Pietro Maximoff (seethiscoming) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-08-06 12:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, pietro maximoff (quicksilver), wanda maximoff (scarlet witch) |
Who: Pietro & Wanda Maximoff
What: The siblings reunite and unfortunately amnesia is something Wanda's magic can't help with
When: 3rd August
Where: Random market in LA
Rating/Warnings: G | None
Status: Log | Complete
Whilst Peter didn’t have many memories post!recovery in Romania there were some things that unconsciously drew him to them. Things like small independent markets where individuals and off the beaten track vendors gathered to display their goods and spread the word about what it is they did.
Today was one of those days.
The small market was according to locals a fairly regular event but this was the first time Peter had attended or rather had the time off in order to attend and it was a really beautiful day so not exactly a trial to pass through and take a gander. It helped that the beach was only a few metres away so not only did the stalls have interest from those who had purposefully gone there to browse but also benefited from those who came in from the ocean.
All in all it was a smart move to put it where it was.
Peter was currently looking at a long delicate chain with a distinct stone set in the middle of the pendant as it tugged at something within him, a familiarity, a knowledge that he might have known somebody was fond of such items of jewellery, but he was unable to conjure a face or a name. It was one of the many annoying side effects of waking up with absolutely no memory of your life before injury and recovery.
That, however, didn’t stop him from buying it, better safe than sorry.
Wanda, on the other hand, was a regular at the markets. She enjoyed seeing the vendors, reminding her somewhat of home, getting fruit and vegetables from the sources and supporting farm workers as much as she could. Now that she was living with Hayley and regularly getting to cook for more than just herself, she was doing more in the kitchen and growing more adventurous.
“Buna dimineata,” one of the ladies that sold soap, made with natural ingredients and some specialist remedies was from a province in Romania, always keeping Wanda on her toes with their shared language. Wanda was sure it was just because she enjoyed making easy conversation in her native tongue, and it wasn’t like she had anything else to do.
After a somewhat prolonged conversation, Wanda left the stall with some new packageless shampoo in the form of a bar of soap and a few old parchments with remedies and recipes etched on them.
She was just passing a trinket stall, on the way to find some smoked meats to make dinner that night when she caught something familiar in her peripheral vision, turning to see if she could see what it was, but not noticing anything and getting urged along by the large tourist and his family.
It was probably nothing.
Peter felt a tingle run the length of his spine which always happened when somebody was watching him but by the time he turned his head whoever it was had obviously lost interest and so he thought nothing more of it.
He pocketed the necklace he’d bought and stopped at another stall, offering the young children sat off to one side a smile as he spoke to the woman tending to the items on sale. Obviously she was the mother and child care she informed Peter was a nightmare to find.
“I can imagine,” he answered with an understanding nod as he exchanged money in return for what looked like a very ripe collection of apples.
Shaking off the uncertainty, Wanda went back to her errands, having a quick conversation with a flower seller, although she couldn’t buy anything that week she promised to get some the following week, before she made her way to obtain her meats.
“Ah, Wanda,” the butcher that came to this particular market was a jovial man, round and aged but no less engaging and cheerful. “I have a treat, just for you my dear.” He had a more grandfatherly vibe about him that a fatherly one, and Wanda knew he had no family of his own, outside his sister and her kids, because he told her all about his sister’s new grandbaby a few weeks back.
“You did not have to trouble yourself,” she was temporarily distracted by a familiar but hard to place voice, turning again to try and find the source before her attention was grabbed back.
“Ox tail!” It was loud, attention grabbing, but the treat had already been wrapped up for her, produced like a gift. “Just for you, let you make some proper stew for that room mate of yours, eh?” She wasn’t surprised that he wouldn’t let her pay for it, her attention back on the vendor, but she made a point in ordering a bit more than she might’ve bought without the generosity he showed her.
“Thank you again, I’ll be sure to let you know how Hayley enjoys it.” She’d need to be careful about what she told the vendor next time she was there.
She was just making her way through the stalls when she was bumped by a young girl chasing after her mother, Wanda’s purse falling from her bag as the girl ran on, shouting an apology behind her. It was while she was kneeling to pick it up, glancing upwards that she saw him, clear as day.
Pietro’s face.
There was that feeling again, of being watched, and it was disconcerting. He didn’t enjoy the sensation, he’d much rather be the one watching people than the one being watched. It was then and only then that he felt as though he had some sort of advantage. He turned his head in time to watch a young girl running away after having left what looked like a trail of destruction in her wake before he tracked it back to a pretty redhead who looked very much as if she’d seen a ghost.
Whilst she recognised him he didn’t recognise her and it showed on his face as he merely walked over to help her retrieve her purse.
“You dropped this,” he murmured with a smile as he offered it.
Her breath was stuck in her throat, her heart pounding in her ears.
It couldn’t be real, but it wasn’t like hallucinations interacted with you, did they? She was still staring, struck dumb and scared and worried and… he was offering her purse but not saying anything else? How would---
“Tha-- Mulțumesc.” Her voice was a little shaky, her hand the same as she took back her purse, having to hug it to her chest to hide the wisps of red mist at her finger tips. “You--- This is…” It was strange, unprecedented, and he still wasn’t saying anything.
Why wouldn’t he say something?
“Pietro?” It was him, she knew it was him, she saw her own face in his in so many ways, memorised the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips and the slice of his cheekbones. They were two parts of a whole, after all, it was impossible not to recognise her own twin.
His brow creased as the woman spoke first in a language he knew very well and secondly when she said a name to him as if expecting him to be that person. Maybe she had him confused with somebody else? That could happen, not that he thought he had that kind of face, but it was possible.
“Sorry, no,” he said as he shook his head. “My name is Peter. Perhaps you have me mistaken with somebody else?”
Of course, there was something about her that made him curious, made him want to find out more and had him reluctant to part quickly. “I assume you must have a name, feel like sharing?” His lips tugged into a soft teasing grin.
Peter? His name most certainly wasn’t Peter, and as Wanda inspected him quickly, gauging her memories of him with the man in front of her, she knew even more surely that it was indeed Pietro. “No, it’s not.” How odd was it to tell someone that they were wrong about their own name?
“It’s… I’m Wanda, don’t you--- You don’t remember?”
The whispers were starting to slink in, which was bad. She needed to focus, pull her attention and calm down. Wanda took a deep breath, her fingers clenching around her reusable net bag, nails catching on the thin string that held them together. Her hair was tied up and out of the way, she couldn’t play with it to distract herself, so she needed to find something to ground her while she apparently tried to convince someone that they were her brother.
“Don’t you remember me?”
It was more than a little disconcerting to have somebody look at you like they knew you and for you to have absolutely no recollection of them. It was unsurprising given that when he’d finally woken from his coma he didn’t know his own name let alone anything else.
“Should I?” He asked, clearly confused.
Belatedly he realised how that probably was as constructive as it could be so he thought it best to explain. “I was badly hurt in my home country and I uh, well, I have no memory of who I was before I woke in the hospital.” Alone, surrounded by strangers, but then he wouldn’t have known any difference even if somebody he’d known prior had been there to greet him.
Pietro? It felt strangely… right, but he was certain he was Peter.
No memory, he had no memory after the…
Wanda regretted putting her hair up, as she shoved her fingers in at the temples, tugging at the hair that was pulled back and pinned up, pressing down on her skull in an attempt to push out the noise. She knew she should walk away, get somewhere to calm herself, to run through the breathing exercises she did with Hayley during yoga. But that meant walking away from Pietro, Peter, and then he might vanish into smoke.
“I was---” She was working out if she should just say it all, tell him what was real, but if he didn’t know it would he believe it? Would be believe she was telling him the truth or stick to his story, without memories he couldn’t rely on anything. And she had lost all of her belongings in the bombing, pictures and keepsakes, she had nothing to prove it.
“I was there, I know. We were… We were in the same building.” In the same room, their parents down the hall, it was… “You must’ve been in the rubble longer than I was, they air lifted me out due to spine and leg damage.” Her head hadn’t been hit, not hard, she’d been concussed from the fall but nothing like massive brain trauma to cause memory loss. She couldn’t say for sure, but she’d be willing to bet it was because Pietro shoved her under the bed.
“I’m Wanda, you are-- You were Pietro. We knew one another. We were,” family, loved ones, attached at the hip, “we were friends.”
What were the chances he would run into somebody else from his home country and more importantly that small town here in Los Angeles? Small, but definitely not one he was willing to pass up. “Pietro?” He repeated, feeling the name and all its syllables on the edge of his tongue, and strangely enough it seemed… right?
He didn’t know what possessed him but something did, his hand reached up to curl around the wrist of the hand seemingly trying to crush the side of her head, and his thumb brushed over the exact point where her pulse beat. It might have seemed forward to anybody who didn’t know that they were at least from his point of view relative strangers but Pet- no, Pietro - had never been one to fight impulse.
“It seems as though luck is smiling down on us today then.”
The contact jolted through her enough to drag Wanda’s attention away from all the building fears and secrets in her head, pulling the mist down and leaving her eyes their warm brown instead of letting the scarlet inch in. “Luck, yes.”
She wasn’t sure she’d call it luck, although Wanda refused to believe in fate either, it was hard not to wonder if Orange County could have some strange magical power itself. “Are you… I mean, how are you doing now? After the--” her hand pointed between his head and her own, trying to gauge how his recovery was. Although it sounded like he was still dealing with brain trauma if he didn’t remember anything from before.
“Have you been in Los Angeles long?” The notion that Pietro had been so close, arms length away, and she never knew felt like a stone had been dropped into her stomach. She could’ve found him sooner, if she’d kept looking, if she’d looked harder.
Pietro’s lips slid into an easy enough smile before he arched an eyebrow, vaguely amused by her gesturing to her head and uneasy way of asking how he was doing since he’d woken and begun his recovery process. “Slow progress.” Which was frustrating as he hated slow and did not have the patience for it, it always felt like the world was moving in slow motion. “But I am alive so I suppose that is a small mercy.”
Belatedly he realised he was still touching her and he pulled his hand back, shoving it into his curls instead and scrubbing his way through them.
“Well I have been here for the last eleven months or so? You?”
Alive, yes. That was the best part, and if he had no memory for now, at least he was around to let his brain heal. Even if it was painful to see no recollection of her in his eyes, it was good to just know he wasn’t dead or hooked up to machines that were keeping him alive in body only.
“Yes, I suppose that is true. Small mercies are sometimes all we can ask for.” But he’d been there for almost a year, and Wanda hadn’t known, hadn’t been able to help or do anything.
“I’ve been in America since shortly after the bombing. I was sent to Greece for treatment initially, and then, once stable, they sent me here to begin rehabilitation and counselling.” In a strange place, without her family, hurt and alone. She almost wished she’d been left in Romania, even if she wouldn’t have gotten the medical treatment that would’ve saved her spine and use of her legs. She could’ve been closer to Pietro when he was found.
But it wasn’t like she could rewind time. “I like it here, even if it’s so very different.”
It was after a further moment that he realised that they were still crouched and he corrected that by standing, offering his hand to Wanda. “It is very different. Americans are a very different animal.” Which was not a lie. He was still getting accustomed to the States and how people expressed themselves over here and the freedoms they had in comparison to the ones back home.
“Can I help you carry anything?”
Ordinarily he would be happy to say goodbye and go separate ways but there was something about Wanda that made him want to stick around. Maybe because she claimed to know him?
It was almost like they’d just forgot about doing normal things, caught up in what was happening. Wanda knew that her own attention was exceptionally narrowed to just this one thing; Pietro, her brother, who was without his memories. She could worry about all the other things later.
“Um, I… Maybe these?” She offered the net bag with her fruit and veg in it, working out if there was a way to extend things, “Are you still browsing? Maybe, I mean, if you’re free, maybe we could get some coffee?” She just wanted to spend as much time around him there as possible, maybe they could talk and something might help jar his memories, or something could come up that might help him.
She certainly wanted to exchange numbers, she knew that it would be hard to leave, to part ways, so if she could push that back to a while from now, that would be best.
Pietro stepped forward and took a hold of the net bag with the fruit, happy to carry them, especially if it meant he was a) being helpful and b) got to spend some more time with Wanda who claimed to know him from before. Maybe just maybe she could tell him something about his old life, perhaps something she said might jog a memory and start the process of recall. A guy could hope, right?
“A coffee would be nice,” he said with a nod. “I know somewhere that has good coffee and they don’t keep you waiting too long. I hate waiting.”
And he did, detested it, couldn’t stand it, not one bit.
Wanda couldn’t help the small laugh, “No, patience has never been your strong suit.” It almost felt normal, like being home, with her family and nothing had happened. No bomb, no accidents, no moving. But obviously that wasn’t the case, and things were still so much more complicated.
But Pietro was alive, and there, and she could talk to him and see him, and hear his voice again. And honestly she’d give everything for that.
“But I would very much like good coffee either way.” That stone in her stomach seemed to ebb away. This wasn’t perfect, or ideal, but she could work with it, and that was what was important.