Disclaimer: I own none of the characters within.

Author's Notes: RENT has eaten my life. That's really all I can say. And then my computer ate this story. I'm working without a beta, so any mistakes must be chalked down to exhaustion, disinterest, or just plain laziness.

I know they're out of character. If they were in character, all their problems would be superficial and shallow, and all conflicts would be able to be resolved in a half hour. Did anyone else feel slightly cheated by the Evo writers?

This chapter is Wanda's first-person point of view.

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Don't let go of me.

Please, Pietro. I know you're there. Don't let me go. Don't let me slip away from you.

Again.

It hurts. It hurts to remember. Am I remembering? Is that what this is? Is it real this time? All those picnics... the carousel rides... the fireworks! They're not real. They're not true. That happiness, that family isn't mine.

An institution? Some kind of asylum.

Oh, god.

I remember.

It is real.

Father!

I have to think. I have to think. This is too much for me right now, too much for one person to handle. The strait jacket. The strait jacket! It hurt my arms, made them cramp and tingle at the fingertips, a tingling that wasn't my power. I hated that jacket. I still hate that jacket.

I remember when I moved in with the boys the first time, I got all tangled up in my sheets during the night and I was having a nightmare that I was back in the strait jacket. Pietro was trying to free me when I woke up, and I threw him across the room. Crack! I can still hear the sound of his head colliding with my dresser. Red! I can still see the blood spreading through his ghost white hair, shimmering on his fingertips after he touched the wound.

At the time, I couldn't have been happier to see him in pain.

What made me hate him so much?

It's not like Pietro put me in the asylum. In fact, if Father was telling the truth just now, Pietro didn't want me to go at all.

I guess that after years and years of anger and rage building inside of me, it was just easier to see them as one person, a single entity responsible for my imprisonment. I got too tired to bother separating them. It was so simple to say, "Pietro didn't rescue me and therefore he's at fault."

He promised to take care of me. He broke his word.

I promised to take care of him.

I guess we're even, now.

Deep, shaky breaths. Looking around Pietro's room. All these movie posters. Jaws. Never seen it. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Never seen it. The Godfather. Never seen it.

I used to wonder why I'd never seen any movies. I was too busy being locked up as a dangerous crazy person. That tends to leave you very little time for trips to the local cineplex.

I'm so confused.

I wish there was an easy way out of this. I don't want to have to deal with this. If I had my way, I would just keep the old memories and forget all this new shit. Although really, I guess this new shit actually is the old memories, and the old memories are the new shit. See? It's too complicated!

I wish it would all just disappear!

I wish I would just disappear.

It would save everyone a lot of trouble, that's for sure. They wouldn't have to deal with my hysterics. Father wouldn't have to deal with his psychopathic daughter. And then everyone could stop pretending that Pietro was going to come back. He's not going to. He's going to die. Oh, god, I know he's going to die and they're all telling me he'll be fine because they don't want me to get hurt.

He's going to die.

I'm so scared.

What's going to happen to me?

I'm freezing. I bundle the quilt around me, snuggling into it and deeply inhaling the smell of Pietro. It smells like his cologne. He loves that cologne. It's called Fierce, and whenever he says the name, he makes his hands into claws and hisses it like an angry cat. "Fierce! Hissss!" He's such a crazy person and he makes me laugh.

That's why I love him now. He makes me laugh. I came back from the mountain resort, and I didn't know what the hell to think. All I knew was that I was very, very sad, and there was no better remedy for that sadness than Pietro. He's pretty much the funniest guy in the world.

And apparently I hate his guts.

He touched his hand to his head and pulled it back, saw the blood there. Then he looked at me, the pain still registering, his eyes wide and confused. I was still half-tangled in my sheets, but I laughed at his despair, thrilled to see the red stain seeping across his head. He staggered, dropped to his knees, but I said, "oh, no you don't, you can go pass out in the hall!"

That's what he did.

Todd found him in the morning sprawled on the floor, half of his hair sticky and reddish brown. Once they woke him up we saw that his pupils were different sizes, which Lance was fairly sure meant something bad but which no one was certain about. There was a huge lump on his head where it had struck the dresser. Pietro gave me a look, and I laughed again.

"Don't know my own strength!"

Pietro never lets you see him hurt. Once he woke up a bit more, he was "fine". He rebuffed Todd and Lance's efforts to make him stay home from his usual wanderings, he turned away the breakfast Freddy made for him, he even refused a ride in the car, saying he'd rather run. He was gone all day, and after supper there was a strong wind and the sound of his door slamming, which meant that he was home and the tomb was sealed.

I'm sorry, Pietro.

I'm sorry, little brother.

I'm trying to understand what made you the way you are. The way you grew up, knowing Father hated you, knowing you would always be second best to me. I think you knew that Father saw you as an unworthy substitute for Mama, and I'm doing my very best to see this all from your perspective.

How would I feel if not even my father loved me?

How would I behave if I was always told I'd never be good enough?

How would I respond if the only person who ever loved me was taken away?

I think, Pietro, that in this whole wide world there are only two people that you love. There are more that you like, but only two that you really love, with a love that is as fierce and passionate and desperate as anything anyone has ever known. This love burns through you, eats away at you, and as much as you wish you could, you are powerless to control it.

The first person is Father.

For all your scoffing and sneering, you love him, Pietro. You can't help it. You are his son. And perhaps it is the knowledge that he will never love you that drives you even more. He is the forbidden fruit, unattainable, not meant for your consumption. You are not supposed to ever have his love, yet this makes you try all the harder because if you should one day earn that love it would be sweeter than any other prize on earth.

The second person is me.

And the more I think about it, the more think that I am not worthy of this love.

This overpowering, overwhelming love. I don't deserve it. For all the times that I hurt you, both physically and emotionally, you just come back for more. I try and I try to drive you away, but it's no good. God only knows why you've chosen me, but here you are.

Here we are.

I'm so scared to lose you.

Now that I've finally found you and you've finally found me.

I can't even imagine living without you. Since you disappeared, I keep trying to picture myself surviving, moving on past this tragedy, adjusting to a life with a Pietro-shaped void in it. But what will I eat for breakfast if it's not one of your pan-fried PopTarts? Who will I play checkers-chess-poker with? Who will show me the movie "Moulin Rouge!" for the first time?

Please don't leave.

Now I know why Pietro vanished in my artificial memories. He disappeared from my mind after we turned five years old, never at any of the picnics or parties. He is absent at the big Fourth of July fireworks show and there is no sign of him at the circus. It's because we didn't grow up together. All those years we could have had... years of whispers and secrets, of staying up late and sneaking out after curfew.

I close my eyes now and try to imagine what it might have been like.

The two of us, ten years old, terrified after a Halloween movie marathon. Pietro is desperately convinced that Freddy Krueger is just around the corner, while I entertain fantastic notions of Jason Voorhees leaping from behind the couch, brandishing his machete and ready to dice us to bits. We don't sleep a wink all night, but rather protect each other, watching harmless infomercials in an attempt to distract ourselves from our fears.

I'm fourteen and Dad won't let me go to a party with friends. Pietro helps me make a rope out of bed sheets, just like I hear they do in the movies, and after he lowers me out the window he promises to distract Dad so my absence goes unnoticed.

I'll bet if Pietro ever got picked on by bullies at school, I would beat those guys up and rescue him. And I'll bet if I ever had a boyfriend who hurt me, Pietro would track him down and give him an ass-kicking he wouldn't soon forget.

We wouldn't have to break our promises.

But those vows are broken now, and it's too late for either of us to try and put them back together.

This all feels so unfair. It's not fair! Who asked us if we wanted to be separated? Who asked us if we were ready to say goodbye? When did we give them permission to take away half of our lives?

I can remember, now. They thought they took it all away, but I remember. For all of the horrors of the asylum, I'm glad to have my real memories back. Because now I can remember the real Pietro. I don't have to remember him as a sneaky little rat who stood idly by and let me get locked away. I don't have to remember him as a malevolent force who stood by Father and encouraged him to throw me in the darkness for so long.

I can see him wiggling to fit under the bed in a game of Hide and Seek. I can see him scrambling up the big tree and then offering me his hand, pulling me up with him.

I remember... Frankenstein...

We were barely five. We stayed up late watching the old Frankenstein movie. I was scared to death! I couldn't even comprehend going into my room by myself, in the dark, with that big empty closet hiding who-knows-what. You took me in your room, Pietro. I fell asleep in your bed. Before I did, though, I remember saying...

"Don't let the monster get me, Pie..."

And you said, "I won't. I promise."

It was only a few months later that you were crawling into my bed. You could barely drag yourself up, you were so weak and shaking so badly. I held you in my arms and tried to help you as sweat poured down your face and you wept from the pain. I can remember how small and thin your body was, wracked with spasms, arching and twisting as those drugs ripped through your system.

We didn't understand it, then. But I understand it now.

It was the day before I stood up to Father in the lab, and I now know it was the day before he decided to send me away. I wasn't thinking about what I was going to do tomorrow. I wasn't thinking about how I could make him pay. All I could think about was how I could make you safe. I held you close.

Through chattering teeth, you begged, "Don't let him hurt me, Wanda..."

And I said, "I won't. I promise."

Neither of us has kept their word.

I suppose it's only fair that both of us got burned in the bargain.

I'm so confused.

I'm so scared.

I bury my face in the quilt and inhale deeply.

Fierce! Hiss!

Then I lay the quilt on the bed and stand up, walking for the door and the phone. I have to call them, let them know where I am, let them know I'm okay. They probably think I just disappeared into thin air like Pietro did. Well, they're not getting rid of me that easily. And I'm not letting go of Pietro that easily.

As I walk, I put my hands in my pockets, and I feel in one of them a slip of paper.

Suddenly, I remember.

Pietro disappeared, and Lance instantly had a note in his hands from him. At the same time, I had a piece of paper in my hands, but without even thinking I stuffed it in my pocket and forgot about it. Now I have it.

Digging it out, I unfold it and see a message in Pietro's wonderfully familiar handwriting. It says three words.

Come What May

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