Every cloud has a silver lining (and a scarlet one)

One fine Saturday – a day that was unofficially deemed as a cleaning day in the school – Ororo finally decided to take the win she earned in the mini-basketball tournament she had with Scott. He tried to unsubscribe himself from the deal, citing the fact that their rematch was thwarted by his heatstroke and that he urgently needed to go to the church’s backyard where Peter and Kurt were sorting out the building materials, but the girl was inexorable.

“You missed it over there,” Ororo shouted over the hum of the vacuum cleaner and pointed to a hard-to-reach place under the cupboard in the corner of the room.

“I know, I’m just getting there,” her friend shouted back and mimicked her in mockery.

He had the impression that right before he stepped into the room a series of tornados swept through it. The place was a total nightmare: pieces of clothes were hanging from the sash, things peeping out of the half-opened drawers, and threatening to roll out of the cabinets; there were colorful wooden beds forming alliances with dust bunnies and crumbs under the coffee table and pink tumbleweeds (read hair) traveling across the floor. A plate with a half-eaten piece of pie on caused a gag reflex every time the young man’s gaze accidentally fell on the windowsill. And the girl seemed to thrive in this chaos as she sprawled in an armchair, legs casually thrown over the armpad, and crunched with popcorn.

Scott turned off the vacuum cleaner, put it aside, and squatted down to look under the cupboard. More dust was waiting for him there.

“I think we’ve got the perfect spot!” Wanda chirped, popping up in the doorway out of nowhere.    

The young man flinched, hitting his head on the drawer’s handle.

“Shoes off!” he ordered, freezing the girl and Jean, who was trailing behind her, on the spot.

“O-kay, mom,” Wanda drawled, teasing him, but took off her low Converses with embroidered sunflowers.

The red-haired telepath cast an apologetic glance at Scott and slipped out of her flats, putting them and Wanda’s sneakers at the door. She chose to perch on the windowsill and swim in the currents of the draft, but before that, her telekinetic power had to lift the spoiled piece of pie, tear it into small pieces and blow them out of the room. The young man loosened a grateful sigh.

Actually, the reason Jean even paid attention to this detail was that her power stumbled upon a disgusted thought in Scott’s mind. Purely by accident. And instead of pretending that the telepath’s rule number one wasn’t violated and simply letting things go as they were, she said mind to mind with the young man, She’s been living on the streets her whole adult life, let her adjust to the idea of having her own space.

I get it, he replied. It’s just I’ll never ever play basketball with her.

Maybe the winner should get another type of prize next time?

That’s a good issue to take.

The youngsters exchanged smiles.

“We walked through the places Jean marked and there’s one beech about half a mile from the mansion that is just everything you imagine when you think about a treehouse,” Wanda said as she settled down on the bed, stacking her knees to one side and propping herself up on a healthy hand. “Its roots go deep, and the wood is dense enough to hold the structure we are going to build, and also withstand strong winds.”

The surprise was written across Ororo’s face. “Whoa, did you become an expert or something?”

The girl snorted. “Wait until Peter will come. Reading stuff about building before bed pays off in a way.”

As if saying a person’s name aloud could summon them, the speedster appeared at the door to the quarter. He pulled off his goggles, dark eyes twinkling with something like triumph, and sat them on top of his head. In a second, blue smoke swirled in the air as Kurt materialized just beside him.

“I confused the rooms!” the teleport immediately exclaimed.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Peter crooned with mock understanding. He whizzed to the armchair where Ororo was sitting and made himself comfortable on its free armpad. “You can have excuses or results.”

“Man, the shoes!” Scott exclaimed, attention fixed on his friend’s feet.

The speedster looked down at his shining silver Nikes and grinned. “Yeah. These are the dopest I own.”

“He meant that you should take them off,” Ororo intervened with a smirk.

“Yeah. He finally decided to pay off his debt,” Wanda added in a pointed tone.

“Ohhh,” Peter drawled dramatically.

The next second he was sitting crossed-legged on the bed next to his sister, his sneakers parked at the door, a trail of dust flying in the air showed the path he took when dropped into superspeed. A bag of popcorn migrated from the Storm Ruler to his dexterous kleptomaniac fingers, by the way. It made the girl click her tongue.

Kurt glanced up from his bare feet to Scott’s face, silently asking what one should do in case he wanders around without shoes.

The young man waved his hand in a “whatever” gesture.

“Bud, you can stop trying to beat him,” he said to the teleport who went to take a seat on the bedside ottoman. “If it’s a short distance, Peter will win, no doubt.”

“You compete on speed?” Jean asked, lifting her brows.

“I’m sure I can get to the chosen point faster than he,” Kurt answered with surprising determination.

“Trying to outrun a speedster is a lost cause by default,” Wanda noted, not unsympathetic toward her friend though.

Emanating smugness, the speedster winked at the teleport.

“What did we miss?” he asked, jumping to another topic.

Want to show off your knowledge? the look in his sister’s eyes said. “We were talking about our options for a treehouse,” the girl replied nonchalantly.

His face became a mask of a know-all connoisseur. “Oak and maple are the best choices. Apple, beech, or hemlock can work out pretty well too. The key is to find a tree strong enough to hold your construction and weather all the climatic changes.”

Without looking at Wanda, he meets her hand in a high five.

Posers, an amusing thought crossed their friends’ minds.

“So, what’s our situation with the building materials?” Ororo asked, her gaze darting between Peter and Kurt.

“Many of the boards are swelled from moisture,” the latter replied.

The speedster took over, “The rest will be enough to build the frame and lay the floor.”

Scott pursed his lips. “Not quite what we planned.”

“Well, maybe we should settle for something less grand and meant for small children?” Jean suggested.

“Or we can think outside the box,” Wanda mused, chewing on her lower lip. “Let it be more like a gazebo.”

“Gazebo?” Scott repeated as if he had never heard the word before. Which, by the way, was probably true.

“Gazebo is a type of structure that provides you shelter but doesn’t really have walls,” Peter was quick to explain.

A crease formed between Kurt’s brows. “Doesn’t sound very safe for the children.”

“That’s why I said “like”,” Wanda pointed out. “We will do the wooden flooring but replace the walls with high railings and make a thatched roof. No one will let the kids be up there when it rains anyway and for the sunny days, it would be enough. Maybe it’s even better if the treehouse won’t be made entirely of wood. It’ll be more ventilated.”

The picture had not yet formed in Scott’s mind. “What will we make the railing from then?” he asked, puzzled.

“There are many branches laying around on the territory,” Ororo supplied, picking up on Wanda’s idea. “We have ropes to tie them together.”

“I don’t know, guys,” Jean drawled, rubbing her chin absentmindedly. “I feel like the chances that the Professor will give the green light to this modified version of a treehouse are lower than when we only started the discussion.”

“But we don’t expect him to agree to everything right away in any case, do we?” Kurt asked, looking around at his friends.

The twins seemed to be more ready for that sort of outcome than the rest of the gang as they nodded without a hitch.

Peter toyed with the popcorn box, now empty of the salty snack. “I think he is well aware that we are not engineers and we may not know all the subtleties,” he said pensively as his fingers folded the edges of the red-and-white cardboard, making outer and inner flaps to trap the maize kernels that didn’t pop.

Wanda tilted her head and added, “Plus, no one forbade him to make his own amendments to this project.”

Jean’s nose crinkled. “Not that he knows much about construction works either.”

“But Erik knows,” Ororo fairly noted. “And judging by the fact that we are sitting here –” she made a sweeping motion over the room “– and the roof has not collapsed on us, he really does.”

Something akin to pride lurked in the edge of the speedster’s mouth as it slowly lifted in a lopsided grin.

“But that’s already the third phase.” Scott held his hand up to stall his friends from rushing ahead. “Now we need to move on to the second one.”

“Which is…” Kurt left the phrase dangling in the air for someone to finish because he honestly had no idea what the young man was talking about. And he wasn’t alone.

“Come on. Isn’t it obvious?” Scott nudged them when the pause dragged on for an embarrassingly long moment.  

Wanda arched her brow, giving him a stink eye.

“We need to put our plan on paper. Sketch it, calculate how many materials we actually have, how many we need and all this stuff.”

“Ooohh,” the speedster drawled, chuckling, “then you better cross me and Wan out of this phase.” He didn’t forget to put the last word in quotation marks, drawing them in the air. “Unless you’re planning on building a death trap.”

His sister smirked.

“Alright then. You can walk through the school grounds, look for the natural materials we’ll need while we are busy with the theoretical side of the project,” Scott began to give instructions, already going through the drawer of Ororo’s desk in search of the paper and pens.

“Excuse me, captain,” Ororo checked him, having none of it. The young man paused and turned his head to her. “I don’t remember you finishing another “project” you’ve been working on since morning.”

“Really? Now?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Scott lingered for a minute or so, but, with a highly disgruntled tsk, closed the drawer, picked up the vacuum cleaner’s handle, and pressed a red button on the suction control panel. The loud humming filled the room once again as the young man resumed his buttle with dust bunnies.

The girl, meanwhile, found the necessary stationery and together with Jean and Kurt settled down at the desk to deal with all the calculations. The atmosphere was not particularly suitable for such an occupation but they were managing. Ororo was mainly writing down the information Kurt was giving when Jean asked him one question after another.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, the hum stopped because Scott switched to cleaning various details of décor so the red-haired telepath noticed that the twins were in the middle of some lively discussion.

She glanced over her shoulder and asked, “What’s your agenda besides the treehouse?”

They went silent right away, blinking at her innocently. But she had already spotted the spark that promised troubles and wasn’t going to let go of it without an explanation.

Kurt and Ororo also twisted in their seats to face the twins, Scott put aside a vase he was dusting.

The brother and sister exchanged a look. Peter lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug and Wanda crooned an answer rather reluctantly, “We’ve been thinking to set up a date for Hank and Raven for quite a while now.”

“Honestly, I don’t think they are a good match,” Jean said, calling in question their intention. “She’s her own creature. Tough. Independent. Always on the go. And he is –” She curled her lips and slowly shook her head “– He is just not that.”

Scott seemed to be more romantically oriented. “Sometimes opposites attract.”

A grimace twisted Peter’s face. “How many Cosmopolitans did you read?”

“It’s physics,” Scott said flatly.

“Nope. It’s psychology. Winch’s theory from the late 1950s actually,” Wanda refuted the young man’s statement, wicked amusement twinkling in her eyes.

Kurt scratched the tip of his nose, hiding a smile.

“Either way, we really shouldn’t listen to you,” Ororo teased Scott, alluding to the time when he bragged about figuring out all the basic laws in physics before the test but the 56% score said otherwise.

The young man dropped the cloth and crossed his arms over his chest. “If you think it’s easy, why won’t you go and pass the test yourself?” he challenged the Storm Ruler.

“Relax. I’m not saying I would nail it,” the girl said in a placating tone. Then, “I only say that it would probably take me less than five tries to pass it.”

Scott’s dignity considered it a public humiliation so he was ready to throw down the gauntlet. He crossed the room, came up to the desk where a part of the gang was sitting, and extended his hand to Ororo. “Let’s settle it once and for all. You have four attempts to pass the test. If you lose, you no longer tease me with this damned physics. None of you.” He tried to make an intimidating eye contact with every member of the gang even though it was an impossible task thanks to the dark lenses of his glasses. It striked Wanda as a sad circumstance, much to her surprise.

“And if I win?” Ororo asked, her eyes narrowed.

Jean prayed that the young man wouldn’t walk into the same water again.

“What do you want?” Scott asked with a slight jerk of his chin.

When an idea popped up in her head, a foxlike grin twisted her mouth. “Be my genie. Grant me three wishes.”

“One.”

“Two.”

“One.”

The girl rolled her eyes but agreed, shaking hands with Scott.

“Jesus,” he hissed out as he withdrew his hand in one brisk movement, his fingers tingled from the base to the tips. A bit of electricity might have accidentally slipped out of Ororo’s grasp to spice up the deal.

Kurt opened his mouth but the gang got ahead of him, saying in synchrony, “Don’t take the name of the Lord in vain.”

....

Later that day Ororo visited the library and retrieved every physics book she could put her hands on. She was dead set on winning this round too. Not as much for the prize itself as for the sake of overcoming the opposition.

Kurt got arguably lucky in comparison to her, the girl sometimes thought. He didn’t get to experience what it was like when circumstances took away people whom you loved the most and then watch how the ones that were left allowed the circumstances to tear them away from you. Ororo was ten when the village she had been living in since her parents were killed turned against her, her grandparents included. They banished her from their house not wanting to shelter someone whose mood swing could cause a drought or winds so powerful they knocked the roofs off of the fragile shacks. The girl had to run, to hide in abandoned houses, to steal. She felt abandoned and alone, having no one to turn to. She had survived the perpetual hunger, the heat, the terror of not knowing where she was going to spend the night or what or whom the day could bring. Ororo knew what it was like when your life diminished to surviving the week, the day, the hour ahead, and had survived it all.

Around her fourteens, the girl finally made it to Cairo where she ran into the outcasts just like her. Not mutants, but forgone children of a desert. And life became less lonely and more…adventurous.

It didn’t take much for Apocalypse to win her over. He stood up for her because of who she was, promised her a world where her powers would be honored, and would not make a monster out of her in people’s eyes. A better world. Such power surged through her veins that day, Ororo sank in it and let it cloud her judgment. When the Professor appealed to her and looked deep into her heart not mind, knowing that all the obstacles she got through didn’t make it callused enough to accept the killing of people, he was right. Regardless of her desire to have a life different from what she had, Ororo felt uncomfortable with the methods Apocalypse used. Watching how this man squeezed Mystique’s neck, suffocating the symbol of freedom of choice, finally flipped the switch.

Life in the mansion was everything the girl dreamt of. She was immensely grateful to Xavier for believing in her goodwill enough to let her in. However, it didn’t mean that the transition came easy to her. In those days when Erik and Jean were rebuilding the school and many of the children lived in tents, Ororo slept better than later, on a soft bed in a quarter that was her own. The first week she didn’t sleep at all. She would come downstairs early in the morning and walk through the arboretum first, then go to the kitchen to help the cooks prepare breakfast. Similar to Erik, the girl felt that she owed the Professor too much to just sit idly in her room.

Over time, Ororo began to accept the stability this new home offered and was able to snuggle between the clean sheets till late in the morning or enjoy a plate or two of spaghetti without casting cautious glances around. She never stopped waiting for an obstacle to show up on the horizon and even though Scott’s challenge was just a childish undertaking, the girl took it as a chance to show that there was much more to her than a once-abandoned child. She could be whatever she chose to be.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” the Storm Ruler muttered, opening a physics textbook with determination.

....

The chances of losing an ice cream without a trace once the package is opened are low but never zero. Especially when there is a speedster living nearby. Darren had to learn this lesson the hard way. The poor boy lost his Goldie first (luckily Wanda was not a fan of fishes so he got his pet back) and now an afternoon snack vanished right from his hands. In desperation, he threw the empty package on the ground and stomped toward the mansion.

“Don’t litter, young man,” Alan said in a soft voice, which, however, didn’t prompt one to take his words lightly.

Legs crossed, the chemistry teacher was sitting on the bench, reading a newspaper in the shadow of a mighty oak tree. He barely took his gaze off the page to look at Darren but it was enough for the boy to return to the thrown package, pick it up, and mumble, “Sorry, Mr. Edwards,” before going back to the school.

Alan turned the page, the expression on his face was pure of pure bliss. A gentle breeze was playing with his white hair, carrying the rich honey-vanilla scent of hydrangeas with it. The day was sunny yet surprisingly devoid of heat, although the man still rolled the sleeves of his white shirt up to his elbows. In a nutshell, what was not to enjoy?

Suddenly, a violent gust almost ripped the newspaper from Alan’s hands and showered him with dirt.

“For the love of God,” the teacher got out, coughing, his brows drawn together.

He grabbed his read with one hand, brushing off the dirt from his face with the other. A quick glance around didn’t pick anything abnormal so the man grimaced to himself and unfolded his paper.

Another rush of wind swept past the bench, shoving Alan’s neatly styled hair back away from his face and sending the newspaper flying in the air. Somewhere in the distance, a startled yelp was heard.

Blinking away the dust, the man rose to his feet. He nearly flinched when he opened his eyes and found Magneto standing practically beside him.

“Hello,” the chemistry teacher drawled hesitantly, his frantic fingers ran down to the edge of his vest and pulled it to smooth out the grey fabric.

The look in those bluish eyes was odd, focused on the space somewhere above the walkway as if the Master of Magnetism was trying to look through the fabric of the universe itself.

“I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced,” the man went on. “I’m Alan Edwards.”

That sharp gaze shifted to Alan’s face, to the hand he extended and for a fraction of a second, the teacher felt like he was a boy who just made himself look like a complete fool. At last, Magneto responded with a firm handshake.

“Erik,” he simply said.

From the corner of his eye, the teacher noticed some shimmering in the air but didn’t pay it much attention.

“Went out for some fresh air?” he asked with a polite smile.

Erik tilted his head slightly. “One can say that.”

In the next moment, somewhere on the periphery of Alan’s vision, an explosion happened. There was a flash of silver in the air before a light shock wave cut through the space, stirring the dirt from the ground and turning it into a cloud that swallowed up everything around. Out of instinct, the man shrank back, his arms coming up to wrap around his head. Something pricked his knee and wrapped around his right leg. No deafening noise startled his ears though. Instead, there was a bit of clutter and an indignant, “What the hell?”.

Slowly, Alan lowered his arms and turned around, his round eyes looked for the Master of Magnetism. The man was standing right at his side like a rock, the only evidence that something even happened was a slight tilt to his head and closed eyes. The teacher flicked his gaze to the blast site and there, on the walkway, right on the ground a young man was sitting, tree branches scattered all around him. He blew out a sharp breath, wiped the lenses of his goggles with the backs of his palms, and outstretched his arm, feeling the space to his left. A sort of net woven from the smallest objects shimmering in the sunlight was stretched there, and it bounced back every time the youngster tried to push his fingers through, resisting the touch.

“Played enough?” Erik asked the speedster and the net collapsed, turning into useless metallic pieces. Alan wasn’t ready to cross his heart and hope to die but it seemed to him that the man’s voice held amused notes.

The words drew a grimace out of the silver-haired boy. Groaning, he got up from the ground and inspected his clothes rather meticulously. “Thanks, man,” he groaned as he tried to dust off the backside of his jeans. “What if it triggered my emotional apocalypse trauma?”

A shadow passed across the face of the Master of Magnetism. “Did it?”

“No. But it had the potential,” the speedster said, not in earnest though.

When the goggles were off and the nearly black eyes met Alan’s gaze, a realization hit the man like a blow. None other than this youngster, Peter, the teacher remembered, helped him to his quarters after the night in a bar with Hank. He rarely saw him and probably a hangover coma was to be blamed for it but the man didn’t really think about this moment. Up until now.

“What’s up, Mr. Edwards?” Peter said, grinning.

“I’m doing well. Thank you,” Alan replied and scratched the back of his neck, averting his gaze elsewhere, embarrassed. The feeling only deepened when he found his newspaper wrapped around his leg. A flush crept up his face and if anyone thought that there was a lot of enthusiasm to the way the man squatted down to gather the pages, they weren’t wrong.

Meanwhile, the young man’s attention had already switched to his father.

“What was it anyway? Why did you stop me? Does this place have speed limits I don’t know about? Am I banned from using my power because Prof is angry? With, you know, New York thing and stuff? We had breakfast together, I thought we had it figured out! Kurt is jumping through space freely but I can’t do a little warm-up?”

Tension seemed to escalate with every other question Peter blasted out so that at the end Erik could only wonder how his son still had air in his lungs to breathe. He himself had to shake his head before he could reply, as if all the blubbering made him dizzy. “Charles is worried about the welfare of his students.”

Peter braced his hands on his hips, his expression turning somewhat smug. “Superspeed is my thing. Nothing will happen to me.”

“I was talking about other students.” The Master of Magnetism tipped his head toward the pond area. There was some fuss happening around a girl who looked wringing wet. The Professor was carefully wrapping her in a towel, cooing something to her along the way. She seemed to fall victim to supersonic speed before she quite literally fell into the water.

The speedster scrunched up his face in an apologetic grimace. “Oi.”

Puzzling over an enormous number of branches scattered on the ground around his son, Erik asked, “What do you need all this for?”

The minute the words left his lips the sight of this spot on the pathway became distorted. In a way, it was similar to watching a fast-moving stream of cars. Only in this case, the speed was too prohibitive for the human eyes to distinguish anything other than the fact that something was happening. The man barely had time to blink twice and the branches, together with Peter, were gone.

“It’s for a secret project.”

The reply to his question came with the sensation of his neck being held from behind. 

“Take care, Mr. Edwards,” the silver-haired boy loosed off to Alan and, even though the Master of Magnetism began to say “Peter, wait,”, dropped into superspeed, moving from the arboretum to the patio.

For Erik it felt like he had lost touch with gravity, which basically happened for a second, so he grabbed onto the balustrade, squeezing his eyes shut, his throat bobbed as he swallowed, fighting the rising nausea.

“Does it ever get easier?” he got out.

Peter’s lips protruded in a thoughtful pout before he said, “Better ask Wanda. She has a rich experience.”

He bent his right knee and brought his right foot to his glute with his hand, stretching the muscles of the recently healed leg.

Even hovering several feet above the ground, Erik could hear the snap of the bone. The leg bent with little effort under En Sabah Nur’s boot as if he kicked a standee. And the boy’s scream…It was gut-wrenching. It checked the Master of Magnetism but wasn’t enough to make him step in and stop Psylocke from swinging her blade. If it weren’t Raven in disguise, his son’s throat would be slashed open. His child would’ve spent the last moments of his life lying abandoned among the ruins, choking on his own blood and watching his father tearing apart the world where he still had his sisters and mother left.

I barely got out of my own apartment, Wanda said to him a long time ago.

Erik’s knuckles whitened.

“Though it seems to be more difficult for old people,” the speedster muttered, eyeing his father. He raced to the kitchen, poured some water into a glass, and went back to the man. Peter outstretched his arm, offering a cold drink, “Here. Take a sip. It should help.”

The Master of Magnetism shook his head slightly. Water could hardly wash off the feeling that was tearing him apart.

His voice was strained when he said, “Your sister mentioned that your mutation began to manifest when you were eight. How did it go?”

For better or for worse, it was not the kind of topic that popped up in a conversation, even at the school for mutants. The thought of encapsulating his experience into a sort of story was strange, but not unpleasant. Not when his father wanted to know every aspect of the life he didn’t have the chance to be a part of.

Peter leaned against the balustrade, plopping his elbow on the top rail, and said casually, “One day I just woke up and found a grey hair on my head. I thought that maybe I’m like that guy from a short story Wanda read. The man was aging in reverse. It wasn’t exactly my case, but, you know, life happens.”

“Benjamin Button?” Erik suggested. His head was still ducked but the grip on the balustrade seemed to loosen a bit.

“Yeah. Probably,” the speedster drawled, unsure. “I remember that his name was kinda funny.” He then looked down at the glass he was still holding, peering at his reflection. “I don’t remember myself with dark hair anymore. This color has grown on me over the years.

The Master of Magnetism cast a sideways glance at Peter, picking on the heaviness the last phrase carried.

“Mom didn’t attach much significance to it at first. She sounded the alarm when I began to look like a zebra. I think subconsciously she knew what was happening. I mean, your metalokinetic tricks are beyond the scope of normal –” he bulged his eyes to emphasize the word “– so why shouldn’t your child turn grey at eight, right?”

Erik’s heartbeat finally evened out. He heaved a sigh and turned his head to his son, fully facing him. “Did she drag you through the hospitals hoping that someone would cure your mutation?”

“No.” The young man put the glass with water between them in a firm movement. “Mom had been supportive every step of the way. She never forbade the use of our powers, even when it gave her more trouble than was necessary.”

His father gave him a nod of understanding. Back in the day, Maria was fascinated by his powers but their ways split on a bad note that could’ve changed her perspective on mutation. He had to ask.

“The thing was that my main mutation didn’t immediately manifest itself. But the day it did –” Peter smirked “– I remember it clearly.

“We were living in Oklahoma City at the time. Mom was able to get a job at the local diner so my sis and I always hung somewhere around, looking for trouble.

That Erik could picture easily.

“There was an old lady living down the street who was, like, obsessed with tie-dying and stuff. I don’t know what she loved so much about it but she produced dozens of T-shirts with psychedelic design. Her family probably had a basement full of them. Anyway, my sis and I were fooling around with our Super Balls. And –” Peter’s story came to an abrupt halt as it struck him that his father had missed all the cool things the 60s era offered. He missed all of it in fact because he was imprisoned in the Pentagon for the assassination he didn’t commit. His light mood dialed down a few notches.

“Just keep going with it,” the Master of Magnetism prompted rather gently, guessing what thought crossed his son’s mind.   

The young man turned around, resting his forearms on the top railing, copying his father’s stance.

“So, one of the balls bounced into a basin with a particularly colorful creation and the water splashed onto the wall of her house. It was, like, immaculately white and then it just...wasn’t,” he said on an exhale. “And as Wanda and I were running for our lives, the world became a blur for half a second before I found myself on an unfamiliar street, surrounded by abandoned houses. In Oklahoma City, there were quite a few of them on the outskirts.” A grimace of disgust seasoned with embarrassment twisted the speedster’s features. “My reaction to that first run was definitely not as restrained as yours.

Even though their gazes were mostly wandering around the school grounds, taking in its lavish greenness and the youngsters buzzing over their own agendas here and there, the moment weaved one more thread between the young man and his father, further binding them into a family.

“Poor sis was running around the city for an hour before she went to mom. They were about to go to the police but we somehow found the way to each other. That day we had a cherry-vanilla checkerboard ice cream for dinner.”   

The sun was slowly moving to the west so it was shining in their backs, bringing yellowish hues to Peter’s messy hair. He honestly looked like a dandelion.

The corners of Erik’s mouth turned up a bit.

“What about Wanda’s powers?” he asked.

Devilish sparks danced in those dark eyes when they focused on the man. “She’ll kill me if I tell you the whole preamble.”

“My lips are sealed,” the Master of Magnetism promised.

To lay out a few now harmless things about your sibling to your parent has always been a sinful pleasure, hasn’t it? Peter could do nothing but indulge in it.   

“Let’s fast-forward two years then,” he said with enthusiasm. “By that time, we had moved to Louisville and had been staying there for a couple of months already. Mom was thinking about settling for good so Wanda and I were making a real effort to fit in at school and the neighborhood. It paid off after a while and a group of cool kids invited us to hang out with them. Among them was one dude my sis had a crush on.”

Being a skillful storyteller, the speedster paused there, as if the sip he took from the misted glass was a real necessity, creating a dramatic suspense. Erik’s expression was stoic but Peter knew for sure his father was barely restraining his curious nature.

“She was primping for so long it began snowing when we finally made it outside. I mean, it was November but still.” The young man shook his head as if he was displeased with that fact to that day. “We lived in the southern states for the most part so snow was a luxury. Naturally, I started a snowball fight right away and Wanda was miserable because she cared more about her makeup, which, I must say, was awful. At some point, a snowball simply didn’t hit her. She was standing with her hands up and eyes squeezed shut, probably regretting that she and mom found me back then in Oklahoma, and the snowball was hanging in the air right in front of her face.”

A bittersweet feeling washed over the Master of Magnetism. He was glad to learn about his children’s lives and relieved to know that finding out their mutation was not a traumatic experience for any of them. Yet Peter’s words formed a picture too vivid in the man’s head. He should’ve been there, help them to understand their powers. Maybe he would’ve asked Charles’ help. Although… Would he meet Charles in that case?

The man pushed off the balustrade, took the glass, and emptied it of the once-cold water, wishing it was whisky.

“If I’m being honest, I felt such relief when I saw that snowball wrapped in the otherworldly red energy,” the young man admitted, his voice unusually quiet. “I thought it was magic. We still call Wan’s powers that way at home.”

“Your mother thought I was a magician when I lifted a coin without touching it,” Erik said with a glance down at his free hand. Once upon a time, he believed that coin-like tricks were all he could do. “It took a while before I convinced her otherwise.”

When he lifted his eyes back to his son, the young man had already straightened up and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, listening to him intently.

“Well, now she’s kinda hard to impress,” Peter noted jokingly, drawing a small smile out of Erik.

There was a recurring pattern in all of the stories the Master of Magnetism heard from the twins. San Francisco, Oklahoma City, Louisville, plenty of towns which names he didn’t remember. It took years before they reached Washington and chose it as their home.

“Why did you move so often? Why leave Louisville?” the man asked.

“Neither Wanda nor I ever asked for the reasons. Sometimes it felt like we were on a run, and sometimes the other way around, like we were looking for somebody.” The father and son stared at each other as the words sank in. If fear and resentment entwined with pricks of conscience in Maria’s soul that journey made so much sense. The speedster averted his gaze first, a slight crease forming between his brows. “As we grew older and our powers began to develop it became more about finding a progressive place to live in than anything else. It turned out that a grey-haired boy who was able to overrun a local soccer star and a girl who accidentally threw a pencil like a dart without even touching it could make quite a stir in a small town.”

“What did they do?” Erik asked in a deceptively calm voice.

“Nothing. No one did anything specific,” Peter hasten to reassure him. “It’s just that the atmosphere quickly became oppressive. All these whispers and sidelong glances…” The young man shivered.

They both lapsed into silent afterward.

With the empty glass still in hand, the Master of Magnetism turned his back to the view from the patio, leaning against the balustrade and peering at the fluffy clouds peacefully floating in the sky above.

Peter meanwhile spotted his sister who was wending her way through the lawn, accompanied by Jean. The latter was holding a sheet of paper in her hands so the young man assumed that the girls were going to check the place for the future treehouse again. Wanda perhaps had no idea that he was watching her, standing on the patio with their father.

“It’s crazy to think that for two years the three of us lived in the same city,” Peter suddenly said. He didn’t mean anything specific. It was just a thought that came to his mind and he felt like saying it out loud.

“And in a grim twist of fate I met you there only for us to part ways for seven years,” Erik said matter-of-factly.

The speedster ventured to bring up a fair but dangerous point. “During which you settled in Poland and had a wonderful family.”

“That’s it, I had,” the man snapped, pain and anger edged his features. His son held his breath, regretting the words that fell out of his mouth. One might’ve inadvertently doubted his sincerity, but despite the fact that for most of his life, Peter dreamed of having a father by his side, he did not have a drop of jealousy in his soul. He only sympathized with his father and grieved that he would never be able to meet Nina, his little sister. Before the speedster could come up with an awkward excuse to absent himself from the patio, the Master of Magnetism added, his tone much softer, “You and Wanda are my family too.”

Peter’s eyes flashed up to search his father’s face. Nothing in it gave a reason to believe that the words he heard were a ploy of his imagination. The young man stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Erik. It was a brief hug but he savored every millisecond of it, surprised to find how tall and muscly the Master of Magnetism actually was. Then, he pulled away and dropped out of superspeed.

“Are you hungry? What do you think about having a midday snack? Maybe a slice of apple? Or something more substantial? Twinkies?” the speedster blubbered out, threading his hand through his silver hair rather anxiously.

For Erik barely a minute had passed so his son’s offer came rather out of the blue but he gave him a nod of agreement, knowing that the boy needed to consume more calories per day than an average person due to his mutation. Only he had this feeling like he had been wrapped in a blanket and then it was ripped off of him. The man rubbed his chest where the comforting warmth still prevailed, wondering where it came from.

“So, you and Prof are, like, talking again?” Peter asked as they walked through the hall, heading to the kitchen.

“Hmm?”   

“You said Prof is worried about the students.”

“You don’t need to talk to Charles to know what is on his mind. It’s often written on his face,” the Master of Magnetism drawled pensively in reply. “I haven’t spoken to him yet. He has this habit of sticking his nose in other people’s business, thinking he is helping. Sometimes he does but eventually, the things that are the most important are needed to be handled in privacy.”

First Erik calls them family, then admits the value of his discovered fatherhood. Peter seriously started to worry that he dozed off at Wanda’s bedside and the last week was just a dream.

“What this secret project of yours is about, by the way? Does it have anything to do with the outdoor space organization?” the man asked all of a sudden.

The speedster’s head whipped to him, eyes round. “How do you know?”

“I walked in on you and Wanda sleeping on the construction magazines,” his father said, his curiosity piqued even more at the boy’s reaction.

“Oh, wow,” Peter mumbled, coming to a disturbing conclusion that, judging by the recent events, he and his sister must have lost their prudence somewhere. “Why didn’t you wake us up?”

“I wanted to see on which golden rule of framing you would drool first,” the Master of Magnetism said offhandedly.

A positively scandalized “oh-ho-ho” erupted from the young man, growing into a full-fledged chuckle of someone who could appreciate a good tease.

“That’s a low blow,” he drawled, his smile was a mirror image of the one that belonged to his father.

They rounded the marble table in the main hall, strolling past the thankfully empty office of the Professor, and finally reached the kitchen. The speedster’s stomach was about to pray on itself and since he didn’t have enough energy to cook a meal in superspeed, he had to come up with something easy yet nourishing.

“Do you like taco salad?” Peter asked, assessing the range of foods the fridge offered.

“I’m not sure I had one in my life,” Erik said over the trickle of water he just turned on. Judging by the ringing notes, the man was filling the kettle.

The speedster paused for a second, again surprised. His father had been through so much in this life and yet, when it came down to the simplest things everyone around enjoyed, he kept missing out. Peter felt like he ought to do something about it.

“Here,” he said as he half-turned to the opposite side of the room, throwing a tomato in that direction. Only he miscalculated a couple of things. Firstly, Erik controlled metal but in no way he was obliged to have steel sharp reflexes. Secondly, and it was directly connected with the first part of the abovementioned point if the man used something made of metal, he didn’t always have to hold it with his hands. Somehow it slipped out of the young man’s mind so when he threw the glossy red fruit, it plopped right into the kettle and splashed the unsuspicious Master of Magnetism with water. 

“Why didn’t you catch it? I said “Here”,” Peter tried to redeem himself straightaway.

The kettle lowered into the sink; the faucet turned itself off.

Erik’s gaze fell down to the soaked side of his blue shirt, then slowly lifted to focus on his son. His casual nature was somehow much more terrifying than when anger was taking over, rolling off him in waves.

“How about next time you throw something, you say, “Catch”?” the man suggested. “Doing so before you throw a thing can also be very helpful.”

““Here” is a synonym for “Catch”. It is, in a colloquial kind of way,” the speedster insisted in response to his father’s skeptical look. He tried to illustrate his point of view, throwing an imagined object every time he gave an example. “You say, “Here,” I toss you the keys.” or “Here, I toss you a pancake”.”

“A pancake?” Erik repeated in an impish tone.

“I’m hungry,” Peter said pointedly and dived back into the fridge, wreaking havoc on its shelves.

When he was done, he turned around, holding a whole bunch of food to his chest, and closed the door of the ice-box simply kicking it with his foot. The speedster lowered the treasures onto the table and braced his hands on his hips. Erik stepped closer, arms still crossed, and together they looked over two more tomatoes, lettuce, one bowl with cooked minced beef, and another one with grated cheese. The man was glad that for once the boy’s choice was health-wise.

“Today you’re gonna be my sous-chef. Tomatoes are on you,” Peter proclaimed casually with a quick glance at his father and went to rummage through the cabinets.

The Master of Magnetism raised his brows but obeyed, drying his shirt with a towel first. His son’s impulsiveness coupled with his superspeed made him decide against retrieving a knife with the power of magnetism. He pulled it out of the holder like an ordinary human, picked up the tomato from the kettle, and began peeling it. After a while the man felt being watched so he lifted his head, looking at Peter who seemed to freeze on the spot, holding a jar of olives and a can of beans in his hands.

“That’s so mom of you,” the young man drawled. He hastened to clarify his note, realizing how weird it must have sounded. “I mean, she does this thing too. I never figured how you can peel a tomato without losing the better part of it but it’s one of the few things mom can do when it comes to cooking.”

A knowing smile caught at Erik’s lips.

“How is she?”

As soon as he learned that the twins were his, his mind plunged into the distant past, hunting for the answers among long-forgotten images. It was easy to cling to pain and resentment, to anger at what could no longer be changed, and never once did the man’s thoughts extend beyond this, did not wonder what it was like for Maria to raise two mutant children when she herself barely stepped onto the path of adult life, where did it lead her to.

“She is doing as well as a single parent of three can. She’s been working at the telephone company for the last five years. Grew up to be a manager there. It’s good money. We have our own house. And a car.” Peter lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug and put a can of beans on the table. “Pretty much everything gran wanted for her.”

Taking the answer in, the Master of Magnetism nodded. So, they were happy, didn’t miss anything in their lives. He looked down at his hands. The juice of the peeled tomato streamed down his fingers and dripped red onto the white cutting board, filling in the numerous marks left there by a knife until it looked like a bloody cobweb on the snow. The man’s brows knitted. “Why were you looking for me?”

What can I give you now?

The answer was not coming a long time. Erik thought that maybe he didn’t voice the question, or perhaps he was too slow for the silver-haired boy who, bored, fled from the kitchen, finding something important to do. One glance at him proved the man wrong. He had never seen such a look in these dark eyes.

“What do you mean ‘Why’? You didn’t run off on me and Wan. And we weren’t like, ‘We don’t like you. You don’t get to be our father. Go away’. Neither of us had chosen this.” The jar in Peter’s hands popped as he opened the lid in one sharp movement. “‘Why’,” he repeated with an offended snort and shook his head.

The speedster picked up a cutting board and a knife and began to chop the olives in half. Erik watched him silently, lips pursed, wanting to sidestep the table and ruffle these silver locks. Or better even, pull his son in a tight embrace. But he remembered how something he had said earlier on the patio seemed to make Peter feel uncomfortable so the man kept his wish a wish only, fearful to rush things his children might not be ready for.

....

There is a special kind of beauty in the early morning. No matter the season reigning behind your window, you find yourself cocooned in a blanket, toes curled, tickled by the naughty draft that seems to always find its way into the room. The pillow feels softer, almost like it’s a cloud that murmurs, “Here, here, my friend. Don’t you worry, you have all the time in the world,” and rests your head against its shoulder. The sun does a lazy stretch on the horizon, its rays reach all the corners of the world, even the darkest, and shush away the magic Morpheus cast when his muse, Moon, bloomed high in the blues of the sky.

Being an early bird, Erik had the chance to take in all of that beauty. Although there was one thing that stood out for him in particular – silence. Not that strained kind that settled like a heavy burden on his shoulders. The morning silence coated him in peace. He loved waking up with Magda curled up at his side, her long dark hair often invaded his privacy, covering his face like a veil. The man didn’t mind it, only brushed it off, gently, so as not to wake her up, placed a kiss on her temple, and went to check on Nina. He would then sneak down the stairs, put the kettle on the stove, and when the water boiled, he would make himself a cup of coffee. If the weather was warm enough, he would go out on the porch, enjoying his hot drink and fresh air, flavored with the scent of pines.

This routine suffered major changes but as Erik’s heart kept the same beat in his chest, he continued to wake up before sunrise, drink a cup of coffee, and go outside. Even though sometimes it felt pointless. Sometimes there was nothing to feel at all. And most days it was agony.

The Master of Magnetism didn’t know what he was opening the door to today but when he turned the doorknob and pulled it, he found Wanda standing on the threshold of his quarter. Her hand, fingers curled into a harmless fist, froze in the air, caught off guard at the moment when she clearly intended to knock on the door.

“Hey,” she said quietly. A smile instantly lifted the corners of her lips, lighting up her face but mostly her eyes. They were magnificent in their forest green color but the true beauty was in the way she was looking at Erik. He could see his daughter’s heart, full of care, reaching out to him.

“What are you doing up so early?” he asked, a slight crease began to gather between his brows.

“One early bird asked another,” the girl bantered. Then she added, responding to her father’s gaze that slipped to the left and right down the hall, “If you are looking for a more interesting answer, you need Peter. Mornings are always promising when he’s already out of his bed at this hour.”

A light smirk kissed off the tension lurking in the man’s features. He opened the door wider and stepped aside, inviting Wanda to continue the conversation in his quarter, but she didn’t move.

The girl was twisting the ring with a black stone on her middle finger as she chirped, “Actually, I was hoping that you may be just as much eager to go back to work at the lab as I am, so I came to pick you up.”

If anyone asked the Master of Magnetism why he decided to take part in Hank’s project in the first place, he would likely frown and, after a long minute of silence, would leave the question unanswered. The scientist’s inventions had never been an object of his interest, least of all was the man himself. Attempts to “cure” mutation didn’t earn him points either. On top of that, Erik’s experience with laboratories was beyond horrendous, it would make anyone crawl into the farthest, darkest corner. Yet, every day for three weeks the man found himself working in one, side by side with somebody who was his polar opposite. The reason was now right in front of his eyes – Wanda. She managed to drag the Master of Magnetism into Hank’s project with such preternatural ease, the man wondered if their familial ties somehow played a role here.

Erik didn’t turn her offer back then when she was a stranger growing to be his friend of sorts, and he couldn’t say no now, knowing it was his daughter asking. Not that the girl had often phrased her offers as such, making them sound more like mild directives.

“I now see that you and your brother share a lot more things in common than meets the eye,” the man drawled, stepping over the threshold of his quarter and closing the door behind.

Something akin to relief passed across Wanda’s face like a shooting star before she arched her bow, skeptical. 

Together, they began strolling down the hall toward the stairs.

“Have you had your stitches already removed?” the Master of Magnetism asked. The girl’s shoulders were draped heavily with her wavy hair yet the absence of the arm sling didn’t go past his notice.

“I know, I know. I scolded Peter for refusing to take Hank’s advice regarding the post-fracture care and now I took this bloody thing off without Ms. Torres’ approval,” she replied in a monotonous “shame on me” manner. “But I swear to God, if I wear it one more day, I will start lashing out at people.”    

They reached the elevator tucked underneath the staircase and Erik pressed the button, metallic, with a glowing red trim. “Well, it’s a good thing that the operation room is right on our way to the laboratory,” he said calmly as they stood there, waiting. Hank or Ms. Torres or both of them must have already come down to level one.

Wanda cocked her head, challenging her father’s authority.

The elevator pinged, the doors opened and the Lehnsherrs walked in. The button with the number 1 imprinted on its smooth surface was pressed by itself, tapped by a brief scarlet spark first. Nothing in the girl’s expression gave a hint that she had something to do with it. She only covered her mouth with her hand, yawning.

Watching his sleepy child, the Master of Magnetism asked, a ghost of a meditative smile danced around his lips, “Don’t you want to have the summertime all to yourself and spend it outside with your friends instead of languishing in a stuffy laboratory?”

“Don’t tell Hank that, otherwise he will definitely fight you this time,” Wanda bantered with a grimace. She gathered her hair and threw it behind her back, uncovering the bandage on her left shoulder. “It’s the Oxfordian side effect, as I call it. I got used to being loaded with so many things I must do in a day, I actually make lists of these things so I wouldn’t miss something. And when you are a university student weekends are never really weekends either. So, when I have a spare minute it’s sometimes hard for me to just stop and do nothing. I get bored quickly and turn into a muffled version of my brother.”

A full-fledged smile tugged at Erik’s mouth this time.

The elevator pinged again and let the father and daughter out into the hall of level one. Both squinted, hit by the bright light of fluorescent lamps. It seemed like they weaned a bit from the underground atmosphere.

“This place honestly looks like a labyrinth made by a high-tech worm,” the girl drawled, eyeing the subbasement dappled with sphere-shaped doors. They didn’t bear any differentiating marks so if anyone unfamiliar with the layout of the space sneaked in, they would probably face a fit of panic relatively quickly.

“Don’t tell Hank that either,” the Master of Magnetism noted, though, in all honesty, he didn’t have it in him to care about the scientist’s feelings.

The closest to them X-insignia suddenly split into halves that slid away into the wall, giving the access to the room they were keeping sealed, or rather out of it since Ms. Torres appeared on the threshold. Her dark hair was gathered into a perfect ponytail with slightly curled ends and despite the early hour, the look in these hazel eyes was fresh and optimistic when they landed on the girl.

“Wanda,” she said in a soft voice. It turned tense once her gaze shifted to the man at the girl’s side. “Mr. Lehnsherr.”

Erik gave her a short nod of acknowledgment.

His daughter was more generous with her emotions, putting on an amicable smile. “Good morning, Ms. Torres. I was just about to swing by your office. It’s nothing serious, my shoulder is fine, and I’m not in pain. I just took off the arm sling and this grumpy gentleman over here –” she gestured with her thumb at the Master of Magnetism “– thinks that I should be examined first before I go back to work at the lab.”

Wanda’s level of familiarity with the infamous mutant terrorist seemed to shock the woman but her medical experience gained from undoubtedly difficult situations must have taught her to collect herself in mere seconds because it was what she had done. She willed her expression to be casual and said, “Well, wearing an arm sling for the three remaining days before I remove the stitches would be a preferred scenario but if you are careful, you will do just fine without it.” She even glanced at Erik. “Judging by what I see every day I change the bandage the recovery process goes as it should.”

The man wondered if Ms. Torres had the slightest suspicion that this very girl at his side was powerful enough to get into her head and alter a part of her memory where everything metal squished and the glass pattered, making her say what was convenient of her to say when Hank burst into the operation room.

“Are there any aftermaths we should worry about?” Erik asked though it would be more correct to phrase it as: when can I stop worrying about it.

The doctor shook her head. “I believe that the scar will be the only reminder of the injury. One may say that Wanda got lucky.”

In his world where he lost his mother to a bullet even though nature gifted him with control over metal and where his wife and little daughter were killed with a single arrow, Wanda Maximoff could be indeed called spared by ill fate. A couple of inches lower and that piece of glass could have pierced her heart or her left lung and Erik would’ve held another dead family member in his arms.

A gentle tap on his arm pulled him out of his stupor and made him realize that Ms. Torres was no longer around, since when and to where she had gone the man didn’t know.

“I should’ve brought you a cup of coffee,” Wanda said sympathetically, looping her arm through his and tugging him to move down the blue-tiled hall.

Erik obeyed, flexing his elbow for the girl’s comfort. “I would’ve considered it a bribe.”

It earned him a good-natured tsk.

Needless to say, Wanda and Erik’s appearance in the laboratory took Hank by surprise. He visibly flinched behind the microscope when the girl chirped, “Good morning,” which caused a slider with a drop of red substance to fall onto the floor. The man’s eyes flashed up to her face, the look in them was odd as if he were caught doing something nobody should have learned about.  

“I’ll pick it up,” Wanda volunteered to help him, already bending over the piece of glass, but the scientist rushed to reach it first, nearly knocking her in the head.

He shoved the slider into the pocket of his white lab coat as his gaze darted behind the girl’s back, to the Master of Magnetism. “What are you doing here?” he asked, more anxious than hostile.

“Aw, I’ve definitely missed this awkward atmosphere,” the girl drawled with a smile and stepped further, circling her healthy arm around Hank’s waist. Since the hug wasn’t reciprocated, she pulled away in a moment and blasted out, “Sorry. We are in the temple of science, serious business, and stuff. I’m being unprofessional.”

The scientist was blinking rapidly at her. “You came here to continue working on the sentinels project?”

“Did you finish it without us?” Wanda counterquestioned, a note of frustration clear in her voice.

“No, no. I haven’t been down here for a couple of days. Couldn’t bring myself to deal with the failed prototype…But also there were just other things I was busy with,” Hank added hastily with an air of dignity, a remark obviously meant for Erik’s ears.

The look the Master of Magnetism gave him was as flat and cold as the surface of the steal table in the far corner of the laboratory where the remains of the destroyed sentinel rested.

“Even better for us,” Wanda concluded. “We took a rather compelled but useful break and now we are back and ready to return to the project with renewed vigor and ideas.”

A proper thrust of her fist in the air would’ve served as a nice finishing touch to this short speech. Erik couldn’t help but admire his daughter’s attempt to imbue them with an enthusiasm which she seemed to have in excess. He uncrossed his arms and silently headed toward a pile of polymer that was a prototype of a robot just a week ago. Hank was about to do the same, though more reluctantly when the girl put her hand out.

“Oh, no, Erik and I are capable of handling it alone. You do your secret side project.”

“I don’t –” the scientist tried to object but Wanda cut him short with a meaningful, “Mm-hmm,” and a foxlike grin.

“Don’t be shy to come by to brag about the progress,” she said, walking backward, and winked at him.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind his company if it means that at the end of the day, it’s not just my hands that will be covered in engine oil,” the Master of Magnetism said to his daughter once she caught up with him.

“Well, it can be our reality if you take the high road and explain to him the true nature of things between you and Raven.”

“It’s not my concern.”

“Then a short quarantine period should do you both good,” the girl responded right away as if she didn’t expect to hear a different answer. When Erik cast a glance at her, there was neither disappointment nor condemnation written on her face, only plain understanding of the same stubbornness she had in her core. And a bit of amusement.

The footsteps clamoring against the shiny floor quieted as the father and daughter reached the corner of the laboratory that served them as their workstation. On the large metal table laid the head of the sentinel, just beneath it, leaning against the square leg, rested its upper body, and a few feet away, in a large container, seemed to be stored everything else that had survived the explosion.

“It reminds me of the day in the bunker,” Erik drawled with the faintest smirk. It was a nice day, the very first one they got to spend together, one-on-one. Wanda offered him a partnership back then, in jest, yet somehow it stuck with them, became their reality up until now. It was also the last time when she called him ‘Mr. Lehnsherr’. It felt so wrong and forced coming from her lips, unsurprisingly so, as it turned out.

“Well, we aren’t back to square one so it’s already something. Though Hank will have to replace all of the wiring.” The girl squatted down and traced a finger along the sharp edge of the hole in the robot’s chest. Her brows knitted. “And the shell is quite damaged. It would have been better if he used carbon instead of polymers.”

“How did you end up choosing literature as your major?” her father asked.

It wasn’t the first time when his daughter demonstrated the breadth of knowledge in different spheres of life. He was convinced that her perseverance and inquisitive mind could even conquer the laws of mathematics if she decided to take it up. But instead, she went to one of the most prestigious universities to learn more about someone’s fantasies. There was no criticism in that question, only curiosity. After all, the Master of Magnetism believed that one should choose whatever makes sense to them.

Wanda’s gaze lingered on the sentinel for one more pensive moment longer before she straightened up and walked over to her desk.

“When it comes to literature there are practically no laws or formulas to hold you back,” she said, opening the drawer. “You can lay bare your thoughts and emotions or drape them in metaphors or bring them to the point of absurdity in which someone will still find meaning.” The papers stored there rustled as she was going through them. “It’s also that rare case when words mean as much as the actions. While reading a book you sometimes feel like the writer lends a helping hand to you, despite the decades that separate you. I find it fascinating, worth studying and advertising so that all these younger generations knew where to look when their heads are swamped with the questions they don’t dare to voice.”

At last, the girl pulled out a stack of tracing paper that Erik recognized to be a folded poster. She went to lay it out on the table but as her left arm outstretched, rolling out a particularly stubborn edge, she winced. It was barely a ripple on the fair skin of her forehead yet it set her father’s mouth in a hard line. He came to her side in an instant, taking over the task.

“Do you like it there, in Oxford?” the Master of Magnetism asked, smoothing out the paper with the detailed scheme of a sentinel.

He more felt than saw that Wanda tilted her head to the side. It meant that she would likely hedge the question or give a half-answer.

“It’s fine,” she replied flatly, aligning with his expectations.

The man turned his face to her, studying her profile, and decided that a light banter had the chance to draw out more specifics. “That’s not quite how I pictured it.”

“That makes two of us,” the girl drawled on an exhale. A pleading look sparked in her eyes as their gazes met. “Please, don’t start the whole “Are you expelled?” topic. I’m so done arguing over it with mom, I don’t want to have this conversation-interrogation with you. If anything, I have an official document that pardons my absence at Oxford during the examination session. Signed by the Head of House of my college.”

Erik’s brow quirked up ever so slightly. “Do I come across as someone who wouldn’t take your word for it?”

“Absolutely!” Wanda exclaimed with an exaggerated eagerness.

He would have tapped the tip of her nose for that unapologetic, quick reply. Lightly. Merely a brush of a finger across the skin. Maybe it would have lifted the corner of her mouth up in a slightly annoyed yet lovely smile much like the one Nina gave him.

The Master of Magnetism shook his head ruefully. “Maybe bribing me with coffee wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”

His daughter curled her lips, nodding slowly, then broke the “I mourn the lost opportunity” mask with a lighthearted “That ship has sailed,” and smoothly stepped past him. She reached the container and took a look inside, coming to the same conclusion as the man: there wasn’t much valuable work for them to do. They could retrieve the robotic remains, evaluate their damage, guess what parts could be fixed and reused for the second prototype but the main task would remain unattained until Hank would work his engineering magic.

It was single-handedly and silently decided that Erik would take the part where he does everything while Wanda only scribbles down the steps that were taken. That way the man had plenty of chances to watch the girl and learn the things about her he should have already known by that time if he was a present father in her life. The way she held a pencil almost made the long, sharp nail of her index finger scrape the paper along with the pencil stem; her notebook laid diagonally, pointed toward her chest as she loomed over it. Despite the fact that Wanda was writing rather quickly – a skill apparently acquired at the numerous lectures – the letters came out almost calligraphic, with ornate Fs and pompous Hs. Her focus did not waver once, even when a couple of curls decided to swirl each other in front of her eyes. She bit her lower lip and tucked them behind her ear only when the sentence came to a full stop. It was then that her right temple caught a particular amount of Erik’s attention. There, a scar cut into her hairline. Seemingly painless and long ago healed, it was an inch-size line that stood out in the fluorescent lights of the laboratory.

The man opened his mouth right at the moment when his daughter had a question on the tip of her tongue.

“Where did you –”

“Don’t you think –”

They cut themselves short, an apologetic sort of smile broke on their faces.

“You go ahead,” the Master of Magnetism said with a slight wave of his hand.

Wanda rested her forearms on the table and carefully leaned forward, her brows drawn together. “Doesn’t Hank weird you out? It’s just I keep getting these sideways glances and it’s not, like, he’s worried that I’m back to work without an arm sling or anything. It’s something else.” She paused for a second and when the next question left her lips, her voice lowered even more, obtaining a secretive note. “Does he know that you and I are related?”

Raven believed the twins already saw Erik as their family and thus far these words were the closest he got from them to support this point. It felt…new.

The man shook his head in reply to his daughter’s question. Mystique was too good at keeping secrets. Perhaps too good. “As for the glances,” he said on an exhale, “it usually means that he is mustering up the courage to approach you with some ridiculous question. I’m horrified to imagine how many of them Raven received before he asked her on a date.”

The girl’s brows shot up. “They went on a date?”

“In the early days, I caught them wining and dining and discussing how to cure her mutation.”

The surprise on Wanda’s face took on a different, darker shade. It was now her who cast a sideway glance.

“What was your question?” she asked, tearing her attention from Hank’s figure on the opposite side of the laboratory.

Erik didn’t beat around the bush. “This scar on your temple. Does it have something to do with the ambush laid by the police that night on the road?”

“It wasn’t an ambush, it was a car accident,” the girl corrected him. “No. This?” She shook her head and pointed to the damaged stretch of her skin, allowing a somewhat bitter smirk to slip her throat. “This is the result of my imprudence, the laws of gravity, and a very sharp edge of the glass coffee table combined.”

But that impishness of her tone felt feigned, a cover to hide something that seemed to cause more unpleasant emotions in her soul to stir than the accident on the road. The man’s imagination had gone haywire. What could’ve happened in his child’s life that surpassed the horror of being held at gun point, being actually shot at? Wanda didn’t give him an opportunity to find it out.

“I think I’m gonna go grab some snacks for us,” she said, rising from her chair. “I overestimated my ability to function properly in the morning without having breakfast first.”

The girl gave him a clipped smile before she made herself scarce, most definitely sensing the swing of the mood.

What should he do? Was it worth digging into the past of his children if it were no longer possible to change it? He hated this feeling. Paralyzing helplessness. The knowledge that what had been done cannot be undone even if he found the names of all the offenders and hunted them down, punishing them for all the wrong they did to the twins. Revenge brought only a brief moment of satisfaction, nothing more. Erik knew it too well by now. Moreover, Wanda and Peter were already adults and determined young people who could and most likely had already figured out their problems on their own. But how should they move forward if forward was all that they had? Where was the starting point of their familial relationships if so many important milestones were already behind?

The heaviness in the man’s sigh was coming straight from his heart. His hands halted, hovering above the sentinel’s arm. Red and blue wires went along its carbon bone, visible from the holes in the bleak shell. A dismantled piece, much like Erik in this life.

The swish of the sliding door made the Master of Magnetism look up, spotting Wanda. She was back from the upper floor with a tray in her hands. Hank made a move, clearly intending to call her to his workplace but the girl spoke over his unvoiced request, clueless.

“Breakfast is coming your way,” she crooned to Erik as she placed the tray on an empty spot on the table.

“Are you changing your eating habits?” he asked, eyeing two cups of black coffee and a plate with sliced apples, pears, and peaches. A sip of steaming drink said: not that much. It burned the man’s taste buds with its sweetness. Wanda chuckled at the face her father made.

“So rude,” she reproached him in jest and took away the cup from his hands, replacing it with the one specifically meant for him. “I would love to have a toast with crispy bacon and grilled tomatoes or a fried egg and smoked sausage but I’m too lazy for that.”

“Sounds like a more British breakfast than what Charles usually has,” the Master of Magnetism noted.

The girl rolled her chair closer to him and planted herself onto the seat. Her gaze lingered on the variety of fruits for a brief moment before she picked a slice of pear with a fork, prudently taken from the drawer in the kitchen.

“If we are to trust Raven’s judgment, he is not a real Brit, so…” She lifted her shoulder in a half-shrug and put the chosen piece of fruit into her mouth.

The man clicked his tongue. “Poor Charles.”

Unlike her father, Wanda had genuine sympathy for the telepath. “Oh, he is. We all should give him a break.” She added quietly, not forcing, “And you should talk to him. I bet he is doing his best to keep away from your mind, trying to put two and two together this past week.”

Fingers curled around the cup, Erik leaned back in his office chair. “He is not the first on my list.”

“I know.” Sorrow lurked in the eyes of his daughter. “Peter and I are working on it. You have my word.”

Before Charles and Raven, before his beautiful wife Magda, there was a Jewish girl with dark curls and hazel eyes who accepted the Master of Magnetism the way he was. She didn’t run away from him because of his powers, even though no one even knew about the existence of mutants at the time. She hugged him tightly at night when another piece of memory from Auschwitz cut through his dream. She knew about the blood on his hands, yet it didn’t stop her from saying “I love you” one rainy evening in a cozy hotel room. But…Erik couldn’t get off the path of revenge. Not when he began to unravel a tangle of names and locations of those who slaughtered his people, Maria’s people. He offered her to come with him. It was irrational and kind of crazy, considering that the purpose of the trip to Europe couldn’t be more ruthless. Of course, she refused and tried to dissuade him, insisting on staying in the States, together, and when it didn’t work and their tempers flared up, she ripped herself from his life, abruptly and single-handedly. That day she already knew that she was carrying his children under her heart…

They needed to talk, if not for the purpose of finding closure, then at least for the sake of Peter and Wanda who had never even seen their parents in one room and suffered the most because of the existing tension.

The thing that kept Erik speechless was the fact that regardless of whatever admonitions against him Maria tried to hummer into the twins, they still ventured to find him. Well, for the most part, it was the speedster’s initiative, that much the Master of Magnetism was able to gather from what his children had been sharing with him lately. Wanda seemed to inherit his wariness and reluctance to alter the outlined course but at the same time, she didn’t force her views on Peter, allowing him to bring the change if he believed in its necessity. And while she missed Cairo, which in the man’s opinion was for the better, she was present here, in the mansion, at his side. Literally, since the girl was hovering over his shoulder, watching him darn a broken robot. It was one of those rare cases when Erik had nothing against his personal space being invaded.

Out of the blue, Hank appeared in their eye line. At least the Master of Magnetism noticed a flash of white lab coat somewhere in the close vicinity of the table they were working at to assume so before the man said, “Wanda, I need to have a word with you.”  

Wanda’s dark curls tickled the back of her father’s neck as her head tilted slightly at the sound of the scientist’s voice. “I firmly believe that there is nothing you can’t tell me when Erik is around,” she drawled distractedly, gaze fixed on the robotic joints.

Erik, on his part, had foreseen that these words, however flattering they were for him, would make Hank linger, weigh whether or not it was worth disclosing the matter right now. What he failed to predict was the dramatic twist of the unfolding conversation that made him go still in his seat.

“You’re a mutant,” the scientist said to the girl. A statement, not a question.

Slowly, Wanda lifted her eyes to his face as she drew up. “Excuse me?”

“I can’t tell what your power is but I’m certain it is inherited. You’re the second generation of mutants in your family.”

However hard it was for Erik to come to terms that the twins were his children, it was more about accepting the fact that he was left in the dark about their existence for over two decades rather than doubting that it was his blood that ran through their veins. Now it was almost like getting the results of a DNA test to confirm once more that he really had family left in this world. Only it was not the point at the moment.

Unprecedented confidence was woven through every word that fell out of Hank’s mouth as if it were not his wild guesses or the rumors he might’ve heard but something substantial, an irrefutable proof that he had in his hands and could’ve studied under the lenses of a microscope…

In the very beginning there were clear boundaries set for the partnership Hank and Wanda decided to step into – however comfortable and friendly they might have gotten with each other, there was no room for running a genetic test on her and her brother or even a discussion on that subject. There were reasons voiced and promises given and it seemed like none of it mattered anymore.

“The lab coat,” she muttered, furrowing as it dawned on her that the splashes of pink on the sliders her ‘friend’ was so protective of were her blood. There was no way for him to get it besides collecting her biometrical from the ruined piece of clothes she left in the operation room. She looked him dead in the eye. “Don’t play with me, Hank. Seriously. I’ve been under way too much pressure lately so you better say that this is a misunderstanding.”

Erik didn’t know how to feel about it. Whenever it came down to mutation, he had been an advocate for transparency, especially in the mutant community. So, there was nothing criminal in Hank’s desire to make things clear and know for sure with whom he had been working. However, the path he had chosen to go was beyond the pale even for the Master of Magnetism. His daughter trusted him and he had the audacity to dig in her genes without asking, while she was in the same room. She even cheered him up about this “side project”, for fuck’s sake.

The scientist folded his arms over his chest and said, wary rather than remorseful, “The other day, when we only began to assemble the prototype, the sensors registered a flow of energy. It was you, wasn’t it?” When the girl didn’t answer, he went on, “I checked the system after the explosion, you know? It turned out to be messed up even though I examined it the night before. Access to the laboratory is limited to me, Charles, and you. And it was you who convinced me to have the first run outside, so...”

The girl huffed a startled laugh.

Shoving an unfair accusation in his child’s face was not something Erik would tolerate.

“It was Raven. She messed the cables,” the man said cooly. Never a liar, he often got the look of utter disbelief, the one that the scientist sent him now.

The Master of Magnetism rose from his seat, the air around him vibrating from his anger. But before he could do so much as to round the table, two warm palms splayed across his chest, halting him. And green eyes won over his attention, soft and yet insistent. “It’s not worth it,” Wanda said quietly.

It was not worth it in the sense that a fight with Hank would only complicate her father’s relationship with Charles further. The girl, on the contrary…Her hands weren’t tied. It would cost him, to land a blow like that, to betray her trust and take away her right to decide if she wanted people around her to know about her mutation. And she wanted him to know that he dug his own grave.

When Wanda turned around, the scientist had already taken on his blue furry form, his clothes hugging him tight. Each step she made to close the gap between them was filled with such superiority, his tall and muscled figure lost its intimidating effect in her presence.      

“You want to know my power? See what I can do?” the girl asked, her voice low as she stopped in front of the man. She leaned forward, violating the boundaries of his personal space to grit out, “My gift is my own. I don’t owe you an explanation, not when you made it abandonly clear how wrong I was to consider us friends. In fact, I could burn this whole place to the fucking ground just for the sake of shaking this unpleasant feeling off my shoulders.” Wanda allowed a few beats of silence to pass for the threat to properly settle before she drew back, adding a much more neutral, “I could. But I won’t.”

She sidestepped Hank and the Master of Magnetism expected her to storm out of the room but she lingered, standing shoulder to shoulder with the scientist. It seemed like disappointment and pain from betrayal put down the roaring anger in her veins and perhaps there were enough friendly feelings left in her soul because she went against her own words, clarifying one thing for the man, “My plan was to just be here for my family, but somewhere along the way I refrained from it, thinking that maybe working with you on the sentinel project is my chance to be a part of something bigger than myself and my family. Something that can change a lot of lives for the better.”

That was when the girl reached the point of being ready to really leave. Her boots clomped in the dead silence that engulfed the laboratory so one could easily count how many feet were there between her now former working place and the door.  

It took a great deal of Erik’s will to send Hank a withering look instead of a tray but he managed to resist the impulse, respecting his daughter’s choice to settle a score in a peaceable manner, sort of. He hastened to retire from the scientist’s company, catching up to the girl in the hall but staying a few paces away so as not to crowd her. She didn’t acknowledge his presence and kept walking, striding past the elevator, opting for the stairs. Designed more as an emergency exit and seldomly (never) used, the place behind the round door was devoid of technological bells and whistles and looked, as well as smelled, like a secret passage in an 18^th century house. The man kept his silence as they climbed one step after another, thinking that if Raven was right and Wanda’s personality had similar patterns to his, she wouldn’t like to converse anyway. But also, he had no idea what to say to comfort her, a thing that by the way her fingers were flexing into shaking fists was exactly what she needed.

“Wanda,” Erik called after her once they emerged in the foyer. It didn’t slow her pace one bit.

“I need some fresh air,” Wanda replied without a backward glance, her voice hoarse.

The man watched his daughter rush through the main entrance of the mansion, suspecting that her eyes were silver-lined. It made his heart go heavy.

Mutant or not, when a parent knows that their kid has problems at school, they hasten to deal with the situation, having several tools for that at hand. The Master of Magnetism didn’t linger, heading straight to the principal’s office.

“Isn’t your school supposed to be a sanctuary?”

His voice must have cut in like a bolt from the blue because Charles flinched and slammed shut the book, he was holding with one hand. Apparently, it was quite a read because the tea in the porcelain cup that was sitting on the desk looked cold and untouched. The gaze of those ocean-blue eyes washed over Erik’s face.

“Erik,” the telepath breathed out, wonder and worry lacing the four letters.

Having crossed the room, the Master of Magnetism stopped between two leather chairs and rested his hands on the desk, its edge too smooth under his palms.

“How are all these youngsters supposed to feel better, safe here, for that matter, if they are studied under a microscope? Or is it just my children that seem like a specifically interesting specimen?”

He remembered how, in the first week after the mansion was rebuilt, Hank followed Peter around like an annoying fly, buzzing about running a couple of tests to study his mutation. The speedster kept laughing it off, but his discomfort was sipping through at times.

Charles put his book on the desk and mumbled, indeed looking lost, “I don’t understand.”

Erik let loose an exasperated sigh. “Hank decided that there was nothing atrocious if he just takes Wanda’s blood sample and runs a test on it without her permission. While she was in the same fucking room.”

The Professor closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head slowly.

“He later proceeded to accuse her of breaking his robot on purpose.”

That seemed to fill the telepath with the same indignation that was flooding his friend’s being. “What? Why?” he exclaimed, furrowing.

“Apparently, she was masterminding an intricate scheme against him. It’s this, or she simply was in the mood to murder all the pigeons and squirrels on these grounds,” the Master of Magnetism quipped darkly. “I don’t know ‘why’, Charles.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Charles promised right away with genuine passion.

“Wanda has already dealt with it herself,” Erik said, pushing off the desk and crossing his arms over his chest. “If he ignores her this time, then he will make a fool of all those ‘brilliant’ Harvard graduates.”

In essence, the man wasn’t sure why he came here. Perhaps it was his way of dealing with the feeling of helplessness but at the end of the day whatever the conversation Charles was going to have with Hank, it would not change the fact that the scientist’s actions irrevocably hurt his child.

The two men stared at each other, coming to the realization that this was the first tete-a-tete interaction they had since the failed sentinel’s launch and even though the Professor was craving the answers, both knew he wouldn’t pry them out of Erik. His method was different. It was kindness, soft words, and genuine promises that more often than not helped to draw out the truth without having to resort to something hazardous to health, mental or physical.

It was precisely the thing the Master of Magnetism suspected his old friend of when a careful smile touched his lips.

“So, your children?” Charles asked, his tone light.

This “ice breaker” was so unexpected, it felt like a bucket of cold water splashed into Erik’s face. But in a good sense of it, like it was a hot summer day and the splash was the most desirable thing on Earth. It toned down the unpleasant and knocked in some clarity, making things around look more vivid, real. Before the man began guessing if Charles looked into his head or figured everything out by himself or won Raven’s support, it dawned on him that the telepath only repeated what he heard several minutes earlier. The fact that Peter and Wanda are his children was not something Erik planned to keep a secret, not from his old friend anyway, yet the words slipped his tongue almost mindlessly, with such ease and so naturally, he didn’t even notice it until this moment came.

The Professor went on, “The twins seemed to truly grow on you. Even more, than I did over the years if they were able to convince you to stay.”

“They are my children,” the Master of Magnetism said, feeling the power of this bittersweet statement.

Perhaps being on the receiving end of the look he gave him made Charles understand that it was not some lovely, out-of-character sentiment but a fact. Or maybe the telepath no longer held back his power and allowed it to brush over Erik’s mind, so gently the man didn’t feel it. Whatever it was, the blissful expression on Charles’ face began gradually waning down. He huffed, utterly shocked but also kind of offended.

“How do I learn about it only now?” the man got out.

“I discovered it only a week ago myself,” Erik replied with a faint grimace.

And this kind of discovery turned the world upside down and forced the gears in the mind to go crazy, viewing every lived moment from a completely different angle. The Professor’s eyes seemed to take on a darker shade of blue as his brilliant mind was overtaken by a myriad of thoughts.

“What are you going to do?” he asked after all, his voice soft.

It was a question the Master of Magnetism asked himself countless times. The answer was always the same.

“Now that I’ve gotten to know them, things just can’t go back to being the way they were.”

Yes, he missed their whole life and it was hard and painful to accept but he has already felt that his world narrowed down to their existence. He couldn’t move on with his life and leave the twins behind.

The window that overlooked the entrance courtyard became the point of the man’s gaze. There, behind the squares of glass, a girl and a boy were playing tag, circling around the fountain. His girl was out somewhere there too, sulking alone instead of enjoying the day. There was one person who knew how to make her feel better and it wasn’t Charles.

“I need to find Peter,” Erik said, more to himself than to his friend.

However, the Professor seemed to read it as a request. His fingers flew to his temple and in a moment, he cued the man on the whereabouts of the speedster, “He is in the churchyard with his friends.”

Without further ado, the Master of Magnetism turned around and crossed the room. In the doorway, he ran into Hank but kept walking. He didn’t pay him a second glance even when being a few steps into the foyer, he heard the scientist say, “We need to talk about Wanda. She is –”

“No, I don’t want to hear it, Hank,” the telepath cut him off sharply.

“But –”

“How could your mind conjure this idea? Isn’t –”

The voices muffled to a hum of a distant argument until they were fully replaced by the measured gurgling of the fountain as Erik halted on the porch. He didn’t need to go any further to find his son because the boy was already standing in front of him, the crunch of the gravel coming late, not keeping up with the speed of his run across the courtyard.

“What’s up?” Peter asked with a grin that didn’t match the suspicion lingering in his dark eyes.

“Your sister might need you right now.”

The meaningful tone made the young man’s brows knit together.

“Where is she?”

The man scanned the area around as he said distractedly, “Somewhere on the school grounds.”

“I think I know a place,” the speedster mused, getting a nod of encouragement in return. He began to walk toward the ponds, but when he realized that the Master of Magnetism wasn’t following him, his steps came to a stop and a confused glance was sent over the shoulder. “Are you not coming?”

Erik slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The bond between the twins was strong, it seemed like nothing went in the life of one without another being aware of it in detail. But the ‘father figure’ was new to them and the man was not sure that Wanda wanted him around right now.

Peter seemed to see through that hesitance because he drawled in his usual impish manner, “Come on, man. If anything goes awry, I need a back-up. Or at least a witness.”

The man’s fingers grazed the chain of the locket he didn’t part with these days. It reminded him of Nina but also of his parents whose photos were tucked carefully inside the silver ornamental case. They had always been a close-knit family. Perhaps he had a deeper connection with his mother, but his father was a big part of his life too. He was the one who dealt with little Erik’s anger or sadness best, even if it meant just sitting next to each other in silence for a couple of hours.

The twins were no longer the mutants Erik had an affinity for. They were his children and if becoming a family was not an empty talk, both sides should engage in this relationship, in words and in practice.

Having left the porch, the Master of Magnetism caught up with his son and together they headed to where the latter believed Wanda was down on in solitude (relative since they were living in a school full of people). They must have taken the shorter route because there was no walkway, only neatly trimmed grass they were ruining with the ribbed soles of their shoes.

“Maybe you could fill me in on the situation?” Peter asked, casting a sideways glance at his father.

The man bowed his head, evading the low-hanging branch of a tree. “Hank figured out that she is a mutant.”

“It wasn’t that big of a secret for her to get so upset,” the speedster practically countered, suspecting there was more to it.

A pale buffy-orange butterfly with black tips on the forewings fluttered ahead of the young man as if it were the North Star come to life to show him the right path to his sister.

“Is it your brotherly senses that tell you she is upset or she has a habit of laying low when something hurts her?” the man asked, watching his son closely.

A corner of Peter’s mouth quirked up a bit. “We both know that my sis isn’t the type to run away from a fight and, judging by the fact that the school didn’t experience any turbulence, she is not angry.”

And indeed, not even a pencil moved in the laboratory even though Wanda’s emotions must have been running high as the situation was unfolding. Considering that she didn’t have any sort of training, her control over her powers impressed a mutant even as experienced as the Master of Magnetism.

“He ran a test on her blood sample behind her back,” Erik said into the peaceful quietness of the grove.

Peter’s face instantly twisted with indignation which a fern under his feet had to experience in full force. “The balls on this guy!” he exclaimed.

Despite the obvious instinct to get even with the offender of his twin, the silver-haired boy rushed forward. There, at the far end of the pond where a willow was reaching out for the still water, Wanda was sitting on the bench. Her chin was resting on her knee that she drew up to her chest and her dark hair curled around her face, hiding it from unwanted onlookers. The butterfly circled over her head for a brief moment before it fluttered elsewhere.

Having thought that he’d better give the twins a private moment, Erik didn’t follow Peter, staying in the shadows nearby. He watched his son cross the lawn and reach the bench, rounding it from behind. The speedster sat close to the girl, his shoulder brushing tenderly against her arm as he leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. That a conversation between these two had sparked could only be inferred from the body language: Wanda shook her head, seeming to claim that she was fine, Peter shook his head too but in a way that said: who are you trying to fool? After a couple of minutes, the young man’s shoulders relaxed, and the girl’s posture lost its dejected bend. She lowered her leg from the bench so that the noses of her boots now scraped the ground, and turned her head to the left. Those green eyes of hers immediately found the Master of Magnetism and he barely noticed those several feet that separated him from his children as his legs carried him to the bench where he sat at his daughter’s side.  

Wanda tilted her head toward her brother, the trails of dried tears on her slightly reddened cheeks caught the light of the afternoon sun. “Somebody told me that bringing flowers to cheer me up was too trivial –” she lifted her hand and Erik went still as she reached his hair “– but it works well more often than not.” A small yellowish flower appeared between her fingers.

“I didn’t see it,” Peter blasted out in response to the man’s look. Then, his attention flicked to his twin. “I refuse to share the credit I deserved with a plant. I was here first!”

The supple willow’s brunches wavered, rustling with their leaves as if in applause to the young man’s pretense childishness. But it served its purpose which was to bring a smile to Wanda’s lips, even if it were going to stay there only for a brief moment.

“I’m sorry I ran away like that,” the girl said to Erik in a quiet voice.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” her father replied right away. His thoughts didn’t even go in that direction. Regardless of whether she fled because it was easier for her to cope with emotions alone, or because she didn’t feel safe to be completely uninhibited around him, regret should not have become the aftermath of the day. Not for her at least. “I just want you to know that you can share everything with me. Both of you. Always.”

The Master of Magnetism did not expect that these words would make his children keen on being honest in an instant moment but it seemed that they unlocked something in his son because Peter said, “What about you? I know you said you prefer to deal with things on your own but…” The look in his dark eyes went soft. “We are in this together.”

Unable to say out loud the painful truth when these two full of expectations faces were turned to him, Erik averted his gaze. “It’s not easy to accept that you knew about our kinship for seven years whereas I had no idea about it at all,” he got out, fighting the sudden tightness in his throat for a whole minute first. “That I missed so many things in your life. I missed all of your life.”

“Is it why you brought up the memory Benjamin fished out of my mind?” Wanda asked carefully. “Does it bother you now?”

The man chanced a glance at her. “It bothered me since the night I saw it.”

He knew what it was like to be the one who is holding a gun as well as being held at gun point. Maybe his feelings about the scene on the highway he witnessed in his sleep intensified now, but it only proved that they had already been there, in his heart.

Their eyes were locked but even though Erik had a feeling of being read like a book, he couldn’t tell if his daughter believed what she saw. Something in her gaze was gradually clouding, losing its bright colors but also hardening with the determination of a mind being made up.

“I know our pretty faces could have tricked you into thinking that we are angels sent from Heaven,” the girl said with an impish upturn of her lips, a contradiction to the words on its own, “but we’ve always given mom a hard time. Especially in our late teen years.”

Peter smirked knowingly, with a hint of remorse.

“We had problems at school, at home, with our classmates, with random people, with control over our evolving powers. A whole rainbow of problems, if you will.”

“This one ran away from home a couple of times,” the speedster crooned from the corner of his mouth, gesturing with his thumb at his twin.

The Master of Magnetism shot an incredulous look at Wanda.

She scrunched up her face. “Yeah, I did.”

Erik’s experience with crises and children was limited to the phase Nina was going through when she was two years old. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to live with a rebel who could actually run away.

“And the last such escapade ended with a car accident a part of which you had the pleasure to see,” the girl said on an exhale, her gaze shifted to the pond a few feet ahead of the bench they occupied.

The way Peter looked away, fiddling with the hangnail on the finger of his right hand as if he was trying to busy his attention with anything but the coming up story, their father knew it was a hard experience for both of the youngsters. He shoved his question deep down his heart and patiently waited to hear what his daughter decided to share with him.

“I met Michael in high school. He was a year older than me but wasn’t like all of these seniors who would look down their noses at you. He actually helped me prepare for several chemistry tests that I had already flunked. And that was how we started hanging out together.” Wanda tucked her front curly locks behind her ears, the expression on her face was of someone who had long gotten over the feelings attached to the memory. It seemed like for her it was just a story from the past.

“He was the first person in this new school, in this city to whom I opened up, admitting I’m a mutant. We had our ups and downs but that was never an issue. Until the moment we decided to take a trip to Greenbelt late in the evening.” The mirror-like surface of the pond went in ripples, distorting the reflection of the bright blue sky. “I can’t tell what exactly happened back then. One moment we were listening to music and chatting, and another there was a car coming right into us. Michael swerved to avoid a collision but it did us little good. Our car flew into a ditch.”

The screech of the tires, the force of the crash that crumpled metal and broke the glass into a million sharp fragments that must have showered them…That all pieced into such a vivid picture in Erik’s mind, he had to remind himself that the girl was sitting beside him, unharmed.

“When I opened my eyes, the world was turned upside down. My power must have worked reflexively and whatever it did, it was contained purely to me because I didn’t get a single scratch whereas Michael…” A crease formed between her brows from the bloodied picture her mind must have supplied her with. She looked down at her hands, at the little flower her fingers were playing with all this time. “I dragged him out of the car to the side of the highway, hoping that someone would stop to help us…but those who were driving down this road just passed by. He was losing too much blood too fast so I turned to my power once again and that was when the cops pulled up.”

The Master of Magnetism remembered the way those police officers looked at his daughter, surrounding her like a wild animal. They considered the frightened girl to be the cause of the accident, and not another victim, and even her trembling hands, her tearful face, and full of terror eyes did not convince them otherwise. There was no need to tell this part to him again, it had already rooted firmly in his core.

Wanda must have felt that tension in the air or maybe she simply decided against repeating what was already known to her family because she jumped to what happened after the shot she was able to reflect.

“I managed to stop the bleeding, and when he cracked his eyes open and took in the sight of me, of what my power was actually capable of, he crawled away from me,” she said, a ghost of a bitter smile wandering around her lips. “I wasn’t wanted there so I checked the cops, made one to call for the ambulance, and walked away. I don’t even remember how I got home, only that Pete picked me up somewhere on the way there.”

“A couple of miles away from the Colmar Manor Community Park,” the young man supplied quietly. He turned his head to his sister and their father and his silver bangs fell over his eyebrow. “I knew something was wrong so I combed the city and the suburbs.”

The twins were a good team. Erik was eternally grateful that no matter the circumstances, in good times and in bad these two had each other. He tried to focus on that, instead of dwelling on the young man who rejected his daughter and caused her pain that must have been hard to work through.

“You know, it’s kinda funny that you asked me about it today,” Wanda said to her father, stunned amusement simmering between the words, “because until thisday I thought that this whole thing with Michael was the biggest betrayal of my life. Thanks to Hank I can add one more to my list.”

“I should have nailed him to the wall before he opened his mouth,” the man said on an exhale.

Out of the blue, a duct tape appeared in the hands of the speedster. His eyes twinkled meaningfully as he pulled the roll in one sharp movement and said, “Better late than never.”

It sent the girl chuckling.

“Slow your roll, you too,” she said calmly, with a fair share of gratitude though. “I’ll deal with it my way.”

“By the way,” Wanda added, turning to her father again, confusion drawn between her brows, “why did you say that Raven had something to do with the sentinel?”

“Because she did mess with the cables the night before the first run,” Erik revealed.

“What?!” the girl exclaimed, scaring off two pigeons that were heading toward the bench. “Wh–Why would she do that?”

“She knew I was going to leave the school but she didn’t want to take away your chance to tell me that we are a family. It was her way to stall me.”

Still in high dudgeon, Wanda grumbled, “Jesus, these two deserve each other.”

“Well, at least it worked,” Peter noted, trying to be positive. It earned him a strong slap on the arm.

“That was why your fight was so…fight-like?” the young man asked the Master of Magnetism and got a short nod as an answer. “I still don’t get what you can do to ruin the walls like that. Do you carry nunchucks with you or something?”   

Erik couldn’t help but smirk at that.

There was one more thing he could not do – take his eyes off his son. Even before he learned the truth about the Peter’s bloodline, he thought that there was something else catchy about the boy besides the cocky personality and incredible powers. It was like those slightly wavy hair clouding around his head and those dark eyes reminded the Master of Magnetism of the person who gave him love first in this world – his Mutter. It was a strange feeling the man couldn’t explain. Why the hell was he seen his mother in this kid? And now everything fell into place. In those rare moments when the mask of amusement fell from his face, the same serious thoughtfulness that was inherent in Edie Lehnsherr slipped into his brown eyes. And when that look full of worry and warmth centered on Erik, it was like she was still alive and her care washed over him.

The man pulled the locket on the silver chain out of his jeans’ pocket and opened it, showing Peter and Wanda two black-and-white photos. “There is someone I want you to meet.”