The reviews... they're so lovely :-) And I'm so totally procrastinating. I own nothing.
Magda had never had to pray for strength for herself, it has always just been there, hiding under her humanity. She had always been able to endure, to ride along with what the world threw at her, and to stand strong all the while. Maybe she was a mutant after all, she wondered, and that was her power. Strength and infinite patience. Outside the rain was coming down harder than ever, she closed the curtains against the dim afternoon light and took her tea through to the living room to finally get a little peace and quiet.
She had half-expected Erik to show up that day. After all, how could he not when the twin's birthday fell on the same day as Father's Day? Not that he had turned up any of the other times that happened, but now that he knew – now that he couldn't wriggle out of responsibilities any more – he had to come, really. So instead of for herself, she had prayed for strength for her son, whom she still thought of as her baby boy despite the fact that he was now much taller than her. Wondered if he would be able to deal with his father suddenly being in his life after all these years, and hoped that he would at least tell her if he couldn't.
When the two older men, one no longer able to walk since she last saw him, had shown up on her doorstep again with her son in tow, Magda had almost knocked their heads together when they explained that Peter had gotten hurt helping them. Tried to be pleasant to the bespectacled almost-stranger who had told her that yes, he was mostly okay, but that he needed to be out of danger and try to rest whilst he regained the full strength back in his leg. Nobody needed to tell her that Peter wasn't okay – she'd seen that look on his face when the police had handed him back to her at the door having been unable to prove anything. When the school principal himself had shown up with him and told her that under no circumstances would he be coming back to his school. And now again when the team that had taken him in suddenly thrust him back out again. She could see that his leg might be doing okay, but he was still deeply hurt by that. Magda wondered if Peter would spend his whole life being delivered back to his mother's door like a faulty package when someone else found themselves unable to deal with him. The almost-stranger – a doctor, she'd found out – had left her with strict instructions and a little bottle of tablets that he said might help Peter get the rest he needed, though she had doubted that until she'd tried giving him some and had the quietest afternoon of her life. Well, quiet apart from fretting a little about the boy laying upside-down in an armchair watching his hands move with a glazed expression.
That evening, when Erik had delivered her boy back to her once again and this time not even tried to make peace with Magda before he had left, Peter had been so over-enthusiastic about the day he'd had that she'd turned to those tablets again, worried the boy was going to make himself ill. He did that sometimes – it seemed he experienced emotions faster and harder than everyone else as well, and despite her warning Erik had probably let him stuff his face with junk all afternoon, or rather been helpless to stop him. Although he claimed to be absolutely fine, Madga could tell when Peter looked sick, and thought it would be best if he didn't literally run laps around the living room walls. So she had sat him down, somehow managed to get him to take some pills whilst he continued to chatter too fast for her to make out individual words, and left him watching cartoons whilst she waited for Dr McCoy's medication to kick in.
Magda didn't know what was in those tablets, but she certainly wished she'd had some when Peter had been younger. Coming back into the living room to find him sprawled out with his head flung back onto the sofa, very slightly cracking one eye open as she came to sit beside him and muttering something incomprehensible as he flopped down with his head in her lap. She grinned down at him, hands falling to gently stroke though the soft silver hair at his temples. Even in a drugged sleep she could feel the coiled tension in his body against her, see his feet twitching as if he wanted to run even now. Peter never fully relaxed – he never had done – when he'd been little Magda had taken him to all kinds of doctors, sure that her hyperactive son had something wrong with him and terrified that whatever it was would harm him. It had only been when he'd been thirteen and his mutation had fully expressed itself that she had realised there was nothing wrong with him at all, that her little boy wasn't going to die of a heart attack despite his pulse hitting the high hundreds even when he stood still, and despite the fact that he had broken the sphygmomanometer every time someone tried to take his blood pressure. After that it had just been a matter of trying to keep him under control enough that he didn't break anything, either himself or the furniture.
It was rare to have the chance to see him like this. Magda thought nobody but herself and his sisters had ever seen him so still. Gently curling an arm around her boy, she took the opportunity to properly look at him, surprised to see the man he was becoming expressing itself so clearly. She wondered if one day she would look at him and realise he'd grown up without her noticing, if he'd ever have children of his own, and if she'd have to welcome an uncontrollable little speedster back into her house if he ever did. The idea made her smile, even as it made her slightly despairing of that eventuality.
Whatever the future held for him, Magda hoped that he would always realise she was there for him like this. That no matter how old he got or how much trouble he got into, he would always be able to put his head on his mother's lap. His father might feel like it was fine to just breeze back into his life, but despite his erratic and volatile nature Peter valued the stability of his family home more than most people would know. And whilst today seemed to have gone fine, Magda knew that Erik could be a cold, pitiless man who would ruffle her son's feelings and not even realise he had done it. Perhaps Peter needed them both – Erik to teach him better how to use and control his abilities, to help him fight, and Magda to show him that sometimes he didn't have to fight. Sometimes, he needed to be human. And if Erik were ever to hurt him, Magda would kill him with her own bare hands.
Peter turned over in his sleep, long eyelashes fluttering ever so slightly. He'd always had those gorgeous, thick grey lashes, a shade or two darker than his hair. When he was a little boy they'd been cute – now, Magda had no doubt they made girls his age swoon. Maybe that superpower of patience and strength would be coming in handy some time soon, when he went back to Xavier's school and those girls his age got a chance at him. In the meantime though, Magda just stroked her son's hair softly and sent out silent thanks that today had gone well, and prayed for her son to be strong if Erik walked back out of their lives again.