super speed. google it.

It probably wasn’t right to be out so late, needing some time to clear his head sometimes. It was hard to shake being alive again, unnatural for anyone to be given the chance to breathe air again. He was gone for so long, that he shouldn’t have came back with his head screwed on right — who was Brother Blood to play GOD by giving back life to Grant? “I understand, happen to do that myself sometimes. There’s something about saying your thoughts out loud that makes ‘em feel more real, better to work through.” Especially with adjusting being a factor for his own situation, trying to deal with what happened to him. No matter, focuses on what was happening here and now. “I usually stay up late — I like how quiet the streets are. What about you?”

Understanding was not something that Pietro found for himself often. All his life, the only person who had truly understood him, the only person who had ever even tried was Wanda. They were on the same wavelength until they weren’t, until the bullets ripped through his body and cut him off from her, and Pietro didn’t know how to get back there. He didn’t know how to be the man he’d been before. He didn’t know if that man existed anymore. But... He knew that there was something in this man’s eyes that somehow reflected that feeling. He knew that, for the first time in a while, he felt understood, even if it was only marginally. Smiling, he nodded his head. “Mine can be hard to work through,” he admitted. His thoughts, like everything else, were fast. Gone from one heartbeat to the next. Impulsivity, it seemed, was a trait ingrained in his DNA as surely as his speed. He shrugged when his own question was turned back on him, not entirely surprised at it. “I don’t sleep well,” he replied honestly. “Too much energy.” 

❝ They want what we have got. ❞ || @blastcd

Pietro was drunk. This was not a new occurrence. Getting drunk as a speedster was not an easy thing to do, but in a city like New York, there were bars specifically catered to people with metabolisms like his. He was grateful for this. On nights like this, he needed to be drunk.

He glanced up at the sound of someone speaking to him, flashing a wide, wild grin at the words. “They do,” he agreed, speech slurred. “Maybe we give it to them. Maybe we... What is it they want again?”

❝ I can see you’re blinded by the sadness of it all. ❞ || @mysteriousmutant

It wasn’t his universe. Pietro knew this. This was not the world he had grown up in, wasn’t the one he watched his sister die for in Wakanda. It was a strange new world, as his father would have said. This should have granted him some distance, should have made what happened in the park sting a little less. 

It didn’t.

This was not his world, but an unspeakable tragedy had happened here. The weight of it sat on his chest in a way he could not explain, suffocated him, made him ache. Maybe it was related to how it happened, too --- all that gunfire, the raging battle... It was painfully similar to Sokovia. Pietro glanced up at the sound of a voice, muscle in his jaw tightening at the words. “I’m not sad,” he insisted, fire burning through the words. “I’m --- I’m angry. That shouldn’t have happened.” 

❝ Wait for me, I’m comin’. ❞ || @captainmarvelofthestars

Wait for me. It was a common request for a man who could run at the speeds Pietro was capable of. It was not one he often honored, especially not now. Not after the catastrophe in Central Park, not after his attempts to help ended just as poorly as they always did. Pietro tried to be a hero, and he didn’t make a difference. People were dead. Good people, the consensus said. 

(Weren’t they always?)

He didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to slow. He wanted to run and run and run and not stop running, but... this voice was strange. It was closer than it should have been, not a fleeting unintelligible yell the way most things sounded when he was at speed. So he stopped, tilting his head to the side and pausing as she caught up. “You’re fast,” he observed, eyes flickering over her carefully, “but I’m still faster. I’ll run if I don’t like what you have to say. So who are you?”

Wanda still carried the grief of losing her twin with her. She felt it in her veins every single day. For a long time, after his death, she’d looked for him. She waited for him - forgetting - that he’d never show. There were times when she’d learn something and the only person she wanted to show was Pietro. The rage that she’d felt when she’d learned about his death had never left her. She felt it every day. The day that she’d lost her twin, she’d lost a piece of her soul and it was something she’d never recover from. 

She remembered when they were younger when Pietro told her that they had each other and that was all they’d ever need. Wanda never imagined that she wouldn’t have him. She never imagined that he’d leave her on this Earth alone. Pietro was all she ever needed and when she lost him - things were never the same. Wanda still wasn’t over it now. 

But now - here he was. Pietro stood in front of her - alive and well - and she couldn’t believe it. Wanda had imagined the moment a million different ways. She dreamed about it. She knew that she could use her magic and see it. However, she’d never had the heart to do so. Seeing him and knowing she’d never be with him again - it was too much for her to handle. Too much for her to bear. But this…. It was real. 

He was saying that he didn’t. But how was it possible? Where had he been during all of the time that had passed? Her grip on her twin brother tightened as he spoke, not wanting to let go and realize that it was all a dream. She opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t find the words. Then, Pietro was speaking in their native tongue and she found herself drawn to him. The way that she always had been. Her eyes met his and she was unable to look away. Pietro began to tell the story and she knew. She knew that it was real. It was inexplicable. But it was real. 

“Pietro,” she whispered his name softly, as she leaned in to rest her forehead against his. I missed you, she thought, knowing that she wouldn’t need to say a word for him to understand. She could feel it in her gut. It wasn’t just his explanation. It was the way that he looked at her. The way that they connected just like they always had. Her grip on him tightened once more, a silent cue for him to not go anywhere. Though, she doubted that he would now that they had found each other once more. “You’re real. You did not… How?”  

Loss didn’t happen all at once. It was something Pietro learned when his parents died, something he’d learned intimately during everything that followed. It happened in an instant, of course. One moment, they were eating dinner. His mother was cutting her meager meat, as if slicing it into smaller pieces and eating it one bite at a time might fool her stomach into thinking it was getting a full meal. His father was telling a joke Pietro would never know the punchline to, animated and bright and alive. Then the world collapsed around them, and they were gone. There one moment, gone the next. It was a heartbeat, just an instant. 

But what happened after was more complex.

The loss itself was quick, but the grief was anything but. Years after they died, there were days Pietro was hit with the thought of them in a way so overwhelming that he feared he might choke on it. He’d catch a whiff of bread baking in the window and remember how excited his mother had been the day she’d saved enough to bake some of her own. (Pietro had scarfed it down so quickly, and the regret when it was gone was instantaneous. He wished he’d savored it. He wished he’d savored every instant.) He slipped his hands into a man’s pocket and barely missed brushing against hands blackened with dust and dirt from a hard day’s work and had to look up at his face because for a moment, he could have sworn it was father. People spoke of grief happening in stages, as if there were boxes to be ticked, but Pietro knew this wasn’t true. There was no time table on loss.

Especially not when that loss made little sense.

Pietro had not lost his sister, not truly. It was him who had fallen in Sokovia, his blood that stained the dirt red. For all Wanda knew, she had buried him in a grave near Clint’s farm. She had his name carved out in granite, left flowers for him in the dirt. Pietro had not lost her, but he had. He spent years in a cage not knowing where she was, not knowing if she was okay. He was cut off from the world, cut off from her, and the loss had felt just as tangible as it had when his parents disappeared through that hole in the floor. Seeing her turn to dust in those woods in Wakanda, watching her float away on the wind... It only extended that loss. It only solidified it.

But she was here now. Both of them, against all odds, had their feet on the ground in the same universe, on the same dirt. The world was right again, and it did not matter that it wasn’t the same world he had been born into. It was a world with her in it. That was the only thing he cared about, the only thing he had ever needed. She was solid in his arms, and Pietro was home. For the first time since he fell on that street in Sokovia, Pietro was alive. 

 The blur solidified into a man, and Roman cocked his own head, clearly sizing him up despite the inability for his expression to change much without the prosthetic.  This man was a speedster, but the clothes and accent were all wrong for the Flash and his ilk.  

“See, that’s what I thought,” Roman drawled, “But you go to give a kindergartner a Glock, and suddenly you’re endangering children and setting a bad example.  Better to tell them to cower in their classrooms when the crazies come knocking.”

And yes, he was well aware that he looked like one of them.  

Roman kept his gun at his side, taking a step closer to the man.  Another.  “You know, now you’ve gone and kept me from making my point.  Very inconveniently, I might add.  People need to understand that I’m not the sort of business partner that you can betray without paying dearly.”  That uninvolved civilians had also been in the line of fire was of little concern to the criminal.  No one was off limits.  

“That being said, I may be willing to let it slide.  I could use someone with your unique… gift… for a job that’s posed some problems.  If you were interested.  Then again, it may be beyond even your skillset.”

Never let it be said that Roman didn’t know how to bait.

There was a moment, a heartbeat when they simply stared at one another. Pietro was familiar with the look a man got when he was deciding whether or not you were worth his time. He’d seen it reflected on the faces of Hydra agents who’d always been more interested in his sister than him, recognized it in the eyes of a robot who only ever viewed Pietro as an added bonus, saw it in the Avengers who’d believed both Pietro and his sister were sob stories to be twisted into heroes. There was always one common thread between them all, one thing that remained constant --- in their eyes, Pietro always came second place to his sister. As a threat, as an ally, as a hero. Anyone who had ever looked at him like this did so because Wanda was with him.

But Wanda was not with him now.

There was something strangely exhilarating about that, foolish as it was. To be known, even without his sister there, was exciting in a way he was entirely unfamiliar with. “Ah,” he said, sounding amused, “you people do have strange views on endangerment, I suppose.” 

The gun remained at the man’s side, and while Pietro kept an eye on it he found he wasn’t as concerned as he had been with bullets flying. The event in Sokovia had been a once off, a moment of failure on his part. He had only been hit because he was focused on saving Clint, and there was no one here now that he would take a bullet for. “I think you can teach them their lesson another day, no? Let them know it is coming. It’s more fun that way.” 

(This, he thought, was why he was not an Avenger, not truly. Captain America would have told this man not to kill the people he was after at all. Pietro could not pretend to preach the same gospel.) 

Felicia looked him up and down briefly before she dropped her leg to stand on both two feet. “Because a good thief doesn’t get caught.” She told him bluntly. There was nothing more tedious than having someone crash into her gig. “Though, I’ve run into way worse looking during a heist.” She teased a little  bit. She could appreciate the competition when it looked good to say the least. “But, this one is mine. You can take your pick of anything else.” She told him, steel claws tracing across the glass cabinet as she walked around it. “Not really going to steal from a girl are you? Or are you going to be like the goody Avengers and slap me on the wrist? I mean, you can put your hands on me if you ask nicely.” She smirked as she tapped her index finger against the glass. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” She assured him, glancing back at what she had in mind for the night before looking back at him behind the goggles.

Oh, she was quick. Not in the way Pietro was, of course, not physically, but the way she spoke? It was fast. Always something to say, always a witty response. “Sure... but the best ones make names for themselves, don’t they?” Not that he ever had. Pietro was a small-time thief --- he stole to survive, not to find fame. He wasn’t sure which category she fell into, if either... but he knew he was interested in finding out. New things had always fascinated him, always drawn him in quickly. He tended to get bored of them just as quickly, but for the moment at least, he was intrigued. He smirked, raising a brow. “I could take it,” he pointed out. “I doubt you’d be fast enough to stop me.” But he made no move to do so. Instead, he glanced around the room. “What is the second most expensive thing here?” He wasn’t good at gauging the price on things. When you grew up in a city stricken with poverty, the idea that someone would pay millions for something with no real purpose was unthinkable. His eyes snapped back to her at the mention of the Avengers. Pietro’s feelings on the group were... mixed. Wanda loved them, and Pietro did not know what to do with that. He was unaccustomed to having to share his sister with other people. “Do I look like an Avenger?” He wasn’t sure what answer he wanted. “I can keep a secret.”

“i need closure.”

It was interesting having someone approach him to talk, even if they didn’t know each other at all. Grant didn’t think he would appear to be someone approachable, but today he was proven wrong as he turns to give the other man his undivided attention. “I don’t know how I can help with that, but what do you need closure with? I can listen at least. You okay?” Sometimes talking to someone outside of the situation could help OR maybe the stranger has heard about what Grant could do and was seeking his assistance. Whatever the reason behind this may be he was going to embrace it with open arms, a chance at living again made him more open to forming new connections. It wouldn’t hurt to make a friend.

[ @speedysmaximoff​ ]

He was talking to himself, murmuring largely under his breath. It was one of those nights, the ones where he woke up in his cold bed in his bare apartment and, for a moment, didn’t know where he was. On those nights, he sped out into the city and ran until there were no thoughts left in his head. Sometimes, he ran to Russia where the Hydra had kept him and his sister and looked at the ruins. Others, he went to what was left of Sokovia and looked at the broken streets he’d once called home. Tonight, he was on the streets outside his building. Still in the country, still in the city. He wasn’t sure if it was an improvement on his usual behavior. He hadn’t realized he was talking aloud until someone answered him, and his head jerked up to meet the other man’s eyes. “No,” he said, then made a face. “Yes. I’m fine. I need --- I was talking to myself. Are you always out so late?”

Sofia had seen the man before. Briefly. She had been scoping out the street the week before and she knew that someone else was working it – but it was impossible to tell who. Until she got lucky and spotted him in between jumps – or sprints? She wasn’t sure what his power was but she knew that he had one. So, when he finally showed up and shoved her latest mark to the side, Sofia wasn’t surprised. But she pretended to be shocked that someone would be so rude as to interrupt her. 

The man walked away and Sofia looked the stranger in the eyes and offered him a bright smile, but her words? Not friendly. At all. “You get too close to me and I’ll scream,” she warned, her voice very calm. “And frankly, I’m surprised it took you this long to butt in, what’s your trick? Teleportation? Super speed?” Her voice was soft enough that anyone around them wouldn’t think twice – and the smile on their faces – they could have been old friends. “Bet I take a different street and still bring home more than you do.” 

Pietro had always been a territorial man. It was why he got irritated when his sister had friends who weren’t him, why he took Ultron’s invasion of Sokovia so personally. If he considered something to be his, Pietro didn’t enjoy the concept of sharing it. And this street, these stupid tourists with wallets filled with more money than any of them actually needed, this was his. He would not have it stolen from him by a stranger, wouldn’t accept the idea of splitting the profits of a street he’d previously had all to himself. His pride wouldn’t let him find another one, either, so there was this. There was confrontation. It was one of the few things Pietro was good at.

He clenched his jaw as she spoke, muscles jumping. “And I’ll tell them to check your pockets,” he growled back... but he knew the odds of that working weren’t perfect. People would have pre-conceived misconceptions about the both of them, on the outside looking in. They would make assumptions based on the color of her skin, but they would also make them based on the way his mouth formed certain words. Immigrants were hardly considered trustworthy. “I was giving you the chance to walk away. I guess you’re dumber than you look, no?” If she thought he’d be thrown by her having seen his use of his abilities, she was wrong. Of course she was wrong. Pietro probably should have feared the possibility of police interference... but he didn’t. It wasn’t as if any enforcer stood a shot at catching him, after all. “Speed. I could have dropped you off somewhere in the Pacific instead of giving you a warning --- you’re welcome for that.” His eyes sparked at the idea of a challenge, irritation replaced by interest. “You want to make a wager?” 

“Im a CSI investigator and how are cops supposed to look?” Barry asked as he looked at the other guy. “They are, but it helps that we don’t look superpowered, now do we?” He rose an eyebrow before he took a sip of his coffee and made a face, making a mental note of not getting that again. Barry shook his head, knowing that he didn’t support it so Barry didn’t see the point of being registered. “Did you?” He relaxed against the chair and gave him a soft smile. “That, I do. Well, Metahuman, but yeah. Im basically a mutant.”

“That’s not a cop,” Pietro pointed out, as if that did anything to make the tension ease from his shoulders. “Cops look like jackasses,” he supplied helpfully. “Do you want to look like a jackass?” He scoffed, running a hand through his hair. “You don’t. I have this. It isn’t a fashion statement.” For whatever reason, the lack of pigment in his hair went hand in hand with his abilities. It had been closer to Wanda’s shade before his abilities developed, and he remembered mourning the loss of the color when he woke to find it faded. It set him apart from his sister in a way he had never wanted. “No. I’ve seen what happens when people put their trust in the government.” It was what he and Wanda thought they’d been doing with Hydra, after all. Back then, everyone still thought it was SHIELD --- and maybe it had been. Maybe there had never been a true difference between the two. “There is no basically a mutant. You are a mutant, or you are not.” But he wasn’t as angry as he thought he’d be. Mutant or no, the man was a speedster. “Do they call you something? A --- A... псевдоним? Like Captain America or Batman?” A superhero name, he meant, but he couldn’t find the word. His mind worked quickly, but in two languages, it was often difficult to make it work right.

“You start running, and I swear to god, I will clothesline you,” she hissed, hands clenching into fists at her sides. She only had about twelve dollars in that wallet, but it was hers. It was the principle of the goddamn thing – she wasn’t about to give it up to some silver-haired little shit. 

“Cut the act, Robin Hood,” she snapped, taking a step closer. She would box him in here. There was no way he could get past her, no matter how fast he was. (And he was a quick little shit. She had to put some of her strength towards the task of keeping up with him.)“Give me my wallet, and maybe I don’t kick your ass. Maybe.”

She was angry, and Pietro found a familiar fire igniting in his chest as well. “Only if you’re fast enough,” he sneered, because no one ever was. Until those bullets came flying in Sokovia, no one had ever been fast enough to hurt him. There was comfort in that... but he wasn’t running. For whatever reason, he kept his feet planted on the ground. Maybe it was that all-too familiar anger in her eyes, maybe it was the security of the knowledge that he could run at any time. Pietro wasn’t sure it mattered.

He tensed when she took a step closer, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. “You try to kick my ass,” he said lowly, “and I carry you to Antarctica and leave you in the snow.” He didn’t know if her threat was empty... and he didn’t know if his was, either. “It is important to you, yes? So what will you give me for it?”

“It’d be worth it, you little shit,” Clint whispered, smiling to himself while Pietro couldn’t see. He had seen a lot of tragedy in the world. Felt pieces of himself get ripped away and stomped on. He knew what it was like, to have the earth shift under your feet and leave you standing all alone, no matter how many people were around you. He knew what it was like to lose, over and over and over again. But he knew miracles too. 

Defeating Thanos. Saving the world. Those things meant nothing compared to this. To seeing someone he loved come back. Back in his universe, he’d been a part of a team again only long enough to see the heart of it die and fade away. Seen his wife and family only long enough to know he had to leave them. Saved the world only long enough to lose all the parts that made it worth living. 

Not this time.

This time, this miracle, it was pure. It was real. Pietro’s entire existence was some kind of miracle, and Clint knew enough about miracles to not question it. To just hold on and futzing enjoy it, for once in his life. “Yeah, I bet you do – and I bet I am,” he said, pulling away just enough that he could look Pietro in the face. He reached one hand up, touching the side of the kid’s face. “You got some nerve just showing up here like this, ya know. If you’d called ahead, I would’ve gotten fresh pizza.”

“We’ll see if you say the same thing when you’re laid up on the couch for a week. I’ll remind you every time you complain.” It was hard to get his voice above a whisper, hard to make himself speak at all, and that was unfamiliar. Pietro had never had an issue being loud, never had a problem with being brash and noisy and making sure he was seen. Of the two of them, it was Wanda who was quiet. If she was a peaceful day, Pietro was a hurricane --- loud and angry and dangerous in ways that everyone knew instinctively. 

But not now. Not to Clint, who was holding him as if he was something precious, something worth holding. It was jarring, the way the man’s arms tightened around them. Pietro thought of his father, dead so long now that his voice was a slipping memory difficult to hold on to. Django Maximoff was not an overly affectionate man, but Pietro remembered the time he was so sick he could hardly hold his head up straight, remembered shivering and sweating at the same time, remembered wrestling out of the pile of blankets on his back only to long for them a moment later. His mother wouldn’t leet Wanda in the room for fear that she’d catch what he had, too, but his father never left his bedside. It was one of the only times he remembered seeing fear etched into the lines of Django’s face, and he remembered the relief that had replaced it when Pietro’s fever finally broke.

He felt the same way now that he had then --- as if his fever had just broken, as if he could suddenly breathe again after years of stalling lungs. He wondered if, if he pulled back now, he’d see the same relief on Clint’s face he’d seen on his father’s all those years ago. A grin split his face when Clint pulled back, humorous and ecstatic. He had been alive all along, but he hadn’t felt like it in a while now. Not since those bullets tore through him, not since he woke up in that Hydra base. But now? With his sister’s new number saved into his phone, with Clint gripping his shoulders? It felt like he was living once again. “I was hungry,” he shrugged, as if that was the only reason he’d come at all. Clint knew it wasn’t, but Pietro didn’t have to say it aloud. There was something freeing in that. “If I had called ahead, you wouldn’t have believed me. Some things need to be spoken about in person first.” 

[ text ] –– when life hands you lemons, use them to cover the smell coming from the floorboards. || @speedrxcer

[ text ] –– do you want to know a secret? me too. let me know if you find out any. || @motherfutzer

[ text ] –– do you want to know a secret? me too. let me know if you find out any. || @sofiastarks