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Erik isn't one to proclaim his love out loud. Yet Pietro can see his care in actions.
Erik adds more food on Pietro's plate. "Eat." Pietro frowns. "I've had my portion already."
Erik gives him a strict glance. "Yes. And now you're having a second one. I can see that you don't have enough. So feed that black hole that you call a stomach and quit complaining."
Pietro never had enough, not since his powers manifested. He's certain Erik knows. "That's not how portions work."
Erik smacks his head like Pietro used to do to him. "Shut up and eat."
Pietro lies awake in his sleeping bag. His teeth are still chattering from the nightmare. Back in that cell, with an inhibitor collar on his neck.
Helpless.
His eyes fly open at the unexpected contact. It's gentle, kinder than he would expect.
Erik's caressing hand in his hair is steadying him. It's a source of warmth and comfort, even in freezing Norway hut.
He feels like a child being comforted by his father and for once it's not a bad thought. He's not alone. He doesn't have to be afraid of being locked anymore.
Maybe he'll never be alone again.
He's losing time and he knows it. There isn't much to do in hiding anyway, safe for getting food and running. It's easy to slip into superspeed and let seconds drag into days.
Back in the day he had a Walkman. Music helped him focus.
A soft song breaks him out. It's soft, nothing like what he'd listen to.
It's a lullaby.
He looks up at sees Erik singing softly while preparing the food.
Pietro can't quite understand the words - they must be Polish - but he understands the importancy behind it.
He hums the melody when he starts slipping again.
Pietro doesn't get sick often. His mutation makes him mostly immune. No such luck this time.
"It's just a cold." He pushes Erik's hand away when he tries to check his temperature. Boiling. "I'm an adult, leave me alone. I'm not dying."
"Of course you're not dying." Erik wraps the scarf around his neck. "Finish your tea, I'll make more."
Pietro does it with an eye roll. "Nobody died of a fucking cold."
There's a soft press of lips to his head and if he wasn't too busy shivering feverishly, he'd smack him for that.
"Plenty did. But you won't."
Pietro stares numbly at the grave.
Wanda Maximoff 1964 - 2011
All because she was related to him. Because she wasn't willing to stand by and watch mutants get slaughtered.
He doesn't speak when he returns to the base. The X-Men avoid him.
Erik sits with him after dinner. He doesn't try to speak, to Pietro's relief.
And gives him a small locker.
It must be pretty old by now. When he opens it, he sees that a new slot was added. Next to his grandmother and grandfather now sits Wanda's photograph.
He lets Erik put the locker around his neck.
Pietro isn't one to proclaim his love out loud. Yet Erik can see his care in actions.
"What are you doing?" He definitely wasn't expecting his son to be standing in the kitchen and baking. Pietro had no patience.
"Apparently it's called lekach." Pietro frowns, looking into the cookbook.
"Why are you baking lekach on New Year's Eve?"
"It's New Year." Pietro says like he's stupid. "Maybe this year we'll have more luck. I couldn't get the other stuff."
It isn't exactly what he remembers eating, thought it was also at wartime. But maybe this time they'll have more luck.
Erik hates the colour white. It reminds him of Pentagon. White walls, white floors, white uniform, white guards with batons.
He shares that with Pietro when the memories and nightmares become unbearable. Their current base is an abandoned psychiatric hospital, which reminds him Pentagon more than any other place.
Pietro disappears the other day. When Erik comes back from checking the perimeter, the walls are painted bright blue. Pietro rests lazily on his sleeping bag. "White was boring and we'll have to stay here for a while." He says sheepishly.
"Blue is much better." Erik agrees. Blue, after Charles' eyes.
He sits on the floor in the middle of the night, head in hands. The memories are loud, too loud. So many lives he took. So many lives that were taken from him. Mother. Father. Mystique. Emma. Charles. Azazel. Sean. Angel. Hank.
A quiet song breaks him out of the painful memories. A lullaby.
He looks up through tears.
Pietro sits on the other side of the room, pretending to be busy with something he's holding. The words aren't quite correct and the melody isn't either, but it gives him something to focus on.
It reminds him he's not alone.
There's less and less of them. Every day their numbers lesser, they bury another. Soon there will be nobody left.
Erik hates being right. He hoped time and time again that Charles wasn't wrong in humans. Yet they proved Erik right each time. Mutant registration act. Sentinels. Trask.
If he fought harder, if he had done more-
"I can see the wheels turning in your head, old man." Pietro muses from the floor. "Stop blaming yourself. There's no point to it now."
Pietro hands him The Once and Future King. "Read to me." He pokes him with the book. "Now."
Erik didn't expect Pyro's death to hit him so hard. Yet when Pietro and Bobby return from a supply retrieve mission without him, a part of him dies.
He was only a young boy, a child, when he joined the Brotherhood.
I never should have recruited him, goes through his head. Just a boy. And now his genes will be used against his fellow mutants in the form of a Sentinel.
Pietro puts a mug of warm tea into his cold hands. "I burned him." He says softly when nobody's paying attention. "They can't get him. They won't find him."