Vanished {Pietro Maximoff}

Chapter 2

Alex turned slowly, as though trying to coax a wild animal to come out of hiding.

"Are you invisible?"

"What?" He laughed again, beginning to sound more confident. "I'm not invisible, I'm right behind you."

Alex turned quickly, and the breeze blew by her again. There was no one behind her, "Well you're not behind now."

"Obviously. I moved, can't let you see me this soon."

Rubbing the back of her head with one hand and fumbling the inside of her thigh for the knife that was usually strapped there, Alex muttered, "Are you sure you're not just in my head?"

Rather than answer like a normal person, Alex found herself being shoved onto the ground. Her reactions were too slow and she landed immediately on her face with one arm stuck under her.

"You're very clumsy." The man acknowledged. "Why is your suit like that?"

"Like what?" She tried to look up up but something was pressing it down on her head so she couldn't.

"The hood, the mask over your eyes. It's like you've got something to hide."

"I'm a minor, it's to protect my identity."

He hummed, "I'm seventeen and I do not hide my identity with a mask."

He was the same age as her. "No, you just turn invisible so no one can see you."

"I'm not invisible. Here," there was a tap on Alex's shoulder and she tried lifting her head again. Before she could lift it too far up, a hand was there, pressing down so she couldn't see more than some old trainers and a pale hand in front of her face. "You should get up."

Alex had three choices: teleport away, contact the team, lay there in misery. Well, her headache was fading but her hands were too numb and the distance to safety was too far. She had to reach up to her ear to press the comms device and then it would take a few minutes for one of the others to arrive. She could lay here for one of them to arrive but with her comms turned down, she wouldn't know when they were coming and again, it would take too long for them to arrive.

She took his hand.

Her first thought when seeing his face was that he definitely wasn't seventeen. Then her second thought was that under the mask she probably didn't look seventeen either.

His hair looked like Alex's did the first time she had it cut after she left home, the only difference was his was a off white colour streaked with brown, like a bad dye job. His beard was the same colour and it was probably that which aged him so much— without it he would look more like the seventeen year old he claimed to be.

"Have you decided you master plan yet? Or am I meant to stand here forever looking pretty."

"You are not pretty." It was true. He could have been attractive, if shabbiness was your type, if it were not for the mourning in his eyes. Alex recognised the look, she had stared into her own similar eyes everyday for years before finding the Avengers. His eyes were not one shade of blue either, streaks of light blue flowed like electricity through them, in unnatural patterns too, like there had been an attempt to make him look more alive, but it had only made the deadness even more obvious.

He was fiddling with something, but his hands were passing the object between them too fast for Alex to tell what it was. Blue-white sort of aura swirled around his hands.

"You have speed. Super speed," she corrected herself.

He stopped immediately and held up the knife, which Alex recognised with a sinking feeling.