The Stronger Twin
He'd always been the stronger twin. She was the uncertain one. The one who craved attention and didn't hesitate to ask for it. He comforted her when their father ignored them. He suffered the neglect. He lived with it. But she took it all to heart. It broke her, and he hated seeing her like that. He'd always been the stronger twin, but now he stood in the rain. Felt it pouring down on him. He let it soak him. He was numb both inside and out. He stood there and watched them take her away from him.
He could still hear her calling out to them. No. To their father. She never called out to him. If she had... he can't be sure what would have happened then. Maybe he would have still stood there. Maybe he would have given in and ran after her. Maybe she knew he wouldn't come, and that's why she didn't call. Maybe she didn't want to confirm her doubts that she could count on him. Maybe she didn't want to prove that he would fail her. Maybe she understood that he couldn't do anything. That he was as powerless as her. Maybe.
Their powers hadn't yet manifested. They were just children. If Magnus had known what Wanda would grow to be capable of, he might have put up with her instability. But she was imaginative, and Magnus didn't put up with games.
Pietro looked up, through the rain. He could see her there, on the steps, struggling to return to them. His twin. I'll come back for you, he promised. I'll get you out of there, and we'll run away somewhere.
The door closed on her, locking her inside. Separating them irrevocably.
I'll come back...
They drove all night. And in the morning, Magnus left Pietro at a house with a strange couple. The Maximoffs were good people. They worried and fussed over him. Urged him to eat. Fretted over his lack of sleep. He didn't tell them about Wanda. Magnus hadn't mentioned her, and Pietro didn't talk. Hadn't said a word since Magnus had told him to stop whining about Wanda and take it like a man. He thought he could make his father bring his sister back to him if he didn't eat or sleep or talk. He hoped the Maximoffs would contact him and tell him of the difficulties they were having. But Magnus never came back. He had abandoned Pietro and Wanda both, only Wanda didn't even have the illusion of a family.
He'd always been the stronger twin, but loosing Wanda had left him broken.
Pietro was 13 when his powers manifested. As soon as he realized what he could do, he ran to her. To Wanda. He ran to her, and in a blink he was outside her door. He couldn't get in. He crouched by the food slot and called her name.
'Pietro?' Her voice was hoarse, as though she didn't use it much. He heard her move to the other side of the door. 'Are you really there?'
He pushed his fingers through the slot and felt her touch them. 'I'm here, Wanda, I'm going to get you out.'
'No. I... I can't... I...'
'Wanda, what is it?'
'They were right, Pietro, I belong here. I can't be trusted in the world.' He could hear the sob in her voice. 'I need to be here.'
'I won't leave you. Not again.'
And then he understood what she meant. In a flash, the door swung open. It was convoluted and distorted, and Pietro was thrown back from it. 'You already left me!' She shouted. 'Why did you come back!? Why??' and she was sobbing through her yells. She was screaming and crying, and he tried to wrap his arms around her, but she pushed him away. 'Just go! GO!!'
And he obeyed. He was always the obedient one. He could suffer through the shame. He'd always been the stronger twin, but he couldn't comfort her this time.
But she left the asylum anyway. Mystique brought her out, brought her right to him, and Wanda lashed out. Her anger had festered, and he cowered in the face of it. His sister. His twin. He'd left her, and he deserved whatever she gave to him. He wanted to comfort her, appease her, prove that he'd suffered, too, but he was the last person she would listen to. The last person she should listen to. He'd abandoned her. She deserved so much better.
'Man, your family needs some serious counselling,' Toad muttered.
Pietro ignored him. He ignored him because he wasn't sure if he was completely right, or exactly wrong. He ignored him because his sister was back, and she was trying to kill him, and he deserved it. He ignored him because his sister was back and hurting and he was the only one — the ONLY one — who couldn't help her. And because, in the face of all that, Toad really was nothing at all.
So he avoided her. He watched her take lessons to control her anger. He stood next to Mystique as she supervised the training. 'You'll never get her to forgive him,' he said quietly. 'Our father deserves her hate.'
Mystique smiled. 'Of course he does,' she said with a small smile. 'He deserves a lot of things.' He realized then that Mystique knew exactly what she was doing, but he would be dead before he let this woman turn his sister, his twin, into an assassin. A murderer.
That night, he heard her downstairs. He knew it was her. She was the only one who forgot that the fourth step down was broken, and she cursed every time she stepped through it. For the first time since he'd visited her in the asylum, he went to her.
'Wanda?'
She didn't look up. Her head was hidden in the refrigerator, though Pietro could have told her there was nothing in there worth eating. Freddie got to all the good stuff faster than Pietro could run around the block. The first hint he had that she was even aware of his presence was when she slammed the fridge shut and yanked open the freezer with unnecessary force.
There was so much he wanted to say, and the variations rushed through his head, not one of them coming close to adequate. 'I'm sorry,' he blurted, though it was possibly the weakest statement of all.
She slammed the freezer shut. 'Sorry?' She repeated. 'You're sorry?'
He refused to run this time. She deserved better than that, and being away from anyone else gave him more courage in the face of her anger. He met her gaze. 'I know,' he said quietly, his calmness putting her off guard. 'It doesn't mean anything now.'
'You're right. It doesn't.' She turned away. Opened the freezer again, as though something worth eating might have appeared in it since she'd last looked. With Wanda involved, maybe it had.
I wish things had been different, he thought, but didn't voice, because it didn't matter either. He just stood there, watching her stare at the empty freezer. 'Did you want ice cream or something?' The 7-11 down the street would still be open.
'Yes. No.' She sighed and closed the freezer, and then she looked at him, and her anger was muted by confusion and hurt, and he stepped closer to her, and when she didn't recoil, he moved closer again. She looked so vulnerable, and it was like they were children again. All the pain and separation, none of that had happened.
He wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into him. And for the first time since that day in the rain, he felt complete. She could exist without him. She could express her feelings despite what their father had done to them. She had survived alone. He was nothing without her. He'd always been the stronger twin... but she was the stronger person.