A/N : I'm going to tell you right now. No holds barred, no punches pulled. If you're feeling in any way delicate just don't read this. It's not pretty, and you've been warned.

Hank pulled the fume hood down, leaned back despite all his protective equipment. Carefully decanted a few drops of the yellow fluid into a flask. Reached with a shaky, thoroughly gloved hand to screw the top back on, and very gently sloshed the contents, screwing his face up as he did.

"You're not exactly inspiring confidence" Erik told him, "In fact, I've half a mind to forbid this"

"Do you want Peter to suffer?" Hank replied, gently raising the fume hood and retrieving the flash of liquid oxygen, holding it more comfortably now that it was sealed, "You have a choice, Erik, don't feel that you haven't. He can suffer terribly now for perhaps 24 hours, or he can suffer terribly for the next few years."

"Or he could die"

"He could die either way" the doctor said firmly, "Believe it or not, this is his best chance"

Erik said nothing. Went to his son's side and stroked his hair back from his forehead. How had he never realised until it could be too late how fiercely he loved him? How he could not bear to lose him? He had spent so long thinking Peter was weak and needy when really, he had been bravely keeping a lid on all that agonising pain, only seeking help when it had become unbearable. He cursed himself for leaving him to suffer, for leaving him with a human woman who could never hope to understand him. For not offering his hand in guidance when Peter had so obviously been reaching for it. Resolved that if he survived this he would guide him and guard him with all his might. Loathed the fact that there was an 'if' in that thought.

It was another fifteen minutes before he woke. Hank took that time to check his IV lines, to screw the flask into place and ready the mask that would deliver the toxin. To strap his arms and legs down to the bed and wind another two thick straps around his thighs and waist.

"He's very frail," he had explained, though Erik didn't ask, "If he fights against the restraints, he could snap his spine without these"

At last Peter had blinked awake, tried to stretch and tensed against the straps. Erik saw panic shooting through his dark eyes, went immediately to soothe him.

"It's alright," he whispered tenderly, "You're going to be alright. Hank's going to give you something to breathe in. I'll stay here. I promise you're going to be alright, my boy"

He did not stay, and he did not believe his own promise. And things were very *very* far from alright.

Wanda walked up the driveway. Rang the doorbell. Waited. Hammered on the door, and waited some more. Gathered a slightly larger ball of energy than she really needed and backed off a few paces, flung it at the door and walked through the gaping crater she had left in the oak.

Peter breathed deeply. Felt lightheaded and slightly sick, and took another deep breath to clear his head. Then he realised that he was deeply, unexpectedly afraid of being tied down.

Then Erik was there. Standing over him with a look of grave disappointment on his face, the kind of harsh look that suited his hard features only too well. Folding his arms, looking at his son laying strapped to the bed, a cold sneer twisting one lip. He leaned down and touched Peter's face, grasped his chin in his hand – not a gentle touch, no love in it, but a grab as though forcing the boy to look at him, despite the fact that Peter's eyes were riveted on his

"Wanda was always such a good girl," he was saying. Disgust and scorn dripped almost visibly from the words, "I always loved her more you know. In fact, when your mother found out she was having twins, I nearly asked her to get rid of you. I knew you would be *such* a disappointment"

His mother, beautiful and joining his father, gazing down at him. He squirmed, felt this was how a bacterium under the lens of a microscope must feel

"I would have done it too" Magda laughed pitilessly, "Sometimes one twin kills the other in the womb. I wish Wanda had killed you, it would have been so much better"

She took his father's arm, stroked it lovingly

"We wouldn't have split up if you hadn't been born. You broke us up, you and your whining and crying and attention-seeking. We would still love each other now without you"

Peter fought against the restraints, his whole body jerking and spasming and straining against the straps. Beside him, Hank watched the EKG climb, saw his heart rate become so high that the machine emitted a high-pitched whine. Peter was whining too, a keening noise that dragged up from deep inside him, tears running freely over his face. He was babbling, hank barely caught a word of it. If Hank had had any faith, he would have prayed at that moment – instead he just hoped.

Wanda explored the empty halls of the house. Peered into bedrooms and climbed endless stairs and followed the call of her missing half.

"It's alright, darling" Erik was saying to Magda, dipping her in his arms as though he were the prince in some fairy-tale, "Just because this one's not right, it doesn't mean we can't try again"

Magda laughed, a girlish peal of laughter that echoed around the room, looked up at Erik and bit her underlip seductively.

"We should tidy up the loose ends though," she said, and they turned to look at Peter again. His mother's hands closed on his throat. He could smell her perfume, her beautiful dark eyes lit with malevolent delight as her fingers tightened around his windpipe, bending so that her hair tickled his face and whispering in his ear

"I wish I'd done this when you were born"

He thrashed and fought with all his strength. Observing, Hank grit his teeth and told himself there was no antidote and planned what he would say to Erik if his son died. Then Peter's limbs were a blur, vibrating so rapidly that the bed shook and began to move across the floor. The straps began to tear. He let out a strangled scream that rattled Hank's eardrums.

Wanda followed the cry of her other half, bolting up the stairs to the infirmary, another blast of energy and the door fell in. Hank could do nothing but stare, Peter broke the restraints, and then he was gone. Wanda saw nothing, advanced with her eyes glowing with hellfire, held one more ball of crackling red force between her palms and launched it at the canister beside the bed.

Phobic toxin spread in poisonous yellow clouds throughout the room. Hank clamped his breathing apparatus tightly to his face and screamed for Erik to come back in.

Peter was nowhere to be seen.

Wanda was screaming, clawing at her face and leaving jagged red marks with her nails, sinking to the floor and beginning to rip at her clothes, her legs, at any skin that she could expose. Scratching and tearing and striking at herself and making inarticulate sounds of panic. As Erik charged in, she spotted him and she howled like a trapped animal, sparks of energy beginning to fly around her. Erik somehow managed to pin her hands to her sides, to stop her from tearing herself bloody, fixing Hank with a horrifying look of fury

"Sedate her!" he yelled, "NOW!"