Wanda Maximoff had been in the institution for almost seven years. She thought. The days were all the same here—gray and boring. No one ever came to see her except the doctors, and that Professor Xavier who was supposed to be trying to teach her to control her powers.
He was just like her father. They were all just like her father. No one really cared about her at all.
And now they were letting her go home? With him? She'd rather be in a straitjacket for the rest of her life.
A nurse came up to her. "Miss Maximoff, I've been notified of the hospital's decision to discharge you into your family's care as of today. Someone will be picking you up at three P. M., so I suggest you—"
"This can't be for real," Wanda said, almost inaudibly.
"As far as I know, it is."
"But every time I've been up for re-evaluation, they've turned me down! How come they're just letting me go just like that?"
"As I understand it, your family has arranged for alternative therapy . . ."
Yeah, Wanda thought. Torture, probably.
It wouldn't have been so bad if she'd had a visitor once in a while. She and her brother, Pietro, had once been as close as two sibling can be, but once she went away, it was as if she had never existed. She hadn't gotten so much as a postcard from him in all this time . . .
It was probably her father's doing. He'd put her in here in the first place. There was no way she was going home with him.
"What if I don't want to go?" she asked.
The nurse looked at her. "Don't want to? Now, why on Earth wouldn't you want to go home to your family?"
"You don't know my family."
"Oh, don't be silly, dear," the nurse said. "They can't be that bad!"
You have no idea . . .
Wanda's mind turned back to the rainy night she'd first been brought here. Daddy, standing by the car while she was dragged away, deaf to her screams for help . . .
Every light fixture in the room simultaneously exploded. The terrified nurse went to get help, but by the time she returned, Wanda was sitting on the floor amid the broken glass, crying her eyes out.
She raised her head. "Please, don't let him do this to me again. Please!"
The nurse sighed. "I'm afraid you don't have a choice."
Back at the Brotherhood house, Pietro was unpacking his most prized possession, his mother's menorah. He was just polishing it up when Tad crawled over to see what he was doing.
"Da?" he said, looking at the big shiny thing Uncle Pietro was holding.
"That's a menorah, Tad. Can you say 'menorah'?"
"Bah-bah."
"Me-no-rah."
"Bah-bah." He tried to put one of the candles in his mouth, but Pietro took it away.
"No, no, no, Tad, that's not for eating. That's a candle. We light it, and say prayers, and . . . stuff."
"Gee doo," Tad said, clapping his hands and going for another candle. Pietro lifted the menorah up out of his reach.
"No! That's not a toy! It's an important . . . um . . ." Tad was too young to understand religion, so how to explain it to him?
"It's just important, okay?"
Tad seemed to understand that. "Gabba bah doo!" he cooed, and went to look for someone else to play with. Once he was gone, Pietro got the menorah down again.
His foster parents were Protestants, but they respected his religion. They usually found some excuse to be out on the eight nights of Hannukah, giving him time alone to do what he had to do.
The practice carried over into the Brotherhood house. After a lot of stupid arguments and eventual bribery, Pietro had gotten the other residents to leave the house for a few hours. He didn't really need to get rid of them, he just didn't want them wandering in and asking questions he wasn't prepared to answer.
Like "Whose presents are those?"
Every year, from the time he first had pocket money, he had bought gifts for Wanda, hoping this was the year that he'd get to see her. When Hannukah was over, he put them away, unopened, in his closet till next year. Someday, he figured, she'd come home, and then he'd give them all to her at once . . . and then maybe she'd forgive him for letting their father put her away in the first place.
The staff at Shady Hills had never been so glad to see someone go. Wanda Maximoff had been a terror from Day One, and had seen the inside of the Isolation Room more than once. Frankly, they were running out of punishments for her. The only thing that seemed to help her were her sessions with Professor Xavier.
Somehow, in all the confusion, the staff forgot to tell him that Wanda was being released. The first he heard of it was when he showed up for their session as usual, only to be told there wouldn't be one today. Or any other day, for that matter.
"She's nowhere near ready!" he told the doctor in charge. "You can't just release her!"
"The family's arranged for alternative therapy," the doctor explained. "It's out of my hands."
An orderly brought Wanda in. She didn't look happy to be leaving.
"What are you doing here?" she asked Xavier.
"I came for our session," he said, "but it seems we've already had our last one."
"Can't I stay? I mean, I still have issues with my father . . . he left me here years ago and he's never even been to visit me! Now all of a sudden he wants to bring me home? What's he up to?"
"Maybe he's not up to anything. Maybe he's had a change of heart and genuinely wants you home."
"I doubt it."
A brunette woman in a gray suit stepped forward. "Ready, Wanda?"
"Who are you?"
"I'm a friend of your father's. I'll be overseeing your training while he's . . . away."
"Great," Wanda grumbled. "He's not even here to welcome me home."
Raven Darkholme noticed Xavier. "Hello, Professor."
"Ms. Darkholme." He nodded to her. They knew each other's "secret identities", but couldn't acknowledge them in public.
Raven took Wanda by the shoulders and started leading her away.
Xavier called after them, "I hope to continue Wanda's sessions as soon as possible."
Darkholme looked back at him. "That," she said, "has already been arranged."
They walked out to the car, where an older woman waited in the passenger seat. "This is Agatha Harkness, Wanda. She's the one who'll be training you."
Wanda took one last look over her shoulder at Xavier, whose expression was blank.
Help me.
Then she got in the car, and they drove away.
Pietro had spent the day doing something nice for Wanda, to make her like him, and maybe even forgive him. He had decided to paint her new room.
He went to the hardware store, and bought several cans of shocking pink paint. (He remembered that she liked pink—everything on her side of the room had been pink when they were kids.) It took quite a bit to cover up the black paint that Rogue had insisted on painting her walls. Then when he was done with that, he applied the leftover paint to the furniture, and as a finishing touch, hung pink curtains in place of the funereal black drapes. The result was a room that looked like it belonged in Barbie's Dream House, but he was sure she'd love it.
"Perfect!" he said. He started to back up to get a better look, and nearly tripped over Tad.
"What are you doing in here?"
"Ah?" Tad looked around at all the pretty pink.
"This is Auntie Wanda's new room."
"Babah?"
"Wan-da."
"Babah," Tad repeated. "Ahdee Babah."
"Fine, have it your way."
"She's here!" Toad called.
Pietro raced downstairs to find the rest of the household already assembled, in their best clothes (or reasonable facsimile thereof). He looked down at his paint-spattered clothes, briefly considered calling it a new fashion trend, then changed his mind and dashed upstairs, returning in something a bit less painty.
He looked down at Tad, and then pushed him to the front. Then Pietro zipped to the back of the line, so she wouldn't see him right away.
The front door opened. Mystique came through first, holding the door for a young girl with black hair and sad eyes. Tad looked up at the visitor, who stared at him as if he were something that had just crawled out from under a rock.
The older woman behind her said, "It's okay, child. No one here will hurt you. We all want to help . . ."
"Who the heck's this?" Pietro demanded.
Wanda took one look at him, and all hell broke loose.
"YAAAAAAAAH!" She lunged at him like a runaway train and grabbed him somewhere that really hurt. All the while, everything in the room that wasn't nailed down was flying around as if in a hurricane. The boys ducked behind the sofa to avoid being hit by flying debris, or body parts.
"Ahdee Babah?" Tad inquired.
"Auntie Psycho's more like it," observed Lance. "They let her out of the hospital?"
Mystique intervened before any serious damage could be done. "Wanda, Pietro, stop it right now!"
Pietro rubbed his neck and gasped for air. "Sure, blame me."
"Go to your rooms and calm down, and I'll call you."
Wanda glared at her. "I don't even know where my room is!"
"I'll show you!" Toad jumped from behind the sofa and sprang to her side.
Wanda glared at him. "Out of my way, you little—"
"That will do, Wanda," said the older woman, who still hadn't introduced herself. "I'll help you find your room."
Toad watched them climb the stairs. "She gonna like her room?" he asked Pietro.
"Yeah, I painted it her favorite color."
"AAAAAAGGGGHHHH!" came the scream from upstairs.
"Why can't she use her indoor voice?" Fred asked.
"What's wrong?" Mystique ran to the foot of the stairs.
"PINK! IT'S PINK!"
"So? You love pink!" said Pietro.
"I hate pink! It's the most disgusting girly color in the whole world!"
"You used to love pink!"
"Yeah, when I was six!"
"Hey, I was just trying to make things nice for you! Don't say thank you or anything!"
"Enough!" said Mystique. "Wanda, as soon as you're settled in, we'll paint your room a different color. In the meantime, let's try not to kill each other, shall we?"
"All right, all right!" Wanda threw up her hands and went to unpack what little personal belongings she had.
"Sheesh!" Pietro said, when she was well out of earshot. "How was I supposed to know she didn't like pink?"
For the next three weeks, Wanda trained with Agatha in the use of her powers (or, at least, the use of them without killing any family members). At the same time, Pietro was trying to adjust to life with an unpredictable sister.
He wished Magneto hadn't fled the country, on "important, urgent business", just before Wanda arrived. He also wished that Wanda wouldn't keep throwing fits every time he came in the room. At the rate she was going, she wouldn't last the next few days, let alone start school in January.
But Wanda surprised everyone by being absolutely on her best behavior—at least, until Thanksgiving. Just as she had finally managed to control her powers . . . her father showed up.
