{Author's Note: I'm sorry this chapter is rather short compared to usual, but it just didn't really feel right to break up the story any other way. I hope it's still enjoyable. The next chapter will be quite a bit more intense than this one, so that's something to look forward to…or not depending on what fits your fancy. As usual, please feel free to comment. I love reading people's thoughts, whatever they might be. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to do so thus far, and thanks to those who have favorited/subscribed to this story as well!}
X-MEN WANDA POV
After Erik left to go find something to quell Pietro's hunger, the three youngsters retreated back into the room where Pietro had been recovering in order to talk, though what about, Wanda had no idea. But it didn't seem to be anything good based on the grave look on the elder Wanda's face.
Pietro, on the other hand, seemed wonderfully oblivious. He was still just happy that they were all together, no one was currently trying to capture or torture him, and their father was going to get him food, hopefully something with calories galore. It was the happiest she'd seen him in a while, and it was going to break Wanda's heart to see her brother lose that joy—even if only momentarily—but Wanda knew the older girl wouldn't ruin Pietro's mood without good reason, so she was anxious to find out what that reason might be.
Pietro hopped up to sit cross-legged on the bed as the girls pulled up chairs.
"Pete, Erik literally just got done telling you not to over exert yourself." Said Wanda, "and the first thing you do is jump on the bed."
"That was hardly a jump," Pietro started to argue but he quickly changed his mind after his sister gave him a disapproving look. "Sorry Wands. My bad. Won't happen again…so what did you want to talk about Wanda?" asked Pietro directing his attention away from his sister to the other girl.
The older girl sighed, "I've already talked to your father about all of this, but please don't blame him for keeping it from you. It wasn't his story to tell and I wasn't even sure if I wanted to share it before, but now I think it's important that I do."
The younger Wanda and Pietro exchanged a glance before giving the older girl rather perplexed looks as they waited for her to continue.
"You already know my name is Wanda, not Wilma. I didn't tell you before because..." the older Wanda took a deep breath and looked them both in the eye. "because my full name is Wanda Maximoff, and I had a twin brother named Pietro Maximoff."
The older girl's words swirled through Wanda's mind, as she watched her brother's eyes go wide and he began to throw question after question at the Avenger.
"Wait. So you're like my sister from the future? No that doesn't make sense, we're from a different universe, not just a different time. Does it make sense? Are you a clone? Are Wanda and I clones? Are we all clones? I guess you look a little bit alike but not like clone-level alike. If you're a clone, does that make you our sister? OhmyGod! IsErikyourdadtoo!? How—"
Wanda cut her brother off, giving his arm a gentle squeeze. Wanda knew she should have just as many questions as Pietro, and maybe they would come later, but there was only one question that she needed to ask right then. The most important part of what the other Wanda Maximoff had told them.
"You said you had a twin brother named Pietro. What do you mean by had?"
Next to her, Pietro went even paler than his natural skin color, as a single tear ran down the other Wanda's face. The older girl's hand shook as she wiped the tear away, but when she spoke, her voice was steady. "He died…he's been gone for over a year now…sometimes it feels like he was just here yesterday…and other days, it feels like he's been gone forever."
The Avenger looked away as the words hit the younger Wanda like a ton of bricks. Even though the rational part of her mind was coming to the conclusion that this universe contained some version of herself and had contained some version of her brother, that didn't mean their lives would follow the same path, but the irrational part of her mind tensed with fear for her own twin, and her hand tightened on her brother's arm.
Wanda knew even if they shared a name and powers that they were not the same person, and they did not share the same lives or history. They weren't even from the same country. What happened to the Pietro Maximoff of this world would not happen to her brother. Their lives couldn't be so insignificant that they would revolve around the happenings of another universe.
And she would die before anything happened to her Pietro. But Wanda couldn't dispel all of her fear. Part of her couldn't rid her mind of the thought that some events might be destined to come to pass. If there were already so many similarities between herself and the Wanda Maximoff of this universe, did that mean that her brother's fate was already set in stone?
Still trapped in the fears created by her own imagination, Pietro asked what Wanda's mind had not yet thought to.
"How…how did he die?" Pietro asked quietly.
"He died protecting others. He was better at hiding it than you, but just like you, he had a big heart." Answered the other Wanda with a sad smile.
"Didhehavepowerslikeminetoo?" asked Pietro quickly. He was curious now. And why wouldn't he be? There had existed someone that could have possibly kept up with him, in a way that even Wanda, as his twin, could not.
"He did…he just…he wasn't as fast as you. He wasn't born with his powers. Neither of us were. We foolishly volunteered to be experimented on in the hope to gain power to help our home country, but in the end, it didn't even matter because I wasn't able to save the most important person in my life…even with my powers."
Wanda felt her brother shiver or perhaps to be more accurate vibrate next to her.
"Does this mean I'm gonna die too?" Pietro asked in a small voice. "ImeanobviouslyI''mgonnadie, everybodydies, but—"
At the sound of her brother's poorly hidden distress Wanda found her voice, "You're not going to die, Peter, not until we are both ancient and have gotten a chance to be grumpy old people. We are each our own person, and our world is completely different from this one. The two are not meant to interact. What happened or happens here doesn't personally affect us." Wanda said, moving to sit by her brother on the bed, where she then put an arm around him, who relaxed slightly under her familiar touch.
Wanda tried not to glare at the older girl. She knew it wasn't her fault for being who she was, but Wanda really wished she had someone to blame for Pietro's fear…and her own.
"Your sister is right, Pie—Peter. Your lives are completely your own. I—I only wanted to tell you who I truly am and about my brother, because I want you two to realize how important it is for you to always look out for each other. I know you know that already…and I know you already do look out for one another, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded. And I really need you to understand how much of a difference you can make in each other's lives, and…and I didn't want to say goodbye without telling you the truth." Said the other Wanda with an air of conviction.
"Goodbye?" asked Pietro in surprise. "I mean, I know we're going to try to go back to our own world, but not like right this second. And we're not going to quit hanging out with you just because we're like basically related. Wands and Erik spend time with each other, even though they're not like the best of friends."
As much as he was trying to keep his voice lighthearted, Wanda could hear the sadness creeping into it. She knew he wanted to go home. They both did, but that didn't mean they wouldn't miss the people that they left behind. But Wanda hated goodbyes. Hated them with a passion because they hurt too much. That's why she'd left home without saying goodbye to Aunt Marya, or Mila…or her own twin.
The other Wanda gave him a small smile, and suddenly the girl seemed a lot older than Wanda herself was.
"I know you're not." Said the older girl, "But you will be soon, and I didn't want to miss my chance to tell you. After another night's rest, we're getting a lift to the farm you were living on when you first came here, and then I'm going to help your sister send you all back home where you belong."
A number of emotions flickered across her brother's face: excitement and hope at the prospect of going home, but also that profound sadness was there again. It pained Wanda to realize that that sadness was probably always there within her brother, at times well hidden, but always there nonetheless.
And though she already knew what the answer would be, Wanda had to ask. She had to ask because even though this whole situation was weird and unsettling, anything that would possibly make her brother happy, made her happy too.
"You could come with us." Said the younger Wanda and next to her Pietro immediately perked up.
"Yea! You should come!" said Pietro excitedly. "Wands can be a pain in the butt sometimes, but she's also a really great sister, and you're really great too and you could be our older, wiser sister and teach us stuff and then Wands wouldn't be able to say she's the oldest Maximoff anymore and—"
The other Wanda held up her hand cutting him off. "I can't come with you Peter. As much as I'm going to miss you, both of you, I belong here, and you belong there. This world needs me, and that one needs both of you. And even though my blood relatives of this world are gone, I still have a family here. And I can't abandon them."
All three were silent after Wanda finished speaking. Because what was there to say? She was right. Even if the other Wanda didn't have people who needed her in this world. They were never even supposed to be in this universe in the first place. It was lucky their mere presence here hadn't destroyed all of time and space, and if the other Wanda went back with them, that might just push the cosmos over the edge.
Finally, the other Wanda spoke again. "Would you mind…could I share the memory of my brother with you both? It's stupid, I know, but the fact that you're from another universe gives me hope that there is some universe or someplace out there where my brother is still alive or—or existing somehow and even if he's not, then if even one more person knows who he was, then he's not completely gone and…"
Wanda trailed off, as few tears ran down her cheek once more. She quickly wiped them away.
"Yea, yea, of course, Wanda. Of course you can show us." Said Pietro eager to make the older girl's pain go away. For one so accustomed to pain, it wasn't surprising that her brother hated to see others bear it.
Her brother was so kind. Unlike herself. Because though he answered for both of them, Wanda actually didn't want to see the memory of this other Pietro. She didn't want to see the face of a dead boy, and know that it could have just as easily been her brother who had died, who still could die because every world seemed to be filled with people who tried to tear him from her. But how could Wanda say no? How could she refuse the simple request of possibly the one person who could understand what it was like to care so much about someone and be so connected to them that their pain was your own?
So Wanda didn't say anything. She just nodded, and leaned forward a little to let the other girl's now power-charged hands touch her and her brother's temples.
A moment later, Wanda was no longer in the white room. Instead, she was standing outside under a canopy of some ancient building. Pillars and remains of what looked to be the bodies of robots lay all around her. Suddenly a boy—a man really, she knew he had to be the other Pietro, but he looked older than even the other Wanda—appeared in front of her, lines of blue and silver lay out behind him in a trail before quickly fading away. He had a thin but dark beard. The roots of his hair matched its coloring, but the rest of his hair was white. It looked like it had been dyed that way, but since the young man could only be the Pietro of this universe, she figured it was probably natural.
"Get the people on the boats." She heard herself say in the other girls Sokovian accent without even thinking about it. It seemed she was not just observing, but taking the other Wanda's role in the girl's memory.
"I'm not going to leave you." The young man responded without hesitating.
"I can handle these." Wanda heard herself say again as a robot rushed at her and she automatically flung out her hands, stopping it in its tracks and breaking it apart with her powers. "Come back for me when everyone else is off, not before." She continued lowering her hands as the young man moved around her at a normal pace.
"You understand?" said Wanda harshly, again unable to control the words out of her mouth, as she tracked the other Pietro's movement.
At Wanda's last words, the young man turned toward her, a smirk on his face that suddenly reminded her so much of her own Pietro that she wanted to look away, but of course she couldn't. This memory was not hers to control. And the other Wanda hadn't looked away, so neither could she.
"You know, I'm 12 minutes older than you." Said the other Pietro, the grin still present on his face and despite the fact that they were obviously in a tense situation, humor laced his voice.
So he was the older twin.
Wanda suddenly felt a strange kinship for this boy/man she would never know because he obviously felt that it was his job to protect his sister, just as she protected her brother.
Then Wanda felt herself smile and answer with a hint of a laugh in her voice, "Go."
Then the speedster was gone, and with him, the memory, and so Wanda found herself once more back in the pristinely white room with her living, breathing brother and the other Wanda who had lost so much.
"That was the last time I saw him alive. Our last conversation was just me bossing him around." Said the elder Wanda bitterly.
Pietro shook his head out a little bit next to her. Wanda figured her powers made it easier to adjust to being taken in and out of a memory than it did for him.
"Hey," said Wanda gently, suddenly feeling the need to comfort the other girl. Now that she had seen the memory of the lost Pietro, she was happy that she had. It was easier now to separate this Universe's Pietro from her Pietro. At least physically, her Pietro was almost nothing like the Pietro who had died.
The other Pietro had been older, taller, and much more muscular than her brother could ever hope to be, and he at least seemed much more sure of himself. Though the bit of her brother that she had seen in the mischievous smile and the glint in the young man's eyes made her want to help this other version of herself understand something. "That's not what I saw. I saw two siblings who cared more about each other than anyone else in the world."
The other Wanda looked up hopefully, appearing younger again. "Really?"
"Yes." Repeated Wanda and Pietro—who had recovered from the memory's affects—together.
The older girl stood up and wiped her eyes, before heading over toward the door and holding it open. "We should go help your father get that food."
The twins rose and followed her. When they reached her, Pietro gave her an awkward but sincere hug. "I'm sorry about your brother. I don't know what I'd do if I lost my sister." said Pietro and a moment of rare seriousness.
Wanda just patted him on the back, startled but touched by the boy's words. "Thank you, Peter."
Pietro let her go and walked out the door to wait in the hall.
"I'm sorry too." Said Wanda because she didn't know what else to say, and sorry seemed to work for Pietro, but Wanda knew they were just words. They wouldn't bring the other girl's brother back.
"Don't be sorry…" Said the older girl looking intently at Wanda. "Just don't let this world, or another, take your brother from you."
"I won't." Wanda answered without hesitating. No one was ever going to take her brother from her again, not while she was around.
And with that, the two girls left the room to join the boy that bound them together.