Disclaimer: I own none of the characters within.
Author's Notes: Ummm... As desperate as I am to find a legitimate excuse for the lateness of this chapter, there is none. Rest assured in two things: that I was tearing myself to pieces in guilt all this time, and that I'm never going to quit this story. There may be interminable stretches of time between chapters, but I'll never give up. I've made a commitment. And though I've had friends say, "you're being consumed by this story; just hit the X-Mansion with a freak meteor and be done", I refuse. Here I am. And here's a new chapter.
I realize that the quality is lagging. I'm sorry. I've been working on my own stuff (I'm writing a musical, huzzah for me!) and haven't had much time for fanfiction.
Besides, I saw RENT in July and it has consumed me utterly. Because everything is RENT.
Please enjoy this chapter. It was the hardest one for me to write.
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Pale, ghostlike fingers traced invisible patterns in the wallpaper as Pietro crept silently through the mansion.
He was aware.
Sharply aware, acutely aware, more than anyone could ever have possibly been before him. His sense of smell was burning with a thousand different scents in the air. When he opened his mouth, he could fairly taste the food in the kitchen he had just left. His eyes were working double time, so that everything he saw was crisp and brilliantly clear, like he'd been half blind his whole life and just got glasses. Even the wallpaper under his hand felt unnaturally cold and smooth.
The only thing that didn't seem to be working was his hearing. Everything was as quiet, as deathly quiet, as if he were the only living being on the planet.
Absently, he rubbed the dried blood from his forehead, making himself presentable for an invisible audience. He brought one stained fingertip to his nose, sniffed it delicately. His pink tongue flicked out and tasted it. Bitter! He spat onto the carpet.
His path led him around to the entry way, and he smelled a new scent, something hot and pungent and familiar. Smoke. Old smoke, though, like the residue of smoke clinging to fabric. It reminded him of how Johnny smelled, the scent of Teazer's t-shirt after a fun-filled, fire-filled day. But that was impossible.
Suddenly, he halted, quivering. He could feel his ears straining, twitching, as every nerve in his body was instantly jolted with... what? It was like electricity, burning his senses and screaming for his attention. He whipped around, paranoid. Finally, his eyes settled onto the source, and he did a little leap in the air of delight.
Wanda!
He bounded up to her, skidding to a halt a few feet away when he realized in disappointment that she wouldn't be able to see him anyway. This realization also brought a hint of terror with it, a high-pitched wailing that started up in the back of his mind which he quickly silenced.
She was at the library door, peering in the crack at something. He didn't care. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled deeply, enjoying for the first time how absolutely warm she smelled. Familiarity raced through him at that scent, the same sweet aroma that he'd known all the times he'd hugged her in their childhood. Overwhelmed by the memories, he kissed the back of her neck lightly.
Something was wrong.
His eyes snapped open. His nerves were crackling now as he suddenly became aware of another scent, one infinitely more overpowering. Old and strong and powerful. But it couldn't be! Not here!
He finally noticed the look of horror on Wanda's face as she gazed into the library. Something was in there. Something horrible. Something terrible. Something that chilled him to the bone, because he knew what it was even before he bothered to look.
But when he at last summoned the courage to slide under Wanda to look through the crack, his blood turned to ice in his veins and his eyes filled with bloodshot fury.
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If silence were golden, then King Midas himself could not have made a more solid scene than the one in the library.
Jean squeezed Scott's hand and he hers, neither looking at each other but both suddenly aware of everything.
Rogue's heavy gaze was cast on the floor, weary and ready for the nightmare to end.
Charles stared in heartbroken horror at the man he had thought he knew so well.
Wanda bit her lip until it bled and the thin line of crimson traced itself down to her chin.
And Erik could look no one in the eye, least of all Charles, so he too kept his eyes on the floor, the statue floating a little higher, his hands locked between his knees to keep them from shaking.
"Erik..." Charles said again.
"I know what I've done, Charles." the other man hissed. "I know exactly what I've done. I know that I've followed in the footsteps of Josef Mengele, and all other cruel persons who have performed experiments on their fellow man. Oh yes, Charles, I am completely aware of this despicable crime, and there is no way to begin to describe to you, you perfect and blameless human being, how much it tortures me. How I can't sleep at night, how I can't eat, can't focus on my work. Can't stop thinking about it and what I could have done to... to stop myself."
A hand covered his mouth to stifle a sob, and he took a long, deep breath to in an attempt compose himself. It worked, and when he put his hand back with the other he was calm, collected, detached. When he spoke, he told the story as though it happened ten thousand years ago, and not to him.
"I met my wife, Magda, long after you and I parted company, Charles. I was already thirty-six, and she thirty-two. Years of misfortune had hardened me into a bitter man. The numbers on my forearm served not as a reminder of a hardship I had triumphed over. Rather, the only thing they brought to mind was my knowledge of the innate cruelty of the human race. A bitter, bitter man."
He paused, raking one hand through his snowy hair in a gesture that would have been startlingly familiar to any Brotherhood members, had they been present; a gesture they would have recognized at once as Pietro's. When Erik continued, a wistful, smiling glow came to his eyes, though his face remained impassive.
"Magda, she... she didn't seem to mind that I was damaged goods. Didn't mind at all. I remember the first time I showed her those horrible numbers on my arm. She kissed them, kissed every one of those wretched digits, and it was as though all the pain and the anger and the sorrow that had been infused in those numbers was washed away. A hopeless cliche, but what else can be said? I suppose when you fall in love, you also fall victim to spouting cliches and gushing ridiculous poetry. I had considered myself immune to such antics, but I soon found myself quoting Shakespearean sonnets with the rest of them."
Jean felt Scott's hand tighten over hers, and she squeezed back gently. A small part of her wished that Erik would end here, leave her with this taste of a romantic story and, hopefully, a glimpse of her future. The idea of Scott stumbling over a mouthful of "thee"s and "thou"s warmed her heart, but it was chilled by the knowledge that the tale she was hearing now could only end in tragedy.
"We were married after a brief courtship. It could have been even briefer, I suppose, if I had not been so afraid of asking for her hand. Our marriage was... quiet, is the word for it, really. Quiet and peaceful. I began to think that I had a chance to live life as a normal man. I never told Magda of my powers, though when she became pregnant I secretly worried that the child might be a mutant, also. Yet the child was born healthy and blessedly normal. We had a... daughter..."
His words choked him and he stopped speaking. Again, he swept a hand over his head, but this time all his pitiful attempts to disguise his shaking failed miserably.
Outside, Wanda was overcome. A daughter? An older sibling? Her face was transfixed with horror and confusion, when suddenly she felt it. The tiniest little kiss of warmth, for the shortest of moments, tickled the back of her neck. And at almost the same time, she sensed something near her, someone else looking through the crack of the door and supporting her.
Erik made a valiant attempt to resume his narration.
"A daughter. Our first child. We named her..." Choking, helpless. "We named her..." This time, a strangled cry of frustration. "I cannot say it! I cannot speak it, not after all these years of silence in her memory. I have trained myself to never repeat it, to never tell anyone, and old habits die hard. I'm afraid she shall remain a mystery to you, but just as well. I'll carry her name with me to my grave."
Charles remained silent, even though with his intense mental repetition of the name Erik had made it obvious to both telepaths in the room.
"She was a beautiful child, the apple of my eye, and her mother the apple of my other. Both had equal portions of my heart. And we lived in that uninterrupted, unhurried way that one would imagine befitting a little family of three. We lived in the Ukraine, a little town called Vinnista. I worked a simple job and brought home enough money to keep the three of us fed. Still, all things come to an end.
My employer (I will not name him) was a cruel, dishonest man. He cheated many of his workers out of their wages, myself included. He was one of the wealthiest men in town, while as time went on I could barely keep food on the table at home. Things came to a head when one day, he refused my wages outright. He had a thousand false complaints against me, designed to ruin my reputation in the village. I don't think I will ever know why he chose me as his target.
But when he would not pay me, my anger came to a boiling point. Without meaning to, I... I threw a crowbar at him. Not with my hands, but with the powers I had fought for so long to keep dormant. Ever since I had assisted those who rescued me from the camps, I had decided that I must smother those powers. I was a child then, a child who realized that being different had gotten me into the camps in the first place, and this new irregularity would doom me forever."
Erik stopped his narrative again, but this time in anger. He drove his fist into his palm, and the statue that had been floating erratically about now quivered in the air.
"What a fool I was! I think so often of what would have happened had I been more in control of myself, how things would have gone if I had any degree of restraint. Things could have been different! It was all my fault! All my fault!"
The statue suddenly smashed through the little end table and the ground, taking what was now a pile of splinters with it. Erik jumped in surprise, having been unaware of his activity. He groaned in embarrassment and buried his face in his hands, overwhelmed by the vicious memories. Charles opened his mouth to reassure him that it was all right, but Erik spoke again in a harsh, grating voice.
"There was a riot... a mob of terrified people, driven to madness by their fear of the unknown... they attacked my home... dragged me outside and set the place on fire... Magda escaped, thank God, but my daughter... my beautiful daughter... the house burned to the ground with her still inside... she was screaming, screaming for her father... and they held me down! They wouldn't let me save her! Those bastards condemned her to death with their indifference!"
He bit his knuckles against a cry of anguish, and outside the study Wanda wept as well, thinking of an older sister she never knew she'd had. When Erik continued the story, his voice dropped to a sinister note.
"But I had my revenge... When my daughter's screams died away and I recovered from my helpless outrage, I felt my powers surge through me ten times stronger than they'd ever been before. An insanity overcame me; every weapon they carried, every piece of metal on those monsters turned against them. Farmers were killed with their own scythes, guns turned on their carriers. It was a masterpiece of chaos. And when it was over, when my daughter's murderers lay drowning in their own blood, I walked over to Magda, who was kneeling in the mud with her hands covering her mouth.
I knelt before her and spoke. 'Magda,' I said. 'This is what I am, and I love you with all my soul. This is what humanity has done to us, and I plan to take you somewhere that claims liberty and justice for all. Will you still have me?'"
There was a long moment. Jean felt strangely nervous, like this decades-old story was happening that very instant, and a single word spoken could sway Magda's answer. Scott predicted an answer, but was being nudged by the telepath's anxiety so that he couldn't think straight.
"She said yes."
If Erik was aware of the two sighs of relief, he gave no indication.
"We left for America. It was a long and tiring journey, made all the more difficult by the fact that we were weighed down by grief and heartache. But I can still remember seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time... Young people born in this country can never truly appreciate that magic. They can never fully understand the majesty and the glory of that beautiful figure, standing with her torch lifted, a beacon of hope for all of us, the poor and huddled masses. It was odd, but even as I looked at her, I felt her. I felt the metal that formed her, and as I stared at that beautiful statue in awe, deep inside I had the knowledge that I was able to tear it apart.
I had not yet fully realized the evil of the entire human race. In those days, I still held a kindling of hope for mankind, not yet seeing the awesome potential of mutants, thinking myself a rarity among normalcy. I promised Magda and myself that my powers would never be used again, that I would have a new beginning in America as a man and not a freak of nature. We did notice, though, that the riotous explosion of my powers back in Vinnista had turned my hair a shocking white, where it had once been a rich brown.
We quickly found our place in the United States; both of us worked as servers in the same restaurant. And after a few years of this monotony, Magda became pregnant again. This time, it didn't even occur to me that the child might be born a mutant. It was a child! A child! Something to fill the empty places in our hearts, a new life that we could nurture and tend, and this time... this time, see her grow to adulthood, to became a woman with a family of her own, children of her own, our grandchildren... a thousand happy futures lay before this child. A thousand possibilities for the daughter with a father who would kill to give her what she wanted.
And I remember... lying in bed beside Magda one night, perhaps three months into her pregnancy, and hearing her say, "There's two of them, Erik, I think. In fact I'm quite sure of it. A boy and a girl." Both of us were thinking the same thing, then: God was blessing us double for our first loss. I felt like Job, after all his possessions were taken away, and then returned twofold for his faith. I did not question Magda's knowledge of their gender; she knew. A little girl for me to pamper and adore, and a little boy for me to pass on the teachings of my father to. She would be a princess, and he would be a prince."
At this point, Charles could not keep himself from smiling fondly, for his old friend had projected a powerful mental image without even noticing it. It was Magda, standing in a cramped apartment kitchen, and Erik kneeling before her, his ear pressed to her pregnant belly and grinning from ear to ear. Jean saw it, too, but because her powers were less acute she saw it as though through a frosted windowpane, which perhaps made it all the more haunting. Erik continued.
"On the night of their birth, I took Magda to the nearest hospital, where she delivered with very little trouble. The doctor told me, he said she did remarkably well for a woman delivering twins. Yes, twins! And Magda had been right about another thing; a boy and a girl. I remember holding Wanda for the first time...
My little princess! Those beautiful eyes, that soft wisp of dark hair, her perfect face pink with health and vigor. She was so small, she barely weighed anything. But she gazed up at me with those shining eyes, and I promised that I would take care of her for as long as I lived, and that I would kill anyone who tried to harm her. I thanked God for sending her to me... a replacement for the daughter I had lost..."
Outside, Wanda felt tears slip from her eyes, but didn't try to stop them.
"And then I held Pietro, my little man. Even then, I could feel that he was a survivor, that he would push through some of life's harshest fires and come out the other side alive. Not unscathed, for no man emerges from suffering without a burn. But he would endure. Endurance and survival. And I began to wonder at God's blessing, for sending me two children to replace the one... It was at this moment that the doctor approached me and told me my wife would not stop bleeding, and then I understood.
I understood that Pietro was not in reparation for the child I had lost, but for the wife I was about to lose!
Suddenly disgusted by the infant in my arms, I thrust him into the arms of a nurse and bolted from the room, chilled to the bone. I had been tricked! Fooled by a God I had trusted in for so long! Time and time again, he let me down, and yet I continued to put everything that I held dear into his hands. This final wound, this ultimate betrayal, stabbed deeper than anything ever before. All those years of prayer...!
They wouldn't let me into Magda's room. The doctors were working on her, I would just be in the way... I ranted and raved like a madman trying to get in there, but every time I got close enough, some monstrous orderly more suited to the task of nightclub bouncer would drag me away. 'Trust me,' they said. 'It's for your own good. It's for her own good.' I could have killed them all. There was enough metal in that single corridor for me to wipe out the entire building. But some shred of Magda held me back, some deep knowledge that if I had such an outburst again, she would leave me and never come back.
Which is exactly what she did..."
This time, Erik didn't try to mask his grief. A shudder ran along his whole body like lightning, bursting from his throat in a violent sob as he buried his face in his hands and wept. Perhaps some would consider this over dramatic, a bit cliched. But Charles knew that Erik had buried these emotions for so many years, had buried all emotion entirely, that now coming back in touch with it was like going from a wading pool to an ocean at high tide, getting slammed in the face with wave after wave until you start to drown. The professor's first instinct, motivated by compassion, was to send calming psychic waves in his friends' direction. But his desire to know the absolute truth knew that if he tapered off any of this raw emotion, Erik might lose his nerve and never finish the story. So he sat in sympathetic silence, waiting.
Jean, however, had no such willpower. Always sensitive to the emotions of others, this onslaught of distress was breaking her heart. Seeing such a powerful, stoic figure become so completely helpless in the thrall of his agony moved her deeply. Without even realizing it, she rose from her seat, leaving a confused Scott on the couch by himself. She crossed the small space between her and Erik, stood before him, and placed her hands on his shaking shoulders.
"I'm so sorry."
He looked up at her, his vision blurry from tears. Seeing another pair of eyes looking into his own seemed to steady him, to calm him, and he regained his composure rapidly. He took her hands in his own and gave them a firm squeeze of gratitude, saying in a faint voice, "Thank you, my dear." With a nod of understanding, Jean returned to her seat, feeling strangely calm as well. Erik cleared his throat, ashamed of himself for such a display, and continued.
"Magda died within hours of giving birth to the twins. My heart died too, I'm afraid, and I left my newborns at the hospital for several days, while I retreated to my apartment to grieve. Perhaps I would have remained shut away there forever, if one day I had not accidentally tripped while crossing the room, falling hard and cutting my arm on the sharp corner of our kitchen table. As I went to nurse the wound, I saw that the blood had smeared so that it looked like my old camp numbers were bleeding. I had always seen these numbers as all of humanity, and suddenly I saw what enormous potential lay within me: I could make the human race bleed!
My grief rapidly transformed into a self-righteous anger. In a short span of days, I had claimed my children and taken them to Germany, where through my quickly expanding powers I transformed an abandoned, forgotten castle into a home for us. I stole shamelessly, for no one could stop me. Who could stop a metal-framed bed as it floated out the front door of the store? Who could stop the canned food from flying off the shelves and into the sky? No human, that is certain.
It was in these days that through chance I encountered my second mutant companion. My first was you, Charles, though we both considered ourselves the only ones of our kind. This one was much different. This one would aid me in ways I can never fully repay, for in return for food and shelter, she helped me raise my children. I could never have done it alone.
Her name was Raven.
Yes, you know her now as Mystique. But in those days it was Raven, Raven and Erik, hiding away in their castle and trying to care for two motherless infants. She herself was pregnant, and perhaps it was these maternal instincts that drove her to name the poor devils, calling the first Wanda and the second Peter. Although I approved of the name Wanda, the name Peter struck a chord of anger in me. It was a Biblical name and I had sworn away from God for good."
He paused. Charles glanced at the floor, concentrating, as Logan suddenly sent him a mental heads-up: "Speedy's been in the exercise room, Chuck; he tore the treadmill to pieces." The professor barely had time to send back "Thank you, Logan.", before Erik's voice spoke again.
"Raven's pregnancy intrigued me. I began to wonder whether her child, sired by a mere human, would be born with such incredible powers as his mother, or whether he would fall prey to the horrible birth defect known as normalcy. With her permission, I began to perform the first of my experiments on mutants, injecting her with certain chemicals that I hoped would awaken a dormant mutant gene.
We lived like this for several months, and I began to get to know my children. Wanda was a loud baby, screaming for attention when she was ignored, laughing riotously when I gave in to my paternal urges and played with her. Her hair came in fast and thick, dark like her mother's. I loved her. She was the daughter I always deserved. I hoped desperately that she was a mutant like me, although at this time I lacked the equipment to test whether it was so.
Peter, on the other hand, was irritatingly quiet. I think he knew that I hated him. Yes, I hated him! My own helpless child, and I loathed the very sight of him. He was a taunting from God, a life that had been given to me in exchange for Magda's, a life that I did not want responsibility for. I made a point of showing God this, showing him how foolish he had been to throw this child into the hands of a man who hated it.
Although I played with Wanda constantly, I never did so with Peter. I left the baby in his room, usually in the dark, in silence. I never went near him. In fact, if it had not been for Raven, perhaps he would have perished through my inactivity, wasting away in his crib while I sat downstairs with his sister in my lap. But no, Raven cared for the boy, saw him maybe as a predecessor to her own son. I would come upstairs to put Wanda to bed, and I would see her in there, holding Peter in her arms and singing quietly to him. She never had to soothe him or shush him; as far as I am aware Peter never cried, choosing instead to stare at me with haunting blue eyes whenever he wanted something.
Still, all things must end, whether they are good or bad. Raven gave birth to her child, whose mutant gene I had successfully awoken. He was incredible, a mutant from birth, a masterpiece of nature. She fell into an exhausted sleep after the long delivery, and I had a few precious hours with what I suddenly and fanatically believed to be my true son. Maddeningly silent Peter could rot, now; I no longer needed him! Through my science, I had created my own child, a child as mutated and powerful as myself. I even contemplated killing Peter and literally replacing him with this newer and better child. But Raven awoke, and in a flurry of terrifying transformations and screamed accusations, she fled the castle and took the newborn with her. I pursued her, but by the time I caught up with her, she had lost the child to the river.
We parted company that night, and it would be some years before I sought her to be my companion again. The child is now one of yours, Charles, and I congratulate you on your attaining such a fine example of mutant kind."
Erik stopped and again ran a hand through his hair, taking a deep breath and contemplating all the information he had just shared with them. Seeming to approve of his telling, he then went on.
"Wanda was walking now, though Peter still refused to graduate from a crawl. As much as I wanted to, I could not leave my son to die. Magda was watching me, Magda was everywhere, and I could not commit such a crime in her presence. The name Peter brought me such irritation, however, that I finally changed it to Pietro, a name more suited to his Polish origins. He also began to grow hair, which I noticed in surprise was shock-white, exactly like mine, only bypassing altogether the phase of brown. When he at last began to walk, the twins were just over a year old.
We couldn't stay in Germany any longer. The castle seemed to be closing in on me. I took us back to America, and after using my powers to procure the finances, bought us a house. The backyard had a tree in it that I remember very clearly, a tree with a branch very low to the ground. There was also a swing set, which the children adored. We lived there for several years. I didn't need a job, I just stole what we needed. I found that it was easier to commit robberies in other states, and as I was searching for a way to travel rapidly I discovered that I myself could fly. This talent did not go untapped. Half of the cash I stole was given to babysitters that I hired while I went out and robbed humanity; an amusing side note in this story that I must observe.
Meanwhile, I was building up an impressive miniature laboratory in my basement. It was stocked with everything I needed; chemicals, equipment, a computer. The only thing it was missing was a subject. Again I returned to the science of mutants, and began to wonder if I could awaken a dormant mutant gene in a child that had already been born. Without even thinking twice, I chose my own children as the subjects for this test. They were four years old when we started, and after several weekly sessions of injections, their powers sprang to life.
Wanda's were as impressive as my own, a thing that filled me with fatherly pride. She was unlimited; as I had complete control over metal, so she seemed to have complete control over everything else. In anyone else, this would have concerned and frightened me. But Wanda was such a good girl... All she wanted to do was please me. When I told her never to use her powers unless I told her to, she took me absolutely seriously. The neighbors never even suspected her immense abilities.
Pietro, on the other hand, was a disappointment. His powers seemed to be that of a jackrabbit; hypersensitive hearing and sight, and incredible reflexes when provoked. The latter part of his powers I did not realize until I saw it myself. He and Wanda were playing in the backyard, and when she threw a clod of dirt at him, he was ten feet away in a split second. This intrigued me, yet when I asked him to do it again, he could not. He tried and tried, but seemed unable to access the speed without the adrenaline of imminent danger. In frustration, I went to strike him across the face, but my hand slapped thin air, and he was on the other side of the yard by the time I realized he had moved.
I trained with Wanda for a year, from when she was four to when she was five. She was a quick learner, amazingly quick, and I loved her all the more for it. She was growing into my perfect little soldier, and we reached a point where she was able to destroy the swing set and I put it back together again. Throughout this year, Pietro moved about in my peripheral vision, slipping in and out as swiftly and silently as the rabbit I had once compared him to. He became self-sufficient, feeding himself after Wanda and I had our meals. Don't think I didn't feed him! He refused to eat when I was present. More than once I dragged him to the table with us, where he would sit sullenly, staring at his plate.
Still, Wanda loved him. When she wasn't training with me, she was playing with him, taking care of him, seeming to understand that he was weaker than she was. She never used her powers around him because they made him feel ashamed. Instead, they chanted silly childhood rhymes and climbed all over that old tree, singing and laughing and chattering.
Curiosity killed the cat, and yet I could not stop myself. Was there a way to harness Pietro's speed so that he could access it at all times? Could I take this pathetic excuse for a mutant and refine him into a well-oiled engine? These were questions that begged to be answered. The possibility of side effects in the long run didn't even occur to me.
When Pietro was five years old, I began work on him.
Every week, I gave him a series of injections, compiled variously of adrenaline, caffeine, and amphetamine; all the central nervous stimulants I could think of. I had the gut feeling that he just needed a trigger, just needed enough energy to break into a higher level, and then he would stay there. Every month, I would perform tests on him to see if there had been any change. Tests to gauge his speed..."
"...with a treadmill." Charles said softly, suddenly understanding why the treadmill in the exercise room had been destroyed by Pietro; it was the cry for help of a scarred child, lashing out at a symbol of his suffering.
At those words, Erik glanced up from staring at the floor, guilt written all over his features.
"Yes, a treadmill. I made it out of solid metal, and it was powered by me. I could make it go as fast as I pleased, which gradually became phenomenal speeds. I'd set Pietro on it and tell him to run as fast as he could, and I would make it go faster and faster... He'd be running and running and begging me to stop, telling me he couldn't go any faster... I lost count of how many times he stumbled and was thrown from the machine..."
Jean couldn't stop herself from gasping in horror at the idea of a father throwing his child from a speeding piece of machinery. Scott was hearing Evan's voice in the back of his mind, when he had described Pietro as looking like he had just woken up from a nightmare; Spyke had no idea how close he was to the truth! Erik gnawed his lower lip, ashamed, and forced himself to keep talking.
"Every week it was the same. Then, it became every other day. I was getting frustrated by the lack of progress. I upped his doses of the drugs. Pietro began to act strangely, edgy and paranoid, prone to chilling shrieks when surprised. At one point, Wanda was playing a game with me where she would come up from behind and pounce; I thought it was amusing. Yet when she played the same trick on Pietro, his fantastic reflexes sent him tearing into the wall, which he clawed and pounded like a terrified, trapped animal. This hysteria became frequent, and Wanda seemed to be the only person capable of calming him down.
I remember rolling up his sleeve, exposing his little arm, hearing him say every day, "Please don't do that, it hurts", and hearing myself saying, "Trust me. It's for your own good." I spat out the same words they had said to me on the day of Magda's death. "Trust me." And he always did. He always sat there in silence as I injected him, and he always got back on the treadmill, though it had thrown him time and time again.
As time passed and I sensed I was nearing a breakthrough, a force more dangerous than I could have predicted intervened on Pietro's behalf.
Wanda.
One afternoon as I prepared Pietro for his injections, the needle suddenly glowed blue and flew from my hand. I looked up and saw her standing there in the doorway, blazing with anger as she said, "Leave him alone." I tried to explain to her how it was for his own good, how he needed my help to become as powerful a mutant as she was. But she would have none of it, and kept repeating "Daddy, you're hurting him!", as though this was an obvious fact that I was unable to acknowledge. She was right, you know; I was so blinded by my need to make Pietro into something stronger and better that I didn't see how much it was tearing him apart.
After arguing with her fruitlessly for a few moments, I ordered her to go to her room. She refused. I repeated my command, and still she stood there and said in a voice full of love and responsibility, "I'm not leaving him with you." She said it so calmly and so forcefully that it was easy forget that I was talking to a girl that was a few months shy of six years old. My anger was straining at the leash. The next few things happened in rapid succession.
Pietro dove from the table and scrambled to hide behind his sister. I lunged to grab him, but even though I came from behind his spectacular hearing easily told him my exact location, and he darted forward in a burst of speed that put him out of my reach. Resorting to the use of my own powers, I maneuvered a metal chair so that it would intercept him.
Suddenly, the chair slipped from my grasp.
I could no longer lift it, though it was solid metal. I couldn't sense any metal at all. It was like being instantaneously turned deaf; to be so abruptly denied one of my most basic senses was the most jarring experience I had ever encountered. Glancing at my hands, I saw that my entire body was shrouded in a blue glow. Even more disturbingly, my vision traced the source of the glow to Wanda's hands. Somehow, she had turned off my power as easily as flicking a light switch!
There was nothing I could do. I stood frozen with indecision, locked in a staring contest with the daughter I thought I knew, seeing none of her obedience to me, seeing only the countless disasters that lay in the future if I kept her under my roof while she was in this rebellious state.
I had to send her away.
This was the only conclusion that could be reached. When she at last released me, whether intentionally or out of default from exhaustion, I smiled and suggested that she and her brother go upstairs and watch television. Wanda was suspicious, of course; I never fooled her for a moment. But Pietro accepted it, tugging her up the stairs by the sleeve, seemingly oblivious of the battle he had just witnessed, the battle that had been fought over him.
After several days of phone calls and arrangements, I approached the twins about going to see the circus. They were both delighted, Pietro especially so. I casually mentioned that it would be a long drive to get there, but if they were on their best behavior on the car trip, I would buy them each cotton candy when we got there. Full of childish solemnity, they agreed to my terms and clambered into the backseat of the car. It was raining. I hoped to drive through the rainstorm, but it seemed to get heavier and stormier the farther we went.
The two of them chattered excitedly the whole way, although occasionally one would shush the other, comically frightened of losing that promised cotton candy. Wanda seemed so calm and controlled that I seriously contemplated turning around and taking them home, forgetting this whole rash plan.
But I had no guarantee. If Wanda continued to use her powers without my permission, and in particular against me, she could not stay. She had been so well-trained since such an early age that her power to break those rules so easily was a warning sign. Understand that I did not intend to leave her there forever; merely until she had learned some self-restraint. Then I would take her back and have both of my children by my side, both of them developed to their power's full potential.
When we arrived, they both leapt out of the car and into the rain, stopping only after they had splashed through a maze of puddles, because only then did they see that there was no circus. I think they knew also that there had never been a circus. They turned and looked at me as I came up behind them, and they asked me where they were. They were answered when the front door of the massive building opened and a small group of men came out to meet us.
After a brief discussion, in which I repeatedly stressed that they were to take good care of her, one of the men advanced towards my children and knelt before them. Pietro ducked behind Wanda instinctively. The man said, "Hello, Wanda, would you like to come inside?" She shook her head, so he said, "Wanda, you're going to have to come with me." "Can I come?" Pietro injected nervously, grasping Wanda's hand. "I'm afraid not, son." The man said. "Come on, Wanda."
When she began to back away, he grabbed her arm, and one of his companions grabbed the other. The two of them lifted her into the air and began to drag her towards the building. Pietro made to stop them, but I ordered sharply, "Pietro, stay where you are." As Wanda kicked and screamed and begged, all of her awesome powers were rendered useless by her panic. She had no coherency to summon them. And Pietro, paralyzed by his loyalty to me, stood there mournfully, his eyes shining with fear and confusion.
As the doors slammed, I urged Pietro into the passenger seat of the car, driving away from that place as fast as I could. He was silent for quite some time, and when he did speak, it was to ask a question. "She'll be coming home soon, right, Dad?" I had known the question was coming, and had been terrified of answering it. But I found that words flowed from my mouth, words of comfort and reassurance and false promises. We didn't make any stops on the way home, except at a confectionary; I bought him cotton candy."
Erik stopped speaking then, apparently finished. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest, his head tilted up and his eyes staring at the ceiling. This reminded Scott strangely of a serial killer that he just been told he was sentenced to death; the same unfocused gaze, the look of one who was contemplating a horrible crime and wondering whether it had been truly worth it.
"Erik," Charles said slowly. "What happened to Pietro?"
"It speaks for itself, doesn't it?" he answered, sounding tired. "Only a few months later, when I had the treadmill accelerating past Pietro's breaking point, it was as though something had snapped. He exploded off the front of the treadmill and slammed into the wall, bouncing off of it and landing lightly on his feet. We stared at each other. Something passed between us, some unspoken message, where his eyes said "I did it" and my eyes said "well done". Within hours he had perfect control of his new speed, and over the next few days he ran just about everywhere imaginable. He would vanish from sight, and then a few minutes later would reappear and tell me what the weather was like in Canada.
The power awoke a new sense of self in him. I saw the building blocks of confidence being laid down carefully in him, and he was always striving to be better and faster. Always striving to please me. He seemed to forget Wanda entirely, instead becoming my son for the first time. The only side effect I noticed then was his sudden, horrible stutter. For the first few weeks, he could barely speak, and only with careful training did we manage to tame it. It would only reappear when he became particularly agitated.
But my plans for the future were far too grand and intensive for me to be raising a son at the same time. Besides, he was becoming cocky and arrogant, picking up far too many of my own pompous mannerisms for his own good. He began to grate on me, even more so once he neared the age at which my first daughter had perished, reminding me of her through no fault of his own in everything he did. And besides, even through all the years of our companionship, there was always the knowledge in the back of my mind that he had been traded for Magda, and there was no way he could measure up to the standards of such a bargain.
I gave him up for adoption when he was eleven years old, making vague promises to come and claim him when he was older, the same promises I had made to myself regarding Wanda, the same promises I had never followed through on. I sincerely doubted that I would come back for him, and wondered if I'd ever see him again. When I dropped him off at the orphanage, he glared at me and threatened that as soon as no one was looking, he'd run right back to me. I told him coldly that I was moving to somewhere he would never find me, and that I didn't want him around anymore while I was working.
I think that, although Pietro's survivor spirit was much too tough to be broken, I dealt it a savage blow that day when I drove away and left him there alone."
Erik sat there before them, spreading his hands and staring into the eyes of each of them in turn, too haunted and burdened and conflicted to comprehend.
When he looked in Jean's eyes, she looked back, and she saw more sadness and guilt than she had known was possible to carry in one person.
When he looked in Scott's eyes, he tried to look back and found that he could not, glancing away and at the floor, not knowing whether to be heartbroken by this man or disgusted by him.
When he looked in Rogue's eyes, she stared back, and the echo of Pietro that still remained inside her was blasted to pieces with a grating shriek, banishing her nightmares back to their source, leaving her in peace for the first time in forever.
And when he looked into Charles' eyes, he saw such compassion and such a desperate desire to understand that he, Erik, could not sustain eye contact and instead looked at his feet in despair.
"I am finished." He said miserably. "It is over."
And when everyone was trying to think of something to say, the most unexpected thing happened.
The doors to the library blasted open in a blue explosion.
There was a peculiar rush of air around them, something rapid and intangible and hysterical that only Xavier could recognize as Pietro, as the library books flew off the shelves and all the paintings were torn from the walls. Wanda came storming in, somehow slipping through the cyclone of her brother's rage, racing instead up to Erik, who had risen to his feet and was backing away.
"You bastard!" she screamed. "You bastard!"
Although she didn't realize it, Pietro was for a split-second beside her, howling the same words, the whites around his eyes all visible as he was possessed by some sort of furious insanity. He could feel spit flying from his mouth as he shrieked insults in such a high, unintelligible voice that even he couldn't understand what he was saying. Moving without even realizing it, he grabbed his father by the shoulders and threw him to the ground, like tipping over a statue in a wax museum and driving it into the floor.
To those moving in realtime, Erik was standing there, and then instantaneously was on the ground, gasping for breath as the unseen Pietro knocked the wind out of him with his force.
Before he could recover, Wanda was upon him, slapping and punching and screaming at him, as she was gripped by a similar madness to her brother's. But although Pietro was driven by years of anger that he had carried his whole life, she felt like she was seriously losing her mind. All the artificial memories fled, and were replaced in a wild rush by the truth, a pounding stampede of rapid images so that she felt like her head was going to literally explode.
She might have kept tearing at her father, but the pain in her head became so great that she staggered backwards, clutching at it and wailing in confusion and agony. Jean rushed to help her, but found herself suddenly on the other side of the room, dragged there by a panicky Pietro.
To him, he had been racing around the room for an interminable amount of time, hours and hours for all he knew, ripping and shredding anything that he came in contact with. Those who would clean up the library later would find that almost every book had its' pages torn out, and shelves had been smashed and broken, paintings ripped into pieces, all this damage done in a span of a few seconds. But he had suddenly become aware of Wanda standing there, holding her head, and he had seen Jean moving to touch her. Some weird protective instinct kicked in, and he hauled the redhead across the room and deposited her in a corner.
He ran around in a panic, seeing Wanda in trouble and being unable to help. He screamed her name, he screamed at his father, he screamed and slapped himself in the face. The superspeed had been tampering with his nerves for all this time. Now it had snapped, and he was rapidly losing control of himself. He continued slapping his own face, hyperventilating and still running in crazed circles around the library, dying to help Wanda but not able to comfort her. He threw himself into a wall, and suddenly, this blow seemed to knock him back into place.
He paused.
Shaking uncontrollably, he drew in a long breath and steadied himself.
Breathe. Think. Breathe. Think.
Wanda.
Then he knew what to do.
For Wanda, everything was being stretched in a different direction, the world distorting and spinning and laughing and yelling. She was aware of her father shouting, and she saw Jean out of the corner of her eye, and somehow she was sure she heard Pietro screaming her name.
Suddenly, everything vanished. For the briefest of moments, a lightning strike, a blank nothingness.
Then she was lying in Pietro's bed, back in the Brotherhood house, carried there by loving arms and surrounded by the old quilt that smelled like him, cushioned by pillows that had been brought from her own room.
And even though she couldn't see him, she knew his arms were around her.
.o.
.o.