We were born in the slumber. Nobody cared about us.
WHAT:Alt Un. Sibling meet up WHERE:Peter's Apartment WHEN:Back when Wanda arrived WARNINGS: Sibling SMOOSH STATUS:Complete!
Wanda being nervous was an understatement. It wasn’t as if they hit it off terribly over the network, god - not at all. It had gone well enough for two strangers with the same last names, born in different universes that could be a tiny little bit related (but technically weren’t). Peter wasn’t her Pietro, could never be her Pietro and seeing him as some replacement wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. Most of her was still grief-stricken, losses fresh but if there is one she never fully recovered from (and probably never would recover) was the heart-wrenching loss of her twin.
To have him around in some form, an echo of him across the universes and all these timelines - she was curious. She wanted to know him. She wanted to know all the things that were different about him, all the things that were the same. They hashed out the whole no expectations, no obligations sentiment over the network already, though she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that she had some kind expectation.
Or hope, if she wanted to be more accurate about that expectations. Perhaps they could be friends, or maybe even feel a little bit like family? It could also be a silly, desperate wish from an orphan. Peter could literally disappear in the next five minutes and never been seen throughout Vallo again. She knew she’d regret not ever trying.
The obsessive thoughts of should I bring snacks?? drinks? was ultimately abandoned due impatience towards her own indecisiveness. It wasn’t as if she asked what his preferences were and she didn’t want to select something he didn’t like. Again, she barely knew him, so -
Okay, enough. Wanda was here. Having lost herself inside the mess of her own, fragile mind didn’t make her too aware of travel time. Strange could have easily opened a portal for her convenience but she needed the fresh air, the exercise to just - get it together? Now she was in the Morningside Apartment Complex, standing in front of Peter’s door and once the courage was mustered, she knocked.
Then came that nervous fiddling of all the rings that were accessories to her fingers, twisting the bands and sliding them up and down over and over.
Peter didn’t realize how much of a big deal getting his own place had been. He’d either always stayed with his mom or at a room in the X-mansion. Nowhere ever really felt like “home” because the idea of four walls and a roof gave the notion of “nowhere to go” and made him a little anxious.
He didn’t really spend a whole lot of time in his place other than when he was sleeping or reading or waiting for time to go by for a thing to happen.
It wasn’t really decorated but it wasn’t barren. Before Wanda came over Peter realized how unwelcoming it was and tried to make it a bit more homey. Probably should have done that in case Anka needed to spend the night or something. He liked the idea of making it look like an old airstream diner, so there was a jukebox, old vintage signs, and a few 70s and 80s timeless Knick knacks around to give the place some life. No tower of Little Debbie snacks or stolen electronics. He paid for all of this.
Did he just pull an entire apartment makeover because this was the first time he’d have company since ever? Yes. But that’s fine. Wanda was worth it and it gave Peter something to do to settle his nerves. “Oh hey!” He stopped mid-sprint when he felt the vibration of her knock, slowing down to the natural pace of everyone else, pulling the headphones off of his ears. He opened the door and stepped back so she could come in.
“Make yourself at home.” Giddy much? Yes. There was a sparkle of excitement behind his eyes no matter how hard he tried to conceal it.
Peter was excitable, so much that she could swear it was contagious. Wanda wasn’t sure what to make of it. It wasn’t bad. It definitely caused the smallest of smiles to twist her lips at the sight of him. He looked mostly different - that, she expected - but she was surprised at how relieved she felt to confirm that fact, to see it with her own eyes.
It helped draw a bolder line of distinction between him and Pietro. It was necessary.
“Very vintage,” she observed, a less pronounced Sokovian accent licking over her words as she stepped inside. “I like it. These apartments are surprisingly - nice?”
Wanda hadn’t taken the offer of money and housing when she arrived. Trusting the government blindly was, ah - not her thing. Already she was impressed by how different it functioned, though. Much better than what she was used to. She chose a spot on the couch to occupy. “I’m currently staying at the Sanctum, with Stephen. It is very twisty in there.”
“They’re not so bad.” Peter shrugged with a fluff of silvery white hair bouncing about. He was trying to eye his ‘not’ sister without looking like a creep. So he’d just gauge her up with the time slowed down a little bit. Her eyes were blue like his dad’s were. If anything, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say they could be siblings. They had a very complimentary bone structure. Hers obviously much more feminine and smooth. He could feel her energy, her power--or was that just his excitement? No. He was old enough and had plenty of experience with other people like ‘them’. Wanda was very powerful and it made Peter happy. She had a kind disposition with gentle eyes, and yet ability to probably definitely fuck some shit up. Definitely not a stretch in relations, this universe or another.
And, back into what had only been a second for Wanda--”With the Doc? Is he being a creep? Let me know if he is…” Although his eyebrows were raised in suspicion there was a small twinkle in his eye that lent to the idea that just maybe Peter was teasing and liked to give Strange shit. And mostly everyone else too.
Not Wanda though. Not until she was comfortable with him.
“Take a seat if you want,” the cushions on the couch were very squishy and bounce worthy. “Oh are you hungry?--I didn’t think about that. No biggie. Just let me know what you want.” He’d be right back before she could blink her eyes. Literally.
Is he being a creep - Wanda had to laugh a little at that, as the notion was ridiculous but she picked up on the teasing well enough. “He’s not,” she assured, crossing her legs once she was comfortable on the sofa. Very squishy indeed. “We were acquainted at Tony’s funeral briefly, and then he was the first to locate me when I arrived. He is trying to teach me a thing or two about magic, I suppose?”
That word rolled off her tongue so weirdly still. Magic. Her powers had been products of her exposure to one of the Infinity Stones and everyone had more clinical definitions to her abilities - psionic manipulations, that kind of stuff. Dr. Strange was the first to identify it in a different way from what he’d seen firsthand during that final battle with Thanos. It was a path she was interested in exploring.
Because, really. What else was she to do here?
“I am not hungry at the moment but maybe I will be later. I think it’s…” Wanda nibbled on her lip before answering honestly. “Nerves. Not bad nerves. I look at you and I see someone I could be related to and - I’m sorry if saying that is weird. You even have similar hair to Pietro. The color, I mean. Is it natural?”
When Wanda declined the offer for food Peter at least went to his pastel diner style fridge at a “normal” pace to grab the both of them some water bottles—which he set on the coffee table before taking a seat across from her on the love seat.
He could feel those nerves as she spoke, and he empathized with her. Why couldn’t he just.. also be her brother? This multiverse stuff and it’s complicated way of screwing things up. But she was forced to face someone with similarities.
“Heh, yeah, it’s natural.” He scratched at the back of his head a little, pushing his bangs back over his dark eyebrows that did have a silver tint when the light hit just right. “I have no idea what silver hair has to do with being fast? But it’s better than a lot of physical appearances other mutants have to deal with.”
Peter relaxed back against the couch, folding his arms over his Nirvana shirt, taking in more of her presence. “Magic sounds like it’s a lot more fun. And at least you’ve got someone to help you with it….what’s your favorite thing you can do?”
She seemed to keep her magic abilities shy whereas everyone else here had an ego. Maybe if he directed it in a positive manner. Peter wasn’t afraid of her. He knew what it was like to be alone and have no one to tell you why things were happening like this. No one to calm you down, no one to prevent you from making mistakes or hurting yourself and others.
Her favorite thing to do? With her powers? The question was more mundane than what she was used to but with a twist unique to their kind. Wanda reached for the water bottle, untwisting the cap slowly as she pondered that question. She was capable of less terrifying things from time to time - she had reeled back on the mind manipulations because controlling people was a dick move, so she’d been told.
“Moving things with my mind is convenient,” Wanda expressed with a light shrug, and with a flair of her fingers came the crackle of the red energy she was known for - a similar aura surrounded a random assortment of belongings from the living room. They danced around in mid air before they tidily settled back to their respectful spots. “I can use it for things that aren’t so… terrible, I suppose. Turning things on and off. Bringing the remote control towards me when I don’t want to get up from the couch.”
Overall she didn’t care to flex her skills - she was aware she could rip the earth apart from under people’s feet effortlessly. There was no need to flaunt. “You seem like you would have fun with yours?” she guessed after a sip from the bottle. “Pietro often did. He enjoyed catching people off guard.”
Peter’s dark eyes brightened at watching her levitate the things around them, smirk widening to reveal his teeth. “Oh just that? No big deal?” He teased gently, giving her a small wink.
“Damn, I’m jealous.” He always was, he thought everyone’s powers were fun because Peter always imagined the shenanigans he’d get into having them. It was probably just as so that he was just..fast. Anything else might have been dangerous. Not that his abilities weren’t.
He could tell Wanda was still pretty conservative about her abilities, so the speedster didn’t ask anymore questions. Of course he had them.
“Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, nothing beats anyone’s facial reactions. It definitely comes in handy if you need to bail a school full of children out of an exploding building or flick someone across the room with a poke.” Trying fight club where he couldn’t use his abilities to unfairly use the force of his speed to brutally beat anyone was a challenge. And he loved it. “I just..get bored easily? I also get the feeling that I’m not really going to be able to just have a normal life like everyone else because my mind and my body...just don’t work like that? If that makes sense?”
Why was he comfortable enough to share that with Wanda? He wasn’t sure, but he knew she wouldn’t judge him. And he knew she could probably relate somehow. “But whatever right? It’s not like everyone needs an existential purpose.”
Those were very specific examples, and something told Wanda that he might be speaking from experience. There was no fighting the smile her mouth quirked into - Peter seemed so light. Easy to have a conversation with, devilishly carefree. Most of her friends started out as enemies and she wasn’t particularly skilled at socializing (there was too much fight in her life for that), but she didn’t feel uncomfortable around him. The nerves that had frazzled her earlier seemed to have settled.
“No, not everyone does. But are you saying whatever because you don’t actually mind, or do you actually want some of that normalcy?” Wanda asked, gently. Sometimes it was easy to come off as not wanting something when you felt as if you couldn’t have it. She herself craved something normal. The stuff they showed in good-feely television shows with white-picket fences; a home full of squabble and laughter with a lot of love.
There had been hope about that kind of life some day. Those hopes didn’t really exist anymore. “Lives like ours are strange for several reasons, though I always kind of wished to have a slice of what everyone else has. Or maybe not a slice but at least - a taste?”
Everyone (or just the few people he was real with) always seemed so insightful about Peter’s quirks and emotions. The corner of his mouth tugged upwards when Wanda called him out and he shrugged sheepishly. “Yeah, you got me. I don’t think normal is in the cards 100% but like somewhere in the spectrum? Whatever it can be..for people like us. I feel kind of stuck.”
He could see in her eyes they were on the same page— her even more so. So much emotion. Peter felt and empathized with her. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have specifics. She could read him well enough and they obviously had a lot in common.
Peter went to grab his little tortoise he’d adopted from the town event—no notion of movement except for within a half a blink he was previously on his side of the couch and then crouched before Wanda, holding the bright colored tortoise in front of her. “I got a pet? A little cheeky with a tortoise, I know, but she’s cute and chill. Her name’s Nikki Sixx.” He ran his fingers gently over her shell and held her out to Wanda in case she wanted to touch her. Pets were normal. A small bit of new responsibility. A successful social experiment, but Peter still wanted more. “Erik—My dad? Made a place for people like us to live peacefully. It’s cool and all but.. I just don’t know where I fit in this world. And as usual, even amongst other hero’s and magical folks, I feel like a black sheep.”
It was so very emo but you know, Wanda had understood him thus far. Maybe she had coping mechanisms she could share if she wanted. He wanted to get a job and make Erik happy—find a place, be content, but that just wasn’t happening.
Oh, the deja vu. That blink of speed wasn’t anything new for Wanda - it just had been awhile since she had seen anything like it again. One second he was seated and then the next he was in front of her cradling a pet in his hands. It was a slice of normalcy she had never had the luxury to have, either. She could remember wanting something when she was little, very little. But there was war going on outside their window,and home was equivalent to one room with barely the money to feed all four mouths.
A tortoise was an unconventional choice, ironic for a very obvious reason but she liked it - Nikki Sixx was cute and yes, she did touch her. Wanda was careful as if a caress to the shell could crack it in half. “Maybe you’re being too hard on yourself,” she told him quietly with a shrug, tracing the lines in the tortoise’s shell. “You move so quickly with everything else but maybe this - adjusting - is something you’re going to have to take slowly. I think I’m going to feel stuck for awhile, too.”
There was so much to figure out after what happened - and it wasn’t something that would happen quickly. It was going to take time, a lot of it, even if Wanda wished she could speed it up herself and move past the grueling parts. “You are not alone, if it helps being a little miserable with some company.”
He was how old and yet Wanda seemed so much smarter. Maybe because of being a mutant, not really aging...well he was just a little more stupid. But she made so much sense and her words gripped at his heart, pulling a stupid smile on his face.
Peter laughed it off, he usually did when he didn’t know how to handle something, and set Nikki in Wanda’s palm. “It doesn’t feel so miserable being able to get to know Erik, and now knowing you. I think maybe I just make things complicated and need to stop bitching.” He shook his head at himself, running a hand through his thick silver hair once more.
“Enough about my crap—how are you adjusting?”
“You’re not bitching,” Wanda assured with a small chuckle, slightly distracted by the shelled reptile plopped into her hands. That was when she decided to get comfortable, tension bleeding off her bones as she leaned back into the couch with Miss Nikki Sixx in her possession. “Though I’m - adjusting, I guess.”
Slowly. Surely. The pace that she was on probably rivaled the tortoise’s, though the point was that she’d get there. “I had something important to do before I came here,” she alluded with a sigh, both defeated and frustrated. “I can’t now. Figuring out what to do knowing that is… difficult.”
It wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before, however - at this rate she was a professional at losing people. You’d think it would get easier the more she lost them. “Having people here helps. It doesn’t feel as lonely.”
She was sweet, but even Peter knew he still talked too fast if he got excited and had no filter for things that should have been “inside thoughts”.
He listened to Wanda, dark eyes watching the happy little tortoise wriggle about in her hands, flowing up to gauge her face. Of course he waited until she was finished speaking before slipping into the freeze frame that was the real world for him to grab a water bottle out of the fridge. A small rush of air and there was a bottle on the coffee table for Wanda as well, Peter seated comfortably beside her on the couch, most of his water gone.
“Well I can promise you at the very least, you’re not alone. Weird as it may be the people here care. Toss in a bunch of oddballs into a magical world where anything could happen and everyone is team Stay Alive.” His brows lifted as he turned his head to take a drink of more water, surprised obviously considering how cut throat and selfish most people from his world were.
She of course had him and her other folks from her universe but that went without saying. Biting his lip and turning his shoulders to face her, he couldn’t help himself from curiously asking, “Mind if I ask what the important thing was?”
That would have driven him absolutely nuts. Thank god he never had anything going on.
Most of those who knew her, well - knew. Wanda hadn’t talked about it much to them. A handful of them had been there to witness what had happened anyway, and she had been filled in on what exactly happened to the one body of the only deceased Avenger they had in their possession.
“I was trying to retrieve my boyfriend’s body,” she answered, eyes focused on the tortoise - still outlining the grooves in her shell, petting that curious head poking out of it very gently too. The way the words came out, though - they sounded mechanical, like she was trying to detach as much emotion as she could from them. Crying on Peter’s couch was something she would prefer to avoid. “I guess the proper term for what he was is a synthezoid? He was killed in battle back home. Then half of us were… erased from existence for five years, and his body was apparently taken to a government facility with the conditions of not being used as some experiment or further weaponized. I don’t trust that they listened. I was about to find out the location of the facility, and then I was brought here.”
Wanda had wanted a funeral. Something - anything - that offered closure. Obviously the way she wanted to do it wasn’t happening and unless Vallo zapped her back into her own world and timeline, she wasn’t going to be able to achieve that anytime soon.
Ooof that’s a pretty awful thing. It was almost like Peter could sort of feel her mood. She was very careful, but very strong, calculating her movements to try and possibly..keep herself together.
But of course his silly Twinkie heart was already deeply invested in another family tie, be what it must—and he felt for her. “I’m sorry, that sucks.” Not the most elegant of words but true none the less. Peter instinctively put a steady hand on her shoulder— he was used to being a big brother from his human sister, and now for Anka. He hoped it was alright for Wanda. “Maybe he’ll turn up here and you can get some closure?” Hopeful thinking, but Peter had found Erik and Wanda this way.
“Either way you should take the time you need to grieve, even if I can’t help you do it like you wanted. If you let that shit get pent up it’ll just hurt more.” He squeezed her shoulder gently before letting go. “I’ll help you with that in any way I can? If I learned anything, being an X-men trying to control worrying about things we don’t have control over isn’t healthy.”
No, the touch wasn’t unwelcomed or anything. It did admittedly surprise her, but it wasn’t as if she seized up at it - it merely drew her eyes back to him, as if she was studying him closely for a bit there. He was so ernest about the offer too, despite barely knowing one another It was like there really was this strange, metaphysical sibling bond that endured all these timelines and universes, just to bring them to this very point.
Her mourning felt like this constant mood, though, and she opted to shift away from the heaviness of it. It weighed her down plenty by herself. She didn’t need to have it weigh her down now. “Do you -” Wanda’s nose crinkled. “Do you want to get some food, maybe? I haven’t really eaten. You can tell me more about the X-Men, if you want.”
Really, she wanted to know everything she could - or everything he was willing to share with her. If there was anything good to come out of this entire situation, meeting Peter was certainly one of them.
If an open universe with possibilities was open on the table then Peter wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. His dad, a step sister and now another sister from another mister? He’d take that family he’d always craved. That thing he’d always been missing.
The speedster grinned a large, toothy grin that wasn’t that much different than Erik’s. “Oh, Wanda, I always wanna get some food.” A rush of air here and there and he had his shades, a bomber jacket, and was standing waiting patiently beside her, hand held out to be a proper gentlemanly brother. She deserved it. “How about I tell you about being an X-men and you tell me about being an Avenger? Fair trade.”