A/N: Came to me during a sleepless night. While it was cold. After an acid trip. Well, I lied about the last one, I watched an acid trip video. I gotta get this out of my head because it's annoying me to death, and my mind is far too busy storming for other story additions to have this bouncing around.

It's another addition for the pile of fics about sad character pasts, cause you have to have your angst fix. Takes place shortly after the episode, 'The Toad, The Witch, and The Wardrobe'. I hope I at least achieve some degree of uniqueness with this. Give me a chance huh?

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Another lovely, crisp autumn season had set in. The leaves of fiery colors littered the ground more than they populated the trees now, by this night of early November. A Saturday night of ill air and bad will had settled neatly in place at the boarding house. It was late, and the majority of the residents had gone to bed; why stay up with nothing to do? There was a frost on the ground and without warm clothing, no one really dared to exit the house unless absolutely necessary.

The old house creaked and groaned as it was mercilessly pummeled by the raging northern winds. As such, the building grew steadily colder as the night went on, the cracks in the windows and holes in the walls serving as entrances for the frigid air. The difference between outside and inside remained mostly within the wind's chilling presence or slightly relieving absence. With their Landlady gone, as was the norm, the five teenage inhabitants were left once again without any real assets besides the roof overhead, and maybe the ancient cast iron wood stove: their only heat source. Of course at the time being no wood existed to feed it with, and thus they dwelled in the negative temperature range.

Currently, the only signs of life among the freezing tomb were the two residents which remained conscious. They both sat in the living room, on either end of the desolate couch, one reading a thick book, the other staring at the minute television, whose signal had been destroyed for a good 15 minutes; the near worthless antenna having blown off the roof. The wisp of icy air filtering through a tape-patched hole in the window behind them passed it's own time by nipping at their bare necks.

Finally the dead silence was broken when Pietro pressed the Power button on the remote, ending the dull erratic light of the TV, and tossed the piece of long outdated technology away, adding a characteristic overly loud sigh of boredom. The only reaction received was a characteristic 'warning huff' from Wanda as she turned the page of her yellowed novel. Pietro settled back into the place on the couch he had warmed slightly, having shifted with his remote toss. He knew that sound well, as he knew most of his twin's body language. She was telling him "not to start".

Wanda was more the boss than the others realized; though they knew greatly the threat she could turn into. Pietro was the leader, and he often controlled the brotherhood; but Wanda often controlled (or at least influenced) him. She could be scary sometimes; in other words her methods of persuasion worked wonders. She was the only one who could really make the mischievous Quicksilver behave. Just that morning she had graciously demonstrated why one should not try to push her to do something she had plainly stated that she did not want to do, by beating her brother over the head with that rather heavy hardcover she was currently reading when he had done so.

Pietro didn't know what exactly was going on in Wanda's twisted up brain, but, he didn't want to really. She wasn't trying to kill him or their father anymore, so he supposed she could be considered 'stable'. The remaining fact of the matter was that, despite the recent happenings with Wanda, the twins disliked one another. More than sibling rivalry, the two just plain didn't like each other. Not hate, mind, but still a rather potent dislike. The complication was, that while Pietro felt he had no choice but to dislike his sister, Wanda felt that she was supposed to dislike him, but didn't know why.

Something kept buzzing around in the back of her head, telling her that her brother was a bad person, that he wasn't trustworthy, that he had wronged her in some unforgivable way. The same thing was going on when she thought of her father. But what had they done? She didn't know. She strained, trying to get something out of the ocean of her memory. All she could ever draw up was reasonably good memories though, never anything so bad that it would cause this odd subconscious warning bell. She gazed down at her book; it was about memories and dreams. She had been reading about how the mind worked for a while, ever since her head had gotten into a mess. She mulled through each memory she could recall of her father and brother, considering what the book had to say about them.

After a while, Wanda noticed an inconsistency in her memories. In the earliest ones she could recall, when she was, maybe 10, or thereabouts, and younger, she could derive that she and Pietro were reasonably close, and that their father was a stern man. Cold, even; and probably proud. Yet, in the later childhood memories, their father seemed to be kind and nurturing, and the closeness between she and Pietro still stood firm. So why was it that they never heard from Father now? Where was he, and what was he doing that was so important that he'd leave his only children in a trashy place like this to fend for themselves? Either he thought so highly of them that he believed they would have no trouble surviving, or...he didn't care.

And what about her and Pietro? In the past they seemed so fond of one another, but now... It was like they were enemies or something. She found herself listening to that warning in the back of her head more than she did her logic. She wasn't exactly nice to her brother, and he returned the favor without remorse. Some of the 'disagreements' they'd had before had gotten quite fierce, and had ended in her distributing some serious bodily harm. She'd always felt sorry afterward though. She didn't like hurting people, she just got so worked up sometimes...

Coming out of her thoughts, Wanda glanced to her left, expecting Pietro to be long gone. But he wasn't. He was sitting there as before, staring at nothing really, and visibly shivering. The cold bothered him so. But what could one expect? He had next to no body fat. She couldn't focus with the knowledge that he was sitting there freezing to death, somehow, she believed, on account of her.

"Why don't you go to bed already?" she used a non-caring tone, as the thought that he didn't really care about her quickly got rid of any cares she had for him. "You're obviously freezing."

"What was your first clue?" Pietro had a smartassed response for most anything. He made no attempt to leave, just curled up in a ball and gave his sister a defiant look. Wanda didn't want to bother with the curse that was her brother and his ego, so she just sighed and went back to her thinking.

She focused on the later memories of her childhood, to see if she could pick out anything else strange about them. The earlier images had been fairly dark and gloomy, but these ones were very colorful. While she could see herself having fun in the sun, she couldn't recall what it actually felt like to do those things. She couldn't remember the soft grass under her feet, the warm wind in her face as she rode the carousel, or even what candy tasted like.

But there was something else that was strange about these memories. They weren't just colorful, they were too colorful. There were no imperfections. What made things real was imperfections. So then, were these images just lingering fragments of lost dreams? Perhaps something that her mind had created and wished was reality? It seemed plausible, but why would these images stand out so at this stage of her life? It just didn't make sense...

Wanda returned to her grueling task of reading this long and confusing book. 'Maybe it'd just be easier to go see a psychiatrist or something...' she thought, growing desperate for some kind of answer. This triggered sudden, fierce warning bells in her mind. Her hands flew up to grip her head, her book dropping to the floor as the already damaged window split in two. It somehow stayed in the frame, despite the wind. In a moment Pietro had patched the window with what little duct tape remained in the house, and Wanda had regained herself.

"You're not exactly helping the problem Wanda..." the speed demon's tone was full of disdain and bitterness. He resumed his 'rigorous activities' once again, without another sound.

Wanda muttered some kind of apology and picked up her book. 'I'm afraid of doctors? What the hell... Why?' Of course her mind provided no answers. This was getting beyond frustrating. There was one other way to find out, and that was to ask someone who knew. That was either Pietro or Father, and God only knew where he was. She sighed. 'Why not?' She knew she wasn't likely to receive an answer, or a straight one anyways. Her twin could weasel his way out of anything with that mouth of his.

"Pietro...er, what kind of things did we do as kids?" Her brother looked at her like she was crazy, of course she probably was in his opinion. If she had not been so serious about the question she might've found his expression humorous.

"What?"

"When we were little, what would we do?" Pietro shifted in his place and averted his eyes. 'Why is he so uncomfortable?' she wondered.

"Kid stuff." was all the response she got. She decided on a different approach, less vague.

"Did we go outside much? To the park or something?" She needed to explain the 'memories' that didn't fit. Her brother just hung his head.

"No."

"Why?"

"Not allowed."

"Not allowed to go outside?" That was hard to believe, or comprehend. "Why was that?"

Pietro took a while to respond. He couldn't feed her too much info, or she might actually remember certain things and go homicidal again. Then Magneto would skin him.

"Bad neighborhood thats all... He was too busy to take us anyplace..." Wanda gathered from the pause that he was lying. He was obviously scared to tell her much of anything, so maybe it was best for both their sakes that she didn't know. Of course just then she had no idea how right she was.

Wanda sifted through all the questions she had in her head, trying to find some that her brother would consider harmless to answer. A big one surfaced while she was pondering, and she spoke it without mulling it over.

"...What do you think Mom was like?" Something many kids before them had wondered.

Pietro flinched and remained silent. He hated thinking about his mother, it always made him cry. "I dunno, 'Daddy Dearest' never talked about her." His eyes stung, so he closed them tightly. 'Why did she have to bring that up?'

"Think maybe things would be different if she was around?"

'Fuck yes!' "Yeah, cause then we wouldn't be in this dump, waiting to see if we live or die while our prick father jerks around on something thats never going to happen! She would've kept us away from Magneto altogether!" Pietro had unintentionally started yelling. He realized that he'd spat out too much info in his sudden fit and swore some more while he yanked on his two front locks of hair like he meant to haul them right out.

Wanda was taken aback, to say the least. 'Now look what else I fucked up...' She decided not to ask questions about what he'd meant before, since he obviously hadn't meant to say it in the first place. Pietro quieted down and she could hear him sobbing. This gave a few more clues as to why she should hate their father, but still, she couldn't get why her mind was telling her to hate Pietro. The two of them had probably suffered a lot together, making him the only one who could understand her completely. Why hate him when he was all she had? So many questions...

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"I know." Pietro growled at her, turning away once more.

A fairly large, icy draft came through the room, making the two of them shiver. Pietro muttered 'so fucking cold' while Wanda considered burning her book just for the sake of warmth. The floor creaked too, but so did the rest of the house, so they ignored it. Seeing something out of the corner of her eye, Wanda turned her head towards the room's doorway. A tiny yellowish light, no bigger than her thumbnail, blinked on and off as it drifted into the room. She turned quickly to her still shaking twin.

"Pietro, what's that?" Pietro growled in response.

"Don't you ever run out of-" Then he noticed the light. "It's...a firefly? How the hell did that get in here?"

"More pressing still is why is it alive in the middle of such freezing temperatures? Thats...not right..." Her brother nodded in agreement. "Well, it's creepy, get it out of here!" The firefly drifted over to Pietro as if to give him an easier time. It stopped and hovered a few inches from his face.

"For God's sake Wanda, it's just a bug..." Pietro just sat and stared at the said bug for a while.

"What are you waiting for?" his nervous sister demanded. She then noticed that Pietro's eyes were dead looking; devoid of color or life. He then shut them and fell over, as if he had ceased to live.

Containing a cry, Wanda quickly chose a plan of action. She had to run upstairs and get Toad to eat the firefly, or whatever the hell it was. She threw her book at the demon insect in hopes of keeping it off her back. The book stopped midair in front of the bug as if someone or something had blocked it, and it fell to the floor. Wanda gaped at the unharmed firefly in horror now, which was what she had been trying to avoid doing. She tried to turn and run for the stairs, but she couldn't. She couldn't take her eyes off of the bug, no matter how hard she tried. She tried to scream, but no sound would escape her throat.

The whole room started to sway and distort itself, as if it were made of melted wax and someone was smearing it around with their finger. She had to run, she had to cry out, she had to do something. But she couldn't. She was going to drop dead, just like Pietro. The room distorted more and more, until it was all one mess of colors; only the yellow firefly stayed normal. It's light was still blinking eerily. 'That light...' She suddenly felt sleepy as the colors of the room changed to black, and the demon firefly's light faded away...

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Well, that bastard demon firefly killed them. Damn. Now I can't write a story about them... Stupid bug screwed up all my plans; this always happens! Argh...

You believed me didn't you? oo I actually fooled someone, can't believe it Don't worry kids, they're not dead, they're just taking a dirt nap. Well, not exactly, cause they're not outside... Uh, nevermind.

I know what you're wondering now: Will the twins be ok? Will the house ever be within a sane person's living standards? What in God's name is that firefly!? Fear not, for all will be answered in the next exciting installment.

Now, if you've taken the time to read this far, please take a few more moments to review and tell me what you think! You don't even have to sign in, I don't care! I love to hear what people think (provided they're nice about it), and I love ideas even more. But what I love most, is when people try and guess whats gonna happen. I love making people guess, cause I'm evil. I am trying to become a super villain after all.

So, review please, love ya if you do, see ya some time in the future.