MARVEL & DC IMAGINES

] matter of question pt.4 [

Summary:

Pietro and Wanda are living in the Xavier Mansion.

They have a lot to learn.

Notes:

Fair warning. This chapter is very expository. It covers several months.

Pietro remembered they first time they'd been taken out and marched out of the X-Jet. They'd been led through an area and turned over to the hands of the Wolverine. He was actually quite intimidating. Over the next couple of months, though, Pietro learned that he would not hurt them - unless he felt they were a threat to the student body.

The first thing that they did was scan Pietro and Wanda. Later, they found that this was so they could have an accurate picture of their powers. That way, they could train them better. For instance, Pietro had no idea that if he touched someone, in any way, while in super-speed, he could kill them. He found that out in the Danger Room, while he was running through exercises that'd been set out for him.

They had holograms that acted like real people and objects, and reacted like real people and objects.

A tap in super-speed produced enough force to shatter a man's skull.

For the first time in his memory, Pietro was pushed to critically examine his beliefs: Was Tony Stark really responsible for his (adoptive) parents' deaths? Oh, you think he was? Look at all this evidence. Do you still think so? Yes? Why? Baron Von Strucker? But he was HYDRA, wasn't he? Didn't it serve his purpose to have you think that? Precisely. Now what does that say?

It soon became apparent that if anyone in Stark Industries was responsible for the deaths of his (adoptive) parents, it was the late Obadiah Stane. He and Wanda had been taken advantage of and played like fiddles. Now, it was time to let go of their hate and accept it had been used against them. It had never helped, and it frankly never would.

Knowing that the men truly responsible were dead - one by their own hands and the other had slit his own throat - helped considerably.

For Pietro.

Wanda took a good deal longer. She had clung to her hate for so long, she was reluctant to let go. It had to be prised away from her. It would also turn out that what she had been doing for so many years was a big telepathic no-no. Entering someone else's mind without their consent, and without need, was considered an invasion of privacy. If one exerted power over their minds in doing so, it became something known as mind-rape.

Pietro was, unsurprisingly, the first one allowed onto the field. He was the first one to acknowledge he had done something wrong, and work to remedy the problem. He was the first to acknowledge he was one of many; his (adoptive) parents had simply been two casualties of war out of hundreds, possibly thousands. Wanda was resistant to the idea that she had been wrong.

Wanda had always been the more stubborn of the two. She was also the most selfish of them. Of course, Logan had absolutely no patience for self-centeredness, and he let her know exactly what he thought of her attitude. Logan spent months and months grinding the whole thing into her head.

She was not entitled to more than the others.

Stark was not responsible for their (adoptive) parents' deaths.

She could not just attack anyone who disagreed with her.

She was not all-powerful.

As a matter of fact, just as Pietro had found limits to his powers there were limits to Wanda's as well. While their old handlers had focused more on her powers of mental manipulation, they had neglected everything else in her...because it did not serve them. She was clumsy with physical manipulation and if she wanted to go into someone's mind to help them, she hadn't the faintest idea how to go about it.