You'll Never Catch Me

Just after my powers had manifested, my mother told me something that I still ponder to this day:

Pietro, the people do not hate you. They are afraid of you. People fear what they don't understand, and that fear leads to hate. You can't hate them for that, as it's the way they are. Instead, pity them for their ignorance, and that they don't have the ability to open their hearts up like we can.

People fear what they don't understand.

Children are sent to school for twelve years of their childhood, and then many go to college for four years, and even sometimes as long as ten. Smart, educated people with degrees in thousands of subjects in hundreds of languages. Men and women who for years are taught that there is more in the world to learn about, and to embrace knowledge.

And yet... they fear what they don't understand.

Why is it then that they can go to college and earn degrees in ancient arts and sciences that as the years go on, are either lost or devalued, yet they refuse to take time to learn about the evolved race that shares the streets and schools and air that they breathe?

It isn't that people fear what they don't understand... it's that people are naturally going to fear things that they don't WANT to understand. Because if they came to understand us, they would see that except for a few exceptions there is no reason to fear us.

And then with the fear gone... the hate would be gone as well.

My hair.

Do you know what it's like being a child with white hair? Sure, I may say that's it's a very light silver, cause it is, but seriously, you look at it. It's white.

Luckily I lived in a gypsy camp. So I was used to people not looking the standard normal look that predominated the world. But when we walked through the towns, people would stare at me.

I was six. And I had white hair. My sister, beautiful brown curls. My parents... mother had brown hair as well, and my papa had almost black, with a few streaks of grey that I was always blamed for.

How did I get white hair? For years, decades ever I never knew. Some people said that I was an albino, but that never worked because I never burnt once in the sun, and my skin always had a healthy tan to it.

So I was scorned, living in a world of brunettes, blondes, and hell, even the redheads had better luck than me.

Then, on the day Luna was born, I came to know where it came from.

My father.

thanks dad

One of the remarks I always hear behind my back is about my loyalties. My father's followers think that I have no loyalties. So do most of the X-Men. I flitter from one group to another, staying and then leaving when it best suits me.

Well, it's true that I tend to change groups. In my life, I've been with the Brotherhood, then the Avengers, then the West Coast Avengers. Then stupidly I went BACK to the Brotherhood, only to leave it again. After that I went to X-Factor. Even spent a few months with the X-Men, and even served as a Knight of Wundergore.

I've lived among the Inhumans, but I was never accepted among them. They only put up with me, but I was never really a part of them.

I've also been to Genosha, serving as my father's advisor for a time, so that I could hope to save that world from being destroyed by his ideals. Course that didn't really work out too well, and I left again.

Some people think that would label me as a consistant deserter. But I don't.

What am I loyal to then? I'm loyal to my sister. I'm loyal to my daughter, and yes, even to my wife though I know her loyalty to me has never been the best. No matter where I am, who I'm with or what I'm doing, those three women are in my mind. I would never let any of my actions cause them or things they hold dear to come to harm.

I'm loyal to my dream. I share the dream that both my father and Xavier preach, about coexistance. But I've seen both the dark side of the humans AND the mutants. Each group has their extreames on this dream, and that is what is making the ability to find coexistance impossible. But it's human nature to resist things that they can't understand, and it's also nature to fight against being held down and not allowed freedom. I can see both sides, and why they clash. And there are times that I think it would be better to just let each group wipe the other out. But I can't desert my dream. And that's what keeps me looking for the group that really wants to fight the good fight for all. Hense why I tend to always come back to the Avengers.

But above all, I'm loyal to myself. I know what I want in life. I know what I want for my daughter, and I know what I want to see this world become. I may seem like a consistant deserter... but I will never sell out to my own desires. Once I do that... then I will just become like the rest of them... with no loyalty to something THEY believe in, but something they are told to.

Every summer, our wagon happened to find itself along a certain stretch of road just along the mountain pass. It was along this pass that each year, we happened to come across a traveling circus.

For four or five years, we would travel with this circus through the summer, the man in charge telling my parents that we could perform and dance before and after the shows and keep almost all the money we made, but give a few coins back to him for the opportunity.

We always made so much during the summers. Mom and Wanda would dance, and Papa would bang a drum while I collected the coins. And everyday Wanda and I got one coin to spend on junk food while the circus was going on.

I remember that I would get a big cone of cotton candy, then sneak into the big tent to watch the acrobats. I loved the trapeeze artists, how they would fly in the air before grabbing the bar and swinging to safety. I loved it so much that when I was nine, I asked if they could train me during the day when they practiced. I wanted to be one of them when I was older. Mama was so mad, but every morning I woke up at eight to go train.

Then one day I fell, and I bounced out of the net and hit the ground pretty hard. I ended up breaking my arm, and Papa had to take me into town to have the doctor fix my arm. I spent that summer in a cast, which isn't fun at all.

But I then decided that I wanted to be a doctor instead, so that I could fix people up. So I spent that summer reading books instead of watching the circus. It was probably around then Wanda started calling me a nerd.

I've lived all over the world. Being one of the few mutants who can travel the circumfrence of the world in a day, I have the ability to make my bed at night whereever I want it to be.

I grew up and lived in a gypsy camp in Romania, as well as a castle there many years later. And then the royal palace of Genosha I lived with for a time as my father's advisor. Then there was the Avenger's penthouses in New York and in Los Angeles... hell, I've even lived on the moon for a short time period.

And those are only the places I choose to remember. But none of those felt like home to me, not after the day where the gypsies who raised Wanda and myself died.

Your home is supposed to make you feel safe. You return to it night after night to relax, and feel comfort in the arms of your loves ones. For me, there is no place on Earth that can make me feel at home.

But in my dreams, home is anyplace where I wake up, stare at my wife as she sleeps in my arms, the dawning sun casting light over her face, and I know my daughter is dreaming happily in the room next door.

That, is when I will be truely home.

It probably wasn't anything I wouldn't have heard later on, I mean, she was getting married. Sure, that was great. But to Vision?! My sister, the one who I love probably more than anyone on the face of this planet besides my wife and daughter, was getting married to an android!!!

Not that I have anything against Vision... it's just... he's a machine! He may be able to simulate thoughts, feeling and emotions, but in the end, it all comes down to the fact that inside, he's made of wires and metal and circuts. He doesn't have a brain, but a computer chip!

How is he going to be able to give my sister the love and support that she needs... no, deserves! And I know she wants a family... I don't think he was installed with a... no, I'm not even going to think about that. Just... no.

*deep breath*

I guess I can understand why Wanda didn't want to tell me right away, wait for a time where she could figure out how to approach me on it, but I would have appreciated hearing it from her first before hearing the others gossiping about it. But I'll be a good brother and pretend I don't know, so she can feel that she's sharing this news with me for the first time.

Though I can't promise that I won't find a way to rearrange Vision's circuts before then.

Muse: Pietro Maximoff
Genre: X-Men

I learned a long time ago not to measures acts that I have done as failures, but instead as "undesirable events or results."

Why? Because once you admit a failure, then you will forever refer back to that event as a level. "It can't be as bad as this" or "I feel like I did when" and you can never move beyond it.

Sure, I've had lots of undesirable results though. Being unable to be the husband and father I wanted to be. Not able to be the son that my father wants me to be. My constant mental choice of running away from conflict instead of resolving it head on.

But true failure? I don't believe I've run across that yet?

Why, you ask?

Because the world is still going on. I'm still alive, and the day leads to night and each morning i greet the sun, and each night I bid the stars a good night.

When I finally have a great failure, I won't be here to talk about it, because to me, the world will end, because I wasn't there to save it.


Muse: Pietro Maximoff
Genre: X-Men

There are nights that I just stare at the moon, and I wonder how they are. How my wife and child are, living in another atmosphere from me, a place that I can not see them. Funny. I can run up walls, across water, and make a lap around the world in just a few hours. But my wife and daughter... I can't even hold them in my arms.

It was decided long ago that it would be best for Luna to remain with the Inhumans. When Fabian Cortez and my father's Acolytes spent years trying to kidnap her, Crys and I discovered that there was no place safe enough for her here.

And then my love, my soul... my wife Crystal. Fate knows just how many times we've come close to finally just breaking apart from one another, but something always pulls us back. Most of the time, it's either my impatience with something, or else her confused heart that causes our battles, but I still want to believe in the end that she does love me, just as she had all those years ago when we wed.

I hate fighting with her. I miss the days of caresses, whispering sweet nothings to each other... the time right after Luna's birth when everything in my world was right... the last time it would ever be.

But I can't get that back. And now, all I can do is love them from afar, hoping that one day I can work to make this world right, so they can come back and be in my arms again, forever.

I want to see my daughter grow up. I would like a son, if my wife wants. But until then, having them safe with the Inhumans is the best I can do for them. It breaks my heart, but they are safe, and hoepfully they know that I'm down here, loving them.