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Beneath fat clouds, New York swelters. The west end of the city takes a pummeling from the cumulonimbus clouds pouring buckets of rain upon them. Sunshine still breaks through Long Island and the borough of Queens, though not for very long. Boats are coming in to port or hurrying away onto the Atlantic for one last pleasure cruise before Barry is a show-off arse and gets Melinda and Sara soaking wet when the downpour arrives.
Wanda Maximoff isn't one to really care so greatly for the extremes of weather summer throws. Life in Isfahan on the run in the height of summer as a young teenager, trying to work your way through Asia to Tibet, and see what 'heat' becomes defined as. No pleasure gardens for her. She floats on her own purpose, incandescent scarlet energy banding her wrists. All because of a cloud. An obnoxiously shaped cloud, and a need for magic, and a truth seen in a diviner's bowl of dreams.
"I do not take naps now. They are foolish."
Strange goes home.
Erik's presence is one that is usually felt before it is seen. When he flies the world answers and right now there are small pieces of metal wedged beneath stones or tossed carelessly onto streets gathering themselves in response to their master's will. He almost makes a game of it, dredging the depths for scrap and pulling it free to collect into a ball beneath the surface of the ocean, ready to spring free of its cerulean prison. Up in the sky, however, that sort of intensity is more or less lost. As a result he is best sensed by the simple power of sight.
Erik Lehsnherr is never one to fly in the ordinary sense. He levitates at great speed, preferring to remain upright as if he might simply walk away across the air when in fact his very nature repels the natural magnetic fields of the earth and buoys him upward without tying. He breaches the sky now, passing through a dark cluster of status clouds that clings to the ground as he passes. The man studies the sky for a moment, his gaze eventually turning to Wanda as she is flying past after her own cloud. Drawn by some miniscule reaction to the exertion of raw electromagnetic force the cloud circles his form and breaks into wisps where it comes closest.
"Hello, Wanda." There isn't need to say much more.
Flight to a sorceress is whatever she imagines it to be. One of the advantages to mastering will over the mundane rules of physics. Air currents up here might normally buffet her about, but the telekinetic drift around her prevents that indignity from becoming overly difficult. No cape runs off her shoulders, the tight jacket protecting her from the worst of the cold and the wind. Hence, too, the need for the headband holding back her dark locks. It shields her from being effectively blinded. Permutations in the atmosphere are enough for her to be on her guard, mostly upright, and there's one thing sure to attract attention better than other means. Anyone flying up there with her should do it.
Why should she bother to take offense at a cloud is no particular matter. Instead, she tips her head in his direction and rotates to face Erik. "Hello, Erik." Her fingers track a wide arc in a wave. "Has it been a good week?"
"It's been an ordinary week," Erik replies quietly. "So good enough." Erik does not appear to be much distressed by stray air currents. They can't move him bodily and his hair is short enough that the visible effect of the wind sleeping past is easily lost on those who lack keen powers observationn. It does, however, irritate the eyes. Erik is forced to blink away a tear or two, though he bears it impassively. That ends up making the twitch that much more noticeable.
Briefly, the master of magnetism squints and looks Wanda over from head to toe briefly. He hasn't bothered bringing his cape with him nor, indeed, any of his accoutrement. Erik Lenhsherr as himself, and not the avenging angel of mutantkind that he is in another life. He returns the wave now and nods once. "Better, up here. Am I interrupting?" The man's path does bear him slowly closer to the sorceress though he closes the distance at a slow pace, as if it were a natural consequence of Wanda's presence.
A slim dip of a nod follows. Her shadowy hair roils around her shoulders in a primordial wave, espresso shot by a hint of molten bronze. Coalescing beams invisibly deflect the wind from striking her cheeks or raising more than the faintest pink tinge to honeyed complexion. Wanda rubs her fingers up the back of her neck, her jaw tightening a fraction. "How does one interrupt? No one owns the sky."
The attenuation of her spine and shoulders gives her a taller stature, a natural reaction for being there. Erik isn't in any way neglected by those glimmering dark eyes. "Your grandson has left," she says quietly. "He crossed the timestream with his paramour."
"Did he give any notice of when he would return?" Erik's cheeks redden slightly but he doesn't pay it any heed. Instead he continues that quiet shift closer, nodding in turn as he is coming closer. "I have still never met the other boy. Todd was his name? Ted?" Erik frowns at this and cants his head slightly to the left, his brow furrowing in his carefully ageless way that speaks to the depths of his thoughts.
Erik bites his bottom lip briefly, the only concession he makes to the work of nerves upon the mind of a stoic. Blue eyes study Wanda's visage, taking in those faint details and the glimmer of darker eyes in a carefully measured way. Now they are only a couple meters apart, a far more normal conversational volume. "I confess I am still unsure of what the boy is capable of doing. Not needlessly so. This isn't the first time he's been involved with time, clearly. Is that what brings you up this way?"
"Tommy. Thomas." The crisp fluidity of her voice imparts a clear thread of emotion in there. Not exactly defensive, but the stirring passion and protectiveness underlie every note. "The younger of my sons. No, I do not know when he would. Only that he will return to us when it is right." Whatever faith is coloured in those words she balances in her usual caution, the survivor chipped from obsidian and adamant rather than softer stuff.
To Erik, the simplest of replies without an iota of doubt present: "Then, if not, I will bring him back safely."
His eyes are the ice of a fresh winter morning, hers the shining sun of the high summer. "He, like my brother, moves very fast. Time does not bother them as it does you and I."
"I can only imagine what it must be like, moving mentally and physically a thousand times faster than anyone And- ah. Thomas. I had assumed… I apologize." Erik makes a conciliatory gesture to this, lowering hsi head in a brief nod and then turns slightly to look out through the clouds ahead of him. Just for a second. There is apparently an empathic reaciton there, for eyes already pale as the ice upon an ocean of blue shimmer with unshed tears as well, even if he doesn't acknowledge them.
"He will return then," Erik agrees with simple confidence. In Wanda and Tommy both, perhaps. "And Billy? Has he been well recently? I should visit him more frequently. All of you, in fact." That thought seems to be the most telling as it is only then, when he looks to Wanda again, that a tear actually falls. One could perhaps attribute it to the errant breeze were they to try.
"I…" Erik pauses briefly. "Never asked you. About the boys. I know they are yours but I have no conception of- the precise circumstances. Is it a good time to ask?"
The floating sorceress does not exude anything more than her usual nature, intensely observant, mildly distrustful at the best of times, and clear-eyed in a way found only in survivors of massacres and horrors. Whatever tempers them is a shared factor mirrored in Erik's slant idealism and her cool veneer. "They are always hungry. Impatient. Our time to answer and do things feels very long to them. They live very quick but they do not miss all things," she says simply enough. "My brother sometimes gets angry. My son is more likely to laugh."
It might be as difficult to understand a speedster's view as a magnetokinetic, and one step removed from the vision she holds over space and the spaces between life. "Yes. Billy is very happy with his situation. He has a partner and that makes him happy. This news…" She shakes her head slightly. "I think he must already know." Twins have the weirdest bonds, and no more so than those conjured by one woman's reality warping gifts and the hand of the gods.
"Ask. It may be I can answer. Some I cannot. They do not know, I have not been there yet."
"Fair enough. IF you tell me anything you've not yet shared with them you can trust me to keep it," Erik responds simply, straightening now. There's that calm, the usual sense of purpose and dignity he tends to carry with him. He keeps it in spite of the tears that have been allowed to fall down his face, most of those whipped away to be glittering crystals on a breeze for an errant second before being dashed apart utterly by raw turbulence. Pietro or Tommy might well see something beautiful in that, even if Erik could not.
"I suppose the most obvious question. Is how did they come to be here?" There's a pause as Erik considers this, briefly quirking his lips and then adjusting his turtleneck sweater slightly before he adds, "I had no idea a mere two years ago that I had a family at all. It hink we've gone a bit beyond that threshold, as it happens."
The beauty in tears, the beauty in the wilds. The approaching rainstorm licks the city in shining pavement and concrete brings a wondrous clarity to the world.
Wanda tugs at the collar of her crimson jacket, lifting it to protect herself against the inundation of cold. "I summoned them." Across what distance this is, Erik is left to interpret in his thoughts for only a few seconds. No more than that. Her shoulders roll slightly as she adds, with a measured calm that means it's no longer a shock, "From the twenty-first century."
Erik nods slowly, just once. He seems to be less shocked than might be expected, though he did intimate earlier that he had deduced there was some time play likely involved given the situation. As the man nods to this he adjusts himself slightly. No doubt he is cold as well, somewhere beneath his wholly inappropriate clothing, but it seems that he refuses to allow this to be sufficient reason to retreat. The shivering has not yet set in.
"The twenty-first?" Erik asks then, a brow arching as he tilts his head slightly to the left and then gives a very slow nod. "Mmm. I would say that this is shocking but I have learned to take in stride what both you and Stephen manage to cook up. I see the mishap that was in play the last time we came together to speak of such things was resolved.
"Was he involved in that summoning then?" Erik asks. "I actually have a thousand other questions there, of course. Such as how you met. You've a strong bond. I've found that most relationships don't manage to cut so deep."
"His girlfriend was from…" Now the difficulties fly. Wanda carefully says, "More ahead than him. She saw the past and the end of Earth." There, it's a statement without contrivance or an indication of anything doubted, the implications painted in streaks of carmine and sepia brows drawn lower. "Tommy will be where he is for some time. I do what I can to watch. You may wish to do the same as your grandson."
A man without family two months ago, and he's already into his third, possibly fourth, generation. No telling if the redhead and speedster ran away for other reasons that daren't be shared in this particular era. Her gaze is clear and serene. She considers her answer. German, then; it's not the desirable language but it's infinitely easier for her.
"«Stephen's involvement set the stage, but we concur I am the cause. Billy and Tommy confirmed it and they appeared in Central Park where a weakening in the fabric of reality was,»" she says quietly.
«That makes sense, from what little I understand of how this works.» Erik takes to German easily. He was raised to it, and though he has had far more time than Wanda to become accustomed to English your first tongue is always the easiest to speak. He draws a deep breath then, beginning to relax slightly as he listens to all of this. Wanda might recognize the dissociation there; he has taken his disbelief and put it into a box and what is left is critical acceptance and analysis.
«I can scarce imagine the family reunion that would have been. Actually, I am sure it was similar to my surprise when I first met you, corra.» Erik, if anything, has a slightly fonder tone to his words in German. Still serious, stark, and unemotive, he still speaks with a more casual air once the language has switched to his native tongue. His expression clears as Wanda's does.
«It seems as though our family is destined to grow whole again following the past tragedies. Albeit, not in the way that we'd expect. It's still a surprisingly pleasant thought.»