What If...the Twins Were Born Separate?

Wanda wished she were dead. Well, that was probably exaggerating just a tad. She wished she were anywhere but here. But when your twin asks you to be somewhere, you go. That's just how it works. Wanda never imagined that going to her parents' living room would be so daunting, but it wasn't the location so much as the conversation that made her wish some handsome, caped superhero would pick her up and fly her away from here.

"You are forsaking God!" her father shouted.

"God forsook me when he put me in the wrong body!" Pietro retorted. Wanda squeezed her left hand with her right and hoped this would be over soon. She'd tried to tell Pietro that he should just do it and not tell their parents until it was over, but he didn't listen. He was determined to get them to accept it, but based on how the past hour of argument had gone, Wanda didn't think he'd ever succeed. Their parents—really just their father, but Mama would never take anyone's side but his—were too staunchly devoted to deviate from this mindset.

Papa's eyes darkened. "How dare you. No daughter of mine will speak ill of God!"

"I'm not your daughter."

Wanda glanced up just long enough to notice that Mama's sad and forlorn expression. Pietro had told her first when he publicly transitioned three years ago, hoping that she'd be more accepting than Papa. She was, thankfully. Papa had actually been coming around, but when Pietro brought up top surgery, all of that progress was erased, just as Wanda feared, and now they'd been sitting here for an hour arguing about it. Papa's family was very firm on the Jewish tradition of being buried at the end of your life in a body unmodified from the one you were born in. Apparently, Pietro affirming his gender didn't comply with this order from God. It made Wanda sick.

Papa seethed. He was so mad he couldn't form words, but his fists clenched like he was about to punch something. Wanda hoped this didn't escalate to physical violence. Papa had never hit anyone before, but nothing had ever made him this angry before, at least not that Wanda had ever seen.

"Wanda," he said shortly. She tensed, not wanting to be dragged any deeper into the conversation. "Talk some sense into your sister. If anyone can convince her not to willingly mutilate herself, it's her twin."

Her hands started shaking. Pietro was tensed like a coiled snake beside her, ready to pounce after Papa misgendered him three times in a single sentence. As much as Wanda feared standing up to her father when he was like this, her loyalty to her twin was more important. "No," she said firmly. "The only one here who needs some sense talked into him is you, not my brother."

His eyes narrowed. Wanda narrowed hers right back at him, and tilted her head ever so slightly to the right, towards Pietro. Papa was never going to get either of his children on his side here, and he knew it now. He stood up and walked away without another word. Wanda didn't know what to make of it.

"I'm so sorry," Mama spluttered, before she, too, got up and left them. Wanda didn't even know what she was apologizing for. Papa's behavior? Her own reluctance to speak up? Leaving?

Pietro stomped to his feet and began pacing across the floor. He made it back and forth only three times before he headed for the front door. Wanda hurried after him. "Pietro!" she called, knowing he was way faster and could easily ditch her once they got onto the streets below.

He stopped in his tracks and whirled around to face her. "What? What could you possibly say to make this better?"

"I don't know," she despaired. "I can't change Papa's mind. If I could, I would in a heartbeat."

"I know you would. I just hate that he can't understand that this is more important than faith, this is my entire being."

"If he can't see it, then screw him," she said sternly. "You don't need his permission or his support to do this."

Pietro shrugged. "But it would be nice to have it."

"I know it would. I'm sorry you can't have that. Nobody should ever have to make this choice, but you have to decide which is more important: your identity, or Papa's approval. Do you want to live as your authentic self without him, or pretend to be someone you're not with him?"

Pietro didn't answer.

Wanda continued, "Whichever you choose, I'll still be there. You can't get rid of me that easily."

He shot her a cheeky grin. "Unfortunately." Then he paused, his expression unreadable. Wanda waited as he ran a hand through his short, silvery hair. Even though they were identical and Pietro hadn't had any hormone treatment or surgery to change his appearance, Wanda didn't think he looked like her. Everyone in their lives insisted that they were the spitting image of each other, but she didn't see it. Pietro looked like her brother, not her doppelganger with a shorter haircut, at least to her. But maybe that was just because she was the only one to truly see him for who he was, and not who he'd been forced to be from birth.

She'd suspected that her twin was fundamentally different than her ever since they were little, but Pietro hadn't come out to her until they were fifteen. And then, it was only to her. He still went by his deadname to everyone else, and Wanda had been careful not to use his real name unless they were alone. She kept that secret for five years. Pietro legally changed his name on their twentieth birthday and started wearing clothes he actually wanted to. Wanda had never seen him happier.

All their friends their age accepted the change with barely a hiccup. But their family was another story. Their grandparents and great aunts and uncles on Papa's side never even tried to change their views of him, but luckily, they only had to interact with them at Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. Mama's side of the family, they never saw. She came from a very traditionalist Romani group, and they practically disowned her for falling in love with and marrying a Jewish man. Wanda and Pietro had never even met their maternal grandparents.

Their parents sort of fell in the middle of this acceptance spectrum. They called him the right name to his face, but Wanda overheard them using the wrong pronouns all the time when he wasn't around to hear it. She corrected them every single time, and gradually they did it less and less often. They clearly didn't understand, but it seemed they were willing to try. Until today. Clearly, Pietro physically modifying his body to suit his identity crossed a line for Papa. The rules of his faith might dictate that one can't alter the body they were born in, but that gave him no right to dictate what Pietro did with his. If he couldn't see that this was necessary for his child to be happy, that was his problem.

Pietro finally looked her in the eye again. "Thank you," he said genuinely. "I don't think I could do this without your support."

Wanda laid a hand on his shoulder. "That's what twins are for."

I don't know if there's any real-world examples of one member of a pair of identical twins being trans, but I'm sure it's not impossible. Way back during Gravesen, someone asked me if I'd written Pietra surviving the separation surgery if I would've explored her possibly transitioning to Pietro to stay more true to the original character. I said it was something I strongly considered, but it just wouldn't fit in the context of that story. Well, I decided this was the perfect time to explore that.