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Dysfunction is a Family Thing; [pietro/wanda/ask]
Topic Started: Mar 2 2009, 01:14 AM (955 Views)
Wanda
Reality Warping
Wanda stirred the spoon in her dark, rich chocolate, watching the cream slightly lighten the brown, as the boy, what was his name… Billy, talked about feeling the Universe unravel. She continued to listen to his complaints about not feeling normal and at the same time, held up her hand in the air, her fingers slightly twitching as if feeling something that wasn’t there.

“The world is not falling apart,” she announced and then shrugged, “not any more than it normally is. It is always dying… always changing. You just do not want to be standing where it is happening.” She shook her head sadly, “It would not be pretty.”

“No,” she shook her head resolutely, coming to conclusions about him, “you are a drowning fish.” The witch got to her feet to let him think about what she’d said; perhaps he would puzzle out the meaning… or not.

“You wish to stop drowning, yes?” She turned her back on the bewildered boy and started hunting her shelves, moving the stacks of this and that around and rummaging in the dark corners. She picked up a small, dark box and rattled the contents next to her ear. Still preoccupied in her search, she talked to him without turning around and in the unconcerned tone of someone wondering if the sun might to peak out from the clouds, she said, “Perhaps, it would help to tell you, Billy Kaplan, that everything you think, everything you see, everything you feel… is a lie.”
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Wiccan
Unregistered

A drowning fish? How did that work? He was an oxymoron? Is that what she was getting at? Great… he was two parts of a thing that didn’t match, like stray jigsaw pieces, or cheese and pineapple skewered on a cocktail stick. Whatever that was supposed to mean. The talk of drowning made his stomach perform flip-flops. But maybe she was trying to tell him that he just needed to learn how to swim, and that it was ridiculous that he was struggling against this current when all he had to do was turn about face and go with it, and that it would take him wherever he needed to go-- this oceanic swell of energy powering beneath his feet, like a metaphysical gulf stream.

However none of that occurred to Billy, who just sat slumped upon his chair, glaring at his hot chocolate, terribly confused and feeling increasingly sorry for himself.

Did he wish to stop drowning? She asked, probably rhetorically. Billy winced out of reflex as the word cropped up again; that dreaded ‘d’ word, which conjured up so many horrific images.

“Well, yeah, but… I’m not sure what…” he mumbled, but was cut off as Wanda breezed across him with a statement that made his mind boggle. His eyes jerked up to stare at her, head snapping up to fix those bemused browns upon her back as she weaved from place to place, searching aimlessly for something, and he almost ended up spilling the scalding brew all over his hands.

“What do you mean?” he asked, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his chest. Being told that everything you thought you knew was wrong wasn’t really the best of news one could be served with. “… Are you telling me that none of this is real? Or that we’re living in some kind of virtual reality construct?” Because yeah, ok, being Neo would be one thing, but in reality…if that was what she was saying… that would just be really insane.
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Quicksilver
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Superspeed/ Superstrength
The child was clearly bewildered by Wanda and Pietro quickly moved to save him from a scalding accident, taking the cup from him in a swift motion, that ended with the cup safely on the side table. At those speeds, if Pietro was uncautious, he could break all of Billy's fingers right off his hands. However, the youth was their guest, and he was not a danger. He would be startled, but he would be uninjured.

“… Are you telling me that none of this is real? Or that we’re living in some kind of virtual reality construct?”

Pietro folded his arms and said, "You are speaking in words and concepts that are not familiar to my sister. English is not our first language after all. My sister does not live in a construct or anything virtual. She sees all possibilities, she sees all worlds, she is beyond what I can understand, but..." He looked at the boy carefully, "I think perhaps you can. Is that not your power? The warping of reality, just as is Wanda's? So powerful an ability, and you are so very young. What are you? Fifteen? Sixteen? The age we were when our powers developed, and it changed our lives forever."

He rested his hand on his sister's shoulder, gently, "Many things were changed but not her wisdom. Now, she knows things that are far beyond the scope of my vision. If you listen with your heart, and not with your ears, William Kaplan, maybe you will begin to understand."
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Wanda
Reality Warping
Wanda patted Pietro’s hand and smiled up into his narrow, angular face. Her anchor… her rock… the pillar around whom the universe turned. He was right, of course, virtual reality, a sort of game of ‘let’s play pretend’ only with less daydreamy imagination involved, didn’t mean anything to Wanda.

“Tsk tsk tsk,” she clicked her teeth with her tongue. Although Billy was her height, she tweaked his chin as though he were a child, “That is what I mean, silly fish.” She sighed and released him, “You will never fulfill your destiny with weights and chains holding you down.”

“I know what your chains are made of,” she said cryptically, fixing him with her dark eyes; however before going on, she turned to Pietro and seemed to travel off on a tangent. “Do you remember swimming for the first time?” Their grandfather had inclined to the classic method of throw the kid in the water, they’ll swim soon enough. However, ‘swim’ was a rather generous term for what was basically thrashing wildly trying to keep their heads on the surface. As she talked, reality fluttered, picking up her thoughts, and a colorful school of clown fish swam out of a wall. Gliding through the air, they gave Billy a suspicious pop-eyed stare and then continued on their way.

“I remember you standing on the edge for ever, dipping your toes in water.”

She turned and looked into Billy’s eyes, “That is what you do as well. Finding that the strange currents you find yourself in run too fast for you?”
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Wiccan
Unregistered

Pietro blurred into action, whisking the mug away before the cocoa spilled all over Billy’s hands, which was rather bemusing since from one moment to the next he was clutching the warm ceramic and then it had disappeared, until the warlock saw the speedster set it carefully down on a nearby table. The advice that followed was welcome and sounded wise, but even so, it was hard for Billy to listen with something that was crushed up tightly with fear and uncertainty.

I know what your chains are made of, Wanda claimed, giving him a look which was somehow both all-knowing and completely unreadable.

Bewildered, Billy simply stared at her slack-jawed, mind racing. She knew? She knew what had happened? She couldn’t… There wasn’t any possible way… unless she was somehow psychic…

You’re being paranoid Billy, he snapped at himself, getting agitated.

But all these metaphors and this stuff about fish and swimming and water, it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, right? No one was that synchronistic or innocently astute. Well of course, she was a reality warper like himself and coincidence and synchronicity were often mutually exclusive, since that was just the way the mind worked concerning these sorts of things. For instance, a song could roll over in your thoughts and end up blaring out of a nearby radio and you just wouldn’t notice it… but… all this talk of drowning and water and swimming!

At about the same time as all of these things tumbled through his head, he felt reality bubble and gently pop, and was quite surprised when a school of brilliantly coloured fish began to weave their way through the pocket dimension. …Even they were eyeing him as though he had done something wrong. …Did that actually just happen, or was he hallucinating now, too?

“That is what you do as well. Finding that the strange currents you find yourself in run too fast for you?”

Maybe it was him. Maybe he was the one accidentally on purpose, or simply unintentionally, connecting with her on the subconscious levels of existence where reality was flimsy and non-cohesive.

Poor Billy. All these worries and fears and suspicions tangled up and entrapped him in a net of his own making. Deep down he truly did want to tell someone about the tsunami, someone who hadn’t found out through means of walking in on the scene of the crime, or being informed by another staff member; he wanted to tell them his version of events and explain exactly what and why and how, and have them understand and tell him that actually, it wasn’t his fault.

“It is,” he blurted, looking frantic. “It is my fault.”

Tears threatened, like overhanging cloudbursts, and to hide the prick of them at the corners of his eyes he crushed his face into his palms, scrubbing them against his features before tugging his head back up once he had fought them away. He didn’t want to end up bawling like a baby in front of two strangers, god; how idiotic would he look?

“I think I’m going insane,” he said stiffly, voice wavering with each syllable. “How am I supposed to stop myself from being swept away?”
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Quicksilver
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Superspeed/ Superstrength
She talked about swimming, and Pietro nodded, remembering it in that vague fog that most of his childhood memories carried, their images oddly distorted by the slowness of his still human brain styming the quickness of his already mutant mind. They had been very little, and he had been very scared, not liking the idea of the water over his head, not liking the swiftness of the current. It was only when Grandfather had tossed Wanda in first that he had fallen forward in a panic into the water, reaching out for his sister, desperately, either to save her or drown with her. He sometimes wondered which he had chosen. He didn't speak though, merely smiling down at her, and meeting her dark eyes which were so much like his used to be in more ways than their dark color.

The boy bemoaned his fate, admitting that he was responsible for something that he had not yet admitted and finished with the anquish cries of the drowning. “I think I’m going insane...How am I supposed to stop myself from being swept away?”


Wanda pulled her gaze away from her brother’s pale blue eyes, as clear and guileless as crystals. “Stop it? You don’t. You ride the currents and hope you do not drown.” She gave a casual shrug, “Or, you learn to swim.” Pietro, who knew the peculiar workings of her mind, offered his translation.


"First, William Kaplan, you must realize that you are, as Wanda is, no longer part of just one world, but a part of all worlds." Pietro sniffed, "Every possibility is at your fingertips or your tongue or whatever instrument you use to access your gifts. If the current moves too quickly in this world, then you swim until you find a world where the water doesn't run at all. What you must learn is how to cause neither flood nor drought." He caught himself, and brushed his long fingers through Wanda's hair. "Forgive me, my beloved twin, I speak of things I know only through you and do not fully understand."


“I forgive you anything, my dearest, but this time I can not,” her face looked troubled as she stared at him, staying that way for only a moment before breaking into a sly grin, “because there is no need; as always, you make an admirable bridge.”

“But our young friend still looks lost,” she said, slightly shaking her head as she took in Billy misery, her hoop earrings jingling faintly. “Like a young shepherd given his first crook and he does not know which end is which. Shepherd... shepherd?” Wanda's gaze shifted to a point in the distance, "Isn't that ...or is it the other one? Oh, no matter," she mumbled and shrugged, "it is to guide the lost little lambs. Have you guided any lost lambs to safety?"
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Wiccan
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Speaking to the twins was like riding a rollercoaster. One moment they’d say something that made perfect sense and dragged him onto a level that left his worries flailing somewhere far below, and then the next they’d feed him a line that just made his brains explode. Like that one: how not to cause floods. He didn’t hear the drought part.

Scrambling to try and find his voice, which had suddenly gotten lost in amongst a flurry of panic and wild thoughts, Billy reeled. Wanda mumbled dreamily about shepherds and guiding lost sheep.

“I, ah… lambs?” he asked, faintly, suddenly imagining the gypsy woman wearing a frock and bonnet and wielding a crook. It was official. He was losing it. His mind was unravelling. Soon he’d be stumbling around naked wearing his boxers on his head and turning the local wildlife into bizarre concoctions like sheepfrogs or horsecats. They’d have to chase him down and stick him full of tranquillisers and he’d spend the rest of his life huddled in the corner of a white padded cell, drooling onto his straight jacket.

“No I…” They knew. They knew. God, they knew?

“You both… do you…?” he squeaked, and realised his hands were trembling. “You keep mentioning floods and drowning and…” His mouth dried up and his tongue got tangled in the multitude of questions and answers that spilled over all at once. Currently two plus two equalled five hundred.

“I didn’t mean to, I mean… it wasn’t like… and how did you find out? Was it someone from Xavier’s?”

He thought his heart was going to slam its way through his chest.

It was always easier thinking about doing something then actually doing it. You could have the whole scenario laid out word for word in your mind, could probably recite it to the mirror like you’d gone through it a million times, yet when it came to the actual point of execution you turned into the human equivalent of rice pudding, or semolina. Jello shots. Whoever had been on the receiving end, in his head… Josh, or Kyle, or a random stranger who had suffered loss at his hands. So it was Wanda and Pietro, and he was shaking like a leaf.

Screwing his eyes shut, Billy clenched his hands into fists in an effort to still them, which only made the quaking worse, but at least he felt as though he was doing something about it.

“I was trying to put out a-“ His throat closed up, twisting away his voice into a strangled choking noise. Man, this was not going the way he had planned. When he finally managed to force out his next sentence it was not the level headed, meaningful relation of what had happened that day, which he had practiced all those moments the desperate guilt threw itself up, it was a very hoarse notice of retreat. White flags in the vernacular.

“I should go.”
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Quicksilver
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Superspeed/ Superstrength
And then the boy collapsed like a house of cards, babbling half sentences and looking as if he was about to cry or faint or explode... maybe all of them. Pietro, who had spent the past seven years of his life learning to cope with the swiftly unraveling sanity of his beloved twin, was quick to recognize that the boy was close to being lost in the current. He was not accustomed to being kind, to being considerate of others. The world was filled with annoyances and irritations and he had too much time to be trapped in existence with those so wrapped up in their misery that they were unable to contain it and keep it from spilling over everyone in their vicinity.

Yet, this boy reminded him very much of his sister at this age, her powers just beginning to overwhelm her. He had been so lost in his own budding abilities that he had not developed the skills that it would take to settle her, to hold her to the world she was in, and stop her from being set adrift in the spaces between realities. Pietro had always felt that he had failed her, and that was why he was so overprotective, so patient with her, so smothering in the eyes of others.

Was it possible to prevent this from happening to his boy?

His logic and intuition working with the speed that had overtaken him when he was sixteen and had never let him slow down, he listened to the boy's protests, put them together with the panic he had at each mention of water, flooding... could the boy have... was it possible? Those days were so muddled in his head, lost in the strange reversion to his childhood, carefree, innocent and far too confused to recognize what had happened to him... but there had been a flood, and many had been killed. But, young Kaplan was a child, just a youth, could he have...

"You are not leaving, William Kaplan," Pietro said, the clipped quality of the words not matched by the uncommon gentleness of his accented voice. "You have learned nothing yet. You are still in need of a lifeline. My sister manipulates probability. What seemingly cannot be, suddenly is because she thinks it is so. Of all the metaphor she could have chosen, hers is not random, is it? It means more and no one has told us, no one has revealed secrets you wish kept."

He crouched beside the crumpled child and said, "Jean Grey-Summers was wise to send you to us. You see here a man and a woman with a great deal of death and destruction on their hands, and little of it was done with good intention. We have unleashed hell and blood upon a town, and killed for no reason other than we were told to. This place is filled with those with similar stories. We all feasted on our misery and nearly starved to death. You did not come here to be fed smoke and air, to drink tears and sorrow. You came here to learn and you will never learn if you glut yourself on your own misery."

Straightening, Pietro looked him in the eye and said, again, "You are not leaving, because you have not learned yet. You are still drowning. My sister speaks of guiding others, of making a difference. Can you do that, help others out of the deep water? Or is wallowing about in the shallows more satisfying to you?"
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Wanda
Reality Warping
It would have surprised many people that, for all of Pietro’s aloofness and cold, pale eyes, he cared. They both cared but for all of their broken lives in this cruel world, they’d hardly been cared for… by anyone except each other; it wasn’t in their natures to enfold the trembling boy in a hug and say ‘there, there, poor boy, we’re here for you, tell us all about it’.

It would have been easy to let the nervous youth disappear out the door; he’d seemed to fight them at every turn, contrarily seeking help and yet skittishly jumping back whenever they tried to draw him out. As Pietro talked to him, Wanda’s spotty memory flashed on a scruffy stray dog that had followed their caravan once… maybe, it was so hard to tell what was true in her mind. “I think the dog was blue,” she said in murmur to herself, her head tilted thoughtfully as Pietro told the boy of the town they’d destroyed, “or perhaps gray.” It would dance around the outskirts of the camp, wanting so desperately to be fed, yet darting into the trees whenever food was offered. “Strange dog,” she said, finally shaking loose from the fragmented memory.

While Pietro stood face to face with the frightened boy, giving him the chance to say if he would move forward or stay trapped and dying in his own misery, Wanda cocked an eye at him from her spot in front of the cluttered worktable, feigning indifference to Billy’s answer.
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Wiccan
Unregistered

If they knew, why weren’t they turning on him and throwing him out of their apartment… pocket dimension… thing? Pietro’s words blocked him from his exit, stopping him from turning and marching out, or even teleporting away. Something about the way he spoke commanded obedience. Billy wondered if he got that from his father, but in the end it was what Pietro said that made the warlock hesitate. He remembered standing beside the waterfall, and Jean telling him that the twins had, like him, rained down onto a town a tsunami of their own making. He had half wondered if she had only told him that to offer him some reassurance, whatever twisted kind of comfort it might have been, but the echo of the story in Pietro’s voice was enough to bring him to a standstill.

Billy’s hands found his head and he slumped into them, battling against a raw surge of emotion. To the occupied Wanda he said, “Have you ever thought about… just resetting everything? Just spouting a few words and making it all go back to the way it was before?” His voice, muffled behind his fingers, developed a tremor. “Wouldn’t that be better?

Wouldn’t it be? Just a sentence and everything could reset. Families would be together again. Names chiselled onto memorials would fade. This feeling would disappear, wouldn’t it? The ethical aspect seemed to pale in comparison to these points, but still it held Billy back. Since that day in July the world had turned two hundred and ten times. How many relationships had been forged, dreams realised, battles fought during those months, all of which would suddenly count for nothing? Would it make everything better, or worse? Would he make the same mistake again, or would he retain the memories to serve as a haunting reminder for the rest of his life?

Was setting something that big right as easy as chanting it away? Should it be?

“I want to help. I don’t know how. I tried to help once and I…” Again he wavered. I killed them…

Just say it.

“I…”

You killed them. You ruined half of the city. You destroyed thousands of lives.

“…I caused…”

Idiot.
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Quicksilver
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Superspeed/ Superstrength
Wanda drifted off, as if illustrating Pietro's very thoughts about her disconnection, and that brought him back to her side, taking her hand in his and gently rubbing it to bring her to where she was. She came back to reality as Billy spoke, asking questions they all had asked at some point. It was part and parcel of the strange problems that reality warpers faced.

"Because that would be wrong," Pietro answered, folding his arms, "Do you not realize that? Perhaps then, that is why you are so lost. My sister could change this world in the blink of an eye, give everyone what they wish, make mutants the dominant species, our father king of the world. The war would end, everyone would be happy, and life would go along, no one any wiser. But it is a selfish and childish desire, one of desperation, one of misery. It is not as it should be and until you realize that you will never recover from what you have done."

The boy crumpled in on himself and Pietro reached out, resting his hand on Billy's head, <"Deget mic Frate,"> he said, in Romanian, Little Brother, a rare term of kindness from the often rude and usually arrogant gypsy, "What you did, whatever it might be, if you did with cruel intentions, you must now attone. If you did what you did with pure intentions then there is nothing left but forgiveness. You are on the precipice, William Kaplan. Between tragic hero and self doubting fool. I do not wish you to make a misstep." He managed a small smile, not quite the gently look he gave his sisters, but one not as forced as usual. "What an opportunity you have, what an amazing gift you have been given, in my sister's guidance, in your youth, in your adaptability. Do not think it a curse, that will surely make it so."
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Wanda
Reality Warping
Ahh, there it was, at Wanda’s work table, she bided her time as Pietro talked. "Because that would be wrong," Pietro answered, folding his arms, "Do you not realize that? Perhaps then, that is why you are so lost. …. It is not as it should be and until you realize that you will never recover from what you have done.” Pietro said to the frightened boy and as her white haired brother started to reach out for him, reality froze; on the wall, the clock that had ticked and chimed through their talk as background noise was suddenly stilled into silence. It was a visual cue for something that was impossible to see, the passage of time.

“My darling brother, he is so virtuous, is he not?” Her soft gaze lighted him, Pietro Maximoff, her speedy who could slice time into fractions so small no other person would notice, was frozen in a slice of time too quick for even his sharp eye to comprehend. “Stay your hand because it is deemed right and proper that you do so,” she said, paraphrasing his words. “But you are too much like me, I think. You would not stay your hand from any job that you think is yours to do.” She gave Billy a level look, the most clear and “with it” stare he’d got from her since he stepped through the door, cold and dripping with slush. “You have finally realized what you came here for… not that one mistake that cost so many lives, you want to know why you should not undo what you have done.”

As if staring too deeply at the boy was too much, she turned back to Pietro. “When I was very, very young, my grandpapa Django craved for me wooden dolls,” she reached out and lovingly slicked Pietro’s errant twin cowlicks out of his eyes. “I played with them and talked with them. Sometimes I talked for them and imagined it was really them. But even as young as I was, I knew they were not really alive.” She glanced at Billy and saw that she’d lost him again. “They were not alive because they were my puppets, they were not really real.” It was always the same; her thoughts flowed in a kind of shorthand that was always difficult for people who wouldn’t or couldn’t make the same logic leaps that she did.

Wanda’s eyes flickered with a moment’s frustration, before she held out her hand, the fingers splayed. Glowing, ethereal strings seemed to drop from her fingers and at the bottom of each was a wooden doll, puppets. The first to appear was Pietro, in solemn gray clothes and with his white hair swooped back like delicate horns. One by one, more people from Wanda’s life appeared at the ends of the strings: an elegant woman with green hair, her blond beau who grabbed her around her waist and kissed her, a dark haired man working on a small robotic suit, a man with vivid red hair calling magic out of the air, a smiling man crackling with electricity, more and more people that doubtless Billy didn’t know and last, the universally recognized magenta and purple suit of the feared terrorist Magneto, his helmet cradled in his arm, his cold eyes gazing around. The living puppets began to move, behaving eerily like their flesh and blood counterparts. “To control people… to decide if they live or die at your thoughts - they are no longer people, they are dolls.” Among the living dolls at Wanda’s fingertips, a green haired, green-skinned elfin doll appeared and began to waltz with the Pietro doll, a slender doll Billy would doubtless recognize as Avery. “And being just dolls,” a pair of ethereal scissors appeared in the air and cut Avery’s string, leaving her to crumble limply to the ground, “you make them play the story you desire.”

His eyes looked, what… horrified? “You protest,” she went on, guessing his reaction. “And you… you would never try to control them, ” she began, filling in his denial but her voice turned up at the end and turning it into a question. She dismissed the idea of the flood; it was foremost in his mind, but even that didn’t have the personal hold on Billy to get her point across.

Wanda stretched out her other hand and this time, instead of her friends, the dolls at the ends of the strings were his: a golden haired, golden skinned teenage boy looked up at the towering Billy and waved his wooden hand, there was a handsome and arrogant dark haired young man who barely spared Billy a glance, a shy Muslim girl in dark veils, a girl who turned into liquid metal, a blue furred teacher, a doll wearing red glasses who crossed his arms across his chest, and beside him, a beautiful red haired doll. “You like your friend,” Wanda tilted her head casually to one side and twitched her finger, bringing the golden boy forward, “and if you said something that hurt his feelings… you looked and saw the hurt in his eyes… wanting to take back those last few moments so that they had never been, would you not? It would be such a small thing and so easy. Your friendship would be saved,” her eyes looked from the gleaming teenager to Billy, “truly, could you resist and let what has happened, remain?” She had done that herself, she thought, turning her to gaze to Pietro; she’d turned back Time to make him happy. “Perhaps your friends are dead,” all of the strings on her second hand snapped and the dolls crumpled into a mass of limp bodies, “could you stand by and do nothing to revive them?”

She gave sharp look, “I do not tell you what to do but know this, the more you treat others as your dolls, then the more as dolls that you play with they will seem to you. Tell me, my boy, what happens to dolls you grow weary of? Where are your favorite toys you played with years ago?”

“You asked, should you not undo a great tragedy you have done, and I tell you this,” over their heads the roof faded away to reveal an infinity of stars and the gigantic form of Wanda so large that only her torso could be seen towering over them, an ethereal string leading from Pietro up to her looming hand. The enormous Wanda, a goddess whose face and form nearly block out the sky, leaned closer into the tiny room and spoke, “You could save them but you will push yourself farther and farther from the people you wish to save; they will soon mean nothing to you.” Next to Pietro, the real Wanda, if she was the real one, was silent and leaned her head against her frozen brother’s shoulder, reassuring herself that he was there… that he was indeed real.

“You would cut the bonds that tie you to them and allow you to see them as fellow beings worthy of you,” the enormous Wanda straightened to her full, impossible height. “Distance yourself too much, and they will become as ants to you, not something you hate, not something you love. You would walk through them as carelessly as you walk over ants and destroy their mounds, not with malice but with indifference.”

The Goddess-Wanda’s eyes, gleaming with shining universes, gazed sadly down at the tiny, insect-sized Billy. “You feel guilt… treasure it. It is a link that will keep you from slipping too far into this,” she raised her hands, crackling with unimaginable power. “When you reach the point where you would change the world without a care, you will find that the lives of ants are not worth the notice or effort,” her voice faded away as the ceiling reappeared.

In their room, Time flowed once again. Wanda’s hands were free of strings and puppets, and Pietro kindly reached out to rest his hand on Billy’s head, obvious to what had occurred in that frozen slice of Time.

“What you did, whatever it might be, if you did with cruel intentions, you must now attone. If you did what you did with pure intentions then there is nothing left but forgiveness. You are on the precipice, William Kaplan. Between tragic hero and self doubting fool. I do not wish you to make a misstep. … What an opportunity you have, what an amazing gift you have been given, in my sister's guidance, in your youth, in your adaptability. Do not think it a curse, that will surely make it so."

“My darling,” Wanda began, running her fingers irritably through her hair, “I am weary of this room and talk of fish and dolls. The weather has cleared; let us go outside in the fresh air.” She stepped to his side and rested her head on his shoulder.
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Wiccan
Unregistered

As time slowed to a standstill, at first the warlock glanced around, immediately noticing the strange shift, or rather stagnation of the pocket dimension. It was like standing in the mid-current of a river and feeling it suddenly swill to a stop. But then the dreamy-headed Wanda disappeared and was replaced by someone else entirely, someone wiser and saner and more insane than anyone Wiccan had ever encountered, and as she talked reality seemed to swim around her fingers, about her limbs and around her body as though she was clad in quantum threads.

Billy was stunned into silence. Was this sort of infinite power too much for his mind to comprehend? Never mind that he was just sixteen years old, just a boy who had accidentally stumbled upon this well of cosmological knowledge and omnipotent capacity…this was… this was...

…This was too big for him. Here was life spread out before him in the form of a marionette show, and she paraded them in front of him as if she had danced these steps a hundred times before. Yes, he did stare at her in horror… horror that she could so easily chisel all the faces and forms she had ever known down into nothing more than loosely-jointed dolls, horror that this, any of this, was a potential future for him.

Teenagers on the whole tended to be of the innate belief that they knew everything about everything, everything about love and life and the planet and politics, about loss and hope and fear and death. They carried the world on their shoulders. Their daily epiphanies were earth shattering. At fifteen, Billy had been one of them, and who hadn’t? He’d known it all. He’d been so sure of himself. Life would generally slap the misguided children in the faces from time to time, until their heads were screwed on correctly, until they’d learned that in fact their opinions weren’t the be all and end all, and until they had finally grown up. For Billy though, it had happened in one fell swoop, and he’d been crushed by it.

And standing at the foot of this gargantuan woman, this behemoth Wanda, Billy was immediately reminded of this, and suddenly felt very, very small. Was this what he was destined for? To see the world as a pantomime, his friends as dolls or ants or fish or whatever kind of metaphor for ‘small and insignificant’ would fit? Where was he supposed to draw the line?

He found himself staring at his own hands as hers danced and mimed, the eerily familiar shapes and faces moving far too naturally for pieces of wood and string, and not for the first time he wanted to scream take it away, take it back, I don’t want this…

As a child he’d had dreams of digging up the past. He’d made discoveries in his backyard and triumphantly brandished fragments of porcelain and shards of mud-caked pottery and dated them, in his mind, to the turn of the century. He’d cracked open rocks hoping to discover geodes and fossils, imagining he would discover some unknown species and that he could put his name to it, and that that would be the extent of his life’s achievements. To be an archaeologist. To be a geologist. For a while he’d wanted to be a lawyer, too.

He’d imagined himself with family and friends and a nine to five job, a lover, a soul mate, a scruffy terrier and a lazy cat, and a bobble-eyed goldfish that had outgrown its bowl. He’d pictured three course meals and TV shows, movie theatres and conversations about video games, about comics, about news stories and politics, about imploding stars, and planets in retrograde. Conversations about everything and conversations about nothing at all.

And all of these things, these normal things that he had assumed would eventually come to fruition, these hopes, these wishes; what were they now? What could he do with normality when it crumbled in his grasp and scattered like ash when he tried to piece it back together?

And then there was all of this, this endless expanse of solar systems and galaxies and unimaginable power, and gods and goddesses, and he just wanted to be Billy, just Billy Kaplan, just a boy like every other. To be separated from vegetables only by feeling, only by screaming and crying and laughing, and for that to be enough. Just to live… how much was that to ask for?

Wanda’s message was clear and terrifying. The teen didn’t want to watch as she in turn flung his friends aside and scraped the ceiling of the universe with titanic fingers that sparked and spat with blinding power, but he couldn’t tear away his gaze. He didn’t want to listen to her, either, but her words burned like the stars around her head, and reverberated right down to his toes. Only when she faded and the caravan roof had once again settled onto its eaves was he able to find another spot at which to stare.

When the clock ticked once more, Billy didn’t move. His eyes burned holes in the floor. He barely felt Pietro’s hand come to rest atop his still damp tangles. He simply stood, stock-still, completely lost for words.
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Quicksilver
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“My darling,” Wanda began, running her fingers irritably through her hair, “I am weary of this room and talk of fish and dolls. The weather has cleared; let us go outside in the fresh air.” She stepped to his side and rested her head on his shoulder.

Pietro blinked at the move and realized from not on her words, but the look on the boy's face that something had happened that was between the two reality warpers, and he was not privy to it. It bothered him slightly, left him slightly jealous that this angst ridden, pouting brat who couldn't appreciate what he had had this connection to his sister. He felt a little... small, perhaps is the word... against these two gods of chaos, when he was nothing but a man who could run very very fast.

He stepped away from the child, not certain what he would say if he spoke at this moment, afraid he would be unkind and snappish in his irritation and envy. He patted his sister's arm, realizing with uncommon insight, that he was being quite petty, but just because he could recognize it, it did not mean he was capable of doing anything about it.

"Yes," he said, calmly, the arrogance creeping back into his voice, making his speech clipped and abrupt. "I think outside in the fresh air will give you more clarity, and room to... think about what you must think about. William Kaplan, you may escort my sister if you like. I am sure there are things for me to occupy my time with here. I have offered advice when I know nothing. I fear I am confusing us all."
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Wanda
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In his sudden melancholy, Pietro wandered a few steps away, already giving himself over to a certain degree to self-pity, when Wanda wrapped her arms around his slender, racer’s torso from behind and pressed her cheek against his back. “Oh, my darling, I know I selfishly steal too much of your time and leave you with barely any time for your own pursuits, but I would be lost without you. After all the talk of sailing the unfathomable currents of madness, I can not go on without my own guiding Northern Star,” she said, lavishing him with attention but all she had said was true, Pietro was the center of everything for her. Looking over at Billy, his eyes wide and stunned from what he’d seen, she felt sympathy for him, a babe in the woods. “You need someone to keep your feet on the path,” she told him, unsure if he actually heard her.

She strolled to where Billy stood, “I know. You have so much to think about your mind,” she twirled her fingers by the sides of her head to mime gears spinning rapidly; it was a sheer coincidence that pantomime also meant crazy. “And as the mind thinks, although, in my opinion you think too much and it gets you in trouble, the body can be doing something else. Look at you,” her gaze traveled from his dark shaggy hair down to his boots and back up, “you are so pale, do you ever see the sun? Or do you spend your time playing video games?” She half-turned to her brother, “I watched Jon and Alister play a fighting game; an hour, they spent on the couch and what do they have to show for it afterward? Sore fingers. If there was any other benefit to those games, I did not see it,” giving the impression that if she didn’t see it, it wasn’t there. But her fussing wasn’t serious and wasn’t meant to be, it was a reassertion of normality. She turned her attention back to Billy, “Even after someone draws aside the curtain to reveal the mysteries of the universe, the beds still need to be made, the meals cooked and the plants re-planted into bigger pots. Come, I will show you how. It will be good for you to get your fingers dirty.”

When he didn’t move and continued to look dazed, she added, looking through the fringe of long, dark bangs that nearly covered his eyes, “Or you can stand here and I will cut your hair.”
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