January, 2001

The time rolled one minute past midnight, and the twins were officially six months and one day old. Magda pulled her aching, tired eyes away from the alarm clock and looked down to where the little babies slept by her side. She breathed a deep sigh of relief as their small chests rose and fell in tandem. She had yet to turn off the lamp on the end stand, afraid she'd miss one little hiccup or something more. Something worse.

She hadn't known that she was pregnant with the twins when Anya had passed away. She could remember that the week before she was due for her monthly cycle, but it wasn't something that was of any import when they had to physically wrestle her away from a despondent Erik, who had not been reacting in the way Magda had thought he should. They broke the news to her after some blood work was done. It was uncomfortable on their part, to say the least. She could see that they wanted to be happy for her, but they didn't know how to quite react. She couldn't blame them; her own confusion was a mixture of unadulterated grief and wondrous joy. It was a feeling she had never wanted to have ever again. She never knew how Erik took the news.

Erik wasn't on his side of the bed. Again. He hadn't been for several days now. Magda couldn't recall if he said he was in training or attending another match – she could never remember what months they played and when they didn't. She didn't much care. She missed her husband.

And he desperately missed his daughter.

"Erik, would you please do something to help for once!" Magda raked a hand through her unruly hair in desperation. Pietro wailed from where he sat on her hip, one chubby hand clutching her shirt as another waved in the air. Wanda echoed her brother's cry from where she sat up in a playpen. Magda could feel her own tears of frustration as they began to well up in her eyes.

Her husband emerged from the guest bedroom; face stony and gray eyes transfixed on the watch he was in the process of putting on. He flicked them over the bawling infants with nothing more than a grimace. "I'm late, Magda." He looked away as if ashamed. "They need me right now."

"I need you!" She would have thrown something in her desperate anger if her hands weren't full of wriggling Pietro. "Damn you, Erik. They're your children too!"

A flash of indignation marred his lips into a frown. "So you keep saying."

Magda couldn't help but feel that the twins could have used that moment to stop crying for dramatic effect. They didn't, of course, but the silence was felt deep in her chest. She inhaled slowly, before she hoisted Pietro a little further up her hip. "Excuse me?"

"You heard what I said," Erik replied lowly. His eyes met hers unflinchingly.

"You don't believe they're yours?" She nearly laughed in her disbelief.

His lack of a reply was more than enough of an affirmation.

Oh, she thought, that explains so much. He doesn't look at them. He doesn't speak to them. He barely touches them. It makes so much sense.

"You don't think they're yours?" Her raised voice did nothing to quell the twin's raucous squall. "How could you even think that, Erik? How could you believe I would do something like that? And with who? And when, Erik? Before Anya's death? After?" She couldn't keep the hysteria from her tone.

Erik was swift in his movements. In the blink of an eye, he was nearly nose to nose with her. His gray eyes were wide; wounded, and wet with unshed tears. She stood frozen, transfixed by the sight of her tight-jawed, red-faced husband as he physically struggled to keep his clenched fist raised in the air. He trembled with the sheer energy.

The sudden silence was swift and untimely, but it allowed for Magda's whispered, "You've become a monster," to be heard loud and clear. The slam of the front door as he left was just as thunderous.

The alarm clock blared a bright red 1:01 in the morning, and Magda had yet to fall asleep. She looked down at the twins, both curled and completely unconscious just inches from her stomach. She placed a loving hand atop Pietro's silver-haired head (a genetic mutation of some sort, according to the doctor's, possibly due to the fact that they were born slightly premature.) He didn't stir under her touch. She didn't do the same for Wanda, having learned the hard way that the little girl was sensitive to touch, but she leveled an equally loving look in her direction.

The front door opened and closed. Magda closed her eyes and feigned sleep as Erik attempted to pick his way through the front hallway and toward one of the bedrooms in silence. He failed miserably when he tripped over a singing child's toy. Magda risked a look to the twins. Still out.

Eventually, Erik made it to their bedroom. He crept in, shucking his shirt and shoes by the dresser before he climbed into the bed. The mattress dipped under his added weight, and the room filled with the stench of alcohol and stale cigarettes. He spooned Magda from behind, his mouth foul and hot against her skin.

"I'm sorry," he drunkenly whispered against the nape of her neck. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." His voice sounded odd, nasally and slurred, and she realized he must of broken his nose. She wondered about what other injuries he carried tonight (in the light of the morning she would see his blackened eye, skinless knuckles, and scratched face.)

Instead, though, all she felt was his arm wrapping around her middle for the first time in months. He pulled her close, and she relished in the warmth and the weight. He clasped her hand tightly, and placed a light peck to her shoulder before he drifted off to sleep.

She couldn't help but notice that he never touched the twins.

TBC...

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