He does not hesitate.
And yet—
As Pietro hurtles forward, the dreamscape clings to him, bleeding fragments of memory and desperate feeling into every step. His feet move through a world not fully real, a world woven from his own mind and Wanda's will—a flashback not remembered, but lived. Time fractures. Each beat of his heart pulls him deeper, each breath dragging him across the blurred edge between what was and what must be.
They had been here before.
In the cradle of that fading dreamscape, Pietro stood before Wanda. No longer the burning force of chaos—no, she was simply Wanda. Human. Breakable. Brave. Her bare feet brushed the cracked ground, and when she turned to him, her gaze carried the weight of centuries.
It was her sorrow that spoke first—so deep it could have drowned mountains.
"You want me to do what?!" Pietro's voice cracked like a whip across the stillness, shattering what little peace remained.
Wanda smiled then—a trembling, broken thing stitched from a thousand yesterdays.
"I want you to kill me," she breathed, and the dream itself seemed to shudder at her words.
The world around them fell silent. Even the wind forgot to move.
Pietro stumbled back, hands raised like he could ward off the very thought. "No. No, no, no—you're out of your mind. We'll find another way, Wanda. We always find another way."
Her smile deepened, bitter and sweet as honey laced with poison.
"There's no time," she said, her voice the hush of falling snow. "He's calling something worse. Something the world isn't ready to bear."
The dreamscape around them bruised and buckled, blades of grass shriveling into ash, the distant sky bleeding into darker hues. Even the stars seemed to close their eyes.
Wanda moved closer, light as a sigh, as if she no longer belonged to gravity.
"I've seen it," she whispered. "In Rin's mind. In the fractures Angra Mainyu left behind. I've seen the futures. The ruins. The deaths."
Her voice quivered—not from fear, but from the unbearable weight of knowing.
"I saw you die," she whispered, as if confession itself could break her. "I saw myself kneeling in the ruins, screaming your name into a sky that did not care."
Flashes of a dying world shimmered at the edge of vision—buildings crumbling into dust, hands reaching, reaching—and never quite reaching far enough.
"I won't survive it again," Wanda said, her voice trembling between defiance and surrender.
Pietro shook his head, breathless, broken. "You don't know that—"
"I do," she said, and her certainty was a knife wrapped in velvet. "I do."
She lifted her hands, and the shadows around them twisted into monstrous shapes—cities folding into themselves, oceans boiling away into oblivion.
"I can feel it in my veins," Wanda whispered, voice shattering like glass. "The corruption. The hunger. It's already hollowing me out."
Pietro could barely breathe under the pressure of her words. The dream warped, the ground splitting beneath their feet.
"If it takes me," she said, stepping into his shadow, "the world ends. And not just this one."
She reached out, cupped his face between trembling hands. Her palms were warm, unbearably real.
"You have to run," she said, forehead pressed against his. "You have to run through me."
Pietro flinched like a wounded thing, clutching her wrists. "I can't. I won't. You're my sister. You're all I have left."
Her smile, when it came, was gentle enough to stop the stars in their courses.
"You can," she murmured. "You must."
Tears streamed down Pietro's cheeks as he choked on the words he could not say. "You told me— You said you could make me fast enough to save you—!"
"I lied," Wanda whispered, and the confession broke something fragile in the air between them. "I had to. Otherwise you'd never run."
A soft red light unfurled beneath her fingertips, seeping into him—an unbearable warmth and sorrow stitched into one last, desperate gift.
"I'm already gone, Piet," she breathed into his hair. "This dream—this moment—it's the last thread of me you can still touch."
"No," he sobbed, burying his face against her shoulder like a child clinging to the ruins of home. "No, you're right here. You're still you."
"For a little while longer," Wanda said, brushing her lips across his forehead like a benediction. "Long enough to say goodbye."
The world around them began to fade—the grass, the sky, the stars peeling away like brittle paint from an old canvas.
She held him, rocking gently, humming the ghost of a lullaby he hadn't heard since they were young and unbroken.
Her thumbs brushed slow circles against his temples, light as a breath, as if merely soothing him. But hidden beneath that tender gesture, her magic stirred—gentle tendrils of scarlet weaving into his mind. Pietro gasped softly, blinking as if the weight of grief itself was numbing him.
Wanda's voice became the melody threading through the spell: a lullaby of old days, of cracked laughter and shared silences. Run, Pietro. You were always meant to run. Not just from pain, but toward hope.
His barriers, built from stubbornness and desperate love, cracked—then crumbled.
She guided his heart gently toward the only conclusion it could bear: that to save her, he must lose her.
A lie slid into the cracks she made, so delicately that Pietro didn't even notice—You won't be hurt by my powers. You're fast enough now. Fast enough to reach the end before the end reaches you.
Pietro buried his face against her shoulder, shuddering, unknowing that it was no longer just grief making him accept, but the faint shimmer of magic coaxing him to surrender.
"There's no time," she said again, her voice dissolving into the very bones of the dream. "Run, Pietro. One last time."
And with a final, trembling breath—
She let him go.
As Pietro vanished from the dreamscape, Wanda turned slowly.
A reflection of herself emerged from the crumbling mist—shifting, not solid, her features blurring and sharpening like a memory fighting to exist.
The other Wanda's voice was a ripple across still water, derisive yet hollow.
"So that's your grand plan? To pit your brother against us? Pathetic."
The reflection's smile twisted, a mockery of sorrow and triumph. Her edges bled into the air, her eyes glinting with a darkness that moved like smoke.
Wanda regarded her silently. There was no fear in her. No anger.
Only acceptance.
The reflection leaned in, their forms almost touching, two halves of a soul in quiet war.
"He won't succeed," the other whispered, voice echoing like a half-forgotten song. "You know that."
Wanda closed her eyes.
"Maybe," she murmured back, her words dissolving into the ether. "But he will try. And that... that is enough."
Around them, the dreamscape began to disintegrate—falling upward into the void, weightless as ash.
The world shatters.
Pietro bursts from the heart of the storm, reality crashing back around him. His feet skid across the cracked floor of the Mirror Dimension. The red maelstrom writhes around Wanda's suspended form like a living wound.
In his hand, the jeweled sword of Zelretch thrums with violent, chaotic power, a pulse that matches the dying beats of the world.
Rin, Thor, Hulk, Clint, Natasha—all can only watch, frozen between horror and helpless hope, as destiny unfurls.
Pietro's chest heaves. His eyes lock on Wanda—his sister, his twin, his beginning and end. Everything he had ever raced toward and away from.
And Wanda's eyes find his.
She smiles.
"Run."
Pietro runs.
One step—past fear.
Another—past doubt.
Each heartbeat an eternity, every footfall a prayer and a scream.
The sword gleams, burning bright enough to blind, enough to sear memory into the marrow of time itself.
He crosses the final distance.
He drives the blade into her heart.
Light explodes, white and endless. A scream tears the heavens—but it is not pain. It is release. It is freedom.
The storm collapses inward, sucked into the point of the sword. The sky turns hollow and still. Debris vaporizes. The crimson rage fades into sparkling ash, dissolving like breath on a cold morning.
Pietro falls to his knees, gasping, his body spent, his soul shredded.
Where Wanda had been, there is only falling light—and silence, vast and unending.
Behind him, the Avengers begin to move again, slowly, cautiously. They don't approach yet. They know this moment isn't theirs to intrude upon.
Pietro remains there, bowed, trembling.
Somewhere inside him, he can still hear her voice, stitched into the very fabric of the air.
Run, Piet. Run.
But now, there's nowhere left to go.
Only forward.
And so, broken but breathing, Pietro rises.
The last race had ended.