Disclaimer: I own none of the characters within.
Author's Notes: Hello from college. Yes, it's hard. No, this story isn't over yet. Think happy thoughts and be safe.
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It was time to let go.
Pietro slid the knife down through the air, tenderly, delicately, the blade touching down onto his pale pale skin about to release his red red blood to spill it all over the sad sad carpet. He kept his eyes riveted on Wanda's face. He couldn't look down, couldn't look at the knife because he might lose his nerve and this was really for the best he just wanted to be looking at Wanda when it happened.
Wanda! He trembled. This was for the best. It really was for the best. Obviously. Of course. Definitely. Don't think about it. Just do it! You're such a pathetic coward! Do it do it do it!
And then it happened.
One moment, Wanda was staring down at the floor, one of her hands resting in one of Lance's, all thoughtful and sad and distant. But suddenly, so suddenly that even Pietro didn't see it happen, she was looking right at him! She was looking into his eyes, through the time and the space and the infinity between them, and she was staring right into his eyes and past the madness and past the confusion and past the despair and directly into the heart of the real Pietro that still clung on somehow deep inside.
Pietro jerked back as though he'd been physically struck. He cried out; a harsh, animalistic yelp of agony. Looking down, he saw a knife balanced precariously on an ivory surface indented under its weight, just about to rupture under the pressure. It was a blade pressed against his wrist, and he was holding it! He looked back into Wanda's eyes and saw accusation and disappointment. You coward. Taking the easy way out. Snap out of it. Get a grip. Just hang on a little while longer.
Filled with guilt and shame, Pietro released his grip on the knife that was suddenly burning hot. The moment it left his hands it became suspended on the air, no longer in Top Gear, perfectly frozen on its descent to the floor. It hung there on invisible threads, hovering Macbeth-style: is this a dagger I see before me? It certainly is. Now run, run away before you do something stupid! Run, you idiot!
Pietro turned on his heel and fled.
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Everyone jumped when the knife clattered to the floor. Todd screamed and Wanda clutched Lance's hand so tight that she almost broke his fingers.
"Holy shit!" Todd spluttered, clutching the skinny chest that his heart threatened to burst out of. "What just happened?"
They all looked around. The source of the clatter was not immediately apparent. Then Freddy pointed at the floor and said, "Where'd that knife come from?"
Wanda was on her knees at once, picking up the weapon; the handle seemed to burn her skin on contact. Fierce! Some residue of energy leapt from the knife and into her hands, a prickle, a tingle of Pietro that raced up and down her spine and rattled her right down to the core.
"Do you think..." Lance said nervously. "He was going to...?"
"Yes," she quietly answered. "He was. But not anymore."
"How do you know?"
"Because he made a choice."
She held the knife like an ancient, fragile treasure, as though a thousand years of history were trapped in that blade and if she could only find a way to release them then she would have all the answers to every question she had ever asked. The sharp edge of the knife shivered with electricity, with the promise of forever, with a thousand heartbeats of doubt and loneliness.
"Please," she said hoarsely. "Someone take this away from me."
No one moved, no one dared. Then Todd loyally reached out his hand and took the knife upon himself, clutching the handle in a white-knuckled grip. There was some sort of darkness that surrounded the weapon, the horrible cruel knowledge that it had very nearly claimed the life of one of the only people he trusted and cared for. He wanted to destroy the thing, break it, burn it, melt it into a harmless puddle that could never hurt anyone again.
In the end, he just went out into one of the massive courtyards that surrounded the mansion and dug a hole. He put the knife in the hole, spat on it, then buried it deep. No stone, no nothing; an unmarked grave for the unused murder weapon.
By the time he came back into the house, Dr. McCoy was in the living room and he was saying, "Wanda, we're ready for you."
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"The way I'm acting," Lance said shakily. "You'd think I was the one getting blood drawn."
He was not allowed inside the med lab. Neither were Todd or Lance. In fact, there was quite a little crowd gathered around the little glass window that showed them, like a TV screen, the image of Dr. McCoy carefully putting a needle into Wanda's arm. It made Lance woozy to look at and he turned away, pale and sweating. Freddy patted him on the back carefully.
"Oh, man," Lance's voice was weak and nervous. "Blood, man. It's crazy."
"I always wanted to donate blood," Jean said, half to herself. "When I was old enough."
"Magneto told us that they can detect the mutant gene when they screen the blood." Todd muttered. "Too dangerous."
Then he remembered that Magneto was standing in the same room, and he cowered behind Freddy, fearing some kind of retribution. He received none. He didn't even get an acknowledgment; Erik's eyes were riveted on the thin stream of crimson that ran from his daughter's arm and into a plastic bag. There was the blood that could save Pietro. His heart ached, every throbbing beat answered by a beep from the machine attached to Wanda. For the first time in over a decade, their hearts kept time together.
Johnny was leaning with his back against the wall, his eyes closed, trying to synchronize his shallow breathing with those same beeps. He had closed his eyes because his vision was blurred and it was giving him a headache. He was leaning against the wall because at this moment his legs could not support him. Logan was standing near enough to hear him whispering over and over, "Some of the time you would say it was luck, and some of the time... Some of the time you would say it was luck, and some of the time..."
Tucked away from all of them in the cocoon of the med lab, Wanda quietly watched the blood as it swirled and danced through the tube. She could feel it leaving her, like little pieces of herself were melting away and drifting up into the air; imagined the perfectly round red droplets suspended in front of her, bobbing and weaving in the zero-gravity, and when she touched them they would burst into smaller droplets.
Dr. McCoy said, "I wish you would reconsider. I don't think it's safe to perform a transfusion without first screening the blood for—"
"For what?" she snapped. "What exactly are you looking for?"
"There are many impurities that can be passed to the recipient during such a procedure."
"Oh, like his blood is so pure right now." Feeling suddenly dizzy, she pressed one hand to her forehead. "Listen to me. He's dying. He's really dying. There's only a little while left before he... before it's too late. I won't let you waste my time and his just so you can feel safe. Pietro has never felt safe in his life, and neither have I. We don't care about the risks. I think you're actually the only person in the whole damn mansion who wants to delay this thing, so unless you want Pietro's death on your conscience, just shut your stupid mouth and do your doctor thing."
Hank said nothing.
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There were two Pietros, now.
One of them was curled up on the bathroom floor, rocking back and forth, back and forth like he was up in the cradle on the treetop and the wind was getting stronger and stronger and stronger. The other Pietro was curled up in the mirror, doing pretty much the same thing.
"I'm a coward, I'm a coward, I'm a coward," Pietro chanted, forcing the words through chattering teeth, choking it out even when it felt like his throat was closing up from guilt and grief. "I'm a coward, I'm a coward, I'm a coward..."
The bathroom rug was blue. Blue like the ocean, blue like the sky, blue like the love in Wanda's eyes. Wanda. His fingers jerked out and grabbed onto the blue blue sky but it was just a rug which wasn't good enough. He twisted the threads in his hands, tearing them out one by one, but it was giving him a terrible headache and it took him a lot longer than it should have to realize that he was tearing out his hair. Snow white clouds for the ocean blue sky.
He stopped.
Rolled onto his back, dying cockroach style, clawing and kicking at the air, with weird inhuman sounds bubbling up from his chest and out of his mouth into a crazy bleating sobbing laughter.
"I'm a coward!" he cried, and when he looked at the Pietro in the mirror, he didn't argue.
Just a little bit longer. If he could just... stop himself... for a little longer. Then he'd either be dead or so insane that it wouldn't matter anymore. He tried to focus on remaining still. It felt like he was sinking through the carpet and into tomorrow; the shadows climbed up the walls, curling like smoke, dancing like demons, a thousand leering phantoms that promised him nothing but pain.
Pain, there really was pain; it was searing right through his middle like white fire, and when he looked down at his belly he could swear it had rotted away. There was a big gaping hole with steam rising from the edges where the fire had passed, oh god, he could see the carpet through that hole, could see his spine laid there like a horizontal Jenga tower. But when he went to touch it, he came in contact with something firm and warm, and suddenly his stomach was there again, oh look, there's my belly button, but the fire is still there how much of this is real and how much of this is a nightmare?
He was so hungry. He imagined his jaw coming unhinged to admit huge portions of food, a whole watermelon sliding down his elastic throat, leaving a huge bulge in his middle like a great big python. Like a snake he slithered out of the bathroom and down the hall, aiming again for the kitchen.
It was almost like little pieces of him were melting away and drifting up into the air.
When he reached the stairs, he fell. When he reached the bottom, he crawled, using his elbows like a soldier in a mud pit, inch by inch, I am a great and terrible snake who seeks to devour anything he may find! To amuse himself he made a low, persistent hissing sound.
The feeding frenzy was a blur. At the end of it he was kicking around the empty soda bottles like soccer balls, laughing because he felt alive again, he felt so alive that he could just climb the walls of the mansion, and when he reached the top he would just keep climbing up and up and up into the blue sky the color of Wanda's eyes...
Wanda?
He stopped his dance, confused, and said, "Who's Wanda?"
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