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Pietro had enough of his father. If it was on him, he'd throw the knowledge of their relation into the deepest pits of hell and never remember it again. If it wasn't for the government reminding him every step he took.
At first it was visits. Visits that turned into interrogations that turned into imprisonment after Magneto broke out from the Pentagon. So he ran, since they apparently couldn't understand that he'd rather bury his father than help him.
There was no home anyway. Mom gave up on him after he got expelled. He couldn't blame her, she had no way of reigning him in when he kept stealing shit and bringing cops to her doorstep. Lehnsherr was who knows where, plotting world domination. He was better off alone really. He didn't need people.
He's sitting in a shitty one bedroom apartment in San Francisco, hoping to get some time to rest before rehoming again when someone knocks. Well, SWAT team wouldn't knock and he was pretty sure he could run from whatever else it was.
He opens the door, expecting some neighbour bugging him about turning music off.
It's his father.
In civilian clothes, looking a little worse for wear than when he last saw him, but undoubtedly him.
Pietro wants to smash the door in his face and send him back to hell in the first split second. Instead he pulls him in and locks the door before anyone can see. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
His father's blue eyes bear into his. "I have nowhere else to go."
He never took him for a beggar. "I'm not a fucking homeless shelter, now, am I?"
"You aren't." Lehnsherr nods. "You're the only one I could go to."
"Screwing over Mystique didn't work out for you?" He mocks. "Why shouldn't I just hand you over?"
"You could."
That blows him away. Lehnsherr was a fighter, a revolutionary. There wasn't a single time they met civilly. How old was Pops now anyway? Eighty? More? Probably never too late to change.
Pietro knows what it's like to be turned away. To be left alone to fetch for himself. And he'd be lying if he said that it's not tempting him to do exactly that to Lehnsherr.
Xavier always believed in second chances, didn't he?
And it got him into an early grave. Fuck it, last thing he could do in his memory.
"You can take the couch." He goes to the kitchen part of the room and starts the kettle to boil water. He looks at his father over the room. He seems weaker.
There are more pressing issues. "How did you know where I am?"
Lehnsherr looks back at him. "I always keep an eye on you when you move. A lot of people owed me."
"So, stalking me." Pietro prepares instant noodles in the bowl. He'll have to be more careful moving forward. "Very on brand."
Lehnsherr says nothing to that.
"Any big bad plans about taking over the world soon? Or what do you plan on doing when you get your act together?" He sits down on the counter. He grabs a Twinkie. He'll be starving again before the noodles cool down.
"I don't know." Pietro frowns. That's nothing like his father. He seems defeated and defeated is a bad look on him. Depressing.
"What do you mean, you don't know? I thought you'd go blow up the president again as a revenge or something."
"I can't."
He tries to evoke some reaction. "What, forgot which way the White House is? 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC."
"I don't...I don't have my mutation anymore."
Pietro drops the Twinkie. "What?" He must have misheard.
"They injected me with their cure. I'm not a mutant anymore."
Well, that's just bloody ironic. Pietro chuckles to hide the pit of dread in his stomach. His father was always an undefeatable force in his eyes, even when they stood on opposite sides. Seeing him like this, no longer mutant and proud, breaks something in him. "Who did?"
He might pay them a visit later.
"McCoy."
One of their own is a different kind of betrayal. He wants to say that he finally got what he deserved, but that isn't true. He remembers the two days he spend in the inhibitor collar. He was helpless without his mutation. A feeling Lehnsherr undoubtedly shared now. "Wouldn't expect the diplomat to be so radical. That was always your strong suit."
Lehnsherr doesn't say anything to that. Pietro doesn't like his resignation. It feels like burying a years long hatchet. Except that for until now, Pietro would be more open to bury the hatchet in his father than with him. He thinks the feeling is shared. "What about the others from Brotherhood? Mystique?"
"They got her first." Lehnsherr's voice is tired.
"Pyro?" He thinks to anyone else from the Brotherhood. That was always his father's pride and joy. "Avalanche, Toad, Calypso, Psylocke?"
"Arrested or dead."
So much for raising his spirits. "And you're just gonna leave them?"
"What would you have me do? I'm an old, helpless man."
There is no joy in kicking someone while they're down, Pietro decided. Especially not Lehnsherr, because he really does look like he feels. "You can inspire people even without your powers."
"They won't listen to a human." The helpless rhetoric was getting on Pietro's nerves.
But at least he knew where his depression came from. "Dry your eyes, Lehnsherr. If they got you, they'll go after all of us. Are you going to sit down and let them do it?"
"What would you have me do?!"
Rage. Better than depression, Pietro decides. At least anger can lead to something productive. "Not sit and whine." He's half-expecting to have something flying at his head for that, but there's nothing. Lehnsherr just sits down on the couch.
It's a pathetic look. He can't face him anymore.
Pietro gives him the bowl of noodles. "I'm going shopping, be right back."