"Pietro, do you always appear suddenly like this?"
The unfamiliar voice pulled Wanda's attention to the doorway. Pietro stood there, trademark smirk already forming, but he wasn't alone.
The woman beside him was unlike anyone Wanda had encountered in this galaxy. Blue skin, delicate features, and an elegant bearing that spoke of political training—yet she leaned into Pietro's space with the casual comfort of genuine intimacy. Her traditional Pantoran robes, rich indigo with silver threading, would've looked formal on anyone else. On her, draped around Pietro's arm, they somehow appeared rumpled in a way that suggested recent... distraction.
"It's hard for me not to," Pietro said, that old cocky edge softening into something warmer.
"But I was in a meeting." The woman's tone carried exasperation, though her fingers remained intertwined with his.
Pietro's grin widened. "You looked bored."
"You always think I look bored."
"Because you are bored." He tugged her closer, dropping his voice to that teasing lilt Wanda remembered from their childhood, back when he'd convinced her to sneak out of the orphanage. "Come on, Riyo. You know Senator Papanoida won't mind. He practically owes me his daughter's life."
Riyo rolled her golden eyes—an impressive feat given how luminous they were—and jabbed her finger against his chest. "That doesn't give you carte blanche to disrupt Pantoran diplomatic proceedings whenever you feel like it."
"You say that like you're actually upset."
"Oh, gods." Riyo pressed her fingertips to her temples, though the gesture lacked any real frustration. "How did I fall in love with someone this insufferable?"
The word love hung in the air.
Wanda's eyebrows rose. "You're girlfriend?" She stepped forward, studying the Pantoran senator with renewed interest.
Riyo swayed slightly, turning to face the source of the voice. Her eyes—sharp with the assessment of a trained politician—swept over Wanda, cataloguing details with practiced efficiency. Recognition flickered across her features.
She glanced between Pietro and Wanda, her gaze lingering on the way they stood, the mirror-image tilt of their heads.
"This is your sister?" Riyo's voice climbed with surprise and something that sounded like relief. "You found her?"
Pietro's entire demeanor shifted. The playful arrogance melted into something raw and unguarded. "Yeah." He gently turned Riyo by her shoulders until the three of them formed a loose triangle. "Wanda, this is Riyo Chuchi. She's a senator from Pantora." His hand settled at the small of Riyo's back, possessive and tender. "And my girlfriend."
He looked at Riyo, and Wanda recognized that expression—the same look he'd worn when they were children and he'd shared his last piece of bread with her.
"Riyo, this is Wanda. My sister."
Wanda extended her hand, crimson energy flickering faintly around her fingertips before she consciously suppressed it. Riyo's handshake was firm, her palm warm despite her cool-toned skin.
"It's wonderful to finally meet you." Riyo's relief was palpable, bleeding through her carefully maintained senatorial composure. "Pietro's been... I know he's been looking for you. Worried sick, if I'm honest. Seeing you here, safe—" She squeezed Wanda's hand once more before releasing it. "I'm genuinely glad."
The sincerity caught Wanda off guard. She felt it resonate through the Force—or whatever this galaxy called the threads that connected all living things. Her other hand found Riyo's shoulder, a gentle touch of acknowledgment.
"I had to meet the woman who makes my brother smile like an idiot." Wanda let her gaze slide to Pietro, who was watching them both with naked hope in his eyes. "Though I'll admit, a senator? I never pegged you for the political type."
"I had standards," Pietro deadpanned, though his fingers traced absent patterns against Riyo's hip. "Riyo just exceeded all of them."
Riyo huffed a laugh. "I had to lower mine considerably."
"Please. You enjoy every second with me." Pietro leaned in, brushing a kiss to her cheek. The gesture was light, almost chaste, but Riyo's skin darkened to a deeper shade of blue—a Pantoran blush, Wanda realized. Riyo's fingers found Pietro's and squeezed, her thumb stroking over his knuckles.
The casual intimacy twisted something in Wanda's chest. Memories surfaced unbidden: their parents' cold disappointment, the compound in Sokovia, the life before everything fell apart.
"So... about our past..." Wanda's voice dropped to barely above a whisper.
Pietro met her eyes. "I know what you're worried about. But she's different, Wanda."
"He told me everything." Riyo stepped closer, not quite defensive but protective nonetheless. "About your family. Sokovia. Hydra. All of it. We talked it through."
Wanda studied her brother's face, searching for doubt, for the desperate hope of a man trying to convince himself. She found only certainty.
"You trust her that much?" The question came out softer than intended.
"I love her." No hesitation. No qualifier. Just truth.
Riyo's blush deepened, spreading down her neck, but she held Pietro's gaze. "I love you too."
"Oh my god." Wanda pressed her hand to her forehead. "Am I really watching this? Is this happening?"
"Hey." Pietro released Riyo long enough to gesture broadly at his sister. "We've been separated for months. I found someone who makes me happy. Meanwhile, you apparently skipped the whole dating phase and went straight to motherhood." He pulled Riyo back against his chest, draping his arms around her shoulders. "So maybe don't judge."
"What?" Riyo blinked, confusion evident in the way her brow furrowed.
"At least someone's willing to put up with you." Wanda's tone turned wry. "Our parents would be so proud—"
"'We're disappointed in you, Wanda.'" Pietro dropped his voice to a mockery of their father's stern register—or at least what he remembered of it. "'We thought Pietro was the disgrace. Yet here you are, proving us wrong.'"
"Oh, shut up." Wanda swatted his arm, then jabbed her finger against his forehead hard enough to make him lean back. "You're worse than I remember."
Pietro caught her wrist, and suddenly they were scuffling like children, all elbows and half-hearted shoves and breathless laughter.
Riyo watched them with transparent delight. Her hand pressed briefly to her chest, as if trying to contain the warmth spreading there.
She'd seen Pietro at his best during missions—confident, capable, heroic. She'd seen him at his worst during nightmares he wouldn't discuss. But this? This unguarded joy, this playful energy bouncing between siblings who'd spent too long apart?
This was the Pietro she'd fallen for. The one beneath the super-speed and the sarcasm.
Her pulse quickened at the memory of a few nights ago, when he'd been equally unguarded, equally open—
"What are those marks on your face?"
Riyo jerked back to the present, meeting Wanda's suddenly focused stare. "Hmm?"
Wanda had extracted herself from Pietro's headlock and now approached Riyo with the careful deliberation of a predator. Riyo's instincts screamed danger, though not the physical kind. Something else pressed against her awareness—gentle but undeniable, like someone lightly brushing their fingers across her thoughts.
"I know you've been accommodating him." Wanda's voice lost all playfulness. Her eyes, dark and impossibly deep, locked onto Riyo's. "But I need you to understand something. He's all the family I have left."
She let that statement settle between them like a weight.
"So I'm asking: Will you take care of him? Actually take care of him?"
Riyo didn't hesitate. She pulled free from Pietro's protective embrace and met Wanda's intensity head-on. "Yes. Absolutely." Her voice carried the same conviction she used when addressing the Senate. "Your brother is—he's everything to me. I will do whatever it takes to protect him, to make him happy."
Wanda's expression softened incrementally. "Good. That's all I needed to hear."
Then, before Riyo could react, Wanda pulled her into a brief but genuine hug.
"So," Wanda murmured against her ear, loud enough for Pietro to hear, "when exactly can I expect to be promoted to aunt?"
Riyo froze.
Pietro choked on air.
"Wanda!" Pietro's voice cracked as he moved to intercept, physically putting himself between his girlfriend and his meddling sister. "We are not—that's not—" He pulled Riyo against him, as if shielding her from the question. "We haven't discussed anything like that. At all. Zero plans. None."
Wanda's eyebrow arched with all the subtlety of a hunter who'd successfully cornered her prey.
The blue flush that had been fading from Riyo's face came roaring back, spreading to the tips of her ears. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, but no sound emerged.
Pietro continued digging himself deeper. "I mean, obviously eventually maybe we'd—but that's not something you just—we're not—"
His eyes widened in horror as he realized what he'd just implied.
Riyo buried her face in her hands.
Pietro stammered through increasingly convoluted explanations, each one somehow worse than the last.
Wanda simply watched, arms crossed, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She'd seen this exact outcome the moment she'd asked the question.