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Another night, another place. Pietro makes sure there's no signs of life in the abandoned steel factory. They were in Poland now. Pietro hoped to get more time when they crossed the ocean. Europe isn't as openly hateful to mutants as America yet.
He lets Lehnsherr battle his nausea from crossing the ocean in mere seconds and covers the windows and doors so that nobody can get in.
It's potatoes for dinner again, unsurprisingly. Maybe tomorrow he'll some carrots to boil instead. Lehnsherr gives him a half of his portion.
"Go to hell with that, I had mine." Pietro pricks up immediately.
"You ran across the ocean, take it." Lehnsherr shoves the plate back into his hands stubbornly. "Don't make me feed you."
Pietro gives him a glare but eats it. He is starving, but that's a default for his body now. He doesn't remember when he last had enough food.
Lehnsherr seems melancholic ever since they came. Pietro doesn't ask. He knows that the metal around Lehnsherr must be irritating him, always just out of reach.
He tries to get some sleep before tomorrow's necessary haul for groceries again, when it's suddenly interrupted by metallic clanking. He wakes up ready to fight, or rather run, but there's no trace of the Sentinels anywhere.
No sentinels maybe, but all the lighter metallic items in the room are floating. Fucking floating. It looks like silver rain.
Erik is laying on the bed, breathing heavily. A nightmare. That's not uncommon.
Pietro touches the bolt floating in the air. It's stuck by unseen force. Fascinating.
He hasn't seen Lehnsherr show this extend of his powers yet. The nightmare must've woken them.
He doesn't touch Lehnsherr to wake him up. "Wake up, Lehnsherr. It's a dream." He calls out across the room.
That doesn't work. The objects starts to shake. He zips over to Lehnsherr.
"Lehnsherr, wake up. Lehnsherr!"
At first he thinks the sound must be an earthquake, before he realises that it's the walls. Steel reinforced walls.
Walls that will bring the ceiling tumbling down on his head if Lehnsherr doesn't wake up. Sleeping in a steel factory with a metal bender suddenly feels like a pretty dumb idea.
He shakes Lehnsherr. "Erik, wake up! Erik!"
Thank the X-gene for his superspeed because a railing embeddes itself in the place where he was standing half a second ago as Lehnsherr jolts awake.
The objects come crashing down.
Shit. That was close.
"Pietro? What happened?" Lehnsherr looks at the hole in the floor. "Did I do that?"
For the first time in a long time, Pietro is speechless. He can only nod as he works to get his voice back. "You had a nightmare and your powers went haywire."
"Are you hurt? Did I hurt you?" Lehnsherr asks fearfully.
It's not a good look on Lehnsherr. Pietro scowls. "Don't get all soft on me, I'm fine. I dodged it, didn't I?" He goes over to his bed and pushes all the screws and bolts off the sleeping bag. "At least we know your powers are back."
Maybe it's just the lightning, or rather the lack of it, but Lehnsherr seems ghostly pale. The nightmares don't usually hit this hard.
Pietro walks over to him. "Do you need to get out for fresh air?"
Erik nods. "Yes, please." He sounds exhausted.
Pietro offers him a hand to help him up, which he takes. They go outside. There's nothing but forest around the factory, but Pietro stays vigilant.
To his surprise Erik doesn't let go of his hand. Pietro is in half a mind to pull it out of his grip and smack him, but he draws comfort from it all the same. Just this once.
They walk in silence for a while. "So what was it that got you so worked up?" Pietro asks, half serious. He's kind of expecting Erik to tell him to shove it, as he's grown to be more like himself in the last months.
"Pentagon."
Right. Pentagon, his father's home for twenty six years. He's not sure how to comfort him, he never knew how to. "You're not there anymore."
"In the dreams I am." He holds his hand a little tighter. "I'm sorry.... for what I did."
Throwing the railing? He was still half-asleep during that. "I dodged it, it's fine. Don't mention it."
They slowly return back to the factory. As Pietro settles into his sleeping bag once more, he can hear the metal screaking again and sees Erik is testing his powers.
"Don't drop the ceiling on my head." Pietro chastises him. "It would be a waste of my pretty face."
"I've had my mutation for long enough, Pietro. I have it under control."
Pietro's eyes go to the hole in the floor. "All the time?
"You dodged, didn't you?"
Pietro rolls his eyes. "Don't pull that shit again, old man."
"Do you think you won't move in time next time?" Erik gets to his sleeping bag too.
"I always move in time." Pietro says confidently. "You should practice that. Nobody stuck a needle in me so far. How many was it for you? Two?"
"Four." Erik corrects him. "And I don't see how you can judge the situation when you weren't on the battlefield."
"I don't do battlefields. They're all too slow for me. I'm a one man army."
"Pride comes before fall, boy, remember that."
Pietro scoffs. "You're one to talk. Where do you think I get it from? At least I'm not murdering presidents yet."
"I was cleared for Kennedy." Erik reminds him. "I killed no presidents."
"And how many senators?"
Erik shakes his head. His voice is rueful. "Not enough."
Pietro shrugs. "Always room for improvement." He tries to count. Kelly, McCarthy, Kennedy. He's sure he's missing a few.
Erik settles in his sleeping bag next to Pietro. Maybe too close for his liking, if he's going to be throwing more railings at him during sleep. So what? He'll dodge them too.