Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Even before agreeing to Baron Von Strucker's experiments, Pietro and Wanda always had been close. There was a connection between them. As twins they were inseparable. They were never far from each other and could tell when the other was in trouble. They were able to communicate without words with their own separate language of movements and looks that only they could understand. And disagreements rarely happened between them while Wanda was able to temper Pietro’s anger and quelled his impulsiveness. They looked out for each other; they didn't need anyone else, only each other. After all, Maximoffs look after their own, after family. Pietro and Wanda were the only ones left after the bombing took out their apartment when they were 10. After their 'enhancements' they became even closer, almost one.
With Wanda's power, she was constantly in Pietro's mind, a constant presence, even when he couldn't physically reach or see her, she was there. Her power created a link, a pathway between their minds that he could use to enter her mind or at least talk to her without her having to be completely in his head.
Their connection was so strong that one day, during one of Strucker's tests for them, when she's suddenly gone, dead, it hurts. His mind, his heart, they’re both broken now that she’s gone. And it hurts so fucking much when she's not there anymore and her power transfers over to him through their fractured bond. Pietro hates Stucker, the scientists, the guards, all of them, in that moment. He wants it to end, wants them gone. So much that he strikes back because he can't take it, the pain, the emptiness. He keeps moving until someone gets a needle in his neck.
After that he can't remember much of anything. Just passing images of a chair, something made of shining metal, red blood and ... blue eyes? And then he can't remember being more than just Pietro. It has been only Pietro since his parents were killed when the bomb struck their apartment when he was 10. There was no one else and there never was. So he grew up on the streets alone and volunteered for Strucker’s experiments alone. Pietro was the only one to survive the enhancements, alone.
-Line Break-
Occasionally Pietro catches glimpses of a girl in the guards' minds with powers like his. She has better control over the red energy but doesn’t seem to unnerve the guards the way he can with the mind reading. And always he's pictured with her and they’re close, always close, together. Sometimes he feels a pang of something in his mind, like there's some sort of echo or a broken connection there. Twin.
Now he can't remember his pain and doesn't know why all of them, the scientists, the guards and even Strucker, fear him so irrationally. It feels like a recent development, as if they're waiting for him to break, to remember.
But what? He's unimportant, just Pietro, nothing more. Hollow, broken and ... forsaken.