flatscalded | For the writing prompt meme

Later, Anya will say this much for her baby sibs: at least they rang the doorbell.

(Unlike someone she could mention, who just broke in and sulked in the dark to ambush her in her own house, drunk and maudlin and sneering how she was a heartless traitor just like her mother – )

She recognized them, of course, even looking awkward and self-conscious in rumpled and ill-fitting civvies, the salt-white hair and oddly familiar face she’d seen flanking Dad on shaky, grainy news shots. Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch, according to the media, not that she had any intention of using such ridiculous titles. Dad always did love his showmanship.

She hit the panic button in her pocket as she stepped onto the stoop and locked the door behind her. It might not keep them out, but at least if she was abducted her house probably wouldn’t be looted.

She folded her arms.

“What, Dad can’t even be bothered to screw with me in person anymore, he makes the new minions do it?”

“So it’s true,” the woman breathed, then shook her head. “No, you misunderstand. We aren’t here to cause trouble. May we come inside?”

“No,” she said curtly. “But glad to hear it. You can not cause trouble right out here.”

“Listen,” the man cut in, aggravation creeping into his voice to match hers. “We aren’t minions. We’re your family.”

Anya snorted.

“You’re as crazy as he is, that’s what you are. Get off my lawn.”

The woman, again. “Please, don’t be so hasty, it’s true. Our mother was pregnant with us during the – accident.” Her eyes were wide and lovely, full of sympathetic politeness. No way for her to know that ‘mother’ was far more painful than ‘accident’.

“We just found out the truth about who we are, and we want to know you.”

“Why?” It snapped out of her, harsher than she meant it, but suddenly she hated them just a little bit, with the quiet poison of every older child who didn’t want to share her parents, compounded by a decade of tangled rejection.

They stared back at her, uncomprehending.

“Because. You’re family,” the man stammered.

“I say again, why?” It was icier the second time, more deliberate. They didn’t choose to be what Dad wanted, but they did choose to follow him, and that was enough for her not to want them in her life.

“Stop being such a bitch,” he snarled. “You’re our sister. We have a right to know you.”

Anya sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“Let me put this as bluntly as I can: I don’t give a damn if we fell out of the same vagina. You don’t know me, and an accident of history does not mean you deserve to know me. But I’ll tell you this much: I’m as baseline as it gets, and I don’t care to socialize with terrorist supremacist assholes fighting to turn me into a second-class citizen at best. So fuck. Off.”

She heard a buzz, the man’s edges blurring for a moment before he settled, glowering, the woman’s hand on his arm. Anya blinked away the mental image of a fist bursting through her ribcage at speedster velocities. Messy.

“Please, it’s not like that,” the woman implored her. “We’re not – we owe him, okay? He saved us.”

The sharp, short laugh surprised Anya, too.

“Yeah, he does that. Okay, let me give you kids some sisterly advice. Just because he kills people for you? Doesn’t mean he won’t hurt you just as badly to get what he wants. And just because he’s related to you doesn’t mean he won’t turn on you.”

“We can’t just –”

“You’d be surprised what you’re capable of.”

“You know,” the man murmured, “It’s kind of creepy. You sound just like him when you lecture.”

“Fuck off,” she muttered again, aggravated and suddenly tired.

“What did he do to you?” the woman asked, all soft eyes again.

Anya snorted and rolled her eyes, before narrowing her expression into a low, cold glare, her voice a disdainful growl.

“The hell do you think he did? He’s Magfuckingneto. He made it very clear a long time ago that I wasn’t good enough or strong enough or special enough to be part of his family. So either do the smart thing and get away from him, or stay the hell away from me.”

“But –”

Her panic beacon beeped a soft proximity alert, and she cut him off, all brusque matter-of-fact warning.

“Anti-meta security forces will be here in sixty seconds. Unless you want to turn this pointless mistake into an international criminal incident, I suggest you be gone by then.”

The woman – her sister – looked like she wants to say something else, but before she could, her twin cursed, grabbed her, and they vanished in a howl of wind.

Anya’s garden was pretty much ruined. She sent a nevermind all-clear, and decided to deal with it tomorrow, after her hangover cleared up.