When Erik walks up the front path that evening, the windows are dark, though they never have been before. No matter how late it is when he makes it here, Magda usually has every single light in the house on. She doesn't seem to care about the electric bill; keeping the dark out is worth it to her. But today, every light's off, and when Erik knocks on the door, his hackles already raised, feeling out every molecule of metal within reach in case he needs to summon it, no one answers.
He's not surprised; the place felt deserted from the moment he came within view of the house. After a minute, before the neighbors can spot him lurking, he unlocks the door with his powers, flicks on the hall light as he steps inside.
"Magda? Are you here?" he calls, loud enough to carry through the house, but hopefully not loud enough to be heard outside the once again closed front door. His instincts could be wrong here. The three of them could be hidden, not fled or— "Wanda? Pietro? It's me. It's Erik. I mean, it's Max. It's me."
There's no answer, but when Erik gets to the living room, the first thing he sees is the police tape. Then, the lamp in pieces on the floor; the overturned coffee table, stuffing pouring out of several gaping wounds in the couch. There's a wide, dark stain on the rug, other, smaller spatters on the hardwood floor and the furniture. Erik's familiar enough with knives that there would be only one way to interpret this scene even if he couldn't smell and taste the traces of iron in the air.
He searches the house, just in case the twins are hiding after all, too frightened to come out. When he looks under the beds, he smells smoke for a moment, acrid and thick, enough to start choking on before he remembers he's not going to find Anya under there, not this time. Then the smell fades, though not entirely; Erik knows from experience that it'll be hours until it's gone, but this time he's able to banish it to the back of his mind, focus on the search ahead.
When he's sure there's no one here, no cranny, nook, or back of a closet he hasn't eliminated, Erik heads over to the neighbor's house and knocks on the door. He remembers Magda telling him that the old woman who lives there is the neighborhood gossip; she'll know something.
***
("So, what does she say about you?" Erik asked, glancing at Magda to see if she was annoyed at him, and if so, whether it was a good annoyed or a bad annoyed. It was the first time he'd teased her since since before the fire. He was surprised how carefully he found himself choosing his words, tone, expression. He'd never been this cautious around her before.
"I don't know and I don't care," she said, even though she probably knew and definitely cared and Erik would have heard her rant about it at least fifteen times already back when they'd been married. She handed him the next plate. "Less talking, more drying."
Middle annoyed, Erik decided, but closer to good than bad, judging by the smile she was trying to hide. "Yes, ma'am."
Not for the first time, not knowing it was the second to last time he would ever see her, he wondered if there was a chance for them yet.)
***
Erik's used to sizing someone up in a moment, working out the best method to get the result he wants. He's good at getting information out of people, often without them even realizing how much they've given away. Now, when Magda's neighbor opens the door, it's all he can do to ask why the house next door is so dark, Magda didn't say anything to him about going out of town—? So now he's worried...
He's on edge, barely able to ask without raising his voice or shaking the house down by its pipes. The neighbor doesn't seem to notice, seeming almost gleeful despite the head-shaking and it's such a shames. They hadn't been friends, and who really cares that much about dark-skinned women in strange dresses who speak halting English in a thick Polish accent? Erik knows how people like this think. They can't see past the unfamiliar long enough to stop being contemptuous of it, to stop feeling threatened, to realize that the woman they thought was stupid could have run circles around them in the languages she'd learned as a girl. She was better than this woman, better than any of them.
If Erik had the time to be angry, he'd be swallowed whole. As it is, he listens to the tale of a burglary or robbery gone wrong, a body bag carried out of the house next door, working to keep his face as blank as he can since pleasant no longer seems to be on tap. When she's done, and he's agreed that it's a shame, (behind gritted teeth, and he can hardly believe that the neighborhood busybody hasn't noticed the strain), he asks, as if it's just occurred to him, "And what about her children? What happened to them?"
Oh, she remembers seeing them go off with a policeman around the same time. They've gone to live with family, she's sure.
"Thank you," Erik says, not bothering to point that that there is no family, that Magda's family met the same fate at Auschwitz that Erik's did. And as a parting shot: "I certainly hope they catch him. It would be such a shame if he came back for you."
***
(Erik was sitting at a stop sign on his way to the airport when he just happened to spot a little girl who looked exactly like his Anya. He expected the resemblance to fade the moment he looked again, just as it always had before, fog fading in the glare of the morning sun, but instead it only grew stronger.
It was impossible in so many ways. For one thing, this girl looked about three or four years old, where Anya had been going on six when she died, and would have been eleven this past May.
It couldn't be, yet the closer Erik got, (leaving his car parked in the road, heedless of the honking from the cars behind him or the glares of any of the other drivers), the more true the resemblance became. By the time he reached her, he'd also finally noticed the rest of what was going on in the driveway, the little silver-haired boy the girl was standing next to (they were holding hands and seemed disgruntled about it, judging by the way they kept glaring at/smacking each other) and the harried-looking women who was getting two paper bags full of groceries out of the trunk of her car, while telling them to wait for Momma in a tone that suggested she expected them to wander off the moment she stopped telling them otherwise. It was a tone Erik recognized, and he was both shocked and not at all surprised when she straightened up and he found that he recognized her, too.
"Magda?" Erik said.
Magda's eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. "—Max?"
A few minutes later, after he'd helped her retrieve all her dropped groceries and she'd invited him in, (and after she'd put the children down for their nap because Pietro had thrown a tantrum at the market and Wanda had hit him six times in the parking lot and who knew how many times after that), Erik said, "They're mine, aren't they? They're ours."
"Yes."
Erik stayed for a few more hours: long enough to discuss the ways he'd help now that he knew the twins existed; long enough to see them for a little while after they were rested; long enough to eat dinner with them when Magda offered (still a little wary of him, maybe even a little frightened of him, and four visits later she'd scream at him for having the nerve to say he wished she'd told him when he had left her—but she offered, and that was something).
Unfortunately, he was also there long enough for his car to be towed, and to miss his flight to Dallas.)
***
Erik's tracked former SS officers to the corners of the earth, no matter how many times they changed their names, how much money they used to wash away their trail. Finding two orphaned children in the care of the state provides little difficulty now.
The next night at witching hour, he forces open a window at the group home, walks down the hall and peers into bedrooms until he finds them. They're in the third room he checks, along with with several other children, all sound asleep. He shakes Pietro awake first, then Wanda, saying, "It's me, it's Erik. I'm here."
He's surprised when Wanda gasps and throws her arms around his neck, clinging to him for dear life. He's even more surprised when Pietro, who recently learned from the older boys in their neighborhood that holding hands is for babies and wussies, lets Erik take his without an argument. They've never seemed overly attached to him before, although he's been to their house at least a dozen times over the past eight months. He knows Magda told them he's they're father, but he's not sure they retained it, or that they've seen him often or long enough for it to sink in. Perhaps it's just that he's the one familiar thing in a world that's gone mad. Perhaps it's even something as simple as the fact that he's speaking to them in the same language they speak at home.
"Where are your things?" Erik asks, after he's impressed upon them the game they're playing, the need to be very, very quiet.
In a drawer in the dresser along the wall he finds a few changes of clothes for each of them, and, much more importantly, a handful of framed pictures. He can't take the time to look at them now, but he knows what they'll be, recognizes them from his visits: They're family pictures, the two of them with Magda. It's good that they'll have them, to remember her by. It's more than Erik's ever had; even with Charles' help years ago, his memories of his own mother are less clear, less certain with each year that goes by.
By some miracle, and after a bathroom break ("I have to go," Wanda whispers into Erik's neck as they pass the restroom. So, it turns out, does Pietro, and, since they've recently learned about the concept of privacy, they have to take turns, with Erik and the other twin standing out in the hall.), they make it back out the window and to the car after that without raising the alarm. Erik was prepared to fight his way out, especially since he's never witnessed either of the them be quiet for more than two minutes at a time unless they were actually asleep, but as it is he manages to get them both in the back seat without much difficulty. By the time he turns his headlights back on down the street, he knows they've actually made a clean getaway.
Ten minutes later, when the twins are still being abnormally quiet, he glances back and sees they've fallen asleep again. Probably they were never that awake to begin with. That's fine with him. It gives him time to think as he drives, instead of answering questions such as where Momma is, or where they're going. He doesn't know how to answer the former, and doesn't actually know the answer to the latter.
After he's driven three hours and changed the letters on his license plate five times, he pulls over at a rest stop to take a piss for himself (right beside the car, unwilling to leave the twins long enough to use the actual restroom, which would put them out of his line of sight for a minute or longer). When he gets back in the driver's seat, he turns the ignition back on, but lets the car sit where it is. He needs to think. He needs to decide where he's going, where he's taking them. He's used to deciding things on the go, in the moment, but he can't be reckless with his children the way he's been accused of being with himself. He needs to stop reacting now, and start planning ahead.
There are already courses of actions he knows he cannot take. He can't go after Magda's murderer, much as he's itching to make them pay the way he made Sebastian Shaw pay in the end. Maybe Magda was killed by some random human thief, but for all he knows, he led one of his enemies to her on one of those visits, making himself scarce for a few hours during one of the Brotherhood's missions in DC, or manufacturing an excuse to go to DC alone. If the latter, then tracking her killer down could draw a target on her children. No. Much as it grates, he'll have to let that go, at least for now, until the twins are out of harm's way. That's definitely what Magda would want, if he could ask her.
***
("I'd be back by the time the plant opens again," Erik said. He had Anya propped up on his shoulder, patting her back to burp her after Magda had fed her, but he was too distracted to pay much attention. All that was on his mind was how he could resume the hunt for a while if Magda would just see his point of view. She knew how much he wanted it. He'd told her often enough. "Don't you want them dead?"
He didn't think he could get Shaw, not in a couple of weeks, but he could take down a few of the others, the ones Magda remembered too. He thought that was a good compromise.
Magda clearly didn't. "Yes," she said. "Of course I do. If I learned they were dead, I would celebrate, I would dance and sing. But you don't have to kill them. I want you here with us more."
After she went back to bed, Erik stayed up with Anya for a while longer. She'd wanted changed before she ate, and of course now that she'd eaten, she had soiled her clean diaper too. So Erik changed her again, and rubbed her tummy to make her smile, and kissed her small hand after he'd laid her back down in her cradle—and the whole time, he was thinking about where he'd rather be, bringing down blood and death on men not worthy of the name so that they wouldn't be breathing in the same world as his family.
A year later, the next time they had this discussion, Erik went anyway. He was gone for nearly two months. When he returned, Magda was almost too furious and too cold to let him back in the house; Anya, who had learned quite a few more words in his absence and who now walked more steadily without help than she had with it when he'd left, barely seemed to recognize him for the first day or two.
Years after that and for the rest of his life, he would wish he'd paid more attention to Anya's smiles, been there for more of the milestones. He'd wish he'd spent more time having long sleepy conversations with Magda under the covers, and less time sitting at the living room window plotting by himself.)
***
Erik considers, briefly, taking the twins to Charles. Charles always spoke of opening a school for mutant children, after all. If Erik himself wouldn't be welcome there, he still knows Charles well enough to know his children wouldn't be turned away. They'd be safe enough, at Charles' house.
He looks at them again, still asleep in the backseat. Pietro's hair needs a trim; Wanda's wants to be re-introduced to a comb. It's been many visits since Erik looked at Wanda and saw only Anya; now she's just Wanda to him, his young daughter who looks somewhat like the older sister she'll never meet but in personality barely resembles her at all. (In all situations where Anya would have thrown a tantrum, headstrong as either of her parents, Wanda's more likely to go into regular old-fashioned tears. 'Sensitive' isn't a personality trait Erik's ever had patience with before, but over his visits he's found himself feeling protective toward her, rather than annoyed.) As for Pietro, Erik was surprised how delighted he was to have a son, once he got over the shock. He's a little shit already, never listens the first time he's told to do something, and Erik always finds himself laughing even though Magda tells him not to encourage him.
To leave them with Charles, Erik would have to leave them. There's no way he can sneak off to North Salem the same way he could to the suburbs outside of DC; he'll be a near-stranger to his children, if he does that, someone they see once or twice a year at best.
To his surprise, he finds that while he could live with that, he isn't willing to. Between leaving his children with Charles or going to ground, he'd rather go to ground. The choice barely feels like a choice at all, in the end.
Erik's used false papers before. He still has those contacts; securing documentation for all three of them shouldn't be hard. Once they have that, they can go—he doesn't know. Somewhere populated, somewhere warm. Not DC, where he'd always have to worry about someone recognizing the twins, but not the middle of nowhere, either. He's not going to raise his children in some bunker or remote cabin, or a tiny hidden room behind some fake wall, where they would rarely so much as see another person. That's not a life. It's not what he wants their childhoods to be. He wants them to be happy. He wants them to have friends. He wants them to have everything he can possibly give. He thinks he might even want to live near a synagogue, so they can learn about their heritage from others as well as from him, maybe even come to believe in the G-d Erik hasn't since the gates of Auschtwitz.
He looks back at them again, and he's terrified in a way he never imagined before. He wonders if this is how Magda felt when she found out she was pregnant again, when she gave birth to them and had to find a way for all three of them to live. He's never let himself think about it before, the way it must have been for her, bereaved and alone. He wishes she were here, to tell him how she did it. Erik has a thousand questions he never asked her, and now he'll never have the chance to, or tell her he's sorry.
A few minutes later, a semi-truck turns into the rest stop. It's not a police car, and thus it's no danger to them, but Erik takes it as his cue to get back on the road. He reverses out of the parking spaces and steers the car toward the highway. He's still not sure of their final destination, but at least he has some idea where they're going.