Wanda Maximoff.
The name surfaced from the memory fragments like a stone breaking water… impossible to ignore.
The couple upstairs had twins.
The girl was Wanda.
The boy…?
Luca frowned, sifting through the mental debris.
Pietro.
The name came eventually, trailing cobwebs.
His gaze found the calendar on the wall, still hanging crookedly despite the blast.
2006.
2006.
The crying above him wasn’t any child’s tears.
That was Scarlet Witch up there.
Pre-everything that would make her one of the most terrifyingly powerful beings in the universe.
Luca exhaled slowly.
In his previous life, he’d written enough Marvel fanfiction to choke a horse.
Not because he was a fanboy, well, not entirely because he was a fanboy, but because Marvel paid bills when original ideas didn’t.
He’d consumed the source material like a starving man at a buffet, movies and comics alike, until the timelines blurred together.
Wanda Maximoff’s backstory was particularly well-trodden ground in his memory.
Not, he told himself firmly, because she was compellingly written and visually striking.
Purely professional interest.
Marvel Comics, founded 1939.
Since then, everyone from the chairman to the janitor had been replaced multiple times.
The universe had been rebooted, retconned, and reimagined so often that even Stan, bless his cameo-loving soul, would need a flowchart to track continuity.
Scarlet Witch’s personal history had been revised more times than most countries’ constitutions.
Mutant… Not mutant… Chthon’s chosen… Magneto’s daughter….
Not Magneto’s daughter… Chaos magic user… Probability manipulator.
The list went on.
But Sokovia, 2006.
Ten-year-old twins.
That narrowed things considerably.
MCU, Luca concluded.
Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The relatively sane one.
Relatively being the operative word.
Still packed with world-ending threats, still dangerous as hell, but at least no reality-warping cosmic entities casually breaking the fourth wall to comment on the narrative.
Small mercies.
“Wanda!” he shouted up through the hole in the ceiling, raising his voice over the gunfire’s percussion.
No response.
Just the continuation of those thin, desperate sobs.
“WANDA!” Still nothing.
The kid was either too deep in shock or the explosions were drowning him out.
“Luca?
Brother Luca?
You’re alive?” A boy’s voice.
Wary and possessing a mouth that immediately made Luca’s eye twitch.
“You’re alive?” What kind of greeting was that?
A crow seemed to caw somewhere in Luca’s skull.
This kid, this particular kid, had a gift for saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.
It was practically a superpower in its own right, and about as useful as one might expect.
Pietro Maximoff.
Wanda’s twin brother.
Future speedster and avenger.
Future…
Luca remembered, with the clarity of someone who’d watched the scene multiple times… Bullets.
Budget constraints wearing a narrative disguise.
The fastest man alive, killed by conventional firearms.
Right up there with the Sorcerer Supreme tripping down stairs in terms of ignominious ends.
But that was future news.
Right now, Pietro was just a ten-year-old boy with a big mouth and a sister who wouldn’t stop crying.
The Maximoffs had been tenants for years.
In the predecessor’s memory, the twins were neighborhood kids who sometimes helped in the restaurant, who waved hello on stairwell landings.
Who existed in that comfortable space between strangers and friends.
Luca looked at the missile.
Looked at the ceiling.
Thought about ten-year-old twins alone up there while their parents…
He didn’t finish the thought.
“Pietro!” he shouted.
“Is your sister okay?
Are you okay?” The pause that followed was longer than Luca liked.
“I…” Pietro’s voice cracked.
“Don’t…
know…” Luca closed his eyes.
Don’t do this, don’t be an idiot.
You’re a hack writer who got lucky.
The crying continued upstairs.
Acquaintances.
That’s all they were… the predecessor had been seven or eight years older, and eighteen-year-olds rarely made time for ten-year-old twins.
“Brother Luca!” Pietro’s voice cut through from above.
“My parents, are they okay?” Luca’s mouth opened, then closed.
The kid had seen the missile come through and watched it obliterate the floor below where his parents were.
But hearing Luca’s voice had kindled that illogical hope children cling to when reality is too horrible to accept.
If the landlord’s stupid son survived, maybe… Luca looked at the mosaics downstairs.
Even Wolverine would have trouble reassembling from that.
“Your parents…” He couldn’t finish.
The silence from above said Pietro understood.
Then the crying started, both of them now, the boy’s brave facade crumbling alongside his sister’s sobs.
Luca checked that the hole in the ceiling was maybe eight feet up.
He dragged a chair onto the rubble, tested its stability, and reached for the third floor’s edge.
His predecessor’s body was young, eighteen years of decent living.
The Luca of his previous life… forty, sedentary, novel-writing soft wouldn’t have made it halfway.
He hauled himself up and into the apartment above.
The twins were under a dining table, as if pressed particleboard could shield them from missiles and shrapnel.
Luca bit back the observation that this wasn’t a war drama where furniture stopped bullets.
Different universe, he reminded himself.
Same stupid instincts.
“Brother Luca!” Pietro’s face crumpled the moment he saw him, relief and grief warring in a ten-year-old’s expression.
He’d been trying so hard to be strong for his sister.
Now, with an adult present, the mask dissolved.
“It’s okay.” Luca moved debris aside, keeping his voice steady.
“Come out.
Both of you.” He reached under the table, wrapped a hand around each twin’s wrist, and pulled them gently into the open.
Wanda sobbed, face buried in her hands, small shoulders shaking.
Pietro stood rigid beside her, tears streaming silently down his cheeks… trying, still trying, to be the man of the family even though there was no family left to protect Luca crouched beside them, unsure what to say.
Comfort wasn’t his strength.
He’d spent his previous life alone, writing words that nobody read, keeping people at arm’s length.
Now here he was, kneeling in a stranger’s apartment, facing two orphaned children who looked to him like he mattered.
What the hell am I supposed to do with this?
[System Initializing…] The voice in his head was utterly impossible to ignore.
[Contact established with world node character: Wanda Maximoff.
Teleportation authorization granted.] [First teleportation will commence in: 10:00…
9:59…
9:58…] Luca blinked, oh.
Oh, thank God.