i.
They were found, after their home had been destroyed, by a man with no eyes, and a woman who was ageless. After three days choking on dust and worry the fresh air is beautiful and kind faces are a gift. They are curled together on a chair, as they have been since they were pulled free of the rubble, fingers interlinked, hands pressed together, shoulders touching.
"I'm Jiaying," the woman says. "I was a friend of your parents."
Pietro shifts, and sets his chin atop his sister's head. Wanda hunches closer to him, and watches the pair with dark eyes. "What happens now?" Wanda asks.
"You can come with us," the woman says. "If you would like?"
There are odd faint scars on her face, but her smile is gentle. Her hand reaches tentatively towards them, and Wanda glances up to Pietro before taking it. "Will we be safe?" she asks, and the woman nods.
"From the whole of the world."
ii.
They are taken to Afterlife through a twisting cloud of blue, warping through the world at the whim of the man without eyes. "My name is Gordon," he says, when they arrive. "Jiaying will show you to your rooms. Do you want me to get you pizza?"
Pietro nods even before Wanda does, and Gordon smiles, ruffles his hair, and vanishes off.
"Come along," Jiaying says. "I'll show you to your rooms."
iii.
Their rooms are spacious, with one bedroom and two beds. "We thought," Jiaying says, "That you would not want to be apart after what happened."
Pietro nods. Wanda, still holding his hand, smiles at Jiaying slightly. "Thank you."
Jiaying crouches before them, gently takes their free hands. "This is your home now," she says. "You will be safe here. You will be taught here. Tomorrow one of the others will come to show you around and introduce you to everyone else." She squeezes their hands gently. "Why don't you both go and get some rest?"
iv.
Afterlife is freeing. So much space, the gorgeous views, other children sometimes visiting, brought with their parents by Gordon and no one, no one at all, questions their closeness. It is like they already know what happened.
"They do," Gordon says one day, handing them a bag of sweets and pretzels for the film night the children were all having. "Jiaying told them. If no one is surprised by you it makes it easier for you to heal."
Wanda considers this, and nods. Her fingers loop smoothly around her brother's when they go to join the others.
v.
Sometimes other people stay at Afterlife, but they do not see them. "We help them," Jiaying says. "When you are older I will explain how, and you may have your chance."
So far, Wanda reminds Pietro, Jiaying has not lied to them. They wait for Jiaying to deem them old enough, and begin to pay attention to those who vanish for a few days in Afterlife.
Some of them, they conclude, must have powers like Gordon's.
vi.
They are sixteen when Jiaying calls them into her office.
"Do you remember," she says, "When you asked what happened to those who came here but were not seen?"
They nod together.
"You are old enough to know," she says, and offers them her hand. "Would you like to come and see?"
vii.
The room they are led to is deep within Afterlife, and there are older people there. One of them raises an eyebrow when Jiaying leads them in and she speaks quietly to them.
"They were raised here, but not aware of it all. When they asked I thought they should witness it."
Wanda and Pietro stand close to the door, holding each other's hands tightly. Pietro is glancing towards the window, constantly, wanting to see. Wanda is watching Jiaying, and when the woman glances back to them, smiles and nods, she walks with Pietro to look through the window.
In a red room a woman waits. There is a bed to one side, and a table. On the table a bluish crystal rests and waits, and they do not notice Jiaying has left the room until they see her walk in to join the woman below.
"Hello Linda," she says. "Are you ready?"
The woman nods, and is passed the crystal. Jiaying held it wrapped in white cloth, but Linda picks it up with her bare fingers, and the twins watch in horror as grey stone begins to weave it's way over her hand.
Then she crushes it, and is encased.
viii.
The twins cannot help their gasp of shock, but Gordon is there and presses gentle hands to their shoulders. "Watch," he says. "She's quite alright."
And the twins watch in awe as the stone begins to crack, and crumbles down to the ground. Wanda looks up to Gordon. "Is that…?" she asks and Gordon nods.
"That's how I got my power. It's how Jiaying got hers. It's how Linda has gained hers, and how, one day, you may gain your own."
The twins watch as Jiaying embraces Linda, and the air lights up like fireflies around the two women.
ix.
"Do you think they'll let us?" Pietro asks. "Do that, become that?"
Wanda shrugs. "Maybe," she says. "Maybe not. But we've been raised here, and the others haven't. Maybe we have a better chance."
They still share a room, these years later. They observe privacy when one of them wants to change clothes, but they share their room still, and keep their beds at right angles so they can hold hands if they have nightmares. Now they sit, cross-legged, on their beds as they talk.
No one else is allowed in here with them. They have kept the room clean since the first morning they came back from playing to find one of the older people changing their bedsheets. ("I can do that," Pietro had said, and taken the sheet. "I will do that.") Jiaying had asked if they were sure they were willing to take up the responsibility for their bedroom, and that was that. Even the other children were not let in, though the door was left open when they visited.
It was, the twins had decided, their space, and not one they would share with anyone else.
x.
They are seventeen when Jiaying calls them to her office again.
"You are on the shortlist for those who may go through Terrigenesis this year. Of those on the list, only one will go through it." The twins stay silent. "If you had to chose, had to decide, which of you would go through the process?"
Pietro immediately says, "Wanda," even as Wanda says, "Neither of us."
Wanda takes her brother's hand and squeezes. "If I had to choose I'd say neither of us. I would not want to be left behind by Pietro, and would not want to leave him behind myself."
Jiaying's gaze goes to Pietro.
"Wanda should," he says. "Wanda should always come first."
Jiaying taps her fingertips on the sheet before her, and softly sends them away.
xi.
They have just turned eighteen when Jiaying calls them in again.
"I have decided," she says, "To make a small loophole in the rules. Siblings have gone through Terrigenesis together before, and acted as aids to one another. And with the world growing as it is we ought to grow also." The twins are silent. "You both will go through Terrigenesis this year."
xii.
Preparation is long and tiring. They read on what has happened before, run circuits through Afterlife so they are in best condition they can be. They are taken to the pools away from the buildings and told to swim or mediate or just relax, and to prepare for the most physically trying thing they could go through.
It is almost December when Jiaying invites them down to the red chamber, and asks them what she had asked Linda.
"Are you ready?"
Their hands are still clasped between them as they stretched out their free hands for the crystals Jiaying holds. They feel the stone playing over their skin, and wait for Jiaying's signal.
"It will be," she says, "Unlike anything else."
They break the crystal and the stone encases them.
xiii.
The stone encases them and they try not to breathe it in. This is like when they were ten, when their parents died and they were crushed beneath rubble and the only thing holding them together is the faint touch of their fingers between their cocoons. Wanda can feel her brother's pulse racing, faster faster faster until it is like a hummingbird's, and she tries to hold his hand tighter, to tell him I am here.
Then scarlet like blood fills her mind, and it's light bathes the room.
xiv.
Wanda is freed from her cocoon by the force of the blast, all but her hand still clasped tight around her brother's. In his cocoon time is passing faster and faster and faster, and she can feel his heart still racing faster. Her scarlet is lashing around her in agitation, tendrils stretching as far as they can reach in the room and she tries to reel them in.
"Pietro," she whispers. "Pietro, please."
The scarlet is twisting, slipping off the reel she tries to visualise it on, so she makes them vines and under her control. They clamber back towards her mind with each worried twitch of her fingers until all but one is safe away.
"Pietro," she whispers. "Come on, brother, please."
Jiaying is watching, she knows, but she does not care. She holds her brother's hand tighter even as it is half-cocooned, and the scarlet still around her wrist stretches up and through the stone, and finds Pietro's face. Wanda tries to pull it in, make it hers again, and then it slips through and oh
Pietro? she calls, and it is into a space of blue as bright as her brother's eyes. Silver wind fills it, swirling faster and faster and faster, and Wanda pours scarlet in, forces vines to grow to make it slow. Pietro, are you there?
Oh, a voice says. That is what you were saying. Everything sounded so slow.
Wanda makes her vines grow more strongly, and has them pull the blue and the silver in to join them. Does this help?
There is the sound of the wind sighing, and Pietro's voice saying, Oh so much.
xv.
The stone around Pietro shatters, and Jiaying does not see the moment Pietro tugs his sister, before he is carrying her. He is laughing, she is smiling, and he runs a circuit of the room as a silver blur before he stops before her and sets his sister down. His hair is shot through with silver-white, though the roots stay dark, while Wanda is unchanged but for the scarlet dancing in her eyes. Jiaying opens her arms to them, and they fall into her embrace.
"Telekinesis and enhanced speed," she murmurs, smile audible in her voice. "What a pair you are."
Wanda squeezes her brother's hand, and Pietro says nothing of her voice in his mind.
xvi.
They spend several days in a room, needles in their skin. They ask to be set close enough to hold each other's hands and the medics, well used to them both, allow it. Wanda's scarlet is still a presence in Pietro's mind, and together they find out how many vines are needed for him to go as fast as he may without finding the world too slow.
Do you mind? she asks one evening, when the medics leave and there is only Gordon listening to an audiobook in the chairs beside them. Do you mind me in your mind?
Pietro's wind laughs. I would never mind it. Without it I might have stayed in my cocoon forever.
xvii.
They have been mostly trained for several months when the jets arrive and bring normal humans to Afterlife. They are called to Jiaying's office and they have never seen her so close to ruffled. "Watch them," she says. "Humans hate that which is different, and we are more different than most. If they try to hurt anyone, get them to safety. Take them to Gordon and get them out. If Gordon and I aren't here, youmust keep them safe. Do you understand?"
The twins nod, and Wanda lets her scarlet, so thin it is almost invisible, slide past the lacquered walls of Jiaying's mind. Monsters, it is snarling, loud enough for her to hear. How dare they defile this space?
When they are outside Wanda's hand catches her brother's sleeve. "She has biases," she murmurs, and sends the memory of Jiaying's mind.
Pietro nods. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't get the others to safety."
Wanda's fingers slip into her brother's grip and gently squeeze as they walk towards where they others wait.
xviii.
When Daisy leaves them and Jiaying and Gordon vanish the twins watch the rest of Afterlife. They are too far from anywhere to get everyone out safely on their own, and not all of them have powers. They consider taking one of the jets remaining to watch them, filled with agents, or giving all unchanged a crystal to crush.
But that can be dangerous, and they were told to protect.
xix.
Eventually the agents offer to take them home. The grey-haired one, Coulson, and another agent promise safety and Wanda's scarlet bleeds through their minds and sees it true. When Jiaying had asked how she had known who to trust, back when they were training Wanda had shrugged and simply said, "I just know." Everyone learned she knew the truth when it was said, and follow her aboard the jets.
Coulson is in the front, beside the pilot, and when they are far enough out and the jet settled for flight he turns.
"They all followed you."
Wanda shrugs.
"Are you a leader of some kind?"
Another shrug. "I know when people lie to me. They followed me for that, not for anything else."
Coulson nods. "Is that your gift then? Lie-detection?"
Beside her Pietro is tense at the man's questioning and Wanda once more shrugs.
"You would be welcome to work with us," Coulson offers and the twins glare together.
"You destroyed our home," she says. "Our first destroyed by Stark, our second by S.H.I.E.L.D.. What makes you think I want to work with you at all?"
"Because," Coulson says, "We can keep your people safe. And that will be easier if someone they trust is working with us."
Wanda looks down the jet, at all the people, some clutching children, holding hands as tightly as she does Pietro's, and feels out the minds in the jets around them. That was their job, set by Jiaying, and she knows that to Pietro adding others to his mental circuit of protect is little effort after all the years at Afterlife. Linda is there with them, sparks lighting the air around her as she looks distinctly green, and a levitator, a hydrokinetic, an object-moulder, a precog.
Coulson sees the look on her face and pauses. "I'll leave you time to think."