SUPERSONIC ▷ QUICKSILVER !

PROLOGUE. ₀

a/n: this is the sequel to my first book/short story, Whiplash. i strongly suggest you read it before proceeding. :-)

[ r e c a p ]

Pietro stopped in his tracks, causing a dust cloud to rise up around him. He was alive. How? He wouldn't have survived all of those bullets. Well, maybe he would have— he healed faster than normal people— but still. Why didn't anything hit him? He looked back at Clint and the boy. They were okay, untouched.

Then he saw her.

Florea, a few steps away from him, her back turned to him, her arms spread wide. She had produced a black hole that sucked all the bullets in, and when she turned around to face him, Pietro saw the obvious strain it had caused. She swayed, her face paler than it had been a while ago, and she still had the audacity to smile at Pietro.

"What, you didn't see that coming?"

And with that, Florea Damion collapsed in to the black hole she created, the portal disappearing along with her.

[ / r e c a p ]

No words could describe what Pietro Maximoff was feeling then. He stared at the spot where Florea, his Florea, had been a few minutes ago, the gravity of what had happened still not sinking in.

She was... gone. Like poof.

There was this high-pitched sound ringing in his ears, and he felt like he was going to hurl. She was gone, just like that. But where? Why? How?

"P— Pi— Pietro, Pietro, snap out of it! Pietro! PIETRO!"

Pietro felt a hand being struck across his cheek, and he looked up at the person who had slapped him; it was Clint Barton. Clint held on to his shoulders, tears streaming openly down his face. "We have to go, Pietro," Clint yelled over the sounds of war. "We have to go!"

"She..." Pietro muttered, still in a state of incredulity. Clint shook his head so hard that Pietro was afraid it would fall off his neck. No other words were spoken between them as Clint dragged him along, the two of them collapsing on to a hellicarrier just as the landmass of Sokovia began to plummet.

Even in his bout of shock, Pietro was able to register another thought: Wanda. "Wanda—" Pietro stuttered, struggling against the seat belt Clint had buckled in for him. The latter held on to Pietro with a death grip. "Vision has her," Clint assured. "I can't lose her too!" Pietro yelled at him, and he regretted it a moment later: Clint Barton's hold on Pietro loosened, and Pietro watched helplessly as Clint collapsed in to himself, silent sobs racking his body.

The next thing he knew, Pietro was a sniveling, whimpering mess alongside the Avenger. This was the girl Pietro loved, the girl who was like a daughter to Clint. What made them such a wreck was the fact that they were both there. That they had seen it, they had seen her, with their own two eyes, disappear.

Pietro thought he knew pain when he fell from a tree when he was eight, cracking his skull open. He thought he knew pain when he lost his parents; when Wanda and him were orphans and she would cry out of hunger, and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

He thought there was no worse suffering than when he underwent HYDRA's experimentation that made him the mutant he is today. Then, he thought the torture of making Florea see her nightmares was unprecedented.

But this, this was the worst. This was the pain Pietro could never measure. the pain he could not comprehend, the pain that one would never be able to put in to words.

Because he knew he could've done something. He could've run and caught her. He could've taken the bullets. He could've jumped in to the black hole after her.

So many things boiling down to one undeniable fact: he could have saved her.

Yet he didn't— and that served him the worst blow of all.