Grace closed her eyes and slid a little further into the tub. The lavender bath oil was softening her skin, relaxing her muscles, making everything seem a little more manageable. 'Relax,' the lion had said. 'We won't give you anything you can't handle.'

I've trusted them so far. And if Rogue is going to start listening, too, maybe they'll ease up on me.

She heard someone enter the bedroom. "Grace?" It was Erik.

"In here." She sat up.

"First my bed, now my bathtub. Is nothing private anymore?" He sauntered in and leaned over her, his eyes traveling over her wet and naked form.

"Do you want it to be?" She gave him a flirtatious smile.

"No. You do improve the scenery…Here." He placed a glass of milk on the space at the end of the tub. "I also brought you a muffin, and some crackers for the morning. I didn't know how hungry you were, but I thought it couldn't come amiss."

"Thank you," she said. How could Magda have left this man? "I often like to have something to drink while I'm in the tub. Sometimes it would be chardonnay, but lately it's been iced tea. I'm glad of that; tea won't hurt Junior—but milk…" She took a healthy swallow, "…is much better for him."

"I see you brought your friends." He indicated the line-up on the toilet tank lid, where the monkey, the lion and the lamb were supervising her bath.

"Since they've started talking to Rogue, I'm not sure I want to leave them alone. If they're up to something, I want to know about it…They say they've been talking to me my whole life. Now I'm wondering when and why and what happened when I listened—even if I didn't know I was."

"It makes sense that they've been talking to you your whole life. After all, you've been a mutant your whole life. The faculty for hearing them has always been in place. Can you think of any time they might have been guiding you?"

"Plenty of times. When I was fifteen I was the tallest and thinnest girl in my class. One day a woman gave me a card and told me she was from a modeling agency. She said I could be the next Lauren Hutton. I was supposed to go to this address I didn't recognize. Alone. I wanted it to come true so bad, but this little voice inside me said: don't do it. I listened. A few months later, she was arrested along with several male accomplices. You can guess what kind of pictures they would have been taking of me."

"Unfortunately. And you think it might have been them?"

"I was fifteen, self-concious, insecure, and immature. I really wanted it, wanted to believe I would be that one girl out of all the millions who gets discovered…That little voice had to come from somewhere. Maybe it wasn't just my common sense talking.

"There were other times. Like when an acquaintance offered me a ride home from a bar at New Year's, and I said no, even though it was twenty below. He hadn't been drinking—but the driver of the car that killed him had been. Only it wasn't a voice—not a literal voice, not then. Care to comment on any of this? I'm addressing them, not you."

"Have they anything to say?" Erik unknotted his tie and removed it.

"Not a peep. They've been quiet ever since the lion there said, 'Because you listen.'"

"Speaking of listening, I'm going to continue to do so, but I want to disrobe. I'll leave the door open. If I don't respond, just yell."

"Fine with me…There have been times I ignored the voice. When I was twelve, I wanted to be friends with this group of girls, and they told me I had to steal a lipstick from the drugstore for each one of them. Of course I got caught."

"That reminds me. Do you know how Wanda and Pietro were making a living when I came across them? They were the best team of pickpockets and shoplifters in Europe. She would cause a disaster, and then he would speed in, faster than the eye could see or the camera could track, and lift the item or the wallet they were after."

"Do they hate me very badly?" she asked.

He appeared in the door, his jacket in his hands. "Hate you? No. They hate me; you're simply the focus at the moment. But they also love me, just a little. I hope to cultivate that, and weed out the hate, in time. In the meantime, I believe I've talked them round into being fair to you. I am profoundly sorry they treated you as they did."

"I'm a big girl. I can give as good as I get."

"Which is the only thing that saved the situation." He went back to undressing. She watched him.

What had surprised her most about Erik in Australia had not been his courtesy or inventiveness in bed—she had counted on his experience making up for whatever time had done to his libido—but that physically he seemed to be a much younger man wearing a elderly man's skin.

He had turned out all the lights, for which she was grateful at the time. She knew what her father had looked like without a shirt at the age she guessed Erik was—sagging inner tube of a chest, dotted with brown age spots, ropy arms. But although her hands told her his skin was looser than that of a young man, the texture slightly crêpey, the muscle under it was solid, and he didn't show any signs of physical diminishment.

Of course, the night before she had seen him naked, which only confirmed what she thought, and he had explained why. Time had been rewound for him. She watched as he drew off his shirt. "You've gone very quiet." he commented.

"Just thinking." And watching your biceps… "Erik—when were you born?"

"In 1939. October 27th, to be precise."

"I knew you had to be at least twenty years older than I am. I didn't know how accurate I was."

"Yours is July 14th, 1959—which I am unlikely ever to forget." He looked at her significantly. "Am I correct?"

"You are." She drank more of the milk. "Two old fossils, as far as all these young people here are concerned. As if love only belonged to those who are young and perfect and beautiful."

"That would leave me out, then. You, on the other hand…"

"You just have an endless supply of flattery, don't you?" She set the empty glass on the edge of the sink.

"I'll have you know these are not just cheap compliments. On the contrary, they're very expensive compliments, made from the finest quality materials by expert craftsmen. I happen to have a deal with the wholesaler, that's all."

He plucked a wire hanger out of the air and arranged his shirt on it. "I also get my supply of witty remarks from him as well. There was one I meant to make earlier when I introduced Pietro— that if you decided you liked my looks but you preferred a later model, there he was."

"That would have been a good line. I could have come back with something about how while the newer model might be faster, they left out the essential charm feature and the all-important intelligence gears. And that finishing too fast is not a desirable quality in a man, if you know what I mean…"

"My dear! I wonder if that's why Crystal started sampling what else was out there… I shouldn't joke about my poor boy like that. He would be mortified. I was wondering why you made the promise you did."

"That I won't marry you until they ask me to be your wife? Several reasons. First of all, he was being such an obnoxious, stuffy little prig—I'm sorry. He is your son."

"You needn't apologize for that. He is an obnoxious, stuffy little prig, and self-righteous with it."

"True—I wanted to throw a shoe at his head, but I settled for that zinger instead. Another reason was that I wanted to throw the other shoe at your head, for bringing the word 'marriage' into this when I had only just decided to try living with you." She soaked a washcloth and massaged her left foot.

"Well, I did give you carte blanche to throw things at me, but I was thinking of metallic objects. Those I can deal with easily." He appeared in the doorway again, in a bathrobe so dark a purple it was nearly black.

"Don't think I don't know that. When I chuck things at you, it's going to be leather shoes, ceramic vases, and volumes of the encyclopedia. Maybe an occasional bag of garbage for variety."

"What have I let myself in for? At the time, I thought saying I was thinking of marrying again was a good idea—better than saying I was simply living with you. I wanted them to know I was serious about you. And I am. I don't want you to feel uncomfortable or pressured, but I do want you to know that."

"Thank you…Anyway, it wouldn't be possible for us to marry until the trial is over, would it? I could hardly go into court as 'Mrs. Lensherr.'"

"You could as 'Mrs. Xavier'. I don't mean you should marry Charles, but 'Michael'—my other identity. He has no blot on his name."

"Get to the church on time." That was a penguin on the bottle of liquid hand soap on the sink. A second penguin hurried up to him, a bridal veil on her head. They billed and cooed at each other.

"Oh, great! Well, if you want me to marry him, why didn't you say so before I made that promise to his kids!" she snarled in its direction.

"Mend what is broken!" declared the penguin bride.

"That was my other reason for making that promise." she told the penguin. To Erik she said, "The bird in the tuxedo just said, 'Get to the church on time.', and his lady friend came running. So they're in favor of wedding bells, but they didn't bother to say so until now. My final reason for making that promise was this: if the four of us, your children and you and I, have a good enough relationship that they want me to marry you, if they want me to be there in their mother's place, then, beyond all doubt, that which is now broken would be mended."

"That's a very touching hope for us." He looked away. His next words came out slowly, each one drawn out as if by pliers. "I would like that. I would like it very much—but I have an idea, by now, of their limitations where I am concerned. I…killed their mother, you see. Not literally, not directly. Not even by causing her death through childbirth. She was so afraid of me that she killed herself. There; I said it."

He turned and disappeared into the other room.

At least I was told how it happened in advance. It feels as if I've already rehearsed this scene—learned my part by heart. 'Mend what is broken' sure has a lot of applications, doesn't it? She stood up in the tub, wrapped a towel around herself, and left wet footprints as she followed him.

"We're back at this window again." she said, when she caught up to him. "You didn't kill her. You didn't make her kill herself. In a way, it's good that I learned about this through Rogue, through a third party. It gives me a perspective I wouldn't otherwise have. She was afraid, yes, but disproportionately so. She must have been emotionally disturbed beyond what happened when…when your daughter died, because a healthy woman wouldn't kill herself and leave her children behind. You are not responsible!"

He reached out and touched her face. "My dear, you are trying to make me feel better. It's not often that I rip the scab off these old wounds and look honestly at my past. Usually I keep them covered with a thick layer of self-deceit. Perhaps I need to do it."

"Well then, lance the hell out of them and drain out the infected stuff so you can heal properly. You have self-indulgent angst pus festering down in there, I can smell it. Quit licking your wounds and let's get on with life!" She made too energetic a gesture, and her towel fell to the floor. "Whoops. Kind of spoiled the dramatic effect, didn't it?"

He smiled. "Oh, I don't know about that. You certainly have me thinking about life…"


A/N: I have no idea when Erik was born—I just made it up, like I made up Grace's birthday.