It was awkward, and it hurt at first. If it had been a little better, or lasted a little longer, Magda might not have noticed the other thing that happened when Max groaned one last time and collapsed on top of her.
"What was that?" she asked, reaching up to cradle his sweating face, barely believing, still, that he was here.
"What was what?"
"That sound." Like change jangling together in someone's pocket—only this had come from the floor, where he'd left his pants.
He'd changed, her Max—no, Erik; he called himself Erik now—but there still came a flash of panic in his eyes. Though he didn't glance hurriedly at the floor, the way he would have when he was a boy, he wasn't fooling her when he looked her in the eye and said, "I didn't hear anything."
He was lying, but did it matter? In that moment, Magda nearly decided it didn't. All that had to matter was that he was alive, and well, and here with her.
But would he ever truly be here with her, if there was a lie between them already?
"I think you did," she said, her mind changed in an instant. "You should tell me, later."
He had finished, but she still ached in more ways than one. She still wanted him. She guided his hand between her legs, showed him how to touch her, the same way she touched herself. He blushed; she refused to, after all they had already done, after he had already been inside her.
By the time she cried out, clenching around his fingers, he was ready again, his manhood rising thick and ruddy against his belly. This second time was better, and he lasted a little longer than he had before. Still, Magda was paying attention this time, and when he groaned and collapsed again, she saw the way his pants pocket rustled, when coins rattled in his pocket.
"Tell me," she said, running her hands up and down his sweaty back. He was as beautiful as only the dead come back to life can be. "Tell me whatever there is to tell."
He looked at her for a long time, and then began to speak. They stayed up long into the night, he telling her of his strange ability—how it had helped to kill his mother, kept him in the eye of the man who had pulled the trigger—how even yesterday when they'd run into each other in the market, he'd been on that man's trail—and she listening, and seeing more than what he said. It wasn't hard to understand that he expected her to despise him, word after word—for his ability, for having had enough to eat at Auschwitz while she herself starved, for having killed many times and for intending to kill many more. But after he'd said everything there was to say, and the coins had come rising from his pocket, dancing before her one by one before landing, so lightly, in a pile in her palm—then, she laid them down on the dresser, and took him in her arms again, and this time it was much better for the both of them.
***
They were married three days later. Part of Magda was surprised Erik had stayed, for he had made it clear how driven he was, that he would not stop his quest for vengeance.
The first days of their marriage were good ones. Erik moved into her room; several months later, once he'd been working for a while, they moved together into a slightly larger apartment. In the little time they had after work and on their days off, they began to make it into a home.
There was one other thing Magda had hoped for, though she would come to learn it had never once occurred to Erik that their tired lovemaking a few days a week might result in anything other than what it was. When she was sure, she kept it to herself for another week or two, trying to think of just how and when to tell him.
In the end, it slipped out on a lazy afternoon, one of the few days they both had off work—all the chores done, all the shopping, too, and too gray and wet out to go anywhere else. There was nothing better to do other than lie in bed together all day, as if they'd just been married yesterday and not a year ago.
Eventually, though, people who lay around in bed all day were liable to get hungry (even if they were also nauseated by the idea of eating anything). And people who had no curtains in their kitchen—Erik was the sewer of their small family, and hadn't gotten around yet to sewing curtains—had no business wandering naked where anyone on the street could look in and see.
"Where is my bra?" Magda asked, once she'd located everything else. "Have you seen it?"
"No."
"Well, have you felt it?" By now, she had a good idea how that worked, Erik and metal. He didn't need to see it to know it was there—or to unhook her bra from across the room.
Erik made a noncommittal sound, and it was another minute or two before Magda happened to look up to see her bra dancing around in the air above her head.
"Very funny." When she looked at Erik, he had no expression, the same way he always looked when he was trying not to laugh at her. In the very early days of their marriage, he'd been so reluctant to show her what he could do—now, he was confident enough, if only sometimes, to forget to be as careful as he usually was. This was one of the few times he'd forgotten enough to tease her, to play, and that was enough to make Magda forget her annoyance with him, especially when her bra dropped into her hands without any more nonsense. It was also enough to make her think of something she hadn't thought of before, and that was what made her say, "Do you think our baby will be like you?"
Erik still had no expression, but something beneath it had changed, becoming colder, more wary. "Why would you want that?" he asked flatly, and then, a few seconds later, "...What baby?"
"Ah," Magda said. "There is something I have been meaning to tell you."
***
Around the time their Anya started school, Erik grew restless again. In the first days of their marriage, Magda had seen that look often, but more rarely with each year that passed. Now, she saw it more and more, as Erik spent more and more time out of the house after work, or pacing their bedroom when he thought she was asleep.
"What is it?" she asked, one night when she could stand it no longer, and had become certain he would not tell her unless she pushed him.
"Nothing."
"Do not lie to me," she said, and stood up and pulled him away from the window, back into bed with her. "Tell me."
Erik came, all reluctantly, and then, minutes later, admitted, "I've come into some information. About him."
He didn't need to say the name; the black way he said 'him' was enough for Magda to know exactly who they were talking about. She had an idea about how he'd come into that information, too; a week ago, he'd come home with bruised knuckles, his shirt torn, a rusty residue on some of the change in his pocket, which he'd rinsed off in the sink, blankly, as if not realizing she was there watching him. She hadn't asked, and hadn't exactly wondered about it, while spending the last week wondering about it all the time.
"You're going to leave," she said, because there was no other reason for him to be so restless, so unhappy, when she knew how much he loved her and Anya.
She could see that he meant to deny it when he opened his mouth. She touched her fingers to his lips, and he shut it again. When he spoke, it was the truth. "It won't be forever. You and Anya, you'll be well taken care of."
They barely made ends meet between his job and hers, but she knew about the bank accounts, the ones he never touched.
Magda thought about how it would be if something happened to Erik while he were gone, if he never came home. They'd never know what had happened to him. At best, they'd know without knowing, the way she'd known without knowing about what had happened to her own father, her own mother.
If Anya lost her father, too, she was not going to lose him like that.
"We are going with you," Magda said.
"—Are you out of your mind?"
"We are all going. As soon as possible."
"No."
"Tomorrow. We will pack tonight."
"Magda—"
"Anya is not going to grow up without her father. Neither is the next one."
"...The next one?!"
If she were ever pregnant for a third time, Magda was going to have to find a better way to tell him than just blurting it out in their bedroom. For now, she got up from the bed, found Erik's old suitcase, and began stuffing clothing into it. "You are not going without us. You need us."
"I need you here. I need you safe."
"Well, we need you to be safe," Magda said. "Who will watch your back, if it is not me? I am a better shot than you, anyway. You know this."
Erik had much to say, after that. Magda let him talk while she packed, the words washing over her until finally he stopped running his mouth and came to help.
***
Years passed, and they stayed in motion, remaining in no place for longer than a month or two before moving on. Anya thought of it as a great adventure; the twins, when they came, knew no other way for life to be.
Whenever they arrived at a place, Erik left them at a safe house or motel, while he went to do what he would do. Magda never insisted on going with him, for she couldn't leave the children alone when they were so small.
Erik always returned to them after a few days, a week at the longest. Sometimes, he came home with blood on his hands, under his fingernails. Other times, he limped home injured, and it wasn't long before Magda learned enough sewing to at least stitch him up again when he was too exhausted or agitated to do it properly himself.
Twice, someone other than Erik found the place where they were staying; twice, Magda used the gun she always carried with her now. Both times, she spent months fighting with Erik once the children were asleep, refusing to agree to what he wanted—for the four of them to settle somewhere without him, for him to go on alone.
***
The third time someone other than Erik found them, Erik was with him. For a moment, Magda tightened her grip on the gun she'd hidden in her skirts. She had been sitting in the chair facing the door all night, knowing how close Erik believed himself to finally be to Shaw, knowing that she would be the only person standing between that evil man and their children, should Erik fail. Here she had sat, while Anya did her lessons and helped the twins with theirs; here she sat still, the three of them asleep in the bed behind her.
"I didn't get him," Erik said. The same thing he'd said, so many times now. Then he noticed the gun, and added an afterthought: "This is Charles. He got in the way," and that alone made Magda surprised that this Charles was still standing; Erik wouldn't have had the patience for her if she got between him and Shaw, "but he's all right."
"Just all right?" Charles spoke English with the British accent, and had medium-length dark hair, wet and plastered to his head.
The next thing Erik said wasn't an afterthought. "He's like me," he said. "And there are others."
Magda knew there were others. Two of them slept behind her, curled up next to their older sister. But something in the way he said it made her hold her tongue, lest he go on the defensive for the thousandth time, or spiral down thinking of the stain he thought he had passed on to the twins.
The next two people to come into the room were women. One was a blonde girl who turned out to be Charles' sister; the other was a brunette who turned out to be with the US government, and who immediately took charge of the room. Magda liked her immediately; anyone who could make Erik shut up and follow along in so few words was someone she could stand to know better.
***
Later, Magda would think she had liked Charles from the beginning.
She didn't trust him, though, not at first. Anyone who could make her feel at ease so quickly was someone she needed to keep an eye on—especially since it was clear from the beginning that Erik trusted Charles wholly. Erik, her Erik, who never trusted anyone. He'd had no friends in the town they'd lived in before, had made no connection with anyone outside of their little family since they had left. As much as Magda loved her husband, a good judge of character he was not, and so she kept her eyes open in those first few days before Erik went with Charles to find others. After that, she observed Erik carefully whenever he and Charles returned to drop off a new recruit at the facility in Virginia.
(Erik had wanted them to stay in yet another anonymous motel room, and Magda had to admit it would have been safer—but she had not wanted to be so disconnected from what it was he was doing, this change in his life. She had not wanted their children locked away any longer, not when the twins had this chance to meet so many others who were like them.)
It was during these days that Magda began to warm up to Charles Xavier. It wasn't that easy charm, the way he smiled too quickly and too sweetly at everyone for any reason, but something else altogether, the traces he left even in his absence. Often, she did not even see him, on the nights he and Erik returned late and left early, but his influence was everywhere.
Before Erik had met Charles, he'd rarely used his abilities as casually as he did now—or if he had, he'd always backtracked quickly. Before he'd met Charles, Erik had always told Pietro to slow down whenever he said, "Look how fast I can go!"; now, he'd just laugh, and ask Pietro to show him again. And when things went missing, or suddenly appeared around Wanda, Erik never snapped at her now, but spoke to her in the same kind way he always had when she'd had a nightmare, or come to him with a question about something she'd been worrying about.
There was nothing wrong with Erik or with what he had passed down to their two younger children, but he had never believed it before. What Magda had been trying to tell Erik for years, Charles Xavier had somehow convinced him of in just a few weeks. It was a change that mattered, and there was no denying who was responsible.
***
It wasn't until after the attack on the facility, when they all moved into Charles' big house in New York, that Magda began to notice the other changes in Erik. It was in the way Charles was with Erik, laying hands on him so casually, as no one else had ever felt free to handle her husband; it was the way Erik went out of his way to never touch Charles in return.
She had not seen them together for more than a few minutes at a time before, and so had not had the chance to make the connection until now. Even so, it took her days to put it together, and more than a week after that to be sure enough to bring it to Erik.
"You are not sleeping with him," she said, one day when they were folding the laundry. She was almost certain about that—Erik had never been able to keep anything from her, had rarely so much as tried since their first night together. If something had happened, she was certain he would have given it away somehow, if not confessed outright; still, she had to be sure. Despite what she meant to say to Erik now, it mattered that he had not. It made a difference to what she could live with, going forward.
Even now, he couldn't lie to her, not even enough to ask who she meant. "Magda," he said. "No."
"Good," she said. "I think perhaps you should."
Erik did not splutter, did not turn red, did not begin to shout. Instead, he went still, his face a mask, and this was how Magda knew how important Charles had become to him. More so than she'd realized, and she thought now that if something had not happened between them, it very likely would soon, no matter what she said or did not say to Erik now. She was surprised to find that knowing this made little difference.
She said, "I think he is good for you. And I think—our family is so small. If it were to grow in this way, I do not think that would be so terrible."
Erik was very quiet as they folded the rest of the laundry, and Magda did not press him, either then or when he spent the next week pretending to ignore Charles.
Then, one day, he was an hour late to bed, and took a shower before joining her, although he usually showered in the morning. There was a love bite on his shoulder Magda had not put there.
"You said you wanted this," Erik said gruffly, almost before she had reacted to the sight.
Magda was surprised to find that she did not feel jealous. She had thought she would, at least a little. She had thought perhaps it would be unbearable, once she knew it had happened, and that she would tell him it could not happen again.
But she had meant it, when she'd said it would be good for their family to grow. She had been sincere, when she'd thought to herself that of the people she had shared Erik with, sharing him with Charles was a thousand times better than sharing him with Shaw. The one changed him for the better, while the other had haunted him, a shadow lying over his heart for all these years...
"Yes," she said. "Did you enjoy yourself?"
She did not expect Erik to share details, and was not at all surprised at the flat look he gave her then. She was surprised when she began to giggle.
***
It had been many years since Magda had had a close female friend, and so it took her weeks longer than it should have to realize that Moira had become to her what Charles was to Erik. A friend of the heart, she thought at first—a friend who was patient with her awkward English, who would speak in equally awkward Polish so as to make them even; a friend who realized the great importance of going to the shooting range at least once a week, so as not to grow rusty; a friend with whom she could share glances every time anyone else in that house did something completely stupid, which was very often indeed (and the culprit was either Erik or Pietro at least half the time); a friend who understood her, and whom she understood in turn, without any of the usual barriers or secrets.
But perhaps other people's hearts did not begin to race at the thought of seeing their friend every day. Perhaps other people did not glance away from their friend often, so aware of them that it seemed as if they must be staring. Perhaps other people could not recall always having felt this way about one friend or another when they had still been too young to be able to put the pieces together. Perhaps other people did not send their husband to a new lover without even realizing they had done so for a reason that was at least a little bit selfish.
Moira was a good friend, fierce and loyal, so perhaps it should not have surprised Magda when one day Moira took her aside and said she had seen Erik and Charles kissing in the library.
"The scum," she said, and went on for several minutes in that vein before Magda could get a word in, to say that it was all right, that she had told Erik he should. And then Moira listened as Magda explained, and if she thought it was all very foolish, all she said when Magda was finished was, "What's good for him is good for you. Come on, we're going out for drinks so you can pick someone up."
"I do not think I want anyone else," Magda said, and did not mean what Moira must initially have thought she meant—but after she kissed her, she did not think there was any ambiguity left for her meaning at all.
***
"Her?" Erik asked later that night, looking distinctly as if it had never occurred to him that what was good for him would indeed be good for Magda as well. "She threatened to castrate me!"
"Well, she will not do so. I have explained everything," Magda said.
She could see Erik wanted to argue, but all he said then was a weak, "She's CIA. It's not safe."
"I am married to you. When have I ever been safe?"
And to this, Erik seemed to have nothing to say at all.
***
The next time Erik told her something was not safe, it was in relation to how she had no business coming with them to Cuba. But although Magda had never wished to be directly involved in Erik's hunt for Sebastian Shaw before, that was before she had seen him, that night at the facility when Angel had chosen to go with him and the others had barely listened to Magda when she'd told them not to be fools. Now, she knew his face, she comprehended what he was in a way she never had before. She needed to be there, and Erik should have known better than to argue with her when she had made up her mind. When the time came she went with them, wearing a flight suit and a pistol of her own.
No one had planned for the plane to go down, but it did, and somehow everyone survived it to wage battle on the sand and in the air. Magda along with Moira tried to stay out of the way, for it was soon clear that there was no place for them in this fight, not yet.
Not until the end, at least—after Erik had come out of the submarine, wearing the same helmet Shaw had worn when he'd come to the base. Spouting such things as Magda had never heard from him before, sentiments that chilled her to the bone. She had never once been afraid of Erik, no matter how many times he came back to her with blood on his hands. Now he sounded so much like Shaw, and so much like certain others—
Then there were the missiles, and he turned them away, and that was good; then he turned them back upon the ships in the water, and that was not. Magda was not in the least surprised when she turned to look at Moira and saw her aiming her pistol.
"No," Magda said. "Give it to me."
Moira shook her head, a sharp little jerk—then paused at whatever it was she glimpsed on Magda's face. Perhaps she had forgotten that Magda had her own gun, if she needed one; perhaps she had remembered that if Magda was a far better shot than Erik, she was also a better shot than Moira; whatever it was, she handed Magda the gun, butt-first, and Magda took it.
She had never been afraid of her husband before, not once. Even when he had been very frightening, the times he'd killed people in front of her—she had never feared anything other than losing him. Now, though, the story was different. As she walked towards him, across the sand, fear and love warred in her heart. Fear of this part of him that had not revealed itself until now; love for everything that had come before, the man who had come back to her from the dead, who could be so hard with nearly every other person but had never refused to soften for her.
Fear and love, love and fear. The battle within her was terrible, but also brief—for how could a momentary fear ever compete with that love of years?
"Erik," she said, when she was close enough that he could hear her. It had taken her seconds to walk the distance, to unload the gun, dropping the bullets one by one into the sand. Now he turned to her, and if his face was hard, there was also a wildness there also, and she thought perhaps he was very afraid, too. "Erik, those things you are saying—they sound so familiar."
The others were speaking behind them, Charles and Moira and the rest, frantic and loud, saying her name and his. In those few moments, it did not matter—although she would often think, later, of the many ways the four of them might have fractured, had even one thing happened differently, there on that beach.
Magda dropped the gun into the sand, as she had the bullets before them.
"I will not share you with Shaw," she said, words she had thought, but never once said aloud to any person. "I came with you, all this way—I did not do it for you to do this."
"Magda," Erik said, looking pained, almost stricken. "I told you not to come."
"Well, I am here. You must stop," said Magda, and it was only then that she looked toward the sea and saw that the missiles that had been in the air had fallen already. She would never quite be certain when they had fallen—if it had been when Erik had first turned his head to see her, or if it had been because of the words she spoke.
Later, there would be many disagreements on this point, about who had been right, and the hows and the whys. But in the end, it didn't matter that much, any more that it mattered that the others were on that beach, too, watching them.
The hardness left Erik's face as he looked at her, and Magda now felt confident enough to add, "You must also take that awful thing off your head. I do not want to look at it on you any longer."
She did not say, 'It reminds me of him,' but Erik was so quick to do as she asked that she thought it must have come through in her voice anyway.
"I got him," Erik said then. He'd been left with terrible flat helmet hair; he looked so much like the boy he'd been when he'd first come back to her. Magda had never before realized how young they had both been, then. "I finally got him."
"Good." Magda embraced him, although he did not always wish to be touched, just after something had happened; after a moment, he put his arms around her as well, his chin resting on top of her head. It would be a few minutes more before either remembered that they were not alone here. "That is good."
And from then on, it was, for her Erik had come back to her once again.