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Seven-year old Wanda Maximoff was used to being called names. At first it was only the other kids at school, throwing names like “freak” or “witch” at her head. She was often alone then, because her brother was too sick to come to school.
She retaliated of course. One girl suddenly had no eyebrows. A particularly violent boy suddenly found himself on the top of the roof of the school building. Another girl had bees in her lunch box instead of bread. As she grew older, the insults grew more creative and vile, but so did her revenge.
The moment an adult looked at her with that familiar mixture between hate and fear while uttering the word “witch” was forever etched into her memory.
She was nine years old.
Her mother was holding her hand and they were shopping for Christmas. Wanda had decided that she wanted to give Peter something that she had picked all by herself and her mother had cleared her schedule for one entire afternoon to help her.
They didn’t get much shopping done that day.
Magda had tightened her grip on her daughter’s hand and they had returned home immediately.
Back then she hadn’t understood. Why was her mother crying? Silent tears that were rolling down her cheeks as she hurried her daughter home. Why was she shaking as if she were afraid?
It didn’t help that her brother was so sickly back then. His body trying to keep up with his faster mutating mind. It drove their mother desperate with worry.
The only thing she understood was that their mother had enough problems at the moment, so from then on she stopped fighting back.
The other kids still called her names, yet she never lifted another finger against them.
They grew bolder, stealing her stuff and pushing her out of their way. Still she did nothing.
She would never belong, but after some time they grew bored of her. She was still the odd one out, but they weren’t actively trying to torment her either.
Then she went to middle school. None of her old classmates went to the same school. She made friends. Friends who knew nothing about what she had done when she was younger. Who knew nothing about what she could do.
She fitted in.
For the first time in her entire life, Wanda Maximoff fitted in.
Peter wasn’t as lucky.
His unusual hair colour had always set him apart, and by then his mutation had fully manifested.
He tried, he tried so hard to sit still and stay quiet during class, but he couldn’t. He needed to run, he needed to eat. It was cruel to try and keep him still for so long.
One time, before they realized how many calories he actually needed, he fainted in the middle of class.
Their mother was furious with him, even more so than that one time he stole his first Walkman. He had kept quiet about how hungry he actually was, because he didn’t want her to worry more about money than she already did.
She had told him in no uncertain words that if he ever kept quiet about his needs again, he would not like what she had in store for him.
From then on he always had enough to eat.
But the other kids kept avoiding him.
She tried to introduce him to some of her friends, but it never worked. He’d humour her, talk to them for a few minutes and from the moment he detected a hint of amusement at his cost, he ran away again.
And then, one day he just stopped showing up for school. She and their mother tried everything, from pleading, to shouting, to bargaining, but he wouldn’t budge.
He refused to go back and that was final.
It didn’t matter what he did, he told them, the teachers hated him. They failed him on purpose. He was bored out of his mind in class.
He was sick of being the weird kid, he couldn’t handle the looks and the jibes thrown his way anymore.
That was one of the few moments her brother cried when he knew their mom could hear him. Wanda couldn’t take it anymore and she vanished the door to his room, taking him into her arms and letting him cry on her shoulder. Magda looked at them with a weird far-off look on her face and Wanda knew she was thinking about their mysterious father.
That evening it was decided that Peter would not return to school.
For a while, Magda tried to home-school him, but even she could not keep up with his mind and after a while that stopped as well.
Wanda could only helplessly see how her brother stayed more and more in his room in the basement. Sometimes for hours on end, only coming out to steal food and, as he grew bolder, other things.
The stealing began because he didn’t want to burden their mother any further with his excessive eating habits. It escalated further and further. The only reason: He was bored and he wanted to see how far he could go.
Not even their mother could stop him.
Wanda Maximoff was called a lot of things in her life. The one insult that particularly stung was “witch”.
No, Wanda wasn’t a witch.
Sometimes she wished she was one, because if she was, she would’ve made a potion, or cast a spell to help her brother and her mother.
The only thing she could do was watch them from the side lines, hoping and praying that he would be okay and that they would work it out, while trying to manage her own powers by herself.
God knows their mother had enough troubles as it is.