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Chapter Text

Legacy of the Furnace draws heavily from real-world historical atrocities that occurred during and after World War II—particularly the treatment of Romani people during the Holocaust and the horrific experiments conducted on twins in Nazi concentration camps. This story is fictional, but rooted in historical trauma that continues to reverberate through generations. The aim is not to sensationalise suffering, but to honour the lived reality of those who endured it—and to frame the Maximoff twins’ story within that brutal legacy, rather than erase it.

The Romani people (often called "Gypsies," a slur imposed by outsiders) were among the many groups targeted by the Nazi regime for extermination. Labelled as racially “inferior” by Nazi racial doctrine, the Romani were subject to forced sterilization, internment, and mass execution. It's estimated that between 220,000 and 500,000 Romani people were murdered during the Holocaust, though the actual number may be far higher due to underreporting and systemic erasure.

Like Jewish victims, Romani people were subjected to brutal living conditions in ghettos and concentration camps. Families were torn apart. Children were taken. Many were executed in gas chambers or used as human subjects in sadistic experiments. The Romani genocide is known as the Porajmos (“the Devouring”)—a term that has only recently gained wider recognition.

Dr. Josef Mengele , infamously called the “Angel of Death,” was a Nazi physician at Auschwitz who conducted cruel, pseudoscientific experiments on prisoners—particularly twins. Mengele was obsessed with heredity and used twins to study the supposed biological roots of racial traits.

Children, especially identical twins, were selected for these experiments. Some were injected with chemicals, mutilated without anaesthesia, exposed to infectious diseases, or killed for post-mortem examination. Mengele would often kill one twin to compare it with the other’s living body. Survivors were often left with lifelong injuries or trauma.

In Legacy of the Furnace , Wanda and Pietro’s imprisonment and experimentation by HYDRA is heavily inspired by these real-world horrors, reframed in the Marvel Universe as a continuation of eugenics under a fictional fascist regime. Their bond as twins, their uniqueness as children of a powerful mutant, and their Romani and Jewish heritage make them, tragically, ideal targets in the eyes of such an organization.

This story acknowledges that the trauma of the Holocaust cannot be separated from the lives of characters like Erik Lehnsherr and Magda—nor should it be. It is a legacy of fire, loss, and resistance.

Thank you for reading with care.

Chapter Text

The wind howled over the Carpathian ridge, curling through the half-shuttered windows of the shepherd's hut where she had taken shelter. The wood walls groaned like old bones in the wind, and the fire had long since died down to embers, but Magda Lehnsherr—if she still dared call herself that—did not stir from the cot in the corner.

She sat hunched, round with child, her back against the cold stone wall. Her hands, chapped and raw from weeks of travel, lay folded over her swollen belly like a prayer too afraid to be spoken aloud. The silence around her wasn’t peace. It was the silence of absence.

Her daughter was dead.

Her firstborn. Her Anya.

The name clanged like a funeral bell inside her, over and over, every time her mind wandered. Anya. Her bright-eyed girl who loved the rustle of leaves and the sound of bells. Who used to sneak sugar cubes from the tin and bring them to the stray dogs in the alley. Who screamed as fire took her. Who died in smoke and heat while her mother clawed at locked doors. Who burned while—

Magda gasped and pressed both hands against her belly. A tremor rippled through her body—not from the baby, not this time. From the memory.

She had screamed, too. Until her throat bled. Until the air blistered with the sound of Erik’s fury.

No. Not Erik. Magneto.

That was the name he chose afterwards. The name he wore like a crown and a mask all at once.

He had torn the city apart.

And in doing so, he had shown her something terrible. Something undeniable.

Erik had loved Anya—God, how he loved her—but his grief was the kind that razed mountains. And if his pain could do that to a city, what would his rage do to the children she carried now? Would they inherit that fury? That power? That same unyielding hunger to reshape the world in pain’s image?

She had fled in the night. Without a plan. Without direction. With nothing but her dead daughter’s hair ribbon in her pocket and a growing life inside her.

The twins moved now, stirred faintly under her hand. Pietro was always the restless one, nudging at her ribs like a reminder to keep going. Wanda moved differently. Sometimes like a whisper, sometimes like a storm. Always unpredictable. Always there.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to them both. Her voice cracked like old ice. “You won’t know your father. But you’ll be safe. I swear it.”

She closed her eyes. The wind keened outside, dragging leaves across the roof in a dry, scraping rhythm. The chill bit deeper. She should have fed the fire, but she couldn’t seem to move. Her limbs felt carved from stone.

Anya’s laugh rang in her ears—unbidden, unrelenting. She remembered the way her daughter’s curls bounced when she ran, the smell of sun-warmed grass in her hair. The way Erik would hoist her onto his shoulders and say, The world belongs to you, my little comet.

But it hadn’t belonged to her. It had taken her instead.

Grief pressed against Magda’s ribs like a second heartbeat. It was the only constant now—grief and fear, grief and love.

Still, her hands rested over her belly.

“I’ll keep you safe,” she whispered again. “Even if I have to walk the length of the earth. Even if I have to become someone else entirely.”

Outside, the wind wailed louder. But within her, two hearts beat on.

✶ ✶ ✶

The labour began just before dawn.

At first, it was a dull ache in her lower back, a slow tightening across her abdomen that made her catch her breath. Then the pain deepened, sharpened, and began to come in waves. The kind of pain that didn’t let you forget what your body was: bone, blood, and something ancient trying to split itself in two.

Magda knew what this was. She had brought a child into the world before, once, with Erik’s hand in hers, his brow damp with sweat and fear as he whispered encouragement between contractions. He’d kissed her temple when Anya’s first cry rang out, laughing like the sun had broken through the ceiling.

But there was no Erik here now. No warm hand. No whisper. Only the wind, and the ache, and the memory of a man she still loved so fiercely it left her breathless.

She groaned and reached for the supplies she’d gathered—linen cloths boiled and dried the day before, a knife she’d heated in the fire, water, and a carved wooden bowl. Her hands shook as she poured the water. The flames she'd stoked hours ago were barely alive, and her breath fogged in the cold.

Pain lanced through her again. She doubled over with a cry, knees buckling to the straw-covered floor. The contractions were fast now, closer, deeper. Her body knew what it was doing, even if her mind wanted to run from it.

She remembered her grandmother’s voice, the old words in Romani:
“When you birth alone, you call the spirits. Not to help you, but to remind you that you're still here.”

Magda whispered the prayer through clenched teeth. Sweat slicked her brow despite the cold. She pressed her palms into the floor, grounding herself. She’d helped deliver children before, in caravans, in fields, once in the back of a rickety truck. But she had never felt so afraid. So exposed.

She needed him.

Erik.

The name was a sob in her throat. She could see him, clear as day—his eyes wide with terror and awe as Anya crowned, his voice hoarse as he said her name for the first time.

She wanted that again. She wanted his strength, his warmth. Even after all he’d done. Even after what he became. He had broken the world for their daughter, and it had terrified her, but he had done it out of love.

“I wish you were here,” she whispered, as another contraction tore through her. She screamed, biting down on her wrist to muffle it. “I can’t do this alone—”

But she had to. She already was.

The minutes became hours. Time lost meaning. All that existed was fire and ice and the steady thunder of her body cracking open. Blood pooled beneath her. Her vision blurred. She felt the pressure shift, felt something move through her, and then—

A cry.

Thin. Wailing. Alive.

Magda let out a sound that wasn’t quite a sob, wasn’t quite a laugh. Her hands reached down, and with shaking fingers, she lifted the slick, squirming infant into her arms. A boy.

Pietro.

She didn’t need to think about the name. It had been there all along.

He cried like he had something urgent to say. His limbs flailed, strong and sharp, and for a moment, all Magda could do was stare at him, awestruck and undone.

But it wasn’t over.

Another pain. A deeper one. The second was coming.

She gritted her teeth. “Come on, little one,” she whispered. “Don’t make your brother wait.”

It was faster this time. Her body, already torn, gave way more easily. The second baby slipped free with a wet gasp and silence.

Magda’s heart froze.

No cry.

“No, no—” She reached, frantic, cradled the second twin, cleared her mouth, rubbed her chest with desperate fingers. “Come on, Wanda. Please—please—”

And then, a soft gasp. A hiccup. A wail, small but steady.

Wanda.

Magda collapsed backwards onto the floor, both babies in her arms, tears pouring down her face unchecked.

They were here.

Alive.

She was alone, bleeding, and exhausted. But she was alive. And so were they.

She curled around them like a fortress. Straw stuck to her skin, and her hair was damp with sweat, but she didn’t care. Pietro nestled against her chest, still squirming. Wanda pressed her face into her mother’s collarbone, soft and quiet.

Magda closed her eyes. For one brief moment, she let herself imagine Erik here. Kissing their foreheads. Whispering that the world belonged to them.

But when she opened her eyes, it was only her.

Only Magda.
Only a mother.
Alone, again.

And yet, not.

Not ever again.

✶ ✶ ✶

The fire burned low again, but Magda didn’t move to feed it. She was too weak to rise—too sore, too blood-drained, too far away in her thoughts. Her back ached from the hard floor. Her legs trembled when she tried to shift her weight. The afterbirth had been harder than she remembered. She felt carved out, hollowed, the sharp echo of pain still humming through her bones.

The twins slept beside her now, swaddled in scraps of her dress. Pietro’s fists were curled tight, his little brow furrowed even in rest. Wanda had turned her face toward her brother’s chest and pressed her cheek to his skin. They were impossibly small, impossibly perfect. And so quiet now. So real.

She watched them, and for a long time, she didn’t breathe.

Then the grief came back, cold and unrelenting.

Anya should have been here.

Her sweet girl. She should have been sitting just outside the ring of warmth with her little hands full of herbs, asking when the babies would come, if they would cry, if she could hold them first. She would have sung to them—Magda’s lullabies, passed down through firelight and wagons and stormed-out villages. She would have told them stories about foxes and rain spirits and dancing lights.

She would have been the best big sister.

Magda pressed a hand to her mouth and sobbed soundlessly.

Anya would never braid Wanda’s hair. She would never chase Pietro through a sunlit field or hold their hands during storms or tell them about their father’s laugh or how he would carry her on his shoulders through the market square.

She would never meet them. Never know them. Never know how they looked, just a little like her.

Wanda had her nose—small, slightly upturned. Pietro’s eyes, though still cloudy with newborn haze, seemed shaped like Anya’s. Wide and curious, made for laughter.

A part of Anya had come back. In pieces. In echoes.

But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

And Erik…

Magda closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the stone wall. Her throat ached, as though she'd been screaming for hours instead of weeping in silence. The memory of him was still sharp and too near. Not Magneto. Erik. Her Erik.

He would never know them. Never count their fingers, never marvel at the soft sounds they made in sleep. He would never sway them in his arms and whisper promises that he meant with all his heart.

He would never get a second chance.

And it wasn’t because he was gone—it was because she had made sure he would never find them.

She had made her choice. She had chosen to flee. To protect them. To protect Erik from himself, maybe. Or to protect the twins from what Erik might one day become.

And yet… she needed him now.

Not for the help. Not even for the protection.

She needed his warmth, his steadiness, his voice in the dark whispering, We’ll be all right, Magda.

But there was only silence now.

Only the twins. Her son. Her daughter. Her hope.

She reached out a shaking hand and touched their downy heads. A sigh escaped her lips—part grief, part wonder, part something wordless.

“I’ll tell you about them,” she whispered to the sleeping twins. “One day. When you’re older. About your sister. About your father. About the world we left behind.”

A tear slipped down her cheek and landed in Wanda’s hair.

“But not today. Today, it’s just us.”

And still, she ached for the missing pieces.

Chapter Text

Magda walked.

Some days, that was all there was—walking until her legs shook, until her boots split at the soles, until her breath came in ragged gasps and her bones felt like splinters. She walked through borderlands and backwoods, over crumbling roads and snow-flecked hills, through villages where the signs were written in languages she couldn’t read but felt in her blood all the same.

She carried her children the way her ancestors had carried theirs—wrapped close to her body, pressed against her warmth as if skin alone could protect them from the cold, from the world, from everything that hunted them. She wore Pietro across her chest, his body curled like a comma against her heartbeat. Wanda stayed at her back, swaddled tight against a shawl secured with knots taught to her by a great-aunt long buried.

There were no more wagons. No more caravans. The roads were too dangerous now, and the old ways scattered like leaves after a storm. But Magda walked the same routes. She followed river bends and tucked herself into the shadows of half-forgotten trails. Sometimes she stayed the night in abandoned barns or under ruined bridges. Sometimes, a kind soul would leave bread out without asking questions.

Most times, there was no kindness. Only suspicion. Only the quiet, sharp fear in people's eyes when they saw a Romani woman alone with children, exhausted, barefoot, carrying her life on her back.

She kept moving anyway.

Each step hurt. Her body hadn’t fully healed from the birth, and some nights she bled again, thin and slow, like her womb hadn’t quite realised it was no longer needed. Her milk came in painfully. The twins were always hungry, always needing more than she had to give.

But she gave it anyway.

When Wanda cried, Magda hummed low, lilting notes that her mother had sung once. When Pietro squirmed restlessly, she bounced him gently, pacing until her legs ached. She told them stories at night—not fairy tales, but family stories, real ones. Of moonlit dances in green fields, of stolen kisses behind chapel tents, of painted wagons and tambourines and ancestors who swore the stars knew their names.

She told them about their sister, too. Softly. As if afraid the wind would carry Anya’s name away before the twins could remember it.

“She would have loved you,” Magda whispered into the firelight one night. “She would’ve made you laugh every day.”

It was hard. Inhumanly hard. But Magda had long ago stopped hoping for ease. She only hoped for mornings. For enough hours to get from one meal to the next.

There were good moments, too. Pietro smiled first. It was crooked and fleeting, but it melted something inside her she didn’t know still lived. Wanda was slower to react, more watchful—but her eyes followed her brother with uncanny focus, and when he laughed, she reached for him.

They had each other.

They had her.

And some nights, under a full moon with a small fire flickering beside them and a river humming somewhere nearby, Magda felt like maybe—just maybe—they could outrun the world a little longer.

But always, the shadows waited. In the eyes of soldiers at the checkpoints. In the whisper of the trees. In the way strangers looked at her—her skin, her accent, her eyes that never met theirs for long.

She knew it wouldn’t last.

But for now, she walked.

She fed her children.

She kept the stories alive.

She survived.

✶ ✶ ✶

Time passed in moments, not in days.

Magda marked it by the steady rhythm of her children’s growth. Not with calendars or clocks, but with the subtle changes only a mother notices—the heavier weight of a baby in her arms, the different cry at dusk, the way a laugh shifts from gurgle to giggle.

Pietro was the first to roll over, as she’d known he would be. Restless even in sleep, he’d squirmed his way off a wool blanket near the riverbank one morning and flipped onto his belly with a startled cry. Magda had gasped and scooped him up, heart thundering.

He looked at her, wide-eyed and triumphant, and laughed.

She laughed too—then wept.

Erik should have seen that. He would have clapped, would’ve spun the boy in the air, eyes gleaming with pride. That’s my son, he would’ve said.

But it was only her.

Only Mama, as Anya used to say when Erik tried to take her from Magda’s lap. Only Mama, with that stubborn smile and arms locked tight around her mother’s neck.

It was only Mama now, always.

Wanda’s first smile came later, quieter, like a secret. They were camped under the twisted boughs of an ancient elm, smoke rising slowly from a damp fire. Pietro was babbling at the sky. Magda had turned to check on Wanda and found her daughter watching her with an expression she’d never seen before—peaceful. Present.

Then came the smile.

Small. Sure. As if she’d been saving it.

Magda cried again. She cried often these days, and not always from sorrow. The twins broke her heart open anew every time they showed her some fragile miracle: the first time Pietro reached out and held her finger; the way Wanda hummed to herself when the wind rustled the trees; the soft, round weight of both their heads tucked against her shoulders after feeding.

But it was when Pietro walked that the grief truly cut her.

He didn’t walk at first—he ran. Three uneven steps toward her outstretched arms, tumbling forward into her embrace with a wide, toothless grin. She caught him, laughing, her own arms trembling from shock.

“Erik,” she whispered without thinking. “He’s walking—”

But there was no one to hear.

She held her son close and kissed the top of his head, whispering praise through tears.

Erik should have seen that, too.

He should have been the arms Pietro fell into first. He should have crouched beside her and opened his arms, coaxing his son forward, face split with joy.

Instead, Pietro had only her. Only Mama.

And she was enough—but it ached, nonetheless.

She remembered Anya’s first steps just as clearly. They had been in their old flat, the morning light soft through the curtains. Anya had walked from Magda to Erik, then turned and walked back again, shrieking with laughter as her parents clapped and cheered.

She had collapsed into Erik’s arms, kissing his cheek with the clumsy affection of a child who knew nothing but love.

Wanda did the same, weeks later. Her steps were slower, more deliberate. She toddled toward Magda with arms outstretched, face serious with concentration. When she fell into her mother’s lap, she buried her face there and didn’t make a sound. Just held on.

Magda held on, too.

She whispered Anya’s name into the twins’ hair some nights. Told them about her when the fire was low. Spoke softly of a girl who had loved stars and sweet pastries and the smell of rain. She didn’t say how Anya had died—not yet—but she kept her memory alive, brick by brick.

Their family was scattered, torn by fire and fear.

But the twins were still here. She was still here.

And every step they took was a victory.

✶ ✶ ✶

Magda raised them with stories.

It was the one thing she always had enough of—stories passed from mouth to mouth across generations, carried in caravans and whispered in the hush between stars. She sang lullabies in Romanes and Hebrew, her voice cracked with fatigue, soft as the wind threading through the trees.

She taught them the names of the moon’s phases in both tongues. Told them the Romani tale of the sun and the fox, the Jewish midrash of the angel who teaches each baby in the womb. She hummed Eli Eli while she washed clothes in river water. She rocked them to sleep murmuring "Dukh lin tu, Dukh lin me,” — your pain is mine, my child.

She did it for them.
She did it for Erik.

She had taken their father from them. Had taken the future he might’ve had with them—the stories he would have told, the Yiddish nicknames he might’ve given them, the way he would have lit the candles with shaking hands on Fridays and whispered the prayers with closed eyes.

She’d made that choice. She had chosen flight, safety, and distance. She had chosen to break Erik’s heart before he could break theirs.

But God forbid, she thought, God forbid I take their culture, too.

The Nazis had already tried to burn that out of them.

The world had tried to crush the Romani people to dust—had dragged them into camps, branded them, buried them in mass graves and unmarked silence. Just as it had done to Erik’s family, and hers. Just as it had done to the bones beneath every road she now walked.

So she kept what she could. Preserved what the fires hadn’t taken.

On Shabbat, she lit candles when she had them. When she didn’t, she cupped her hands around a flickering flame and whispered the blessings anyway. Pietro watched the light dance with wide, wondering eyes. Wanda tried to echo the words before she could speak properly.

She sewed tiny bits of blue ribbon into their clothes for protection, as her mother had done. She braided red thread into their hair when they were ill. She buried their first clipped nails near the roots of trees. She spoke their names at dawn to the rising sun, as her grandmother had whispered hers.

She told them about the world as it should be, not as it was. About wandering as a sacred inheritance, not a punishment. About how to carry memory in the body. About how their father had once played music like a storm in his blood, and how he had loved them before they were even born.

Magda didn’t have much—just a battered satchel, a few faded photographs she dared not look at often, and her voice.

But she had her children. She had their souls. And she had her grief.

She gave them everything she could from both bloodlines:
From the people who danced through fire.
And the people who sang through mourning.

Even if the world gave them no place, she would make one for them out of memory and breath.

✶ ✶ ✶

Magda had always known they would be marked.

Not just by the blood that ran through them, but by the skin that held it.

They were unmistakably hers, these children. Wanda, with her dark hair and deep brown eyes, was the spitting image of Magda as a child—same bronze skin, same long lashes, same solemn quietness behind her gaze. There was no hiding the Romani in her, not in the tilt of her chin or the soft curl of her hair. She carried it like a birthright.

Pietro, at first glance, might have fooled them. His silver-white hair had come in early, and with it, the sharp blue of his father’s eyes. Strangers sometimes softened when they saw him, thinking him some pale child of the north. But then they looked again. At the warm tone of his skin. At the way his sister clung to him. At the mother who held his hand.

And suddenly, the softness was gone.

Magda had seen it too many times—the shift in a shopkeeper’s mouth, the way people stepped aside without looking. The subtle squint of suspicion. In towns where her accent marked her, or the babies cried in a language not theirs, or her face reminded someone of something they'd been taught to hate.

The war was over, they said. The camps were gone, they said.

But the silence still roared. The hatred still smouldered in gutters and behind fences and inside the walls of buildings rebuilt too fast to remember who had died there.

Magda remembered. The camps still lived behind her eyes.

She remembered the smell. The sounds. The numbers on arms. The numbers on her arm. The way children disappeared from the lines. She remembered the weight of hunger, the clatter of wooden clogs on stone, the way ash settled on skin like snow.

And now she had children of her own. Children who bore every mark the world had once tried to exterminate.

They were not safe.

Not in this village. Not in the next. Not anywhere.

She watched every face that looked too long. She kept to the shadows and back roads. She taught the twins to stay quiet when they heard boots, when they saw uniforms, when someone’s voice turned sharp. She taught them to run—not far, just to her side, to the folds of her skirts, to the safety of her arms.

But she did not teach them shame.

That was the line she would not cross.

If the world had wanted to erase them, then she would make them unforgettable. She would make them proud.

She taught them the old songs, even when it made people stare. She painted their clothes when she had scraps of dye. She braided Wanda’s hair in the style of her own mother’s village—three strands for the living, one for the dead. She gave Pietro a wooden flute and let him play, even if it meant someone might hear.

They were children. They would live as children.

She would not let the shadows take that, too.

Some nights, when the wind was quiet and the fire still burning low, she would hold them both and whisper:
“You are not broken. You are not cursed. You are the children of love and war and survival. You are my miracles.”

She said it to Wanda when the girl flinched at the sound of boots.
She said it to Pietro when he asked why people called them names.
She said it to herself when sleep would not come.

Even as fear clung to her bones like frost.

She remembered Erik’s voice, soft in the dark, asking her once if she thought they could ever raise children in peace.

“I don’t know,” she had told him.

She still didn’t.

But she was trying. Every day.

Trying with stories. With songs. With protection stitched into sleeves. With the way she wrapped her arms around them like armour.

Trying, even as the world glared at her babies and saw not children, but something other. Something to fear.

Chapter Text

The world was legs.

Big legs, strong ones, always moving. Steps that rocked the earth and cradled them close. Warm arms. Scarves that smelled like smoke and soap and sleep. The swish of skirts. The soft humming that meant everything was okay.

That was what life was.

Wanda didn’t know why they moved so much. She didn’t really know what moving meant. It was just what they did. Sometimes they slept in wagons, sometimes in cold stone places, sometimes under trees that reached all the way into the sky. There were nights with firelight and nights without. Days with food that tasted sweet and days when her tummy felt like it was folding up inside itself.

But Mama was always there.

Mama was constant. Her voice was music. Her hands were always working—fixing, feeding, brushing hair, tying knots Wanda couldn’t undo no matter how hard she tried. She smelled like earth and ash and something Wanda could only think of as home.

Pietro didn’t question anything, either. He ran. That was what he did. His feet were fast. He liked to test them. How many steps could he take before Mama scooped him up again? How fast could he chase the wind?

Sometimes Mama laughed when he ran. Sometimes she cried. He didn’t like that.

He liked her laugh best.

He liked the way she sang when she thought they were asleep. He liked the games she made with her fingers—little dancing shadows on the wall. He liked it when she told the same story three times just because Wanda wanted to hear it again and again and again.

Wanda liked stories, too. She liked the one about the bird who turned into a girl. She liked it when Mama said words Wanda didn’t understand, but still sounded nice. She liked it when Mama touched her forehead and called her "me mandra," even though she didn’t know what it meant.

Their world was Mama.

When strangers looked at them, Wanda didn’t know why Mama held them tighter. When people muttered under their breath, Pietro just wanted to go play in the mud again. When they slept in cold barns or under the sky, it wasn’t strange. It was just Tuesday.

Their world was small and soft and wrapped in layers of fabric and song.

And it was safe, because Mama said it was.

They didn’t know what “Romani” meant. Or “Jewish.” Or why Mama sometimes stared into the fire like she was remembering something that made her stomach hurt.

They didn’t know what a war was. Or a camp. Or why Mama whispered someone else’s name sometimes— Anya.

But they knew her hands.
They knew the rhythm of her walk.
They knew her heartbeat like a lullaby.

Mama was everything.

Wanda fell asleep with her head on Mama’s chest, listening to her voice. Pietro curled up with his sister’s foot in his hand and dreamed of rivers and dancing lights.

They were just children.

They didn’t know they were being hunted.
Didn’t know their skin and their names and their parents’ love had once been considered crimes.

They knew joy.

They knew wind in their hair and kisses on their foreheads and warm soup and candlelight.

They knew Mama.

And for now, that was all the world needed to be.

✶ ✶ ✶

There were words Mama said that felt like magic.

Some she whispered with her eyes closed. Some she sang. Some she only spoke when the sky turned orange and the air got quiet, like even the trees were listening.

Wanda didn’t know what the words meant, not really. But she felt them. Like a hum in her chest, like the way Mama’s kisses landed on her curls—soft and sure and sacred.

She loved the candlelit nights best.

Mama would take out two little white candles, sometimes broken, sometimes just leftover stubs from somewhere else. She would strike a match— that was exciting—and the flames would jump to life. Pietro always clapped. He liked fire, but Mama always said, “Don’t touch.”

Then Mama would cover her eyes and talk in a voice that made Wanda feel sleepy and safe and special all at once.

“Barukh atah Adonai…”

Wanda tried to copy the words. She couldn’t say them right yet, but it didn’t matter. Mama smiled anyway. Pietro bounced and echoed the sounds like a song, getting them all wrong on purpose so Mama would laugh.

There were other words, too—words from their other world.

Romanes ones, old ones, ones that made Mama’s accent deeper and her voice stronger. She would sing songs with no beginning or end, songs about horses and stars and leaving and returning. Songs about the road, the fire, the family.

Pietro liked those best. He liked the dancing. He liked it when Mama clapped her hands and spun them around and called them her chavorrensa —her little ones.

He didn’t know what “Romani” meant. But he knew that when Mama spoke those words, it meant they were theirs.

Wanda learned to look for colours. Mama wrapped beads around her wrist and told her red was for protection, blue for memory. She tucked ribbons in their coats and told them stories about how each one kept away a different kind of danger.

They didn’t know religion. Not as something with rules and names and commandments. They only knew it in pieces.

Pietro knew that if you were very, very quiet on Friday nights, Mama would sing the sweetest lullabies.

Wanda knew that when Mama lit candles, you didn’t cry, even if you were hungry. Because that was a special time.

They both knew that when Mama drew little marks with chalk or stones around where they slept, they were safe from “bad eyes.” That was what Mama said. “The eyes that hate,” she called them.

But Mama’s eyes never hated.

Her eyes were soft and strong, and when she looked at them during prayers, it was like she was trying to remember all of them—every name, every person, every piece of the past.

Sometimes, Wanda caught Mama looking at her with tears in her eyes while she prayed. Like she was saying something without words. Like she was holding someone else in her heart while holding Wanda’s hand.

Pietro didn’t see it. He was too busy jumping and spinning. But Wanda did.

She didn’t understand it.
But she felt it.

And even though she couldn’t say it out loud, she knew that what they were doing—lighting candles, singing songs, wearing beads, speaking old words—it wasn’t just for them.

It was for the people who came before.

And the ones they’d never get to meet.

✶ ✶ ✶

Sometimes Mama danced for strangers.

Wanda liked to watch her twirl. Mama’s skirts would lift like wind, her bangles clinked like tiny bells, and her hair moved like smoke. It was beautiful. Magical. Like the stories she told about moon girls and starlight.

Pietro clapped. He always clapped. Sometimes he tried to spin with her, too fast, tripping over his own feet. It made Mama smile. But only when she thought no one else was looking.

Because it wasn’t always dancing.

Sometimes Mama sang for the white men who didn’t smile the right way. Sometimes she laid out bright cloth on the ground, and people threw coins down, but not many. Sometimes they didn’t throw anything at all. Just stared.

Sometimes they gave food instead. Or blankets. Or a few precious coins that Mama hid fast, like they might disappear.

Wanda didn’t like how the men looked at her.

She didn’t have words for it. She didn’t know the names. But their eyes felt wrong. Like being cold without wind. Like being watched by something with teeth.

They looked at Mama like she was made of silk and smoke and something not real. Like she was a trick.

And sometimes—just sometimes—they looked at Wanda the same way.

She didn’t know why. She didn’t like it. Mama always pulled her close then. Sometimes she wrapped Wanda in her shawl so tightly she could hardly breathe.

Pietro didn’t notice. He was busy chasing insects, playing in dirt, and counting his steps in circles. But Wanda felt things. She always had.

She felt how tight Mama’s hand got when a man talked too long. She felt how stiff her body became after dancing, like she was trying to be a statue. She heard the tone of men’s voices when they called Mama things—“gypsy woman,” “witch,” “brown beauty.”

She didn’t know what those words meant. But Mama never smiled when she heard them.

Sometimes the men gave them bread. Sometimes coins. Sometimes promises Wanda didn’t understand, and looks that made her stomach twist.

Mama always said thank you. Always bowed her head a little. Then always, always walked away fast.

There were places they weren’t allowed to sleep. Places they weren’t allowed to walk. Shopkeepers who yelled at Mama in harsh, spitting words. Villagers who crossed themselves when Wanda and Pietro passed.

Wanda didn’t understand.

All she knew was that when she saw men in coats and clean shoes, Mama’s voice got quieter. Her eyes stayed down. And her hold on their hands never loosened.

Pietro thought the world was full of people who didn’t like them because they were different.

Wanda didn’t know what different meant.
Only that it seemed to matter a lot to everyone but Mama.

Mama kept moving. Always moving. Always working. Sometimes she didn’t eat, so they could. Sometimes she slept sitting up. Sometimes her feet bled.

But still she danced.

Still, she sang.

Still, she wrapped them in all her layers, kissed their brows, and whispered blessings.

Wanda didn’t know why people looked at Mama like she was a thing.
She only knew that to her, Mama was everything.

And even though the world didn’t see it, Mama was magic.

✶ ✶ ✶

The grass was tall that day.

It swayed like water, golden and green, brushing against Wanda’s knees and tickling Pietro’s arms as he ran shrieking through it, trying to catch the wind. The sun hung low in the sky, thick and orange, painting everything in honey.

They’d walked far that morning, slept in a barn the night before. But now—now they were nowhere.

No towns. No eyes. No boots. No fear.

Just a field and the sky.

Mama looked at it like she couldn’t believe it was real. Like the open space was a gift she hadn’t dared to ask for. She let go of their hands, stretched her arms wide, and spun once—just once—letting her skirt flutter out around her.

Pietro squealed. “Mama’s dancin’!”

Wanda clapped her hands and spun, too, though she didn’t spin as fast. She liked to watch. She liked how the beads in Mama’s scarf caught the light. How her earrings glittered. How her shadow looked like a story.

“Mama! Show us the spinning one! ” Pietro begged, already out of breath.

Mama grinned. She looked younger in that moment. Lighter. She plucked up the hem of her skirt, gave a little bow like a stage dancer, and began to twirl.

It wasn’t the slow dance she did for strangers. Not the careful one, with guarded eyes and measured steps.

This was the real one.

The Romani one. The wild one.

She threw her head back and laughed, feet stomping to a rhythm only she could hear. Her hair flew loose, her shawl slipped off her shoulders, and the ground seemed to bounce beneath her.

Wanda joined in, following her mama’s hands, her feet, copying every movement as best she could. Her little braids swung behind her. She laughed so hard she fell once, but Mama scooped her up and spun her anyway, their giggles trailing behind them like ribbons in the wind.

Pietro was running again. Not dancing— running. That was his dance. Circles and sprints and twirls that ended in tumbles. He threw his arms wide and shouted, “Faster than the wind!”

“ Amaro lil devleski! ” Mama called to him between gasps, out of breath but smiling. Our little storm.

They danced until their legs ached. Until Wanda’s cheeks hurt from smiling, and Pietro flopped into the grass with a dramatic groan. Until the sun dipped lower and fireflies started blinking above the wheat.

Then Mama gathered them into her lap, breathless and warm, her arms wrapped around them both.

“Did we do good, Mama?” Wanda asked, her voice muffled in Mama’s scarf.

“You danced like queens,” she said softly, kissing Wanda’s crown. “And lightning.”

Pietro grinned. “I am lightning!”

“You are,” Mama whispered. “You both are. My miracles. My light.”

And for a little while, there was no past and no danger.

No stares, no hunger, no cold nights.

Just a field, a sunset, and three souls held together by rhythm and love.

Chapter Text

By the time the twins turned five, the air around them had started to change.

Magda wasn’t surprised. Not really. How could she be, knowing who their father was? What he was.

The man who bent railways with his rage. The man who could pull iron from the earth and crush it into ash. The man who called himself Magneto now, as if Erik had never existed. As if her Erik—Anya’s father, the man who once wept holding a pair of baby shoes in trembling hands—had vanished beneath steel and fury.

No. Magda was not surprised.

But she was grateful for one small, private mercy.

Neither of them had inherited magnetism.

Thank God for that.

Pietro had started first. A blur one morning. A sudden gust of motion that left behind only laughter and a kicked-up storm of dust. One second he was there; the next, he was across the clearing, barefoot and breathless and glowing with pride.

“ Mama! I ran so fast I disappeared! ”

He was beaming. Glowing. His hair, always silver as frost, trailed behind him like smoke. His feet were blistered raw, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Magda had knelt down, taken his hands in hers, and kissed his forehead like she always did. But her hands shook.

She had seen Erik levitate, once. Had watched metal orbit him like moons. He had said it didn’t hurt, didn’t tire him. That it belonged to him.

Pietro’s speed was wild and joyous—but there was pain in it, too. Bruises on his legs. A nose bloodied from a stumble. Magda made him rest when she could. Sewed padding into his shoes. But he was the wind, and wind was hard to hold.

Wanda came next.

More subtle. Quiet. Like her.

It started with feelings—hers and those around her. Tantrums that rattled pans on their hooks. Laughter that sparked little floating lights, like drifting sparks from a fire. Dreams that curled into reality.

One night, Wanda woke up crying, and every candle in the cabin lit itself.

Another, she whispered a song to the trees, and the leaves turned toward her like sunflowers.

Magda didn’t know what to call it. Witchcraft, maybe. Or chaos. But it was beautiful. Terrifying. Sacred.

Wanda looked just like her, but there was Erik in her too. In the sharpness of her eyes. In the way her gaze saw through people instead of at them.

She never said so aloud, but Magda feared Wanda most of all.

Not because she was dangerous. But because she was his.

They both were.

And some nights, Magda would sit by the fire and look at their sleeping faces and ache.

Because Pietro smiled just like Erik did when he was young and in love.

Because Wanda had Erik’s silence, his intensity, the quiet before a storm.

Because Anya had never even gotten the chance to have powers. Or to meet them. Or to be a sister.

Because the future was growing fast in front of her, and all she could do was try to hold it together with threadbare blankets and whispered prayers.

But she never showed them her fear.

Not her twins.

They were innocent. Glorious. The best of what was left after the world tried to burn everything away.

So she braided Wanda’s hair and called her a witch-child, like it was a blessing. She bandaged Pietro’s knees and told him the wind had always belonged to their people.

And when they asked about their gifts, she just smiled and said, “You’re magic, that’s all.”

She would not let the world take that away.

Not from them.

Not again.

✶ ✶ ✶

At night, when the children slept and the forest was still, Magda let herself wonder.

About Anya.

About what might have been.

She remembered Erik’s face the first time he held her—his hands trembling, his breath caught, like he couldn’t believe he deserved something so delicate. He had kissed Anya’s little brow, over and over, whispering things in Yiddish, in broken Romani, in the language of fathers who’d lost too much and finally been given something back.

She had been perfect. Their daughter.

Their first.

And sometimes, only in the dark, when no one could hear, Magda let herself ask the question that lived like a thorn in her chest:

Would Anya have had powers, too?

She had been too young. Just a little girl with soft curls and wide eyes. But she had been Erik’s daughter. And Erik… Erik had always said his blood was filled with iron and fury. That it ran strong. That it would pass on, one day.

Maybe Anya had been meant to inherit it.

Maybe that’s why the twins hadn’t.

Maybe the gift— the burden —was always meant for the firstborn.

Her little girl, who had once built tiny towers out of sticks and insisted they were castles. Who had pressed her palms to the sky like she could command the clouds.

Magda had never seen metal move around her. Never seen lightning spark from her fingers. But maybe she hadn’t lived long enough.

Maybe if she had survived—if they had gotten away, just a little sooner—Anya would have been the one bending nails from the walls. Calling keys to her hands. Floating cutlery, the way Erik used to when he didn’t want to get up from the table.

Maybe the twins had been spared because Anya was meant to carry it.

The thought made Magda sick with grief.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, staring into the embers of the fire, and let the tears come quietly.

Not just for the daughter she lost.

But for the powers Anya might have had.

For the father who would never see it.

For the twisted inheritance passed down from war and pain, wrapped in genes and memory.

For the curse that Erik had called a gift.

She looked at Wanda then—curled in sleep, lips parted in a soft snore, fingers twitching with some half-spoken dream—and at Pietro, who had flung a blanket off again in his sleep, his silver hair a halo against the grass.

They had their gifts. And they were alive.

Anya never got the chance.

And Magda would never know what she might have been.

✶ ✶ ✶

Erik would have loved this part.

Magda sat still beside the fire, her knees drawn to her chest, watching the way Wanda turned her hands in her sleep. Little circles. Little curls of fingers in the air, delicate and precise, as though shaping invisible threads.

Just like him.

He always moved his hands when he worked his power. Even when he didn’t need to. It was a habit. Graceful. Theatric, sometimes, when he was showing off—but mostly just… Erik. Like he was drawing the world into place with his fingers.

Wanda moved the same way.

Sometimes, when she was playing or focused on a song or cradling a beetle in her palm like it was sacred, her fingers would twitch, her wrist would bend, and the air would shimmer faintly around her. Like the world was listening.

Magda swallowed.

He would have adored her.

Erik had always been proud of what he could do. Not in a vain way—not exactly. But fiercely. Like he had to be. Like it was the one thing no one could ever take from him again.

He used to say it was a gift from God. A sign he was meant to survive. To fight. To protect.

He had wanted Anya to have powers, but he never expected her to.

“She’s too gentle,” he used to say, smiling, combing Anya’s curls back with reverent fingers. “She’ll be a teacher. Or a poet. My gift ends with me, I think.”

But he would have been wrong.

And Magda knew— knew —if Erik saw Wanda command the wind or Pietro streak through the trees like lightning incarnate, he would have wept. He would have held them up like miracles. He would have told everyone, “These are mine. Look what we made.”

Magda pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes burning.

What have I done?

She had run to protect them. She still believed that. Erik was a man broken by fire, and Anya’s death had nearly unmade him. Magda had seen the danger in his grief. The violence at the edges of his love. She had been afraid.

She was afraid.

But had she also taken this from him?

The chance to teach Pietro how to balance speed and control. The chance to show Wanda how to harness her wonder, her wildness. The chance to see their gifts not as burdens, but as blessings.

Had she robbed him of redemption?

Had she robbed the twins of their father?

She looked at them, sleeping side by side under a thin blanket. So bright. So alive.

No.

She hadn’t robbed anyone.

She had saved them.

From the legacy of blood and vengeance that had nearly consumed Erik.

From the world that would turn their gifts into weapons, and their bodies into tools.

But still… she let herself ache for what could have been.

For Erik’s arms around his children.

For the sound of his laughter when he realised Pietro outran the wind.

For the way his face would have crumpled, speechless, the first time Wanda made a flower bloom in her palm.

She had taken that from him.

And some days, that guilt felt heavier than anything else.

Chapter Text

The marketplace was loud— blessedly loud.

Voices shouted over one another in half a dozen languages. Chickens clucked beneath tables. Wheels creaked. Bells rang. Someone was playing a fiddle off-key in the corner near the bread stalls, and a woman two carts down was bartering so hard she might start throwing onions.

No one was paying attention to a little girl humming beside a spice cart.

Magda knew how to disappear. She always had. A scarf over the hair. A slight stoop to make herself look older. Calloused hands that worked fast and eyes that stayed low.

And the twins—well, they knew how to be quiet when they needed to.

Usually.

Pietro was up ahead, crouched beside a crate of dried dates, giggling with a fruit-seller who had silver coins in his beard. Magda was watching him out of the corner of her eye while she counted a few tarnished coins in her palm, deciding whether they’d eat bread or eggs tonight.

And that was when Wanda’s powers flared.

It was tiny. Barely anything.

A twist of her wrist.

A whisper of frustration when she couldn’t reach a swaying bundle of lavender above her head.

And the whole cart shifted.

The strings creaked. The air trembled. All the bundles shivered— shook, almost—and then one snapped free, falling directly into her hands.

She caught it like it had been given to her.

Wanda blinked, stunned. Then she smiled. Proud.

A few nearby shoppers turned at the sound of the cart’s rope snapping, but no one really looked. Too much noise. Too much movement. One man scowled at the merchant like it had been a shoddy knot. Another simply kept walking.

No one looked at the little girl in the red scarf.

No one saw her fingers curl in that way that made Magda’s heart stutter.

But Magda saw.

From across the market, she was already moving. Quiet. Quick. She dropped the coins. Didn’t even look to see where they landed.

She reached Wanda in three long steps and crouched, tucking the child into her arms like she was straightening her coat.

“Wanda,” she whispered, too low for anyone else to hear. “Little heart, you must not do that here.”

Wanda’s smile faltered. “But it was falling. I just… helped it.”

Magda kissed her temple. Held her there, still kneeling, breathing deep so Wanda would breathe with her.

“I know. I know you meant no harm. But we can’t show that. Not here. Not ever. ”

Wanda nodded slowly, her lip trembling. “I didn’t mean to make trouble.”

“You didn’t, mămică, ” Magda whispered. “You’re perfect. But the world doesn’t understand perfect things. So we keep our magic to ourselves, yes?”

The girl nodded again.

Behind them, the merchant was retying the loose bundles, muttering about old rope. Pietro came bouncing back with a date between his teeth, clueless to the danger.

Magda stood, brushing Wanda’s scarf back into place, and took both their hands.

They walked on. Just another tired mother with two quiet children in a city too busy to care.

But Magda’s heart beat hard the whole way.

Because next time, someone might see.

And once someone sees… You can’t ever go back to being invisible.

✶ ✶ ✶

It happened again.

Not the same day—another, cloudier one. The sky hung low and grey, and the air was thick with the promise of rain. But the marketplace buzzed on, as it always did. Rain or not, people needed to eat. To trade. To survive.

Magda kept her shawl close, her eyes on her children.

Wanda stayed close this time, her little hand buried in her mother's skirt, humming softly to herself. A new charm song, something Magda had taught her to help keep her hands still. She still reached for things—unconsciously, instinctively—but now she whispered to herself while she did, a grounding trick. It helped. Most days.

Pietro, though...

He’d been jittery since morning. Tapping his feet. Bouncing on the balls of them. His legs were growing faster than the rest of him, always bruised and sore. He said they “buzzed” sometimes when he sat too long. Magda had warned him to stay beside her. Repeated it twice.

“Pietro, do you hear me?”

“Yes, mamă! ”

And still.

One moment, he was by her side. The next— gone.

A blur of motion shot through the crowd. A gust of wind, a clatter of crates knocked loose, a startled yelp from a man carrying fish.

Magda’s heart stilled. She dropped the bundle of cloth she’d been inspecting and turned sharply, scanning the crowd.

There.

At the far end of the spice aisle, between the grain carts and the cheese wheel stand, Pietro. Panting. Grinning. Holding a bruised apple.

His cheeks were flushed. His eyes alight.

“I didn’t mean to run!” he called, jogging back now, slow and sheepish. “It just happened!”

Several merchants looked his way, scowling, confused. One muttered something about “thieving little rats.” Another waved a hand, more annoyed than suspicious. There were dozens of children in the market, after all. Kids running around wasn’t strange.

But that speed? That wasn’t natural.

It was only luck that saved him again.

The timing. The noise. The chaos. A man dropped a sack of beans nearby, drawing attention away. Someone started yelling about a misplaced goat. The world moved on.

But Magda’s fear stayed.

She crouched low when Pietro returned to her side, fists clenched tight, her voice like iron wrapped in silk.

“Never again,” she hissed, grabbing his shoulder—not hard, but firm. “Do you hear me, Pietro? Never like that. Never here.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, shrinking. “I just—my legs wanted to go. I didn’t mean—”

“I know. I know you didn’t. But listen to me, copilul meu. You can’t run like that. Not where people can see.”

His bottom lip wobbled. “But it was only a little bit.”

Magda’s voice softened. She pulled him close, smoothing his hair back.

“I know. And you were fast. So fast, sufletelul meu. But this world… it doesn’t forgive what it doesn’t understand.”

Wanda reached up and touched his elbow, solemn and quiet. “You scared Mama,” she whispered.

Pietro nodded, ashamed.

Magda took both their hands again, and they moved on—quieter now. Smaller. A family always one wrong step from being seen.

Later that night, when the rain finally came, they huddled beneath a makeshift tarp behind a bakery wall. Pietro sat curled into Magda’s side, asking if she was angry.

“No,” she whispered into his hair. “Not angry. Just scared.”

Because she knew one day, the world would notice.

And she didn’t know what would happen when it did.

✶ ✶ ✶

Magda felt the man’s gaze long before he spoke.

It was a prickle at the back of her neck. The way silence always falls before something dangerous steps into your path.

She kept her eyes on the stall—roots and herbs this time, a familiar vendor who didn’t ask questions. Wanda was beside her, humming her grounding song, little fingers tracing invisible patterns in the air. Pietro knelt by a basket of dried mushrooms, brow furrowed in concentration as he counted aloud under his breath.

They were calm. For once. Just children.

That was when the man spoke.

“Well, now. Aren’t they something. ”

Magda turned slowly, already tucking Wanda behind her hip with practised ease.

The man was white. Late forties, maybe older. Red-cheeked, dressed too finely for this part of the market. Soft hands, polished boots. Something in his coat pocket clicked softly when he moved—keys, or maybe coins. A foreigner, by the look of him. English, perhaps. Or American.

He smiled.

Too many teeth.

“Twins, are they?” he asked, pointing a gloved finger between the children.

“Yes,” Magda said shortly, already turning back.

But he stepped closer. “That’s just fascinating. I mean, look at them! One with hair like snow, the other as dark as you. But the eyes—same shape. Same spacing. You can tell, can’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

“They look just like you,” he added, smile tightening. “Well, one does. The girl. The boy—different story. His coloring, that’s unusual. I’ve seen something like it once. In Morocco, maybe? Or Portugal.”

He was still staring at them, gaze flicking back and forth with an eagerness that made Magda’s skin crawl.

“Beautiful children,” he said. “Exotic, aren’t they?”

She stiffened.

The way he said it— exotic —like they were trinkets. Like they were curiosities he’d found in a window. His interest in them overrode his discomfort, but it was there. Underneath. That thin sheen of disgust he couldn’t quite hide when his eyes drifted to her skirt, her scarf, the thick, dark braid wrapped around her shoulder.

“You from here?” he asked, voice suddenly casual. “You and the little ones?”

“No,” she said.

“Traveling folk, then?”

She didn’t answer.

He leaned a bit closer. Too close. “Their father around?”

Magda’s stomach turned.

“Dead,” she lied.

The man paused. A flicker of something in his face—sympathy, maybe. Or suspicion. “Shame,” he said. “Mixed blood, eh? It’s a strange thing, twins like that. Can’t help but wonder how the genes split. Nature’s funny.”

Magda took Pietro’s hand. Then Wanda’s.

The man smiled again. “Just curious, of course. I work with children. Interested in development. Biology. Things like that. Mind if I ask how old they are?”

“Yes,” Magda said sharply.

His eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mind, ” she said. “We’re leaving.”

He stepped aside but kept talking, eyes following them as they passed.

“Lovely meeting you, miss. Truly. You’ve got something special there.”

Magda didn’t look back. She didn’t breathe until they were five streets away, through an alley, past the butcher’s smokehouse and into the shadow of the chapel wall.

Only then did she crouch and press the children close.

“Listen to me,” she whispered. “If anyone ever speaks to you like that again, you come to me. You don’t answer. You don’t smile. You don’t show them anything. ”

Pietro nodded, wide-eyed. Wanda clung to her.

“I didn’t like him,” Wanda murmured. “His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t.”

Magda exhaled shakily, brushing her daughter’s cheek. “Good. That means you’re paying attention.”

Because that man?

That kind of man was the reason they ran.

✶ ✶ ✶

They were almost out.

One more turn through the back streets and they’d be past the town’s edge, into the trees again, back on the road. Magda had already planned their next stop—a small Romani camp in the hills, one she hadn’t visited in years but still remembered from before the war. She’d get them food. Shelter. Time to breathe.

The twins were tired. Wanda walked slowly, clutching her stuffed scrap of fabric, her cheeks red and eyes glassy from overstimulation. Pietro lagged behind, scuffing his shoes in the dirt, the speed burned out of him for now.

Magda had their hands. One on either side.

She felt it before she saw it.

A shadow moved in the alley ahead, too still. Too large.

She froze.

“ Pietro, Wanda— ” her voice snapped low. Urgent.

But it was too late.

The first man came from behind. Then another from the side. Faces half-covered. Heavy boots. Gloves.

She moved instantly.

Pushed Wanda behind her.

Shoved Pietro back.

“ Run— ” she started.

A fist struck her side—blunt, fast, cruel. Her ribs screamed.

She didn’t fall.

She lunged.

Her fingers found skin, throat, eyes—whatever she could reach. She scratched. Bit. Screamed.

She’d lost one child.

She would not lose two more.

She fought like a woman possessed. No form. No mercy. A mother’s fury made flesh.

One man fell back, bleeding from the face.

Another reeled when her elbow cracked into his nose.

But there were many.

She was one.

They grabbed her arms. Her legs. One pinned her from behind while another slammed something into her stomach—hard and sharp. The air fled her lungs.

Still, she thrashed.

Still, she screamed.

“ RUN! ”

But Pietro didn’t. Wanda didn’t.

They were screaming too now. Calling for her.

Her babies.

She heard Wanda cry out— “Mama! Mama!” —just as something heavy cracked against her skull.

The world split in two.

She hit the ground.

Blood in her mouth. Gravel in her cheek.

No—

She turned her head. Vision swaying.

Pietro was kicking someone, fast and wild, his speed blurring—but it wasn’t enough. A gloved fist caught him across the temple. He dropped like a stone.

Wanda screamed.

And then Wanda screamed without sound —her mouth wide, her hands out, her power surging —

And a man struck her from behind. A black baton to the head.

She crumpled.

Her little red scarf floated to the ground beside her.

Magda tried to crawl.

Her arms didn’t move.

She tasted the earth. Iron. Regret.

Her heart broke in real time as they were dragged away.

Small bodies.

Soft limbs.

No mercy.

No—no, no, please, please—

She needed Erik.

He would have felt them coming. He would have turned the air itself into a weapon. They wouldn’t have laid a finger on her babies if he’d been here.

She should have let him be their father.

She should have—

Everything dimmed.

Her last thought before the dark took her was not a thought at all, but a memory—

Anya’s tiny hand in hers.

Now lost.

Now all lost.

Chapter Text

The morning light came golden through the windows.

It spilt across the wooden floors, dappled and warm, stirring the dust motes that danced lazily in the sunbeams. Somewhere, a kettle whistled. Somewhere, someone laughed. A deep laugh—familiar, full of mischief and joy.

Magda blinked, then blinked again.

She was standing barefoot in a kitchen she knew, but could not place. Herbs were hanging from the ceiling. The walls were painted the colour of late summer wheat. A worn wooden table sat in the centre, cluttered with bowls, crumbs, and fruit peels. A child’s crayon drawing lay beside a chipped mug.

It smelled like coffee and bread and something sweet baking in the oven.

“Mama!”

A voice.

Then a weight at her hip—small arms, warm breath.

Wanda.

Wanda, five years old and perfect, in a red cotton dress with her dark curls pulled into loose pigtails. Her brown eyes sparkled up at her.

“Papa says we can go to the river today!”

“Did he?” Magda heard herself say. Her voice was light. Whole. Not ragged with exhaustion or dread. Her hands weren’t shaking.

“Yes!” came another voice.

Pietro zoomed into the room with the sound of bare feet skidding on polished wood. He was grinning, cheeks flushed from running, his silver hair a mess. “He said we can go after breakfast!”

Magda laughed. She laughed.

“Oh, slow down, little wind.”

Pietro beamed and darted around the table before throwing himself onto her other side.

Two arms. Two children. No fear.

And then—another voice.

“Let us eat first, you little hurricane.”

Magda turned.

There, by the stove, in sleeves rolled past his elbows and an apron dusted with flour, stood Erik.

He looked older than when she left him, but in that strong, lived-in way. Lines around his eyes. He was barefoot, too, and smiling at her with a softness that nearly undid her.

“Good morning,” he said simply.

She couldn’t speak.

He crossed the floor in three steps and kissed her cheek.

Anya came next—of course she did.

She danced into the room with a twirl of her skirt, her long dark hair tied with a yellow ribbon, just like the ones Magda used to braid into it. She was maybe ten, maybe twelve—it shifted every time Magda looked at her. She looked like them all. A perfect mix.

“Mama,” she said with a grin. “Papa made pancakes. He burned the first one.”

“I did not,” Erik said behind her, mock-offended. “It was rustic.”

“You tried to flip it in the air,” Wanda whispered with a giggle.

“It hit the ceiling,” Pietro added, mouth full.

Magda just stared.

At their faces.

At the life around her.

At the impossible dream unfolding in her arms.

No fear. No hunger. No running.

Her children were clean. Healthy. Fed.

Erik was here.

Not a ghost. Not a memory. Not a regret.

He stood at her side, one hand on her back, the other wiping jam from Pietro’s chin. She reached out—touched his chest. Solid. Warm. Real.

Her eyes filled.

He noticed.

“Hey,” he whispered, his brows pulling together in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“I…” she choked. “I just… I’m happy.”

And she was.

She didn’t know why she felt like she hadn’t seen them in years.

Didn’t know why her chest ached like it had been split open and only now was beginning to heal.

Didn’t know why her heart whispered warnings even as it soared.

But it didn’t matter.

Because here, in this place, her family was whole.

Alive.

Together.

And for the first time in so very long, Magda let herself believe it could stay that way.

✶ ✶ ✶

The world smelled wrong.

Like metal and bleach and something else—sharper. Like burnt wires. Like fear.

Pietro woke first.

He sat up too fast, head pounding, the edges of his vision swimming. His small hands flew to his temples. Everything was too bright and too loud. The lights buzzed overhead like angry bees. His heartbeat thumped unevenly in his ears.

“Mama?” he croaked.

No answer.

The floor beneath him was cold. Not wood. Not Earth. Not anything he knew.

It was grey. Hard. A strange smoothness, like stone with no soul.

He turned—where was he?

Not the wagon.

Not the field.

Not the campsite by the river where they’d danced just a few days ago.

Not home.

“Wanda!” he scrambled to her side.

She lay curled on her side, one hand twitching softly. Her scarf was gone. Her curls were messy, face was smudged.

He touched her shoulder.

She flinched awake with a soft gasp. Her eyes fluttered open, wide and confused and glassy with tears.

“Pietro?”

“I’m here,” he whispered.

Wanda sat up slowly, clutching at him. “Where’s Mama?”

“I—I don’t know.”

They looked around.

The room was too small. No windows. Just smooth steel walls and a humming door with no handle. There were lights on the ceiling—blinking red and white. A strange mirror on one wall that Pietro somehow knew wasn’t a mirror at all.

Wanda’s fingers crept into his. “Is this… did we do something bad?”

“No!” Pietro said too fast, too loud. He squeezed her hand. “No, we didn’t. Mama said it’s never our fault when bad people do bad things.”

“Then where is she?” Wanda’s lip trembled. “Why didn’t she come?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

He hated not knowing.

He was supposed to know things. He could always find her when she wandered off, always hear things other people couldn’t. But now he heard nothing but that terrible humming. No birds. No wind. No Mama.

He stood up too fast again. His knees buckled.

Wanda cried out and tried to stand, too, but the cold made her feet stumble. They clung to each other, wobbling.

Then—

A voice. Mechanical. Tinny. Somewhere above them.

“Subjects A and B: conscious. Begin recording.”

Wanda whimpered. Pietro shoved her behind him, just like Mama always did.

“Who’s there?” he shouted.

No answer.

He ran to the wall and pounded it with his fists. “WHERE’S OUR MAMA?”

His voice echoed. But no one came.

Wanda sniffled. “Are we in trouble?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is this… the bad place Mama told us about? The one with fences and no doors?”

Pietro didn’t answer.

He didn’t want it to be true.

But deep down, he knew.

It wasn’t a question of whether they were taken.

It was why.

And what would happen next.

He sat down again, pulled Wanda into his lap, and wrapped his arms around her small frame. She was shivering.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he said, into her hair.

“Just like Mama?”

His eyes stung.

He didn’t answer.

✶ ✶ ✶

Wanda’s hand trembled in Pietro’s.

He didn’t let go.

The two of them stood—barefoot, dirty, tiny—before a wide metal desk. The room around them was colder than the last. More clinical. More wrong.

White lights hummed overhead. Everything was grey or silver or steel. A smell lingered beneath the antiseptic: something coppery and sharp.

Across from them, a man sat behind the desk.

He was smiling.

That was the worst part.

“Well, look at you two,” he said, voice smooth as polished glass. His accent was strange. European. Clipped and too careful. “You really are something, aren’t you?”

Neither child answered.

He leaned forward slightly, hands steepled.

“So polite. So quiet. Most children scream when they’re brought in. You haven’t made a fuss at all.”

“Where’s our mama?” Pietro asked, his voice a cracked whisper.

The man didn’t blink. “Ah. Straight to business.”

Wanda repeated, softly: “Where’s Mama?”

“She’s resting,” he said with false warmth. “You gave our recovery team quite a bit of trouble, you know. She’s very brave.”

Neither twin looked comforted.

Wanda’s lip trembled, and she gripped Pietro’s shirt so tight it wrinkled.

The man’s smile never faltered. “You two… you fascinate me. Do you know what it means to be special?” he asked, tilting his head like a predator pretending to be a teacher.

Pietro glared. “We want Mama.”

“You’ll see her. In time. Once the tests begin.” He waved a hand, as if that should satisfy them. “Now, you two—twins. Identical gestation, simultaneous development. Same age, same bloodline, and yet—so different.”

Wanda’s eyes darted to the corners of the room.

Mirrors.

No way out.

“You move faster than any child I’ve seen,” the man said to Pietro. “And you,” he turned to Wanda, “have a remarkable gift. Still raw. Still untrained. But the potential—oh, it’s beautiful.”

Wanda took a step back.

Pietro moved in front of her.

The man watched with interest. “Always protecting her. Very sweet. You’ll both be protected here too. Guided. Improved. Hydra has a long history of unlocking what others fear.”

He smiled again.

Wanda looked up at him, brow furrowed.

“What’s Hydra?”

“Hydra is order, little one. In a world of chaos. Your kind—mutants, anomalies, miracles—you are the future. Our future.”

Pietro’s voice was almost too quiet to hear. “We’re not your anything.”

The man’s expression faltered for the briefest moment.

Then returned.

“You will be. In time. We have such plans for you.”

The twins didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t cry.

They just stood there, two trembling little bodies in threadbare clothes, dirt on their cheeks, bare feet on cold tile, staring up at a man who spoke like he owned them.

The only thing they said, over and over, softly, was—

“Where’s Mama?”

“Can we see Mama now?”

“Please.”

“Please.”

But Mama didn’t come.

And the man behind the desk only smiled.

✶ ✶ ✶

The silence in the office stretched thin.

Pietro wouldn’t let go of Wanda’s hand, not even when the man behind the desk crooked a finger and said, “Come now, darling. Just a step closer. No one will hurt you.”

Wanda didn’t move.

He sighed theatrically. “It’s just a desk.”

Then, to the guards stationed by the door: “Separate them.”

Two uniformed men stepped forward.

Pietro immediately tensed, blue eyes flashing with panic. “No—!”

Wanda tugged his hand gently. “It’s okay,” she whispered. She was shaking. “I’ll go.”

He didn’t like it, but he let her go.

She stepped forward alone.

Her feet were bare, her dress wrinkled and stained with dirt, and she had to crane her neck to even see over the edge of the desk.

The man beamed like she was a prize he’d just won at a fair.

“Very good. Such a brave girl,” he said, pushing a small object toward her. A dull silver paperweight, shaped like a cube. Too big for her hand. Too heavy for her to lift without effort, even with her gift.

“Now,” he said, steepling his fingers again, “I hear you can move things. With your mind. Is that right?”

Wanda didn’t answer.

“Can you show me?” he coaxed. “Just a little. Try to push it. That’s all.”

Her tiny fingers lifted—hovered over the desk. Her brow furrowed, her nose wrinkled.

She tried.

And tried.

And tried.

Nothing happened.

Her little face was tight with focus. Her fingers curled, her shoulders trembled. Pietro stood frozen by the wall, wringing his hands, helpless.

Wanda’s power flickered at the edges—barely a spark. Like static electricity at her fingertips. The paperweight shivered once. Rolled a fraction of a centimetre—then stopped.

She gasped.

The man’s smile dimmed.

“That’s it?” he asked, tone still syrupy, but thinner now.

Wanda’s lip quivered. “I—I can do more. Sometimes I can. It’s just hard.”

“She’s tired,” Pietro said, voice hoarse. “You made her tired.”

The man ignored him.

He leaned forward slightly. “Try again, Wanda. Push it harder.”

Wanda’s hands lifted once more. Her fingers strained.

But the weight didn’t move.

“I—I’m trying—”

His tone shifted. Just enough to notice.

“I said try again.”

Her breath hitched.

Pietro stepped forward, panicked. “Leave her alone!”

The man raised one hand to silence him, and with the other, gestured.

The guards exited the room, the door hissing shut behind them.

Now it was only them. One man in a dark suit and a pair of five-year-olds under the sterile light of a place that reeked of control.

“Do you know what disappointment feels like, Wanda?” the man asked softly.

She blinked. Her hands dropped.

He tilted his head. “You will.”

✶ ✶ ✶

The door hissed open again.

But this time—

This time, they brought her.

“Mama!” the twins cried out in unison.

Magda was barely standing.

Her hair hung in matted waves around her face. Her dress was torn, stained with blood and dirt. One eye swollen shut, her lip split. Her wrists were bound in front of her, arms pinned by two guards gripping her like a prize animal.

But her head snapped up the moment she heard their voices.

“Wanda! Pietro!” she choked, stumbling toward them.

The guards yanked her back.

The children rushed forward—but the room was too large, the space too well-planned. They couldn’t reach her. They couldn’t touch her—only brush fingers through the air before being held back.

Wanda’s sob echoed off the steel walls. “Mama!”

Magda reached for them uselessly, shoulders trembling. “I’m here. Mama’s here. It’s okay—shh—it’s okay—”

The man at the desk rose calmly.

He reached into a drawer.

And pulled out a gun.

Magda froze.

The guards didn’t flinch. They held her tighter.

The twins fell utterly silent.

“Now then,” the man said, voice unchanging. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

He turned to Wanda.

“You’re going to lift the paperweight, little one. No more pretending. No more weakness. No more time.”

He raised the gun. Calm. Casual.

Pointed it at Magda’s head.

“You don’t lift the paperweight,” he said, “and I pull the trigger. Do you understand?”

Wanda stared, trembling. Her knees gave out, and she collapsed to the floor. Pietro grabbed her, but she was too far gone with terror to even register it.

The man took a breath.

“One.”

“Mama,” Pietro whispered, eyes wide.

“You can do it,” Magda said quickly, voice desperate but gentle. “Wanda, baby, you can do it. It’s okay. Just try. Mama’s here.”

“Two.”

“Everything is all right,” Magda whispered again, even as her eyes filled with tears. “It’s all right, sweet girl. Just breathe. Just—”

“Three.”

Wanda screamed.

But nothing moved.

The paperweight sat, still and silent, on the desk.

Just like the moment.

Just like the breath between breaths.

Then—

A sound like thunder cracked through the room.

Blood bloomed from the side of Magda’s head like a red flower.

The children shrieked.

She collapsed.

Her body hit the floor with a lifeless thud.

The guards let go.

The man holstered his weapon with clinical efficiency, brushing invisible lint from his jacket.

Magda’s last thought, in the half-second between the trigger and the dark, was of her babies.

Their faces.

And Anya—smiling, arms outstretched.

Home.

Chapter Text

The room erupted.

It started as a scream.

Wanda’s scream. Pietro’s too. High-pitched, raw, animalistic. Not words—just pain.

She dropped to her knees beside Magda’s still form, sobbing so hard her tiny chest heaved with every breath. Her hands scrambled uselessly across her mother’s cooling skin, brushing blood, trying to shake her awake. “ Mama—Mama—Mama— ”

Pietro’s cry turned into something else.

He couldn’t stand still.

His limbs jittered, blurred, and vibrated with a velocity he couldn’t control. The walls around him flickered like they couldn’t hold still either, light strobing from the sheer speed building up in his veins.

The air in the room thickened.

Light fixtures shook.

Papers and pens lifted from the desk, floating as if the laws of nature had bent around the sheer force of their agony.

And the man—

The man smiled.

Delighted.

Like a parent at a piano recital.

“ Marvelous, ” he whispered, eyes gleaming. “Absolutely marvelous.”

Wanda turned to him, face soaked in tears, her tiny hands shaking, sparks of red flickering at her fingertips. “ You killed her! ”

The paperweight launched off the desk—fast and sharp like a bullet—but it missed. Clanged against the wall.

“ You— ” she tried again, another chair lifting, trembling in the air, then clattering uselessly to the floor.

The power was there.

But it was wild.

Untrained.

He took a step forward, utterly unfazed. “You don’t understand yet, do you?”

Pietro shot forward, a blur of motion, only to slam into one of the guards who had re-entered the room and was ready for him, electrified baton crackling. The sound of Pietro’s scream when it struck him was worse than the shot had been.

The man didn’t flinch.

“Your names,” he said, over the chaos, “are Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Five years old. Subjects of Project: Miracle. Hydra property.”

Wanda crawled toward Pietro, sobbing, arms wrapped around him. He was shaking, twitching, and breathing in shallow gasps.

“And me?” the man continued, crouching down like he was addressing pets. “I am Dr. Wilhelm List. But you, my darlings, may call me Uncle.”

His voice was all honey and rot.

“You are extraordinary. And you’re mine now.”

He reached out—

Wanda slapped his hand away with a spark that actually burned.

List’s smile only grew.

He stood, dusted off his coat, and gestured for the guards.

“Sedate them.”

“ No— ” Wanda shrieked.

But it was too late.

The needle sank into Pietro’s neck first.

Then Wanda’s.

Her world blurred.

The last thing she saw was Mama’s hair sprawled across the floor.

And then—

Nothing.

✶ ✶ ✶

Wanda woke with a jolt.

Her limbs were heavy. Her mouth dry. The room was dim and cold, walls made of steel and shadows. No windows. Just four corners and a flickering overhead light that buzzed like a fly trapped in glass.

She sat up slowly, dizzy.

“ Mama? ”

Silence.

No birds. No trees. No hum of a wagon wheel. No Pietro.

Her tiny hands gripped the edge of the metal cot she’d been placed on. Her knees trembled as she slipped down to the floor.

“ Pietro? ” she called louder this time, voice cracking.

No answer.

She stumbled toward the door—thick, grey, sealed.

Tried the handle.

Locked.

Banged her fist against it with all the strength her little body had. “ PIETRO! ”

But the walls were too thick. He couldn’t hear her.

And she couldn’t hear him.

✶ ✶ ✶

On the other side of that very wall, Pietro was doing the same.

He had woken up alone in a near-identical room. Plain bed, plain walls, plain fear curling in his chest like smoke he couldn’t cough up. He had screamed the second he opened his eyes. Clawed at the door. Pounded until his fists went red and raw.

“ WANDA! ”

He cried until he hiccuped. Until he threw up on the floor.

Then kept crying.

The emptiness around him was unbearable.

He’d never been alone before.

Not really.

Not without Mama.

Not without her.

“Where is she?” he sobbed into the wall, hands flattened against the metal. “Where’s Wanda? Where’s Mama? I want Mama—please—I want Mama—!”

No one came.

Not yet.

Just the soft click of a vent turning on.

A soft hum of cameras watching.

✶ ✶ ✶

Wanda curled up under her bed.

She’d always hated closed-in spaces, but she couldn’t bring herself to stay in the open. She was still wearing her dress from the market. It still had Mama’s blood on it. She couldn’t stop staring at it. She wanted to rip it off, but she couldn’t move.

Everything hurt.

Inside and out.

She pressed her hands over her ears and started whispering. Words she barely knew the meaning of. A mix of Yiddish and Romani—her mother’s languages. “Avel Mare Romani, Mare drey...a sheynem kind, a sheynem zeyde...” Nonsense lullabies. Prayers. Anything to drown out the silence.

She didn’t know she was only a few feet from Pietro.

Just one wall away.

But it might as well have been a world.

✶ ✶ ✶

The hours stretched.

They passed like dripping water, each second a lead weight falling through space.

Wanda didn’t know how to tell time—Mama always said they didn’t need clocks, just the sky—but she could feel the day turning inside her. The weight of it. The silence that wasn’t natural, that felt like it had teeth.

She cried until her voice broke.

And then she cried more.

“Mama,” she whimpered, curled tighter under the bed, one thumb jammed into her mouth though she hadn’t done that in a long time. “Mama, please come get us. Please come get us. Please—”

She didn’t care if the lights stayed on forever.

She wanted the stars.

She wanted the dirt under her bare feet and the way Mama would sing while fixing their skirts, and the crackle of fires, and Pietro’s hand in hers as they ran laughing through trees.

Her brother’s laugh.

She hadn't realised how quiet the world was without it.

✶ ✶ ✶

Pietro had stopped screaming, but only because his throat had given out.

Now he sat on the floor in the corner furthest from the door, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around them. His whole body trembled—not with speed this time, but with fear. Cold.

He hadn’t stopped whispering her name.

“Wanda… Wanda… Wanda…”

Sometimes he screamed it again just to check if she’d answer.

She didn’t.

They had never been apart for more than a few minutes. Not since they were born. Not since Mama laid them in the same cradle with their heads nestled together and said, "You were made together, you'll stay together. Like breath and heartbeat."

Now there was no Mama.

And no Wanda.

Just steel.

And cameras.

And that horrible, humming vent.

He didn’t understand what was happening. He wasn’t old enough to. All he knew was: Mama was gone, and he couldn’t get to Wanda.

He’d tried running the room, hoping to go fast enough to break out, but it was too small. The walls came up too quickly. His knee was bruised from hitting it. His hands scraped.

And the more he moved, the more he remembered Mama's voice, screaming his name.

He curled tighter.

“Wanda, please talk,” he begged the wall. “Please. Please, I’ll be good. I won’t run again. I’ll be good if you just come out. Please…”

✶ ✶ ✶

They didn’t feed them.

Not that day.

No one came.

No one spoke.

Not even to hurt them.

And somehow, that was worse.

Wanda’s stomach cramped with hunger, but she didn’t care. Her cheeks were raw from rubbing against the floor as she cried, the tile smelling of metal and sterilised cold. She stared at the door for hours, willing it to open. Hoping every second it would swing wide and Mama would be there, arms out.

“Mama,” she whispered again. “Please…”

Nothing.

Just the camera’s slow blink.

Just the flickering overhead bulb.

Just her own sobbing echoing back at her like ghosts of herself she couldn’t escape.

✶ ✶ ✶

They’d never known stillness before.

Not like this.

They had always moved. Even when they stopped in one place for a few days, there were fires, songs, and voices. There was Earth.

Now there was nothing.

No wind.

No night.

No sky.

Just four walls, each one tighter than the last.

It wasn’t just grief.

It was starvation —not of food, but of everything they’d ever known.

Chapter Text

The lights snapped on all at once.

Blinding white. Cold.

Wanda flinched awake under her bed, shrinking from the sudden brightness like it burned. Her mouth was dry, her eyes swollen from crying.

The door hissed.

And in stepped him.

Dr. Wilhelm List.

But he smiled like he was a friend, like a parent picking a child up from school.

“Ah! There she is,” he sang, crouching to meet her eye level. “My precious girl. Slept well, did we?”

Wanda blinked. Said nothing.

He didn’t seem to notice her silence.

He reached beneath the bed with slow, deliberate movements and gently drew her out by the wrist. She didn’t fight him—couldn’t. Her legs felt made of smoke.

“Come now,” he said, brushing a strand of tangled hair from her cheek. “We have a very important day ahead. Big plans for you and your brother.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out a wrapped biscuit. “Here,” he said sweetly, placing it in her hand. “Something to fill that little tummy, hmm? Eat up, starlet.”

Wanda stared at it. It was dry and crumbly and stale—but she was starving.

She ate.

He wiped her face with a cloth and tutted softly. “We must keep you pretty, you know. Important little girls must look the part. Let’s get you dressed.”

And like that, she was his doll.

✶ ✶ ✶

It was an old-fashioned dress—plain, faded yellow, high collar, tight buttons. Wanda barely noticed it as he guided her arms into sleeves, tightened the back, and ran a comb through her hair. She flinched at the tug, but he only chuckled.

“Good girl. All ready for your big day.”

He kissed her on the forehead.

And then left.

✶ ✶ ✶

The door across the hall hissed open.

Pietro had just woken up when the man appeared.

“ There he is,” List said with a delighted gasp, as though Pietro hadn’t spent the previous day crying and screaming until he passed out. “My fast little prince.”

Pietro curled his knees to his chest, back against the wall.

“I want Mama,” he said quietly.

List smiled. “Of course you do. We all want many things. But what we need is to be strong, don’t we?”

He crouched, placed another biscuit in Pietro’s hand. “Eat, now. We need to fill that tummy before we go exploring.”

Pietro stared at it. “Where’s Wanda?”

“Just next door. Getting ready.”

“You took her?”

“Of course! She’s safe. I’m taking care of her. Just like I’m taking care of you.”

Pietro didn’t trust him. He didn’t know why—he was too little to know about manipulation—but he could feel it. Something rotten behind the smile.

But he ate anyway.

Because he was hungry.

Because he was five.

✶ ✶ ✶

List returned to Wanda’s room, now with a matching hair ribbon.

“Oh, I forgot,” he chuckled. “A princess must have her bow.”

Then he was back to Pietro with socks and shoes. Muttering about laces and scuffed soles and perfect fits.

Then back again to Wanda, straightening her collar, brushing off crumbs.

Then again, to Pietro.

It went on and on—back and forth—until both twins stood in their rooms in identical poses: silent, freshly scrubbed, dressed, fed, hair combed, hands folded.

It was all so normal.

Except it wasn’t.

They were five.

And their mother was dead.

And the man smiling at them had done it.

✶ ✶ ✶

The door slid open with a soft hiss.

Wanda didn’t move at first.

She was sitting in the corner of the new room, wider than her cell, padded in places, painted a dull, childlike yellow. There were a few old toys scattered around like they were trying to mimic a kindergarten, but everything felt wrong. Staged. Cold.

She didn't care about the toys.

She just wanted her brother.

And then she saw him.

Pietro stumbled in with wide eyes, nearly tripping over the edge of the padded mat as he scanned the room—and the second he spotted Wanda, the world snapped back into place.

“ Wanda! ”

“ Pietro! ”

They crashed into each other like magnets, like breath and heartbeat, the way Mama used to say. Pietro wrapped his arms around her tightly, and Wanda clung to him harder, both of them sobbing into the other’s shoulder. It didn’t matter that they'd been apart for only a day. It felt like years. It felt like death.

They sank to the floor, arms tangled, hands grasping clothes and hair and whatever else they could hold. Wanda's ribbon came undone. Pietro's shoes were half-tied. They didn’t care. They had each other.

They were whole.

Sort of.

✶ ✶ ✶

Dr. List watched from behind the two-way glass for a moment, then stepped inside.

The click of the door made them freeze.

“Now isn’t that just precious?” he cooed, arms out like a benevolent uncle. “I knew this would do wonders for morale. Children need company—especially twins.”

The twins looked up at him warily. Wanda shrank behind Pietro, who stood in front of her instinctively, as though he could shield her with his too-small body.

But List just smiled, crouching a few feet away.

“Don’t be shy. Come now,” he said. “I made sure you were clean, warm, and well-fed. Isn’t that nice? Don’t I take good care of you?”

No answer.

He tilted his head, mock-wounded.

“Would you prefer I leave you alone again? You didn’t seem to enjoy that very much.”

Wanda sniffled. Pietro’s lip quivered.

“No?” List’s smile returned. “I didn’t think so.”

He picked up a stuffed rabbit from a chair beside him and held it out. “For you, little Wanda. And perhaps later, a racing track for Pietro. Would you like that, my boy?”

Pietro didn’t answer.

Wanda took the rabbit slowly.

They were five years old.

They didn’t understand what was happening.

But they understood this: they had to be good. If they were good, they might get to stay together. If they were good, maybe Mama would come back. If they were good, maybe this man would stop smiling like that.

✶ ✶ ✶

List stood again, brushing imaginary dust from his coat. “Play for a while,” he said sweetly. “Be children. We’ll begin again soon enough.”

And with that, he left.

The door shut behind him.

And the twins, finally, desperately held each other again.

✶ ✶ ✶

They were ushered back into the same office. The one with the heavy desk, the too-bright lights, and the ghosts of things they couldn’t name yet.

Dr. List was already seated, pen in hand, smile in place.

“Now then, my sweet little stars,” he said brightly, gesturing to the chairs opposite him. “Come, sit. Let’s have a nice chat, hmm?”

Wanda clutched the rabbit he’d given her. Pietro clung to her sleeve. They climbed into the stiff chairs, small legs dangling. Wanda had to kneel to peek over the desk.

List tapped his pen. “Let’s start with your names.”

A beat of silence.

Then:

“Wanda,” she whispered.

“Wanda…” List repeated with exaggerated affection. “ Beautiful . And you?”

“Pietro.”

He wrote it down, nodding slowly, as if it mattered. As if he didn’t already know.

“And… your last name?”

“Maximoff,” Pietro said.

“Max-ee-moff,” Wanda echoed.

List smiled thinly. “Yes. Of course. Maximoff.”

He leaned forward, resting his chin on folded hands.

“Now, tell me about your mama.”

“She’s our mama,” Wanda said simply.

“She sings,” Pietro added. “She dances.”

“She’s pretty.”

“She makes soup.”

List chuckled. “Yes, yes, I’m sure she did.”

He flipped a page in his folder. “And your father ? What was he like?”

The twins blinked.

“…What?”

“Your father,” List said more slowly, still smiling. “The man. Do you remember him?”

Pietro frowned. “We don’t got one.”

“Just Mama,” Wanda said.

List’s smile twitched.

“No father?”

They shook their heads.

Interesting.

He scribbled something.

“And what are you?” he asked next, tone falsely curious. “What… background? Do you know?”

Wanda’s face lit up just a little. “We’re Romani. Like Mama. She said so.”

“And Jewish,” Pietro added. “We do Shabbat.”

Wanda nodded proudly. “We light candles.”

List’s pen stopped.

His jaw tightened.

“…I see,” he said, after a pause. “That’s very… rich heritage.”

The twins didn’t understand his tone. They were five.

They only knew Mama said it was special.

That they were meant to carry it.

✶ ✶ ✶

List stood slowly, smoothing his coat. The performance was slipping slightly, like a mask growing heavy.

“Well,” he said, clapping his hands once. “This has been so helpful. Thank you for being such good listeners.”

He turned to leave, then paused.

“Remember,” he said with a half-turn, voice soft and syrupy, “you can always tell Uncle List anything.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

And the children were left sitting in chairs far too big for them, in a world far too cruel.

✶ ✶ ✶

The room smelled too clean.

Too sharp.

There was a metal table—two, in fact—and bright lights that buzzed overhead. Pietro and Wanda were led in gently, hand in hand, Wanda still clutching her rabbit. There were people in white coats. Masks. Gloves.

And List.

He was all smiles, arms open like a welcoming fire.

“There you are, my sweet ones,” he said, voice smooth as honey. “You’ve been so brave. One more little thing, and then we’re done for today.”

Wanda clung to Pietro’s arm.

“Will it hurt?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Oh, precious heart,” List cooed, brushing her cheek with his knuckles. “Only a little pinch. Just a small thing. Like a drawing. A special mark—just for you.”

The twins were lifted—placed side by side on the cold metal tables. Straps secured their arms. Their legs. Their tiny wrists and ankles, held down by thick leather. Wanda whimpered. Pietro squirmed.

They didn’t understand.

Not until the whirring sound started.

Not until someone rolled up their sleeves.

Not until the needles came close.

Then—

“No! No no no!” Pietro shouted, yanking against the restraints with everything he had. “Let us go! Let us go! ”

“ Mama! ” Wanda sobbed, trying to twist her head toward him. “ Mama, help! ”

But there was no Mama here.

Only List.

He stood calmly between them, stroking Wanda’s hair, then Pietro’s.

“You’re doing so well,” he murmured, voice syrup-thick. “So, so well. Brave little stars. Just like your mama would want, hmm?”

He held their hands—tiny fingers curled into his palm—while the needle began its work.

Wanda screamed. Pietro thrashed so hard that the table rattled. Their wrists bruised under the strain. But the men didn’t stop. The needles bit into soft, unblemished skin, cruel and exact. One on each arm. Black ink. A number. A claim.

Not so different from the ones worn by the dead.

Not so different from what their mama once hid beneath her sleeve.

Not so different from what Erik bore on his own arm with eyes full of rage.

✶ ✶ ✶

If Magda could see them now, she would weep.

She would fall to her knees and tear out her hair. Her babies—her tiny, helpless babies—numbered like cattle, like criminals, like they were nothing but property. She had run so far to protect them, and yet here they were. Marked. Stained. Owned.

Exactly what she feared.

Exactly what she died to prevent.

✶ ✶ ✶

The tattooing stopped.

The straps were undone.

Pietro curled in on himself, arm cradled to his chest. Wanda sobbed into the fur of her rabbit, staining it with tears.

List crouched between them again.

“There now,” he whispered. “Now you’ll always belong. We’re family now.”

He kissed their foreheads.

Neither child looked at him.

Chapter Text

Morning came in soft light filtered through barred windows. A new day.

List greeted them with the same sweet routine—bright, too-cheerful humming as he entered the playroom. He brought new clothes folded neatly over one arm, small shoes with laces tied in bows, and a clean towel slung over his shoulder.

“Up we get, little darlings,” he said brightly. “We’ve much to do today, very exciting, very important.”

He washed Wanda’s face gently, dabbed behind Pietro’s ears with a damp cloth. Dressed them each with painstaking care, brushing out Wanda’s curls and gently smoothing Pietro’s pale hair with his fingers like a proud uncle before a photograph. He hummed as he wiped their hands, adjusted their collars, and fastened buttons.

The children didn’t speak. They simply let it happen, the light behind their eyes dulled to embers.

When they were presentable, he clasped each of their hands and led them from the room.

✶ ✶ ✶

The hallway was cold and long. White tiles, white walls, white lights. They were led into a new room—smaller, cleaner, emptier.

Clinical.

“Now then,” List said, ushering them in. “Let’s get to know you just a little better.”

There was no table to climb onto this time. Only marks on the floor, rulers on the wall, strange equipment too complicated for them to name. A young assistant stood nearby with a clipboard.

List knelt in front of the twins, resting a hand on each of their shoulders.

“I know you’re frightened, but we must do this, yes? For science. You want to help Uncle, don’t you?”

Neither child replied.

He stood, and the examination began.

✶ ✶ ✶

He started with Wanda.

Measured her height. Her arm span. Her legs.

“Delicate frame,” he noted aloud. “Compact. Flexible.”

He touched her face, tilted her chin side to side. Pulled down her lower lids with gloved fingers, then examined her teeth. Measured the width of her mouth with callipers. Poked at her ribs. Spread her fingers. Bent her knees.

“Such dark eyes,” he murmured. “Lashes too long to be useful. Skin… decidedly dusky. Undesirable. But don’t worry—we’ll try lightening it later.”

Wanda blinked, not understanding. Her arms trembled at her sides.

“And this hair,” he continued, winding a black curl around one finger. “Thick. Wiry. Defiant.”

He patted her cheek like she was porcelain.

“Still, very symmetrical. We like that.”

He moved to Pietro next.

The tone shifted.

“Oh, look at you,” List purred, eyes almost gleaming. “Silver hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin. Just look at this one, hmm?”

He turned Pietro’s face side to side, a gleam of satisfaction in his voice.

“So Aryan, this one. So… clean.”

He measured him in the same way—height, limbs, skull circumference, flexibility—but with less contempt, more indulgence.

“You’re the pride of your line, boy,” List said warmly. “Now let’s just see if your insides match your outsides, shall we?”

He prodded Pietro’s ribs. Counted his vertebrae. Even measured the tiny veins visible on his wrists.

“But that skin…” He tsked softly. “Still kissed by something darker. Not quite pure, are we?”

He turned to the assistant and dictated quickly, “Possible pigmentation adjustments. Attempt lightening protocols on both. Compare results.”

Then he stepped back, admiring the twins side by side.

“They look so different, yet so alike,” he mused aloud. “Perfect specimens. The ideal natural control group. Imagine the possibilities.”

He smiled down at them again, voice syrupy sweet.

“You’re doing so well. Uncle is so proud.”

Wanda looked at Pietro.

Pietro looked at Wanda.

Neither said anything.

But in the small shift of their fingers, brushing together, was the only truth they had left.

✶ ✶ ✶

The sterile observation room was colder than the last. The walls were mirrored—two-way glass—and the air smelled faintly of metal and disinfectant. There were no toys here, no soft voices. Only a wide white floor, a series of small objects on a tray, and List.

The twins stood side by side again. Pietro rubbed the toe of his shoe against the floor. Wanda swayed slightly, nervous, her small fingers curling inward.

List stood on the other side of the room with his arms behind his back, flanked by white-coated observers with clipboards and calm, clinical faces. A camera hummed softly in the corner.

“Now then,” List said, voice dripping with syrup. “We’re going to see what you can do , yes?”

No answer.

He motioned to the tray.

“Wanda,” he said gently, “you first.”

The tray held small things—marbles, a wooden block, a ball, a paperweight. The same kind as in the office. She hesitated.

“Show Uncle what you can do,” he coaxed. “Lift one, just like you tried before.”

She stared at the objects, face tight with concentration, tiny hands stretched forward. Her lips parted. A faint shimmer danced around her fingertips, a flicker of red-pink energy crackling—but it sputtered out just as fast.

“I know it’s in there,” List murmured. “I saw it, little one. Don’t be shy.”

She tried again. Her whole body strained, a tremor running through her arms—and the paperweight finally gave a single tremble before sliding half an inch across the tray.

The observers scribbled rapidly.

“Good girl,” List cooed, clapping once, softly. “Very good. It’s instinctual, isn’t it? Like a song inside you. Beautiful chaos.”

He stepped forward and placed a marble in her palm.

“Hold it. Now let it go—without using your fingers.”

Her brow furrowed. Her hand opened. The marble dropped—but paused midair for a split second before plunking to the floor.

Another scribble. A murmur. A frown from one of the observers.

“Unstable focus,” one whispered.

“Not instability,” List replied. “ Potential. A different kind of discipline.”

He turned to Pietro.

“And now you, darling boy.”

Pietro’s fists were clenched. His breathing was shallow, legs twitched slightly from nerves.

“No need to be afraid,” List said with a soft chuckle. “Just run. That’s all.”

Pietro blinked.

“Run,” he repeated. “Fast as you can. Anywhere you like.”

For a heartbeat, Pietro didn’t move.

Then he bolted.

A white-blue blur darted across the room so fast that the observers flinched. He ricocheted off one wall, stumbled, then zipped to another, slipped slightly, and skidded to a stop, panting hard. His hair clung to his forehead in a sweaty tangle.

One of the clipboards snapped in half from the man gripping it too hard.

List clapped his hands again, delighted.

“ Magnificent! ” he crowed. “Reflexive ability. Automatic adaptation. And so different from hers.”

He stepped between them, smiling.

“So unlike each other,” he murmured, looking from Wanda to Pietro and back again. “You—untamed, wild power. A storm with no center. And you—so direct, so instinctual. A blade without a handle.”

He crouched.

“But I wonder … is there a connection underneath? Twins are rarely truly separate. Perhaps you’re two halves of a whole. What one starts, the other finishes.”

Neither child spoke. Pietro’s lip quivered. Wanda looked down at her feet.

List’s smile widened.

“We’ll find the thread that binds you,” he whispered. “No matter how deep it’s buried.”

✶ ✶ ✶

The door slammed shut behind Pietro with a harsh finality.

“No!” he wailed, fists pounding uselessly against it. “No, no, no— Wanda! ”

From the other room, muffled but equally desperate, Wanda’s cries echoed back: “Mama! Pietro!”

List paused in the hallway between them, closing his eyes for a moment as if savouring the sound—two panicked, breaking little voices reverberating through the sterile corridor. Then, with a deep breath, he smiled and stepped into Pietro’s room first.

The boy had collapsed onto the floor, small fists still striking out against the cold tile. Tears streamed down his flushed face, and he kicked at the wall blindly.

“Oh, my sweet boy ,” List murmured, kneeling and scooping him into his arms without permission. Pietro thrashed, but his limbs were weak and wild, and List merely adjusted his hold and began to pace slowly with the child against his chest.

“I know, I know. You’re upset. It’s hard, being apart from someone you love. But she’s just next door. Not gone. No need for such dramatics.”

Pietro screamed into his chest.

List patted his back gently, like a father rocking an overtired toddler. “We’ll do better next time, won’t we? Show Uncle how brave we can be. And if we’re very good boys, maybe we’ll earn some time together again. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Pietro only sobbed harder.

Once he’d deemed the boy sufficiently exhausted—hiccuping and limp in his arms—List laid him gently on the bed and stroked the white-silver hair from his sweat-damp face.

“Sleep now,” he whispered. “I’ll check on your sister.”

The door shut softly behind him.

Wanda’s cries had not stopped.

He opened her door with practised calm and stepped inside. She was curled up in a tight ball in the corner, rocking back and forth with her hands over her ears, face blotchy and red.

“Oh, my darling girl,” he cooed, crossing the room and kneeling beside her. “You’re such a sensitive one. So much feeling in that little body.”

She didn’t resist when he picked her up, but her sobs tore out of her in jagged gasps. She clutched his coat with tiny fists, trembling, muttering over and over: “Pietro. Mama. Pietro. Mama. Want Mama.”

“I know,” List said, swaying gently. “But Mama’s gone, sweetheart. And Pietro? He’s right next door. He’s crying for you too, you know. You’ll see each other soon. I promise.”

She hiccuped. He wiped her face with a handkerchief.

“It’s just part of learning. Of growing. We have to learn how strong we are apart so we can be even stronger together. ”

He tucked her into bed, brushing her curls from her face with something close to reverence.

“So much power, my little marvels,” he whispered. “So much promise.”

Then he turned off the light, stepping into the hallway once more, the twins’ soft whimpers fading behind metal doors.

✶ ✶ ✶

The rooms were quiet now. Too quiet.

Pietro sat on the edge of his cot, swinging his legs listlessly. His cheeks were still damp, and his nose still sniffled with the aftershocks of a tantrum far too big for his little lungs. His arms were wrapped tightly around his knees, forehead resting on them.

He kept glancing at his forearm.

At it.

The black ink looked so sharp against his skin. Too sharp. Too big. Like it didn’t belong on someone so small. He didn’t know what the number meant, not really. But it hurt. Not when they did it—it hurt then, too—but it still hurt.

Because it didn’t wash off.

He’d tried. Licked his hand and scrubbed it. Used the edge of his sleeve. Nothing.

It was his now.

He whispered, “Mama,” into the empty room. Again. Again.

No answer came.

Across the wall, Wanda was lying in the fetal position, curled on her side, her thumb in her mouth—something she hadn’t done in a while, but she’d slipped into it without thinking. Her other hand clutched her forearm tightly, fingers digging into the flesh beneath the new tattoo as if she could peel it off by force.

She didn’t cry anymore. Her face was hot and tired. Her throat was sore. Her eyes stung.

She missed Mama. She missed Pietro.

She was so tired of white walls. Of white coats. Of that awful man calling himself Uncle.

She didn’t know what Uncle meant anymore. She didn’t think it was something good.

She turned her arm to the light, staring at the number etched into her skin. The same numbers Pietro had. Except his ended in a 1 and hers in a 2.

One. Two.

Twins.

They’d said that word so many times. Twins, twins, how fascinating, how different, how useful.

Wanda didn’t want to be useful. She wanted to be home. In the field. With the sky over her head and Mama singing.

She sniffled and turned her face into the mattress. “P’tro,” she mumbled. Her powers fluttered around her like a dying breath—just a hum beneath the surface.

Pietro lay down too, one hand pressed over the tattoo to hide it from his own sight, as though he could make it disappear.

Both of them, alone.

Both of them, forever changed.

Marked.

Chapter Text

He called them walkies.

Like puppies.

Their hands were small in his, Wanda on his left, Pietro on his right. If they dawdled or dared try to let go, he’d simply scoop them up—one child balanced on each hip like a grotesque caricature of a loving father. But today, they behaved. Obedient. Quiet. Their little feet pattered across the cracked pavement of the compound's inner courtyard.

“Isn’t it lovely out today?” List chirped, as if they were strolling in a park in spring, not the fenced interior of a concrete prison. “Look at that sky! So blue, so clear. Much better than those dreary little rooms, don’t you think?”

The twins didn’t answer. They rarely did anymore.

He didn’t mind. He filled the silence himself. He always did.

“I had a dog once, you know,” he said conversationally as they passed a row of silent grey buildings. “Back in Vienna. Sweet little thing. Schnitzel. Isn’t that a funny name?”

Wanda looked up at him warily, her steps shortening.

“You know what Schnitzel liked best? Fresh air. And structure. Just like you two.” He squeezed their hands just a little too tightly—enough to remind them. Enough to warn. “Structure is so important. Routine. Order.”

They passed a corner where soldiers stood smoking. The men looked at the twins with unreadable eyes, and the children looked down at their feet.

“Don’t slouch,” List said, tugging at their arms. “Chin up. You’re very special, you know. You ought to walk like it.”

He led them in a wide circle, the perimeter of the compound familiar now, too familiar. The fences were high, laced with barbed wire. The guards watched from the towers. The air was still. Even the birds didn’t come here.

List walked slower now, basking in the illusion of normalcy.

He smiled. “When you’re older, you’ll look back and see how lucky you were. So many children don’t get the chance to grow up with purpose. But not you. You’re chosen. Designed for something more.”

Neither child spoke. Wanda kept her eyes on the gravel. Pietro’s jaw was tight, his mouth a firm, thin line. But they didn’t pull away.

They knew better now.

And so they walked. In silence. In step.

Side by side in captivity.

✶ ✶ ✶

The next time they went out for walkies , Wanda and Pietro were quieter at first, but less stiff. Less frozen. Their little bodies still remembered how to brace, how to wait for something awful, but the courtyard’s repetition, the strange routine of it all, had begun to sink into their bones.

List chattered endlessly, as always, voice lilting like a lullaby laced with venom.

“Now this building here,” he said, gesturing toward one squat structure with heavy doors, “is where the grown-ups do all the very boring things. Science things. Not nearly as fun as what you two will get to do one day, of course.”

Wanda peeked up at him through her lashes. “We don’t like boring.”

List gasped, theatrically delighted. “Oh! She speaks! ” He crouched a little, still gripping her hand. “Well, then I suppose I’ll have to make sure your days are filled with fun, won’t I, little dove?”

Pietro kicked at a pebble with the toe of his shoe. “Mama said we like flowers.”

List grinned, rising back to full height. “Did she now? That’s wonderful. You know, the flowers don’t grow here, but maybe we’ll find a place for some. I’ll put in a request. The Maximoff Garden. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

He said their name like it belonged to him.

“Wanda and Pietro’s Garden,” Wanda mumbled, testing the idea in her mouth like it might bloom if she said it softly enough.

“ Yes! ” List beamed. “That’s the spirit. See? This is so much nicer than crying, isn’t it?”

The twins didn’t answer. But Wanda didn’t pull her hand away when he gave it a little squeeze. And Pietro didn’t flinch when List brushed some dust from his sleeve.

They kept walking.

List pointed to another building, this one with shuttered windows and thick locks.

“Now that’s where the very bad children go when they misbehave,” he said, voice sweet but eyes cold. “But you two aren’t bad, are you?”

Wanda shook her head. “We’re good.”

Pietro echoed quietly, “Good.”

“Oh, I know you are. So good. So special. ”

They completed the lap around the courtyard, the sun pale and filtered through thin clouds, and by the time they neared the door again, Wanda had said three more sentences. Pietro had even giggled—just once—when a bird landed near the fence and hopped, twitchy and sharp, across the gravel.

It was something.

And for List, it was progress.

He knelt as they reached the threshold, one hand still on each of their backs. “See how nice it is when we’re all friends?”

Wanda nodded. Pietro didn’t.

But he didn’t run either.

✶ ✶ ✶

It was during another walk—sunless, cold, the sky a low grey dome over the compound—that Wanda tugged gently at List’s hand.

“Is it Friday yet?” she asked, eyes blinking up at him, soft with hope. “We used to… on Fridays…”

Pietro’s voice chimed in, slower. “Mama would light candles.”

Wanda nodded. “And we’d sing.”

List didn’t stop walking. But his smile twitched—just a little—around the edges.

“Hmm,” he hummed, as if pondering the weight of a complex scientific question. “Friday… well, what a curious little question that is.”

The twins waited, too young to notice the sudden tightness in his jaw, the faint shadow crossing his face.

“You won’t need to worry about Fridays anymore,” he said finally, too chipper. “Or candles. Or singing. All that was part of your previous life , wasn’t it? But now—now, you’re part of something much bigger. ”

Wanda blinked. “But we’re still Jewish,” she said plainly, like it was just a fact, like saying the sky was cloudy or that her name was Wanda Maximoff.

List stopped walking.

He looked down at her, then over at Pietro, whose hand was already tightening in his.

“You are children ,” he said after a beat, his voice still bright but sharp underneath. “Children with remarkable gifts. And children like you must belong to something more than silly little superstitions and dusty old songs.”

“But Mama said—” Pietro started.

“Mama,” List cut in smoothly, crouching between them now, “was confused. She was a very… broken woman. Clinging to scraps of things the world has already moved past. She didn’t understand the kind of future you could have here. But I do.”

Wanda’s brow furrowed. “But Mama—”

He reached out and cupped her face with gloved fingers, gently turning her toward him. His voice was syrup now, sweet and slow.

“Your Mama isn’t here anymore. I am.”

She flinched at the touch, but didn’t pull away.

Pietro whispered, “But we still remember.”

List’s eyes flicked to the boy. His smile thinned.

“Well. Memory is a funny thing. But we’ll help you with that. Don’t worry.” He straightened again, brushing invisible dust from his coat.

“No more talk of Fridays.”

And that was that.

The walk continued, but the twins didn’t ask any more questions. They just watched the fences, the sky, and each other's feet. Wanda hummed something quietly under her breath—one of the Shabbat songs, maybe. Too softly for List to catch.

But Pietro heard.

And he hummed along.

✶ ✶ ✶

When the door shut behind her with that familiar hiss and click, Wanda stood in the centre of the room and blinked at the silence.

The walls were blank. The light too white. There were no stars.

But in her mind, there were fields. And music.

Mama’s scarf had always twirled when she danced. Like the wind was holding it. Wanda didn’t have a scarf, but she did have arms—and so she spun. Clumsily. Quietly. Just like Mama.

She hummed off-key and softly—a half-forgotten lullaby, Romani and Hebrew melodies tangled together like thread. She couldn’t remember the words, not really, but the rhythm lived somewhere in her body.

When she turned, she tried to remember how Mama had done it, arms wide, fingers curled just so, hips swaying as though the earth sang beneath her.

Wanda’s movements were too stiff, too young. Her feet thudded instead of gliding. Her balance was poor, and she stumbled into the edge of the wall.

But she smiled, just a little. Because it still felt right. Even if it was wrong. Even if she was alone.

Across the wall—so close and yet out of reach—Pietro sat cross-legged on the sterile floor, his arms wrapped around his knees. He was mouthing something, tongue poking out slightly as he tried to sound it right.

“Baruch… a-at… Adonai…”

The words were crooked in his mouth. He kept forgetting the lines, skipping to the end, then back again.

“Baruch atah Adonai, Elo… Elo-henu… melech ha—”

He frowned. Mama had said it with such softness, with such knowing. And he didn’t really know. He just remembered her voice and the way the candles looked when she lit them. He remembered how Wanda used to cover her eyes and giggle at the warmth of the flames, how Mama would kiss both their heads after the blessing.

He looked down at his arm, at the number that now lived on his skin like it had always been there. His voice dropped to a whisper.

“…ha’olam.”

It was all he could manage.

Pietro didn’t know what the words meant. Not really. He just knew they mattered. That Mama had said them, and they were theirs.

So he whispered them again. Over and over. Like they might keep him safe.

And in the next room, Wanda spun until she was dizzy and the song in her throat turned to tears.

Chapter Text

The sun had returned.

It poured through the narrow slits in the concrete walls and cast long streaks of gold across the tile. Outside, it warmed the compound grounds enough to leave the scent of dry earth and dust hanging in the air.

List took the twins out anyway, of course. Routine was important, especially for children. Even these children.

He held their hands tightly as they wandered the interior paths—concrete-lined, sparse, ringed with quiet guards who didn’t speak. He kept his voice bright and melodic, as always, telling them all sorts of facts and tidbits as if he were leading a school trip through a museum instead of parading his prizes through a prison yard.

But he was watching them.

Wanda’s skin had deepened to a warm bronze, her cheeks glowing ruddy and sun-kissed. She was beginning to resemble Magda too much again—too vividly. It was unfortunate.

Pietro, despite his silvery hair and pale blue eyes, had begun to turn gold around the edges too. His arms were darkening under the sun. His neck. His little nose. And when he smiled—on the rare occasion—it was almost charming, until List remembered that it was the smile of a Romani-Jewish child, not an Aryan boy.

And it would not do.

Later that afternoon, back in his office with their files spread neatly across the desk, List pressed his lips into a thin line and jotted a note in neat, clinical handwriting.

Increased melanin response. Unfortunate. Suggest reducing outdoor exposure. Consider skin lightening measures if field viability becomes necessary. Continue observations.

He underlined it once.

Then called for his assistant.

✶ ✶ ✶

That evening, their walk was shorter. The next day, it didn’t happen at all.

When Wanda asked softly, “No walkies today?” List only smiled and tousled her hair.

“Too much sunshine makes little girls sick,” he said, as sweet as ever. “And we wouldn’t want your pretty skin to get any darker, would we?”

Wanda blinked. She didn’t understand, but her tummy hurt at his tone. It made her feel itchy inside.

Pietro didn’t ask anything. He just stared at the window and pressed his fingers to the sunlight leaking through the bars, like he could hold it anyway.

✶ ✶ ✶

The change came quietly.

At first, it was just new soap. It smelled strange—too sharp, too chemical—and made Wanda’s skin sting. Pietro’s lips dried out. Their arms itched. When Wanda scratched until she bled, a woman in a white coat clicked her tongue and said, “That’s just the treatment working.”

The twins didn’t know what “treatment” meant. No one told them anything.

But they noticed that “walkies” were gone entirely. Their meals changed. Fewer tomatoes, no eggplant, no paprika or olive oil. Nothing their mama had ever cooked.

Just grey things now. Dry meat. Chalky rice.

And then came the scrubs.

It started once a week, then twice. Wanda and Pietro were brought, separately, into tiled rooms with drains in the floor and hoses coiled in the corners. The people inside wore masks and gloves. They didn’t speak.

The first time, they were stripped and scrubbed raw. Their skin was scoured until it burned. Chemical creams were rubbed in—harsh, stinking things that made their eyes water and their throats close.

Wanda screamed the first time. Pietro kicked so hard that it took three grown men to hold him down. The gloves left bruises on their ribs. List didn’t come.

He never came.

Later, when their tiny bodies were returned to their rooms, damp and trembling, it was List who entered then, soft-voiced and glowing with concern.

“Oh dear,” he said, kneeling beside Wanda’s cot. “Did someone hurt you? They must’ve been far too rough. I’ll have a word with them, sweetling.”

Wanda didn’t answer. Her cheeks were flushed, but not from embarrassment.

She was five years old. But she remembered. She knew.

Across the compound wall, Pietro lay on his cot, staring at the white ceiling with red-rimmed eyes.

List entered there too, cooing and doting.

“They don’t understand children the way I do,” he said gently, brushing Pietro’s silver hair back from his forehead. “But don’t you worry, my boy. I’ll make sure they’re kinder next time.”

Pietro turned his face away.

They weren’t stupid. Their mama hadn’t raised fools.

They remembered what he’d done.

And now, every bath burned. Every lotion left welts. And every time List leaned close and whispered, “We’re just making you better,” Wanda and Pietro said nothing.

But something inside them burned hotter than soap.

✶ ✶ ✶

They didn’t scream anymore. Not for him.

Not when he came in with warm towels and syrupy words. Not when he brought sweets wrapped in crinkly paper or little carved toys meant to look like things they might’ve known, once—horses, birds, a dancing woman.

They never touched them.

Wanda kept her hands balled in her lap, lips pinched shut, refusing to answer even when he knelt beside her and called her “his little flower.” Pietro turned his face into the wall and flinched whenever List touched his shoulder.

“I’m the only one looking after you,” List said once, just a little too sharply, as if they owed him something.

Wanda blinked slowly, then whispered, “Mama looked after us.”

He froze, then smiled. “Yes, well. She couldn’t, in the end. Could she?”

“She would’ve,” Pietro snapped from the corner. “You made her not.”

List stood up so suddenly that his chair scraped.

They were only five years old, but their memories were long and sharp. Mama's blood on the floor. The sound of the gun. The smell of her hair when they tried to reach her. That didn’t go away, no matter how many new clothes he dressed them in. No matter how many “walkies” he offered with arms outstretched.

He started getting colder after that.

Not with words—those stayed sweet. But the sweetness curdled at the edges. Wanda noticed how his hands tightened on her arms just a little too hard when she didn’t smile. Pietro noticed how he no longer crouched to their level. He loomed now, taller, heavier. Watching.

And when he ordered the white coats to bring in harsher treatments—bleaching pastes, injections that stung and burned—he didn’t even try to act surprised anymore.

He didn’t touch their bruises afterwards. Didn’t whisper lies about how sorry he was. He just sat, neatly, watching them with cold fascination as their skin cracked and reddened.

“You’ll thank me,” he said softly, more to himself than them. “You’ll be grateful, one day.”

Wanda said nothing. Pietro spat on the floor.

And behind their bruised, blotched faces, their tiny hearts throbbed with quiet, ancient rage.

They would not forget.

✶ ✶ ✶

Dr. List did not take rejection well.

The children were supposed to love him. He’d curated every word, every gesture, every lullaby-voiced instruction. He’d ensured their clothes were soft, their food was warm, and their “walkies” timed to sunshine. He’d given them everything they could want—except, of course, their mother. But wasn’t that a mercy? She had held them back.

Still, they scorned him. Bit him with looks, with silence. With memory.

So, he changed tactics.

The training sessions grew longer. The demands harsher. Wanda was pushed until her head pounded and her tiny hands trembled violently trying to move objects too big, too heavy. Pietro was forced to run laps far beyond what a child his age—or any age—should manage. If he slowed, they shocked him.

They were always watched. Always recorded. There were charts to fill, orders to follow. The science came first. But List had motives beyond that.

Because then, after the pain, after the shaking and the gasping and the quiet little cries that they tried so hard to swallow, he could arrive.

With his soft slippers and warm hands.

With the candy.

With the pitying voice.

“My poor darlings,” he’d whisper, gathering Wanda against his chest as she shook. “They push you too hard. But don’t worry, Uncle List is here now. Uncle List will fix it.”

He dabbed tears. He smoothed hair. He cleaned the blood off of noses and knees with a gentleness that made Wanda freeze up and Pietro hiss like a cornered cat.

He was trying to make himself the hero. The rescuer. The one who cared .

But the twins weren’t stupid. They might’ve been five years old, but five years is old enough to know a monster when you see one.

They flinched when he entered.

They flinched when he smiled.

He didn’t notice— refused to notice—that the children never reached for him, not once. Not even when he was the only comfort offered.

They sat through his affection like soldiers bearing a storm.

Because they remembered.

He shot Mama.

He smiled when she died.

And now, he was training them like animals and pretending it was love.

✶ ✶ ✶

It was all carefully staged.

List planned every detail.

He’d spent weeks allowing the experiments to escalate—each one crueller than the last. Heat chambers. Sensory deprivation. Wanda had spent three days in a dim cell, fed nothing but protein paste, lights flickering overhead in erratic pulses. Pietro had been run to collapse, his small legs trembling like reeds in the wind, retching from exhaustion.

They were breaking. And List was watching .

Then came the grand performance.

The fabricated experiment was to be the worst yet—just terrible enough to seem unsanctioned , a breach of even Hydra’s cold, calculated cruelty. Two masked doctors entered the room with straps and needles and something that buzzed low and angrily. They said nothing. They didn’t have to. The twins screamed when they saw the table.

Pietro kicked, flailing with a speed that barely mattered anymore—he was too small, too hungry, too afraid. Wanda thrashed in her handler’s arms, begging, sobbing, trying to do something , anything with her power to stop it, but all that came was a pitiful spark and the sound of her own wailing.

Just as the doctor’s glove touched her neck—

The doors burst open.

“ Enough! ” List’s voice rang, righteous and sharp, his coat fluttering behind him like the cape of some false angel. “I said they are not ready for this!”

He stormed forward, wrenching Wanda out of the man’s arms, pulling Pietro to him like a knight in shining armour. “ Who authorised this? Who allowed this to go forward? I will have your credentials revoked—this is not what I asked for! ”

The men cowered and retreated on cue, masks hiding their smirks.

And then, silence.

Just sobbing.

Tiny bodies wrapped around his legs, trembling like leaves in the wind.

“Oh, my darlings,” he crooned, gathering them into his arms, one on each hip. “I’m here. Uncle List is here. I stopped it. I’ll never let them hurt you like that again.”

He rocked them slowly, humming a lullaby their mother might’ve sung. Wanda hiccuped against his collar. Pietro clutched his shirt.

He smiled—warm, triumphant.

They were his now.

And they didn’t even know.

✶ ✶ ✶

It didn’t make sense.

Wanda sat in the corner of her room, legs tucked beneath her, thumb in her mouth—not sucking, just… resting it there, like it helped her think. Her eyes were red and raw, still stinging from the bright lights and too many tears. She stared at the bandage on her arm, the place where the needles had gone, and tried to remember Mama’s touch instead.

Uncle List had saved them.

Hadn’t he?

He yelled at the doctors. He picked them up and held them tight. He stroked her hair and told her she was special and brave. He gave her sweet bread afterwards, the soft kind with honey inside. She wanted to believe him. She really did.

But he had also been there when Mama fell.

She remembered his face. How his voice didn’t shake when he counted: “One. Two. Three.”

Mama’s head snapped back, and Wanda screamed so loud her voice still cracked sometimes when she spoke.

He had done that. He had done that.

In the next room, Pietro paced in a blur of restless motion, too fast and too slow all at once. His little arms were crossed, fists clenched like he could hold the confusion down by force. “He lied ,” he whispered to himself, again and again. “He lies. He smiles and lies.”

But then… List had stopped the bad men today. Pietro had been so scared, and List picked him up. Just like Mama used to. Just like before. Warm and tight and safe .

Why would a bad man stop worse ones?

Why would a monster wipe your tears?

The questions didn’t have answers. Not for five-year-olds.

So they made up new rules in their heads.

Maybe List was two people. Maybe there were two Uncles: the Bad One who did the yelling and made Mama fall… and the Good One who brought bread and tucked their hair behind their ears. Maybe the Good One didn’t know about the Bad One. Maybe he couldn’t stop him all the time, but he tried.

They needed to believe something .

Because if List was only bad, and Mama was gone, and no one was coming—

Then there was nothing left at all.

Chapter Text

The needles had stopped—for now.

There were no straps. No cold tables. No white coats.

Only Uncle List, who smelled like soap and metal, always smiling, always humming, always watching.

He said the bad men were "on a break." That it was just "them" again. That they could have fun, just like before. Like they were a family.

So the walkies returned.

Hand-in-hand, Pietro on the left and Wanda on the right, he took them outside—but only under the shaded edges of the courtyard. Wide-brimmed hats were pressed onto their heads. Pietro kept taking his off until Uncle List chuckled and tied it under his chin. Wanda's sleeves were long again, even in the sun.

“We have to take care of your beautiful skin,” List told them sweetly, brushing Wanda’s cheek. “Don’t want to undo all that hard work, hmm?”

Neither of them responded. They just squeezed each other’s hands tighter.

In the shade, they walked.

List talked the whole time. Rambling about clouds shaped like animals, about stories with brave little twins who went on grand adventures and were loved more than anyone in the world.

“And then the clever little girl,” he said, glancing at Wanda with a wink, “used her special magic to lift the whole mountain!”

Wanda smiled faintly.

“And her fast, fast brother ran all the way around the world to find help!” he added, ruffling Pietro’s silver hair.

Pietro beamed—just for a second.

They wanted to believe in magic. It was safer than the truth.

In the playroom, there were no scalpels or shouting. Just soft blocks, puzzles, and new “games.”

One game had colour-coded objects: red, blue, and yellow. Wanda had to lift the red ones. Only the red ones. “Just like a big girl,” List whispered in her ear. “Focus.”

Another game had a racetrack painted on the floor. Pietro had to run it faster and faster while lights blinked and soft clicks followed his steps. “Faster, my boy!” List cheered. “Faster still!”

They were tests. But they looked like toys. And the twins were five—clever, yes, but still children .

And children craved warmth. They clung to routine like lifelines.

They missed Mama with a grief so deep it lived in their bones. But this… this felt closer to before.

If they closed their eyes during walkies, they could almost imagine they were just travelling again. If they focused hard enough, they could pretend the soft toy Wanda lifted was part of Mama’s dancing. That the racing game was just Pietro darting through trees.

List was always there.

Always smiling.

Always building.

Even when the walls watched.

✶ ✶ ✶

“Today,” Uncle List announced, beaming like the sun through the barred window, “we are going to learn letters!”

Wanda and Pietro sat cross-legged on the soft carpet of the playroom. Wanda’s dress was clean. Pietro’s hair was combed to one side. A little chalkboard stood before them, neat and green, with white chalk ready to be held in tiny hands.

List knelt beside them with a large picture book—bright colours, cheerful animals, big block letters.

“‘A’ is for apple,” he said, turning the page slowly. “You like apples, yes?”

Wanda nodded cautiously. Pietro didn’t speak.

“‘B’ is for blood purity, ” he added seamlessly, his tone never faltering from that gentle sing-song. “That means good, clean blood. Strong blood.”

Wanda blinked. Pietro shifted uncomfortably.

List smiled. “Don’t worry. You are very special. You're an exception.” He patted Pietro’s cheek. “That’s why you get to learn.”

They didn’t understand it, not really. But they understood the way he smiled when they got an answer right. And they understood the way his eyes narrowed when they didn’t.

And so they tried their best.

They traced letters with stubby fingers. List clapped when Pietro spelt his name without help. Wanda got a gold star sticker for copying the numbers 1 through 10 in perfect order.

They learned colours. Shapes. Simple maths. They practised reading aloud from soft-covered books with friendly illustrations—and once in a while, a word that didn’t quite fit.

Hierarchy.

Purity.

Lineage.

Wanda sounded them out phonetically, not knowing what they meant. List beamed anyway, kissed the top of her head, and said, “You’re so clever. Not like the others.”

The twins didn’t ask who the others were. They had a feeling they didn’t want to know.

Between numbers and spelling, there were subtle lessons sewn in like poison under honey.

“Some people,” List would say lightly, “aren’t as lucky as you. Some people don’t belong anywhere. But you —you’re valuable.”

“You’re special,” he whispered, over and over.

And Wanda and Pietro, five years old and desperate for affection, repeated it back in small, hesitant voices:

“We’re special.”

Because if they weren’t—what were they?

Just two brown-skinned, tattooed little children, alone.

They didn’t believe him, not really. Not deep down. Not where Mama still lived in their hearts.

But the words stayed.

Because repetition, as List knew well, was the first step to rewiring a child.

✶ ✶ ✶

Sometimes, Wanda and Pietro were separated for their lessons.

It didn’t happen every day, and Uncle List always said it with a smile, like it was a special treat.

“Boys and girls learn differently,” he would chirp, ruffling Pietro’s silver hair and smoothing Wanda’s dark curls with equal care. “You’re growing into your roles, after all. So important, so natural.”

Wanda was led to a smaller room—painted in faded pinks, with shelves lined with dolls and neatly folded linens. A little cradle sat in the corner, like it was waiting for a baby that would never come.

Today, there was a woman there. Not a warm one. She spoke crisply, with precision, like Wanda was a dish to be carved into shape.

“You have such interesting features,” the woman murmured, tilting Wanda’s chin to examine her face. “So much like your mother. But we'll refine you. With time.”

Wanda didn’t understand. She just wanted to play with the dolls.

And so she did.

She wrapped them in blankets, cradled them like Mama used to cradle her. She rocked them and whispered lullabies she half-remembered.

The lessons were subtle at first.

“This one is the baby. This one is the mama. The mama is always calm. She cooks. She cleans. She stays beautiful.”

Wanda nodded, repeating the words like a song.

Later, they showed her a chart of the human body, and a smiling paper cut-out of a girl with red paper hearts pasted where her hips were.

“These are birthing hips, ” they explained. “You have them too, just like your mother did. One day, you'll grow into them.”

Wanda blinked. “Birthing…?”

“Children,” they said. “Girls are made for children.”

She didn’t understand what it meant—just that it was something expected of her. Something inside her. Something she couldn't escape.

And yet she still liked the dolls. She liked dressing them, brushing their yarn hair, tucking them in at night. It reminded her of home. Of Mama.

She didn’t realise the game was rigged.

✶ ✶ ✶

In another room, Pietro was learning to build.

Blocks. Shapes. Puzzles. All things that clicked together.

“Men lead,” the instructor said, drawing a little stick figure with a square jaw on the board. “Men protect. ”

Pietro liked building things. He liked making towers and knocking them down faster than anyone else could blink. That was fun.

But when they showed him pictures—strong, pale soldiers holding flags—he didn’t understand why he was supposed to look up to them. They didn’t look like him. They didn’t look like Mama.

And when they held a mirror to his face and said, “ Aryan strength, ” he felt cold.

He didn’t know what it meant, only that they never said the same thing to Wanda.

They praised his blue eyes, his light hair, and the way he ran so fast.

But they never said her name when they talked about perfection.

✶ ✶ ✶

Later that night, after the lessons were over, the twins were reunited in the playroom.

They didn’t talk about their separate lessons. They didn’t have the words yet for how strange it felt, how wrong.

But Wanda tucked her doll into Pietro’s arms, and he let her, and they curled up together on the rug.

“Did you get a gold star?” Wanda asked sleepily.

“No,” Pietro said. “But I made a tower.”

“That’s good.”

And the silence that followed was heavy with the things they didn’t say.

Because even at five years old, they could feel it: the slow shifting of their world into something narrow and tight. A place where even their games were watched. Where love had conditions. Where they were being turned into someone else, very carefully, very quietly.

✶ ✶ ✶

The playroom was quiet that day.

List liked it that way—orderly, cheerful, under control. No screaming, no chaos, no reminders of who these children really were or what had been done to make them pliant. Just his pretty little experiments, learning, growing, forgetting.

Or so he thought.

He stepped into the room without fanfare, ready to begin another round of observation disguised as affection.

Then he saw her.

Wanda sat in the corner on a soft rug, humming softly under her breath. A broken melody in a minor key, familiar to no one in the room but her. In her lap, she cradled a porcelain doll—her favourite one, the one she'd named Anya .

She had tied a scrap of cloth around its head like a little scarf.

“Mama always made sure we covered our heads on Friday,” she was whispering, brow furrowed with concentration. “That’s how we show respect. Right, baby?”

The doll didn’t answer, but Wanda nodded anyway.

She dipped her fingers in a shallow dish of imaginary water and mumbled words she barely remembered—words she'd once heard her mama say over flickering candles in the dark. Her hands made clumsy shapes, circling over the doll.

A ritual remembered imperfectly, but with love.

And just like that, the entire room dropped several degrees.

List stood frozen.

His smile, always sickeningly sweet, evaporated.

“What is this?” he asked.

The twins both startled—Pietro from where he sat stacking blocks nearby, Wanda from her place in the corner.

She looked up at him innocently, still holding the doll like it were precious.

“I’m being mama,” she said quietly. “It’s Shabbat.”

Something inside List snapped.

He stormed across the room with a fury so sudden and foreign that the children flinched before he even touched them.

“You filthy little thing —”

He grabbed the doll from Wanda’s hands.

“No! Please—!”

But it was too late.

The porcelain shattered against the floor like ice.

It cracked in half, the doll’s painted eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, its little cloth headscarf lying limp beside it.

Wanda screamed.

Pietro lunged, but List shoved him away with one hand, snarling to the guards stationed just outside the door.

“Take them. Punish them.”

The doors burst open. Boots thundered against the tile.

The twins didn’t fight. They were too stunned. Too small.

Pietro just cried, “Please don’t hurt her! I’ll be good!”

Wanda screamed for her doll.

They were dragged away, flailing, sobbing, reaching for each other, reaching for her —for the broken thing on the ground that represented everything they had left of their culture, of their mama.

List stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily, staring down at the shards.

He had broken his own rule. He showed his own hand.

And the last thing he saw before the twins disappeared around the corner was two faces twisted not just in terror, but betrayal. Innocent, childish betrayal. The worst kind.

Because they had trusted him.

And now they knew better.

Chapter Text

By the time they were six years old, the sweetness had soured.

Uncle List still smiled, still spoke in that syrupy tone as he fetched them from their tiny, whitewashed rooms. Still called them his “bright little stars,” his “darlings,” his “miracles.”

But now he didn’t flinch when he grabbed Wanda’s wrist too tightly.

He didn’t blink when Pietro cried, not unless it interfered with data.

The walkies were shorter now. The games were more clinical. The lessons more pointed.

List wasn’t hiding anymore—not really.

“Now, Wanda, don’t be stubborn,” he’d coo, dragging her by the hand into the observation chamber. “You don’t want Uncle to get cross , do you?”

She shook her head, silent. Her big eyes held his gaze now. No longer because she trusted him, but because she didn’t dare look away.

List had stopped pretending it was all in service of kindness. Oh, he still spoke softly, knelt beside them when they cried, and kissed their foreheads with practised affection. But his hands no longer hesitated when he adjusted the electrodes himself, when he personally locked the restraints around their little ankles.

“You’re growing so fast,” he told Pietro one morning, running his fingers through the boy’s silver hair as he strapped him down. “So strong. Your mama would be proud, hm?”

Pietro didn’t answer. His breathing was already quickening in panic.

List didn’t care.

He hummed a lullaby as the machines warmed up.

Sometimes he stayed to watch the whole session now. Sometimes he stood in the corner, scribbling on a clipboard while they screamed. Other times, he’d sit beside the table, gently stroking Wanda’s damp hair as she convulsed, whispering, “Shhh, shhh, that’s it, my girl. You're doing so well.”

The twins began to flinch at his touch.

But they still reached for each other in the moments between. In the quiet hours when they were briefly together, they held hands so tightly their knuckles turned white, curled against each other on the floor like two creatures from the same egg.

That was the one thing List couldn’t separate. Not yet.

“Such a bond,” he murmured once, watching them sleep on the playroom mat, curled into each other like tangled roots. “What potential.”

He didn’t smile that time.

He didn’t need to.

✶ ✶ ✶

They told her it would sting just a little.

Uncle List said it with a smile as he wiped her cheeks dry. She had been crying—again—clinging to Pietro in the corner of the playroom after that morning’s testing. But now her brother had been led away, and List had knelt beside her like he always did, gentle and soft, the way Mama used to be.

Except Mama never lied.

"This will help you, my darling girl," List whispered as he gathered her into his arms, resting her tiny head against his shoulder. "You're going to be just like your brother soon. Just like the best children in the world. The world needs to see how beautiful you can be."

Wanda didn’t answer. She was too tired.

He carried her to a new room—smaller, colder, filled with glass vials and bright lights that buzzed angrily overhead. A long chair with straps. Metal trays. The smell of vinegar and something sharp.

List sat her down gently, brushing her curls from her face.

"Do you want to look like Pietro?" he asked softly. "Your brother has such beautiful eyes. Ice and sky. But you…" He cupped her chin, tilting her little face up. "You’re too much like her. Like them. "

She blinked.

"Brown is a dirty color," he said sweetly, like a lullaby. "We want you to shine."

She didn't understand. She was six. She didn’t know why her eyes were wrong. She didn’t know what made brown eyes bad and blue ones good. All she knew was that Mama had brown eyes, too. And Mama had said she was beautiful.

"But it’s okay," he continued, pulling on gloves. “Uncle will fix it.”

He held up a small bottle of cloudy liquid and a dropper.

"You’ll just feel a pinch," he said, humming, as a man stepped into the room behind him with a tray of needles.

Wanda started crying again.

They strapped her arms down when she reached up to wipe her tears. One assistant held her head still. Another pried her eyelids open with cold metal. She screamed when the first drop hit—cold fire stabbing through her eye, into her skull. Then came another drop. Then another.

The injections came later.

She kicked and sobbed and screamed for Mama and Pietro until her voice cracked.

List kissed her damp forehead through it all, soothing.

"There now," he whispered, brushing a thumb over her twitching eyelid. "We’re only making you better. "

That night, Wanda couldn’t open her eyes.

Everything was pain.

List said she was very brave.

He promised she'd thank him one day.

✶ ✶ ✶

The next morning, the room was quiet except for Wanda’s small, choked sobs.

Her eyelids were crusted shut, lashes stuck together with pus and dried tears. The world was burning behind them—red, gold, white. She whimpered as she reached out blindly, her tiny hands searching for something—anything—to hold onto.

“Mama,” she whispered, the word barely a breath.

But it wasn’t Mama who came.

It was List.

His shoes clicked sharply against the floor as he approached, but his voice was still honeyed when he spoke.

“There’s my precious girl,” he cooed, crouching beside her. “Let’s get you ready, hmm?”

She flinched when he touched her face. Her cheeks were hot, feverish, and her small body shook beneath the too-thin nightgown. Her eyes were weeping still—thick, yellow tears—and she whimpered again when he tried to clean them.

“Shh, shh, you’re all right,” he said, dabbing at the swollen lids with a cloth. “The price of beauty, darling. We’re almost there.”

She tried to pull away, mewling weakly, but her arms had no strength. She couldn’t see, could barely breathe through the pain, but she knew his voice.

She knew he was smiling.

“You’re blooming,” List murmured. “All that darkness leaking out of you. Soon enough, you’ll be bright and clean and perfect. Just like your brother.”

He dressed her slowly, humming some lullaby as he slipped on her socks, shoes, and buttoned the front of her uniform dress. She swayed on her feet, almost collapsing twice, but he kept her upright with firm hands under her arms.

When she stumbled, he caught her.

When she cried, he kissed her forehead.

When she vomited from the pain, he held her hair back.

And through it all, his eyes sparkled with delight.

To him, this was progress.

✶ ✶ ✶

He carried her to the playroom like a father might, arms strong but cradling, a gentle sway to his steps as if he thought motion might lull her back into trust.

Wanda didn’t move. Her face rested against his collarbone, fever-slick and pale. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps, and her fingers twitched weakly against the fabric of his coat. She was light—so light it worried even him sometimes—but today she felt heavier. Like the body knew what the mind hadn’t yet admitted: that something had been taken.

List didn’t mind. He liked the weight. It meant she needed him.

The playroom door clicked shut behind him, locking with its usual hiss. Pietro was already there, curled up in the corner on the foam mat. His legs were pulled to his chest, his white-blond hair sticking up in soft static tufts. He looked up when they entered.

His eyes widened.

“Wanda?” he asked, breath hitching.

She stirred at the sound of his voice, a faint whimper escaping her. List smiled.

“There’s our strong boy,” he said warmly, kneeling down with Wanda still bundled in his arms. “Come here, Pietro. Your sister’s had a long morning.”

Pietro crawled over without hesitation, his knees scuffing against the mat. He reached for Wanda as List settled down cross-legged on the floor, placing her carefully in his lap. The girl slumped against his chest, blind and trembling. She didn’t flinch when Pietro touched her—just let her head fall toward the warmth of his hand, a tiny, pained sigh slipping out.

“What did you do to her?” Pietro asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.

List didn’t answer right away. He busied himself with straightening Wanda’s dress, adjusting the hem so it lay flat across her knees. Then he reached over to the bin of toys and selected one of her dolls—a threadbare cloth thing with a lopsided yarn smile and button eyes.

He tucked it gently into Wanda’s arms.

“There we go, my darling,” he murmured, guiding her fingers around the doll’s soft body. “It’s your favorite. Anya, isn’t it? You call them all Anya, sweet girl. Such a curious habit.”

Wanda’s grip tightened around the doll on instinct. Her mouth moved like she wanted to say something, but no sound came out.

List turned to Pietro then, his tone brightening.

“She’s going to have eyes like yours soon,” he said, brushing the hair back from Wanda’s sticky forehead. “Isn’t that wonderful? Like ice. Like sky. The world will look at you both and see perfection.”

Pietro frowned, edging closer. He curled into the space beside List’s knee, small hands hovering uncertainly before settling against Wanda’s shin. His voice shook when he spoke again.

“She didn’t need different eyes.”

List chuckled softly, like a man indulgently correcting a child’s poor manners.

“No, perhaps not to you. But the world isn’t always so kind, Pietro. We’re helping her shine. Helping her belong.”

He tilted Wanda’s chin up, examining her puffy lids, still crusted with thick yellow discharge. Her lashes were clumped, her cheeks splotched red with fever.

“Mm. Still inflamed,” he noted, reaching for a cloth from his pocket. “We’ll have to keep a close watch today. Can’t risk infection getting out of hand.”

He began dabbing gently at the worst of it, cooing soothing nonsense all the while. Wanda whimpered, trying to turn her head away, but he held her still with careful fingers.

“You’re very brave,” he told her, voice honeyed. “I know it stings, but we’re almost there. Just a few more days and you’ll see the world in a whole new light.”

Pietro crawled into List’s lap without thinking, slipping under his arm so he could wrap both hands around Wanda’s doll-clutching ones. He pressed his forehead to hers, careful not to bump her eyes, and whispered, “I’m here, Wands. I’m here.”

Wanda didn’t speak. Her lips trembled, and a tear leaked out of the corner of one swollen eye.

List’s smile widened.

He rested his chin lightly atop Pietro’s silver head, drawing both twins closer into his embrace. One arm curled around Pietro’s narrow back. The other hand kept gently wiping at Wanda’s eyes, dutiful and slow.

A picture of peace. Or it might have looked like one, to someone who didn’t know better.

To List, it was a portrait of progress. Proof of his work bearing fruit.

He’d have to file a note later—record the eye discharge volume, Wanda’s fever, the way she’d clung to the doll like a lifeline. He’d mention Pietro’s instinct to comfort, to draw near. That was useful. That was something.

But for now, he was stuck here, wasn’t he?

He sighed contentedly, shifting slightly to get more comfortable on the mat.

“Well then,” he murmured, stroking Pietro’s back and Wanda’s hair in turns, “looks like Uncle List is staying in the playroom today.”

He didn’t mind.

After all, someone had to keep an eye on the miracle.

✶ ✶ ✶

Later in the day, after lunch had been spoon-fed into their mouths like they were birds, after Pietro had been coaxed into colouring shapes at the little table, List decided it was time for a milestone.

“Up we go, little star,” he said softly, lifting Wanda from his lap and setting her gently on the floor.

Her legs folded immediately beneath her, a soft thump against the padded mat. She whimpered, confused, her arms tightening around the limp doll in her grasp. Her eyelids fluttered, still swollen mostly shut—slits of weeping, red-rimmed pink.

List crouched beside her, his hands warm and firm on her trembling shoulders.

“You need to stretch your legs, precious girl. All that lying around isn’t good for you. Come now. Show me you can stand like a big girl.”

She didn’t move.

She sat there on the mat, her knees knocked together, her toes curled inward, the ragdoll pressed to her chest like a shield.

“Wanda,” List said, voice still velvet but sharper now, “let’s not be difficult.”

She flinched.

Pietro looked up from the table, frowning. He opened his mouth to speak, but List turned to him with a light, warning smile.

“Let her do it herself, Pietro,” he said. “She needs to grow strong. Like you.”

Reluctantly, Pietro fell silent.

List turned back to the girl and coaxed her up again, this time lifting her under the arms and setting her upright on shaky legs. She swayed dangerously, her doll falling to the ground with a soft thud.

“See?” he said brightly. “There’s my brave girl.”

She whimpered, arms groping at the air as if she could find the walls by memory. She made a tiny, faltering step—and promptly tripped over her own feet, collapsing back to her knees.

List tsked.

“Oh no, no, no,” he crooned, scooping her up again. “We mustn’t fall. Little ladies don’t crawl. Let’s try again.”

He placed her back on her feet. Her balance was worse now—fatigue settling deep in her bones—but he clapped his hands like she’d just won a medal.

“Again.”

She stepped forward blindly, hands outstretched. Her foot struck the edge of a foam block. She stumbled and caught herself on her hands, breathing hard. Her face was red with exertion and shame.

List was behind her in an instant.

“No, no crawling,” he said sweetly, gathering her feet in his hands.

He grabbed her ankles—small, birdlike things with faint bruises from the restraints—and lifted them gently, manoeuvring her legs into a standing posture like she was a marionette. His grip tightened as he aligned her knees, then released her and stepped back.

“There. So pretty when you stand tall.”

She tried again. Her arms wavered. Her head lolled. She took a step, then another—tiny, sliding movements like a baby deer walking for the first time.

She couldn’t see. The room was blinding and blurred, and every light seared into the raw mess of her eyes. Her breath came in hitched sobs.

“Just to the wall,” List encouraged, pointing at the far end of the room. “You remember the wall, don’t you? It’s not so far. You can do it.”

She took another step.

And fell.

This time, List didn’t rush to catch her. He walked slowly, like a parent savouring a moment.

When he reached her, he crouched again. Not to help her up.

But to reposition her ankles.

He grabbed both, carefully, rotating them this way and that, adjusting her posture like she was a doll who had sat improperly on a shelf.

“Your joints are all out of alignment, darling,” he murmured as she whimpered. “You’ll hurt yourself walking like that.”

She shook in his hands. Her fingers scrabbled at the mat, but she didn’t cry out. Not anymore. Her voice had gone small and silent.

“There,” he said at last, releasing her. “All better.”

He stood and placed his hands on his hips, surveying her like a craftsman admiring his work.

“You’ll thank me one day, Wanda. When people look at you and see something beautiful. When they don’t see what she left behind. What you used to be.”

The girl did not answer. She curled around the fallen doll instead, whispering something faint into its cloth ear.

List didn’t catch it.

But Pietro did.

He had come up beside them without a word, silent as breath, and he crouched now, curling his arms around Wanda’s shoulders, glaring up at List like something feral.

“She doesn’t want to be like me,” Pietro said quietly.

List tilted his head.

“Oh, but she will,” he said, smiling. “Because she must.”

✶ ✶ ✶

That night, the playroom lights dimmed into gold.

The shadows stretched long across the mat, and the warmth of the floor faded. It was quiet, save for the occasional beep of a monitor tucked behind the bookshelves and the soft rustle of Pietro turning the pages of a worn picture book. He didn’t read the words—he couldn’t yet, not really—but he liked the shapes of the letters, the familiar animal drawings. He liked that Wanda was beside him again, even if she wasn’t really there.

Wanda lay curled on her side, cradling her doll like a second spine. She didn’t speak. Her eyelids were nearly sealed again, weeping that sticky, yellow tear-stuff. Her cheeks were fever-hot and tight. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and every now and then, a soft whimper escaped from her throat like steam from a cracked kettle.

She didn’t want food. She didn’t want water. She just wanted darkness —but even that hurt now, because the dark pressed too loudly against her eyes.

List appeared at the edge of the mat with a low hum, carrying a folded blanket and a clipboard tucked beneath one arm. He crouched, smiling.

“There’s my sweet ones,” he murmured, brushing Pietro’s shoulder with his fingertips. “Time for bed, little darlings. Come along.”

Pietro closed the book reluctantly, glancing at his sister. “Can… can she stay with me tonight?”

“Oh, no,” List said gently. “You each need your rest, my boy. Separate rooms help you grow. You wouldn’t want to fall behind, would you?”

Pietro swallowed hard. He didn’t answer.

List picked him up without effort, balancing him on one hip like he was still a toddler. Pietro was too big for that now—his legs dangled too long—but List didn’t seem to notice.

He carried him into the hallway, through a door that locked behind them with a soft click. He laid him in the tiny white bed with starched sheets and a single pillow. Tucked him in. Smoothed his silver hair.

“You’ve been such a good helper today,” he said warmly. “I’m very proud of you.”

Pietro turned his face toward the wall. He didn’t speak.

List kissed the top of his head.

Then he returned for Wanda.

She hadn’t moved. The doll was still pressed to her chest, her fingers locked tight around its soft torso. She whimpered when he touched her.

“Oh, hush now,” he murmured, gathering her in his arms. She twitched against his chest, a shivering bundle of heat and pain and silent, crumpled resistance. “It’s just me, little star. Uncle’s got you.”

He carried her slower this time.

Not because he was careful.

But because he was savouring the moment.

In her room, he lay her down gently on the cot, brushing a damp strand of hair from her flushed forehead. She flinched again, the movement barely visible. Her eyes were sealed shut now, sticky with infection and tears.

He leaned in close.

“You’ve done so well today,” he whispered. “You’re going to be such a pretty girl tomorrow. Just imagine—eyes like water. Like diamonds. None of that old mud.”

She whimpered, lips moving around a wordless cry.

List pulled the thin blanket up to her chin and tucked it in tightly around her.

“You’ll see,” he cooed. “When you wake up, it’ll be all worth it. You’re just getting rid of the last bits of that filth. Mama’s gone, but she doesn’t have to be part of you anymore.”

Her breath hitched.

He leaned down, pressing a kiss to her burning cheek.

“You’re blooming,” he whispered again, the same phrase he’d used that morning.

As if it were some holy thing.

As if she were a flower instead of a child.

He stood slowly, smoothing the clipboard under one arm and pausing to make a quick note:
Day One Post-Procedure: Photophobia is extreme. Swelling satisfactory. Response to distance movement is poor. Mild fever. Maintain close observation. No painkillers.

Then he shut off the light.

Locked the door.

And left.

The room was silent.

Except for Wanda’s breathing—wet, quick, and full of something that used to be tears but had become something else entirely.

She didn’t cry.

She just whispered to the doll curled beside her, her voice almost too soft to hear:

“Anya, Anya, Anya…”

And let the dark burn through her eyes.

Chapter Text

Morning came too early.

The white lights snapped on with an electric hum, flooding the tiny room with sterile brilliance. Wanda didn’t stir at first. She lay motionless on the cot, her small hands curled around the edge of her blanket, the doll pressed under her chin like a broken talisman.

Then the door creaked open.

And he came in.

“Oh-ho!” List sang, his footsteps brisk with anticipation. “There she is—my brave, brave girl!”

Wanda flinched at the sound. Her whole body ached, her eyes throbbed with a dull pressure, but she could open them now. Just barely. The lashes peeled apart with a soft crackle of dried tears. The air was sharp and painful against her gaze, but the fire wasn’t there anymore. Not like before. She blinked sluggishly, the world swimming.

And List stopped in his tracks.

For a beat—just one beat—he said nothing. Then:

“…Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured.

He crouched beside the cot, tilting her chin up with two gloved fingers. She blinked again, slow and confused, her gaze unfocused.

“Look at me, little one,” he whispered.

She tried.

And he saw.

Brown.

Still brown.

Big, warm, dark brown eyes stared back at him, drowsy and wet with crusted sleep. Not blue. Not even Hazel. No shimmer of ice or glass or sky.

Just brown.

Exactly as they had been the day before.

“No, no, no,” he said softly, still smiling—but it was thinner now, tighter. He tilted her head to the left, then the right, inspecting with clinical disbelief. “That’s not… that’s not quite right.”

Wanda blinked again, her lips parting to breathe. Her face was pale, cheeks still a little flushed from the fever, but the heat had broken. The swelling was gone. Even the pus had dried. Her eyes were raw, bloodshot, and glassy with pain—but they were hers.

List sat back on his heels, frowning faintly.

He reached for the clipboard and flipped to the page he’d filled the night before. He stared at it. At the careful notes. The timeline. The precise dosage of drops. The injections. The binding agents. All accounted for.

His brow twitched.

And then—

“Well!” he said, voice bright again, too loud for the room. “A little hiccup. That’s all. You must be tougher than we thought, little one. Strong body. Stubborn blood.”

He set the clipboard aside and cupped her cheek, patting it gently. “We’ll try again. That’s what science is, my darling—it’s trial and error.”

Wanda didn’t speak. Her mouth moved a little, like she wanted to. Like she didn’t know what to say.

List stood and smoothed down his coat.

“We’ll call this a minor setback,” he said cheerfully. “Still—it’s good to see your eyes again. Even if they’re not the color we hoped for.”

He glanced toward the door.

“Let’s go see your brother.”

✶ ✶ ✶

The days that followed felt like a blur of cold, sterile repetition.

Each morning, List would come into Wanda’s room with that same bright enthusiasm. He would lift her from the cot, her body stiff and sore, and carry her to the sterile chair in the observation room with the same practised gentleness. He would whisper sweet things to her about beauty and potential, about how she was almost there .

But every time he looked into her eyes, they were still brown.

The first morning, List was full of optimism. His tone was sweet, soft, like he was coaxing a reluctant child into a new trick. He tapped the dropper to her eyes again and again, just as he had the first day. He stroked her hair, leaned down to kiss her forehead, murmuring that they were “almost done” with the process, that today would be the day.

And when Wanda blinked up at him, still the same warm, brown eyes, List had just smiled through gritted teeth. He’d tried not to show it—tried to smooth his frustration under layers of syrupy affection.

“We’ll try again tomorrow, sweetheart,” he’d said.

The second day, List was less gentle.

His fingers still stroked her hair, but the kiss on her forehead was absent, too quick. His voice was strained, tight, as if the sweetness he’d once been able to inject into every word was beginning to sour.

“Just one more try,” he said, pulling the dropper back again. “Just one more, darling. You want to be beautiful, don’t you?”

Wanda didn’t answer. She just flinched when the cool liquid touched her eyes.

The blue didn’t come.

By the fourth attempt, List’s patience had started to wear thin. His fingers pressed too hard when they held her chin, his touch almost brusque as he forced her to look at him. He was still careful with the dropper—he was always careful with the procedures—but now there was something sharper in his eyes.

“Why won’t you cooperate?” he muttered, though his voice was still sing-song. “Come on, darling. We’ve done this before. Just let me fix you.”

The syringe punctured the delicate skin of her eyelids again. Wanda gasped, jerking her head away, her brown eyes wide with the kind of terror List seemed to only recognise in the scientific results—an aberration, a variable he couldn’t quite control.

“I’m fixing you,” he repeated, though his hands trembled slightly as he readied another dose.

But Wanda’s eyes stayed brown.

The next day, when List returned with the same bright, false cheer, there was a faint flicker of something in his chest. Something like doubt. But it passed too quickly for him to fully grasp.

“We’ll try again today, little one,” he cooed, this time holding her face more firmly, forcing her to meet his gaze. “We will make you beautiful. You’ll be just like your brother. Just like him.”

She didn’t even look at him, eyes unfocused, pain too deep for even words. She winced when the dropper neared her, but there was no fight left. There wasn’t even a hint of protest. She simply let him do it, over and over again.

And still, her eyes didn’t change.

On the sixth day, List was… quieter.

He didn’t smile as much.

His hands still gently manoeuvred the dropper, still wiped away the wetness from her face with a cool cloth, but there was something different now—a dull edge in his voice when he told her that this time, this one time, she would finally be perfect.

“I don’t understand,” he muttered to himself. “I followed every step. Every one.”

Wanda didn’t answer.

Her eyes—brown as ever—stared back at him, full of something List refused to recognise.

The following days blurred together. Each morning was the same: Wanda waking, List coming in with that same thin smile. The repetition of the procedure. The gentle, syrupy words.

And every time, Wanda’s eyes stayed brown. Not a hint of blue. Not a glimmer of sky.

By the seventh day, List's gentleness was gone entirely.

He gripped her chin tightly, his fingers digging into the soft skin. He forced her to look at him, his mouth twitching with something darker than frustration.

“Why aren’t you changing ?” he demanded, too loud now, the sweet sing-song tone of his voice cracking. “You’re supposed to be better than this! You’re supposed to be perfect!”

Wanda didn't answer.

Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut, as if bracing for another wave of pain, but there was nothing left in her to resist anymore. No energy to even flinch.

When the next round of drops hit her, she barely reacted.

List looked down at her and blinked rapidly, the bitter taste of failure curling on his tongue.

But then, after a long, suffocating silence, he stood up straight. He smoothed the front of his coat, masking his confusion and anger behind that same disarming smile, one he always wore when things didn’t go exactly right.

“It’s alright, little star,” he murmured, barely audible. “You’ll shine for me one day. I’ll make sure of it.”

Wanda just stared up at him with her brown eyes—her brown eyes—and said nothing.

✶ ✶ ✶

It wasn’t until the eighth morning that List noticed it.

He had been pacing.

The failed attempts had begun to sour his mood entirely—each failure piling on top of the next, curdling into something dangerously close to rage. He had planned everything meticulously: the formula was precise, the dosages monitored to the millilitre, the recovery intervals observed to the hour.

And yet—

Those eyes .

Still brown. Still stubbornly hers.

But that morning, as he crouched beside Wanda to inspect the damage—checking for the usual blistering, the usual signs of chemical trauma—he frowned.

Her eyes were… clearer than they should be.

Less swollen.

There was still redness, yes. Still signs of irritation. But the healing was faster than he expected. Too fast.

He leaned in closer, ignoring her soft whimper as he pried open one lid with a gloved thumb.

No pus. Barely any tearing.

“Hm,” he murmured, brows lifting slightly.

He reached for his flashlight and gently tilted her head back, examining both eyes now, running the light across the sclera. She blinked sluggishly, her face pinched in pain, but she held still. She was too tired to resist.

No permanent clouding. No burns. No retinal damage.

By all accounts, the tissue should have still been raw, delicate, peeling from the repeated exposure. But instead…

It looked healthy.

List straightened slowly, a low, delighted laugh escaping his throat.

“Oh, my girl,” he breathed, beaming now. “You clever little thing.”

Wanda didn’t react. She sat limp in the chair, her fingers curled weakly around the edge of the seat, her small shoulders hunched in anticipation of another round.

List began moving quickly now—scooping her up, carrying her to the desk, grabbing fresh swabs and equipment. She whimpered at the sudden change in pace, but he didn’t pause.

He gently but firmly collected samples from her tear ducts, from the corners of her eyes, from the faint pink skin around the sockets. He whistled a jaunty tune under his breath as he sealed the vials and labelled them.

“I should’ve seen it,” he muttered to himself, exhilarated now. “Your file—your vitals during recovery, your resistance to infection, the way your wounds close faster than they should. It’s not just the energy surges, is it?”

He turned back to her, grinning, and crouched so their faces were level.

“You’re healing, aren’t you?” he whispered, with reverence. “Not just a trick of the light. Not coincidence. Your body’s correcting itself. That’s why the blue won’t take.”

Wanda blinked at him, slow and dull.

He touched her cheek, soft as ever.

“It’s not rejection,” he said, more to himself than to her. “It’s resilience.”

He laughed again, low and giddy.

“This changes everything.”

He kissed her forehead.

Wanda recoiled slightly, but she was too weak to pull away.

“Don’t you see, darling? This isn’t a failure,” he whispered, his voice trembling with delight. “This is a discovery .”

He stood up suddenly, turning to scribble furiously on a clipboard nearby. His words came in short, fevered bursts as he dictated to himself—chemical resistance, regenerative tissue rate, cellular correction under duress.

He was almost gleeful.

“Who gave you this, hm?” he murmured aloud. “Was it the trauma? The strain? Or is it just… you ?”

He turned to glance at her over his shoulder. “Oh, Wanda. You’re going to be so much more than I thought.”

Wanda sat motionless in the chair, blinking slowly against the light, her face blank.

Her eyes were brown.

And healing again.

Chapter Text

It stopped.

Just like that.

No more drops. No more needles. No more burning lights or metal hands prying her eyelids apart. The mornings came quietly now, slow and syrupy, with warm cloths and lullabies instead of restraints and acid.

Wanda didn’t know why.

But she was grateful.

She didn’t dare ask, didn’t dare speak the wish aloud in case it shattered. She lay still when he came in, stiff and small, blinking through the haze that still clung to her eyes—but not the pain. That was gone. For the first time in what felt like forever, her face didn’t burn. Her skull didn’t throb with each blink.

Pietro noticed, too.

He had been watching her constantly—hovering, fidgeting, darting to her side any time she so much as whimpered. But when the third day passed without injections, without screams, his shoulders began to settle. He even smiled again—barely, faint and fleeting, but real.

“You’re all better,” he whispered one afternoon, curling around her on the playroom mat. “See? I told you. You’re strong like me.”

Wanda didn’t answer, but she pressed her forehead to his.

Their fingers laced together quietly, like the roots of a small tree regrowing in burned soil.

List noticed, of course.

He noticed everything .

He sat on the mat beside them that day, legs folded like a storybook uncle, humming as he sorted through a tray of puzzles and cloth dolls. He was all warmth again—soothing and sunny, his voice lilting as he passed Wanda one of her dolls.

“There’s my girl,” he crooned. “Feeling better now, aren’t we? My little star.”

Wanda nodded slowly, clutching the soft-bodied doll to her chest. Her eyes were clearer today, but not blue. Still stubbornly brown.

Still hers.

List didn’t comment on it anymore. Didn’t so much as glance at the colour. But he kissed her hair gently and said, “Good as new,” and Pietro beamed.

They didn’t know, of course.

They didn’t see the way he wrote furiously the moment they were asleep, didn’t hear the low excitement threading his murmured dictations into the recorder each night.

“Regenerative function appears stable. No evidence of scarring or memory aversion responses. She returns to trust after each interval, albeit in a diminished state. Remarkable.”

He was waiting now. Letting her body reset. Giving her time to recover properly.

Because next time… it wouldn’t be the eyes.

There were so many other wounds to make.

He needed to know how deep the healing went. How fast. Whether it was only tissue or deeper—muscle, bone, blood. Whether she could regrow. Whether she could be broken and still come back.

He watched them quietly as they played—Wanda drowsing against Pietro’s shoulder, her doll clutched in one hand, a puzzle piece in the other. Pietro was chatting nonsense, stacking blocks too fast for Wanda to follow, occasionally pressing kisses to her temple.

They were sweet this way.

Soft. Unspoiled.

Almost like normal children.

List’s smile lingered as he jotted a note:

Specimens display increasing attachment behaviour when physical harm ceases. Useful window for surgical calibration? Further testing required.

He tore the page free and tucked it neatly into her file.

Then he turned back to the children, his voice syrupy again.

“You’re both such good little helpers,” he cooed, brushing Pietro’s hair aside. “Uncle’s very proud.”

Neither of them saw the glint in his eyes.

✶ ✶ ✶

That evening, after the playroom was tidied and dinner trays cleared, Uncle List decided to stay a little longer.

He always smiled more when he lingered.

Pietro was drowsy by then, curled up with a picture book and Wanda’s ankle looped gently beneath his. Wanda was still awake, just barely—her lashes heavy, the little doll (Anya, always Anya) tucked beneath her chin.

The room was warm.

Safe.

List moved gently, almost tenderly, setting down his clipboard with a little tsk of mock impatience.

“Too much play, not enough stretching,” he chided softly, crouching beside Wanda. “We mustn’t let those little muscles get stiff, hmm?”

She blinked at him blearily.

He smiled and gathered her into his lap.

She didn’t resist.

She didn’t know how to.

She was so tired.

“This won’t hurt,” he promised, brushing a curl from her cheek. “Just a tickle. Uncle needs to see how fast his brave girl can bounce back.”

Wanda didn’t understand. Not until he rolled down the long white sock on her right leg. Not until he pulled a thin silver blade from his coat pocket—something too fine to be a scalpel, too cruel to be anything else.

She started to squirm, but his arm tightened instantly around her middle.

“Shhh,” he whispered, like a lullaby. “Don’t wriggle, darling. You’ll make it worse.”

The blade pressed lightly at first, tracing her shin as though drawing a line of poetry.

Then he cut.

A clean, shallow slash—no deeper than a paper cut, but it burned sharp and bright. Wanda squeaked, jerking instinctively, but his grip kept her still.

Blood welled in a single thin ribbon.

She stared at it, frozen.

Pietro sat up, confused. His eyes locked on Wanda’s leg. He didn’t speak, but his fists curled.

“Just a little scratch,” List said cheerfully, dabbing at the blood with a white cloth. “We mustn’t fuss, boys and girls get scrapes all the time. Don’t you, Pietro?”

Pietro said nothing.

His silver brows were furrowed in something like rage, though he didn’t understand it fully. He just knew this wasn’t right .

But List only hummed, delighted.

Because even as he held the cloth to the cut, the blood stopped flowing.

Even as Wanda whimpered softly, her skin beneath the wound began knitting itself back together, slowly, but visibly. The edges tugged inward. The colour shifted from red to pink, the shape flattening.

“Marvelous,” List breathed, transfixed. “You really are something special.”

Wanda was shivering now.

The pain was fading already, but the fear wasn’t. She clutched Anya tighter to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut.

“See?” List cooed, wiping the blade clean with a handkerchief. “Not so bad. You’re already healing. Uncle’s clever girl.”

He pressed a kiss to her temple.

Pietro bristled.

“I don’t like this game,” the boy said suddenly, sharp and brittle.

List looked at him, still smiling.

“Oh, but it’s not a game, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s science.”

He stood slowly, still cradling Wanda, and carried her back to her cot.

She was quiet now. Staring.

The cut was already a ghost.

By morning, it would be gone.

And List would be back with a sharper knife.

✶ ✶ ✶

The next day, Wanda woke up with no scar.

Not even a mark.

List clapped his hands with delight when she toddled into the playroom, still rubbing sleep from her eyes, still unaware she had been studied all night through a hidden camera trained on her leg.

“Look at you,” he beamed, crouching beside her. “Good as new!”

She blinked at him, unsure why he was so happy.

But Pietro hovered close, taking her hand automatically, like he always did now.

They played for most of the morning—blocks and shapes and a quiet drawing session with dull pencils under a guard’s lazy eye. Wanda tried to colour a red ribbon but stopped when she couldn’t quite get it to match the shade of her blood.

Then came the afternoon.

Lunch trays were cleared again. The curtains were drawn. The guard dismissed.

“Why don’t we try something a little bigger today, hmm?” List murmured, like a parent offering a new flavour of candy. “Just a little test for Uncle.”

Wanda was slow to react, sleepy from her meal.

He picked her up gently, carried her back to the far corner where mats had been laid out.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, stroking her back. “You’re so brave, my girl. We’re just going to look inside.”

He set her down, tucking Anya into her arms again.

Then came the scissors.

Pietro moved faster this time, crossing the room before List even lifted the hem of Wanda’s dress. “Don’t,” he said, teeth gritted. “Don’t hurt her.”

List smiled without looking at him. “It’s not hurting, sweetheart. It’s helping. You want her to be strong, don’t you?”

“She’s already strong,” Pietro snapped.

“Mm,” List hummed thoughtfully, snipping Wanda’s tights at the thigh. “Let’s see how strong.”

He drew a scalpel next—not the delicate blade from before, but a surgical one. Sharp. Clean. Precise.

Wanda whimpered, holding Anya tighter.

“I’ll be quick,” he promised, positioning the blade just below her knee.

The cut this time was longer. Deeper.

Wanda cried out, a shrill little sound, her leg jerking in reflex. Blood gushed immediately—bright red, sticky and thick. List applied no bandage, only watched. Enraptured.

“Don’t touch it,” he whispered to himself, barely breathing. “Let’s see.”

Pietro was shaking now. He hovered over Wanda, shielding her with his small frame.

“Stop it!” he shouted, fists clenched. “She’s bleeding!”

“No,” List said softly. “She’s healing.”

And she was.

Slower than the night before—but faster than any normal child. The edges of the wound twitched, tugged, fought to rejoin. Blood thickened. Clotted. The muscle beneath pulsed, twitching as if calling skin back over bone.

List dropped to his knees, watching in awe.

“Incredible,” he breathed. “Accelerated cellular regeneration. We’re not just playing with potential here—this is unprecedented. You’re rewriting your biology in real time, little one.”

Wanda was sobbing now, gripping Pietro’s arm so tightly it hurt. He didn’t care.

List reached forward, tenderly brushing her hair back from her sticky forehead.

“You’re going to change the world, my darling,” he whispered. “And Uncle List is going to help you do it.”

She didn’t answer.

But that night, she dreamed of fire—and of her own skin closing itself up like a living mouth, swallowing the hurt before it could even take root.

✶ ✶ ✶

It happened by accident.

Later that afternoon, during free time in the playroom, Pietro tripped.

He’d been running laps around the edges of the padded floor, as he always did—his version of calming down after watching Wanda bleed. He didn’t mean to go so fast, but his legs had a mind of their own, and the corner of the toy chest had a sharp edge.

He hit the ground hard, knees first.

Wanda gasped.

A beat of silence followed—then the wail came, sharp and furious, more from the shock than the pain. Blood welled up instantly from a jagged scrape across his right knee. Not as deep as Wanda’s cut, but wide, raw.

One of the guards stepped forward.

But List, who’d been watching everything from his usual perch in the corner, scribbling notes, was already moving.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, kneeling beside Pietro with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “My poor boy. That looked like it stung.”

Pietro scowled through his tears, trying to shove his hand over the scrape before List could touch it.

But List wasn’t interested in comforting, not really.

His eyes were locked on the blood.

The gash.

The twitch.

Pietro sniffled once, then froze.

Because the pain was already fading.

He glanced down and gasped.

The bleeding had slowed dramatically. The open skin, only a moment ago split and wet, was already pulling itself back together, pink and glistening. Before Wanda could crawl over to him with Anya tucked under one arm, the wound had shrunk to the size of a coin. Then a button.

Then a freckle.

List’s face broke into a wide, ecstatic grin.

“Well now,” he whispered, practically vibrating with excitement. “What have we here?”

Pietro stared at him, then at his knee.

“I-It was bleeding,” he said, confused. “I saw it.”

“Oh yes, it was,” List murmured, taking Pietro’s hands into his own. “But not for long. My boy—my clever, shining boy—what a gift you have.”

Pietro shrank back instinctively, but List only stroked his hair like always, doting and delighted.

“I should’ve known,” he said, practically cooing. “Twins. Of course. One body, two stars. If your sister can heal, why not you too?”

Wanda had crawled close by now, confused and a little scared. She reached for Pietro’s arm and clung tightly.

“Did it hurt?” she whispered.

He nodded.

“But it’s gone,” he added, almost defensively, as if daring it to come back.

List leaned forward with that honey-dripping voice they were both learning to dread.

“Oh, my miracles,” he said, glowing. “Just think what you could survive.”

And as he said it, his eyes sparkled—not with warmth, but with promise.

Not what could be spared…

…but what could be tested.

Chapter Text

It started with symmetry.

Two chairs.
Two sets of restraints.
Two children, stripped down to their underthings and buckled in like matching dolls.

List beamed.

“Oh, you look marvelous,” he crooned, brushing Pietro’s hair back from his forehead. “Twins, side by side—perfect little reflections.”

Wanda didn’t answer. She stared ahead, jaw clenched, eyes glassy.

Pietro tried to hide his shaking legs by locking his knees stiff, like a soldier.

The room smelled like bleach and cold metal. Bright lights buzzed overhead. A tray of instruments gleamed between them, set with horrifying precision—scalpels, clamps, syringes, gauze. Two bowls of lukewarm water.

List stepped between them, clapping his hands once, the sound sharp in the sterile air.

“Today’s a special day,” he said, smiling broadly. “We’re going to learn more about what makes you so extraordinary. What makes you strong.”

No response.

But he didn’t expect one.

He picked up a scalpel.

“We’ll begin with matched incisions,” he said to the recorder hovering beside him. “Upper bicep. Clean lines. Identical depth.”

He turned to Wanda first, gently grasping her arm.

“You’re my brave girl, aren’t you?”

She nodded, barely.

Then the blade slid in.

She gasped—sharp and sudden—but didn’t scream. Not this time.

Blood welled up at once, dark and rich. List dabbed it with gauze, observing the way her skin quivered, already pulling inward.

Then he turned to Pietro.

The boy tensed, teeth bared.

List grasped his arm as well, slicing with the same careful force.

Pietro hissed and flinched—but his skin reacted even faster. The blood was thinner. Lighter. And already beginning to clot before List had even set the scalpel down.

He stepped back, eyes darting between them.

“Fascinating,” he whispered.

He timed everything—set up side-by-side cameras, thermal scans, probes to measure inflammation and cellular activity. He watched the way Wanda trembled and tried to breathe through her pain, how Pietro held still by sheer will, his fists clenched white against the arms of the chair.

The healing process was not identical.

Wanda’s took longer, but it was more thorough, leaving little trace. No inflammation, no bruising.

Pietro’s was faster—almost violently so, skin knitting with startling speed—but the edges were messier, slightly raised, more like a callus than untouched flesh.

List couldn’t have been more delighted.

“You’re both so special,” he murmured, running a gloved hand down Wanda’s back. “So rare. You’re growing more miraculous by the day.”

She looked at him then, not with gratitude or fear, but with a tired sort of hatred.

List only smiled wider.

“Let’s try a deeper wound next,” he said cheerfully, picking up the larger blade.

✶ ✶ ✶

The second incision went deeper.

List announced it with a kind of giddy professionalism, narrating into his recorder as if explaining a recipe.

“Two-point-five centimeters. Controlled depth. Muscle involvement minimal.”

Wanda whimpered when he said it.

List brushed her cheek.

“Shh, it’s all right, darling. You did so well with the last one. Let’s see what you can really do.”

She didn’t cry until the scalpel bit in.

This one hurt—truly hurt. It sliced past skin and fat into the tender meat of her upper thigh. Her scream was sharp and immediate, her legs jerking against the restraints, her fingers twitching helplessly where they were strapped down.

Blood streamed down her leg.

List leaned close, eyes hungry.

“Remarkable vascular response,” he muttered, dabbing at it quickly, then standing back to observe the clotting.

Wanda trembled violently.

Pietro thrashed in his seat beside her, red-faced and wide-eyed. “Stop it!” he yelled. “She’s little—she’s little—”

“You both are,” List interrupted, turning to him with eerie calm. “But you’re not weak. That’s what we’re learning. That’s why this is important.”

Pietro bared his teeth.

But he froze the moment List moved toward him.

“Your turn,” List said gently, and without hesitation, he drove the blade into Pietro’s thigh in the same place.

The boy shrieked—part pain, part rage. His legs kicked, restraints creaking as his muscles spasmed.

Blood spattered across the side of the chair, a faster pulse than Wanda’s.

And already-already-the skin was twitching, knitting, curling inward to seal the damage.

“Fascinating,” List breathed.

He spent the next hour watching, measuring, and photographing. Pietro's leg stopped bleeding within minutes, a pucker of red skin already forming over the gash. Wanda's wound was still oozing, slower now, but the swelling had vanished, and the tissue had already begun to regrow.

“Different methods,” List murmured, pacing between them. “Same destination. Your bodies are learning. Adapting. Just like your minds.”

Wanda had stopped crying.

She was limp, head lolling to the side, eyes half-lidded. Her skin was pale and clammy, and the whites of her eyes had gone slightly pink from the pressure of sobbing.

List crouched beside her.

“Oh, my sweet star,” he whispered, stroking her temple. “You’re making history.”

Pietro was staring at her, wild and silent, fists clenched hard enough to shake. He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear her breathing, shallow and rasping.

And all he could do was watch.

✶ ✶ ✶

It didn’t stop with cuts.

Not now that List had a new question to answer: how far can they go?

The twins were subjected to experiment after experiment—each more elaborate, more prolonged than the last. The goal was never healing alone, but healing under pressure. Healing under strain.

Sleep deprivation came first.

He started with Wanda.

“No naps for you today, little blossom,” he cooed as he roused her for the third time in a single night. “We need to see how tired cells behave. Sleep is a luxury, not a necessity, hm?”

She wobbled through the halls like a wind-up doll, her small limbs clumsy with exhaustion. Her head lolled during lessons. Her body trembled in stillness. And when he cut into her again—deliberately shallow, near a wrist—her healing slowed.

Barely.

But it slowed.

List was delighted.

“Do you see this?” he said to the attending aides, pointing at the delay. “Already so advanced, and yet… not limitless. She has thresholds. Beautiful.”

He stroked her curls as she wept quietly, drooling from the corner of her mouth.

He kept Pietro awake next.

The boy had always been more sensitive to pacing, to rhythm, to speed—so when his body slowed under exhaustion, he panicked. List kept him seated upright for nearly thirty hours, poked and prodded each hour, timing every scrape and prick.

Still, Pietro healed faster than Wanda.

Still.

“Your power fuels it, doesn’t it?” List murmured into the recorder. “Speed doesn’t only define your movement—it defines your recovery. How divine.”

Then came starvation.

It began subtly—portions reduced by half, then again. The twins complained of hunger, clutched at their bellies. Pietro grew snappish, Wanda limp and glassy-eyed.

And when he resumed the incisions, the results were slow. Raw. Wanda bled longer, her skin sluggish to seal.

But Pietro?

Pietro still healed faster than her.

Even with ribs visible under his skin.

List kissed them both on the forehead after each session.

“You’re teaching us so much,” he whispered. “Your bodies are writing the next chapter of evolution.”

Then the infection.

He introduced bacteria into a clean incision on Wanda’s arm—carefully diluted, not lethal. Just enough to inflame. To swell. To burn.

She cried, begged to be held, the skin around the wound turning pink, then red, then nearly purple.

And still… still… her body fought.

A fever, then a sweat, then calm. The skin closed overnight.

List beamed.

“You are a miracle, my darling.”

He kept Pietro whole for three days just to watch—then repeated the same process. The boy's fever broke in half the time.

He healed overnight with barely a scar.

List laughed aloud.

“Of course you do,” he purred, hugging him tight while Pietro tried not to scream. “You’re twins. How could one gift live without the other?”

All the while, he was gentle.

He cooed and praised. He kissed clammy foreheads, tucked them in each night. When Wanda began hallucinating from exhaustion, murmuring nonsense about floating stars and fireflies, he rubbed her back and called her his little comet.

When Pietro tried to bite him in rage, he only laughed and offered the boy a sugar cube.

“So spirited,” he whispered. “You’re perfect just as you are.”

And yet every week, he asked for more.

Wanda began to twitch when he walked into the room.

Pietro began to dream of blades.

But the healing—always the healing—kept them valuable.

It made every wound a beginning, never an end.

✶ ✶ ✶

They hadn’t been outside in weeks.

Not properly. Not beyond the grey, echoing corridors or the sterile testing rooms. Not beyond cold floors and brighter lights and long, white coats.

So when Walkies were announced, the twins didn’t even believe it at first.

But then List came in that morning with gloves and scarves and little coats folded neatly over his arm.

“Up we get, my treasures,” he chirped, his tone high and sweet as syrup. “Today’s a very special day. The sun is shining. Fresh air is good for growing bodies. And you’ve both been so very brave lately.”

He knelt to dress Wanda himself, buttoning her coat all the way to her chin. Her eyes blinked slowly—still a little puffy from last week’s fever, but warm and curious beneath their haze. He pulled a matching cap over her curls and kissed her nose.

“There,” he whispered. “My little flower, ready to bloom.”

Pietro’s coat came next—grey and clean, but several sizes too small in the sleeves. His arms had grown again. List made a note of it aloud, humming to himself, and adjusted the buttons as best he could.

They were led outside through a different hallway than usual—two aides at their side, uniforms stiff and faceless—but the door they passed through was real. Air was real.

And the sun.

The twins blinked hard at it. Wanda raised a hand to shield her eyes.

Then, without thinking, she let out a high, sharp laugh.

It rang like a bell, unguarded and wild, as she skipped forward into the sunlight, arms flailing like wings.

“Wanda—!” Pietro called, startled—but she only spun in place, hands high, giggling as she danced in half-steps along the cracked stone path.

He ran after her, of course. He always did.

The courtyard wasn’t beautiful. It was surrounded by tall cement walls and capped with barbed wire. There were no flowers, only dry earth and one stunted tree in the corner with bare, clutching branches. But there was a sky above them. Real sky. Pale blue and endless.

And there was freedom in that patch of sunlight, even if it only lasted ten minutes.

Wanda twirled in her boots, arms fluttering like a little moth. Her hair glowed gold in the light.

She hummed something tuneless, aimless— danced to music that didn’t exist except in her head.

Pietro slowed, watching her.

Then—hesitantly—he joined her, skipping two steps, tapping her elbow.

They circled each other like foals, breathless and clumsy, bumping and giggling and tripping again.

They were six. Just six.

For ten minutes, they remembered that.

List stood to the side with his hands folded behind his back, smiling faintly, sunglasses perched on his nose.

“They are resilient,” he murmured to no one in particular. “Fascinating.”

One of the aides grunted something about the schedule.

List only waved him off.

“No rush,” he said. “Let them play. We’ll have time enough for study later.”

He watched as Wanda crouched to touch the ground, poking a stick into the dust like she was drawing a secret. Pietro was plucking pebbles and sorting them by size. Neither spoke.

Their cheeks were flushed with real colour.

Their laughter was thin, but true.

List smiled wider.

“I want blood panels after this,” he said. “Let’s see how outdoor stimuli affect cellular regeneration. Maybe sunshine is another variable.”

But even he didn’t call an end to Walkies right away.

For once, even he seemed content to watch the twins pretend they weren’t prisoners.

Chapter Text

By seven, they were very familiar with their insides.

The room was cold—always cold—and white, so white it burned their eyes. The lamps buzzed overhead like angry insects. The steel trays clinked softly. Footsteps echoed.

Wanda didn’t cry when they cut anymore.

Not usually.

She stared at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster, the tiny spidery fractures near the vents. They moved her arms and legs like she was a doll. They held her still when her muscles twitched.

She’d tried to scream the first time. The first few times.

She didn’t anymore.

She just breathed—shallow, careful—like Pietro had taught her. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Don’t fight. Don’t scream. Save your strength.

“Look how quiet she is,” List said cheerfully once, while holding open her side to examine something nestled between her ribs. “Our girl’s such a star.”

They didn’t tell her what they were looking for. Not really.

List muttered things sometimes about symmetry, development, phenotypic convergence, and structural mirroring. Words Wanda didn’t know. She was seven. She didn’t need to know.

All she knew was that her body had healed.

And so they kept opening it.

✶ ✶ ✶

Pietro was on the table next.

His wrist had been opened cleanly with a scalpel, long and shallow, tendons twitching beneath the skin.

He watched it curiously as List measured it with a calliper.

“See,” the doctor crooned, tapping the space just below the thumb. “Almost identical tendon elasticity. Fascinating.”

Pietro didn’t answer. His lips were pale. His fingers curled slowly, instinctively, like he wasn’t sure they still belonged to him.

Then List turned to the second table.

Wanda lay there, a similar incision running across her left wrist, pink and slightly swollen around the edges.

“Side by side,” List murmured. “Like two books written in the same hand.”

He leaned closer, peering with rapt delight between the wounds, measuring them again, then marking something on his clipboard.

“Still bleeding a little slower than Pietro,” he said aloud, mostly to himself. “Not unexpected.”

He turned to an assistant. “Next, the abdominal comparison. Begin prep. I want muscle tissue this time—deep layer.”

Wanda blinked up at the light, face unreadable.

Pietro turned his head to look at her.

Their fingers twitched toward each other across the space.

The aides didn’t let them touch.

✶ ✶ ✶

“You’re twins,” List whispered once, stroking Wanda’s hair as she vomited from blood loss, “but nature is never perfectly symmetrical. That’s what makes this all so thrilling.”

She whimpered, cheek pressed to the tile.

He patted her back.

“Don’t worry, little blossom. We’ll learn everything soon.”

✶ ✶ ✶

They knew they were the same.

Everyone said so.

“Twins,” the handlers murmured. “Matched set.”
“Same womb, same cells,” List cooed. “Nature’s miracle.”

But Wanda didn’t feel like Pietro.

And Pietro didn’t feel like Wanda.

Not really.

They shared the same scar now, etched like a mirror across their lower bellies. They healed at the same speed, roughly. They cried in the same soundless way when the needles pushed too deep. They sometimes woke at the same time in the night, breath catching in their throats, with no memory of why they’d been dreaming of knives.

But Wanda’s hair was still dark.

Her skin was still darker than Pietro’s.

Her lashes curled long like Mama’s, and when she caught her reflection in the metal trays—just for a flicker—she always saw Mama’s face, not Pietro’s.

He looked like someone else. Someone List liked more.

List liked Pietro’s eyes.

He liked Pietro’s quickness. His quiet panic. His obedient muscles.

He liked Wanda’s skin when it tore. Her healing. The strange way her tissue reformed, even when he burned it.

But when he called them “mirrors,” Wanda didn’t know what he meant.

She was not like Pietro.

She cried less now, yes.

But Pietro always tried to help. He always pulled against the restraints when she screamed, even if it made the zapping rods come out.

She would have done the same for him. But he was the brave one.

He was the quick one.

She was the one they called soft.

They still curled into each other when they were allowed to rest together, when the tables were cleaned and the data logged and the trays wheeled away. They would press foreheads together and hold hands, pressing palm to palm, fingertip to fingertip. It was the only way to know they were real. That they still had bodies. That they still had skin.

But sometimes Wanda stared too long at Pietro’s face and felt like she was looking at a stranger.

He was her brother.

Her other half.

But lately… he looked more and more like someone she didn’t know.

Someone safe. Someone loved.

And when he looked at her, sometimes, just for a moment, his mouth would twist in confusion.

Like he was wondering the same thing.

Why do we hurt the same way…
…but I still look like the wrong one?

✶ ✶ ✶

They were alone again.

Not truly alone—never truly—but alone enough. The room was dim, humming softly with the white noise of machines in sleep mode. The lights above had been lowered. The air smelled like antiseptic and metal, but also a little like mint. One of the assistants must have cleaned with something new.

Wanda sat on the padded mat, her legs folded beneath her. She was still in her nightgown from surgery, the hem crusted with dried blood. It wasn’t hers this time. She thought it was Pietro’s.

Pietro lay beside her, curled onto his side, cheek pressed to the mat. One arm slung over her ankle like a leash.

They hadn’t spoken since they were brought back together.

Not aloud.

But now Pietro shifted and whispered, barely audible. “Did it hurt?”

Wanda didn’t answer right away. Her hands were folded in her lap, still sticky with antiseptic they hadn’t wiped off. Her belly ached in a dull, wet way. Like the pain wasn’t even real anymore—just a colour.

“A little,” she said.

Pietro blinked slowly. His lip was cracked. His eye was still puffy. But the cut across his ribcage was gone now.

“Why do they always do mine first?” he asked.

Wanda looked at him, surprised.

“Uncle says we’re the same,” he continued. “So why does he always do mine first?”

Wanda didn’t know. She never asked.

She looked down at their hands—his fingers curled around her ankle like he was afraid she’d disappear. She pulled her leg free, gently, and set their palms side by side again.

Pietro’s hand was thinner. Longer. His skin was paler. The veins stood out blue.

But when she pressed their palms together, their fingers lined up almost exactly.

Same.

She touched the spot beneath her ribs, where the newest incision had been. They’d taken something out and put it back in, then done it again. Just to time it. Just to compare.

“Maybe…” she said slowly, “you’re the better one.”

Pietro flinched. His lip trembled.

“I didn’t mean—” Wanda started, panicked.

But he turned his face into the mat and whispered, “I think that too.”

The silence that followed was deep and cold.

Then, the door opened.

Light spilt in. Footsteps. A cheerful whistle.

“Look at my stars,” List sang as he entered. “What a lovely pair. All settled in?”

The twins straightened automatically. Wanda blinked up at him, face empty. Pietro didn’t move.

List crouched beside them, cupping Wanda’s chin. Tilting it. Studying the faint pink where the newest scar was still fading.

“Mmm,” he purred. “Healing beautifully. As expected.”

He reached over, tousled Pietro’s hair. “And you, my swift boy. Always faster. Always first.”

Pietro didn’t look at him.

“Isn’t it fascinating?” List went on, kneeling now, letting them feel his presence like gravity. “Same inside. Same bones. Same blood. But so different where it matters.”

He tapped Wanda’s nose. Then Pietro’s.

“You,” he told Pietro, “are a pearl.”

He turned to Wanda. Smiled.

“And you, my dear, are iron.”

Wanda didn’t understand what that meant.

Not yet.

But she felt it settle in her chest, deep and cold and hollow.

When List left again, humming as he went, Pietro touched her wrist.

“Do pearls hurt?” he asked.

Wanda looked down.

“I think iron does.”

✶ ✶ ✶

The playroom was quiet.

Pietro was napping on the mat, curled in a sunbeam like a stray cat. His breath came in soft, whistling little puffs. Wanda sat across from him, cross-legged in her dress, surrounded by her dolls.

They were all lined up—eight in total. All porcelain. All pale. All perfect.

They didn’t look like her.

Not a single one.

She’d named them all Anya, as always. It was the only thing she could control. Their names. Their bedtime. Who got the blanket. Who sat where.

But today, even that didn’t help.

Today, her chest was hot and tight with something she didn’t have words for.

She picked up one of the Anyas. Her favourite. The one with the blue dress and the little painted mouth. Its eyes were glassy and wide and blue. Always blue. Always blue.

Wanda reached for a felt-tip.

The brown one.

She uncapped it and tried to colour the doll’s face. Tried to make the skin warm and soft like hers. Like Mama’s. Tried to make the eyes deep and dark.

But the felt tip just slid over the porcelain, smearing into an ugly stain.

She tried harder. Pressed down. Scribbled furiously over the cheeks, the eyes, the hair.

The marker squeaked.

Nothing held.

Her breath quickened. Her fingers shook.

"Hold still!" she snapped at the doll, clutching its face too hard. "You're supposed to be like me!"

The felt tip slipped from her grip. She grabbed another colour—black this time—and tried again, pressing so hard the nib collapsed inward. Ink streaked across the smooth ceramic, pooling at the corner of the painted lips.

Still wrong.

Still not her.

Something broke.

With a sudden shriek, Wanda raised the doll above her head and slammed it down on the floor.

The sound was sharp and brutal, like a gunshot.

Shards flew across the playroom. Porcelain limbs. Painted curls. The tiny blue dress, torn at the hem.

Pietro startled awake with a yelp, but Wanda didn’t hear him.

She was screaming.

Screaming and sobbing and kicking her legs against the floor as her powers swirled around her. The remaining dolls began to shake. One tipped off the shelf. A book flew open. A chair scooted an inch without being touched.

She flopped onto her back, fists in her eyes, legs thrashing like a baby bird.

"I don’t want blue!" she howled. "I don’t want blue eyes! I don’t want to be clean—I want to be me!"

The door burst open.

“Wanda, darling!” came List’s voice, full of sugar. “What’s happened, sweet girl?”

He entered fast but calm, arms already outstretched like he expected to scoop her up. He stepped around the broken doll with a quick glance, then dismissed it entirely.

“Did one of your babies fall down?” he asked gently, crouching beside her. “Poor thing. I know you love them.”

Wanda screamed again, but it was breaking down now. Becoming wet and hiccupy.

List pulled her into his lap, shushing her sweetly.

“There, there. It’s all right, my pretty girl. Nothing to cry about. Uncle’s here.”

She squirmed, but he held her tighter, pressing her cheek to his shoulder.

“Someone’s tired,” he cooed. “Too much excitement. You just need a cuddle, hmm?”

She was still crying. Still heaving. But her fists were caught now, pinned between her chest and his coat. Her feet dangled, limp.

List stroked her hair.

“You’re so good, Wanda. So strong. You don’t need to cry over a silly doll.”

He didn’t see the black ink smudged across her fingers.

He didn’t ask why she tried to change it.

He just rocked her slowly, humming one of the lullabies he always used.

Behind him, Pietro watched silently from the mat, knees drawn to his chest.

He knew better than to speak.

Chapter Text

Eight years old now.

They could feel it slipping.

It was like the way dreams melted after waking—fuzzy around the edges, then gone. That was what their languages were becoming. Mama’s Romani lullabies. The Hebrew prayers whispered into their hair. The sharp consonants, the soft rhythms—they had them once. Knew them like their own hands.

Now, they stumbled.

Pietro tried to say a word the way Mama had. The kind she used when she tucked them in. But the syllables came wrong. The tongue didn’t bend the way it used to. He blinked fast, like maybe that would help him remember.

Wanda’s voice was quieter these days, but she still hummed. All the time. Little half-melodies she strung together like beads. She didn’t know the full songs anymore. Just pieces. Just the parts she could still reach.

They clung to what they had.

List, of course, noticed.

At breakfast, Wanda muttered a blessing under her breath—imperfect and hurried, hands folding in a way that wasn’t part of the routine he’d taught them. List paused mid-bite, his smile flickering.

“Oh, darling,” he said, voice light. “We don’t need to do that anymore. That’s all from before.”

Wanda didn’t meet his eyes.

Later, Pietro refused to use the fork during a meal and instead ripped a piece of bread with his hands like Mama used to show them. He murmured something in Romani—mangled and mispronounced, but sacred in its effort.

List’s fingers tightened around his teacup.

“English, sweetheart,” he said smoothly. “Only English, remember?”

But they didn’t stop.

Wanda lined up their dolls and spoke to them in a jumbled blend of their old languages, braiding nonsense with memory. She tried to mimic her mother’s cadence, even if she couldn’t recall the right words.

Pietro drew symbols in chalk—some from memory, some invented—ringing their playmat in a protective circle only they understood. He taught Wanda the shapes and made her promise to redraw them if he ever forgot.

They shared bread pieces in secret. They whispered the fragments of Mama’s bedtime stories. They tried to twist their tongues the way she had. It came out wrong. It didn’t matter.

List grew testy.

He tutted when he caught them humming unfamiliar tunes. He confiscated Wanda’s drawings when he found her sketching a dark-haired woman in long skirts again and again. He scolded Pietro for mumbling over his meals.

But he didn’t stop them completely.

No, Uncle List preferred to watch.

He liked seeing how far they’d go to keep their past. What they'd sacrifice. What they'd distort.

“You poor little things,” he said once, patting their heads. “Still clinging to ghosts.”

They didn’t know what “ghost” meant, exactly. But they understood the tone.

They weren’t clinging to ghosts.

They were trying not to vanish.

Because that’s what it felt like—vanishing, piece by piece. One forgotten word, one unspoken prayer, one lost habit at a time.

And so they pushed back.

In every way they could.

They weren’t even sure why, exactly. Only that they had to. Because the stories were theirs. The songs were theirs. The words were theirs .

Even if no one else remembered them.

Even if no one else ever had.

✶ ✶ ✶

Pietro didn’t say it aloud—he didn’t know how to—but he was starting to forget Mama’s face.

Not all at once. Not completely. Just… little things. The curve of her eyebrows. The way she tilted her head when she listened. Whether her earrings jingled or stayed still. He tried to picture her at night, the way she looked when she bent low and pressed her nose to his. But the details got blurry.

What didn’t blur was Wanda.

She was the same shape. The same soft mouth, the same big brown eyes. When her hair fell in front of her face and she laughed—not the high, unguarded laugh of their old life, but the brittle little giggle she used now—it still sounded like Mama, just a little.

So he started watching her more.

Clinging tighter.

In the playroom, he curled into her side during rest time, eyes locked on her cheek. When List allowed them their shared meals, Pietro would sit as close as possible, knees bumping, elbows brushing. Wanda didn’t question it. She simply let him.

Because she understood.

She’d caught her reflection once in the shiny back of a spoon and cried. Not because she didn’t like what she saw, but because it was her . Mama’s whole face was in her face, like a mirror that showed the past instead of the present.

Pietro saw it too.

Sometimes, when he was especially tired, especially scared, he’d whisper, “Wanda,” like it was a question. And then, “Mama,” like he didn’t mean to say it.

And Wanda would shush him and hug him tighter and say, “I know.”

It didn’t matter if he got the names mixed up.

Because they both knew what he meant.

She started brushing his hair like Mama used to. Humming the bits of lullabies she could still remember. Drawing birds on his arms in felt-tip marker when he was scared, saying they’d fly him away someday.

List, of course, noticed. He watched Pietro’s gaze drift to his sister again and again. Watched how the boy’s fingers twitched toward her when they were separated, how he blinked hard when she was out of sight.

He made a note of it in his little black book. Visual imprinting on the female twin—strong maternal projection.

But he didn’t interfere. Not yet.

He was too curious.

Wanda, for her part, didn’t mind being looked at. Not by Pietro. Not when it helped. If she had to be the memory, the mirror, the anchor—they could use her. They already used her for everything else. At least this felt like something real .

So she let him hold her tighter, stare a little longer.

Because if Pietro forgot Mama’s face completely…
Then maybe Wanda would be the only one left who ever remembered it at all.

✶ ✶ ✶

It began with minutes.

Tiny, almost imperceptible changes to their routine—subtle shifts in timing. Wanda would be led to the testing chamber just a little earlier. Pietro would be escorted out of the playroom a little later. Their reunions, once predictable, began to scatter across the day like breadcrumbs.

They noticed.

At first, they didn’t panic. They simply adjusted. When one was led away, the other left behind would press fingers to the playroom wall, humming the old lullabies under their breath, mouthing the words to prayers they couldn’t fully remember. Wanda began drawing pictures with smudged markers—Pietro’s favourite trees, Mama’s scarf, crooked stars. She’d leave them where he could find them.

List found one such drawing and smiled.

“Clever girl,” he murmured, tapping the crude red star drawn on the back of a napkin. “But we’re not doing that anymore.”

The next day, the playroom had new rules.

One twin at a time.

One in, one out.

Wanda’s crayons were reduced to a single dull grey. Pietro’s books—he’d had only three—were taken away entirely. The shared meals were replaced by solitary trays in sterile rooms, without a single glance exchanged between bites.

They were being unbraided.

List called it individual progress tracking . The twins knew better.

“Why can’t we see each other?” Pietro asked, voice trembling.

List crouched beside him, brushing a bit of silver hair from his forehead. “Because you’re not little anymore, sweetheart. It’s time to grow up. Time to stand on your own two feet.”

“But—Wanda—”

“She’s doing beautifully,” List crooned. “You both are. My brightest stars. But you shine better when you’re apart. You don’t need to be so dependent , do you? You’re strong. You’re better than that.”

Pietro didn’t feel better. He felt like a limb had been taken from him.

Wanda asked about her brother once, quietly, after an especially long day of testing. “Can I see him soon?”

List smiled as he wiped the dried blood from her arm.

“You miss him, do you?” he asked, tilting his head.

Wanda nodded, lips trembling.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he sighed, gently kissing her hairline. “You’re just confused. You miss the idea of him. That’s all. But clinging to old things—old names, old faces—that’s what keeps you sick . You want to be well, don’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

Because she didn’t know what well meant anymore.

After that, the separation became the rule. If one was brought to the courtyard, the other was kept in their room. If one was allowed a lullaby, the other sat in silence. Sometimes, List would lie—say Pietro was “too tired” or “feeling selfish” and didn’t want to see her. He told Pietro the same about Wanda.

Each time, he said it with a smile.

Each time, he ended it with a soft kiss to the forehead.

“Such a good boy,” he whispered to Pietro.
“Such a good girl,” he whispered to Wanda.

Meanwhile, the lullabies faded.

The memories dimmed.

And the words they once spoke to each other—the old Romani phrases, the secret Yiddish lullabies—began to feel unfamiliar in their mouths. Wanda scribbled them in the margins of her testing worksheets. Pietro whispered them to himself at night.

List noticed.

And he did not like it.

✶ ✶ ✶ 

They were unravelling.

Not in the ways List expected—not with sobbing or begging, not even with silence or withdrawal. He had seen all of that before. No, this was different. This was defiance . Raw . Unfiltered . Dangerous in its unpredictability.

It began with Pietro refusing to eat.

Not in a dramatic way. Not at first. He would simply sit there, legs swinging under the sterile little table, staring at the tray like it was foreign. When List encouraged him—sweetly, coaxingly, with promises of dessert and rewards—the boy just blinked at him.

“I’m not hungry,” he said in a dead voice.

“You need your strength, precious boy.”

“I don’t care.”

Wanda stopped answering questions in testing altogether. Her charts flatlined. Her responses reduced to head shakes and muttered nonsense. She began humming over List’s instructions, eyes glassy, distant. The same bar of melody again and again—some half-forgotten tune from a cradle song no one else remembered.

By the end of the week, the experiments were a disaster.

Wanda’s readings were erratic, unpredictable. Her powers flared and stalled and surged with no clear trigger. The electrodes burned out. Chairs split down the middle. Pietro disappeared in the blink of an eye during a speed tracking session, only to be found an hour later curled in a corner of a storage closet, rocking back and forth with his hands over his ears.

“They’re destabilizing,” a lab assistant whispered.

“They’re grieving,” List replied calmly, folding his hands. “We’ve simply removed the crutch. This is to be expected.”

But even he hadn’t expected what came next.

Wanda bit an orderly. Drew blood.

Pietro shattered a glass wall. With his fist.

During a sleep study, Wanda screamed so loudly that the lightbulbs exploded overhead. The shards rained like snow onto the scientists’ clipboards. Her body seized on the cot, her mouth foaming, a single word sobbed through cracked lips: “Pietro—”

They gave her a sedative. She vomited it up.

Pietro outran a security guard and punched him square in the stomach when he was tackled. The man coughed up blood. The bruise from Pietro’s knuckles healed in minutes. The guard’s injury took weeks.

They were only eight.

But they were acting like creatures trapped too long in a burning house. Gnawing at the walls. Screaming through the smoke.

List still cooed. Still sang lullabies. Still kissed their foreheads and praised them for their strength.

But his patience was thinning. That sweet, syrupy calm had begun to curdle at the edges.

One night, after Wanda scratched at her own arms until the skin split open, List sat beside her in the infirmary and whispered:

“This won’t bring him back to you, my darling girl.”

Her glassy eyes didn’t move.

“You’ll see him again when you’ve earned it. Do you understand?”

She didn’t answer.

“Say you understand.”

But Wanda just turned her head and whispered something in a language List couldn’t translate. Old syllables. Old songs. Romani? Hebrew? Yiddish?

He didn’t know.

He hated that he didn’t know.

He stood.

Made a note in her chart.

“New directive,” he told the nurse. “We’ll separate them longer this time. No playroom for either of them. And if they speak in anything but German during testing, shock collars go on.”

“But—Doctor List—they’re children. ”

List smiled, without warmth.

“Yes. Exactly.”

Chapter Text

It had been three weeks since they last touched.

Three weeks since Pietro had heard his sister’s voice without static on the wall. Since Wanda had felt the warmth of his hand curled into hers, grounding her like the threadbare edges of their old blanket from Mama. Three weeks of silence, steel, and false lullabies.

They were still resisting.

No matter the pain.

No matter the cost.

✶ ✶ ✶ 

Pietro was strapped to the speed treadmill again. Electrodes on his skull, needles in his arm. He hadn’t run in hours. Not properly. He stumbled deliberately every time, scraped his knees raw on the belt, legs collapsing under him like soggy paper. The technicians tried shouting. Threatening. Then they tried pain.

Shock.

Searing across his ribs.

He screamed, fell, and writhed.

They reset the machine.

Again.

Again.

And still he did not run.

List came in at hour six, cradling a clipboard like a cradle song. "You know how proud she’d be if you ran like a good boy, Pietro,” he whispered, brushing sweat-damp curls from the boy’s forehead. “She told me she wants to see you happy. Wouldn't you like that?"

Pietro stared at him.

Then spat.

Right in his face.

✶ ✶ ✶ 

Wanda's room stank of ozone and iodine.

Her charts were a mess of blinking red.

She hadn’t answered a single question in over four days. Not a nod. Not a blink. Not even when they clamped her eyelids open with iron fingers to track her pupils. Her gaze stayed empty, locked inward, always watching a scene no one else could see.

They shaved the side of her head and attached fresh probes. No response.

They played screams over the speakers.

Nothing.

Eventually, List himself came.

Sat beside her with a cloth and water, dabbing her temple like she was some feverish little lamb. “You’ll get yourself in trouble if you keep this up,” he warned, gently. “We can go so much further than this, Wanda. You know that.”

She blinked.

Slowly.

Then whispered: “I hope you do.”

List paused. Not with fear. But with delight.

He scribbled something in his notebook.

"Fascinating," he murmured. "Look at how strong you’re becoming."

✶ ✶ ✶ 

By the end of the week, both twins were so depleted they couldn’t stand.

Wanda curled in the corner of her cell, singing to a lump of cloth she had rolled up like a doll, crooning half-lost songs about the sun and a wooden spoon and Mama’s hair.

Pietro had clawed “WANDA” into the metal floor until his fingernails tore off.

The blood soaked into the grout.

✶ ✶ ✶ 

List observed it all. Charted it with rapture. This was evolution in real time.

When they were finally allowed to see each other again, he planned—it would be at the edge of their survival. When the bond would either break entirely... or reform into something new, something stronger, something his .

But not yet.

Not quite yet.

He wasn’t finished watching them burn.

✶ ✶ ✶

 Wanda danced until her feet bled.

Not just twirls, not just little-child spins. This was something else—something sacred and scorched. She moved like she was chasing ghosts, like the rhythm could drag her back through time. Her thin legs buckled beneath her over and over, but she kept going, arms slicing through air, muttering words half-remembered from candlelight and lullabies.

“ Baro Devlesa, ” she gasped. “ Baro Devlesa sa mi kheli... ”

Her nightgown clung to her like wet parchment. Her hair was plastered to her skull. Her eyes—still stubbornly brown—shone wild, glassy.

She collapsed mid-step.

Didn’t get up.

They sent three guards to retrieve her.

✶ ✶ ✶

Pietro was louder.

He clawed the chalk from the wall and scraped it down his arms, drawing stars, moons, symbols he didn’t fully understand but felt burning in his bones. He screamed words he barely remembered learning, not sure if they were Romani or Hebrew or something Mama made up. But they were hers. That was all that mattered.

He screamed:

“ Mame, khav tu! Mame! ”

He shrieked until his throat cracked open. Then he hissed the Shema. Then Eshet Chayil .

“ Ayli! Ayli lama azavtani?! ”

The technicians didn’t even try to sedate him. They called List.

✶ ✶ ✶

When List entered, he looked almost human.

Sweat at his collar. A tremble in his left hand.

But his eyes glowed bright—bright like candles devouring a wick.

He stepped into Pietro’s cell and crushed a chalk symbol with his shoe.

“Enough.”

Pietro didn’t stop.

“ Zog shoyn! ” he spat. “ Tate’s fire will eat you! ”

List struck him across the face.

Pietro hit the floor hard, blood smearing one of the symbols.

Still, he laughed.

The sound was high, feral.

“ You can’t take her out of me, ” he whispered, curling his body inward. “ You can’t take her face, or her voice, or her songs. Not if I put them here— ” he thumped his chest “ —and here— ” his temple “ —and here— ” and smeared the blood onto the wall again, making a crooked hamsa.

List stared at it.

At the shaking child below it.

At the cracked voice that still clung to prayers and ash.

Then he turned on his heel and left.

✶ ✶ ✶

Wanda was waiting in her room, barely conscious, her ankles wrapped in gauze, dried salt crusted on her cheeks.

A new camera had been installed in the corner.

“ Baro Devlesa... ” she whispered again.

And danced, even lying down.

Because if she moved, she could still remember.

Because if she moved, maybe he could find her.

Because if she moved, she was still her mother’s daughter.

✶ ✶ ✶

Wanda stopped eating.

It wasn’t a tantrum. It wasn’t even conscious. Her mouth just wouldn’t open anymore. Food would be placed before her—mushy, colourless, calorie-packed sludge—but she’d stare past it. Her eyes wouldn’t blink. Her lips stayed shut. When the technicians forced a spoon between her teeth, she retched so hard she coughed blood. They strapped her down and tried again.

Three days passed. Then four.

The dark circles beneath her eyes bloomed like bruises. She lay curled on the playroom floor in the same thin gown, unwashed and limp, her heartbeat a feather’s pulse under her skin.

She murmured in Romani now. Only Romani.

Barely above a whisper.

Over and over:

“ Del si amenca. ”

God is with us.

She repeated it like it was the only sentence left in the world.

✶ ✶ ✶

Pietro’s protests had gone beyond words.

He'd begun to rip apart his room. He flung toys against the walls with such speed that they shattered like glass. The bedframe was destroyed. The sheets were shredded and soaked with spit and blood. He had bitten himself, then tried to carve words into the walls with his teeth.

He didn’t speak anymore.

He howled.

He ran until his legs gave out. Then he crawled. Then he shook, like a caged animal in a wire box. Every muscle in his body vibrated with panic and fury. His skin split open in places from the pressure, healing, splitting again.

They tried to sedate him.

It didn’t work.

He outran the needles.

He didn’t sleep. Not even for seconds. If he slept, he might forget Wanda’s voice.

Forget Mama’s eyes.

Forget the song.

He pressed his face against the door every night, sobbing so quietly that only the camera picked it up.

“ Ta na del tu mange lasho somnakuno gilab, Sosefka... ”

Please sing me a pretty song, Sosefka.

But Wanda wasn’t there to sing.

✶ ✶ ✶

List watched both cells in tandem.

He hadn’t slept either.

They were dying .

His precious miracles—his twin specimens, his divine anomalies—were wasting away before his eyes, and all his meticulous scheduling, his controlled environments, his injections and data points meant nothing in the face of whatever this was.

Love?

Culture?

Twin instinct?

He hissed the words like they were rot.

It couldn’t be that. It couldn’t.

He slammed a folder shut, hands shaking.

He couldn’t let them die. Not now. Not before the spinal tap results. Not before the cellular resonance mapping. Not before they reached full neural pruning at age ten.

He strode into the corridor, pale and frantic.

“Prep emergency reintegration protocols,” he barked. “Now. Immediate transfer. We do not sedate. We do not isolate.”

Technicians scrambled.

List wiped a hand down his face and forced his mouth into a smile.

Time to be Uncle List again.

Time to save his miracles.

✶ ✶ ✶   

The door opened with a mechanical hiss.

Wanda didn’t move at first. She was slumped in the corner of her cell, her limbs skeletal, her lips cracked and grey. The light from the hallway made her wince. She curled further into herself like a paper doll left out in the rain.

She didn’t even react when footsteps approached.

Not until—

“ Wanda?! ”

The voice cracked like thunder. High. Young. Familiar.

“ WANDA! ”

Her head jerked up so fast she nearly passed out. For one blinding second, she thought she was hallucinating.

But then—

Arms.

Tiny, warm, and clinging around her.

“Pietro…” she gasped, mouth finally opening.

He was sobbing into her shoulder, rocking her, his silver hair wild and unkempt, his face bruised and sallow with exhaustion. She clung to him like he was the last tether to the world.

They didn’t speak.

Not in words.

Just the press of foreheads, fingers fisting in thin fabric, the desperate inhale of a familiar smell—sweat, metal, and something vaguely floral, something that still whispered of Mama’s apron .

✶ ✶ ✶   

Dr. List stood in the doorway, smiling like a proud parent.

“Oh, my good little miracles,” he crooned. “You gave poor Uncle List quite the scare. What naughty little things you are, starving and screaming and scratching up your walls like stray kittens.”

He stepped inside, the door sealing behind him with a soft thump.

“But it’s all right now. Isn’t it?” His voice was honeyed, sing-song, like a lullaby laced with arsenic. “You missed each other, didn’t you? Well, guess what?”

He clapped his hands together gently.

“You’re going to share a room now! A big, clean, soft room with a bed just for you two. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Wanda didn’t answer.

She was still cradling Pietro, her fingers pressed tight to the back of his neck. Her mouth trembled against his ear as she whispered fragments of songs, prayers, anything she could remember—just so he’d never forget them.

Pietro nodded against her, too dazed to speak, but his little hands clenched in her gown like vices.

List sighed, pleased.

“I knew you’d be good again once you saw each other. You silly little things. You just needed a bit of together time. ”

He crouched in front of them, hands on his knees like a daycare teacher.

“And now, no more tantrums. No more screaming. No more naughty drawings or dances or made-up babble-words, hmm? Uncle List is watching very carefully.”

His eyes sparkled behind his glasses.

“But if you're good—oh, if you're good—I’ll let you nap together. And maybe even... a walk.”

✶ ✶ ✶   

The new room was sterile, but larger.

The bed was a single cot with crisp white sheets. It was nothing like home. It never would be. But Pietro didn’t care. He climbed in and curled around Wanda like he used to curl against their mother.

Wanda held him back, humming softly. Not even words anymore. Just vibrations.

Her chest rose and fell against his back, steady and fragile.

“Don’t let go,” he whispered.

“Never,” she whispered back.

And behind the one-way mirror, List smiled, scribbling furiously.

They would live.

His miracles always did.

Chapter Text

They were always together now.

List wouldn’t— couldn’t —risk separating them again. He told himself it was for research integrity. That the data was cleaner when both subjects were emotionally regulated. That dual testing could be controlled, measured, and precise.

But the truth was simpler.

He couldn’t bear to see them break again.

So they were housed together, fed together, walked together, and even bathed side-by-side in a sterile tiled room with warm water and gentle sponges—like little glass dolls with silk hair and tissue paper limbs.

They were so thin.

Their skin clung to their ribs like parchment, and their legs wobbled with the smallest steps. When Pietro walked too fast, he collapsed. When Wanda twirled like she used to, she fainted. So List changed the routine.

He reintroduced food slowly—liquids first, then mush, then solids. High-fat, high-sugar, high-protein. He spoon-fed them himself at first, like babies, holding Wanda’s head gently while she swallowed, or wiping Pietro’s mouth with a cloth as he dozed mid-meal. They were grateful, docile, too tired to resist.

They slept more than they were awake now. Curled up like twin fawns in the narrow bed, faces pressed into one another’s shoulders, breathing in tandem. It would’ve been beautiful, if not for the medical restraints tucked just under the mattress, and the bio-monitors beeping at every flutter of their REM cycles.

But oh, how compliant they were.

How good.

List was delighted .

✶ ✶ ✶

“Walkies?” he said one morning, like a question to puppies.

Wanda stirred first, blinking slowly, her lashes crusted with sleep.

Pietro mumbled something in Romani under his breath, shifting his cheek against her collarbone.

“Yes, yes, my sweet little birds,” List cooed, helping them sit up with practised care. “We’re going outside today. Doesn’t that sound nice? Fresh air! Sunlight! Just like when you were small.”

They didn’t answer, but they reached for each other instinctively, and List beamed as he guided their hands together.

Outside wasn’t a meadow or a playground, of course. Just a fenced-in stretch of concrete ringed with hedges, with cameras in every corner and a patrolling guard at each end. But to the twins, it might as well have been a park in spring. The breeze was real. The sky was blue. There were birds somewhere, and Wanda smiled faintly when she heard them.

Pietro staggered after five minutes. His legs folded beneath him like wet paper. List caught him before he hit the ground.

“Ah ah—too soon, little star,” he murmured, lifting the boy against his chest with practised ease. Pietro rested his head on List’s shoulder, not asleep, but too weak to care. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Later, it was Wanda who slumped mid-step, and List scooped her up just the same.

He cradled her like a prize, like a daughter, like a treasure too fragile for the world. “Shhh,” he crooned, rocking her slightly, her dark head nestled under his chin. “You’ll be strong again soon. We’ll fix you right up. You’ll see.”

And so Walkies continued.

Some days, Pietro walked. Some days, Wanda. Some days, neither.

But always hand in hand.

Always under List’s watchful eye, his voice sticky-sweet in their ears, promising comfort, safety, praise—as long as they stayed good.

And they did.

Because they were together.

And for now, that was enough.

✶ ✶ ✶

It started small.

A blood draw during story time. Wanda sat on his lap, quiet and pliant, as the needle slid into the crook of her elbow. Pietro watched with wary eyes, one hand still tangled in his sister’s shirt. Neither flinched. Neither spoke.

Then it was reflex testing—taps to the knee, pressure to the spine, gentle pulses to see how their nerves fired. Pietro giggled once when it tickled. List nearly wept from joy.

They were healing.

They were his again.

Once their legs stopped trembling with every step, the tests escalated. Only slightly. Only just enough.

A small incision above Wanda’s shoulder blade. No deeper than a coin, closed with surgical tape and a whispered “good girl” against her ear. Pietro’s test came later that night—a needle pushed into the sole of his foot to monitor muscular twitch response. He hissed. Clenched his teeth. Didn’t cry.

Progress.

They were still pale. Still hollowed out in the cheeks. But their vitals were strong, and their eyes were focused again. They could walk across the playroom unassisted now, though Pietro’s gait still limped and Wanda still drifted when she twirled.

List was careful.

Careful not to break them too soon again.

✶ ✶ ✶

One morning, they woke to new playroom toys: wooden puzzles, brightly colored tiles with geometric shapes. But they weren’t just for enrichment—each puzzle came with heart rate monitors, eye tracking, and subtle pain stimulus. It was all very clever, List thought. To see how cognitive fatigue impacted their healing speed. To measure frustration under cheerful conditions.

Wanda stacked the tiles absently, humming a broken lullaby. Pietro lay on his stomach and drew on the floor with chalk—another test, though he didn’t know it. Each colour-coded piece was laced with trace stimulants to track how long they could focus before crashing.

Still, the twins were calm.

Still together.

Still his.

✶ ✶ ✶

Later that week, the incisions returned.

Longer this time, and paired—one across Pietro’s ribcage, one down Wanda’s thigh. Unmedicated, but clean. Wanda shook. Pietro bit his hand to keep still. They healed within hours.

List kissed their hair afterwards, proud and ecstatic.

“You are wonders, ” he whispered. “You are miracles. Just look at you! You’ve never been stronger.”

And it was true.

The data confirmed it.

They were stabilising again, slowly regaining weight and cognitive clarity. Pietro’s speed was still dormant—too weak for bursts—but Wanda’s powers flickered here and there. A floating spoon. A toy that moved across the floor with no touch.

List didn’t punish it.

Not yet.

✶ ✶ ✶

He knew the real tests were coming.

Real thresholds to push.

But he’d wait. Just a little longer.

Because now they were strong enough to bleed again. And that meant answers.

And that meant purpose.

All he had to do was keep them good. Keep them sweet. Keep them his.

And never— never —let them break like that again.

✶ ✶ ✶

It began with Pietro.

List was more cautious with him. The boy’s powers were buried deep under fatigue, and every sprint that flickered from his limbs came at a cost—nosebleeds, trembling, vomiting. But his body still held secrets, and List was determined to coax them out.

Each morning, after “breakfast” (a nutrient-dense slurry Pietro drank with a pinched nose), List made him run laps in a white, empty room with cushioned walls and biometric sensors. Cameras watched from every angle. Floor panels lit up at random intervals, forcing Pietro to swerve, hop, twist—anything to keep momentum.

At first, he stumbled. Collapsed. Vomited yellow fluid onto the floor.

But then… something clicked.

The speed came back.

Only for a second. Only in bursts. But enough for List to cry out in joy, clapping like a delighted uncle as Pietro panted on the ground.

“There he is! There he is, my fast little boy. See? See what you can do when you try?”

Pietro didn’t smile. He just rolled onto his side and muttered, barely conscious, “Don’t tell Wanda.”

He knew she’d worry. She always did.

✶ ✶ ✶

Wanda’s tests were more complex.

She had always been the harder one to define. Her power resisted labelling. Sometimes it sparked without cause—telekinesis, heat, a flicker of light. But there was an intention buried beneath it, List was sure. Purpose. And he’d unearth it, layer by layer.

He began with psychic strain.

A wall of lights was installed in her testing room, each programmed to flicker in a pattern only she could match with her mind. If she aligned them correctly, she got her doll. If not… the floor shocked her feet.

It wasn’t strong—just enough to burn. Just enough to learn.

Sometimes she made the lights move.

Sometimes they exploded instead.

List didn’t mind. Every failure taught him something.

He tracked how pain impacted her focus. How grief stalled her ability to direct force. How isolation weakened her control.

And how Pietro’s presence amplified everything.

Because when her twin was in the room, hooked to his own monitors, sitting across from her on the floor, Wanda was sharper. More precise. More dangerous.

Once, she shattered every bulb on the wall just because List reached for Pietro too quickly.

It took four hours to clean up the glass.

✶ ✶ ✶

Then came the healing benchmarks.

Starvation. Infection. Sleep deprivation.

Again.

But this time, they were measured side-by-side. Side-by-side, like the little miracles they were.

List had them lie on twin hospital beds in the lab, arms stretched out, identical incisions made across their bellies—Wanda first, then Pietro. No anaesthesia, of course. He needed the raw data.

He whispered to them the whole time, stroking Wanda’s damp curls, pressing kisses to Pietro’s clenched fists.

“My sweet twins… see how much you can endure. What strength you hold inside. This is God’s work, you understand. You are gifts.”

Wanda sobbed softly. Pietro stared at the ceiling and hummed a lullaby in broken Hebrew.

The wounds closed in hours. Pietro’s faster, of course.

List recorded everything.

✶ ✶ ✶

Sometimes, during “recovery,” they were allowed to sit together on the floor of the playroom, Wanda curled in Pietro’s lap, his arms wound tight around her like thread. He stroked her hair in a daze, murmuring words in Romani under his breath that neither could fully remember the meaning of.

But Wanda smiled anyway. Because they still meant something. They still had each other.

And if they had each other, then nothing— nothing —was completely gone.

✶ ✶ ✶

It was only meant to be another comparative trial.

Another test of thresholds. Another quiet violation written out in clean black ink.

List had Pietro wired for exhaustion, already two days into another starvation rotation. Wanda was brought in next, sedated lightly—just enough that her head lolled against his shoulder, blinking like she was underwater. She was cradling a doll again, skin smudged with dirt and tears. The latest “Anya.”

They were seated opposite each other on padded gurneys. Monitors beeped, tubes fed into arms. A tray of surgical tools gleamed under the lights.

Just like always.

List, cooing softly, stood between them like a conductor of some grotesque symphony. “Now, my loves. Let’s see what happens when we truly test the bounds of pain and bond. Together this time.”

He turned first to Pietro, who was too weak to flinch as the scalpel pressed against his palm. Wanda, still groggy, twitched in response. But then, he moved to her.

Pietro croaked. “Don’t—”

List only smiled. “It’s just a tiny incision, precious one. She won’t even feel it— not for long. ”

He didn’t get the chance.

The moment the scalpel broke Wanda’s skin—

She screamed .

Not like a child.

Like a force .

Like something ancient and buried, tearing loose from under the earth.

The air changed. The temperature dropped. Lights shattered in their sockets one by one with crisp pops, sending the room into strobing shadow. Glass crawled backwards into the bulbs, then shattered again, then reversed again. Sparks danced along the wires, time skipping forward and back like a scratched tape.

And Wanda’s eyes—still brown, still wide—glowed faintly at the edges, as if something behind them was trying to claw its way through.

She wasn’t conscious. Not fully. But her body arched off the table as if pulled by invisible strings, floating. The doll dropped from her lap and unravelled into strips of cloth midair, then reassembled again, face twisted and wrong.

Reality buckled.

The floor twisted into water, then into stone, then into something else. List stumbled backwards, laughing hysterically even as monitors shorted and the ceiling bulged downward like liquid. Pietro tried to crawl off the gurney but couldn’t find gravity—up was sideways now.

Time flickered.

The hum of machinery grew into a scream.

List shouted, “ Yes—yes—this is it! My miracle girl, just look at you! ”

And then everything snapped.

✶ ✶ ✶

Silence.

When Wanda came to, she was on the ground, curled tightly in Pietro’s arms. The air smelled scorched. Everything was dim and smoky. The walls were warped—bent in ways they shouldn’t be, like paper soaked through. The glass in the mirror looked like it had melted and refrozen mid-drip.

List sat slumped in a chair nearby, grinning like a madman, blood trickling from his ears.

“Oh, my sweet Wanda,” he whispered, voice thin and thready. “You changed the room, darling. You changed the world. ”

Wanda was shaking.

Pietro held her tighter.

And somewhere deep inside her chest, something was awake now. Something that didn’t want to go back to sleep.

Chapter Text

By the time they were nine, the Facility no longer looked the way it used to.

The walls flickered when Wanda passed. The corners bowed. Doors sometimes led to nowhere or back to memories that didn’t belong in the present. Lights dimmed or buzzed in strange tones, as though unsure of their frequency. List had to replace the tiles in their playroom three times in a single month. They kept bubbling like blisters and curling like burnt parchment.

And Wanda?

Wanda stopped blinking when it happened.

Stopped crying, too.

She would sit perfectly still on the floor in her faded smock, one of the Anya dolls tucked against her chest, Pietro curled at her side like a shield. Her expression wouldn't change, but the air would thicken—slow, syrupy, wrong. Sometimes the colours in the room would turn inside-out. Sometimes she’d whisper things under her breath that didn’t seem to come from her.

And something would break.

Sometimes small. Sometimes catastrophic.

The last time, a nurse who raised her voice at Pietro found herself speaking in reverse for the rest of the day—garbled and panicked, her words falling backwards out of her throat. The woman wept and clawed at her own mouth. Wanda simply tilted her head and watched.

The time before that, List had tried to separate them again, just for a day, just to “measure cortisol rates individually.” The door welded itself shut behind him. It took hours for his staff to dig him out.

He still couldn’t tell if Wanda meant to do it.

And Wanda had no plans to tell him.

Let him wonder. Let him fret.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

She was her mother’s daughter. She might not remember every word Magda had ever spoken, but she remembered her fire. She remembered the shape of her shadow when she danced. She remembered the lullabies in Hebrew and Romani, and Pietro's tiny body pressed against hers under ragged blankets. And even if the words were fading, the weight was not.

Wanda was the culmination of a thousand years of survival.

She was the answer to every broken prayer.

And if the world around her had to shatter to make room for that truth, so be it.

All she needed was Pietro’s hand in hers—and the cracked, stitched, smudged Anya doll held to her heart.

That was enough.

Let the walls bleed.

Let List tremble.

She didn’t care anymore.

✶ ✶ ✶

Pietro was having the time of his life .

He knew he wasn’t supposed to be. He knew they were probably going to be punished—locked away again, separated, needled, starved, maybe worse. He knew . But it didn’t matter.

Because, for the first time in years , things were fun .

Things were hers .

The world was theirs .

The floor tiles rippled like pond water when Wanda was in a mood. The ceiling cracked open in spiderwebs of glittering black whenever List got too close. One time, a syringe bent itself midair and shot like a dart into the wall behind him. Pietro howled with laughter. Wanda didn’t even blink.

He cheered every time.

“ Go, Wanda! ”
“ Do it again! ”
“ Make the lights flicker! ”
“ Make his eyebrows fall off! ”

He darted through her flickering warps with the surety of someone home inside her chaos. When the rooms bent and twisted, Pietro danced through it, arms wide, grinning like a feral thing. He grabbed her hands and spun her in the middle of the storm, even when her nose was bleeding and her eyes had gone glassy.

He was her biggest fan. Her front-row audience. Her twin.

Wanda barely spoke, but she smiled when he did that.

That made him double down.

Every time something went wrong—when the walls bled static, when the nurses screamed, when the glass turned to sand in its frame—he would whisper, “That was amazing ,” into her hair.

When List shouted, Pietro laughed.
When List threatened, Pietro spat.

“You scared, Uncle?” he chirped once, beaming up at the trembling man with bloody socks and a cracked front tooth. “She’s just little . You scared of a little girl ?”

List slapped him so hard his ears rang. He didn’t care.

Because Wanda looked proud of him. Because Wanda made the air hum afterwards. Because the lights buzzed and the shadows in the corners twitched , and that meant she’d heard him and loved him and it mattered.

This was the most alive Pietro had felt in forever.

This was power. Their power.

And if the walls melted, and the floor fell away, and the ceiling turned to fire—

—Well, at least he’d be laughing.

And Wanda would be the one who lit the match.

✶ ✶ ✶

List was unravelling.

He tried to hide it, of course. He still smiled. Still cooed. Still patted Wanda’s head and pinched Pietro’s cheeks and handed out sugar cubes as if he wasn’t watching reality itself bend under their tiny, scarred hands.

But the veneer was cracking.

The twins weren’t compliant anymore. Not reliably. Not at all.

They glared at him now. They whispered in the corners. Wanda stared too long, like she was trying to peel him with her eyes alone. Pietro wouldn’t stop humming a Romani lullaby that he swore he’d erased from them years ago. And every so often, things just happened —shifts in gravity, displaced matter, time itself slipping . His hair was turning grey. He was too young for that.

List paced his office like a trapped animal, rifling through drawer after drawer of neatly catalogued files—his personal archive of miracles and monstrosities.

It was supposed to reassure him. A record of brilliance. But all it did was make him sweat.

#309081 – “accelerated muscle growth.” Suicide at 11.
#487210 – “telepathic development.” Self-mutilation. Unstable.
#512990 – “precognition.” Spoke in riddles. Poisoned caregiver.
#300099 – “cryokinesis.” Froze her own lungs from the inside.

He flipped faster.

Children with extraordinary promise. Children who eventually broke down. Children who failed to love him enough. Or feared him too much. Or saw too clearly what he was.

Each entry neatly stamped. Clean. Cold. Gruesome.

He stopped only when he came across a torn, half-burned folder wedged in the back of a drawer he rarely opened. The paper was warped with moisture, edges curled like old leaves.

The front of it was barely legible. Just a long, faded number, handwritten in old ink:

#214782

List frowned.

That wasn’t one of his.

It wasn’t even one of Hydra’s , as far as he could tell—too old, too foreign in its formatting. The style was wrong. The ink not up to standard. No name. No clear metadata.

He flipped it open briefly. Inside were just scraps—burnt notes, faded forms in archaic type, a blurred photo he couldn’t make out. German. Maybe Polish. Impossible to tell.

He sneered.

“Useless,” he muttered, and shoved it aside with the same careless flick he'd given countless other ruined records. Just another number, lost in the tide. No miracles here. No answers. Just rot.

His hands were shaking now.

Where had his perfect children gone?

They were supposed to love him. They were supposed to be grateful . His sweet little miracles. His proudest achievement. And now they whispered in tongues and shattered porcelain with their minds and refused to break the way the others had.

They weren’t miracles anymore.

They were something else .

And he had no idea what to do.

✶ ✶ ✶

It was getting worse.

The floor of their room trembled softly underfoot now, even when Wanda was calm — if she ever was. Light bent wrong around her sometimes. Her eyes shimmered unnaturally, like the sky before a storm. And always, always , Pietro was there.

He clung to her like a shadow, all flashing grins and manic energy, whispering in her ear like a devil made of bone and memory.

“Do it again,” he whispered when List turned his back.
“Make the ceiling fall a little, just a crack.”
“Make the door rattle.”
“Make him scared.”

Wanda never questioned it.

She’d once followed her mother through the cold forests of Poland. Now she followed Pietro through the ruin of her own mind, the new constant in her chaos.

She didn’t smile often, but when she did, it was always after Pietro spoke.

They made the lights pop in the hallway. They made the water run red. They made the radio turn on by itself and play songs in languages only they remembered.

It was dangerous. Unhinged. Completely unsupervised madness in the body of a child.

And List… watched.

He was not surprised.

This was not unexpected.

He’d seen it before — in others like them. The ones taken from old ghettos, hidden camps, the back alleys of Budapest or Kraków. The ones who refused to assimilate. The ones who clung to their blood and their language and their otherness with iron fists and dead mothers in their eyes.

They were all like this, eventually.

Twins. Wretches. Warped by grief and bonded by birth.

He’d just underestimated how long these two would hold out.

And now?

Now Pietro was the match, and Wanda the powder keg. They weren’t individuals anymore. They were a single, synchronised, dangerous rhythm — twin hearts beating against the cage he’d built for them.

He watched them through the glass.

Wanda’s fingers were twitching in the air, weaving invisible threads. Pietro leaned close to her ear and whispered something; she immediately obeyed. A ripple shot through the room—one of the ceiling tiles exploded downward, shattering on the floor.

Neither of them flinched.

List smiled tightly.

“You’re only proving me right,” he murmured, voice soft against the hum of the monitors.

This kind of destruction? Of course. Expected.

He tapped his pen, making a note:

Subject W (Female): Powers nearing instability threshold.
Subject P (Male): Further instigator. Control structure weakening.
Joint cognitive function is increasing — twins are echoing each other’s neural responses.
Intervention required. Soon.

He would fix this.

Or at least contain it.

One way or another.

✶ ✶ ✶

The courtyard air was warm, humming with bees and the scent of clipped grass. A carefully cultivated illusion of peace.

List strolled between the flowerbeds with his little miracles. One hand rested on Pietro’s shoulder, the other casually twirling Wanda’s hair. He called it “walkies,” like they were pets, like he was indulging them. And in a way, he was. They were docile when allowed to breathe a little.

But not today.

The twins were twitchy. Restless.

Wanda’s fingers danced and curled like she was playing invisible piano keys. Her gaze kept shifting toward the far perimeter of the yard—the tall, grey concrete wall that loomed like a prison, which it was.

Pietro couldn’t stop pacing, weaving in erratic figure-eights around her.

“They’re jittery,” List observed aloud, tapping his clipboard. “Weather change? Early puberty? Hmm... We’ll have to start charting cycles.”

He didn’t notice the way Pietro leaned toward Wanda, whispering something low and secret against her curls.

He didn’t notice Wanda nodding.

He didn’t even feel the surge of static in the air until—

BOOM.

Concrete detonated at the far edge of the wall, a perfect circular hole blasted through by a pulse of warped energy that bent the air and flickered the sky.

For a second, time stood still.

Then Pietro was gone.

A streak of silver vanished through the hole like lightning. He laughed— howled —as he shot through the woods beyond the courtyard, wind howling in his ears, sunlight splintering through leaves, alive , free , faster than everything.

“I got us out , Wanda!” he shouted into the rushing wind. “I told you —I told you we’d make it!”

But Wanda wasn’t there.

Pietro skidded to a halt half a mile away, his feet kicking up dirt.

His heart dropped into his stomach.

He turned, suddenly ice-cold.

“I grabbed her—didn’t I grab her—?”

He hadn’t .

He’d thought he had. His hand had reached back. He always grabbed her.

But she didn’t have his speed.

Wanda had been too slow.

✶ ✶ ✶

Back in the courtyard, everything was chaos.

List was screaming commands. Alarms howled across the facility.

Wanda stood dazed, a slow trickle of blood running from her nose, the effort of the blast already draining her.

She barely had time to stumble before they were on her — black-clad men with needles and fists.

“No—” she managed to say, one hand half-extended.

But the world was already tilting sideways. A sharp jab to her neck. Cold fire in her veins. The sunlight above turned into smears of white noise.

Her last thought was of Pietro’s hand, not in hers.

✶ ✶ ✶

Pietro returned too late.

He zipped back through the hole like a thunderclap and found Wanda crumpled on the grass, limp in one of the guard’s arms. Another one lunged toward him.

He screamed, panicked, lunging forward—but the second needle caught him square in the side of his neck.

“NO—” he gasped.

His vision went sideways. His knees buckled.

The last thing Pietro saw before the dark swallowed him was Wanda’s bare feet dragging through the grass, away from him.

Chapter Text

Pietro woke in a haze.

The ceiling was too bright. His limbs felt heavy, distant. His head ached with that strange, echoing pressure that always came after List’s needles—like his brain was full of cotton and static.

He blinked. Once. Twice.

Then the colours began to settle, shapes clicked into place, and he realised he was lying on the floor of the playroom.

He turned his head with effort. The mat pressed hot against his cheek. His legs barely moved. Every inch of him groaned like he was made of old wood.

“...Wanda?”

His voice cracked. The air hurt to breathe.

Then he saw her.

She was slumped in the far corner of the room, her back to the wall, legs stuck straight out in front of her like a doll set down wrong. A single Anya doll was cradled clumsily in her arms—no, trapped in her arms, barely held by the stiff, heavy metal casings that swallowed her hands entirely.

Thick manacles bound her wrists and ankles, the chains bolted directly into the wall. Her head lolled slightly to one side, eyes half-lidded, pupils sluggish and wrong. The red rims around her eyes and lips showed how sedated she still was. She swayed softly like she was listening to music no one else could hear.

“Wands?”

Pietro sat up too fast, and the room spun, tilting like a carnival ride. He grabbed the edge of the play table to steady himself, breath shallow, chest tight.

“Wanda?” he croaked again.

She didn’t answer—just blinked slowly, as if registering his presence through a thick veil. Her Anya doll was tucked awkwardly against her chest. The most she could do was nuzzle it with her chin. Her fingers couldn’t flex, not with the metal swallowing her hands whole.

One of her legs twitched, dragging the chain slightly with a soft clink .

Pietro stared.

His sister. His Wanda. Bound to the wall like an animal.

She couldn’t even hug her doll.

“Wanda, what did they do?” he whispered, stumbling toward her on all fours.

She smiled, loose and soft and strange.

“P’tro,” she slurred, her words syrupy with sedative. “You’re back. I... I saved you.”

Her head dropped forward a little before she slowly lifted it again. Her gaze wobbled but found his.

“I made a hole.”

Pietro’s heart twisted. “Yeah. You did, Wands. It was... really good.”

She blinked again, slow and content. “I’m sleepy.”

“I know,” he said, dropping to his knees beside her, gently resting his head on her shoulder. She couldn’t lift her arms to hug him back. “Me too.”

The metal on her arms was cold against his cheek. The room was too quiet.

He stayed there, holding her the only way he could. Neither of them said anything else.

The Anya doll stared blankly ahead from Wanda’s slack arms.

✶ ✶ ✶

The door creaked open with its usual soft click —too gentle, too deliberate, like the man entering never wanted to startle a soul.

Pietro’s head snapped up.

Uncle List stepped in with a smile stretched wide and full of sugar. He wore soft slippers today, like always when he came to the playroom, like he thought it made him gentle. Kind. Safe.

“Oh, my darling little miracles,” he cooed, clasping his hands to his chest as he approached. “You’re awake. Both of you. How lovely.”

Pietro scrambled to his feet, putting himself between List and Wanda. His fists clenched at his sides. He wasn’t trembling. Not yet. Not if he could help it.

Wanda, meanwhile, blinked up at List, eyes glassy and red-rimmed, still slumped where he’d left her. Her head swayed slightly on her neck as if trying to follow the sound of his voice.

“Uhncle Lissst,” she giggled softly, lips barely forming the words. “I did a magic trick.”

List knelt beside her, beaming. “Yes, sweetheart, you did. A very big magic trick. We’ll have to be careful, won’t we?”

Wanda let out a dreamy hum and let her head thunk gently against the wall. She tried to lift her doll to cuddle it, but the casing around her hands didn’t budge. Her brow creased faintly.

“There now, darling,” List murmured, reaching out to adjust the Anya doll tucked in her stiff arms. “Let me help you. There we go. Snug as can be.”

She made a soft noise of delight, leaning into it as best she could.

Pietro's hands balled into fists. His whole tiny frame trembled.

“She can’t even hold it,” he hissed.

“Shhh,” List chided lightly, not even glancing at him. “It’s better this way, Pietro. We can’t have little accidents, now can we?”

“You drugged her! ” Pietro shouted. “She’s all... wrong! You made her wrong!”

List finally looked at him, eyes shining with mock sympathy. “Oh, sweet boy. She’s still our Wanda, isn’t she? Just a little sleepier. A little softer. We don’t want her doing anything... dangerous , now do we?”

Pietro stood his ground, shoulders high, chin trembling. “She wasn’t going to hurt anyone. We just wanted to see the sky. ”

“And the sky will still be there,” List said sweetly, rising to his feet. “But we can’t have little Wanda unraveling the walls of reality again, can we? Not with that big, brave brain of hers.”

He turned to her again, brushing her hair back with a tenderness that Pietro wanted to bite through .

“That’s why we give her the sleepy juice,” List cooed, like he was explaining something to a toddler. “So she can rest. And so things don’t go... wobbly. When her mind is cloudy, her powers can’t quite reach the surface. Much better for everyone.”

Wanda smiled faintly. “I like juice...”

“Of course you do, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Of course you do.”

Pietro glared at him, tears threatening in his eyes but not yet falling.

“She’s gonna get better,” he said fiercely. “You can’t keep her like this.”

“Oh, darling boy,” List said, kneeling to Pietro’s level, voice honey-slick and patient. “You both still have so much to learn.”

He reached out, and Pietro slapped his hand away.

List just chuckled.

“I’ll check on you after naptime,” he said softly. “Don’t wear yourselves out.”

With that, he turned and walked out, slippers silent, the door shutting with another soft click.

Wanda leaned her head toward Pietro, her eyes fluttering.

“I like... the sky,” she whispered.

Pietro sat beside her and took her stiff, metal-encased hand into his own.

“I know,” he whispered back. “I’ll get you there again. I promise.”

✶ ✶ ✶

It was quiet again for a while, just the soft mechanical hum of the lights above, and Wanda’s slow, syrupy breaths beside him. Pietro sat curled close to her, arms around her knees, rocking slightly on the floor like that would make the walls stop pressing in.

He didn’t know how much time had passed—minutes? Hours?—before the door opened again. This time, it wasn’t Uncle List.

It was them .

The white-coats. Three of them, crisp and faceless. Efficient.

Pietro’s instincts flared instantly. His body tensed as one stepped forward with a metal tray, a tiny syringe glittering beneath the lights.

“Don’t touch her,” Pietro said lowly, standing.

No one responded. They didn’t need to.

Two others moved in behind him—smooth, clinical. He barely saw it coming. One hand gripped his upper arm. Another was locked around his waist.

“ Don’t touch her! ” he screamed, thrashing, trying to twist out of their grip, but they were prepared this time. They always were, now.

He kicked and writhed, teeth bared like an animal, but they held him tight, like he was just a squirming toddler. The third figure approached Wanda.

She looked up dreamily. “Hiiiii,” she said, voice sugar-sweet and dazed. “Do you have the juice?”

No answer.

The syringe slid into her arm.

Wanda’s body flinched, but she didn’t protest. Her head lolled against the wall again, a giggle slipping from her lips as her grip on reality melted further. Her Anya doll slipped from her lap and hit the floor with a soft clink.

That was it.

That was it .

Pietro screamed —raw and shrill and heartbreaking. He twisted, kicked, flailed with every ounce of strength he had, and—miraculously— slipped free . His speed wasn’t like it used to be, not with how weak his legs still were, but it was enough. He bolted across the room and threw himself over Wanda protectively, eyes blazing, arms around her body like he could shield her from the world itself.

But it was already done.

She was limp in his arms, blinking slowly, smiling up at the ceiling. “’m floatin’,” she mumbled. “’s so nice.”

Pietro trembled, shaking, his whole tiny body wrapped around her like a barrier that came too late.

The handlers didn’t try to separate them again. There was no need.

Wanda was good and quiet now.

Just like they wanted.

The men left in silence, the door locking behind them, leaving Pietro holding what felt like the last flickering candle of his sister's fire—dampened, drugged, dim.

He didn’t cry.

Not this time.

He couldn’t afford to.

✶ ✶ ✶

Wanda was still slumped against the wall, wrists and ankles chained with thick, unyielding metal, arms spread just enough to make comfort impossible. Her hands, encased in cold restraints, could only cradle her Anya doll in a limp grasp.

She was breathing steadily, drugged into softness, her head lolling slightly with every slow breath. Her eyes fluttered occasionally, like she was dreaming. Maybe she was. Maybe she was with Mama in the dream.

Pietro sat across from her, knees tucked under his chin, eyes wild and bloodshot. He watched her chest rise and fall. Watched a droplet of saliva slide from the corner of her mouth. Watched her Anya doll slip again. And again.

His hands trembled. He’d had enough.

With a strangled breath, he lurched forward and began pulling on the restraints. His small fingers scrabbled at the bolts, at the heavy clasps locking Wanda’s thin limbs to the wall. “C’mon, c’mon, please— ”

The metal didn’t even budge.

He tried again, nails splitting as he clawed. He tried biting one of the shackles, spit and blood slicking the edge. He tried wrapping his entire body around the chain to yank it loose.

Wanda giggled at some invisible joke, humming faintly under her breath.

Nothing worked.

He screamed in frustration and slammed his fists against the cuffs, bruising himself in the process. Still nothing.

And then—

A soft, familiar clap echoed through the room.

“Well done, Pietro,” came the drawling voice from the doorway.

Pietro whipped around, panting, wild-eyed.

Uncle List stood with hands clasped, his smile warm, his tone dripping with syrupy condescension. “Truly. Admirable effort. That little tantrum almost gave me chills.” He stepped forward slowly, eyes gleaming with amusement. “Almost.”

“Let her go,” Pietro spat, voice hoarse.

“Let her go?” List laughed gently, crouching down beside him like they were playing a game. “Oh, sweetheart. I think we both know that’s not going to happen.”

“She’s not herself! ” Pietro shouted, gesturing helplessly at Wanda, who was now stroking the air next to her face like there was something soft there. “She’s just a ghost! ”

List leaned in even closer, close enough for Pietro to see the shine in his eyes. “And yet… she’s so quiet now. So peaceful. Don't you like her like this, hm? No screaming. No spells. No rebellion.”

Pietro lunged at him with a snarl, but List simply stepped back, letting the boy collapse to the floor.

“Oh, Pietro,” he sighed, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “You were always the obedient one. The easy one. What happened to that lovely, well-trained little boy?”

“I wasn’t! ” Pietro shrieked. “I never was!”

List looked over to Wanda, who giggled again, murmuring nonsense to her Anya doll. “She’s still in there, you know,” he said, voice almost wistful. “Takes a lot to silence something that volatile. But don’t worry. I’ve got so many syringes.”

Pietro’s fists clenched until his nails bit his palms.

“Enjoy your playtime,” List said with a wave, already turning for the door. “I’ll be watching. Always am.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

Pietro turned back to Wanda, chest heaving, throat raw. He crawled back to her side and rested his head on her lap, metal restraints cold under his cheek.

“I’ll get you out,” he whispered, voice cracking. “I swear, Wanda. I will.”

Wanda smiled softly down at him, eyes glassy.

She didn’t answer.

Not yet.

✶ ✶ ✶

The door opened again with that soft click that always set Pietro’s teeth on edge.

“Bedtime~,” Uncle List sang, voice feather-light and laced with cheer. “Come now, my miracles. It’s been such a long day.”

Pietro’s head snapped up from Wanda’s lap. His whole body tensed, waiting, suspicious.

List strode in with the practised gait of someone who had no real need to fear children. In his hand was a little keyring, gleaming, rattling softly. He knelt in front of Wanda, still dreamy-eyed and boneless in her chains.

“There we are, my sweet girl,” he crooned, undoing the wrist shackles with gentle clicks, then the ones at her ankles. “Time for pyjamas, hmm? Wouldn’t want you sleeping in those stuffy old clothes.”

Pietro blinked in disbelief as Wanda's hands dropped into her lap, unshackled, bruised wrists free. He let out a breathless laugh and scrambled to help her stand, barely registering how she wobbled on her feet.

“Wanda—Wanda, c’mon, let’s go,” he murmured, her arm slung around his shoulder. “We can go to bed now, okay? Together.”

Wanda hummed something close to his name. She was still smiling, placid and loose-limbed, her head resting against his.

List guided them down the hallway like a shepherd, humming under his breath. Pietro held Wanda tightly, daring not to let her go even as she nearly tripped over herself.

Their bedroom looked the same as always—pastel walls, soft sheets, too-clean surfaces. But it felt like heaven compared to the playroom.

“Time for pyjamas,” List said brightly, retrieving neatly folded sets from a drawer—blue for Pietro, pink for Wanda, always the same. He even helped them change, acting like he was a doting uncle helping sleepy children after a long, eventful day. Wanda barely reacted, pliable and soft, letting him pull her arms through the sleeves.

Pietro held her hand the whole time. He was starting to hope.

But the moment their pyjamas were on, List clapped his hands.

“Alright, then! Back we go!”

Pietro blinked. “...Back?”

“To the playroom, of course,” List said with a smile so wide it nearly split his face. “Wanda will be sleeping in there from now on. Just a precaution.”

“No—no, you said bedtime—” Pietro’s voice cracked.

“And bedtime it is!” List said with a sing-song lilt. “Just not here. ”

Wanda didn’t resist as she was led back, too out of it to understand. Pietro followed, trembling.

Back in the playroom, List guided Wanda to her same little corner by the wall. The shackles waited there, polished and ready. Pietro's heart thudded.

“No—no, please, don’t—”

List calmly began locking her wrists in again, humming like this was a lullaby. The cuffs clicked shut around her ankles, too, splaying her legs gently apart. Her arms slumped in the same half-spread posture, hands hanging uselessly.

Wanda didn’t even flinch. She only looked up at Pietro with glassy, half-lidded eyes.

“You see?” List said gently, tucking the Anya doll into Wanda’s lap. “It’s safer this way. She could hurt herself. Or you. Or me. But if we keep her nice and loopy, and nice and still, we can all be safe.”

He turned then, placing a hand on Pietro’s shoulder. “Now, let’s get you back to the bedroom, hm?”

Pietro ripped away from his touch.

“No.”

List blinked.

“I’m not leaving her again. I’m not. You can’t make me.” He stood firm, fists clenched, chest rising and falling like he was about to explode. “You leave her like this, I stay here. ”

List gave an exasperated little sigh. “You’re very dramatic, Pietro.”

“I mean it! ”

The silence hung for a moment.

Then, with a shrug and a sigh of long-suffering patience, List nodded. “Fine. But just for tonight. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

He fetched a blanket from a small cupboard and tossed it carelessly on the floor beside Wanda. “There. A little nest, like a dog by the fire. Sweet dreams, little one.”

Pietro didn’t say thank you. He just curled up against Wanda’s side, head resting on her chained arm, one hand holding her hand as best he could.

List left with one last look back.

“I do this because I love you,” he said simply, and shut the door.

Pietro didn’t respond.

He only whispered against Wanda’s bare wrist, over and over, “I’ll get you out. I’ll get you out. I’ll get you out.”

And Wanda, doped up and blinking slowly, just kept smiling.

Chapter Text

The new routine had teeth.
Not the sharp, sudden kind that bit once and let go. This was a slow, gnawing, steady, patient. The kind that wore down bone over time.

Every night, the same performance.

List would enter the playroom with his too-soft slippers and his too-sweet voice. He’d croon bedtime reminders like lullabies, offer Pietro a warm bed, a soft pillow, the comfort of a “real room.” He’d hold out his hand, like a gentleman inviting someone to dance.

And every night, Pietro would refuse.

Sometimes he said no outright. Sometimes he simply turned his back. Once, he curled tighter against Wanda’s side and said nothing at all.

But he never left.

At first, List tried persuasion—bribes, games, the promise of extra food, of a new toy, of a story before sleep. When that failed, he moved to threats—silent breakfasts, skipped walks, solitary confinement. Pietro bore them all like a stone. Unmoving. Unyielding.

After two weeks, List stopped asking.

Now, when bedtime came, he simply brought an extra blanket. He’d toss it in the corner with practised nonchalance, sometimes muttering something about how dogs should sleep in kennels. Then he’d leave them there—Wanda in her shackles, Pietro curled beside her like a shadow that wouldn’t be shaken.

The playroom was no place for sleep. The floor was thinly padded but never warm. The lights, though dimmed at night, buzzed faintly overhead. The air was stale. The walls were too close.

But Pietro didn’t care.
Because Wanda was there.

And he wasn’t going to leave her again.

✶ ✶ ✶

Pietro was learning how to talk to someone who didn’t always talk back.

Wanda still smiled. Still blinked slowly when he said her name. Still laughed sometimes—soft and unfocused—at things he couldn’t see. But there were days now, longer stretches, where her words came out as syrup and static. Where she mumbled nonsense syllables for minutes on end, repeating odd little phrases to the rhythm of a song only she could hear.

Sometimes she remembered who he was.
Sometimes she forgot her own name.

At first, Pietro had tried snapping her out of it—clapping his hands, shaking her gently, yelling into her face. But that only made her eyes cloud over more. Now, he just… adjusted.

He brought the dolls to her.

He’d arrange them in a circle on the playroom floor, just like she used to. One on her lap. One on each side. One propped in front of her, so she’d have something to look at when her gaze went blank.

When she mumbled, he answered as if she’d spoken clearly.
When she giggled, he giggled too, pretending he understood the joke.
When she stared at nothing for too long, he would whisper her name over and over until she blinked and looked at him again.