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He passes money across the counter before he can even stop to think about what he is doing. The trinket is in hand, and he sees her in the way it shines, fracturing colors over the skin of his arm. It is only once he has passed through the doors of the shop and into the blustery cold and falling snow that he realizes his mistake. His hand drops into his lap, the small parcel falling there, and his brows draw together across his forehead.
He is but a fool. This small gift will never find its way into his sister’s hand.
“Professor?” a voice asks from his right, “Are you feeling alright?”
He looks up and smiles, practiced and easy, into the young woman’s eyes, “Of course, Ororo. I was merely lost in thought. Come now, there are other gifts to be found and it is getting late. We should not keep Hank waiting much longer.”
She smiles at him, knowing he is not entirely truthful but willing to save him his dignity. For a girl so young, she is so very mature, he thinks, as she steps ahead of him, stomping into small snow drifts and giggling. He watches her, his expression one of fondness as he wheels behind her and pretends to forget the small package still in his lap.
***
He was fifteen. She, always younger, but never quite sure of her own age. They sat beneath a lavish Christmas tree, raised high toward the vaulted ceiling. The lights blinked, dotting their faces with dim light as the colors turned endlessly on and off. She held her hands tightly over her mouth, trying not to make sound as he shook a long rectangular box against his ear “It is clothes,” he declared, in a faint air of mock superiority, his chin lifted high “Judging by the packaging and weight, I believe it is a red jumper”
She pushed him playfully, giggling, and he fell back onto his elbows “You’re such a cheat.” she said “I know you looked. You always do.” He stuck out his tongue and her and began to laugh as well.
When the sound of his step father’s loud stomps reached their ears, they quieted. They could hear the man cursing about the noise as he came toward them from around the hall. Charles stood quickly, and without thought took Raven’s small, blue hand in his and ran in the opposite direction. They hid in one of the broom cupboards down the corridor, listening to Kurt’s swearing, waiting for him to run out of patience and go back to bed.
Even after the silence returned to the old mansion, and Kurt had long stopped searching for them, they stayed like that. They now had no desire to move out of each other’s company and go to bed, nor to return to their game under the tree
Raven’s face had fallen, now. She leaned against the cupboard door, eyes downcast, smile leached from her face. Her hands curled around her knees and her legs were tucked against her chest. Charles watched her for a long moment before reaching and digging something from his back pocket.
“Here,” he said, in a hushed voice. He took her hand in his and place a small brown package in it. It was no larger than the palm of her hand.
***
He wishes he remembered what the gift was, or how beautiful she had looked when she opened the small package and had smiled.
He can’t remember her happiness anymore, nor her smile. Those memories are too blurred and much too far away.
***
It is late when they return with their gifts for this year’s Christmas. He puts the hastily bought thing with the others. The trinket sits sparkling, waiting to collect dust as the other gifts have done over the years. In the past, they had always been simple and of no real use, but that had never stopped him from giving her these things and it had never once stopped her from loving them.
Looking at them now, the ones she will never see, he feels even more foolish. Not only has he bought her a gift tonight, but he has forgotten himself before and bought them for other Christmas seasons. The room is kept as it was when she’d left. He does not do this out of hope that she might return: He knows she won’t.
This room is merely, perhaps, a shrine to a memory: the young girl he grew up protecting who never really wanted protecting at all.
He wonders briefly, as he pushes himself out of the room and closes the door, where she stowed the ones he’d given her when they were still close.
He decides it doesn’t really matter. She is not the little girl who needs them anymore.
***
Snow fell the Christmas in Oxford in which Raven’s laugh could be heard freely, unsilenced and uncontrolled by Kurt or anyone else. The night wasn’t extravagant or lavish. But for the first time they had Christmas, and a home, all for themselves.
They sipped eggnog and played puzzle games while they snacked on store bought ham. Charles tried not to cheat, but Raven would always call him out upon winning regardless.
Their tree was small that year, and there were no large gifts of luxury beneath it. The simple gifts they had bought each other, still wrapped, sat tucked against the trunk. The thing was fake and nearing the point of ugliness, but it had some small amount of charm attached to it that they could have never found on the ones once put up for show in the mansion, strung with tinsel and decorated floor to ceiling. This one only had one string of lights and a crooked star, but they had bought it together and it would always be enough.
At least, this is what Charles had believed back then.
***
Charles’ correspondence with Erik-sorry, Magneto-has been sporadic, at best, over the years. His correspondence with his sister, however, is non-existent. Occasionally Erik writes to him with brief notes, commentaries on current events, or the smallest question after his health and the school. Hank brings them, hesitant, as they arrive. Charles can feel the bitterness in Hank’s touch as he hands them, knowing that as soon as Charles receives them, he takes to his room and closes the door for the rest of the afternoon.
Charles does not blame Hank, because he is bitter as well.
He does his best to brush past the personal questions with cordial, fake answers. He knows well enough that Erik can tell that he never speaks of himself or the children in much truth or detail. This does not hinder Erik’s asking every time.
Charles always asks after his sister and receives the same responses. This does not hinder Charles’ asking, either.
It pains him, surely, that she will not even contact him.
And as much trauma as he has been dealt, losing them both was perhaps the worst of it.
He used to wonder if he would be quite so resentful had they stayed. He wants to believe the answer to that is no.
***
He still loves her enough to hope that she smiles sometimes
He will always wonder if she does.
***
The first time he sees Erik again face-to-face and on his own terms he makes sure to hand him a small gift.
“She will understand,” he says.