@scarletmagics
Growing up, Pietro’s father was a busy man. He worked relentlessly, came home with cracked hands and bloodied fingernails. The money he brought home was small, sometimes spent before he’d settled into his chair after the day’s work. There’d scarcely ever been any to spare, but when there was... Django Maximoff spent that money on books. It is important, he told Pietro once, for a man to be well read. It is important to surround yourself with words, Pietro. Words will outlive us all.
Pietro had never had his father’s patience, had never been good at surrounding himself with words. The only time he spent with books were the darkened evenings when Django read his books aloud. He taught Pietro English through the words of long-dead poets and playwrights. Pietro had always been a bit partial to Shakespeare. A classic, his father would say. When their apartment building was destroyed, when he saw his father disappear into a hole in the ground and carried with him the knowledge that he would never again hear Django’s steady voice uttering words that were not his own, Pietro had thought of those books. He’d thought of his father’s love for words, come back when the danger was gone to search desperately through the wreckage until he managed to find a single book not destroyed. Shakespeare, with his father’s messy scrawl across the title page. He kept it with him, even when he and Wanda were living on the streets. He carried those words.
It was Shakespeare’s words that rung in his head now, his father’s voice providing them with a voice. O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in't! This, he thought, was probably not what Shakespeare meant when he’d spoken of that brave new world. Django always said Pietro had a tendency to take things a little too literally.
There was, of course, only one person in this world he was interested in, only one goodly creature he cared to find. That, too, had been a constant in Pietro’s life. His sister had always been the most important thing to him. And finding her now, even after years of separation, was just as easy as it had always been. He was practically vibrating as he waited for her to exit the coffee shop, wanting to speak to her without the prying eyes of a crowd peering into the conversation. It felt like years before she stepped out onto the street, coffee in hand, and Pietro zipped up to her quickly, scooped her into his arms as he had a thousand times before, and deposited her in a nearby alley carefully. For a a moment, he simply stared, heart pounding even faster than its usual dangerous speed. Finally, throat dry, he spoke. “Wanda.” It was all he could manage, all he could think to say.
