Summary:
An examination in brief of defining events during Pietro and Wanda's shared lives.
Disclaimer:
Follows a work of fanfiction intended for entertainment purposes only, the creation and publication of which earns its author no monetary profit. All recognizable characters and referenced canonical events are property of Marvel Comics Incorporated. Or Disney, whatever. Or Fox. I absolutely cannot keep track.
CROSSROADS
They should return.
Eventually staggering to a halt, a gasping mess of spent limbs and seething terror, they collapsed into ruined piles of exhaustion and shock. Barren trees surrounded, bearing mute witness with branches outstretched in supplication to the cruelest gods, while in the greater distance unseen for the dark of night, a column of smoke rose ever heavenward. As if holding each other might prevent themselves from crumbling to pieces, they clawed across the dim dampness to grasp onto whatever unity and solace may be found in this cocoon of isolation and loss, and staring eye to eye sobbed, raged, preyed, an impromptu funeral hymn mourning their stolen innocence and slain legacy smeared in ashes like war paint across small tear-streaked faces.
They would return if only that it meant letting go.
They could accept his help.
Doubly outcast by their mutant genes and ancestral heritage, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters would seem an apropos landmark along the stretch of their life's road yet untraveled. But their independence hard won upon this path carved day after day with their own bare hands, by their own guile and luck and indomitable will, they had learned to wrest a living out of the art of survival and found a degree of comfort in segregation, while an ocean of indifference slept between the land of opportunity and the cursed Mountain whose shadow welcomed them into this old world. Home is where the heart aches most familiarly.
They should accept his help but had managed too long without any.
They wanted to abandon him.
Tangled up in Magneto's crusade on the wrong side of a war they wanted no part of, unwitting recruits turned unwilling participants, mutant pitted against mutant though battling for solidarity amongst themselves, a chaotic spiral of hypocrisy and inevitable self-destruction. But at his side, the chance to prevent ever greater evil: cold-blooded murder and oppression worldwide. On their own: a life-debt unrepaid, relegated to the wandering void of purposelessness and exile perpetual.
They would abandon him, if he were beyond salvation and they not damned by so doing.
They could remain anonymous.
The Roma were born and bred in obscurity, a rumor and a myth, neither here nor there and everywhere. Posing as normal, keeping unnoticed, profiles low and heads down: this would be no adventure, devoid of challenge and achievement. Yet joining the Avengers, they subjected themselves to the mercy of public discrimination, of popular opinion, of the world's eyes and ears and judgment fixated upon them. But victorious, both praise and redemption as prize and finally, just perhaps, a place to belong.
They could dwindle in obscurity, or become Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
~fin~