So @littlestartopaz​ sent me this post and a request for Vision/Wanda and I fucking love this ship and also Jewish!Wanda is my jam (LITERALLY WHO AM I KIDDING, RELIGIOUS SUPERHEROES ARE MY JAM) so I did it.

Okay also Topaz I know you sent me this prompt a while ago but I wanted to be able to post it for the first night of Hanukkah so I held onto it for a few days.  And it’s now officially after sundown where I am, so Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

Wanda had set up a small table in the empty hall outside of Pietro’s room, where she could see him through the wall of windows without being kicked out for bringing fire into the medical wing. He was still asleep, even months after Sokovia—she’d seen him in this sort of healing coma before, but never for so long.  The external damage was healed, but his body was still rebuilding fragile nerves and blood vessels and ruined organ tissue.  The doctors said that he’d shut down every system to preserve what he could after taking those bullets to save Hawkeye, and she was glad for that, glad that, when he woke up, he would be her brother again.  She could stand any wait.

Or at least that’s what she told herself when she came down to sit with him.  

Wanda smoothed a blue cloth, fringed and embroidered with a white star, over the table she’d stolen from the lab. The steady beeping of the heart monitor inside the room was reassuring, but she missed hearing Pietro rattle around near her as she went through these motions.  The first year they had fine things, a soft cloth and matching candles and all, and he was comatose.

“Wanda?” a tentative voice behind her asked, and she jumped so hard the table rattled.  “I’m sorry,” Vision said as she whirled on her heel.  He was dressed in civilian clothes, plain and disingenuous against his bright synthskin, and he looked apologetic, as he always did when he took her by surprise.  He moved as quietly as a ghost most of the time and the Mind Gem let him shield his mind so tightly it was as if he wasn’t there at all, and Wanda was unused to being startled.  “I was looking for you, and this was the last place I could think of.  Don’t you usually visit your brother during the morning?”

“Today is different,” Wanda said, and chewed on her lower lip for a moment, considering, as she pulled out the small box she’d gone out to buy that morning.  Opening it, she drew out the silver hanukkiah inside, still shining, and the box of white candles she’d tucked inside.

Vision stepped closer, until he was at her shoulder.  She looked up as she stood the hanukkiah on the cloth-covered table, and saw the gears making up his eyes rotate faster, glittering faintly as he accessed some scrap of knowledge.  “This is…the first night of Hanukkah, correct?  I didn’t realize you were observant.”

“Not for a long time,” Wanda admitted, carefully putting the shamash into its center holder and adding the first candle on the far right. “We, um.  We were told it was a universal policy, not just about Judaism, when we worked for…  But we always found time to celebrate Hanukkah, even when we had to sneak out.” She smiled, looking into the room and blinking a few times as her throat ached distantly.  “It was always our favorite holiday, when we were small, and we just could not quite…let it go.  I suppose it’s childish,” she said, looking down at her hands as her smile faded.

A red hand stretched out and wrapped around her own, warm and smooth, and she looked up in surprise to see Vision smiling at her, shy.  “I don’t think it’s childish, Wanda,” he said quietly.  “I think it was strong.”  He hesitated, then asked, “Will you let me stay?”

“Of course,” Wanda blurted without thinking, tightening her grip on his hand before she released it.  “Here,” she instructed, pulling out a match and striking it before pushing the matchbox onto him.  “Hold this.”

Wanda brought the flame to the wick of the shamash and held perfectly still, waiting for it to burst into light.  The warmth of the match stung against her fingers as she blew it out, and Vision made a noise of mild alarm.

“Wanda, you will burn yourself.”

“I’ll be fine, Vis,” she said, and picked up the burning shamash. “This is the shamash,” she told him.  “The helper.  I—you probably know this already.”

“Tell me anyway,” he said, soft and almost reverent.  

“The shamash is used to light the rest of the candles,” Wanda said. “And then they burn all the way down.”

Holding the shamash up before her eyes, she took a deep breath.  The blessing was one of her oldest memories—she couldn’t even translate it anymore, but she remembered listening to her mother sing them, her voice so much stronger and surer than Wanda’s.  Between herself and Pietro, they had managed to keep them alive, the memories fresh enough to bring into the light once a year.

“Barukh atah Adonai,” Wanda sang, “Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam, asher kidshanu b’mitz’votav, v’tzivanu l’had’lik neir, l’had’lik neir, shel Hanukkah. Amein.”  She paused, looking over at Vision, who was watching her steadily, the Mind Gem gleaming gold above his eyes.  “Do you…can you tell me what it means?  I…it’s been too long.”

He nodded.  “Blessed are you, Lord, our God,” he translated in a murmur, “sovereign of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to light the lights of Hanukkah.”

Wanda nodded and looked back to the flame in her hands.  “Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam, she'asah nisim la'avoteinu bayamim haheim baziman hazeh.  Amein.”

“Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe,” Vision echoed, “who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time.”

A smile, softer than anything she’d dared to wear in a while, one of those small sweet things Vision brought out in her at all the moments she least expected, crept onto Wanda’s face as she raised the shamash for the final blessing.

“This one is only for the first night,” she told him, and cleared her throat gently before she sang.  “Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam, shehecheyanu v'kiyimanu v'higi'anu laz'man hazeh.  Amein.”

“Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season,” Vision said, barely more than a breath.  “Amen.”

Wanda reached out to touch the shamash to the single candle in the hanukkiah.  Once the shamash was returned to its center holder, she stepped back to look at the two flickering lights, casting a bright gold reflection off the glass of the window.

“It’s beautiful,” Vision said, and Wanda looked up to smile at him.

“Do you know the story?”

“Tell me,” Vision said, looking down at her, and she wondered for a moment how anyone could think that his mechanical features were less expressive than a human’s.

“Well,” she said, reaching out to link her fingers hesitantly through his, “once there was an emperor, and he decreed that the Jews should worship as his people did.  He killed any Jews who refused to adhere to the command and desecrated the great Temple.  Finally, a man named Judah Maccabee led a revolt with his father and the religious leaders who had escaped the emperor’s purge and all the Jews who would follow them. They won, but when they returned to the Temple, it was ruined, and the oil for the holy menorah was almost all gone. The flame of the menorah is never supposed to be allowed to go out, but when the Maccabees came back to the Temple, there was only enough oil for one more day, and it would take a week for more oil to be found.”

Wanda let out a breath and Vision squeezed her hand, gently, and asked, “What did they do?”

“They consulted the rabinim, and they finally said, ‘Put all the oil that is left into the menorah, and pray.’ And so they did, and they prayed, and they waited.  And the oil that should have only burned for one day burned bright for eight whole days, and they called it a miracle.”  She stood there quietly for a moment and blinked, her eyes dazzled by the candles.

“Wanda,” Vision said quietly, his free hand coming up to brush away a tear tracking down her cheek.  “The story is more beautiful when you tell it.”

“Thank you,” she said, offering him a smile.

“Perhaps you could find a synagogue to attend, here in New York,” he suggested.  “I would go with you, if you weren’t opposed.”

Wanda felt her breathing stutter with shock.  Find a synagogue?  Return to her faith, to Shabbos on Friday nights and apples with honey on Rosh Hashannah and an empty seat for Elijah on Pesach?  It had somehow never occurred to her that she might be able to do it.  She was a monstrous thing now—a witch, like they had codenamed her.  Would a rabbi even welcome her like this?

She looked up at Vision again, trying to find the words to articulate the ache in her chest.  The idea that she might be able to be Jewish again, like her mother taught her, or, worse, that she might never be clean enough to do so, hurt like a knife in her ribs.  He looked back down at her, the tiny perfect gears of his irises turning slowly in the candlelight, and she couldn’t seem to find it in herself to give in to the rising panic.

It was Hanukkah, she thought stubbornly, tucking herself minutely closer to Vision’s arm.  If there was going to be a time for the miracle of a rabbi accepting a witch and an android into a synagogue, it was surely now.

“Okay,” Wanda said, and she was proud that her voice didn’t shake.  The light from the candles seemed to warm something long forgotten in her chest, something that shivered and cracked open to reveal that it had burned untended all this time.  “We can go tomorrow.”