talk to me; like lovers do
Characters: Pietro Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff, Kurt Wagner, Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Jubilation Lee, Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, Raven Darkholme, Hank McCoy
Warnings: None
Spoilers: X-Men Apocalypse— but you knew that already
Pairings: Pietro/Wanda if you squint (lmao u won't need to squint that hard)
Summary: Across the landmass that is the United States of America, the Maximoff twins stay connected by a single phone line in the middle of the night.
Author's Note: give us the fucking quicksilver solo movie we deserve! also i literally listened to 80s music 24/7 for the past few days while writing this fic
Insomnia pretty much comes with the territory of being a mutant, and a speedy mutant at that.
He runs on about three hours of sleep every night, depending on how exhausted he is, but with a combination of energy drinks and sugary foods, its actually pretty remarkable that he manages to fall asleep at all.
A look at the daily sleeping routine of Peter Maximoff: no rules apply, it's a free for all until you fall asleep in the middle of an algebra class and Professor X is shaking his head for what seems like the fifteenth time in the single week you've settled into the X-Mansion — and when a sleeping schedule is pretty much imposed on you, you ignore it completely, of course.
So it's three a.m on a Wednesday night of his second week, a —scandalised gasp— school night, and he's all but built a blanket fort next to the landline downstairs (so he won't disturb anyone, he's not that much of an asshole, even if the landline is next to Scott Summers's room and boy, it would be fun to annoy that kid and keep him from sleeping)
But anyway, he's under the blanket fort, well armed with snacks and energy drinks (which coincidentally, he's not exactly supposed to have, but what they don't know can't hurt him) to last him at least a couple of hours, and he picks the phone up, and dials, holding the receiver close to his ear.
He has her phone number etched into the very retinas of his eyes, so well that he doesn't even need to think about it as he cradles the receiver between ear and shoulder, deftly unwrapping a Twinkie with one hand and popping half of it into his mouth.
One ring.
Wanda.
Wanda, Wanda, Wanda.
He'd be lying if he said he didn't miss her, and that would be the biggest lie he ever told.
Wanda was always the more normal one. The less accident-prone, less restless, quiet student that was too often overlooked. She was sensitive, too. Far too easily hurt by the careless words of others, he was the distraction to her silence, drawing the attentions of school bullies from her and to him, the louder twin.
Don't get him wrong— she is every bit as fierce and hungry as he was, but her anger is the simmering kind, a pot bubbling viciously just before it overflows. The difference was, she found it easier to live without using her powers unless it was to fix some stupid mess that he created, and the messes alone allowed her more than enough practice with her powers.
Second ring.
So she had the relatively normal life. No one knew that she was a mutant besides their mother and him, of course. Mutations were definately easier to hide when no one suspected the quiet one of being a mutant. She's always liked using fists and tangible feelings to hurt people rather than hexes. (Ask all those kids about her right hook, go on.)
Now she's in New York, miles away from him, studying astro-physics and theology.
Third ring.
"—Pietro?"
On the other side of the line, he smiles involuntarily, and it is as if something clicked into place solidly, the gentle rasp of his sister's voice.
"Did I wake you?" he teases.
"It's 3 in the morning, Pietro. What do you think?" she laughs softly. "But I'm glad to hear from you. How did your first week of school go?"
It's both strange and yet comforting to hear his birth name from her lips. When they moved to the country, their mother insisted on changing their names to something more Americanised to help them fit into their new schools. To this day, only they call each other by their Roma names, like they're reminding each other of a history that started way back before them, a heritage now all but forgotten.
"School is fine," he says, cracking open a can of Monster and gulping it down between words. "Boring stuff that I probably should have learnt in high school but never really cared about. Professor X still thinks that he can make me an honest man and pack me off to college one day."
"Is that so?" she sounds amused over the line, the crackle of her breathing coming across clear and loud in the silence of the X-Mansion. "Tell him that even I tried, but you don't love anyone enough to go to college for them, not even me."
"That's not true!" he protests mildly. "You're the one that left me, not the other way around. I would have— will follow you to the ends of the earth. Just not to college."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, my beloved brother."
"Aaaaaand subject change. I can't imagine what you could do in the Danger Room. The training is hard, but I can really see us coming together. Working as a team. It's really nice to be accepted for what you are."
"I'm glad you feel like that. I'm— happy that you're happy. You know what I mean."
He did. It was just like he never begrudged her the excitement of going to college, her want to be normal, like all the mundane humans who could never keep up with him. If she was happy, so was he. It worked both ways.
"I know," he reassures her. "But how have you been holding up on your end? Any assholes I need to trash for you?"
"You will do nothing of the sort." she warns with an edge to her tone. "I can deal with my own problems now."
He decides not to press it. Anyway, a trip up to New York should be no problem when he's bored of school sometime in the near future. Make that tomorrow, actually.
She slides into the silence with a single sentence.
"So, about our father," she says hesitantly. "Did you manage to speak to him yet?"
"Uh—" he sits up so fast that his head hits the top of the blanket fort and it collapses inwards, so he pauses for yet another fraction of a millisecond to re-structure it. "Well, we've talked. About things. Inconsequential things, I guess. The weather, whether the fountain looked better with his weird metal structures or without. Everything except the fact that, newsflash! We're his long lost kids. I haven't even told him about me, how's he gonna react when there's two of us?"
"Pietro…"
"I know, I know. I just— it was never the right time. We were in a fight and he was emitting these weird magnetic rays, then all of a sudden he's on the side of the angels again and helping rebuild the school, I mean, I didn't have much— opportunity."
"And now he's—?"
"Gone. Mostly. I blew it again, I know. But how was I supposed to say it? In my dreams it's never like this." he broods, picking aimlessly at the threads on the blanket, so quickly that in no time a small pile has appeared in front of him. "In my dreams, he always finds out without me having to tell him, and then we get you and then well, I guess we ride off into the sunset."
He runs a hand down his face, flopping back onto the pillows with a sigh. "I'm a mess."
"We both are."
"You wouldn't believe how many times I've either called him or almost called him 'Dad'. It's embarrassing, honestly. And it doesn't help that almost everyone knows but him."
"That is pretty embarrassing." she laughs again, and he imagines the sunny crinkle of her smile and the turned up corners of her eyes.
"But… what about you?" he asks. "Don't you want him to know he has kids too? To— I don't know, fill up that hole all children of single parents have? I don't know, you tell me. You're the one getting a college degree."
"Hmm." her voice is thoughtful. "I suppose I did, once. But we were living such a comfortable life. I was happy with mom and you that I eventually felt like… maybe bringing him back to the picture would almost ruin the idyll that we created."
He is quiet for a few seconds before replying: "It wouldn't have changed anything, I think. I mean. Mom thinks he's insane and doesn't want us anywhere near him, but I think she's accepted that we'll always be hers. That's what she was afraid of in the beginning, at least. That he would twist us over to his side and she'd be alone."
"I know. But it was an irrational fear. I suppose I wouldn't mind him learning of our existence anymore. If you ever get around to telling him, that is."
"Har har. There's two of us, you know. No reason why I should be pulling all the weight here."
"Do you— want me to? Go over there and visit, if he ever comes around."
"Well, the selfish part of me wants you to, but you should be living your own life free of me. And I know that you're not that big on meeting him anyway. But hey— aren't twins supposed to be sick of each other by the time they finish high school?"
"Says the one who calls me nearly every night."
"Well I can't help it, I miss you a lot," he tells her honestly. "It's not the same without you, even at home."
"I miss you too."
The hands of the clock turn until it's just minutes before 5:30 a.m.
Wanda has yawned approximately five times in quick succession, and an assorted collection of wrappers have materialised around Peter. His throat is sore from sugar and telling his sister all about the shenanigans at the X-Mansion, trying to make her laugh with any opportunity he gets.
Wanda yawns again, and he grins. "Looks like I've tired you out completely. What time is your first class today?"
"1 p.m, thank goodness," she punctuates the sentence with another yawn. "I can afford to have a lie in today. Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?"
He shifts deeper into the blankets. When Wanda first went to college, they would stay on the phone for hours, him just talking as she fell asleep to the sound of his voice. Even when they were kids, more often than not their mother would come to wake them only to find that Wanda had crawled into his bed again in the middle of the night. (The only person who could ever make him stay in bed voluntarily had always been Wanda.)
"Always."
"Goodnight, then. Or rather, good morning."
"Night, Wanda. I love you."
"I love you too."
He stays on the phone as she drifts off to sleep, listening to the rise and fall of her breath until a steady rhythm is all that is transmitted, then he gently puts the phone receiver back into its holder, clearing up after himself and dashing upstairs to at least pretend that he was doing something productive (or sleeping) before the wake-up call comes.
Kurt has nightmares.
It's just an established fact of life, honestly. Years of abuse at the hands of mutant circuses, it gets to a person. Sometimes he wakes up with a cold sweat, and all he can do is pray to the ivory statuette of the Virgin Mary that Professor X gave him as a welcome gift, or— get out of bed and make hot chocolate, just the way Jean showed him, a fellow survivor of night terrors passing on her coping mechanisms to another.
And so Kurt pads downstairs in the dark, his eyes having no trouble adjusting to the low light at all until wait— what the heck is that silver object hovering next to the magic object of communication HOLY SHIT IT'S THE GHOST OF SATAN COME TO EAT HIS SOUL GOD HAVE MERCY— and so Kurt Wagner lets out the loudest shriek of his life before grabbing the nearest object; a seventeenth century vase that's the ugliest thing ever and it somehow still managed to survive the explosion and hurls it squarely at the apparition before holding his cross out and fervently murmuring the words to the Lord's Prayer.
"Kurt, what the fuck?" he hears a familiar voice, but he knows the tricks of these devils, they assume someone else's shape and then drag you to hell, oh no, Kurt Wagner is not falling for your trick today, Satan.
"Hey asshole, I'm talking to you. Why the heck did you throw that at me?"
Hmm. It does sound an awful lot like Peter Maximoff. Maybe it wouldn't hurt if he— cracked open an eye and oh.
Standing there with the world's most confused/slightly hurt expression on his face is none other than Peter himself, setting the vase back where it belongs.
"… Peter?" Kurt asks, still holding out the cross. "It is you?"
"Well, duh! Who else could have caught your murder weapon and live to put it back where it belongs?" Peter says, pushing away the cross being waved in his face. "Why the hell were you attacking me?"
"I thought… I thought you were some sort of… malevolent spirit." Kurt admits somewhat shamefully. He doesn't add the part where he was convinced that the 'spirit' was going to eat his very soul and throw him into the depths of hell.
"Dude, next time just teleport the hell away. I thought you did that as a reflex, anyway?" Peter half laughs, moving back towards the telephone. "Just give me a sec."
Kurt scratches his head sheepishly and tries hard not to listen to the conversation, but he can't help but hear Peter exchanging terms of endearment? With the person on the other end of the communication device? He has to admit, it does make him slightly curious.
Peter sets the phone down and then opens his arms wide in Kurt's direction. "Hot chocolate, I'm guessing? Let's go grab some of that good stuff."
Later that day, their small group— the crew of fresh X-Men and Jubilee (because she would kick their ass if they left her out, not that they had ever planned on doing so) were sitting on the side of the amusement park sipping on slushies when Peter perks up from the mass of cotton candy he's absolutely tearing into and says: "Did you guys know that Kurt almost killed me yesterday? To be fair, it was a pretty lame attempt, but it was still an attempt on my life."
Kurt all but spits out his bright blue drink, but ends up half choking on it instead.
"Peter! We agreed never to bring that up again!" he protests weakly as Jubilee and Ororo whack him thoroughly on the back.
"How?" Scott asks. "It's a shame he failed, though." (Scott's still bitter over the fact that while he was asleep last week, Peter managed to remove all the furniture from his room and to the other side of the estate)
"Well as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I was on the phone last night—"
"The phone?" Ororo asks, a glint in her eye. "Even with your curfews in place?"
"That's not the point, Ororo. The point is, I was minding my own business and having a perfectly civil conversation with an intellectual being so unlike yourselves— no offence to Jean or Jubilee, I'm not lumping you in with these idiots—"
Scott scoffs, but Jean lets out a quiet laugh, and Ororo tackles Peter into a headlock which lasts all of five minutes before he starts tickling her and she has to let go.
"Who were you calling in the middle of the night anyway?" Scott asks.
"My sister." Peter answers, and then well, Kurt now understands the terms of endearment he heard yesterday.
The others explode into action.
"You have a sister?!" Scott says in disbelief.
"Well when a mother and father love each other very much, sometimes two people can be made from—"
"Okay enough of that. So she's your twin?" Jubilee asks, holding her hand to her head like she's trying to do one of those terrible calculus sums.
"Yep. The very one and only." Peter says with a smirk. Kurt can tell that he's very proud of his sister. For someone that acted so much like an only child, even Kurt is surprised at the tender expression it brings out in the usually carefree and laissez-faire mutant.
"Then why isn't she here with you?" Jean's expression shows that she is plainly baffled. "Does she not have powers?"
"Maybe she wanted to get away from Mr Annoying here?" Scott quips unhelpfully.
"Shut up, Summers." Peter says without looking at him, and then turns to Jean. "She does have powers. Pretty cool ones as well, but she wanted to live a normal life, so she's at college on the East Coast. New York, actually."
"That sounds so wonderful," Jean says wistfully. "She must be able to control her powers very well."
"Well, trust me, as the sole cleaner-up of my messes all through middle and high school, she's had loads of practice. Anyway, the mutant life… just isn't for her, I guess." Peter says.
For a moment Kurt wonders if he's imagined that's a sad look on his face before Peter starts grinning again. "Anyway, she's pretty freaking awesome, and I guess she'll be visiting soon enough."
"But you guys better watch your backs, you never know when Kurt's gonna suddenly decide to attack you with that ugly vase that the Professor keeps in the main hall!" Peter teases, and Kurt sputters.
They break into laughter, and watch as the sun sets over the amusement park.
The thing about being a double major in astrophysics and theology is that it raises a lot of questions. Too many questions for Wanda's liking, sometimes.
They ask her how she's able to reconcile the jarring faiths between religion and science and she tells them that that's exactly it— its a marriage of two faiths, neither of which agree, but does it mean that the other is invalid?
They shake their heads in confusion, and no matter how hard she explains, it's pretty much useless. They'll never understand, so why does she bother?
Mostly, she just lies and says she's studying either astrophysics or theology, depending on the company that she's in.
She loves the routine of it, the learning of new things every day, where she's just another student in a sea of others, completely unnoticeable and silent. The single, solitary thing she loathes about her subjects is the absolutely unholy amount of homework from both factions.
And she misses Pietro more than she can say.
The ache of his absence is almost constant, and even after all these years at college by herself, she can't help but think that he's going to turn up behind her with that lazy grin and silver headphones and make some well-timed quip at a professor's antics or snide observations of the students on campus.
Tonight the moon is especially bright, and she leaves the window open as she does her stacks of homework, keeping the phone close to her. Pietro likes calling when he's made sure that everyone's asleep rather than risk being overheard. It's not that they talk about anything really private, but he'd always been loath to share her with the others.
Just last month, to celebrate his six month anniversary at the school, she'd gone down to visit, and he had hardly let her out of sight in that charming way of his, always an arm around her waist or shoulder, until she had very firmly made him let go with a pinch in the side. His teammates were good people, so that made her worry a lot less about him.
She'd bonded best with Jean over their similar powers, and she found the one they called Kurt an absolute sweetheart, what with his heavily accented speech which struck a chord with her, reminding her of their childhood in Sokovia. Ororo seemed just like her brother's type of friend, mischievous and with a background in theft. It is no surprise that in their nightly phone calls, he often speaks of pranks they played together on Scott. And Jubilee of course, whom she had an extremely scintillating discussion of physics and how it worked on mutant bodies.
She had wondered if it was a ploy by both her brother and Professor X to entice her to stay, by creating a community that she could actually envision herself belonging to, and living in comfortably to make it harder for her to leave. Nevertheless, when the week was up, she resolutely ignored her brother's puppy dog eyes ("For goodness sake Pietro, we're both grown-ass adults, that is not going to work on me.")
Well, maybe it had worked. She finds her thoughts drawn to the school more often than not, and sometimes her fingers tingled with the comparative freedom she'd had there with her powers.
She rubs her eyes free of visions of the X-Mansion and sets to work, glancing every so often at the clock and waiting for Pietro's call.
First ring.
She puts down her pencil and turns off the light, moving the phone to her bed so she can settle down comfortably for what will inevitably be another long night.
Second ring.
She picks up.
"Pietro?"
"Wanda—"
The sound of her name said by him like that is enough to make her sit bolt upright in bed.
"What's wrong? Are you hurt, Pietro? Did something happen?" she's on her feet, half panicked and half worried, and it's all for him. She's ready to run out of the room right at that moment and rescue her brother out of whatever he's gotten himself into this time and run with him to the ends of the earth, if needed.
"No— god. I'm fine. That's the problem, I'm fucking fine."
"Then what's the matter? Did something happen?"
"Fuck." he breathes out long and hard, and she can almost see the desperation on his face. "This is so fucked up."
She stays quiet, and sits down on the edge of her bed.
"I— I killed someone today."
She can't help the involuntary intake of breath that fills her lungs with the tiniest bit of relief because first of all, he's not hurt, and he's calling her to talk about it instead of dealing with it by himself. Underneath that veneer, she knows that he's just as sensitive as her, and definately possesses the stronger moral compass of the two.
She remembers an incident from their childhood when he hadn't been fully able to control his powers and had knocked out half the teeth of another child who'd been picking on her, how terrified he'd been of his own strength and the fragility of someone who wasn't a mutant. He'd lain in his bed sobbing as she held him because that was the only thing she could do. She was terrified too, at the changes within them that were coming so fast and so violently they could barely keep up.
One day it was something harmless like Wanda accidentally levitating all the items in their shared room while still asleep, that day it was Pietro actually hurting someone so badly that the kid would have to wear dentures for the rest of his life. (Deep down, she actually thought the kid deserved it, but she would never tell Pietro that.)
So she had held him while he cried because they were in this together, and would never let go of each other, and Pietro had opened his eyes and told her very seriously, between sobs that she had to promise, absolutely had to promise that if he ever became a killer or that he was in serious danger of hurting someone that she would promise to stop him in any way that she could.
"But Pietro—"
"I'm serious, Wanda. If I've gotten to the point where I've started seriously hurting people, then… then you'll know that I'm no longer me. And you're the only one I trust. You know I'd do the same for you."
She closes her eyes now, and counts to three.
"What happened?" she asks quietly. On the other side of the line, his breathing is ragged, and her heart aches to be there with him, to stroke his hair and listen to what's wrong, but he's on the other side of the country and she's here in her dingy college room with a flickering yellow light, connected by a single phone line and their unspoken twin connection.
"It— it happened so fast that I couldn't stop it. They released some kind of gas that made us hallucinate like crazy and I couldn't even see properly until I saw Jean and that guy's hands around her neck—" his voice cracks, but he continues. "And I saw you, Wanda. I saw you instead of her in that guy's hands and I just lost it. I twisted his neck clean off and I didn't feel anything but fear."
"It's not your fault." she tells him, voice low and steady. "You made a mistake. One mistake doesn't make you a killer."
"But where do the mistakes stop? After this one, what comes next? Am I just going to keep making these mistakes and excusing myself because I'm just doing what's right? God fucking dammit, who made us the rulers of the earth anyway?"
"They won't be mistakes, Pietro," she tells him firmly. "I know you. I know the kind of person that you are, and you would never voluntarily hurt anyone."
"I don't know who I am anymore. And what I did today, it was voluntary, don't give me all that 'not my fault' bullshit I'm getting from everyone else around here. I had a choice to take that man out quietly and quickly without killing him, and I chose to kill him. It was my choice. And now I'm just fucking out of my mind because I'm realising that I am capable of making these choices."
She is quiet. There is nothing left for her to say— how does one comfort a person who has killed for you? She knows she would kill for Pietro. She would kill for this family again and again without a second thought because she is selfish, and she knows it. Perhaps Pietro just has to realise that keeping the things you want means that you have to sacrifice some things, even if it means sacrificing the very foundations of your soul.
"I love you." she says into the silence.
She hears the click of the receiver on the other side, and the overhead light flickers off in a burst of red hexes.
They haven't talked for two weeks, a personal record for both of them.
Part of her wants to rush to her twin and shake him out of this silent, empty void that she can palpably feel over their connection. No matter how gently she reaches out, the void returns nothing, not even a nudge. It feels like she's cut off a limb.
The doors of the class swing open a little more forcefully than she would have liked, out here in the throng of students she's just another being, disconnected and cut loose into the wider world until someone grabs her arm.
She looks back, and Professor Xavier is there, a charming smile she recognises from memory standing behind her, his sister Raven attracting more than her fair share of attention from the college boys behind his wheelchair.
"Wanda. Might we have a chat?" the Professor asks, smile unwavering, and she nods shakily.
The nearby coffeeshop she leads them to is the quietest on campus, where they can talk fairly openly without too many raised eyebrows. Their coffees arrive (tea, for the Professor), and she braces herself for the oncoming impact.
"I'm aware that your relationship with your brother now is somewhat… difficult," Xavier slides into the conversation carefully. "But he's been having a very hard time."
"A hard time is an understatement," Raven scoffs. "He's barely himself, and I can't blame him."
"Your brother seems to think that he's a murderer. Now, given your parentage and your father's less— savoury history, he's terrified that the same is going to happen to him. That he's going to lose everything. And the one thing that is dearest to him in the world is of course, you."
Wanda had to stifle a strange cough of laughter. Even after all these years and everything her 'father' had done, the Professor was still making excuses for him. She didn't know if this was some kind of insane loyalty or if the Professor was in love with him.
"I'm aware of this. I'm also aware that he thinks that his loss of control is because of me, because he's afraid of losing me. I think he's trying to distance himself from me because of that."
"No, that's not—" the Professor puts his tea down vehemently. "He doesn't blame you for anything at all."
"But we all know that I am to blame for this," Wanda says coolly.
"Look, Pietro is terrified for you because you're so far away that he can barely help you if you get yourself into any trouble." he tells her like she is a small child.
"So what are you trying to say? That I should come quietly with you back to your little idyll to protect my brother from himself?"
At that, the Professor is silent, and a dawning look of respect is growing on Raven's face.
"Pietro needs to realise that he cannot both be part of the X-Men and yet be free from its moral implications. He just needs time to figure out what is important to him and how far he will go to protect that which he loves, and I will respect and love him no matter what decision he makes." she all but spits.
"And stop trying to add me to your little collection. I have no interest in being part of your specimens." she says, before tossing money onto the table and leaving in a rush of rattling teacups and displays.
At the exact same time that the Professor and Raven have finally left him alone and gone to do something 'extremely important' and left him in the care of his team (whom he has left still looking for him in the Mansion), Peter relishes a couple of minutes of alone time by the fountain without a single person present (they haven't left him alone at all since the accident, even Scott has eased up on the jokes and snide comments, and it just feels wrong).
That is, until the one and only Magneto, also known as Erik Lehnsherr, also known as dad (only in his most private thoughts), and how could he forget, also known as a mass murderer of countless people without giving an actual shit about any of them.
So Magneto and Quicksilver walk into a bar, and maybe when they come out, they'll be just an ordinary father and son? Not likely.
To his quiet surprise (and his secret hope), Dad sits next to him and watches the fountain as well.
"What do you want?" he asks. Okay, perhaps a little too aggressive. Tone it the fuck down, he tells himself. Stay cool, Pietro, stay cool.
"I wanted to talk to you," Erik says easily. "That is, if you're not too preoccupied with calculating the trajectory of the water curves."
Peter shrugs. "Did the Professor send you?"
"He did," Erik admits easily. "He seemed to think that you would benefit from a talk from me, where all others have failed."
"And you're going to tell me it's not my fault, just like everyone else has. Nice try."
"Of course not. It was completely and utterly your fault." Erik replies without changing his tone.
No matter how much he knows that already, it never ceases to hurt him. Hearing it said out loud, he hates himself even more for not being able to control himself, for this whole fucking mess happening in the first place.
"It was your fault," Erik continues, "But it was one that you took to protect someone you loved. To protect your team-mate. And as you know, you cannot have your cake and eat it."
Erik shifts slightly, and Peter is hanging on to his every word.
"Before Apocalypse came for me, I had a family in Poland. A daughter and a wife, and they were murdered by men that I had worked with and trusted, but who feared me for what I was."
A daughter and a wife, Peter thinks. He thinks he's all alone, but he doesn't know what he already has.
"And I killed those men. I stood by and took my revenge while holding the dying bodies of my family in my arms." Erik says emotionlessly. "There are those who will tell you that they didn't deserve it, that it was an accident, but I say that you need to decide if your morality is more important than the lives of your family."
"I don't want to have to choose," Peter says quietly, feeling like a child all over again.
An arm, solid and heavy drapes itself creeps around his shoulders, and it feels so right, this comfortable interaction between the two like they had co-existed their entire lives.
"You remind me of my younger self," Erik tells him. "The self I could have been if my parents had not been murdered by a senseless sociopath. If I had been strong enough to save them. You will always have to choose, and don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can have both— you will never have the luxury of both, but you must choose the choice that you feel you will regret the least in the end."
"Even if it means sacrificing myself?"
"No one ever said this life was easy, Peter. But you have— as I have learned, friends, and the family that we make for ourselves."
Peter's heart stutters, and for a moment all he wants is to cling tight to his father and tell him "I'm here, dad. I'm here."
But he swallows back the lump in his throat, and remains silent.
He doesn't tell Wanda about the conversation he has with their father, but he calls her again that very night because he really fucking misses her and he's tired of playing the recalcitrant teenager.
When he calls her, she picks up on the first ring, and just like that their comfortable synergy is replaced again.
"Are you alright?" she whispers.
"I think so. I mean, I still need to figure some things out, but I'm sorry for icing you out. It was never about you, Wanda." he twines the cord around his fingers while sitting on the floor of the mansion. "I would trust you with my life. I want to be the kind of person that you would trust with your life too."
"I trust you implicitly." she reassures him, and it does make him feel better.
"I'm trying my best."
They don't talk about it again, and months go by without incident. He still calls her every night, and she still waits for his phone calls.
Peter is working on trusting his team, more because they have his back. (There is also an incident where Hank 'accidentally' injects Peter with something that makes him temporarily lose his powers and thus, be landlocked like everyone else for some kind of 'team-bonding exercise', and Scott and Ororo had a field day with that).
A year passes. Halloween comes and goes, and so does Christmas.
He calls Wanda again the night before he goes on his first ever solo mission, half-bursting with excitement because Ha ha, no more listening to Scott because guess what? He owns this show (even though it's a pretty sad one man show)
"So, tomorrow's the big day!" he sing-songs into the receiver, reclining onto the couch. "This dude is going on his first solo mission."
"How could I forget. You're lucky Hank got us an encrypted line, or literally anyone could hear what your mission is, if you hadn't told them yourself already."
"I'm hurt, sister-mine!" he fake-choked, putting his hand on his heart. "It's only because I trust you so much, I'm willing to divulge top secret information to you at no cost at all!
"Mhmm."
"Come on, aren't you excited for me?"
"I am, but I want you to be safe— if I hear from Jean that you took some horrendously stupid risk during the mission that almost cost you your life, you're gonna wish you'd stayed home."
"It wouldn't matter even if I did, you'd be there to clean it up," he jokes. "But I promise, no unnecessary risks. Unless I really can't help it. Anyway, our dear oblivious dad is around for the weekend. Maybe if I do get in trouble his dad instincts will kick in and he'll come save me?"
He can almost hear her eyes roll, and chuckles.
"I have to go," Wanda says reluctantly. "I have an early lab tomorrow."
"Okay," Peter replies, stretching in the comfort of his bed. "Wish me luck before you go?"
"Good luck. And I love you. Try to get a good night's sleep, Pietro." she says, stifling a yawn.
"Will do, sister-mine. Sweet dreams."
Peter has never felt so alive.
It's just like the old days, committing larceny on a small scale, except this time he has a really nice suit, a earpiece and a tracker on him, and something to prove.
This mission is supposed to be simple: one of the many bad guys is holding some precious object captive. All he has to do is get in there fast, get the thing, and get out quick. It's probably a half hour job, if he's honest.
The guy's place is shabby, with far less security than anything he'd seen so far. He bypasses the flickering laser beam alarms with a speed that makes the cameras think a leaf just blew past and forces open the door to the super-secret abandoned warehouse lair with little trouble.
He ponders briefly if he should think of a wisecrack as he's passing by, just to really round it off, but decides against it when Hank coughs loudly in his ear and tells him to stop running on the ceiling because he was leaving physical evidence, for goodness sake.
When he's in super-speed, things start slowing down so drastically that it almost feels like he's swimming in molasses or honey, as time warps and bends to accommodate his speed.
He bursts into the headquarters where several guys are just sitting at their computers, taking care of their nefarious plans, and while he's at it, swipes a sweet fountain pen from one of the guards' pockets to re-gift to Wanda at a later date.
Or at least, that was supposed to be the plan.
What really happens is this: Peter speeds into what is supposed to be their headquarters, judging by the schematics Hank has plastered all over his goggles, and he gets tangled in a mass of webbing and nets that he did not see coming because they were fucking invisible, no thank you.
And in what seems like a moment as fast as himself, someone jabs a fucking needle into his neck while he's struggling to get free of the sticky mess, and then everything goes black.
In the middle of a particularly boring physics lecture, Wanda jerks upright like her air supply has been cut off and lurches forwards involuntarily. It's Pietro, she thinks. Something's gone wrong.
Pietro seems to be completely still, something that she has never felt before even when he falls asleep, he's always some kind of frenetic energy that can never be silenced. The void this time feels hostile, like it's actively trying to cut them apart and hide him from her, something created to harm him.
After excusing her sudden sickness as an asthma attack, she leaves the lecture hall and runs to her car. It doesn't matter that she doesn't know where the hell he is— she's just leaving it all up to magic and hope that she'll be fast enough to save him.
"We've lost contact." Hank worries at his lip. "Something's happened to Peter."
"What the hell happened—" Raven starts, and then the screen they've been tracking Peter on flickers to life, and a robotic voice greets them.
"Looks like even the fastest mutant in the world has a weakness— a lethal cocktail of drugs coursing through his body is enough to stop anyone, and so easily administered once you have the cat in the bag. My request is simple: Send the one called Magneto to retrieve his precious belongings and exchange himself, and I'll cure the boy."
The camera pans to focus on Pietro strapped to a rudimentary operating table, completely winded.
"Where are they?" Raven grits her teeth. Stupid vendettas and stupid Erik, for needlessly killing so many people. If this isn't a revenge plot, Raven will give up shapeshifting altogether and stay as a mutant for the rest of her life.
"In the garden. I'll get them."
As expected, Erik is perhaps the most confused out of all of them.
"Me? The criminal wants me in exchange for Peter's life?" Erik's brows are furrowed so hard that Raven wants to just reach up and straighten them out for him. "This is a strange bargain."
It's laughably ironic that every single person in this room knows the truth except for Erik, but no one steps up to educate him of the facts, but they all resort to glancing around at each other, Charles pointedly looking away from the other two and looking like he is about to burst into laughter.
"If all four of us go, it should be no trouble. After all, he's just a small-scale criminal." Charles volunteers.
"A small scale criminal that managed to almost single handedly disable Peter," Raven says, rolling her eyes. "We'll go with you, Erik, because I have a feeling you're gonna need the backup."
"For young Peter, I suppose." Erik says uncertainly.
Peter wakes up with one hell of a headache and the growing realisation that he's completely paralysed to the point where the single action he is able to take is to open his eyes. Anything beyond that is completely impossible, and he can barely feel the nerves in his extremities.
He panics slightly— but nothing happens. There's a light shining right in his eyes and the blur in front of him looks suspiciously like Professor X and Raven and Hank and oh is that his dad holding a giant chunk of metal ripped from the building over the head of the guy who knocked him out?
And guess what? He can hear just fine.
"Aren't you glad to see him again, Magneto? Or is this perhaps… an uncomfortable familial obligation?" the blurry villain says. And damn, that hurts. Literally everyone in this room knows that Peter is Erik's son except for the man himself.
"What on earth are you talking about?" he hears Erik say. "What familial obligation?"
"You don't know?" the villain reaches over to pat his cheek, and he wishes he had the free motion to bite that damn hand off. "Your beloved son here hasn't told you?"
Well fuck. Now his dad's gonna think he's a coward, or ashamed to be his son, or something stupid like that. Thanks, evil villain.
"My— son?" Erik's voice cracks. Peter sees him glance at the Professor for confirmation, but he sees no doubt in any of the faces of his adopted family, not even Raven or Hank, and he stops dead in his tracks, the metal lump above swaying dangerously.
"Now we have context, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to drop that metal door somewhere else, unless you want to lose yet another family member." the villain says, and Peter feels something cold pressed to his neck.
"Uh-uh. No one moves, or he dies. Just like the father of mine you killed, Magneto. I am going to kill you in exchange for his life." he says, wagging his finger menacingly as Raven slinks a little closer but she stops dead when he presses the knife just hard enough to draw blood.
It's an uncomfortable stalemate that seems to take forever, and Peter wonders who will be the first to crack.
In a series of events that Peter will later claim was the most epic moments of his short life, Wanda completely redeems her absent self by kicking ass.
It probably helped that she had the element of surprise, and boy, was it pretty wonderful to see the stunned look on that asshole's face as she slammed him against the wall with her hexes and beat the crap out of him while swearing in their native language.
Raven acts quickly enough, so instead of dying at Wanda's hands, Raven handcuffs the bastard and drags him outside (to turn over to the police, presumably), leaving everyone else to take care of Peter.
The effects of the medication have begun to wear off, and Peter stretches his vocal chords as Wanda looks over him anxiously, his father— their father rising to the occasion and looking worried as hell right now, all to say: "See, Wanda, I knew you'd come for me."
Then for the second time in his life, Peter Maximoff passes out.
Now he's pretending to be asleep in a hospital bed while his father and sister have a slightly awkward, stilted conversation that he's not quite ready to join just yet, but he finds it quite interesting to overhear what his father really thinks of them.
"I'm sorry." are the first words he hears from his father in a hushed undertone. "I didn't know that either of you existed, that I had such beautiful children waiting for me."
Wanda says nothing, but Peter can imagine her jaw clenching up, her eyes roving around the room and she's retreating into herself again, determined not to let their father in for fear of getting hurt.
"I… have never had a happy family. Both of you are proof of that as well. I can only regret all the times that I missed with you two. I missed everything, from your first words to your first steps, and we can never turn back the clock. All I ask for is a second chance."
"Did you really not know?" Wanda asks abruptly. "And what makes you think that we will believe you, the man who has murdered hundreds in cold blood?"
"I don't expect you to believe me," Erik says. "I know it will be difficult. I just want to be the father that you never had, to make up for all the years that we missed together. I would never have willingly abandoned you, but your mother gave me no choice— I didn't even know of your existence. I want the chance to do right by the both of you."
"Don't blame her," Wanda says quietly, but her tone is softer. "She tried her best to raise us in a strange country all by herself. She never had anyone for years after you left— I don't think she ever forgot you."
"I'm sorry," Erik says earnestly. "I didn't know."
Wanda is silent again, and Peter guesses that she's thinking about it. She might not have come around yet, but she's thinking about it, and that's a start.
"Well, you can start making up for it by buying twenty years worth of birthday presents." Peter quips, opening his eyes. "We expect amazing presents, though. Cash is also accepted."
"Pietro, you're awake!" Wanda breathes a sigh of genuine relief and strokes his hair.
"I'm sure I can do the presents." Erik — no, their dad, says gravely. "I take it that you're willing to… accept me, then?"
"For a long while, it was all I ever wanted," Peter admits. "I don't want you to think that I'm ashamed of you because of what you've done. Neither of us are. The timing was just… well, for someone as fast as me, the timing was never right."
"Well, perhaps Time will allow us to spend the remaining years we have with each other." Erik smiles, and everything in the world is alright.
Peter glances at Wanda, and she's smiling a little too. Somehow, the universe has come through, and he's with two out of three of his most favourite people in the world. No more misunderstandings or pauses— just full speed ahead.
"Wouldn't have it any other way, dad."