FIC: How Still My Love - XMFC, Charles/Erik

[regann]

Title: How Still My Love
Author: Regann
Character: Charles/Erik
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I just play with them.
Notes: None!

Summary: A mysterious sleeping disease, three loyal guardians, and a friend-turned-foe with unclear motives. It might sound like something out of a fairy tale but it's life after Cuba in the Xavier manor for what's left of the so-called X-Men. When Charles can no longer lead them, it's up to Hank, Alex and Sean to figure out a way to protect their mentor, especially once Erik comes seeking an audience. (Variously nicknamed "the Fairytale Fix-it," "Snow Charles and the Three Wishes," and "Alex feels via Charles/Erik." All three are pretty accurate.) ~20,000 words.



How Still My Love

Alex had never considered himself a superstitious person but he couldn't help but feel like a curse had settled over the Westchester manor they all now called home.

It could've been the weather that made him feel that way -- winter, with its snow and ice, and endless gray sky -- or even the time of the year -- January was a dreary month, no matter what was going on -- but he knew in his bones that the reason had nothing to do with the sky or the calendar and everything to do with the preternatural stillness that fell over them all in the wake of the latest tragedy.

Of course, there had been Cuba, when their small group had splintered apart and he, along with Moira, Sean and Hank, had dragged a wounded Charles home to recuperate from both his physical and emotional wounds. That first month had been hard but they’d survived it, each as best they could. Eventually Charles had fared well enough to resume his place as their mentor and Moira had been sent away, presumably for their own good. Things had been quiet after that, but not like it was now -- not like death, like a magic spell left them all pale and quiet and trapped in a nightmare.

Well, it had been that way for Charles, Alex decided, even then. Even as he had smiled at them and coaxed them through their own problems, even as he had set about the business of creating a school for other lost kids like the one Alex had once been, Charles had seemed a little less...present. Quieter, more thoughtful, even for someone they had all considered tweedy and academic before. Even as he had presented a calm, controlled demeanor, the three of them left had seen the truth in their teacher's eyes in a way they never had seen in the way he struggled with his new, physical limitations.

Charles Xavier had returned from Cuba a broken man.

And the thing that had broken him had a name that none of them ever uttered.

Erik.

Their fear of his name had taken on its own power, magical in a way that children eschewed thoughts of boogeymen and monsters at bedtime. They even worried about their thoughts where even a passing memory might be picked up by Charles's telepathy, might remind him of the things they didn't want him thinking about. In some ways, Alex wondered if things between then and now would've been different without that strange protectiveness they'd developed toward Charles, if they hadn't felt the need to circle around him. They had all made their choice on the beach but it sometimes felt like they'd found their loyalty in the days after.

It hadn't helped any of them that as much as Charles had tried to hide his sorrow during the day, it had been readily apparent each night when he didn't seem to sleep or eat, when he didn't seem to do anything whenever one of them wasn't demanding his attention. Scattered, Sean had called it; distracted, Hank had said. Alex had had another word for it but he hadn't said it out loud, for fear of how the others would take it. But in his head, it rose up in his mind every time he caught an unguarded expression on Charles's face, one that hurt him to even have to look at.

Broken-hearted.

There were also the nights -- only a handful, of course, but enough -- when they all three came awake from the same nightmare, nightmares that originated in the telepath's mind and was projected into theirs by a lack of control that Charles apologized for profusely whenever it had happened. They had understood and told him not to worry about it. After a week of sporadic incidents, Charles had stopped sleeping.

After another week, Charles wouldn’t wake up.

They had found him one morning, still in his bed, alive but unresponsive, so still that Sean's pale face had convinced Alex for long, unending minutes that Charles had somehow died in his sleep. Hank had checked and re-checked, had run test after test but hadn't found an answer to the question. His best guess had blamed some schism in Charles's telepathy but without another one to help them test the theory, they'd been left in limbo, taking turns to watch over their comatose mentor and hope against hope that a miracle waited around the corner.

The problem was, though, that Alex had long since stopped believing in miracles.

And so they were, the three of them: Alex, Hank and Sean, rambling around the huge mansion and isolated from people by its expansive grounds, holding vigil over Charles like he was a princess in a fairy tale, even tucked up in a tower in his lofty bedroom suite. They went through the motions of the day, doing what they could, but there was no doubt that there was a listlessness, a hopelessness to every action they took. What were they to do, without Charles? What were they without Charles?

Sometimes Alex wondered if Erik and Raven spared any thought for what had happened to them in their wake of their disappearance on the beach, if they ever even wondered about them. Alex wondered about them, but never without bitterness, without a rage he figured even Erik would appreciate. It was one that grew every day he looked down into Charles's silent, still face when he checked on him and realized they probably didn't have any idea of what they'd done to him. Hank often told him that they had no proof that Charles's condition had anything to do with them but Alex was a "simplest explanation" man and he'd experienced enough second-hand nightmares to know what had haunted Charles's mind before he'd become lost inside it.

Pain. Heartache. A bullet. And a name that they'd all been scared to speak, not even in their minds.

But Alex would now, now that Charles was at least safe from that.

Erik.

And so another day passed and Alex sat by the window of Charles's room where he spent part of each day, just like Sean and Hank did, where he watched the snow blanket the world in suffocating, deadening whiteness and wondered, not for the first time, if that was what it was like in Charles's mind, frozen as he was in a winter of his own.

With nothing more to offer than his loyalty, Alex did the only thing he could.

He waited.

**

Long before Charles Xavier had burst into his life with his dreams of a mutant brigade, Sean had lived his life around a routine. It hadn't been a very interesting one or even one he'd particularly enjoyed, but it had given structure to the days, something that he found himself missing when he, along with Alex and Hank, found himself left to aimlessly sloth in the tomb that had once been the Xavier family home.

It still wasn't much of a routine, but he found comfort in it, especially since there was so little to be found elsewhere. Every day, he got up, made breakfast, half-heartedly poked at the layers of dust that seemed to accumulate on every surface, did his turns at checking on and sitting with Charles, then dinner and bed, with long hours in-between, often passed with books or magazines found among Charles's library or stacked in the corner of his study. Often, Sean read aloud to Charles when he took his hours at vigil, although he rarely made it through anything without commentary that he hoped Charles appreciated if he could hear them.

Sean preferred to think that he could hear them because, if he couldn't, it made his whatever-it-is that much more like death.

He wasn't the only one who had developed a routine to help pass the endless days of sadness and despair; the three of them all took their turns with Charles, took their time moving through the necessities that had to be attended to if they didn't want to fade away just as surely as they felt Charles was. When he made breakfast for himself each day in the quiet emptiness of the echoing kitchen, Sean often glanced outside to see Alex putting himself through the paces, pushing himself through the winter chill as he ran and trained, his breath a staccato of angry white puffs as he greedily sucked at the air after a hard workout. Sometimes Alex would come back in through the kitchen door, chilly and sweaty, looking at Sean long and hard before he disappeared into the twisting halls of the manor, off to his room or whatever he did when Sean didn't see him.

Hank rose far earlier than either of them and retired after them, spending as much of his time as possible either in his lab or with Charles. Every morning as Sean ate, he knew that Hank was already awake, making the first of his many checks on Charles that he made throughout the day, always at precisely the same time, each vital statistic painstakingly recorded by large, blue fingers that had only just re-learned such fine motor control.

Sean usually wandered up to Charles's room about midday, when Hank was in his lab and Alex was still brooding or whatever it was he did when he wasn't running or blowing up the underground bunker with his ever-more-powerful plasma beams. If the shades weren't opened, Sean did that, letting light into the room so that it could pool like honey against the dark woods of the furniture and faded earthen shades of the carpet. He thought Charles would appreciate it, if he'd been able.

Alex usually showed up in the evenings, tight-jawed and angry at nothing that he could put his hands on. Sean would always slip out whenever Alex slipped in, letting him keep his watch in whatever way he wanted. He knew Alex sometimes talked to Charles and sometimes even touched him, an affectionate pat of his hand or his arm, something to remind himself that Charles was warm and breathing, not as cold and hard as the statue he resembled. Sean never stayed much past those first few minutes, never wanted to hear what Alex had to say in those hushed tones. They all had their little routines when it came to Charles, with the time they spent with him, with the way they tried to keep him alive as he slipped away before their very eyes, small insignificant things that made up their minutes, hours, days, weeks, that might make up their months.

He never said anything but Sean was Catholic; he knew ritual when he saw it, both his and Hank's and Alex's. But it was all they had, so they clung to it, each of them refusing in their own way to give up hope.

But that didn't mean their hopes didn't fade a little more with each passing day.

The routine was so important, so ingrained, that the first time something happened to interrupt it, they all nearly panicked. One moment, Sean had been reading aloud to Charles from one of his scientific magazines and the next he'd looked down out of the window to see a dark figure cutting across the last stretch of white ground separating it from the front of the manor. His eyes widened and he dropped the magazine where he’d found it as he made a mad dash out of the room, down the hall toward Hank's lab.

"Guys!" he yelled as he scrambled down through the mansion, before remembering that his mutant ability had to do with sound. Then his voice boomed. "Guys? There's someone coming toward the house!"

Through some great instinct he didn't know they shared, they all met on the stairs just above the great foyer, where they could each eye the front entrance as if it had been transformed into the Gates of Hell.

"Did you see who?" Hank asked. "Maybe I should hide."

"Whoever it is, we don't want them here," Alex said. "They shouldn't be here."

"Maybe we should look?" Sean suggested. "It could be nothing."

By silent mutual agreement, they all three headed down the stairs, although Hank hung back in the shadow of the stairs as Alex boldly wrenched the door open with Sean at his side. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the blinding whiteness of the snowscape that greeted them, but as soon as he had, he saw the figure and recognized the familiar shape and movement of the man whose existence had become verboten among them.

"Erik?" Sean said aloud, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, still disbelieving even as what he saw kept giving him the same answer. Same tall, proud figure, same slink to his step; but most of all, same strange shiny helmet on his head that they'd last seen in Cuba.

Only the hideous red robes were new.

"What?" Sean heard Hank exclaim behind him before the scientist was pushing past him to stand beside Alex who was nearly vibrating with anger -- and the sudden build-up of plasma energy.

"Hey," Sean said with a sharp poke to his shoulder. "Watch it."

But Alex was past listening, it seemed. "What the hell?" he said, certainly loud enough for Erik to hear even though he didn't pause in his steps. "What do you think you're doing here?"

"Alex..." Hank said with a wary glance out of the corner of great, yellow eye, obviously noticing what Sean had noticed seconds earlier. "Calm down."

But Alex was past being placated, apparently. That didn’t surprise Sean since Alex lived on the edge of anger, always ready to make that fall. "Stop right there," he continued, a hand raised in warning at Erik. "One step closer and I'm blasting you back to wherever you came from."

Finally, Erik reacted, feet slowing until he came to stop entirely too close to where they stood for Sean's comfort. He thought uneasily about the errant bits of metal on his clothes, much too much even as he shivered in the winter wind, underdressed for the time he'd already spent on the mansion's stone steps. Erik glanced up at the three of them, eyes barely visible around the hard, defensive lines of the helmet. "I came to see Charles," Erik said, his voice like some auditory ghost rising from the past as it reached their ears. "I'm not here for you."

"Well that's not possible," Hank said, furry brow furrowing.

"Because you'll stop me?" Erik asked, amused disbelief plain in his voice.

"Bet on it," Alex growled. "You know what I can do."

"That's not why," Sean heard himself say.

"Then why?"

"Because..."

"Because he doesn't want to see you," Alex ground out, cutting off Hank's timid explanation before it had ever really begun. "Why would he?"

Sean could see Erik's jaw tighten where he clenched it in either irritation or anger, a strange mirror to Alex. "I'll hear that from him myself."

"He told us not to let you near him," Alex lied and Hank's hand closed over his shoulder, tightening in warning. He didn't even flinch when Sean saw a sharp, beastly nail catch against his bare skin.

"I don't believe you," Erik said.

"Then ask him yourself," Alex said. "Telepathically, I mean. Take off the helmet and see what he has to say."

They all held their breath while they waited for his answer. "No."

Sean was certain there was relief on his face.

"Then I guess you'll have to take our word for it," Alex said. "Now, get the hell off our property."

Erik glared, still as dangerous as he looked on the beach when he'd tried to kill an entire fleet of soldiers and had felled his best friend with a misdirected bullet. "No."

Hank stepped forward. "Can you just excuse us for a minute," he said, using his hold on Alex to drag him back toward the door after he had elbowed Sean to get back inside. "We'll be right back. Don't try anything." Once he'd offered up that warning of his own, Hank slammed the door shut and faced them where they stood a few feet inside the foyer. He glared at Alex. "What was that?"

"We can't let him near Charles," Alex said, "And we definitely can't let him know what's going on."

"Why not?" Sean asked. "Once he figures that he can't talk to Charles, he can be on his merry way."

"That's not how it'll work," Alex argued. "Charles is the only one of us he has any respect for. If he knew Charles was out of it, what's to stop him from taking us out? From hurting or even killing Charles?"

"He wouldn't do that," Hank said.

Alex rolled his eyes. "Did you miss the part where he put a bullet in Charles's back?"

"That was an accident," Sean pointed out.

"...or the part where he left him to die? Left all of us to die?" Alex continued. "The fact is, we don't know what the hell he's capable of. The night before Cuba, I would've never thought he'd ever turn on Charles but that's exactly what he did. I can't forget that." Alex shook his head. "And I can't trust he won't do it again."

Hank sighed. "Then what are we going to do?"

"We need to stall him somehow," Alex said. "Make him give up. I'm sure all he wants to do is talk about how all humans are evil and need to die, blah, blah."

"And how are we going to do that?" Hank demanded. Before anyone answered though, he glanced out of one of the windows that faced the entrance. "He's coming this way, we have to get back out there."

Like the strange little unit they had become, they formed a line of defense with the three of them, each standing their ground to bar Erik's way into the mansion. "Can't you take the hint?" Alex asked. "Nobody wants you here."

Erik glanced up above them toward the upper row of windows like he knew exactly which were Charles’s and expected to see his former friend watching from the high vantage point. Sean only wished it were possible. "I'll hear it from Charles."

"No, you won't," Alex said.

"Erik, look," Hank began. "Whatever it is you want to talk to Charles about, I don't think he's interested."

Erik looked at each of them in turn, eyes sharp and much too perceptive. "There's something you aren't telling me," he said. "Charles would never send the three of you to tell me anything."

Sean could see the anger sparking in Alex's eyes and the worry in Hank's and he knew he had to do something. "You have to prove yourself," he blurted out.

Erik's steely gaze cut his way. "What?"

Sean stood a little straighter. "Charles wants you to prove that whatever you're here for isn't bad," he continued. "That you're here in good faith."

Erik folded his arms, his new red cape fluttering dramatically. It reminded Sean of how underdressed he was and he shivered. "And how am I supposed to do that?"

They all exchanged a panicked glance before Sean spoke up again. "You have to listen to us, do what we tell you."

"Are we to play some child's game, then?" Erik scoffed. He shook his head. "Out of my way."

"No," Hank said, once again letting the growl seep into his voice. "You know if you do anything to us, it's not going to matter what you have to say. Charles won't listen."

It was a good point, one Sean was glad one of them remembered to raise. "Fine," Erik said, and his long-suffering eye-roll reminded Sean of the surprisingly quick-humored man who had helped them all of those months ago instead of the monster from the beach, the one that had lived in his memories since. "So there's something I have to do to prove that I come in peace. What is it?"

They all looked at each once again. "It won't be easy," Hank warned.

"You should probably just leave now," Alex said.

Sean was trying desperately to think of some stupid, ridiculous task they could demand that would send Erik on his way. The only thing he could think of was the articles he'd been reading to Charles, just that morning. "Sapphires!"

"What?"

Alex and Hank were looking at him like he'd lost his mind, but Sean forged ahead. "There's this island off the east coast of Africa, called Genosha. They just found a huge vein of sapphires in some mountains there. That's what you have to do. Bring back a Genoshan sapphire."

"Charles wants me to find him a sapphire?"

"No, I do," Sean said. "But Charles wants you to listen to us, so..."

"A Genoshan sapphire?" Erik repeated, shaking his head.

"You could just leave and never come back," Alex told him. "We'll all be happier that way."

Erik glanced up toward Charles's window. "Tell Charles I'll be back in a few days to talk," he said as he turned on his heel and stalked away. "With your sapphire, Sean."

They all three stood shivering in the cold until Erik's form stopped being a beacon against the stark white landscape. Then they retired to one of the sitting rooms where they started a roaring fire and helped themselves to the alcohol that Charles kept stocked before his illness.

"Sapphires? That was the best you could come up with?" asked Alex as he threw one of the blankets he'd grabbed from a linen closet at Sean's head.

Sean was too cold to complain as he wrapped it around himself. "I was thinking on my feet! And I just read an article about them in National Geographic." He shrugged. "It should keep him busy for a while, at least."

"Not that long, no more than a few days," Hank said, rubbing a towel over his snow-dampened fur. "Not if Azazel is still with him."

"Whatever, I don't think he's coming back," Alex said, grimacing as he gulped the scotch he'd poured himself. "He'll think about how stupid a request it was, decide it's not worth it and move on, probably to kill some people that aren't us."

"I don't know," Hank said. "He seemed fairly resolute in his desire to talk to Charles."

"Doesn't matter," Alex said again. "He's not coming back."

Three days later, Erik proved Alex's prediction wrong when he, in fact, came back.

And he didn't show up empty-handed; when they met him at the manor's entrance like they had on that first visit, he tossed a large object straight at Sean's head, one he just managed to catch.

"Your sapphire," he said mockingly.

Sean turned it over in his hands, impressed despite himself. It was a sapphire, one as large as his fist, deep blue with only a hint of violet in its color, almost like the photograph he'd seen in the magazine. Its bright blue shade had reminded him of Charles, of his mentor's honest, knowing gaze, which was why the article had stayed with him for so long. The stone was rough, obviously newly liberated from the sediment in which it had formed, and he couldn't help turning it over and over in his hand.

"You still can't see him," Alex said boldly, unperturbed by the darkening expression on Erik's face. "You probably didn't even get that yourself."

"This is completely ridiculous," he said. "Let me talk to Charles."

"Do you think he doesn't know what we're doing?" Alex said with a laugh, despite the fact they all knew Charles had no idea. "Maybe he thinks you need to learn a little patience and humility."

Erik's glare at the three of them was as hard and as intimidating as the one they'd seen him use on the beach but it didn't have the effect it had once had. Sean realized that somewhere in the months between then and now they had developed a strange kind of bravery, one he was fairly certain came from the same place in each of them -- a place that said they had so little left to lose, there was no reason not to be brave.

"Like Alex said last time, you can always take your helmet off and contact him that way," Hank told him. "But we're not letting you inside this way."

Erik was clearly displeased but something seemed to seize him and his shoulders relaxed a little. "Does that mean I have another stupid task to do as part of this little...?" He couldn't find the word for it so he just waved his hand between himself and the line of them.

"Yes, we haven't decided on it yet," Alex said. "Come back tomorrow."

Erik looked as if he wanted to say something or, by the way his hand clenched at his side, as if he wanted to crush them all with the nearest slab of metal but all he did was give them one, slow nod. "Tomorrow," he said, either a warning or a promise, before he turned and left as he'd come, walking alone across the snowy grounds toward some unknown destination.

None of them really breathed until he was gone from their eyesight and they all but ran into the mansion, Sean latching the door sturdily behind them even as he knew how useless it would be if Erik chose to attack.

This time they all ended up in Charles's room together, Hank pacing in worry while Alex kept suspicious watch out of one of the windows. Sean settled in the chair they kept at Charles's bedside, the sapphire still in his hands.

"We can't keep this up forever," Hank said. "Eventually he's just going to storm in here and then he'll know. And what will we do then?"

"Hope he's given up before we reach that point," Sean said. He cast a longing glance down at Charles's pale, motionless face. "Or hope Charles wakes up before then."

"Like that's going to happen," Alex sighed. "We just have to hope that Erik gives up before then. That he figures this is Charles's way of saying he doesn't want to talk and then he can go back to his evil mutants and leave us alone."

"This is not Charles's style at all," Hank pointed out.

"No, his style would be to sit down and have tea with him and talk about his feelings," Alex said, hint of scornful mockery in his voice. But everything about him softened with sadness as his gaze wandered over to Charles. "But he's not really around for that."

"I wish he was."

"I think we all do."

Hank suddenly stopped his pacing. "I think I have an idea," he said, drawing both Alex's and Sean's attention away from Charles. "Maybe we can fix this and maybe Erik can help."

"Really?" Alex said.

Hank nodded, then pointed toward the door. "But I need to go do...some things. Find some things, all right?"

"All right," Alex said. "But we still need to figure out what to ask Erik for next -- and something better than sapphires."

"I've got that covered," Hank promised. "I'm just going to..." With another wave of his hand, he headed out of the room, more determined-looking than he had been since they'd found Charles as still as death in his bed.

"Let's hope Brainiac figures something out," Alex said after a moment, running a hand through his hair. "Because something needs to give."

Sean nodded his agreement but suddenly couldn't find the voice to say anything at all. He laid the rough sapphire on Charles's bedside table and left Alex to his usual quiet hours with his watch.

**

He didn't know if it was an honest assessment or just his own paranoia, but Hank always felt like Alex and Sean both looked at him and expected him to have all the answers. Even though Alex clearly made a grab for leadership whenever the three of them were on their own, it was still him that they turned to when they wanted to know something, when they wanted an answer to whatever question perplexed them. Despite how much he wished it otherwise, Hank didn't have all the answers and he always felt like a failure when he had to admit to them. That feeling had become more and more persistent since Charles had fallen ill this time, a painful reminder each day when they asked him if there was any change in Charles's malady that for everything he knew and everything he studied, Hank McCoy didn't know everything.

He'd long stopped wanting to know everything; now, he just wished he knew what to do for Charles.

Knowledge was something he'd always taken for granted, something he'd always been able to search for when he needed it. The CIA recruitment when he'd been sixteen had seemed like just another step on the path he'd chosen for himself since he'd realized that other four year olds couldn't read and write and do algebra. The Director had been everything he'd wanted in a mentor, kind and patient, curious and encouraging. The only in which he had been found wanting, however unknowingly, was on the topic of mutantness. It had hurt to lose the Director like he had, thanks to Shaw and Azazel, but at least he'd had Charles there, the man he knew, both intellectually and on some deeper level, was the teacher he had needed all his life.

And then he'd lost Charles, too.

The thing with knowledge, especially government knowledge, Hank had learned, was that as much as his job had been about illumination, it had been just as much about concealment. For every discovery he'd made there had been a corresponding need for containment, so that each discovery just became one more secret he had to keep along with the ones he'd been hiding his entire life. Anyone working for a top-secret government facility had to be good at keeping secrets and Hank had always been one of the best. It hadn't taken long in his tenure before the truth of his mutant genetics hadn't been alone in the dark, secretive corner of his mind where he hid what he couldn't share. So many bits and pieces and briefings and classified research, confiscated research and hushed correspondence between scientists at their facility and others -- they'd all come to take their place in Hank's mind, filed away accordingly and marked as secrets. Even after he'd left the facility to come to Westchester with Charles, Hank had never imagined that he'd ever do anything but keep those secrets until the day he died.

As he spent the better part of the afternoon carefully recreating maps from his almost flawless memory, Hank realized it had taken much less than death to get some of those secrets out of him.

By the time Alex and Sean got tired of waiting for him to leave his lab to ask him about the plans he'd alluded to before he'd left Charles's room and the two of them came looking for him, Hank had two detailed maps sketched out and a list of bulleted details that someone would need to use them to do what they were meant to do. On another sheet of paper he'd had an actual sketch of a strange room that he'd only seen once or twice, but those times had been enough to leave its mark on his memory, a room of shiny metal and small tiny, marked cubicles, one of which led something Hank hoped might help and even cure Charles's coma.

And it was something that only Erik and his team could get for them.

"Are you going to explain any of this?" Sean asked, picking up one of the maps and holding it up as he studied it.

"I said I would," Hank reminded him. "I was just trying to finish up."

Sean laid the map back down and pulled up a stool while Alex settled against the edge of the lab table, propped up on his elbows. "What does this have to do with stalling Erik?"

"The Director was really interested in things like telepathy, ESP, long before he ever met or knew about Charles," Hank began. "It had been one of his special areas of research for years."

"Seriously?"

Hank nodded. "I know you weren't there but we already had the plans for Cerebro completed," he told them. "The Director had hoped to use it with some other volunteers who he believed exhibited ESP ability."

"And the maps?" Sean asked.

"Because of his interest," Hank continued, "the Director stayed in touch with others working in the same fields. There's a research facility in Switzerland, very hush-hush, where the scientists were working on the same things, just from a different approach. One of them created this serum that was supposed to induce and intensity telepathic abilities in subject that tested as latents in their trials."

"But Charles isn't a latent," Sean pointed out.

"At the moment, that's all Charles is," Hank sighed. "But I'm pretty sure whatever is wrong with Charles is tied to his powers. If we give him this...it's a neuro-stimulant. Hopefully it would help him push past whatever the block is."

"So it's like...liquid Cerebro?" Sean asked.

"The comparison is apt, I suppose."

"Wait a minute -- hopefully?" Alex asked. "You mean you don't know?"

"That's the thing," Hank told them. "The scientist died -- let's not get into that -- and all his notes were destroyed, so it's never been tested. There's only one sample of it left and it's locked away in this facility." He picked up the diagram of the cubicle vaults. "And it's really secure. And underground. And very top-secret, which is why we would need Erik. It's something that plays to his strengths."

"You mean destruction and mayhem?" Sean said as he picked up the other map.

"Okay, I like the thought process, Hank," Alex said. "But, you're talking about sending Erik after the only sample of something that boosts telepathic ability. Maybe. Who's to say he won't keep it and use it for himself?"

"I don't know that he won't," Hank admitted. "But it's worth a try."

"We don't have to tell him what it's for," Sean suggested. "Just that needs to bring it back."

Alex shook his head, the leaned in, eye to eye with Hank as he spoke. "Are you sure this might help Charles? Because we're going to putting a lot of people in danger if we send him after this. And we'll basically be handing the guy a weapon to use against us. Is it worth the risk?"

Hank thought of all the research he'd seen, all the scraps of findings that had survived the lab's explosion. He took a deep breath and realized that, like always, they were expecting him to have all the answers. "If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have brought it up," he said. "It's worth a shot."

"Okay," Alex said with a sigh, nodding a little. "Get it ready and we'll use it tomorrow. Maybe we'll be lucky and he won't come back from Switzerland ever."

Sean frowned. "Did you just wish death on Erik?"

Alex straightened. "It's not the first time," he said, slapping Sean on the back as he headed out of the room. "And it won't be the last."

They both watched him go before they turned back to each other. "I think we should start worrying about him," Sean said.

Hank sighed again, closing his eyes. "Who ever stopped?"

Hank tried not to get his hopes up as he finished up the plans he'd have to present to Erik, but he couldn't help it because it was the first breakthrough he'd had in weeks, the first thing he'd thought of that might have a chance to work. And he wanted it to work desperately because he wanted Charles back more than he'd ever wanted anything, including his human form.

It was a shock when he processed that revelation.

Despite Alex's hopes to the contrary, Erik did show up the next day and they did what was becoming habit: meeting him on the front steps of the mansion and shivering in the winter weather that refused to abate. He made a stark figure against all the white, dressed in his red clothing with his helmet still firmly in place.

"Well?" he asked, a single word that demanded an answer.

Hank was clutching the plans in his furry hand, so he stepped forward and offered them to Erik. "I need this serum for something I'm working on," he said. "It's dangerous, so it's up to you if you want to try or not."

Erik looked at the roll of papers for a long moment before he took them in his gloved hand. "How dangerous?"

"It's all in there," Hank said, stepping back into line with Alex and Sean. Somehow he felt stronger when they all stood together. "If you're going to do it, that has everything you need to know that I can tell."

He looked at each of them in that hard, steely way he had. "I don't know what's going on," he told them. "But I do plan to find out." He held up in the papers. "In the meantime..."

Once he was nothing but a blurry figure in the distance, they allowed themselves to relax their guard and resume their normal tasks. Hank headed back to his lab and was only somewhat surprised to find that Alex and Sean followed behind him.

"I can't keep wondering about why he's even going along with this," Sean said. "It's not very Erik-like, you know?"

"I think we need to realize we don't know what's really Erik-like," Hank said. Out of comfort, he seated himself in front of his favorite lab table but he wasn't working on anything in particular, so it was empty and smooth against his fur. "The only one of us who really knew him was Charles and...he can't help us."

"I just hope he doesn't come back," Alex said.

Hank and Sean exchanged a glance behind his bent back.

As he did every night, Hank's last stop before he went to bed was his last check on Charles. Someone -- probably Alex -- had drawn the shades earlier and the room was dim, lit only by a soft lamp near the bed. Hank moved with as much grace as he could manage in his newer, bulkier form, running through his mental task list. He made sure Charles was warm and comfortable, made sure there was no hint of change in his condition before he awkwardly patted Charles's knee through the blankets, an action Charles wouldn't have been able to feel even if he had been conscious.

"I'm not going to give up, Charles," he told his mentor who hadn't moved on his own in weeks. "I'm going to figure this out, I promise."

Every hour of every day passed tortuously slow as the three of them waited to see if Erik returned and, if he did, if he'd have the neuro-stimulant serum with him. Sean remained stubbornly optimistic on the point that he would return while Alex's opinion oscillated between hoping that Erik returned with the medicine and loudly wishing death down upon his head. Hank kept his own counsel when it came to his thoughts but he wanted Erik to return as much as he feared it. He wanted the serum, but worried it wouldn't work; he wanted Erik to bring it, but he hated the threat he represented. Every option seemed to have its own danger until Hank wasn't even sure what he wanted.

When four days passed with no sign of Erik, the faint hopes that had been stirred began to die a quiet death. Even though it looked like they had accomplished their plans of scaring Erik off from wanting to visit Charles, they had lost a chance to save Charles in the process.

Almost a week to the day that they had last seen Erik, it was Hank who glanced out of a window -- one in his lab -- and looked down to see not one but three shadowy figures standing on the lawn, oddly ethereal against the blue-white world of the winter evening. He didn't bother calling out for Sean or Alex and instead hurried down to the entrance on his own, throwing the door open in time to meet Erik on the steps, as if he'd just stopped him from opening the door and entering. Still, it was the closest Erik had gotten to the manor since Cuba and Hank drew himself to his full height, summoning every bit of anger he had to look threatening and menacing.

Erik could've pushed his way, could've used any bit of stray metal to incapacitate Hank but he didn't, and that lack of aggression confused Hank enough that his "What?" was devoid of most of the growly undertones he'd planned.

It wasn't until Erik thrust a small metal box out at him that Hank noticed the other mutant held it in his hands. "Your serum, Hank. As requested."

He was slow in accepting the box, suddenly reminded of his occasional bouts of clumsiness in his new body. His eyes wandered away from Erik, over his shoulder to the two figures waiting just far enough way he couldn't consider them a threat. They were a matched pair, one pale and feminine, the other dark and broad; Azazel and Emma Frost, Hank guessed.

Finally Hank clutched the box in his hands. All the hope that he'd pretended he didn't have over the neuro-stimulant roared to life inside him as he carefully lifted the lid to find the still-sealed vial of amber liquid resting in its protective case, so much so that his hands shook a little as he snapped the lid shut once more.

"Is it as you expected?" Erik asked, voice betraying his impatience with Hank's silence.

"Yes," he said. "But you still can't see Charles, not yet."

Erik sighed and glanced over his shoulder toward the waiting figures. "I have somewhere else to be this evening," he said. Then his gaze hardened as it met Hank's. "Mystique was injured in the recovery of that item. I need to check on her."

Hank only realized that he meant Raven when he said Mystique as Erik began to leave. "Tell her..." he began and Erik paused. Hank shook his head. "Never mind."

"I will be back tomorrow," Erik told him. "And this game will be over. No matter what Charles thinks he's accomplishing with this, I'm through." He turned and looked pointedly at the serum in Hank's hands. "I hope that was worth all the aggravation its retrieval caused."

Hank waited until Erik, Azazel and Emma Frost were gone, until he closed the door on the silent winter night before he spoke his answer to Erik's statement out loud. "It was."

"Well?" Alex asked as he came out of the library, obviously drawn to the entrance by the noise Hank had been making. "Was it Erik?"

"Yes, it was," he said with a nod. He looked up and noticed Sean waiting quietly at the top of the stairs. "He brought the serum."

Alex's eyes widened in surprise. "And you think it'll work?"

"I hope so," Hank said. "I really do."

There wasn't much in the way of preparation to be done because Hank had busied himself with all of the options early in the waiting period. He had everything he needed to administer the neural stimulant and he was qualified to do so, but still he hesitated once he stood there with the injection ready, staring down at Charles's slack face.

Alex must've had some of his own concerns because his hand closed around Hank's arm -- well, as much as it could. "You sure we can't test this or something before we try it?"

He shook his head. "This is exactly one dose. If we wasted some on testing and then it turned out it could only be effective at a full dose, this would’ve been for nothing and we might lose our best chance."

Alex sighed. "I don't want to make things worse."

"I don't think it can."

"No offence, Hank, but you've made mistakes about this before."

"You think I don't remember that?" he snapped, then sighed when he saw Alex's eyebrows rise in response. "I can't know everything, all right? All I have is what I do know and I think it's worth the risk. The longer Charles stays comatose...catatonic...in this state, the less chance we have or ever finding a way to fix it."

Alex scrubbed a hand over his hand, then crossed his arms, eyes focused on Charles. "I guess do it, then. Right?"

"Right," Sean echoed from where he stood at the foot of the bed, leaning against the carved mahogany of the footboard.

"Right," Hank said, making it a unanimous decision. Before he could change his mind again, he gave Charles the injection and they all held their breath.

"Should it work immediately?" Sean asked, voice barely a whisper.

"If not instantly," Hank said as he stared hard at Charles, searching for some small evidence of a change. Alex and Sean were doing the same, Sean's hand wrapped around the bedpost so tightly his knuckles were white while Alex was a vibrating column of tension, so tense that Hank half-expected him to have an accidental discharge of his powers. But they all remained still for the long moments of waiting and watching and hoping for some kind of change.

There wasn't one.

It was like someone cut Sean's puppet strings the way he collapsed with disappointment. "Something should've happened by now, right?"

"Yes," Hank admitted with a sigh, head bowed. Charles remained still and unresponsive, like he was frozen in time instead of locked in his own mind. "We should've seen something by now if there was going to be a change."

He almost jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. "At least you tried, Hank," Alex said. "And it doesn't look like it made anything worse."

Hank knew Alex was trying for comforting so he didn't snap at him again about his second oblique reference to the failed serum that had turned Hank into the blue furred creature he was now. "I don't think I'm ever going to be able to fix this on my own," he confessed instead. "This serum was the last thing I could think of and it didn't work."

"We have to keep trying," Sean said. "We can't just let Charles waste away like this."

"I'm not going to give up," Hank said, sneaking a glance at Alex. "But I think we need to accept that we need help."

Alex was immediately suspicious. "Like from who?"

Hank steeled himself for an argument, but he had come up with what seemed to be the most logical course of action. "When Erik came tonight, he wasn't alone. He had Azazel...and Emma Frost with him."

"Are you honestly suggesting...?"

"Look, I know your opinion on this but I really don't think Erik wants to hurt Charles," Hank told him. "He's given in to every arbitrary demand we've given him without even the threat of violence. And he knows something is off, Alex. We might as well tell him because we can't hide it forever, especially if Charles doesn't get better."

"Even if -- and I don't have to tell you what a huge if that is -- we can trust Erik, do you think we can trust Emma Frost? Really?" Alex shook his head.

"She and Erik seemed to have worked out their differences," Hank said. "And I think we have to accept this isn't an ordinary medical condition. It's something to do with his powers and I can't fix it. All of the hope in the world isn't going to change that or his condition."

"Well, I don't agree," Alex said. "Not with telling Erik and definitely not with letting Emma Frost mess around with Charles's head."

"Well, I'm the one here who actually knows what I'm talking about," Hank said, glaring. "And I think we need to face the facts that we can't do this alone. Didn't you at least learn that from Charles?"

"Hey, hey!" Hank hadn't even realized that he and Alex were in each other's faces until Sean was there, stepping in between them, making them each take a few steps back. "Knock it off."

"It looks like you're the swing vote, Sean," Alex said. "What do you think?"

Sean's expression was troubled as he looked between them. "I think I'm going with Hank on this one," he said quietly. "We've got to take the chance or we might lose him forever."

The look of betrayal on Alex's face, even smothered as it was by anger, made Hank flinch. "So that's how it is?"

"Alex, wait."

But he just shook off Hank's touch. "This isn't the way," he told them. "Charles trusted Erik and look where it got him."

When Alex slammed the door of Charles's chambers on his way out, Hank let out a rattling sigh that felt almost as loud. "What are we going to do with him?"

"We've just got to let him work it off," Sean said. "There's no arguing with him like this."

"Reminds you of someone, doesn't it?" Hank said.

Sean almost smiled. "Yeah, it does, but he really would blow something if we told him that." Sean waved a hand, some kind of aborted gesture. "Do you need anything?"

Hank shook his head. "I think I'm going to stay with Charles tonight, just in case," he said. "Why don't you get some rest? Things aren't going to be pretty tomorrow."

"Like it ever is around here," Sean snorted. "Goodnight, Hank."

Once alone, Hank looked down at Charles again, at the empty syringe on the bedside table that sat next to the sapphire Sean had left there from their first ridiculous task for Erik. It was one of those moments where he needed a mentor, needed someone who could help him figure out what to do when all his knowledge failed him. But Charles had been that person for him and now he was gone in every way that mattered.

"I'm sorry," Hank told him and hoped that wherever Charles had gone, he could hear him.

**

Alex had made himself a lot of promises after they'd made it back to Westchester after Cuba and he'd made even more to himself after Charles had refused to gain consciousness that horrible day all those weeks ago. Of all of those promises, the most important had been that, come hell or high water, he was part of whatever Charles had been trying to build and he was going to stay here, supporting him, helping him, doing whatever he could to see that Charles's vision came to life. It had taken those terrible moments of the beach to make Alex realize just how much it all meant to him -- Charles; helping people; understanding and mastering his powers; even Hank and Sean -- and he had decided to never take it for granted again. So when Charles had fallen ill, Alex's resolve to stay and see it all through had only been strengthened in the face of adversity.

A less important but no less fervently felt vow he'd made had been that he would make sure Erik paid for what he'd done to Charles on the beach. And while the other promises might've been out of his grasp -- that one, at least, was right there, a shiny tempting apple on a low-hanging branch. All he had to do was reach out and take it, no matter what Hank and Sean said.

It was obvious, though, that he'd have to take matters into his own hands to see it happen.

They all knew that Erik's return was imminent, that he'd come back as he'd warned, that he’d show up some time the next day and they all spent the night awake, restless and uneasy with the tension in the house, the tension between them. Alex ignored it as best he could and ignored his friends as well, his plans already forming in his mind. He wasn't going to wait for Erik to come to the house, where Hank would ruin everything they'd done in keeping him from Charles and would instead tell him the truth so that he'd know just how precarious it was for them all. Alex knew that Hank and Sean still saw the old Erik when they looked at "Magneto," even through the helmet and cape; but Alex saw the man who had tried to kill thousands of innocent people, who had deflected a bullet into a man's back, and who had walked away from that bloody and battered friend without so much as a second glance.

Alex had read enough fairy tales to know what people called that person in the story: they were the villain. And he couldn’t just let the villain in through the front door, not unless there was an ax waiting on the other side.

It was early, very early, when Alex rose the next morning, pulling on his clothes and suiting up to handle the wintry weather outside. He started out across the snowy grounds, using the details he'd noticed over the last few weeks about the when and where and how of Erik's comings and goings from the estate to decide on a destination. He settled himself against a tree that gave him the perfect vantage of the snowy slopes of the land and then he did what he'd been doing for so many weeks.

He waited.

Alex didn't know how long he shivered in the cold morning, huddled against the wind, before his patience paid off, but it did, and he looked out across the open field to see Erik and Azazel appear in puff of red smoke. He melted from the shadows and headed their way.

Erik noticed immediately. "Alex."

He hadn't expected the swell of anger he felt just looking at Erik, knowing that he was moving and awake while Charles was neither just over the hill back in the mansion. Alex took a deep breath. "Hank said you'd be back."

"I've told you all that I do plan to speak to Charles," he said. "And I'm tired of playing this ridiculous game with the three of you."

Alex shook his head. "I hope you don't think it's over?"

Erik looked at him a long moment. "I've gotten Sean a sapphire and Hank a serum," he said. "If I'm to believe this is some kind of test on Charles's part of my...sincerity, then I assume you have something for me to do as well?"

"That's the idea," Alex said. "And we saved the best for last."

Erik sighed. "I thought that might be case." He made an impatient gesture with one hand. "Out with it. I'd like to get this over with as quickly as possible."

Alex shook his head. "Not going to be that easy, Magneto," he said. "Not by a long shot."

"I still need to know what it is."

"We're getting to that," he said. "Right now, we're going on a field trip."

"You're coming with me?" asked Erik with palpable unhappiness at the prospect.

For the first time since Cuba, Alex grinned at Erik but it wasn't a pleasant sight. "Oh yeah, I am. I know for a fact your buddy there can handle it."

Azazel glared.

Erik shrugged, a defeated but irritated acceptance. "Where are we going?"

It had taken all night but Alex had decided on exactly what he wanted Erik to do and where he wanted him to do it.

Alex took a deep breath and told himself it would be worth it to try, even if Erik just killed him or had Azazel dump him in the ocean. At least if he did, Hank and Sean would finally be convinced that he'd been right about Erik all along. "He knows the place. In fact, we all do. It just happens to be this beach in Cuba."

The look Erik gave him as soon as he realized where Alex was referring to made Alex question if he actually would live long enough for Azazel to dump him in the ocean. But then that rage was gone, shuttered behind an icy mask. "If that's what it takes."

"It's a start."

Erik glanced at Azazel who nodded. Then to Alex, he said, "All right, let's go."

Alex hadn't exactly been in a position to appreciate the nuances of Azazel's teleporting powers the last time he'd been exposed to it, so he was surprised that it was still disorienting to experience even if he wasn't fighting for his life. It was also more startling than he'd expected to have the beach explode into existence around him, golden sands and the line of the ocean, warm breeze and swaying palm trees just like it had been in October. Even parts of the wreckage still littered the beach, the rusting skeletons of the submarine and the Blackbird close to how they'd left them, like grave markers for everything they'd lost there.

He sucked in a pained breath as he looked around, fighting the overwhelming emotion that came with the place. He knew part of those emotions weren't his own; they were vestiges of Charles's nightmares, heat and pain and so much sadness that Alex thought his own heart might break from it.

The only thing that came close to that feeling was the haunted expression he noticed on Erik's face when he glanced his way and Alex let the satisfaction from that observation soothe over the sting of his second-hand hurt.

Azazel remained unaffected it seemed, patiently waiting for some kind of direction of what he was supposed to do next. Erik looked at him. "Give us an hour."

The teleporter nodded and disappeared.

"We might not be ready to leave in an hour," Alex told him.

"I will be," Erik said. "You're welcome to stay behind."

"Wouldn't exactly endear you to Charles, would it? To leave me behind, especially on this beach."

There was a flicker of that rage again, in Erik's eyes. "I have my doubts that Charles knows this is happening."

"Why is that?"

"Charles is many things," Erik said, eyes scanning the line of the water where it met the horizon. "But he isn't cruel."

"No," Alex agreed. "He's not. It's too bad the same can't be said for you."

Erik turned sharply away from the ocean, eyes piercing as they met Alex's. "That's what this is, then? Some kind of punishment?"

"Oh, you think just being here is your task? Not hardly." Alex shifted a little to save himself from the glare of sun off Erik's helmet. He pointed out toward the sea. "Clean up your mess."

"Excuse me?"

"All those pieces of bombs, all those scraps of metal in the bay out there, because of you?" Alex pointed again. "I want you to clean it all out. Pull it out of the ocean and bring it up here to the beach."

"For what purporse, Alex?" Erik wanted to know.

"Because I said so," Alex said. "You've only got an hour."

Erik looked like he wanted to protest, like he wanted to murder Alex where he stood and they glared at each other for a long moment before Erik made a noise of derision in the back of his throat and turned back to face the ocean. After a few seconds of stillness, he lifted his hands, palms flat and fingers spread wide. His entire body tensed with the action and then, like magic, Alex watched as pieces of metal of all shapes and sizes began to rise above the water's surface.

Slowly, the metal began to crawl through the air, heading for the beach as he'd ordered, but it was obvious that it was a strain on Erik's powers, more so than Alex had expected.

"Lose some of your edge, there, Erik?" Alex mocked, watching as the curtain of metal dipped and lurched when his words permeated Erik's attention. "I guess you're not as great as you thought without Charles backing you up."

Erik sent him a dark look but he didn't say anything, still gliding the pieces of metal toward the air and toward the beach. Alex didn't say anything as he watched Erik create a pile of shrapnel next to the Blackbird's wreckage.

He nodded back at the ocean. "Keep going."

And Erik did. As he worked on drawing in a second wave of metal, Alex continued to speak. "Do you even care about how much an asshole you are?" he wondered aloud. "Do you ever think about what you did that day?"

Again, his hand wavered. "I can either talk or I can do this," he said. "Make up your mind."

"I don't really care if you answer or not, actually," Alex told him. "Because I already know the answers. No, you don't care that you're an asshole that wants to kill people just because you can. And, no, I'm sure you don't think about what you did that day. And if you do, you don't care." He watched Erik's jaw tightened, obviously annoyed, so he kept going. "I mean, from what I could tell, you'd never even had a friend before Charles and then you shot him in the back. But you didn't even blink."

"I didn't shoot him," Erik grit out. "Moira fired the shot."

"Oh, god, of course, it's Moira's fault," Alex said. "It wasn't because you were trying to kill a bunch of people for no reason and she was trying to stop you."

"Those people that Charles -- and now you -- seem so eager to protect were trying to kill us," Erik reminded him.

"You stopped them with a wave of your hand," Alex said. "Charles probably could've mind-whammied them from here to forget all about us. Nobody else had to die and Charles paid for the fact that you weren't happy with that."

"Hindsight makes things clearer," Erik said after a moment, metal flying toward a little more recklessly than before. "It's not so plain in the...heat of the moment."

"Do you know what was clear? You shot Charles and you left him to die," Alex told him, anger creeping up again, raising his volume. "When he didn't agree with you, you stopped caring about all those people wanting to kill him and you left him on this beach hurt and bleeding and in danger. How's that for heat of the moment?"

Metal hit the accumulating pile with a messy, angry clatter as Erik jerked around to stare at Alex with his cold eyes, still shadowed by the helmet. "You don't have any idea what you're talking about," Erik growled. "You don't understand anything. All you know is whatever nonsense Charles has no doubt filled your head with about being the better men and doing good and hoping things get better. I have news for you and Charles: things don't get better, Alex."

Rationally, in that small part of his head that could be rational when it came to Erik, Alex knew that their former teammate didn't have any idea about what had happened to Charles since they've went their separate ways in October, had no idea how cruel his words sounded or how Alex, Sean and Hank had had to spend so many anguished days worrying about their mentor. But that didn't stop the casual cruelty from hitting Alex where he already hurt, re-opening wounds that had never had a chance to heal. What swept over him was past anger, past rage; he didn't have a word for the swamp of emotions he felt but they were there, unmistakable, like fire in his blood.

It might've surprised Erik when a spiral of plasma skittered across the surface of the open sea but didn't surprise Alex. He doubled over a little in the wake of uncontrollable spike of his powers, like his pain was physical instead of emotional. "You're the one who doesn't know anything, Erik," he bit out. "And you damn sure don't understand Charles if that's what you think of him. Do you really think that Charles doesn't know that things can get worse? Doesn't understand the difference between how he wants things to be and how they are? God, did you listen to a word he said all those months? Did you hear anything, anything that wasn't just what you wanted to think he was saying? I know Charles isn't perfect and he can be just as stupid as anyone else but he's not blind. Not like you are."

Alex straightened, spine tensing as he glared at Erik, fighting against the last image he had of Charles in his head, the one where he was locked in his own mind which Alex knew, somehow, was Erik's fault, just like the bullet had been. "And he doesn't try to blame others for his mistakes and that's all you seem to do: find someone else to blame for the shit you did that hurt people."

Only after he stopped speaking did Alex realize he wasn't the only person having troubles controlling his powers, if the rattling of everything metal around him was any indication. "Not another word, Alex," Erik warned, lifting a warning hand toward him.

"You haven't done a lot of listening but maybe you'll listen to this," Alex said. "You act like the idea of you needing to pay for what you did here is crazy but it's not. You betrayed every one of us. Me, Sean, Hank -- hell, you betrayed Darwin's memory just as much as Angel did. But that's nothing to what you did to Charles. How can you not know? How can you know him and not realize what you did to him? How much it hurt him? Do you want to know? Do you? I can tell you because I was there after you and Raven disappeared to start the mutant revolution."

"It was never about hurting Charles, Alex," Erik told him. "He was my friend, you know that. But some things couldn't be avoided."

Alex looked away from Erik, out of the sea, hoping that the sudden sheen of moisture in his eyes could be blamed on the sting of the salt air. "He couldn't walk, you know. Because of the bullet."

The only reaction of Erik's that Alex registered was a sharp intake of breath. "What do you mean, couldn't?"

"He still can't," Alex said, wincing as he realized his slip. He hadn't even noticed that he'd started to think of Charles in the past tense and it just made another wave of sadness well up in him. "The bullet shattered his spine, no chance of recovery." He couldn't stop himself from dashing at his eyes with one hand. "And then there were the nightmares, about you, about this place." Alex glanced around at the sun and the sea and the sand, and the residual memories threatened to overcome him again. "Charles accidently projected a few of them and I remember how he felt and it makes me want to throw up, just standing here." Alex finally turned back to Erik who looked pale and intense but otherwise unmoved by Alex's words. "I noticed you don't seem to have that problem. Here, surrounded by all the destruction, right at the scene of the crime, right where you crippled him for life and still not a hint that you ever really gave a damn."

"That's not true," Erik began but Alex cut him off.

"How are you going to lead anyone but when you don't have a heart? How is anyone supposed to believe in you when you don't feel anything?" Alex shook his head, then opened his arms in a gesture that took in the beach. "So none of this does anything to you, standing right where you were when you almost killed your best friend. Oh, right, it wasn't your fault, it was Moira's." He looked down at the sand under his hastily-tied sneakers. "Maybe that's what I should have you doing, looking for the bullet. The one meant for you, that you drove into Charles's back. It's not a big piece of metal, not like the bomb pieces, but I'm sure you can find it, right? The great Magneto?"

"I mean it, Alex," he said. "No more of this."

Alex waved off his words. "There might even still be blood on it, right? Maybe then it'll finally get through your head that this, that everything, is your fault!"

"Would that make you happy, Alex?" Erik asked, biting, just on the edge of control. "The bullet? Would that do it?"

"You think you can find it?"

Erik's mouth turned up at the corners but it was too ghastly for even Alex to call a smile. "I don't have to." Instead of reaching out with his powers or anything else Alex expected, Erik did nothing more than reach into his pocket. When he uncurled his gloved hand and presented his palm, Alex saw what Erik had withdrawn: a small crumpled sliver of metal that had mistakenly once been a bullet.

Alex's eyes snapped up to meet Erik's, shocked. "I don't..."

"You don't know anything," Erik repeated, angrier than Alex had ever seen him, including on their last visit to the beach. "You certainly don't know anything about me or about Charles. Not like you think you do. What was it that you hoped to accomplish with this? Did you want proof that it mattered that I hurt him? Because it did. Do you think that I don't regret everything? Do you think that he's the only one who dreams of this place and wants everything to be different?" Erik's fingers tightened around the bullet and his hand dropped to his side. "Do you think that I would put up you and Hank and Sean and your stupid little tasks if it wasn't because I would do anything to close this breach between me and Charles?"

When Alex lowered his eyes, it wasn't to hide the trace of tears in his eyes; it was to ignore the ones in Erik's.

"Do you feel better, Alex, knowing that I am haunted? That there is not a day that goes by that I am not reminded of Charles and of what I lost by choosing to side against him? Does that make you or even Charles hurt less, to know that I hurt, too?"

Of everything he had expected to happen when he had decided to bring Erik back to the beach, this quiet, painful confession hadn't been something he had even been able to imagine. But that was what he won from Erik, a glimpse at the man beneath the surface that might've been almost as broken as Charles had been.

Maybe Erik had been right to say that Alex didn't know everything.

But Alex was right too because neither did Erik.

He wasn't sure how long they stood in painful silence under the hot sun of Cuban coastline before Azazel finally reappeared, looking from Erik to the scatter of metal with trepidation. When Erik just shook his head, the teleporter relaxed.

"Erik." Alex forced himself to speak and to meet Erik's sharp glance as he did so. "You want to see Charles?"

"Obviously."

"Fine." Alex thought of what he was taking Erik to see and wondered if he was doing it as repayment for Erik's honest emotion or to punish him further. He guessed, at this point, it didn't matter. "Let's go see him."

**

From the moment Erik had decided that he wanted to see Charles, he'd known it wouldn't be easy. He had expected resistance, expected anger, had even expected some kind or retribution for his actions, either from Charles or from the others. What he hadn't expected was the concerted conspiracy to keep him away entirely, to shield Charles from his very presence. It had taken every bit of self-control not to lash at the boys each time he returned to the manison, only to be rebuffed again, just as it took every shred of hope that had ever existed deep down inside him to agree to the boys' outrageous tasks. He'd had to convince himself that there was a reason for them, no matter how trivial, and, if traveling to Genosha to bring back a sapphire or breaking into a far-off governmental facility would be the thing that would restore something of what they'd lost between them, then he'd been willing to do it. Erik had even been willing to follow Alex to the beach, to debase himself in the face of the boy's anger and bear his demons to light if that was what it took.

But along the way, from his first step onto the Xavier property, Erik had had a deep sense that was something was terribly, terribly wrong.

In the beginning, it had been vague, something easily blamed on his anxiety over the prospect of another war erupting between them before any of the things he wanted to say had a chance to be said. Next had been his anger at the idea of the tasks set before him, the frustration of how each visit ended with another denial. But even then, in the moments between, there had been that sense of dread, that feeling that something wasn't right, no matter how much he tried to ignore it.

In the days from the first task to the last, his dreams of Charles had strengthened, grown more vivid and alarming, more all-consuming in the curtain of anguish they'd left in their wake. And even as they had made him fight harder, steeled his determination to outlast whatever game the boys played with him, the dreams had been another clue that he'd missed something important in all those short, stern visits.

But it wasn't until he was on the beach with Alex, trembling with the force of his emotions -- anger, remorse -- and he'd heard Alex speak of Charles in the past tense that his worst fears had crystallized.

He had never thought that the tasks set for him were much in Charles's style of confrontation or avoidance; somewhere, in the back of this mind, even while he had passed his time doing them, there had been the terror of the idea that what the boys were trying to keep him from wasn't Charles, but the truth about him.

The truth that Charles might've been dead.

So when Alex looked at him across the ravaged beach where he'd last seen Charles with his own eyes, and asked him if he wanted to see Charles, there was no way he could've answered with anything but an affirmation.

"Fine." Alex said, and Erik could see something flicker in his eyes, something he hadn't paid enough attention to in the past to know how to understand it. "Let's go see him."

Even though it only took seconds for Azazel to take them from Cuba back to New York, it felt like another eternity, every beat of his heart too slow, blood sluggish and cold in his veins. That feeling only intensified when the snowy whiteness of the Xavier estate grounds once again swirled around them, the wind icy and cutting after the temperate balminess of the beach. Erik drew his cloak closer around his body and looked over to see that Alex had crossed his arms in a vain attempt to hide how the chill soaked into his bones. Azazel gave him a quizzical glance and Erik dismissed with him a wave of his hand.

Once he'd disappeared obligingly, Erik caught Alex's eye and motioned toward the mansion. "Shall we?"

Alex still didn't look happy about Erik being at his side as they traipsed through the snow en route to the manor but he didn't say anything either. For want of distraction, Erik tried to glean something from Alex's face, from his pinched expression and the hollow darkness under his eyes. He didn't have the look of someone who was happy or even content, Erik reflected. He had enough ghosts of his own to know what the signs looked like since they stared out of him every time he could a look at himself in a mirror. It was not a face that assuaged Erik's fears about the worst.

When they reached the steps leading toward the great, wide door of the manor's entrance, Alex was the one who pushed against the heavy door and opened it, revealing the inviting warmth of its interior that called to them. The threshold was as close as he'd come since he'd left to being inside of the house and it felt like a significant step when Erik took one over the threshold and into the foyer for first time since he'd walked out of it the morning of the Cuban mission.

Nothing had changed, of course, although Erik doubted anything had changed in the manor's decor in centuries. It felt a little less warm, a little less inviting than it had when Charles had flung open the doors and motioned them all inside, a grin fixed on his face. But the change in temperature could've been as much a function of the weather or a figment of Erik's imagination as it could've been caused by the spiritual absence of the master of the house.

As the door swung shut, it let out another audible creak, a twin to the groan it had made when Alex opened it. Erik hadn't thought the noise a major one, but then there were heavy footsteps coming toward them, followed by another set, pounding and hurried. They both looked up toward the stairs in time to see Hank coming down them.

"Alex! Where have you been? I thought..." he'd started, trailing off when he noticed who stood behind the dejected figure Alex presented. "Oh."

Sean was only a few beats behind. Like Hank, he was startled to see Erik. "You're back," he said to Alex, still looking at Erik. "And I guess we can say the same to you, huh?"

"Hank," he said in greeting. "Sean."

"Where have you been?" Hank asked Alex, angrier and fiercer than Erik had seen him since he'd casually threatened to strangle him the last morning before they'd all parted.

Alex shrugged. "Not really important."

"We were kind of worried," Sean volunteered. "We figured one of you was off killing the other."

"No," Alex said, a sharp, quick glance in Erik's direction. "Not today."

Erik decided to direct his next words at Hank, if only because he seemed the most even-tempered and intelligent one of the three, despite his beastly growl. "I told you that I would be back to see Charles today."

Hank's yellow eyes darted to meet Alex's. "Did you tell him anything?"

He shook his head. "I just told him he could come see Charles," he said. "Isn't that what we decided last night?"

For a moment, Erik was tempted to remove the helmet he'd become so used to having encase his head and put his questions to rest immediately, but he couldn't make himself do it. Not only did he fear that he wouldn't feel Charles's mind nearby, he feared the opposite as well, that the mind waiting there wouldn't be the soft brush of fondness that he had once had and now craved again.

"Could there be a little less discussion about this?" he asked aloud. "This isn't hard. I want to talk to Charles; where is he?"

They spent a full minute exchanging panicked, miserable looks before Sean, of them all, spoke up. "He's in his bedroom," he revealed. "Up on the top floor?"

Erik knew precisely where Charles's bedroom was so he nodded at Sean in thanks before he swept up the stairs, Alex right behind. By the time he was stalking down the right hall that would leave him to Charles's suite, they were a united shadow dogging his heels, conferring in hushed tones that he didn't care about enough to bother listening to them or trying to decipher their meaning.

"Charles?"

Erik entered the room just behind his unsure salutation, eyes trying to flit over the entire layout of the room to map out any changes as he'd done downstairs. It was almost as unchanged as the foyer had been, although there were significant exceptions, such as a shiny metal wheelchair that sat on the far side of the grand bed and the chess board he knew Charles had once had on the table near the fire that was missing completely. But the strangest thing of all in the great suite was Charles, who lay still in his large bed, eyes closed against the bright sun of the un-shuttered windows.

"Charles?" Erik said again, stepping closer to the bed, dread creeping up his spine like icy fingers. There was no response from Charles, no sign that he'd even be heard; Charles remained as he was, laid flat on his back and hands limp along his sides.

Erik turned to his triumvirate of shadows, all huddled together just inside the door, watching him look at Charles's serene but motionless form. Erik met each of their eyes in turn: Sean's frank, painful gaze; Hank's solemn, yellow-eyed scrutiny; and the hot, blue fire of Alex's stare. "Asleep?" he asked, twisting back to see only Charles, still and quiet in his frozen repose.

"Unconscious," Hank offered in correction, head bowed.

It wasn't what Erik had feared, but he knew there was still more, more that caused the pain he saw on each of their faces as they watched him watch Charles. "Why?"

"We don't know," Sean said.

Erik could feel the last wisps of patience in his body evaporating, replaced by a swell of anger that made him want to pull until he rattled the metal in their teeth. "How long?"

Sean shrugged, looked away. "A while."

"The whole time I've been coming here to speak to him?"

"Since way before," Alex said, the only one who didn't look away from whatever they saw in Erik's face.

He thought about how "way before" might be measured, starting with the weeks he'd been coming himself, realizing that every time he'd been just outside the stone walls of the mansion Charles had been like this -- worse than immobile, still like a statue, presumed as deaf to the world as he was mute to it. Eyes closed, mouth quiet; his mind seemingly dormant and without connection.

Everything that made him Charles had been stripped away.

Erik could see no visible signs of any trauma that could explain Charles's -- coma, for lack of a better term -- or anything else that spoke of an answer for his state. His skin looked a little pale, dark hair a little mussed, but nothing in his form spoke of tension or pain. His body looked loose and relaxed, not even a flutter to his eyelid or a purse to his mouth. It reminded Erik painfully of stolen, soft moments during their months of companionship, the kind of unguarded things that Erik had never experienced from anyone before and had never shared of himself. Something hot and dry tightened in his throat and he turned away from Charles to glare at the three young men who ranged around him.

"You didn't say anything, all that time."

"I didn't want to say anything now," Alex said.

"What was the purpose of your little charade?" he wanted to know. "With Charles up here, like this, while you sent me away again and again?"

"We didn't..." Hank began. "We weren't sure what you'd do. So we tried to discourage you from trying to see him."

"What I'd...?" Erik's eyes widened a little behind his helmet. "You thought I'd, what? Do something to him? Hurt him?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Alex said. "This is Charles. We weren't taking any chances."

"I wouldn't," Erik said.

Alex narrowed his eyes. "I think a bullet to spine says otherwise."

"Alex!" Sean said.

Again, Erik decided to turn his attention to Hank as the reliable voice in the room. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Hank said, then shook his head. "I guess the correct answer would be we don't know. I came up here to check on him one morning and...there he was. Like that."

"No signs, no anything?" Erik asked. "I find that hard to believe."

"Well, he was already in a wheelchair," Alex told him. "And his heart was pretty much broken because you and Raven went off to who knows where to do who knows what. So, no, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary considering nothing has been ordinary around here in a very long time."

"At first I thought maybe it was some kind of coping mechanism," Hank volunteered, probably to stop Alex from continuing. "Maybe some kind of telepathic way of processing trauma? But he was...as fine as he could for a while before this happened, so that didn't make sense."

"So you've just sat around waiting for him to wake up?"

Hank growled at him, a low rumbling menace. "I tried everything I could think of," he said, that rumble of a suppressed roar still in his voice. "Everything I knew to do. When it didn't work, we just decided to...make him comfortable and hope he improved."

Erik looked at Charles again. "How has he not wasted away?"

"We can make him eat something, usually," Sean said. "And then there's..." He waved a hand at a small cluster of medical equipment on the other side of the bed, equipment Erik hadn't noticed before, as consumed as he was with Charles's state. "We do what we can here but we didn't want him to go back to the hospital right after he just got out."

"It's not a coma, medically speaking," Hank added. "And it's not...maybe you could call it a vegetative state? It's not something normal -- at least not for normal non-telepaths, I don't think. It's why I even tried some experimental things."

"The serum." Erik moved toward Hank. "That wasn't just a game, you needed that serum for Charles. You could've just said so."

"Look, Erik, the last time we saw you, you didn't exactly leave us with the impression that you were interested in being a stand-up guy, especially where we were concerned," Sean told him. "So yeah we probably went about this all the wrong way but it's not like we had many options. Charles would do anything for us, we wanted to repay that."

"Have you tried it, the serum?"

Hank sighed. "There was no change. I'm...almost completely out of ideas."

"So you do have one."

Hank nodded. "We noticed that you were working with Emma Frost. We thought maybe having a telepath try to look his head might tell us something."

"If she can be trusted not to make it worse," Alex said. "I doubt it but I've been overruled."

Erik thought about it. "If I tell her to do it, she will and she won't disobey me."

"So we're back to just worrying about your intentions? Great."

Erik shot Alex a glare. "You know how I feel. Don't try and make me do that again."

Finally Alex looked away.

His questions answered, Erik had no use for the young men who had worked at keeping him from Charles when it was clear his friend needed him, though he was grateful of the care they'd obviously taken of Charles, of the concern they had for him. As much as he resented Alex's method, there had been truth in his accusations that Erik and Raven had abandoned Charles. Without these boys, he would have had no one and that thought pained Erik.

He didn't know if the boys left when he decided to ignore him completely; he didn't care. Instead, Erik sat on the edge of the bed where Charles lay, settling his weight carefully. The bed was so large there were still more than enough space between him and Charles, space he breached with his hand once he'd stripped it of his glove. But at the last moment he wasn't even sure of what he wanted to do, where he'd planned to touch him, so his fingers ended up brushing over Charles's where they rested on top of the comforter pulled up over him. Despite the lack of animation inherent in Charles, he was still warm to the touch, not cold like death, and Erik let out a startled breath at the realization. It was the birth of a hope he hadn't had until that confirmation.

Erik knew that, in similar circumstances, others might've prayed or spoken aloud, but he'd long ago lost faith in prayer and there were no words that needed to be spoken when Charles couldn't likely hear them. There were words he wanted to share, things he wanted Charles to know and things he wanted to know from him, but none of it mattered if Charles's mind was absent. His mind defined him so much more than it did others, the seat of his self as well as his powers, and as much as Erik held onto the hope that had come from the warmth of Charles's skin, what breathed in front of him was nothing but a shell without the essence it housed.

He thought about the last time he'd felt that essence, the quiet steadying feel of Charles in his head when they'd went after Shaw, first when he'd pulled the sub from the water and then later as he'd started to face Shaw, Charles's urgent pleas to not let his anger rule his actions. Shaw's helmet in his hands at that moment had been like a miracle, a way to save himself from the doubt Charles had tried to raise with his insistent voice. As if just reminded of its place still on his head, Erik touched the cold lines of the telepathic-proof metal, remembering with what satisfaction he'd first slid it into place those months ago, as he'd cut away Charles's reach into his mind.

At that moment, he would've given anything to feel it again.

Erik slowly pulled the helmet from his head, its smooth gleaming surface making no noise as it collided with the soft rug that covered the floor.

"I am sorry," he said aloud, to the shell that had once been Charles.

Those were the only words he thought mattered between them anymore.


**

It would've been inaccurate to say that Charles had known the source of his ailment but it also would've inaccurate to say he hadn't. In cases like the one in which he'd found himself, there was nothing black and white to be found, only shades and shadows of feeling. He had known something was wrong, that something had been creeping away from him each and every day; but not even Charles Xavier knew everything, even about himself.

He'd known from the day they'd parted in Cuba that Erik had taken something from him, some piece of him that he'd never get back. It hadn't taken long to realize that with their separation, he'd never be whole again. He'd felt the wound of it to his soul, something even separate from the pain and loss he'd felt over Raven's departure.

But he hadn't known, could've have known, the literal truth of what he'd felt.

For so long, Charles had floated in some hazy world that felt like an eternal winter -- white, veiled, distant. There had been some dim awareness of the things around him but it had been like living in some dream, half-formed and half-remembered. Nothing had been loud or bright or strong enough to permeate the shroud that settled over him. There had only been the blankness and the longing, the pain and the hole left in him. So he had went deeper and deeper, looking to soothe its source; but he hadn't been able to find his way out.

After what felt like an eternity in the twilight of his own mind, rising to alertness was another kind of pain, shocking instead of smothering, fire in his arms and fingers like the uncomfortable pins and needles of limbs long unused being asked to move again. The sensation didn't extend past his waist, but his mind didn't seem bothered by the fact so he let it pass, still struggling to take the great, shuddering breath his body told him needed to fill his lungs.

"Charles?"

He heard a voice he knew had to be from his dreams -- or maybe even his nightmares; there are been more of them in his last estimation -- because it was Erik's and it sounded worried instead of angry, unsteady with an emotion that wasn't rage or betrayal. Then there was a soft touch against his hand, a shaky brush of fingers against his own, and finally, finally, he could take that breath, force air in and out of his lungs because it was like he'd been struck by lightning, a jolt of energy to both mind and body that quick-started everything that had been rendered slow and sluggish by the numbing quiet of the frozen state he'd only begun to leave behind him.

"Can you hear me?" The voice asked again, with more edge and impatience. More Erik. "Damn it, Charles, answer me!"

He wanted to answer desperately, if only to test the boundaries of whatever ghosts his mind had conjured, but his mind also seemed elsewhere, drenched in some strange brightness that poured over him from an outside source, chasing away the lingering shadows wrapped around his consciousness. But what was most amazing about that brightness is that it didn't seem unfamiliar or foreign, even though it originated outside of him and it ran through him like comfort to settle perfectly into the holes of his soul he'd tried so hard to ignore.

The sudden wholeness seemed to give him the strength to move his mouth, to form sounds into words. Or, at least, one.

"Erik?"

"Charles?" He heard Erik's voice again, and his touch, a hand on his face. He might've still been convinced it was all an illusion, a phantom made of his loneliness but with Erik's physical touch came the touch of his mind, the glow emanating from the brightness.

Still, Charles wanted more proof and he struggled to open his eyes.

"Hank!" he heard Erik call out. "Hank!"

By the time Charles managed to hold his eyes open long enough to focus, there was a great blue blur hovering above him, watching him with large yellow eyes. "Hank," he murmured, wanting to lift his hand to touch Hank, to verify the sight in front of him. But he couldn't because one of them was heavy with the feel of needles and tubes while the other was held fast in another strong grip, almost crushing. Charles's mind told him it was Erik, though, who held his hand and so he didn't complain.

"Charles, I need to check you, okay?" Hank said, voice so soft and gentle compared to how the boy thought of himself, the taunts of "monster" in the scientist's thoughts. "Will you let me do that?"

Charles wasn't sure if he actually displayed any agreement but Hank was convinced he had because suddenly there were pokes and prods, flashes of lights in his eyes and furry fingers against a wrist, checking his pulse. It was such a jostle of movement and light and sound that it struck Charles as another kind of blur. His mind was too busy trying to absorb something from the bright warmth that slotted into the broken pieces of his mind for him to truly make sense of the world outside of his body; he was aware of it but they made no impact on him even as he knew they spoke about him.

"What did you do?" Hank was asking Erik.

"I didn't do anything!" Erik protested.

"Well something changed because he's responsive," Hank said. "I don't believe enough in coincidence to think you just happened to be here when he came out of it."

"Or are you just angry that my mere presence seems to have done what all of your medicine couldn't for weeks and weeks?"

"Your...." Hank's voice was more commanding as he continued. "Tell what you did, Erik. I mean it. Everything. It might be important."

"I spoke to him," Erik said after a long moment of silence. "I touched him -- his hand. That's all."

But Charles knew that was wrong because he knew Erik had done something else, something much more important than speak to him or touch his hand. He wasn't even sure how he knew it was more important but it was; he could feel urgency to tell Hank rising up from somewhere inside him. Even though it felt like a momentous effort, he shook his head against the pillows.

"What's wrong, Charles?" Hank asked, a hint of panic in his tone.

"Erik also...removed his helmet," he managed to whisper.

"I did," Erik agreed.

"Huh," came Hank's intelligent reply. "That's...interesting."

Charles took another deep breath as his mind continued to right itself into a whole, something it hadn't been since the beach. Finally, he was able to open his eyes and easily focus on the two worried faces looking down at him, Hank's and Erik's. When his eyes met Erik's there was another one of those jolts from before, another pulse of brightness from the missing pieces that had fitted back into place when Erik had removed his helmet. "You have no idea."

Charles knew Hank wanted more of an explanation than that but Charles was still searching for the right words to explain everything, both to Hank and Erik. Instead, he distracted them by trying to pull himself into a sitting position and they both rushed to help him, hampered as he was by his numb lower half. He finally remembered that, too, the why and wherefores, a loss that had pained him but had been nothing like the agony that felled him in the end. By the time they had him settled against the headboard with a mound of pillows to keep him upright, the door to his room had flown open again so that Alex and Sean could tumble in, both demanding answers.

"I told you to wait outside!" Hank said.

Alex ignored him, focusing on Charles, his relief as strong a force as his powers could be. "Charles!" he said, half-laugh, half-strangled breath.

Charles smiled at him. "Alex."

Sean broke out into a brilliant smile of his own. "It's good to see you -- you know, conscious."

"It's good to be so," Charles answered.

Finally, Alex turned toward Hank's disapproving frown. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Hank said. "I haven't had a chance to figure anything out, which is why I didn't want you two in here yet."

"Well, you just can't expect us to wait around, can you?" Alex asked. "We wanted to know what was going on!"

Charles managed to lift his IV-heavy hand since Erik had re-claimed his other one. "Now, now," he said, and they both quieted down. "The bickering isn't necessary."

Sean snorted. "It's a good thing you haven't been around."

After so much time cut off from everything, it was good to feel the sweep of Sean's humor, the hum of it from Erik, even as he kept up his neutral expression, a hum that echoed inside of Charles's chest, warm and comforting. "Still, I'm glad to be back, all the same."

Hank broke off his glaring match with Alex to return to Charles's side, concern still shining out of his eyes. "Do you know what happened to you? How it reversed itself?"

Charles had a very good idea of what had happened, one that was reinforced with every flicker of Erik's moods that he felt as keenly as his own. But he was equally certain it wasn't something he wanted to share with his pupils -- at least not yet. "I'm not completely certain," he said with a glance in Erik's direction. "But I do believe it was an, ah, affliction caused by my telepathy. I may have...over-extended myself a bit."

Hank didn't like his explanation. "Using Cerebro didn't even do this to you," he argued. "This is something outside of mere over-extension."

"I only have theories at this point, Hank," he said. He looked at each of the concerned faces that watched him from around the room. "But they'll have to wait. I'd like to speak to Erik alone, please."

"No," Alex said. Sean jabbed him in the ribs.

"You sure?" Hank said, with an uneasy flick of his eyes toward Erik.

Charles nodded and was heartened that his head felt almost normal. "Yes, please."

Hank was almost as reluctant as Alex now that Charles was awake, but he dutifully followed Sean and Alex out of the bedroom. "Call if you need anything," he said. "We'll be just outside."

He could feel Erik's sudden unease as much as he could feel his own, the momentary joy that they had shared at Charles's awakening seeping away with the cold truth of their unfortunate reality. Charles steeled himself for the storm that could follow as he asked, "What are you doing here, Erik?"

"You know more than you're saying about your condition," Erik said. "What happened to you?"

Charles frowned. "That didn't answer my question."

"And that didn't answer mine."

"That's hardly relevant at the moment," Charles said, even knowing how much of a lie it was as he spoke it. "I need to know what you're doing here."

Erik was frustrated by Charles's stubbornness but he also...found it endearing; it might've seemed strange that Erik could way that way, if Charles didn't feel similarly about so many things about Erik that both vexed him and that he loved dearly because they were things that made Erik Erik. "I came...I wanted to speak to you," he admitted. "Weeks ago. But your guard dogs wouldn't let me."

"I could hardly speak a few weeks ago anyway."

"They didn't tell me that, either," Erik said, feeling something sharp and hot that made Charles wince. Erik noticed and narrowed his eyes. "So I guess you're in my head again, already?"

"That's a more complicated question than you realize," Charles said. "And...it relates to your earlier one. If you really want to know."

"I do," he said, grip tightening on Charles's hand that he still held.

"Then I need you to answer me first," Charles told him. "Why are you here?"

Erik's pale gaze was painful to meet but Charles forced himself to do so, made himself watch the brittle display of what lay beneath the armor of anger and conviction. It was the vulnerability that Erik refused to show to any others, the core of Erik that beat in Charles's heart now, that made it so easy for Charles to love him in face of everything between them. "I..." Erik began, emotion choking him. His voice was a whisper. "I couldn't stay away."

Charles turned his hand in Erik's grip so that their fingers entwined. "Lucky for me," he said.

"Tell me," Erik urged. "What did that to you? What undid it?"

Charles finally dropped his eyes to their hands, his own fingers much too pale against Erik's. "I made no secret of my feelings for you," Charles said after a moment. "It shouldn't have been a secret that I lost something of myself when you left." He swallowed against the sudden rise of emotion in both of them. "I just don't think either of us expected that it would be so literal a thing."

Erik frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I...something..." Charles trailed off, looking for the words. "I don't know if it was a matter of my mind being joined with yours when you took on Shaw's helmet, or if it was something else, but...something of me -- my powers, maybe, or my...soul, for lack of a term -- left with you, Erik. And I was connected to it but then I wasn't. And I couldn't go on, cut off from it. From you. Maybe I could've with just distance between us but the helmet..."

Charles didn't need the connection between them to sense Erik's shock, his horror, the denials he wanted to raise, even when he knew the truth of what Charles was saying in his bones. He'd felt it, too, just not to the degree Charles had. Still, the same ache that had chased Charles into the twilight of his own mind had chased Erik to Charles's door, had made him determined in the face of his own doubts.

"So Alex is right and it's my fault?" Erik asked. "That's your answer?"

"It's no one's fault," Charles countered. "It just was."

It was the thing that caused Erik to pull away. When he untangled his fingers from Charles's, he reached down to retrieve the offending helmet from where it had fallen, the sight of it enough to give Charles a chill. He wasn't afraid of the helmet itself but, as a symbol, it was strong, something that made him want to flinch from what it represented to him. "So we're...connected? Bonded?"

"Those are as good as words as any to explain it," he said.

Erik looked down at the helmet in his hands. "And what happens when I leave? When I put this on again?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

"You've as good as told me you'll fall back into that coma," Erik snapped. "Don't deny it."

"I don't know," he said again, his own temper rising. "I don't have all the answers, Erik."

"A rather late admission coming from you," Erik retorted.

Charles sighed. "Perhaps. But I mean it. Your guess is as good as mine."

Erik looked at the helmet in his hands for a moment before he set it on the bed near Charles's knee. It might've even touched him but, of course, he couldn't feel it. "Every moment," Erik began quietly. "You were there, like a ghost. I regretted...everything. I missed you more than I thought I could miss anyone since...since. I couldn't escape you, no matter how far I went." He made a disgruntled noise. "And now you're telling me it's because you've been in my head the entire time."

"I'm afraid so."

"What am I supposed to do, Charles?" Erik demanded. "What would have me do? I don't have any choice."

"You always have a choice," he disagreed. "You can put your helmet back on and walk out of here. No one will stop you."

"Knowing that you'll waste away if I do?" Erik asked. "You expect me to leave, knowing that?"

Charles's gaze didn't waver as he said, "You left me behind once. Surely, it's not harder the second time."

Erik reared back as if Charles's words had been a physical slap. Hurt bloomed in him as if it had been, too. "Damn you, Charles, if you think any of this has been easy."

There were the threat of tears in Erik's eyes and his voice shook; but it was the raw emptiness Charles could feel in him that made him regret the stab of his words, no matter how much he felt the hurt expressed in them. Before he had even realized it, he had reached out to touch Erik's cheek, to brush at the moisture that hadn't yet fallen. When Erik leaned into his touch, Charles had to close his eyes for a moment to remember something other than the way it made him -- them -- shudder with longing. "I am sorry for that," Charles finally said.

Erik choked out something that might've been a laugh. "That's what I said to you, when I thought you couldn't hear me."

Charles continued to let his fingers dance over Erik's skin. "And now that I can?"

Erik looked up to meet his eyes as his hand came up to cover Charles's, holding it against his cheek. "You really have to ask?"

"No," Charles admitted, all of it battering at him inside of his rib cage, his feelings and Erik's, the uncontrollable force they created together. It was an ironic microcosm for what he thought they could accomplish if they could manage it, something beyond the hurt and misunderstanding and feelings of betrayal. "Actually, I don't."

"I am," Erik said, anyway. "Sorry." His eyes flickered up and down Charles's form and Charles knew he was talking about his legs, deadened and useless thanks to Moira's bullet. "For so much."

"It was no one's fault," Charles repeated, with an altogether different meaning. "It just was."

He knew, because of their connection, that it had been the words that Erik had wanted but dared hoped for, the benediction that he could be forgiven for everything that had passed on the beach and what had happened to Charles afterwards. Charles could sense Erik's guilt, riled up by words shouted at him by Alex, by the sight of Charles, still like death, in his bed. And as much as Charles had clung to his own pain, he couldn't do it when he felt Erik was as deeply wounded as he had been. Erik, Charles had learned long ago, was often his own worst enemy.

Charles hadn't even realized that he'd been leaning toward Erik until Erik bridged the last few inches and kissed him, kissed him as Charles had always wanted but had dared hoped for, aching as he had for some outward display from his friend of what he had always known between them thanks to his power and, now, doubly so thanks to the bond that they had somehow created. Charles couldn't help but smile against Erik's mouth, even as Erik twined their fingers together again, even as his lips bruised under Erik's. When they finally pulled away, it was just enough that they could rest their foreheads together, sharing everything in that perfect moment -- space, emotions, breath, thoughts.

"We could think of this as a curse," Charles finally spoke, plucking the doubts from Erik’s mind and giving them voice. "Or as a blessing. We can look at it as something that chains us together or as something greater than ourselves that gave us something we'd never have left to our own devices."

"What's that?" Erik asked, distracted as he was by the movement of Charles's lips, red and swollen. But Charles knew he was equally rapt by the words he spoke, waiting breathlessly, once again, for Charles to lead the way. Charles prayed he didn't fail them both again.

He spoke with as much hope and as much certainty as he could. "A second chance, Erik."

Charles waited for Erik to disagree, to raise every valid objection for why they couldn't work, even with a thousand chances between them. It would've been like hearing his worst fears spoken aloud, his own despair given voice. But he didn't.

All Erik did was murmur, "Yes," against Charles's lips before he kissed him again.

If this was their second chance, Charles decided, it would make it all worth it, every moment of anguish, every moment of his days in the void of his mind. He couldn't think of a price he wouldn't pay for what it might mean to have Erik again by his side.

Any trial, Erik agreed in his thoughts, where there was barely any barriers left between them. All of them. It was worth it.

**

The weather outside remained as it had been, shrouded in the icy white of a northern winter but, inside, within the walls of the Xavier manor, it was like spring had come early for the joy that Alex and the others could feel bloom inside them at Charles's miraculous recovery. It was still a little like a dream, even a week later -- still a pleasant surprise to have Charles gently in their minds when he called for them, to see him once again in his study, to hear him laugh at some outrageous thing Sean would say. It was even a joy to help him, to watch him continue to deal with his new reality -- it was just a joy to see him alive instead of still and somber. After Charles had freed Alex from prison, Alex had promised himself he wouldn't forget the debt he owed him. But now, after everything, he made himself another promise: he would never take Charles's presence for granted again, not even in the moments when he was aggravating and pompous and a little too fatherly for a man that barely had a decade on him.

The only dark mark on their newfound spring was what had brought it -- Erik.

Charles hadn't ever said more about his mysterious ailment or his equally mysterious recovery but Alex knew that it coinciding with Erik's hard-won visit was not mere happenstance. He didn't know what Erik had done to him, either to make him sick or to lift it, but he didn't doubt the blame should be laid at Erik's door.

They -- the three of them, a strange and solid unit of measure that hadn't quite existed before Charles's illness -- had their own theories, ones they discussed among themselves after Charles retired. Sean favored a simple answer and blamed Charles's broken heart, pointing out that the spirit could sometimes be as strong as the flesh; Hank had complicated answers grounded in science, based on his ideas about telepathy and brain chemistry. Alex thought the answer probably existed somewhere between the two his friends offered, somewhere between the truth of what telepaths could do and what Charles had went through, in some space that made sense of Erik's desperate need to see Charles after having abandoned him in Cuba. Unfortunately, whatever that answer was, they were never going to hear it from Charles, it seemed.

Or from Erik, for that matter, despite his occasional appearance at the manor.

Like with his illness, Charles offered no explanation and answered no questions about it, stubbornly close-mouthed about whatever he and Erik discussed on those visits or even what they did when they closed the heavy doors of Charles's study and asked not to be disturbed. Alex wanted to protest, wanted to fight against Erik's place there, even as some small part of him thought back to that morning on the beach, to Erik's naked feelings laid bare for his judgment. That part of him thought maybe, maybe, that Erik deserved a little of the time he spent with Charles.

Maybe.

One day, sometime in February, Charles looked across the otherwise empty breakfast table and asked Alex how he felt about Erik. It was a vague question, probably one with an answer he could never put into words, but Alex knew that he didn't have to, not really. Charles would find the absolute truth of it in his mind.

He thought about so much -- the happier times before Cuba, the days and weeks after, the rising alarm as Charles had become more and more withdrawn; Alex thought about the big blue sapphire that still sat on the table beside Charles's bed, and the way Erik had stubbornly kept coming back even when they sent him away. He thought about the bloody bullet Erik had carried (and perhaps still did), the one that had crippled Charles and shattered them all apart.

And then he thought of how much better Charles always looked in the first few hours after one of Erik's visits, brighter and sharper and more alert, the closest they had seen him to the old Charles since they had left for Cuba.

When Alex dared to look up, Charles was smiling and Alex knew his mentor had found an answer, possibly the one he was looking for.

They didn't see Erik for several weeks and it affected Charles, leaving him paler and more distracted than any of them liked to see him, enough that the specter of his last illness raised up to haunt them all, even as he assured them there was nothing wrong. The days became breathless and worry-filled affairs even as Charles tried his best to ignore the concern that must've been a choking cloud of thoughts coming from the three of them. For the first time in forever, Alex found himself wishing for Erik to come back.

Alex didn't consider himself superstitious but there was something about the air one warm spring morning that told him something was about to happen, that something more than the weather was changing. It was a clear day, blue skies and the hint of fluffy clouds, and green had replaced the white that had reflected Alex's mood for so long. The air was heavy with spring, with bloom, with the anticipation of things to come.

And so Erik appeared on their doorstep and at his side was Raven, blue-skinned and smiling a little uncertainly.

Alex might've protested, might've raised an objection, but Charles's face at the sight of them was like the sun coming from behind a cloud and the dark circles beneath his eyes seem to ease just with the mere sight of Erik before him, pulling his helmet from his head.

But that didn't surprise him, as used to it as he was; what did surprise him was when Erik turned away from Charles's welcoming smile and toward Alex, one hand outstretched as he offered Alex -- the helmet.

It gleamed in the afternoon light, shiny and smooth. It was cool against Alex's skin as he took it, nodding at Erik as he did so.

Strange that it happened but Alex took it for what it was: a promise, a gesture, a sign of intent.

Alex tucked the helmet under his arm, accepting it.

He didn't consider himself superstitious but maybe he would admit to believing in auspiciousness. The day was clear and bright and Charles was smiling and Erik watched him like he was afraid to look away.

Maybe, as Alex knew Charles hoped, it was the day that they could all try again.

(The End)

Notes: This story started out as a riff on the mythological story of Cupid and Psyche, where Psyche does something stupid and has to go up againt Venus to prove her worth before she can reunite with Cupid. Hank/Alex/Sean stand in for Venus here, making Erik prove himself after what happened in Cuba. Somehow, it also became a soul-bond fic with distinct Sleeping Beauty/Snow White overtures. IDEK.

Title from the Stevie Nicks song of the same name, because I've never left a fandom without naming SOMETHING after a Stevie Nicks song.