Wanda, ages 10-15
When Wanda is ten, she tries to reach the book of fairytales on the top shelf. The book is green with gilded pages and has all of her favorites. Vasilisa, Ivan and the Firebird. Her grandmother claims these are the real classics. Her mother insists they are too dark for the twins and stows it on the top shelf when their grandmother is not around. Wanda, filled with all the rage and determination her small body can muster, insists on reaching that top shelf. She stands on her tippie toes, reaching up with both hands, and the book shifts slightly.
Wanda knows about mutants. She’s heard about Conner Berkley down the street who can see in the dark, about Mrs. Berkeley who can disappear at will.
Wanda, being ten, has seen the film Matilda. She grins, focuses hard and the book is wrapped in the faintest wisps of red mist and falls perfectly into her hands.
She turns when she hears glass shattering and sees her mother staring at her, the remnants of a mug of tea on the floor.
Magda moves Wanda out of the second floor bedroom she shares with Lorna a week later, isolating her in the attic in some misbegotten desperate attempt to keep the powers from spreading. It does not work. Wanda crushes a locker telepathically when Jamie Snell and Tanya Carter gang up on her in the hallways during their passing period. Peter grabs her hand amidst the panic, and they find themselves on the school roof in seconds.
The twins are politely asked to leave school the next day and Magda begrudgingly complies. For three weeks they think Peter can teleport, until he runs into a glass door.
Magda does not let Wanda move back into her old room.
When she is thirteen, she is forcibly placed into an institution where they keep her under lock and key. They use straight jackets to pin her hands to her side, give her sedatives to keep her too woozy to get mad, and place her in therapy. They keep her isolated from the other ‘sick’ girls. They say it's for her own protection. Wanda knows it's because her night terrors shake rooms and break the lightbulbs. Magda visits every month with Lorna and Peter.
Eventually, it’s just Peter. Eventually, it’s no one, and the only reason Wanda keeps track of the weeks is because on Wednesdays this random bald guy comes in for ‘therapy’.
Therapy consists of her stubbornly blocking his attempts to read her mind. She worries maybe he’ll take the last memories she has of normalcy. Just another attempt to turn her into the animal this institute claims she is. She’s pretty sure he thinks she doesnt know how to speak English either, which is pretty damn funny.
When Wanda is fifteen, a nurse with red hair comes into her room with a cupcake and a candle.
This cannot be a nurse.
The nurses here know not to come into her room without the doctors, or with other people who can sedate her. The nurses here know she isn’t allowed sugary foods. The nurses know not to put an open flame in her path. Wanda stares at the cupcake, then the nurse clad in bare feet, then into her eyes.
Yellow irises with catlike pupils look back at her.
“Make a wish kiddo.” The not-nurse says with a small wink.
Wanda takes a moment to think before blowing the flame out gently.
“What did you wish for?” The not-nurse asks gently.
“I want to leave. Please.” She croaks out.
The nurse grins and extends a hand. “Perfect. Let’s get out of here.”
They step out of Wanda’s cell as sirens start to blare.
Wanda is fifteen and two hours old when she learns the not-nurse is named Raven and has rescued Wanda in a secret mission created by her brother Peter. Peter has been at this school for mutant kids called Xavier's School for the Gifted for a while now, Raven tells her. She sits on an old motel bed where Wanda sits in front of her staring at the rundown TV in front of her. Raven insists on gently brushing knots from the young girl's hair. Wanda only lets her because she craves human contact. Eventually Wanda lets Raven chop most of it off with shitty scissors, ginger hair filling a motel sink, which is promptly stained with black hair dye. They find new clothes for Wanda at the mall where Raven lets her pick out anything she wants. She sticks to red and blacks, small trinkets and baubles inexplicably finding themselves in her pockets. If Raven notices, she doesn’t chastise her. A week later, Raven drives her to Xavier's, takes her into the foyer of the ridiculously large mansion and reunites her with her brother.
Here, holding him in her arms, she notices he’s taller than her now. She takes a shaky breath and buries her face into his chest as he rambles on and on about everything she’s missed. He’s sorry he couldn’t visit, Magda was getting worse and worse, he’d needed to get him and Lorna out of there, did he mention he found their dad, everything is crazy now, he’s on a superhero team-
She pulls back from him and covers his mouth with her hand and laughs. Peter laughs too and the pair hug again. Then they turn as a very polite cough catches their attention.
Wanda shatters a window the minute she puts eyes on Charles Xavier.
Charles learns that she does know English perfectly fine, and most of what she’s spitting at him is curse words as her brother and Raven hold her back from physically assaulting a man in a wheelchair.
----
“You’re an asshole.”
“It is literally, legally not my fault. I am not in control of who our father is! Or who our father decides to marry while I’m unaware! Or who our father decides to bone!” Peter insists as he lays flat on his back on the main lounge floor. Wanda covers her ears, shaking her head.
“I still feel like it’s your fault.”
“Tough luck girl scout.” He snorts. Wanda flicks a finger and hits him with a pillow. He gasps and grabs at the pillow, frustrated as it constantly evades his grasp. She giggles, yanking it away from him time and time again until she pulls it back behind her and it hits someone in the chest. Peter stares. Wanda, already knowing who it is, tilts her head back and stares back at Erik, who now holds the throw pillow.
“Telekinesis then?” He asks quietly. In the few months she's been here, Wanda has kept her powerset secret. Not even Erik Lehnsher (who is apparently her father and married to her stupid therapist, a fact Pete neglected to inform her of until she had ben at school a week), doesn’t know. Only Peter and Charles know the extent of it, something she would like to keep that way.
“Sure,” The goth responds coolly, turning to look at her brother. They stay quiet for too long, staring intently at one another.
“Ah. Telepathy too?”
“Sure.” She responds again, looking back at Erik- her father. Even before that part of her power developed, she and Peter have always known what the other one is thinking. It’s a twin thing.
“I imagine the mansion must get loud for you then.” He says, setting the pillow back onto the couch.
“It’s a lot louder than the hospital, that's for sure.” She snorts. Erik pulls a face at that, the same one he makes every time she jokes about the institution. Contempt, anger, sadness.
He knows very little about what happened there. Only Peter has been given full details, which she only gave him after a particularly nasty nightmare her first week in her own room. In her terror, she’d blown a fuse and shattered all the lightbulbs in the dormitory hallways.
Peter has rolled over onto his stomach and starts flicking through TV channels so fast it makes the TV dance with colors. Wanda watches for a minute before looking away, the influx of stimuli too much at the moment. Erik sits on the couch. He sits at the far end, staring at the pillow Wanda hit him with, then at Wanda for a moment.
“Your mother,” He begins and Wanda shakes her head. “Magda.” She insists.
Her and her siblings haven’t called her their mother since her and Pete were 12.
“Magda,” He amends, “Did… a very bad thing, I assume. I do not claim to know the extent of it. But I would like you to know that had I been there, had I known… I would have done everything in my power to prevent it.” He says to Peter and Wanda who are staring at an episode of ‘I Love Lucy’ now, pretending not to listen to him. Erik waits for a full minute before sighing, and turning to watch with them. Five minutes later, he hears a small
I know.
It's only projected into his head. It’s small, but it’s enough for the two of them.