A Girl of the Future

by Vanessa Krowd

  "To be fair, that wouldn't have happened if one of your agents hadn't shot me – with an arrow, of all things."

  "I'm sure Barton will apologize when he returns."

  "Where are the dynamic spy-duo?" Skye asked.

  Coulson eyed her Stark-Tablet, raising his eyebrows in a silent question, but answered, "They're currently interrogating a few leads we've managed to bag."

  "Any answers yet?" Nikki asked, immediately sounding more hopeful.

  He shook his head, "Most of them have cyanide capsules hiding on their persons. The ones that are less inclined towards suicide aren't exactly talking. Clint and Romanoff are

  the best, they'll get the answers we want."

  She sighed, "Any word from Dmitri?"

  When he shook his head, Skye watched something dark cross Nikki's expression. She supposed he would look the same in the Alchemist's position. She knew what it was like to

  live without parents, but Nikki at least had found a father figure in Dmitri, and now he had disappeared again.

  "We should have tried to stop him," Nikki murmured. "If HYDRA gets their hands on him, they could potentially reach the other universes if they can harness his mutation. And if

  there are mutants in mine, aliens in yours, there's no telling what could be in the others."

  "You never saw any of the other worlds?" Skye asked.

  Nikki shook her head, "No. I asked Dmitri to start looking for safer worlds long before I decided to stay here. There was a war brewing between mutants and humans, one that

  would likely start soon, and so my intention had been to find a home where mutants would be accepted. It was what Charles and I had wanted.

  "But then there was…something that came up, and so I asked Dmitri to tell me about the most likely candidate, and he told me about this world. Charles tried to talk me out of

  going, but it seemed like there was no other choice at the time, so I took all of the mutants that didn't have families or had been abandoned and we came here."

  "You were gone four days after the unveiling of the Sentinels," a deep, smooth voice said from behind them. "Didn't even say goodbye to anyone. Seems to be a habit of

  yours."

  Skye turned to see a fairly tall ginger-haired man leaning against the open doorjamb. Erik, she realized, Nikki's ex-husband and something of an instigator, if Coulson was to be

  believed. He had aged well, since she guessed he was a little older than Nikki. Then again, if she counted all the years he had skipped, she supposed he looked excellent for an

  eighty-three year old man.

  He was a classical sort of handsome. Were it not for the faint worry lines across his forehead and around his eyes, Skye would have thought he looked rather like the Greek

  statues in museums. But there was also off-putting about him, something in his gaze and stance that seemed more predatory than human, and then there was the ridiculous magenta-like purple body armor he wore. Coulson had said that he had refused to change into a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform.

  "Do you really want to analyze bad habits right now?" Nikki asked, pulling her gloves off gingerly.

  There was no malice in her voice, Skye realized, but a sort of resignation as if she had given up fighting him. With Nikki's words, she watched the tension slowly disappear from

  Erik's stance. She couldn't help but wonder what bits of the story she was missing. Of course Skye had been filled in a little about the two mutants, and had even hacked into

  the security feeds to watch the argument that had led to an entire room's worth of electronics to be crushed like tin cans, but only so much information could be gleaned from

  second-hand sources. And it was painfully obvious that the two had a very interesting past together.

  "No, I don't," Erik conceded. "I was hoping I could talk to you. Privately."

  Nikki shook her head at that as she handed off the gloves to Fitz, "Whatever you want to say, you can say it now."

  Erik looked visibly uncomfortable at that and, when he began to speak, his words were in a language that she couldn't recognize. Skye remembered how they had argued days

  ago in what sounded like German. This one was slightly different, the words less flowing and much faster. It was almost as though he was more familiar with this language than

  German. And, when Nikki spoke, her own accent was slightly different than Erik's and she often paused as though searching for the right word.

  "How many languages do you speak?" Skye muttered, thinking out loud.

  "Five," Nikki answered in English, her attention going to Coulson. "You restricted Erik's access to the kids' files?"

  Coulson nodded, "You seemed uncomfortable with him accessing their files, so I revoked his clearance level."

  "Oh, well…thank you," Nikki said slowly before turning to Erik. "Why do you want to help? You came to see me, for some reason, and all the sudden you want to help find the

  kids?"

  "It's important to you," Erik muttered, his voice kept low as though he didn't want the rest to hear. "And I don't want them to go through what we did. You were right."

  Nikki seemed taken aback by that, her lips parting as though she wanted to speak but couldn't find the words. Skye watched as some of the apprehension seemed to drain

  from the older woman. Turning to Coulson, as Skye had long since learned that he could read people much better than she ever could, she noticed that even he seemed

  surprised by Erik's admission. It was a minute change in his expression, the slightest quirk of an eyebrow and widening of his eyes. But she could tell he hadn't expected the mutant to say something like that. Even Fitz and Simmons were watching Erik and Nikki as though waiting for something.

  The slamming of the door caused them all to jump, everyone's eyes suddenly turning to the agent in the doorframe. He was panting slightly, as though he had been running,

  and his eyes flicked from Coulson to Nikki and back. He couldn't seem to speak as he caught his breath.

  "What is it, Harvelle?" Coulson asked, breaking the silence.

  The agent looked back at him, "It's Maximoff, sir. He's back."

  "And?" Nikki asked, taking a step forward.

  "He's been shot."

  Erik watched from his seat as Magda paced back and forth in front of the glass separating them from the operating room. She looked like a caged tiger – all danger and barely

  contained power. Even though nothing showed in her expression, which was a carefully manipulated mask in his presence, he had felt the temperature of the room rise the

  second she had seen Dmitri.

  He had followed her the second she had torn from the room, not bothering to excuse herself in her haste. They had arrived in the room just in time to see their surrogate

  father on a stretcher, the white sheets stained with red, but the agents had held them back. Dmitri was in surgery, they had said. He had three bullets in his chest. Erik might

  not have been so worried, as he had seen Dmitri wounded before, had the man not been unconscious when they wheeled him in.

  "You're going to wear a hole in the floor if you keep pacing," he said, his eyes flicking away just for a second. "You may not have noticed, but you're not fully in control right

  now. The metal is, quite literally, thinning beneath your feet."

  She turned her dark eyes towards the floor, and Erik couldn't help but wonder if she could actually see the molecules that made up the steel under her, and sighed. He held his

  breath as she approached him. Was she feeling more comfortable with his presence there? But she left two seats between them as she sat down, making it very clear that she

  still couldn't find it in herself to trust him completely.

  "He'll be fine," he told her. "The Second World War wasn't enough to kill him, this won't be, either. He'll make it through, and he'll tell us where the children are."

  "You don't know that," she said bitterly. "You don't know everythi
ng."

  He shook his head, his gaze cast downward on his hands in his lap, "I never claimed to."

  "Why are you here, Erik?" she asked suddenly, her hand moving from her forehead to push her hair from her face. "Dmitri was already looking for us, but not you. Why bother

  coming here at all?"

  "I told you: I wanted to see you again."

  She shook her head, her eyes meeting his unflinchingly, "Don't do that. Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. I always hated when you used to do that, as if I'm too

  fragile to hear the truth."

  "You were the one to pretend you were fragile when we married," he pointed out. "I remember the days when we were young, you came in covered in bruises and scrapes

  because Sergei had said a girl wasn't as strong as a boy. You had beat that boy bloody just to prove a point. And then his mother had come to our door, yelling at Dmitri for

  what he was teaching you, and all you did was grin."

  It wasn't a lie. In those days he had known she had been a force of nature, made of flint and fire and spirit, something that would likely never be tamed. He had thought her

  strong even without a mutation. She could have withered and died, been stomped out by the cruelty of the world they had been subjected to, and yet she had only seemed

  to burn brighter after the liberation of Auschwitz.

  "You told me that a man wanted a demure woman, so I thought that was what you wanted."

  "Most men," he corrected.

  "You didn't bother to make that distinction."

  He sighed, burying his face in his hands, "I was upset with you that day. I wanted to hurt you, thought it would knock a little sense into you. It didn't occur to me that you might have taken it to heart."

  "When did it become that all we did was lie to each other?" she asked.

  "I don't know."

  Silence fell between them, heavy with the weight of memories of how everything they had wanted had gone wrong. He wondered if she felt just as lost as he did when it came

  to making amends. Over the years, while Magda hadn't been actively on his mind at all times, there had been a small part of him that always wondered what they would say to

  each other if they met again.

  "How long has it been for you?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "I know Dmitri tends to get the years mixed up," Erik said. "For me, it's been eighteen years since you left. How long has it been for you?"

  "Almost sixteen years. You're older than me by ten years now, instead of your usual eight."

  "You certainly know how to make a man feel old."

  "You're fifty now," she pointed out. "You don't exactly need my help for that. Your hair is even greying."

  Despite the tension between them, Erik couldn't help but laugh. The teasing edge to her voice was unmistakable, and oddly good-natured, but what gave it away was the

  half-smile she gave him.

  "I missed you."

  He stopped short, and so did she. It hadn't been what he had meant to say, though that was not to say that it wasn't the truth, nor how he would have said it had he meant

  to. But there was no taking it back now. Might as well keep going, he thought.

  "Did you…?"

  She avoided his gaze, her eyes turning instead to the closed blinds over the window to the operating room, but she quietly said, "For the first couple years. It didn't make any

  sense, especially since I was so afraid of what you had become. But I did, I missed the you that I had known since the Shaw found Johanna and I. Then, after a few years, I

  began to accept that you hadn't been my Erik in a very long time."

  He nodded in understanding, pressing forward even as he knew he might regret it, "I never stopped loving you."

  Erik watched as her jaw clenched, her eyes fluttering closed, but not before he saw the tears forming there. It was as though her entire posture went rigid. He got the

  faintest impression that if he were to nudge her right then, she would shatter like a vase dropped on the floor.

  "I know," she said, her eyes still shut tight. "But tell me this, at least: if that's true, why did you feel the need to prove that everyone was right about us?"

  Erik winced as he remembered the whispers of neighbors who thought he and Magda couldn't hear them or couldn't understand their words. So many had believed he was too

  old for her, especially when they had married so young, and the others who thought he would break her heart. They were already the outcasts – the Jew and the Gypsy – and

  yet people had still speculated as to how compatible they had been.

  "I never meant to," he confided. "Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of what I had always loved, and I let Shaw's hatred affect me. You have to believe me when I say

  that it was never my intention to hurt you or Anya."

  When she finally met his eyes, the already sable hue growing darker, he realized he was opening himself up to the one question he had refused to answer even to himself. But

  this wasn't about him, nor was it even about reconciling, as he now realized that there was no mending what they had once had. This was about the closure they had both

  denied each other for over fifteen years.

  "Then why did you lie? Why did you take her to the Brotherhood, knowing I wanted her to stay away from it?"

  He was silent as he thought over what his true reason was. Reaching into the pocket at his side, he pulled out his old photograph of Anya. Magda leaned over as he unfolded

  it, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion, but she gave a soft gasp as she saw what it was.

  It was the photo he had taken of her and their little girl on their last day together before he had gone on the hunt of Shaw. Anya had only been four years old at the time, but

  she had been thrilled with the picnic in the woods. She stood directly in front of the camera, presenting a slightly mangled bouquet of flowering weeds that she had ripped from

  the grass, with Magda just visible a few feet back. Her amused smile was even still visible in the photo.

  "You were wrong when you said I was trying to make Anya into a soldier," he told her, handing her the photograph. "That was never on my mind. I took her to meet the

  Brotherhood because, the day her mutation manifested, she looked so scared and alone. I wanted her to know that she wasn't alone, that there were hundreds of people like

  her."

  Magda's fingers shook as she clutched the photo, her thumb brushing over the image of their daughter, almost as if she could touch her through the image. A few tears hit the

  back of her hands, but she didn't move to brush them away.

  "If I had known she would try to become more like them, as strong as they were, I would have told her that she was already perfect. I suppose I should have known. After all,

  she was rather like you – always trying to prove herself when everyone could already see it."

  "Why did you lie?" she whispered, unable to tear her eyes from Anya's beaming face. "If that was your intention, why did you hide it from me?"

  "I was under the impression that the only reason you had been subjected to Shaw's experiments was because Johanna and your father were mutants. You had led me to

  believe that it had somehow skipped you, that you had undergone all of Shaw's torture without having a gift you could rely on, and so I thought our mutations might remind

  you of that. It's why I almost never used my mutation in the house."

  "The path to hell is paved with good intentions," she muttered with a sharp laugh.

  "What?"

  "That was why I hid my mutation from you, remember?" she asked, finally looking up at him with a watery smile. "I thought that, after Shaw, you wouldn't want a reminder of

  what we had been through. I guess we're more alike than I thought."

  He nodded in consent, not bothering to voice his opinion on the matter. Maybe they shar
ed the same view on protecting each other but, in his eyes, they would always be

  very different people. While not the ray of eternal optimism that Charles seemed to be on most days, she certainly had more faith in humanity than Erik likely ever would. He

  could understand now why she and Charles had gotten along so well.

  "You asked me why I came looking for you after all these years," he said suddenly, feeling as though he might as well tell her this, as long as they were being completely

  honest with each other. "I wasn't lying, but I wasn't being entirely truthful, either. It wasn't just that I wanted to see you again. I wanted to make sure that you were okay,

  that Charles and I hadn't finally broken you, especially after the…the speech I broadcasted."

  "It'll take a lot more than your lies to kill me," she scoffed half-heartedly, handing back his photo.

  "I know that now, but I wanted to be sure," he told her. "It would have been just another thing I would never forgive myself for." – when she didn't reply, Erik took it as a sign

  to continue – "I know no apology I make will ever make up for what I did. I know you will never look at me in the same way as you did when we were young. But…I also know

  that I have loved you since we were children, and I don't know if I can ever stop."

  "Oh, Erik," Magda breathed, wiping away her tears at last. "In the end, it doesn't matter if we loved each other or not. What we had was codependency. We were all we had

  left after the war, and we were afraid to let go of each other because of it, even when we were hurting each other.

  "I can't remember a time when I didn't love you. I have loved you all my life, even when I hated you, and I probably always will. But a friend told me not too long ago that

  there is a very big difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. And I've realized now that we were never in love with each other for very long at all."

  Erik wanted to object, to tell her that she was wrong, but he couldn't find it in himself to do so. It would have felt false, like another beautiful lie to tell both to her and to

  himself, because he could see that she was right.

  "I don't blame either of us for that," she continued. "We were too young to know better and, when we were told otherwise, we dismissed the words, because that's what we