{Author's Note: The End Note contains spoilers for WandaVision episode 5. I need to address that episode, not because it affects this story, but just because I need to rant about THAT ending.}
The week—or maybe it was two?—went by in a blur. Despite the loss of her sisters, and her obvious sadness, Nina was as chatty as ever, but getting Pietro to talk was like pulling teeth. Perhaps Nina was compensating for her brother's silence, for he was the one she talked to—or more precisely, talked at—the most.
Nina was a bright spot in their dark storm of melancholy, but she was not the only one who attempted to throw them a metaphorical life vest. To be honest, Erik would have preferred to turn all of their well-meaning visitors away, at least until his son would talk to him. He had always dealt with his grief alone, not that he had a choice about that most of the time, but either way it was still his first instinct. However, in one of his better moments—which were quite rare—Erik tried to think not like himself, but like Charles. He'd barely spent two minutes in his friend's presence since they'd returned to the land of the free. As you might expect, recovering from having an ancient being invade your mind and trying to put a school back together took quite a bit of energy. But Erik knew that Charles, the good man that he was, would spare much more than two minutes to speak with him, if he only asked him, and in fact, the other man had reminded Erik of that fact every evening since they'd been back, reaching out to him with his mind—but never breaching it—just for a moment to say I'm here, if you need me, and I'm here, even if you don't.
Erik had chosen to ignore that voice—both annoying and comforting—for now, but still as the well-wishers came by, Erik hadn't necessarily wanted to shut the door in their faces, but he had at least wished to shepherd them away. But he'd resisted that impulse, and instead, he had forced himself to ask what Charles would do, and what was best for Pietro, acknowledging that not everyone was meant to be alone like him. And socialization could be good for his son.
So with each visitor Erik had asked Pietro whether he was up to seeing them, and surprisingly, every time Pietro had answered yes.
Jubilee had come first. She had acted uncharacteristically timid when Erik had answered the door, standing with one hand behind her back clutching her other at the elbow, which held markers of all things. He'd found out shortly thereafter what the markers were for—to decorate Pietro's cast. Nina, had been thrilled at this development—or as thrilled as she could be given the circumstances—attacking Pietro's cast with fervor. And whether because of her enthusiasm or Jubilee's thoughtfulness, Pietro even managed to sustain a glimmer of a smile for a brief period of time as the girls decorated the blank canvas that was his cast with an unrestrained ambition. Pietro even joined in a bit, though it looked like he struggled slightly given the angle and his injured arm and hands. Erik realized as he watched them that he had no idea whether Pietro was right handed or left handed. Or maybe he was ambidextrous? Just one more fact he didn't know about his son because he had missed so much of his life.
"Do you want to add something?" Jubilee asked after some time as she stared at Erik cautiously waiting for his answer.
"Oh, I don't know . . . " Erik trailed off, not knowing what he could possibly add to their intricate designs, and he had no idea whether Pietro would even want him to.
"You have to at least add your name Papa! It's the rules!" said Nina running over to pull Erik out of his chair and toward the three teenagers. "Or, I guess you can write 'Papa' and not your actual name." added Nina with a thoughtful look.
"I'm pretty sure she's right." Said Mila shooting Erik a half-smile as he sat down on the bed.
But still Erik hesitated, looking not at the girls but at his son for the answer to his unasked question.
Pietro didn't give him an answer though, at least not with his words; instead, he just held out a marker, and Erik took it from him uneasily, like it was a grenade and not a child's writing tool.
Erik uncapped the marker, but he remained frozen for a moment, unsure whether to write 'Erik,' 'Henryk,' 'Papa,' or something else. Aware that he had been sitting there for too long already, Erik finally picked a spot higher up on the cast, near Pietro's hip where he could see the writing if he cared to look for it.
He capped the marker once more and looked down at his 'work,' if you could call it that for it was very simple. Just one word. A noun: 'Dad'. A man in relation to his child or children. One's father. . . . Pietro's father.
He handed the marker back to Pietro. He expected the boy to go back to working on his doodle of a bullet with wings, but he didn't. Instead, his hand went over to where Erik had written on the cast and started writing something upside down. It only took a couple of seconds, and Erik guessed that he could have been much quicker about it if he had wanted to be.
When Pietro moved his hand away, Erik leaned forward to see what he had written. Like with Erik's writing, it was simple, just one more letter than Erik had put down. No longer did Pietro's cast just say 'Dad,' rather, it now said 'Dadneto'.
Erik looked up at his son, unsure what to make of the change. Was it Pietro's way of telling Erik that he could not escape his nature as the man known as Magneto, or was Pietro telling him that he accepted that part of him? But one look at his son's face made Erik think it was the latter for though Pietro's eyes were shining, he also gave Erik the smallest of smiles before he returned to his previous drawing. The moment was gone so quickly that Erik might as well have imagined it.
But he hadn't.
The evidence was written on plaster.
Jubilee stayed long enough to make her 'mark,' but it was clear she didn't want to outstay her welcome, so she departed after a bit, but she left the markers, so Nina and Mila continued their unexpected art project for a good hour or more until there was barely a free space left on Pietro's leg.
It turned out that Mila was quite the artist—they all were really—creating a few notable renderings that ranged from a pinball machine to a smiling portrait of Pietro. Erik even noticed a bit of an exaggerated caricature of himself in his Magneto getup that she hid on the bottom of Pietro's foot.
Jean visited next. And in contrast to Jubilee's visit, this time Erik was the one that felt uneasy. It wasn't that he was trying to hide what he asked Jean to do from Pietro. He had in fact tried to broach the topic, but it hadn't gone particularly well. The best he could get out of Pietro was 'I know. Okay? What do you want me to say? I know what you and Jean did, and I don't want to talk about it right now.'
So they hadn't talked about it.
Not yet anyway.
But when Jean appeared at the door, her eyes boring into his, Erik still felt like he was hiding something from his son.
They didn't speak about their collaboration. They didn't need to. Without his helmet, Erik knew Jean could read his thoughts, at least when Erik wasn't actively trying to shut her out. And all Jean said about it to Erik was that she had 'spoken' to Pietro already, but didn't plan to share what he had told her in confidence, unless Pietro wanted her too.
So that was that.
Unlike with Jubilee, for some reason, Erik felt that he should give Pietro and Jean privacy, so he retreated to the adjacent room.
Mila and Nina had gone for a walk, so he was left to wait alone, but he couldn't stop himself from peaking in on them once. When he did, they were sitting in silence, and Jean was holding Pietro's hand, but there was nothing romantic about the gesture. Instead, it was like Pietro was clutching her hand like a lifeline. But looking at them, Erik felt like he was intruding more than if he would have walked in on them kissing, so he quickly withdrew again.
But he didn't have to wait much more than a minute for Jean to reach out to him and tell him she was leaving. Erik watched her go, and turned to ask Pietro, not what that talked about, but if he was hungry, but when he returned to the main room, Pietro was gone.
Erik felt his blood pressure rise instantly, but then, he spotted him, standing on the balcony leaning on his crutches—someone had finally found proper ones and with the addition of a new brace, Pietro's arm had healed well enough to use them across short distances—staring out at the horizon with his earbuds in. Somehow, through everything, he'd either managed to hang onto Jubilee's gift or someone had given him a replacement and Erik hadn't noticed when or whom. Erik wasn't versed enough in the ways of music players to recognize one device from another.
Erik slowly advanced out the already open door toward his son. He didn't want to spook the boy, but he had a feeling he knew he was there, and his next move confirmed as much.
Without looking at Erik, Pietro removed one earbud and offered it to his father, and together—though Erik wouldn't have been able to tell you the name of the song or the artist—they listened to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here.
Pietro's third visitor wasn't really his visitor at all, but Erik's.
Erik opened his eyes at the sound of gentle knock at the hotel room's door. He had been trying to catch a few minutes of sleep while Mila and Nina took Pietro out for a bit in the wheelchair. They'd—mostly Nina—had managed to convince him to take a stroll because Nina wanted to find the stray cat that was rumored to hang around outside of the hotel kitchen hoping for scraps.
So Erik may have been annoyed if had actually been asleep, but like most of his endeavors these days, he had failed at that too.
Erik trudged over to the room's entrance and opened the door without first looking through the peephole. He expected Jean or Jubilee to have returned or maybe even Hank come to check back on Pietro as he had been wont to do for the duration of their stay. Erik didn't really consider Hank a visitor in the same way the girls had been, since his reason for visiting was more professional in nature, though he sometimes looked over at Erik in what might have been poorly veiled concern. But the visitor was none of the three aforementioned individuals.
Instead, Alex stood at the door, looking stone-faced and like he had gotten about as much sleep as Erik had during the days since Apocalypse.
"Alex…"
"Er—" Alex started before clearing his throat and trying again. "Hey, Erik."
"Pietro's not here." Replied Erik, not unkindly. He just assumed the only reason Alex would willingly tolerate Erik's presence in a non-life or death situation was because he was seeking out Pietro. They may have crossed the world together to reach their loved ones and watched Erik's daughter die together, but still, Erik didn't know if he and Alex would ever see eye-to-eye.
"I know. I saw him with the girls outside. They seem to have found a cat to spoil . . . . Peter seems to be . . . holding up. But I came to speak with you actually. I'll—I'll come back to see him later, but there are some things you and I need to discuss first." Said Alex, and as he spoke, one of his eyes twitched, as if it was taking a great deal of effort to remain emotionless. "But . . . is he . . . is Pete hanging in there? He—I mean he was petting the cat, so he hasn't retreated too far into himself has he? And he was out and about. That's good right?"
Alex looked at Erik not quite expectantly, but at least like he thought he should have some insight into the state of Pietro's mental well-being. As if Alex hadn't spent nearly just as much time with Pietro as Erik had. But he supposed that for Alex, it had been quite a long time since he made friends with the faceless boy in the cell adjacent to his own.
"It's . . . something. And you're right, it's probably better than the alternative." Erik admitted, but there wasn't much optimism in his voice.
"Before—toward the end, when we were . . . back there . . . he started going for longer and longer spurts without talking . . . so is—is he talking now?" asked Alex, the concern clear on his face now, as if it hadn't been before.
Not to me. That was Erik's first thought, but that wasn't what Alex had asked.
"Sometimes. But nowhere near as much as he would be if . . . things were different."
Alex nodded. "That can be a normal reaction to trauma and loss, I think. My brother only thought he lost me, and he's still shaken up. And like I said, he did that . . . before."
Silence settled between them as they each replayed the events of the last few days (and even years) in their minds, wondering what they could've done differently to avoid coming to this particular point in time.
"You said you didn't come here just to ask about Pietro." Said Erik finally, though part of him wanted to let the silence linger because if he didn't want to just talk to or about his son, then it wasn't hard to guess what else—or more precisely who else—he wanted to discuss. One only had to look at who connected them so closely besides Pietro, and they would find the answer. And Erik still didn't know how to feel about said person other than guilt.
"Right. We need to talk about Lorna." Replied Alex, dispelling any lingering doubts Erik might have had about who Alex had come to converse about.
Erik swallowed. "Do you . . . want to come in?" He asked as he clenched his fist, not because he was angry at Alex, but because he needed to focus on something other than the image of the daughter he would never get to know dying in front of him.
"No, I'd rather just . . . get this over with, and the kid might come back. I'm not quite ready to face him yet." Said Alex dropping his gaze to the floor for a moment.
This time it was Erik's turn to nod, until Alex continued.
"She's—I'm—I'm having her cremated; that is, if you don't have a problem with that? I just—she never liked being tied down, and I—I know she's gone, but I still can't take the thought of her trapped in a box for eternity. But I know you're Jewish," Alex said as he glanced down at Erik's arm, where the only tattoo Erik had ever received lay, and then quickly back up to Erik's face again—"and I don't know what the rules are, so I understand if you have some objection to that, religious or otherwise. You were—you are her father, it should be your decision. I mean, I wasn't—we weren't even—"
"Stop. You knew her. I didn't. If that's what you think she—" wanted wasn't the right word. No one wanted to die before they'd barely begun to live, at least not someone like Lorna, "—would have preferred, then that's what should be done."
"Then if you, um, want to—to say goodbye, you should do it now. We're going to move her now and then she'll—she'll be . . ." Alex started, obviously trying to say that she would be cremated or something along those lines, but he was finding it difficult to speak the words. The finality of it so much more real when said out loud.
"No—that is—I—I think it's better if it's just you." No he'd had enough of looking down at his dead family members, first his mother then his daughters—Anya, Wanda, Lorna. . . . He'd seen enough. And who knows if Lorna would even have wanted him there.
"What about—do you think Peter, Mila, or Nina would want to say goodbye before . . ." asked Alex, rubbing one hand through his hair, looking exhausted enough that he had to be putting in a real effort to remain on his feet. Erik wondered if he looked the same.
"I'll ask Mila, but as for Pietro and Nina . . . I don't think that would be a good idea. I already told Nina we would give her a—a proper goodbye later, and Pietro . . . he . . . I just don't think that would be a good idea." Said Erik finally. "But I'll ask."
"I understand. If Mila does want to—to see her, just have her alert the Professor, or she can come find me. I'm in the room right below yours."
"Okay." Said Erik because there was nothing left to say. It felt all too mundane and clinical, discussing the details of disposing his daughter's body like they were arranging a move.
"I should go." Said Alex. "Your kids will probably be back soon. You can tell Pete I'll be back later tonight, and if he's not up for company then I'll try again later."
Alex turned to leave without further ado, but Erik called out to him.
"Alex."
He turned to look back at the older man, and Erik cleared his throat before continuing.
"I don't like to think about it, but I'm glad they had you—Lorna and Pietro. And I'm glad Pietro still has you."
Alex gave a curt nod, acknowledging Erik's not quite thank you, but at the same time expressing that he clearly didn't think his presence alone was enough. It hadn't been for Lorna at least.
A moment later Alex disappeared around the corner.
Erik stared at the corner for longer than was healthy, imaging that everyone that was gone from his life was just around it, but of course they weren't.
And it did not do to dwell on something that would never be.
{Author's Note:
…SPOILERS AHEAD FOR WANDAVISION EPISODE FIVE!...
…You've been warned!...
…TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT!...
So at the end of episode five when the doorbell rang, I was like—'It's going to be him. It's going to be him. It's going to be HIM! And then it was HIM, and I still screamed! To clarify, I screamed in delight. I'm really excited to see where they go with this. Will he really be X-Men Pietro/Peter, some random NPC (or I guess that term doesn't make sense if Wanda is controlling him), or something/someone of a more nefarious nature? Ah, I can't wait for next week! So, in sum, WandaVision is an extremely good writing motivator. Also, now the temptation to add a third part to this series is very very strong. . . . but anyway, yI've decided on a chapter count of 43 for this story. That is still a guestimate, so it might change, but I wanted to let anyone who cares know that the end of this story is nigh.
…END OF SPOILERS…
Okay, now story related notes:
Erik and Peter will hash things out, just not yet.
The two 'dad' definitions before 'Pietro's father.' are some real definitions of the term 'dad'.
Also an update basically within two weeks? Is that a record for this story? It just might be. Until later, folks. Thanks for reading!}
