Candles
By Lyo
Legals: Not mine.
Dedicated to: Naisumi and Rosiel, who despite everything, still read. ^_^
~~**~~**~~**~~**~~
He stood alone in the church, head bowed as he looked at the candles. They warmed only a fraction of the room as plaster saints stared down at him, staring at him with accusing eyes. They knew what war raged inside of him, more than the age-old war of growing up. More than just turning a page and seeing what life had in store.
Without thinking, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled out a dollar. It was an old dollar, fuzzy and creased from age. The green ink was so much brighter than usual as the face of a dead president looked at him. He seemed to be glaring, mouth set in the familiar line. Only now, it seemed cruel.
He stared at it a moment longer before shoving it into the donation box, looking around. He felt dirty, wrong. He didn't believe in God or the Devil or any of that kind of thing. No God would be so cruel as to treat His children the way Pietro or Wanda or any of the Brotherhood had been treated their whole lives. At the same time, he felt that he had to do this. It was an involuntary action to come here for guidance... His foster parents had all but drilled that into his skull when Magneto left him.
The slender, delicate fingers shook as he lifted one of the wooden splinters beside the candles and placed the tip into one of the already lit candles. One of the priests was walking around, setting books into the wooden slots on the back of every pew, looking at him with soft eyes every moment or so.
Pietro looked away, lifting the stick and placing the flame into a blue candle, watching the wick catch. He didn't know who that candle was for. Maybe it was for him. He couldn't just walk with his family, stand beside the man who gave him life and the sister that he'd started that life with. It didn't matter that his father pushed him harder than he could physically and mentally take. It didn't matter that his father wouldn't ever care about him more than he cared about the mission.
And it didn't matter that his sister never really spoke to him. He didn't care that she'd rather see him dead than share a half-way decent conversation. Everything that they could have shared together was killed by their father's inability to raise children. He put away the problem child, and that left him with the little boy that needed depressants shoved down his throat every moment of the day.
They could both kill him easily. Wanda could just hex-bolt everything until he was caught up in it... Magneto could cause the iron in his blood to kill him some how. He'd seen him do it once. It wasn't a pretty picture. They could kill him; he accepted this. He was equally terrified of both of them. Wanda would kill him if that would punish Magneto, and Magneto would finish him if that would help his cause.
So why did he care about them both?
He lit another candle, red for his sister. He missed waking up in the morning and seeing her in the next bed over, usually still sleeping, thumb in her mouth and one finger twisting around a lock of black hair. He missed carefully getting out of bed and then pouncing on her. She'd giggle and start thwapping him with a pillow. He'd do the same.
He missed going to school together and eating lunch together. He actually missed being forced into playing Barbies with her or Pretty Princess. He missed building forts on rainy days and juice and crackers and all the simplistic things that they'd shared together. He missed comforting her when the mutation began to get scary, when she'd do things that she didn't mean.
One finger traced a line over his eye where a table had clipped him. That had been the end. His father couldn't take it; he didn't need a wild mutant on his hand. She'd gone away....
The boy pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket, swallowing hard as he looked down at the simple words that one of the girls at school had written for him that day, when he knew what he had to do, "Mother Goddess, please guard her as I travel. Enclose her in your loving arms and foster and bring forth the strength she'll need to stop me. With my death, I pray that she will be free from this, that she will shine in the light of the Golden Wings of Isis. All that is great and loving belongs only to her. Please grant her the strength to forgive me."
He lit another candle, green, for his father. He couldn't just leave him alone. Wanda would survive this...She didn't want him. His father was alone where Wanda would be accepted by the X-men if all else failed. His father had always been alone, since...Since before he knew. And even if the man didn't love him, a son must stand by his father. It's his only duty to that man.
Why couldn't he make any one else see that? All he wanted was acceptance from the man that sent him away when the stress of losing his twin caused the mutation to come to life. He didn't need a hyperactive ten-year old that could break the sun barrier any more than Summers needed contacts.
He looked down at the candles, then at the stick in his hand. With a moment of hesitation, he did something that he hadn't done in all his sixteen years. He lit that fourth candle, a black one that seemed so sinister in the see of all the rest. That candle was for the one he could safely blame all of this on.
Magda.
That woman ran from his father when she was pregnant, frightened of his newly found powers. She didn't care about anything but her own fear. She ran for three months, never seeking real shelter or real food. It was because of her that his family fell apart. It was because of her that both he and Wanda had been born before term, underweight and struggling to live.
If she had even loved her children half as much as that tattered letter that his father had framed and hung in the twins' bedroom, she would have gone somewhere safe. Magda knew that she had twins growing inside of her. She knew that she needed to have rest. She could have gone to a shelter, but no. She ran.
She died shortly after the birth of complications. Complications that followed those twins till today. He was glad he looked nothing like her. He was glad that he never knew her. She left his father to raise two mutant children, two children that needed more care than normal children because of birth complications. Two unhappy little anemic children that were forced apart because Magneto had too much else going on and no one that he could trust to raise them.
Magda hated Magneto; Wanda hated Magneto. Wanda had honored her mother.
And now it was time for him to honor their father.
Pietro glared down at the candle, which shown so brightly. The priest was fussing with the altar now, not paying attention to him. Pietro pulled a picture out of his wallet that was folded over and opened it. A woman with black hair and bright green eyes smiled back at him, mocking him. He put the picture down against the candles, looking at those he had lit.
"Wanda, I am so sorry it has to be this way..."
"I won't let you face her alone, Magn...Father."
His eyes fell on the black one.
He licked his fingers and put out that flame.
"Rot in Hell, Mother."
FIN.