1. Chapter One

Okay, as anyone who's read this already has probably already determined, yes, this was originally part of a much longer oneshot, and there were two other oneshots that I had written that were in the same continuity as this. However, as was rightly pointed out to me by **Macceh**, that doesn't really work well for inter-connected stories on a site where you can't put separate stories that are connected by the same storyline into a subfolder on your account (And just how deeply AO3 has spoiled me becomes embarrassingly apparent). So here's the deal. What was once to be a long string of oneshots has become a multi-chapter slice-of-life story with chapters of varying length (and with a possible side-story or two), and the first oneshot, _As You Were_, has been cut up into three chapters because it would have been disproportionately long compared to everything else.

I messed around with some of the comic details to explain how Peter (and presumably Wanda, since I refuse to believe that she doesn't exist in the movie continuity) ended up with the Maximoffs.

Also, in real life, the Paris Peace Accords occurred in late January of 1973. However, I have messed around with the dates a bit on that. The presence of mutants on both sides changed things, and the Paris Peace Accords did not occur until around August instead. Of course, in real life, it wasn't like the signing of the Paris Peace Accords actually stopped the fighting in Vietnam.

Chapter summary: Erik tracks Peter down to his home in Alexandria, Virginia.

I own nothing.

* * *

"_They told me you control metal. You know, my mom once knew a guy who could do that."_

Beyond a bit of a double-take, Erik hadn't paid much attention to the rapid-fire words out of the boy's mouth at the time. He was too busy reeling at his sudden freedom after ten years of imprisonment, too busy trying not to lose the contents of his stomach from going at speeds he _never _wished to occupy again. At any rate, everything Peter said, he said so quickly that the words started to bleed together in his mind.

So Peter's mother had known a man who could control metal. All that meant was that she'd once known a mutant who could control metal. Erik couldn't possibly be the only mutant in the world who could do that.

And his surname was Maximoff. Well, the name was certainly _familiar_ to Erik, but the Maximoff family he had known couldn't possibly be the only Maximoff family in the world. Even if Peter was from _that _Maximoff family, that didn't mean anything.

And Peter was a mutant.

It was a coincidence. Surely it was a coincidence.

But the more Erik thought about it, when he finally had an opportunity to think about it, the more he realized that the details were just a little too coincidental to be coincidence. Peter was a mutant, a member of a family called Maximoff, and his mother had known a man who could control metal. If only one of the details was present, Erik could have discounted it. Even two, he could have chalked up to chance. But all three…

That couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

During the trip from the Pentagon to the airport, Peter had been more than happy to offer up personal details of his life (At least, details that, in a similar situation, Erik would never have volunteered even under pains of death). Erik had been trying not to listen, instead staring holes into the back of Charles's head, almost daring him to turn around and look at him—and when Charles didn't look at him for the entire ride, didn't speak to him or acknowledge his presence in any way, Erik was in no way, shape or form hurt about this, just like he was in no way, shape or form hurt about the fact that Charles had waited ten years to get him out and had never even attempted to contact him in all that time. Anyways…

Anyways, while Erik had been trying not to listen to Peter, he ended up hearing a lot of what the boy said regardless; they were sitting next to one another in the car. He chattered about how slow the car was going, about how he could _definitely_ get to the airport faster than this car ("Could get there faster than a jet!"). This boasting Erik forgave, as the boy had certainly gotten him out of his prison fast enough and he was the last person in the world who would tell a mutant anything that might hint that he shouldn't be proud of his powers. Besides, every person in the car with them was a mutant; what harm could it do?

Peter talked about his life growing up, talked about his little sister, a girl of six named Lorna whom he called "Munchkin" and clearly adored, if the comment that she was the only one he'd sit still for was any indication—Peter fidgeted in his seat the whole ride. He talked about his mom and how she wasn't a mutant, but was "cool, but really super strict", which, reading between the lines, Erik could only suppose meant that the woman was at her wit's end dealing with Peter. To be fair, if Erik was having to raise Peter and he had no way to keep up with the boy, figuratively or literally, he'd probably be at his wit's end with him too. At least she hadn't thrown him out on discovering that her son was a mutant.

Peter talked about his twin, Wanda, who was apparently also a mutant, in a quieter voice, and Erik tried very hard not to notice that every time Peter brought up Wanda, he spoke about her in the past tense.

Come to think about it, Peter had been the only one doing a whole lot of talking in that car. It could have been that he was just cutting everyone else off, but Erik wondered, with some discomfort, if maybe there was a reason Peter had been talking quite so much.

Erik had gleaned enough from Peter's incessant chatter (even if he hadn't been trying to listen) to get a good idea of where the boy lived. His hometown was Alexandria, just south of D.C. Truthfully, Alexandria was not some small town where everyone knew everyone else—far from it. But bizarrely, everyone seemed to know exactly where Peter Maximoff lived, bizarrely enough that with some of the things Erik had been hearing lately in regards to mutants, he found it worrisome.

He had been attempting to make contact with old acquaintances, those who, for whatever reason, be it that they had families they didn't want to endanger (frustrating but understandable) or that the only mutant abilities they possessed didn't really bring anything to the table on a "combat" front or in fact made them unsuitable for combat (understandable and slightly less frustrating) or for other reasons (that varied on the scales of frustration and understandability), had never taken up the fight but still supported him in quieter ways. He'd only gotten through to about a quarter of them. Some, it turned out, had been drafted into Vietnam, and, unfortunately, they had likely ended up on Trask's lab tables. Some of them had disappeared after Erik had sent the word out over national television, and most of those mutants did not strike Erik as the sort to simply leave their families (if they had any), their jobs (if they had any) and their homes (if they had any) without giving word to _someone_.

The rest had simply vanished, and no one could say when or how.

These were the people Erik had instructed to lie low if things went wrong in Dallas. Lying low, they could do; they'd been lying low ever since their mutations emerged. For them to just vanish… It concerned him. Better to make sure that Peter hadn't "vanished" too.

But as he neared the house one fine morning, he found himself assailed by thoughts that had nothing to do with various possible nefarious schemes against mutants.

_I can't believe I have children._

_What is Magda even doing in the U.S.? She could barely speak any English, though I suppose that since it's been nearly twenty years since we last saw each other, that may have changed._

_I can't believe I have children._

_Why didn't she contact me? _When Erik realized why Magda had likely not tried to contact him, he flinched and moved on to a different line of thought. Unfortunately…

_I can't believe I have children._

It happened to be a bit redundant.

When his line of thought reached a bemused, almost terrified _Should I have bought flowers? _Erik decided that maybe Charles had addled his brains the last time he was inside his head, just a little bit. He'd have to have a word with him about that later.

Erik did _not _hesitate to walk up the front path to the front door. He did _not_ hesitate to knock on the front door. In fact, if he had been moving any more quickly towards the door, he would have been running. He quickly calmed the hammering of his heart and knocked sharply on the door.

He was expecting Peter, or Magda or Wanda or maybe even the little girl Peter had spoken of. Instead, he was greeted by another who, while not being whom Erik had expected, was nonetheless familiar to him.

Marya Maximoff, looking worn and exasperated, drank in the sight of his black suit and matching hat (contrary to popular opinion, Erik knew better than to travel through suburban Virginia wearing armor and a cape—even if he had quite deliberately left the helmet at the White House) before she got a good look at his face. "Peter!" she called into the house, scowling, "the cops are…" She trailed off.

Erik had taken his hat off. When Marya got a good look at his face, she paled. He sucked in a deep breath and said, "Hello, Marya."

"Oh my God," she muttered, somehow managing to pull off a look of simultaneous anger, worry and terror. What Marya did next was to frantically wave him inside, hissing, "Get inside before someone sees you and we get ten kinds of hell falling on us."

Well. Out of all the possible greetings Erik had been expecting, that certainly wasn't one of them.

Marya shut the door behind him with a firm slam and a twist of the lock and the deadbolt. She wasn't trying to keep him in, Erik realized; she was trying to keep anyone else who might come in out. Oh no, that wasn't worrisome at all. "Marya, I—"

"I saw your… _performance _on television," she muttered, going around and making sure that all of the windows were locked, before drawing the curtains shut. "Figures; you drop off the face of the earth for nineteen years after scaring the living daylights out of my cousin, and the first time we hear from you again, you scare the living daylights out of my daughter. It was all Peter and I could do to calm her down once the shock wore off. You have to admit—" There was a sharp, almost feral quality to her smile, but there was misery lurking behind the surface of her eyes, and a question there too, though Erik wasn't sure what it was "—there's a certain amount of symmetry to it."

There weren't a whole lot of people who could talk to Erik like that, and without provocation to boot, and not expect to be seriously injured soon after, but this was a special case. He knew also that it was difficult to appear intimidating to a woman whose clearest image of him was likely that of a gawky, malnourished twelve-year-old whose voice broke on high notes and who stared at her favorite cousin like she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Especially considering that the last time they'd laid eyes on each other, he was a gawky, only slightly better-nourished eighteen-year-old, newly married to her favorite cousin and _still_ staring at her like she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. That tended not to leave an impression of dignity in the minds of others. As much as it irked him that his appeal to mutantkind had been reduced to a 'performance' by Marya's description.

Marya was pausing at the last of the living room windows, her hands poised over the curtains. She looked back at him, standing in the foyer and convinced that he had never felt so awkward and out-of-place as he did now, out of the corner of her eye, half-obscured by long blonde hair. Erik remembered when it had still been short; she'd been eighteen the last time he saw her, when she and her father had relocated to New York. "Why… are you here?" There was the undercurrent of fear, a tone Erik had heard many take when speaking to him.

"…Peter…" The fact that, for the life of him, he couldn't think of what to say, well that was absolutely unacceptable. He knew exactly what he wanted to ask, but when he tried, he found himself tongue-tied. Perhaps… Perhaps that was because it was a question he was almost certain he already knew the answer to.

"What about him?" The fear was still there, in her now-strained voice.

"Is… He's my son, isn't he?" By contrast, Erik's voice was flat, detached. He could almost pretend that he didn't suddenly feel like the world was hinging on Marya's answer.

She turned about to face him. "Yes, he is."

"And Wanda?"

"Well, she and Peter are twins, so I don't see how she could possibly be anyone _else's _kid."

Erik let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"And… Is Magda here?" The words were more painful than they should have been. "I would like to speak with her."

It had been years since he'd fumbled over his words like this. In prison, he'd always had a ready answer for every last barb and jibe and bored question his guards had thrown at him. But then, this was not a normal situation at all.

Marya shook her head choppily. "No." Her mouth formed a thin, twitching line. "She died when the twins were about three. She… She didn't like to talk about why the two of you separated, but she told me what happened." Marya's shoulders sagged. "I'm sorry, Erik."

"Save your sympathy." The answer was rote and brittle, the way he had always rehearsed it in his head if he happened to run into someone who knew "what happened." "Are Peter and Wanda here?"

At this, Marya rolled her eyes. "Peter's in the basement. Try to ignore the stolen goods; ignoring them is about the only way I can have a conversation with him anymore that doesn't involve 'why aren't you afraid of going to prison?!' And don't even ask me how he got that arcade machine home!"

Erik snorted. He'd noticed Peter's sticky fingers during their car ride from the Pentagon to the airport. He did, however, also notice that Marya said not a word about Wanda, whom he hadn't even seen. "What about Wanda?" And Erik couldn't remember the last time he had heard himself sound so… earnest. Eager, even. "Is she here?"

Marya's face fell. "No," she muttered, looking away. "She ran away about a year ago." The woman practically radiated shame. She cut Erik off before he could reply. "But like I said, Peter's in the basement. Go talk with him, if you can get him to listen."

-0-0-0-

It was so much _worse_ than Erik had thought.

The basement was filled with things—Twinkies, Ding Dongs, televisions and other appliances—that Peter had obviously stolen. Erik had no idea why there would be so many microwaves in the basement otherwise, and _what does he even want with so many microwaves? _And the arcade machine… Erik had thought Marya was exaggerating, or even out-and-out joking. But no, there was one here, and somehow Erik doubted that Peter had acquired it by legitimate means. How _had_ he gotten it home?

_I never would have let him steal all of this. There are better things for a mutant to be doing with his time and powers than divesting grocery stores of their snack goods._

_Well, the answer is simple_, came the sounding of a voice in the back of his head, that bitter voice that Erik usually only heard from when he'd had more than was advisable to drink. _Marya isn't one of us; she has no way of keeping up with Peter and no other way of leveling the playing field. She's tried as best she can, but ultimately, how can she be expected to effectively deal with Peter? Now you, on the other hand, you likely could have effected a change in his behavior, if you'd been here._ There was, on the whole, likely a reason Erik usually only heard from this voice when he was drunk.

It didn't take Peter long to spot him; the boy appeared to just be finishing up with a magazine of some kind. Peter waved languidly (or what was probably languid by his standards, anyways; his hand was only _nearly_ a blur), before zipping out of his chair and coming to stand entirely too close to Erik for his liking. "You know, I didn't break you out of the Pentagon just so you could try and kill yet another president." There was none of the laughter in his voice that Erik had heard in the Pentagon, genuine, mocking or otherwise. "I mean, yeah, it's Nixon and all, and he's kind of an asshole—course, how would you know that; you were still in prison when that thing with Ellsberg blew up—but still…"

Before Erik could back up or tell Peter to back away, the boy was gone in a grayish blur. The next thing he knew, Peter was back on that chair of his, munching on a Twinkie and looking at him with the distinct air of someone who felt that he was owed an explanation.

Erik found himself staring at Peter rather than immediately giving any explanation (And the idea that he owed anyone any explanation for anything…). He'd not really gotten a good look at him in the Pentagon, one, because he hadn't realized who the boy was at the time, and two, Peter was just moving too quickly for anyone to get a good look at him. Peter didn't really look a whole lot like him—come to think of it, he didn't look a whole lot like Magda, either, and even if Peter had resembled either of his parents, the gray hair probably would have drawn the eye away. The jaw was his. Maybe. If you squinted.

_At least no one's made him disappear either._

Then…

_I wonder what he looked like when he was little._

Okay, obviously Erik needed to focus better.

Peter seemed to think so, too. He shot a slightly nonplussed look at Erik, just as he finished up his third Twinkie. "You… just gonna stare at me all day?" he asked, almost as slowly as that second delivery of _'whiiiplaaaash'_ in the Pentagon.

"If I could clarify my 'involvement' in the Kennedy assassination—"

"I saw that one on the tube too! That's crazy! What is it with you and the president, anyways? You got a grudge against the office or something?"

"I was trying to save him," Erik told him shortly.

The only response he got was a set of raised eyebrows and what Erik was sure must have been the thought _Sure you were_.

"He was one of us," Erik explained (And was amazed at himself immediately afterwards; there were only a few people alive whom he could name who he would actually even think of explaining his actions to). "Kennedy's actual assassin had gotten wind of this and was set on killing him."

"Your aim must suck, then," Peter told him frankly. The skeptical look was gone from his face, but Erik suspected that the thought that had replaced it was _Damn, no one would admit to screwing up that badly unless they really had._

"I was the only one who could save him."

"You've got an ego on you, don'tcha?"

Said or thought practically everyone Erik had interacted with in the past month. And that included Charles.

The two stared at one another for another protracted moment, Peter pausing even from devouring his ill-gotten Twinkies. Erik watched as the boy brushed the crumbs off of his shirt and wiped the rest from his hands. "Soooo… To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Peter asked, miming an English accent—he sounded almost disturbingly like Charles when he did that, and it honestly made Erik wish Charles was here. After a moment, he told himself that he wished Charles was here so he wouldn't have to do this by himself. "And in normal clothes, no less." There was, much like Marya, something quite feral in that grin of his, but Erik could see from one look at Peter's eyes that he had no idea what he was doing here—what he was to him.

"Peter—"

"If it's to recruit me to your brand-new terrorist group, thanks but no thanks. I mean—" Peter pointed to himself with both hands and smiled, slightly more softly than last time "—thanks for the invite, breaking you out of lock-up was fun and all, but I'm not in it to hurt people."

Amazingly, Erik found that he wasn't annoyed with being constantly interrupted. He was almost grateful to have the real reason he was here put off over and over again. "It's not a terrorist group, and I'm not here to recruit you to it." That was also fairly amazing, as Erik realized that, in all the time he'd had between realizing that Peter might well be his son and the present, he'd not once considered recruiting him to the Brotherhood. "Your…" Erik prayed that his voice would sound gentle instead of just raw "…you said that your mother had known a man who could control metal, didn't you?"

Peter nodded, silent. He stared Erik up and down, and for the life of him, Erik couldn't tell if Peter knew where he was going with this or not.

He had to broach the subject gently. That was what he had been telling himself the entire journey to this house in suburban Alexandria, if it did indeed turn out that Peter was his son, that Wanda was his daughter, that he had children, living children. Erik had enough emotional awareness, even after ten years of solitary confinement, to know that rushing headlong into this was likely not going to end well. And he had managed to broach the subject gently, so far.

"I'm your father."

But eventually, he was bound to screw up.

Peter gaped at him. This was probably the most surprising thing that had happened so far—Peter had up to now always had a witty remark ready to fire; Erik didn't think he would ever see him slack-jawed. But then, this was his son, whom he had known, in accumulated time, for probably three hours, at the most. He didn't really know much anything about him.

"No…" Peter faltered, looking almost stricken. "No way."

"Go ask Marya," Erik said quietly. He had expected skepticism. "She'll tell you who I am."

Though he likely had to wait no longer than a minute for Peter to return, the waiting was unbearable. Was this what it felt like for Peter, every hour and every minute of the day? As Erik stood in the middle of the basement, staring down at the bare concrete floor, searching with his senses for every metal object in the house just to pass the time, the air seemed to grow uncomfortably warm and still.

When Peter sped back down the stairs, he stopped to, once again, gape open-mouthed at Erik. "So…"

"So…" Erik felt his head begin to pound.

"So why now?" Peter's eyes were very wide; he would have to be about eighteen by now, but suddenly, he looked to Erik's eyes much younger. "If Mom says you're my dad, I believe her. But why show up after all this time?"

"I didn't even know you _existed_ until the day we met," Erik pointed out, exasperation flavoring his words for the first time, though he wasn't sure if he was exasperated with Peter so much as he was exasperated with this whole situation. And himself. "You _or_ Wanda. And even if by chance I had found out before then, as you will recall, I just spent the last decade in prison. I wasn't allowed visitors; I wasn't allowed phone calls, or letters. There wasn't a great deal I could have done about it in there."

Peter nodded swiftly. He looked away, a remarkably hard expression—and suddenly, Erik saw a bit of himself in the boy where he hadn't seen any before—flitting over his face before vanishing. "Okay, yeah, that makes sense," he muttered, and whether it _actually_ made sense, Erik didn't know.

Erik decided to try a different tack. "Marya told me your sister ran away."

This earned him another nod, much swifter than the last and looking more like the spasm of someone having convulsions than anything else. "Yeah," Peter said shortly, still not looking Erik in the eye. "It was… Well, it was hard." But then, his head snapped up and he was staring at Erik so hard that he expected to feel his skin start to burn. "You wanna go look for her?"

"What?" Erik had meant to ask why Wanda had run away in the first place, but all memory of the question was knocked out of his head by this abrupt twist the conversation had taken.

Suddenly, Peter was grinning. "I've been meaning to go look for her once I finished up school, but let's face it, school's boring and Wanda's way more important than school anyways." His eyes narrowed. "Come on, man; you came _this_—" he held his thumb and his forefinger about a millimeter apart "—close to CIA central just to see me, and you don't even want to recruit me to your terrorist group. You can't tell me you don't want to see Wanda, too."

Erik raised an eyebrow. "Do you even have any idea where she is?" he protested. "The world's a bigger place than you seem to think it is." But he already knew he had lost. If mutants were disappearing again, he didn't want Wanda to be one of them. Even if he had never met her.

Peter shrugged. "Wanda always talked about wanting to see San Francisco."

"Do you even have a car?"

"Yes."

"That _isn't_ Marya's?"

"Still yes."

Erik sighed. "Alright, then. But if you want to do this, we're going to have to stay off the interstates for most of the trip." He wasn't entirely sure how he'd managed to throw up his hands before Peter could protest, but he would count it as good fortune. "I have been attempting to make contact with some of my old 'acquaintances', only to find that most of them have gone missing. I would like to visit those whom I did manage to contact, and if possible figure out those who have disappeared. I would," he assured Peter, "also like to ensure that Wanda is not among those mutants who have gone missing since the end of the Vietnam War."

Suddenly, Peter was standing at the top of the stairs. "Then what are we waiting for?!"

Even if Peter wasn't his son, Erik would have to admit that he owed the boy a great deal for breaking him out of prison. Erik was _not _the sort of person who liked being in someone else's debt. But he sighed again, and wondered exactly what he was getting himself into, before following.

-0-0-0-

Marya was strangely accepting of the idea that her nephew and foster-son was going to take off on a cross-country road-trip with the father he'd just found out was his father to find the sister he'd not seen in a year.

"Did you pack your duffel bag?"

"Yeah, Mom!"

"Is there anything other than Twinkies and Ding Dongs in there?"

"Umm, there's a lot of them…"

"Go pack it again."

Peter came back into the living room, and after Marya inspected the contents of his bag, she nodded. "Now go say goodbye to your sister." When Peter zoomed up the stairs to the second floor only to reappear three seconds later, she pointed up the stairs and said, "_Properly_ this time, Peter." He grinned sheepishly and vanished again.

While they waited for Peter to come back down from saying his goodbyes to Lorna, Erik chanced a glance in Marya's direction. She was leaning against the wall, gnawing on her thumbnail the way he remembered her doing as a girl. "I'm surprised you're just letting him go with me," he murmured.

Marya started, as though she'd forgotten he was in the room (Erik felt vaguely insulted, but saved the feeling for later). She brushed stray strands of hair out of her face, and shrugged. "I wanted him to stay in school so long as the government kept sending troops to Vietnam, but now… He nearly failed last year. He's already missed too many days this year, and yes, I know it's only September; the school's been threatening to expel him over his cutting school so much. And…" Marya narrowed her eyes. "…And I have been hearing things. Keeping my ear to the ground. He's… He's safer with you."

Just because he was curious, Erik asked, "What would you have done if someone with ill-intent had come looking for Peter?"

Her smile was not feral. It was absolutely _predatory_. "Why, Erik, don't you know that's what shotguns are for?" she said, as falsely sugary as saccharin.

Erik decided to let the topic drop.

Finally (after what must have been a long time for him), Peter came back down the stairs. He was very close to vibrating, he seemed so impatient to leave. "Okay, Munchkin knows where I'm heading, I promise I'll call, I promise I'll get Wanda to call when we find her, I love you—" he kissed Marya's cheek so fast that Erik wondered if Marya even felt it "—and I'll see you when I see you. Okay, bye!"

"Hang on, Peter." Marya dug a wad of bills out of her pocket. Peter's eyebrows shot up as she pressed them into his hand. "For gas and food. I don't know how far it will get you, but you—" she smiled, and managed to keep from smiling too bitterly "—have never had much trouble finding food even when you have no money, so… I love you too, _please_ remember to call, and good luck."

Peter squirmed when Marya kissed his cheek and squirmed even harder when she hugged him. Once she let go of him, he practically flew out the front door, duffel bag. Erik followed at a significantly more sedate pace. As he was crossing the threshold outside, Marya had one last thing to say. "Oh, Erik? I just want you to know that, while I'm glad that you're actually taking an interest in your kids, if you get Peter or Wanda involved in any of your terrorist schemes, I don't care how many stadiums you drop on my head—I will find you and I will slit your throat in your sleep."

Erik waved without looking back at her.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter summary: Day one of the road trip, part one. Peter fidgets; Erik asks questions and reminisces.

* * *

The car, the one that Peter actually owned and wasn't 'borrowing' from his foster mother, was an elderly Chevrolet Nova—Erik had never cared much about cars and wasn't sure if this was supposed to impress him or not. It was, of course, painted silver. Peter quickly confided that he and Wanda had bought it a year and a half ago for a very low price, due to the fact that it was what was politely referred to as a "beater." The twins had then spent many a weekend resuscitating, repairing, and all-around making the car "better." Again, Erik wasn't entirely sure if this was supposed to be impressive or not. But the car looked sturdy, looked like it could carry them from Alexandria to San Francisco (Or wherever Wanda might be, if Erik heard from one of his accounted-for contacts that she'd been sighted somewhere else on the continent).

He'd instructed Peter that they were heading first to Detroit, and that they would be taking the back roads, not the interstate. Peter wasn't terribly impressed by the idea that they were heading to Detroit by way of Indianapolis, but he got over it when he realized that he'd have the chance to check out the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; apparently he was a fan of the Indy 500. "_We're big into car racing_." By 'we're', Erik supposed Peter was referring to Wanda.

Peter… was a surprisingly good driver. Erik supposed he'd expected him to be a bad one, since the boy had a decided aversion to sitting still which Erik had noticed on more than one occasion. Driving was an activity that required a certain amount of single-mindedness; Peter didn't seem to have much in the way of that either. However, he did an admirable job paying attention to the road, to other cars, to traffic lights and road signs. Erik wondered if Peter's mutant abilities didn't help with that.

(He also began to wonder, after a while, if Peter wasn't trying to impress him with how well he could drive. It was just a suspicion, of course. A suspicion informed by Peter trying and utterly failing to subtly sneak glances at him every time he came to a perfect stop in front of a traffic light or made a left hand turn from an intersection without crossing into the wrong lane.)

Regardless of that, Peter still managed to fidget, twitch, and squirm in the driver's seat of the car more than anyone Erik had ever witnessed drive a car. The car's young driver was constantly adjusting the air conditioning, the radio station, anything he could get his hands on. Erik wondered how long it would be before Peter jumped out of the driver's window just to see how long it would be before the car started spinning out of control without someone driving it.

If Erik had to use his powers to stabilize the car so he didn't die the ridiculously anticlimactic death of dying in a screaming car wreck, he was going to kill someone. Seriously. But not Peter, because hurting Peter would be unacceptable.

He knew he should have brought a book to read.

-0-0-0-

So far, so good. The trip was quiet, they hadn't been stopped by the police, and Peter hadn't wrapped the car around a tree. Peter… He'd been very quiet so far. Maybe he just felt like he needed to focus more on driving; Erik had known people like that. But it felt unnatural, somehow.

(He remembered another person who had fallen so unnaturally silent sometimes, usually when under extreme stress. He'd known Magda to go days without saying a word in the camp, not even to him.)

"Tell me about Wanda." He couldn't stand to frame it as a question. It seemed absurd that he should be asking someone, let alone his son, about what his own daughter was like. It seemed absurd that he shouldn't know. It still seemed absurd that he wouldn't know about his children until they were essentially adults, and the chance to raise them had passed him by.

Peter's gaze lit on him for a split-second before his voice filled up the interior of the car, drowning out the music playing on the radio. "Well damn, man, it's about time. I thought you'd never ask. I mean, come on; you find out you've got a daughter and you're not curious at all? So what d'you wanna know?"

Erik spread his hands—for a moment, the car shook, before he reined his powers back in and shook his head instead, trying to clear out cobwebs. "Anything you can tell me."

With that prompting, Peter launched into what felt like a thousand different anecdotes at once.

Wanda's mutant powers were, at best, ill-defined; no one in the Maximoff family had ever known what to call them. At a coin toss, Wanda always seemed to know if it was going to come up heads or tails. She was also a master at cheating at cards; she always knew what cards Peter was holding at any given time. When they were in tenth grade, Peter and Wanda had been picked on by a high school senior until, one afternoon, Wanda had glared at his car as he drove away until one of the back tires burst and the car had spun and spun and spun until it hit a lamp post.

Little Lorna had taken her first faltering steps with Wanda holding her hands, trailing closely after her to make sure that if she fell, comfort would be soon to follow. She'd scolded Peter for trying to scoop Lorna up before she could fall to the ground. _"How's she going to learn with you doing that?!" _Wanda had asked, exasperated. When Peter relayed this part, he had adopted a high-pitched voice that Erik could only assume was supposed to be an approximation of his twin's. Somehow, he seriously doubted that Wanda sounded anything like a teenage boy practicing falsetto.

Wanda would drive Marya crazy by begging her to buy oranges from the grocery story only to do nothing with them but suck out the juice and refuse to eat the flesh. It was only when Marya had taught her how to candy the peel that she'd seen any use to oranges besides sucking out the juice.

And evidently, thanks to the combined efforts of the Maximoff twins, no door-to-door salesman within a fifty-mile radius was stupid enough to visit their house.

Bizarrely, Erik felt the faint stirrings of pride upon hearing that last detail.

"What does she look like?" There was no way Erik could think of to frame that as anything other than a question, even though it was even more absurd (and laughable, in a terrifying, painful, terrifyingly painful way, the way someone laughed when they realized that they'd had something dear to their heart stolen from them) that he shouldn't know what his own daughter looked like.

But Peter didn't laugh at him, didn't scoff, didn't mock. He just jerked his head towards the back seat. "I brought some pictures. They're in the duffel bag."

There was something metal in the duffel bag, though Erik wasn't quite sure what it was yet; thanks to that, it was easy enough to levitate the bag into his lap. He unzipped the duffel bag, and immediately saw where the metal inside of the bag had come from.

"Is this a flat iron?!" Erik asked Peter incredulously, taking the iron out of the bag and waving it around. "Why do you have a flat iron?!"

"Put that back in the bag!" Peter protested, glaring daggers at his father. "It's not mine!"

"You took Marya's flat iron? _Why?!"_

"It's not Mom's, either! It's Wanda's! She used to straighten her hair sometimes and she didn't take it with her when she left! Stop waving it around; you'll break it! I got that for her when we turned fifteen; now put it back!"

Erik sighed gustily, but did indeed—carefully—place the iron back inside of the bag. "You know, when someone is planning to run away, they usually pack more sensible items than flat irons."

"Weren't you digging through my stuff looking for _pictures_?" Peter asked pointedly.

Erik returned to rummaging through the duffel bag. There were, predictably, clothes, which he left alone, and a few more mashed-up Twinkies and Zingers that Peter had managed to sneak past Marya (No Ding Dongs, though). Eventually, he found a few photographs, held together with a paperclip. Erik slid the paperclip off of the photographs and stared at the one on top. He saw a teenage girl with long, curly dark hair ("Mom curled her hair for picture day; it doesn't normally look quite that… _big_."). Where Erik could see neither himself nor Magda in Peter, he saw them both in Wanda. She had the soft, ill-defined features of someone who was still growing into her face, but nonetheless possessed a sharp, narrow chin, delicately pointed nose and a mouth that quirked downwards even when she was trying to smile. Erik looked into her eyes…

…And was startled to see his own eyes staring back. His own intent, piercing gaze, restless, dissatisfied with the world.

"Is this your most recent picture of Wanda?" Erik heard himself asking.

Peter glanced at it and nodded; his shoulders tensed up slightly. "Yeah, it is. It's a couple of years old, but after that she wouldn't let people take pictures of her anymore. She… She wasn't happy that day."

Women usually stopped growing before men did; Wanda likely didn't look all that different now than she did then, unless she'd done something drastic like bleach her hair or something like that. Erik slid this photograph to the bottom of the pile (and in no way was he doing it so he wouldn't have to see his daughter's gaze—so reminiscent of his own—any longer) and began looking over the others.

There was a photo of Peter and Wanda, a few years younger, it looked like, with a tiny girl whom he assumed was Lorna. Lorna was wearing a frilly, bright pink costume dress covered in rhinestones and was grinning from ear to ear. For some reason, the twins both wore sheepish, uncomfortable expressions and didn't particularly look like they wanted to be in the picture.

There was a photo, again of both of the twins, as small children themselves, blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. The date on the back of the photo was 1960—the twins' fifth birthday. Erik didn't see Marya—she must have been holding the camera—but he recognized a few other faces in the background.

There was a picture of Wanda from 1962 in a flower girl's dress, holding a white wicker basket and beaming brightly. "One of Mom's cousins got married," Peter informed him. "I was the ring bearer; I didn't bring that picture. No loss, really. I lost the ring; it took hours to find it. Nobody's let me do anything in a wedding since. That was right before Wanda got her powers."

Below that, there was a picture dated '_1957, June_'—Magda with the twins. Peter was trying to climb over her shoulder; Wanda sat sedately in her lap. Magda was smiling brightly, but it didn't quite reach her eyes, which looked fond, but tired. Erik felt his stomach swoop just a touch to look at her, but the sensation wasn't pleasant as it had been, what felt like a lifetime ago. He slid the photo to the bottom of the stack more quickly than he had the others.

Then, Erik came to a photograph that gave him pause. It was dated 1966, when Wanda and Peter would have been about eleven. They appeared to be standing in their backyard, and were wearing a decidedly odd assortment of clothes. Peter was wearing swimming goggles and what looked like a blue-gray leotard, over which was a silver jacket that was clearly the predecessor of the jacket he seemed so fond of these days. Wanda wore a sleeveless red dress, red tights and opera gloves, a glittery masquerade mask that covered the upper half of her face adorned with green and purple feathers, and on top of all that, a red beach towel pulled around her neck like a cape, fastened with a costume brooch.

"What's this?" Erik held the photo so that Peter could see it, eyebrows raised quizzically.

When Peter saw it, he grinned hugely. "I remember that! Mom took a color photo of that specially, said she wanted to remember what we looked like in color."

"Why are you dressed like that?"

"Heh." Peter laughed sheepishly. "You know, we thought we looked so cool when we did that, but _damn_ we looked stupid." He cast a sideways glance at Erik. "Guess I finally know where we got the sucky fashion sense from. You and that god-awful super villain get-up."

"I'm not trying to set a fashion trend," Erik rejoined, glaring lightly at him. "And I hardly think that trying to keep mutantkind from being massacred by the human population is the behavior of a super villain."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Keep saying that, keep doing stuff that makes the Joker, Lex Luthor and Vandal Savage look like small-time shoplifters. Anyways, don't you want to know why we were dressed like that? I'll tell you.

"Me and Wanda, we always liked superhero comics and the cartoons, the Superman and Batman stuff and all that." Peter quirked a smile, but it wasn't a particularly happy one. "When Wanda got her powers, we started playing superheroes for real. One of us would be the hero, the other would be the villain. It was kinda like cops and robbers, 'cept with superheroes and one of us could make stuff break if she wanted to. I remember how happy she was when I got my powers. That—" he pointed at the picture "—kind of turned into Superman versus Flash. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver." Peter's gaze grew distant; his hands clenched down tight over the steering wheel. "I think it was probably the only time she was ever really happy using her powers."

That didn't sound like something that boded well. Erik stared down at the photo of the eleven-year-old twins, ran his thumb over their faces. "Pietro…"

"The name's 'Peter,'" Peter asserted, visibly disturbed. "Come on, don't tell me you're forgetting my name already; that's not supposed to happen until you're like, in your seventies."

"Why did Wanda run away?" he asked quietly. The answer? Erik suspected that he already knew the answer was, but the question bore asking anyways.

Peter shrugged. He stared straight ahead, into the rearview mirrors, anywhere but at Erik. "Wanda always seemed… Well, she never seemed completely happy with her life, even before she got her powers. It always felt like she was waiting for something, though it's not like I ever really found out _what_ she was waiting for. I'm not sure she knew, either. Sometimes…" Now, Peter did look at him, his eyes hard. "…Sometimes, I think she was waiting for you to show up. When we were little, we used to play these games where we tried to guess where you were and what you were doing. We used to put bets on when we thought you might show up. Once Wanda got her powers, I always thought that if she placed her bet on when you'd show up, you would." Peter looked away. "She was never right."

Erik shut his eyes tight, trying not to remember what he had been doing while Peter and Wanda—his children—had been placing bets on when their absentee father would, at last, come looking for them. _I never regretted any of it._

_But I regret _this_, don't I?_

"Once she got her powers…" Erik listened to Peter as he went on. "…It wasn't… Well, it wasn't good. She couldn't control them, not at first, and even the last I saw of her, she couldn't control them all that well. She might be trying to make a glass tip over and end up flipping the table instead. She got to where she was afraid to use her powers. She was afraid…" Peter's voice had gotten oddly high-pitched. "…She was afraid of herself. What she might do. Wanda could always take care of herself—she was better at that than me—but she always seemed really tense. Like I said, she was afraid of herself. It wore her down. And when she got mad, really mad, stuff would just break and fall over and blow up all over the place."

That sounded more familiar to Erik than he would have liked.

"And I don't think it helped when I got my powers." Peter let out a small, quavering breath. "Wanda got her powers when she was seven; I got mine when I was ten. You know, three-year gap, and she spent all of that time thinking that she was by herself, that she was alone. It didn't help her, thinking she was alone; it didn't help her at all." Somehow, that sounded familiar too. "At first, when I found out how fast I could go, she was really happy, but when she realized how different our powers were—she had something we didn't know how to identify, something she couldn't really control, and I had no trouble controlling what I could do at all—it made her angry. She'd gotten stuck with her weird powers, and I had powers like a superhero's." Peter sighed heavily. "It didn't help.

"And then she got expelled from school."

At that, Erik's eyes snapped open (The world suddenly seemed far too bright). He stared at Peter, feeling confused for some reason, though he had no idea why he should feel particularly confused. "Why was she expelled?"

"Vandalism."

"Vandalism," Erik repeated blankly.

"Yeah, I know!" Peter laughed humorlessly. "Everybody expected me to get expelled first, not her." When he caught Erik's still-blank stare, he elaborated, "Look, I told you, Wanda had trouble controlling her powers. When she got mad or upset, stuff broke. And you know, it's pretty impossible to avoid getting mad or upset at school, especially with all the assholes in our high school. At first, it wasn't anything anyone could really pin on Wanda. The leg on somebody's chair would break while they were sitting in it, a cafeteria tray would crack while someone was holding it, the seams on their book bags would break and all their binders would come spilling out. Like I said, nothing anyone could pin on Wanda. But if you really think the teachers missed the fact that all of this was happening to people Wanda had just had fights with or to people who had picked on her, you've got another thing coming.

"And then…" Peter ran a hand through his silver-gray hair (and if Erik hadn't seen pictures of him as a small child with that hair color, he would have sworn Peter was dyeing his hair), making it appear even more unkempt than it already was. "Then there was this time when she was alone in the gym after school. I don't know what she was doing in there; I just know that she was there. She lost control and, well, a _lot _of stuff got broken. She didn't mean to do any of it—she never _meant_ to do any of it, except when she did—but a lot of stuff still got broken. And here's the thing." He fixed Erik with another hard stare. "The system doesn't care a whole lot about kids like us to start with. Kids like us, foster kids with 'behavioral problems'—" Peter sounded out the words as though he was saying something more vulgar than he would ever normally countenance saying "—the system doesn't give a rat's ass about us. Kids like us don't get second chances. Second chances are for rich kids. So Wanda got expelled. The school had gotten the word out; nowhere else would take her. And from then on out, it was countdown to that moment when Wanda would have all she could take and couldn't take no more."

Listening to Peter's tale, Erik wasn't entirely sure what to feel. There was anger, yes, and sadness, and if there was guilt there too, that was only natural, and he told himself that he didn't need to look into that too closely.

Wanda was angry, confused? Erik knew anger. He knew confusion. She felt isolated? Erik knew isolation as well. The emotions were close kin to him, had always been. _If I had been there…_

But Erik wasn't sure what to say to Peter. When Charles was confronted with a story like this one (and he _had_ been, Erik knew that; he'd borne witness to it himself), he would usually spout something he thought sounded very wise, but inevitably left the person he was talking to looking at him in mild confusion. Occasionally, Charles had managed to hit the nail on the head, but frankly, there had been occasions when Erik suspected that all that had saved Charles from getting punched in the face (usually by Alex or sometimes, surprisingly, Sean) was that what he said was so obviously well-intentioned that it was difficult to stay angry with him. Charles had always meant well. Erik missed that, in the life where he was once again on his own, without Charles. But then, he'd missed a lot about Charles.

He put his hand on Peter's arm. "We will find her," Erik said quietly.

To his surprise, Peter actually grinned at him. "I know we will."

(Erik tucked the photo of Peter and Wanda in their 'costumes' into his coat pocket. He was trying to be surreptitious, and failed miserably. Peter caught him doing it and grinned even more widely than before.)

-0-0-0-

"Pietro—"

"It's still Peter."

"—I'm going to turn the radio to a news station."

"What? Come on!"

"It won't kill you to go without music for a few minutes, even an hour."

"Yeah, but what about you?"

"I don't follow."

"Oh, come on, man, you've missed like, ten years worth of new music! I know you weren't getting music in that cell of yours! Pink Floyd, Queen, The Who, The Moody Blues, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles! You've got a ton of catching up to do!"

"I didn't miss The Beatles, _or_ Simon and Garfunkel. The latter wasn't always known by the name that they are now, and the former are highly overrated."

"…Wow. Just… Wow."

-0-0-0-

Erik hadn't known that Magda was pregnant again when they had separated. How could he? She wasn't showing, might not have even known herself, and if she had, she certainly hadn't told him. Would that have changed things?

He looked down at some of the photos of the twins, those he'd not yet put back into Peter's duffel bag. Their fifth birthday, the picture Marya had taken of them their first day of school, a baby picture in which, for the life of him, Erik could not tell which child was which. This one, the oldest, had been taken in black and white—he couldn't even tell what color their blankets were.

Over the years, the long years, he'd forgotten how to be a parent. Perhaps more accurately, Erik had forced himself to forget how to be a parent, how to be someone who had a family and a life that didn't involve tracking Shaw down and making him _pay_. He had devoted himself to that exclusively, spent years doing very little to nothing that didn't involve furthering his goal of killing Shaw. If he had found out about Wanda and Peter in the years between his and Magda's separation and his imprisonment, if he had known…

_What would I have done, at that?_

Erik would have liked to say that, if he'd discovered that he had children during those years, of course he would have taken custody of them. He would have liked to say that of course he would have taken responsibility as their father, of course he would have done his best to care for them and raise them.

But he wasn't sure. He really wasn't. There had been days (and weeks and, sometimes, months) when all he could do was fantasize about how Shaw would scream when he drove that coin through his head and out the other side. The man he had been then would not have wanted anything distracting him from his quest for revenge. Children, small children who needed looking after, they were the ultimate distraction from such things.

And if, by some chance, Erik had found out about the twins, had taken custody of them, he would not have been a good father. He was honest enough with himself to admit that. He had been so consumed with killing Shaw, and a life like that had no room for children. Even at their unhappiest, Peter and Wanda had been better off without him. Erik could admit that, even if it did feel like the bullet that had grazed his neck, courtesy of Raven.

He glanced over at Peter, who, having won the battle over the radio station, had gone back to driving in peace and silence. For once, Peter seemed to be entirely ignorant of his scrutiny. Erik knew that his children had been better off without him, that he wouldn't have made a good father, but he prayed, he hoped, that Peter would never realize that.


	3. Chapter Three

A word for the readers. Yes, there is shipping in this fic. Yes, it is Charles/Erik. But it's pretty much just background noise, Peter trying on occasion to speak to his father about it (whether in the attempt to tease him or not), and informing the way Charles and Erik speak to each other on the rare occasion that they do in this fic. I think that as of DoFP, their relationship, whatever it was, is too broken for anything more than that.

Chapter summary: Day one of the road trip, part two. The car gets ditched.

* * *

"So, how'd you and Mother meet?"

They weren't too far from the border with West Virginia now. Unfortunately, driving through the George Washington National Forest had necessitated getting on to I-64; it was, as far as Erik knew, the most straightforward route through the forest. However, they'd likely be able to get off of it not long after crossing the state border. Erik wasn't sure why, but he'd feel better about all of this when he got out of Virginia.

Needless to say, he'd not been expecting a question like this.

Erik stared at Peter, who reacted as though he thought Erik hadn't understood. "I mean our birth mother. For the record, 'Mother' is our mother, 'Mom' is Aunt Marya, 'Munchkin' is Lorna, and 'that jackass from Toledo' is that guy Mom was dating a few years ago, Lorna's dad—don't worry, me and Wanda scared him off; he really was a jackass, not nearly good enough for our Mom. Anyways, how _did_ you and Mother meet? I don't know how long you've been running around doing terrorist super villain stuff, but that doesn't sound like the sort of lifestyle that leaves a lot of room for romance. Unless…" Peter's eyes lit up conspiratorially. "Mother was a _retired_ terrorist super villain! Now it all makes sense!"

That was not the sort of thing that bore dignifying with a response. Especially considering that Erik suspected that Peter had said all of that nonsense about Magda being a 'retired terrorist super villain' just to get a reaction out of him. "Your mother and I met in the Warsaw Ghetto," he said shortly, cutting off any other wild speculations Peter could possibly come up with.

"Oh… I… umm," Peter stammered, immediately sensing that he'd hit a nerve, and a raw one at that. "I'm sorry," he muttered, regaining control of his tongue. He was still stammering, just a bit. "I should have realized… Mom's got this weird spot on her arm; she told me she got the tattoo removed when she moved here. Mother did the same thing with hers." When he got no immediate answer (at least not one that came fast enough to ease his troubled conscience), he glanced nervously at Erik. "Look, I really am _sorry_, okay?"

There were a number of things that it occurred to Erik to say, each one of them sitting on some different end of the sliding scale of 'gentle reproof' versus 'stinging rebuke.' However, what came out of his mouth instead was a weary "It's not your fault."

Peter stared at him with huge dark eyes.

Anyone in this situation would have realized that Peter wanted to hear more than just the simple explanation of the physical location where his parents met. It was clear Marya hadn't given him the story; how much must Peter have wondered about this, as he was growing up? "After…" After the camp, after Shaw, after he ceased to be a number and started being Erik Lehnsherr again (Though there were times when, remembering his name as it had sounded out of Shaw's lips, Erik almost wished he could seek the anonymity of the number on his arm again). "…After the end of the war, your mother's family took me in. I had none of my own left. I already knew Magda, and her parents already knew me."

The Maximoffs were a huge family, the type that used a field rather than a house to host family reunions. Like every family who had been targeted during the Holocaust, they had lost some of their number, but they had still come out a large family. They, Magda's parents, at least, were aware of the 'interest' Shaw had taken in him. "Schmidt's pet", he'd been called in the camp, spoken with scorn by the guards and pity by the inmates. Even then, he didn't like to think that it had been pity that had motivated Magda's parents to take him in. He told himself that it was because he was their daughter's friend; Erik felt a little better about all of this when he'd realized that he wasn't the only orphan the extended Maximoff family had adopted after the end of the war.

"We married a few years later," Erik went on, deliberately as flat and detached as he could manage. Almost… He could almost believe that he wasn't hearing the undercurrents of anger rise in his own voice, rising like a river beating against a dam. "We settled in Vinnytsia, in Ukraine. Back when I was a different man."

He _had_ tried to move on, at first. He _had_ tried to put what Shaw had done to him and his behind him. Erik had tried that for years, tried living his life without revenge, without rage, without his powers. Only later had Erik realized how fragile that peace had been.

"The people there found me out." He cooled his rage, knowing it would not go well if he ended up crashing the car. "There was… an incident." A fire, and screams. Then more screams, and more, and more. "We never formally divorced, but your mother and I separated after that. I never saw her again."

Magda shrank from his touch when he had tried to embrace her, tried in vain to comfort her. She screamed at him to stay away from her. Screamed at him and fled into the night. Her face, transfixed in horror, was the last he ever saw of her. The sight of her face, transfixed in horror, had brought him out of his rage, but she was gone, and he had nothing left but rage. (It was a year before Erik realized that it wasn't that fact that he could move metal that had terrified her so much that night.)

Magda had told him to stay away from her, so Erik listened, and obeyed that demand for five years, before, at last, he decided to try to find her. He never did, knew now that she had already been dead when he put his search for Shaw on hold to try to find his missing wife. Erik tried to look up Magda's family, those who hadn't already relocated to America, in the hopes that she might be staying with one of them or that they'd know where she was, but had never found them, either. It was as though that large family that had once treated him as one of their own had vanished off the face of the earth. He eventually found himself standing in the empty house of one of Magda's maternal aunts, dusty and filled with mold and neglect.

The revelation that even if, by some chance, Magda was willing to accept him back into her life, even if she was willing to let him be her husband again, she wouldn't recognize him for the man he had become: a moment of terrible, unforgiving clarity. Charles, if he ever heard this story, would probably be disappointed to realize that this moment of clarity hadn't ended in Erik realizing that his desire for revenge had destroyed every good thing he had left in his life. Well, Charles was only half-right. Erik _had _realized what his desire for revenge had done to him.

In all those long years, Erik had never thought about what he would do after he killed Shaw. Killing his tormentor was, in itself, the endgame, and always had been. He was like a ghost that had been given flesh again to resolve its unfinished business. After he killed Shaw, he would be like a puppet with its strings cut. After he killed Shaw, he would really have no reason to be alive anymore; it wouldn't be suicide that got him so much as overwhelming apathy. (And it wasn't until, of all people, Shaw gave him a new reason to stay alive that he thought differently.) Erik suspected that Charles knew this, suspected it to be a large part of the reason Charles begged him repeatedly not to kill Shaw—he was trying to expand his lifespan. _I don't want to lose you, I don't want you to throw your life away_; his words had had all the stamp of that.

In that quiet, empty house, Erik had shed the name that Magda's parents had gifted him with, when he came under their care. They had tried to give him a name and a life that didn't bear the taint of the camps or of Klaus Schmidt. He was grateful to them for that. But he had only ever been 'Magnus' to them, 'Magnus' to Magda and her parents, and with them gone, so was he. He was a different man.

Peter looked at him, lips quivering strangely; for one horrible moment, Erik was sure that he was going to start crying. He had no idea what to do with tears. But instead, he said, "Okay."

And then: "And now you're in love with this Xavier guy."

"_What?!"_

Obviously, Peter had misunderstood the motivation behind that _'What_', because he waved a hand (never taking the other off the steering wheel), and assured him, "Look, you swing both ways, that's fine. So do I! I ain't got no room to judge. And I don't think you're betraying Mother's memory or anything like that, you don't have to worry about that."

Erik glared at him. "We are _not_ in love." _Anymore_, the ever-treacherous voice in the back of his mind chimed in.

Peter rolled his eyes so far back in his head that all Erik could see were the whites. "Oh, please," he scoffed. "The first thing he does upon seeing you for the first time in ten years is punch you in the face, and all you do is smile up at him and talk about how glad you are to see him. Then you spend the whole time we're in the car staring at the back of his head. Do you know how long that was? It was a really long time! We were in that car forever and you stared at him the whole time. Couldn't take your eyes off him!"

"We are not—"

"Do you know what I was seeing in the Pentagon?" It seemed impossible to dissuade Peter once he'd gotten on a roll. "I was seeing what I would swear to God was a couple who had obviously gone through the nastiest break-up in the past century, only to discover that they still had feelings for each other, and one of them—" at this, he pointed at Erik "—was a lot more comfortable with the idea than the other."

At this, Erik could only glare at Peter again. "Pietro—"

"Still Peter, man."

"My love life," Erik told him in an ever-so-slightly raised voice, "_non-existent as it is_, is none of your concern. Do you understand?"

Peter nodded entirely too meekly for Erik's liking, but short of actually contradicting him, he couldn't do a thing about it.

It got him thinking, remembering.

Erik could remember, on occasion, spotting a woman or a man at the bar or in a restaurant or just walking down the street, and finding them attractive. At first, guilt over what felt like betraying Magda had kept him back. After that, it had been the knowledge that there was no room in his life for anyone else, that there was no room in a life hunting down Shaw (and that would have no meaning left to it once Shaw was dead) for anyone he could love. On the rare occasions that he actually spoke to and interacted with these people, Erik usually skipped town not long afterwards, before it could become anything but a vague, ill-defined attraction.

Against his better judgment, he hadn't done that with Charles. Charles was the first other mutant he had ever met, the first person who, in all his time hunting Shaw, could tell him he wasn't alone and mean every word of it. He hadn't skipped town when he realized that he found Charles attractive, hadn't skipped town when he realized that the feeling was mutual. He'd accepted help for the first time, had stayed, and for a while, he'd felt… like he was home. Even when he knew that it wouldn't last, that this would end up being just as transient as every other city and apartment and hotel room he'd ever stayed in, he had managed to make himself half-believe that maybe this time would be different. For a day or two, Erik could actually see his life beyond killing Shaw.

But then, he'd found out where Shaw was, and all of that had vanished. It wasn't the first time he'd managed to let his rage destroy the relationship he had with someone he loved.

And now, he still found himself plagued with all those conflicting feelings.

(Charles had just looked so _beautiful _when he smiled.)

-0-0-0-

Peter was fumbling with his goggles again. He kept sliding them off, on, off, on, then off and on again. Erik could only suppose that he was at last growing bored with doing nothing but driving. After all, why do one thing when you can do four, or five or six, practically at the same time? He had to admit, Peter's mutation probably allowed him to get much more done in the space of the day than most others (Now, if only one could convince Peter of the value of this).

Erik remembered what he had thought the first time he'd seen Peter wear those goggles: _What, are we going to have to swim through a shark tank to get out; I think that's a bit too 'James Bond' for my captors, even at their worst moments._ An absurd thought, he would admit, but he was also still reeling from moving at speeds he still _never _wished to occupy again.

He had to ask: "Why do you wear those goggles?"

Peter looked at him, startled, as though he'd forgotten that Erik was in the car with him. By now, they had settled into an almost companionable silence, filled only with the strains of _"Home where my thought's escaping, Home where my music's playing, Home where my love lies waiting silently for me_." "Mom makes me," he said simply, elaborating only when Erik's eyebrows shot up as if to say 'Oh, you're blaming _her_ for your questionable fashion choices.' "Trust me, there's a good reason."

"Then tell me."

At that, Peter's face actually reddened, embarrassment coloring his features. "One of the first times I went running after I got my powers I, uh, well, I got a bug in my eye."

"That…" Erik found himself wincing, sympathy coming up unbidden.

"Yeah." Peter laughed ruefully. "It was pretty nasty. It also hurt a lot, which is why Mom made me wear the goggles. She said that if I was going to be running around that fast, I needed to protect my eyes. Well, she also told me that I needed to keep my mouth shut and for pretty much the same reason, but I'm not as good at that."

"So I noticed."

"Hey!" But Peter's voice was devoid of any real anger. He stared at Erik out of the corner of his eye, mouth quirking downwards in a light frown. "Mom's always tried to look out for us, even when we gave her grief. I remember how freaked she got when I turned eighteen—when I got old enough to be drafted," he explained, and Erik winced again, but for an entirely different reason. "Mom doesn't like war to start with, and I guess she'd been hearing some bad shit about what was going down in Vietnam. She actually told me to _run_ if my number came up! Seriously! First time she'd ever _encouraged_ me to break the law," Peter muttered, and fell silent.

Marya had said that she was 'hearing things' which, given the context, likely had something to do with mutants, maybe even what Trask had been doing to them. Erik wondered exactly how much she had known, where she had gotten her information from. She'd always been like that, seeming to know more than it was possible for her to know. Maybe she was a mutant too, a telepath, and her telepathy was just more subtle than Charles's or Emma's. Alright, so she probably wasn't a mutant. But sometimes, Erik still had to question where Marya was getting her information from.

"Parents are like that," Erik said quietly, and set himself to staring out the passenger side window. He didn't look at Peter.

-0-0-0-

Eventually, they did have to stop at a gas station. The Nova got good mileage (Erik didn't know whether this was typical of the car or part of the "improvements" Peter had talked about), but the gas tank wasn't bottomless, and besides, apart from the few snack cakes Peter had managed to sneak into his bag, they had no food.

Peter went in to pay for the gas and to pick up some food; Erik didn't want to risk being spotted and recognized, and Peter could get in and out a lot faster than he could.

And, almost predictably, Peter came back with a bag stuffed full of snack foods, and another stuffed full of sodas and water bottles.

Erik inspected the contents of the bag full of food, and sighed slightly. It was full of granola bars and chocolate bars, bags of trail mix and M&amp;M's, bags of peanuts and sunflower seeds, honey buns, and yes, Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Zingers, Ho Hos, and Sno Balls. His son, evidently, was determined to turn himself into a walking advertisement for Hostess. Not that he was going to complain about the contents. Erik had spent enough years of his life on the run (and in a concentration camp, and in the ghetto) to have adopted an attitude of 'Eat what you've got when you get it', and dietary laws were discarded along the way. However…

"Did you pay for all of this?" Erik asked suspiciously, indicating both the bag full of food and the bag full of soda and water.

"I paid for the gas," Peter said, looking remarkably nonchalant and not-guilty for someone who had just divested a convenience store of what was probably half its stock of sweets. "It cost me an arm and a leg; I don't think losing all this stuff'll hurt 'em very much." When he caught Erik's stern look, he held his hands up defensively. "Don't give me that look! You drop stadiums on presidents and you want to get on to me for shoplifting?!"

"Using your powers to shoplift is remarkably petty." _Is this how Charles feels when one of his students—if he has any again at this point—misuses their powers?_

"And, again, pretty small-time compared to what you do with yours."

"It's beneath you."

_This has to be how Charles feels._

Peter drew a deep breath. "Look, I need to eat a lot because of my mutation, stuff high in fat and calories and protein and stuff like that." When faced with a skeptical look, he added, "Seriously! I lost fifteen pounds the month I got my powers! Mom thought I was dying and kept dragging me to all these different doctors!"

Erik rubbed his forehead. "Pietro—"

"Seriously, it's still Peter, man."

"If you are lying to me…"

"I'm _not_."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Erik could see no lie in Peter's eyes—that, or the boy was a better liar than he gave him credit for. "Alright." Peter grinned. "But next time, we get some food with _substance_, and we pay for it."

Having won yet another battle, Peter seemed willing to concede this point. "Sure, sure."

-0-0-0-

It was starting to get dark; the shadows of the trees were long and deep, and Peter had switched on his headlamps. He had also been persuaded to switch the radio to a news station for the time being.

"…_And the search for mutant terrorist Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as Magneto, remains ongoing. Also ongoing is the search for the man who aided him in his escape." _Peter's hands tensed on the steering wheel again. _"Though the identity of Lehnsherr's accomplice remains unknown, he is described as a young mutant with gray hair and the ability to move at superhuman speeds."_

Peter looked like he was going to be sick. Erik thought it prudent to turn the radio off.

-0-0-0-

"I don't want to kill people," Peter said very suddenly.

This, after he'd not said a word or taken his eyes off the road for half an hour. Erik had expected him to break into hysterics when he finally did speak, but asides from a slightly strained quality to his voice, he sounded remarkably calm. (Of course, it didn't occur to him that the fact that Peter _sounded_ calm wasn't necessarily a good thing.)

"What brought this on?" Erik asked, perplexed.

Peter shrugged; his shoulders seemed to vibrate. "Well, you got to the point where you were willing to kill people, didn't you? And you didn't start out that way, did you? You didn't start out as someone willing to kill people; you had to get to that point. And now I'm, like, I'm on the run. Like Dillinger, man." He began to breathe very hard. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to kill people. I don't want…"He trailed off, sucking in shallow breaths and shaking like a pine tree in a thunderstorm.

Erik looked him over, catching sight especially of Peter's too-bright eyes; he really was going to start crying if he didn't say something soon. "Yes, you're right. I didn't start out as someone who was willing to kill." In the years before, in the years between the war and the hunt. "I had to become that, just like everyone else."

Apparently he had failed in the 'comfort your child so he doesn't break down crying while he's driving' department, because Peter's eyes, if that was even possible, grew even brighter, and Erik could clearly see tears forming around the corners. "You don't have to kill anyone if you don't want to. I would never ask you to," he assured him.

That was actually the truth, surprisingly enough. Erik still had the same opinion on the idea of recruiting Peter and Wanda: it wasn't a good idea, he absolutely _wasn't_ going to do it, and he did not want them on the frontlines. He had no interest in recruiting children, no interest in risking their lives. Erik had seen children shot, seen them killed, and he never wanted to see that again.

Peter didn't appear terribly comforted by this either. _What would Charles say_? Erik wondered desperately. He pushed aside the suspicion that, at this point, Charles would have no interest in helping him and would only sit back to watch the fireworks. "Everything's going to be fine, Pietro," he said awkwardly, just as awkwardly patting the boy's shoulder.

Peter nodded and sucked in another breath that, nonetheless, sounded steadier than the ones he'd been taking before. "Umm… Why do you keep calling me 'Pietro?'" Peter asked, in a smaller voice than Erik would have liked. "That's really not my name, you know."

Erik didn't quite have an answer for him. At least, he didn't have an answer that would have allowed him to leave the car at any point in time with his dignity intact.

-0-0-0-

Peter's driving was starting to take a turn for the worse. Erik couldn't tell if it was because of the radio report or just because of the time of night. They needed to find somewhere to pull over, and soon. Sleeping in the car would be a better solution than finding a hotel room; at least, sleeping in a hotel wasn't going to be an option every night. Peter was a—still surprisingly—good driver, at least for a teenager who couldn't have more than a couple of years of driving experience under his belt, but the truth of the matter was that he had been driving all day, and had to be tired. Had to be nervous, after what he'd heard on the radio.

"Pull over. I'll drive the rest of the way until we find somewhere to pull off."

"No thanks, I'm good."

"You're _not_ good. You keep weaving. You're speeding."

"What? Oh, yeah." A strained laugh. "Sometimes I've really got to concentrate to keep from overdoing it with the accelerator. You should hear how Wanda talks when I do that."

"I mean it. You're tired; it happens to everyone. I can drive."

"No, you really can't. Do you even have a driver's license? One that didn't expire while you were in prison? I don't think they give driver's licenses to terrorists; hate to burst your bubble."

There was no convincing him. Erik supposed he was just going to have take control of the car if it looked like Peter was going to hit something—or someone.

-0-0-0-

Inevitably, Peter got stopped by the police.

It had started with the flash of blue lights behind them, dazzling and too-bright in the darkness. Neither Peter nor Erik was stupid enough to think that trying to outrun the police on roads unfamiliar to the driver was going to end well, so Peter pulled over and rolled down his window. The police officer took Peter's driver's license back to his car to examine it. Erik, having never been arrested on a traffic violation in America, didn't know if this was normal or not. Peter didn't seem to know, either. He also asked for Peter's car keys, though, which was definitely not normal, though Peter didn't get nervous when that happened. He did, however, start to get nervous when five, then ten minutes passed, and the policeman didn't come back.

"Umm… Is it normal for them to take this long?" Peter asked anxiously.

"No," Erik said grimly, "I don't think it is."

Peter began to fidget in his seat—at least, his fidgeting was rather more pronounced than it had been before. "Do you think he recognized you? Do you think they've figured out I was the one who busted you out of the Pentagon?"

"I don't know. But that man is a fool if he thinks he can do anything to me."

Peter's eyes flashed. "You know, I think your ego just developed its own gravity," he hissed. "Wait, is that a satellite? It is! Congratulations, your ego has _moons_!"

"Do you want to get out of this situation or not?" Erik asked testily. _One must not inflict violence on one's child, _he reminded himself. Peter's voice was high-pitched and cracking; he was obviously nervous. _One must not inflict violence on one's child_. _One must not inflict violence on one's child… Even if they're really asking for it._

There were probably a lot of things fathers wanted to do alongside their sons, though to be honest, what those things were escaped Erik at the moment. He was, however, quite sure that being arrested and herded into the back of a police car was not one of them. He seriously doubted that this was what Peter considered acceptable 'father-son bonding time' either. And it wouldn't be happening, not tonight.

Then, something else happened. A second police car appeared and pulled up just behind the other one. The two officers began to speak amongst themselves.

"Oh my God." Peter's voice was choked, his eyes huge in his face.

"Alright, here's the plan," Erik told him, in the sort of tone that brooked no contradiction. "I'll eliminate the police officers, you run out and get your license and your car keys, and we keep moving. We get off this road; we find a different route to Indianapolis. We don't come back this way, or through this state."

"Wait." It seemed that 'brooked no contradiction' wasn't the sort of thing that applied to Peter. "When you say 'eliminate', do you mean 'kill?'"

Erik nodded. "Yes. That's what most people mean when they say 'eliminate' in a situation like this."

Horror broke over Peter's face. "You can't kill them," he protested, his voice oddly hoarse.

"I don't see that I have much of a choice."

"Yeah, you do! Look—" Peter smiled weakly "—we've got another problems as it is without you just killing two random cops. Do you know what they do to cop killers?"

"If they die, there are no witnesses against us," Erik pointed out. "No one can prove that we were here."

Something very hard and very sharp came into Peter's face at that. "Okay," he muttered. "Here's the thing. I told you before. I'm not in it to hurt people, and if you're going to, I don't want any part of that. Here's _my_ deal: you kill them and I will leave you right here, and I will try to forget that we ever met at any point in my life."

"Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack."

The message was crystal-clear: I have gone most of my life without you, and while I _want_ you in my life, don't think for once second that I _need_ you in my life. Don't think for one second that I'll put up with this just because I want you around.

Erik thought about it (for the few short moments that he could spare in such a situation), before he winced, and nodded. "Alright then, different plan."

"You want us to get out of here on foot."

"That would be correct."

Erik levitated the duffel bag over to his lap as furtively as he could and began stuffing water bottles and some of the more nutritious food items Peter had picked up from the gas station into it, until the bag was nearly too full to zip shut. He slung the bag over his shoulder and chanced a glance back at the police officers, who mercifully seemed unaware of what he had just done.

"You ready?" Peter asked. He put one hand on the door, and slid the other behind Erik's head. _To prevent whiplash._

"Do I have a choice?" Erik retorted.

Peter grinned, bad feelings evidently forgotten. "Not really."

He was abandoning the car, their one reliable means of transportation that didn't leave Erik feeling like he was going to be violently ill, all because his eighteen-year-old son whom he didn't know for sure was even his son until today didn't want him to kill a couple of cops. Erik supposed that he didn't really need to be racking up any higher of a body count than he already had unnecessarily, but still, he could barely believe that he was abandoning the car on the whim of his son.

"Wanda's gonna kill me when she finds out I lost the Nova," Peter muttered. "Okay. On the count of three. One, two, three."

They left the car and the rural back road far behind them.

-0-0-0-

Peter came to a stop in the middle of a dense forest, far from the roads. And, of course, _of course_, Erik found himself doubled-over throwing up violently the moment they came to a stop. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so sick.

At some point, Peter had removed the duffel bag from his custody, and had taken a water bottle out of the bag. He proffered it to Erik when he was finally done vomiting, brow creased in sympathy. "You want some water?"

"Thank you." Erik's voice was raw and torn, still, his throat aching and burning, and he was grateful for the water, tepid as it was. "I don't suppose," he gasped, when he had drank what was probably at least half of the water bottle, "that you have a toothbrush and toothpaste in that bag of yours."

"Nope. Forgot."

"Of course."

Disaster (or at least, untimely arrest) averted, every last bit of nervous energy Peter clung to drained away. His shoulders sagged, his eyes drooping, and Erik considered how late it was, how long Peter had been driving without a break. "Get some sleep," he said shortly. "I'll stay up for a few hours, make sure the police aren't following us. We're starting early in the morning."

Peter didn't need any more encouragement than that. He flopped down on the ground, using the duffel bag as a pillow. "No problem; I don't sleep in much," he said thickly. "G'night, Dad."

"Good night…" Erik turned, only to see that Peter had already fallen asleep. "Good night, son," he said quietly.

Erik sat awake in the darkness under the trees and the moon and the stars, listening to his son breathe and the wind murmur against tree bark and pine needles. Occasionally, he heard a lonely birdcall high above; occasionally, he heard a distant wail of a car driving on a road, somewhere in the distance.

Eventually, he fell asleep. In his dreams, there were two children running around wearing strange costumes and playing at being superheroes in their backyard. In his dreams, Charles was smiling at him again and waving a chess piece in his face.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter summary: "Okay, tell you what. I'll cut my hair and dye it... if you grow a beard." Also: Peter asks his father a question about his propensity for lethal force.

* * *

The car was gone; that much was a fact. Peter had snuck back over to where they had been (after some trial and error; "Don't look at me like that; I haven't got a photographic memory or anything like that, and it was dark.") the night before and found the car gone. Erik could only assume that the police had impounded it; it seemed only natural that they would do so. He and Peter would have to find other means of transportation to Indianapolis, and then Detroit.

Upon scouting the area (a more respectable term for what Peter had actually done: zip around the countryside while Erik watched in bemusement, supposing that the boy might have been in mourning for the loss of his car and was working out his grief through exercise), Peter had discovered that there was a town about three miles from where they were now. "It's a start," Erik muttered. "Come on."

He pulled away immediately when he felt a hand on the back of his head. "Not like that, Pietro," he said, before Peter could do anything.

"'Peter'," Peter corrected him, but without any other comment. Too early in the gray, overcast morning, it seemed, and likely Peter was still hungry after their meager breakfast.

Himself, Erik had no desire to travel at the speeds his son could reach. He'd barely been able to get any food down this morning as it was. He didn't think he'd handle levitating too well right now, either. "You do whatever you want, so long as you don't draw undesired attention; _I _am walking."

Peter shrugged. "Have it your way." He began walking north. "The road's this way; once you get to it, all you've got to do is follow it, and you'll hit the city limits."

Erik caught glimpses of dark clouds through the canopy of trees and grimaced, hoping they'd get into town before it started raining. He really doubted Peter had packed an umbrella in that duffel bag of his, doubted that it would have occurred to him to do so even if he'd had some inkling that they were going to have to leave his car behind. At least it hadn't rained on them while they were sleeping. That would have just been the _perfect_ end to a bad night.

Peter forced himself to—more or less—match Erik's pace until they got to the road. However, once that happened, he started zipping back and forth, presumably all the way to the town and back. Since he hadn't been shot yet and there was no blare of lights from a police car on the horizon, Erik could only assume that Peter hadn't been spotted yet by the humans. So much the better.

"You're probably going to have to dye your hair," Erik remarked on one of Peter's return trips, raising an eyebrow when he saw the boy polishing off a hot dog, but deciding not to comment on it.

At this, Peter shook his head violently. "No way, man." He grimaced hideously. "Tried that before, didn't work."

By 'before', Erik could only assume that Peter meant that he had tried dyeing his hair some time before they had met. Somehow, Erik doubted that Peter, even as fast he was, could make dye bleed out of his hair as fast as all that. He glanced at Peter and saw the preoccupied, even melancholic look that had stolen over his face. Erik suspected he knew why Peter had tried dyeing his hair 'before.'

That was probably not a wound, deep or shallow, that needed to be reopened. Erik remembered what it was like to be a self-conscious teenager, and never would he like the idea of telling a mutant, especially one who was young and (likely) impressionable that he needed to hide some quality that was likely the result of his mutation. Nevertheless…

"Pietro—"

"Peter."

"—Like you said yesterday, we are… Well, we're not on the run the way you seem to think we are; I've no intention of being shot down in front of a theater 'like Dillinger.' Nevertheless, we are indeed dodging the cops, the feds and anyone else who might recognize us and decide to mete out… _justice_." Erik couldn't help but frown darkly. "And your hair is easily your most salient feature."

_At least he put that ridiculous silver jacket away. _Peter had at some point in the past ten seconds traded in his silver leather jacket for a black sweatshirt—much more subtle.

But Peter, Peter didn't seem to accept the pragmatic solution. Instead, he scowled and set his jaw stubbornly. "Yeah, and you know what's going to stand out even more? A kid who's got brown hair and gray roots." Peter tugged on a lock of his hair. "You know, people see this hair, and they don't think 'mutant.' They think 'punk who dyes his hair.' Yeah, there's no roots, but people don't see that. But if people see a kid who's got normal looking hair all over his head except at the roots, they're gonna start asking questions."

"Fair enough. But you could at least cut it; it _is_ rather long, don't you think?" Erik asked pointedly.

A sharp laugh filled the humid air. "You really have been in prison for ten years, haven't you?" Peter grinned, but without malice. "Okay, tell you what. I'll cut my hair _and_ dye it… If you grow a beard."

The presence of the floating razor in camp this morning had not gone unnoticed, it seemed.

"Absolutely not."

"I didn't think so."

Peter began to run back and forth from the town again, having evidently grown bored of conversation. He would occasionally show back up with some sort of food item in hand, a candy bar, an apple, even a bag of boiled peanuts. He eventually showed back up with a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

"Here," Peter muttered, pressing the cup into Erik's hand. "You look kinda rough."

"Thanks," Erik muttered back. It was no use asking Peter if he'd paid for it or not; at the very least, Erik had no desire to have that argument again this early in the morning. He took a sip of it and tried not to grimace. The coffee was lousy. He drank it anyways.

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Peter fell back in step with Erik. The boy kept his eyes trained on the ground, avoiding muddy spots on the side of the road with swift feet. He fiddled with the zipper on his duffel bag, perhaps contemplating getting some more food out, but eventually left the zipper alone, perhaps thinking better of it.

Erik considered asking Peter to go check the town for a bus terminal, before deciding not to; they didn't need to separate for too long. Peter had described the town as being big enough to have one. Even if it didn't, there would probably be a trucker or someone who'd be willing to take them closer to Indianapolis (Which itself was sure to have a bus terminal). Stealing a car would be too conspicuous, like tempting fate. While Erik supposed that it wasn't absolutely necessary to get to Detroit and the next two stops before San Francisco with backbreaking haste, he'd be happier once he had checked in on his contacts.

"Erm… Can I ask you a question?"

Peter was looking at him with an uncharacteristically tentative expression on his face. Erik stared quizzically back at him. "Has my displeasure stopped you so far?"

"I guess not." Peter nodded to himself and drew a deep breath. "Well… Okay, look." He swiped at the air with his hands. "I will completely understand if you don't want to answer this; I know it's a weird question and all that. Why are you so trigger-happy?"

Before Erik could even start to think of an answer, Peter started up again. "I mean, why is it that when you're in a bad situation your first thought is that the big solution to all of your problems is to kill you way out of the situation? You said it yesterday: you didn't start out like this." Peter's brow furrowed; there was a look in his eyes that seemed… troubled. "So… how'd you get to that point?"

It was a long time before Erik answered. He frowned abstractedly, nursing his coffee cup. "When… The first time I killed someone intentionally, of my own free will—" he remembered the camp, the lab; he would never forget that "—I was horribly ill afterwards. When it was over, and the adrenaline had worn off." And when he had put down his shovel and brushed the dirt and ash from his hands. "I felt… sick. In more ways than one."

"So why did you keep killing people if the first time made you feel so bad?" Peter was probing, in much the way Charles would have done, except with words instead of projected thoughts and gentle prods at memories and emotions. Erik wasn't sure if Peter was trying to accomplish quite the same thing as Charles would have been, either, but he had little doubt that there was a similar goal in Peter's mind.

Erik shook his head and let out a sharp breath. "Pietro—"

"Peter."

"The first time I killed intentionally, those whom I killed… They had murdered a member of my family, prevented me from rescuing her." He was still wanted in Ukraine. He could still remember the way the flames had leapt into the night sky. "I didn't feel 'bad' that I had killed them; I still don't. I know few who, in my position, would have felt remorseful about killing them."

Peter nodded. "And the next time?"

"It was after your mother and I separated. I was trying to track down a man who had been a doctor, though frankly using that term on him is an insult to actual doctors everywhere, in Auschwitz. I caught up with his partners in crime long before I caught up with him."

The first time Erik had killed one of them, one of those former Nazis who might have known where Shaw was, it was an accident. He hadn't meant to do it. He had started by leaving them bloodied and bruised, but otherwise unharmed. Then, slowly, he went from leaving them bloodied and bruised to leaving them with injuries that would have necessitated hospitalization. It seemed a natural progression, and besides, the injuries these people suffered were nothing compared to the people who had starved and wasted away, to those who had bled to death on the ground, to those who had become ash and dust.

The first time Erik killed one of them, it was an accident. The first time, he would like to make this very clear. He was looking at the man, a former SS officer who was now living a comfortable life in Damascus, and thinking of all of his own people, his fellow survivors. Many of them had tried to return to their homes, only to those same homes occupied by those to whom they had been assigned by the occupying Nazi government. They were met with hostility, threats and sometimes outright violence when they tried to protest that these were _their_ homes, and _this man_ was living well off of stolen gold when he should have been rotting in prison or dead.

Erik had only been trying to frighten him, trying to sweat Shaw's location out of the man. Floating knives were good for that. But then that man, that blood-stained man, he had lunged forwards and tried to overpower Erik—not so much of a coward as many of his partners in crime. He'd fallen on the knife. The house maid found her master the next morning, lying on the floor of his bedroom with that same knife sticking out of his forehead.

(He remembered feeling sorry for the maid, a guileless girl of around sixteen or so who had been easily overawed and had readily opened the back door for a gaunt stranger who looked in desperate need of a good meal. She had clearly had no idea just who her master was. Erik wondered what had become of her, sometimes.)

Peter grimaced. He could take a hint, at least in that regard. "Okay, that I get," he muttered. "There aren't a whole lot of people in the world who really fall into the group of "needs to die", but Nazis?" He grimaced again, rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, I get that."

It had gotten easier, over time.

It got easier to just kill them, rather than leaving them alive. Dead men tell no tales, and all that. And it occurred to Erik, more and more, that these men and women who had committed genocide, didn't really deserve to live when so many who deserved to be alive were dead, when they had so much blood on their hands that Erik was amazed that they didn't reek of it wherever they went. They looked so normal, so unassuming, and they really didn't deserve to; they were alive, and they didn't deserve to be.

The only ones Erik left alive anymore were the bankers who had taken Nazi gold, the landlords who had sheltered Nazi war criminals knowing who they were, and others who had sheltered and aided the perpetrators of genocide after the fact. He frankly had even more contempt and disgust for them than he had for his targets and his ultimate target themselves, but they had no blood on their hands. Erik would only kill them if they tried to do harm to him.

It got easier to kill them over time. This had never struck Erik as much of a loss, that it had gotten so easy for him to shed blood, that he no longer retched or vomited or dreamt about the screams at night. By the time he finally caught up to Shaw, by the time he was finally able to kill him, he didn't even hesitate at all anymore.

"And those cops last night?"

"Alright, I think I've answered enough—"

"I'm just trying to understand you better," Peter said, cutting him off. There was a faintly pleading quality to his voice, an odd, ambivalent pull on his mouth. "We spent all day yesterday in the car together, and that's a really long time for me, but most kids get a lifetime with their parents. I've only been around for what, thirty hours? Thirty hours, tops." He looked down for a moment before meeting Erik's gaze again. "I'm just trying to understand you better," Peter repeated.

'Most kids get a lifetime with their parents.' That wasn't right. There were plenty of kids who didn't get that; in all the world, the number of kids who grew up with their parents didn't even come close to amounting to 'most.' _And so much for completely understanding if I don't want to talk about this, _Erik thought, rolling his eyes discreetly (As discreetly as anyone ever rolled their eyes).

"_I'm just trying to understand you better."_

_Are you really?_

"Pietro—"

"And it's still Peter; seriously, are you _ever_ gonna tell me why you're calling me that?"

"—Powerful people within this country have been rounding up mutants for experimentation and extermination for years." Erik's voice was hard. He remembered how Emma used to poke fun at his expense about how easily angered he was. They had never really been friends, but he still felt her absence as a loss, just like the others, and remembering her only made him angrier. "From both within government and from without, there have been those among the human population who have been intent on turning us into lab rats, intent on seeing us dead. We are surrounded by people who hate and fear us for reasons beyond our control, and there are plenty who will commit unspeakable atrocities to see us dead. These people tend to use the police as their enforcers."

Peter cast a sideways glance in Erik's direction. "So even when there's just two of us, you've still got a speech ready to fire," he mumbled. "But what if they—"

Erik raised a hand to cut him off before he could get any further. He fixed his son in a piercing stare. "Alright, before this goes any further, you need to know that there is a phrase that you should never say in my presence."

"What's that?"

"Do not _ever _tell me that they were 'just following orders'," Erik spat. "I don't give a damn about their orders. Those people, policemen and soldiers who rounded mutants up on Trask's orders and sent them to his laboratories, they had a choice, and they made it. Everyone who has ever committed such an act while following orders had a choice."

Peter held his hands up to placate him. "I wasn't gonna. It's just…" His brow furrowed. "You were just going to kill them last night, and for all we know, they might not have had a clue who we were. There could have been any number of reasons why that second cop showed up. They might not have even known we were mutants. I mean, you look 'normal.'" Peter grimaced at the word 'normal.' "Wanda looks normal. Apart from the hair, I look normal. Nobody's gonna look at us without knowing who we are and immediately think 'mutant.' I've thought about it some, and we could have gotten out of there fine. But you were just gonna kill them." He trailed off.

There was a question hanging in the air. Though left unspoken, Erik knew what it was, knew it like the words engraved on his own soul.

"Sometimes," he murmured, "sometimes you can't take that chance. Not with your own freedom. Not with your own life."

"Is that why?" Peter asked, and he didn't sound bitter, or sad, or disappointed. He didn't sound… Well, he didn't sound anything. But Erik knew what it sounded like when someone was deliberately keeping all inflection out of their voice, knew that there were more questions that, for whatever reason, Peter didn't feel like voicing.

But they'd come eventually. Of course they would.

Erik wondered how much Peter knew about death, and suffering, and cruelty. It was clear that Marya had done her best to insulate him from the latter two, the way any loving parent would, especially one who had been through as much as she had as a child. But Erik looked at Peter and could tell that likely the closest he had ever come to seeing death up-close was news reports on Vietnam. Seeing corpses carried out in body bags on television was no comparison for the real thing. It was just an image. It didn't capture the smell of death, the reek of suffering and despair. It didn't capture the tension and unease in the air, the fear that you could be next, at any moment. Peter was the type who wouldn't recognize death until it was staring down its nose at him.

It was something to think about.

Peter himself resumed his previous activities—running at his incredible speeds, back and forth, back and forth. When Erik finally reached the town, he found him sitting on an overturned waste basket outside of a gas station, petting a stray dog that had trotted up to him. He also spotted Peter feeding the dog what looked like a sausage; that had likely helped in getting the dog to come up to him.

The dog, some kind of lab or retriever, wagged its tail when Erik walked up; he patted its head absently before saying to Peter, "Come on; I need to go look for something in town."

"'Kay." Peter tossed the remains of the sausage on the ground for the dog to eat, and followed after Erik, managing to go only a little faster than him. Erik had been known for having a brisk stride, but Peter could outpace him easily without even trying.

After some time walking through town, Erik finally spotted what he was looking for: a small, hole-in-the-wall clothing store with a "CLEARANCE—EVERYTHING MUST GO!" sign pinned up over the awning. If he was going to be spending his nights sleeping in the forest, it would look less strange for him to be wearing scruffier-looking clothes than a suit.

He came out about fifteen minutes later, met by Peter smirking at him. "Guess I know where we got the leather jacket fetish from, too," he muttered.

Erik chose not to respond to that. Instead, he pulled a black cap out of the bag with the new umbrella in it, ripped the price tag off of it and held it out to Peter. "If you're not going to do anything about your hair, then put this on."

Peter's eyebrows shot up as he took the hat. "Thanks." He stared at the hat for a second, but then pulled it down over his head and tucked the ends of his hair under the cap.

It would do until they got to Indianapolis.


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter summary: Peter entertains some kids on a bus; Erik and Charles have a conversation while several states apart.

* * *

The bus would take them from Owensboro, Kentucky to Indianapolis in a journey of around three and a half hours. To Erik, who had been on far longer plane trips, train rides and bus rides in his time, three and a half hours didn't sound like much time at all. To Peter, who perceived time very differently than Erik (and Erik was still trying to work out just how _much_ differently), the trip was stretching out into infinity with no sign of the horizon showing up any time soon.

"You didn't bring _anything_ to do?" Erik asked, around half an hour after "Eisenhardt" and son had boarded the bus and settled in. Peter was fidgeting madly, frankly far worse than he had when he had been driving the Nova.

Peter shook his head, the ends of his hair that had come loose of his cap fluttering. "Uh-uh. Thought I'd be driving the whole way."

Erik raised an eyebrow at that, but upon remembering the comment Peter had made that first day—_"Do you even have a driver's license?"_—supposed there was a good reason he had thought that way. "You might try getting some sleep, then."

To this, Peter demurred as well. "Not tired."

"Then get comfortable. We're not leaving this bus before our stop, not unless the situation gets sticky."

They were going to be making their way across America hitch-hiking and taking buses. Trains had been ruled out; the reason for this was two-fold. One, if they were found out, it would be easy enough for Erik to stop a car or a bus dead in its tracks, allowing him and Peter to make their escape with ease. Not that he couldn't stop a train; it was just that it would be more difficult, more draining, and it would be more difficult to do so cleanly. Two, Peter had confided that if he was to be jumping out of the window of a moving vehicle—_especially_ with a passenger (and one who was bigger and heavier than him, to boot)—things would go better if he could match the speed of the vehicle as soon as possible. Cars and buses were better for that than trains.

And as for why there would be no levitating, the reason for this was also two-fold. One, Erik had never levitated with a passenger before, and he suspected that even if it wasn't too much of a strain for him, it would be too conspicuous. Two, Peter was afraid of heights. _Extremely_ afraid of heights.

Peter soon found something to do: making faces at the little girl sitting on the other side of the aisle from them in the attempt to make her laugh. Soon, he got dragged off to the back of the bus by a whole tribe, it felt like, of little boys and girls, none of whom could possibly be any older than seven. Apart from the parents of these young children glancing back occasionally on their progeny, they were soon forgotten. Peter got along quite well with young children, it seemed. Erik presumed it had something to do with having a six-year-old foster sister.

He occasionally spared a glance backwards himself, but for the most part, set himself to staring out of the window instead, watching ribbons of road and flashes of blue and white and red and black of cars pass by at high speeds. Beyond all that were the rolling hills and green trees, sporadically morphing into flatlands. Rural Indiana was much as Erik remembered it—pretty to look at, but otherwise, it didn't interest him very much.

_Erik?_

The first time Erik heard it, he didn't recognize the voice for what it was. He had been sleeping at odd hours and considerably less than he was used to for a few days now; as it was, he was on the edge of sleep at this moment, sinking further and further back into the fraying upholstery of the bus seat.

_Erik? _The next time, the prodding at his mind was more insistent, a voice at normal volume rather than a whisper.

Erik sat upright and frowned, tugging his hat lower over his head so that it concealed more of his face. He recognized that voice, knew only one person currently alive who could actually have a mental conversation with him from several states away. _Charles? _Erik honestly didn't know whether to feel elated or suspicious at this development. _I… _Realizing the direction his thoughts were taking (_'I'm so glad to hear from you again.'_), he paused, before instead settling on a sardonic _To what do I owe this… visit?_

He could almost hear Charles sigh, though whether from sadness or exasperation or simple weariness, it was impossible to say. _Peter, Erik._

_What about him? _Erik asked cautiously, carefully clearing his mind of any excess thought about Peter. He didn't really think that Charles would do anything to the boy, but the response was automatic. At least he could put the training that Emma had insisted he and the rest undergo to good use.

_I'm currently attempting to reopen the school; there's a need for it again. _Which was to say that Charles was now sober again and no longer attempting to live in denial of his mutation. Good. Erik remembered Charles as he had been when they first met, confident and self-assured, and even if his tendency to behave as though being a mind-reader meant he had all the answers was a little grating, Erik would take that over the man Charles had turned into in the eleven years since they'd last seen each other any day. It had been both infuriating and horribly depressing to see that Charles had sunk to such abject levels of apathy. _Peter Maximoff seemed like a good place to start, but when I attempted to pin down his location with Cerebro, he wasn't in Virginia. Imagine my surprise when I found him with you._

It was more unspoken question with dry tones than accusation, though Charles managed to match Erik's caution (If a bit more subtly). _I don't recruit children, Charles. I never have. _And really, the implication was rather galling.

_Peter isn't really a child, Erik, however immaturely he might behave._

_I would argue with you about that, Charles, if I saw any point in it. Regardless, he's quite a bit younger than anyone I would seriously consider recruiting._

_Fair,_ Charles conceded, and in spite of himself, Erik breathed a sigh of relief. (Considering the reasons why… No. He didn't want to consider the reasons why.) _So why is he with you, then?_

_I'm keeping an eye on him—a favor to his mother._

_Really? _

Erik could almost hear the roll of laughter with the word, a mix of amused and incredulous. He didn't know whether to be offended or to laugh himself at the sheer absurdity of this whole situation. It was still strange to him, from time to time, the idea that he had living children, as much as Erik might be trying to acclimate himself to it. Charles didn't see all of that, though.

_Is that so difficult to believe? _Erik shot back. In the back of the bus, one of the younger children shrieked with laughter. Peter joined in, his deeper voice seeming jarring after the high-pitched laughs. Erik restrained himself from turning about to look at him.

_Yes, actually. You were never much for babysitting, Erik; you always left that to me or others._

_There's a first time for everything, Charles._

_In your case? _If Charles had been sitting in the seat next to him, Erik could have easily imagined him staring at him skeptically. _It's possible, I suppose, but not likely. Either you owe his mother a _very_ large favor, or there's something else. Which is it, Erik?_

…_I suppose it's too much to hope for that you wouldn't be able to tell if I was lying to you._

_Why would you need to lie to me? _Charles asked pointedly.

Erik got the point. With everything that Emma had taught him about blocking telepaths _("Why do you think the Russians made that helmet for Shaw in the first place?_"), he could push Charles out of his mind if he wished to, but honestly… He didn't. Erik didn't want to do that. In this case, it was difficult to be honest with himself, but if Erik was honest with himself, he would admit to being afraid that if he pushed Charles out now, he would never hear from him again. He didn't want that.

So instead, Erik drew a deep breath. _He's my son, Charles._

For several seconds, Erik received no reply, and he began to wonder if Charles hadn't withdrawn from the conversation entirely. It wouldn't be so difficult to believe, given the circumstances. He probably would have done the same in Charles's place, with Charles's powers, withdrawn to think about what he'd just been told. But then, he heard Charles's voice in his head, this time carrying with it faint hints of the hysterical behind its flat tones. _You're not joking, are you?_

Erik sighed heavily. _No, I'm not._

What followed was something Erik didn't have the occasion to hear often: Charles stammering. _Oh, my God, Erik. I am so sorry; I had no idea…_

_If you are referring to the fact that you unknowingly recruited my son to help break me out of the Pentagon, thereby alerting the government to his existence and his status as a mutant, then… Just don't worry about that. He's not what I would call easily led, and I doubt that the humans could ever catch up to him, if he was to set his mind to outrunning them._

_No one can run forever, Erik, _Charles said sadly. _Not Peter, and not you._

_I've no intention of running._

_No, of course not. Not even if the road leads you straight down to Hell._

_You know, I left that helmet behind for a reason, but I'm having trouble remembering what that reason was at the moment. _The fact that he didn't shut this conversation down right now, Erik supposed, served as proof that at some point during his time in prison, he had turned into a gigantic glutton for punishment. After all, he'd not been this way before he was imprisoned, and it might even explain why he barely even reacted to Charles decking him before he could even get out of that elevator.

Of course, Charles didn't let it drop there. _I'm… actually rather curious about that, Erik. Why _did _you leave your helmet at the White House? It would have been easy enough for you to retrieve it, and given what… happened after it was removed, I would have thought you'd want to take it._

Ah yes, the moment when Raven had knocked Erik's helmet off his head and Charles had taken the opportunity to immediately take over his mind and make him use his powers to get a chunk of debris off of him. Something that Erik would have done on his own if Charles had just _asked_ him.

_I heard that, Erik. _Charles's tone, such as it was, was noticeably tart. _Forgive me for thinking you weren't going to be reasonable, considering you were trying to kill the president and his entire cabinet at the time._

He seemed to be slipping.

_You wanted to know about the helmet, didn't you? _It would probably be best to steer the conversation back to calmer waters. _The reason I left it behind is a simple one, Charles. No more hiding._

_No more hiding, _Charles repeated. Not that he didn't understand what Erik meant; Erik recognized the tone Charles took to be an invitation for him to explain it himself, even from several states away.

_That's right. I won't hide my face from the humans. _If he was trying to go about incognito right now, it was more for Peter and Wanda's sakes than for his own (Even if Erik had known Peter for less than a week and had never even met Wanda). It wouldn't do for either of them to be associated with him, if he was captured again. _I'm not afraid for them to know who I am. And I won't hide my mind from you._

_In that case, please don't give me a reason to make you wish you had._

With that, Charles withdrew from the conversation, pulling his consciousness back to Westchester. Erik craned his head over his seat and stared at Peter. Still surrounded by a ring of grade-schoolers, Peter seemed to have no idea that his father had just had a mental conversation with someone who was currently in New York. Judging by his untroubled expression, it also seemed that Charles hadn't attempted to make telepathic contact with him.

Erik went back to staring out of his window at the cars and road and green hills that seemed more like hazy mirages (fuzzier the closer they were) than actual scenery. Indianapolis couldn't appear on the horizon soon enough.


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Summary: Erik and Peter make it to Indianapolis. Erik combs over the old lair, and Peter calls home.

* * *

"So this was where you and your old buddies hung out before you got arrested, huh?"

Erik had half-expected the government to have found this place. It wouldn't have surprised them, considering the way Trask and the CIA had finally tracked Azazel down, nine years after he was put into that concrete prison. (It had hurt, overhearing the guards whispering amongst themselves about that, the way it had hurt to hear them saying the same about Janos and Angel and Emma and Sean, and wondering the same about Raven, but somehow, Erik doubted she would care very much now if he was to tell her that.) But this place remained undefiled, unmarred with red tape or listening devices. It was, in its own way, a relief, knowing that he had something that the humans hadn't been able to ruin.

Even if that something was a hovel of an underground hideout in Indianapolis.

Erik nodded absently in response to Peter's question. "It was one of a few places, yes."

In much the same way that Erik had somehow managed to inherit Shaw's followers when he killed him, he had also inherited Shaw's hideouts. However, while this location was known to Shaw's followers, it was not one of Shaw's specifically. Shaw's hideouts were, while infinitely more comfortable, too well-known to the government to provide a truly safe place for Erik and his own following—there was also the fact that Erik wanted as little of what had been Shaw's as was possible. The helmet was enough. This was instead an old hideout of Janos's, from the days before he had thrown his lot in with Shaw. As such, it was rather less well-equipped than Shaw's hideouts had been.

"It's kinda bare, don't you think?" Peter set about exploring the hideout, the basement of an abandoned apartment building. He began trying to flip the light switches on and off, to no effect; even if this place was still getting electricity, the bulbs probably wouldn't work anymore anyways. The only reason Erik and Peter could see where they were going down here at all was on account of a flashlight and the door that had been left open, allowing a bright patch of sunlight to grow on the staircase and on the floor. Who knew how long it had been since anyone had last stayed here?

Beyond the lights, Peter tested out the sagging leather couch, the cloth-upholstered chair that Erik was both amazed and relieved hadn't molded since the hideout was last occupied. Peter examined every nook and cranny, before materializing at Erik's shoulder, eyebrow quirked quizzically. "Really doesn't look like much."

"Comfort wasn't really on our minds in those days, Pietro," Erik said quietly.

"Peter."

Erik began tugging on the braided rug (Another thing that he was amazed and relieved hadn't molded). "Come help me roll this back," he told Peter. "There's something under it I need to get to."

Between the two of them, Erik and Peter rolled the rug back easily, so that a large section of the floor was now exposed. Peter stared down at the exposed bit of floor and nudged it with his foot. Erik could understand why he might consider it strange. Where the rest of the floor was bare concrete, under the bit of rug the two of them had rolled back, the floor was made of metal.

Erik lifted the metal, which under normal circumstances appeared to be bolted to the concrete, up from the floor, sending it to rest gently against the nearest wall. Under it were several cardboard boxes, labeled with the names of their owners.

'_Emma.'_

'_Angel.'_

'_Janos.'_

'_Azazel.'_

'_Erik.'_

Raven's was gone. The space second from the right was empty. She must have come for it, at some point.

"Your old buddies' stuff?" Peter was already lifting the lid off of Erik's box, digging through clothes and books and such.

"Yes," Erik said shortly. "Anything we couldn't carry on our persons we left here when there was work to be done. And I had best find _none_ of their belongings on you or in your bag later."

Like that, the lid was back on the box. "Whatever." Peter got to his feet and stuck his thumb back towards the door. "I was gonna go check out the Motor Speedway?" A hopeful gleam entered into his brown eyes.

"Do you know how to get to it from here?"

"Well…"

"And do you know how to get back to our hotel from there?"

"I'd find it eventually."

"And I would rather you didn't have to do it that way." Erik lifted the lid of his box long enough to take a city map out of it. He stepped into the light and laid it out on the floor. "We are here, right now." Taking a pen out of his pocket, he drew a dot over their present location and labeled it. "The motor speedway is here." He circled the area; no labeling needed, really. "And the hotel is here." He drew another dot, and labeled it as well.

Peter took the map when it was offered to him. "'Kay. See you later. Don't get arrested," he mumbled absently.

"I should say the same to you," Erik retorted, but the words were said to empty space.

_Right…_

Left alone, he got down on his knees and lifted his box up out of the depression in the floor. Janos used to swear that it was used to hide alcohol during prohibition; Emma or Angel would usually scoff in response and offer up some more mundane explanation for why there was a large hole in the floor. Whatever the reason, the six of them had soon found other uses for it that had nothing to do with smuggling illegal alcohol or stockpiling weapons and ammunition.

Peter likely thought that life on the run, in hiding, had been exciting. Erik could only imagine the sort of romantic notions the boy harbored concerning the lives of mutants who worked outside the law to better their own lives. The truth was, it was an eventful life, but in their circumstances, an 'eventful' life wasn't a safe one, or a particularly happy one.

For the most part, they had been very hungry. In the interest of keeping the group fed and financed, Emma had immediately moved after being rescued from the CIA to drain Shaw's bank accounts. Unfortunately, she'd only been able to get a pitifully small amount out before the accounts were frozen; in retrospect, the CIA had probably been waiting for someone to try to touch Shaw's bank accounts. Beyond that, they had only what money the six of them had access to and could scrounge up later, which in the case of most of them, wasn't a whole lot. There hadn't been much money for food, for the daily comforts.

There were other disadvantages to living in the basement of an abandoned apartment building. While Raven had been able to fix things so that they would have electricity, the basement did _not_ possess air conditioning or central heating, which was hellish in summer and even worse in winter. Several of them, including Erik, had taken refuge at the local YMCA at night until Azazel, who had been spending his nights in the rafters of a Catholic church (in an ironic move that surprised absolutely no one), showed up one day with a gigantic electrical fan. A few months later, when the weather started to get cold, he showed up one morning with a space heater. No one was willing to question how he had gotten them. After that, they slept in sleeping bags and under their coats, alternating between who got the couch, who got the chair, and who had to sleep on the floor.

Here was where they had taken refuge, plotting out their next move. Here was where Erik had first learned of Trask kidnapping mutants, though he'd not known who was taking them and why at the time. Here was where he had lived with those five, some friends, some not, but…

But when they were dead, he remembered them all as though they had been friends.

Erik lifted the lid off of his own box again. They needed more money. Peter still had a fair amount of the cash Marya had given him left, but that wasn't going to be enough to get them all the way to San Francisco. Erik had traded in more than one ingot of Nazi gold for cash in his time (usually after persuading an increasingly terrified banker to do that for him); most of the money from that was gone, but he still had some left.

There was about two hundred dollars left, where the rest had been spent on groceries and maps and such. Erik looked down at the bills in his hands and sighed. Between paying for bus tickets and hotel rooms and food (he and Peter did _not_ need to eat stolen snack foods at every meal), this likely still wouldn't be enough. Reluctantly, he began to lift the lids off of the other boxes and search through them as well.

(It wasn't stealing. It wasn't _anything _like desecrating a loved one's grave. The dead had no need of money. This wasn't ancient Greece where the locals were convinced that if someone didn't put a coin under their tongues when they died they'd never reach the afterlife.)

Like him, Emma had had around two hundred dollars to her name when the CIA captured her. There was a small hand mirror in her box, a pair of running shoes with socks balled up inside of them, a box-cutter and a white, sequined scarf. There was also a crinkled, weathered photo in a frame, of a teenaged Emma and an older boy, standing arm in arm and both smiling brightly. Emma, _smiling_, and in such a way that didn't look hard and sharp and cold as diamond. Erik slid the photo out of its frame carefully and turned it over for any hint of notes. He found it: _'1948, Boston, Christian Frost and his sister Emma.'_

Erik remembered. Emma had mentioned her brother once; it must have been a slip of some kind, since she never once talked about her life before she fell in with Shaw otherwise. Just something about how Christian might have fitted in better with mutants than Erik thought, despite not being one himself. _I remember now_. He had made some offhand comment about how mutants and humans were never going to be able to live together; Emma had fired off her comment about Christian as a retort, looking unusually hurt. Erik had never asked why she said so. Looking back, he wished he had.

Angel's was next. She had about fifty dollars, with a few scattered nickels and dimes on the bottom of the box. Erik found them under a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte and a copy of _Jane Eyre_. It looked as though, whenever she had left this place for the last time, she had also left those ceramic leaf earrings she'd been so fond of.

Janos had only ten dollars to his name when he died. The single ten-dollar bill was stuffed in a shot glass, hidden amidst a suit jacket and a yo-yo and a bag full of soda can tabs.

Azazel had not a single penny to his name—either that, or he alone had been carrying his money on his person when he was captured. Erik did find something else though, something that made his jaw drop in shock.

"What on Earth?!" he muttered, gaping down at the photo grasped in his hands.

It was dated 1972. In it was Azazel, Raven in her natural blue form, and a baby sitting on Azazel's lap, with the former's tail and the latter's coloring. Raven was beaming so much that Erik wouldn't be surprised to learn that she had dislocated her jaw afterwards. Uncharacteristically for him, Azazel looked every inch the proud father, holding the tiny boy upright so that he wouldn't fall over.

_So where has the child gone?_

(Much like he'd done with the photograph of Peter and Wanda playing at being superheroes, Erik tucked this photograph into his coat pocket. He told himself that it was to return it to Raven if he ever came across her again. But considering that she would probably gut him given half the chance, that seemed unlikely.)

His search ended, Erik replaced the lids and, still on his knees, stared at the boxes. His own, he would do with as he would, but it seemed indecent somehow to leave the others where they were. They were the effects of the dead. When someone died, their loved ones usually took possession of their belongings, so that they wouldn't sit in the dark to gather dust and rot, and when Erik had time, he supposed he needed to make sure that such a thing didn't happen to these. But where to send them?

Angel's step-father had kicked her out of his house when her mutation emerged; the rest of her family had disowned her when her desperate financial state caused her to turn to work as a stripper (And they all conveniently ignored the fact that she had done this because she wasn't being offered help from _anyone_, let alone them). Erik could not think of anything that would persuade him to send Angel's belongings, such as they were, back to her 'family.' Charles might want them, though.

Her brother Christian was the only family member Emma had ever made mention of, and she had spoken so little about him. Boston was a big place, and Christian didn't necessarily have to be living there anymore. He could have been killed in Vietnam, or Korea. He could have gone to live in another country. Erik didn't know a thing about Janos or Azazel's families, or their lives before they had gone to work for Shaw…

And the thought floated through his mind that he was probably going to end up sending _all_ of their effects to Charles, eventually. Charles would just _love_ that.

-0-0-0-

Peter had to admit that he had really missed sleeping in a bed. He had never been a fan of camping, even when tents and sleeping bags were provided (so needless to say, his stint in the boy scouts had been a short one), and going without had been even less pleasant. Not that he had said as much. It would be pointless to say as much (as Marya kept reminding him, he was _not_ a child anymore), and he got the distinct impression that Erik wasn't enjoying the forced camping trips any more than he was. Silence that surly in the mornings couldn't mean a whole lot else.

So Peter wasn't terribly surprised, and yet managed to be elated, when Erik announced that they were finding a hotel for the night they'd be spending in Indianapolis. The hotel in question really wasn't what anyone would call a swanky place, but there were beds and a shower and a fridge and microwaves! Peter had never realized how much he took these things for granted before he wound up spending all of his nights sleeping on the ground somewhere. The hotel also had a phone, which had proved quite welcome as well.

"Yeah, I _know_ I should have called earlier, but we've been kinda off the grid." Peter lied back on his bed, head on the pillow and phone pressed up against his ear. He wound the cord around his finger listlessly, as he had done in the eternity between his dialing the number and Marya picking up (God, phone calls could be tedious.)

Marya made a clicking sound with her tongue so loud that it could be easily heard over the phone. "I don't much like the sound of that."

"Well, we had to ditch the car in West Virginia, and that sucked—"

"You had to leave your car?! Oh, Peter…"

They were speaking in Romani, as Marya had taught Peter and Wanda when they were small. Language is history, Marya and elderly Uncle Isaac had told them. It is the language your mother learned in her cradle, the tongue of our people. Our language is the beginning of our culture, which too many have tried to take away from us. Even if Marya Maximoff's household didn't keep marime* very well, they kept the language.

Speaking Romani had come in handy for Peter and Wanda at school, too. Since no one else at school spoke the language, the twins could have a private conversation without eavesdroppers whenever they wanted—well, up until the moment the lit teacher called them out and threatened to give them detention unless they agreed to "speak proper English like _loyal_ Americans" (_Somebody_ was a diehard McCarthyist who liked to imagine that Communists lurked in the air vents outside the teacher's lounge). There was no reason for worrying about eavesdroppers this time—Erik had stepped out a couple of hours (an eternity) ago and had yet to return—but Peter liked being able to speak Romani, and so did Marya. They had been the only ones in the house speaking it for over a year, now.

"We got pulled over by some cops," Peter explained. "Dad got paranoid, and we ditched the car to be safe." Peter left out his own part in this story, his own fear, the terrified thought of _Oh my God. They're either gonna send me to prison or try to shoot me right here. _He didn't particularly want to dwell on that.

"Let me get this straight." Marya did not sound in any way, shape or form amused. "Because Erik got paranoid… you had to abandon your car."

"Aww, Mom, it's not that bad. Yeah, Wanda'll bawl me out when she finds out, but we can save up our money and buy _another _Nova on the cheap for being a beater."

Peter heard a sound over the phone that might have been Marya laughing. "For someone who gets bored so easily, you are fond of repetition sometimes."

Peter shrugged, though he knew Marya couldn't see him doing it (She could probably tell though, with that Mom sixth-sense she seemed to have sometimes). His mouth quirked down in a frown for a moment, before he forced it back up into that neutral line—smile hovering on his lips even if it didn't come through all the way, all the time. Honestly? He'd loved that car. So had Wanda. They'd spent weeks fixing it up and making it drivable, and this when they didn't even have their driver's licenses yet; they'd had to lie to the car dealer and say it was a gift for their foster mother.

Of course Wanda hadn't taken it with her when she left; it was _theirs_, not hers alone, and that didn't make it hers to take. But for the past year, even though the car was one of those things that was _theirs_, it had effectively been Peter's—_his_. There weren't a whole lot of teenagers who enjoyed having to share their stuff with their siblings, but Wanda had been gone for so long. Peter would have been happy to label everything he owned as 'theirs' if it just meant that he could see her again.

"Peter…" Marya's tone softened, faint worry taking the place of fond exasperation. "Are you alright?"

Peter squirmed on the bed. "Yeah, Mom, I'm fine."

"Are you alright, Peter?" Marya insisted. "Have you been getting enough to eat?"

He looked down, examined himself. Peter would be lying if he said that his clothes didn't fit a bit more loosely now than they had when he left his home in Alexandria. For most people, weight loss wouldn't be visible after spending the past week the way he had. But then, Peter wasn't most people. "It's okay, Mom."

"I mean it, Peter." There was no mistaking the worry in her voice now. "You remember what happened the last time you stopped eating as much as you should."

"I remember, Mom." A beat. "I don't think I'm gonna forget that any time soon."

He'd splurged this evening on food, and that was by Peter's standards. A lot of the meals eaten at the Maximoff household were takeout, which was just fine considering that everyone in that house loved takeout. Marya had always made sure her kids ate healthy food—in Peter's case had to practically shove his vegetables down his throat for a few years—but there were times, a lot of times as the years wore on, when takeout was just easier. It was cheaper, for Marya, Wanda and Lorna it lasted for several meals, and you could at least order dishes that had steamed vegetables in them if you were worried about how healthy or unhealthy this was.

Peter's love of takeout, specifically takeout of the Chinese persuasion, had dictated what he went for this time. He had been living off of snack cakes and hot dogs and corn dogs for a week now. All good food, true, but for God's sake, he needed _real _food. He had placed his order in the tiny little hole-in-the-wall restaurant and then ran around the block (and the next five) a few times to give himself something to do while he waited. Peter had ordered enough food for approximately six people; the man he gave his order to asked if he was having a party.

Food for five of those people, Peter had eaten himself, devouring rice and noodles and all manner of shellfish and steamed vegetables and pot-stickers and crab Rangoon and plenty of other stuff besides. It had been a week since he'd eaten as he needed to, and if he was eating more now than he usually did, well, that was just to make up for all the eating he'd lost in the past week. If his stomach felt uncomfortably tight, well, that was just the price he had to pay, and he'd be hungry again in the morning, no matter how much he ate this evening.

What was left, Peter had set aside for his father, one of the takeout place's fried rice dishes, and an eggroll and a couple of pot-stickers. He had been kind of hesitant on that score, actually. Peter knew that Erik was Jewish; it was one of the little tidbits of information about him that Peter and Wanda had managed to wheedle from a wary Marya when they were little (And come to think of it, Peter felt kind of stupid for not putting two and two together when, to make them feel better, Marya had told the story of a "friend" of hers and Magda's who could move metal objects without touching them). Peter knew also that observant Jews had certain dietary laws that needed to be abided by. Unfortunately, Peter didn't know a whole lot about those dietary laws (he supposed he'd have to look them up later); the most he knew was that pork was definitely not on the menu. He hoped that what he'd gotten would be okay. It wasn't worth rocking the boat over something like that.

"Are you happy?"

Here was the question Peter was hoping she wouldn't ask him. He'd come to dread it over the past year, honestly. "Mom, I'm finally looking for Wanda. _Really_ looking, instead of running around D.C. hoping I'll find her there. I'm the happiest I've been since she left."

Mercifully, Marya took his cue and switched the course of the conversation. "Have you heard anything about where Wanda is."

"Uh-uh. But she always talked about how much she wanted to see San Francisco, so I figure that's as good a place as any to look."

"San Francisco?" Even without seeing her in person, Peter could practically see Marya's shoulders sagging. "Peter, that city is _huge_. Even if Wanda is there, even with someone who can move as fast as you can looking for her, you could search for weeks and never see hide or hair of your sister."

"I _know_, Mom. But I've gotta look."

"That you do. I wouldn't stop you."

All of a sudden, there came the sound of a key twisting the lock. Peter looked up when Erik slipped inside of the room, resetting the lock behind him and putting up the door chain. "Oh, hey," Peter said in English, putting his hand over the telephone mouthpiece. "I picked up Chinese. Yours is in the fridge."

Erik nodded absently, not looking at him.

When Peter turned his attention back to the phone, Marya said, "Well, Lorna has already gone to bed, and I'd rather not wake her."

Peter tried not to let the taste of disappointment sit too heavily in his mouth. He switched back to Romani—there was a potential eavesdropper in earshot now. "Oh, okay. Tell the Munchkin I said hello."

"I'll do that, and if you call at an earlier hour, you could speak to her yourself. Also…" Marya hesitated for a few moments (Another eternity). "…A man came by our house today with an offer for you."

"Who was it?" Peter frowned more deeply. Erik's paranoia was probably rubbing off on him, that had to be it, but he didn't like the idea of some strange man showing up at their house looking specifically for him. If it was the police looking for something he'd stolen, that'd be different. Marya probably would have told him about that straight off, followed by her by now completely memorized speech on how, given that he was now technically an adult, he had to take responsibility and be a functioning part of society. But this? This sounded weird.

"Yes, he said his name was Charles Xavier. He did show up at our house about a month ago—he was looking for you then, too."

Marya still sounded a little concerned, but Peter felt all the tension flow out of his shoulders. "Oh yeah, him. He's cool, Mom; he's a mutant like me and Wanda." He was also that guy that Erik seemed to be in love with, despite vehement denials and frankly vicious sucker punches.

"Yes, I know," she said dryly. "He gave a demonstration of his powers when I proved to be a bit too cagey for his liking. Funny thing is, I distinctly remember him being able to _walk_ the last time we met."

"What, he can't now?"

"No, he can't. He was in a wheelchair the whole time; had to be helped into the house. He didn't really seem to want to explain _why_ he was in that wheelchair either." The note of frustration in her voice was that distinct one Peter had become familiar with after a lifetime with Marya, the frustration of not knowing the answer to a question and having her efforts to find that answer blocked. She ought to have been a detective, not a clerk.

Peter grimaced. "That sounds… god-awful, honestly." He could not imagine being stuck in a wheelchair. Peter was sure he'd die of boredom and frustration within an hour if, by some unlucky occurrence, he could no longer walk. Life was meant for moving, for walking, for running, for strolling and gamboling. Life wasn't meant to be spent sitting in a chair, unable to move around unaided. While he didn't know anyone who could move as fast as he could, nor anyone who put quite so high a value on being able to run around as he did, Peter knew that going from being able to walk under their own power to being unable to walk at all would have to be a huge upheaval for _anyone_. Not something he wished on other people, he had to say.

"Yes, it does." Marya was another who prided herself on her independence, her ability to look after herself unaided.

"So what'd he want?" Peter asked, steering the conversation back on course.

"He said that at some point—and _of course_ he couldn't tell me when—he was opening, well, re-opening, a school for… people like you and Wanda. Mutants. What he said was…" Marya hesitated "…He said that the school was so that you would learn how to better control your powers, and so that you would be able to be with people like you. Does that sound like somewhere you would want to go, Peter?"

There was no mistaking the strain of anxiety in Marya's voice. She had been alive long enough and had been through enough that she knew how it started. You get all the people you don't want around in one place, shove 'em in like sardines and refuse them adequate food and water, refuse them proper medical care, shoot anyone caught trying to leave. Sometimes, you shoot even if they aren't trying to leave, just for fun. Marya had been there. She had always told Peter and Wanda (and later Lorna as well) not to trust the government _too much_. She had always told them not to follow the government blindly, not to do what someone said just because they claimed to be a representative of the U.S. government.

"_You are not sheep. You are not like lambs that they can lead into a slaughterhouse without fuss. You can't claim the excuse of ignorance, that you didn't know what might happen. It's happened before; it can happen again. I know this is frightening for you. I don't want to frighten you. But you need to know."_

"Yeah, sure!"

But this was different. This Xavier guy was a mutant. On the one hand, being taught and living with some guy his dad had been (or still was, even if he didn't want to admit it) in love with, and had apparently had a nasty break-up with at some point in the past? Awkward. On the other hand, Peter would get to live with other mutants and see what they could do. It'd be a place where no one looked twice at his gray hair or did a double-take at how fast he could talk. And whatever crazy terrorist super-villain scheme his father was currently trying to cook up, Peter didn't want any part of that.

"Do you think he'd take Wanda too?"

"I imagine so. But please don't force your sister to do anything she doesn't want to do."

"Oh, come on! When have I ever done that?!"

"I distinctly remember an occasion when the two of you were eight. Something to do with the ketchup bottle and the garden hose?"

"Mom? Can we please stop talking about these things like I haven't changed at all in the past ten years?" Peter asked testily.

She laughed. "Alright. There are plenty of other stories I could talk about, but I'm afraid Lorna would try to reenact them. God forbid we have a repeat of the Day of Baking Soda."

"Well of course she'd try to reenact that. Munchkin's cool like that."

"Don't encourage her. I'm afraid she'll somehow hear all of this even though she's asleep." Marya sighed. "Well, it's late and I've got work in the morning. I love you, Peter. Please try to call again soon; I'll tell you if Wanda's called me."

They both knew she wouldn't have that sort of news the next time Peter called her. Wanda hadn't called once since she left.

"Love you too, Mom. I promise I'll call earlier next time; tell Munchkin I miss her."

"I will, Peter."

Peter put the phone back on the hook and sighed, just a little bit. He looked over at the other bed and saw Erik sitting on the edge, wolfing down his warmed-up supper. Either Peter hadn't picked out something that went against Jewish dietary laws, or Erik just didn't care. "So what were you doing?" Peter asked, staring at him.

"Mailing packages," Erik replied succinctly.

"Mailing…" Peter's eyes widened. "Oh, shit! You didn't just mail someone a bomb, did you?!"

"_What?!_" Judging by just how offended Erik looked at the suggestion, either was protesting too much, or he really was offended by the suggestion. Peter couldn't really tell which. "Of course not! What makes you think I would do that?"

Peter shrugged. "Who ever knows what a terrorist super-villain's gonna do in his spare time?"

Erik glared at him over the 'terrorist super-villain' _thing_ (_Look, man, if the shoe fits…_) but didn't respond. "I just did exactly what I said I did. I mailed some packages."

"Who to?"

"An old friend," Erik told him, his face unreadable.

* * *

Marime are purity laws dictating social behavior traditionally followed by Roma and Sinti.


	7. Chapter Seven

So, with this entry, I start on what's pretty much a recurring theme throughout this storyline. Namely: Erik screwed up. Badly. (But I don't suppose I needed to tell any of you that.)

Chapter summary: Erik and Peter get to Detroit, and Erik has a chat with his contact there.

* * *

The weather was starting to cool and the oil prices were starting to skyrocket when Erik and Peter reached Detroit. It had been ten years since Erik had walked these streets, and they had changed little to his eyes, though to be fair, he had never paid much attention to the evolution or decay of cities. He thought Detroit looked slightly dirtier than it had in 1963, but at the same time, memory distorting behind concrete walls and glass could have imprinted a cleaner image than what was reality.

There were a few posters tacked to telephone poles and on the sides of buildings that Erik hadn't seen ten years ago, or even in other cities when he had first been liberated from his concrete prison.

He wouldn't have minded not seeing them at all.

'_Down with mutants!'_

Childish print on a childishly bright red background.

'_Do YOU know who your child's friends are?'_

There was a picture of a little child dragonfly-like wings and an insect's compound eyes in line with other, presumably human schoolchildren. The wings were very much like Angel's; it made Erik wonder if one of Trask's underlings, now that the man had been arrested for trying to sell his Sentinels to the Soviet Union, had had the temerity to publish Trask's "tests" conducted upon the mutants brought to his labs.

'_Muties! They could be anywhere!'_

Should he be surprised at how quickly the humans had come up with a new slur?

It was pathetic, honestly, pathetic and so typical of humans that, once confronted with their fear of the unknown and the different, would go looking for scapegoats. Of course they branded mutants their new scapegoat, now that they knew of them. Erik scowled darkly at the posters, only restraining himself from tearing them down by reasoning with himself that that would be too obvious. They were trying not to draw attention to themselves unless it was necessary.

Erik heard a small noise behind him, and turned to see that Peter's eyes were riveted on the poster depicting the line of schoolchildren. He couldn't really read Peter's expression. The boy's mouth was pressed into a thin, tight line, and he was standing unnaturally still. After a few moments, Erik supposed that Peter might have been worried—beyond that, he couldn't tell what was going on in the boy's head at all. That in itself was a little worrying. It wasn't like Peter had been hard to read before.

"Keep walking." Erik planted his hand behind Peter's shoulders, propelling him forward. "Don't linger too long; don't stare at those posters," he muttered. "Do not draw attention to yourself."

His eyes lingered on the ends of Peter's silver-gray hair, sticking out from his cap as they were wont to. At least when Peter kept his hat on, it was impossible to tell that it wasn't dyed, though at the same time, Erik wondered how much longer it would be before teenagers with dyed hair started to be harassed in the streets. He did wish Peter would cut it; he didn't know how to persuade him, forcing him was out of the question, and Erik had the distinct impression that trying to cut Peter's hair in his sleep wasn't going to end well. The idea of Peter having to hide physical manifestations of his mutation galled Erik more than ever, but it worried him (yes, he could admit that) that Peter would not even think of dyeing it.

They continued their walk east from where the bus had dropped them off, Erik carefully keeping his eyes directly in front of him. It was a trick he'd learned during his years tracking down Shaw's associates—walk swiftly, keep your head held high, make eye contact with others if you must but not if you don't need to, and above all else, behave as though you have a right to be there. There was another usage for it now. If he saw another one of those posters, Erik suspected that he would have torn it down from the telephone pole or building it was attached to. And then tracked down whoever was printing them for good measure. He didn't need to be doing that. All in good time, but not right now.

Finally, after three more blocks, they reached their destination. It was a bar on a street corner, an unassuming little place, really, with more windows than Erik had ever been comfortable with and a sputtering, green neon sign proclaiming its name to the world. 'The Waterfront Bar', it was called, a name that didn't make much sense, seeing as it didn't sit on or near the waterfront. But Erik had never made comment on the name when he visited.

They paused outside of the door. "Listen," Erik told Peter, waiting until he was sure he had Peter's attention to continue. "When I am talking with my contacts, do _not _let on that you and I are related."

It didn't look like Peter had understood, because he quirked an eyebrow and frowned disagreeably. "Any reason _why_?" he asked, folding his arms across his chest. He tapped his forefinger against his arm impatiently.

"For someone who seems to know something about fugitives, you are—" Erik cut himself off before he could say 'painfully naïve.' Peter had never been on the run before. He had never spent days and weeks and months and years at a time peering back over his shoulder. Erik should be grateful for that. "Being known to be my son could cause problems for you later," he said quietly. "You and Wanda. I'd rather you didn't have to deal with that."

After a long moment, Peter nodded, though there was still something mutinous in the set of his jaw. "'Kay." His gaze strayed to the door. "So, how're we gonna get in? Sign says the bar doesn't open 'til six, and it is currently—" he rolled back his sleeve to check his watch, probably just to be melodramatic "—five o'clock. Door's still locked." He'd probably checked that so fast that Erik couldn't see.

The bar's many windows did have one advantage: all Erik had to do was look to see that the bartender was inside, washing down the countertop. So there was that, at least. He turned his gaze back to Peter, staring quizzically at him. "You mean to tell me you couldn't just find a way in yourself?"

Peter snorted. "Contrary to popular belief, breaking and entering isn't really my thing. I prefer places with _plenty_ of exits, not just the one I made myself. Springing you out of jail was just a one-time thing."

At that, Erik actually wanted to laugh. "Never say never, kid."

The lock was easily handled. Erik had learned the ins and outs of manipulating simple locks with his powers as a young adult, a skill that had come in handy from time to time when hunting down Shaw. He pushed the door open, and motioned for Peter to follow him inside.

"Bar doesn't open for another hour," the bartender muttered without looking up. "You're gonna have to…" She looked up, and her eyebrows shot up. After a few moments of staring open-mouthed, she unstuck her jaw and said dryly, "You know, Erik, we used to take down bets on how long it would take for you to show up on national television. Gotta admit, it took longer than any of us expected."

At least there had not been the commingled horror and worry in her voice that there had been in Marya's. Erik didn't like the idea that he inspired fear in everyone he met who recognized him (humans who would do harm to mutants needed to be afraid, but the rest did not), whether or not they knew him, whether or not he was trying to frighten them. It was an idea that had been playing in the back of his mind for a few days now—he had no idea why; it probably came from the memories dug up when he sorted his late allies' belongings—but if she could have such a normal reaction to him, it probably wasn't anything to worry about.

Adara Nejem was a mutant of Lebanese and Arabic descent, an expatriate of the former country who had been living in the United States for her entire adult life. Her mutation was a form of telepathy that allowed her to understand and speak whatever language she heard spoken to her. When she had explained her mutation to Erik, she had explained that there were qualifying factors. Adara's mutation did not enable her to read or write in the language she had "absorbed", and if the language had any different standards between genders, be it standards of politeness or word choices that were considered more appropriate for one gender over another, it was very much for the best that she picked up the language in question from a woman. There was probably a story behind that, but Erik had never tried to figure out what it was.

"Do you want something to drink?" Adara asked, when Erik took what, once upon a time, had been his regular seat at the bar.

"No, thank you. I'm afraid I'm not here to pay a social call."

A grayish blur zoomed past the two of them, and Erik frowned to see Peter standing behind the bar beside Adara, staring at the bottles on display with interest. "You're not drinking anything either," he said chidingly, "unless what you're interested in is non-alcoholic."

Peter held up his hands. "Hey, I'm legal*," he protested. "Mom's never let me drink before; I just want to try some."

"Marya's no fool, and I happen to agree with her. I don't care if you're legal; you're not drinking anything alcoholic here."

Peter getting drunk was not something Erik ever wanted to deal with. He could not imagine the way the boy would behave after a few mugs of beer, not unless he was willing to delve into the realm of nightmares. Alcohol and a teenager who could probably get from one side of the continent to the other faster than a jet plane didn't sound like anything resembling a good combination.

Then again, Peter had mentioned that his mutation required him to eat much more than normal humans (And likely more than most mutants as well). That would indicate that his metabolism was also much faster than a normal human's (Or mutant's). In that case, was it possible that his body would metabolize alcohol much more quickly than was considered normal?

It would be worth investigating, but _only_ under controlled circumstances, and these were not controlled circumstances. Besides, Adara didn't put up with much foolishness in her bar. She certainly wouldn't appreciate it if it turned out that Peter metabolized alcohol at roughly the "normal" rate and proceeded to wreak havoc.

Unless Erik was very much mistaken, Peter actually _stuck his tongue out_ at him for a fraction of a second before zooming back out from behind the bar, and heading off towards the pool table instead. Erik directed his attention to the windows long enough to draw the blinds shut. The windows may have been tinted, but that wouldn't be enough to keep passersby from seeing Peter moving at full speed.

Adara watched Peter as he played a game of high-speed pool against himself; the sharp _clack_ of the balls hitting each other quickly became a regular sound feature in the background. "Thought you didn't recruit kids," she remarked, pursing her lips. The look she proceeded to direct at Erik was a reproachful one.

"I don't," Erik said shortly. "I'm just keeping an eye on him."

"Hmm." Whether or not Adara believed that explanation any more than Charles had, Erik would never know. "Okay, you've got half an hour before the wait staff comes," Adara told Erik, laying her washrag down on the countertop. She stared seriously at him, the soft lighting making her face seem carven. "If you're not here for a social call, why are you here?"

"I've been out of communication for a while."

"You don't say? Personally, I was starting to wonder if you hadn't died." Adara's voice was light, but her tone had just the right amount of strain in it to ring false.

"He was in jail," Peter called from across the room with a laugh, before Erik could say anything.

Erik shot him a look, but didn't respond—it wasn't like Peter ever seemed to mind that. "Like I said, I've been out of communication. Now that that's no longer a problem, I've been trying to get through to my other contacts throughout the country, but have heard nothing from most. Have you heard anything from them?"

Adara frowned, her brow creasing. Slowly, she shook her head. "You know I never had contact with the out-of-towners…"

Erik sighed heavily. He'd been afraid of that; except for the odd visit back to Lebanon, Adara had never been very interested in what went on outside of Detroit. "Alright." For a moment, he really did want that drink Adara had offered him. "What about the mutants here in Detroit?"

Detroit had a small underground community of mutants, most of whom counted this bar as their 'base.' Nearly eleven years ago, Adara had been the only one receptive enough to Erik's offers to even agree to act as a contact. Maybe that had changed.

She shifted her weight uncomfortably. "Gone."

"What?! All of them?!"

There was no mistaking the flash of distress that flickered in Adara's eyes. "Yeah, all of them. Nearly all of the men got drafted into Vietnam. We started to get rumors about how mutants who went to 'Nam didn't come back, and some of the men who were still left started draft-dodging; I haven't heard back from them, either."

"And the rest?" Erik started to feel a cold knot of dread in his stomach, and viciously quelled the feeling.

"Well." Adara drummed her fingers against the countertop. "Naoto Ishikawa got medical dispensation. He was the one with the botched surgery, couldn't walk without a cane, remember?"

Erik nodded. "I remember him." He remembered the long conversations Ishikawa and Adara would have in this bar, the two of them carrying on in fluent Japanese. He used to marvel at the range of Adara's abilities, lamenting the fact that she wouldn't take any more of an active role in the Brotherhood—Adara would have made a wonderful translator if every they took their activities to another country. The lights would get brighter and brighter when Ishikawa got excited, and Erik would smile into his glass. "What happened to him?"

"He got arrested for… _something_, I can't imagine what, about six months ago. Nobody's seen him since."

"What about Catherine and Maryanne Bowles?" Those two were identical twins, both of whom possessed vivid purple hair and the ability to make dead plants come back to life with a touch.

"The same thing." Adara's lip quivered slightly, before she forced it into stillness.

Erik squeezed his eyes shut. While he didn't like to admit favoritism, he had to admit that the idea of the Bowles ending up in Trask's laboratories was an especially disturbing one. He remembered the twins' barracks in Auschwitz, and would never be able to expunge the memory of Mengele's horrific experiments from his mind. The fact that the man still went free was nearly as galling as it had been to consider that Shaw was still free, in all of the years that Erik had tried to track him down.

Erik turned about and stared at Peter, who was still engrossed in his one-man game of pool and was apparently unaware of his father's scrutiny. For some reason, he felt reluctant to take his eyes off of him.

Finally, Erik directed his attention back at Adara. "What about John Adler?"

"Said he was going to visit his mother in France about a year ago. He never came back, but I suppose that all that might mean is that he decided to make his visit permanent."

"Siobhan McGowan?"

"Vanished. There were missing person posters, but nothing ever came of it."

"Sarah Holt?"

"Same as Siobhan."

"Mark Walters?"

"Ran off to Alberta."

"And Jane Brown?"

"Also ran off to Alberta. The two of them got married over there, actually."

"Oh. I'll have to congratulate them if I see them," Erik muttered. They was all of the mutants of Detroit that were known to him, those who either due to gender or medical problems could not be drafted. The only other mutants in this city were either children or adults unknown to him. He cast a glance in Adara's direction. "Have you reconsidered my offer since we last spoke, Adara?"

Adara shook her head sharply, her thick black hair obscuring her face. "No, I have _not_," she said firmly, more firmly than Erik was used to—though perhaps, in the past ten years, he had simply forgotten that Adara could be so firm. "I'm no more a fighter now than I was then. I like my comforts, and I _don't_ like the idea of being homeless and going without food for days at a time.

"Listen." Her tone and expression was still firm and serious, but worry started to creep in as well. "Ever since you went on television and made your big speech, there's been trouble. Anybody with visible mutations has been harassed or worse, and it's not just mutants, either—people with mismatched eyes or birth defects that make them look 'different' have been having the same problems. I'm lucky." Adara said this without shame, but without pride, either. "I don't look any different from normal humans. I don't want any part of this."

Erik's face darkened as he drank in what she told him, and remembered the posters he had seen tacked up around the city. He was naïve not to realize that hateful words had already morphed into violence. "Well, rest assured that I will be addressing that 'trouble.' One last thing." He drew a deep breath, forced himself to calm down. "At any point in the past year, have you seen a young woman by the name of Wanda Maximoff? She would be around seventeen or eighteen, dark-haired, fair-skinned."

Adara shook her head, brow furrowed. "No, I haven't. Keep in mind that I get a lot of people coming through here. Who is she?"

_My daughter_. "That doesn't matter. Thank you for your time, Adara."

As he and Peter left the bar, Erik tried to ignore the bitter taste forming on the roof of his mouth.

* * *

* Fun fact: The drinking age in the U.S. was still 18 in 1973.

Note: Josef Mengele escaped arrest after the end of World War II and lived until his death in Brazil in 1979, when he suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned. He was indeed fascinated with twins, and performed horrifying experiments upon them during his time in Auschwitz, including sewing their bodies together, injecting chemicals into their eyes in an attempt to change the subjects' eye color, and others.

Another note: While the propensity for a woman to give birth to identical twins is not a hereditary trait, the propensity to give birth to fraternal twins is considered a hereditary trait. A woman is more likely to give birth to fraternal twins if she herself has a fraternal twin sibling, if she has already given birth to fraternal twins, or if she has siblings who are fraternal twins. Just… something to keep in mind in the context of this story.


	8. Chapter Eight

Peter Maximoff never had a father around growing up, and for the most part, that was completely fine. Marya had had a series of boyfriends that never seemed to last longer than a month or so—they got scared when they saw the twins, and Peter and Wanda agreed that if a man was scared by the idea that a woman he was seeing had kids (even foster kids), he was not worth keeping around, thank you very much. In time, Marya inevitably came to agree with them on that score, though the time it took was usually directly proportional to just how active a role the twins had played in alienating the latest guy from Marya.

Then there came the jackass from Toledo, the guy so worthless that Peter refused to mention him by name. The Maximoff household did not talk about the jackass from Toledo. Peter would tell you that he was very sorry that he had begged Marya to take them to the Great Lakes the summer before Lorna was born, and not much beyond that. The only good thing to come from that relationship was Lorna herself. The whole thing seemed to have soured Marya on men permanently; she'd never even considered another relationship after that one.

The Maximoff twins had never had a father around growing up, and they had not appreciated any attempts by any man to replace him. If they were going to have a dad, they wanted _their_ dad, their flesh and blood father. Even if Marya's various boyfriends didn't understand this, Marya got it—she had never pretended to be their birth mother, had never hid from them the fact that she was their adoptive mother and that their birth mother had been her cousin. (Peter hadn't called Aunt Marya 'Mom' until he was ten years old. He wasn't proud of that.)

Peter had expected his association with Erik Lehnsherr to begin and end in the Pentagon. Sure, it was cool, breaking someone out of what had to be one of the highest-security prisons on the planet, but in retrospect, it hadn't been the smartest thing to do. He hadn't asked nearly enough questions about the guy and what the hell he was doing in the Pentagon in the first place. Peter had known it must have been for something big, but hey, Nelson Mandela was in prison too, and Xavier and company had seemed trustworthy enough—Peter hadn't figured them for the sort of people who'd break a psycho out of prison. Peter hadn't expected the guy to turn out to be a terrorist super villain out to kill U.S. presidents and lead a bloody revolution or whatever the fuck it was Erik was doing; the man hadn't been very clear about that, and Peter wasn't sure that even Erik knew what he was doing right now.

Of course, Peter also hadn't expected Erik Lehnsherr to turn out to be his and Wanda's MIA father.

They were at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Seriously. There wasn't a town for miles in any direction, only one road going past the truck stop, and the landscape was absolutely featureless—no trees or hills or ponds or anything like that, just flat farmland. Pretty boring place. Peter knew that the good old U.S. of A had a lot of nothing in it, but he hadn't expected it to look so _boring_.

"That sign says there's a town five miles from here," Peter pointed out to Erik, nodding towards the road sign erected right outside of the truck stop. "I could just…" He wiggled his fingers, a gesture that Peter wasn't entirely sure translated to 'super-speed' all that well, but he suspected Erik would get the message regardless.

And ouch, not even a worded reply, not even a glare, just one of those pointed looks Erik used when he didn't feel like dignifying something with a response. He looked remarkably like Wanda when he made that face, though in Erik's case, the look had lately been losing its sharp edge. Peter knew he shouldn't have been surprised—he didn't really know anyone who _wanted_ to do a ride-along with him at high speeds—but he never failed to be disappointed when someone reacted to the idea of going fast with such a resounding _'No.' _They really didn't know what they were missing.

"Stay close to me," Erik muttered as they neared the convenience store.

Peter raised an eyebrow. "Look, man, I'm not just gonna leave you out here in the middle of nowhere." Let's ignore the fact that he'd threatened to do just that their very first day of traveling together; given the circumstances, Peter didn't consider that to be remotely the same thing. "That'd leave me in a tight spot too."

Erik shook his head. "That's not what I meant." There was something familiar about the set of his jaw. "Just stay where I can see you."

He got it. At least, Peter thought he got it. It was hard to tell with Erik sometimes, and it wasn't like Peter had had a lifetime with the guy to decipher what _all_ of these small gestures and looks meant. No zipping into the next town for him.

The convenience store was at least big enough that Peter could spend a few minutes looking around while Erik chatted up the cashier. For a convenience store out in the middle godforsaken nowhere, there sure was a lot of touristy stuff here; some parts of the looked more like a gift shop than anything else. Peter shook a dusty snow globe until the ballerina figurine inside was completely obscured until the ballerina figurine inside was completely obscured by whatever it was they used to make the snowflakes. He tried on a couple of ball caps, dismissing them all one by one on grounds of clashing color or the fact that the ball team it represented sucked. Peter held a kaleidoscope up to the light fixture and snickered at some of the cheaper, more rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses out on display.

He should pick up some souvenirs for Marya and Lorna. Shouldn't he? That was something people did while traveling, right? Peter hadn't done that much traveling, but he was pretty sure that was what people did while traveling. One of his older cousins had gone to Spain once with friends and brought back a ton of cheap little trinkets for the younger kids in the family.

Not here, though. This stuff all looked like the sort of cheap stuff that would break in about a week. Who knew how long he'd be holding onto the stuff before he saw Marya or Lorna again? Peter decided to wait until they'd found Wanda and were heading back towards Alexandria.

Erik was taking _ages_ with the cashier; Peter could only assume he was trying to get them a ride to wherever it was they were heading next. Peter wondered how many candy bars and Gatorade bottles he could stuff into his bag without anyone noticing. He could probably stuff at least four of each into the bag without creating a noticeable bulge, but he usually did hit-and-run shoplifting. Peter rarely lingered after grabbing what he wanted, and wasn't sure how to act otherwise.

Besides, his dad had eyes like a hawk—you'd think he actually had raised a child, his eyes were so sharp—and for all that Erik had no qualms about massive property damage, assault with a deadly weapon and _murder_, he bizarrely enough had something against shoplifting of foodstuffs. Weird. Somebody definitely had their wires crossed where priorities were concerned.

Peter decided against it.

After what felt like an eternity of pacing around the convenience store, Erik caught his eye and waved him over. "We've got a ride to Milwaukee. We'll catch a bus to Topeka from there."

"Milwaukee?" Peter repeated. "I don't really know geography, but isn't that a bit out of the way?"

"It's the best we've got," Erik replied firmly, and no one, let alone Peter, could have mistaken the note of finality in his voice. Erik strode out of the store and Peter followed after him, brow furrowed.

-0-0-0-

Peter wondered what Wanda would think of their father.

He and Erik had slid into the cab of an eighteen-wheeler transporting produce after a middle-aged black man, Erik sitting by the passenger's window and Peter stuck in the middle seat sandwiched between them. The driver didn't seem too interested in conversation; Peter peppered him with a few questions about his job and stuff he'd seen on the highway, which the driver responded to succinctly. Erik had taken to staring out of the window, and Peter didn't think it'd be the best idea to talk to him right now. Man didn't look like he was in the mood, and it would probably end badly if the driver recognized his voice. So all Peter could do was stare out at the road, try not to squirm in his seat too much, and think.

He wondered what Wanda would make of their father. They had spent their whole lives wondering who and where he was, what he was doing, and if he was even still alive. The possibility that their dad could be dead wasn't one Wanda had liked to discuss, when she still talked about them at all. She never wasted any time shutting Peter down when he brought up the idea that their father might be dead.

They'd contemplated many possibilities, when they still talked about it. Maybe their dad was some politician or other kind of big-shot in the Soviet Union, and that was why the family never talked about him. Maybe he was a KGB guy, and their mother had left him because she couldn't live with what her husband was doing. Maybe he was a hippie and he spent all his time lying around smoking weed.* Maybe…

But then, Wanda hadn't wanted to talk about it anymore. The image of her face set in displeasure, frowning deeply with lines etched into her pale forehead, materialized in Peter's mind. He grimaced. Peter hoped that wouldn't be the face she showed when he saw her again. He hoped that maybe, just maybe, she'd look happier than that.

Hell, even Peter didn't quite know what to make of Erik. On the one hand, he'd actively tracked Peter down when he'd thought he might be his kid, and actually seemed interested in Wanda, too. On the other hand… Terrorist. Terrorist who had spent the last ten years in prison.

Yeah.

And Peter could tell that as much as Erik seemed to want to know his kids, he wasn't especially keen about the idea of being a father. There _was_ a difference between the two, and where Erik was concerned, something just wasn't quite clicking. Peter couldn't tell what that something was, but he knew there was something off. He'd seen people interacting with new stepchildren or adopted kids, trying to be parents but not quite sure how to be. This wasn't that.

If Peter could see it, Wanda would definitely be able to see it. She'd always been the sort of person who ferreted out somebody's shortcomings and judged them for it. Growing up, Wanda had always been the first to call Peter out for nabbing a snack cake from the store or rearranging a particularly awful teacher's desk while the teacher wasn't looking. Peter wasn't sure what Wanda would be less impressed by, the fact that Erik was a terrorist and a convict, or the fact that after eighteen years of absence, he was kind of a half-assed parent.

(She'd probably have resented it if Erik had emerged from the ether only to behave as though he had a right to be a properly attentive, involved father. On reflection, Peter supposed that he'd probably resent it, too. Funny, that.)

Wanda and Erik's first meeting was going to be… interesting. Peter kind of wished he knew Wanda's phone number so he could call ahead and warn her. _"Hey, Wanda, it's Peter. I found our dad! We're coming to find you. Just to warn you, though, he can be kinda lousy. Like, he's not nearly as bad as he could've been, and he actually wants to know about us and he's got a good excuse for being a deadbeat, but he's a bit shitty. Can't put my finger on why, but I guess I couldn't be the only fuck-up in the family, huh?"_

He'd probably feel bad about it when it happened, but Peter didn't feel like warning Erik. He could handle it and, Peter reasoned, he kinda deserved it, too.

-0-0-0-

It had been kind of chilly in Milwaukee. Was that normal for this time of year? Peter had spent every fall and winter that he could remember in Virginia, and how hot or cold it was there depended on coastal currents or some such stuff; meteorology wasn't Peter's strong suit. It also wasn't like Peter had ever been this far west (According to Marya, they had been born in New York, so he couldn't say the same about north). For all he knew, this was normal.

But hey, they'd caught a bus to Topeka, no problem, and now they were on their way.

"It's just a river," Erik remarked, eyes glued on his newspaper. The bus hit a bump on the road and Erik stiffened in his seat, frowning slightly, but returned to his newspaper without comment.

"Hey, the Mississippi is _not _just a river," Peter protested. He waved his hands, trying to simulate, he didn't know, maybe a knife cutting a cake in half. He was pretty sure he was doing it wrong, anyways. "It's the river that, like, partitions the entire continent—"

"I'm fairly certain you're exaggerating. The Mississippi flows from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico; it hardly partitions the whole continent."

"And I'm telling you that that's not the point. I've never been west of the Mississippi in my life; this is a whole new experience for me."

Unless Peter's eyes deceived him (and they might; it was getting pretty dark outside), Erik might have smiled a little. "You've seen the Potomac, haven't you? The Mississippi isn't so different from that."

Peter glared at him. "Bet you're lying."

"What?" There was no mistaking the timbre of incredulity in Erik's voice, even if he was keeping his voice down. "Why would I lie about something like that?"

"To mess with me?"

Erik laid his newspaper down and down his nose at Peter. _Ouch, you still look _exactly_ like… _"Pietro."

"Peter." Peter clapped a hand to his forehead and grinned ruefully. "Damn, we nearly got through a whole day without you calling me that. What's with the relapse?"

"It really is just a river. If you attach too much significance to it, you'll only be disappointed."

"You see, it's an attitude like that that sucks all the enjoyment out of life."

"Besides," Erik went on, in an all-too-casual voice, "for impressive sights, the Grand Canyon far outdoes the Mississippi river."

Peter's eyebrows shot up. Erik had returned to his newspaper, and was studiously avoiding eye contact. In fact, he was holding the newspaper so close to him that Peter couldn't even see his face. Peter's lip twitched. "I'll take your word for it."

Peter went back to staring out of the window. They only had a few miles to go before hitting the bridge that would take them over the Mississippi river. It was really getting dark outside now; the sky had changed colors from red and purple to a rich indigo blue, the darkness punctured by stars. From his seat he watched the other cars pass the bus or race in the opposite direction, never knowing that there was a kid out there who could go twice as fast as them without breaking a sweat.

He'd never imagined this.

"Hey… I've got a question."

"…What is it?"

Peter pressed his head against the window and frowned pensively. "If…" He paused, then shook his head. "No, never mind," he muttered. "It's not important." Not important anymore.

He could feel Erik staring at him, but neither one of them spoke.

-0-0-0-

The Mississippi was a broad, black ribbon in the twilight. When they crossed over it, Peter finally felt a little closer to his sister.

* * *

* Peter and Wanda had a rather caricatured view of hippies growing up.


End file.
