{Author's Note: I would have had this up yesterday, but FanFiction was being difficult and not letting me submit documents or copy and paste text.}
ERIK POV
Mila hung back by Erik as Nina led them along and quietly asked for the short version of how Lorna had died. And he had told her—in the end, she had tried to stop Apocalypse, but only Jean had been capable of truly ending him.
When they reached their room, or rooms really because there were two, Erik was unsurprised to find that they were quite expansive. Charles or the girls or someone had set them up in connecting suites, which were both simplistic in design, but outfitted in such a way that Erik could tell they were high-priced. It would cost more to stay in such a place than Erik could certainly ever hope to afford, even if he were ever to be legitimately employed. Not that it mattered. The rooms could have been devoid of anything but the bare essentials and Erik wouldn't have cared.
It also turned out to be much more space than they needed being that no sooner had Erik helped Pietro transfer from the wheelchair to the bed then Nina had crawled up to join him on it, sitting carefully beside him. As Nina's weight shifted the bed, Pietro opened his eyes, having shut them as soon as his head hit the pillow. Erik wasn't sure if he'd done so in exhaustion or merely to shut out the world. Pietro turned his head, looking over at his sister. She stared back at him; their eyes mirrors of each other. . . . though Pietro's true mirror was gone from this world.
Pietro gazed back like he didn't quite understand Nina or what she was doing there, but he seemed to accepted her presence all the same, because a moment later he turned his head forward again and shut his eyes once more.
It was much too soon for him to have fallen asleep, but when there was a knock at the door, Pietro didn't flinch like the rest of them.
Mila went to answer the door, having barely moved from the entryway, and Erik was suddenly extremely grateful for her presence, glad that he didn't have to do this alone. Though he knew he couldn't put too much on her—she was still so young—all the same, it was comforting to have someone around who wasn't injured or a young child.
Nina returned a moment later, pushing a cart of food and dinnerware.
Erik didn't bother to ask who it was from. It was possible that someone else had sent it up, but more likely than not, it had been Charles, already back to shouldering the care of others, despite having been in the physical and mental clutches of power-hungry mutant merely hours (or a day?) ago.
They all—except for Pietro—stared at it for a moment, as if they were jointly remembering that, oh right, they still had to eat. Wanda and Lorna were gone, but the world was still turning.
"We should eat." Mila said finally, though her mouth had a slight downturn to it, as if the thought of eating thoroughly displeased her. Nevertheless, a moment later, she was handing out plates of food, first to Nina, then to Erik. Then, she took two more filled plates and set one down on the nightstand by Pietro before sitting on the bed silently beside him with the fourth plate on her lap as she reached out to put a hand gently on Pietro's shoulder.
Erik didn't hear what Mila said, but by some miracle with a few whispers, Mila had Pietro sitting up with the plate on his lap.
But that didn't mean he was eating. Pietro stared at the food unmoving for a good thirty seconds, and they all stared at him, even Nina, though she had taken a couple of bites of her food before she noticed that no one else had started eating.
Pietro looked up, perhaps sensing so many eyes on him. Erik was about to say something—though he didn't know what—to try to get Pietro to start eating. But shockingly, he didn't have to, for not a second later, Pietro trained his eyes back down on his plate and took a bite. But the way the boy mechanically shoveled each bite into his mouth made Erik suspect that he was eating merely to get his family's attention off of him . . . or at least some of their attention.
Satisfied that he was eating, the girls followed suit. But when Erik stared down at his plate, he had to suppress the urge to hurtle it across the room. Despite the fact that Erik could not recall the last time he had eaten, he was not hungry. He had no doubt that his body craved food, but Erik had long ago grown used to the feeling of hunger, so much so that at times the feeling no longer registered. He had carried so many aches and pains—both physically and mentally—in his body, what was one more?
Nevertheless, he forced himself to eat the meal before him. Erik's experience with hunger also made it hard for him to see food go to waste. And if his son could force himself to eat, then so could Erik.
Speaking of whom, Erik looked back over at Pietro. He had finished eating, clearing his plate, and yet, he looked entirely unsatisfied. But Erik knew all too well that the hunger in his eyes was not for food.
Mila took the empty plate from him, prying it gently from his hands, the fingers of which had curled tightly around the edge of the plate of their own accord. As she did so, Nina abandoned her own plate and chair where she had withdrawn to eat and crawled back up by Pietro, curling up next to him like a cat, she pressed her forehead carefully to his shoulder.
Pietro looked down at the top of her head. His lip began to quiver, and Erik felt sure that tears were imminent, but this time, they did not come. Instead, he closed his eyes, not gently, but with such fierceness that his eyebrows furrowed.
Erik knew he should get up. He should comfort his children, the ones that were still here. But he had nothing to give them, nothing to take their pain away, so he let Mila be the one to lay a blanket over them and tuck it gently around them, while he simply watched and failed them again.
Eventually, Pietro's brows relaxed and his and Nina's breathing settled into a steady rhythm, almost in sync, making it clear that they had truly falling asleep.
Shortly thereafter, Erik realized Mila must have retreated to the adjacent room to sleep because she was in the room no longer, so Erik was alone with his children.
He regarded them carefully, cataloging their existence, but noticing now more than ever in the silence the children that were missing.
Suddenly, Erik needed air that—despite the vastness of the room—could not be found within the room's four walls.
Erik stumbled to the balcony door, fumbling with the lock and handle, until he gave up and wrenched it open with his powers, surely breaking it in the process.
He stepped forward, crossing the balcony until he reached the edge where he grasped the metal railing with both hands like a life-line. It was cool to the touch, finely crafted, and sturdy, or it would be to anyone else, but to Erik, it was perfectly pliable. How easily he could manipulate it if he wished, control it with the precision of a surgeon, and yet . . . what did it matter when there was so much that was beyond his control?
Erik squeezed the rail beneath his fingers—but ultimately with his mind—forcing it to bend to his will. A moment later, he straightened it again, restoring it to more or less its original state—smooth and undamaged, . . . if only everything he faced were so easy to fix.
But of course nothing was and nothing would ever be.
Erik stood there, looking out into the distance for a time. He would have remained in such a state for longer, if not for the interruption that followed.
Erik heard the balcony door slide open behind him. He turned—only slightly on edge—to see Mila, eyes bloodshot, stepping through the door while holding two glass bottles tucked beneath one arm.
"I thought you were asleep." Erik said as he turned completely around to rest his back against the railing.
Mila shook her head, "I wasn't sleeping. I was pacing. I don't feel much like sleeping right now . . . which is why a brought this. Here. Looks like you could use one." She said as she grabbed one of the bottles out from under her arm with her other hand and held it out to Erik. It was, as he expected, beer, not a brand he recognized, but granted, if it was in this hotel, it was probably much more expensive alcohol than Erik had ever had the pleasure of tasting.
Erik accepted the drink without a fuss, but then, Mila held out the other bottle, looking at him expectantly. "Do you mind? I don't have an opener."
Erik looked from the bottle to Mila, trying to connect the young woman in front of him to the little girl he'd found hiding in a toy chest not so long ago (to him at least). But it was difficult to do. She was no longer a scared child waiting for an adult to come save her and her family. Now she was an adult, or nearly one—Erik wasn't exactly sure of her age—who had seen tragedy and accepted it as part of her life, who was old enough to know that the adults hardly ever had all the answers and, more likely than not, on the inside they were floundering just as much as children.
Which reminded him . . . "Don't you have a couple more years before you can have that?"
Mila didn't lower her arm, rather she just looked at him skeptically. "Really? That's what you're worried about right now?"
"No. Guess not." said Erik popping off both bottle caps with a flick of his hand. "But as—as a parent, I thought I should at least say something. Charles might smite me from afar if I encouraged his students to engage in underage drinking."
Mila smirked, though the smile was nowhere close to meeting her eyes, nor did it come close to wiping away the sadness there. "Your naive if you think the older students haven't raided his liquor cabinet at least once. With a school full of hormonal mutants, you'd really think he'd be better at keeping his alcohol under wraps."
Erik let out a huff of not-quite laughter, letting himself imagine for a moment a world in which all they had to worry about was preventing teenagers from getting drunk on a single glass of gin.
"Besides. You don't have to worry about me. You're not my parent." Mila added taking a swig of her drink. She grimaced a little as it passed her lips, whether because she was exaggerating her experience with alcohol, she simply didn't like the taste, or for some other reason, he couldn't say.
"No. I'm not." Said Erik, taking a long drink of his own beverage, but it did nothing to soften the events of the last couple of days, and he wondered for a moment if relief would appear at the bottom of the bottle or perhaps at the bottom of a second or third. "And you should be thankful for that."
"Maybe." Said Mila, staring down at her own drink clasped tightly in both hands between her knees, where she had taken a seat on one of the available porch chairs. "But if you were, then maybe I wouldn't be so helpless. Maybe I could have done something. Maybe I could've—could've—"
'Saved them' went unsaid.
A better man would have offered Mila sophisticated words of comfort. But he was not the best man. He was not even a good man. If that ship had ever been in harbor, it had sailed long ago. He had gone not from boy to man, but directly from boy to monster. And maybe that wasn't entirely his fault, but that's the way it was all the same, and the people around him—his children especially—paid the price of that reality over and over again.
All the same, he tried a little. "I learned long ago that it does no good to dwell on what-ifs. There was nothing you could have done to stop what happened."
Mila looked up at him then, wiping her eyes—which had grown misty—with the back of her sleeve in one quick motion, studying him intently.
"But you could have?" she asked, clearly understanding his subliminal message—that though he did not think she could have done anything to save Wanda or Lorna, that he thought he could have; or at least, he should have. She pressed on, not giving him time to respond. "I remember that day. Of your speech in front of the White House, not just the films of it. I remember from watching it live on tv, sitting on Peter's lap in my princess dress. I didn't understand most of what you said, and honestly, I kind of wanted to pull Peter away from the screen and go play, but I understood that you were like him, like Peter, and that was important for him. What you did with the stadium, you're powerful, just like Peter is, just like—just like Wanda was, and that still didn't save her. And Lorna . . . Lorna was powerful too. No one was ever going to stop her from doing what she wanted to do. Her choices were own, Erik. And you said she died trying to stop Apocalypse. That was her choice too."
"It shouldn't have had to have been, if I'd—" Erik started.
"If you'd what, Erik? Not been throw into a different dimension for ten years? That wasn't your fault either, nor was it really Wanda's. It's just the shitty cards we've been dealt. I'm not saying I'm okay with the fact that Wanda's dead or that Lorna's dead, even though we weren't close, it's just that, I'm used to it—the loss. I had ten years to get used to it. I'll make it through this, and Nina too. She's too happy of a kid not to bounce back, and—and I have to believe that Peter will too. It's hard because when I was little, I saw him as this invincible beacon of a knight in shining armor, but now, it's like I can see through that armor and realize he's just a kid that's been through a lot. And now he's lost the person that meant the most to him in the world, because, no offense, but that's not you, it's not me, it's not even Nina, and it certainly wasn't Lorna, but still, despite all that and despite any persona he might put on, Peter's still the most selfless person I know. Once he realizes that he has people who need him, just as much as he needs them, he'll get through this."
Erik study Mila's face for a moment, "You know, I want to believe that you're right. It's hard to see that now, but with Wanda before I . . . I shouldn't have . . . " Erik trailed off, not sure if Mila knew yet what he had Jean do, and not wanting to get into it at the moment. "I just should have known that he's not going to leave you and Nina. I—I have to believe that."
"I don't believe it, I know it." said Mila with confidence Erik didn't completely share. "He's going to carry Wanda's death with him forever because she was his twin and he loved her in a way that I don't think anyone can ever compare with. But he loves us too, and he'll stay in this world for us, if not for himself."
He'll stay for you and Nina. Erik Thought. He doesn't need me.
When Erik didn't reply, Mila stood up and headed back toward balcony door. "Erik . . ." Mila paused to look at him once more, and as if she could read his mind, she continued. "You're much better at this father-thing than you give yourself credit for. Peter will keep going for Nina and for me, but he'll stay for you as well. He'd stay just for you. He loves you more than you could ever know, and I know you love him just as much . . . so whatever it is that you think you have to do after all of this, I trust you because I've always trusted Peter's heart, and surprisingly, I trust yours now too, but before you do anything drastic, just ask yourself if it's what's best for him."
And with that Mila slipped quietly back inside, leaving Erik alone to his thoughts.
And if Erik shed any tears after Mila's departure, well, no one was around to confirm that.
He was alone, as he should be.
{Author's Note: I don't condone alcohol as a coping mechanism, but they've been through some difficult stuff, so . . . .
Also, at first I was like, Mila is around 18ish, so she is definitely not old enough to drink in the U.S., but then I remembered that the drinking age hasn't always been 21, so based on very minimal research the drinking age in New York might have actually been 19 in 1983, so she wasn't that far off from being legal.}
