Wanda (thehexx) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-12-03 12:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, erik lehnsherr / magneto (movie), wanda maximoff / scarlet witch (616) |
Who: Erik Lehnsherr (Movies) & Wanda Maximoff (616)
When: Like a month ago, but it really could be ~any time~
Where: An abandoned playground, early evening, Manhattan.
What: Awkward father-daughter bonding. Emphasis on awkward.
They were walking in one of the neighborhoods, seemingly quiet now that dusk was upon its inhabitants, one of those suburban oasis tucked within the bustling confines of the city. It reminded Erik of Germany, or what he could remember of living there. The tiniest fragment of a memory remained that he had once lived in a neighborhood tucked within a neighborhood, vaguely like this one, but older. If he thought hard, he could remember coming home from school, before the Nazis had had him removed. And if he thought very hard, which he never did, he could remember his mother, and father, and everything that he tried very hard to forget.
Erik kept those memories buried deep, even now, a universe away from those who had caused him pain. He knew that those people had existed here, perhaps they still did. But they weren't here in this neighborhood, or even in this city, and he did his very best to focus on what he did have.
He paused outside the gate to a playground. The area was abandoned now. Most of the children had either gone home to their parents, or found something more interesting to occupy themselves after dark. There was a lock on the gate, but it was half-broken and Erik didn't even need his powers to release it. Opening the gate, he turned to look at Wanda. Whatever Erik said to himself on the subject of his "children," however much he tried to weigh the possibility that - in another universe - this could be a thing, he could not - yet - see Wanda as his daughter.
"I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to live here," he said simply, "but I can't. The quiet is too misleading."
Wanda had found herself in a different universe with not one, but two versions of her father. As luck would have it (for once in her life), both of them were approaching her and her brother quite differently than the original. The older one possibly wasn’t happy with how her life turned out, but that’s how fathers were supposed to be. You know, disappointed but not attempting to kill your brother upon his disappointment.
The younger one, the one she walked beside that night, was a completely different man. At least, as far as she could tell, he was. No one really thought to tell this young Erik that Pietro and Wanda were his children until Billy showed up. The walk was a chance to get to know each other.
And when he pulled the lock off the gate, Wanda thought she could deal with it. “The quiet is misleading? Don’t blame the quiet, Erik. It’s not the quiet’s fault.” When the gate was opened, Wanda walked carefully through it and to a swing. She sat and swayed for a moment, as if she were much older. As if she weren’t able to move so much in one go.
Erik hovered near the swings. He thought he was far too old for such things, even though, as luck would have it, he was nearly the same age as his children in this universe. They were nearly the same age, but how different their lives must have been. He didn't know, almost didn't want to know very much about their lives.
He didn't want to talk about the quiet, or why it disturbed him. He didn't know why he had even brought it up. It made no difference. He wanted to know if in her universe they did these sorts of things, but he knew himself well enough not to ask. Even if the other version of himself was different, and had had different life experiences, he thought that it all amounted to the same.
"I tried to watch The Sound of Music. I wasn't aware that the Alps could sing -" Which wasn't really what he had meant to say at all. He paused, let the moment pass. "And I'm still trying to find a houseplant that I'm convinced Charles can't kill." These were the pressing matters of his current existence. That, and his lack of employment, and the Crack House, as he had heard it called.
"I'm thinking I might give up and go for one of those plastic-y palms. You know, with the blinking rainbow lights…" Here was Erik discussing the inane details of his housemate - no, of his best friend. Here was Erik with his daughter, leaning uncertainly against a swingset, arms crossed, thinking of how he was an awful parent. Of how he couldn't even keep a fake plant alive (and how he was glad not all his friends were telepaths).
Even if Wanda moved like she was too old, she didn’t feel too old. Maybe her short childhood kept her doing things others thought silly. Maybe she didn’t see an age restriction on swings. “Sit with me. You don’t have to go far.” Wanda began to pump her legs, enough so that she moved at a steady rate but could still talk with her would-be father.
The other mutants didn’t talk much to Wanda. She didn’t know anything of the “crack house;” but surely if she would have asked, they would have told her about it. Wanda was too scared over what they thought of her to bother. Things were better where she came from. Her team had a few X-Men on it. These weren’t those X-Men.
“You could try asking Ms. Ororo Munroe. She is good with plants, at least that I last heard. Or just don’t let Charles on watering duty...”
"I didn't think of that."
He joined her on the swings, pushing off the ground with one of his feet, but not actually going anywhere.
"Where I'm from," he said, dragging his foot through the soft dirt, "I'm told I help the X-Men."
It was strange to talk of a life that he hadn't yet lived, but it was easier than discussing what he had lived through. Even if he managed to avoid his childhood, limited as it had been, there were still all those other years to account for. He wasn't ashamed of his actions, or what he planned to do (had done, apparently), but it wasn't the sort of subject that was open for discussion.
"We find the X-Men, or - some of them, not the ones who are here, and we train them. I wouldn't think it -" He spun, making a dark line in the dirt as the swing's chains twisted, pressed against each other. "It doesn't seem the sort of thing I'd do?"
Wanda enjoyed the feeling of her hair moving behind her. Like she was flying. She slowed, “You helped Charles at first. But eventually you differed in dogmas.” Her feet skidded the swing to stop. “Charles believed we were all made the same. You believed-- you taught us, that we were superior to humans. They would always hate us, because we were better than them. That we were… it doesn’t matter, now.”
She looked down at her hands, realizing she was fidgeting and picking at her fingernails. “We fought the X-Men, many times. Enough that when I went to Charles’ funeral, one of his students wanted to fight me.”
Wanda took a deep breath, realizing how much she just said in such small window of time. “I’m sorry.”
"Funeral?"
He knew that he and Charles had their differences of opinion; even now, he thought he could see the cracks in their relationship. But Erik had always been a pessimist (he called it realism), always looking for the worst where there might be nothing. He thought it kept him safe (mostly, it made him alone).
He reached out, as though to offer a hand, a word even, of comfort, but he stopped. His hand grabbed the swing's chains instead.
"I - should be sorry." It was uncomfortable, taking the blame for what he had not done. "I wanted to know."
He looked at his daughter, and then up at the night sky, obscured here by trees and tall buildings. "What of your own life?"
“He was very old, if it makes you feel any better.” Not old enough for a funeral just yet, but Wanda decided to leave all that out.
“Everyone wants to know. If I came here from a different point in my life, I’d beg them to know. I want to know now what my future holds. It can’t get any worse, I don’t think?” Wanda laughed softly and kicked off from the ground again. She laughed again when he asked of her life. “What of it? My husband and I are no longer together. My children are beyond my help. But I keep living.”
Erik kicked off from the ground, lost momentarily in his thoughts. He supposed he should take comfort in the fact that he and Charles had long, albeit seemingly troubled, lives.
"We all keep living," he said. "Until we don't. I imagine that's what we have philosophy for, and poetry. Not that anyone in this age appreciates either."
"But maybe -" And he knew, in this moment, that he had been spending far too much time with X-Men, for what he was about to say was incredibly idealistic. "Maybe we keep on living in this world to prove we're not the people we are, or are about to become, in ours."
"Fortune-telling isn't really my area of expertise."
When Wanda was seemingly orphaned, all she had was Pietro. She looked up to him, not as if he were the same age, but much wiser. He acted like it. It was amazing to her, that the two versions of her father here reminded her of Pietro. She wondered if she and her brother had been separated as children, if they would still have the same ticks and similarities.
“We keep on living, until we don’t. I think that’s the best way to put it.” She smiled at him. What would she have been like if this man raised her?
She never felt more compassion and understanding for the man known as Magneto than right then. He didn’t want to become a terrorist, a bad father, a monster. She was taking a glimpse into the past and not the future for once.
“It’s easy, really. I learned from our foster mother. You just look at the person you’re divining for. What would they want to hear?”
Erik had met his share of fortune-tellers in his lifetime. He thought the entire act a charade, something to swindle money out of lesser men. What would he want to hear, if faced with one now? Perhaps that it had all been worth it. No, it had been worth it. There was no doubt that the things he had done in the past had been awful, but they had been worth it. They had taught justice to someone, somewhere, somehow…
"The past is dead," he said, twisting his hands into the chains of the swing. "I believe that's what I would want to hear. The past is dead, and immutable, and nothing here can change that."
It can't change us, either, he thought. In the end, nothing changed.
"We should head back."
He said it not because he wanted to leave the confines of this sanctuary, half-hidden between the rowhouses, but because he thought he should say it. The moment should end, he thought, before he broke it into a thousand fragile pieces. That was how his relationships always ended - broken and bruised and left dying in an island paradise.
Wanda nodded. She understood. Maybe not completely, maybe not his every thought. But yes. The past was dead. This moment was dead. It was time to move on.