(A/N: Hey, this is a book I published many years ago and abandoned/unpublished after 4ish chapters and have decided to finish! Please vote (it helps to get discovered!) and comment your thoughts on the story :) 

Cast: Young Wanda is Raffey Cassidy, young Pietro is Levi Miller, young Zrinka is Willow Shields, Thom is Lewis Macdougall. Older Wanda's Elizabeth Olsen, older Pietro's Aaron Taylor-Johnson, older Zrinka is Dominique Provost-Chalkly. Hope you enjoy!)

"No!" Wanda screamed as she ran across the street, which was riddled with cracks and loose pieces of asphalt. "Stop it!" she shrieked.

Suddenly she tripped and fell, and her brother Pietro landed on top of her, laughing, pinning her to the ground and confining her eyeline to the passing shoes in the busy avenue.

"Too slow, sister," Pietro said, standing up so she could rise. She stood and glared at him, red hot fire in her green eyes.

"I told you we weren't playing tag," she grumbled. She hated the game, because she always lost.

"Fine-" Pietro started to say, but was cut off by his mother's voice.

"Wanda! Pietro! Come in for dinner!" She yelled. She was a middle-aged woman of a particular beauty, with shimmering green eyes and glossy brown hair that she passed on to the little girl who lost tag, who would someday grow into the confidence that came with her mother's genes.

"Coming!" Pietro yelled and dashed back across the street, Wanda trailing behind him. They walked inside the apartment building and followed their mother up to their home on the second floor. When they got inside, the small but comfortable apartment was filled with the smoky yet subtle scent of paprikash, their mother Magda's signature dish. 

The twins sat down at the dining table, anticipating the meal to come. Magda served up three steaming bowls of paprikash and placed two in front of the twins, and the other at her seat, then settled down in the chair after a long day selling jewelry and cloth in the streets.

"Where's Papa?" Wanda asked, taking a bite of food, the reddish tint pooling at the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, just finishing up some work things. He'll be out in a minute," Magda uttered, reaching to wipe away the red stain with her thumb. "Pietro, slow down," she added, giving her son a look of disapproval as he shoveled his dinner into his mouth.

That was when Django Maximoff emerged from his cluttered office where he spent most of his time working to support the family. What he couldn't meet his wife covered with the small profit of her spot in the market.

"Papa!" Wanda said joyously. Pietro said the same, through a mouthful of food. 

"Hey, kiddos," their father said, sitting down as his wife served his dinner. "How was school?"

Pietro groaned. He hated being stuck in a desk all day. But Wanda smiled and said, "Fine. We learned about evolution." 

"Oh?" Django said, taking a sip of water. "What about evolution?"

"That only the best people survive. Lucky for me," Pietro said. Wanda rolled her eyes as her parents laughed. She'd had to deal with his cockiness every day for ten years and it was getting old. 

"We learned that you must adapt to survive. That the fittest survive," Wanda corrected.

"That's very interesting. How was that math test?" Magda asked. 

"Okay," Wanda and Pietro said at the same time, both with a nervous glint in their eyes.

"Did-" BOOM!

Magda was cut off by the sound of an explosion, in the room under them. The explosion racked the building, the spoons trembling against the bowls, water spilling from the cups on the table, and left a herculean hole in the middle of the floor. Wanda and Pietro screamed. Their father instinctively grabbed ahold of them and carried them away from the drop. You could see clean through it, ten feet to the floor of the apartment below, which was unrecognizibly coated in dust and debris. Magda crouched and peeked down at the mass of growing flames and coughed as smoke seeped upward. With a fear that neither of the twins had witnessed in the mother they saw as practically magic, Magda locked eyes with her husband, and something was understood between them.

"To your room!" Django shouted and pushed the twins in that direction. Then he and his wife started to make their way down into the hole to see if they could save the residents of the apartment. 

"Mama!" Wanda yelled. Pietro grabbed her wrist violently and pulled her towards their bedroom.
"Wanda, come on!" Pietro exclaimed, his voice high with terror. Wanda finally turned and ran with him into the room. Pietro grabbed her again and they rolled under the bed. They could hear screams coming from all around them as the building started to collapse, and they wondered who the screams belonged to, why this was happening, and what would happen next.

Then a second shell hit, tearing through the walls and landing right in front of Wanda and Pietro, only a few feet away, close enough to touch. And it didn't go off. It just sat there in the rubble, taunting them, frightening them. The twins stared at it wide-eyed and notice one word painted across the sleek, silver side: STARK.