IV.
Pietro went to bed that night more exhausted than he had ever been in his life. The "training session" Magneto had put them through that afternoon was nothing short of brutal.
"And we're supposed to do this again tomorrow," Peter groaned. "If we're just sitting around waiting, why are we training for a war?"
"He's up to something," Pietro said. He couldn't lift his arms high enough to put his pajama top on, so he left it off and crawled into bed in just the bottoms. "But I don't know what."
"You seem to know him very well."
"Not as well as I should. He's my father."
Peter didn't seem overly surprised. There was a resemblance, after all. Wanda took after their mother, but Pietro had always been Daddy's boy.
"You're not close, then?"
"Not really. I . . . I don't feel like talking about it."
Peter nodded and turned out the light.
The dream was different this time.
He was standing in the middle of a graveyard at night. The shining white gravestones reached as far as his eye could see. There had to be thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands.
He bent down and read the name on the closest one.
SCOTT SUMMERS.
What?
He looked for a date, but he couldn't read it. The rounded numbers were shadowed and hard to make out. It could be tomorrow, could be ten years from now.
Trembling, Pietro went down the line. JEAN GREY was the next one, followed by KURT WAGNER, KITTY PRIDE, EVAN DANIELS . . . they were all there.
All dead.
And he knew it was because of him.
A shadow fell over the last stone, which said simply ROGUE. Pietro looked up and saw his father standing over him.
"They're all dead."
Magneto only nodded and moved down the line.
The next one was LANCE ALVERS.
"Our own people, too?"
"They . . . got in the way."
Sure they did. "We're the only ones left, aren't we?"
Magneto said nothing, just stalked past, his cape billowing behind him.
And then suddenly it was daylight—a cold, gray daylight that didn't really illuminate anything. Pietro found himself alone, standing over an open casket. Behind him was the bombed-out shell of a building.
I don't want to look. I don't want to see . . .
But he did look.
The corpse had his own face . . .
He woke up screaming, unsure what was real and what was a dream. His head was pounding, and his insides were churning like they were in a blender.
The screams had brought everyone running. "Wha's wrong?" Remy asked sleepily
.Pietro couldn't answer. Suddenly he ran to the bathroom and threw up, over and over again. When the tide subsided, he rested his forehead against the side of the bowl and heaved a huge sigh.
"You're not well," Peter said, belaboring the obvious. "You should see a doctor, maybe."
"No . . . no, I'm all right," Pietro groaned, trying to lift his head. "Just a bad dream."
"Not the first time that's happened, is it?"
Pietro looked up and saw his father in the doorway. If Magneto had been in uniform, Pietro might have been too spooked to say a word, but the older man was in his pajamas.
"A lot's happened." He turned over and tried to sit up. "It's just . . . it's kind of hard to deal with, all at once."
Magneto looked around. "Everyone go back to bed," he ordered, and the boys scattered.
Peter looked over his shoulder, but at a stern glance from Magneto, he left as well.
Magneto sat down on the floor beside his son. "How do you feel now?"
"Awful."
He put a hand on the boy's forehead. "No fever. It's probably just a nervous stomach." He smiled. "You get that from your mother."
"You never talk about her."
"Well . . . you wouldn't remember her."
That's why I want you to talk about her, Pietro thought.
"She almost missed our wedding because we couldn't get her out of the bathroom. By the time you came along, she knew the location of every public bathroom within five miles of our house."
"What was she like?"
Magneto sighed. "I wish I had time to tell you, but it's late, and you need to be getting back to bed—"
"I don't think I can sleep tonight," Pietro said. The dream was fading away, but he knew he'd never be able to close his eyes without seeing those rows of gravestones stretching on and on to infinity . . .
His father patted him on the shoulder. "I'll let you sleep in tomorrow. You don't have to come to morning training. I would, however, like you to see me as soon as you've finished your breakfast."
So it was back to business. Fine, sure, whatever. He was used to it by now.
"Okay."
Magneto helped him up off the floor. "Dreams rarely come twice in the same night," he said. "With any luck, you should be out like a light in no time."
Easy for him to say.
"I hope so," Pietro said. With that, he went back to his own room. He glanced over at the other bed, but all he saw was Peter's unmoving back.
He spent a long time lying awake and thinking about his mother . . . how you could miss someone even if you could barely remember what they looked like anymore. Even though he had to look at her photograph to remember her eyes and her smile, she still meant more to him than anyone else in the world.
He wished she were here now, so he could ask her advice on how to fix his screwed-up life. She would know what to do.
And then he thought: if she had been here, would any of this have happened?
Quietly, he got up, and went across the room to the chest of drawers. He opened the top drawer as silently as he could, and took out the picture.
Then he went back to bed and put it under his pillow. And he fell asleep right away.