1965-01-19 - A Point of Interest
Summary: One Pietro Maximoff informed of new events, checked from Strange's list. Next on the list: Dad. Eeep.
Related: None
Theme Song: None
pietro strange 


Pietro rang the bell. As impetuous as he was having spent all his life around invisible signatures that explode has apaprently given him some level of discretion. He stood and waited. For-ev-er.


As is their wont, the silvery wards swish to the door and to their caster within a second — no doubt a lifetime for the one waiting outside. Ensconced in one of the wing-backed chairs before a low fire in the living room, Strange glances up from a trieste on the dangers of summoning Alterkine and lets out a huff of a laugh.

"Well…gods be damned," he mutters before setting aside the thin tome on the chair-side table and rising to his feet. In his Master-blues, he makes his way to the front door and opens it with a grin easily this side of wry. "Pietro Maximoff, as I live and breathe. Wanda will be happy to see you…after all this time," he adds, remaining in the doorway for another beat. Then, he steps aside, unspoken permission for the pale-haired young man to enter the Sanctum. The wards hover nearby and already, they're on guard. After all, the rule for all who visit is…

No touching.


The elder of the Maximoff twins gave Strage that look like I know you know and yet here we stand. The words that came out in a deadpan were, "Awww you didn't miss me, Stephen?" His head tilted to the side stepping in. "She home?" By the time Strange had opportunity to answer there was a breeze and Pietro was eating a half of a blueberry muffin. Where he got it from was anyone's guess. "Know when she'll be back? How the hell are you?" He took too long to answer so apparently Pietro took it on himself to have a glance about.


"She'll —" An aborted response is for noting the sudden appearance of the muffin. Indeed, where did Pietro get that bit of snackage? Probably one of Wanda's stores. After all, she's the only one who could appreciate the fare of Earth still. The Sorcerer was often left to his nutritional shakes and questionable nibblings from other realities entirely. Finally closing his mouth and flicking dark brows high, Strange finishes his thought.

"She'll be here soon. Myself? Busy but content enough as allowed." By his patrons, of course, the Vishant-ly three. "Missing you, however? Mmm…" Steel-blues narrow, but then there's the slow appearance of a smile once more. "You're welcome as always, Pietro. The wards admittedly missed you. You always give them a run for their money."

The sylph-like spells swim closely around Pietro, their near presence dropping the ambient temperature a noticeable handful of degrees.


Pietro looked around the hall and all the things clinking in the 'no-touchy cases knowing he will likely be trying to find a way. Oh yes. We leave no stone un-mussed. "See, was that so hard to admit?" It really mattered not that he actually admitted nothing. Almost as if teleporting, the muffin now gone, Pietro was nose to glass near about examining something found. "That's new. What is it New York has been up to? If it is never sleeping it is always busy and busy is doing something so let us start there."


"The admission wasn't on par with a tooth extraction," the Sorcerer admits dryly. With half an eye and totality of wards' attention on the speedster, he wanders over at his own speed — absolutely an amble, in stark opposition to Pietro's general proclivities. Standing beside him, he sighs. "New York is as it always is: rife with interest, both benevolent and horrifying. We don't need the Otherworlds to impede upon it. Humanity itself causes enough issues…" A little roll of his eyes expresses subtle frustration with the current state of the world. "Though…"

With a sudden brightening of expression, he glances at Pietro and then turns to meander away across the foyer again, to the center of the beautifully-designed flooring in its myriad hues of mosaic wood. "You may find a new development to be a point of interest." The Witch would recognize the glee gamboling about behind his eyes as he turns to face Pietro again, hands folded behind his back and composed air about himself.


Pietro squint examining the trinket beyond the glass with interest, though just to absolutely screw with the wards tracking him he kept shifting left and right to build up friction in the small space. Ha! Take that tiny particles! In the end raising the temperature in that one spot significantly, but also seeing if he can make invisible things dizzy, or even give someone a headache. Always fun. "Humanity?" Those pale blue eyes drifted over the idle curiosity allotting it likely usage by hi estimate. "Don't you find it odd that humanity is a word used to mean benevolence, but yet, is also being the very trouble of everything?" It wasn't even a political opinion. For all purposes his outlook was simple: there was family and then there were other people. He murmured, "Tell me this irony is not lost on you." Still if there was a way to arrest his momentum Strange hit on it. A half heartbeat later Pietro was in the middle of the adjacent room mid-casual stroll stopping before Stephen. Both pale eyebrows arched up. For real he was legitimately standing still. This was his own invitation to continue talking.


The wards simply continue wafting around the speedster, heedless of change in temperature, though they absolutely do emit the idea of intrigue briefly. Ooh, a new trick from a known factor!

"I appreciate the irony regularly," Strange replies quietly to Pietro, a slight cant backwards of head his betrayal of surprise at the pale-haired young man now standing suddenly before him. Indeed, blink and summon him by that alone, it seems! "However, this new development has little to do with the philosophical attributes of 'humanity'…or maybe it does, but —" And he shakes his head dismissively. "I digress. I'll be blunt. I have proposed to your sister and she has accepted." There, the information presented, and now he waits with semi-bated breath.


Pietro stood perfectly still but for blinking with a look that clearly read: Excuse yourself and try that again?! While he stood there too still and holding a level look at Strange from one end of the sanctum he could be heard saying loudly "WAN-" and also from the second floor on the other side at the same time "-DA?" but here he stood perfectly still in front of the Doctor. Now Pietro knew she chose to come here and a year and a half ago stay, and in there he trusted his sister not to be 'given' her opinion. They were raised better than that. Which left only- when did they move? They were standing four feet back from where they were standing a moment ago, and though Strange was unharmed there were three fingers pressed to his chest by the pale speedster, now standing uncomfortably close. The words were quiet, distinct, and belied his native accident when he stopped making promises he would keep in Romani and switched to English to make absolute certain there was no mistake in intent here.

«"If you harm my sister, or make her cry? I personally promise you I will see you live long enough to suffer ten times over. You will have no rest, just me haunting you in a way no hexes will help you."» There was, what Pietro deemed as a long enough pause before he concluded, "On our mother's grave I will curse you, Stephen. You are understanding?" He was raised with his sister to know exactly what he said, and what it implied above and below, however, perhaps because Strange got the benefit of the doubt, or that he trusted his sister to know her own mind? Well he didn't try to put Strange out the window and into traffic. Even if he wanted to, even he know the Sanctum was not the place to do that. Still, the order stood, and Pietro continued to stand perfectly ever present to let the Doctor really take in the weight on this moment while Pietro waited forever and a year for that answer.


It all seems to happen with the advent of each new blink. There — distant sound — here again — more distant sound — and his inner ear tells Strange that he's been shifted back, even as his brain catches up with the sensation of stabilized stance and the three fingertips pressed against his chest. Count him surprised, evident by lofted brows, though these quickly come together to complete his stormy expression. Mind the minute shift forwards in weight, forcing harder pressure between triple points of contact and his tunic's heavy fabric. The spread of the guardian spells widens, unfolds to encompass both men, and the air again drops those distinctive degrees. If someone feels like a stare rests on the back of their neck, it's not a lie; the wards currently have intense interest in the Maximoff brother.

"If you've any idea of my mantle, Maximoff, you'll know that there is little that would stop me from bringing down the very stars on someone who dared to discomfort her, much less myself. I understand perfectly that you think yourself her only protector and companion." He leans backwards even as he says this, the upwards tilt of his chin proof of that ego that never left, even after all of the years at Kamar-Taj. "I don't intend to take that from you. Consider me another shield between her and the world, for all that she does not need it in the least." A thin smile begs the younger man to disagree.


Pietro easily could go round and round with the Sorcerer Supreme all year ina battle or arrogance and stubbornness. Really, it almost might be that the Mutant, who fancied himself as 'Quicksilver', might have found it a point in his favour. He was not, however, at all familiar with trusting other people or giving any shits about them ever. What he would respect, however, was his twin's choice. The man had one caring feeling left and that was simply to see his sister finally happy, or be allowed to attempt to be, after a life of nothing but war and running. That square jaw set firm, and the three fingers recoiled into a ball with the others, thumb rubbing the side of his knuckle thoughtfully. He corrected, "This has nothing to do with what Wanda needs. This has to do with what she should not have to be bothered with." To that he emphasized with one finger to his potentially future brother-in-law. No not the 'driving' finger, the index finger. "Everything she has cared about has been taken away from her. See this is never happening again, or be with me when it is remediated, but you do not want to be on the other side of me, Stephen. Or her." Especially her. To that point, he seemed agreeable to Stephen's proclamation on where he stood. There was a lot of trust going on right now Pietro was neither comfortable with nor prepared for. Who could blame him, everyone they grew up trusting is dead, or betrayed them, but in all cases gone. "I would very much care to talk with my sister."


The Sorcerer's eyes fall to that insinuating finger and then rise back up to the speedster's face. His irises slowly complete the process of melting away their metallic-grey core in favor of a brilliant amaranthine purple, something supernaturally eerie to anyone unused to the Mystic Arts.

"I'm certainly not stopping you from speaking to her, Pietro, nor am I hiding her from you. She is a free woman to do as she pleases within reason while in my household and, as I have my druthers, in the outside world as well. She is not beholden to me." A swallow even as his own jaw tenses, accenting those high cheekbones momentarily. "Her answer to me was 'yes'; it very easily could have been and still can be 'no'. I am a Shepherd of this Reality and by gods, of free will. I know of your past, what little of it she has shared with me. Upon my head be any loss that was within my volition to contain and control."

The temperature around Pietro rises as Strange recalls the wards, a silent gesture of good faith on his part. The silvery spells wreath about his shoulders instead, an invisible stole of magic slowly undulating.


Pietro watched Strange evenly. He took a sip of-When in the Nine Hells did he go pour himself a cup of tea?! He *tinked* the rim of his against- well at least he got Strange one too. This was apparently perhaps some formalization of agreement. Some sign a contract, others spit into their palm, today it was tea. He may be accused of being a scamp, a thief, and even to some an assassin, but he was refined enough to have manners, perhaps competitively. In the end the issue seemed to be settled. "Este bine." Simply stated, 'It is good.'


A fine gesture indeed — history shows the effectiveness of agreeing over a cuppa, still steaming. If only Pietro knew that this is nearly precisely how his sister and the Sorcerer met, in an accord over the rising heat of Chai. Strange barely avoid sloshing tea over the brim of his own demi-tasse in his small jolt of surprise. Oh gods below, this was something he did not miss in the absence of the speedster. Still, he clears his throat and despite the small wrinkle of his nose, he does return the soft clink of salute to the brother.

"Yes, I should think so." The grumpy note only lingers in that particular sentence. His mien noticeably smooths out after a sip of the tea. "By all means, go and speak with her. You were the first on my list. Next is her father." Another larger mouthful of tea isn't too unlike a fortifying shot of liquor, it seems.


Pietro considered Strange's to-do list and subtly, though certainly, seemed pacified at being told he was the first person Strange came to. Good. At is should be. When Strange knocked a cup of tea back admitting next was the great and mighty Magneto, their father? Strange got a slap to the shoulder and Pietro had a disturbingly amused, wolfish grin. "Excellent. I'll be certain to be there when you speak to father." Oh god, he was going. But of course he was.


The muted grunt follows aforementioned friendly pat on the back and Strange eyes the Maximoff brother with momentary pique.

"I have no doubt that you'll enjoy it." Hey, at least the Sorcerer was aware of what possibilities he was walking into. If he had his druthers, it would be with his Beloved at his side…and mayhaps in the Mirror Dimension, where little existed with which to cause immediate harm to one's person. With an empty cup in-hand, Strange sighs briskly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Pietro, I was in the middle of some important research. If you wouldn't mind returning at another time, I can play the better host." He manages a polite smile even if his insides are still moderately gnarled up with stress. It turns a hair sharper as he adds mildly, "And give my love to your sister, please."


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