Chapter 28: The Twins
Word traveled fast in a hospital. Especially word regarding anything new and exciting. Towards the tail end of the chitauri fiasco, that word began to spread even faster than the bacteria had. Thor overheard the latter half of one of Wong's phone conversations and Steve noticed Dr. Coulson acting more frantically organized than usual. Dr. Strange could be seen waltzing through the halls in genuine excitement, a rare accomplishment for someone as easily bored as him. Heimdall and Sharon spent a long time in the empty room between Quill and Nick. A double bed was rolled in to replace the single. The residents couldn't help but speculate about what was coming.
"Why would they roll in a double bed?" Clint asked. "If there's two people, they would just add another single or put one in another room."
"Could just be one large person," Quill suggested.
"You mean a bariatric patient?" Bucky questioned.
"Maybe. I don't know."
"Why would Wong and Strange be involved with a morbid obesity case?" Thor asked.
"I think some brain tumors can cause weight gain," Tony remarked. "Quill, can you confirm or deny?"
"Depends on where it is, I guess. I have no idea. I only really know about mine."
"Well if Coulson's freaking out and Strange is on cloud nine, it must be some sort of rare surgical case," Steve insisted. "Last time Coulson got like this was when they had to construct a new larynx for a mute kid out of bone tissue from his ribs. And this level of enthusiasm in Strange is something I've never seen before."
"Steve's probably right," Bucky said. "If Strange is excited and Coulson is fretting, it must be something way out of the ordinary. They do so many surgeries here that most things are routine. Chopping off an arm is just another Tuesday."
"Yours was on a Thursday," Clint reminded him.
"Whatever. You get the point."
"The double bed still mystifies me," Tony admitted. "What sort of patient is too big for a normal sized bed and requires a rare form of neurosurgery?"
"We'll find out soon enough," Steve remarked.
~0~
The mystery patient moved in sometime that night, when all the other residents were asleep. They met her the next morning when they stumbled into the common room and found her on the sofa watching TV in a language they didn't recognize. Well, they found them, not her. Tony, Steve, Bucky, Thor, and Quill walked into the common room that morning expecting to find it empty. Instead, they encountered two girls snuggled together, heads touching. It was kind of cute.
"Good morning," Steve greeted cautiously, not wanting to startle them.
Neither turned around, but the one on the left said, "Good morning," in an accent Tony couldn't quite identify, though he'd probably place it somewhere in Eastern Europe. The one on the right grabbed the remote and turned off whatever they'd been watching. They stood up, and all the other residents immediately came to the same startling conclusion. They hadn't been cuddling head to head—they were conjoined at the scalp. Now they understood Wong's involvement, Coulson's mental state, and the double bed.
"Nice to meet you," Steve said with composure Tony recognized as forced. "I'm Steve."
"I'm Wanda. Wanda Maximoff."
"And I'm Pietra. But most people just call us 'the Twins.'"
"Wait—you guys are twins?" Quill asked jokingly.
They chuckled with genuine amusement. "Hard to believe, isn't it?" Pietra said. "I mean, we're completely different! She's on the left, and I'm on the right."
"I think she means to say that she's the arrogant one," Wanda countered.
"Just because I'm always right?"
"No, just because you always make that same stupid joke." She elbowed her sister in the side, not a difficult task given their close proximity. The group drifted farther into the common room and sat down, still in shock at the new arrivals. Wanda and Pietra sat back down and stared expectantly at the crowd of teenagers eyeing them in wonder.
"Alright, we'll take questions one at a time, just raise your hands," Pietra said, sounding like she'd gone through this countless times before. Five hands shot straight up. Wanda and Pietra made no immediate move to choose someone, so Tony, Steve, Thor, and Quill simultaneously conjured the childish idea to raise two hands to increase their odds of getting called on.
"No fair!" Bucky cried. Thor stuck his tongue out at him, and Bucky made a gesture which was probably him intending to cross his arms and forgetting it didn't look quite the same. It kinda just looked like he was hugging himself. Wanda took pity on him and allowed him to ask a question first. "I can't quite place your accent; where are you from?"
"Sokovia," she and Pietra answered at the same time.
"Where's that?"
"Europe," they said vaguely.
"That's helpful," Tony muttered.
"Geography is not our favorite subject," Pietra admitted. "Next question."
"Are your brains connected too, or just your skull and scalp?" Steve asked. Leave it to him to ask a legitimate medical question.
"Sort of. We have separate brains, but there's extra bits in the part that connects us. That's why we're here. Chopping us in half is too complicated for all the other doctors, so they sent us to Gravesen."
"Why do you need to be separated?"
Wanda put a hand beside her mouth and started stage-whispering, "Don't tell Pietra, but it's because after fourteen years of constant companionship, I'm ready to be rid of her."
"I heard that!" Pietra said indignantly. "And that is false; you're the one who was against separation."
"I was not!"
"You still haven't answered my question," Steve interrupted.
"It's complicated," Wanda sighed. "But then again, just about everything about us is."
"Long story short, our spines don't like us having to walk with our heads together, and some of our organs aren't too happy either," Pietra explained.
"Can you read each other's minds?" Thor asked.
Pietra and Wanda glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes and counted to three. "Yes," Pietra stated confidently.
"No," Wanda said at the exact same time with the exact same conviction.
"Well, that answers that question," Bucky deadpanned.
"If I had the option to read her mind, I'd rather be illiterate," Wanda snipped.
"Hey!" Now it was Pietra's turn to elbow Wanda.
"They fight worse than Clint and Natasha," Tony whispered to Steve.
Thor overheard him and chimed in, "They fight worse than me and Loki."
"Well, you would fight with someone too if you never got a moment away from them," Steve said.
"Rogers appreciates his alone time," Tony remarked.
"Don't call me that," Steve countered. "It's so unnecessarily professional."
"What, you got something against your family name? I mean, I'm not saying I don't get it, because I sometimes want to be as dissimilar from my father as possible, but what's wrong with Rogers?"
"I just prefer Steve. Rogers is a name that was just passed down, but Steve is what my parents chose for me. It means more," Steve explained haltingly. Tony suspected he came up with that on the spot to avoid sharing the real reason, but decided not to pressure him. His using the name Rogers clearly made Steve uncomfortable.
"Are you named after a famous Steve?" Thor asked.
Steve nodded. "Adlai Ewing Stevenson."
"Who the hell is that?" Tony asked.
"Vice president to Grover Cleveland in the late eighteen hundreds. And my middle name comes from Ulysses Grant, the eighteenth president."
"That's weird."
"You think that's weird? Where do you think Bucky's name comes from?"
"I don't know, the Call of the Wild?"
"Bucky's just a nickname. His real name is James Buchanan, after the president before Lincoln."
"Why are you both named after such obscure American historical figures?"
"I don't know. Ask our parents. The weirdest part is that Stevenson's middle name is Ewing, and Bucky's type of cancer was discovered and named by a guy named James Ewing."
"That's a tangled web for sure."
"Why are you all blabbering on when Wanda and Pietra are clearly the more interesting narrators at the moment?" Bucky asked. "You just missed them telling the story of the time they tried to get into the movies with only one ticket."
"Sorry, got sidetracked," Tony admitted. "But we'll sit here and listen to all the crazy conjoined twin stories you have until one of us has to leave for treatment or drops dead."
"Not funny," Quill grumbled.
"Wanda, remember our first day of school?" Pietra asked with a snicker.
"How could I forget?"
"This I've got to hear," Thor said, scooting his chair closer as if it would help him listen better.
"Now, we're from a pretty small town, but not so small that the other kids knew us before starting school."
"We couldn't see your faces when you saw us for the first time, but we're familiar with the typical reaction. But most people your age disguise it out of a learned sense of politeness. Five-year-olds have no such qualms."
"No such qualms," Wanda echoed.
"Even at such a young age, we were used to being stared at in public. Whether they could tell we were connected, or just thought we were acting weird, people stared at us all the time. Our mother never even acknowledged them, so we did the same."
"But as soon as we walked in the door of the classroom, all the other kids started following us around silently. We ignored them, like Mom had taught us, and just played with some blocks, and some of them let us be and went about their own business, but there were a few that refused to take their eyes off of us."
"So, naturally, we turned around to face them and kindly introduced ourselves."
"But we did it wrong."
"How do you introduce yourself wrong?" Quill asked.
"Intentionally wrong," Wanda corrected. "It's a joke we made up almost as soon as we learned how to talk. It goes a bit like this."
"Hi, nice to meet you, my name is Wanda," Pietra said with a little wave.
"And I'm Pietra," Wanda added.
"Wait just a minute, did you say Pietra? That's my name!"
"But you just said you were Wanda."
"You're Wanda."
"We can't both be Wanda."
"I'm Pietra, and you're Wanda."
"No, I'm Pietra, and you're Wanda."
"No, that's not how it goes! Pietra is on the right and Wanda's on the left. That's how it's always been."
"You're right!"
"Anyways, we introduced ourselves like that and this one kid got scared and called the teacher over to tell her we didn't know our own names," Pietra laughed.
"And then he and his friend made us nametags," Wanda concluded.
"We considered putting them on wrong, but decided that we didn't want any more confusion than we'd already created."
"Unlike most identical twins, we're pretty easy to tell apart—the whole left and right thing. So learning our names wasn't the problem. Adjusting to our difference was a bit more difficult for them."
"We don't run," Pietra explained. "Figuring out walking took long enough, but running on a playground full of kids requires more range of motion in the neck than we're capable of. Imagine playing tag without being able to look over your shoulder."
"If it makes you feel any better, most of us can't run either," Steve mentioned.
"We're not five anymore. There are many more important things than joining in on playground games," Wanda explained. "But thanks for the pick-me-up."
"The important thing is, at some point one of them thought tug-of-war would be more fun than tag."
"He wondered if they put all their strength together they could tug hard enough to pull us apart."
"That's horrible!" Steve sounded as mortified as they all felt.
"Fortunately, they weren't skilled enough in their technique to even come close, but Wanda cried loudly enough for the teacher to notice and run over to stop it."
"Mom almost pulled us out of public school as soon as she heard about that. She wanted us homeschooled, but we didn't want that."
"Did you get to stay?" Quill asked.
"Yeah. We convinced her. And that kid never messed with us again. The rest of school pretty much went off without a hitch, until a few months ago when our health started to suffer."
"Without a hitch? How is that possible?" Thor asked.
"I feel like there would be some hiccups in schooling when your head is stuck to someone else's. How did you agree on what classes to take when you got old enough to pick?" Tony asked.
"There aren't many options in Sokovian schools. We learn history, math, language, science, all the usual school things. You get to choose in American schools?"
"Well, classes usually come in different difficulty levels."
"God, American life is so complicated. Once we're separated, promise me we'll never come back here Wanda."
"Promise."
They paused. "Should we tell them about test-taking?"
Wanda smirked. "We should definitely tell them about test-taking."
"What do you mean?" Bucky asked.
"Sokovian teachers aren't exactly the most innovative," Pietra explained.
"And they needed a way to make sure we didn't cheat on tests," Wanda continued. "Putting up a divider between us isn't really feasible, you know, since our heads are basically one and the same."
"So this teacher came up with the idea of blindfolding one of us while the other took the test. She'd watch us super closely to make sure we didn't whisper to each other to solve the problem together. And then she'd switch the blindfold and the other would take the test."
"She told all the teachers in the school about her magnificent technique and in every single class after that we took tests like that."
"That's insane," Tony said, shocked. "That has to be against some rules or something."
"Not any rules that the teachers played by," Pietra sighed.
"Did they give you extra time since you had to take it one after the other?" Steve asked.
"Usually. They weren't so cruel as to make us take it in half the time."
"They would have had a harder time of it if we could read each other's minds," Wanda said with a smirk.
"I'll be the first to say it—you guys are the most interesting newbies that have ever set foot in this hospital," Steve announced. "No offense, Tony."
Over ten chapters ago someone asked if Wanda would be entering this story...well, there's your answer. Also, just to make something clear, genderbending Pietro was a narrative necessity because conjoined twins are always identical.