Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Erik was in love with Charles. He wasn't ashamed of that fact. It was a curiosity to him, though--for him, the word love had always had strong associations with the idea of family, the image of a mother and her child. He hadn't thought of himself as being capable of being what they call a "family man"--maybe not since he was very young, and before the war. Charles seemed to have been trying, as of late, to force him into the box, by trickery and wiles, that trouble-making telepath. Nonetheless, Erik, was not gentle with the other persons living in the mansion with them. Alex, Sean, Raven, Hank...they were not children any longer, they did not require kid gloves.

There was probably an irony to the fact, then, that the first child to come to the Xavier Estate was the child that Charles had never known he'd had.

Raven was the first to tell Charles that she wanted to throttle him. It hadn't been so long ago, really, those days when Charles had gone to bars and shamelessly flirted with women, taking them home afterwards, his or theirs. Charles had the grace to look ashamed, putting the telephone down after his third call to the mother, to a woman named Madeline, making the necessary travel and meeting arrangements.

"She wanted to know," Charles said to Erik, privately, and over chess, "If my family had any history of hereditary mental illness. That's the only reason she contacted me."

And that's why Charles went.

--

Charles drove to Philadelphia by himself; he was gone for a week, and when he returned, it was with a six-year-old boy in tow. Erik greeted them in the front hall and regarded the child with light curiosity. The house was quiet, with the younger mutants having gone into town for the day. The boy was holding Charles' hand, and he looked back at Erik with wide eyes.

"That's David, I presume?" Erik asked Charles.

The boy flashed a quick, nearly furtive look at his father, while Charles began, "Well, it's--I suppose it's a little more complicated than that, I'm afraid--"

"I'm Julia," the boy said, soft and piping and shy. Then he pressed his fingers against his mouth, and then ducked behind Charles' leg a little. In a slightly different tone, still hiding behind Charles, he said, "I'm David."

Erik felt his brow furrow. He looked narrowly at Charles, and asked, "Mutation, or otherwise?" He didn't wait for Charles to answer, going on, "Charles, you're a geneticist, not a therapist--"

"Please," Charles interrupted sharply. He sounded weary. "Erik, I wouldn't have--" He hesitated, then seemed to bowl on, "I wouldn't have brought them back with me if I didn't think we could have helped."

"Them?" Erik repeated, disbelieving.

The boy--Julia, David, whoever it was--the boy was clinging to Charles' leg.

"Ducklings," Charles said, putting a gentle hand to the boy's shoulder. "This is--ah, this is your Uncle Erik."

Erik snorted. Uncle was one way of putting it, he supposed.

Charles took the boy to the kitchen and made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. While Charles spread peanut butter on bread, the boy wandered around the kitchen, touching the knobs of drawers, looking out the windows at the estate grounds, looking at Erik in an inquisitive way, and then finally sitting down. The boy seemed to be in a bit of awe of the place. Erik sat down in the chair across from the boy's. He folded his hands in front of him on the table.

"Stop that," Charles said to Erik, putting a place in front of David, and also a glass of milk. "You're going to frighten them with that kind of intensity of expression."

"I'm not scared," the boy said, reaching for the milk.

"Hmmm," said Charles, sliding into the next chair over.

While the boy sat at the table, eating his lunch, Charles explained, "His mother, Madeline, didn't...believe me when I tried to explain to her that the erratic behavior of her son was really the collective behavior of...hmm, a number of discrete consciousnesses that had developed in the shared body. I've seen this before. It's not the same kind of mutation as my telepathy, or your manipulation of metal, although on that count David has begun to show developing ability for telepathy, and Spoons has exhibited mild telekinesis."

"Spoons?"

"Spoons is a good name," the boy mumbled around his sandwich.

"It is," Charles reassured his son, and then added to Erik, "I wouldn't say that Magneto is the most sophisticated name I've ever heard, either." He said the last with a light smile.

"Your sister came up with that one, not me."

"I'm seven years old," the boy said, "And I can float spoons, and I like the name Spoons." He demonstrated with the butter knife, a glob of grape jelly sliding down. Erik did not point out that he was floating a knife over the kitchen table and not a spoon.

Charles watched this display, and then winced, as though at an unpleasant memory. "At first, Madeline thought that David simply had an overactive imagination, that he was making up these other children and spending too much time play-acting. As a telepath, I can see them as different children, as separate and distinct brain wave patterns, I suppose you could say, but it's... harder for others I think. I was present when Spoons demonstrated his ability, and Madeline was horrified that David might have been suffering from some kind of possession after all, and not mental illness...She's a bright and lovely woman, Maddie, but I think this was all a bit much for her."

Charles seemed unhappy, thinking about all of this. "I...convinced her to allow me to take the child with me. At least for a little while. I promised her and the children that I'd take them home on alternating weekends to visit their mother."

Charles looked at Erik. I didn't want to take them, Erik heard in his head. They are only six years old. What right do I have to take these children from their mother? But along with that was a wave of fears and worry, of doctors and psychologists examining the child when there was nothing wrong, of forced therapy and worse.

Erik thought of Shaw, and his jaw tightened. He took Charles' hand. Then he looked over at the boy in a considering way. "I don't know who I'm talking to, just by looking at you," Erik said bluntly. Charles made a disapproving noise, which Erik ignored. Erik believed in being frank with people, even children, and if that included pushing them off satellite dishes or telling them the facts, then that was how it was going to be. "Perhaps we can reach a compromise with a collective name, so I can address you as something other than 'that boy.' At least until everyone has had time to become more familiar with all of you."

"Daddy knows who he's talking to," the child said to his sandwich.

Erik smiled thinly. "I'm not Charles," he said. "Or should we take to referring to you as the ducklings, after all? A little saccharine for my tastes, but--"

"We like ducklings." The boy squeezed the sandwich a little between his fingers, watching the jelly and peanut butter ooze.

Charles was watching the exchange with a faintly bemused smile.

"Fatherhood does not suit you," Erik said, not meaning a word of it. He was thinking about names. The child was still small. 'Duckings' would do for present, but he imagined they'd have to grow into a more suitable name in the future.

Chapter Text

Raven, Hank, Sean, and Alex came back in the evening, loaded down with the week's groceries, and also hamburgers and fries for Erik, Charles, and also for the kid that they'd heard Charles would be bringing back. Erik and the ducklings were up in the library, watching television. They were watching Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, and Ludwig Von Drake was telling the audience about different countries around the Mediterranean Sea. When Charles came up, the other young mutants along with him, he sent a flash of a teasing thought to Erik, about watching this cartoon character butcher a German accent. Erik made a slight face.

Charles had explained about the ducklings to the rest of their group, while helping them unload groceries and organize things in the kitchen. Nonetheless, it was difficult for him to access how well they were all processing the information, as they all crowded into the library. Frankly, he wasn't sure how well he had explained the situation himself, either.

Alex came in and asked, "So that's the kid?"

Raven said, before Charles could begin, "Charles, he's adorable!"

"I'm a girl," Julia said, tucking herself a little deeper into the couch cushions. She peered up at Raven in a kind of wide-eyed way. Then David said, "How come you're blue underneath?"

Raven looked at the ducklings like she didn't know whether to be amused or mystified. "He's a telepath isn't he?" she asked Charles. "Or... she?"

"Yes and yes and yes," Charles said. "Presently, oh--well. It would appear that David and Julia are both here, and alternating in conversation." When Raven looked at him, he said, helplessly, "It is....how should I put this...what they are doing is--"

"Complicated," Erik said. He looked like a knife in repose on the couch next to the children.

Raven walked over, and said, kneeling down a bit so that she was at level with the ducklings, "I didn't want to scare you, so I made myself look like this, like a blonde girl. Do you mind if I show you what I really look like?"

Julia had sidled back to let David use the body, and David pondered Raven for a moment. "Okay," he said.

In a moment, her skin had shed away into blueness. The ducklings studied her new appearance.

Then Julia said, "I wish we could do that. Then I could look the way I feel. And no one would make any mistakes about us."

Raven regarded the child in front of her with utter bafflement, her brow knit together. Charles sat down on the couch between Erik and the ducklings, and he let Julia and David crawl into his lap. It was a strange feeling, the weight of the one body leaning against his chest and in his arms, but to also sense telepathically the soft press of two minds, and then a third sort of flitting about on the edges, Spoons having a gander on things.

"Professor?" Alex asked, uncertainly.

"Strange," Hank remarked, taking a seat himself. "Professor, so would you say, in other words this is a case of having multiple--"

Charles interrupted, firmly, "We won't be using those kind of terms, Hank. It bore repeating several times on the drive here, getting to know the children, and I will repeat it again however many times it needs to be said--it's not personalities. It's just...them. It's three different children."

Sean dropped himself unceremoniously into one of the empty, cushioned chairs. "How's the show, kids?"

"It's our favorite show," David said. He snuggled up closer to his father, while Julia repeated, in a kind of sing-song way, "Favorite show."

Charles held them close. He wasn't sure how to begin explaining. He was their father--and he wasn't, in that he hadn't spent the last six years of life with these children--and yet there was a feeling of deep protectiveness. When he focused on them, he could see impressions of three different children: Julia with her longer brown curls, David studiously watching the television, Spoons wanting to go over and tug at their "Uncle Erik"...

He must have been seeing the way these children saw themselves.

How could he even begin to explain?

"You know," Raven said to the kids, as she sat down on the carpet, "Hank over there used to be blue too, but it wasn't permanent."

"The wonders of science," Sean said, while Hank scowled at him.

"We're all different here," Raven said, but she couldn't hide that note of hesitation creeping in, as she looked at the child on Charles' lap.

Erik had reached over to take Charles' hand. Charles squeezed Erik's hand gently back, taking comfort in that gesture. He wondered if he was projecting, if Erik could sense his mood.

"Yeah, but how are we supposed to tell who we're talking to?" Alex wanted to know. "I mean, sorry, but--honestly."

Charles heard in his head, David's telepathic voice, Daddy, should we stop? Mommy didn't like all of us out at once either. Julia wants to know if she should stop talking, if people don't like it. Or I could stop talking.

Charles wasn't sure what to tell them.

David made that decision for himself. "It's just me talking," David said. "You don't have to worry, Julia says she's tired anyway, so now you know who I am."

Except Charles could see that Julia was still there, just tucking herself inwards and watching.

"Oh, sweetie," Raven said.

But there was still that sense of utter bewilderment that Charles could sense in the air, from all of the younger mutants, a sense of still struggling to take things in, for all of Sean's nonchalance, and Raven's concern, and Alex's well-meaning curiosity, and Hank's more intellectually bent wonderings about the situation. But perhaps, at that moment, there was nothing else to be done.

--

The children were settled into the bedroom across Charles' and Erik's. While they were changing into their pajamas, and brushing their teeth, Raven caught Charles in his bedroom opposite. He was drinking some tea he had brought up. He was very tired.

Raven said, "So you really believe it?"

Charles just looked at her.

Raven's eyes were very yellow, and bright against the blue of her face. He was beginning to appreciate more, these days, though, the youthful quality of that blue face and its expressions. She really didn't look so different in her natural form from her chosen human form.

"I guess you have an advantage over us, then," Raven said at last. "Fine time for your--" she indicated with her fingers, the gesture he always did, "to be useful, isn't it? Fatherhood and everything." She smiled at him. But then she said, a little more hesitantly, "But it's, you know, kind of eerie. I can't help feeling funny, talking to...them."

Charles sipped his tea. But then he said, "You mean well, though. I appreciate that, I really do, and I'm sure the children appreciate it as well."

She shook her head. Her hair was wet from the shower, and vibrant in the light. "I can't believe I'm an aunt," Raven said. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"You make a wonderful aunt," Charles said, meaning it.

Raven rolled her eyes a little, but slung her arm around her brother, hugging him.

"We'll have to take them into town sometime. Get pizza. See a movie: that new Disney one came out, what's it called? Sword in the Stone..."

Charles laughed. "I'm sure they've butchered the source material."

"Only you would care," Raven teased. "Also, shop for new clothes--I don't think that one suitcase is going to cut it."

"Ah, well." Charles put down his tea. A boy wearing flannel pajamas was peeking out the door across the hall. "Clothing was the last topic I was worried about, bringing them here."

--

Charles tucked the children into bed that night.

Spoons was as bold as a squirrel. He was also lazy. He didn't get up to retrieve things; he floated them over to his hand. From the shelf, he floated over a stuffed mouse, then a shark with felt teeth. He sneezed when the dust in their fur come off on him. Then he floated them over to the wall to thump the dust out of them. He was being relatively gentle, but Charles watched in bemusement and said, "I'll have to admit, that is rather disconcerting to watch."

Spoons settled in under the covers, clutching his new stuffed toys close. David flitted up to the surface while Charles tucked the comforter in around them.

"They're afraid of us," David said simply.

Charles sat down at the edge of the bed. "They... simply need time to adjust."

"Mommy was afraid too. And so were the doctors." Then, in a small voice, "That scared us too."

"People are only afraid of what they don't know," Charles said. "Once everyone gets to know you... things will get better, you'll see."

Charles reached over to smooth back their hair. It was a gentle gesture, a protective one.

"I'm glad I have a Daddy," David said, when Charles was standing up once more leaning over to switch off the bedside lamp.

Charles looked over at the boy.

"Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you're here with me too."

When he turned off the lamp, the only light slanting in from the hallway outside, and the moon filtered through the thin window curtains--the dark silence almost seemed sweet.

--

In the morning, Spoons woke up earliest. The sky was starting to brighten outside. He couldn't go back to sleep, feeling too much that light excitement of being in a foreign place, of waking up in the kind of new places that he loved to explore. The clock read six o'clock in the morning, and if Daddy was anything like Mommy, he wouldn't be awake for hours, but Spoons couldn't sit still. He climbed out of bed, and then brushed his teeth and dressed, and then went into the outside hall.

It was very quiet.

Spoons pondered the carpet, then the large painting on the wall of some apples.

Spoons didn't want to wake anyone up with his exploring. Maybe he'd explore outside.

He went down the hall. Then he went down the hall. Then he went down another long hall until he got back to the front door.

He went outside.

There was a man standing in the driveway of the mansion, looking up at the windows in a kind of wondering way. He had darker skin and was wearing a shirt that was very nice shade of blue, and David had woken up by now and he said this man was like all the adults here, he had a special ability. Spoons decided that made this man okay to talk to, although David was still not sure.

The man looked at Spoons and smiled. "Hello, kid. A bit early to be up, isn't it?"

"You're up early too," Spoons said. "Who are you?"

"I'm Darwin," he said, offering his hand. Spoons took his and shook it solemnly. Whatever David and Julia said, he knew how to be polite, he did.

"We're David and Julia, and I'm Spoons," Spoons said. "Sometimes we have to pretend to be one person though, because people don't like it when we aren't."

Darwin scratched his head. But all he said was, "Adapt to survive, huh? I know the feeling."

Chapter Text

“My favorite cousin—well, cousins,” Darwin amended, “they were like you.”

They were sitting on the steps in front of the mansion’s front door, Darwin and the ducklings. Darwin had been using a cigarette lighter to demonstrate how his skin toughened into something like armor when he passed the flame over his fingers. Then he’d snapped the lighter closed and put it away into his pants’ pocket.

Spoons had shown Darwin how he could lift pebbles from the driveway, letting them rain down again afterwards, click click click.

Darwin said, “We had gone swimming at the beach the first time I—well, I guess you could say I adapted to my environment, like a fish dumped in water. Even now, I can’t really control it—my body just wants to change, to fit into whatever place I’m in.”

“I want to see you look like a fish,” Spoons said.

Darwin laughed. “Maybe when I get my hands on a bathtub.”

“We want to meet your cousins too. We’ve never met anyone like us before.”

“You’d like them,” Darwin said. “They’re my favorite cousins for a reason. I think it must have been Isabel at the time—but she said, well if they were going to have a secret of mine, they wanted to share a secret of theirs too—and they were like you. Although,” and here Darwin frowned. “She also said that they started existing like that because of… hmm; let’s say some bad things happened to them as kids, and one person ended up with several around to help cope, did anything—?”

“Dad looked at our head,” Spoons said. “He said that he thinks we were just born this way. He said a lot of people end up just being born this way, but some people aren’t.”

“Strange as anything,” Darwin said, shaking his head. “That, and the fact that the Professor’s your pop, the weirdest thing I’ve heard today.”

“And there’s our uncle,” Spoon said, noticing their uncle coming around the side of the house, up the gravel path, in a grey sweatshirt and sweatpants. Julia jumped up, singing, “Uncle Erik.”

--

Erik had been taking his customary morning jog. He was warmed up under his training clothes. He was sweating in a good way. Between one moment and the next, coming around to the front door, he found that a small child had come running up, throwing their hands around Erik’s waist, and stopping him short. He looked down. He was not used to the affections of children.

Then he looked past them and recognized the man who they’d all thought had died, back at the government facility.

“How did you find this place?” was what Erik asked. Anonymity was all-important in keeping this mansion a safe haven for mutants. It wouldn’t do for just anyone to be able to waltz up to their driveway, even speaking of the formerly deceased.

Darwin shrugged, his smile more than a little self-satisfied.

“Havok has a…different feeling to his energy. I think the feeling of it got under my skin, when that guy, Shaw or whatever, tried to kill me with it.”

--

Alex looked as though he was going to break apart when he saw Darwin. He looked as though he wanted to cry.

Charles was saying something about Darwin’s cellular structure adapting to Alex’s, atoms and chemical bonds reforming to whatever it was that kept Alex from burning to a crisp when he emitted his high energy blasts, but it didn’t look like they were listening. Breakfast was an unusually excitable affair that morning. They talked about the war, about saving the world. They talked about all the things that had changed, and those that hadn’t.

Darwin sipped his coffee and said, “Well, whatever’s going on, I’m more than willing to continue on here and help out, if you guys need it. There’d be no living with driving taxis again, not after all of this strangeness we’ve been through.”

--

Mornings after breakfast were usually the physical training periods for all of the young people. Hank went on jogs with Charles, or practiced new kinds of acrobatics on the metal climbing structure Erik had put up in the back of the house. Sean went flying. Mystique used the weight room, or went jogging as well. Alex went down to the basement shelter, although that morning it looked as though he had wandered off with Darwin, the two of them sitting out back, talking and talking and talking. Erik could see them from the corner of his eye, while half turning his attention to moving the satellite dish in the distance. The young men’s heads were bent close, Darwin’s hand on the small of Alex’s back.

There were ducklings sidled up close to Erik, watching the far-off satellite move and creak.

These days, with Shaw dead, and the government no longer looking over their shoulders, there was less of a drive to train as though preparing for war. Life felt strange for Erik. Strange and quiet. It would be better once he was occupied with some kind of larger purpose again. Once things were settled with the ducklings, he and Charles were fully intending to continue their work of seeking out those mutants who may have desired to find others like themselves.

“Uncle Erik,” the child piped up.

Erik looked down at the ducklings clinging to him.

“Are you and Daddy…” the child paused, and then made a shape like a heart with their fingers, up near their face. The whole of the image was a very sweet one, a very innocent one.

Erik arched one brow. He was beginning to recognize the expression on this child’s face, “This is Julia, isn’t it?” he asked.

There was a beat, and then the child, Julia, beamed.

“What makes you say that about your father and I?” Erik enquired, already suspecting the answer.

“David said so,” Julia said. “And he said that you and Daddy love each other like mommies and daddies are supposed to love each other, do you love Daddy?”

“I love your father very much,” Erik said frankly.

“Oh, good,” said Julia. She hugged Erik again.

Erik was very much unused to the affections of children. He leant over a little and hugged Julia back awkwardly.

Then, “Uncle Erik, you smell sweaty.”

Followed by a very quick, “Uncle Erik, Spoons said that, not me!”

“But Julia was thinking it too, I just said it!”

Erik thought: this was far, far too much for him to be having to deal with this early in the morning.

--

Midmorning, Raven came out with snacks for the ducklings, juice and crackers and fruit. She took them out with her onto the lawns behind the house, where they could watch Sean doing his usual exercises.

In the fall, Sean would be going to college.

They watched him soar overhead, his arms outstretched.

“Sean’s going to be leaving?” the duckling asked in disappointment. Raven thought it might have been David, but sometimes it was hard to tell.

“Yes,” she said. “But he’s going to be close enough to visit on weekends, and—you know, if everything works out, we may end up with other children here too. Other mutants. Your dad wants to start a school, you know. In the next few months, you might have friends here to play with—although I guess that’s going to be interesting, given our...hmm, current staffing…”

“I want to play with other kids,” David said, chewing on a piece of apple.

Raven ruffled his hair absently. “Patience kiddo. We’ll try to come up with fun things for you to do in the meantime.”

Even after saving the world, life went on. Charles wanted every one of them to develop themselves to their fullest capacities, as human beings, and not simply focusing on these extra-normal abilities. They were not defined by their powers—their abilities were theirs to use as tools, nothing more, and Sean had long fine-tuned the manipulation of his own ability.

Raven had studied theater as an undergrad. She was thinking about seeing if there was any theater work, any shows she could audition for, in the nearby town, if only just to get her out of the mansion. Or she could find some other part-time job: anything to keep her from stagnating while they were still working out the logistics of this contacting and supporting mutant youth and children thing Erik and Charles were still dreaming up together. It wasn’t going to be easy. Not everyone was like Alex, like Darwin or Hank, ready to be plucked from old lives. Even Sean had family elsewhere, and was being encouraged to continue his general education. Social change would take time. The world was so big, so vast—it had been easy to forget that, while caught up in government schemes and plots involving madmen with too much easy power at their disposal.

In the meantime. Life still seemed to be full of surprises, even without mishaps like missile crises turning up at their doorsteps.

“Auntie Raven,” the child said, “When we go shopping for new clothes, can I buy a dress?”

“A dress?” Raven repeated, surprised, and startled despite herself. It was Julia asking, she thought, but perhaps it would be a mistake to simply assume. The child looked uncertainly at Raven.

“Mommy didn’t like it when I asked… but I just want one dress. If it’s okay.” The child’s voice had gotten very small, like someone used to hearing no to this question.

Raven was quiet for a moment. In her mind, there was Erik and Charles. In her mind, there were those queer cats she’d known as a theater major in college. In her mind, there was herself as well, liking both boys as well as girls. It was still a shock, somehow, to hear these kinds of words coming from a six-year-old ostensibly boy, ostensibly one boy.

She said quickly, smoothing it out, and with feeling, “Yes. Absolutely. Forget one dress, we’ll buy more than one if you find some that you like, so you can have a choice of them to wear around the house. Boy’s clothing shouldn’t be the only choice you have in there.”

The huge smile on the kid’s face was worth the promise.

--

They were nibbling on slices of apples and eating crackers. Julia was so happy at the idea of getting dresses of her own, and Spoons was getting bored and starting to float their apple slices in circles in the air, and David asked Auntie Raven if she could make herself look and sound like anyone.

She did impressions of people she’d known back in college, theater types of both genders, with their own eccentricities. “Better than any magic trick, isn’t it?” she teased the kids.

High above, there was a shout of joy as Sean did a loop in the sky, a Peter Pan in grey sweats against the blueness of the sky.

The ducklings watched Sean fly high in the air.

For the longest time, they had thought, there wasn’t anyone else in the entire world like them. Even now, it was a lonely feeling, because only their Daddy knew exactly who they were, and everyone else was only just getting used to it. But it was better. It was so good, there was a feeling like hopefulness, and they drank it in thirstily.

They were watching Sean fly.

Someday, they’d be like him. They’d be like superheroes.

They’d be heroes.

--

There was a feeling like flying.

Chapter Text

A kind of sequel can now be found at Who I Am Now.