Chapter Text
Pietro was fine.
Totally fine.
Yeah, he went by Peter now, but that was fine.
Yeah, he looked… different, but that didn't really bother him.
Unless someone he knew before saw him.
As far as the rest of the team was concerned, his entire life story was, “Hi, I'm a loser and I have super speed, the end.”
He was pretty OK with that.
Better than the truth.
He, Jean, Kurt, and Scott were lifting weights under Raven's watch. Whenever Raven walked past, he actually lifted, trying his best not to wince. There was shit in his chest that pressed up against his muscles, making such exercises excruciating. I mean, she was going to notice sooner or later that he was never making any progress.
She hovered over him longer than usual. After a couple more lifts, he dropped the weights, completely spent.
“Why aren't you making progress?” she demanded. “Don't think I haven't noticed.”
He sighed. “I don't want to talk about it.”
She grabbed his shoulder. “I'm not going to let you just slack off. I know you've done it your whole life, but this is serious.”
“Leave it,” he growled.
She scowled at him. “Peter, if you think I'm willing to put up with your crap, you are gravely mistaken.”
“Fine. Then don't.” He pulled away from her and ran away.
Pietro Peter lied down on the lawn, draping his arm over his eyes.
This is getting harder every day.
He had never been a good liar. That was Wanda's thing. He usually punched his way-
Wait, no, not punched. He wasn't very good at punching. Probably more of a “run away” kind of guy now.
So, simultaneously trying to make friends and keep his past quiet was difficult.
Ororo approached him. “Hey, Peter.” She sat down on the grass next to him. “You look like shit.”
He took his arm off of his face. “Thanks.”
Ororo smirked. “Mystique’s pretty pissed at you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Where'd you hear that?”
“Hank mentioned it. In nicer words, of course. What'd you do?”
“Walked out on her training session.” Peter rolled his eyes as he said it.
Ororo glared at him. “Whole story, please.”
“I was being a little shit and slacking off, she noticed and yelled at me, then I left.”
Ororo looked incredulous. “Still not the whole story.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You're not just randomly a little sh- OK, yes, you are, but you're not normally a slacker.” She paused. “Explain.”
“I fucking suck at lifting weights.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know, you can start small with weights. Or find alternate means of training.”
“Yeah, but she wants me to lift weights specifically. I'm fine with training other ways.” He groaned. My chest hurts.
Wait.
He could remove the bullets.
I can just do it away from the school, stumble back, and then I'm good.
“Peter, where are you going?”
“I'm hungry,” he replied.
She rolled her eyes as he walked away.
Peter walked into the kitchen. Jean was sitting at the counter, drinking orange juice. “Hey,” she greeted.
“Hey,” he muttered distractedly.
Shit.
“Peter, what are you planning?” she asked, turning to look at him with her newly suspicious gaze. “Your mind is plotting.”
“N-nothing,” he lied. He switched into superspeed mode, walked over to the locked knife drawer, picked the lock, picked out a serrated (that best cuts skin, right?) knife, re-did the lock, and walked away.
Xavier rolled into the kitchen.
Jean turned toward him. “Peter's up to something,” she announced.
“When is he not?”
She shook her head. “This isn't some prank, professor. Something significant. ”
“Should I attempt to contact him?”
She frowned. “I think he's still in superspeed mode. You'll just get a headache.”
“That doesn't matter, Jean. I can handle a headache. If there's something wrong, I need to know.”
Ororo entered the room. “Peter was talking to me about how much he hates lifting weights and then he went to get food, but I can't find him.”
“He never got food. He came in here, got something , I don't know what because he was gone before I could perceive anything, and then left,” Jean informed her.
Xavier rolled around the kitchen and lifted the lock on the knife drawer. “I believe he accessed the knife drawer and took-” he un-did the lock, “-one of the serrated knives.” Replacing the lock, he turned to the girls. “This is quite concerning. I'm going down to Cerebrum.”
Both girls followed him to the newly built machine.
Pietro Peter sat down on a tree root in the nearby forest. He felt around for the first bullet. He had already removed the ones in his arms, but this would be a little trickier.
Slicing into his skin, he stuck his fingers inside the wound and pulled out the bullet.
Wow.
That hurt a lot more than he remembered.
“Hello, blood,” he grunted. He picked up a piece of cloth that he had brought and put pressure on the wound. After waiting for a couple of minutes, he began stitching the wound closed.
Pain pain pain but he can't stop now.
Xavier cried out in pain as soon as he found Peter.
“I told you so,” Jean muttered.
“No, it's- he's in a lot of pain,” Xavier explained. “He's in the forest right now.”
Ororo's eyes widened. “Well, let's go find him!”
Xavier nodded. “Ororo, take Jean and Kurt. Jean should be able to detect him more easily, and Kurt can teleport him back to the school.”
Ororo nodded, then turned to Jean. “Come on.”
Peter was on the third out of nine bullets. He didn't know how he could possibly get the four in his back, but four could probably be explained away. Thirteen? Probably not. And that wasn't including the seven he’d pulled out of his arms or the two he'd pulled from his face and throat.
His pale, bare chest was covered in blood and sloppily stitched up wounds. The thread he'd used was black, since that was what he could find, which made the stitches far too obvious.
Too much blood too much blood Jesus fucking Christ too much blood
It was all he could do to finish stitching up the wound before he lost consciousness.
Kurt was the first to find Peter. He saw his friend limp against a tree in a puddle of his own blood. His chest was stained red and a needle and thread hung off of a freshly stitched wound. A knife was sitting in his lap on top of a white cloth dripping with blood. Three bullets rested next to him on the dirt.
Kurt let out a scream in horror.
Jean and Ororo came running. “Oh, God, Peter, what did you do?” Ororo growled, kneeling down next to him. She looked at Kurt. “Quickly! Get him out of here!”
Kurt and Peter vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving the two girls to clean up.
Kurt arrived in Professor Xavier's office. Hank was waiting with Xavier and immediately rushed forward. Xavier rolled over to Peter as well.
He looked at Kurt. “Do you know what happened?”
Kurt shook his head. “We found him like this.”
“He's not currently bleeding. His stitching job may look bad, but it did get the job done,” Hank told the others. “Until we get a greater sense of what happened, I don't know what I should do.”
Peter opened his eyes. “Hello,” he greeted, his voice strained.
“A knife, bullets and a piece of bloodied cloth.” Jean looked at Ororo as they walked back towards the school. “Was he trying to… perform surgery on himself?”
“That would be extraordinarily stupid, even for him,” Ororo muttered.
“Yes, it would, but you never know with him.”
“What happened?” Hank demanded.
Peter groaned. “M’going back t’sleep now, kay?”
Hank was about to protest when Xavier interrupted him.
“We will discuss this later,” Xavier declared. “Hank, keep an eye on him and monitor his state. I will wait for Jean and Ororo's return. Kurt, go rest.”
Hank lifted Peter onto a stretcher. Another student helped him carry the stretcher to the medical area.
Ororo and Jean walked into Xavier's office and set down their collected items.
Xavier leaned forward to look at the objects. “I'm assuming he was shot,” he started. “If he was shot, why didn't he just go to the medical area? Why would he do it himself? Without painkillers, I imagine. He's never been one to deal with pain silently. Remember when he broke his leg? He was constantly whining about that.”
“That's probably because he couldn't use his powers, not because it hurt.” Jean shrugged. “More importantly, when was he shot, and why was he keeping it from us? For that matter, how was he keeping it from us?”
Kurt appeared in the office in a puff of smoke. “He's awake.”
“We can continue this discussion with him.”
“Hey,” Peter greeted when Jean and Xavier entered the room. “What's up?”
“You tell me,” Xavier replied. “You're the one who attempted to perform surgery on yourself.”
“Like you've never done that.”
“I have not done that, Peter. I have not performed surgery on myself.” He studied Peter. “So why did you?”
“It's none of your business.”
Xavier sighed. With Peter mostly limp on the bed, machines monitoring his vitals and blood covering his chest, he was starting to think he should read his mind-
“Stay out of my head!” Peter exclaimed, although Xavier had yet to enter it in the first place.
“I wasn't-”
“You were about to!” he shouted. “When you're about to do something mind-y, you make this face. You do it, Jean does it, Wan-” He cut himself off when he realized his mistake. “So keep out!”
“Who was the third person you were going to list?” Xavier asked gently.
Pietro Peter’s eyes widened. “Nobody! Just treat my fucking wounds and leave me alone!” He rolled over so that he was facing away from them. Peter winced.
Painful, but not as painful as the truth.
“I heard that last thought of yours, Peter.” This time it was Jean in his head.
“Hopefully you'll never need to use this, but you should learn how, at least,” Wanda whispered.
Pietro nodded. “Teach me.”
“Imagine a wall, an unbreakable wall, in your mind. Imagine it surrounding your consciousness and your thoughts.” She hissed. “It's working. Can you feel it?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I feel… alone.”
“Then make the walls go away. You don't need them anymore.”
They embraced, both in body and mind. A tear rolled down Pietro's cheek as he felt the relief of the reconnection.
And Peter was blocking off his mind. Silent tears wet his cheeks, but they couldn't get inside his head anymore.
Xavier turned to Jean, Kurt, and Hank. “Would you mind allowing us to speak in private?”
The trio quickly obliged.
“Peter, what's going on? Why and how are you blocking off your mind?”
“You don’t need to be a telepath to protect yourself,” he replied. “I'm protecting myself.”
Xavier placed his hand on Peter's shoulder. “You shouldn't feel that you need to protect yourself from us. Whatever you're going through, at least one of us has likely experienced the same thing, or at least something similar.”
Peter flipped over to look at him. “Have you, though?” He shook his head. “But I'm not going to let you psychoanalyze me.” He turned back over. “Professor, you don't need this garbage. Go back to what you're best at: teaching. I don't need or want a therapy session, let alone with you. ”
Xavier bit his lip, hurt. “Peter, I'm not going to let you go through this alone.”
Peter flipped back over. “Don't you see? I've already gone through this! I'm already over it!”
Xavier shook his head. “You're clearly not over this, Peter. Your behavior makes that abundantly clear. But we can help you get over it for good. You needn't push it down anymore.” He paused. “Besides, who taught you how to block off your mind? I can't help but think it was a telepath.”
“My past is my business and my business alone, Xavier,” Peter replied. “Sorry to disappoint, prof, but I'm not telling you shit. I don't owe you anything.”
Xavier's expression turned dark. “What about for letting you stay here? I could kick you out.”
“Oh, yeah, that'll be great for your reputation. 19-year-old boy turned homeless after professor removes him for defending his mind.”
“Then go back to your mom's basement!” he shouted.
“That was a lie! My mom doesn't have a basement to go home to! I don't have a mom to go home to!” Peter glared at him. “Do you really think you know me? You don't know anything about me!”
Xavier inhaled sharply. “Peter, I'm going to say this once. This is a school. For children. Children with powers that I cannot put at risk because you're too proud to accept help or too distrustful to admit who you are!”
Peter shook his head. “What happened to me, you guys will never treat me the same. You'll feel sorry for me. You'll try to take care of me when I don't need it. I've taken care of myself my whole life. I'll tell you this much: being on the streets was better then moving from one rapist family to another. You think I got good at stealing ‘cause I felt like it?”
Xavier put his hand on Peter's tear-streaked cheek. “Please, just tell me. You don't have to go through this alone.”
“This never leaves this room. And turn off the camera.”
Xavier obliged. “Tell me what's wrong,” he requested.
“I'm not from America. I am born and raised in Sokovia. Don't you dare fucking interrupt me about my accent. My parents die in a bombing and put me and Wanda in an orphanage. But the orphanage sucks and there aren't enough space for all the kids, so they put us with families. But all the families that volunteered just want kids to put their disgusting hands on. So we run away. I barely graduate from high school with an extra year because I am always working and stealing. When it gets bad, she gets sick, maybe I find a couple hundred dollars.” At his blank stare, Peter added, “I was a fucking prostitute, Xavier.”
Xavier's eyes widened in horror.
“Yeah, see, you're pitying me. Anyway, Wanda and I volunteer for some experiments they say will give us superpowers. They do unspeakable things to us. And they do. We get superpowers. She gets telekinesis and telepathy and I get superspeed. Then that whole Ultron disaster happens. I take 22 bullets in Sokovia to save Hawkeye and some kid. They think I'm dead. I wake up in America, already buried in a coffin. I dig out the bullets in my throat and face. When I redevelop my voice, I'm in America, so I get an American accent. I change my name to Peter because it's easier for me to pronounce now. My name used to be Pietro. When you come to my door, I've just established my life. I get near normalcy between when I broke Magneto out of the Pentagon and the Apocalypse incident. I never got the bullets out of my chest, but I got seven out of my arms. Now I'm here, trying to get out the stupid bullets by myself because nobody can know, nobody can know what happened to me. Except I'm stupid and messed up so I had to tell you and now you're going to treat me differently because you think I'm vulnerable and I can't convince you otherwise because you've seen me cry and now you're looking at me like that and I'm rambling and I'm scared as fuck because-”
He drifted off when Xavier reached over and squeezed his hand. “You're safe here,” Xavier reminded him. “You're one of the strongest people I've ever met because, despite everything that's happened to you, you can still make jokes, you can still laugh at yourself.”
“Of course I can laugh at myself! Look at me! I'm a walking joke!”
Xavier furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about, Peter?”
“I'm skinny, I'm pale, I've got weird silver hair and a weird face. If anyone that knew me before the… before the accident, they wouldn't recognize me. There is literally nothing similar in appearance between me before and me now.” He sighed. “Professor, I know you don't have time for my vain garbage, but I used to be hot!”
“Peter, I'm sorry for what you went through, but you are no less of a person because of it. We both know that your appearance isn't your primary concern, and I doubt that it ever was. Everyone here likes you for your personality.” He stroked Peter's shoulder. “Do you want me to call you Pietro?”
Peter shook his head. “Pietro’s the guy who went into the coffin. Peter's the guy who came out. I'm not the same person I used to be.” He smirked. “The only good thing that came out of it is that the trauma made me faster. Those bullets wouldn't be a problem now.”
“Isn't that enough?”
Peter sighed. “Yeah, whatever.” His face turned serious. “This stays between us, ‘kay?”
“Of course, Peter.”
Peter was fine.
He wasn't Pietro anymore. Pietro died in the Battle of Sokovia.
His friends still didn't know his history, but they treated him… differently. Nicer. And he felt a little bit of Pietro coming back as he spent time with them, treating them as equals, none of that old contempt. They didn't deserve his contempt. And he didn't need his defense mechanisms anymore.
He wasn't secretly bothered by his appearance. He wasn't as proud of it as his attitude suggested, but he no longer frowned at mirrors.
Peter was Peter. Peter Django Maximoff Lehnsherr.
He threw that last one in for good measure.