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"I just don't understand why he didn't lock YOU away too!" Wanda had bursted out at her brother, who had been trying to get her to understand his side when it came to her being locked away for her dangerous powers. "You're just as dangerous as I am!"
"Because he didn't see it that way!" Pietro bursted back at her, a tinge of hurt in his voice. "He…would tell me I was nothing like you and him. I was weak, and had the potential to be dangerous with his help. He convinced me to be dependent on him….he was controlling me, and I was easy to control, so he just wasn't scared of me. He could berate me and put me down all he wanted, and I wouldn't retaliate."
"I'd say you're lying to get sympathy from me, but you're still not retaliating, and knowing father, that sounds like something he'd do. So I'll believe you, but I'll be nice this once and leave you with this. You're a Maximoff, Pietro. You're just as powerful as father and I, all on your own. Our powers come from within us, not from father. Not from anyone else. You've been able to control yours this entire time, something I still can't do. You never needed him to reach your potential. You only need to stop holding yourself back." Wanda left Pietro in stunned silence in the bathroom.
Pietro kept thinking about what Wanda had told him. Thought about it the next day. For weeks. Kept thinking about it when he switched to his father's side again, always glaring at him when he wasn't looking, or looking somber or deep in thought. And he kept thinking about it when The Brotherhood was suddenly ready to face off against Magneto. They were downtown, Wanda and Magneto in a fierce one on one, the rest of The Brotherhood on the sidelines, the X-Men showing up to stop the battle right in the middle. Obviously, there was nothing they could do.
Pietro was standing behind his father, watching him and his sister go at it in the air, a wide eyed look on his face. They were really going at it, being almost equal in power. It seemed like nothing could stop either of them. If they went too far, neither of them were surviving, and everyone else would get hurt. Something had to be done.
Pietro considered all of his options, closing his eyes to think.
Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder, followed by a clearly concerned voice.
"Pietro? What's going on in your head? You need help? Why don't you get us out of here or something? I don't think there's anything else you can do…"
Evan. It was Evan, trying to comfort him. If this battle went on for much longer…he could get hurt. The Brotherhood could get hurt. Wanda will definitely get hurt…he had to stop this.
Suddenly Pietro's eyes opened, and they were totally blank. They were a light blue color, just a bit lighter than his Quicksilver suit. He started walking forward, shoving Evan's hand off of him and speaking.
"I know what I can do. Stay here."
He could hear Evan trying to speak to him, but his voice was drowned out as he walked up to his father and sister. At this point, everyone was yelling at Pietro, asking him what on Earth he was doing, and to stay back. They were ignored as Pietro stopped, and held both of his hands up, a light blue glow forming around them, similar to the blue of his eyes. He threw his hands down, and suddenly, Wanda and Magneto flew down to the ground. Wanda landed softly, while Magneto was slammed hard into the asphalt of the road, leaving cracks. Everyone looked at Pietro in shock as one hand dropped to his side, the other still hovering above Magneto. He was being pushed down aggressively into the road, Pietro facing both him and his sister.
"Aren't you forgetting someone in this family affair?" He let Magneto up, only to immediately push him into a nearby building. He looked just as surprised as everyone else. Pietro tilted his head as he walked closer to his father. "Surprised father? I can be dangerous too. I've always been able to. You just never let me." He let go of Magneto, who fell to his knees, weakened. Barely missing a beat, Pietro started running circles around his father, strong winds blowing all over the place, a cyclone taking almost no time to form in the middle, starting small and getting real big, lifting Magento up into the air, debris flying around, getting caught up in the cyclone. He let it go on for a little while, before stopping and watching Magneto fall straight to the ground. After he fell, he struggled to get up, but he got up well enough to throw a metal bar in Pietro's direction, to his right. Pietro immediately pushed it away from him, not realizing if anything was in the way. He'd soon realize, however, as a chorus of voices were screaming things such as "Evan!" "Watch out!" "Get out of the way!" and other similar phrases. Pietro's eyes went wide, the color returning as he turned his head to see the metal bar heading straight for Evan. It was going so fast, there was no way he'd protect himself in time. Good thing Pietro was faster. He zoomed over to Evan in a flash, grabbing him and pulling him out of the way to the side, both boys still holding onto each other. While everyone was distracted, Magneto had flown off, escaping. Pietro didn't notice, nor really care, as he was checking Evan out for injuries.
"Are you ok?? I'm so sorry, I was in the moment! Nothing hit you right?? I cut it pretty close. And my cyclone definitely threw debris everywhere, none of it hit you did it??" He kept rambling on and on, Evan having to stop him by holding his face.
"I'm fine. I'm more worried about you. What was that? I've never seen you…."
"Like this." Came the voice of Lance, as The Brotherhood and the X-Men had made their way towards the two, Wanda standing a few steps behind. "You got some explaining to do, Speedy. About all of this."
Pietro sighed, annoyed undertones as he pulled away from Evan, a hand on his hip. "What do you guys want first?"
"You can explain why you went with Magneto in the first place if you were gonna turn on him anyway."
"I didn't plan to do that. I realized just how bad the situation was about to be and had to stop it."
"Wanda could've handled herself." Mystique said, anger in her tone as she walked up face to face with Pietro. "Because of you, Magneto escaped! She would've had him!"
"And she would've killed herself in the process! Both of them would've hurt somebody! But I promise you, next time I see his face near me again, I'll handle him myself." Pietro paused, and looked over at his sister in the back. She had an unreadable expression, her arms crossed. "..And I'll do it with my sister." He'd say with a smile in her direction. Wanda looked a bit surprised at first, before her face melted into a matching smile.
"Why'd you even switch sides again, yo? Are you gettin' sappy on us?" Todd asked, Pietro turning away from Wanda to answer.
"News flash, he's hurt both of us. He made me believe I was weak, and wasn't as dangerous or powerful as him or my sister. He made me believe I needed him to become dangerous and powerful. Wanda helped me believe that I am powerful on my own. That I don't need him. And I do actually care for some people. He was gonna hurt those people if I didn't do anything." By this point, Evan was holding his hand.
"Ok, well, now can you explain what that flinging stuff was?" Lance asked this time, clearly annoyed by this point, but that was typical.
"Well, I haven't been entirely honest with you guys about my powers. Like I said, my father convinced me I wasn't powerful, so I never used my powers to their full extent. I can even do more than what I just did."
"Which is?"
"Well, what I just did was make a cyclone, but that was kinda obvious, and controlling gravity. I can control the wind too, like so." With a wave of his hand, a strong gust of wind blew by. "But what really makes me dangerous is my control over time. Technically my speed comes from me being able to accelerate the speed of anything. Here." He zoomed off and came back with a random weed, then with a wave of the hand, the weed quickly wilted and died, falling apart to the ground. "It doesn't just apply to making things grow old and die. I can do it backwards, or I can generally make all sorts of things go faster. I can even run fast enough to slow down the time around me till I stop, and fast enough to make a sonic boom, but I obviously can't show that. I can show you.." He zoomed up again, towards the sky as if he was flying, and even stopped and stood on the air. Not hovered or float. Stood. "I can stand on air!" He'd shout, zooming back down to the ground. "And what can really make me dangerous, that I don't like to do, is if I run fast enough, I'll time travel."
"You can time travel?!" Practically everyone yelled in unison, making Pietro flinch.
"Yes, yes! But like I said, I don't use it. I don't want to deal with the whole butterfly effect timeline consequences stuff. It's a headache, and the process wears me out. A lot of it does."
"Oh great, our job could've been so much easier ages ago!"
"Look, I'm sorry guys! We can talk more about this later, ok?"
The Brotherhood mostly groaned or huffed in response, with a "fine" or "whatever" or two.
"Anything else you guys need to know?" Pietro asked, annoyed, sounding like himself again.
"Just one thing." Storm, of all people, walked up to Pietro, hand on her hip as he and Evan turned to her. Once their attention was caught, she simply pointed in between the two teens. "I thought you two were over a year ago."
Oh, Pietro was suddenly nervous again.
"We-we were! We just uhm…"
"I forgave Pietro, Auntie O." Evan saved him, a hand on his arm, the other on his back, making him sigh with relief. "He came to me, and was genuine and sincere about making a mistake. Besides, I hurt him just as much. We missed each other, and decided to get back together. Just…be a bit more secret about it this time. I'm sorry for not telling you, with everything going on, we were scared to be open about our relationship even more than before."
Storm didn't respond immediately, and she looked a bit tense, processing and thinking about what she was just told.
"I really do care about your nephew, Ms. Munroe. He's one of the big reasons I did what I did. I was scared my father was going to hurt him, and I couldn't let him do that. I know you're probably still mad at me for how I initially treated Evan, but I'm trying to make up for it."
A pause, then a sigh from Storm before she spoke. "I believe you. I know you just expect me to be angry, and try and forbid you from seeing my nephew, but I won't do that, not to Evan. You take good care of him, and we'll have no problems. But if you even think about doing what you did to him a year ago, I won't be so nice. You understand?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Good. Now the rest of you can either head home, or help clean up here."
"I'll clean it all up." Wanda spoke up, stepping forward. "It won't take long." With the raise of her hands, anything that was damaged was fixed, the two mutant groups now going their separate ways. Pietro was about to leave with The Brotherhood, but Evan stopped him briefly, giving him a goodbye kiss to the cheek, and a "Meet up later? Typical spot?"
"You got it." Pietro responded with a wink, and his own kiss goodbye, then sped off. He could only imagine the comments and lectures he was about to get from the other X-Men. Though whatever it was, Pietro was bound to get something worse from Mystique.
"You are SO lucky I can use your powers to our advantage, or I'd be MUCH more furious." Mystique had taken no time yelling at Pietro when they got home. "Just, give me some time to think of a new course of action. Do whatever it is you all do when I'm not around." She was clearly frustrated and exhausted, and just went up to her room to think. Once she was gone, Pietro was immediately bombarded with questions from Todd and Fred about his powers, especially his time traveling ability. Lance and Wanda managed to get them to slow down, and leave the poor guy alone. Wanda offered to sit alone with Pietro if he wanted, or to make sure everyone else left him alone, but he declined, wanting to sit downstairs with everyone for once. Wanda also decided to join them, but was still sat far away from everyone else. It was silent for a bit as everyone sat together in the living room, until Todd would be the one to speak up.
"I know we were done with the questions, but I gotta say somethin'." Oh boy. "You and Daniels?"
That got a sigh from Pietro. "Yes. And? And pick your words carefully here."
"Hey man I wasn't gonna say anything mean! I was just gonna say that makes three Brotherhood and X-Geeks couples in this house."
Everyone immediately looked confused.
"Three? There's me and Evan, obviously, Lance and his Kitty cat-"
"We're not dating! It's complicated!"
"Whatever, who's the third? I'm assuming you and…."
"Nightcrawler. Kurt. Fuzzball. The blue one. Got together two months ago, but we had been talkin' for a while. And before you ask, he told me he didn't like being angry and holdin' grudges. If I was willin' to be friendly with him, he'd be friendly with me. Things kinda escalated after that. I talked with him before we all left. Figured if you and the spikey boy were able to come out, it was time we did before it got too hard to keep it a secret. He gave me the go ahead. He's probably tellin' the geeks about us now."
"I thought I caught you two talking for a split second." Fred commented.
"Of course you did.."
"Are we done telling secrets?" Lance asked, getting nothing in response. "Good. I can only handle so many in a day."
"Now! I've had my turn at being teased and bombarded!" Pietro started speaking, twisting around so he was facing Todd with a shit eating grin. "Your turn! Tell us ALL about you and the fuzzy kid!"
"What? No! I didn't agree to that!"
"I didn't either! Now spill!"
The boys, and a bit of Wanda, spent the rest of their afternoon teasing Todd and getting whatever they could out of him about his relationship. It eventually evolved into everyone getting teased, and just talking about whatever came to their minds. It went like this for hours and hours, basically until everyone got tired. They even said good night to each other when they started to head for bed. As Pietro and Wanda were heading to their respective bedrooms, Wanda stopped Pietro in the doorway of his.
"Hey." She said. "..Thank you. For stopping my fight. And just for…everything today. I haven't felt like I was in a family since we were babies. It's still gonna take me a while to warm up to everything, but I think tonight was a start."
"Oh. It's uh, no problem. I'm sorry about everything before today. I should've been a better brother. Father just…"
"He had you under his control, basically. I understand. We both still have a lot of healing to do. I guess we can take comfort in the fact that we don't have to do it alone anymore." Both twins smiled softly.
"Yeah…I guess so."
A comfortable silence fell between them for a moment, Wanda looking to her left, then right, then at Pietro, pulling him into a soft yet tight hug. It caught him off guard at first, but he melted into the embrace, returning it, already feeling a tear run down his face.
"Good night, bro." Wanda spoke softly, clearly having been tearing up herself.
"Night, sis." Pietro responded with a chuckle, both twins pulling away, wiping their eyes, and heading to bed. Things were…very out of character for practically everyone today. But sometimes, that isn't really a bad thing. At least now, Pietro had the comfort of knowing things were changing, most likely for the better.