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Chapter Text

1 – Peter

Like so much regarding his new lease on life, it started with Peter.

It only made sense.  This brighter, more hopeful chapter of his life started in earnest with seeing Peter at the open door of Charles’ school, and before then, with looking up from his dull white and gray surroundings and seeing the smiling face of a young stranger, who shattered the ceiling of his prison cell with hardly an effort.  Peter was the first of Erik’s living children to be revealed to him, the first to reach out to form an emotional connection, to make him realize he still had undeniable family.

Anya had been Erik’s firstborn, and Wanda was officially older by minutes, but Peter had been the start of his second chance.  

It made sense he would be the one to start an activity that would come to mean so much to Erik.

It was inevitable that Erik would take note of the music device Peter took with him everywhere, the Walkman.  Asking about it one day made his speedster son’s face light up with excitement, as he launched into an explanation of how he’d been able to finagle it to play at a good listening speed when he ran, leaving the rest of the world essentially frozen around him.  The music helped him mentally cope with the social and auditory isolation that the use of his power inflicted.  The styles and genres of music he gravitated toward, “rock,” and some modern “folk,” resonated best with his emotions and how he experienced the world.  Rush, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd (some of the names these groups chose baffled him, to be honest) and Jim Croce, were among his described favorites.  

Erik’s own experience with music was rather limited, and what you could call his ‘tastes’ even moreso.  A radio was all that was available at home when he was young, and he could vaguely recall snippets of crackling melodies wafting out from the long-gone machine from his youth.  What he remembered much more clearly were the traditional songs his mother and father would sing, his own thin adolescent voice joining in alongside his sister’s.

It had been decades since he’d last sung any songs.  Especially those of his heritage and his parents’ faith.

Once his power manifested in earnest, he often unintentionally interfered with the controls and output of such devices, resulting in static more often than not, especially when he was stressed.  Because of this, he rarely bothered with a radio in the home he’d made with Magda and Anya.  It was flawed, in-person human voices with no accompaniment that served as music in their humble home, for those few precious years of relative peace.

And after… After.  There was no joy to be found in life, only grim, driving purpose, and he focused on building his skills in pursuit, in language, tracking, interrogation.  Physical training and honing his powers.  He had more control eventually, and stopped hampering electronics for the most part, but that no longer mattered.  When he happened to encounter music in various environments as he worked, it meant nothing to him.

But it mattered to his son, so now it mattered to him.  Thus, he gladly accepted Peter’s efforts to “broaden his horizons.”  

Even if he couldn’t always see, or rather, hear, for himself what Peter experienced from his preferred musicians, he deeply valued the joy his son got in sharing them with Erik.

That was more than enough.

2 – Wanda

It took some time for Wanda to get comfortable having only Erik in her home, without her twin also there.  However, thanks to his teaching her gradually how to control her powers in whatever ways he could, she’d slowly developed trust in him over the months.  

It took slightly more time for her to stop treating him, in her cynical and subtly prickly way, like a formal guest, however.

“What would you like to listen to?” she asked one day during his visit, approaching her small turntable.  “I have some variety.”

“Whatever you want, this is your home,” Erik insisted, removing his jacket.

“I can listen to whatever I want all the time,” she retorted.  “Maybe something you like will even be something I like, what about that?”  

Erik had never met someone who could be so contrarian while simultaneously so hospitable.  Honestly, he could respect it.

“I’m growing a liking for that Jim Croce fellow’s work,” he admitted. 

Wanda shook her head with fondness.  “I don’t have any of his albums, but I’ve got something similar.  At least, I think so,” she replied, kneeling down to flip through her box of records.  “I take it Pietro’s been taking it upon himself to ‘improve your music education.’  He mentioned you being a bit behind the times on that front.”

“It hasn’t exactly been a priority of mine since he got me out,” Erik acknowledged.  “But I appreciate his efforts.”  They were both quiet for a moment as she got the record out of its sleeve and set up in the turntable.

“You don’t share your brother’s tastes, I take it?” he asked as he tentatively sat on the couch.

“I like Peter’s stuff just fine, in limited quantities,” she replied, “but I feel like a lot of the time the meaning of the words is lost behind the style of the stuff he likes, with exceptions of course.  I like stuff that’s more sincere, more open about the emotion behind it.  Kind of gentle, or openly passionate, you know?”

“You like romantic songs,” Erik surmised with a small smile.

Wanda looked at him out of the corner of her eye.  “Maybe,” she admitted quietly, as a somewhat familiar style of instrumentation began.

Erik didn’t feel the need to say out loud that he found that deeply endearing about her; he got the feeling she could tell.

That first singer she played for him had an earnest, vulnerable voice, and sang of how he related the feeling of experiencing sunshine to the love he felt for the object of the song.  Erik couldn’t decide if he pitied the singer for his naivete about how love and relationships turned out, or envious of him for having clearly lived with the freedom to express all his love openly without fear.

She finally shrugged.  “Also, I have to be in the mood, but when I want something with more energy, I like disco.”

Erik blinked.  That he hadn’t expected.

Interesting.

From there, over the course of his visits with Wanda, the background music expanded to a broad spectrum of ballad singers, Barry Manilow, Ella Fitzgerald, Roberta Flack, the Carpenters, and so on.  If Peter had wanted to provide him an assortment of songs to exercise, travel, or get things done to, then Wanda wanted to provide him a palette's worth of color to express his emotions with.  

One afternoon, months into their developing father-daughter relationship when they were finishing another session of Erik helping get more comfortable with her power, she revealed an unexpected nugget.

“I can’t wait until I have your fine detail control,” she mused as they walked from the woods back to her cottage.  

“Any reason in particular?” Erik asked, looking at her as they emerged from the woods into broader sunlight as the day drew closer to its end.

“I would love to create a music box,” she replied, a distant and bittersweet expression on her face.  “Uncle Django and Aunt Marya had a little music box that they’d bought in the town they went to right after they got married,” Wanda recalled.  “It was so beautiful, and the song was so pretty.  But I can’t remember how it went, anymore, and it accidentally got left behind when we all had to move here,” she added sadly.

He nodded in sympathy, thinking.

When the twins’ next birthday came around, Wanda received a delicately carved silver music box, which took much longer than Erik would admit to create (he had to discreetly consult the closest relevant artisan he could find for guidance on how to pattern the holes on the rotating disk concealed inside the main compartment of the box).

It played the very first song Wanda had played for him.

She cherished that music box for the rest of her days, eventually passing it down to her own children.

Chapter Text

3 – Lorna

If Erik had needed some time and an open mind to come around to his son’s musical taste, it was nothing compared to what his volatile youngest child listened to.

“I love Lorna dearly.  Absolutely,” he stressed to Wanda one day after returning from one of his regular visits to the Dane household.  “I would die or kill for her in a heartbeat.”

“The latter isn’t exactly a tall order for you, Dad,” his elder daughter replied wryly, which Erik graciously ignored.

“ However.  I fail to see how on earth what she puts in her ears can be considered ‘music.’”

“Ah,” Wanda realized, a grin appearing on her face.  “She had you listening to that newer alternative stuff, huh?  What was it, garage rock?  Hair metal?  That angry rebellious stuff?”

“It was something, alright,” Erik muttered as they looked over the menus at the cafe they’d met at.  But the music was just a surface-level thing; his true concerns lay far deeper.

Peter and Wanda hadn’t been exaggerating when they suggested, albeit not in so many words, that it would likely be difficult for Erik to initially connect with his recently discovered youngest daughter, especially at such a critical stage of adolescence.  The budding search for identity, the new questioning of authority, and all the bodily and social changes that came with the beginning of the gradual transition to maturity…  It was a fraught time for any young person on its own.  Add to that her struggles with the relatively recent manifestation of her mutation, and the stress that came with her mother’s ongoing cancer treatment, and that fraught time became a powder keg.

In the two months Susanna had him listed as secondary family contact for their daughter (under a pseudonym), he had been called to her school three times, and received reports of other incidents:  Fights, skipping, and property damage.  As sympathetic as Erik was to her struggles, he wanted to get ahead of these destructive tendencies before they got out of control.

He was self-aware enough to know he might not be the most appropriate person to express such sentiments about his daughter’s activities.  He’d admitted as much to the counselor he still spoke to once a month.  She’d implied that it suggested he simply didn’t want his daughter to struggle in life as he had, which was basically a healthy approach, but if not used with open communication could lead to him “missing the forest through the trees,” whatever the hell that was supposed to mean in this context.

Peter merely suggested, admittedly with some affection, that it just made him a hypocrite.  Erik hadn’t dignified that with a verbal response.

(In reality, maybe it was that he wished for her to be more refined and strategic in her anti-establishment activities, but it wasn’t fair to expect that at her age.

Also, he’d prefer for her to have the freedom and opportunity to finish growing up first, then tackle the system as needed.  Yes, that was really the main point of his wish on the matter.)

And the noise she played at atrocious volumes in her bedroom on the nights he stayed at the Dane household when Susanna was in for treatment or in recovery; it often defied description.

That alone, for all its unpleasantness, would at least have been tolerable.  But what he discovered one night when he checked on her after a few hours of working on some mutant rights projects was much worse.

In fact, he attempted to check on her, but when he softly knocked, received no response, and slowly opened the door to her room, he found it was completely empty of teenage girls.

Kicked into panic so suddenly he was briefly lightheaded and had to brace himself on the door frame, he made himself focus and take stock of what he could see of the situation:

There was no sign of a struggle, and if he knew anything of Lorna, he knew she would have made an almighty racket if she’d been accosted in her room.  Her school books were present on her desk, but her backpack itself and black denim jacket were conspicuously absent.  And the window was open.

Snuck out, then.  And, he would find out later, this had not been the first time she’d done so, though it was the first on his watch.

Nerves stretched tight as a drum head, he secured the house with his power and began his search of the town, nearly vibrating with anxiety and aggravation.  He traced her by a necklace he remembered seeing her wear earlier that day, to a chaotic, hellishly loud live performance of that abrasive music she liked.  Flinging open a side door without touching it, he could look through and see her diminutive stature in the crowd, only visible by her neon green hair.  She bore no discernible injuries or signs of foul play, and his relief quickly turned to churning, sour anger.  Still, he was not so cruel as to drag her out by her necklace, but rather tugged firmly on her jacket buttons and backpack zippers.  She tried to fight him with her own power, of course, but her teenage hubris was no match for his decades of training for skill and control.

She finally stood in front of him, sullenly refusing to look at him but not resisting further.  Not wishing to say something he’d later regret, he simply took her firmly by the elbow and led her away from the seedy-looking establishment.  When they were far enough away to not draw unnecessary attention, he picked her up, despite her indignant squawk of protest, and took off into the air, touching down just outside Susanna’s house and setting her on her feet.  Before she could rush inside, though, he took her elbow again.

“This cannot happen again, Lorna,” he said firmly.  “No matter what you may think of me, my past or my absence from your life until now.  During the times your mother entrusts your safety to me, I cannot find myself not knowing where you are.  Not the least because it would not be fair of me to keep that information from her, and the last thing she needs right now is the stress of having to worry about you more than she already does, as any parent naturally would.  Do you understand?”

She nodded, reluctantly, frowning.

“Your word, Lorna,” he insisted.  She glared at him, but sighed.

“I promise.”  He exhaled, a fraction of the clenching of his stomach easing, and they went inside.  

Since then, things between them had remained tense, but no worse, and she still played that auditory hellscape in her room after school most days.

Eventually, under Wanda’s suggestion, when he had picked her up from school during one of his visits, Erik asked Lorna what specifically she liked about her harsher music. 

“It expresses for me the feelings and thoughts I can’t say or act on, without getting in more trouble,” she said after a moment, not looking at him.  He nodded, not grasping the specifics but glad to have gotten a sincere answer instead of her usual sarcasm.  

Later that evening, just after dinner and after she’d done her homework, she approached him as he worked at the kitchen table.

“There’s another garage concert tonight,” she said without preamble.  He raised his eyebrows.

“You’re bringing it to my attention?” he asked, surprised.  He couldn’t pin a motivation for her to do so.

“Yes, because I’m not going to sneak out to this one.  I want you to go with me.”

He blinked.

Let it never be said that Lorna didn’t inherit his boldness.  

“You asked me what I like about it.  What I told you is true, especially for recordings.  It might make more sense if I can track down some lyrics for you; I know sometimes they can be hard to understand just from listening.  But being there in person… it’s different.  I figure the best way for you to understand is for me to show you.  It’s not a school night, and nothing can hurt me while you’re there, so what’s the downside?”

Erik stared.  As much as he didn’t fancy the idea of being that much closer to that ruckus, he couldn’t deny that gaining such prime insight into his daughter’s perception of and response to her environment was a keen draw for him.

And…

Nothing can hurt me while you’re there.

The words themselves, and the fact that he knew them to be unfortunately untrue, even if he’d always do his damnedest to prove otherwise, set off a flare of dull pain deep inside him.

Still…  If she held such trust in him despite her prickly demeanor, despite everything, what kind of fool would he have to be to squander that trust?

So, against any misgivings, he accompanied her to the industrial garage she said was the site of the next performance.  On the way, however, he stopped and procured them both a set of earplugs, and handed a pair to her insistently before they went inside. 

“You’ll not lose your hearing at a premature age if I can help it,” he said firmly.  She rolled her eyes, but accepted the pair and pushed them into her ears as he did.

The performance began quickly soon after they entered, and Erik centered himself as best as he could so as not to get overwhelmed by the dense, pressing crowd, keeping a hand on Lorna’s shoulder continuously.  He kept his eyes sweeping over the room, passing over the band intermittently but largely focused on seeing any potential threats before they could approach.  Then, at the tail end of one such surveillance sweep, he looked down to his daughter at his side.

She wasn’t looking at the band like many in the crowd, nor was she engaging in the wild, thrashing kind of dancing taking place across the room.  In fact, her eyes were closed, her arms were raised slightly, her hands lightly curled into loose fists level with her lower face, and she was swaying slightly in place.

As if she could feel his gaze on her, she opened her eyes and looked at him.  Since there was no point in trying to speak over the noise and through their ear plugs, she gestured.  She opened her hands toward the band and their instruments, but not exerting her power.  After a moment, she turned her hands back toward herself, lightly tapping shoulders and upper chest rhythmically.  Reach out with your power , the gesture suggested, and feel it.

He tentatively did so, opening up his senses further, and he realized what she meant.

She enjoyed being able to feel the rhythm of the metal in the instruments.  The vibrations he too felt against that innate sense inside himself.  It honestly reminded him somewhat of the description he’d once heard of a deep, percussive massage.

It took some acclimating to, but it was… pleasant, in a new way.  Like stiffness being aggressively shaken out of all his muscles.

Bizarrely, with his earplugs in, and despite the chaos around them, he found himself growing more relaxed as the performance went on.

She grabbed his hand and dragged him out into the blessedly cool, quiet, open air outside after the set was finished, and pulled out her earplugs.  He copied her, gratefully.

“So, did you feel it?” she asked eagerly, looking up at him.

“I felt it,” he replied quietly.  “I… I understand a bit more, now.  Thank you for showing me.  And for trusting me.”

The relief in her young face was well worth any discomfort of the ears – and the gray that had been steadily spreading through his hair after she and the twins entered his life.

Chapter Text

4 – The Eisenhardts, Magda

Erik goes back to Temple sometimes, especially for the shabbats.  Sometimes Pietro,  less often Wanda, and recently, even Lorna goes with him.  He struggles to reconcile his love and grief for his first people with the loss of his faith so long ago.  He hears the songs, and remembers.  

He borrows cassettes from the local library, of the jazz and swing artists he vaguely recalled his parents enjoying.  The recorded performances of Brahms, Schumann, and Schubert that Ruth favored.  He listens, and remembers.

He meets with Magda, now and then after the twins have vouched for him, and they talk, pushing through the awkwardness.  Clearing the air.  His former wife talks about how, in her youthful defiance against completely assimilating into the American “norm,” Wanda had been going through everything left behind by Marya and Django, trying to cultivate a new sense of her and Pietro’s heritage.  The photos, the journal entries, the clothing, the art.  The words of family songs, the hand-written melodies.  It’s been healing for Magda as well, to accept the reminders of where she came from, after so many years of trying to blend in and keep her head down, for the sake of her children.  To gradually reintroduce some of those elements to her life.

Erik listens, and he remembers.

5 – Erik

He’s amassed a modest collection of his own, now.  Vinyl and cassettes, carefully organized in his particular way (he ignores genre entirely, which Peter might have called blasphemous, and sorts the separate mediums strictly by alphabetical order of the artists).  Some artists he’d been introduced to by Peter, some by Wanda, even a handful of the songs Lorna had played for him – some of which he focused less on the sound and more on the words, once he knew the lyrics, as she said, because they resonated with the pain and anger of his lifetime more than he would ever have expected.  Some of her recommendations were of a slightly mellower style that he could enjoy, as his tastes had evolved.

He still attended live performances with her, to bond and to feel those deep vibrations, when their respective schedules allowed.  

He eventually purchased his favorites of the recordings he borrowed from the library, when he could find them.

He painstakingly wrote out the words of the songs his parents sang, and Peter helped him figure out the notations of the melodies on the piano in Charles’ parlor, writing out the notes as they discovered them on blank staff paper.

He wanted them written down, for posterity.

The music he kept close to his heart – like Erik himself – was a mosaic of what he’d learned from his fore-bearers, his own life experience, and his children.  

It was a gift he never would have expected, but cherished in his way nonetheless.

Chapter Text

+1 – Together

Five years to the day after their first trip, Erik returned to that beach in Virginia with his children, now one more in number, and now also his grandchild.

Oh course, it hadn’t been five years of perfect peace and harmony, unfortunately, even between them.  

Everything seemed to be changing, lately.  Or, perhaps it had been changing for some time, and now it was finally catching up to them.

There was Wanda, now in more control of her power and rejoining broader society, beginning to attend college as an “adult learner,” while going on missions with the Avengers on the side. (Erik personally got a bad feeling about that group; he didn’t trust them.  And it wasn’t entirely to do with that odd sentient android creation that he’d seen his daughter exchange odd looks with.  Not entirely to do with that.)

Then there was Lorna, about to start senior year of high school ( How??  How was his baby a senior already? ), also having gained a better handle on her power from his training her, and needing less direct supervision from him thanks to burgeoning maturity and Susanna’s remission – that’s what he told himself, anyway.

He wasn’t given any comfort by her talks of joining the X-men as soon as she could, while starting college in a year, though he didn’t express it as such to Charles.  He had good reason for concern: the middle of junior year saw the first major depressive stretch for Lorna, in which she was lethargic, withdrawn, worryingly pessimistic and barely passing her classes, followed quickly by a prolonged manic period, in which she’d been exploring various research topics she could use to form her eventual, but inevitable, Master’s dissertation.  She ran herself ragged between school and extracurriculars and frenzied private study, convinced she didn’t need anything as pedestrian as rest or to eat regularly, until one night the school librarian called him to collect her.  The staff didn’t want to disturb her, they said, as they’d witnessed her powers react unpredictably when she was startled in the past.  He found her sprawled on the carpet, passed out, between rows of geology and physics, open books surrounding her.  Her green hair was lackluster, and her skin ashen, the blue veins standing out on the insides of her thin wrists.  He’d placed the books on a return cart, gently rolled her, lifted her into his arms, and took her home.  When she stumbled downstairs the next morning, he’d quietly pleaded with her to eat at least some of the breakfast he'd made, to drop just one club, and talk to the counselor his own had recommended.

She hadn’t been happy with him that day, but eventually had agreed to at least try his recommendations.  In the subsequent months of treatment, her mood and energy had thankfully leveled out, for now.

And then, Peter.  His Pietro.  Thinking of him, and seeing him now, brought a heavy bitter-sweetness to Erik’s heart.  

His son had become a father himself last year, in a series of events neither of them could have anticipated.  However, he’d risen to the occasion remarkably, with some help from his family and friends.  

And yes, looking at little Luna and hearing her sweet laughter does still hurt somewhat.  He does still see Anya as a baby, just for a moment, when he looks at his granddaughter.  But he is still so incredibly grateful that precious Luna, her father and aunts are here with him now, that they’re all alive and relatively healthy and as safe as they can be as mutants in this world.

Speaking of which.

That was the core of the bitter component of his feelings regarding Peter recently.  He just didn’t understand why his son couldn't fathom that they needed this, needed Genosha to become a reality, so that they and their future generations could have a better future.  Or any future at all, really.

Peter plainly loved his baby girl more than life itself.  Erik saw it every day.  The young man was even stepping back slightly from X-men missions and taking more of a teaching role to focus on raising her.  So why didn’t he understand the need for a country where she could grow up free and safe?

But they’d already had their grisly argument on the matter, and Erik was relieved that Peter had even agreed to this trip after that disagreement, so he was determined not to raise the topic.

It didn’t change the fact that Erik and Charles were due to depart for Genosha in a matter of weeks, leaving Hank and Raven in joint charge of the school, and they all knew it.  

That ticking clock was one of the reasons Erik had been determined for this trip to happen, even if no one openly discussed it.

Just like they weren’t discussing any of the changes they were facing.  They were all here now, and that in itself was enough to give him hope.

The first day had started somewhat stiff and awkward, once they’d all arrived, getting familiar with being together again, after months split apart by life in different ways.  They strolled on the boardwalk, split into intermittently-shifting pairs so as to not take up the whole span of the walkway.  They noted which seaside shops had changed and which had stayed the same.

They walked down across the sand to the water's edge, wading in up to their ankles and shins but no farther; they weren’t dressed for swimming that day.  Peter held Luna carefully above the small shallow waves, and they all reveled in her shrieks and giggles of delight at the foaming water rushing over her tiny, tender feet.

They ate at a small fish shop, the one they’d been to the first time, so that now Lorna and Luna could get the experience.  

Throughout it all, their interactions were casual.  Pleasant, but without the depth that Erik had experienced with his twins the first time.  As if they were mere friends, instead of family.

Finally, they retreated to the rental home for the evening.  Erik had secured a slightly larger one this time, on account of the additional occupants, and they broke a bit of the ice by playing a few rounds of card games before turning in early.

The next day went somewhat easier.  They went down to the water as they had before, and got things set up.  Peter diligently slathered sunscreen on Luna’s sensitive skin, while having to be reminded to apply some to himself.  He left her under Erik’s willing supervision while he and Wanda included Lorna in the family beach tradition of being given bodily additions made of sand, complete with photo documentation: she received the tail and fins of a shark, at her own request.  The full-teeth smile she gave up at the camera completed the look rather admirably.

The sisters then took temporary custody of Luna so Peter could swim, walking her carefully in the wet sand, and Erik followed him shortly after.  They mostly stayed out of each other’s paths, but both stayed aware and ready to intervene for the other if something went wrong.

Later, they both relaxed under the umbrella with Luna, conked-out after lunch, and watched as Wanda and Lorna stood on boulders a little further down the shore, their conversation carried off on the wind, their hair and light skirts wrapped over their bathing suits fluttering like vibrant flags.  They experimented with influencing the tide with their powers, red and green energy side by side, pushing and pulling the waves to crash this way and that.  It was something Erik never would have thought to try, and he couldn’t help but look on them in awe.

Eventually they agreed to they’d had enough sand and surf for the day, returned to their temporary home, and were showered and changed by late afternoon.

Once most of them were seated in the living room, the awkwardness they’d started with had been burned away by the day’s exertions, and Luna was situated in her mobile carrier, stubbornly fighting her nap despite her clear fatigue.  Peter stood with a grin, withdrawing a tiny pair of protective headphones and putting them over Luna’s ears, before turning to the others.

“I’ve brought some tunes to improve the vibe,” he said, lifting a small box of cassettes in his hands.  “There was a new release last month; I thought maybe we could enjoy it together!”  

The girls heckled him good-naturedly as he inserted the tape into the boom box he’d brought along.  Shortly after, a jaunty keyboard and electric guitar intro floated through the speakers.  Peter immediately started “grooving,” as he called it, beckoning the others to join him in the center of the room.  Lorna laughed, saying his dancing was out of style, “fitting, since you’re now an old man,” she teased, but she and Wanda both got up to join their brother, letting themselves start to move casually.  

Erik didn’t really want to know what his youngest considered him, if her older brother got the moniker of ‘old man’ merely by virtue of being older, having silver-gray hair, and a child of his own.

Maybe Erik counted as a dinosaur.  He certainly felt like one, some days.

He stayed by the edge of the room at first, watching his children contentedly, picking Luna up and holding her close when she waved her little arms and whined for attention.  After a few moments, he felt a pressure on his whole being, Lorna’s magnetic energy tugging at his own, encouraging him into the group.

He smiled softly.

She’d come so far, and gotten so much stronger and more controlled since her power manifested, and Erik was so proud of her.  Of all of them.  Maybe someday, she might even be strong enough to pull him somewhere he didn’t particularly want to be.

Someday.

Fortunately, today wasn’t the day she’d have to test that idea, as he chose to give in to the gentle tugging and moved forward to join in, shifting Luna to his hip, lightly swaying her side to side as he approached.

They made space for him, never pausing as they enjoyed themselves.  Peter in particular would mouth along and gesture emphatically with the more passionately sung lines.  Erik took a few more moments to get used to the movement and feeling.

Then he had a sudden thought.

Since they were already vaguely in a circle, and a small core of hope had slowly been growing inside him over the past weeks, months, years, he decided to take a chance.

He reached deep into his memory, past the pain and fear and anger, all the way back to the joy and love and belonging underneath, and pulled it forward to join with the joy and love and belonging of now.  He took a chance, and began moving his feet in a pattern they’d nearly forgotten.  

He looked at Peter, to his right, and saw him watching him thoughtfully as he moved.

“You want to try?” he asked quietly.  His son nodded eagerly, and he began copying Erik’s steps, as Erik re-adjusted his hold on his granddaughter and placed an arm around Peter’s shoulders.  Wanda and Lorna soon followed, raising their arms, Lorna putting a hand on Erik’s shoulder to close the circle.  Luna was just happily along for the ride.

It was true that no one in the family was getting married any time soon, and that they were laughingly trying to fit the steps to a slower modern rock song, with limited success.  It was true that Erik had never before danced in a mixed-gender circle, and that he hadn’t danced at all in close to forty years.  

None of it mattered.

His children and grandchild – and he could even picture Anya in the circle with them, grown and smiling and graceful, something he’d never been able to do before – were with him, here, together, with no immediate threat of danger.  And, whatever the future held, for this moment, they were happy.

It was enough, so he gladly danced with them.

"Darling, tell me the truth

Don’t turn away

This is our last chance

To touch each other’s heart

Does anything last forever?

I don’t know

Baby, we’re near the end

So, Darling, Oh

How can we go on together

Now that we’ve grown apart?

I know that the 

Only way to start

Is heart to heart…"