Despair

He ran home with all his might. Peter was always faster than all his peers, rarely getting tired. His speed was something he was proud of. He always assumed that in the future he was destined to become an athlete, perhaps a runner. He didn't know how his fate might have turned over time.

Now the world seemed to him not the way he was used to seeing it. Everything seemed to be surrounded by energy pulsing in the air. He could see it with the naked eye, the silvery-bluish energy colored the night city for him. He knew he was running fast, very fast. And that this energy is a consequence of the awakening of his strength, speed.

At this point, he no longer doubted — the old vision that he saw then, as a child, was not a lie. He really was a character in the film who has an inhuman, one might even say, unrealistically huge and beyond the limits of physics, speed.

In the real world, only a few seconds have passed, and Peter has already managed to run several kilometers, remembering everything he saw during that time. Starting from the quality of the road, ending with the leaves of trees falling to the ground. He had never experienced such a feeling before. A sense of courage, freedom and omnipotence. It seemed to Peter more than ever that now he is capable of almost anything, he can take and move mountains with his one desire. But along with the forces that suddenly opened up, his head began to ache.

Right on the run, he felt that another minute at most, and his head would burst apart. And every second of running, running through every street, she began to hurt even more.

Finally, he ran into a familiar street for himself. As luck would have it, his consciousness treacherously failed him. The headache became so unbearable that everything went dark in his eyes, his body weakened, and his legs buckled after his body, ceasing to hold Peter.

All sense of power instantly evaporated, as did the silvery-bluish energy that surrounded the world while running. His entire environment instantly became as dim as it had always been. The body, as well as the head, hurt no less strongly. In his opinion, the sensations he was experiencing now could only be experienced by athletes who had received a sprain, or even a rupture of ligaments. Only unlike them, Peter's body hurt everywhere, from neck to legs.

Right now, he didn't care about the reasons for what had happened to him. For him, only one thing was important: to find out what happened to his mother. Swearing under his breath, ignoring all the pain, he got to his feet and, leaning on the objects nearby him, slowly headed towards his house.

Peter put his hand to his face, hoping to cheer up. He wanted it to help him get rid of the fatigue that had suddenly come over him. I felt something wet on my hand. He ran his hand over her face in disbelief and looked at the brush. The whole palm was red, it was his blood.

Shaking his palm, he ignored the blood pouring out of his nose like a faucet. The house was nearby. All you have to do is turn the corner and walk a few more tens of meters along the uneven asphalt that has not known the word repair for a long time, and he will be at home. The first thing he wanted to do now was hug his mother. She always hugged him, no matter how much he could annoy or frighten her, she didn't stop hugging him. And all because she loved him, and he loved her.

Peter instantly banished bad thoughts from himself. He didn't want to think that something bad could happen at home. For him, all this is just a bad dream, and it will end soon.

He turned the corner, headed to the left and froze in place for a few seconds. There were a lot of police cars parked near his house, and even more people were standing near the cordon at his house, which the police managed to quickly put up. People wanted to know what had happened. Peter's heart sank into his heels.

 — No... no, no, no! Ignoring the pain enveloping his body, he took off, stumbling several times along the way.

Squeezing through the people standing at his house, he ignored the police cordon and climbed over it. He was separated from the front door by only a few meters and one policeman who stopped Peter trying to break in.

 — Hey, man! — He called out to him. — What are you doing here? Where are your parents? You're not allowed in here…

 — Let me go! — Peter screamed desperately, trying to break free from the officer's strong grip. He tried to use his power again, but it, like everything that had happened in the last half hour, treacherously refused to be used. — There… My mom is there!

Surprised by the boy's statement, the officer loosened his grip a little, and looked excitedly at the boy's face. His eyebrows rose treacherously when he saw his appearance. The whole face was smeared with dirt, and the lower part was completely mixed with mud and blood. His pale face was covered with ragged white hair that covered his despairing blue eyes.

 "My God, what happened to you?" — he said, looking at him in confusion, — Barry, come here! Turning away from Peter, he called out to a dark—skinned man in a black suit standing nearby.

Feeling the officer's weakened grip, Peter deftly freed himself and instantly ran into the living room. Running home, all his worst fears were only confirmed with double force. The living room was destroyed, the TV was smashed to pieces, all the vases were lying on the floor. Broken windows let moonlight into the darkened areas of the room. And in the middle of all this mess lay the lifeless body of his mother.

 — Mom!

He ran up to her, and the policemen who ran in after him did not dare to pull the boy away from his mother's body. Her eyes were open, but there was absolutely no life in them. Her white blouse was red.

Peter felt despair, hatred and fear. Everything he saw now became the last straw for him, and he plunged into darkness, losing consciousness. Only now the feeling of falling asleep did not seem so sweet to him. It was searing, insidious and terrifying…

*

October 25, 2001

In one of the many wards of the local hospital, which was completely allocated for a young boy of seven years. Peter was lying on the bed, his blue eyes focused on the slightly cracked ceiling. His silver hair was scattered on the pillow. With one hand, he was scratching his right cheekbone with great force, so much so that this area had already begun to itch unpleasantly. However, this feeling of pain did not appear for long and disappeared almost instantly. It was all the more surprising considering that Peter had been irritating this part of his face for the past thirty minutes. An ordinary person's skin would have started to itch and burn unbearably a long time ago.

His gaze was frowning. Having stopped scratching his cheekbone, he rolled over on his side, looking out the window. The view of the city from the fifth floor of the hospital calmed him in many ways. The last few weeks he spent here in the hospital were very unpleasant for him. The bitterness of losing a loved one plunged the boy into depression, and he began to repeatedly plunge into his gloomy thoughts.

There was a TV in the room, it stood on a counter near the wall, directly opposite his bed. It was a generous gift from the hospital itself, to roll your own TV on a stand in the patient's room. With this action, the administration wanted to calm down and cheer up a little a seven-year-old boy who had suffered such an irreparable loss. Perhaps they thought that he would watch cartoons or any other entertainment program on TV for days.

That's just Peter himself never liked to watch children's shows. Who knows, maybe being a child then, in a previous life, he watched children's programs all day long. But now it seemed unbearable to him. Yes, he very often behaved like a child: he cried when he was injured; he was jealous; he did not like to share. He was convinced many times that, although he did not behave like many children of his age, and that he partially possessed adult consciousness, but, having been reborn, he still continued to be a child. He may be more adult, responsible and already with some formed views on some things, but a child. He himself did not understand his situation in many ways. Sometimes he just thought that he was like that in a previous life, but he couldn't remember it for sure.

The latest news was on the TV, mostly it was Peter who watched it, if he turned on the TV. Everything was as usual: all sorts of nonsense, the weather forecast. In general, he was convinced that his brain would not accept anything useful now. Peter took the remote control lying at his side in his hand and reached for the off button with his finger. But at the very last moment, he suddenly heard at least something that intrigued him.

— ... Now from the latest news, — the voice of the news anchor from the TV rang out, — The police still cannot find the killer of Isabella Maximoff, who was killed a few weeks ago under mysterious circumstances. What do you think, Tom, how soon will the police find at least some clues? She turned to the man standing to her left.

 — Well, Caitlin, the story really freezes the blood in the veins, — the presenter began to speak, — The department refused to give us any information about the case that happened. Such stories are especially frightening when they happen in our city. The crime rate here has always been low and now people are openly beginning to show dissatisfaction with the work of the police. No one feels protected.

 — They say that the deceased had a son?

 — Yes, the boy's name is Peter Ma…

The TV screen went dark, Peter turned off the power. Throwing back the control panel on the bedside table next to him, he spread out his hands with a sad sigh, looking at the cracked ceiling again.

 "I hate TV," Peter whispered, "and when will smartphones be invented?"

He had no memory of his past life, but sometimes small visions or scraps of information came to him. He was always sure that people with amnesia have much the same thing that happens to him.

Peter wondered if his relationship with his mother would remain the same in the future. His mood plummeted after the news. He started tossing and turning on his cot from side to side, wanting to calm a small tremor all over his body. He reached for his right cheekbone again.

These few weeks have really gone very badly for him. He was admitted to the hospital believing that Peter could have been beaten. His state after waking up was really like this. There was blood and dirt all over his face. The pajamas are torn in some places. His face was unusually pale, and the circles under his eyes could make an unprepared person take the boy for a monster.

His whole body ached very much after waking up, as did his head. She was spinning every time he tried to get out of bed, and her legs gave way during these attempts and gave off an unpleasant, piercing pain. The doctors immediately told him that he had multiple sprains, and cracks were noticed in his legs.

Peter was told that he might have to spend at least a month in the hospital, and he was really ready for this fate. That's just to his surprise, all the pain in his body disappeared the next day after waking up, as well as headaches. He tried to tell the doctors about it, but they refused to listen to him, mistaking the boy's conversations for his fantasy. After all, doctors really did know better about how to treat people, and they refused to listen to Peter's words that his wounds had already completely healed.

This made Peter very angry. A week after the tragedy, his mother's funeral was to take place. He was forbidden to go there, despite all the arguments and arguments. It hit him very hard. A lot of his mother's friends came to him, and in conversations with them he tried not to show his weakness, tried to joke and smile.

Police officers came to his room several times. They asked him about why he was not at home and whether he knew what had happened to his mother. Peter did not invent any excuses and said everything as it is. Of course, his stories that he just found himself outside his house in a second were not believed. Again, everything was attributed to the shock and stress of the boy and they did not address him with such questions anymore.

During the last visit of the police, his mood dropped even more. Due to the fact that Peter had no relatives on his father's side, custody of him was issued to his aunt, his mother's sister — Magda Maximoff.