"Ow!" "Ouch!" Their waking was so abrupt that they managed to knock their heads together when they sat up.

"Bogu moy! She's in there with you? It isn't even eight o'clock yet. Please tell me you're not both naked!"

"We're fully clothed, Wanda." Why is there such a general outrage at the notion that I have a sex life?

Beside him, Grace began to laugh. "This takes me back thirty years. My boyfriend's mother said almost the exact same thing to us once."

"Some things never change." he agreed, going to the door and opening it.

His daughter stood there, her blue eyes snapping and her nostrils flaring, clearly about to boil over.

"Exactly like Colin's mother." Grace chortled. She was hunting for one of her shoes. "'We weren't doing anything, Mrs. Rutherford, I swear! Please don't call my parents.'"

"Hello, Wanda. Have you seen your brother yet?"

"No. I thought that since he was unconscious, I would find you first." She said it as if she should have known that was a mistake.

"Then we'll go see him now. First, however, Grace, this is my daughter Wanda. Wanda, this is Ms. Engstrom. You don't have to be rude to her; your brother took care of that. He was more than rude enough for two people."

"He didn't actually call me a gold-digger and a skanky ho, but he came close." Grace had found her shoe and joined him at the door. "The implication was clear."

"Oh." Wanda visibly and resourcefully reined in her anger. "I'm sorry if he offended you, Ms. Engstrom. You see, we never knew our birth mother, and the only other woman we knew our father was involved with was…I'm afraid we were expecting the worst."

"I'm not sure what I expected when Erik said he wanted to tell his children about me, but it wasn't this." Grace said ruefully. "I think I'll leave you two to visit the injured, and go see if I can find something to fill in what dinner didn't quite cover. I'll see you later."

Erik waited until she had disappeared around the corner before he turned to his daughter.

"That was well said," he congratulated Wanda. "You almost succeeded in concealing the prejudice you formed against her before you even met her."

"Why are you talking this way? You're being—flippant."

"Flippant? I am not being flippant. Believe it or not, I'm teetering on the verge of elation."

"Because you're in love?" Wanda looked incredulous.

"Because today I talked to both my children, and they answered me honestly. We had more genuine communication today than in the past five or ten years combined. My daughter called me—twice! And my son came out of his way to see me. I was beginning to despair that all my efforts to create and maintain a relationship with you were in vain. Now I know that you do care. Granted, your concern exhibits itself in the form of disapproval, but disapproval is worlds better than indifference. I have hopes that this will evolve into a closer relationship than we have ever had before."

"You're still being flippant."

"Take it in whatever sense you will. The fact remains that I am happy with these developments. Now shall we go see your brother?"


Grace wasn't especially hungry, but she didn't want to intrude on Erik's conversation with his daughter. "So," she said to her lion as she walked through the darkened corridors, heading for her attic, to see what it looked like at night, "since you seem to know everything, can you give me the skinny on the first Mrs. Magneto?"

--Wait a minute. Did I just say the 'first' Mrs. Magneto? As opposed to the 'late' Mrs. Magneto? Implying that she has a successor?

Am I already thinking of myself as Erik's wife?

I don't think I should be doing that…

The lion interrupted her train of thought. "She was another survivor of the camp. She was having emotional problems he didn't know about. He was working twelve to fifteen hours a day, so he wasn't there to see what was wrong, and she didn't tell him."

"What kind of emotional problems?"

"Survivor's guilt. Stress. Difficulty coping with the responsibility of being a mother. Depression."

"Was she a danger to herself?" She pulled the lion out of her pocket as she ascended the stairs to her attic—the stairs were very well lit now that the new bulb had been installed.

"No. Not yet." the lion told her.

"Was she a danger to their daughter?"

"Not while they lived in the village, where everybody knew them. There was always a neighbor woman to help. When they moved to the city, that was when she became a danger."

"Was Magda abusing her little girl?" The attic was lit by single light bulbs which hung on wires from the ceiling—very plain, minimalistic.

"Not yet. She always stopped herself. People who are hurting create hurting families."

"That's true. Is that why she left their child alone while she went shopping for food?"

"Yes."

"Because she thought her child would be safer that way…How old was their daughter, anyway?"

"She was four."

"Everybody knows you don't leave a four-year-old alone!" Unless you think she would be safer where she is, than she would be with you…

Except that she wasn't. Not that time.

"So what happened to Magda?" Grace crossed to the window and looked out toward the shimmer of the lake. If one child stressed her out to the point where she couldn't handle it, what would suddenly having infant twins do to her?

"She waited until she was strong enough to walk, and then she went out into the winter night." The lion looked sad.

"She deliberately killed herself?"

"Yes. To keep them safe. She loved them."

"To keep them safe. From their father, who didn't even know they existed, or from their mother, who was tempted to hurt them?"

It said nothing.

"Hello?" She shook it. It was quiet.

The attic itself was quiet, which was good, since she would soon be living up there. No rustlings of mice, no creaking. Just the sound of the wind, not very loud, and the echoes of her own footsteps.

She spoke her thoughts aloud. "So Wanda and Pietro are hurting, which is why Pietro's marriage failed, and probably why Wanda married an android. After all, a husband who was a real person might be too dangerous and scary. It would be safer to marry someone artificial, who never got tired, or cranky, or sick, whose programming would keep him from ever…running off to Atlantic City with all their savings and a cocktail waitress named Raquel.

"Erik was hurt, and he's still hurting but at least he's functional. I'm the only one who isn't one of the walking wounded…My mother never beat me, my father never molested me, I had a happy childhood, and if my brothers did sing 'Amazing Grace' over and over again while Danny sat on me and farted, that's pretty much what you can expect from older brothers.

"I was never raped, only mugged once, and didn't get badly hurt, never used drugs or ran away or had to sell my body to eat. For forty-seven years, I had a normal life."

"You're about the only one here who did." said the lion. "By here, I mean all the mutants in the world."

"You—you mean that?"

"Yes. They're all hurting. They're all wounded. Mend what is broken."

"How am I supposed to do that? Am I supposed to mend them all? How many of them are there?"

"Relax. We don't expect you to do it all. We're not going to give you anything you can't handle."

"You're being awfully communicative and helpful tonight….Are you sure you're right in trusting me so much?"

"Uh-huh."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"Send them home."

"Send them home. All right. Are you going to tell me what that means, or am I supposed to figure that out on my own?"

"Send them home."

"Nothing else?" She squinted at it.

"Go down two levels, and take a right at the first cross-corridor."

"When you get this specific, I get worried."