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There is going to be real wine.
Erik has been quite firm on this point, even though Kitty is nowhere near old enough. Professor Xavier glowered a bit and said he really didn't think but he subsided readily enough, possibly because he'd rather drink real wine than Manischevitz himself. Who wouldn't? Grampa Sam used to scoff at it too, saying that they hadn't had kosher wine at every seder and he was still alive by the grace of God. That tended to end arguments. Erik doesn't need to bring that one out; the way he lowers his eyebrows at the Professor tends to end their arguments quickly enough.
Erik wasn't even interested in hosting a seder to begin with. That's all Kitty's fault. Or her idea, rather, though she's pretty sure Erik would use the first term. But she had been trying to figure out how to approach him after their trip to Washington, after she found out he had known Aunt Chava, a woman she'd only heard stories about. And the first warm days of spring reminded her that Passover was coming, and so she'd sidled into Erik's office - actually knocking first instead of phasing through the door - and summoned her courage.
"It's almost Passover," she said.
"Is it? I hadn't noticed." Erik didn't even look up from his papers.
"I was thinking we could hold a seder."
"I didn't think we would."
"But we could." Kitty pushed off from where she was hovering by the door and walked closer. "I mean - you talk all the time about how mutants should be free, should be proud. Don't you think a seder could be another way to talk about it?" She wasn't entirely sure what she meant, half-baked ideas in her head tumbling out unformed, but she had to try and it was the argument most likely to get him to pay attention. Erik looked up at her with a gaze that was serious and considering and not immediately dismissive. She gave him a little smile. "Besides, I bet people would come if we told them there was going to be wine."
He smiled, a flicker across his face, and turned back to his papers. "I'll consider it."
Kitty had thought that would be the end of it, as she slipped back through the door and down the hallway. She didn't expect Erik to appear in the den a week later with car keys in hand and inform her that they were going grocery shopping. Usually that got done on a rotating basis; it wasn't till they were in the car that he asked if she knew where they could find matzoh around here.
It had taken a little bit longer than a usual shopping trip, but they'd gotten everything they could remember along with one of those free haggadah printed on flimsy thin paper with smudgy ink, and Kitty felt an odd sort of happiness as they started on the drive back to the school.
"Are we going to clean the whole house?" she asked, glancing at Erik. "I think Bobby might start a riot if we throw out all the Oreos."
"Perhaps just the kitchen, for the first night. If it matters that much to you." Erik's eyes never left the road, but Kitty felt something warm inside her at the thought that he cared.
"It matters. Why do it if we're not going to do it right?"
Erik chuckled. "For one so admirably suited to shortcuts, you don't like taking them, do you?"
Kitty glanced at him and couldn't help smiling. "Sometimes I do. Sometimes I get lectures about invasions of privacy." That was one she'd gotten from Erik multiple times.
He smiled back. "Sometimes we do what is necessary to achieve our ends. And other times we take a less direct route."
They ended up cleaning out the kitchen, banishing all the chametz to the garage for the first day of Passover. Kitty put up fliers in the hall and called her mother asking how to make matzoh ball soup - disgruntled when the answer was "use the mix, sweetheart" - and begged the Professor for actual wine glasses. It didn't seem like they would be able to get everything together in time.
And now, as they sit at the table with candles lit and the seder plate before them, Kitty still can't quite believe it. Erik is at the head of the table, with her seat right beside him. Ororo is looking at her across the table with interest and a warm smile; Bobby is beside her, and Piotr and Jean and Scott further down, and a few of the younger students who were intrigued enough to come by, and the Professor at the foot of the table with his chin propped on his fingertips.
Erik opens the haggadah, and so does Kitty, and then the rest of them after a moment, fumbling with the back-to-front switch.
"Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam..." Familiar words that Kitty knows well, that Erik drawls out in a singsong not quite matching her own intonation, Ororo's gentle alto joining them a half beat behind. They sing the benediction over the wine, and drink the first cup, and pass a bowl of water for the washing of hands - Kitty kicks Bobby's ankle when he appears to be thinking about freezing it - and pick up the parsley.
"The green vegetable symbolizes spring," Kitty says, hoping her voice doesn't shake. She's not used to everybody looking at her like this. "And the salt water symbolizes the tears we shed in slavery. We recognize that the birth of our freedom came out of oppression."
Erik is looking at her with a gleam in his eye, as everyone dips the sprigs of greenery in the salt water and eats it. Piotr grumbles something in Russian about the taste.
They break the middle matzoh, with Erik setting aside one half of it in a napkin as the afikomen. He had scoffed at it, but Kitty insisted. Tradition was tradition, after all. And then they turn to the story of Passover.
"Like the Ten Commandments," Jean says, down the table. "I always thought Yul Brynner was dreamy." Scott looks aggrieved but says nothing.
Erik gives her a stern glare and they all fall silent as he raises the plate of matzoh. "This is the bread of affliction," he says, voice suddenly booming in the dining room, changing it into somewhere less familiar. "Whoever is hungry, let them come and eat; whoever is in need, let them come to our seder. This year we are here; next year we will be in Israel. This year we are slaves; next year we will be free."
Kitty feels a shiver down her spine. It's not just the words she's been hearing since she could remember; they mean something different here, in Erik's mouth, in a room surrounded by fellow mutants. They mean a promise of a better life, a life where they won't have to hide, a life where all can be free and safe in a better place.
Then Erik sets down the plate and the moment passes and she breathes out. "Who's the youngest?" she asks, looking down the table.
"I think that would be Jubilee," the Professor says, and everyone turns to look at her. She turns pink.
"The youngest at the table has to ask the Four Questions," Kitty explains. "Next page."
Jubilee turns the page, looking down at it and concentrating. "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Kitty remembers years of asking these questions and has to try hard not to murmur along with Jubilee: why do we eat matzoh instead of leavened bread, why do we dip our food twice, why do we eat bitter herbs, why do we recline. "That's five questions, really, if you count the first one," Jubilee says, looking up.
"You may take that up with the scholars of three thousand years ago," Erik says, looking down his nose magisterially. Kitty wants to kick him in the ankle. She hears the Professor stifle a laugh.
Kitty clears her throat. "There are more questions. Jean?"
Jean bows her head over the page, smiling a little as if she's considering which of the others might be the wise child, the wicked child, the simple and the one too young to ask. "We tell that one the story of the Passover, how the Lord led us out of Egypt."
And then the story begins, and everyone takes a page; Ororo flawless and bringing life to Yocheved's sorrow, Piotr telling how even the Pharaoh's own daughter could show mercy and love, Scott's voice catching a little as Moses killed the overseer and fled and was found by Tzipporah. The Professor's resonant tones booming out "I AM THAT I AM," making everyone smother their laughter at how much he's getting into the role.
Danielle tells of Moses' return to Egypt, of how he confronted Pharaoh. They sing "Go Down, Moses," with Piotr's bass rumbling along at the bottom and Jean attempting harmony over the top. Then Erik recites the names of the plagues in Hebrew with Kitty echoing in English afterwards. "We spill the wine to show we take no pleasure in the suffering of our enemies," Erik says, but Kitty isn't sure he means it. Bobby wipes his finger on his jeans.
"And every year, we picture a new Pharaoh," Erik continues. "We look at the rulers who make our world a mitzrayim, a narrow place, whose tyranny and torment make slaves of us all. The freedom delivered by Moses was only the first of many uprisings and the first step on the way to our people rising up and taking their rightful place."
"But that place isn't to become new masters," Kitty says, trying to keep her voice from trembling. Challenging Erik is one thing; challenging Magneto, in a room full of silverware and metal candlesticks, is quite another. But he merely looks at her with surprise. "The Jews didn't stay in Egypt to punish their oppressors. They left the place of their enslavement and went to find a new home where they could be free and no one would have to suffer more."
"You suggest a mutant Israel?" Erik asks, eyes narrowed in contemplation.
Kitty shrugs, then shakes her head. "I don't know. I don't think so. I just think the lesson is about justice rather than revenge. The Egyptians suffered ten plagues and lost an entire generation of children, and then Pharaoh and the entire army were swept away in the sea. Wasn't that enough?"
"Dayenu," someone murmurs down the table, and Kitty tries her very hardest not to turn. It sounded a lot like the Professor. Erik smiles suddenly and the tension vanishes. And they all sing another song, about how it would have been enough if they had come out of Egypt, if they had been given the sabbath day and Torah, if any of these blessings had been given it would have been enough. It would have been enough for her to have her powers, Kitty thinks; it would have been enough for her to come to the Xavier School, to join the X-Men, and yet she found friends. A family.
They skipped the ending of the story with the song, so Erik pulls them all back to tell of the parting of the waves. Kitty tells them about how she used to ask her mother what happened to the fishes, and there's a lot of laughter. And then Bobby asks, "Was Moses a mutant?"
Kitty fights the urge to drop her head into her hands, but it's the Professor who speaks. "And what do you think his powers would have been?"
"What's the word - hydrokinesis, I guess? Water powers."
"And talking to God?" Scott sounds extremely skeptical.
"A mutant to one may be a god to another," Ororo says. And she would know better than any of them. "Why not a prophet?"
Bobby has nothing to say to that. None of them do, except Erik, who smiles and says "Indeed, why not? Our brethren may have been among our people even then, leading them through the waters and to the other side."
"Where they danced with timbrels," Kitty adds. One of her favorite parts, Miriam in the story once again. Miriam was always her favorite character in the story.
"Dancing at the death of so many men?" the Professor asks. Kitty can feel herself bristling.
"Dancing at their liberation," Erik objects.
"Are you going to keep arguing or are we going to eat dinner?" Piotr asks. He has a good point; it's well past dinnertime and approaching when the younger students would normally be heading to bed. So they eat the matzoh, and assemble the Hillel sandwich of horseradish and charoset and matzoh - Bobby and Piotr engage in an impromptu manliness contest to see who can pile on more horseradish, which ends with tears streaming down Bobby's face - and then they begin the feast. Everyone is laughing and talking and finishing their cups of wine, and Kitty hates to leave the table but she sneaks away to hide the afikomen when nobody is looking.
The parts of the seder after the meal have always felt a bit like an anticlimax to Kitty, but somehow it's different here with these people. With Jubilee finding the afikomen and bargaining a whole week off dish duty before giving it up, an act of resistance. With the third cup of wine and teaching songs to everyone that she's known for years and they've never sung before, and everyone dissolving into chaos at the end of Chad Gadya just like her own family. Throwing open the door and pouring a cup for Elijah, just as Logan arrives home from wherever he'd been, and Jean and Ororo laughing so hard they start to cry.
Logan joins them for the fourth cup, for the closing of the haggadah and the closing of the seder. Erik lifts his glass. "L'shanah haba'ah bi-Yerushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem, may we be free and whole in our promised land."
Kitty thinks about points of light, about the holy days of the year and the spaces in between. About years with nothing, decades and centuries of slavery and no hope at all, and the tiny lights of one burning bush in the high country and the voice of God. She thinks about belief, about the empty space at the heart of everything that seems solid where her power takes her, about moving electrons and moving the ocean to make a place that the people can walk, about a school where mutants can be safe and a man who bent the prison gates to save his people with the force of his will. About imagining the impossible: about walking through walls, walking through waves, walking through the desert for forty years. She thinks about belief that can change the world.
"Next year in Jerusalem," she says, raising her glass. Erik meets her eyes and smiles.