Summary:

Already an adult at the time with a torrid history of his own, why DID the world accept Magneto as Quicksilver's father so readily?
In this story, Luna wants to know more about her 'real' Grandfather, and Pietro opens up to Crystal about his 'daddy issues'.

Disclaimer:

Follows a work of fanfiction intended for entertainment purposes only, the creation and publication of which earns its author no monetary profit. All recognizable characters and referenced canonical events are property of Marvel Comics Incorporated. Or Disney, whatever. Or Fox. I absolutely cannot keep track.

OF FATHERS AND (MAD)MEN

"Daddy… why did you say that my grandfather is dead?"

Luna was at the tender age of asking-uncomfortable-questions-with-reckless-abandon.

Pietro regarded her in what he hoped would be a discouraging fashion, regardless that it never did seem to have the desired effect. "Is it not past your bedtime?"

Twisting a toe onto the floor adorably, "Mommy tells me not to answer questions with questions."

Luna's mother tells her many interesting things, evidently, such as that when her father said Grandpa was dead, he lied.

No, not 'lied', almost assuredly; Crystal had more couth than to openly discredit him in front of their child. (Pietro was supposed to be working on the whole 'snap judgment' thing.) More likely that it was harmlessly or even mistakenly implied to some degree – and their daughter was quite astute.

"Because he is, Luna. Come here."

He twisted in his chair to face sideways, and lifted her to sit upon his lap. Not knee: lap – she had grown that big. Though not too big for favorite footed pajamas – she kicked her feet printed with ladybugs in an erratic rhythm, restlessness running thick in her blood too, and nuzzled comfortably against his chest.

"My father, your grandfather, died many years before you were born."

For the time being, he elected to omit the fact that Django was only thought to have perished in their childhood, when the family campsite was marauded and Pietro watched him beaten unrecognizable, before fleeing the chaos with his sister, barely escaping with their own lives. Many years later and not many years ago, they came to discover that he had survived that brutal attack, and after a mystical battle with a demonic entity, the old man died of heart failure in his children's arms – and they lost him again forever. When Luna was grown, he hoped she would forgive her father's abbreviated method of storytelling during her youth.

Yet he did add, "We laid him to rest near the place of our birth, your auntie's and mine, in the lands where we shared our happiest years together. Someday we will bring you there."

"What was his name?" She had taken to fiddling with a buckle on the forearm of her father's uniform. It had been quite a feat designing a suit that Pietro could get into (and out of) without assistance. The amount of wind friction he was exposed to while in motion required a number of smartly placed straps not only to safeguard his decency, but also so secured, the lightweight and durable material protected him from physical damage should the unthinkable occur and a toppled speedster go skidding across the ground at Mach 3. It had saved his skin, literally, more than once.

"His name was Django."

"You told me about him."

"Yes I did." He kissed her temple. "And I told you that he passed away."

"But he wasn't your real father."

Pietro wrangled control over the breath he took before it could escape in the sound of a sigh – for that would not go unnoticed, as few things did. He adopted the tone he used to employ during restless nights, when he would weave nonsense tales that so mesmerized Luna in her infancy. "When I was still barely newborn, tiny as your baby dolls that you love, he would swaddle me and rock me to sleep in front of the stove where it was warmest. And when I grew frustrated by crawling slowly on the ground, he held my hands until I learned to walk on my own two feet. And-"

"Do you remember those things?"

"It happened just so, I promise." Pietro continued, "He carved toys out of wood for us to play with, your auntie and me, and taught us to ride horses and make fire and read books. At night he helped us find names for every star in the sky, and around the campfire he played songs on his mandolin while mother sang. He kept his family safe and happy and free, until his time with us came to an end. This was the man who is your Grandfather."

Luna did not reply for a small eternity, alternatively thumping her legs or tugging on fastenings too tight for little hands to release. "Then who's the other man, the one still alive?"

Clever as Luna was, she would not know the word 'antithesis', and Pietro did not care to explain it. "He is… related. He is a blood relation. Nothing more."

"Mommy said-"

"Luna-" softer, slower, sweetlittleangelwhoknewnotwhatsheknewnot, "Luna. Your mother is not wrong, but neither am I – and in this thing daddy knows best, because I was there when your mother was not." Crystal was not there when Magneto harvested his child-soldiers, when with his training and his will and his fists as hard as steel he conditioned them to serve him; as weapons, as terrorists, as sacrifices – whatever contributed to his Cause, under pain of death, under threat of separation, or worse. Pietro was there, and he remembers those days well. "Do you understand?"

"No."

"Well. You will when you are older."

"I knew you were going to say that."

"You are very smart," he said, and meant it, and kissed her temple again. "Now go to bed."

Released to the ground, Luna scampered for the door, hugging its frame as she looked back at him, a finger between her teeth and weighing the chances of getting anything more. "Can I meet him?"

"No." Pietro could count on the fingers of one hand how many times he had refused his child her desire outright. "But I will tell you more about it, when-"

"When I'm older." She performed a curtsy that her mother's people must have taught her for use in court, where a four year old has no business being, princess or no. "Night, daddy."

"Good night, baby girl."

"Allow me to set the record straight on this matter," Pietro located Crystal in her chambers, and never did subscribe to the art of preamble – or knocking. "There once lived a man who actually raised me, and in this life or the next, I will always consider him to be my father."

She blinked, backwards engineering in her mind what could possibly have brought this on. Her memory settled on a time earlier that week, when Luna had asked the meaning of a 'family tree' and Crystal could not keep the resultant line of questioning from diverting away from her own parents' side. "Pietro, you know how curious she is. If this is about Magneto, all I told her was-"

"Who, by the way, if I ever referred to as 'father', I did so only in the bitterest of sarcasm. Or else I was being grossly technical, for effect. Unless the circumstances were such that it would have bothered him to hear; then I may have said it out of spite." He lowered the finger that had been unconsciously articulating each point, his next tone reminiscent of rubber skidding across pavement as it changed course forcibly and smoothed its edges with as much effort. "That said – I do not wish to speak of Magneto. In fact you may recall that I have never much cared to."

Crystal tried to lower her eyebrows, manually, and said underneath the shadow of her hand massaging her forehead, "Yes, he's clearly the furthest thing from your mind, as usual."

Pietro pretended the jest went unnoticed, determined to gain momentum on this slippery and unmarked road towards that elusive state of 'sharing and understanding' that he never intentionally strayed off of. "I would rather talk about Django. That is actually why I came. If you have time. If you want. Or I can go."

"Oh. No. Please stay." Crystal joined beside him where he had come to pause in front of a portrait hung over the sitting room fireplace ornately framed in swirling gold: the figures of young Crystal sitting beside her sister Medusa, their parents standing proud and united behind such fine offspring. For one dumb reason after another, they never had managed to find the right time to have one painted of the Maximoff family: Luna with her parents, either happily married, openly estranged, or in that grey area of otherwise.

Crystal gazed at her father's familiar face in particular, but thought of Django – a stranger to her in every sense. "You've never really spoken about him." As little as he ever said about any of his family. Her husband had once described his memories of early childhood as a puzzle with half its pieces flipped right-side down.

"I know."

"You always said you don't remember much."

"I remember… probably more than I have expressed. Wanda is better at such things."

Recognizing the look that had overcome him -a hard and unnatural stillness- as the schooled visage he adopts to suppress an emotional reaction, she slipped her hand into his. It squeezed in brief response, or flinched – impossible to know for certain. "It's all right."

"No, it is not." Another twitch of his hand, followed in contrast by a deliberate pulse, and a softer tone, "If all I remembered was a man who would do anything to care for his family, who shared his wisdom and treated us kindly and gave us the best years of our lives, then I should have said that much, I should have shouted it from the rooftops. Even that little, even that much, is more than enough to rejoice in."

His gaze fell downward. "Yet that has never been my way, has it? He was lost to us, after all, as so much else had been, and I filled that loss with silence and forward motion. We were already set upon that path when Magneto found us, but he encouraged it; peeling away whatever sense of cultural identity we had left, like a snake sheds old skin. He said only the strong survive, told us to embrace the evolution of change and not look back. YesIknowIamtalkingaboutMagnetoagain. And the cruel joke of it is that now the one person who abused us the most and who had the least cause to do so, overnight suddenly became my 'real father' in the eyes of the entire world. Why? How does that even happen? Not simply because he sired me, which would be quite bad enough andIwouldbleedmyveinsdryifitcouldchangethatawfultruth-"

He must not have realized that his hand contracted progressively into a fist, squeezing her fingers to the point of pain. Crystal placed her other hand against his shoulder, and immediately the tension retreated to some other secret place where it could fester undetected, and their connection severed. His expression that had gathered up in a scowl of anger and repugnance fell blank again, only his eyes remaining in constant motion, following the reflection of the fire as it danced upon the gleaming marble floor.

His voice echoed some defeat suffered on this internal battleground that she caught only accidental glimpses of, "No. It happened because I never gave anyone reason to believe otherwise, not even the people I love who should know me best. Because it made more sense from the outside that I belonged to a ruthless megalomaniac, rather than to a loving man whom I had ceased identifying with to dull the pain of having lost. Because I let my parents who dedicated their lives to raising us as their own blood fade from living memory, without commemoration or reverence, and now not even their ghosts stand between Magneto and his true son. Yes. He became my 'real father' so easily, without question or doubt, because I deserve no other."

"Pietro, no, that's not true." Crystal knew even making a sound, much less contradicting him, risked that he would snap out of his reverie and speak no more, or disappear entirely. Taking that chance, she moved her hand from his shoulder to neck, and guided them together for a kiss, the first they had shared since who knew how long – yet it always did feel like the first, even in the best of times (especially in the best of times). Once parted, they rested brow to brow, and she said, "Nothing that Magneto is or says or does can change anything between you and your parents – not in this world or the next. That bond was forged out of their love for you and your sister and for each other, completely beyond his control."

An odd fast noise that might have been a sigh, "I have not honored any such bond for many years."

"It's never too late." He relaxed the hand curled into a fist again to let her fingers entwine with his.

"I hope you are right." He wandered to nestle his face against her cheek, taking a breath amidst the fullness of her hair as she felt the fingers of his free hand find a comfortable fit on the small of her back, "It's been a considerable portion of a lifetime already."

"Then what are you waiting for? Come sit down with me. I promise to let you keep rubbing my back…." she pulled away just enough that he could see she smiled in play, but not insincerity, "if you tell me more about my father in law?"

~fin~

Notes:

Confession: I wrote this out of longstanding frustration and bewilderment at the canon mis/representation (more frequent in recent years) of the foundational nature of 'daddy issues' that the twins would reasonably have developed towards Magneto.
It's no stretch of the imagination that they would be considerably disturbed to learn their biological sire is a megalomaniac who was abusive and manipulative to them in particular, and has done no favors for the human/mutant struggle over the years. During their tenure in the Brotherhood, he was tyrannical, violent, and psychotic, whose anti-human bigotry poisoned their own viewpoints subconsciously, helped in no small part by the repeated and senseless aggression that they had already endured during their formative years as members of a persecuted minority class.
That said, how on earth any writer concluded that the twins would harbor bitterness towards Magneto for being a 'bad father' (as though he ever had the chance or as if they would have wanted him to) is, to me, simply irreconcilable. Pietro and Wanda HAD a family complete with a loving father who died tragically (Django even got to die twice: because comics) before Magneto ever came into the picture, and long before they discovered any familial relation to him.
Magneto is bad news and bad luck and a bad man, certainly – and what a miserable fate to end up related to him after all that had transpired before (and to be sure, the knife twists every time he flip flops between repentant reformed supervillain and evil archenemies to humankind), but one thing they could reasonably celebrate any day of the week is having dodged the bullet of actually being raised by the madman.
And ultimately, why a writer would take this road (Boo-Hoo Lane) over the other more cohesive and dynamic one, is beyond me. Just imagine, instead of Skywalker's palpable revulsion and horror, screaming a useless denial in pain and rage at the unbearable truth of his parentage thus revealed, imagine instead of that, Luke wailing, "You never loved me! You were a poor father!" Did it hurt your brain? Because Pietro and Wanda bemoaning Magneto's 'parenting' makes just as little sense.
/endrant