I get what they were trying to do with Erik's character arc in XMA, but I can't help but think they could have handled it better (ie, with less gratuitous fridging). So here, have a deconstruction/fixit fic :D

(I can't believe this is my introduction to this fandom) If you're interested, I've posted extended notes, including a picture of Peter's terrible moustache, on my Tumblr (also linked in author's profile):

zedille DOT tumblr DOT com / post / 146722309739 / fic-hold-your-head-up-to-prevent-whiplash

Thanks for reading!

It's a good thing Peter gets there when he does.

He looks at the scene in front of him contemplatively:

an arrow, hanging in the air (who still uses bows and arrows these days, really? though not everyone can have glass guns, he supposes), aimed at the back of —

a little girl, with bangs and long dark hair, crying in her mother's arms —

a flock of birds, large and small, frozen in mid-flight around and among —

a group of policemen, rather less nattily dressed than the guards at the Pentagon, standing around —

Erik Lehnsherr, aka Henryk Gurzsky, aka JFK's assassin, aka Nixon's would-be assassin, Magneto himself.

He looks nothing like he did when Peter broke him out of the Pentagon, and even less like he did the last time Peter saw him on TV in front of the White House. It's hard to believe that this is the same man: he's sporting really terrible facial hair (which reminds Peter of the time he tried growing a mustache back in high school, actually – terrible facial hair must run in the family) and wearing flannel.

It isn't even magenta.

No one would ever associate this lumberjack with Magneto the mutant terrorist, bugbear of presidents and blue mutants the world over. The less said about his duds at the White House, the better (there are multiple reasons Mom almost fainted when she saw him on TV, okay), but he'd been pretty nattily dressed during his brief appearance in Paris. Even the prisoner's uniform looked sort of sharp, in a "they put me in prison for a reason" way. Real street cred.

Not to mention that Magneto somehow came out of the metal-less prison under the Pentagon perfectly clean-shaven, an achievement which Peter has spent too much time wondering about the logistics of. Magneto's new look, stubble and mustache and flannel and all, in combination with his relocation to a city in Poland with too many consonants in a row, must have been intended as a disguise of some sort. This is the last place Peter expected him to be.

No wonder he'd never found him in all his time searching. Why isn't Magneto out agitating for mutant rights, or trying to kill Reagan on live television, or living it up at a Renaissance Faire with his cape and armor and helmet, or shacking up with women under a false name and having children —

Right.

Well.

First things first. Peter shunts the arrow (really? what is this, William Tell?) away from the girl and her mother, aiming it for the trunk of the tree standing behind them. A moment (for a certain definition of "moment") later, he reconsiders. Given Magneto's luck, it'll end up ricocheting off the wood and hitting them from behind. Best to avoid that entirely by just sending the arrow in a different direction. He didn't see anyone else in the area outside of this clearing when he ran in, so that should be fine.

The Prof hadn't been very specific when he called up Peter back in Virginia and sent him to Poland. He'd said that Erik needed him, which is certainly true enough, and to follow the screaming, which the Prof probably intended as a joke, but also turned out to be true, and also quite useful when trying to find people in the middle of a forest. He hadn't expected there would be this many trees out here.

The Prof had, however, made absolutely no mention of the fact that Magneto had gotten married and had a kid. This is the sort of thing that Peter could have used some advance notice on, just a friendly warning that by the way, you have a stepmother and a half-sister now.

In the ten years since Mom recognized Magneto on TV, Peter has entertained some vague fantasies of finding his father, persuading him to stop going after the President, getting him and Mom to reconcile, and then doing all the sorts of things that fathers and sons do. They could go rob a bank together – Peter's always wanted to rob a bank, just to say he's done it, but Mom never let him. He's fairly sure his father would approve, though, and he'd be a great bank-robbing partner. His father can manipulate metal. How cool is that?

The problem is, these fantasies all skipped the tricky conversations and went straight to the good bits. Peter has never been good with words. He had some ideas for how The Talk would go, but the apparent family expansion pack has thrown all his half-sketched plans for this conversation out the window. Briefly he considers turning around and running back to the airport, but he's not waiting another ten years for this. He can only imagine how many presidents Magneto will have killed by then.

Only one of the policemen is carrying a bow and arrows; a few of the others carry nightsticks. All of them are flailing at the birds attacking them. Peter grabs the bow and arrows first, and then works around the birds to strip the policemen of anything that looks like it might contain metal: hats, jackets, belts, and so on. He uses their rope to bundle it up, and then and scatters it all in the forest several hundred meters away from that clearing, just in case Magneto decides to pull a Magneto again.

Peter does leave their pants, though. There's clearly metal in the buttons and zippers, but they're on their own there.

The policemen, lacking most of the outer layers of their uniforms, look rather worse for wear by the time Peter's done with them, but he can't help messing with them a little more. He reserves special attention to the wannabe Robin Hood, who isn't even looking at the girl he would have shot. Peter takes the policeman's outstretched arm, the one that held the bow, and turns it into a fist aimed at the policeman's own face.

The guy clearly hasn't thought things through. They've just confirmed that this is in fact Magneto, not just someone with the same power and a suspiciously specifically opposite aesthetic sense. If offered a choice between a vicious flock of birds and Magneto enraged over his daughter getting shot with an arrow, the sensible choice is clearly the birds, angry or not.

The idiot isn't even looking at the girl he would have shot. He basically punched himself in the face (well, somewhere lower, really, but there are children present) already; Peter is just making it literal.

Peter keeps one of the policemen's nightsticks just in case, throws the rest of them away, looks over the whole scene, and lets time resume its usual speed —

The arrow ends up in a pile of leaves on the ground, a few feet away from the girl and her mother. The group of policemen look very confused as to how they're all collapsed in a pile and missing a lot of their outerwear. They haven't noticed him, but Magneto has, staring grimly alternately at the arrow, at his wife and daughter, and then back at Peter himself.

"Hi," he says brightly, and waves. Though, right, they're in Poland, so. He desperately tries to remember any of the Polish in the phrasebook he'd flipped through on the plane ride here, but it hadn't included anything that would be really relevant in this particular situation. Hello. My name is Peter. I'm twenty-seven years old. I like to run. I broke you out of the Pentagon ten years back. You knew my mother. I'm your son. Long time no see.

The policemen have managed to separate themselves and stand up. They're muttering to each other and casting ominous looks at him, Magneto, and the girl. It's just as well Peter took away all the easily accessible metal bits; he just hopes he took it far enough away as Magneto looks increasingly thunderous —

and then all the policemen close their eyes and collapse, right where they're standing.

Peter thinks they're dead for a moment (what did Magneto even do, give them all aneurysms?) before he notices they're still breathing. A few start snoring. It must be the Professor's work: he'd said something about riding along in Cerebrum or Cerebellum or something like that. Not that Peter couldn't have handled it, but the "what if we tried not inflicting grievous bodily harm?" lecture would probably come across better from the Prof.

Magneto comes to the same conclusion about the Sleeping Beauties a moment later, as his confused expression transforms into the faraway expression people tend to get when the Prof is talking to them.

Still getting fussed over by her mother, the girl stares at Peter, her eyes huge. Too late, Peter realizes what his sudden appearance on the scene might look like to someone less familiar with his powers and with less experience getting rescued by him – for all she knows, the policemen are dead, and he did it. So Peter drops the nightstick hastily and raises his hands, smiling. He can make Lorna smile even when she's in the middle of a tantrum; he should be able to win over his other younger sister.

The girl blinks, and he thinks it's working, but she scrunches up her face and, fuck, the birds that had been circling over the policemen are now flying at him —

Peter absolutely does not scream. If the high-pitched sound that comes out of his mouth sounds like a scream, it's only because of the Doppler Effect kicking in as he blurs out of visible motion. It's a yelp, at most. Anyone would have yelped at the sight of that many birds all going for their head.

That's his story, anyway, and he's sticking to it.

Next chapter, Peter gets unenthusiastically recruited by En Sabah Nur. Things do not go as anyone expects.