How nicely we fit together, she thought afterward. This was a good idea. I ought to thank my menagerie tomorrow. The thought made her chuckle to herself—just a quake of her diaphragm, without sound.
He felt it, though, as his arm draped over her, his hand resting on her midsection. "What's made you laugh?"
"Just thinking I should thank my little friends tomorrow. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't. I don't like this new development. I was just getting used to being told what to do, and now they've decided to annoy me into doing what they want…I think they enjoy driving me crazy. They must think it's funny."
That made him chuckle. "I must say I enjoy getting you worked up."
She jabbed him in the stomach with her elbow, but gently.
He responded by pulling her closer against him. "Tomorrow I'm going to my headquarters to collect the rest of my followers, not to mention my things. I'll be leaving soon after breakfast—provided that the Toad is conscious—and I expect to be gone the better part of the day. I should be back by the dinner hour, however."
"The plan here is to clear out my attic. Or is it going to be our attic?" Her voice sounded tentative in her ears.
"It is if you say it is." He sounded somber. "That is what I want. But as I also want you to be happy, perhaps I am not the person to ask."
"You mean my little friends? They seem to have cast their votes in favor of it."
"I meant you yourself. Would you want to live with me if they said neither yes nor no?"
"I don't know. If this situation were at all normal, if there were no prejudice against mutants and we simply happened to reconnect now, without lives and the outcome of a trial at stake—I would want to get to know you better first. I'd want to meet that thirty-five year old daughter you mentioned, and the rest of your family, if you have any others."
She rolled over so that she was facing him. "That you would so casually dump a woman who had been your companion for some time in favor of another would also send off a lot of warning bells. I'm not saying it would be a deal breaker, but I would be quite cautious about getting too involved too quickly. I'd still sleep with you…"
That made him laugh. "That's good to hear."
"Well, there's no putting toothpaste back in the tube. Once you start having sex, you keep on having sex until you either break up or get bored. This scenario also leaves out your criminal history. I'm still having difficulty processing that."
"Does it leave out your pregnancy?"
"No, that's a factor, but saying any more than that would be telling. I can't do that. That's all intellectual, though. I would want to...but I would want to be sure first. The brain is there to put the brakes on the heart and the body. Now you're smiling."
"Think over what you just said, and you'll know why."
I brought my heart into it. And I did say 'yes.' "What if you keep this room down here, officially, and we try living under the same roof to see how it works?"
"It's a start, I suppose. Yes, I accept that." He leaned across the foot of space between them, and kissed her.
"I just hope I'd give the same answer if we weren't both naked and you weren't close enough to touch me." she groused.
That made him laugh. "At my age, you could hardly pay me a better compliment—I'd like to tell my children about you."
"Children, plural?"
"Yes. I have two children, two living, that is…My eldest daughter died in childhood."
"I'm sorry."
"Thank you…Now is the time to talk about the living, however. Their names are Pietro and Wanda, and they're twins. Both thirty-five, of course and both mutants. His power is super-speed, and she causes disasters, rather like a living embodiment of Murphy's Law."
"I've known people who can cause disasters on a regular basis without any mutant powers whatsoever."
"Hers are somewhat different. They can be focused and specialized."
"Where do they live?"
"In New York. He's divorced from his wife, Crystal—she has custody of my only grandchild, his daughter Luna. Despite Crystal's heritage—she's one of the Inhumans—somehow they managed to have a Sapient child. She's adorable, though."
"Do you have a picture of her?"
"Of course…" He got his wallet.
"You really are a grandfather." she said, looking at the photo of a dainty pre-school princess. He speaks of her with affection, even if she isn't a mutant. That's good.
"Her name suits her—with that white-gold hair and green eyes, she looks like a creature of moonlight."
"I hardly ever get to see her. She and her mother live on the moon. Crystal isn't too keen on my visits."
She closed the wallet and gave it back to him. "How do you get along with Pietro and Wanda?"
"Apologetically." He put the wallet on the nightstand. "I didn't meet them until they were in their teens. Their mother left me after our oldest daughter died, without telling me she was expecting again, and she died right after their birth. I never saw her again. I didn't know they existed."
"I'm so sorry. That hardly seems an adequate word."
"It was a very long time ago. This was in Europe. Pietro and Wanda were in danger of being killed by a mob, and I rescued them."
"I see a pattern emerging. That's how we happened to meet again."
"Quite so. You'll find this difficult to believe once you see Pietro, but I had no idea they were my children. Mind you, the resemblance has grown as he's gotten older, so he didn't look quite as much like me, but Wanda looks like her mother—and like mine. I can look at her and say which feature she got from whom.
"After I saved their lives, I—I didn't treat them badly. They ate the same food I did, whether it was good or bad. They lived as well as I. I didn't abuse them, but I held what I had done for them over their heads every hour. They owed me, I told them. Anything but unquestioning obedience was miserable ingratitude on their parts. I threatened to throw them out with only the clothes on their backs, and let the humans have them."
"That's cold."
"I was cold, then. Eventually they made connections in the hero community who helped them get…helped them to escape from me." There was a shadowy anguish in his voice when he spoke of it.
"That was before I entered my second childhood in a rather unusual fashion, however."
"Oh?"
"I was reduced back to babyhood for a while. It's quite a long story, but after a time which I remember indistinctly, I was, er, zapped back to adulthood. It's impossible to calculate my physical age now, as a result. Skin, sixty-seven years old or so, heart and lungs, somewhere in the thirties, bones—better than they were before, fewer aches in the joints."
That explains a few things..."I might make a comment about your stamina, but I won't. The conversational thread might get lost."
He smiled. "Very well—to return to Pietro and Wanda, my stint as a child did seem to have a lasting effect. I wanted to learn what had happened to my wife after she left me; I investigated, and found out what I have told you.
"At first they were furious. They wanted nothing at all to do with me for a very long time. I told them I would never have treated them that way if I had known—Wanda replied that treating anyone's children as I had treated them was wrong. A much-needed lesson; I treat people with more respect now.
"It took some years, but they take my calls—not with any great enthusiasm, but they do take them. We have some sort of relationship. Their personal lives haven't helped—Pietro's divorced, as I said, and Wanda is—widowed. After a fashion."
"How can one be widowed 'after a fashion'?"
"He was an android. He was reclaimed by the government, and deactivated for a while. When he was returned to service, they left out the emotion circuits."
"Oh. That's…Um. I'm sure it must be very difficult for her."
"It is."
"Girl needs a boy." It was a dopey, comically deep voice—one of her Voices, she could tell. Grace sat bolt upright.
"What?" Erik asked.
"There's something in this room with an animal face. One of my little friends just spoke to me."
"What did it say?"
"It said, 'Girl needs a boy.' I'm assuming he means Wanda. Where is it? I'm throwing it out the window."
A search of the room turned up a news magazine with a political cartoon on the cover, buried in a stack of other periodicals. It was of a donkey holding out a valentine to an unregistered voter. "Girl needs a boy." it repeated.
"So you don't even have to see the animal for it to send you a message." Erik scratched his chin as they looked at it.
"Apparently not. Why would the voices in my head want your daughter to start dating?"
"Are you sure that's what they want?"
"Well, we were talking about Wanda—."
The donkey nodded. "Girl needs a boy."
"And when I said her name just now, it nodded and repeated, 'Girl needs a boy.'"
"I don't know, but in this case, I think they should mind their own business."
"That may not be an option." Grace looked at him with concern.
"I'm not sure Wanda would take it at all well if I told her your 'little friends' wanted her to start dating again. Or if you told her, once you and she met."
"I see your point. This one doesn't seem to be an emergency, so—." Grace took the magazine, strode purposefully to the window, opened it, and sent the magazine flying.
"Girl needs a boyyyyyy!" faded into the night as it disappeared from view.
She shut the window hastily. "The nights are getting chilly. I've got goosebumps."
"And I can see every last one of them. The only solution is to get back under the covers."
She did, and he began to rub warmth back into her limbs, which, of course, soon became another activity.
At a very bad moment, someone banged on the wall behind the bed from the next room. "Whoever you are, could you keep it down?"
Erik paused in what he was doing. "Callisto?"
"Oh," said the voice. "It's you. Um. Sorry." A moment later, the girl said, very distinctly, "Eeeew!"
"What was that about?" Grace asked, because he broke into laughter.
"I will tell you later…"
A/N: Since the movieverse leaves out Wanda and Pietro, Erik's daughter and son, I have had to improvise with some comicverse history. Hope you like it.
