Chapter Eighty-Three:
Wanda Maximoff did not like surprises.
She supposed it had something to do with the fact that, when she was only nine years old, her father had taken her and Pietro out for ice cream and a 'surprise'- the surprise being that she was going to spend the next seven years locked in a mental institution because she couldn't control her powers.
Needless to say, that incident had scarred her deeply, and to this day she was very suspicious of the word 'surprise', no matter who it was who said it. Kitty found it annoying that they couldn't even throw her a surprise party on her birthday, but the younger woman seemed to understand that it was just one of those things that they all had to learn to live with about each other, like the intangible mutant's incessant perkiness at all hours of the morning.
But when Rogue had announced that they had a surprise guest for the dinner, the last thing Wanda had been expecting was to see her long-lost, elusive twin brother standing in the doorway.
She wasn't the only one who had been shocked to see Pietro, nearly everyone in the room had been speechless, and some, like Scott and Lance, who hadn't forgotten that the last time they saw Pietro was the day he had betrayed them all, had actually risen from their chairs before the Professor ordered them to sit down.
Like they could have caught him, anyway, she thought with a snort. Pietro's superspeed had always given him an unfair advantage, making her detest playing 'Tag' with him as children, since she never stood a chance at winning. That had been the very reason that he loved the game so much, because he'd always absolutely hated to lose.
At Xavier's request, which was really more of an order, they had all set down for a nice, albeit awkward, dinner. There had been a tense moment where Pietro and Lance ended up seated across from each other, and Kitty had bitten her lip nervously, anticipating a fight, but for once they demonstrated maturity that Wanda hadn't known either of them could possess.
Pietro had congratulated him on his engagement, which Rogue must have told him about, and Lance had immediately relaxed. Neither of them had said the words 'I'm sorry' or anything, but somehow Wanda got the feeling that they had managed to convey the apology anyway, and she marveled at the fact that within a few minutes of dinner being served, the two were recalling the good times back in Bayville, giving Remy some rather juicy tidbits about his wife's more embarrassing moments under the Brotherhood's roof, despite Rogue's threats of bodily harm.
"What are you thinking?"
Shaking off her reverie, Wanda looked over at her brother, who sat in the armchair across from her, the two of them having retreated to the study after dinner so that they could talk in private. "I was thinking about how much you've changed," she replied honestly.
"You've changed, too, you know," Pietro pointed out. "I like the new hairstyle, it suits you better than the old one."
"I haven't worn my hair like that in years," Wanda informed him, and they both winced at the reminder of just how much they had missed out on of each other's lives. Once upon a time they had been inseparable, two halves of one whole, and now...
Now, they were little more than strangers.
"Oh."
They sat in a rather awkward silence for several moments, neither of them sure what to say, and Wanda began to tap her fingers on the arm of her chair absently, pondering this man in front of her.
He wasn't the same boy who had smirked just before taking off at top speed that day at the construction site, leaving them to face the trap that Magneto had laid for them, that much was obvious. This man seated across from her reminded her of the quiet boy who'd looked away with tears in his eyes while she was placed into a straight-jacket and taken away.
Who never even tried to help me, she thought bitterly, but she stifled the surge of resentment before it could surface, remembering what Xavier had told her, that Pietro, too, had been just a child that day. A scared little boy who didn't have any idea what was going on, much less what to do about it.
It wasn't like he'd had the power to stop it, anyway.
Only their father had.
Wanda had terribly mixed feelings about the man who had crowned himself the Master of Magnetism, a man who she knew to have a good, gentle side, even if it rarely showed. After their mother, his beloved Magda, died in childbirth, he hadn't been able to care for them on his own, so he had recruited a young Romany couple, Django and Marya Maximoff to look after them over the first few years of their lives. On their fourth birthday, though, he had come for them, as he'd always promised, and taken them to live with him.
He'd been a strict parent, but they'd never wanted for anything with him, and instead of bedtime stories, he would regale them with stories about their mother and her beauty, caressing the photo of her on the dresser with a sort of sorrowful regret, his heavy sadness even evident to a child.
We loved you, she accused silently. How could you send us away?
While she had been locked up due to the destructive nature of her powers, Pietro had been sent to New York not long after, for reasons she still didn't entirely understand. Had their father just been too busy to be bothered with his own son? Or had Pietro been a reminder of the daughter he'd abandoned?
Whatever the reason, Pietro had never seemed to hold it against their father, which made Wanda wonder if maybe he hadn't been as alone in New York as she'd always presumed.
"What made you leave Father?" she asked suddenly, needing to know the answer.
"Rogue kicked my ass," Pietro answered wryly, and she started to snort before she realized that he was serious. "It was the day we brought them to the island, she took one look at me and just beat the crap out of me."
Despite herself, Wanda smiled, and it wasn't a very nice smile. "Good for her," she murmured, and she meant it. If she had been in Rogue's shoes, she would have done the same thing. Come to think of it, she practically had done the same thing, the night she arrived at the Brotherhood, upon seeing her traitorous twin for the first time in years.
"Thanks," Pietro said sarcastically.
"Well, you did deserve it, you know," Wanda pointed out.
Pietro winced, a flicker of guilt darkening his sapphire eyes. "Yeah," he muttered in agreement. "I guess I did."
After an uncomfortable beat of silence, Wanda shifted in her chair, clearing her throat. "So, uh, Rogue was the reason that you quite the Acolytes?"
"Not entirely, no," Pietro replied, shaking his head, seemingly grateful for the change in subject. "She just knocked some sense into my head, opened my eyes to what I was really getting myself into. Then when she and Gambit went missing... I just decided I wanted to be a better person, you know? So I left."
"And he just let you leave?" Wanda asked skeptically.
Pietro shrugged. "He wasn't exactly happy about it, but he didn't try to stop me. I think he'd been expecting me to leave eventually, so it didn't come as much of a surprise. Besides," he added, giving her a self-depreciating smirk. "I'm always disappointing him, right? What's one more time?"
"You? A disappointment?" Wanda echoed incredulously. "You've always been his favorite!"
"Yeah, right," Pietro snorted. "Nothing I did was ever good enough for him. He wanted me to be the perfect soldier in his little army, the perfect heir to his mutant empire... and I'm anything but perfect, as you're well aware of."
Not having a response to that, Wanda merely pressed her lips together thoughtfully, never having really stopped to think about just what it must have been like for her brother to be in their father's shadow for so long. She'd been harboring resentment all these years that he'd been allowed to stay while she wasn't good enough, but now she wondered if maybe she wasn't the lucky one, never having to deal with all of those expectations...
Then again, Pietro had never spent years trapped in a mental institution, so she still felt he'd gotten the better end of the deal.
"Did he, um, did he ever..." she trailed off, biting her lip, unable to say the words.
"Talk about you?" Pietro finished knowingly, offering her an apologetic look. "Not really, but then again, he didn't really talk to me all that much about non-Acolyte matters. I caught him looking at some old photographs a few times, though. He'd sit there and stare at them for hours, so who knows what was going through the old man's head."
"Mmm," Wanda murmured.
"Look, Wanda, he's not a normal father, you know that," Pietro said insistently, clearly trying to do his best to make her feel better, an act which touched her more than she was willing to admit. "Hell, he's not a normal anything. That's part of the reason why I left in the first place, because I didn't want to end up like him."
Wanda blinked, surprised by that statement, considering that Pietro had practically worshipped their father since before he could walk.
"But he's not all bad," Pietro said, and Wanda was surprised by the sincerity she heard behind those words. "I mean, he gave Rogue that bracelet, didn't he? He had us rescue her and the others from Area 51, and he never pressured them to join his crusade. He's not incapable of goodness or mercy- if you don't believe me, you can ask Rogue about that, she knows him inside and out- it's just that he's... well, he's kind of senile, I guess."
"Senile?" Wanda scoffed indignantly. "Our father?"
"Okay, so not in the general use of the word," Pietro retorted with a wry smirk. "Although he's certainly old enough for it to apply." His expression turned somber and pensive, a grim frown touching his lips. "I just meant that he thinks this is the Holocaust all over again, he's not fighting the good fight, he's waging war."
Sighing, Wanda shook her head in frustration. "Xavier keeps trying to make him realize the err of his ways, but he just won't listen. I don't know if anyone can get through to him."
"It's the helmet," Pietro informed her dryly. "It gets bad reception."
A ghost of a smile crept over Wanda's lips.
"I've tried talking to him," Pietro told her evenly, running a hand through his silver hair. "Before I left and after, when the Avengers have been called in to deal with his messes. He's not listening to me, either. I think his head is just too thick for anything I say to get in. He's always been stubborn, you know that."
"Like father, like son," Wanda muttered.
"Look who's talking," Pietro quipped smugly. "I'm not the one who once caused a power outage over a ten block radius just because Daddy wouldn't give me another cookie."
"I was eight," Wanda said with a scowl. "I couldn't control my powers. At least I never got so hyper that Father sent me to China to pick up authentic Chinese food just to get me out of his hair for ten minutes!"
"Oh, yeah, well- hey, he sent me to get me out of his hair?!" Pietro cried indignantly. "What do I look like? A delivery boy? He didn't even tip me!"
They stared at each other for a heartbeat or two, and then burst out laughing in unision, all too aware of just how ridiculous they sounded. This, Wanda decided, was what she had truly missed most about her twin brother, the simple things like shared laughter, and in that moment she realized that she really had forgiven him for the past.
"You should have come to visit sooner," she told him with a smile.
"I wasn't sure I'd be welcome."
"Well, now you know," Wanda responded, deciding it best not to admit that even as little as a year ago, she might not have recieved his sudden reappearance into her life as well as she had now. Instead, she grinned, feeling a little sibling torment was long overdue. "It's a bit ironic that you and Rogue both come back into our lives in the same week, don't you think? If we'd known that was all it took to drag you back, we'd have tracked her down sooner."
"Ha ha," Pietro retorted, rolling his eyes. "I didn't just come back because of Rogue, I came back for you, too, you know. Besides, I knew everyone else I cared about was alive and safe. Forgive me for being a bit impatient to see someone I spent the past four years believing to be dead."
"You're forgiven," Wanda said lightly, pausing to study her brother's profile. "You really care about her, huh?"
"Always have," Pietro answered with a shrug. "We've got a lot of history, Rogue and I. Not all of it good, mind you, but history nonetheless."
"Do you love her?"
"I'll always love Rogue," Pietro replied bluntly. "She was the first girl I ever really cared about, you know? But I'm not in love with her, not anymore." He hesitated a moment, then smiled faintly. "I've got someone waiting for me back in Los Angeles."
"Mutant?" Wanda arched an eyebrow.
"Sort of," Pietro responded vaguely. "I'll let her explain it herself when you two meet. That is, if you'd want to..."
"Sure," Wanda agreed steadily, intrigued. "When?"
"Uh, how about two weeks from now?" Pietro suggested hopefully. "I could come get you in the Avengers jet, you could spend the weekend out on the West Coast?"
"That sounds nice."
"Yeah."
"I'm not sharing a room with you, though," Wanda informed him after a pause. "You snore."
"I do not."
"Yes, you do," she corrected him irritably. "You've always snored. It sounds like an airplane taxiing off in the room when you're asleep!"
Pietro opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by snickers from behind them. "She's right, Speedy," Rogue drawled, leaning in the doorway with Lance at her side. "From what Ah remember, ya made quite the racket."
"We used to contemplate smothering you with pillows when you woke us up at three in the morning," Lance added with a smirk. "Once or twice, Tabby even threw some of her bombs into your room, just to scare you awake so the rest of us could get some sleep."
"I rest my case," Wanda informed her brother wryly.
"The Prof sent us down to tell ya that Cap called, Pietro," Rogue announced ruefully. "Looks like they need ya back at headquarters in a jiffy."
"Jiffy?" Lance echoed, earning him an elbow to the stomach from the Southern Belle.
A stab of disappointment shot through Wanda's chest, she'd been hoping that her brother could have stayed for a while longer, maybe even for the night, but it didn't look like that was going to be possible.
"Duty calls," Pietro said, rising to his feet with a heavy sigh, and somehow she instinctively knew that he wasn't happy about leaving so soon, either. "I tell you, you guys don't know how lucky you are not to be part of a government funded team."
"Then why'd you join the Avengers instead of the X-men in the first place?" Lance asked.
"Dental plan," Rogue quipped, sharing a ridiculously broad grin with Pietro, who obviously got the inside joke even if the rest of them didn't.
"Better uniforms, too," Pietro added with a wink.
"You're both nuts," Lance declared, rolling his eyes, but there was a fond smile tugging at the corners of his mouth just the same. He extended a hand to Pietro, who shook it firmly, and smiled. "I'll let you know when we set the date for the wedding."
"I'll be there," Pietro promised, then moved on to Rogue, who immediately threw her arms around him in a fierce embrace. "Better get in my hugs while I can still get my arms around you," he said sarcastically. "Mini Cajun in there is going to be getting pretty big soon."
"God, don' remind me," Rogue groaned. "Ah'm gonna be so fat that Ah'll make Freddie look like a twig."
"Doubtful," Pietro assured her, trying not to laugh at her obvious distress. "And if you do get huge, well, you can always blame Gambit, right?"
"Right," Rogue laughed, pulling back to fix him with a bright smile. "Don' be a stranger, Speedy. Come back an' see us sometime, if ya don', Ah'll hafta hurt ya. An' don' fo'get, Ah know where ya live now."
"I'll be back," Pietro vowed, kissing her on the cheek. "My two favorite girls are here, after all. I wouldn't want to disappoint them."
Rogue and Wanda rolled their eyes in unison.
And then Pietro turned to Wanda, their identical blue eyes locking together, a thousand unspoken words passing between them. "I'll see you in two weeks, then?" he asked.
"Yes," Wanda replied, and after a moment's hesitation, she reached out and pulled her twin brother into a tight embrace, feeling his shoulders sag in relief as he wrapped his arms around her. "I love you," she murmured against his ear.
"Love you, too," he whispered back.
They clung to each other for a long moment, neither willing to let go of the other, until Wanda finally stepped away, knowing that someone had to do it, and smiled weakly, her eyes stinging a bit. "Have a safe trip back to Los Angeles."
Pietro flashed her a lopsided smirk. "I'll try not to trip over anything."
"Okay," Wanda said, chuckling softly. "Um, I guess you'd better get going."
"Yeah," Pietro agreed reluctantly. "I'll see you soon."
With that, he quickly kissed her on the cheek, then darted out of the room in a blur of silver, a light breeze sweeping through the room in his wake.
"He always did like to make an exit," Lance muttered, shaking his head in amusement.
"Such a drama queen," Rogue added with a grin.
Turning to the other woman, Wanda offered her a sincere smile of gratitude. "Thank you for convincing him to stay for dinner," she said warmly.
"Yo' welcome, sugah," Rogue replied. "It was the least Ah could do. Lord knows that Ah can relate t' missin' a brother fo' four years."
Somehow Wanda had a feeling that Rogue could relate to a lot more than just that. After all, this was Mystique's daughter, and she had spent a good deal of time in the company of Magneto, so she was probably the only other person in the world, besides Pietro, who could understand.
"Was dat de speed demon tearin' outta here?" a Cajun voice drawled, and they all looked up to see Remy sticking his head into the room. "Or did Stormy send a tornado through de livin' room?"
"It was Pietro," Lance grunted.
"He's headin' back t' California, den?" Remy inquired.
"Yeah," Rogue sighed. "Off t' save the world or somethin', no doubt."
"Thought dat was our job, hahn?"
"I think there's plenty of conflicts to go around," Lance retorted wryly. "Unfortunately, a mutant superhero's work is never done."
"Ain't that the truth?" Rogue mused with a scowl. "As if it ain't enough wit' idiots like Trask an' Stryker runnin' around an' those FOH nuts causin' trouble, we gotta clean up the messes ot'er mutants make, too."
Wanda blinked, taken aback by the woman's sudden, and drastic, change in temperament. The boys were clearly uneasy, too, because they shared a timid glance before Remy cautiously took a step towards his wife. "Uh, chere?"
"What?" she snapped.
"Y' be feelin' okay?" Remy inquired. "Y' seem pretty upset dere."
"Well, gee, Remy, Ah wonder why," Rogue drawled bitingly. "Half the mutants in the world are crazy, psychopaths who want t' make trouble fo' de rest o' us. An' ya know why that is? They're all men! Stupid, arrogant men who think their powers make 'em big shots!"
Lance and Remy both looked mildly insulted, but wisely kept their mouths shut as Rogue stormed out of the study in a huff, her stride quick and her muscles tense, and Wanda pitied anyone who crossed her path during the next few minutes.
"Okay," Lance said. "What the hell was that?"
"Mood swings," Wanda replied knowingly.
"T'ink we need t' alert de Professor t' put the mansion under lockdown until it passes?" Remy asked, and she couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
"With Rogue's temper?" Lance murmured. "That might not be a bad idea."