AN: I am not an English native speaker and this story is not betaread. I hope I didn´t butcher the English language too badly. I tried my best to get grammar and spellings right.
I will mix the history of the different Pietro´s and Wanda´s up a bit (the characters are of course not mine) and put some of my own ideas into it too. From their looks however I had the Evolution characters in my mind when writing this.
Luck is not for everyone
The night was dark. Darker than usual that is. There was no moon in the sky, nor any stars. Only clouds traveled on the fast lane over the world, sped up by the stormy wind raging through woods, villages and towns in the north- east of America.
Bayville, home to the X-men and Brotherhood was on the winds path also and while Xavier´s big mansion stood firm, the Brotherhood boarding house creaked and shuddered under the forces of nature.
Most rooms of the house were dark, which was easily explained by the clock showing everyone who cared to know that it was 2:30 in the morning.
Just one room was still filled with a source of light, namely the flickering light of the television. And in front of the device, on a worn grey couch, sound asleep, was a boy of about 17. He was wearing dirty and ripped blue jeans with a black shirt, which had certainly seen better days also. He turned around in his sleep on the small surface and fell promptly, with a thud and rather ungracefully on the hard floor.
"Huh?" Lance looked around drowsily, trying to find his bearings. A girl screamed shrilly in the television and the boy yawned loudly.
"Damn!" Lance muttered. He was a bit angry at himself for falling asleep, because he had wanted to see the car race, that was being held somewhere in Europe. Of course the race was over by now and he had seen exactly the first 5 minutes of it.
"Oh well..." he murmured and got up from the floor, scratching the messed up mop of brown hair on his head. "Up to bed with you Lance." He told himself and stumbled still sleepily up the stairs.
He could hear the usual sounds, while passing the doors to the rooms of his housemates. Fred snoring loud, Todd mumbling nonsense in his dreams, some notes of music drifting to him through Wanda´s door (she said she slept best with music) and Pietro tossing and turning in his bed. That boy was a fitful sleeper, never still, not even at night.
Just when Lance passed Pietro´s door to get to his room, the tossing and turning stopped and instead was replaced with a string of curses.
"What now?" the teenager thought and pressed his ear against the door.
"Oh no! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" he heard Pietro mutter. "Damn! Fuck!"
Lance lifted his fist to knock, when suddenly the door flew open and Pietro crashed right into him, throwing them both to the floor.
Startled they stared at each other.
"Uhm...you ok?" Lance asked.
"What the hell are you..." Pietro started his rant, but abruptly stopped, blushed and raced to the bathroom. With a bang the door was shut behind him and the shower turned on.
"Now...that was strange." Lance thought and curiously peered into Pietro´s room, to find out what the problem might be, that had the speedster behaving the way he did.
Not even two minutes passed when Pietro reappeared in his room, dressed in new shorts, throwing the old ones in a corner. Lance stared at him oddly. "Man Pete, what´s that? Did you piss in your bed?" he asked gesturing to the big wet spot on the mattress and the smelly, scrunched up sheet on the floor.
"Get lost!" Pietro shouted at him angrily and before Lance knew what happened, he was sitting on his butt on the floor in the hallway (again), Pietro´s door was firmly closed and another angry face was staring down at him.
"What´s all that racket about?" a disgruntled Wanda wanted to know and Lance swallowed dryly. Waking up Wanda in the very early hours of the morning was never a good idea. He had seen what happened to Todd the one time he wanted to surprise the girl with a sunrise-picnic. Todd had not been able to leave his bed for 2 days afterward.
"Uh..." was Lances intelligent response.
"Well?" Wanda asked coldly.
"Nothing?" the boy tried, but Wanda would have none of it.
"Is something wrong with that devil brother of mine?" she required and Lance was astonished to hear a bit of worry slipping into her tone. "Not that I care if there is!" she added quickly. "But well...is he alright?"
"I think he had an accident...you know...in his bed." Lance said and couldn´t stop himself from chuckling a little.
He froze however, when he saw anger clouding the girls face even more than usual. "Never..."she spoke dangerously slow "...never again laugh about my brother having an accident!"
"Uh...no, I ...well...I mean... hey... he is 15 years old..."
Wanda sighted. "He had a lot trouble with this, when we were younger, understand! Didn´t know he still had accidents though, but don´t ridicule him. He got enough of that from father for a life time."
"He has?" Lance asked. "I always got the impression Pietro rather admires his father. I mean Magneto is an ass, but...
Wanda´s look silenced him once more. For a moment he thought Wanda would just turn around and go back to her room (or worse hex him), but to his biggest astonishment she slid down on the floor next to him, leaning against the wall.
"My brother did not speak much about his past...our past..., did he?" she inquired in a calm and serious tone, that Lance had never heard on her before.
Lance shook his head no. "All I know is that he was in the foster care system for some time and that you...uhm...were...well...in that mental place."
Now it was Wanda´s turn to look astonished. "I thought he continued to live with father, when I was sent away..."
"No. I don´t know what happened, but as I understand it, he was in a few foster homes and first saw Magneto again when he broke him out of jail, a year or so ago.
"Oh..." was all Wanda said.
They sat in silence for a bit and just as Lance pondered about getting up and finally meeting his mattress, Wanda spoke up again. "We were street urchins you know..."
"Pietro and you?" Lance asked the obvious, and Wanda just nodded.
"Yeah. We lived with a gypsy clan for a bit, but when they were killed in a fire we were all alone on the streets in Transia. ... That´s in Eastern Europe." She added, not quite sure if Lance would know where her birth country lay.
"How old were you?"
"Around 4 I believe. "
"Young." The boy stated.
"Mhm... I owe Pietro my life." Wanda continued and Lance mouth formed a perfect O. Was this Wanda talking nice about Pietro?
"You do?"
"He pulled me out of the fire and kept me save afterward, you know. Found us shelter and food. When my powers were acting crazy and things just happened, it was he, who stood against the people. I don´t know how many times he shouted at them and threw rocks at them... of course he was just a scrawny little boy, so in the end we always had to run and hide... but he tried."
Lance didn´t say anything. He had never before heard Wanda speaking more than a few words at once and without shouting and cursing too.
"He...we... we had to live through a lot bad things and Pietro had had trouble with staying dry when he slept since I remember. We were 7 when Magneto saved us from some people, who were attacking us and in the 2 years we lived with him, before he send me to the asylum, Pietro woke up wet more often than not."
"Ah..." Lance responded, at a loss of what to say.
"Father hated him for it. He punished and ridiculed him all the time, calling him a baby. Pietro felt really bad. He tried very hard, you know. He even stopped sleeping for a time, but of course one cannot do that indefinitely. When we turned 8 years old, father brought me a present. It was the first present I had ever got and I was so excited about it."
Lance nodded, not quite understanding the sudden turn of subject yet.
"Anyway, there also was a present for Pietro, a big one, all wrapped in blue paper with little elephants printed on it. You can imagine what this did to Pietro, can´t you?"
Lance laughed. "Oh yes!" he said, letting his thoughts travel back to a few months ago, when he had bought a birthday present for Pietro and made the mistake of letting him know that a day before his actual birthday. He had had not a second peace from that moment on, as Pietro´s curiosity was tremendous and his impatience even more so. In the end he had given Pietro his present at midnight, because that had been the only way to get some sleep.
"He was so excited." Wanda continued. "So happy. He was bursting with curiosity and felt so special, because father got him a present. I mean, I think he did feel that way, because I felt the same way, but I was a little more relaxed about it... outwardly. Father said to us, that because I was the lady, I was allowed to open my present first. So I did and it was a doll, with a beautiful white dress and long blonde hair... "Wanda caught Lances confused face and blushed a little.
"Well, I know, I don't seem much like a girly girl, but before the asylum...I always had looked with envy at the little girls Pietro and I saw playing with their dolls, when we passed through the villages and towns. Back than I had wished for a doll so very much and suddenly I had one of my own, who was even more beautiful, than the ones I had seen before. I was delighted by my present. After I had thanked father for it, it was Pietro´s turn to open his present. He was already very impatient, hopping up and down on the balls of his feet and babbling the whole time about his present probably being the red fire fighter car, which we had seen in the window of the same shop the doll was from. He wanted to be a fire fighter, when he´d grown up. Well anyway...he ripped the present open and..." Wanda´s face dropped and her eyes clouded with sadness and anger.
"You know what he got him?" she asked, her voice cold.
Lance shook his head. "No idea."
"Diapers. Yes, he brought him a big package of diapers and said to him: "When you act like a baby, you will be treated like a baby." From that day on, he forced Pietro to wear them every night and to report to him first thing in the morning, so that he could check if he was wet or dry and punish him if necessary...and that was most times. My brother was so disappointed and felt so humiliated. I will never forget his face, when he saw what was inside his first birthday present ever. I didn't understand why father was so cruel to him. I wanted to love father. He saved us. He gave us a roof over the head and food... only a nice man would do something like that, right? But he never loved us. He just wanted us for our powers. I understand that now. But I wonder if Pietro understands that yet... and ever will."
They were silent again.
This time it was Lance who broke the silence. "I will not laugh at him, Wanda. Don´t worry."
"Good," was all the girl said, now falling back into being her usual self.
"Or was the sullen, angry girl of few words her usual self?" Lance wondered. "Was Pietro truly the arrogant jerk, who sneered at everyone and everything?" Lance sighted. All of them, Pietro, Wanda, Todd, Fred, himself... they could have been so much more, if they would have had a chance... if life would have treated them a little fairer maybe they would not have become the losers they were now... the delinquents... the criminals...the scum of society.
"Thanks Wanda." The boy said.
She looked up at him startled.
"For telling me some about your and Pietro´s life," he continued.
"Yeah whatever" Wanda snapped at him, now feeling very embarrassed that she had let her guard down in front of him.
Lance got to his feet.
"Uhm... well... have a good night then." He said and left the girl on the floor, vanishing into his room and closing the door silently behind him.
Wanda stood as well, but before she left, she put her hand on her brother´s wooden door, wishing more than anything, that they truly could be brother and sister again one day. She missed her brother so much, always had for all the years, but she could not yet find it in her to forgive him for not stopping their father´s plan of sending her to the asylum... and for not visiting her afterwards at least. But she promised herself to ask him soon, what had happened to him, after she left. The information she got from Lance, that Pietro was in foster care... maybe his life without her had been going a lot differently than she thought it had been. Maybe he had reasons even for how he had acted toward her, for leaving her rotting in that place. She would find out soon. And maybe... maybe...
"Good Night, my brother," she murmured to the closed door, unaware that on the other side of it sat Pietro, who had listened in to her conversation with Lance. Tears were silently running down his cheeks. "Good night, my sister," he mumbled and buried his face in his arms, sobbing silently till he fell asleep once more.
The End
AN: This story has a real background. It is inspired by a boy I know, who often had to suffer humiliation by one of his parents and who got only a package of diapers for Christmas, with the words I have Magneto use towards Pietro, because he had had a nightly accident a few days before. Sad.
Maybe I will spin some more webs for the life of this Pietro. I do have some images in my head, from the time he lived with Magneto and his time in foster care, especially the last foster home he was at before jail, but have to see if that´s enough to make another story of it.