💥𝒢𝑜𝒹𝒹𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒲𝒾𝓈𝒹𝑜𝓂💥 [𝒳-𝑀𝑒𝓃]

Chapter 39: On the Run

"No idea. He wasn't here... All I found was his helmet."

"His helmet?"

"Yeah. It's still sitting on my dresser where he left it."

"Do you think that means something?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not sure yet."

"Are you gonna try to find him?"

"One day. For now, I'm going to leave him in peace. It's often easier if I let him come to me."

"You think he will?"

"I think he often does. We'll cross paths one way or another. That much, I know."

Dad rolls into the lab before Hank can respond. He's been at a meeting for several hours with a few government officials. Right now, he's the leading expert on mutants. They're looking to him for advice on how to handle the discovery of mutants.

"How did it go?" I inquire.

"Not as bad as expected," he explains.

"They're still afraid of us..."

"I hope that soon they will understand that their fear is misplaced."

"Any other news?"

"Only that, for now, we have no reason to fear any violent action against us."

"Well, that's a plus," Hank states.

"Yes. Yes, it is, Hank."

"Are we actually going to be able to make the school real this time?" I question.

"I know we will."

We all need it to be real this time. Hope is what we have to hang onto right now. The world just got a lot bigger, not to mention quite a bit more frightening. This school would mean as much to us as it would to these kids.

There aren't words to express what it used to mean to me. Without it, none of my friends would've met me. I would've been even more lost than I was at Oxford. In truth, it was the girl who eventually became my best friend, whom I had met in the early days of the school, who kept me alive and going.

I leave the lab and go back up to my room. The helmet stares back at me from the same spot where it's sat for almost two months. I walk over to the dresser and pick it up before sitting back down on my bed. The surface feels rough against my fingertips.

I run my fingers along the outside and inside of the helmet. Inside, my fingers brush against something. I pull it off to see that one of my sticky notes was stuck to the top of the inside of the helmet. Written on it are only two words, but truly, they say it all:

"I'm sorry."

Erik's POV

After over a month of fleeing from every authority under the sun, I finally landed somewhere I believed I could settle. I have found myself in Pruszkow, Poland for almost a month now. The first night I was here, I had no place to stay. I knocked on the door of a woman and asked if she knew where I might find lodging.

Seeing my deteriorated state, she brought me inside. The woman—who introduced herself as Magda—told me that though she had no spare bedroom, I was welcome to sleep on her couch. She showed me more kindness than I've experienced from most people I've met.

When she asked me my name, I introduced myself as Henryk Gurzsky. Magda is quite observant. She never believed that was actually my name. Of course, within a few hours, I admitted that I had lied to her. Her only question was who I was running from. I explained... I told her everything. It made no sense to tell her facts that were nothing short of incriminating, yet something inside me couldn't hold onto it any longer. Somehow, I chose to trust her.

The next move a person would expect her to make would be to throw me out on the spot and call the police... but for some reason, Magda didn't. She barely batted an eye at the things I told her I had done. She knew every horrible thing that had happened to me and every horrible thing I had done. Magda was the only person who knew this other than Elizabeth and Charles. I amazed myself at how much I'd told this woman who only a few hours prior had been a total stranger.

I've lived on her couch ever since. We've become... closer. Every night I've told her a new story of my life as she has told me stories about her own. She listens intently whenever I speak of Elizabeth.

"You speak about her as if she were your own child," Magda tells me after every story with a kind, soft smile across her face.

"Maybe..." I always reply. "That's because it's always felt like she is."

❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ⚡️ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜

Song: Public Enemy #1 by Motley Crue