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Pietro Maximoff has been busy.
Since his restoration to human — well, mutant — once more, his time has either been spent moping, or… doing things. He has been trying to focus on the latter.
In the little apartment given to the Maximoffs by SHIELD, the elder of the twins zips around from room to room; one moment he is tidying up… the next he is rearranging furniture. A moment or three after that, he is speeding out into the neighbour — exchanging furniture, as well as collecting other knick-knacks, shopping, twinkies (which are usually eaten before he makes it back home again), and other things.
Finally, the 23yo settles down on the sofa, a packet of crisps in one hand and a beer in the other, smirking smugly to himself. He is about to turn on the television…
*
Ms. Maximoff does not stay in an apartment so devoid of soul. It's a thing with her. She would rather squash herself into communal bunks in a Buddhist guesthouse, and forsake the meat she does not eat, rather than have a private room in a dormer in town because the latter lacks something. Personality, tradition, a given atmosphere. There aren't easy words to explain what makes a well-lived site better in her eyes than a sterile one, except she clearly hates American hospitals with a special passion reserved for demons otherwise.
The flat gets a callous look, and after the scrape saw of a key in the lock, she steps inside carrying a paper bag in one arm. Said bag has a logo partly concealed: Sainsbury's. Hollows limn her amber eyes, and that she smells of the seaside might give mild consternation. The girl needs one of those Jammie Dodgers poking out the top of the bag like nothing. Jammie damn deliciousness dares, nigh beckons Quicksilver. He better have some energy, for she has none, sliding through the foyer and ghosting over to a squat sofa chosen because it probably graced a forgotten room somewhere.
"Pietro," she murmurs. Transian, assuredly, has a faraway quality in her ephemeral voice.
*
The posters on the walls flutter, and the shopping bags are devoid of one Jammie Dodger. Pietro comes to a halt at the kitchen bench — leaning on it like he built it himself, one leg bent, its foot resting on its toe — and smirks at his sister.
"You are looking tired, Sister," he responds in Transian. "What was it this time? Battling demons in the sewers of New York? Or is your boyfriend wearing you out?" He holds out his hand.
"Jammie Dodger?"
*
ROLL: Wanda +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 40
*
Jammie Dodgers are something of a new invention. Precious shortbread biscuits have not manifested on this side of the Pond. When they do, they shall be coveted greatly and not nearly as fun or tasty as the custard and sweet hearted concoction. The open packet earns something of a sharpening of her gaze. Pietro burns ridiculously hot, and so does his depleted twin for that matter, for whom the dietary options are considerably more restricted than 'chemical sausage wrapped in foam' and 'salted and oiled cardboard wafers' in a crisp bag.
She lightly pinches another of the cookies from the package and brings it to her lips, staring at the television unattended by a blur of motion. He coalesces into being again, this other self, and his smirk holds no weight with someone as incandescent and ethereal as she is. Pull the right string, she might simply disappear.
"You are well enough to hear this, Pietro?" Darkness spilled over her shoulders, down her back, holds an equally windblown quality. "There might be no choice. You will need to know sooner or later."
It's that tone, the one shorn of its trappings to become the foundation stone of her being, that probably betrays how serious she is.
*
Pietro frowns.
"You've got that look again," says he, in English. "Is not a good look." Then his shoulders slump. "If you say we have to leave New York — after redecorating — I'll… okay, shutting up."
He dashes across the room again, snags another Jammie Dodger and sits back down on the sofa. The silver-haired speedster downs some of his beer and… waits. "Okay, is driving me crazy. What's going on?"
*
Wanda does not indulge him immediately. It is not cruelty upon her part, nor is Pietro likely to mistake her motives as anything other than practical.
She has a mouthful of cookie, and the remaining chunk coated in a smear of custard soon ends up between her teeth for a final bite. She shields her mouth with her hand, crumbs clinging to her palm.
If the television is turned on, the immediate image resolved upon the screen is a motorcade snaking along a Texan street, flat as a board, while waving crowds mass to either side.
While Pietro is poised for the worst, she licks her lips clean and puts down the Sainsbury's bag on the rickety table that belongs in someone's summer house in upstate New York. It truly doesn't deserve the title of 'table' much. "I was already in England. We stay for now unless you have a reason?" Her eyes darken a fraction, pupils sliding wider apart in their full dilation. How does one go about this?
"Your nephew is here," she murmurs while unpeeling the package of cookies further. How little do they know how groundshaking her words really are. Yet.
*
Pietro blinks.
Then bursts out laughing.
With mirth in his eyes, the slightly older twin points a finger (the hand holding his beer) at his sister and tries to get himself under control. "You know…" says he between chuckles. "You almost had me going there — for a tenth of a second. Is a good joke, Sis! I thought you were gonna say something like, 'Weirdy-Beardy-Magiciany Man is gonna be your brother-in-law — and we'd have to move in with him."
He goes back to chuckling and drinking his beer… but occasionally steals glances at Wanda, trying to work out if she's serious or not. She can't be. Can she…?
*
The apartment supplied by SHIELD for the Maximoff twins since their extraction from Berlin lacks much in the way of character. One occupant recently spent a stint undead, enmeshed in Hell's Kitchen's finest residents, as opposed to residences. His summer mirror clearly prefers the expansive Sanctum Sanctorum, assuring very few personal touches to speak of except abundant junk food, clothes in the respective bedrooms that fit their typical canon — black leggings and black shirts, more colourful jeans and tees — and all those things that a safehouse has, but none of the personality making a place a home. It shows. Some of the furniture is downright frightening, the bowls and plates and cutlery far too uniform.
*
Twelve minutes, one for every constellation of the Zodiac, minus poor forgotten Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, separates Pietro from Wanda. The speedster might be lording it over her right now while she extricates another biscuit from the pack. Let him laugh.
She nibbles the scalloped fringe one bite at a time, absorbing the calories practically directly as they burn out in her hyperactive metabolism. No wonder she sheds weight under intense activity or mystic stress, she tears through her minor reserves altogether too fast. Another cookie disappears while Pietro's sides heave, his chin wobbles, and his throat clenches around the amused noises that start to falter around sips of beer.
Silence goes for exactly one hundred twenty seconds, an homage to that distance separating the moments of their birth and the march of their mother to Death's harsh gate.
Her eyebrows tick higher while he glances up to her, and the sorceress' dark purr blends smoke and red wine at a near whisper, "You suspect you would be the father?" Beat.
"We aren't Habsburgs."
*
"Ooom. Ooooom." Billy sits cross-legged in his bedroom, surrounded by five candles, his hands on his knees, palms up. He's been meditating a lot lately, that self-help book he got saying its a really great way to clear the mind and such. And every so often when he does something weird happens: he literally slips out of his body. "Free the mind." Mmmmm… "Free the mind." Ooom. "Free the mind." It hasn't registered with him that its when he chants that he escapes his body, but… He slips into the astral realm and floats for a long time among the eddies of thought and will. It's hard for him to tell how much time he's like that, as the flow of wandering thoughts both his own and others meander through the realm of aether and thought.
But there is a beacon, a bright crystalline light that he is drawn to. She wasn't visible to him before, but just here and now, she suddenly is: and he recognizes her. Taking his bearings, he pulls on the silver cord that binds floating mind to resting body, and returns to wakefulness.
Billy promptly vanishes: reality ripples as he edits himself from one place to another. He doesn't really recognize the door that he stands outside of, but he knows she's in there. So. He knocks.
*
Pietro's jaw falls open.
"Me?? the father?" he exclaims, spraying beer all over his jeans. "Wanda, that's crazy — even for you." The young man stands up, brushing down his jeans, then disappears into the bedroom for a fresh change of clothes…
And another beer from the fridge.
"Is not making any sense, Wanda," he goes on to say. "If I have a nephew, then you have a kid, and… I missed… the birth, the pregnancy… when did you get knocked — ?"
And that's when he hears the knock at the door. Without waiting for his sister, Pietro dashes across to the door and opens it, all in the blink of an eye. He looks the newcomer up and down, then turns his head back toward Wanda, points a finger at Billy and says:
"Who the hell is this?"
*
The number of people aware of this apartment is probably in the range of five, including present company and Peggy Carter. A knock upon the door stands as such an unusual incident that the sorceress pivots off the balls of her feet, raising her hands in front of her to tether flows of energy into a barrier. It falls whisper thin around her, sealing to every limb and dusting the ground in a hailstorm of invisible sparks.
To anyone else, she just executed a pirouette in slow motion.
Her arms fall gracefully to her sides, leather jacket slightly glossier for the effort, betraying the slightest violet sheen where the light is prone to strike it. The accusing finger aimed squarely at their visitor brings the faintest line to her gathered brows, and then a dawning moment of revelation that lasts a few seconds.
Paranoia sticks its head back under a wing and slumbers uneasily. She nods to Billy in greeting, and says to Pietro, "«Your nephew.»"
In English, she says, "Come in, Billy. My brother, Pietro. Your uncle." A nod to the white-haired fraternal twin brings into sharp relief how similar they appear, even if one is the moon and the other sun. Most Mediterranean folklore transposed the role; the female is moon, the male sun. Not so further east or north. Gold and silver, red and blue, summer and winter, their oppositions are painted wherever one looks.
*
Billy can't help but stare at Pietro for a long moment, eyes a little bit wide as he shakes his head slowly, "Whoa, you kinda look like Tommy." he breathes, his expression going a little bit pained for a moment. Still, he doesn't mind the less then friendly greeting from Pietro, but instead gives Wanda what can only be described as a shy grin. Shy or not, the dimples show.
"Um, Hi." He greets Pietro with a sorta bewildered expression. Uncle? This is all so weird. To Wanda he says, "I was meditating and suddenly it was like you needed me or something so I came over…"
*
Pietro is… silent.
"Ah — ."
"Wha — ?"
"Who — ??"
Obviously, not for lack of trying. He points from Billy to Wanda — to Wanda's belly — and then back to Billy, until finally putting a hand to his head and and blinking his eyes several times. Still, he doesnt' speak. Instead, the elder Maximoff vanishes in a streak of blue and grey, only to reappear with a large bottle of whiskey in a brown paper bag, and a packet of cigarettes.
He lights one cigarette using only his fingers, speed and friction, turns on the television… and sits down.
"You got some 'splainin' to do," he tells Wanda with a meaningful glance at Billy, before settling down in front of the television.
*
A black presidential limousine sweeps past the waving crowds. Excited children held up by their parents catch sight of Kennedy. The Connallys give smiles, the First Lady all grace and charm behind them. When the warming screen resolves into btter detail, flicks of snow show the motorcade and its adjacent agents and handlers sweeping through Dealey Plaza at a positively glacial pace by processional standards. A drunk, three-legged donkey wearing an eyepatch could probably make a cleaner go of it.
Bright mirror flees, leaving the younger to oblige the requirements of hospitality. This she does by approaching slightly, her pupils shot through by amaranthine sparks against an endless black sky, betraying her seeking any traces of magic. She herself glows under the Sight, an iridescent wine sheen from the force armour painted over her. Wanda gestures. "He learned about you right now," she explains in her uneasy English, Pietro's infinitely smoother and cleaner than her own. "You felt me? Maybe you can explain—"
Pop. Pop.
Pop.
The sound carries right over the speakers built into the cheap unit, probably a Zenith, with a distinctive signature children of a revolution, spawned by war, fed on the bleak meals of disaster, ought to have no trouble picking out from the commentary of the news network.
*
"Whoa, you're as fast as Tommy, too." Billy stares at Pietro for a long moment, but then his attention is drown to the television.
Billy sighs softly, looking sad, "I told you he was going to be assassinated. I wish I knew it was today." If they ever needed proof of what he said—
He looks to Pietro, and smiles a little bit, the dimples barely showing. "I'm from the future. I do magic like Wanda does. Somehow our magics reacted when she and the Doctor were doing something at this 'hellmouth' and my life got edited out of then and stitched into now." He sounds like he's told this story a few times, "Unfortunately, half my memory got edited into 1963, so don't ask me for any lottery numbers or who won what world series." He pauses, "Especially don't ask me about sports, I do not do sports."
*
This is a lot to process — even for a mind that works as fast as Pietro's. It is not only the revelation that he is now apparently an uncle… of a kid from the future… so his sister got knocked-up by someone (was it the peculiar Beardy Magician? What did they do in the Hellmouth??)…
But it is also the assassination of the U.S. President. Pietro frowns, puts down his whiskey and concentrates on smoking his cigarette instead, watching his sister and nephew…and the TV.
"So… Nephew, huh? Billy? You knew this was going to happen? — the assassination? Huh. Could've stopped it if I'd been there… ugh, my brain hurts…"
The man leans forward, shaking his head. "Feels like your hellmouth blew in my ear… Any more surprises? Is my bride from the future going to knock on the door tomorrow? — please tell me it's a princess or famous actress?"
*
"Pietro. I am not answering you about it when he is here." Wanda's voice holds a single note more serious than his lighthearted candor. The twins have been collectively caught up many, many times in direct trouble. At one revolution to another, the uprisings of recent history keep these two close. The door ends up shut firmly behind Billy and she flits over to the table to pillage the paper bag from a British supermarket. Digging through the various bits leaves her with a glass bottle of black currant juice, set aside. Two identical glasses taken down from a cabinet give what passes for hospitality. "Do you want a drink?"
Whiskey is evidently not on the menu. Water certainly is, and whatever Pietro's stashed in the fridge over his return to drinking less rarefied liquids than fresh human blood or starflower nectar sprinkled by LSD.
On television, the cameras jostle around. Some manner of disturbance sends one of the cars careening onto the grass, and clearly several people in the crowd fall, injured, not long after one another. Elsewhere figures scramble over the presidential motorcade, attending to the vulnerable men and women. It's chaos without question, and the shots capture the crowd more than the anyone else.
"Thank you. I am not angry, Billy." When she goes into her Transian accent harder, it comes out Vili, part of the linguistic shift that cannot be helped. "Time cannot change always. You may have known a date. It would not stop what passes. Ask him," a gesture to Pietro, "about time. He acts with it more. What is a 'world series?'"
Please someone kindly educate this monster-hunting mage on pop culture. Please.
*
"I knew JFK was assassinated. I didn't know when, where, or by who: that's the problem. I know *facts*, but nothing that makes those facts *useful*. You can not possibly comprehend how annoying it is." Billy grunts abit, and slips his hands into his pockets.
"That said… this whole Wanda's son— your nephew?— thing is completely new to me. I… still am not entirely sure, I mean its not that I don't believe it but— I have parents. In the future, I have a whole life. A boyfriend." He really needs to learn that is just not something to come out and say in 1963. "Friends. A team. A mission."
Billy glances over at Wanda and gives a little bit of a nod, "Please." He doesn't specify what, whatever she gets him will be fine. "The world series is a baseball… thing. Like a contest for all the teams in the world? To see which country has the best? USA usually wins? I think?" Yeah that's not at all right but, err, Billy is a sci-fi nerd okay?
*
There are a lot of things — that Wanda and Billy have mentioned or let slip — upon which Pietro could focus. There are a lot of questions he could ask… but there is one thing that stands out above them all. There is one issue worth addressing, one topic worth commenting on:
"Baseball? One hits a ball while the others try to catch and throw the ball?" Pietro asks, eyebrows raised and the beginnings of an impish smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Boring. Too easy. Too boring. And this they give a 'world series?' I played baseball once — took a lunch-break, read the newspaper, looked up some girls' skirts, got myself some new clothes (after trying them all on)… changed the uniforms on all the other players — and swapped out all their gloves for paper bags — and then hit the ball into next week."
He shrugs, smirking fully.
"Boring. Wait, did you say 'boyfriend'?"
He looks surprised more than anything. Then he shrugs.
*
The lid unscrewed from the bottle allows Wanda to pour out equal measures of black currant juice. Helpfully she dilutes it with water in one glass, or else the nectar undoubtedly might go through Billy like a punch to the gut. 1963 lacks for sugar-bomb cereals in quantity, something that might inoculate the digestive system against saccharine overdoses. She happens to burn up power like jet fuel, and even that sweet liquid fails to leave any lasting marks.
So she drinks black currant juice neat. Big deal, she can also handle vodka the same.
The witch presses her fingers to her hairline, massaging her temples. A reminder: this is how men inexplicably bond. They tell one another impossible stories, pantomime a kind of dominance dance, and then settle in or tear one another apart over territory.
Glass to lips, she sips her juice and says nothing, letting them sort out their differences and similarities. When it comes down to it, she's learned a thing or two in recent nights. Though Pietro is a fool if he dares to think her claws are sheathed and she is daydreaming about banishing demons or reading forbidden tomes.
*
"I'm gay." Billy says without a lot of hesitation, he was out for so long in the future— and even though he got beat up for it more then a few times he was still out— that being 'in' in 1963 is still a problem for him. Then he remembers: "Oh that's not a word yet, I think. Homosexual. Its not so big a deal in the future." Pause, "Okay so it is to some people but not to most people. Yeah, I got beat up for it a few times. But then I learned about lightning." He lifts a hand, and electricity dances around his hand for a moment. The dimpled grin on the kids face is not at all friendly: its a little dangerous. But his hand falls and the electricity goes away.
"People don't try to hurt me anymore."
That said, he has to grin at Pietro's story, "Okay its totally weird how much you remind me of Tommy. Anyways, yeah, that's sports. I'm no good at sports, and the kids who play sports are more then likely to be deeply annoying to me." He eyes this black juice a little warily.
*
There is confusion on the Maximoff fellow's face.
He listens, still frowning, glancing occasionally at the television screen and then at his sister. "My English is only so good," says he after a while. "But with the President just being… shot, 'gay' is not a word I'd use to describe myself…" Pietro glances at Wanda and adds softly:
"Is it a 'future thing'?" Still, the point (overall) is not lost on him, and after his more jocular comments, the man's countenance falls a bit, and he looks more seriously at Billy.
"Anyone tries to beat up my nephew… Huh. Sometimes I miss being a vampire — ." he trails off, admiring the lightning in Billy's hand and glances back at his sister.
"Is capable taking of himself, no? Still… Maximoffs stick together — nephews too. I — who's Tommy?"
*
"His twin brother. He is also called Speed." The Scarlet Witch leaves the empty glass in the sink, turned upside down, and she crosses the kitchen to briefly stand near Pietro, her hand brushing over his shoulder. From one's twin, a certain familiarity comes, and they are closer than most.
Family is hers by blood, love by choice. No matter how maddening the dandelion-fluff, cocky bastard is, she still falls in to her brighter shadow at times like this. "You fight fine. Do not wish that on yourself." A frown touches her lips and she could go further into her dismay, but Wanda refrains. Some business shouldn't be shared in company.
"Twin with white hair and fast movement." Her words slip briefly into Transian. "«You know I do not believe in coincidence.» Where he is, I am unsure. But now? I have to find him."
*
"He … I didn't know he was… my brother." Billy's expression says he seems to find THAT more bewildering then any of this, "He was like my best friend. Speed and I made a great team. But I didn't know he was… family. So… he might still be in the future." He frowns at that, "In fact, he probably is. I don't think anyone was pulled back who I didn't know was connected to my life: after all, my boyfriend wasn't." There's a flash of pain on his features but he smothers it ruthlessly.
He eyes Pietro a bit, "Wanda said that, too. Family sticks together. Don't get me wrong, guys, I just find it— weird. I mean, I have my parents… but they're *normal*. I keep all of this hidden from them. They have no idea I go out flying and fighting crime and evil and trying to save the world. I wouldn't go to them for help with anything more involved then college tuition. This is so weird."
*
Pietro holds up his hands.
"Hey, sport — no judgement here. Is no point coming to me for help with college tuition… unless you want someone to steal the momey, or look over the teacher's shoulder and tell you the answers…"
The man grins, stands to his feet and approaches his nephew — although not without glancing again at the television, followed by his sister. Are they really blaming… 'us'? he thinks, knowing she can hear him. Mutants? …Asgardians?? Perhaps we should not have come to America — another president might've died then. Revolution follows us everywhere…
To Billy, he puts a finger to his chin — the other arm resting across his midriff — and says, "So…I have two nephews…? and one is… like me? Is being like… mirror images of us? Does Tommy chase girls? I do! And Wanda chases boys — so that explains you." The man grins.
And holds out his hand.
"Sis is right — we stick together. I see 'weird' every day. I manage. Welcome to the family!" If Billy accepts the handshake, Pietro will instantly pull him into a 'bro-hug'. Either way, he smirks back at Wanda.
I have nephews! Weird nephews! This is, how the Americans say, 'swell!'
*
"Oh yeah, Tommy is totally a girl magnet." Billy isn't shy about shaking his… Uncle's hand… Whoa he has an uncle what the hell. And then he's being pulled into a bro-hug! And he has absolutely no idea how to process this. He does not flail: he is cooler then that, by exactly a thread's width, so, there's this like. Pat thing that happens. Pat pat. Good Uncle, yes, uh, how long is this supposed to go on?
He is absolutely no good at this hugging thing. Apparently, though he has a family and he's on good terms, they aren't especially huggy people. "Hey, don't worry. Dad's a doctor. Tuition is covered, they've been putting money into a college fund since forever." He's blushing a little bit. This is all so weird. And he backs away a bit, running a hand through his hair, grinning dimples.