driftfleet | (no subject)

[ There's a moment of pause as she takes the tea, and she breathes out before she huffs a little noise. ]

I wish I could say I was surprised.

[ But she's not. It seems no matter what world they're in the two of them are incredibly close. ]

Well... he was no longer around in that world. [And so he understands, in an oblique way, why 'he' might choose to name his son after his oldest friend. This just brings him back around to the other elephant in the room.]

Has anyone mentioned Kurt to you?

Kitty told me. Charles dies and you lead the X-Men. It's almost funny. [ And she'd had a minor breakdown about it, but she'd prefer not to talk about that if at all possible.

Instead, she wrinkles her nose. ] Hank did, and Charles and I talked about it.

Almost. [And not at all. It was one of the first tales he'd heard on the Fleet, him as the only person present from reality as he knew it. He'd needed the connection, even if it was built on Kitty's memory of another man. It had been a hard story to swallow, though.]

I know him. He seems like a good man. [From what he knows about Kurt, at least. Another of the first people he'd spoken to, another whose memory of Magneto made a starting point for being an ally.] I've sparred with him before too.

[ Almost, but not quite. Even thinking about it now makes her feel angry and on edge, as if she needs to find Charles and touch him to make sure that he's alright, that he's alive and real and not hurt. She can imagine Erik as a leader, but a leader of something like the X-Men? She can't quite imagine that.

She tenses, though, gritting her teeth and looking away. It's a hard topic to talk about and it bites at her. She's barely gotten around to letting people know about her connection to Azazel and now... This. ] I haven't met him. I get the feeling we're accidentally avoiding each other.

It doesn't have to be. Because I could easily give you his communicator ID.

[Just like that. He sips at his tea. He would give it to Raven if she asked for it; what she did with the information was up to her. He's not going to talk about Kurt's history, or who his parents are. Mystique, he knows, was his mother. His father he can pretty well guess, based on the clues provided. They have their own hesitant steps to dance, the interplay between Kurt's impression of another Magneto and Erik's disinclination to hear much about other worlds.]

[ And there it is.

Erik sits in front of her and sips tea and pretends as though a bombshell hasn't been dropped on her lap, and she hesitates for a moment before she closes her eyes, squeezing them closed tight. She doesn't like this; she's not comfortable with who she is and all that she's learned and she's on edge about it all, shaking as she tugs her hands away and slips them under the table, trying to hide herself away despite the hurt she feels in her heart.

It even hurts to speak. ]

He's not my son.

...no. He's not. He's from another world.

[After a moment's silence, he continues.] I've been-- told, that I have another child in these other realities. A son. And he likely exists in ours. [The difference between the names Pietro and Peter is negligible. He's seen the patterns, the repeating ones, across the stories he's heard. All of them reappear in different roles, different guises, in these worlds where mutants exist.

His expression shadows a bit as he remembers the sheer panic he'd felt as Charles told him that the boy who'd broken him out of prison was probably his son. Because how could he have living family? He's gone so long without it, that it no longer seems rational to think about.]

... In ours.

[ She can't imagine anyone that might be Erik's child; there's no one that she knows, no mutant that she's come across that could possibly fit the mould of Erik Lehnsherr's family - not biologically, at least. It just doesn't make sense to her, not because Erik isn't worthy of a family or capable of having one - he is, of course - but because she can't imagine it. It's the same as the idea of her having her own child; she doesn't want to think about it because the truth hurts too much and it weighs on her.

Bowing her head, she squeezes her eyes shut. ]

You know about me and Azazel, Erik. You know what - what we had. What happened. I can't think about it.

[ He has to understand because it's the same for him, surely. ]

[He understands, but he doesn't think it's quite the same. Can't be, in some fundamental aspects. He remembers Raven and Azazel well. In those hectic, all too brief days where their Brotherhood was formed and they had all cleaved together in their desires to change the world. It hadn't been his habit to keep tabs too closely on all their interpersonal relationships - and yet it was nearly impossible not to know, given how closely they had all lived together.

Mentioning his son to Raven is the first time he's voiced it since Charles had told him. He feels like if he looks at it too closely, it'll blind him like looking straight into the sun.]

I know.

[ The months she shared with Azazel wasn't some kind of supreme love affair, as if they were some kind of star-crossed Romeo and Juliet-esque lovers destined to find each other. It was borne out of being close to one another, being near enough other, caring about each other just a bit and being in close quarters. She had never felt the same with with Janos, true, and Erik was always held in an esteem far, far higher than any of their friends could touch, but it didn't mean she felt for Azazel the way she had always felt for Hank. It was just different, and she had to force it out of her mind before she ended up falling into memories somehow.

Turning her head to look at him, she has to fight back her ugly, sad laughter. ]

We're more alike than I remembered.

[He snorts, a short huff of air through his nose. Taking another mouthful of tea, his tone is a little lighter, an attempt to move them past the dark places their minds have gone to.]

It's easy to forget. Especially when we were more focused on our differences, not so long ago. [His drive to kill not just Trask but all of his ilk, send a message to the world with the head of one of their leaders - and Raven's path, which had diverged and gone its own way. Maybe this isn't much lighter than talk of their children, but it's surely less personal.]

[ It's easy to follow Erik, as it's always been, and she huffs a noise before she speaks. ]

A little bit. But we're here now, and we're trying.

[ Her leg might still ache a little sometimes, but...

They really are trying to get better, aren't they? Not just her and Erik, but her and Charles, too. ]

Yes. That we are. [It's still a strange new realm they're trying to inhabit, within each other's spheres again. Erik's had a headstart with Charles and Hank, but he's more willing to admit to himself that none of them have returned to reality as much as they should have.]

I haven't even called you an idiot today. We're making progress. [ She might have thought it, of course, but that doesn't count. ]