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Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Age 13

            Anya Lehnsherr regretted every life decision she had ever made.  Really, most people would have just regretted the series of decisions that had led to this horrible, horrible, I-would-rather-burn-my-eyes-off-with-acid-than-stand-here-any-longer moment, but Anya was a smart girl.  A smart girl who’d spent the past 13 years watching every time travel movie under the sun.  Even the crappy ones. Especially the crappy ones. She knew about The Butterfly Effect. She knew that any one of her millions of decisions over the course of her 13 years of life could have led to this moment. 

            Best to just regret all of them and be done with it. 

            “Dad,” she poked her father in the side. 

He looked down at her, sharp features splashed with a neon rainbow of reflected light from the crooked disco ball spinning lazily at the center of the middle school’s multi-purpose room ceiling above their heads. “Yes?”

“Can we leave?” She kept her lips pressed together, standing an arm’s length away from him, making sure there was enough space between them to make it look like they weren’t talking, but still remaining within poking distance.

He raised a single, expressive eyebrow. “Why?  We just got here,” he observed flatly, the barest hint of a smirk ghosting along the corners of his lips. 

“Well can you put on a coat or a frumpy sweatshirt or something, then?”

“Am I violating your school’s dress code?” he asked in that way that told her very clearly that the words might sound like a question but most definitely were not actually anything of the sort.

“No,” Anya grumbled, squinting disagreeably up at him out of the corners of her eyes.  He was laughing at her, she could sense it.

“Well, then what’s wrong with my choice of wardrobe?” Erik Lehsherr’s eyes did not do anything so jovial as sparkle, but they were gleaming with something akin to the unholy glee as shark feels upon spotting a crippled seal flopping through the water all alone. 

“Daddy,” Anya sighed, wished he’d just spontaneously develop telepathy and just understand what she meant without her actually having to say it.

“Anya.” He was grinning. She poked him sullenly again. Did he really have to wear tight black turtlenecks and slacks everywhere? She was 98% sure none of her friends’ dads’ dressed like a dapper hit man from the 60s.  Then again, the clothes he wore at home weren’t much better. The ripped jeans and stained t-shirts he wore in his studio weren’t exactly fashion-forward.  Or nearly frumpy enough to deter her classmate’s unwanted hormone-fueled attention.

A clump of girls approached them, whispering amongst themselves and shooting their corner furtive glances before dissolving into giggles. Erik’s grin disappeared and he just stared at them.  Almost in sync, they all blushed and skittered away, still giggling. 

“That, Dad!” Anya said, pointing dramatically after the fleeing passel of her peers, “That is why we need to leave early!”

“Are the other kids being mean to you?” another expressive eyebrow arch, “You know it’s okay to be mean back, right?”

Anya puffed out her cheeks indignantly, “Dad, we will address your alarming tendency to advocate violence later.”  She ignored the spasms that ticked across his face as he tried to smother the urge to comment on her word choice.  “But the problem is…you!”

“Me?” He said blandly, eyes crinkling into the beginnings of a smirk.

Anya soldiered on, “Yes, you. You’re all the girls, (and some of the boys, too, you’re extremely popular) can talk about!” 

“What exactly have I done?” Erik folded his arms and slouched against the wall.  Across the multi-purpose room Anya could see the cluster of girls (which had now expanded) start ogling and giggling all over again.

“Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is crushing on you,” she hissed, “And it’s horrible.” 

A smirk bloomed on Erik’s face and Anya poked him again, sharply in the ribs.  “Is that so?”

“Yes.” 

He looked thoughtful for a moment and Anya thought they might just be able to go home now…when he shrugged.  “You should have fought harder to keep me at home when that horrible PTA woman called and begged me to chaperone your school dance.”

“I didn’t realize what a problem it would be until you got here and became some sort of sex icon.” 

“Hey, you’re not supposed to know about that stuff yet,” he gave her a hard look, “And frankly, being a sex god to a pack of middle schoolers is incredibly creepy and gross.” 

“I know. I don’t know what they see in you! You’re my dad! You’re like, old!”

“I’m thirty.”

“Old!”

There was a moment of amicable silence, punctuated only by the thumping bass of another generic 90s pop song. 

“Does this make me as cool as Justin Bieber?” Erik said flatly, “Because I have mixed feelings about that.  No.  Unmitigated disgust is not a mixed feeling.  I take back my question.”

“If Justin Beiber were German.  And terrifying.  And old,” Anya answered his question anyway.

“Not old,” Erik grumbled, shifting slightly and folding his arms even tighter across his chest.  He cut his gaze over to encompass his posse of admirers across the multipurpose room and made face.  “Do they have to keep staring?” He said irritably, glaring at the group in question, “It’s creepy.  I feel like a gross old man.”

            “See, are so old.”

            Erik pulled a face at her and Anya laughed, impulsively leaning forward and hugging him tightly around the waist.  “Love you, Daddy. Now please don’t speak to me in public ever again.”

            “No promises,” he said dryly, “You do live in my house and eat my food and spend my money.”

…

            The next morning in pre-algebra class, Anya Lehnsherr discovered that someone had taken her phone off vibrate the night before…and changed the ring tone to the ‘Stacey’s Mom’ parody ‘Stacey’s Dad’. 

            She dashed out into the hallway, cheeks burning, ignoring the curious glances of her classmates and lazy frown from her teacher, and hissed into the speaker, “Dad, what did you do?”

            “I like the ringtone.”

            “Dad, you’re embarrassing me.” 

            He chuckled evilly, “That’s my job.”

            “Go back to work,” she grumped.

            “Love you, schatz.”

            “You too. Now go away.  And you’re fixing my ringtone tonight!” 

            “No promises.”

            “Dad!”

            But he’d hung up. Grumbling furiously to herself, Anya threw her phone back in her bag and trudged back into class. Never leave a cellphone within reach of one’s ever-so-slightly-evil metallokinetic father. 

            And never let your freakishly-young-looking dad chaperone school events. Ever.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Age 14

            Anya Lehnsherr had always known she had a pretty good chance of turning out to be a mutant. After all, her dad was one the most powerful metallokinetics in the world (and no, he did not know she’d googled him once).  Just, by age fourteen she had sort of resigned herself to being human, like her mom.  Most people manifested by fourteen, right?  She didn’t like the idea of disappointing her dad, of being just an ordinary human (and no matter how many times he gruffly reassured her that yes, he would love her whether or not she inherited the x-gene she knew, in that stubborn way all fourteen-year-olds have of ‘knowing’ things which may or may not actually be true, that he would be disappointed in his boring human daughter). 

            So one afternoon, when she was feeling particularly stressed and she wished her stupid algebra textbook would just catch on fire and die; she was understandably alarmed when it actually did begin to smolder. She stared at it in blank, uncomprehending shock for a solid minute before squeaking a curse and running downstairs, yelling “Dad, Dad, Dad, DAD!!!!” all the way down.

            He wasn’t in the living room. Damn. 

            Over the rush of panic thundering through her skull, she could just barely make out the rhythmic crash of her father’s favorite music rumbling through the door to the garage. Anya lunged for the knob, wrenching it open.  Her eyes skittered through the space, her frantic search tangling with the heaps of, well, scrapyard junk Erik kept piled around. Well, piled around in labeled bins, but all the labels in the world did not make scrapyard junk any tidier. German rock tore through the air around them.  The headache that had begun to squeeze its unwelcome way behind Anya’s eyes since the textbook caught fire (crap, textbook still on fire, gotta find Dad…) only intensified under the auditory onslaught of her father’s questionable musical taste.

            Unable to see more than a few feet ahead of her and not really in the mood to force her way through the thicket of scrap metal to get to Erik’s studio space in the middle of this mess, Anya grabbed a trash can lit and a steel rod of some kind and banged the two together as loudly as she could.  The resulting assault on the ears was enough to tip the tightness behind her eyes all the way over into true headache territory, but it did the trick. The music cut off sharply.

            “Dad!” Anya yelled into the silence, “I caught something on fire!”

            Silence, then a string of multilingual curses and then a clattering cacophony as Erik forced his way through his trash collection and over to the doorway.

            “You set something on fire?” he growled, wrestling his way free of the bins, the edge of his ratty t-shirt catching on some rebar wire.  He glared at the offending scrap and it pulled away sulkily, “How?”

            If Anya didn’t think her head was about to explode from the pain pressing behind her eyes, she would have laughed at her dad’s indignant expression. Erik Lehnsherr was not at his best at the moment.  His hair stuck up in a way that definitely suggested he’d been running his fingers through it in a fit of artistic frustration.  He was wearing his oldest, most battered jeans; the ones with giant holes in them that would probably fall apart if they weren’t held together by industrial-strength safety pins in some places.  His arms and hands were more blackened-grease-smudge than skin. 

            Anya shrugged helplessly, squinting at him, the light suddenly too bright for her aching head. “I just got really mad and it caught on fire.”

            More multilingual cursing. Erik lunged into the house, Anya at his heels.  “Where’s the fire?” he asked and Anya would have laughed, she would have, but she just didn’t have the energy. 

            “In my room,” she said miserably. 

            Erik’s lips flattened into a pale line and he tore up the stairs, pausing only to grab a heavy wool blanket from the closet in the hall.  Anya trailed miserably after him, watching as her father quickly an efficiently smothered the fire (which had kicked into destructive high gear in Anya’s absence).

            “Sorry for taking you away from your sculptures, Daddy,” Anya said wretchedly, “I know you’re on a deadline for the gallery, and oh, crap, we’re gonna have to pay the school for the textbook, and I don’t know what happened, and I’m so sorry and my head hurts…” to her utter shame she felt frustrated tears pricking at the edges of her eyes, her throat closing up behind them. She tried to talk, to keep them at bay, but all that came out was a pained whimper.  She closed her eyes and willed her dad to ignore her patheticness until she got herself back under control. 

            To her shock she felt strong arms wrapping around her shoulders and squeezing tightly. Almost against her will, Anya pressed her face into her dad’s chest and breathed in the scent of his studio. He must have been welding today; she could smell ashy smell of it on his shirt.  It didn’t smell anything like the burning textbook, more metallic and homey than the smoking ruin of her homework. 

            Erik murmured to her in German, mostly soothing nonsense.  If only his students could see him now.  None of them would believe that scary Professor Lehnsherr, terror of the university art department, could be this gentle.  Anya wasn’t dumb.  She knew her dad wasn’t a friendly, or even very nice guy around most people.  He was a hard man, all sharp edges and harsh lines, both physically and personally. But he was the one person who’d always been there, who always stayed.  Her mom was nice, in a distant (quite literally) sort of way. She’d send postcards and snapshots of wherever she was, chasing the next world-changing story. Anya had a whole shoebox of her mother’s articles, painstakingly clipped from magazines and newspapers. Anya would read them sometimes and try not to think about how there were more articles than postcards in her little box. But Erik had always been there; he’d demanded sole custody from the beginning and Anya both loved and hated to hear Grandma Edie talk about fierce, whole-hearted love her father had given her from the first day.  He’d been the one to comfort her after every nightmare, the one to teach her how to read and write and throw a punch, the one to clip all those articles from all those magazines and newspapers and only mutter darkly in German half the time. He was her daddy.

            “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whimpered, cringing away from the smoking textbook, “I don’t know what I did.”

            “You manifested,” he said gruffly, but didn’t let her go, giving her an extra squeeze, “You’re pyrokinetic. Congratulations.”

            He released her then, ruffled her hair and grabbed both the toasted remains of the textbook and the lightly smoking blanket.  “I’ll get rid of this. Take some Advil and take a nap, we’ll talk when you’re feeling better.  Everything will be okay.”  He smiled at her, sharp, with all his teeth.  She’d called it his ‘shark-face’ when she was little.  It was her favorite. 

            “Okay, Dad. Thank you.” 

…

            The next morning found Erik in the school office, glaring at the secretary as she tried to explain that yes, he did need to pay a fine for the damaged textbook and that no, spontaneous combustion did not count as a valid reason for anything ever.  Erik glared at the woman even harder.  She didn’t budge an inch. 

            “Dad, just pay the fine,” Anya sighed from the waiting area. 

            He gave her an aggrieved look as if he were saying ‘I can win this, just let me terrify this innocent bystander a bit more’.

            “Dad!” Anya said, shooting the school secretary an apologetic look.  The woman gave her a watery smile and Anya couldn’t help the hot rush of embarrassment on her belligerent father’s behalf.  She stood up and went to his side, elbowing him when he got there. “Dad, you’re embarrassing me.”

            Erik paid the fine.

            He got her back though. As they exited the office, Anya already heading towards her first period class, Erik on his way out the door, he turned around and said, “Goodbye, schatz. Be safe, have fun, light no one on fire.” 

            “NOT FUNNY, DAD!” she yelled after him, cheeks burning.

            He grinned at her and waved before sauntering off.

            “Love you too,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Age 15

            "Dad,” Anya groaned, shrugging deeper into her trendy military-style jacket, picking absently at one of the multi-colored decorative patches she’d sewn onto the olive material.  The cold fluorescent light of the department store washed out her skin, making the bright blush on her cheeks stand out garishly bright on her pale face.

"What?" Erik asked blandly, scuffing his boot on the linoleum floor. 

"Do you have to follow so close?" she groaned.

"...no,” he coughed and shuffled away a bit.

"Dad." Anya gave him a flat look.

"What?"

"The glaring just makes you look creepier."

Erik gave her a look that might have been wounded on a normal human being.  On him it just looked sort of hard and angular. 

"Lace is not infectious,” she rolled her eyes and turned back to the racks of ladies’ undergarments her father was pointedly refusing to look at, “You'll be fine."  She returned to flicking through bras, pausing only to groan under her breath, “Why do they never have anything pretty in my size?” 

Erik shuffled like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to flee or make sure he was as close to her as possible to ensure no one thought he was here for nefarious purposes.

More awkward non-Lehnsherr shuffling signaled the approach of a nervous-looking pimply store employee.  "Sir, do you have a reason to be in this section?"

"Dad,” Anya sighed, “Did you have to make him come over here?”

“I did no such thing,” Erik grumped at here, sparing a few seconds to glare at the store employee and snap “What?”

"I told you that coat makes you look like a creeper,” Anya sighed, shaking her head at her father’s long, dark coat.

"I'm not a ‘creeper’." Erik pointed out flatly.

"Sir, do you have a reason to be in the women's underwear department?" The employee pressed.

"Dad, go sit over there before you get arrested for looking creepy,” Anya huffed, still more focused on the bras than her extremely uncomfortable father, “I'll be fine."

"You'll be spending your college fund, have you seen the prices on these things?" Erik griped, giving the lacy undergarments a dark look.

"Dad!" Anya protested.

"Sir?" The employee’s reedy voice interrupted.

"Dad, go, sit, now." Anya commanded.

"Pick something under $30," Erik ordered, already making his retreat.

"Only the cheap or ugly ones are under 30!" Anya cried, scandalized enough to finally look up from the plastic hangers and their polyester offerings. 

"Why do you care if it's pretty? No one's going to see it,” Erik pointed out.

"Daddy!"

"Under $40 and if anyone else sees it, you're grounded and getting checked for STDs," he declared before turning and beginning to stride away.

"DAD! THAT'S GROSS!” Anya squeaked, face flaming as she shot an extremely embarrassed glance at the nonplussed store employee, “And what about when you do the laundry, huh?” she said to Erik’s retreating back, “Does that count as 'someone seeing it'?"

"It counts as you doing your own laundry sometimes,” he said without turning around.

"Sir, can you please go somewhere else, you're disturbing the other customers," the employee tried, apparently unwilling to acknowledge the fact that Erik had followed his order already.

"Under $40, remember that,” Erik said over his shoulder.

"Go away, Daddy,” Anya sighed, “Get a coffee, text Charles and complain to him, and calm down.”

“What an excellent idea,” Erik grinned his shark-grin at her and pulled out his phone.

“Dad!” she yelped, “You are not seriously complaining to Charles about bra shopping,” she hissed the last few words, face red to the hairline.

“Who else would I complain to?” Erik asked blandly, “As you keep pointing out, I don’t have much of a social life.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Anya gave up, “You’re so embarrassing.  Go call your not-boyfriend and bitch about me, I don’t care.”

“Since when does ‘family friend’ equal boyfriend?” Erik asked archly, already unlocking his phone. 

“Not-boyfriend, because you’re too chicken to do anything.  And seriously, Dad, normal people don’t spend nearly as much time ‘playing chess’ as you two do.” 

Erik just gave her an unimpressed look and wandered off, texting already.  “Call me when you need me to pay for your ludicrous underwear,” he said absently.

She did not stick her tongue out at him. She was a grown-up. Or nearly there. Now, time to decide if she wanted to play it safe or pick something guaranteed to giver her dad a heart attack. Decisions, decisions.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Age 16

            It was a good party as parties go.  Until her dad showed up, of course.  One moment she was playing beer pong with a nice mix of her classmates and some undergrads who only counted as not-strangers by virtue of copious amounts of alcohol. Alone.  Or as alone as she could be when surrounded by dozens of acquaintances and various other drunken celebrants.  And then there he was, casual as could be, leaning over her shoulder and saying, “You’re going to miss that shot.  Just like I miss the days when a ‘party’ was five year olds in tiaras tearing up my backyard.” 

            Anya yelped in surprise, missed the shot, and whipped around to glare at her father. Erik gave her a sharp-toothed grin that meant nothing good and casually leaned against the table like he did this every night.

            Maybe he did.

            That was a disturbing thought if there ever was one.

            “Dad!” Anya said, voice climbing to a pitch she hadn’t imagined it capable of, “What are you doing here?” 

            “That’s my line,” he said coldly. 

            “Hey, is that Professor Lehnsherr?” someone slurred from the other end of the table. Erik glared at the source of the voice until soberer minds prevailed and the voice retreated to a safe distance.

            “Dad, you’re embarrassing me,” Anya hissed. 

            “I’m embarrassing you?” Erik said; even tone belying the tight white lines of fury etched around his eyes.  That was a strange thing to see, actually. Erik had always seemed timeless, immortal, forever too young to be anyone’s dad.  Now, while his hair was the same auburn, his body the same long lean line of muscle, his skin still mostly unlined, Anya Lehsherr could see her father’s thirty-three years reflected in his pale grey-green eyes.

            He looked tired. And angry, yes. But mostly tired and sad.

            “I’ll drive us home,” she said softly.

            “No you won’t, I can smell shitty beer on your breath.”

            “You’re nowhere near close enough to smell my breath!” she protested.

            Erik gave her a look that clearly asked how stupid she thought he was. 

            “Sorry, dad.”

            He snorted, “I started drinking at fourteen, at least you waited two years.” 

            She gaped at him.

            He gave her a hard look, “You stopped thinking I was perfect once you mastered basic math. Learn from my mistakes, schatz.”

            Anya nodded mutely, not quite sure where the words she needed to say were and too afraid of messing everything up to reach for sub-par vocabulary. 

            “Are we going home now?”

            The corner of his mouth kicked up, like he was tempted to smile, but couldn’t quite make it. “I could always relive my youth, down a few shitty beers and kick all your millennial asses at beer pong.”

            Anya stuck her tongue out at him. When his face didn’t even twitch, she started to get concerned, “You won’t, will you?” 

            He shrugged, “I could call Charles, he could be our designated driver.” 

            “Dad, no. You’re not dragging Charles out of bed for this.”

            “I’m sure this is the least embarrassing thing he’s seen you do,” Erik shrugged, “Considering the fact that you’ve thrown silverware at him before.” 

            “It was a straw, and I was four,” Anya hissed. 

            “Straws. There were many.”

            “You should be more grateful, if it wasn’t for four-year-old me’s straws you never would have met Charles.”

            Erik looked at her, a deadpan expression on his face and said, “No, I never would havemet the guy who owns half the coffee shops in town. Ever.” 

            Not quite sober enough to find a good response, Anya settled for sticking her tongue out at him again.

            The dead air between them wasn’t really silence, more like wordless time punctuated with the steady pound of bad pop music and the occasional stranger’s drunken whoop. “Ready to go home, schatz?” Erik asked suddenly.  His sharp eyes, which had been panning back and forth across the room, cataloguing every detail, turned back to settle on hers. Anya had once, in a fit of adolescent curiosity, asked Charles what her father’s mind was like. The telepath’s expression had turned thoughtful and he’d said after a long moment, “Sharp, clean, like a safe.  No, like a puzzle box.  A series of rooms and pieces; all fitting together in different ways.  Very precise and direct.  I like it.”  Then he’d blinked and gotten a little flustered and asked if she wanted another cup of tea.

            “Sure Dad,” Anya said, “Let’s go home.” 

            He nodded, once, sharp and direct before turning and making his way towards the door. Unlike nearly every other human, he didn’t duck and weave through the crowd.  He just walked and assumed people would make way for him. And they did. 

            Of course, Anya wasn’t over six feet of German muscle topped with a dead-eyed glare.  She ducked and wove along in her father’s wake. 

            “By the way,” Erik said, once they’d emerged into the crisp fall night, “You’re grounded.”

            Anya shrugged. “Okay.”

            “And you’re working off your debt.” 

            “Debt?” she asked, skeptical and wary. 

            “Community service hours. You can work in my shop.”

            Anya groaned. ‘Work in the shop’ meant spending hours in Erik’s classroom/workshop at the university bullying her father’s collection of ‘interesting’ scrap metal into some semblance of rational order, only to have undergrad art students wreck her system day after day. Normally Erik did it. Because Erik had a long-term love affair with organization that rivaled only his obsession with wearing 60’s-hitman-style turtlenecks in public.  But foisting the task on Anya had become his new favorite method of discipline once he figured out that she didn’t actually mind hanging out in her room all day ‘being grounded’. 

            “It could be worse. I could negotiate with Charles and send you to a coffee shop.” 

            Anya pulled a face, “Please don’t.” 

            Erik chuckled evilly and she was not reassured.  Charles’ father had owned caffeine dispensaries, which his son abruptly inherited at age eighteen upon his father’s death.  Managing the coffee shops (and their straw-flinging customers) of course hadn’t stopped him from getting two phds by 25.  Now he was an economics and anthropology professor at the university.   For the last six years he’d used the coffee empire he inherited from his father as a training ground for his students, putting the business and econ majors in a real-life business scenario and providing the anthropology students a veritable petri dish of live test subjects for them to study group behavior.  If Erik asked, Charles would gladly put her to work in one of his ‘labs’.  Anya did not want Erik to ask.  Organizing junk heaps was at least a step above food service. 

            Anya gave Erik a look out of the corner of her eye and Erik just sort of smirked at her. She rolled her eyes and the smirk deepened. 

            Anya sighed. “Thanks, Dad.”

            “For what?” he feigned ignorance.  Badly. On purpose. 

            “For driving me home and not yelling at me.” 

            “Would yelling have worked?”

            “No.”

            “There.”

            Soft silence hung between them, only partially disturbed by the deep bass thrum of the music in the house behind them. 

            “I love you Dad.”

            He gave her a deadpan look and said completely flatly, “Mein gott, you’re so embarrassing.”

            She laughed, free and clear in the dim night light.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Age 17

            Of course her dad would find out.  He always did. Charles may be the telepath, but Erik was a bloodhound and the truth was his crippled and limping prey.  

            “Dad! What is this?!” Anya demanded, stomping up to his favorite table at his favorite of Charles’ coffeehouses and holding up her phone, the photo she’d taken of the picture he’d secured to one of the whiteboards in his studio/classroom at the university displayed on the bright screen.

            Erik glanced up from grading for barely a second before returning to making broad, angry strokes with his red pen across some unfortunate’s essay.  Why art students had to write essays, Anya wasn’t entirely sure. But her father with a red pen in hand was a great and terrible god not to be trifled with by petty mortals.

            “It was a reasonable precaution to take.” 

            “One guy, Dad.  One guy.”

            He gave her a sharp look, “No.”

            “No what? There wasn’t a question there!” she sighed in dramatic exasperation and flopped into the chair across from him, the motion of descent ruffling the pages spread out in front of him.

            “No.”

            “Dad, you have to start making sense sometime.” 

            He eyed her as if to say ‘I am a grow-ass man and I do what I want’.  Anya sometimes wondered if she was the mature one here.

            “I take it you saw the photo?” Charles’ gentle voice sounded over her shoulder and Anya blinked and looked up to see her father’s best friend standing behind her chair, a mug in each hand, “Erik, I told you she wouldn’t like it.”

            “It doesn’t matter if she likes it,” Erik grumped, refusing to look up, even when Charles set a steaming mug of black coffee directly on top of the paper the artist was mauling with red ink, blocking Erik’s line of sight.

            Charles passed Anya her pumpkin spice latte with a sympathetic grimace and an amused spark in his blue eyes. 

            “Charles, tell Dad he’s overreacting,” Anya said, tone verging on petulant, but too aggrieved to care much.

            “I actually agree with your father on the general idea of the thing.  The execution could have been a little…less aggressive, but overall, I think you’re better off with the picture up.” 

            “Charles!” Anya cried, “Why?”

            “Hm, yes, curse my sudden and inevitable betrayal,” Charles said archly and Anya rolled her eyes at him. Erik smirked a little and Anya kicked him under the table.

            “So that’s it, one college guy flirts with me and you do this,” Anya gestured expansively with her phone.

            Erik just nodded, taking a sip of his black-as-sin coffee. 

            Charles smiled winsomely and said, “Well, the boy was doing a bit more than flirting, wouldn’t you say?” 

            “He asked me out!”

            “He asked you to a party. There’s a difference,” Charles reminded her primly, wicked humor dancing in his eyes.  Anya didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

            “I know that kid, he’s twenty two years old.  You’re seventeen,” Erik said, voice hard. 

            “He didn’t know that,” Anya protested.

            “You didn’t set the record straight,” Erik pointed out.

            “I would have!” Anya claimed; ignoring the too-knowing eyebrow arch Charles threw her.

            “Well, I think we’ll all feel better now that Erik’s…public service announcement is posted,” Charles said too-cheerfully. Anya knew he was teasing her.  She knew.  That didn’t stop her from narrowing her eyes irritably at him.

            Erik smiled like a shark and went back to grading with a slightly more-cheery vengeance. Anya gave a long-suffering sigh and pulled out her own (high school) homework.  Charles wandered off to check up on his students.

            Anya unlocked her phone and gave the image one last look, sighing the sigh of the resigned. Attached to the whiteboard in her dad’s classroom/workshop with industrial-strength magnets was her yearbook picture from last year.  Underneath it, in purple dry-erase marker, was the caption: ‘this is my daughter, if any of you touch her, bad things will happen to you. Feel free to imagine what ‘bad things’ might be.  I’m sure you’re all very creative.’

            “You know, it was worse,” Charles had reappeared with a plate of scones Erik would pretend to ignore until Charles left and then eat half of in under five minutes. 

            “Worse?” Anya asked, trepidation sneaking into her voice.

            Charles shrugged, “It used to read ‘this is my daughter, if any of you scumbags touch her, I’ll skin you alive with a rusty spork’.  Of course, the dean’s office got complaints about that one and Erik had to change it. They asked to him to ‘please refrain from-”

            “ ‘-using demeaning or threatening language towards the students’.” Erik finished the quote for him, not looking up from his papers. 

            Charles pressed his lips together in a way that could have been disapproving…or could have meant he was holding back a laugh.  “So your father changed the caption.  Of course there were complaints about the current one too.” 

            “I pointed out to the dean’s office that there are no direct threats in the new message and I even complimented the students’ creativity.”  Erik’s head lifted from his work just long enough to flash them both a wicked grin. “Really, I deserve a bonus for being so nice.” 

            Charles sighed, “The dean’s office decided to just let it go.  For now.”  

            Anya rubbed her face, “Great, I’m blood related to a crazy person.” 

            “Let’s not discriminate against the differently-moraled,” Charles said, voice light and teasing.

Erik lifted a scone; “I will throw things at you.”

“Another family tradition,” Charles observed lightly, “First Anya with the straws-”

“Why can’t anyone let the straw thing go?” Anya sighed, “Also, I’m never talking to guys in your coffee shops ever again, Charles. You’re a wretched tattle-tale and this is all your fault.”

“Nice use of the word ‘wretched’,” Charles said blithely, and wandered off again. 

 Anya shook her head and she and Erik returned to their drinks and their work.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Age 18

            “Dad, put on something nice,” Anya shouted over the angry German music pounding through the garage.

            “Why?” Erik demanded, not emerging from his metal-cave. 

            “You have a date.”

            “No I do not.”

            “Yes you do. Now go put on something that isn’t held together by safety pins and stubbornness.” 

            “No.”

            “Not an option.”

            “No.”

            “If I set something on fire will you come out of your artist cave and talk to me like a normal human being?” Anya was getting a bit tired of shouting at a wall of metal and rust. 

            The metal wall rattled ominously.  “You really think you need to turn arson to get my attention?” her father said flatly, emerging from his forest of abandoned machine parts.  His jeans were just as tattered as ever, the enormous holes in the knees held closed with tidy lines of slivery safety pins, more safety pins hung off the edges of his front pockets, ready to be pressed into use should any other tears appear elsewhere.  Streaks of black grease and coppery rust tracked their way up the faded denim. The logo on his ratty t-shirt was worn, the paint flaking away in some places.  The shirt itself could have been red at some point but now was closer to magenta. 

            “Dad,” Anya said flatly, “You look like a hobo.  And you have grease on your face.” 

            Erik gave her an unimpressed look and said nothing.

            “Thank god I picked your clothes out for you,” Anya sighed, gesturing at him to follow her, “Come on.”

            Erik folded his arms across his chest, “Anya,” he began, tone a warning all its own.

            “Dad,” she echoed him wearily, “come on, one date.  I’ve set everything up for you.  You just need to put on real-person clothes and follow the directions I give you.” 

            If anything, Erik’s expression was even more unimpressed.

            “Come on, Dad,” Anya encouraged, “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

            “Who is it?”

            Anya gave him her most innocent expression, “What?”

            “Who is it?” Erik said, spacing out the words in a tidy, even line.

            “That,” Anya held up a finger, “Is a surprise.” 

            “No.”

            “Dad, come on. Blind date, it’ll be fun.”

            Erik gave her a tired look, “Anya, I don’t need this.” 

            “Dad, I’m not getting you a mail-order bride, I just arranged a nice dinner for you to meet someone your own age.” 

            Erik’s face was getting downright mulish now. 

            “Please, Dad? I don’t want you to be lonely anymore.”

            The tight skin around his eyes softened just a bit.  He huffed softly and shook his head, shifting on his feet, “Fine. Lead the way.”

            Anya grinned, “You won’t regret this.” 

            “I’m already regretting it.”

…

            An hour and a wardrobe change later Anya’s phone chimed restlessly and she grinned, “Right on time.”

            She unlocked her phone and clicked on the red message icon.  Black text in a grey bubble stared back at her. 

            Still regretting this. 

            Another text leapt onto the screen before she could respond.

            Your mystery person hasn’t shown.

            Anya sighed and waited patiently.

            Three…two…one…

            YOU SET ME UP WITH CHARLES. 

            WE WILL BE DISCUSSING THIS WHEN I GET HOME. 

            Anya rolled her eyes, and typed back, ‘Have fun, remember I’m your best woman in the wedding.’

...

            The next morning Anya found Erik standing in the kitchen, drinking coffee…wearing the clothes she picked out for him yesterday. 

            “Not one word,” he muttered at her over the rim of his mug.

            “Nice night?” she asked blandly, pouring herself half a cup of coffee, then filling the mug to the brim with the kind of froufrou flavored creamer that made her father wince misanthropically.

            “That was two words I didn’t ask for,” he said, but the corners of his lips ticked up just slightly.

            Anya grinned, “I was right,” she sing-songed, sipping her over-creamed coffee. 

            He gave her a dry look but the slight smile didn’t go away.

            “So, will you see him again?” Anya asked faux-innocently.

            “It’s rather difficult to avoid him.”  Erik said dryly.

            “Not what I was asking,” she pointed out.

            He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why do you care?” 

            “I just want you to be happy,” she hummed. 

            He gave her a skeptical look; then flashed her one of his rare, sharp-edged, enigmatic smiles before setting his coffee mug on the counter.  “I’m taking the first shower.” 

            She rolled her eyes at him, but grinned when he took a moment to give her a brief one-armed hug before leaving the room.  Waiting a few minutes to make sure her father was out of the room, then a few more until the sound of the shower running thrummed through the house from the upstairs bathroom, Anya pulled out her phone and clicked on Charles’ contact information.

            Still smirking, she shot off a quick text to their old friend (and apparently, her father’s new paramour). ‘Hey, looks like last night went well.  Now’s the time when I tell you I’ll hurt you if you break his heart.’

            A few seconds later her phone chimed again.

            Thank you, Anya.  Don’t worry about your father and I. 

            Anya’s grin widened, ‘Remember, I’m best woman at the wedding’. 

            Don’t jump the gun, Anya.

            ‘Never! ;)’

            Text silence and then… I’m sorry; emoticons confuse me. 

            …Right, telepath.  She was lucky she’d managed to convince him to get a phone in the first place. Telepaths tended to avoid any communication that wasn’t directly face-to-face.  Psychic impressions were to telepaths like body language was to other people…which made them poor at reading regular body language and abysmal at decoding emoticons. 

            ‘Don’t worry about.  Just take good care of my dad.’

            Of course, Anya. 

            Anya smiled and ended the conversation. Upstairs she could hear the shower cut off and her father begin to tromp around his room. 

            It was going to be a good year.