*Disclaimer* This fan-fiction is based on characters from Marvel Comics Inc. I claim no ownership of these characters, and I'm not making a single penny by borrowing them. Don't sue, I know a lawyer. (Just kidding. I'm actually a pretty classy girl ;)

*Rating* This story arc will eventually call for a more mature rating, but at this point, it's still pretty mild. Let's call it PG, so its predecessor doesn't feel left out. ;)

*Keys* ~` Telepathic communication `~ *Characters' thoughts*

*Authors Notes* This is the second piece I've written so far of my aforementioned 'horribly long story'. More to come soon. And believe it or not, I actually do have it all planned out; ending and all. ;) As always, please enjoy this story. Readers/Reviewers may feel free to contact me via [email protected].
And Now...On With The Show!

It was a day like any other.

Rise early, admiring like always the radiant beauty of the sun's glow.
Pietro said once that she shone like the sun.

Put on a touch of makeup. Every single time she did so in front of Pietro, he would ask without fail 'why she even bothered'. "Waste of perfectly good time." He would scuff. She knew, in his own way, he was trying to be sweet. Or maybe he was just being bratty. No, Crystal much preferred to believe that he was trying to be sweet. His point was that in his opinion, she didn't need any makeup at all.

Dress for the day. Pietro never took more than five minutes himself to wake up, shower, shave, dress, make the bed, and ask what she wanted for breakfast.

Crystal huffed at the mirror as she realized she'd put her sweater on inside out.
"I shouldn't have to concentrate to get dressed..." She mumbled to herself as she discarded the garment completely and rummaged through her closet for something else to wear entirely.

Pad down the hall, heading for Luna's room. Luna never rose as early as either of her parents on a regular morning. Usually Crystal would wake her sometime later in the morning hours. But she knew. She knew that every morning Pietro left their room and headed for the kitchen, he always and without exception made a detour to his daughter's bedroom. She knew that he simply opened the door, peeked inside, smiled that wonderfully handsome and ever so scarce smile, shut the door and went along his way, never making a sound or waking little sleeping Luna.

Open the door, peek inside, blow a little kiss, and go along her way. *I suppose,* Crystal mused, *that someday I will have to knock first.*

The kitchen. How many times did she enter the kitchen and see Pietro there with Luna, covered in more flour than seemed rational, milk spilled places milk just doesn't get without being thrown there, and giggling something fierce about soggy waffles or 'baaad' pancakes; an ongoing joke between father and daughter. *Not enough.* Crystal sighed as she started fixing herself a cup of herbal tea.

"What is with me today?" Crystal asked the resident dog of the palace, Lockjaw; who, of course, had no idea, and so didn't offer any answer, save for a small whine.

Seating herself at the table, she put her face in her hands and sighed again.
It actually made her laugh. "Not only can't I stop thinking about him, but now I'm starting to sound like him. 'Sigh' this and 'sigh' that." Crystal took a sip of tea, and carefully didn't sigh as she set down her mug. "Is that my problem, Lockjaw? That I can't stop thinking about him?" Now more than ever, Lockjaw wasn't interested in getting involved in the conversation, and he promptly started in on a dognap.

"Another fight, my sister?"

The voice was feminine, yet strong at the same time. Medusa stood casually in the oversized, elegant doorway connecting the kitchen to an equally elegant and oversized dining room. Medusa; Queen of the Inhumans, wife to King Blackbolt, and sister to Crystal.

Still didn't make her right.

"No," Crystal corrected delicately, "we had a simple difference of opinion."

"I see." Medusa took a seat beside Crystal at the square kitchen table.
"But tell me, was this yet another argument-"

"Difference of opinion!" Crystal corrected again, this time not delicate in the least.

"I do beg your pardon." Medusa tried very hard to keep a straight face. Her little sister was just so very cute when she was aggravated. "Is this the same difference of opinion that you were having before, or has that been resolved already, and this is some new and unforeseen difference of opinion?"

Crystal stared blankly into her tea for a moment. If Medusa didn't know better, she would have guessed Crystal was looking for the answer in that cup. "I don't know. I honestly can't even remember anymore. We...He..."

Sensing Crystal's unease, and wishing desperately to avoid being the one to spill the tears gathering in her sister's eyes, Medusa thought it best to ease off the subject. "Crystalia, it's so early. What are you doing up and out of bed at this hour?" Medusa tried to sound as casual as she could, ignoring Crystal as she quickly wiped away a few tears that managed to get loose.

"I...couldn't sleep. I can't...I..."

*Same subject.* Medusa realized. *She can't sleep because of him.*

An awkward silence followed, and seemed to linger for hours. Medusa didn't know what to say. That is, she knew what she wanted to say, but Pietro wasn't here to defend himself, so that would hardly be tasteful.

Finally, Crystal got control of her runaway tears and their followers. "I had some strange dreams." Crystal said slowly, remembering why her night had been so restless.

"Yes? Anything that you care to talk about?" Medusa was glad for the break in silence.

"No...I mean, I don't really remember what they were about...just that they were very...disturbing. Kept me from really resting, you know? I don't think you're quite sleeping completely when you dream, because part of your mind has to be working in order to dream. So dreaming doesn't seem like the same thing as sleeping to me. And I was dreaming all night."

Medusa gestured to Crystal's trembling hands, her fingers laced loosely around her mug. "Your hands are shaking."

"...I think...I'm worried about him."

"He's fine." Medusa allowed herself to at least think what she wasn't saying for Crystal's sake. *Or he's not, which also is fine in it's own way.*

"No. No, I don't think he is." Crystal's voice went hard with determinism as she stood from her chair.

"Crystal, you're just tired. Why don't you go back to bed and get some good rest?"

At this point Crystal's expression was absolutely chiseled in stone.
"Medusa, don't you see? This is woman's intuition at it's best! Something must be wrong! I can sense it! Just like I was sensing it all night! I just can't believe I didn't realize it sooner."

Medusa sighed as her younger sister stormed out of the kitchen like a madwoman with a mission. *Does she even have a means of contacting that man? Poor dear will probably go to a world of trouble just to get a hold of him, and he, fool that he is, will probably waste no time at all blowing her off, especially if they're having another differ-- if they're arguing. My shoulder Crystal will be crying on, Pietro.*

Thinking of her sister's broken heart and failing marriage, Medusa sighed.

***

A day like any other, as Crystal tore down the palace hallway, racing back to her bedroom.
A day like any other as she scrambled like mad to retrieve the small cellular phone from her dresser that Pietro had given to her all that time ago, when he first took his position as Magneto's Cabinet Minister to the Island Nation of Genosha.
"For emergencies. Only. Understand?" She remembered the look on his face when he had said that. At the time, it peeved her to think that anything she wanted to talk to him about wasn't important enough to have a phone for, but no, he only gave her one for emergencies.
"Yes" was all she said then.

"YES!" She found it, shoved away in a corner of one of her lesser used drawers, so as not to get in the way. "Please, please, Pietro. Just answer, and tell me that I'm not supposed to use this phone unless it's an emergency. Please. Be mad, and disobeyed, and disappointed...just be there."

Pushing a button that automatically dials a pre-stored number, as he'd instructed her, she pressed the phone to her ear like it was a lifeline. Dangerously annoyed by the loud noise the phone just made in her ear, she adjusted it to her eye level and glared at it with no mercy. 'No connection', the little screen read.

Several minutes went by and Crystal did nothing. *Far be it from Pietro to leave something useful behind, like an instruction manual.* Crystal thought icily. 'No connection', the little screen still read. Deciding that's probably the phone's one and only trick, Crystal put it atop the dresser and sat down on the corner of her bed.

*Silliness.* She thought. *Utter silliness. All this worrying, and for what? Because I had a little dream?* Try as she might to calm her own nerves, her hands wouldn't stop shaking. And now, to top it off, her heart wasn't slowing down from her sprint down the hall. *All right, the dreams then. What was so bad about them, anyway? If I can't even remember what they were, why are they bothering me so much?*

Flopping herself down on the bed, she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. She forced herself to relax as well as she could, and focused all her attention on remembering those dreams. Pietro. He was involved in the dreams, but in what context, she wasn't sure.

Crystal's eyes shot open as one detail came vividly back to life in her mind. *Pietro.* She couldn't focus anymore. The one memory she had managed to recall was too upsetting. *Pietro. He was...he needed me. I remember. In my dream, he needed help.* Shaking violently, and completely convinced that she had to do something, she bounced off the bed and headed for the phone to try one more time.

At the exact split second before she picked it up, it rang.
Crystal actually screamed, cleared a good half-foot off the ground, and dropped the phone like a killer snake out for royal blood. Not Pietro's phone that rang, but hers, sitting on her vanity. Gasping for breath, she whirled. Staring aghast at the other phone, she made a clumsy dash for the vanity, nearly tripping over the cell phone she dropped a second before.

"Hello?" Her voice was comically uneven and squeaky. If she noticed at all how ridiculous she sounded, she didn't care.

"...Crystal?" The other voice was weary, and it wasn't Pietro, which didn't do anything at all for her waning mood.

"Yes!"

"It's Janet." Janet Van Dyne, otherwise know as the Wasp. Crystal served as an Avenger alongside Janet not too long ago.

"Yes, hello, Janet." Crystal tried to change her tone to something at least resembling'friendly', but given the circumstances, she didn't quite pull it off.

"Crystal, I...don't know quite how to say this..." Janet sounded awfully nervous. It made Crystal's knees wobble under her weight. "Crystal, you'd better sit down."

That was it. Tears flowed freely. She couldn't hold back a sob that escaped sounding more like a desperate gasp for air. Her knees gave out completely, and she fell down to the floor. "Is he dead?" It sounded colder than she meant it to, as if that just isn't the way you find such a thing out; by just asking.

Janet never missed a beat, although her mind was absolutely reeling as to how Crystal possibly knew what and who she was talking about, before she'd hardly even said a word. *Woman's intuition, I guess.*
"No, Crys. No. He's just been...hurt. But he's not going to die."

The way Janet said it, as if she was totally sure, told Crystal that it was far from the truth.

"But...Well, I'm sure he'd really like to have you with him right now. Crys, can you come to Avengers Mansion? He needs you..."

"I know. Yes. *sniff* I'll come, of course. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Okay," Janet tried to sound comforting, but it came out more like gooeyness, "and don't worry, Crys, it'll be okay, I promise. See you soon, 'kay? Buh-bye."

"*sniff* Bye." Crystal hung up the phone, and pulled herself off the floor.

A day like any other, when suddenly the sun's glow didn't seem so radiant.

***

"Wen'll you be back, mommy?"

Crystal hugged and kissed her young daughter probably for the dozenth time in the last two hours. Only now, the plane was ready and she really was leaving. And not a moment too soon. In Crystal's opinion, she was already running two hours late, but, as she kept telling herself, she had had to pack, and organize Luna to be taken after, since she opted to leave her here in Attilan with her family while she went to New York.

"Just as soon as I can, my little love." Crystal couldn't help one more hug. "You be good while I'm gone. Mind your Auntie and your nannies, young lady."

"I wull," Luna managed even as her mother was affectionately squeezing the life out of her little body.

"Mommy loves you..." Crystal said softly.

Luna wondered, again, why her mother was so upset today. Her eyes were all red and her makeup was all smudgy and she kept sniffling and every time someone asked about where she was going she almost started to cry. It just didn't make any sense to her three-year-old mind.

Crystal broke from their embrace, only to be caught in another one, this time with her sister. "Don't worry about us, my sister. We shall be just fine." Luna nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

They parted, and Crystal headed for the plane without looking back; save for a couple more little waives. Inside the plane, after a polite greeting to the pilots, she nestled down in her seat and placed a call to Avengers Mansion. Liftoff was a little rougher than she had expected, and she very nearly threw the phone unintentionally over her shoulder.

"Avnegers Mansion, this is Edwin Jarvis speaking."

Crystal's heart warmed fondly at the sound of the older man's voice. Such a nice voice, such a nice man. "Jarvis, hi. It's Crystal."

"Madam, Crystal! So nice to hear from you. But don't let me waste your time, dear, is there someone else I should fetch for you?"

"No, Jarvis, that's okay. Just..." She meant simply to place a message, that she was leaving Attilan, but Jarvis was so honest by nature, and totally unprepared for her call. He wouldn't try to sugarcoat the truth, like Janet had. "Is he still doing okay, Jarvis?" Crystal asked hopefully.

"..."

"No, that's...it's okay, Jarvis, never mind. Just tell Wanda that I'm on my way. It's a long flight, okay, so I should be there by tomorrow afternoon or evening, your time." Quickly checking the math in her head proved to be an absolute waste of effort. She couldn't count, couldn't even think. She had no concept of time, or how long she'll be in the air or at what hour she'll arrive in New York.

"I shall tell her, of course."

"Thank you, Jarvis. Bye."

Feeling terrible for trying to manipulate Jarvis into telling her more of what she already knew was bad news, Crystal sat back and did the hardest thing possible: she waited to reach her destination.






~ To be very continued. ~