Chapter 25 – Wanda

January 11, 2014 – 3:30 p.m.

"I don't see why she needs to get her hair done," Pietro grumbled around a mouthful of nutella crepe.

"Don't talk with your mouth full."

Wanda inhaled the steam from her coffee, thinking of a pair of deadened green eyes. And the mind behind them, like a man trapped in a frozen lake, screaming under the ice.

"She knew him long ago," Wanda said. "The Soldier. She wants to save him."

Pietro shrugged. Wanda snagged his plastic fork and took a bite.

"Hey!" He yelled, holding the takeout box above his head, out of her reach. "If you wanted one you should have ordered one!"

A jogger looked around in alarm at the shouting, and Pietro scooted to the far side of the park bench. Wanda sipped her latte.

"You're sure she doesn't remember you?" He asked, after a few jealously-guarded bites.

"If she did, I'd know."

"We could still turn her in to Pierce," Pietro said. "You know, if you're having second thoughts."

"Do you want to be that person?" Wanda asked. "The kind of person who would do that?"

She was looking at the statue at the center of the park - a man on a horse, green with verdigris – but she could feel Pietro's mind beside her, red and spiky with shame. She looked down into her lap.

"I'm tired of digging my hands into the mud," she murmured. "I want to be clean."

Pietro handed Wanda the fork and set the takeout box on the bench between them. She took another bite - mostly whipped cream.

"What about Paris?" Pietro asked.

"What about it?"

Grandfather had taken them to Paris, right after he found them in Novo Grad. They'd been...thirteen? Fourteen? Hungry and hollow-eyed. Grandfather's memories of the war had passed over his mind like shadows everywhere they went. Her own memories of war had been very fresh.

"We could go there," Pietro said. "We don't have to work for Pierce or the Mandarin – or your Captain. We could start another life."

Grandfather had taken them to the Eiffel Tower, had laid her hand on the sun-warmed metal and let her look into his mind, see it through his eyes. The whole tower had thrummed like a harp string under his wrinkled hands. That night, they'd gone to Shabbat service at the Victory Synagogue. Wanda's parents had never been devout, but that night she had felt the prayers around her, lapping against her like warm, golden waves. It was the first time she'd thought faith could give her anything. It was the first time she'd thought her powers could be beautiful.

"In hiding?" Wanda asked. She took another bite, holding her hand under her fork to keep the crepe from slipping off. "We're like squatters in our own lives. Don't you want a home?"

"That's what the Mandarin was going to give us."

"And you believed her?" Wanda laughed bitterly, handing Pietro the fork. "She and Pierce are two of a kind. I'm sick of working for people whose minds I can't bear to touch."

The Mandarin was worse than Pierce, in one way at least, because Wanda couldn't read her mind. Whenever they were together, it gaped at the edge of her awareness like an open grave. She felt like she would fall into it.

"Will Grandfather be safe with her?" Pietro asked. "What if she...sways him?"

Grandfather's mind was like the tower – old, but strongly rooted. Humming with restrained power. Warm in response to warmth, and cold in response to coldness. Even the Mandarin, for all her abilities, would struggle to find purchase there.

"His mind is strong."

Pietro nodded.

"Will he understand?"

Wanda remembered that first Shabbat in Paris. After service, there had been a dinner. The young greeted her grandfather with nods, but the older people...they embraced him, kissed his hands. Thanked him, with tears in their eyes. They loved him. And seeing him through their minds, Wanda loved him too.

"Of course he will," she answered. "He's family."

Man, I love these kids. They just keep taking over everything because I love them so much.

Hope you're all hanging in there!