Chapter 2- Then and Now
A/N: So Wanda’s excited about seeing Pietro, but how does Pietro feel? This chapter is pre-Wanda’s arrival. It basically establishes the Brotherhood and where they are as of now, two years later. Sorry that this chapter has no action, but upcoming ones will have tons of it, I promise. Anyway, Wanda will be making three choices that will majorly impact the Brotherhood and Pietro. Her calling Pietro was the first one, but there’s two really big ones coming up, so watch for those (not this chapter).
Quick reminders. Pietro’s a senior, Todd’s a junior, and Lance and Fred both graduated and are in college. Rogue would be a senior, but she graduated early and left Bayville last year. Some Lance/Rogue will be implied, but it’s not part of the storyline. If there’s any questions or requests, e-mail me or put it in the review, and I’ll write you back. A lot of things will be hinted at that will later reveal itself. Anyway, on with the story! Sorry for rambling so long, but it was necessary. Go ahead and RER (read, enjoy, review)!
Pietro Maximoff stood nervously at the closed doorway. How was he supposed to say this? This was going to be awkward. Hey Lance. Um, you know how I always said I was an only child? Well, I actually have a twin sister who’s going to be moving in with us. Hope that’s okay. By the way, she’s also the daughter of our former leader, who abandoned us on Asteroid M two years before. Remember him? He’s my dad.
The phone call had been a complete shock. He’d been in the kitchen making himself a snack when the phone rang. He’d answered it. He always did. And it was Wanda.
Pietro felt a spasm of guilt and pain whenever he thought back on his sister’s voice on the phone. She’d sounded so eager and nervous to talk to him. And so happy. Totally opposite to his. On the contrary, the call had been rather upsetting.
He hadn’t wanted to see her again. It had been painful enough to leave her. Not that he’d had much choice. Magneto never gave other people choices. Pietro had cursed Evan Daniels that night. It had been all that bastard’s fault.
He never would’ve gone to jail if it weren’t for the blonde-haired boy. He never would have been put at his father’s mercy if he hadn’t gotten stuck in jail. And it was all Evan’s fault. What had once been petty competitiveness had exploded into full-blown hatred. Pietro truly hated the boy. Even now, after he’d started to forget. Forget about his sister.
The Brotherhood was his family now. Lance, Todd, and Fred. The four boys had shared the same house for two years, and they’d formed a kinship with one another that Pietro had never experienced. Not even with Wanda. He’d missed her so much in the beginning. The pale delicate face carved in an angel’s perfection. Thin lips that curved upwards in an innocent smile. Eyes identical to his own. The clear icy blue pools that were so open and yet so elusive. But for every smile, every laugh, he’d remembered tears and pain.
With Wanda, he couldn’t be a kid. Since age seven, he’d had to be the dependable one. His young shoulders were burdened with both of them. Their foster parents didn’t care. They didn’t know the emotional horrors that haunted the seven-year-old twins, Pietro had always felt he’d had to take care of his sister. His delicate, frail, sister. He’d always been protective of her. Sheltered her from the wrath of their father.
Wanda had never known this. She thought he’d gone away. That he’d never come back. When he’d come to take away Pietro, it was the first time she’d seen him. And the last. However, Pietro had seen him frequently throughout the years. None of the meetings had been pleasant. So he’d never told Wanda. Not having a father had always been a sensitive subject for her.
In Bayville, Pietro had finally had a chance to relax. To let down his guard. Lance was the responsible one now. Even while Mystique and Magneto were both around, he’d shown signs of leadership. And Lance had proved to be a good one. He’d held their family together despite lack of money, emotional problems, and the hectic chaos that seemed to constantly follow the four boys. Pietro had deeply respected his best friend for it. He couldn’t have done it.
Pietro poised his knuckles over the worn, wooden door. How would he explain all this to Lance? Lance didn’t even know he had a sister. He didn’t even know the truth about Magneto. Lance didn’t like it when things were hidden from him. Especially considering the two boys had lived together for two years and were best friends. Pietro gulped, then braced his fingers for the knock.
The door suddenly opened. Both Pietro and Lance jumped back in shock. "Jeez, Pietro," Lance groaned after he recovered. His dark hair was rumpled and there were bags underneath his eyes. He’d been sleeping. He blearily looked into the white-haired boy’s face with a scowl. "Why the hell are you standing in front of my door?"
"Um," Pietro’s eyes darted nervously between Lance and the doorframe. "Um, I-, I-, um, I need to, um, talk-, talk to, um, you."
When he got nervous, he talked fast, and Lance didn’t catch a word Pietro had said. "What?"
"I just, um, there’s something I-, I need to, um-,"
"Just spit it out, Pietro!" Lance snapped, his temper getting the better of him. Right now, he was too tired to play the sympathetic mommy role and help Pietro say whatever he was trying to say.
Pietro snapped his mouth shut. Lance regarded him with a sideways glance. There was something about that look…it painfully reminded him of another pair of eyes, deep green shadowed with black, that had the same look as Pietro’s. It was right before breaking some sort of terrible news. Was Pietro-
"I have a sister!" Pietro blurted out. "And she’s coming here to live with us."
"Oh." Lance wasn’t sure how to respond. In fact, the words didn’t even register into the dark-haired boy because what Pietro had just said was impossible. From the look on Pietro’s face, he’d expected something terrible. But this was just…strange. "Oh," he said again. "You have a sister?" He hadn’t known this.
"Oh, well, that’s cool. She can live with us." That was rather anti-climatic.
"You’re not mad?" Pietro looked rather anxious. Lance was a bit alarmed at the strain on the younger boy’s face.
"Noooo…, should I?" Lance said these words slowly. Sure, this was quite a shock, but why would he get mad? Besides, Pietro had never talked about his past family life, so Lance had never pushed him.
Instead of answering however, Pietro just stared at an uplifted part of the gray carpet. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. Lance watched him with a trace of impatience. He didn’t see what Pietro was getting so worked up about, but he wished he would just say it. Actually waiting for the speed demon was strange and unnerving.
Pietro looked up at Lance, his eyes solemn. "Do you remember Magneto?" He asked.
"Yeah?" It was kind of hard to forget that guy, though they hadn’t heard of him since Asteroid M.
The white-haired boy let out a slow breath. How to say this? How to say this? "Magneto had kids, they’re twins. They would be eighteen now." Lance just nodded, waiting for his friend to continue. "Well," Pietro said slowly. "One of those twins is Wanda." He looked Lance in the eye. "The other one, he’s me."
Lance just stared disbelievingly into Pietro’s face. What? Pietro was Magneto’s son? And Wanda was his sister? Oookay. Was this even possible? He had no idea how to react. Should he yell at Pietro for not telling him sooner? Comfort him on his lost family? Deal with it like it was normal? What? For the first time in his twenty years, Lance was at a complete loss. He opened his mouth to respond to this odd revelation, but all that came out was a very unmelodramatic, "oh."
* * *
Morning sunlight seeped through the broken blinds of the bedroom window, casting stripes of light across Todd Tolansky’s sleeping face. Blinking against the harsh brightness, he lazily rolled over. The clock next to his bed read 9:34. But it was an hour ahead, meaning it was actually 8:34. Too early for a weekend. He started to fall back asleep when he remembered. The new girl was coming today.
Lance had called a "family meeting" last night and explained that Pietro had a sister named Wanda and that she would be coming to live with them. The news had hit Todd full force. He had been initially shocked. Learning that Pietro, Magneto, and now this Wanda were all connected by blood was a startling revelation. All in all, it had left him speechless.
After the shock, he’d felt a bit hurt by the speed demon’s secrecy. After all, weren’t the four of them brothers? Pietro should’ve trusted them enough to tell them. Well, the secret was out now anyway. With a sigh, Todd rolled out of bed, dragging down half the blankets with him. Leaving them in a muddled heap on the messy floor, he headed downstairs.
He went to the kitchen and found all three older boys sitting around the kitchen table. Todd stopped in the doorway in surprise. "Uh, s’up ya’ll?" Pietro was up, which was normal. But Lance and Fred always slept in on Saturdays. Maybe that was why the latter two looked so grouchy as they swallowed down their black coffee.
"This coffee tastes like shit. It expired a fucking two months ago," was Lance’s response. He glared at the tabletop mutinously. "Since when the hell does coffee expire?" He looked up at Todd with a pissed-off expression, as though implying that it was the younger boy’s fault. Lance always was so cheery in the morning.
"I need doughnuts to go with this." Fred said. He looked at the steaming mug in his hand and shook his head ruefully. "Need more doughnuts," he repeated thoughtfully. He took a ginger sip of the black brew and shuddered. Todd remembered that the larger boy hated black coffee.
"Why doncha add some sugar to that, yo?" He asked as he plopped into the remaining chair.
Pietro answered for Fred. "We’re out of sugar. We’re also out of cereal, bread, milk, orange juice, pasta, fruits, and vegetables. Actually, our entire fridge and pantry is empty. This is what we could salvage." He gestured to an unopened can of string beans and a half-opened bag of stale pretzels that lay on the table.
Todd wrinkled his nose at the unappetizing food before him. Flies would definitely taste good at this point. "Who bought the string beans? Where’s all the food at, yo?"
"Ask Lance," Pietro groaned, before burrowing his face in his arms. Todd looked over at the dark-haired boy questioningly.
"That new transmission we bought for the car last week was a lot more than we could afford. It kind of sank into our non-existent savings." Lance explained, looking rather harried. Todd noticed that the earth mover had deep circles under his eyes and an unhealthy paleness invaded his normally tan skin.
He felt a wave of sympathy for his older friend. Lance didn’t deserve to work so hard, with two jobs and college, when he was only twenty years old. Besides that, he supported the entire Brotherhood. Sure, all four boys had jobs, but Lance worked the hardest and longest of them all. And that episode with Rogue had definitely affected him. After she’d left Bayville several months before, he hadn’t been the same guy since. There must have been something bigger between the two of them than Todd had realized. Lance wasn’t a moper.
Todd uncomfortably pushed all those thoughts away. The financial status of the Brotherhood was always shaky. Lance had a full scholarship to the local Bayville college, so that didn’t cost anything. Todd felt another wave of guilt at the thought. Despite the delinquent reputation the older boy had, he had definitely been meant for bigger things than the community college. However, Lance didn’t want to leave the others behind by going elsewhere and had opted for staying home. Todd was secretly grateful because he knew Lance was the one who kept their family together. However, he felt bad that Lance was missing out on his own life in the process. He longed for those simple days when all four boys were in high school. Things had been so much easier then. With Lance and Fred both out of high school and Pietro in his senior year, Todd had been forced to think more about his future. What would he do when he got out? He had no idea.
Todd snuck a look over at Fred, who was moodily sipping his coffee. Fred took several night classes at the same college that Lance attended at the older boy’s insistence. For some reason, Lance was determined that everyone get a post-high school education. Fred had flat-out refused to attend college full-time. Todd personally thought it was just as well. The blonde boy had barely gotten through high school, only surviving thanks to Lance’s late-night tutoring. In any case, the Brotherhood never could have afforded an entire year’s tuition for college, since Fred would not have qualified for any scholarships. So Fred took the night classes, as well as working part-time for a construction firm.
Fred would be all right. He wasn’t book-smart like Lance or Pietro, but he did have the muscles. Strong people were always need by smart and rich people. But who would ever need slimy little Todd Tolansky? He definitely wasn’t strong. He wasn’t as weak as he looked, but people tended to judge what they saw, which wasn’t impressive. Academically, he had a high seventies/low eighties average. If his SATs turned out like the PSATs he took last year, the colleges definitely would not be interested in him. He didn’t have Lance’s charisma or leadership qualities, Pietro’s confidence or charm, or Fred’s strength. So what did he have? What distinguished him from the swamp of white trash he’d risen from? Was he special? This was what Todd didn’t know, and for that reason, he feared the future.