and though the rules of the road have been lodged

[windchasing]

Who: Pietro Maximoff & Various
Where: Various locations
When: Throughout May
What: A catch-all post that I'll add top-level comments to throughout the month. If you want a thread we haven't already planned (or get tired of waiting for my slow ass), feel free to toss your own starter in here!
Warnings: None yet, but there may be some manipulation in the thread with Jiaying.
[Open for new starters]

Comments

[windchasing]

Most of the time, I blend in, except for- [ He gestures to his own hair, bane of his existence, with a chagrined twist of the mouth. ] But that's only on the outside.

[ The inside is what matters -- to him, and to Cassian, so this is the real moment of truth. Expose himself for the freak he is, and see how quickly Cassian pulls back from him. It's inevitable. Inescapable. No point in turning back now. ]

I'm a mutant. The next step in human evolution.

[ It sounds like something someone else said to him, a scrap of learned pride he's donning like armor in the face of presumed rejection, as if genetic superiority will keep him company when everyone else leaves. ]

For me, that means-- [ he makes a nervous, circular gesture in the air with one hand, searching for the right words--

Then, with a glance aside to be sure they're really out of earshot, he snaps his fingers instead. Only the sound it makes isn't a snap at all; it's a crack, the way the end of a whip sounds when it breaks the sound barrier. ]

My mind is not the only thing that is fast.

[ouzel]

[ The next step in human evolution. Does that mean confined to the same planet, or no? Cassian tilts his head, a wry small smirk at Pietro's gesture towards his hair - he always thought it a unique and interesting quality, though he understood Pietro's dislike of it...thought he did, anyway - and then Pietro snaps his fingers.

Cassian's eyes go wide.

Everything he knows about Pietro has to be reevaluated in this new light, specifically the way he behaves, his reactions, how quickly he grasps what he's read, listened to, is shown. ]

That's pretty fucking amazing.

[ He frowns in the next instant. ]

School must be hell for you. [ Not that Cassian wasn't aware that it was, but suddenly he's glad he never had the impression he should attempt homeschooling for Pietro. ]

[windchasing]

[ Pietro's smile breaks with an exhale like a delicate release of pressure, because yes, it is pretty fucking amazing, thank you, and the fact that Cassian sees that -- that he isn't disgusted, or afraid, or any of the thousand other worst case scenarios Pietro has conjured up in the last few minutes -- is pretty amazing, too. ]

No more than everything else, [ he jokes ("jokes"). ] -Well. A little more than everything else.

[ English lit is basically torture. ]

You aren't-- [ Bothered. Hostile. He doesn't know to finish that thought. ] It frightens people, sometimes.

[ouzel]

Highschool, at least, will be over soon.

[ There's of course the option of college, or at the very least there should be, if they weren't all being corralled from the outside world like bacteria in a petri dish.

Cassian shakes his head at the idea that he'd be frightened by what Pietro is capable of. Amazed, sure, and re-evaluating in his previous assessments and assumptions, without a doubt. ]

There are...billions of lifeforms in the galaxy that can do things I can't. Even just ordinary humans. It's part of you, and you're important to me. That is stronger than fear. What matters is what you do, not just what you can do.

[windchasing]

You see. [ Pietro sounds sort of bewilderedly grateful for that, that he's important enough to anyone to be listened to and understood like this, even knowing he would do the same and more for Cassian in return. ] I don't want to hurt anyone.

[ Want being the operative word. His eyes drop at that thought, troubled. It matters what he does, but what will he do? ]

Only, I doubt the choice will always be so simple. I have– dreams about it, you know? Of a war between mutants and humans. [ Are they still dreams if he's awake? ] At any moment, I am more dangerous to them than a loaded gun, [ With a nod toward town, toward humanity. ] And that is all most of them will see. A weapon that is not theirs to control.

[ouzel]

[ Cassian blinks at Pietro's description of his dreams, pause noted - and are actually they dreams, or really memories? Because it speaks to the idea of a place where Pietro isn't safe, where a war has already happened or looms on his horizon.

It strikes him suddenly how his entire life seems like a weird sort of fiction right now. A twist, he thinks ruefully, around every corner! ]

I know something about war. [ Cassian sighs. ] It was all I knew, before I came here. [ A universal truth. ] Conscious life is conscious life; a weapon is something you point at someone else, that cannot make the decision for itself whether or not to fire.

Humans, here in particular, have led a dangerously sheltered kind of life. When you grow up and you're told, everyone is like you. Everyone looks like you, thinks like you, behaves like you? That leads to some pretty spectacular failures in understanding other people.

[windchasing]

[ Pietro listens to Cassian in a way he doesn't to just about anyone else — because Cassian is his brother but also because he is a soldier, a person with concrete experience instead of everyone else's hypothetical bullshit — and that's true now more than ever. The words feel like articulating something Pietro's only managed to express in scathing quips, emotion always sharpening his thoughts into a dangerous tangle he can't sort through without drawing blood, but here's Cassian, explaining it so simply. Weapons don't have choices, and he does, so he isn't one — only the humans here are too narrow-minded to see it. He nods. It makes sense.

But what can he do about it? ]

Because of their failures, I am trapped like this — slowing myself down to a crawl every minute of every day for the rest of my life, just to make them more comfortable.

[ And Pietro rarely so much as scoots over on the bus to make anyone more comfortable. ]

Or someday I stop hiding, and risk them coming for us all.

[ Lorna. Wanda. Even Cassian. Mutations are genetic, after all. ]

[ouzel]

[ There's real risk, real danger in what Pietro is describing - while Cassian has spent a lifetime interacting with other cultures, species, this town is not a shining example of those experiences.

So he's hesitant to dismiss them as not a problem. Out of the two of them, Cassian suspects Pietro has a better understanding of what xenophobic earthlings might get up to, if pressed. ]

I can't tell you that hiding is worth it, in the end. I can't even tell you that I think you won't exhaust yourself this way, that you won't...reach a point in which doing what you know you can will outweigh the risks in the moment.

Obviously it's easy to say that you shouldn't have to - just because it's easy, doesn't make it less true. But I don't know what would happen, here. It's a small town, we're heavily monitored... [ Cassian shakes his head. ]

My point is: you shouldn't have to hide, and if I know you, there will reach a point where hiding is no longer a real option for you. When that happens? And whatever happens after? That isn't on you, that isn't your fault. That is on the people who decide what their fears and presumptions of what it means to be human 'like them' means to anyone who doesn't fit that mold.

Self-preservation is important, protecting family and community is important. But so is being true to yourself, or you end up suffering from every direction, and it is hell. It is. Trust me.

[windchasing]

[ Pietro does trust him. But Cassian sounds so much like he knows what he's talking about right now, it strikes Pietro that he doesn't think of Cassian as someone who hasn't been true to themselves, not ever. Cassian is more controlled than him, yes, more cautious in ways that are occasionally frustrating for someone as unapologetically headstrong as Pietro, but he's always been honest, to Pietro's memory. He's always been sincere when they're together.

But maybe he isn't always. Maybe he can't be. Pietro doesn't want that for either of them. It makes his chest ache just to think about.

(That isn't your fault. That hits him under the ribs, too. It still feels like his responsibility.) ]

I wish I could simply make them see. [ His voice is small, a vain, childish hope he promptly shakes his head to dismiss. He isn't a child anymore. ] When pigs fly, perhaps. Until then, I won't put our family in danger unnecessarily.

[ And unnecessary includes for his benefit, whatever his frustrations. This may be about the worst way he can imagine to spend the rest of his life, but his siblings' needs always, always come first. ]

How is it you know so much about this kind of thing, anyway?