Marlena watched with slight horror and surprise in her eyes as the swarm of sentries clambered up streets and walls in order to reach the team surrounding the core inside the church. She had fought off plenty of sentries beforehand, but she never would have imagined needing to fight off so many at one time. The sentries outnumbered her and her team quite possibly by the hundreds, but Marlena knew enough to know that the team would do whatever it took to defeat them—they would do whatever it took to end the fight and go back home as they had been wanting to do since the battle began.

"This is the best I can do," the voice Marlena had grown to despise uttered. "This is exactly what I wanted—all of you against all of me. How can you possibly hope to stop me?"

"Like the old man said," Tony replied, glancing over at Steve. "Together."

Ultron's sentries wasted no time at all in bursting into the church, advancing on whatever team member stood in their path. Several sentries came barreling toward Marlena in an attempt to reach the core, but she refused to allow them access.

The enticingly prominent sapphire color of Marlena's psionics lit up the small area as she unleashed every ounce of her power onto the advancing sentries, obliterating their metallic forms in an instant. Not a single one of them managed to get passed her, and if for some reason they did, Thor or Bruce were quick to take care of them for her. Even those who believed they could retrieve the core by flying over top of Marlena had to deal with not only her, but also Vision and Tony. Though she was not officially an Avenger, she and the team were definitely a force to be reckoned with, and Ultron had finally realized that after about ninety-seven percent of his sentry army was gone.

Marlena was working diligently on eliminating the remaining sentries when she caught Ultron's attention. He narrowed his glowing, red eyes at her, and with a grunt of frustration he flew into the church. He grabbed the petite girl by the base of the throat and slammed her into the crumbling wall of the structure, his glowing fist raised.

"Bucky, is it?" Ultron baited as Marlena struggled in his grasp. "It would be a shame if he were to lose you, but I guess that's the price he would have to pay for leaving you to fend for yourself at the party, huh?"

Marlena's lip twitched in anger at Ultron's threat toward Bucky. She raised her glowing hands and shoved them towards the large robot, releasing a wave of energy powerful enough to send him flying into the opposite wall where Vision was waiting to take care of him.

Marlena landed in a duck and roll on the ground, narrowly avoiding the silver blur that was Pietro, as well as stray bullets from Natasha's handguns. The sentries were slowly disappearing, and Marlena jumped into action to further quicken the process. She fought alongside Wanda, Pietro, Natasha, Clint, and Steve inside the church, while Thor, Tony, Bruce and Vision took care of Ultron just outside the church.

In moments, the sentries were making an attempt to escape the city, much to Thor's despair. "They're trying to leave the city," he exclaimed as he headed back into the church.

"We can't let 'em, not even one," Tony followed.

Marlena took a deep breath and steadied herself beside Steve. The air was getting thinner as the city continued its ascent, and with the amount of physical exertion Marlena had just endured, it was becoming harder and harder to breathe properly. Not to mention, she was still recovering from the death grip Ultron previously had on her throat.

"We've gotta move out," Steve said, placing a hand on the small of Marlena's back to help steady her. "Even I can tell the air's gettin' thin. You guys get to the boats, I'll sweep for stragglers and be right behind ya."

"What about the core?" Marlena coughed out.

"I'll protect it," Wanda spoke up as she glanced over at Clint. "It's my job."

Clint nodded in response before he, Natasha, and Steve took off, leaving Marlena with Wanda.

"I'm really proud of you, Wanda," Marlena said to her.

Wanda smiled in response to her words, and Marlena turned to head out until Pietro appeared.

"Get the people on the boats, both of you," Wanda instructed the two of them.

"I'm not going to leave you here," Pietro replied.

"I can handle this," Wanda retorted, just in time for one of Ultron's sentries to burst into the church. Wanda destroyed it immediately, leaving Pietro to nod his head in an approving manner. "Come back for me when everyone else is off, not before. You understand?"

Pietro let out a sigh and walked over to Marlena, placing his hand on the small of her back. "You know I'm twelve minutes older than you?" he teased his sister.

She only laughed and shook her head. "Go."

Without warning, Pietro scooped Marlena into his arms and sped away. He sat her down on the ramp to one of the boats and Marlena chuckled before looking up at him. "Was that really necessary? I could've ran by myself."

"Yes, but had you done so I would still be here waiting for you to arrive," Pietro replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "I am a very impatient man, Marlena."

Marlena scoffed and shook her head. "Yeah, that hasn't changed one bit."

"You still know me so well," Pietro said, a grin on his face as he patted Marlena on the arm. "Even to this day it still disgusts me."

Marlena rolled her eyes at his remark and grabbed his wrist. "Let's go see who else needs to be saved."

Pietro hummed in response and allowed Marlena to pull him back onto the floating city. They stopped, though, when the deafening sound of gunshots rang throughout the area. Marlena looked up as the Avengers' quinjet soared over the city, numerous bullets raining from its guns. She knew better than to think one of the Avengers was responsible for the gunfire; it was Ultron.

A look of fear flashed across Marlena's face as the jet neared Clint, who was carrying a small child in his arms. Her heart began to pound dangerously at the thought of Clint and the boy being struck, and without a word, she turned to look up at Pietro. He looked down at her before looking back to Clint, and Marlena knew from the look in his eyes what he was planning to do.

"Pietro, don't!" Marlena yelled as he removed himself from her grasp and ran away, directly into the line of fire.

The bullets were coming too fast, but that didn't stop Marlena from trying to stop them. She threw her hands up and released a wave of telekinetic energy in a desperate attempt to prevent the bullets from hitting Pietro and Clint, but not only were the bullets too fast for her, Pietro was as well.

The gunfire fell silent, as did everything else surrounding Marlena. She lowered her hands and let out a breath before running as fast as she could towards the area Clint and the boy had just been standing. Clint was a few feet away, still holding the boy in his arms, while Pietro stood in front of them with bullet wounds covering the entirety of his body.

"You didn't see that coming," he said to Clint before falling to the ground.

An excruciating amount of pain entered Marlena's body as she felt her mental connection with Pietro dissipating to nothing but an empty void. Her body began to tremble in fear and sadness when she was met with the devastating realization as to what was happening, and she ran over to him as fast as her aching legs would allow.

"No," Marlena forced out as she skidded to a stop on the ground beside him. "Not you—not again."

She heard footsteps behind her but ignored them; her attention remained solely on the silver-haired man laying on the ground. Clint watched Marlena with sad eyes as she attempted to shake him awake, but there was no use; Pietro was already gone.

"You can't be dead," Marlena exclaimed as the tears burned in her hazel eyes. "I can't lose you again."

Before Marlena could do anything else, Steve was plucking her from her spot on the ground, much to her despair. She struggled in his grasp for several seconds before he placed her back down.

"Listen to me," Steve instructed as he placed his hands firmly on her shoulders. "Get to a boat, okay?"

Marlena shook her head violently and made a move to get passed Steve. "But Pietro—"

"Marlena, listen to me," Steve cut her off, his voice stern. "Get to a boat now. We don't have much time left, and I am not losing you. Clint and I will take care of Pietro; just please, Mar, get to a boat."

Marlena gave one last glance to Pietro's body before removing herself from Steve's hold and taking off towards the nearest lifeboat. She plopped down onto one of the numerous seats and pressed her eyes to the palm of her hands as if to halt the flowing tears.

She had spent years believing Pietro to be dead, and was more than thrilled to learn that he wasn't. She had lost him once again, however, and it physically pained her. The worse part of it all, though, was coming to terms with the painful fact that she had managed to save so many people with little or no effort, yet her attempts to save one of the few people who had actually meant something to her had been futile, and that was something she would never be able to forgive herself for.

★ ★ ★

Marlena jolted awake in bed. Her breathing was slightly ragged as she attempted to recover from the nightmare she had just woken up from. In actuality, it hadn't even been a nightmare; it had been just a mere flashback—a memory. She'd been experiencing them off and on since returning back home from Sokovia, though they grew to be less frequent as the time passed. Regardless of how frequently they appeared, though, they still proved to be among the most painful of Marlena's memories, aside from remembering the painstaking three months she spent trapped in a Hydra facility back in 2014, of course.

"You keep having them, Marlena," an accented voice said, catching Marlena's attention. "It has been a year; you have to stop blaming yourself for Pietro's death."

Marlena took a deep breath and ran a hand through her tousled brown hair. "I can't help it, and you know that."

Her thoughts continued to torture her as she sat on her mattress, just as they had been for the past year. She had tried to save Pietro but had ultimately failed, and nothing hurt her worse than living with that guilt every single day. Her confidence since the incident had been at an all-time low, though she had been doing whatever she could to help boost it. Because of what happened with Pietro, Marlena wanted nothing more than to help people—to save people. It was the reason why she assisted the Avengers on any mission they needed her on (though she was not officially a part of the team), but even while on the battlefield she couldn't help but be afraid; how could she be expected to save others when she couldn't even save Pietro?

"I am aware, but I just wish you would not be so hard on yourself."

"What are you even doing in here, Wanda?" Marlena questioned as she fell back onto her mattress.

Wanda rolled her eyes at Marlena and stood up from her spot on the couch, venturing over to her cousin's bedside. "I had originally come to wake you up. Then I saw that you were once again lost inside your memories, so I decided to sit and observe."

Marlena chuckled quietly and covered her head with her comforter, not at all shocked that Wanda had found her way into Marlena's mind. Wanda was more open with her powers than Marlena was, and although Wanda believed mind-reading to be an invasion of privacy, she didn't care when it came to Marlena, and Marlena didn't care when it came to Wanda; the two sifted through each other's minds as if it was nobody's business.

"Get up," Wanda commanded as she ripped the comforter from Marlena's head.

"But why? It's only ten in the morning," Marlena defended.

"Are you forgetting that we have plans today?" Wanda feigned a hurt expression. "We were supposed to hang out before I was forced to go back to work."

Marlena frowned when she remembered Wanda would be leaving soon to head back to New York. Wanda had joined the Avengers shortly after the battle of Sokovia had ended. After losing her brother, she wanted to be able to help people, and she knew by joining the Avengers that she could do so.

When the Avengers were on a hiatus, Wanda lived down in Washington D.C. with the Claires. The moment Marlena returned home with Wanda by her side, Miranda had been more than ecstatic, though after learning of Pietro's death during the battle and learning that Wanda had nowhere else to go, she was more than willing to allow her under her roof. The two barely ever got to see each other when Wanda was working, unless Steve called for an extra set of hands during an important mission. When they did see each other, however, the two would be far too consumed in watching movies and eating junk food to actually go out and do something productive with one another. This lead to them not leaving the house until it was almost time for Wanda to leave.

"Can't you just call in sick?" Marlena whined as she got out of bed.

Wanda chuckled and watched as Marlena strolled over to her closet. "I can't, and you know that. Why don't you just come with me, Marlena? You know they still want you to be a part of the team, Sam, Nat, and I especially."

"Two words, Wan," Marlena called from her closet. "Family and Bucky."

"Your answer continues to remain the same," Wanda sighed.

"Speaking of Bucky, where is he?" Marlena asked, electing to ignore Wanda's remark. She stepped out of her closet with an outfit in hand, though she was missing her shoes.

Wanda shrugged and eyed the clothes in her cousin's hands. "I don't know, but I'll go see if I can find him while you get ready. By the way, I've stolen the black boots that go with that outfit; you may need to find a different one."

Marlena glanced down at Wanda's feet to see her favorite black ankle boots, and she groaned before heading back into her closet. "Dammit, Wanda."

"If you didn't own such adorable clothes I wouldn't have to steal them," Wanda chuckled before running out of Marlena's bedroom to look for Bucky.

A familiar aroma coming from downstairs caught Wanda's attention. She hurried down the stairs and into the enormous kitchen, where Miranda stood by the stove; Bucky sat at the island eating breakfast and scribbling away in a notebook. She shook her head when she noticed the amount of bacon piled onto Bucky's plate and scurried over, removing two of the strips and shoving them into her mouth. Bucky looked up at her with a glare on his face, while Wanda only smirked and continued eating.

"Listen here, Maximoff," he started, placing his pen down onto his notebook. "I'm getting real sick of you always taking my bacon. Do you not understand how disrespectful that is?"

"There's no need for such hostility, Bucky," Wanda chuckled as she sat down beside him.

Miranda let out a sigh at the bantering pair and turned around to sit a plate of food down in front of Wanda. "Maybe if you didn't eat so much damn bacon she wouldn't need to take it."

Bucky only rolled his eyes and continued his previous activities of writing and eating. Miranda shot Wanda a smile, one of which Wanda returned, and turned back around to the stove.

Miranda absolutely adored Wanda. Though Wanda was her niece, Miranda didn't see it that way. To her, Wanda was like another daughter, and that was more important to Miranda than anyone knew. Several months after finding out she was pregnant with her third child, she had suffered a miscarriage. Losing her baby had a very negative impact on not only Miranda's physical state, but her mental state as well. Though Miranda loved Mason and Marlena more than anything in the world, there was still that empty space in her heart she had reserved specifically for her third child. Then Wanda made an appearance months later, and Miranda found that space slowly beginning to fill. She would, however, always love and miss her unborn baby—the daughter she was never granted the opportunity to meet.

"Where's Marlena at?" Miranda asked Wanda from the stove. "Don't you two have plans today?"

"Yes we do; she's upstairs getting ready," Wanda answered as she chewed on her food. "Where are Mason and Greyson? I remember seeing them when I woke up this morning."

Miranda chuckled. "They both decided to take a trip down to Virginia Beach for the weekend. Greyson said something about needing to spend time with his future stepson, I dunno. It was a very spontaneous decision. I was only informed about it this morning when the both of them came downstairs with suitcases in their hands."

"Interesting," Wanda mused as she glanced down at the notebook Bucky was writing in. Her brows furrowed in concentration as she read over the words of the memory he was jotting down, and she let out a sigh before turning back to her breakfast.

For all Wanda knew, the notebook he was violently scribbling away in could've been the sixth in his collection, or even the twentieth. Each one of them held pages full of Bucky's scattered memories, dating as far back as he could remember.

Bucky had suffered sort of a mental breakdown several months ago due to the lack of memories he was able to recall. Even so, if he did, he would soon forget them, almost like a man on Alzheimer's. Marlena, who did her best to help him, encouraged him to write down everything he remembered, whether it be good or bad, and so he did, and it proved to be one of the smartest things he could've possibly done. He was deathly afraid of losing his memory again—he was afraid of losing everything he had worked so hard to recollect.

There was a simpler solution to his memory problem, though, and it was one that Bucky refused to consider, much to Marlena's and Wanda's despair.

"When are you going to stop being stubborn and let Marlena and I help you, Bucky?" Wanda spoke to him telepathically to prevent Miranda from hearing what she had to say.

Bucky jumped as he registered the sound of Wanda's voice inside his head, and he glanced over at her with a small glare on his face, though she refused to look him in the eye. "I'm not being stubborn; I've given you both multiple reasons as to why I don't want you to help me, at least not the way you want to."

"It would be more effective than just talking to you and showing you pictures from your past, and you know that."

"Let it go."

Wanda refused to give up on him. "What are you so afraid of?"

"I said let it go, Wanda."

Wanda rolled her eyes and looked at him this time. "Not until you tell me what the hell you're so afraid of. You know Marlena and I would never do anything to hurt you; we are only trying to help."

"I spent seventy years going through the pain of having my brain mutilated to the point of not being able to remember my own damn hair color," Bucky said as his pace on the paper quickened. "I understand you two are trying to help me, and I appreciate it more than you know, but I just can't subject myself to any kind of mental manipulation; it would only make things worse than they are now. If you want to help me, then just please let me figure myself out without trying to force everything on me at once."

Wanda could only nod in response to his words and continue with her breakfast. She understood Bucky, but she still had not been expecting him to respond the way he did. She knew his story, she knew his past and everything he had been through, but she just didn't think he would incorporate that into his reasoning.

After several minutes of silence, the kitchen door opened, attracting Miranda and Wanda's attention. Bucky was still concentrating on jotting down memories; he was afraid that if he lost even the smallest bit of concentration he would lose the memory, and he didn't want that.

"Don't you look cute," Miranda said as Marlena entered into the kitchen.

Marlena made a face and looked down at her clothes; she wore a black halter top with a black and white flannel over top, jean shorts, and her red converse rather than the outfit she had originally planned to wear. "I would've looked cuter had Wanda not stole my boots."

"I couldn't help myself," Wanda defended. "They are just too cute."

Marlena only shook her head and strolled over to where Wanda and Bucky sat at the island. She wrapped her small arms around Bucky's torso from behind and pressed her head to his back, allowing his tense body to relax under her touch. They had been together for almost two years, yet Bucky still could not get over the feeling she gave him when she so much as looked at him, let alone touched him.

"Hi, sweetheart," Bucky greeted quietly as he finally closed his notebook.

"Hi, Buck."

Bucky turned around to plant a kiss onto her lips before allowing her to move towards the fridge. She pulled out a root beer and opened it up, wasting no time at all in pressing the bottle to her lips.

"So, where are you and Wanda going today?" Miranda asked.

Marlena shrugged and brought her hand up to play with the silver locket around her neck; she'd barely taken it off since Bucky had given it to her for Christmas back in 2014. "Wherever I can afford."

"Maybe if you had a job like a normal twenty-one year old you wouldn't have that problem," Wanda sassed. "I know an opening."

"Bite me, Maximoff," Marlena said, tightening her grip around her locket.

"Squeeze any tighter and you're gonna break it, Mar," Bucky said nonchalantly as he shoved a piece of bacon into his mouth.

Marlena released her hold on the necklace and took another sip of her drink. "Are you still going out with Sam and Steve today, Bucky?"

He nodded. "I don't know where we're going, and I don't really think I want to. It'll just be good to spend some time with those punks before they head back to New York."

"Yet you never seem to want to spend time with me," Wanda scoffed.

Bucky shot her a sideways glance. "I see you too much to actually wanna spend time with you."

"Don't take it too personally, Wanda; he does the same with me, too," Marlena said as she placed her bottle of soda onto the counter.

"Are you two planning on leaving any time soon?" Bucky teased the two girls.

Marlena pushed herself off of the counter and sauntered over to him. "Yes, as a matter of fact we are."

Bucky hummed in response before wrapping an arm around her and pulling her close to him, placing yet another kiss onto her lips.

"I'm going to the car before I puke," Wanda remarked before getting out of her seat and hurrying out of the kitchen.

"Oh, she wouldn't be acting that way if she were with Vision," Miranda muttered from the table, earning a laugh from Marlena.

Bucky shook his head as he thought of Wanda and Vision. "How does she have fun with that?"

Marlena snorted, obviously aware of what he was hinting at. "How about you worry about your own sex life, Bucky?"

"Oh, I will," he smirked, kissing her on the lips again.

Marlena chuckled and pulled away from him. She bid both her mom and Bucky goodbye before heading out the door, unaware of what the day ahead had in store for her.