Snapshots

Nina was two when they built the house.

They could have lived in town, the way they had for their first year here. Could have continued renting that small brick house, could have bought another small brick house now that they had some money saved from Erik's work at the steel mill. Instead, they bought some land in the woods, and together constructed a wooden house, away from prying eyes, the people outside of Erik's coworkers who might see his face too often and come to recognize it from the paper or the television.

The work was hard, slow going. Erik had barely used his powers since Nina was born, and then only in his and Magda's bedroom in the dark, with the curtains drawn; he didn't dare use them out in the open, even if no one was likely to wander by. He'd learned, already, that the moment he thought no one was watching was the moment someone, unnoticed, was most likely to stumble in.

Magda wasn't the only one weary of moving. She wasn't the only one, anymore, who craved the idea of staying in one place. Of settling down, so that they could own more than they could carry, so that their daughter's life wouldn't be constantly uprooted, once she was old enough to remember.

The construction, done after work and on Erik's days off, took months where it otherwise would have taken hours. But once it was finished, it was the same thing it would have been if he had used his powers: Comfortable. Private. Theirs.

Erik tracked Magda by her necklace, caught up with her several streets away from the train station.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I don't care."

"I should never have said such a terrible thing."

She didn't seem to realize how rare such an apology was from him, and this soon after the fact; she kept walking, without so much as glancing at him.

"Magda," he said. "Please. Can we talk?"

Now she rounded on him, so suddenly and expectedly that he nearly tripped backward. "Talk about what? How you think I'm cheating on you?"

"—Not so loud," Erik said. "You don't want to draw attention to us."

"Draw attention to what?" If anyone, her voice had gotten louder. "That you think I'm fucking other men? That you think I have the time to fuck other men?"

"I don't think you're doing anything," Erik said. "I shouldn't have said that."

"When do you think I did it? Tell me, Erik."

Now, her voice had lowered, a hiss that no one outside of a few feet range could have picked up on. "Daveed," Erik reminded her, conscious of the scene they were making—but it was no use.

"Maybe I did it at the last seedy hotel we stayed in," she said. "Or the one before that. Maybe I let someone in and had him fuck me beside you when I was supposed to be keeping watch—"

"Magda—"

"Or maybe I snuck someone in for a quickie when you went out for smokes—you're never gone long, but who says I need more than five minutes? That's the kind of woman I am, right?" Now she was in tears. "Or maybe it's the kind of man you are. What have you been doing when I'm not with you?"

"Nothing," Erik said. "I'm sorry I said that. I was only—I was frightened."

He was frightened still, and deeply. It was the fear his parents must have felt in the few years before they'd been killed—not for themselves, but for him. Erik had never imagined there was any greater fear than that of standing before a monster, pleading for his mother's life with an ability he didn't understand and had no chance of summoning on purpose—now he thought his mother's fear in that room must have dwarfed his own.

Along with that fear, intertwined with it, there was another: that though she'd chosen to leave her family and friends, abandon everything she knew in order to come with him, that Magda would leave. She'd get on a train, alone, and go back to the town she'd grown up in, to which Erik could not return, and raise their child there, where he would never see it, never know it. That he'd lost them both in one idiotic moment, with one kneejerk reaction, the way he always seemed to lose everyone, when he'd never suspected until that moment that he would.

"I'm sorry," he said again, and now he'd forgotten all the people passing by them to either side. The two of them could have been alone in the world. "I know the baby's mine. I have no doubt of that. I never did." Now he dared to take her by the arms, gently, in case she wrenched away from him. "Please forgive me. Please stay."

"I'm scared, too," she said, finally, beginning to weep in earnest. "How are we going to raise a baby when we live like this?"

Staying in seedy hotels in dangerous neighborhoods, keeping a watch day and night, changing countries and names and backstories at a minute's notice—she'd known what she was signing up for when she married him, she'd known it since the day they met. On another day, Erik would have said so, but he couldn't argue that theirs was any life for a baby.

"We'll figure it out," he said, wrapping his arms around her, surprised that she came willingly. "Together."

When they boarded a train an hour later, they both had red eyes. By the time, a day later, that they disembarked, they'd come to an understanding about the way things would have to be, going forward, and Erik had vowed to both her and to himself to never again utter the phrase, 'Perhaps it's not mine,' even if they had a thousand more surprising pregnancies.

"All right, let's go now, back to bed," Charles said, as he rounded the corner into the kitchen. A moment later, he wished he'd paid more attention to which of the children was up and wandering about at such an hour. Then, he'd have known it wasn't one of his own students he'd caught up after bedtime, and adjusted his opening accordingly. "—Ah. Hello, Nina."

Erik's daughter was seated on one of the stools by the island, and on the table's surface stood a family of oppossums: a mother, with four babies riding on her back. That couldn't be sanitary. Less so was the raccoon by the refrigerator, reaching into a box of Lucky Charms. Charles made a note to throw that out, or at least write something on the box so people would know to avoid eating out of it.

"Hi, Professor."

Erik had told her to call him Charles; the other children had been completely scandalized by the very idea; so Charles was Charles when Erik was in the room, and the Professor when he wasn't. (Due to Erik's preference to lie low a while longer, Nina, Charles, Erik and a student had yet to all be in the same room at the same time; when that eventuality came to pass, Charles was interested to learn whether he would be Charles, or Professor, Professor Charles, or perhaps simply 'you.')

"You're up awfully late, aren't you?" Charles asked, although he didn't intend to push her on this. Another thing Erik had been extremely clear about: Nina was his daughter. Not Charles' student. Not under Charles' dominion at all. Erik's, and Charles had no right to discipline her or tell her to do anything or ask impertinent questions, pretty much ever. He'd whipped it about in this vein for another several minutes before his wife had elbowed him in the ribs and hissed something in his ear, which was the point at which Erik had, somewhat grudgingly, thanked Charles for taking his family in. (Magda had thanked Charles much more profusely, both then and later; he'd assured her more than once that he understood Erik's currently mentality—fear, mostly, and anger, without any of his old outlets for either—and that he would calm down within a few weeks, once they'd finished settled in and what could have happened had faded somewhat. Charles wasn't planning to take offense at any of it.)

"I couldn't get to sleep," Nina said, looking a little worried—though she'd always looked a little worried, ever since they'd arrived. "I'm sorry I woke you up."

"Oh, don't you worry about that. I was already up." This was true, more or less; he'd roused just enough to turn over in bed, which had also been just enough to scan the house to make sure everyone else was where they were supposed to be, which had been just enough to get out of bed and head down here. "Who are your friends?"

Most of the children, when questioned about their mutation for the first time, became defensive, or at least hesitant. Nina, though, brightened visibly, and while she hadn't struck Charles as a chatterbox prior to tonight, he soon knew everything he'd ever wanted to about which wild animals lived on or occasionally wandered through the grounds.

The first snowflakes had begun to fall as Erik left for work that morning, and kept coming for most of the day. By the time he was off, the roads had been cleared to some extent, but it was still a slow crawl home in his little car; even in this weather, when no one was likely to be out or to see him, he didn't dare cheat, other than to ensure he wouldn't skid off the road, or become stuck in some snowdrift.

By the time he arrived home, he was exhausted and he was cold, shivering inside his coat all the more because he'd spent all day beforehand sweating in the steel mill. He was ready for a long hot bath, a large hot meal, and his soft warm bed, in that order.

An hour and a half after he'd gotten off work, he pulled into the driveway and waded into the house. There was a fire crackling in the fireplace—perhaps that was what he'd do first, let himself defrost in front of it for a while.

"Magda?" he called out, once he'd shed gloves, jacket, hat, and still no sign of her. "Nina?"

He listened for a minute, heard muffled laughter from outside. When he looked out the back window, he spotted two figures in heavy coats, working on a snow beast of some kind. Not a snow man, never that in their yard—Nina had always been more interested in snow rabbits, snow deer, snow grouse.

Erik opened the door a crack, stuck his head out. "I made it home alive," he informed them.

"Good!" Magda said. Then, because she obviously knew his next question was going to be 'Are you coming back inside anytime soon?' she added, "We're making a whole herd!"

A whole herd. So far, Erik counted one of...whatever-they-were. (Deer, he now assumed.) So, it would be a while. If he wanted to, he could go ahead and take his bath, and be dried off and comfortable by the time they came back in.

"Papa!" Nina said, waving at him now that she'd finished packing her latest handfuls of snow into place. "Come help!"

Erik considered. He was still shivering, despite being inside their warm house. He could barely feel his fingers. His feet were an even worse situation—cold and wet, and wouldn't be any better until he'd had a good long soak. And as ever, a long day at work, spending hours at tasks he could have finished in minutes had he let loose his gift had left him out of energy or ambition to do anything other than lie around until bedtime.

His daughter wanted him to come outside and play with her and her mother.

The decision was, and would always be, an easy one.

"Let me get my coat," he said, and went back inside to get it.

For Magda, the days between what happened in the woods and their arrival in New York would always be a jumbled mess. It wasn't the first time she and Erik had fled together, but she'd always wondered, those other times, whether they were leaving for a good enough reason. For all his passion and all his kindness, her husband had a paranoid streak a mile long—though he'd curbed it after their daughter was born, for Nina's sake and because Magda had asked him to.

This time, though. This time, there was no question he'd been right. Magda didn't argue with him, any of the time he decided abruptly that they should change their direction, double back to a train station they'd already left from, or get off a bus if the driver had looked at them for a split second too long. If she tried to calm him, it was only those times he was so strung up and so tense she thought he might lash out at an innocent person who'd made the mistake of glancing at Nina instead of someone else's daughter.

Instead of being one long story, those weeks were made up of moments: Nina making friends with a pair of rats at the train depot, and a flock of pigeons at the bus stop; Erik bribing an official to get them out of the country; the first time they overheard the news bulletin on the radio, the one about Magneto, armed and dangerous, suspected of traveling with his wife and daughter and, possibly, a gathering of wild animals; their hushed conversation after that, changing the plan, which had been to wait out the 10-year anniversary and then find somewhere else in Europe they could settle.

The next bribe, and the largest one, got them on a cargo ship to America.

The next moment that would remain clear, the moment that seemed to drop them back into life instead of the strange nightmare they'd been wading through for the last three weeks—

"You didn't tell me it was so big," Magda said, the first time she saw Charles Xavier's house in New York, the three of them standing outside the gate once they'd paid the cabdriver and sent him on his way.

"Yes, I did," Erik said. He waved his hand, and the gate opened. "What part of 'ridiculous castle' wasn't clear?"

Truthfully, she didn't remember exactly what he'd said about his friend's house, other than that it was a refuge and a school for mutant children. He'd spent much more time telling her about his friend, until he'd remembered she knew they used to be lovers, (a confession he'd made one night when Nina was three, followed up the next morning with, "I shouldn't have told you that," which actually meant, 'you should forget I told you that,' which Magda might have pretended to do if it hadn't been so funny to watch him squirm, or so strange to think of him making love to a man) when he'd become very gruff and self-conscious about it, and refused to say even a word more.

They were halfway up the drive—such a huge, beautiful lawn that went along with this house; so many children Nina's age playing there, some of them even showing off their gifts in-between curious glances at the newcomers—when a man in a wheelchair came out of the house to great them. Before he was close enough even to shout, Magda could feel a delight and a welcoming that wasn't hers, didn't belong inside her head at all—but that was meant for them, all three of them.

This was Charles, Magda knew, whom Erik had loved before her. Erik had said nothing about how handsome he was. For a moment, she might have been jealous—when she glanced at Erik and saw the softness in his eyes for someone other than herself, or Nina, perhaps she should have been jealous...

But it would have been such a small, mean thing, when she'd spent so many years wishing Erik had even even one friend, one person to talk to outside of their family, the way Nina had her animal friends and Magda had a handful of other mothers to talk to, even if some of them had pulled away from her once they'd seen what Nina could do, even if there were secrets she could never share with them.

Neither Charles nor Erik shouted; none of them spoke until he was a few feet away, able to speak in a normal voice. Then, Charles spoke first—in English, and yet Magda could understand every word instead of one in three:

"Welcome," he said. "Erik—I'm so happy to see you again, old friend. Magda, Nina—I'm so please to meet you."

"I haven't introduced you yet," Erik said, gruff but pleased—Magda could tell he was pleased, and it also pleased her that he glanced at her to check her reaction, that he wasn't going to be lost in his friend's lovely smile.

"I'm Charles. Charles Xavier," said Charles. "There, we're introduced. And of course you can stay, as long as you need to."

"I haven't asked yet."

"And now you don't have to. Come, let's get you settled in. Nina, do tell me more about your fascinating mutation on the way..."

"You don't have to tell him anything," Erik interrupted.

Charles winked at Nina, then rolled his eyes in Magda's direction, and for a moment she felt they could be friends. That was not something she'd expected, and yet she found she liked the idea, that she could have a friend in this place, someone who could commiserate with her about her husband when he was being ridiculous. Erik had always been so reserved around everyone else they knew; there had never been anyone else who'd witnessed how foolish he could be when he was comfortable in a setting—or if they did, they were too busy being alarmed to laugh at him.

It would be good to have a friend here. Better yet, it would irritate Erik—he was irritated already, and it had always been so fun to wind him up over small things. It was a relief, too, to see that he could still be wound up over small things, so soon after they'd run for their lives.

"You have a beautiful home," she said as they followed Charles to the house. Erik hadn't mentioned that, either.

"Why, thank you. I'm rather fond of it myself."

First there was the tour of the house, which Erik could have skipped; then the tour of the subbasement, which he was dragged away from long before he was finished interrogating Charles about everything in it; then supper for the three of them, an hour ahead of the normal dinnertime; then Charles showed them where their rooms were, and despite protesting such an early bedtime, Nina was asleep within moments of being tucked in, despite insisting that he must sing her a lullabye.

Erik sang it anyway. Then, he and Magda staggered into their room across the hall. By the time they'd set their suitcases down, Erik felt the tiredness, seeping into every limb, kept at bay for the last two weeks by fear and adrenalin. He hadn't admitted to himself, before, how little sleep helped when it was taken two hours at a time while Magda kept watch—and taken lightly, less he not be able to wake up quickly enough if something were to happen. He'd lived on such a sleep schedule for many years as a young man, when he'd had no one to watch his back; he wasn't a young man anymore, and it was only necessity which had kept him upright for the last week.

The same was surely true for Magda as well, and so the last thing Erik expected was for her to pounce on him the moment he straightened back up.

How she had the energy to kiss him so fiercely, he didn't know. How he had the energy to kiss her back nearly as fiercely—he didn't know that either.

"What are you doing?" he asked, when his mouth was free because it was his jaw she was kissing, nearly as insistently as before.

"What does it look like?" Her hand stroked him through his trousers; though Erik would a minute ago have sworn himself too exhausted for anything other than lying unmoving in a bed for at least six hours, he responded, groaning into her hair as he stiffened against her hand.

"I'm tired," he said.

"We'll make it quick."

They did. The bed wasn't far, just a few steps away, but the desk every bedroom seemed to come with was closer. By the time they had fumbled their way over to it, Erik's pants were open; by the time he hiked her up, Magda's skirt was up around her waist. She wrapped her legs around him, he pushed her panties to the side, and then he slid inside her, more easily than he'd expected—he hadn't known she was so wet already.

At first, she stroked his neck. Then, his back. Later, when she was close, she grabbed his shoulders and held on tightly, her thighs a vise around his waist though her orgasm and his own.

Afterward, her face buried in his neck, he nearly said, "You can't really be this jealous of Charles."

He was very glad he hadn't said it when she gave a dismayed sob against him, a huge shudder running through her body. So this hadn't had anything to do with wanting to claim him now that he and his ex had laid eyes on one another again; it had everything to do with what had happened in the woods, how close they'd come to a terrible tragedy. They'd have done this weeks ago, if they'd had somewhere safer than a train station bathroom to do it in.

"It's all right," he said, stroking her back, making the same soothing noises he'd made when she was deeply in labor with Nina. His softening cock fell out of her. He felt exposed, standing bareassed in the middle of a strange room, but there was little that could have taken him from her side in this moment. "We're here, all together. We're all right."

A few minutes later, they stumbled toward the bed. After that, Erik remembered nothing until he woke up, disoriented in the darkness, to Magda kissing him again, her body gyrating against his. If it had been a while since they'd fucked against a piece of furniture other than a bed, it had been longer since they'd done it like this, needing each other so much in sleep that they woke each other up.

Impossible to say who had started it. Almost as difficult to say, later, whether or not either of them had finished—Erik remembered it later only in snatches, half-awake contact in the dark. When he woke up the next morning, wrapped around her, his pants were down around his ankles, and Magda's panties had somehow made it onto the pillow.

He extricated himself, pulled up his pants, and headed across the hall to check on Nina. He could feel her locket exactly where it was supposed to be, but a wave of relief still swept through him when he peaked in and saw her, asleep in her bed. There was a few small birds on her windowsill looking in—so word had gotten out, somehow. That was good. With new friends to keep her company, she wasn't likely to go wandering once she did wake up.

It would leave plenty of time for Erik and Magda to take their time, if Magda were still in the mood.

Back in their room, Erik took off his clothes as loudly as possible, not just dropping them, but slinging them into the wall and the dressed with a thud. It did the trick; by the time he crawled back into bed, Magda's eyes were open.

"You're naked," she said as she reached for him.

"Am I?" Erik said, the last thing he had the chance to say for quite some time.

The guards didn't seem to recognize him, nor did the teller. Still, Erik remained on edge through the entire exchange, certain he'd be recognized at any instant. Surely, someone here would remember the boy he'd been, put the pieces together now that the D.C. footage still played on news stations around the world.

But no one did. Soon he was led into another room. There, among thousands of identical metal boxes, Erik found the contents of this one immediately: a set of cufflinks, a gold watch, various coins, and something else, the only thing that mattered. The moment the security guard left, the door closing behind him, Erik lifted this last, precious thing out.

The watch had tarnished, but the locket hadn't. When Erik opened it, there they were: his parents, in their best clothes. Even when he'd been a boy, they hadn't looked like themselves in this photograph; now, he saw no one he recognized in either of them. It was a bitter disappointment, for he'd expected more—to feel something, as he had when he'd been a boy and paid to leave the locket here in the first place.

It had been taken off his mother. Shaw had used against him for years, threatening to burn it as their bodies had burned, if Erik didn't do as he was told. When he'd gone after Shaw, still only a boy, he'd paid to leave it here, where it would be safe. Once, it had seemed like the only important thing in the world that wasn't his vengeance.

Now, though—now there was Magda, Erik's child growing inside her, a new family that meant more than anything but his first family ever had. That child would never know their grandparents, except in the stories Erik would tell. Would never know what they had looked like, outside of this one image, the only thing Erik had left of them.

It would have to be enough.

Erik put the locket in his pocket, and left the rest.