Chapter Text
On the third day—or was it the fourth? Time was losing its meaning—Magda woke to the sound of a thud. She groaned, still half-asleep, and rolled over onto her side, trying to return to the calming throes of slumber where she was a little bit younger, a lot wealthier, and most importantly, had two perfectly healthy children. But when another crash sounded, her subconscious knew that any hope of falling back to sleep was ruined. Magda was the type of person that once she was up, she was up! No falling back to dreamland no matter how hard she tried or how tired she was.
As her sleep-fogged brain cleared, Magda remembered that she had good reason to get up—she had a sick son to check on!
Magda sat up, immediately looking to the bed to find her boy, check his fever, and probably try to get him to drink some more fluids and down some more Tylenol. But when her eyes fell upon the bed, it wasn't to the sight of a disheveled teenage boy.
The bed was empty.
"Pietro!" Magda immediately called out, scrambling to her feet. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe he was feeling better and had managed to make it to the bathroom on his own, which he hadn't been able to do at all yesterday.
Or maybe he had fallen trying to get somewhere and was now passed out and bleeding to death somewhere in the house.
Maybe that was the thud that Magda's finally-clear head just realized was what had woken her in the first place.
Panicking, Magda burst out of her bedroom, looking up and down the hall.
The bathroom door was closed, but there was a light streaming beneath the crack in the door, meaning that someone had turned on the light inside for the small window within was never enough to give one the ability to do anything more than stumble from the toilet to the sink. Magda's panic eased slightly before it occurred to her that Pietro could've just as easily passed out in the bathroom as anywhere else in the house.
"Pietro?!" Magda called again as she knocked on the door much more frantically than she had the first night when she had discovered him in there at the beginning of this anxiety inducing illness.
There was no response.
"Pietro!" Magda tried again, a little louder, and she slammed her hand even more forcefully against the door. The only response was another thud. Well, Magda reasoned, she didn't know what the banging was, but at least it meant her worse nightmares weren't realized. If he was making noise, then Pietro wasn't lying on the bathroom floor dead.
"Pietro. Open. The door. Please." Said Magda clearly and calmly, trying another approach, since brute force was clearly getting her nowhere. Yes, she respected her son's privacy, but these were outstanding circumstances.
This time, the response Magda received was a slight buzzing or humming noise, followed by two more thuds. "Pietro! What is going on in there?! Open the door! RIGHT NOW!" Magda shouted. She didn't know what was wrong with her son, but something clearly was.
"IsaidgoA-WAY!" Pietro shouted back rapidly, and although he attempted to hide it beneath the volume and speed, it only took those four small words for Magda to tell that her boy was in tears.
"Pietro, what's the matter? Open the door so we can talk." Said Magda, no longer shouting, her voice laced with concern as she tried the doorknob again, even though she knew it was locked.
"He won't come out." Said a small voice behind her, and Magda whipped around to find her little five-year old standing barefoot in the hall in her tiny pink-striped pajamas, a familiar pout on her face and her little stuffed dog that used to belong to Pietro clutched to her chest. "I thought maybe he was better because he's making a lot of noise, but he won't come out, even when I promised that we could play whatever game he wanted to play this time."
"How long has he been in there?" Magda asked bending down to meet her daughter's eyes.
"For for-ever. He didn't even make me breakfast, and I'm hungry." Said Mila in exasperation, and then after a moment she added with an impish grin that greatly resembled her older brother's 'I have done nothing wrong face' "I had to go pee outside."
Magda raised her eyebrows at her little girl's antics. Okay, well, at least Mila hadn't had an accident in the house, but after this, Magda was going to have to have a serious conservation with her daughter that entailed explaining that peeing outside was not going to become a regular thing.
But that was a conversation for later.
One crisis at a time.
"O-k, um, I'll get you some breakfast in a bit. Why don't you go watch some cartoons?" Said Magda, trying to placate her youngest child.
Mila's grin widened. "Okay!" then her daughter turned on a dime, and ran out toward the family room, no doubt happy to have permission to plant herself in front of the television until further notice, hunger forgotten.
Magda stood and turned back toward the bathroom door. "Pietro. I need you to open the door." said Magda, trying to remain calm while leaving no room for argument.
But all she heard in return was another thud followed by sniffling.
Okay, so Pietro wasn't going to open the door on his own accord. Not a problem. Magda grew up in Nazi-occupied Germany. She knew how to be resourceful.
Magda retreated to her room, grabbing a bobby pin off the bedside table and then returning to once again stand in front of the bathroom door.
It took more time than she would have liked; Magda hadn't had to use this particular skill set for some time, but eventually, she cracked it. In the end, the lock was no match for her bobby-pin wielding skills.
"Pietro, I'm coming in." Said Magda as she pushed the door open slowly, not wanting to bump into Pietro should he be directly on the other side of the door, not that he could be that far from it. Just because it was the sole bathroom in the house, did not make it spacious.
The first thing Magda notice when the door revealed the room's small interior was the glass. It was broken and scattered in pieces, both large and small, all over the linoleum floor. It only took a moment to find the source of the glass, which turned out to be the bathroom mirror—or former mirror—above the sink.
Barely any part of the mirror remained on the wall, but though Magda saw all of this and recognized it, it was not what truly caught her attention.
No, what drew Magda's eye, was the blood.
There wasn't a lot of it, though any amount of blood in a room that she knew was occupied by one of her children was frightening, but there was enough for Magda to know instantly that it hadn't come from something as trivial as a paper cut.
Splatters of blood crisscrossed the floor, some of which were recognizable as footprints, as if someone had paced uncontrollably every which way around the room, someone, who could only be her son.
Her boy was as far from the door as possible without being in the tub. He was curled into a corner, his long limbs tucked into himself as tightly as possible. His head was down, or at least Magda thought it was for he had a towel covering his head, so it was difficult to tell. But his hands were more or less visible, one wrapped around his legs and the other pressed to his head as if he were afraid to let the towel fall.
If it hadn't been before, it was obvious now where the blood had come from, for there was a trail of it leading to Pietro, and in particular to his feet, though the knuckles of his hands also appeared to have been responsible for some of the bloody scene.
If it wasn't for the fact that she knew immediately that her son was still breathing, she would have panicked and screamed. Who was she kidding? She was still panicking; only, she was managing to keep the panic on the inside for her son's sake.
Her first clue that Pietro wasn't dead was the shaking—no vibrating. Her son was violently vibrating like a plane right before take-off or perhaps more accurately like a plane during severe turbulence.
Magda took a second, just a second (maybe two) to take a breath and force down any fear threatening to claw its way to the surface of her mind before she tiptoed around the broken glass on the floor to approach her son.
"Pietro." Magda gently called his name for what felt like the millionth time that morning as she carefully knelt down next to him. When Pietro didn't respond, Magda reached a hand out toward him and laid it gently on his shoulder, but the moment she touched him, she was left grasping at air.
But that wasn't all.
At the same time, there was a whoosh and Magda was knocked back onto her bottom. Fortunately, she didn't fall on any glass, but even if she had, Magda didn't know if the pain would have registered as her mind tried to comprehend the impossible—somehow her son was now in the opposite corner of the room.
During that impossible movement, the towel had fallen from Pietro's head, and she now saw her son's face fully for the first time since she had stepped warily into the room.
Oh.
Oh how she had hoped this day would never come.
She recognized him, she did—of course she did—he was her baby. She would always know him, but now . . . he was changed.
The moment their eyes connected, Pietro covered his face with his hands faster than she could comprehend.
"Darling." Magda said, once again scooting carefully over to her son along the edge of the tub. This time, she felt a small piece of glass dig into her knee, but she paid it no mind. "Look at me. Please."
Her words hung in the air for only a second or two, but she still thought that Pietro wouldn't comply with her request. But after a tense couple of seconds, he did.
Pietro drew his hands down from his face and looked up at his mother.
His skin was pale; very pale. She had noticed that from the start given that his hands and feet were visible even as he had kept his head more or less hidden, but his ghostly pallor was all the more obvious when she stared at his now exposed face. No longer did mother and son share the same sun-kissed skin that her family had passed on through generations. And Magda had more than a hunch that the change in color had nothing to do with blood loss.
But that wasn't the most striking thing about Pietro's appearance. What stood out to Magda the most was his hair. Gone was the beautiful auburn locks sprinkled with gold that she had known so well and that she knew made the girls (and perhaps some boys) his age swoon, and that she always had to plead with him to trim. Instead, his face was now framed with sea of silver.
His new mane was beautiful in its own right. Like its previous hue, Pietro's new hair color was not one note, but rather, there were different tones and shades to it—darker grey at some points while nearly white at others, with an almost shimmering metallic highlight to it all. The overall effect was rather ethereal. Combined with his sharp features and thin frame, her son's new appearance made him look like some elfin creature or woodland sprite that had stepped out of the pages of a fairytale. Nevertheless, despite the beauty, it was disorienting to look at her son expecting chestnut hues with blonde highlights and instead seeing a shock of silver, but as alarming as it was for her, Magda imagined that it had to be doubly so for her son who—unlike Magda—had no frame of reference for what was happening to him, no hint of understanding or reason for the sudden change.
Not that Magda really understood it either, but she had no doubt as to what—or rather who—was to blame.
She had tried to forget him—the man that had stolen her heart in two short months and then left in the night leaving a trail of bodies in his wake—but she had never quite been able to, and one way or another she knew he was responsible for the scene in front of her.
It was weeks after he'd left that Magda had realized she was pregnant, and by then she had wanted absolutely nothing to do with the man, least of all a reminder of their time together.
Oh but how life had other plans.
She had of course been terrified, not only at the prospect of being a young, unmarried woman with a child on the way, but because she had no idea what having a child from that man—if that even was the correct term for him—would mean. In her growing terror, the more she had contemplated the reality of Erik, the more she wondered if he was even human. With the things he could do, how could he be? He could've been an alien for all she knew.
During their affair, all of those unknowns that made Erik, Erik, hadn't mattered to her. He'd been charming, good looking, and despite his haunted past and the destruction he left behind—he'd been . . . kind, or at least, he had been to her. And though they never spoke of it, she'd seen the tattoo on his arm that mirrored her own in all but its specific digits, and perhaps because of that, when Magda was with him, she had felt an overwhelming sense of home that she hadn't felt since before the war. But still, when she'd found herself pregnant, the fear had been immediate and nearly paralyzing.
What would their child be like? Would he—or she—be able to manipulate metal like his father? If Erik was a different species altogether, would the child be deformed in some way? Who knew if the form Erik showed her was even his true shape? Would the child even survive?
Did she want them to?
In the end, as crippling as the fear had been and as vast as her resentment for Erik had become, there was some part of her that still clung desperately to their time together and perhaps that was why she couldn't bear to take one of the less shameful options that would have been appropriate for a woman in her circumstances at that time—give the baby up for adoption or do something that, today, Magda could barely think about without shuddering.
When she'd given birth, but for a single mid-wife, Magda had been alone and fully—well maybe notquite fully—prepared to find that she'd given birth to a monster. But the child she had brought into the world a decade and a half ago was as far from a monster as anyone could be. The babe had ten fingers, ten toes, a beautiful bronze head of hair, and absolute no extra eyes, limbs, or anything of that sort.
Her son had been remarkable to her, but by all other accounts, he had been perfectly normal.
Or so she had thought.
And when Magda held him—Pietro—for the first time, as clichéd as it sounded, she had felt an overwhelming sense of love for the child she and a man she never expected to see again, let alone understand his true nature, had created together . . . but underneath, or perhaps equal to, that feeling of love, there was also a tremendous sense of relief—relief that raising him would be no harder than it was for any other single mother in her circumstances. She had been so grateful that she wouldn't have to deal with a child that wasn't quite human.
And yet, the fear that Pietro would become something more didn't go away all at once; it lingered like smoke after a fire.
But as each year passed and they drew further away from the spark that had started that fire, the fear that anything would come from the half of Pietro's DNA that didn't belong to her slowly began to dissipate, until one day it just wasn't something she thought about anymore . . . or at least not as often. It was more difficult as he grew from a little boy into a teenager and she began to see Erik more and more in the shape of his face, the tilt of his head, the furrow of his brow, the rhythm of his walk.
But in recent years when that ugly fear reared its head, Magda quickly squished it down, thinking she was being irrational. For surely if something was going to happen to Pietro to truly mark him as his father's son, it would have happened already.
Except, as it turned out, Magda's reasoning had been drastically flawed, and she realized now that she should have known that along. Her rationale for concluding that Pietro was just as human as she was, was based on little more than foolish hope. She'd never asked Erik where his powers came from or when he got them or even if he was mythical being, so there should have been no reason for her to think that just because Pietro had gone this long without displaying any unexpected traits inherited from his father that he was out of the woods.
So when Pietro looked up at her and Magda saw that silver head of hair, too pale skin, and the supernatural tremors running through his body, she knew.
She knew it was Erik's fault.
And it was her own fault too, for taking the path that led Erik to be Pietro's father, but whatever was happening to her son at that moment was all Erik.
And as terrible as it was to admit, a part of her wanted to run from the boy she had raised, to take Mila and not look back. But beneath his new features, her son's dark and haunting soulful eyes remained, and they looked at her with terror and confusion and pleaded at her to do something. And seeing that pain written so plainly on her son's young face, made any thought of fleeing bleed away in an instant.
He might look different. He might be different. But he was still her son. Her Pietro. Her rock. He was still the little boy that had promised her that he would take care of her and they would take on the world together no matter how much life tried to beat them down.
It took another couple of seconds staring at her boy for Magda to realize that he was speaking, or at least, she thought he was trying to. His lips appeared to be moving, but all Magda could make out was the same buzzing noise she had heard before, as if he were speaking at too high a frequency or too quickly for her to understand.
"Pietro, I can't—I don't know what you're saying." Said Magda, gently placing a hand on his arm, and feeling extremely grateful when he didn't immediately jerk away this time.
Pietro closed his eyes tightly for a moment, as if in great concentration. After a second or two, he opened his eyes again and once more tried to speak.
"You'resoslow.Whyiseverythingsoslow?WhydoIlooklikethis?" Pietro said rapidly and it looked like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. Magda was able to understand him this time, but it was a challenge. All of his words ran together faster than an auctioneer's.
"Just—just breathe for me, Pietro." Said Magda, taking his hand and holding it to her chest so he could attempt to match her breaths.
It took a bit, and he didn't look any less fearful when his breath finally slowed to match her own, but as it did, his vibrating seemed to lessen some.
When it had settled some more, Magda took Pietro's hand and held it between her own. It felt unnaturally cold, and again, Magda had to resist an urge to draw back from him. But ultimately, she kept hold of Pietro's hand, anchoring herself to the here and now, trying to figure out how or where to begin. Her son was looking for answers, and she had them . . . to a certain extent.
But she would never have enough, and she would never be enough for him.
Before she could decide how to broach what would be a very difficult conversation, Pietro spoke again.
"What. Is. Hap-pen-ing. To. Me?" He enunciated each word, over compensating for the speed of his previous communication, and once again staring at Magda with those haunting eyes.
Magda let one of her hands release her son's and she grabbed his other hand with her now free one, holding them both tightly. "Listen to me. You're going to be okay. Everything is going to be fine . . . . but I think" Magda swallowed and forced herself to continue. "I think it's time I tell you about a man I once knew who could control metal . . . ."