For MarburyBlur, who requests a fic where Peter becomes a Horseman of Apocalypse instead of Erik. I have the feeling this is going to be another long one...
With the rest of the basement in darkness, Magda could hardly see her son sat in front of the television absorbed in a news broadcast. Just the occasional glare of light over his face revealing that he was there at all. She'd never seen him sit so still, stood as still as she could herself at the top of the stairs to avoid tipping him off that she was watching. Told herself that he was fine, that she didn't need to be worrying about him as much as she was, and that all this talk of a Mutant god was just talk – Peter would know that, he was a smart kid for all his goofiness.
She worried anyway. Mothers knew when there was something up with their children, even if they couldn't put into words what it was. All the anti-Mutant prejudice that had sprung up since that day ten years ago when Mutantkind had been revealed to the world had a bad effect on her son. Added to the isolation from and sense of resentment toward the human world that had been growing ever since he was expelled from school at 14. He'd been sad and solitary and rebellious for years, but now she thought there was something else. Sometimes she thought he seemed to be getting angrier than he had been. With his sisters moved out, none of the prospects and milestones that an ordinary boy hitting his mid-twenties would have looked forward to, no escape from the whirring chaos in his head and now all this talk of Mutants on TV, it was understandable.
He'd become so good at hiding what he felt from her, she thought. Ever since that afternoon years ago when his twin sister had dragged him by one bleeding arm to show Magda what he'd done to himself. Ever since she'd taken him to the quiet, dark-wood panelled office in town and the kind lady doctor who had tried to get him to talk to her about how he was feeling. Ever since he'd refused to go back to her and refused to go out and refused any attempt at human friendship, there was a sort of mask that fell across his face that even Magda couldn't see through. She worried that behind that mask, all the impatience and annoyance and the wounded feeling of being left out and hated and feared was building up into something that would strike out one day.
There had been fewer police at the door in recent years, but Magda suspected that wasn't a case of Peter not using his gifts to amuse himself with petty theft, graffiti and mischief, but a case of him having got better at getting away with it. Whilst she knew that there was a sweet nature in him, a sort of soft goodness that persisted, she wondered if something else was growing alongside it that would one day eclipse it. A cold, silent thought that he deserved better than this – he was a superior species after all, why should he settle for hiding away like this? Why should he not use the advantage he had over normal people? He was better than them – why should he not show them that?
He didn't turn as he spoke. Magda hated the edge of cold steel in his voice, so unlike her sweet little boy.
"Goodnight, Mom"
He told her. Dismissed and caught watching, Magda turned away and went up to her own room, leaving him alone. She took a sleeping pill, knowing she wouldn't sleep otherwise for wondering about that growing darkness in her boy, and was soundly asleep by the time the glow of the television had cut out suddenly and instead a swirling blue vortex had manifested itself in the basement.
Peter hadn't hesitated for a second to go with the four Mutants who had emerged from it.