On Everything I Love and Cherish
Before exiting the room, Peter grabbed his manilla C.I.A. folder and left the rest, ignoring the nagging feeling that he should grab Lensherr’s as well. He had no business holding onto it though and left it with the others in the hotel room before dipping out, disappearing from plain sight, and not even leaving a trail of light as he bolted home. It was officially 3:30 in the morning by the time Peter made it to the front porch. He was completely exhausted and ready for a long night’s sleep.
Unlocking the door, he slowed himself down and began walking in at a “normal pace.” The silver-haired speedster dragged himself into his room ready to collapse onto the mattress before realizing someone else was asleep on top of the sheets still completely dressed in jeans. Lance must have dozed off unintentionally seeing as how he was sitting with his back against the headboard and drool falling down the side of their face. He had a comic book that was half on his lap while the other side was slowly sliding off and onto the bed. To be honest the brown-haired teen looked like utter shit: his neck bent in a sure way to leave him feeling awful come morning.
Setting the folder down on his nightstand, the speedster made his way over to the unconscious teenager.
“Pst,” Peter said, lightly nudging the boy in hopes to wake him up. When Lance began to show signs of life, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Peter continued, “you’re going to get a crick in your neck if you stay that way for too long, you know.”
It was quiet for a bit until Lance looked in his direction smiling softly in that hazy state of mind right before you’re about to drift back off to sleep.
“Hey, you’re back,” his voice croaked.
Peter nodded.
“Parents at it again?” Peter asked.
Lance staying the night over at their house wasn’t an uncommon thing. Ever since they were 12, Lance had been coming over to escape. The Maximoff house was Lance’s favorite place, full of chaos and love: two things that were always missing in his own. And while Lance’s parents had always hated their son spending time with Peter and his family, they were never able to keep him away seeing as they were too involved with their own lives and drama to notice when Lance disappeared anyway.
“Yea… it’s different this time,” Lance began to say more lucidly than earlier. “I was waiting for you downstairs, but then I remembered you still had my favorite issue in your room. Guess I must have drifted to sleep. Where’ve you been? Your family’s been worried about you. Wendy said she hadn’t heard from you for days. What happened?”
“Nothing. Just needed to get some air for a while.”
And Lance just nodded, taking it for what it was before moving the four-year-old-torn-up comic off his lap, sliding himself off the bed and stretching as he yawned.
“I’m taking the good pillow,” he told Peter as he plucked one of the two pillows off Peter’s bed and made his way to the door. “Night Maximoff. You better not run out before getting scolded by your mom and Wendy. I’m serious. Whatever you’ve been up to has had them scared out of their minds,” he tells Peter pointing an accusatory finger at him before walking out.
And oh shit – he’d forgotten about the scolding both were likely to give him. Honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised if Lorna gave him one too. She’d been growing quite the mouth on her lately.
It didn’t take Peter long to brush his teeth and fall onto the mattress ready for the night to be over. Laying his head down on the leftover pillow, he waited for sleep to take him away. He’d never felt more mentally exhausted before but sleep never claimed him. His mind was still racing, and he felt ten times more alert than ever. It was like he was waiting for the police to come to break into their home and arrest Peter at any moment in front of the rest of his family.
‘After tomorrow it would be all over,’ the speedster thought to himself. All that was left were the two guards he trusted Hank and Charles would take care of on their own, after all, their lives were just as much at stake now.
He still didn’t know why the government never came after them, which left Peter unnerved, but he just kept reminding himself that it was all pointless now. Nothing would come of what happened anymore. After tomorrow everything would go back to normal.
Well… maybe not normal. He was still adjusting to the fact that Arnold was now dead, that his birth father was a terrorist he helped break out of jail, that he’d been kicked off the track team and lost his college scholarship, that he’s just recently been expelled from school and outed as a mutant to the general public, but aside from that everything would be normal.
It took a while, but eventually, Peter managed to soothe himself enough to fall into a dreamless sleep.
When Peter first began waking up, it was to the sounds of conversation.
“Well damn, he’s still asleep.” He could hear his mother say.
“Yea, he came back around 3:30 this morning,” Lance told her. “When I asked where he was, he said he just needed some air.”
“He seems fine to me,” Wanda’s voice sounds in his ears.
“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, though. He’s never asleep this late,” his mom informs them.
“… Maybe he’s just really tired,” Lance’s voice suggests.
“He looks dead,” Lorna deadpans.
There’s a beat of silence after that before whispered shouting breaks out.
“You’re going to wake him up,” Lance says.
“I’m just checking to see if he’s breathing, relax,” his mother replies.
“Well?” Wanda asks.
“He’s alive.”
“Well, what do we do now?” His twin questions.
“We could wake him?” Lance chimes in.
“You were just yelling at me not to,” his mother reminds him.
“You know, maybe he fell into a coma,” Lorna mentions.
“Don’t say that!” the other three all shout at once.
“Ok, that’s it. I’m waking him up,” he hears Lance announce to everyone before he feels his shoulders being shaken causing Peter’s eyes to flutter open face to face with his friend. Peter forms a dopey smile and tells him hi. He watches as Lance rolls his eyes at him and turns away to address the other three people in his bedroom. “Nope, not a coma.”
“Well in that case I guess I can chew his ass out now,” His mother says before scolding the speedster still tangled in his bedsheets. “Everyone else, out.”
The silver-haired mutant watched as the three quickly shuffled out of the room before closing the door. There was no doubt in Peter’s mind that they were all leaning against it in hopes to listen in, but right now that hardly mattered. Once his mother gets started, even the neighbors would be able to hear her shrieking voice.
“Are you ok? Are you hurt?” she asks in a voice that is deadly calm. Peter can’t find his voice to respond so he just shakes his head. “Do you have any idea how long you were gone for?” she asks, her voice picking up in volume. Strong and stern, she looks at him with one eyebrow raised waiting for an answer, but Peter still can’t get any words out. She doesn’t wait long before answering her own question, accent seeping through her every word now that she was too emotionally rattled to pay attention to it. “Three days. Three days you’ve dropped off the face of the earth, Pietro. For three days we’ve all been going out of our minds wondering where the hell you’ve been. For three days I’ve been having to rely on Wanda telling me that wherever you are, you’re safe and alive. Three days I’ve spent worried about my baby. Three days to piggyback on the months’ worth of hell we’ve been going through as a family.
“You want to act out? Fine. You want to get into some trouble? Fine. We all cope in different ways. But if you want to pull a little disappearing act on your family and not even leave a note as to where to find you or a way to check in so we know you’re safe? Not fine! This isn’t fine.
“I get it. Life sucks right now. You’ve screwed up a lot recently, but you can’t just run from it. And even more, you can’t just run from us! I hope you’ve gotten all the ‘air’ you needed Peter because you are grounded. I don’t know for how long yet, so don’t ask. No basement. No TV. No games. No fun runs. No anything. And if you think of leaving from underneath this roof before I say you can, you better not be coming back because I cannot deal with this! We’ve got enough going on in this house right now to be putting up with whatever the hell you’ve been doing. Do you understand?”
And finally, as Peter fidgeted with his sheets, he was able to find his voice again and let out a meek “yes.”
“Look at me. Stop mumbling. Tell me: do you understand?”
Looking his mother straight in the eye, he cleared his throat and told her,
“I understand.”
“Now do you want to tell me what the hell you’ve been up to these last few days that made it worth leaving the rest of us in the dark?”
Peter shook his head no.
“Fine. Stay quiet,” she told him before turning away pacing and muttering to herself in Romani. “Nu pot face asta. Nu pot suporta asta. nu stiu ce sa fac.” I can't do this. I can't put up with this. I don't know what to do. Eventually, his mom turned around to face him again, this time there were tears in her eyes. “You would think after the last stunt you pulled before all this school crap happened, it would have gotten you to understand just how serious things are. I thought you would have understood after that, but you didn’t. You decided to vanish for three days and leave me panicked out of my mind because what if you got caught? What if those other guys sold you out? What if someone recognized you? What if they came and took you away from me? I know what they were saying about you at school. Maybe they came after you? What if they rounded you and all the other people out there that they thought were mutants and put them in some goddamn camp?
“You see the numbers on my arm? They are never going away much like the nightmares when I try to sleep at night. And when you go missing, I can’t help but think that there’s a good possibility those nightmares are becoming real. That’s what I need you to understand, Pietro. I need you to understand that at a moment’s notice, those nightmares can become real.” The tears were free flowing down her cheeks now. Not only had Peter made her cry the other day, but he made her cry again. “But you don’t seem to understand. I made a promise to my brother – your father – that I would look after you and Wendy and keep you safe, but despite my best efforts, I will never be able to truly do that for you two. There are things out of my power. Things I cannot protect you from that you just seem drawn to Peter. The pentagon – the whole mutant fiasco – I can’t protect you from that. I’ll do my fucking best, but I can’t truly protect you from it all and that kills me. It really does. Pietro Django Maximoff I love you so much, but I cannot save you from this cruel world. One of these days you’re going to understand. I just hope that happens before the nightmares become real.”
And with that Mayra Maximoff wiped her hands over her cheeks to rid the tears before patting under her chin, taking a deep breath, and turning to open the door. Peter only hoped she left satisfied and got everything out she had been needing to say to the reckless teenager. Round two’s were never fun.
With his mom gone from the room, Peter finally collapsed back down into bed berating himself for everything. He doesn’t remember ever being so selfish, but that’s undoubtedly what he was right now: selfish. He knew how bad his mom was when it came to her kids getting in trouble, but for some reason, it was all he could seem to do.
Peter doesn’t really know how long he was zoned out as he let his thoughts consume him, but before he knew it Lance was knocking on his bedroom door.
“Hey,” he tells the silver-haired boy. “Mind if I join in on your self-deprecating thoughts party?” He asked.
And while usually, Peter would probably smile at a comment like that, he simply didn’t have it in him right now. He just gave the boy a slight nod before turning away again. He felt the bed shift as Lance laid down on top of the bedding placing his hands behind his head to stare at the ceiling. There was a long beat of silence before Peter finally spoke.
“I fucked up.”
“Yea, you did,” Lance tells him pausing for a second before adding, “But you won’t do it again.”
Beat.
“Why’d you do it anyway?” Lance finally ventured to ask, looking over at his best friend.
“I was trying to find answers,” he told him, avoiding Lance’s stare.
“To what?”
“You wouldn’t know. I don’t even really know.”
“…Ok. Why seek it out then?”
“I just wanted someone to talk to, I guess. Someone to understand.”
“And nobody here could give you that?” Lance asked with a twinge of hurt in his voice.
If only he knew the full story.
“You guys could try, but I don’t think you’ll understand. And even then, you’ll judge me. The people I went to… it wouldn’t matter if they judged me. I would just leave and never see them again. You guys? I can’t do that with.”
Lance just nodded his head in understanding before asking, “how’d it go? Did you get your answers? Was it worth it?”
“I don’t know, but it’s over now.” Or it should be at least.
After that, they lay in silence once more as the wheels turned in Lance’s head. It was quiet until he voiced a question Peter could tell he didn’t know how to go about yet. Brow furrowed Lance hesitantly said,
“C-can… Can I ask you something?”
And something told Peter in the back of his mind he wouldn’t want to hear it, but instead of telling Lance no, he replied,
“Sure. What’s on your mind?”
When Lance didn’t continue his questioning, Peter turned on his side to face him while he watched as the boy opened and close his mouth, words on the tip of his tongue but not rolling off before Lance finally spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Were the people you went to find answers from mutants?”
Peter would be lying if the question didn’t cause him to jolt backward away from the brown-haired boy beside him. Lance looked at Peter concerned before regret immediately reached his facial features.
“I’m sorry. You don’t have… you don’t have to answer that. I don’t mean to – I shouldn’t have asked. Sorry… but… you know you can talk to me, right? I was by your side in sixth grade Pete and I’m sure as hell not about to leave you now. I may not have the whole picture. I may not understand what’s going on with you, but I have some ideas and I can honestly tell you no matter what the reason ends up being, I’m here.”
It took Peter a while, or what felt like a while for him, but eventually, he looked Lance in the eyes, and with unrelenting determination, he told his best friend,
“I’m a mutant.”
“I…” and while a part of Peter hoped more than anything his next words were going to be ‘I am too,’ that wasn’t what came out, but it didn’t make him deflate any when Lance instead stated, “I know. And I’m still here.” And Peter knew Lance meant it. For what felt like the first time in days – since Arnold really – Peter smiled. It wasn’t a smirk or a half-hearted upturn of the lips, but a bright smile that Lance was quick to reciprocate.
“This doesn’t change anything, you know that, right?” Lance asked him. “I’m still the cooler friend.”
Peter couldn’t help but snort at that.
“Still? When were you ever the cooler friend?”
“Oh wowww. I can’t believe you just said that. You know what? I can’t with you. That’s it. I’m letting Wendy have a go at you now,” he teased Peter before shouting Wendy out into the hallway. It wasn’t long until his twin was making her way up the stairs and at the door. “Good luck. You’re going to need it. She’s pissed. Well, I’ll see you two down in the kitchen, or well… I’ll see Wendy in the kitchen. You’ll probably be a goner by that point.” And just like that, Peter was left in his bedroom alone with Wanda and no way out of the conversation that was bound to be more of a scolding from her while he nodded his head and took whatever she dished out full well knowing he deserves it.
For a while it was silent in the room, Wanda lingering in the doorway not looking Peter in the eye, but instead looking around the room until she slowly made her way to the corner of his bed and sat down. Peter watched her as if she was about to put a sledgehammer through everything he held dear. Her being so eerily quiet and anxious just wasn’t the sister he knew. Out of the two of them, she was the strong one; She was the one with all the answers, but looking at her now, it was like she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She was scared.
After a long wait, Wanda seemed to gather some bit of resolve, for she took a deep breath and began,
“You know when I was isolating myself these last couple of weeks, I never meant for you to actually disappear from my life for days,” she told him before giving a bitter laugh. “That was a dick move, P. I know you know that. I don’t know if you’ve seen the news recently, but things are bad. And even though I knew I’d feel it the second you were hurt or something,” she paused as her voice began to break before inhaling and plowing through.
“I spent these last few days waiting for that feeling to surface at any minute. Sure, you were ok as of that moment, but what happens when the next you aren’t? I don’t know where you are at every moment. I can’t help you if you get into trouble. No, instead I’m constantly having to tell mom that you’re ok and hoping that you come back before there’s even the slightest chance that you won’t be.”
Peter watched the side of her face as tears began to pool in her eyes, but Wanda just wiped them away and turned toward her brother. Grabbing both of his hands, she squeezed desperate to get through to him, but she already had Peter’s full attention.
“I know you’re freaking out right now. I am too. So is mom. We all are going out of our minds right now and the last thing we need is for things to get any worse. Mom was scared to death thinking either the government kidnapped or killed you. And that just can’t happen, ok? It’ll kill her. It’ll kill me. I need you, P. We all need you right now, so you can’t just leave. Promise me, you won’t leave us again, please.” Wanda said, the last word pleading with Peter. Taking a shaky breath in and out, he looked at his sister and promised her on everything he possibly could that he would never leave her or the rest of their family again.
“Besides, I’m pretty sure mom has me grounded indefinitely so there’s no way I will ever be leaving this house again,” he joked.
“That’s not funny,” she told him before smirking.
“I’m sorry. Not for joking, but… I’m sorry I left. I didn’t mean for it to be three days. Honestly. It’s just—”
“—Easy to lose track of time, I know.” She finishes for him offering a small smile and letting go of his hands.
“You know, I was told you were going to kill me. If this is your attempt, it’s kind of pathetic. Mean, I’m very much alive right now.”
“Trust me, there is nothing I’d rather do than wring your neck right now, but I don’t think that’s what you need. We all heard mom. She kind of had that covered. I just wanted to say thanks for coming back unharmed and before any of us had to contact the police just for them to decide you’re either a runaway or dead because they already don’t like you and are biased sons of bitches.”
“You knew I was coming back, right?” Peter ventured to ask, hating the hesitation in Wanda’s response. He watched as her smile froze causing his own to fall as he dreaded her response.
“I hoped. But honestly, I didn’t know for certain. So much has happened,” she told him before whispering a secret confession, “even I’ve debated just running away from it all at one point, so I couldn’t really fault you for that.”
“Wait, you were going to run away?” Peter asks. His eyes frantically searched his sister’s in hopes they’d say ‘No. I’m just exaggerating. I would never leave you guys,’ but that wasn’t what came out of his twin’s mouth next.
“I planned on it. I changed my mind before leaving, but I pondered it for a while. I had a bag packed and everything. I’m sorry.”
“No.” Peter shook his head in denial. “No. No. You’ve never been one to run away. You wouldn’t leave me. You wouldn’t. No. No. You’re just messing with me, right? You just want me to feel what you felt for those three days I was gone, but I told you I’m sorry. I was always going to come back. I never meant to be gone that long. I even just promised you.” Peter could feel himself panicking and his voice breaking. There were tears in his eyes now and his breath grew shorter with every inhale. “No. No. You’re lying. It’s rahat. You wouldn’t run away. I-I don’t… I don’t believe you.”
He felt as Wanda grabbed both of his shoulders and willed his eyes to meet hers. Only when they met did she talk, and Peter noticed tears were streaming down her cheeks again too.
“I’m sorry. I’m not lying. I wouldn’t lie. We don’t lie to each other. You know that. And I’d never try to get back at you like this. But I promise you now on everything I love and cherish, I’ll never leave you P. Never.”
And at that statement, Peter felt himself collapse into her arms, hugging each other like a lifeline and crying like they were back in Sokovia again having just lost their parents and realizing they were all they had left in the world.
It was only after they’d both calmed down and collected themselves that the speedster dared to ask his sister why she’d want to run away. She pulled away from the hug then and searched Peter’s face for something before deciding to share.
“I didn’t want to. But I thought… Part of me even still thinks that you, mom, and Lorna would be safest without me. I’m dangerous, P. What if I hurt you? What if I hurt them? I couldn’t live with myself if that happened… but I can’t control it. Sometimes I think I can. Sometimes I fool myself into thinking I have complete control over this, but then… it’s like I never had it to begin with. And if I can’t control it, people are going to get hurt or worse. They already have. I just… I can’t let it happen again.”
“You’re going to figure it out. You’re not going to hurt us. I know that with absolute certainty. I promise you. We’ll get through it. Together.”
“And if we can’t?”
And oh how it broke Peter’s heart to see his sister so scared. That was his job. She was always so sure of everything, but looking at how broken she was, he realized that at this moment, their positions were swapped. Wanda was the one uncertain and scared, but Peter knew the answers. He knew his sister and the lengths he’d go to for her.
“We will.”
“But if we can’t? If I hurt someone? If I hurt you? What if you get killed?”
“Then I’ll walk it off,” he tells her with a shrug, completely unbothered.
“Peter,” she says. She’s dead serious and Peter can see in her eyes that she’s desperate for a real answer, so he gives it to her. Taking a deep breath, he says,
“Even if you can’t control it, I won’t leave you. I won’t let you give up. And on the off chance I get hurt, I know it’s not you hurting me because you’re not in control. And whether you learn to control it or not, you’re still my sister and you will always be the most important thing in my life and I will always love you just the same.” Peter waited for his words to sink in. For Wanda to listen and understand them. He watched her desperately wanting to argue with him but refraining because she knew he was telling the truth. Only when she had time to cope with that did he remove himself from her arms and grab some maybe clean possibly dirty clothes from one of his piles of laundry and headed to the door. “Now, I’m going to grab a towel and wash off some of this nauseating emotional garbage you’ve just made me go through,” he told her with a teasing smirk before softening his gaze. “You ok?”
Wanda wiped the tears off her face with her sleeve looking back at him from the floor.
“I will be,” she told him in a small voice. “You?”
Peter shrugged.
“I will be.”