“Right here,” he says, gesturing to the couch, “And I forgot it. But it wasn’t here when I returned. Everyone knows it’s mine, I wear it all the time, so no one would take it on accident. So I think that someone’s sabotaging me.”

    He paces back and forth, rubbing his hands together. “Who do you think has it out for me in this building?”

Her cheeks pull with a sweet but amused smile. “Much better. Apology accepted. I’m Darcy, by the way.”

She rises from her spot, smiling even wider as he glances down at his shoes. “I think I’m good with that. Where’s the last place you saw it, hot shot?”

     Pietro’s eyebrows furrow, and he bites back a piece of sarcasm. He’d hate to put off a stranger before he even introduced himself. He grips the guy’s hand and pulls him up with one hard tug, then nods in affirmation to his question.

       “I’ve lived in New York for a couple months now. My name is Pietro,” he tells him and shakes his hand before he lets go.

     He steps back and rocks on his heels. He’s jittering, anxious to get moving again, but he feels bad for interrupting this man’s day and the least he could do is to make sure he was okay. For the sake of being polite, if nothing else.

       “You need me to run you to a hospital?” he asks, “You looked like your shoulder was in pain.”

The question lands the second time, and Kasper rolls his shoulder while he’s still closer to the ground than further away from it - which does hurt. “A little - it’s uh, fine, though. It’ll be, fine.” 

    Running too fast - explains why he hadn’t seen the guy, and he frowns at the implication of someone running that fast. Mutant is the first thing his mind jumps too, but he’s not sure how the culture here views mutants, and even though he’s got a few friends and a group of people who seem fine with it… that doesn’t mean it’s okay here. 

“Yeah, actually,” he answers, taking the guy’s hand - he’s gonna be sore tomorrow, but it’s nothing too terrible. “Um, New York. City. New York- City. New York?” he offers, the city and the state making him sound a little like a broken record. “Are you?” 

     She’s always been more reasonable than he was, and Pietro knows it. He also knows that she has a good point. He sandwiches her hand in his and squeezes, tracing over her fingers with his like he used to when they were children and holding hands in public wasn’t unusual. Her palms were still smooth and her wrists were still small, but he wonders when they grew so much.

       “But he’s the one who did create Ultron. And he made bombs, and weapons of war,” he argues. He sighs and his face opens up to a much softer expression.

       “That wasn’t your fault. You can’t get rid of me that easily.” He lets go of her hands and cups her face, offering her a smile in hopes that she wouldn’t cry and that his heart wouldn’t crack. “Do you understand me? I’m not leaving you.”

         The grief that flows through her at the thought of their parents resonates from deep within, causing her breath to hitch. “I remember.” she responds, words taking a cool and crisp tone as she speaks them. Her eyes fade out some, as though she’s looking through her brother and not at him but she corrects herself quickly, forcing the vacancy out and letting warmth fill them again. She reaches down to grab his much larger hand, taking it between her smaller ones.           “I am not asking you to forgive Stark, I still hate what he did but I will not let my resentment for his actions keep me from something I know will be good for us. We have changed, Pietro, this is who we are now. Don’t forget that I let Stark create Ultron…” the guilt that rips through her then is enough to physically halt the words in her throat and and her thoughts fall to the day she thought he’d been ripped from her entirely. “——-I almost lost you.” she whispers, unable to produce anything more audible. Her eyes are brimmed with tears, the mere thought of what had happened was enough to render her absolutely weak.

     “I just want to go in and see what’s going on, but apparently I’m not on the precious, all-knowing list,” he scoffs, crossing his arms, but his expression and body language make a drastic shift when he turns to her. “On second thought, I might stay here if this is where I can find women as beautiful as you.”

Ororo pauses in step and turns at the voice. She folds her arms over her chest and leans to one side a bit. “What exactly is the problem?” She asks turning her blue eyes to the guard.

     “My mistake.”

       He stepped forward and a grin worked its way on his face. “I am. My name           is Pietro Maximoff. You’ve heard of me?”

        “No, I do not belong to SHIELD. But I know people who work there.

             You’re Wanda’s brother? Aren’t you? The fast one.”

     His eyes close for a short moment as she brushes away his hair, then open again to meet her familiar ones. In that short time, he wonders how she would act in his place, if he were the one who wanted to stay behind and if he had the choice to give in. (He knew he wouldn’t, but that wasn’t something he wanted to admit.)

     “Don’t you remember what Stark did?” his words are murmurs but they take on a sharp edge, as quiet as they are, “He killed our family. He almost killed us. He almost killed you.” He shakes his head and places a hand on her shoulder. “I can’t stay here because I can’t forgive that.”

             There is a weight that settles upon her chest, a knot building uncomfortably in her throat as he speaks. “Pietro….” she murmurs quietly before shifting to gently place her hands on either sides of her twins face. Wanda looks up at him and lets out a soft sigh, using her left hand to smooth away some of the stray tendrils of his pale hair.           “Our life was good small, yes, we made due with what he had….” she starts, still fiddling with his hair before she finally builds the courage to meet his gaze, her left hand falling to his face once more to hold it between her palms. “But this—–” she insists “We wanted to help people, this is where we belong. I have seen so many paths and we always end up here. This is who we are, brother. Why do you want to reject it?” she asked him, furrowing her brows, tone still soft. 

     “You can never be too careful. Not with everything going on now, and         not when SHIELD is involved.

     “I’ve seen you back at the base before. You’re one of the best SHIELD has,              no?”

    “Nothing that concerns you, I’m sure. Why are you so concerned about being a target?”

     His words choke up his throat and he swallows them back down. He was irrational in thinking that he and Wanda would always live together like they did in Europe for many years, he knows that, but what hurt was knowing that this was the change she wanted to settle for. He hesitates, and when he does speak again, it isn’t confident.

     “Our home was small and dirty, yes, but it was a good home. We can fix it and make it work again, like we did before,” he urges, and he’s not sure which one of them he’s trying to persuade, “SHIELD is much bigger than the both of us. We can do more good with tiny lives.”

        “It was not all of them.” she responds “That aside, my hands are hardly clean.” She was the one to bloom the fear in Tony’s heart, she had to take responsibility for that. Wanda saw what he would become and did not stop him. “Go home? What home, Pietro? Sokovia was destroyed, do you want us to go to the streets of Romania and resume our tiny little lives, surviving on scraps?” she asked him gently. 

"That's very impressive," he admits with a nod, "I've never met anyone who could do that before. Actually... how can you do it? There couldn't have been an English-speaking squirrel who taught you, no?"

He tilted his head and furrowed his eyebrows. There was more to this than he had first thought, that much was becoming obvious to him. “How much stranger have you seen?”

“She’s just in a bit of a mood. She’s expecting, so it just makes her a little sensitive.” She smiled at Pietro, and her own lips curled up into a wide smile. It wasn’t animals she was good with, honestly. Just Squirrels. “Nice to meet you, Pietro, and uh…Yeah, Squirrelese is a thing. Tippy speaks a northern grey squirrel. She understands when I speak english to her too.” It was now her turn to scratch the back of her head. “Insane, I know but…” She smiled. “I’ve seen stranger.” 

He sighs and drops his hands down by his sides. “Alright. I see your point,” he admits, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a jackass. Or a child.”

He rubbed the back of his neck like he had a crick in it and glances down at the spot between his tennis shoes. His eyes meet hers again and the corner of his mouth crooks up. “Can we agree to put aside our differences over tracksuits if you help me and I continue being pretty?”

She ticks off each of her points with her fingers. “One – you could maybe apologize before asking me for a favor. Two – yes, I can help you look but only after you apologize. Three – you sound like a three-year-old. Four – ……it’s not great either though. But. That’s less to do with that tracksuit in particular and more to do with the fact that I’ve never liked tracksuits. You’re still very pretty though, so don’t be sad.”

    “Are you hurt?” he repeats, “I’m sorry, I... I guess I was running too fast to see you.”

    Pietro crouches and picks up palm-sized, shiny, paper rectangles -- postcards, he sees once he flips them over -- that blew to the ground from the nearby truck as he passed; so this man wasn’t from around here.

    “Visiting?” he asks, extending a hand out to help him up. “Where are you from?”

One second Kasper’s looking at postcards, and the next he steps away from the little tourist truck and – something happens, and he ends up on his ass, utterly disoriented and blinking at the sudden jolt of shock ripping through his body. 

“Ow,” he states, and he’s still sitting there when the other guy comes up. “Um, what?” But he winces as he gets up on his hands and knees, his shoulder well tweaked. 

     “I’m just curious. This is a publicized event, no? I think that means      that the public is supposed to know what’s going on.”

   “I’m afraid you do not have proper clearance to enter this area.”

@scarlettxsorceress

     “I really don’t think this is a good idea, Wanda. We can’t forget what they’ve         done, I think it’s better that we just... go home.”

I’m fine, I just need to take a minute.

@mutant-kasper

     Pietro was running, which wasn’t unusual. What was, though, was the guy whom he brushed past. It was pretty hard to miss seeing a whole human being, and yet Pietro pulled it off somehow. The contact was brief, but the high velocity that he was travelling at could do some real damage as fleeting as the touch was. He skidded to a stop and, heels smoking, he turned back and jogged to the man.

     “La dracu,” he swore under his breath, then hurried and asked, “I’m sorry, are you hurt at all?”