{Author's Note: Well, this took a while. Skip to the end notes for possible spoilery trigger warnings.}
"How can you sleep like that?"
Peter blinked his eyes open at the sound of the voice above him, and then scrunched up his nose at the sight that he beheld.
Wonderful.
Just what he needed—a dose of asshole to ruin his day. Might as well see if someone was around to break another one of his legs. It would be less painful.
"I'm not sleeping." Said Peter closing his eyes again, and pointing his toes a little to stretch out further where he was perched precariously on a section of stone rail that looped around the walking path across the grounds at the back of the school, lying on his back with his hands under his head, basking in the sun, waiting for a tan that would never take, and pretending that if he waited just a few more minutes, he really would drift off to sleep.
But of course he wouldn't.
And, with that being the case, he pushed his headphones down more securely on his ears in an attempt to ignore the younger mutant standing over him and whatever he had come to pester him about.
Before the unwelcome intrusion, he had left one headphone tucked behind one ear. As a rule, he never let himself escape completely into the music if he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings, at least not out in the open like he was now with no one watching his back. He'd learned the hard way that blocking his surroundings out completely, left him vulnerable, but for Scott, he'd make an exception to that rule.
Unfortunately, however, Scott's voice was still loud—or grating—enough to cut through the sound of Eurythmics in a way that even the crack of Jubilee's fireworks display couldn't.
"What are you doing then, just thinking?" Scott asked, irritated, and, reluctantly, Peter opened his eyes again to deal with the annoyance.
"Yea. Are you not familiar with the act?" Peter asked with a self-satisfied smirk.
Scott scowled down at him. "More familiar with it than you are, seeing as you never think before you act."
Peter's smirk dropped into a frown at how wrong that statement was. Peter always thought before he acted. He thought too much in fact. His thoughts swirled around his mind like a relentless hurricane, trapping him in his own head.
"Are you going to elaborate on what seems to be precursor to a rant or are you just going to drop that pathetic attempt at an insult and leave? Because either way get on with it. You're interrupting my very busy schedule." Peter replied, still refusing to sit up or feel intimidated by the teen. The only outward sign that gave away his creeping anxiety within was the tapping of his fingers against cool stone.
"You're injured again," Scott said by way of reply as if that was all he needed to say, and maybe it was.
Peter glanced over at the crutches leaning against the wall past his feet. He'd nearly abandoned them today, tired of the two hunks of metal slowing him down, but ultimately—and pathetically—he hadn't felt brave enough to face Hank's wrath by tossing them a day early, so he'd begrudgingly stuck with them. But, childishly, he had shoved his injured foot into his favorite shoe as a show of tiny rebellion, even though it pressed against his healing cut, not exactly painfully, but it was more than a little uncomfortable, and he was maybe regretting his decision a bit.
Evidently, Scott had noticed the crutches or had seen Peter wandering around on them—again—or both.
"Very astute observation skills you have today, so far you're batting 50/50. Don't worry, I can still be out of here in a second even with the crutches, but seeing as I was here first, I'll let you run along. Go scare the little children. They're easily intimidated." Peter said, waving one hand at Scott dismissively and pulling his sunglasses down from the top of his head to darken the afternoon sun slightly and maybe to put him on even footing with Scott, so to speak. He knew the sunglasses were a necessary accessory for the kid, but sometimes Peter thought Scott leaned into the look a little too much.
"I wasn't talking about your foot. There's no point in even getting into that," said Scott, crossing his arms across his chest. "I was referring to your head injury. It was all anyone was talking about last night. Todd said you ran into a wall and knocked yourself out."
"What?" Peter sputtered, just as another one of Jubilee's sparks cracked in and out of existence. Caught off guard, and then sitting up in outrage, Peter pushed his sunglasses back off his face to glare ferociously at the other mutant. "That—I—I did not run into a wall."
That hadn't happened since he was like sixteen thank you very much.
"But you did knock yourself out then, didn't you?" Scott asked, but there wasn't much of a question in his tone.
"No." Peter replied sharply, swinging his feet to the side to hang over the edge of the rail and to face Scott. "I did not knock myself out. Todd's a spaz who says whatever he thinks will get him the most attention. You should know that by now. He literally claimed that he met Madonna and Tom Cruise last week when we all know he hasn't left the school since it—" Blew up . . . was what Peter had been going to say, but not wanting to bring up what was obviously a point of contention between him and Scott, he finished instead, "—I've been here."
"Well, you're not wrong, but I know you got a concussion somehow. Hank told me that much, when he said that you wouldn't be at training for at least the next three days." Scott said, arms still crossed and glowering at the older boy.
"Three days!" Peter repeated indignantly. "Forget that. I'm fine. Hank needs to calm the fuck down."
"Good luck convincing him otherwise. Mystique follows his word to the letter when it comes to injuries, which is something you should've been thinking about before you went off on whatever hare-brained scheme landed you with a concussion and left your teammates down a man. So if you didn't run into a wall, then what was it this time? Did you injure yourself on a burglary streak or breaking someone out of prison? Or maybe you tripped sneaking in through your bedroom window?" Scott asked like he seriously believed that all of those scenarios were equally as likely when it came to Peter, which okay, he did have a pretty bad case of sticky fingers and maybe he had broken a very powerful and dangerous mutant—who just happened to be his father—out of a highly secure facility, but Scott didn't know that. And the last accusation was just ridiculous.
"Do you even hear yourself?" Peter replied, with a humorless laugh, choosing to ignore the first two accusations. "Why would I be sneaking into the school through a window? I'm an adult. Unlike you kiddies, I don't have curfew. I can walk through the front door any time, day or night."
"You don't act like it." Scott replied flatly. "An Adult." Scott added, as if that wasn't clearly implied.
"Thank you." Peter replied, grinning in such a way that he knew would annoy Scott, even if the truth was that he didn't appreciate the reminder that he utterly failed at being an adult. He kept waiting to 'wake up' one day with a sudden epiphany—'ah yes, this is how the world worked and how I fit into it,' but that hadn't happened yet. Instead, to Peter, it felt like everyone—almost everyone—he had ever known continued to grow up and move on, and unlike everything else in life, Peter was the one trying to catch up.
"That wasn't a compliment." The other mutant replied stone faced.
"Well it wasn't insulting, so if that was your intent, do better." Peter said, grabbing the edge of the rail with both hands and leaning back casually, until his knuckles turned white from holding himself up.
"Are you capable of taking anything seriously?" Scott asked incredulously, as he watched Peter rock back and forth seemingly without a care.
"Yes." Peter replied cheerfully. "Just not you."
At that retort, it was Scott's turn to scoff. "Well, you better start taking me seriously because when I'm leader of the X-Men, if you keep pulling this shit, you're going to be off the team faster than even you can blink."
Peter's reply was another insincere laugh. "This again! Honestly, would you give it a rest. Regardless of what happens in the future, you're not team leader now, so if I did have to miss training—which I don't—Raven's the one who should be pissed at me, since—as I'll remind you again—she's the one in charge, not you. But don't worry, if the day comes when she completely loses her mind and puts you in charge, I'll be out the door so fast you won't even have time to kiss my ass."
"Yea because you'll be running right off to Magneto, won't you Maximoff?" Scott replied, his voice louder than before, as he took a step closer to where Peter still sat. As if responding to his mood, the sound of some of younger mutants testing their powers behind Peter seemed to increase in volume too and mixed, almost seamlessly, with Jubilee's firework display, each boom and crack almost a drumroll to . . . something.
"You know, Summers," Peter replied, standing up now, finally tired of letting Scott tower over him, not caring if he looked more like a tall gawky scarecrow than a hulking frame of muscle. "maybe if you worried a little more about yourself and your own training and less about everybody else, other people wouldn't have to fear getting blasted to death every time you happen to sneeze."
"You'd know all about just worrying about yourself, wouldn't you?" Scott replied, stepping forward again. There was barely two feet between them now.
"Is everything a question with you?" Peter asked. There was no longer any joy, or a mockery of it, left on his face. "Look. I'm sorry about your brother, okay? I really really am. I wish I would have gotten here fast enough to save him, but I didn't. And that's. Not. My. Fault. But maybe you should just think about the fact that if I hadn't shown up at all, Raven, Hank, and most of your classmates would all be dead, except for you and your little friends that decided to take Chuck's car on a joy ride."
"Shut up! Don't talk about my brother!" Scott was nearly shouting now, and again the noises around them seemed to almost intertwine with them both, building like the start of a song, approaching a crescendo as if charged by the very strength of their argument.
"Then don't try to make me feel guilty for something beyond my control! I do that well enough on my own without your help!" Peter shouted back at him, his fists white knuckled at his side as he tried keep his vibrating body under control and remind himself—as Scott just had—that he was the adult here.
"You think we should all bow down to you for saving everyone from that explosion? When you didn't even save everyone. You're the one that should be grateful that the Professor even lets you stay here, when you're not even a student or a teacher. The least you could do is put some effort into being an X-Man!"
"Like how you put in an effort, you mean? By berating someone who is supposed to be your teammate? No thanks. And you're lucky I don't boycott the team just for its stupid name alone. If anything, we're 'Mystique's Minions'. We all know the 'X doesn't actually stand for the X-gene or our extra 'powers'" Peter said, crossing his arms and trying not to wince at the pressure he put on his still healing foot as he tried to stand tall without leaning too much against the rail.
"You think your so much better than ever one else, don't you? Just the same as Magneto. And you know what? He's not a student or teacher either. He's just a squatter. I guess you and Magneto have that in common too." Scott said and clenched his own fists angrily at his sides.
"I guess we do! At least I don't have anything in common with you." Peter shot back, though it wasn't true. Like Scott, he'd lost a sibling—siblings—and in his grief he'd lashed out at people too. He tried to remind himself of that right then too, tried to feel empathy for the younger man, but in the moment all he felt was anger.
"You're just like him. You probably think mutants are better than humans and you definitely think you're better than everyone." Scott growled out.
"I'm the one that thinks he's better than everyone else? Me? While you're the one standing on a self-righteous soap box? You know, having a dead sibling doesn't give you a free pass to be an asshole." Peter replied, finally stepping away from the support of the rail.
"But a dead wife and kid gives Magneto a free pass to kill thousands?" Scott shot back.
"Of course it doesn't! But why do you have to make everything about Erik? I'm not him. I'm not talking about him. Notwithyou. If you have a problem with me, have a problem with me. If you want to hate him too, fine, but I don't have to feel the same way as you."
It wasn't like he had forgotten what his father had done. It was just . . . he knew there was more to the man than who he was in his worst moments.
"Fine. I do have a problem with you. You aren't committed to the X-Men. The company you keep is questionable at best. And you've injured yourself at least twice now doing who knows what! If we ever go on a mission, you're going to get yourself, and all of us, killed!" Scott yelled back, any hint of a civil conversation a thing of the past.
"Wow. Inspiring speech. Really motivating stuff. Totally living up to your leadership potential." Peter replied, his voice surprisingly calm. "If that's what you're worried about, maybe it'll ease your mind to know that if we all get killed on a mission, you won't be around to see it because if something or someone is powerful enough to take me down, it sure as hell would've knocked you out first."
"You arrogant little—" Scott started to reply, reaching forward to grab Peter's shoulder, the latter's last retort finally enough to trigger a physical reaction.
Normally, Peter would've just dodged him easily, and though he was admittedly curious as to how exactly Scott was going to conclude his insult, he never would find that out either because at that exact moment several things happened at once.
First, there was a bang behind him, and he flinched. If he had looked over his shoulder, he would have seen the source—Ridley and Blaine had finally pushed the limits of the former's elemental powers and the latter's fire based powers setting off a mini explosion that would have awed many of the students had they not seen their school explode earlier that year.
Second, off to his left, Jubilee sent a particularly powerful charge into the air, and the ensuing crack captured another fraction of Peter's attention.
Third—and most significantly—a flash of red behind Scott drew Peter's gaze like a beacon to a sailor lost in the night.
It was her.
The woman from the mirror.
But this time, she was in a window—or in the reflection of it—over Scott's shoulder. She was the same as before, red eyes and crown, blackened fingers, but he could see more of her now, all tight and severe red leather, the back of her top trailing down her back like a cloak, and though he couldn't see her feet, somehow, he knew she was floating. And she was staring at him—again—staring into the depths of his soul like she knew him, knew his flaws and his fears, and if he let her . . . she could take them all away. Take him away. But when his eyes locked on her and hers on him . . .
He froze.
For once, he was unaware of time passing or the physical sensations around him, even Scott's grip on his shoulder felt like nothing more than the touch of a light breeze on his skin. Rooted to the spot, Peter watched the woman in scarlet lift an arm and then a finger to point at him.
It was only later that he'd realize—she wasn't pointing at him.
She was pointing behind him.
Ironic really, because if she hadn't been there—or at least if she hadn't appeared to be there in his head—he would have seen it coming. He had plenty of time to move, plenty of time to prevent what was about to happen.
Instead, when he finally found the strength to close his eyes and block out the sight of the specter haunting him, the world sped up once more.
Peter felt a tug on his torso, and without a choice in the matter, he was falling forward. His head hit Scott's shoulder or knee–something bony for sure—on his way down as he plowed uncontrollably into Scott, taking the younger mutant down with him.
And then it was over and Scott was crawling out from under him while black spots played at the edge of Peter's vision, but was it really over if Peter could hear kids screaming and a deeper adult voice attempting to yell over them?
"P-Peter?"
That was Scott's voice, but he didn't seem angry anymore, more confused, maybe even worried, perhaps.
Peter tried to blink away the lingering shadows that hung over his vision, and purely out of an attempt to avoid any more unwanted attention from Hank, he jumped to his feet, relying on the adrenaline rushing through his body to force him upright.
"I'm good!" He proclaimed confidently, though he felt as if the pavement was shifting unhelpfully beneath his feet.
"Sorry!" "We didn't mean to!" Two pre-teen boys shouted from next to a large blackened patch on the basketball course, clearly the source of the explosion. Dust and ash covered their clothes and they looked anxious, surely realizing they would be facing detention for the destruction and endangering their classmates, but, fortunately, other than being a little soot-covered, they looked largely unharmed.
"No worries! We're all good!" Peter shouted back with a thumbs up, though his eyes darted around hoping to confirm that was really the case.
"Are you two alright?" Jubilee asked, rushing over away from the crowd of kids she had been entertaining, Kurt at her side until he poofed the last bit of distance between them to arrive before her.
"Yep! Right as rain." He said quickly, in the distance he could see Erik and Hank jogging over, and he felt a rush of dread run down his spine, sinking into his stomach. Hoping to dispel the gathering crowd and divert attention from himself, Peter turned to the mutant he had been arguing with moments before the blast who stood slightly behind him still. "Right, Scottie?"
But Scott wasn't looking at Peter, or at least not at his face. His face was drained of color, and he was staring at Peter's back in horror.
"What?" Peter asked, the feeling of dread churning in his stomach again. "What are you staring at?"
But as he strained to look down at his back, his question was answered for him because where merely fabric should be, a piece of wood—perhaps a little shorter than an arrow, but thicker too—was sticking out of his back. Hilariously, Peter's first thought was 'at least I'm not wearing my favorite jacket.' His second—and more sobering—thought as he pulled the front of his bomber open to see the extent of the damage and to find the piece of wood sticking through the front of his torso and quickly staining his white t-shirt red was 'that's a lot of blood.'
"Well shit. Huh. That's not supposed to be there." Peter said, and he laughed because for some reason, it really did seem a bit funny. What was the point of going insane if you couldn't laugh like a madman?
And then the pain hit.
He toppled over, only being saved from further injury by Scott, who had caught him from behind, stopping his second descent.
Of course, Erik and Hank chose that exact moment to arrive, and in another moment, Erik was pushing the kids aside none too gently and kneeling over him, his face pinched with an emotion Peter hadn't seen there before—fear.
"HANK! HANK!" Erik shouted above him, even though Hank was already there too, looking calm and professional—though there was a strained glint in his eyes that he couldn't quite hide—despite the fact that Peter was bleeding out in front of him.
Hank joined Erik to kneel beside him. Peter was somewhat aware of the fact that Erik was asking him something as he pushed at the wound, but though the sound reached his ears, his mind seemed unable or unwilling to translate it into a comprehensible language.
But he did hear Hank call out for Kurt.
And then the youngest blue mutant poofed into existence again beside the older man, even though he too had to have been only a few feet away to begin with.
"Do you know where the hospital is in town? Can you teleport there?" Hank's voice was terse and quick.
"C-can't you do anything? The humans—they won't—they won't know how to treat him." Said Erik, his voice shaking.
"They won't know. They won't know. They won't know." Erik kept repeating the statement, or maybe it was just echoing around Peter's brain like a cry for help into an endless cavern.
"Erik. Look at me." Hank said, looking up from Peter to meet Erik's gaze. "This is beyond me. This isn't a cut to the foot or a bump on the head. He needs surgery. He needs a medical doctor—doctors. They'll be able to help him much more than I can right now." Then he turned to Kurt again, "Kurt, the hospital. Do you know it?"
"I-I-I don't—I've only been to zee mall." Kurt said, his voice dripping with guilt, like it was his fault that he grew up in a circus and was literally thrown into cage fighting, which, until recently, kept him from engaging in normal teenage ventures.
Peter wanted to pat Kurt on the shoulder and tell him it was okay. There was no reason for him to have been to the hospital. Everyone hated hospitals. Peter hated hospitals. He tried to raise his arm to offer said comfort, but nothing happened. Maybe one of his fingers twitched. He stared at his arm angrily at its disobedience. He'd reprimand it later, when he wasn't so cold.
Peter shivered, and he wondered fleetingly—if it was so cold out, why hadn't he dressed warmer?
"—okay." Hank was speaking to Kurt again, Peter only picking up bits and pieces of the conversation now. ". . . just around the corner . . . get to the mall?
"Ja. I can!" Kurt replied quickly.
". . . and Erik. . . go north . . . entrance . . . a block down . . . can't miss it . . . come back . . . soon as you can."
Peter felt himself shift as Erik picked him up, or maybe he was just floating . . . like the woman in the window.
" . . . let them know . . . same blood type . . . transfusion . . ." Hank was saying things, important things probably. Unlike Peter, everything Hank said was important, but it came out in bits and pieces for some reason, and the man could have been speaking gibberish for how much Peter understood.
Peter watched Kurt grip Erik's shoulder tightly and then his other hand gently encircled Peter's own wrist. The next moment, they poofed out of existence, and Peter felt a brief and blissfully welcoming sensation of nothingness, but a moment later the pain and cold were back again and a darkness pulled at him. He took all of a second to wonder if he couldn't sleep, could he still pass out from blood loss?
Spoiler alert—he could.
Peter blinked, looking up past his father's panicked face to a ceiling instead of the sky.
There was a scream . . .
And then nothing.
Hank rattled out his instructions, a nonstop fount of knowledge, and Erik was grateful that Kurt seemed to be grasping each piece of information, because Erik was losing it.
He was panicking.
He was going back to a place—a moment—to which he had never wanted to return, to the feeling of his child too still within his arms.
He could feel Peter's blood warm against his chest, and it felt so wrong. Beyond the fact that his son was losing blood, Peter shouldn't feel so warm. He had touched his skin before, and Erik knew that Peter ran cold.
He always ran cold, but now, he was so warm. Too warm.
And it wasn't right.
Kurt wrenched Erik from his despair—literally—latching onto Erik's shoulder and Pietro's wrist, and then, in a flash, they were gone.
Kurt's method of travel wasn't as nauseating as Pietro's, but it was still disorienting, and with Erik's world already spinning so fiercely out of control, it took him a few seconds to take in his surroundings and recognized that the desperate trio had landed in a shoe store of all places.
But the reaction to them was immediate.
A salesman screamed at their entrance, knocking over boxes of shoes stacked behind him. A customer fled the store. Another followed suit. A third customer shielded her young son behind her.
Erik knew that they thought themselves afraid, afraid of something different from themselves, but they couldn't know what fear was until they were holding—clinging to—the source of it within their arms.
"Sorry! Sorry!" Kurt exclaimed, trying to placate the bystanders, but perhaps—like Erik—he was used to screams upon his arrival because he didn't waste any extra time trying to calm them, already grabbing Erik by the arm and pulling him and his charge out of the store and through the mall, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.
"I schould have brought us right outside, but I couldn't remember exactly vat it looked like or vhere it vas, and it zeemed like too big of a risk." Kurt rambled out as they hurried along, his voice laced with worry. "But I remembered the schoes."
"Just get us out of here." Erik said through gritted teeth as they passed store front after store front and human after human, some who simply gawked at them and others who jumped out of their way in terror.
"Ah zhere!" Kurt said suddenly as they reached the top of an escalator. The younger mutant grabbed Erik's arm, and the metal bender went from seeing a glimpse of the outside world through a second-story window at the edge of the mall to feeling the cool rush of fresh air on his face.
Erik shook his head, trying to orient himself to the sudden change in scenery, but he couldn't focus beyond keeping the hands that held his son from shaking. The boy looked like a ghost, all monochrome, except for the crimson staining his body like a target on his chest.
Erik pressed Pietro closer to his chest and blinked the sun spots from his eyes to see that Kurt at least remained set on his goal, scanning up and down the street as he teleported away and back again in flash.
"Found it!" Kurt nearly shouted after what felt like hours, though it couldn't have taken him more than a minute to return to Erik's side once more, and then they were moving again somewhere between the folds of time and space, and Erik found himself outside the entrance to a hospital, its automatic doors sliding open and closed as people hurried in and out.
This time, something about being so close to the prospect of his son receiving the aid he so desperately needed pulled Erik forward before Kurt could, and then they were inside, and Kurt was yelling for help.
Suddenly, there were hands reaching for him. No. Not for him, for his son—grabbing at him, trying to pull him away. Trying to take his son. His family.
Instinctively, Erik held Pietro tighter, clutching him to his chest, willing him to stay. To live.
Someone was trying to speak to him, trying to reason with him, but he wasn't hearing them, not really.
He wasn't even there under those florescent lights.
He was outside . . . in the rain . . . in the cold . . . in the past . . . being torn from his family as they walked to their deaths.
"Sir, you have to put him down." It was a woman's voice—English, not German—that broke through to him. He couldn't say exactly why, except perhaps that her hands were gentler than the rest. They weren't grabbing. They were asking, pleading.
"We can't help him if you don't let us." The nurse continued, her soft hand still resting on his arm, asking him again—to let go, to put his trust in them.
Erik breathed in a shuttering breath, bringing himself back to the present, to the white walls, English chatter, and clinical scents of the American hospital, and, as the nurse coaxed him again, he reluctantly released his hold on his son, setting Pietro on the gurney that had been wheeled out in front of him.
His eyes closed. He could be sleeping. But he wasn't, because Pietro didn't sleep.
The woman—the nurse—squeezed his arm again, and then they were rushing Pietro away, their voices barely filtering through the white noise raging within his head as he hurried along behind them.
" . . . puncture wound . . . male, late teens early twenties . . . possible mutant . . . "
The group rushed through a set of doors and Erik made to follow, but then, the same nurse blocked his path, placing her small frame in front of his. He dwarfed her, and yet she somehow stopped him in his tracks.
"You can't go in there." She said, putting a hand on his chest as he made to step forward.
"My son . . ." He couldn't manage more than that. His voice broke on those two words alone. He could still feel the metal of the gurney getting farther and farther away. If he focused, he could even make out the locket on Pietro's wrist. He could stop them, if he wanted. He could push past the woman in front of him with barely any effort at all. He could bring the whole building down to reach Pietro. But he didn't, because some part of him knew that the best thing for his son . . . was to let him go.
"I know, but you being there is not going to help him. Everyone trying to help him will only be distracted by you." She answered, calmly and with a level of empathy that suggested this was a message she had had to give many times, and, when Erik didn't try to move forward she dropped her hand.
"I can't—I can't . . ." He wasn't sure what he was trying to say—he couldn't stay here? Couldn't lose him? Couldn't breathe without him? Couldn't go through that pain again?
"He needs you here—here for him no matter what happens." The nurse said firmly.
"They have the same blood type!" Kurt offered before Erik could take in the implications of her statement. Erik had forgotten he was there. Hadn't even noticed him following, his focus—his world limited to the boy on the other side those doors.
To her credit, the nurse didn't bat an eye at Kurt's obvious mutant appearance, so maybe he could trust these humans with his son's life after all, or, on the other hand, if Kurt had been there all along, perhaps she had simply had time to school her features and Erik hadn't noticed.
"You're sure?" she asked looking at Kurt then back to Erik.
"Yes!" Kurt answered confidently, his faith in Hank's knowledge unshakeable. Erik could only nod.
"Then come with me." She said to Erik, ready to take off down the hall and expecting him to follow, but something on Erik's face must've revealed that he wasn't sure he would be able to tear himself away from the doors because she paused and then looked him right in the eye.
"Thisis how you help him."
Then she turned and took off down the hallway, away from the doors, and Erik followed because she was right and though he had told himself that he would never—never again—let someone treat him like a specimen under a microscope, for Pietro, he would let them drain all the blood from his body until his veins ran dry.
If it would save Pietro, he would even spend another ten years in isolation, so long as the face that greeted him when he was set free was his son's.
{Author's Notes: Warnings: Someone casually uses a slur word. It probably wasn't considered such in the 80s, but it is. Also, there are descriptions of a bloody injury.
I don't really know how hospitals work now or how they worked in the 80s, but from stories of heard, you at least used to be able to donate blood for specific person. But maybe only for planned surgeries? Maybe you still can now? Idk.
Finally, Erik mood = Joel in The Last of Us.}