Chapter Text
Hospitals are boring, in Erik’s opinions. Staying in them, that is. Well, mostly boring, interspersed with short, fraught periods of way-too-interesting. They smell of fake sweet air fresheners over disinfected over… worse odours. There’s nothing worth looking at. Also, the food is terrible.
He doesn’t admit to himself he hates them because they remind him of the last months and weeks and hours of Magda’s life. At all. That’s an awareness Erik keeps pushed down inside himself, and probably always will.
Still, boredom or hatred, the best way out of them, if one cannot use the doors (or windows) is sleep. Erik sleeps a lot, healing, and has strange dreams, and knows he can only blame some of this on the drugs. He dreams of Magda as she was, when she was well. He dreams of his mother. He dreams of metal sheep, of spaceships, of aliens and explosions.
This dream is proving very odd indeed, really. Muttering voices (familiar, somehow, and automatically tagged as safe) talk about unrelated things, while the butterfly-winged sharks curl up in a pack, eating beets or gnawing at old bones.
Can you get vegetarian sharks? Erik wonders, and cringes as he thinks about the size of the litter box that many sharks will need.
“Right this way—don’t drop those—” The voice rolls overhead, covering the ceiling in a splash of familiar crimson flowers.
“He’s sleeping!” the butterflies argue.
“Don’t shout.” One shark flutters past him, causing a minor earthquake. “Or he will not be sleeping, anymore.”
“But if he’s sleeping we can’t give him the cookies,” whines the smallest shark.
Cookies? Erik thinks. They sound better than what the flying sharks are eating. Also: flying sharks? Must be a dream. But maybe the cookies are not a dream. He frowns, and opens his eyes.
Correction.
He tries to open his eyes. It is not very easy. Clearly things have got a little rusty in that department since yesterday. After some grumbling (mostly internal), Erik succeeds in levering open one eye. He is rewarded with the close up view of a pillow. Which confirms he’s now awake, even if it doesn’t give him much more to go on.
“Huh?” he turns his head, and sees a flash of a familiar smile.
“Az?” His voice is croaky from disuse.
“Indeed, me, my old friend,” Az says. “Also your children. And—”
Both Erik’s eyes open.
“Wanda? Pietro?”
“Daddy!” They both shout and pile their pointy selves onto him immediately. Erik winces and relaxes simultaneously. They’re safe. They’re, well, loud, and hopefully unhurt. He’s kept at least part of his parental duties upheld.
“Uh—ow—Elbows!” Erik says, slightly incoherent with the effort of moving to sit up burdened by bullet wounds and small hugging children.
Az clucks and mutters, fiddling with the bed tilt, before he bends over the bed, lifting first Pietro and then Wanda, briefly, so Erik can turn over and sit up. Then he steps back. Erik wraps his arms around his children as tightly as they’re clinging to him, and for a long moment no one says anything.
“You’re alright.” Wanda presses her face to Erik’s chest.
“Everyone said he was,” Pietro tells his sister, knuckles white with the force of his grip on Erik’s hospital gowned-shoulder.
“Yes, but now we can see it. Him. Daddy,” Wanda says to Erik’s collarbone.
Erik’s eyes prickle, and he squeezes them shut. When he opens them again Az is somehow managing to offer him a plastic cup of water while staring at the wall. Erik takes the water, grateful for the lack of eye contact. He drinks down a huge gulp of it and sighs. A fundamental tension starts seeping out of Erik’s frame.
He’s been afraid, constantly alert, it seems, since he first saw the bulge under Creed’s jacket that meant he was armed. He hugs his children—his children, safe, alive, unharmed—again, and would thank God, if he believed in one.
Then—
“Daddy,” Pietro says, eyes, solemn. “We have an important thing to ask you.”
“Very important,” Wanda says. “About the future, and, and everything.”
Erik looks at Az a little desperately, hoping for an explanation, or a warning. Az merely raises his hands; he’s innocent, or at least ignorant of whatever it is the children are about to request. Apparently.
“I’m never taking you to the Zoo again,” Erik says, reassuringly.
“What!?” Pietro demands. Wanda pushes back from hugging to stare up at him.
“I promise. It’s—I’m sorry,” Erik says. He is. Sorry for so, so much. But he can promise them this; they’ll never have to go—
“But Daddy-!” His daughter’s lip is quivering, and Pietro is scowling. What is this, Erik meant for his children to reassured, not—“The wolves are there, and we want to say thank you!” Wanda says, urgently. It doesn’t immediately make things any clearer.
“Wolves—oh.” Erik pauses. “You mean—I thought you’d be put off for life, after…”
“Wolves,” Wanda insists. “Good wolves.”
Az chuckles.
“They like the wolves,” he says. Erik glares lightly at him, on principle. “So do I,” Az adds. “They saved me a job.” Erik half smiles. They saved Erik a job too. Good wolves, Erik thinks.
“Daddy,” Pietro asks, earnestly. “Can we have a wolf?”
“No,” Erik says, immediately, out of long habit. “They’re wild animals, not pets. It’s illegal, and also unsafe. And cruel.” He glances at Az, requesting back up, but Az simply looks at the ceiling and grins to himself.
“Can we have a dog, then?” Wanda asks, hopefully. “Please?”
“I—perhaps,” Erik concedes. “Perhaps—” he’s always liked Dobermans himself, although he wouldn’t be surprised if his children focus on cuteness over elegance. He wonders at the solemn air of request though; certainly dogs are a commitment, and he’s pleased his children recognise this. But Erik would have thought they were going to ask him something much more serious—
“Can we have a wolfdog?” Pietro says.
“Y—what’s a wolfdog?” Erik asks, suddenly wary. He looks to Az, who shrugs, helpfully.
“One of a number of breeds created by crossing dogs with wolves,” A voice says from the doorway. “Or an illegal hybrid of a wolf and a dog.”
Erik grins. He knows that voice. Charles.
“Mr Charles!” The twins shout, slightly too close to Erik’s ears for comfort. They wriggle on the bed until they can wave at their favourite teacher.
Erik looks over and the smile falls off his face.
Charles is in a wheelchair. He has one arm in a sling, and the wheelchair is being pushed by a smiling Raven. Guilt washes over Erik immediately. If he hadn’t pulled Charles into this mess, if he’d never sent his children to Charles’s old school—Charles would still be fine. But he can’t deny every association he’s made with Charles has hurt the other man. Even just a simple trip to the Zoo.
“You said everyone was all right!” he snaps at the damned lying woman. “Charles… I’m so—”
“If you say you’re sorry, I shall have to frown at you,” Charles says, cheerful and brisk. “I’m fine, Erik, I just can’t use crutches right now.” He nods at the sling.
“I didn’t lie.” Raven’s voice is crisp as she wheels her brother up to the bed. “He’s fine.”
“Charles,” Erik says, a little hoarsely.
“Erik,” Charles says, in response. He’s smiling, as he leans forwards. Erik leans towards him as much as two gunshot wounds and two children basically sitting on him will allow.
Charles puts out a hand, and Erik turns his head, kissing Charles’s palm, quickly. Charles slides his hand up, cradling Erik’s face, running his fingers through Erik’s hair.
“I knew,” Az is saying, far away and unimportant. “I knew it would come to this.”
Raven laughs and replies, but neither Erik or Charles are paying any attention, too busy leaning towards each other, wordlessly drinking in the presence of the other alive, safe, recovering.
“Shh!” Wanda says to Pietro. “Don’t scare them off!” Erik is not at all sure what she’s talking about, but she sounds happy as does Pietro, so he focuses back on Charles; too-pale face breaking into a glowing smile, blue, blue eyes sparkling with affection and joy and home.
Charles grunts a little and leans upwards to press his lips to Erik’s then, and well.
That’s all Erik thinks about for a little while.