Disclaimer: I own none of the characters within.
Author's Notes: Ahhh, I loved New York. Now I'm on another vacation in South Carolina. The sea air is good for my angst muse. I lost track of him when I saw 'The Producers', but then I read 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and found him lurking there with all the symbolism and stuff.
Anyway. This has to be my least favorite chapter yet, but bear with me. It is always most difficult to get from one point of the story to another. Like 'JAWS' is two different movies (shark attacks and shark hunting), so 'Melting Point' is two different stories. For everyone who wanted me to bring in more characters, rejoice! Your wait is over!
PS- Did anyone else think 'No Good Deed' completely screwed up Pietro's character? Thank heavens I started 'Melting Point' pre-Apocalypse!
~
It was a like a black hole had just opened up in front of them. Something, something huge and wild and uncontrollable had just swung open invisible jaws, closed them over Pietro, and snapped shut, taking him with them, leaving only the scream of absolute panic ringing in the air.
Todd, still in mid-run, was so startled by the disappearance that he tripped and crashed to the floor, the water spilling from the glass and cascading over the carpet to be absorbed.
Fred, moving towards where Pietro had been, now stood dumb and confused, arms still stretched out to catch the speedster lest he had bolted in a frenzy.
Wanda fell on her hands and knees. She had been rushing to grab him, to try and get a hold on him and help him, and in that desperation had jumped. Her arms had closed on thin air, and so she landed hard on the ground where he had been standing a split-second ago. Strangely, she felt a piece of paper in her hand, and she absently stuffed it in her pocket as she rocked back on her heels in despair.
Lance, who had also been lunging to grab Pietro's arm, had the sense to lean backwards and counter his forward motion, somehow knowing he would never be fast enough to catch his friend. He, too, suddenly became aware of a sheet of paper in his grip, and he spared it a grim glance without really seeing what it said.
Everyone was holding their breath. It happened yesterday. Pietro was gone, they panicked, Pietro was back, everything went back to normal. Seconds ticked by. An entire minute elapsed before Todd let the air rush from his lungs in defeat.
"He's not here." he said stupidly.
"He's coming back." Fred argued calmly.
Todd shifted to his feet, eyes still frantically scouring the room, ears still straining for the same rush of air that would signal Pietro's return.
Nothing.
Wanda still knelt on the floor, breathing hard. In the briefest span of time, scarcely a moment, she had been panicked, calm, angry, frustrated, lost, confused, heartsick. This wasn't her. She knew herself, knew that her reaction to things was usually logical and measured. No, it wasn't her.
It was him.
She jumped a mile when Todd's hand settled on her shoulder.
"You okay?" he asked, voice full of worry.
"Fine." she lied, standing up and willing herself to stop trembling. "I'm fine."
Lance, in the meantime, had looked about the room again, before his eyes fell on the paper in his hand. It was covered in scrawled, yet elegant handwriting that at first he didn't recognize. It wasn't his. Wasn't Todd's. Wasn't Fred's. Then he remembered seeing the handwriting in a crossword puzzle, in which the only word filled in was 'diaphanous'.
It was Pietro's.
Instantly the paper became monumentally important, and he clutched it with both hands as though it might fly away. Hungry eyes tore over the message, somehow knowing that it had been sent to him from wherever Pietro was in the belly of the invisible beast that had swallowed him up.
This is what it said-
Lance-
Stuck in Top Gear. Everything going in slow motion. Can't think. Need help. Trying to slow down, can't, can't get out of Top Gear. Something snapped. Clicked. Broken stick shift, can't find the brakes. I'm sorry; the speed is messing with my mind. Can't think.
Go to Xavier! He's got all sorts of medical crap in that place, I've seen it. He fixed Grey's meltdown, he can fix mine. Just suck in your stupid pride and go ask him for help.
I just want to come back.
- P
The comforting thing was, even as he read it, he could hear Pietro's voice saying those exact words. Pietro wrote exactly how he spoke; fast, disconnected, somewhat confusing unless you had already spent a good deal of time learning to decipher it.
So Pietro was trapped.
"Guys," Lance managed to say, drawing all attention to him.
"What's that?" Todd noticed the paper at once.
"It's from Pietro."
"Pietro?" Wanda cried, and before Lance could think she had wrenched the note from his grasp and was reading it herself.
When she finished, she moaned and pressed a weary hand to her forehead to ease the headache that was forming. Todd slid the note from her grip and read it himself, his face distorting in confusion and fear as he passed it on to Fred, who absorbed the information in brooding silence.
"So, uh..." Todd began in a shaky voice. "What do we do now?"
"We go to Xavier." Wanda stated. "We have no choice."
This did not settle well with the boys. Their egos could not bear the thought of whining to the X-Geeks for help. It just didn't make sense to them. They'd spend countless days working themselves to the bone to avoid that very predicament.
"Maybe we could ask Magneto for help..." Fred shuffled awkwardly.
At the name of Magneto, Wanda felt something split in her head. In one instant, she thought of the loving father that had taken her on picnics and raised her so well. But she also was filled with rage and hatred, a fury she did not understand.
A third emotion charged through her, a voice that was not her own; Trust your instincts, not our father.
And she wondered for not the first time why Pietro was absent in all her childhood memories. After the age of six, he vanished as though he had never existed. Something was very, very wrong.
In this instant, she knew that Magneto was not to be trusted.
"No," she said firmly. "We're on our own, here. Xavier is the only option we have."
Again, the gazes drifted to the ground, to the ceiling, anywhere but her. They were still trying to wriggle out of it, each one wracking their brains for anyone else they could go to.
Wanda felt power surge behind her hands, and an ominous blue glow formed around her fists.
"We are going to Xavier." she ground out. "Magneto cannot help us, but Xavier can. Just suck in your stupid pride and go ask him for help."
Pietro's words gained new power when uttered from such angry lips. The unspoken threat was dire. It was Todd who spoke up first, because it was Todd that was the most flexible.
"Yeah, man, why we just standing here?" He was suddenly filled with resolve. "It's just stupid to stand here and argue! If we want Pietro back, we gotta start at the one guy who can do it."
Fred nodded.
"Xavier can do anything!" he agreed.
All three turned their burning eyes to Lance, who was suddenly forced to realize how futile and stubborn he could be sometimes. He found himself in one of those horrible moments where you can beat yourself up, you're so angry at your own petty feelings.
"I'll get the keys to the Jeep." he said.
Trotting up the stairs, he swung in to his room and snatched the keys off the dresser. Pietro's door was open, and he poked his head inside as though he half-expected to see the speedster sitting on his bed and laughing hysterically at his prank.
Instead, he noticed for the first time a plain, black cellphone resting on the night stand. And without really knowing why, he snatched it up and stuffed it in his pocket.
By the time he got out to the Jeep, everyone else was already piled in and waiting. Wanda looked on the verge of dragging him over to them with her powers; a lethal determination now filled her. He all but ran to jump into the car and start it, flying down the road at a pace that reeked of desperation.
It was a long drive to the mansion of Charles Xavier.
Heavy silence now weighed on them, each one willing the car to just materialize in front of the mansion. Todd briefly wished he had a more useful power, like teleportation, but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and if wishes were riches, there would be no beggars left to be making up philosophical phrases about.
A Corvette zipped towards them in the opposite lane and rushed past them and onwards. Wanda felt the furious determination draining from her, only to be replaced by a weak feeling of helplessness. She began praying to any God that might exist that Xavier would indeed know what to do.
The ringing of a cellphone gave them all a jolt.
"It's not mine!" Todd yelped automatically.
"You don't even have a cellphone." Fred pointed out.
"Lance," Wanda said quietly. "It's coming from your pocket."
"Lance?" Todd screeched. "Since when did you have a cellphone? Why didn't you tell us?"
"I don't!" The driver snapped impatiently. "I've never owned a cellphone."
"Then you got pretty musical pants, yo, 'cause that ringing is starting to sound like 'The Ride of the Valkyries'."
It was Wagner's famous piece, and Lance remembered the cellphone he had grabbed from the night stand.
"Shit!" he cried, fumbling to get it out. "It's Pietro's!"
"You stole from Pietro?" Fred was aghast.
"No! I just borrowed it! Hang on..."
Retrieving it, Lance pressed 'answer' and brought the phone to his ear.
"Hello?"
"Quicksilver, status report."
The voice froze his blood in his veins. Clipped, cold, and utterly devoid of emotion, it was a voice that belonged to the one person who had ever truly scared him.
"It's Magneto!" he mouthed silently to the others.
"Status report!" the voice requested again, and he flinched.
Wanda felt her angry side stir, and a sudden piercing fury filled her that she knew did not come from herself. But still, it felt right, and she again had the definite feeling that Magneto had somehow cheated her out of something.
She grabbed the phone and pressed it to her ear, just as the voice repeated "Status report!" for the third time.
"Here's a status report for you, you cold-hearted bastard." Venom filled her heart, and the anger at her father was so familiar that she enjoyed it. "Your precious son has no control over his powers and is most likely in peril of his life. Claims that he can't slow down and it's messing with his mind."
"Wanda?" Magneto's voice cut in, full of confusion.
"End of report, sir." She said in a sharp voice.
Then, without even turning it off, she winged the cellphone out of the car, causing Fred and Todd to whip around in their seats to watch as it shattered on the road.
She slumped in her seat, quiet, exhausted. She felt herself coming back, remembered how kind her father was and why in the hell had she just yelled at him like that? Her gut told her that the anger was justified, but Magneto had taken her on picnics and raised her so well. Or had he?
Trust your instincts, not our father.
Lance, meanwhile, decided not to question her. Still, he felt a little thrill of admiration in his heart for her. How long had he wanted to say something like that to Magneto? How long had he wanted to do nothing more than spit in his face? And here she was, his daughter, and she was the one with the guts to do it.
The silence that now enshrouded them was one of deep contemplation. Where did Pietro get a cellphone? But more importantly, why was Magneto calling him on it? Lance chalked it down to that whole stupid spiel about Pietro being the new leader of the Brotherhood. Bullshit. Magneto didn't want him around, that was for sure. But why? Why would Magneto shunt away one of the best mutants on his team?
These questions would remain unanswered for now.
Xavier's mansion loomed ahead.
Somewhere on the lonely highway, the remains of a cellphone were crushed into tiny shards under the vengeful wheels of a semi-truck.
~