Erik didn't wake up the next morning knowing something was wrong. He hadn't meant to sleep through the night. His plan had been to catch a few hours of sleep before nightfall, wake up to check on Pietro just after dark, and then maybe catch a few more hours sometime between midnight and morning, but the stress of the last couple of days must have gotten to him—or perhaps he was just feeling his age more than he used to—for when he woke up, dawn had broken.

When one had children, there was a constant undercurrent of worry that existed within their parents' bones, that they would hurt themselves or that someone would hurt them. But that morning, the current was no stronger nor weaker than usual. It simply flowed steady.

Still, Erik's first step of the morning—as had become his habit if they weren't already together, two sleepless wanderers of the night—was to stop by Pietro's room. He wasn't always there. After all, unlike Erik, he didn't need to sleep, but he did often spend the night in his room nonetheless. Perhaps for a sense of normalcy.

Something Erik would never be able to offer him.

Pietro's bed was made, as it usually was, but there were other ways Erik could tell Pietro had been there—a blanket thrown haphazardly across the bed, a pair of blown out tennis shoes pushed into a corner, a pillow tossed on the floor, as if his son had laid there for a time instead of on the bed, a comic book open and dog-eared on his desk.

Pietro's room was much different from Nina's. There were no hand painted flowers on the walls, no stuffed animals lined up on the windowsill on the lookout for animal friends, no photos of a child wrapped in both parents' arms.

The contrast couldn't have been more striking, but the sight of the room, which Pietro had barely dared to make his own, as if he were afraid to make himself too comfortable for fear of being asked to leave it, brought the same feeling to his chest that a small bedroom in Poland—and an even smaller one in the Ukraine—had not so long ago. And when he looked beyond the surface of the organized chaos, the signs of his children, grown or otherwise weren't so different from one another.

So when Erik didn't find Pietro in his room, he was not yet alarmed.

But Pietro wasn't in the kitchen either. Or in Hank's lab. Or on the roof.

He should have been concerned then, but he wasn't. Not really.

His son tended to wander. He was like Nina in that way, so Erik fully expected to find him running—literally and against doctors' orders—around the school grounds somewhere, probably in need of a reminder to give his body some fuel.

And Erik was happy to be that reminder, as he had been many days before.

And yet, when he was on his way back downstairs from his rooftop exploration and he spotted a glimpse of fiery red hair coming out of one of the dorm rooms, instinctively, he called out.

"Jean." Erik called to the red-headed girl, and she turned, her hair whipping out behind her like a crackling flame, barely missing the boy walking behind her.

Erik felt his face drop into a scowl as the boy turned around with Jean, and Erik recognized him as Alex's younger brother, but he forced himself not to react, reshaping his mouth back into a neutral expression.

It may have been one of the hardest thing he had ever had to do.

"Erik." Jean greeted a tad warily, coming over to the man with Scott—of course—trailing behind her like a lap dog. "Good morning."
"Dzień—good morning." Erik replied mechanically.

Behind the girl, Scott glowered silently, clearly wanting to pull Jean away from the interaction or voice some choice words to Erik.

Seeing no point to wasting time with small talk when they'd hardly spoken before this moment, Erik got straight to the point.

"Have you seen Pietro?" He asked, an innocent enough question. There were any number of reasons he could be asking after the boy. Jean had gotten much better at controlling her gift, and Erik's mental shields were strong. She wasn't going to immediately jump to the conclusion that they were father and son just because he was inquiring as to Pietro's whereabouts.

"Who?" Scott asked, face scrunching into what Erik might have recognized as borderline revulsion, if he had taken the time to care about the other boy's reaction at all.

But still, Erik grimaced internally. He was losing his grip, letting his guard down too much, using his son's given name beyond their private conversations.

"Peter. Pietro is his real name. He just goes by Peter . . . mostly." Jean responded, when it was clear Erik wasn't going to, and then she turned back to Erik. "No I haven't seen him. Not today yet anyway. And I know what you're going to ask—not because I read your mind, it's just logical—I can't find him. If I let myself cast too broad of a net, I—I'll get overwhelmed. And, well, for a multitude of reasons, I go to pretty severe lengths to stay out of Peter's mind . . . But if I see him I'll let you know."

"Why do you even need to see him now? It's not even seven am." Scott added without prompting, crossing his arms in front his chest, staring Erik down as if the man couldn't toss him over the side of the railing before he had a chance to even touch his glasses.

He wouldn't of course.

He wouldn't hurt another mutant without cause, especially a child mutant.

But that didn't mean he couldn't think about it.

"Scott." Jean said shoving her books into his arms before Erik could choose whether he really had the self-control not to throw Scott down the stairs. Perhaps out a window would be less damaging but equally satisfying?

"Why don't you go finish up our chemistry assignment. It's due first period." Jean continued, adding one more book to his pile. "And I know for a fact that you aren't even half way through it."

Scott, looked between Jean and Erik and then back to Jean before wisely choosing to listen to his girlfriend. "Fine. I'll grab us some Pop-Tarts and meet you in the library."

"Sounds good." Jean said smiling at him amicably, until he walked away. "Sorry about him. He means well, really. He just gets weird about you and Peter hanging out together. He doesn't think it's good for the team." Jean explained apologetically.

"I've gathered." Erik said without further comment.

"I'm not saying I agree with him, but he has his reasons. You don't have the best track record in terms of public image, you know?" Jean added quickly.

"I am very aware of my past." Erik replied deadpanned.

"And sorry about knowing Peter's real name, I—

"Stop apologizing." Perhaps that was this generation's default state? Apologizing for existing? But then, again, beyond Pietro, who wasn't exactly in the same generation as Jean, and now Jean . . . and also Kurt, he hadn't observed such behavior in too many other students. Most were unapologetically teenagers.

"How did you know? About Pietro's name?" Erik asked, partly curious, partly concerned.

"Mind reader, remember?" Jean said tapping her head in a way that was disconcertingly like Charles.

"I thought you were able to block other's thoughts?" Erik asked, a bit panicked. Trying to remember how much he had thought about Pietro in the past few minutes, and then more wisely trying not to think of anything at all.

"I do. Or, I try to, but I'm not always successful. And it's harder when people's thoughts are loud or frequent, and well . . ." Jean said with a small shrug. "Sometimes yours are both. You think about him a lot—Peter. Pietro."

"I don't—that's not—" Erik said flustered, taking a step back. And then, when he realized what he was doing, he stepped forward again and spoke more firmly. "You are mistaken."

"Don't worry. I won't tell anyone, not even Scott, especially not Scott. Look, I don't think it's weird or anything. I can tell you care about him and worry about him. It's nice. You're not so . . . sad when you think about him." Jean replied with a small smile.

Erik struggled with what to say to that, so he chose to say nothing at all in response to the statement. "Just . . . let me know if you see him. Please."

"I will." Jean said, and then, without further preamble, jogged down the stairs to mingle with her peers.

Erik waited an acceptable amount of time so that she was out of sight before heading down after her.

He made his way to the front door—ready to continue his search outside—and opened it only to find a child on the other side, ready to enter. The child was one of the smaller ones, twelve or so and not one with whom Erik had interacted directly.

Nevertheless, Erik stepped back, holding the door open for her. He expected the girl to appear frightened and dart around him quickly, or at least hesitate before entering, but she did neither. Instead, she stepped through the doorway and grabbed his forearm with her own small hand, stopping him.

She looked up at him, serious and unsmiling, from beneath her dark jagged bangs, and said quietly, "There's a dead body on the lawn."

She held his arm for a moment longer, frowning, then simply let go and continued into the school before Erik could even begin to process what she had told him.

Erik's eyes followed her retreating form, but it never crossed his mind to follow her. Instead, he made his way outside, as if in a trance.

His feet seemed to know where he was going, even if his brain did not, for they took him around the pond to the edge of the woods, or perhaps he had merely seen it from a distance, the small silvery object reflecting in the early morning sunlight, and been drawn to it.

He walked toward the object calmly and on autopilot, ignoring the other larger object nearby, as if nothing were amiss. As if, he were simply out for a stroll. It was only when he picked up the object, held it—the slightly battered Walkman—in his hand, that he allowed himself to panic.

"CHARLES!"

He did not know whether he screamed the name out loud or in his mind—or perhaps both—but in any case, the answer was worried and immediate.

Erik? What is it? What's the matter?!

There's—and he's-he's—

Erik tried to express what was before him, what he held in his hand, and the fear that had now taken root there, but all he could see was the body shifting from shades of red to tones of grey. He tried blinking the image away, but it only served to be replaced with images of an arrow flying through the woods and him—as he dropped to his knees again—kneeling on the ground holding his heart in his hands. Only the image had changed, fluctuating indiscriminately from the still forms of his wife and daughter to that of the boy with silver hair.

But the boy hadn't been there, in the woods. And the hair—or what remained of it—on the body before him was auburn not silver. And yet—

And yet. And yet. And yet . . .

He could not clear the image from his mind.

Erik! Calm your mind! It's alright. We're coming, my friend. We're on our way now.

His heart beat loudly in his chest. It beat like a hammer against his ribcage as if it wished to break its way free, tired of the cruel life it had no choice but to endure.

The sounds of wheels rolling on pavement and then grass slowly made its way through Erik's skull, and he looked up or—perhaps more accurately—through the images that had unwilling formed within his mind to find Hank pushing Charles toward him.

They had not rushed toward either the body or Erik. There was no reason to rush to the former. It was clear, even from a distance, that there would be no reviving the body on the ground. The corpse. For that was what it was. It was no longer person. It hadn't been for a long time.

"Erik, what happened?" Charles asked wheeling himself closer to him as Hank went to kneel by the body on the ground. He did not touch her—it. But he moved all around it, looking for things that Erik couldn't begin to see.

Erik opened his mouth to respond, failed, and the tried again. "I—"

"Is that Peter's Walkman?" Hank asked, standing up and walking over to Erik, his face dropping in concern.

"Y-yes." Erik answered his voice cracking, his grip on Pietro's Walkman knuckle white, his knees now wet from the dew soaked ground.

"His what?" Charles questioned, not privy to the young people's gadgets.

"Walkman. His cassette player." Hank clarified. "For music."

"It's broken." Erik said for want of anything better. "It's broken." He repeated because that was important. The Walkman was Pietro's lifeline. His security blanket. He took it everywhere, and it was broken, so something was terribly, terribly wrong. And thus the rest poured out of him. "There's a dead body. I-I can't find Pietro. And-and it's broken."

"Erik, focus. Do you know what happened to the girl?" Charles asked gently, clearly not putting the same level of significance on the broken Walkman as Erik had. "She was here when you arrived?"

"Yes she was here when I arrived, Charles! And I don't care what happened to her! Whatever it was that happened to her, happened years ago. I care about finding whoever put her here because they took Pie—Peter!" Erik's voice and body rose as he finished, and as he spoke, he gripped the Walkman tighter, and it cracked a little more. He quickly loosened his grip, immediately feeling guilty for damaging it any further than it already was.

"Hank." Charles started. "We need to round up the children. if this is a student—"

"It's not a student! She's been deceased for years!" Erik said throwing out one hand as he held the Walkman to his chest like a life raft with the other. "It doesn't take a genius to see that, and by my count, I thought you and Hank both considered yourselves such!"

"We don't know that for certain, Erik. She could still be a student. Strange things happen in this world, and—"

"How many dead bodies have you seen in this life, Charles, compared to me?" Erik asked his hands were shaking now. "How many!?"

"I've seen my fair share as well, Erik, but as I said—"

"I'm going to get some supplies." Hank said, interrupting Charles, before turning to Erik. "Erik, if something happened to Peter, finding out who this girl was, may help us find him. Trying to solve that question, does not negate us from solving the other." Hank finished, and then took off like a man on a mission, or like someone had dumped a dead body on his front lawn, and it was now his problem.

Logically, Hank might have been right, but it still felt like he alone was worried about Pietro.

"I'm going to search for Peter." Erik said, walking toward the woods. "Unless you find him, do not. Bother. Me."

"We don't know that anything has happened to Peter, Erik! He may have simply broken his music player and forgotten it out here. We both know his attention span is shorter than a goldfish's." Charles said, and then he raised his fingers to his temple, no doubt giving instructions to someone inside, though whether that someone was Hank, Raven, or perhaps even Jean, Erik couldn't say.

"His attention span is fine. If you don't hold his attention, that's your issue, not his! Trust me when I tell you he would never leave his Walkman on the ground like a piece of trash. Broken or not. He wouldn't. I know he wouldn't. And something's not—someone's been—he's been holding something back from me. Something's been haunting him, and whoever it is has him now. I know it!" Erik finished, stepping pass the body without a backward—or downward—glance. "If you want to help, send Kurt out with Raven or a teacher. He can cover ground faster than I can, but he shouldn't be out here alone."

"Erik!" Charles called out to him, but Erik did not stop. "Have you even checked his room? He may simply be sleeping!"

"He's not sleeping." Erik did pause then, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, but refusing to turn around. "Whoever took him. He was wide awake for it. Whatever they did, he suffered through it all."

The only question was—did his suffering end?

Things moved quickly after that. The minutes and hours seemed to tick by faster than normal, and Erik knew that the more time that passed, the more difficult it would be to find Pietro.

That was some rule about that, wasn't there? Something about the first 48 or 72 hours being crucial, or was it if they weren't found within that time, then they probably never would be?

And there was no trace of Pietro, save for the inoperative Walkman that Erik had eventually clipped to his side. The now non-functioning headphones also hung around his neck like a noose just waiting to be used.

No one had seen Pietro since the night before. Ororo, Jubilee, and the faux Frenchman had had the honor of seeing him last. The past evening's events had come together in bits and pieces as Erik questioned the girls while they sat side by side on a worn leather couch, worried faces mirroring one another. Raven, possibly afraid he wouldn't handle the interaction well, took on LeBeau's interrogation alone. But the end results were the same. They all painted a picture of a fun but mundane night, not one that was a precursor to a kidnapping.

It was as though his son had simply disappeared, as if he had never existed, as if Erik had imagined him.

As if he had always been alone.

What Charles and Hank did all day, Erik did not know, but there were many things that had to be done it seemed. Children had to be kept away, but also accounted for, as though any child under Charles' care could go from whole and healthy one day to a decomposed corpse the next.

The body also had to be examined, no doubt a task left to Hank, and one he did not envy. Killing, for Erik, had always been easier than what remained afterward.

At one point there was a debate about whether the police should or must be called. It was a debate that did not last long, and ultimately, there was no call placed to the boys in blue.

So, as one hour bIed into another, it was dark before Erik went inside, before Erik forced coffee down his throat and remembered to eat.

The school was quiet again, as it had been that morning.

The Walkman remained broken.

And Pietro was still missing.

More time passed, but Erik was frozen. One hand on a wall, the other on the Walkman, tracing the buttons on the device with his hand, and the gears with his mind, as if he could only get it to play, then Pietro would return.

A blue hand closed around his wrist, stopping its tracing, and Erik looked up to see Raven standing there, peering into his face as if looking to see if there was still life behind his eyes. She could've removed her hand from his arm then, once he acknowledged her presence. But she held it a moment longer. She did not move to hold his hand as she might once have. For a hand held and a wrist held did not mean the same thing. Entwined hands meant 'I love you' and 'I care for you.' An entwined wrist, in the right circumstances, meant 'this is real,' 'I am here,' and 'you are not alone.'

"Charles wants us in his office." Raven said, releasing his wrist.

"Did they find Peter?" Erik asked, but there was no real hope in the question, no real point in asking it.

She shook her head. "No, but he wants us all the same. To discuss the body, and . . . where to go from here."

Erik nodded. Maybe Hank was right, maybe he had found the answers Erik needed in the remains of the corpse, so when Raven turned to head toward Charles' office, Erik followed.

Charles was not the only one in his office when they arrived. Hank was there too, looking frazzled and exhausted as he spoke quietly to Charles at his desk. Unfortunately, LeBeau was there as well, leaning against the wall by a window, arms crossed and looking more serious than Erik had yet to see him.

"Did you find out who she was?" Raven asked before anyone else could speak.

"No." Said Charles shaking his head and rubbing his forefinger and thumb of one hand together on his forehead, as though he had a migraine. "But she wasn't a student, thank god. None of the students are missing."

"Besides Peter you mean." Erik said clenching his jaw. "Or were you so focused on identifying an unknown corpse that you forgot that fact?"

"We don't know that Peter is missing." Charles said exasperated, and perhaps if his son wasn't missing, if Erik wasn't so worried that Pietro was dead somewhere waiting for someone to find him, the same way Erik had found the body on the lawn, then maybe Erik would understand that Charles was stressed by the fact that someone had already died. Who that person had been didn't matter to Charles because he cared about that person regardless.

But Erik and Charles were not the same.

Charles cared about the dead girl in the same way one might read the newspaper and care about a war halfway across the globe only to flip the page a minute later to move onto the comics. Erik cared about Pietro the same way his body cared about oxygen—without Pietro, he couldn't breathe.

"Do you see him here?" Erik asked, throwing out an arm. "Look around you! He is missing!"

"As everyone seems keen to remind me, Peter is a grown man. He doesn't have to leave us a note if he wants to take off for a while. He may have just gone home." Charles replied, and then as an afterthought, he added. "Someone should call his mother."

Guilt flooded through Erik, replacing his anger, but not his fear. He knew deep in his bones that Pietro did not go home. He was not eating dinner with Magda or testing her patience, but Charles, unfortunately, in this instance, was right. He should've called Magda. He hadn't even thought to. He wouldn't be there, but she—she should know. She should know that once again one of their children was—was—missing, and if Erik knew anything about the world, it was—once again—his fault.

"I did. Call her." Hank clarified, interjecting. "About an hour ago. She hasn't seen him since he was in the hospital."

"What did she . . . did you tell . . ." Erik tried to ask.

"I didn't tell her he was missing." Hank replied gently to the question Erik hadn't quite asked. "Or that anything was wrong here. I just said I was calling to ask if she had his vaccination history, since it would be good to have it on file, which is true. The last thing we need is an outbreak of the measles or mumps. She said someone could stop by and pick up his records if we call ahead or we could have Peter run by to pick them up once he was feeling up to it. She clearly hadn't seen him since the hospital. . . . she wanted me to remind him to give her a call."

"Well that is a tad concerning." Charles admitted, finally speaking some sense.

Hank nodded. "Either way, if he doesn't turn up soon, someone will have to tell her." Hank replied, looking pointedly at Erik. "She should know. She's still one of his emergency contacts, and well, his mother."

"Yes, undoubtedly." Charles replied, "But back to the matter at hand. Did you uncover anything about our Jane Doe, Hank? Was she a mutant?"

"I don't know yet. It'll take a few days to run the DNA analysis. But I did find something that might tell us more now . . . she was wearing this." Hank said as he held up a clear plastic bag. Inside was what could've been an innocuous necklace, that is, if the world hadn't deemed it a death sentence when Erik was a just a boy.

It was the Star of David.

Erik's heart skipped a beat as he reached for the bag. "That's Peter's." He said, barely whispering.

"Now really, Erik, let's not jump to conclusions. Are you sure? I know Peter mentioned he's half-Jewish, but I don't recall him wearing a necklace proclaiming such. And even if Peter has such a necklace, I'm sure other people do too." Charles said calmly.

"He doesn't wear it, but he has one." Erik said. His hand was shaking slightly as he took the necklace from Hank without resistance and held the small item in his hand. "It's his. It has to be."

"Does he keep the necklace here, Erik, or at home?" Raven asked.

"I'm not sure. Here, I think." Erik replied, racking his memory to try to remember if Pietro had ever clarified.

"Okay, well let's at least check his room for it." Raven proposed. "Charles, will you call Kurt?"

Before Erik could protest that Pietro wouldn't want someone rummaging in his room, even someone as harmless as Kurt, and if someone had to look he should do it, Charles had raised one hand to his temple.

A moment later, Kurt blinked into existence in the center of the room. He jumped back a little, bumping into Charles' desk behind him when he saw Erik and Raven standing in front of him. Obviously he had not been forewarned by Charles that he wasn't being summoned to a one on one meeting.

"Ah uh p-professor. You n-needed me?" Kurt asked, eyes darting from one person to the next as he looked about the room.

"Yes. Thank you, Kurt." Charles said, wheeling over to him. "We need you to look for something in Peter's room."

"Oh of course. Of course. Anything to help find Peter." Said Kurt, nodding enthusiastically. "For vhat am I looking?"

"This." Said Raven, holding her hand out to take the necklace from Erik. Reluctantly, Erik dropped into her hand, and she walked it over to Kurt.

"The Star of David? I didn't know Peter was Jewish. Oh vait, actually I—" Kurt started, looking up at Erik, then quickly away. "Ah um never mind. I'll—I'll go look now!"

Erik felt adrift without Peter's necklace in his hand, and he hoped Kurt would be quick with his search, but he also knew that when one was looking for something that wasn't there that took more time.

"This is a waste of time." Erik said, clenching his hand into a fist at his side when he no longer had anything to hold onto. "Every minute we are standing in this room, Pietro could be being picked apart and experimented on!"

"What do you suggest we do, Erik? We are doing all we can." Charles said in exhaustion. "It's not like we have Cerebro anymore, or did you forget that your goonies blew it up!"

"Technically, that was Alex. And are you? Doing all you can? You didn't even believe Peter was truly missing until a few minutes ago!" Erik yelled back, towering over the other man.

"Which wouldn't have happened if you hadn't decided to join up with a monster. And it cost Alex his life. Do you remember that?" Charles shot back, ramming his finger into Erik's chest.

"And thanks to Pietro the rest of the people here still have their lives! If you need a reason to find him, shouldn't that be enough?!" Erik replied, shoving Charles' hand away and taking a few steps back, probably so he wouldn't strangle him.

"I care about Peter too, Erik. But you'll have to forgive me if I don't jump to the worst case scenario!" Charles answered, shouting again. "He did immediately agree to break into the Pentagon after just meeting three strange men. Perhaps someone came along and offered to let him break into the White House!"

"That is not what—"

"Found it!" Kurt exclaimed, popping into existence in the few feet remaining between the two men with a huge smile on his face, unaware of the tension he had broken as he held up a necklace in one hand that was identical to the necklace inside the bag in his other hand.

Finally noticing the heavy breathing and death glares radiating between the two men, Kurt quickly stepped to the side, and spoke much more timidly.

"Ah, does someone vant these? Or . . ."

"Yes." Said Erik brusquely, stepping forward and taking them from Kurt without further ado.

"O-okay." Said Kurt, grasping his tail between his hands, like someone might twirl their hair nervously. "I—I'll go now then . . . unless you still have need of me?"

Charles, took a second to let his eyes follow Erik, who was now pacing around the room, examining the two necklaces, before he answered the young teleporter, "No. You've done excellently. Thank you, Kurt. You are dismissed."

Kurt's shoulder's sagged in relief, and he dropped his tail. "G-great!" Kurt answered. He glanced at Erik one more time and then vanished in a cloud of blue smoke.

"So you were wrong. It's not Peter's." Said Charles a little too triumphantly.

"It doesn't matter if it's his or not." Erik said, shaking his head, stopping his pacing. "The metal is the same. That can't be a coincidence. Someone is sending a message."

"If you ask Remy," Remy said stepping forward, though no one had, asked him that was, "a note woulda been a more helpful way to send a message. Remy's not big on reading, but planting an identical collier—ah necklace seems a bit subtle."

"Does it?!" Erik said, rounding on the younger man. "A dead body with a Star of David around its neck. That's subtle to you?"

"Remy meant no offense. Mon ami." Said Remy, throwing up his hands in surrender. "Remy's worried about Peter too. He just means it's not a very helpful message when it comes to finding our Mercure. Remy's just thinkin', if someone took him because they wanted something, why not just say so? Remy wonders perhaps that means they already have what they wanted—Peter."

"There is no our. Peter is not your anything." Erik growled, advancing on the other man. "Why are you even here? You have already failed to give us anything of value when recounting last night's events. What more could you possibly contribute?"

"Moi? Well, Remy does not like to brag, but he does possess a particular set of skills—

But what particular set of skills LeBeau possessed, the room would not find out in that moment because Erik was at his wit's end, and wasn't having it, cutting the mutant off before he could elaborate further. "You were one of the last people to see Peter, and now he's missing! Why does that not seem like a coincidence either! Everything was fine before you arrived, then you turn up and all of a sudden there's a dead body and my s—"

"Whoa, mate, between the two of us, honestly Remy is flattered that you think he is more likely to drop a body. But that dame was not Remy's handy work." Remy said, as he flipped a card through his fingers. If Erik was thinking straight, he may have noticed that the behavior was not dissimilar from how he sometimes flipped a coin through his own fingers—a nervous tick more so than a bout to show off.

But of course, Erik wasn't thinking straight.

"Is this a joke to you?" Erik scowled.

"Non. If it was, Remy woulda laughed. Remy is actually very concerned. He likes Peter. Quite a bit more than Remy likes you, see? Remy's not about to make that ange disappear. If Remy was going to make anyone disappear, well . . . it would probably be you."

"I swear, if you had anything to do with this I'll—" Erik practically growled again.

"Relax. Remy would not touch a hair on Mercure's head . . ." Remy paused, and no one in the room filled the silence, as if they were all waiting, waiting for him to finish his thought—his death sentence—whatever it might be. "unless he asked Remy to of course. Then Remy would be much obliged to—"

With a flick of Erik's hand, the Cajun was thrown backward and through the closest window, flying through the newly made opening in a shatter of glass.

"Erik!" Hank and Charles yelled together, both appalled as the former dashed over to the window while Erik stood silently fuming as if he hadn't just chucked a person through the air like a frisbee.

"Relax." Raven said, unfazed by Erik's behavior. "We're on the first floor. He's fine. . . . probably." She shrugged. "And he was asking for it."

Hank looked at Raven in disbelief, but then there was groaning and a distinct 'ow' from outside.

"See." Raven said. "Fine."

"Must you always resort to violence?" Charles said, shaking his head. "I understand you are upset—"

"You understand nothing!" Erik shouted as the metal wall sconces in the room bent in time with his rage.

"Yes, I do! I'm concerned about Peter too, but you need to calm down, and we have to deal with the problem at hand first. A girl is DEAD, Erik!" Charles snapped back at his once friend.

"AND MY SON IS MISSING! So don't tell me to calm DOWN!"

{Author's Note: Oh Erik, you spilled the beans. Sorry this took me so long, and I hope you enjoyed it. Also, Remy's 'particular set of skills' quote is a reference to Taken.}