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Once, many years ago, in a secluded motel room, Charles said to Erik, "You know, whenever you're ready to move on from all of this nonsense, you can always come home."
At the time, Erik took issue with Charles characterizing his mission as "nonsense." He took issue with Charles deciding for him that the school, that the opulent mansion of Charles' kin, would ever be somewhere Erik considered "home." He took issue with the way Charles said it, sharp and bitter, after Erik made some comment during one of their sordid little trysts.
These past few years, he's found himself returning to that offer again and again.
Charles never repeated himself. He never encouraged Erik to return. He never pushed Erik away, either, however. When Erik found himself stealing an afternoon or two at the mansion, when they met at conferences, for weekends at hotels, Charles never rejected him and he never forbade Erik from returning. Part of Erik wonders if Charles was waiting for him to ask, or if he was merely as unsure of his feelings as Erik was of his own. Either way, it leaves Erik with no certainty about how Charles would treat him if he were to pack his bags and show up at the school today.
Ororo would welcome him, though.
Ororo was just a young girl when Erik met her all those years ago, hiding in Charles' study one afternoon. She was small and inquisitive and she wasn't afraid of him. She watched them play chess and asked question after question about Erik, about the game, about world around her. She talked endlessly about what she was learning, and when Charles telepathically asked Erik if he should send her away, he shook his head before he thought better of it.
After that, Erik didn't seek her out, necessarily, but he did ask about her. He allowed her to visit with him when he was at the school to see Charles. He watched her slowly grow up, and once she could write, he wrote down the address of a post office box for her.
"Tell no one," he said. "Not even your professor. But if you wish, you may write me letters."
"Neat!" she said. "What do you want letters about?"
Erik had paused. He wasn't sure. He found himself invested in her, in her happiness, in her intelligence, in her growth. He didn't know how to express that to her, though. She was a child of six or seven and he didn't know that she would understand what it was he wanted from her. He didn't know himself.
"Whatever you'd like," he said.
And so, for the past fifteen years, his post office box has been home not only to Charles' love letters, but to letters upon letters from young Ororo. Drawings and stories and reports about school morphing into gossip that didn't interest him and secrets he'd never share. Good news, like her college acceptance, and bad news, like the death of a classmate. He still saw her, periodically, on his visits to the mansion, but they didn't talk about their secret correspondence. Erik didn't want Charles to know--he wasn't sure he was ready for Charles' reaction, good or bad.
Ororo started college four years ago, absent, then, from Erik's periodic visits. And the timing wasn't intentional, but the visits stopped too.
The world was changing. Erik was changing. He wasn't quite sure how Magneto fit into the new world. He wasn't quite sure he wanted to.
He still wrote to Ororo at university--entreaties to do well, questions about her friends and her studies--and Charles at the mansion--sprawling love letters and terse paragraphs where he laid out his dilemmas, his confusion, his hesitation, his fear. He took to calling Charles, too, on and off, just to hear his voice.
He missed Charles, but he knew if he stepped foot in the mansion, he might not want to leave. He wasn't sure yet how to feel about that. He wasn't sure how Charles would feel about it either.
This isn't the mansion, though.
He stares across the street at the restaurant and repeats that to himself. This isn't the mansion. This neutral territory, nearly. This is just another place in the city, nondescript and probably mediocre, the sort of place that college students take refuge in. Ororo must have picked it herself--certainly Charles tends to prefer restaurants to be quieter and neater, though this isn't his party. This is Ororo's party to celebrate her college graduation and two months ago she wrote him a note to invite him to attend.
.
I know, it said, that you might not get this until it's too late, but if you do get it, I'd really like you to come.
He was undecided for weeks, but in the end, here he is. She asked. He couldn't say no.
He doesn't know what his reception will be like inside. While most of Ororo's cohort of students most likely won't recognize him without his helmet and costume--relegated for three years now to a suitcase he never opens--McCoy and Darwin and the others most certainly will. Moira most certainly will.
Charles will. He hasn't seen Charles' face in nearly four years. He's still not sure what he'll say when he does.
If he sees Charles. It's Ororo's party, most likely populated by her college friends and maybe her friends from the school. There's no guarantee that Charles--educator, scientist, beloved mutant figure--will have the time to attend.
He considers, for a moment, fleeing. He could go home.
Or he could if he had a home any longer. He has a series of empty apartments, rented month to month. He has three suitcases and a box of books and papers and letters. He could flee, but where would he go?
He crosses the street and enters the restaurant.
The interior is loud--music is pumping through the speakers and the place is packed. Everyone is talking and shouting and Erik elbows his way over to the hostess who tells him the Munroe party is downstairs and points him in the correct direction.
Down a narrow stairwell he finds another large room with different music playing. It's not quite as loud, and while the crowd seems to be full of strangers at first, before long he begins to pick out people he knows--a couple laughing and dancing, upon closer inspection, are Jean Grey and Scott Summers; Alex Summers is leaning against the wall talking to Moira's husband; Moira herself is playing darts with Darwin, Mystique, and another man that Erik doesn't recognize. There are many others, mostly people Ororo's age, talking and laughing and picking at the food that's against one wall, or sipping drinks at the bar.
Of course Ororo has a room full of friends who adore her and want to show up to celebrate her accomplishments. He shouldn't have come here. Certainly she won't miss him, not with all of this love and affection directed at her.
He doesn't have time to turn around, though. The crowd parts and he catches sight of her, talking to a Japanese girl about her age. She sees him in the same moment and abandons her conversation to run over to him.
"Erik," she breathes, and after one awkward moment, throws her arms around him in a hug. Erik hugs her back after only a second of hesitation.
"You're...taller," he says gruffly.
"Well, it's been four years," Ororo says. She steps back and he looks at her more closely. She's definitely different from the little girl with snow white hair and pink floral dresses. Her hair is short and spiky and she's wearing an ultra-modern black and silver dress. She's wearing make-up, jewelry. She looks like an adult.
She is an adult now, he supposes.
"I'm so glad you came," she says. "I didn't know if you would get my letter or if you were busy or--"
"I'm never too busy for you," Erik assures her. He reaches into his coat and pulls out a small wrapped gift. It's a book--he wasn't sure what to get her or what was appropriate for an occasion such as this, but he knows she loves to read and they've spent many of their letters over the years discussing books, so it seemed like a safe choice.
"You didn't have to bring me anything," Ororo insists, but she takes it and hugs it to her chest. "Thank you."
"You're very welcome," Erik says. "Congratulations."
Ororo tugs his arm and pulls him off of the landing and into the room proper. A few of the other young people look at him oddly, but no one says anything as Ororo leads him through the room.
"I have to give a speech," she says. "Or...something. I don't know. But have something to eat and drink and don't go anywhere, not without saying goodbye, okay?"
"I won't," Erik promises. At the very least, he can't leave until he figures out where he's going, as heavy as the stares from the others may weigh on him.
Ororo kisses his cheek and then leaves him at the food table, disappearing into the crowd.
Erik's palms are sweating. He shouldn't have come here. He's completely out of his element. He hasn't been around this many people in ages. Moira and her husband are here--they're government agents. McCoy and Summers are here and they hate him, Mystique probably wants him dead, he's in a room full of people who would love to see him locked up and it's far too warm and far too loud and--
Someone taps him on the shoulder and Erik only just barely stops himself from whirling around and impaling them with all the loose metal in the room.
It's Darwin. At least he probably would have survived it. He seems to have survived everything else.
"Hey, man, what's up?" Darwin asks, offering Erik a hand. Erik tentatively shakes, eyeing Darwin, glancing around the room. Moira and Mystique are both still ostensibly playing darts, but he notices the way their eyes flick to him. Summers is outright glaring at him. As is McCoy, standing by the bar.
Darwin clears his throat, and Erik refocuses his attention.
"It's good to see you," Erik says. It's not entirely a lie.
"It's...something," Darwin agrees, smiling wryly, and Erik steps back. He shouldn't be here.
"I should go," he mutters. "I never should have come here, I--"
"Hey, hey," Darwin says, and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Don't do that. I saw that hug. You're here because Ororo invited you, right?"
Erik nods.
"Then relax," Darwin says. "It's her day. Don't disappoint her by leaving. And the rest of us won't disappoint her by being rude. Isn't that right, Alex?"
Summers pushes off the wall and stalks over, arms crossed over his chest.
"Haven't heard from you recently," he mutters. "In the papers, I mean."
It's on the tip of his tongue to snap back at Summers or threaten him, to tell him Magneto will give the human world something to put into their papers.
He thinks of Ororo, though, and calms himself.
"I find myself disinterested in pursuing that life any longer," he says instead. That much is obvious--he hasn't been interested in a long time. The problem is, in the three and a half years since he was last Magneto, he's not figured out what it is he's interested in.
Summers looks over at Darwin and they have a silent conversation. Erik wonders, not for the first time, if Darwin doesn't have a little bit of telepathy mixed up in his very handy mutation. After a moment, Summers shrugs.
"Then, for today at least, I don't have any beef with you," he says. He rolls his shoulders. "Enjoy the party."
Erik would take glee in the obvious pain it causes Summers to say that if it wasn't equally painful for him to say, "You as well."
Summers goes over to the darts game and mutters something to Mystique and Moira, and he sees them relax, too. Moira's husband, still regarding him coolly, raises a glass in greeting when Erik glances his way. All over, the tension in the room seems to release, at least a little.
That doesn't stop Erik from feeling supremely out of place.
"Relax," Darwin says. "Have some food. Have a drink. Half the kids in here are mutants, strike up a conversation or two. All the other stuff? Put it on pause for the day. This isn't about you or the wider world. This is about Storm."
It is. And she invited him. She wants him here. He's going to stay.
He has some food. He has a drink. He forces himself to make small talk, first with people he doesn't know, then with people who probably only barely remember him as Erik Lehnsherr and don't seem to be able to identify him as Magneto. Jean Grey and Mystique's son, Kurt, both talk to him for long minutes about what they've been up to in the years since Erik met them in Charles' study. Alison Blaire talks his ear off about the music she's writing, only barely able to connect him to the strange man who found her wandering around out of bed after a bad dream when she was only eleven.
He's making his way across the room in fits and starts. He's starting to feel, if not comfortable, then at least in control.
He's doing a very good job of not mentioning the one thing on his mind.
A girl he doesn't know shows off her gossamer wings, so reminiscent of Angel that Erik feels twenty years younger. A boy he's never met flits back and forth across the room at super speed and Erik thinks of the son he never speaks to. He sees Logan, the Logan of this timeline, one who's never met him before, and finds himself actually enjoying the barbed conversation they have over their drinks.
It's surreal. He feels Moira's eyes on him the whole time, Mystique's, Summers'. He keeps expecting to be kicked out or attacked. He keeps expecting something to go wrong, but instead, it's just...a party. A party that would be tedious and boring if it wasn't celebrating someone he cared for so deeply.
Two drinks, and he's ready to ask the question that's been on his mind since he arrived, since before that. He's actually laughed, now, and smiled, and loosened himself up enough to admit, even to himself, that he wants to see Charles. He wants to be here, in this room, surrounded by these good feelings, these happy people, with Charles.
He takes his third drink and walks purposefully towards McCoy. McCoy will know if Charles is coming or where to find him if he's not. Erik will be a man and look McCoy in the eye and ask him--
He feels a large amount of metal abruptly start to move and turns all at once to the elevator he barely noticed when he arrived. It's tucked away in a corner, cramped and ancient, but apparently it still works. It creaks down to the basement level, and it dings.
No one else in the room seems to take much notice. No one else seems to care. Erik can't look away.
The doors open and Charles rolls out and into the party, clean, radiant, and smiling. Erik thinks that joyful look must be for Ororo until their eyes lock.
Charles approaches him immediately, without hesitation, and stops just in front of Erik, staring up at him with those blue, blue eyes.
"You're here," Charles says.
Erik is horrified to feel a lump forming in his throat.
"I am," he manages to say. "I...I don't have anywhere else to go."
Looking down at Charles, he feels brittle and empty all at once, so quick it makes him lightheaded. It's not a bad feeling though. It feels like teetering on the brink of something terrifying. It feels like...possibility.
It feels the same way it did that night all those years ago, treading water in the Atlantic and staring at Charles and knowing his life was about to change entirely.
"You always have somewhere to go," Charles says softly. "But that's for later. For now, there's food and cake and drinks and a young woman who's about to give a speech I think we'll both want to hear."
"Later?" Erik asks, clearing his throat.
"Later," Charles promises him. He raises his eyebrows and tips his head up and Erik doesn't think about the room full of strangers or the glare of Charles' friends. He leans down and kisses Charles.
The music continues to play and the party goes on around them and Erik thinks he might finally be ready to come home.