How I wish you could see the potential,
Remy does not know how he got here, but he feels trapped on a thousand questions and silent moments and fleeting touches. Pietro, sleeping by his side, the darkness of the room stopping Remy of viewing the expression on his face, leaving him to wonder whether Pietro frowns while sleeping, locked in a thousand different nightmares, or if he sleeps peacefully, the nightmares only existing while he is wide awake, never letting them escape from his mind, because Pietro wears his shames and mistakes the same way he uses his father’s coldness, his twin sister’s eyes, his half-sister’s trust. Showing off to the world, unafraid of what other people might think.
Pietro is not quite touching Remy but he radiates so much warmth that Remy feels like he will never feel cold again. It would be good — a heat so strong his heart won’t ever give in the coldness that is losing a teammate, that is having another disappointment, another heartbreak. Remy feels safe, ironically, and maybe that is why Pietro Maximoff is still viewed as a hero: he is capable of give other people the impression, the feeling that everything will be ok, that they are safe near him, or in his arms.
Remy is not that stupid to fall for these tricks, however, and wonders how many people were capable of committing this mistake. How many people looked at Pietro Maximoff and thought I could fall in love with him. How many actually did. How many survived the abyss Pietro surely pushed them onto.
(and yet he is here, next to the man, naked and vulnerable, admiring his face, giving into the heat and wondering what it would be like to fall in love with a Maximoff, if the abyss would be to him as horrible as other people’s experiences)
Remy thinks of touching Pietro’s hair, Pietro’s lips, pushing into them, waiting barely a second for the man to wake up and lick them, bite his digits and either bring Remy on top of him or bring himself on top of Remy. He thinks of the heat and the gasps and the way Pietro’s skin vibrates when close to release and fights the urges. All the urges.
He is everything but a fool. He has seen what Erik did to his children and later to Anna Marie. He has seen what Lorna did to Alex (or what they did to each other until all that was left was them clinging to a relationship that hurt them both and did nothing else). He has seen what Wanda did with every man who dared to love her. He has seen what Pietro did with Crystal and her people.
He leaves.
the potential of you and me.
Pietro is unpredictable. He thinks too fast, analyzes every possibility and comes up with the one that makes more sense, even though it is completely wrong. Remy sees in him what he sees now in Scott and what he saw, years before, in Wolverine. How Pietro thinks of measures to stop a man for good and Remy wonders how they have lasted so long together.
Together.
Together means months of midnight encounters and months of a tension that never stops, not even when they started having sex. Together means release and harsh kisses; means Pietro sleeping and Remy leaving. Together means avoid the eyes of every teammate, but mostly Luna — her with the uncanny ability of seeing every lie, every emotion people give (or don’t give, what they hide and what they ignore) to others. Together means ignore the fact that Pietro does not do any of it. That he is ready to face their judgment the same way he was ready to lie for the Inhumans.
(Remy does not notice, or does not want to, but Luna’s eyes are only fixed on him. He is the one doing the running; Pietro never lied to his daughter. Not anymore)
Remy is trying (so hard, so hard) to stop things before they happen. Steal before it is stolen, destroy before it destroys, save before it makes any victim. He was too late to save Joelle, to help her and her daughter, to solve her problems. That he never wants to lose a friend like that again. A lover. A colleague. A teammate. Someone.
The problem is that Pietro fits in all of these options. Remy wants him gone, but it is almost funny how he is exactly like his chosen name. Remy tries unsuccessfully to take every shared breath, every kiss and every bite and clutch it into his hand, but it escapes like sand, like quicksilver, and pours down his arm, poisoning him like Anna Marie’s touch once did (black veins and blank minds and I’m sorry and she is leaving him behind a thousand times).
This will be the last time is always a fleeting thought, a fleeting decision, before warmth and vibrations and white hair take them away, cold green eyes promising a thousand things its owner would never be able to keep.
It's like a book elegantly bound
Pietro’s family is obscenely beautiful. Even in madness, Wanda was astonishing, a creature from another time, with an ethereal beauty that she must have shared with her mother. Now, with her sane eyes and guilty stance, she still seduces with her silence and the flutter of her eyelashes.
Pietro and Lorna are a different matter. They both have sharp edges, from different reasons — Lorna’s appearing more now than ever, for something that happened before this X-Factor, related with the sudden end of X-Factor Investigations that no one talks about it, as if it would bring bad luck. Remy wonders if one day Lorna will tell him what happened, if she’ll open up for him.
Not today.
Today she is in an impossibly tight black dress, her long green hair braided. She is talking to Snow, champagne on her glass ready to be drunk, when Pietro comes to her and asks for a dance. Snow laughs at Lorna’s surprised face, and when she composes herself she smirks at her brother, takes his hand and lets herself be led to the center of the ballroom.
Pietro is in an expensive suit, its cut fitting his form so well that Remy notices that his current costume does not do him justice. His sharp edges are still there and they contrast well with his sister’s. If they were not siblings, they would be perfect for each other. Right now, they are.
Lorna dances showing she does not have much practice; Pietro dances as if the ballroom is his house, every step sure, every dip more graceful than the next. Remy wonders if he imagines someone else instead of Lorna, Wanda or Crystal perhaps, as he leads her into every spin; has his answer when Pietro’s eyes lock with his. Remy does not blush, but looks down to his champagne and downs it as surer as Pietro’s steps.
Remy wonders whether Pietro will release Lorna and go to him, knows that he himself is not ready for such a statement. Waltzing with Pietro in public (or at all) means giving in to whatever they have, giving deeper meaning to every kiss, every pant, every touch. It means he has forgotten and forgiven; it means he is ready for heartbreak. He is not.
He is not.
He is not. Not after Joelle.
The waltz ends and Lorna and Pietro break apart, only for Pietro to be invited by another woman; her black skin a beautiful contrast with her vivid orange dress. Pietro kisses her hand and when the music starts again, he leads the woman to a spin that makes her laugh quietly. Remy ignores the surge of envy, the jealousy that trails his throat like a scream that is being build up when the woman traces Pietro’s shoulder with her fingertips. He imagines himself stopping the pair, turning to Pietro and asking for a moment in the dance floor, leading him the way Pietro led Lorna, the way he leads this woman.
Remy takes another glass of champagne from a nearby trail, turns towards the first woman he sees and asks her for a few seconds of her time to slow dance with a stranger. As he waltzes with her, Remy wonders, ignoring the form of Pietro on his peripheral vision, when did he become Anna Marie, so afraid to let someone in. So afraid to touch.
but in a language that you can't read.
The world is ending.
They haven’t told the children yet, haven’t told that maybe this time no superhero would be able to stop this destruction since they are the ones causing it. The team helps as they can, but they don’t go far from Serval Industries for sheer preservation and the knowledge that they cannot do much but pick up the pieces after both teams destroy each other. Remy sees the signs, sees the look on Alex’s face (sees the look on Lorna’s face as she looks at Alex) and knows that everyone has lost their minds.
The children know, still. They always know. And they are quiet, so quiet, waiting for the future to never happen, or come with the tomorrow.
All Remy thinks is that Pietro is out there. He can’t help but feel that Luna will be the last thing remaining of him when this all blows over — for good or for worst. Pietro is fast and Pietro is good, but the numbers are all wrong and he—
He doesn’t stand a chance against all these X-Men. Against all these Avengers. Against his sister.
Remy turns to his team, to his people all gathered around the apartment’s living room with their grim faces and tied bones, but all he can see is Pietro in every shadow; in every corner.
Lorna is like those nights in the dark, in the middle of the night. Looking at the window, thinking. She said little when Alex appeared on TV with a promise to save all mutants and kill the rest; she has since gone completely silent when they finally figured it out it was Magneto who took Pietro away from them. Took him, but not her. Left her to save the civilians and hide while Pietro got to save the world. Lorna feels rejected by two members of her family, to the point Luna decided to sit near Remy, her horrible emotions taking a toll on Pietro’s little girl, even though they are family.
They are family, Remy remembers, and wonders where his father is. If he is okay. If he is alive.
After the words said on TV about the end of humanity, everything went silent. There are no reporters left, no communication but the scream of bombs and the occasional glimpse the technologies in New York give Danger. Superhero killing superhero and they are all in one place, licking their wounds.
“It’s going to end today.” Snow says, still holding his wife. Remy remembers their night, the torture, Pietro. Everything is about Pietro, nowadays. Remy wonders when he’ll get tired of it. Hopes it’ll be never, now that he is far away and the possibility of hearing only one thing about him (death; died a hero; died a traitor; sacrifice; murder; many words for one end). “Either way, the world ends or doesn’t.”
“They’re going to stop it, won’t they?” Georgia asks suddenly, from where she is sitting with Doug. “The superheroes. The good ones.” She means Pietro. Pietro and someone else.
“They’re the ones causing this.” Luna answers her, shortly. Her voice is tight and cold. “My aunt is in the middle. I…” She silences herself and Remy remembers her mother, who never left Medusa’s side, never forgets her father, taken away to fight in a war he has no chance to win.
“If they don’t stop, we’ll have to do it ourselves.” Danger says, her mechanical eyes closed, concentrating on something far away.
“Found somethin’, chère?” He asks, because Anna Marie is there, together with every friend, every enemy, every lover. Pietro. Remy’s mind dwells on the fact that, one moment or the other Anna Marie and Pietro would come to blows. And she has defeated all the Avengers once.
Remy feels as if he is losing his mind. That this is all a damn joke, but his cats are around him, silence and as scared as every person in this room and he knows he is one of the sanest people left in the world, now.
“Both teams are ready to kill each other.” Danger says, matter-of-fact. “There is another one, that is too planning to finish this.” She gives them that Danger-smile of hers, almost fondly. “Quicksilver’s team. The Scarlet Witch is with him.”
Everyone breathes after this, a breath they all have been holding up not just for, that represents every living creature of this world. Wanda Maximoff is not powerful to win, but she has Pietro and her father. She has others. Remy glances at Lorna, who has recoiled into a ball of anger and dejection. She is now the only member of her family, outside Luna, who is not fighting this. Still, Lorna listens Danger’s narration of events, like they all do. It’s not as much as she could, not compared with before — every blow destroys more of her eyes, a Cassandra who will soon turn blind —, but soon there is no more tales and the world is still standing.
Almost every hero and villain are changed back to their old selves, making the living room lighter, the possibility of they getting into that fight now a nightmare that never came true. They would have done little; possibly nothing.
“Three remain changed.” Danger says. “One good, two evil.”
Danger says the name of a man who thinks himself superior; of a man who before was little more than an animal; and Alex’s, whose name she hesitates. At his name, Lorna clenches her fists and Luna flinches, Olive whining when she pushes him closer to her body. And then everything that is made of metal is flung across the room and breaks all the windows, the winds almost suffocating them all with the smell of burned gasoline and burned plastic.
They move to the bedrooms, all gathering at Lorna’s. After a moment, Snow says: “Well, this ended rather well.”
Remy wants to laugh, but the wind has caught his voice and left when it did not bring news of Pietro.
Hours pass and Pietro does not come back. Danger does not know what has happened and Remy breaks minute after minute, his heartbeat faltering every time the clock moves. If this is hell, Remy wants no part of it. It hurts too much, it takes his sanity away. Luna is the same, but she has actual reasons to do so. All Remy did to Pietro was kiss him goodbye every time their lips met and hope one of them was indeed the last.
Yet, she still takes his hand and they both wait for a man who has no patience to wait for others.
It is almost a blessing when Danger opens her eyes and informs that Quicksilver is coming, at his normal speed, joined by someone else. Running to them after he had helped to save the world. To them. Meaning they still have something to offer him; meaning that, after all, that glory meant nothing if not together with his team. Remy was never someone who watched from the sidelines, but this time he is glad to be the one which someone comes back to. It has happened only a few times, but he knows he can be home, if he lets himself. Yet, a part of Remy feels as if Pietro will never belong with them. Not anymore; not after he fought against Avengers and X-men together with a group that sounded as if they were ready to take both teams. And did it.
(that, that is what the Avengers first saw on the twins. That is why they were always Avengers, transcending their own race, transcending their own trouble)
The rest is a blur, a race to the elevators caused primarily by Luna, who is smiling in ways she has not been since all this madness started. When the doors open, she is the fastest, the daughter of the speedster, who runs in time to see Pietro stopping; who runs in time to see Pietro putting Crystal on the ground next to him.
Remy is not the fastest there, and maybe that is why he sees only one scene.
All Remy sees is her beauty. Crystal Amaquelin, princess of the Inhumans. The flushed cheeks, as she puts a lock of strawberry hair behind her ears and thanks Pietro. All the years that have gone by between them and the love that still radiates from them both. Like Anna Marie and he. Unfinished stories with an end nonetheless. Remy wonders if this is how other people — other people who have loved Anna Marie, who have loved Remy — see them both when they are next to each other. Prays it is not.
Pietro hugs his daughter, as tight as he can, before she moves on to hold and be held by Crystal. Pietro watches them both for a moment, smiling slightly, before his eyes fall on Remy’s for good. And every regret Remy had until this moment builds up. He wants to say that he is sorry, that he is worried, that he is glad Pietro is alive. He wants to kiss him welcome, hold him until the world is rebuilt, take him until it ends again.
However, there is something unreadable on Pietro’s eyes, something Remy can’t read because that would be falling into an abyss (or admit he is already in front of said abyss, ready to jump forward, plunge towards the darkness and feel like Icarus felt when he was falling).
Remy stops himself and sees what others have seen before. Sees what Pietro has to have noticed.
“Is Anna Marie all right?” He says instead, for pure desire of self-protection. To save himself from whatever feeling Pietro is ready to give him. He is not ready.
Pietro closes his eyes, his smile faltering, but still holding up. He is sad now and Remy wants to take it back, but the fear, oh the fear. He is not ready. After Joelle, he became so afraid of falling for someone so old, so foreign. Anna Marie had hurt; Joelle had almost killed him. Pietro—
(—is ready—)
—Opens his eyes, sharp and distant, something Remy has not seen in a while, and tells him what he knows.
He is not ready.
Just yet.
Lorna does not say, but Luna’s drawing is unfinished by the coffee table and Pietro’s room is empty. Every teammate looks at Remy, but he shows no emotion. Remy smiles and Remy jokes and Remy welcomes Sunfire into the new team, asks if he likes the view of his new room.
Remy takes a beer, goes to his room. Closes the door and wonders if dreams that come true should taste this bitter; hurt this much.
(I will possess your heart)
“I didn’ fall for your tricks.” It is autumn in New York and Remy is freezing. Central Park is beautiful as ever and in the midst of all that brown, Remy can see Pietro’s new old house from a distance. Mocking him. Reminding him that Pietro would always, always come back to the only place he was always accepted with open arms.
Pietro smiles, calmly, and touches Remy’s cheeks. “There were no tricks.” He whispers, kisses Remy for a moment, like a child kisses another for the first time. “But you fell anyway.”
He leaves.
There are days when outside your window
Under the lights of the apartment, Pietro’s hair is almost gold. There is an opened beer in front of him, that he has not touched yet, and he is eating pizza with a fork. Remy wonders if one of the Barton brothers is making fun of this fact. Hopes it is the one in the wheelchair, knows it is Hawkeye and hates that Pietro does not glare, only ignores it. They are so used with each other, their bickering so warm it almost is foreplay.
Remy remembers the girl he saved, the one that walked out with Clint Barton (the Avengers, the hero, the non-mutant) and wonders if he made the same mistake again. Knows that he did. Clutched so hard at the quicksilver, kept clutching until it slipped away from him, away from his veins, his body metabolizing the poison, to the floor and waited until it was collected by an expert in handling it.
And he let it happen, like he did with Anna Marie (surprise, surprise, she is an Avenger now, a foreshadowing from whatever he would have — didn’t let it happen —with Pietro).
Under the lights of the apartment, Pietro’s hair is almost gold. There is an opened beer in front of him, that he has not touched yet, and he is eating pizza with a fork. Remy keeps hoping he will look at the window and see him on the other side of the street, on the other building, watching him, asking for something he still does not know what it is.
However, Pietro never does. It is not surprisingly, with his powers. Once he takes off, whatever he left behind has been replaced by a different scene, a different environment, a different person, watching him go, mesmerized. Wondering where he will go next.
I see my reflection as I slowly pass,
The Maximoffs are a cautionary tale.
They are dangerous and have a penchant for madness. First there was Erik, then there was Wanda, followed by Pietro and now Lorna. Lorna, who doesn’t seem to stop drinking after two glasses; who Remy catches sometimes looking at the windows of their apartment, watching the horizon at three in the morning, a silent woman breaking in pieces that she refuses to mend back. A part of him knows that Pietro only stayed this long because he was worried about her and Remy has heard the gossip about their last fallout (before this one). Suicide by cop, a fight, a night in prison and a release that traces back to Snow. If she were Anna Marie or a member of his family, Remy would have done the same.
It is five in the morning when Lucifer wakes him up, for no reason other than a fight with Figaro. Remy finds himself unable to go back to sleep, remembering all the times he could have embraced Pietro and yet chose to leave, and decides replaying all his mistakes drinking a glass of water or milk is better than replaying it alone in his bed, waiting for the morning to come.
Lorna is by the window when Remy enters the living room. The sun has yet to arise, but her silhouette can be seen in the mirror, illuminated by a thousand lights of Serval’s Industries. Remy sees a ghost and hopes Joelle is happier, wherever she is now.
“Would’ya like somethin’ ta drink?” Remy asks for no reason, knows he won’t get an answer, and after a few moments he just gives up and fixes himself a glass of water.
Remy sits by the counter and wishes for sleep to come back to him. He is not the Scarlet Witch, however (he is thinking a lot on her, lately). Sleep mocks him from wherever it ran away to, and leaves Remy with a broken Lorna, who watches the lights of the industry she is helping to build and who thinks things she would have not thought a year ago.
“You were already with Pietro when you kissed me.” She says suddenly and Remy almost drops his glass of water, not expecting Lorna to speak. Lorna at five in the morning in quiet; Lorna during the rest of the day is brash.
“Pardon?” Remy says.
“You and Pietro were together.” Lorna whispers. “When you kissed me.”
“Oui.” Remy answers, because there is nothing to say. He has kissed Lorna, trapped her with his arms and his lips, the same way Pietro seemed to have done. By then, Pietro had already his clutches on Remy’s everything.
“But now you’re here. With me. And he is gone.” It sounds as if Lorna is talking to herself, speaking her thoughts and conclusions out aloud, not waiting for an answer. But she is. These days, whenever she talks, she waits someone to answer. Remy wonders if she does this because of Alex — if he ignored her so much that now she only talks when there is someone in the room, who she knows will answer.
This family. They are so pitiful. It should be a sin for them to have so much power and be so ungrounded. And it is. A sin, on the eyes of every mutant and perhaps every Avenger too.
(They are sins and cautionary tales and so many other things it makes Remy wonder if one of these many options is something good. He doubts that. Hopes he is wrong.)
“I like dis team.” He answers finally, not sure what to say.
There is silence. Remy waits for Lorna to speak again, but her eyes are unfocused and her arms are a shield in front of her. She looks so small in this dark room; like Pietro was always so quiet when he slept on his; like Wanda must look frail on her own, at the Avengers Mansion.
(Erik Lehnsherr does not sleep)
Remy gets up from the place he is sitting at the kitchen counter and decides to walk back to his room. When he is about to enter the hallway, however, Lorna starts talking again. “You’re just too afraid to get be burned—”
“Lorna—”
“—But you’re already burned, Remy. Always were. From the beginning of this team. From before, even. Rogue.” Anna Marie’s name comes out from Lorna’s mouth together with a snort. Lorna turns her body and looks at him. Half of her face is darkness; the other half is industrial lights and tired eyes and anger that she not always lets it show. Not anymore. “He was the runner in this team, but you were the one who did the running away.”
There are no excuses. Not anymore. There never were any. “I didn’ know how ta stop.”
She smiles and sits on the couch. Looks back to the window. “Yes you do. He is probably waiting for you. You know that.”
Yes, Remy does. Just like he knows they are a joke on the eyes of other teams. Just like he knows Wanda is so much like Pietro, but stronger. Just like he knows Lorna needs the type of help no one in this team can give. Just like he knows that all he did to push Pietro away was useless.
A part of Remy cannot wait to have his name added on the list of people who should have remembered the cautionary tale. Another part already knows he is the tale’s new installment.
and I long for this mirrored perspective
It takes a knock and a familiar smile, Anna Marie’s white locks being thrown away from her eyes by her gloved fingers. She does not say anything, she never had to when it came to Remy, only steps aside and lets him in. There are eyes on him, eyes everywhere, as if they all knew he was coming here; as if they all knew about what happened between Pietro and he between closed doors of a mutant’s team create by a corporation.
Remy has never been into this house, but he remembers the maze that was all the X-Men’s lairs and decides it cannot be as hard. He is proved right: three flights of stairs and soon he is in the bedroom floor, the hallway decorated by a thousand lights, a thousand pictures on the walls, a thousand closed doors.
One is wide open.
Under the lights of the bedroom, Pietro’s hair is the shiniest silver. He is sitting at the edge of the bed, a book open between his hands.
“It surely took you time.” Pietro says, not even looking at him. Remy does not mind and closes the book, not having noticed before that he has approached the other so fast. Pietro didn’t even blink. The bustard probably watched it in slow motion.
“I’m h’re now.” Remy says, all smiles and fast heartbeats, and slowly pushes Pietro down the bed. The door is still open, open for the world to see and Remy hopes it stays that way while this lasts. He is not hiding (or trying to). Not anymore.
“I never said I minded.” Pietro says, amused, long fingers on Remy’s brown locks, long legs parting, a glint of something wicked in his eyes. Something wicked and something pure, and Remy would like to think it is adoration, but that particular emotion is on his eyes, not on Pietro’s. “I knew you were coming.”
No matter, Remy thinks. He has time to investigate.
when we'll be lovers, lovers at last.
Remy looks at Pietro and wonders how someone could find him beautiful. He uses his flaws and his shame as armor, not afraid of what others think and say — and every thought, every word, every accusation only builds a shield that is stronger than any weapon in this world. Pietro does not try to make others love him. Pietro does not let others love him and yet he craves for something his father will not give, something that his twin sister does not want to share with him anymore, something that his half-sister does not know how to share when she has little to give to herself (love, love, love).
(I will possess your heart)
Remy thinks about it again. Looks at Pietro one more time, his eyes used with the darkness, the peaceful but tired expression on his face while he sleeps. Wonders how someone could not see beauty in all this courage, in all this fear and imperfection.