After whatever the hell happens in Dark Phoenix, Peter Maximoff –who is very much alive, thank you very much,– decides to have a try of a normal life.
Some years later Peter is working as an architect on a restoration project of old libraries in Central Europe; and in Sokovia, their last project, Peter meets a girl in a bar.
Her name is Suzanna and she has long curly hair, a dark shade of strawberry blonde.
She witty, intelligent, impressive.
She’s a scientist, she tells him and laughs at his cheesy joke.
She asks what brings him to Europe; “self-discovery” - Peter answers - “both of my parents are from here.”
They bond over growing up in a country that their parents fled to, Suzanna’s mother was a Polish Romani like Peter’s, they talked until the bar closed, and Suzanna offered to show him ‘Sokovia’s greatest treasure’.
She took him to a church in the centre of Novi Grad, that had long been burned down.
“My mother and father stayed here, during the war” She told him.
Sokovia, in the 1940s, had been a small, densely populated country, its Western side was separated from Slovakia by its river and its Eastern side separated from the Czech Republic by its mountain, it’s capital, Novi Grad was its only major city.
At the start of spring 1941, it had the same sized population as Luxembourg, by the time the spring of 1995 rolled around, Sokovia’s population had tripled.
Between the river and the mountain, over 120,000 refugees hid from the Nazi rule.
“They housed a thousand here ” Suzanna explains “Sokovia embraced it’s refugees and protected them from the Nazis and their allies, in 1994 they stormed the city and burned this church down.
That is Sokovia, unbent under tyranny, we opened our arms to those poor souls that fled concentration camps and protected them as a country should protect its own.
It’s nice, that you worked to restore our central library. But if you really wanted to restore something of importance for Sokovia, you should have started here”
Peter was supposed to stay in Novi Grad for half a year.
He ended up staying for five years.
He restored Sokovia’s church and as the candles lit the altar, he asked Suzanna on a date.
He met Suzanna’s parents after months of dating, her mother was brash and spoke Polish without the secrecy Peter’s mother had, and her father called him Russian endearments.
Dates turned, into long cuddle sessions, that turned into them moving in together and painting their walls yellow.
One day he woke up with long curly hair on his face, and as the world moved in its agonising slow pace, for the first time he didn’t mind, he counted Suzanna’s eyelashes, again and again, and again, and he realised he was in love.
He proposed in winter, in the spring, after the wedding, they moved to the countryside.
Suzanna planted an apple tree into their garden. She tended to the tree, with devotion, and when the apples grew, she made them into a pie, and jam and anything she could think of.
When the twins were born, first Pietro and twelve minutes later Wanda, for the first time in a long time, Peter considered finding Erik.
The twins inherited Peter’s endless energy, luckily for their mother, their father had the speed to match them.
One day Peter considered his life; his wife was smart and pretty and fierce, and she always wore summer clothes, even in the winter, she lived with endless amounts of patience for her husband and equally endless gentleness for their children.
Their house was old and littered with drawing done by the twins, and old cheap furniture they bought when they first moved in, the scrapes on the floors and walls that came from three energy-filled joy pills living in the same house and all of it coming together as a mark that proved this house, had become their home.
And Pietro and Wanda were the lights of his life, every day Peter fell more in love with his children, every day he feared losing them more.
That day Peter called Charles, he didn’t tell him where he was, but he told him about Suzanna and Pietro and Wanda, apple pies and tiny hands and how the world moved at the perfect pace.
Charles said he was happy for Peter, he sounded like he was crying.
Wanda and Pietro turned eight, and Kamil Novoty rose to power.
Sokovia’s freedom was threatened and the people rose to arms.
In the following years, Sokovia was torn apart by the fighting between the corrupt government and the citizens, and amongst it all, half of Peter’s home was burned to the ground.
A year after they moved to the capital, they had settled into their apartment building well, and despite the growing revolution in the streets, their family continued living, peacefully, together.
Then Peter got shot in the foot, during a riot in the marketplace.
Suzanna fretted over him for weeks, and Pietro followed him with a blanket that he threw over his father at every opportunity.
One afternoon, Suzanna was making apple soup to cheer Peter up, and directed the twins in chopping vegetables for the beef stew.
They settled around the table, eating and laughing, like they did every day, happy though not necessarily safe, a loving family.
Having dinner, just the four of them.
(Peter considered telling Charles where they were, Peter considered finally contacting his father)
The first shell hits, and it makes a hole in the floor, everything happens so slow, for Peter, but his leg is useless and he can’t move fast enough, can’t do anything.
His mind processes everything at super speed.
The tears of fright that roll down his children’s eyes, so so slowly, Peter’s wife gasps as the floor cracks underneath them, so so slowly, Suzanna grabs his hand, her hand is so so soft, it has tended to him and their children so so warmly.
Peter holds his wife’s hand and looks at his crying children, the hole widens and they go in.
Years later, the Avengers, the X-men and the Brotherhood of Mutants collaborate in defeating some aliens trying to invade earth, that had also kidnapped a bunch of mutant children for a zoo.
In the quiet after the battle, Wanda Maximoff sits down next to Charles Xavier and Magneto and tells them who her father was.
She lets Charles hug her, and tells him that her father spoke fondly of him, and then turns to Magneto and says the same.
She speaks of her mother, and the apple tree she tended to and their first home that was peaceful and burned down.
She speaks of her father and how he worked on several projects at a time, always filled with boundless energy and good-humour, and how he blasted rock music at full volume and always managed to convince their mother to dance with him.
She speaks of Pietro, and the protests and Hydra.
And Charles recognizes the pain and rage and grief that sings in her mind, so similar to what he first glimpsed once, long ago; underwater, trying to stop a submarine.
The Professor cries, for another student and friend lost, for another child he had failed to protect, for the young woman that had felt such pain.
And then Wanda turns to Magneto, and using hushed German, tells her father’s secret to Erik Lehnsherr.
And Erik cries, for another one of his children that he has lost.
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