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Though Charles hadn’t thrown the punch as hard as he could have, the skin of his knuckles were still raw from the contact with Erik’s jaw.
It had been hours since the man with the bone claws— Logan, he said his name was— had barged into Charles’ home and conscripted him to save the future by breaking Erik Lehnsherr out of the bloody Pentagon. All of this was meant to prevent a butterfly-effect Raven would cause by killing a businessman, one who’s practice would lead to the inevitable hunt of all mutantkind. It was a lengthy task untangling the web Logan had set out for Charles and Hank to decipher, but the headache had begun to dissipate once he managed to wrap his mind around it.
He could have at least been a little less rude, Charles thought irritably.
When Charles had woken up, the inane plot that he had found himself caught up in was the last thing he would have expected to get tangled into that morning. His day had only grown more tiresome when they had picked up that peevish speedster from the suburbs of DC.
He was a talented mutant, that Peter, but Charles would be damned if he didn’t admit that the kid wanted to make him tear his hair out by the roots.
Despite Charles’ grievances with his newfound company, the kid had done his job and he had done it well . His methods had been rather… unorthodox, but once the job was complete a considerable amount of weight had been lifted from Charles’ shoulders.
His hand still hurt like hell, however.
Charles rubbed the skin of his knuckles almost without thinking about it, and his fingers twitched for a hit off of the cigar Logan had stuck into the corner of his mouth.
Trying his best to ignore Erik in the backseat of the rental car, the kid stuck between him and Hank like a safety rail, Charles turned to Logan and said, “Mind if I take a hit?”
Concentrating on the road, Logan side-eyed Charles once before turning his gaze back to the windshield. “Don’t think that future you would appreciate gettin’ a nicotine addiction,” he said, scoffing lightly. “From what I’ve heard— and pardon my bluntness— you don’t exactly need any more of those, Professor.”
“Any more of what?”
“Addictions, Professor,” Logan replied simply.
“I am not addicted to anything,” Charles snapped. “And don’t call me that.”
“Sure you aren’t,” Logan said. He shrugged and puffed out a cloud of smoke, blowing it through the window that he had cracked open. “Not even the stuff you use so you can walk? Because it has some pretty shitty side effects, what with the whole no-powers gambit you’ve got going on.”
“No.” Charles huffed out a breath. “I’m not reliant on the serum Hank makes to treat my spine. Should I quit cold-turkey right now, I wouldn’t go through any withdrawals. I can stop at any time.”
“Then do it,” Logan said. “We could use the world’s most powerful telepath on our side, so I would be the first person in this car to encourage you to stop.”
Charles pursed his lips and knit his brows together.
“But you’re not, are you?” came from Logan’s side of the car.
“No, I’m not.”
Logan just shook his head and released another cloud of blue smoke, causing Hank sitting downwind to cough and cover his mouth with his arm. “Relax, Beastie, a little second-hand smoke won’t kill you.”
“Actually, there are studies that say— “ Hank attempted to argue, but he was cut off by Logan.
“Eh, forget it.” Logan waved his cigar through the air. “Forgot how much of an egghead you were.”
“Can I try it?” piped Peter from the backseat.
“Absolutely not,” Logan shot back. “How old are you anyway, fourteen?”
“Uh, no, I’m eighteen,” Peter replied.
“Well then, I do not know how children work.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“Whatever you say, kid.”
Contradiction seems to be Logan’s mantra , Charles thought.
Grumbling a bit, Peter shrugged and leaned back in his seat, putting on his headphones, his hands already fiddling with the controls of his stereobelt. (In all of this, Erik stared through the window of the car, wide-eyed, like he hadn’t completely woken up and was trying to savour the dream while it lasted. It wasn’t unearned— there hadn’t been a lot to see in the bottom of the Pentagon, but a dart of something acrid spiked Charles through the heart.)
And that was the end of the conversation.
~~~
“Oh, and, Peter?”
The kid looked up in surprise after catching the keys he had been tossed, his gray hair bright in the sunlight.
“Take it slow.”
Smirking in a way that made Charles itch to lock up his valuables, Peter laughed and dangled the keys from his fingertips, almost dropping them in the process. “Will do.”
Something in Charles suspected that the kid would attempt no such thing.
An hour later, after boarding the plane and Charles and Erik’s… discussion, Charles had been feeling rather tired from the events of the day, and he leaned back in his seat, allowing a wave of exhaustion to wash over him, soaking him to the bone. Charles and Erik had played through a round of chess for old time’s sake, and apparently Erik had been feeling rather similar to Charles, seeing as how once they’d finished the game (Charles let him win) he had leaned against the wall and promptly began to snore lightly. Nowhere near the angry mutant from the beach in Cuba.
Charles took a moment to study his old friend now that he had the chance to observe Erik without being glared at.
When Charles and Erik had been reunited in the kitchen inside the Pentagon, the excitement of the proceding events had torn Charles’ attention from seeing how the years had treated his old friend. Now he had the chance he noticed that there were more than a few unfamiliar worry-lines on Erik’s face. They were slackened from Erik falling asleep, but they stood out against the starkness of his skin, pale from being underground for a decade. Erik’s face had more hollow places in it compared to ten years ago, but the gauntness was partially hidden by a layer of scruffy facial hair.
In the brief instances Charles had managed to look Erik in the eye, there had been a sort of madness and paranoia that had infected the normally ocean-like blue of his irises. But all Charles had seen was the reflection of the time he had spent with Erik all of those years ago, wasted.
Despite the harsh way they had been separated, Charles often found himself mourning the loss of his old friend.
But old grief hadn’t prevented him from punching Erik the second he had been placed within Charles’ reach, and he absent mindedly rubbed the skin of his knuckles.
Logan glanced from where he was puffing on another cigar. “Hell of a difference when he’s asleep, ain’t it? Almost looks nice.”
Charles removed his hand and instead placed it on an armrest, sipping at his glass of whiskey. “I… suppose so.”
“I guess ten years underground has a tendency of making someone a bit of a lightweight,” Logan laughed. Then something bitter washed over his features, a reflection of the regret Charles had felt just moments before, and Logan shook his head. “Poor guy has no idea what’s in store for him. Not a damn clue…”
Charles sat up in his seat. “I beg your pardon?”
Logan hesitated for a moment as he visibly froze. Charles was tempted to snap his fingers in front of the man’s face, but the urge dissipated when Logan relaxed in his seat. “Ah, what the hell… no tellin’ if he’d ever get the chance to figure it out.” Shrugging, he added, “He sure as hell didn’t back where— ah, when — I’m from.”
“What in blazes are you talking about?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m gettin’ there.” Logan waved his cigar through the air. “But before I start poking my nose into business where it shouldn’t be, mind if I get a sip of that whiskey you’ve got there?”
Though Charles was still suspicious of him, he motioned for Logan to take what he pleased, slightly regretting it when the man grabbed the entire bottle.
Taking a deep swig from the bottle, draining half of it in the process, Logan set the drink down, said, “You know that speedster kid we picked up today? Peter was his name.”
“Considering it wasn’t an hour ago that we dropped him off, yes. I remember him,” Charles retorted.
Sighing, Logan said, “You might not be feeling so snippy once I tell you.”
Charles’ eye began to twitch. “And what is that?”
“It has to do with Erik.”
For a moment, all was silent. Then—
“What are you talking about?” Charles glanced over to Erik asleep in the corner, his mind scrambling to figure out where the pieces Logan had placed fit together.
“Erik is Peter’s father,” Logan said simply.
Oh.
“Shit,” was all Charles had to say as the pieces of the puzzle snapped together.
“Yeah.” Logan took another long draut from the whiskey bottle and said, “Shit’s fucked.”
“Indeed. I… suppose that would explain why Peter was so powerful.” Quirking a brow once, Charles asked, “Erik doesn’t know, does he?”
Logan shook his head. “No, he doesn’t. And he didn’t know from my timeline until it was too late.”
“What do you mean?” Charles asked.
Fiddling with the bottle in his hand, Logan glanced to the side. “Well, Teach, where I’m from, a lot of good people ended up getting hurt because of what Trask and his cronies are making, and chances are Peter was one of ‘em. Boy, you did not want to be there when Erik found out; I was pickin’ out shrapnell for days afterwards.”
Though the situation demanded silence to fully absorb Logan’s words, Charles spoke up anyway. “What happened?”
“Not sure,” Logan said. “One day he was here, and the next he wasn’t. There wasn’t even a body or nothin’— he was just gone. Lemme tell you, Erik was pissed.”
“I’m sure,” Charles replied.
Charles turned his gaze to where Erik was sleeping in the corner. Now that he knew his connection to Peter, he could see the resemblance between him and the kid. The curve of his mouth, the plane of his cheek, and there was something about the glint in his eyes that reminded Charles of Peter all too well, though much more world-weary than Charles hoped the kid would have to experience.
Erik looked so peaceful sleeping in that chair, and there was a world’s difference from the bitter man Charles had once dragged out of the ocean.
But there was something in Charles that would never forget the sharpness in the base of his spine after Erik had ricocheted the bullet in Cuba, nor the way he had cradled Charles in the aftermath. Erik had removed the bullet from his spine, and Charles wished that the pain hadn’t disappeared afterwards, if only so his lower half wouldn’t succumb to the daunting nothingness that would proceed.
The spark in Erik’s eyes under the shadow of Sebastian Shaw’s helmet tormented Charles in his nightmares for years after. Then he started taking Hank’s serum to treat what was left of his nerve endings, and the nightmares stopped. Nothing haunted him from there on out, nothing at all, but the relief wasn’t as sweet as Charles had hoped it would be.
Those old nightmares seemed to have come to fruition everytime Charles remembered that Erik was free again, sitting not a metre away from him. It terrified him, but there was a braver (or more stupid) part of Charles that was tempted to confront the nightmares and unveal them for the facades they were. Nothing at all.
But nothing was what they would all become if they didn’t manage to work together and prevent Trask’s hellish sentinels from hunting them and all of mutantkind into extinction.
“This could change everything, couldn’t it?” Charles said quietly.
“Who knows?” Logan finished off the bottle and set it to the side with a sigh. “I guess that all depends on Lehnsherr. I mean, for all we know he’d just try to recruit the kid into what’s left of the Brotherhood and do somethin’ stupid, like try to kill the president. Again.”
Charles scoffed. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Me either,” Logan said, and he added, “besides we only have one chance at this. The mutant who sent me back here won’t be born for another twenty or thirty years. But Peter is a good kid. A little misguided? Sure. A kleptomaniac? Absolutely. But he’d never hurt anyone, and if Erik did find out about their relationship I doubt the kid would let him take it too far. He’s stubborn like that.”
“I sure hope so,” Charles said. “It would be a real pain in the arse to have someone with Peter’s talents against us.”
“Yeah,” Logan agreed. “But like you said, let’s hope it never comes to that. And who knows? Maybe Erik’s true calling is fatherhood.”
~~~
“Godammit, Erik!”
Charles was stuck under the metal beam, and there was nothing he could do to get out. Then—
Bang!
There! Raven shot Erik, knocking the man to the ground and leaving him gasping. She glanced at Charles once and stalked towards Erik’s body, swiping his anti-Charles helmet clean from his head.
“He’s all yours, Charles!” Raven called out.
Charles saw the chance Raven offered him and he took it, easing a hold of Erik’s mind, foggy from the pain in his neck, as easily as his heart beat. Using Erik’s hand as his own, Charles lifted the metal beam off of his chest, groaning as it was removed, but once it was gone Charles was able to take in a full breath of air.
Hank, decidedly no longer blue, slung Charles’ arm over his shoulder and lifted him up, and Charles was able to get a proper look at the sight before him.
Erik rose to his feet, his hand cupping the wound Raven left in his neck, and he almost seemed shell-shocked as he regarded Charles and Hank in front of him. “You know that if they get to me, I’ll be a dead man,” Erik said to Charles.
“I know,” Charles said, quietly agreeing with his old friend. Then with very little effort, Charles crept inside Erik’s mind, but never did he once turn his gaze away from Erik.
Charles was met with confusion in the haziness of Erik’s mind, but the confusion was slowly clearing as Erik gathered his thoughts together in response to his new visitor.
But confusion wasn’t the only thing Charles was met with, as Erik brought up an old memory. One from so many years ago it might as well have been a different world, a different age, a different time. It was where Charles prevented Erik from drowning while he was going after Shaw, revealing himself as a mutant, and he promptly informed Erik that he wasn’t alone, when that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
I suppose that was a load of shit, Erik thought sourly to him.
Charles sucked in a sharp breath, but something occurred to him as he mulled over Erik’s lament. But Erik, you’re not alone.
Need I remind you what I’ve done today? I will never be able to stop running, Erik thought.
About that…
More confusion came from Erik’s mind, but he allowed Charles to proceed despite his discontentedness towards telepaths and the urge to grab his helmet.
There is something that you should know about the speedster that helped free you from the Pentagon, Charles said telepathically. Logan told me, and what you do with this information will be up to you, but you have to know that you aren’t the only one affected by this.
What do you mean? Erik asked. He was brimming with impatience, but let Charles continue.
Peter is your son, Charles explained. You had a relationship with his mother, Magda Maximoff, but left before she knew about the pregnancy. There, he implemented a mental picture of Peter’s mother to Erik.
Familiarity sparked in Erik’s mind, and the cogs began to turn and lock together as he absorbed Charles’ words. I…
He’s a good kid, Erik, but I urge you to consider this delicately.
Before Erik could say more, Charles removed himself from Erik’s mind and watched as he took on this new fact. It would be a lot to get used to, and what Erik did with it would be up to him, but Charles knew that from that day on the only way to go was up.
Finally, Erik accepted this. Spreading his arms in preparation for flight, he called out, “Goodbye, old friend.”
Something like melancholy washed over Charles, but he smiled at Erik anyway. “Goodbye, old friend.”
And then he was gone.
As Charles watched Erik fly off, followed by Raven limping herself to goodness knew where, he thought to himself, I hope he makes the right choice.
Despite the evidence that Erik would inevitably choose the contrary, Charles had faith.