Time travel was, surprisingly, a somewhat familiar concept. It was one that Erik didn’t always understand, especially when in his own experience the foray into such a thing involved asking questions like ‘what does the space-time continuum really look like after being twisted into a spiraling pretzel of insanity?’ and things of that nature. So many potentials, one future darker than the next, and it was a wonder they managed to stabilize anything at all - but if they hadn’t, mutants would have been wiped out. He was no less confused by recent Vallo events, but considering he had arrived in the past with Rogue and their daughter he was liable to not make things worse and just let whoever knew more about time travel handle a way to get back to where they were supposed to be.
In the meantime, he’d survive - both he and Rogue were adept at doing so. They had both spent portions of their lives on the run, blending in to avoid suspicion and attempting to escape that which seemed to dog them. This wasn’t so much that, but they did manage to find a suitable farm to barter lodging with - helping take care of the land was a monumental task, so exchanging shelter and food for manual labor seemed more than fair.
Erik actually sort of even enjoyed it a little - being outside, the fresh air, keeping busy. The sunshine was brilliant but not overly heated - and the ground didn’t resemble swathes of mud but all softly verdant and hills rolled like a quilt; maybe it was the time period but the air seemed to have more fragrance and more warmth to it. He was outside now with Anka Irene, who liked to run and pick wildflowers - there were treasures to be found in meadow grass, along with rabbit warrens and stones. And there were vegetable gardens and fruits to be tended and tools to repair - Erik would take care of that, however. He could do it easily.
“Daddy!” Anka Irene proudly held up the flowers she’d gathered.
“That’s lovely, maleńka,” Erik told her. “Show your mother too?”
Traveling back in time wasn’t exactly a new thing for Rogue. In Tumbleweed they had something similar, though at least here they were still in a world that had mythical creatures running around. Magic wasn’t out of the ordinary so what the three of them could manage to do wasn’t seen as a huge threat. She also knew that having Anka Irene around helped--not just to calm her nerves over what was happening to her daughter as well. Having the tiny girl in tow helped calm people’s fears of them. They might be outsiders that no one knew, but they were outsiders with a child. Ones who were willing to work.
She smiled at the little girl who proudly ran over to her, holding up the flowers for her to see as well as Rogue went about pinning up the washing to the clothesline. This simple life was one that she could get behind most days. As much as she enjoyed the city, a quiet house out in the country seemed a lot more appealing. Aside from the fact that back in their time the Vallo woods were prone to various monster attacks.
Rogue had a feeling it was the same in this time period. Probably slightly worse with the lack of waypoints to move people and creatures around. So she made sure to keep alert and was thankful that Anka Irene could handle herself if something did appear. She’d probably turn it into a teddy bear. That seemed to be her go to at the moment.
“Do you want to make them into a crown?” Rogue suggested once she had the last of the linens up, unsurprised when the nearly four year old nodded enthusiastically at the idea.
The two sat down in the tall grass, watching Erik work while Rogue showed their daughter how to string the flowers carefully together. “How ya doin’ with the tools?”
“They’re coming along,” Erik replied - he had a whole set of farming tools near him; one spade made of iron (with a wooden handle) was picked up with a flex of his powers, and he squinted to let the metallic sparks fly, bending and shaping. Thinning out the blade, really- this would be for digging ditches, and then he’d take care of the iron picks next followed by the sickles for harvesting. A lot of these things were made at the smithy anyway so he knew them - it was the gardening that happened to be more foreign, but he figured he’d let Anka Irene follow him with a basket and they’d pick the best wild berries and some apples; there were a couple trees on the property.
It was a nice place, overall - the greenery of it reminded him of Genosha, but he knew it wasn’t going to be as peaceful as the island (which didn’t exist here, of course - he’d already done a flyover to check). The entirety of this ancient version of Vallo felt raw and dangerous - he and Rogue were both keeping a close eye on Anka Irene; he was protective of her, regardless of her abilities.
“I’d say we should look into a farm of our own, move out of the apartments - “ Which could be stifling sometimes, though the city had the benefit of being attacked far less. “But you know how dangerous it is. Perhaps a compromise - an urban farm.”
An urban farm did have a nice ring to it. “Getting the penthouse on one of the other buildings might be the way to go about doin’ that.” Plant a rooftop garden, put in a few other structures to give themselves something resembling what they wanted. They had plants in their current place, Rogue had a bit of a green thumb. She reckoned that was because of living so many years with Ororo. It was hard not to know about soil and the best amount of water for different types of plants with the weather goddess for a best friend.
She hadn’t kept up with it as much in Vallo because of their city life, only a few potted plants--mostly herbs--here and there, but it was something she wouldn’t mind putting together again. It wasn’t like they didn’t have the money either for it. She’d gotten all of her inheritance from Irene one month, a lofty sum showing up in her bank account that she’d known all too well. None of the houses from around the world had shown up too but Rogue wasn’t sure what she’d have ended up doing with them anyway.
“It’s somethin’ we can look into whenever this lil time hop ends.” She set the flower crown on top of Anka Irene’s head and sent her over to show off the new headpiece to Erik.
The sight of Anka Irene wearing the flower crown caused Erik to smile, and he paused in the middle of adjusting a sickle blade to set it down (not anywhere near her - he kept sharp things away from his toddler) and scoop her up. She laughed, and honestly, one of his favorite sounds was that little sweet giggle - he’d missed it, with Nina - and he pressed a kiss to her cheek before setting her down on the grass again. “You’re Queen of the Flowers now,” he teased, which clearly delighted her.
He went a couple steps to the fence, which also needed repair - though he was still within talking range, and could do so over the way he used one of the hammers (no drills in this day and age but he really didn’t need one anyway) to knock things back into place. “A penthouse - getting fancy on me, Anna,” he also teased his wife, lightly, a slight trace of an accent coming through - it was hard to tell what that accent even was, considering how long he’d been around for and how far he’d traveled (literally). German, Polish, something else - difficult to say.
“But I like that. And like the idea of growing our own food, to some degree.” He paused, considering. “...how long do you think this will last?”
The other option was a place with a backyard but that seemed more cumbersome in the city and considering they could all fly to a degree going up more felt better. She watched as Anka Irene headed off to gather more flowers, keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn’t wander too far while she considered Erik’s question.
“About a week?” Give or take a few days if things went how they usually did in Vallo. It was a vast improvement from the month long ordeals of Tumbleweed. Little change ups weren’t so bad when they only lasted a few days. It was those cruises that she was never going to miss. They threw a wrench into everything and unlike Vallo, far too many people had actually died on them.
“Nothing’s really gone over that length of time at least. Not by too much anyway.”
The idea of dying on a cruise was still so strange to Erik - just goes to show that there were multiple universes out there, multiple timelines, and not all of them were kind. It was true though - ever since he’d been in Vallo, odd things would happen but they wouldn’t last too terribly long. And it all even became a pattern, of sorts - they could anticipate the usual monthly madness and then when it did happen, they were comforted by the fact that they wouldn’t have to endure it until it broke them.
This, however - he wasn’t so naive as to believe that it would follow that same pattern.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst?” he chuckled, hammering in another fence post to get it to fuse with the other one next to it, so it wasn’t so wobbly. That was generally Hank’s line of thinking but Erik considered that perhaps it was valid to borrow for the moment. “We’ll be alright here. If something happens - we won’t jump in unless it involves Peter? Or Wanda. Or the one of the twins.”
The family, basically. But he just wanted to see where Rogue landed on the heroics issue - because surely something would happen. This wasn’t meant to be a leisurely vacation back in another era.
Oh Rogue definitely agreed with that. She’d purposefully taken a cushy desk job with the DOA, making sure papers were filed and bills paid and the like. Something that would keep her out of the frontlines and working a regular schedule five days a week. It was mundane and perfect. She never wanted to chance ending up injured or worse and leaving Anka Irene alone. Even with Erik and the others there she still didn’t want to chance that happening.
“My heroing days ended nearly four years ago, hon,” Rogue told him, looking over at the little girl who had laid down to act out a story with the corn husk dolls that had been made earlier for her to play with.
Hopefully the other four wouldn’t end up getting into too much trouble. She didn’t think Wanda would, but the other three were all big tossups.
“Mine never truly began,” Erik stated with dry humor, referring to his ‘hero’ days - he’d come to accept that sort of thing just wasn’t in the cards for him. Not like it was with Charles, though even with him - after Raven was killed, and Jean sacrificed herself to stop the Phoenix Force from destroying the world, his old friend had retreated. Left the Institute (which was renamed) in Hank’s care, jetted off to Europe to blend in on the streets of Paris and hunker down - he’d been broken too, perhaps realizing that he’d acted wrongly when he chose to keep certain things from Jean which could have saved a lot of heartache later on.
When he met Charles for a game of chess in Paris, he didn’t feel like much of a hero either - Erik understood. Things would get better, he hoped. And he hoped to see Charles again one day too.
Now he was ruminating and probably ought to get out of his own stormy thoughts. He had a couple more tools to repair, but first moved closer to Rogue and ducked to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “Once I finish with this - we can do some gathering, maybe? Anka Irene can help us pick out berries?”
And probably eat more than her share too, but that was alright - they weren’t poisonous.
“You ain’t gotta be a hero to change the world.” Didn’t have to be a villain either. But there was no discounting that things they had done in their pasts had catapulted their worlds in one direction or another. Especially him. That didn’t mean either of them had to stay on those particular roads.
Especially not in Vallo. No one was being persecuted. Being a mutant was just another in a long line of things that people could do in that world. She knew others considered their powers its own sort of magic, the easiest way for them to explain it with what they knew, and Rogue didn’t mind the distinction.
“I reckon she’ll enjoy the berry pickin’. Though let’s try not to get her spoilin’ her appetite.” If they got enough of them they might be able to make some jams and pies.
It was true, Erik supposed - and he’d grappled with a lot of trauma in his day. Trauma from the Holocaust, and how it fed his drive to want to protect mutantkind while also developing a mistrust for humanity. He’d always wavered in terms of heroics, but eventually he would find his way back to doing what could be considered the right thing (even if it was for a different motive each time) - and he was trying to do the right thing in Vallo as well.
And he was pragmatic. He knew what needed to be done and how to do it, even if he didn’t like doing it (killing Shaw, for example). Perhaps he’d done his part to bring awareness to the deadliness of the Sentinels, to change the world - even if he had a different method to the madness.
Could also be argued that all of that led him here which - watching Anka Irene play with corn dolls - he certainly wasn’t complaining about. “Are you sure we can’t spoil her appetite?” Erik grinned a bit; he was apt to definitely spoil their daughter, but if she did something she wasn’t supposed to he wouldn’t shy away from telling her that was wrong and why. He was a big proponent of talking to kids like they weren’t stupid, for example.
“But alright, that sounds like a good plan. We’ll take it day by day here anyway.”