I could never thank epicureanEmpath enough for being my beta reader. Let's just say that it's a real honor for me to have such a talented, stunning writer by my side *throws flower petals and sends kisses*
Enjoy ^^
Part I
Frankfurt, Germany.
Wanda opened her eyes.
White rays of dawn came shyly through the curtains, drawing abstract figures on the floor. She looked at them with sleepy eyes and in those figures she saw an endless dance—graceful, serene—of life. She daydreamed about dancers performing in a theatre crammed full, knights fighting bravely for their kingdoms and princesses locked in high towers, best friends chatting during a walk on a seafront, lovers kissing on a bench, lovely fathers and mothers playing with their children, sisters and…
She turned onto her back again.
As always, the awareness of being alone accompanied her awakening. This time though, a new, alien torment gripped her heart.
It was her—their—birthday.
Twelve years old: Pietro had been promised a new bike. He had asked for it already in the summer, jumping on their father's back while he was painting one of his marionettes. At first dad had yelled at him because the puppet had fallen on the grass, but then he had laughed—he would always laugh in the end.
Dad just couldn't get angry at them—not seriously, not for long.
For your birthday, he had promised.
But that was before.
Staring at the ceiling, Wanda could almost feel the weight of his body beside her. She could almost see him jumping on the bed, yelling in extra excitement: "Happy Birthday! It's our birthday! It's our birthday! Happy Birthday!"
Wanda swallowed that ghost as some sort of exotic poison and opened her mouth, eagerly gulping for air. But there wasn't enough—there was never enough.
She got up and walked through the bathroom door holding her chest tightly, half afraid that her pain could fall from her body and soil the shiny floor of her spotless room.
She examined her face in the mirror with empty eyes, searched for something, anything that could remind her of him, even the tiniest clue. But there was nothing of Pietro in her. They didn't share the color of their eyes and hair; their skin tones were different, and so were their features.
They shared a soul, but that wasn't something a mirror could show.
All she found in that mirror was a broken thing—no, less than that. Only a piece, the remains of something that once had been beautiful, unspoiled.
Now nothing was left for her to remember what it was like to be whole.
He's not here.
§
Wanda took the scissors from the second drawer.
Studying the blades, the child lulled herself with the thought of her blood dripping in the washbasin and on the glossy white tiles of that immaculate bathroom. She closed her eyes and almost smiled, envisioning her corpse lying there: an outrage against the untouchable decency of that house, with its antique furniture, its Persian carpets, the precious porcelain flowerpots and the baskets with fruits that were never eaten.
But dying wasn't allowed.
She couldn't die. She couldn't cry. She couldn't let the pain go.
Her sorrow was the casket where her brother was kept. He was safe there, and in that grief Wanda could always find him.
She cut.
Long locks of hair fell down. Those brown curls were the only tears she could allow herself to shed.
Looking at her reflected image, Wanda almost smiled. Her new savage haircut would have freaked out Mrs. Eisenhardt.
"Happy birthday, Pietro" she whispered softly.
A blank gaze was still staring back at her from the mirror—still searching for him.
But he wasn't there.
Timișoara , Romania.
In his dreams he was always running.
He could run so fast that he could leave everything behind, even the wind: he was only a blurry contrail for everyone else to see.
In his dreams, glancing at the world he was so powerful to overtake, he always planned to save his sister and take her away somewhere nobody would ever find them.
Somewhere they could be together again.
But the black car was faster. No matter how quick he was and how desperately he tried to chase it, the black car was always ahead: just an inch, even lesser, but ahead nonetheless. He didn't reach the car that afternoon and neither did he in his dreams.
And then he fell. He fell every single time. It was his inner alarm clock—definitely a bitter one.
He opened his eyes in the darkness. His lips were unwittingly parted; his chin and neck were wet from his own saliva; his mouth was dry and sticky. He tried to swallow but it didn't work. It was too early. His mind went in and out of focus, but Pietro didn't panic. Sadly, it wasn't the first time this crap had occurred to him.
While his eyes slowly accustomed to the darkness, he remembered.
The syringe, the daze, and then the obscurity that had closed all around him.
They had knocked him out, the boy recalled. Again.
Pietro managed to blink a couple of times and licked his lips, making a huge effort to stay focused on his own breath. With each passing minute his breaths became more and more regular until he could finally swallow with ease.
I bit the stupid nun and threw a lamp at someone's head, he reminded himself. He sighed, not awake yet but already exhausted.
Happy birthday, you loser.
§
When the door opened Pietro was still a bit dizzy, but his mind had finally cleared.
A bald man—a man he had never seen before—came inside. Pietro shivered, recalling all the threats and intimidations the stupid nuns and the orphanage's director had addressed to him in those weeks, every time he had had a breakdown for wanting his sister back. They were scary, and mean, and he definitely didn't want to end in a nuthouse, but he couldn't help himself. He had tried to follow their advice and stop thinking about Wanda, but no matter how hard he tried, always something reminded him of her.
She appeared in his thoughts unexpected, like a fly on the window. For a few moments that made him even happy again, so grateful he was for those tiny glimpses of her: the scarlet sparkle in her green eyes, her left canine—sharper than the right—or just her shrill laughter. But in an instant the fragments were gone, and Wanda with them. Sometimes, Pietro had managed to stay in control, going out for a run to vent his frustration and anger and pain. Mostly, though, that severance was just too painful and he couldn't hold himself together. Those times there was only one thing he could think about: I want my sister back.
He had cried and kicked and punched the walls of his room so hard he bled, yelling that he wanted his sister back. He had repeated those five words so many times that they had taken an unusual rhythm, a swift one, almost as if he wasn't pronouncing a phrase but a single word, or a spell.
Iwantmysisterback.
But that never happened. Instead, there would be stern snappish words, a threat—he must behave well or they would have him locked away in a mental facility. And if that didn't work, a needle and sharp darkness.
Pietro flattened himself against the wall while the man closed the door.
"Pietro," he said, "I know that you don't know me, but I need to talk to you."
The boy hid his face between his knees, lacking the courage to look into the man's eyes. That's it, he thought, biting his lower lip and scratching his shins in distress. They will lock me away.
"I want to tell you a story" he explained. His voice was gentle, serene. Quite baffled, Pietro lifted his head and—meeting the man's blue eyes—felt mysteriously reassured all of a sudden."Maybe you won't understand immediately what I'm going to tell you, but, if you listen very carefully, you will soon."
Seven years later
Paris, France.
He stared wide eyed at the concrete wall enlightened by the car's headlights. Less than two meters separated the wall from the bumper.
He had made it.
Hands on the wheel, Pietro opened his mouth in disbelief, dithering between hysterical laughter and a liberating scream.
I made it.
When someone opened the car door, his hands were still stuck on the wheel, his fists almost paralyzed.
"Maximoff, you son of a bitch!" a voice shouted, laughing aloud. A hand grabbed his shoulder.
Pietro found himself outside of the vehicle surrounded by exultant people. He shook his head, trying to regain consciousness, and recognized Thierry —the car's owner—in the man that was yelling in his face.
"You little brat! I'm so fucking horny right now that I could even fuck you!" Thierry kissed him on a cheek and Pietro finally laughed.
"Save it for the ladies," he said, shaking with adrenaline, "or for whoever may be interested."
He received a series of pats on his back and noticed a group of men cursing and kicking empty bottles.
They didn't bet on me, he guessed, and that thought inevitably aroused his vanity.
"Does life smell that bad to you?" someone else asked, with harsh laughter. It was the other pilot, Pietro realized. "Well, then. Congratulations, kid."
Pietro lifted his chin and thanked the man when someone finally decided to pass him a bottle. Thank god, he thought. What was in it, he couldn't have told, not that it mattered in that moment anyway. He just wanted to drown as soon as possible what he had seen when the car didn't seem able to stop in time.
But every time he closed his eyes the little girl was there, just in front of him. Her green eyes wide open, her arms stretched out, asking for a hug.
On her face, the most beautiful smile in the whole world.
§
"Hey, Stray Dog, tell me something: since when have you gone completely nuts?"
"Hi," Pietro said. He couldn't see Al from where he was, but of course it was him—or that's what he hoped: a talking couch was definitely something he didn't want in this life.
Al jumped to his feet and put himself in front of Pietro in all his height. He seemed disappointed.
"A chicken run?"
Pietro sighed, passing a hand through his hair.
How the hell does he know about it already?
"It was not…" he tried, but the other went ahead.
"A chicken run?" Al said again in a high-pitched voice that was meant to underline his disappointment. "You're not in a fucking movie, Pietro. This isn't the set of Rebel Without a Cause, in case you didn't notice. If I were as young as you, and if I had all the girls that you have—and only God knows what kind of tales you tell to make them fall for you like cats outside a fishmonger—"
Pietro blinked and frowned. A fishmonger?
"—I wouldn't try so hard to have myself killed."
"A fishmonger?" Pietro muttered.
Al crossed his arms and stared at him, trying to be intimidating.
"What's your problem, Pietro? Seriously?"
"I don't have any," Pietro replied, smiling to hide how annoyed he was. "Relax yourself. I had the chance to put my hands on a bunch of easy money and I did it. I'm not trying to kill myself. I had the perfect chance and I'm still here, in case you didn't notice."
The man rolled his eyes while Pietro finally moved from the entrance.
"I should have beaten the shit out of you when I found you trying to steal my car radio. You might have learnt something."
Pietro laughed at that memory: he was a thin lad, not thirteen yet, just ran away from the orphanage, with nothing and nowhere to go. He'd found himself hung in the air, grasped by the collar by one who seemed to be nothing less than a giant. Al was a gentle giant but back then, while those dark brown eyes glared at him, Pietro had thought he was as good as dead.
"So it seems you lost your chance" he said with a childish smirk, kneeling near the little refrigerator to take a beer. Once he reached his bed, Pietro stared, puzzled, at the red cat placidly asleep on his pillow.
"You were a kid," Al pointed out, "but now you're not. And just because I didn't want to beat a fucking puppy it doesn't mean—"
"Speaking of which," Pietro interrupted him, "why the hell is this damn animal always in here?"
Al sighed, giving up his lecture.
"I let it enter 'cause it only goes on your bed. It loves you" he said grinning. Then he opened the door and groaned. "Must be a female."
Pietro lay down on the bed and Al left the caravan, slamming the door behind him. The tremor awakened the cat, which gazed at Pietro and curved his back, purring. He had barely raised his hand to pet it when the animal decided to jump on his chest. Pietro took it in his hands and lifted it: its paws swung in complete abandon. Its blind trust made him smile a bit.
"You are really in love with me, aren't you?" he whispered, putting it on the floor. The cat mewled, offended. Pietro cleared his throat to duplicate the voice of an old movie actor.
"Sorry, honey. I'm afraid this is a one-sided love."
§
He woke up with his left forearm draped over his eyes and the cat asleep on his stomach. It was late afternoon, judging from the lights. Pietro decided to take the train to the city.
He rarely left Saint-Denis or the camp—old habits from when he wasn't of age yet and constantly frightened that the police might find him.
When they had arrived there four years before, Al used to take Pietro to the city with him, but that ended when one day a policeman stopped them and asked for their documents. To be honest, Pietro had found the whole thing extremely funny—running down the streets like a hare, jumping the steps and slipping in dark alleys—but Al hadn't been of the same mind, especially because then they had the police around the camp for days. Miraculously, the man had managed to keep him hidden even in that hell of policemen entering and searching every single caravan. He had taken Pietro's not-wanting-to-be-found thing damned seriously, and had always kept him hidden in one way or another. So, as much as he'd been pissed off that he was not allowed to go to the city anymore, Pietro had never complained.
He owed Al everything.
At Gare du Nord he got off the train. He has been living there for years now, and yet he couldn't say that he had particular feelings for that city, maybe because he didn't live it daily, or maybe because he had loved the south of France better. Anyway, he had never really thought of leaving. He came all that way to be there. The little boy that had once made a promise to his sister while they sat on the trunk of a fallen tree might have gone forever, but Pietro just couldn't betray him. He didn't dare to.
§
Hands in his pockets, he kept walking towards the canal St Martin. A lot of people were already there, with their bottles of wine and their food. Students, mostly. He liked this place. He liked when the weather was nice. People were more friendly when they could spend time outdoors.
A girl with a black hat stopped him.
"Do you have a lighter?"
She gazed impertinently into his eyes as though in an attempt to embarrass him. Pietro stared back, nodded slowly, and struck a match. The girl came closer so that he could light her cigarette, then turned her head to blow the smoke away from his face and thanked him.
"And where's yours?" she asked. Her red lips curved in a provocative smile. Pietro smirked, hands back in his pockets.
"I don't smoke."
She stared again, observing him like people do with a painting in a museum, apparently without mind of being impolite. He felt her gaze on his hair, on his eyes, on his second-hand clothes, and he stayed perfectly still.
He was used to this. Girls liked him. The reason—as his old friend had pointed out—was a mystery for Pietro as well. He was only a Roma boy with nothing but his shoes and a quite bizarre head of hair. They, on the other hand, were usually wealthy, educated beautiful girls.
"Come, Mylène, we're already late," said her friend who, more reasonably, had a rather suspicious and perplexed look on her face. Mylène said good-bye with a little wink and walked away.
They always walked away, of course.
They would kiss him, caress his hair, hold his hand. They would brush against his scars and ask him how he got them. They would touch him, spend their nights with him, have sex with him, and fall asleep beside him. They would do all those things but then they'd just walk away.
Not that he wanted it to be any different.
He never loved or really cared for any of them. He had simply found a kind of peace in having a woman's body beside him at night—and no, he definitely didn't need a psychology's luminary to know what was that he was really looking for, what he was really missing.
He knew it already. He had known it all along.
He climbed the steps of the green bridge and stopped to watch the water flowing under his feet. He liked the water, even this crappy canal. That was the reason he had loved the south better. He had fallen in love with the sea: the way it made the air salty and always somewhat alive; the way it reflected the sun and the moon, and, above all, the never ending blue of the horizon, with its promise of freedom, silence, and peace.
His gaze fell on a couple of girls walking down the street. One of them had a long brown braid that fell on her right shoulder and wore a red jacket and black low heel boots. She was definitely beautiful, but that wasn't the reason why Pietro couldn't get his eyes off of her: he was bewitched by her completely absentminded smile. Her friend was talking to her but she wasn't paying attention at all. He knew that feeling too well, he thought, smirking a bit. His mind was always somewhere else, too.
Then their eyes met.
It was only a fraction of a second, maybe less. Pietro barely saw them, and still he felt sick all of a sudden.
No, he told himself, shaken by an unexpected, creepy desire to laugh.
And then he took a better look.
Wanda loved Paris. She had fallen in love with that new and unknown city a year before, on the first rainy day of September.
That time, she had felt she was attending an enchantment, or the awakening of a mythological creature: it had opened its eyes and had risen, in all its beauty and strength, and had stared straight at her.
You'll have me, child, it seemed to say. You'll always have my small dark streets and the shores of my river and the stairs framed with branches and they'll be your trusted friends. They'll wipe your tears, they'll treasure your extinguished dreams and they'll allow you to mourn for your lost brother.
Sometimes, Wanda played herself in the delusion of having learnt how to deal with her brother's absence, of having moved on.
In truth, Pietro was such a distant memory that more than once she'd found herself wondering if he was ever actually real.
Over the years, she had kept losing him, one piece at a time, until all of him was gone.
She had lost his laughter first, then the smell of his skin, the sound of his voice, the silvery shades of his hair and, at last, even the penetrating icy blue of his eyes.
Her brother didn't have a face anymore, but still he was always with her: he was an unhealed wound, somewhere on the left side of her chest. It was raw, and infected. It didn't heal and it didn't worsen. It stayed the same, as a perpetual memento of what she had lost.
§
She closed the door of the room she shared with an American girl named Claire, with whom she went to class and sometimes studied, and entered the little kitchen.
Claire used to refer to her as "a friend", but Wanda didn't honestly know what being a friend meant. She thought that the girl was nice, sometimes funny, polite and well educated, and she genuinely enjoyed her company but, besides those rational esteems, Wanda didn't feel affection for her at all.
Maybe she just wasn't capable of that kind of thing anymore.
Maybe that kind of thing was lost with Pietro.
She took the kettle from the burner and made herself tea.
Once in Frankfurt, every day she had begged for a phone call: just ten seconds, just to tell him that I love him.
They had always said it wasn't safe.
He will feel sadder hearing from you, they had dared to say.
She had tried to run away—to run back to him—but she didn't know how, she didn't even know that city and got immediately lost.
They had found her after less than two hours. You know what will happen to him if you do something that stupid again, he had said with his usual inexpressive tone of voice, driving back home. Now that she was a grownup, Wanda knew they had been bluffing the whole time, that they could have never really done something that horrible to a child—or, well, that's what she hoped. But at that time she had blindly believed them, and had never run away again, hoping to keep her brother safe that way.
But there was more: she had taken their words for true without questioning because she had truly believed, in the very depth of her soul, that she was responsible, that everything had happened because of her.
Because of her wish, because of what she had thought the night the fire had turned their lives into dust.
How stupid she had been. A stupid little girl who had believed a wish could be that powerful.
Wanda washed her cup and glanced outside the window. It was a sunny day.
After the disastrous escape of that night, she had even stopped begging. She had naively hoped that showing a cooperative attitude would have given her the chance of a reward. It did not, actually, but she received another kind of recompense: she had discovered that Mr. Eisenhardt was speaking with someone at the orphanage at least once a week, and that was something she could use to relieve her thirst a bit. Every time the phone rang she would sneak behind his studio's door, eavesdropping, hoping to hear about him. She always knew when he was talking about Pietro, even if the man never mentioned that name, not even once. He only said "the boy", as if calling him by his own name would have broken a spell or something.
About the reason of those late night calls, Wanda hadn't the faintest idea.
Years later—when the answer didn't matter anymore—she'd asked herself that question, but back then she hadn't minded to know why a man would behave that way toward a kid he didn't even know. She was a child, for her that man was just evil, and evil men—like those in the stories mama used to tell them before sleeping—didn't need reasons to be evil: that was just the way they were, and she had accepted that as a fact, like children always do.
Sighing, Wanda put her boots on, took her jacket and went out: the city welcomed her with its usual noises and its smells of smog and bread.
§
For a while, Wanda had thought that being behind that door would have given her a kind of comfort: she could pretend that he was just there, on the other end of the telephone cable, and that if she yelled loud enough he could have even heard her.
But there was no comfort in that: it was only excruciating to think that he was somehow near, that he was almost about to be seen, and heard, and touched… and she was denied it.
She had thought no pain could have been worse.
She was wrong.
Since now he was not only far from her: now Pietro was lost, and she was denied everything, even that heartrending, silly illusion of nearness.
When the phone rang in the middle of the night she had fled downstairs. She had felt in her stomach it was about him and hadn't even minded to stay hidden: she'd just flung the door open while the man was shouting into the receiver.
"What do you mean you lost him?"
Wanda could still recall his rough voice, the way he had said that word—lost—as if talking about baggage.
She had internally rejoiced, smiling victorious at the man and feeling so reassured to know her brother was out of that vile place, far from those horrible people. But then, looking at the defeated expression in the man's eyes, at the way his lips sealed in silence, twisted in a smirk that wasn't of anger as she had thought, but of pity—pity for her—her smile had silently died.
If Pietro hadn't managed to find their people, she realized, he would be in serious danger all alone out there. But if he'd found them…
Wanda had taken a few steps back.
If Pietro finds them he's lost to me forever.
Because very few things were more unlikely than finding a gypsy boy who didn't want to be found.
§
She got off the bus and crossed the boulevard St. Michel, politely smiling to a man in a red Peugeot who let her pass. By now, Wanda had learned how to fake a smile. She had also learned how to entertain a futile conversation, and, more generally, how to fake a life.
She descended the boulevard and walked toward the river. On her right, majestic and terrifying in its astonishing beauty, Notre Dame rested peacefully.
At the end of the bridge she turned left, descending the stairs that led to the quay. It might reasonably have been the last decent sunny autumn day, so she chose carefully the perfect spot to sit and read her book in peace. She wanted to enjoy it.
Resting her novel on her skirt, Wanda took a deep breath and let her gaze wander on the water and the series of bridges that connected the little island to the city. It was a good day. Her life was somewhat better since she left her house and foster family and moved to Paris. She could distract herself more easily with her studies or just by having a walk in a city that was always able to surprise her.
Nevertheless, not even that beauty ever really touched her. She could barely feel whatsoever anymore.
She had only achieved a delusional appearance of serenity—like now, when she was reading her novel, with her skin warmed by sunlight and her mind softly cradled by the slow flowing of the river, she could pretend to be a person just like everyone else and not the unresponsive doll, the broken thing that she actually was.
How much she would willingly give away in order to have few moments back, to be once again the person she had been—the old Wanda, the one who always smiled, cheerful and kind; the one who had loved to sing and dance, the one who could spend hours recognizing shapes in the clouds or counting stars at night—and get rid of this Wanda, with her fake smiles, her fake good manners, and her dead cold heart.
If only she could have them back, all the small moments she had let negligently slide away because they seemed nothing special, nothing precious. Of course back then something like playing hide-and-seek with her twin brother didn't seem that precious.
Of course back then she could have never imagined how precious it was.
§
Before dusk, Wanda closed her book and started walking home.
The red lights of sunset hit the leaves of a branch that hung just above the top of her head. She couldn't help but stare, stopping in the middle of the street she was crossing. There was something in that light that, somehow, brought back one of those lost moments she so desperately longed for.
It was a little memory: just laughter, a summer afternoon, a run in the grass. A red ribbon wrapped around her arm.
She almost closed her eyes, savoring the sweetness of that tiny happy moment that was somewhere in the universe, suspended, where everything that had been precious once was jealously kept.
Then everything turned upside down. She felt the push and saw the asphalt, she saw the sky, the asphalt again, the leaves, the sun.
They hit the pavement together.
A long, loud car horn accompanied their falling.
Big blue worried eyes stared at her.
"Are you all right?"
He spoke so fast it took a moment for her to understand. Wanda opened her mouth to answer the young man's question, but she couldn't think. Her thoughts whirled in confusion and shock. This couldn't be…
This cannot be…
Thank you so much for reading it. Let me know what you think about it, every comment is very welcome and very appreciated.
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