A/N : Oh my dear and lovely readers! You've been so patient waiting for this to be updated. I hope your patience has been rewarded and that you continue to enjoy this. Hopefully I'm now going to be marginally less busy, and will be updating with more like my usual frequency.
Hank wished just for five seconds that the two men would stop bickering. They hadn't stopped snarking at one another since they had left the Pentagon, and so far it showed no signs of abating. He checked the fuel gauges, buried himself in meticulous detail, tried to ignore the raised voices.
"Oh so what was your plan then?" Erik spat, "Just fly over, tell Raven you're very sorry about everything and could she please come home? Strangely I don't see that working"
"And I suppose you have a better idea?"
"Are you really that blind, Charles? Why not get her out the same way you got me out?"
Charles closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. Shook his head a little. Either that last injection had really hit the spot better than usual, or his friend had gone utterly mad.
"Are you seriously suggesting we take that boy – that child – with us? Put him in even more danger than he's already been?"
"He's exactly what we need"
"He's reckless!" Charles burst out, stood slamming his fist into a table, "He'll get himself killed or someone else, or all of us, or end up in some experimental facility when he's caught! He's just a child, Erik, a stupid, immature, irritating little boy and you are NOT dragging him into your fight!"
"M'not stupid"
Charles swung around in terror, saw Peter with his feet kicked up on a table, relaxed back in the seat. Wondered how long he'd been there, how much he'd heard. From the wounded look he was trying desperately to cover up with self-conscious cool, quite a bit.
"Peter, I didn't mean –"
"It's cool, don't sweat it Prof" he said dismissively. Kicked his feet down, made for the door with his hands in his pockets, "I wouldn't want me along either"
"Peter, stop" Erik said quietly. The boy did as he was told. "Are you sure? Forget his opinions, we've seen what you can do. Will you join us?"
"Erik!" Charles spluttered, "Who put you in –"
"Shut up, Charles. So what about it, boy?"
Peter looked between the two. The dishevelled, shaggy-haired Professor who looked like he'd rather be in bed. The steel-eyed, stern man who had the bearing of a general even in prison whites. Shrugged his shoulders, shook his head.
"My Mom's already going to be mad, dude" he said, raised an eyebrow at Charles "After all, I am just a stupid child"
He hefted the backpack containing his stereo-belt, a few spare battery packs, a handful of tapes. It looked heavy, and when Hank had picked it up from the car earlier he'd been surprised at the weight, fascinated all over again by Peter who must have enhanced strength as well as speed to shoulder that so easily. Pushed the door of the plane. Felt Charles' hand on his shoulder before he did and refused to turn.
"I'm sorry," he said earnestly, "I spoke out of turn. I think you're making the right decision"
"I know" Peter said simply. Pushed through the door. As he reached the car parked on the tarmac, Charles called to him again, tossed him the keys to the car. Peter plucked them out of the air easily, squinted up at the plane.
"Take the car back for me will you?" he asked kindly. At last, Peter smiled at him, "Oh and Peter… take it slow"
Erik was standing with behind him giving Charles a glare he recognised as one of his stock of severe and disapproving looks, and which had long ceased to faze him in the least bit.
"What?"
"Take it slow?" he asked, "really?"
"That's the end of this" Charles told him "I don't know why you're taken with him, Erik, and frankly I don't care. I assume you see some future acolyte of your cause in him"
"I see an energetic idealist. Someone with passion, who still believes the world can be different, better. Do you not like seeing someone who reminds you of what you once were, old friend? Is that why you can't bear to have him with us? Because he reminds you of yourself, when you still had a spine. Oh! Terribly sorry… poor choice of words."
Charles did not reply, only set his lips and stalked off, slammed the door of the cockpit behind him. Erik sighed and decided he should get settled for take-off, attempted to 'borrow' the newspaper that Logan had been pretending to read in a desperate effort to keep out from between the two of them, only to have it pinned to the table by three long claws.
"Imagine if they were metal" he told him teasingly, winked and began to buckle himself into a seat.
Charles may have been surprised to learn that Peter did, in fact, take it slow for a good half hour of the journey. Very slow, in fact, with frequent stalls and much grinding of gears and clutches. After ten minutes of working out the controls as he went, Peter was cursing himself for managing to get expelled before he even took Driver's Ed, for never stealing a car and learning in all his years of finding ways to amuse himself, but mostly for agreeing to take the car back at all. Maybe, just maybe if he hadn't happened to hear the Professor say those things about him, he would have owned up to not being able to drive. As things stood though, he'd considered returning the car in a state that could only be achieved by an impatient 17-year old learning to drive in it and knowing it would be charged to the old guy's card as fair revenge. Eventually he'd figured out which gears did what, and by the time he was navigating the suburban sprawl in which he'd grown up had relaxed into it and cranked the stereo up, humming along cheerfully to Bad, Bad Leroy Brown by the time he'd parked outside his house. Almost instantaneously the front door had flown open to admit his mother, and she did not look happy. Reaching him just as he'd shut the car door behind him, the look on her face and the way she folded her arms all looking like she was this close to clipping him around the ear.
"Where have you been, who were those men, why didn't you call, and what the hell is going on?!" she demanded, "In any order, Peter, just the whole truth"
"And nothing but the truth so help me God?" he finished for her, one hand held up and the other to his chest, gave her a hopeful grin. It didn't seem to work. He sighed, gave her a serious look.
"OK, Mom? I know you're mad, and I'm sorry. Let's go inside and I can tell you"
"Why can't you tell me right here?" Magda asked, "And why is that car here – Peter did you *drive* that here?! You can't drive!"
"I learned. C'mon Mom, I really don't want to talk about this in the street" finally, she relented, allowed her son to slip an arm under hers and walk with her back to the front door, thawing a little with the relief of seeing him home safe, "by the way, what's for dinner?"