Avenger's AOU~ Oblivion. { Quicksilver Fanfic }

Chapter 17: Under the Willow Tree.

"I can't," I murmured into his shirt.

I felt Pietro sigh next to me. He gave me a tight squeeze. "No," He whispered.

"You will."

* * *

When I was little, my father would take Harry and I to local homeless shelters where we would hand out food and gospel tracts and stuff. We would love going and loved talking with the people there. And that was the thing. It seemed that no matter what we did, whether it was from giving them money to feeding them meals every day, the people there never seemed happier than when we would talk to them. About nothing in particular, just talking. They would smile so brightly it lit up their faces making the dirt and hard work from the long day disappear from their faces. Their smiles. They were some of the happiest smiles ever.

I never really understood how someone so broken, so lost, could become the happiest person in the world by the littlest things. Then I came to the conclusion, they were so used to be being broken and lost that when the slightest opportunity for happiness came around, they took it with full gratitude and made the best out of it.

I always saw Pietro as one of those broken lost people in the shelter. Nowhere to go but forward, even if the path was rough and detestable. I always saw Pietro as a little boy, no parents, no family except his sister. The only thing that mattered to him. But now that last bit of happiness was taken from him. He had no reason to be bright or joyful.

But at that moment on the beach, I realized that that's not what it was at all. I was so fixated on fixing people that I didn't see that I was the one who needed fixing. The "broken" people in the world weren't damaged at all, but everyone else was. Those people in the world were the only people out there who saw things for what they really were. They weren't blinded by money or gifts or pleasures. They were concentrated on one thing. Love.

And for the first time, I felt that damaged feeling that lost feeling. But I also saw, looking at Pietro's rugged complexion, his mused hair, his ragged scars, underneath all that, the light that struggled to shine through all those ashes of the past.

I struggled to give him a watery smile that I'm sure just looked like an unsure grimace. As all the thoughts flew through my brain, mixed emotions about how I felt about Pietro, I felt something new for him. Respect. Something I rarely felt for people other than my team and my father.

For a moment I was unsure what to say. As you can tell by now, that happens a lot. But before too long, my mind spoke for me.

"How do... how do you do it?" I spoke so quietly, I could barely hear myself.

Pietro surprised me by letting out a light chuckle that I felt through his shirt. "You don't."

"What do you mean?" I moved my head to the side, my hair getting tangled in my jacket.

"I mean," Pietro breathed, picking up a handful of sand. "That sometimes you can't do anything. You just have to breathe, trust, and let go."

I nodded in agreement, though inside it made no sense to me. How could he go through all this, lose his family, his home, his life, and then the best thing to him and still go on. I didn't even know if I lost Steve or not yet, but the feelings I felt now were worse than death almost. I would do anything to save Steve if I could. I didn't know what I felt for Steve, but over the past weeks I spent extra with him, I felt something flicker in me. I didn't know what it was, but I felt my future without him was gray. Steve and I understood each other.

But this boy here next to me was another story. I didn't understand anything about him. I couldn't understand the fact that he could keep going on after losing everything to him.