Chapter Text
After all these years, most everyone has figured out not to bother trying to wake Charles in the middle of the night. He takes enough sedatives at bedtime to level an army – or drown out a school full of anxious adolescent minds, whichever comes first. As a result, Erik has gotten used to being the one woken up at ungodly hours to deal with emergencies ranging from fires to floods to teenage drama. Charles usually sleeps through it. Either that or he wakes up halfway through the event to an empty bed and groggily sends Erik a telepathic message along the lines of, What's wrong, darling? Do you need me? Which Erik usually answers with, Go back to sleep, Charles.
Even so, Erik still can't understand why everyone seems to take it for granted that nothing will wake Charles. Just because he's taken a triple dose of tranquilizers doesn't mean people should be going around making a racket when he’s trying to sleep.
Like when Beast throws open their bedroom door, flooding the room with bright light and cold winter air at 12:45am. He doesn't knock. He doesn't even bother whispering when he says, “Erik? Erik, wake up. We need you downstairs.”
Erik sits up and rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Would you please keep your voice down? For godssake you're going to wake Charles.”
Charles lets out a heavy snore as Erik gets out of bed and puts on his slippers.
“Sorry,” says Beast, “but this can't wait.”
Erik throws on his robe and steps out into the hallway. “What is it?”
“Another runaway, it looks like. There's a cabbie in the foyer looking for someone to pay him for the trip up from Penn Station.”
Erik rolls his eyes and turns back.
“Where are you going?” Beast asks.
“To get Charles' wallet.” He checks Charles’ dresser, his pants pocket, then finally finds the wallet tucked into a pouch on Charles’ wheelchair. Luckily, it's filled with cash.
Young mutants have begun appearing at their doors unannounced more and more often as the school has become more visible; these unexpected cab fares have become so routine that Charles has started building them into the school's budget. Erik can't imagine why, then, Beast seems so agitated this time. This isn't the first time this has happened – this isn't even the first time this month. Even so, as Erik pays the driver and sends him on his way, Beast is fidgeting and hovering nervously nearby.
“Well?” Erik asks when the cab driver is gone. “Where's the kid?”
“I told her to have a seat inside.”
“Has she called her parents?”
“Not yet. She-- That's why...” Beast fumbles for his words. “I thought I should go get you first.”
Erik frowns. “Why? What's wrong with her?”
“Nothing! She's great. It's just that she says... she said you're her father.”
“What?”
“That's what she said.”
Some of the children who have arrived at the school unannounced, especially the younger ones, have walked in with wild stories – anything from saying they're fugitives to fortune tellers to saying they have two days to live – just to make sure that they wouldn't be turned away at the door. This is a new one, but it still fits the pattern.
Erik pulls his robe a little tighter and steps into the sitting room. There's a girl there all right, though with a story like that one, he was expecting her to be younger. By her clothes and slouch, he guesses she's closer to fourteen or fifteen years old. She's got her hair dyed bleach blond, which is a bit unusual. The look is out of fashion compared to the hippie style of the rest of her things, and the dye job is so poorly done it's got an almost greenish tinge to it. When she notices him hovering and watching her, she freezes, then slowly stands to greet him.
“Good evening,” Erik says. “Welcome to the Xavier-Lehnsherr Academy for the Gifted. For future reference, there are plenty of pay phones at Penn Station. Next time you can call us collect, and we can have someone drive down and pick you up. You might have to ride in a car with Banshee for two hours, but it's a lot cheaper than taking a cab.”
“Are you Magneto?” she asks carefully.
“Yes, but the students call me Professor Lehnsherr.”
“Oh. What are you a professor of?”
“Nothing, really. But it sounds better than 'hey you.'” The joke falls flat, so he continues. “What's your name?”
“Lorna Dane.”
“Where are you from?”
“California.”
“That's a long trip.”
She nods.
“You're probably very tired. Let's find you a room, and then you can call your parents to let them know you're safe. We can figure the rest out in the morning, all right?”
“No,” she says.
“No?”
“I mean...” She fingers the ends of her sleeves, and for a moment she looks so familiar, though Erik can't place it. “I mean, you're Magneto, right?”
“Professor Lehnsherr.”
“I saw you on TV. I...” She’s trembling, just slightly. “I think you're my father.” As he's gearing up to let her down gently and assure her that she can drop the act – she's welcome to stay – she stops him. “Your mutation is magnets, right? Magnetic fields? Me, too.”
Erik tries to pretend he's not curious, but they've met hundreds of mutants over the past few years, and not one has had powers similar to his. The truth is he's a little excited. “Really?”
Lorna nods. “Can you feel it when I do this?” she asks, and pushes a ripple of magnetism at him.
Erik nearly gasps. “Yes, I can feel that. I’ve never— I’ve never felt that from another person before.” He grins. “That's very cool. Can you do that again?”
She does, and adds, “And when I push against it, like, this, I can lift off the ground.” She moves her hands to her sides and makes a pushing motion, and just for a second, her feet leave the carpet. She drops down from her inch-and-a-half liftoff looking slightly embarrassed. “That wasn't very good.”
“No,” Erik says. “That's amazing. I bet if you work at it you could fly.” That makes her smile. “But just because our powers are similar doesn't mean we're related. There are five telekinetics in this house and none of them are related.”
When she starts to look disappointed, Erik gets some of Charles' welcome lines ready – Charles is much better at greeting the new kids than he is. Charles is warm and friendly and radiates how thrilled he is to meet a new student. He makes them feel at home. Erik is more of an acquired taste.
“You don't have to be a blood relative to be welcome here. This is a home for all mutants, no matter who you are or where you come from,” he tells her, mimicking Charles. “Since you're under eighteen, you will need your parents' permission to stay, but if you're in trouble or you're frightened – no matter what happens, we will be here for you. We are a family here, whether you're blood-related or not.”
“No, you don't understand,” Lorna says. “That's not it. My mom always told me that my father died in the war before I was born, but I don’t think that’s true. I think that’s just part of her whole pacifist thing, and anyway I don’t even think Vietnam had started yet. And then I saw you on TV and you have the same powers as I do almost and we look alike – don't you think we look alike?”
Come to think of it, they do look a little alike. Her eyes are the same color as his and they have the same shape face, though hers is still a bit rounded and child-like. She also has the same tall and lanky stature that he did at fifteen. But still, that doesn't mean anything.
“What about my mom?” she presses. “Do you know my mom?”
“What's her name?”
“Sunshine.”
“Sunshine?”
“She changed it a couple of years ago. It was Barbara.”
Erik rolls his eyes. Hippies.
“She told me his name was Erik. I'm not making this up, I swear I'm not,” she says.
“I'm not accusing you of it.”
“I was born in 1958. Are you sure you don't know her? Barbara?”
Barbara in California around '57 or '58. No, actually, come to think of it, he's not sure he didn't know a Barbara. Barbara Dane. And then Lorna makes that face again and this time Erik can place it: she looks just like his mother.
His heart begins to race.
Erik? What's wrong, love? Is everything all right? He feels Charles call out to him through a sleepy haze. Do you need me?
Yes!
*
Erik met Barbara in a tiki bar in San Francisco in January of 1958. It was his first time in California and, not unlike Lorna 15 years later, he'd taken a train across the country only to find that he had no money. His wallet must have been stolen at some point during the trip – he refused to believe he'd simply lost it. With no wallet, no money, no one he knew and nowhere to go, he wandered into one of those Pacific Islands-themed bars that had become popular thanks to aging veterans' hazy memories of serving in the South Seas. Barbara was sidled up to the bar drinking something enormous with more fruit in the glass than booze, clearly looking for a good time. Erik decided he'd show her one, and maybe in return she'd let him sleep in her bed and eat out of her fridge for a day or two while he tried to figure out what to do about his missing wallet.
He ended up staying with Barbara for two and a half weeks. He quite liked her. It turned out she was a cocktail waitress at that bar and she got him a job bartending there in the afternoons to make a few bucks. She was energetic and fun and chatty and opinionated and had the kind of personality that filled a room, leaving no space for things like depression or revenge fantasies or mourning. Sure, he spent their entire time in bed together thinking about Paul Newman or the other bartender (Ted “Rocky” Moorehead, whose Hawaiian shirt never seemed to be buttoned), but it would take him couple more years to figure out that little detail. All in all, his weeks with Barbara in San Francisco were one of the few good times in those dark years.
He never thought he'd see her again, and he never wanted to. After a couple weeks, he took his tip money and took off. His mission was only beginning. He couldn't hang around California mixing rum drinks. He wished her well and then completely, purposely, forgot about her.
He certainly never thought he'd end up calling her in the middle of the night while their teenage daughter and his partner look on, listening to her shriek and threaten his life and manhood if anything happens to her baby. Apparently her pacifism only goes so far – perhaps she and Erik have more in common that he would have thought.
The conversation isn't nearly as bad as it could have been. They discover that Barbara (Sunshine, yes she really does call herself that – it seems that being called Barbie doesn't get you very far in certain circles) knows all about their school and all about who Erik has become, and Lorna throws a fit at her mother for hiding it from her all that time. When the screaming match finally dies down, Lorna is allowed to stay.
Erik can't tell if he's thrilled or terrified or humiliated or what he's feeling, but Charles is gently patting his back and sleepily sending him telepathic waves of comfort and love and, oddly enough, excitement. There's something underlying all of it that makes him think that Charles is a little bit giddy about all this, even if it's making Erik vaguely nauseous.
When Lorna's hung up the phone and turned back to them, the expression on her face makes Erik think that her feelings are more in line with his than with Charles’. There's a distinct “what have I done” look in her eyes, and she doesn't speak: just looks back and forth between the two of them anxiously and fiddles with a string at the end of her sleeve. She looks simultaneously terrified and determined. She looks just like his mother.
“Well, I hope you've brought some warmer clothes with you,” Charles says with a smile, breaking the silence. “I know you're used to San Francisco, but it gets very cold here in the winter. Do you have a winter coat?”
She shakes her head no.
“We'll have to get one for you, then. In the meantime, come along with me – we have a room all made up for surprise students like this, and there are plenty of warm blankets in there waiting for you.” Charles wheels himself down the hallway, chatting cheerfully while Erik and Lorna follow him in silence, both trying not to be caught staring at each other. “And it's all yours – you'll have a roommate once we get you settled, but for tonight you'll have your own room and your own bathroom. If there is anything you need, please don't hesitate to ask. Believe me, we've heard it all before.”
They reach the room and Charles pushes the door open, allowing Lorna in first, then Erik, who's carrying her suitcase.
Still Charles is the only one who speaks: “Would you like a glass of warm milk? Or a cup of tea? A bite to eat before bed?”
Lorna shakes her head, then squeaks, “No, thank you.”
“All right, then. Breakfast-slash-roll call is at 8:00, but for tomorrow you can feel free to skip it and sleep in if you like – when you're awake, Erik and I will give you the tour and welcome you to the school properly.”
Lorna nods, and so does Charles.
“Have a good night, and we'll see you in the morning.”
“Thank you for letting me stay,” says Lorna. “I’m sorry about barging in like this. I just thought…”
“My dear, you are more than welcome,” Charles smiles. “Sleep well.”
Erik watches as Charles wheels his chair back out towards the door, but doesn't yet move himself. He feels he should say something, but his eyes dart to the floor when they meet Lorna's, and all he can do is mumble, “Good night.” He wanted to say, “Good night, Lorna,” but he wasn’t brave enough to say her name out loud, not just yet.
“Good night,” she mumbles back, and with that he follows Charles into the hallway and shuts the door behind him.
Charles is smiling up at him with shining eyes. “Oh, Erik...” he begins to say, but Erik shakes his head to stop him.
“Let's just... Let's go back to bed.”
There's no way that Charles doesn't pick up on the frantic acrobatics Erik's mind is doing as they head back to their bedroom, but mercifully he doesn't say anything about it. All he does is hold Erik's hand and allow him to take control of the wheelchair – the low level use of his powers can be calming when he's anxious like this, especially when the metal in question is as familiar as Charles' chair. They bypass the elevator, walking hand in hand up the wide grand staircase instead, Charles floating along at Erik's side.
Their bedroom is chilly when they return. Charles left the door open and it's cold enough in the room now that they're both eager to climb back under the four comforters Charles has on their bed. Erik usually ends up kicking them off in the middle of the night when he gets overheated, but now he snuggles in beneath them and rests his head on Charles' chest.
It's ironic, Erik thinks, as he arranges Charles' legs to tangle with his own. Charles loves children and craves family so desperately, and between the two of them, Charles is the one who still claims to be attracted to women. Forget “claims”: the man slept with half the female population of Oxford. If anyone was taking bets on which of them would have a love-child out in the world somewhere, the odds-on favorite would have been Charles.
Erik, on the other hand, doesn't think he was ever attracted to women. He looks back on his marriage to Magda and his occasional flings in the time between her and Charles and wonders what he was thinking, why he didn’t see then how disconnected he was, how half-hearted those relationships were. He wonders sometimes if that unconscious loneliness, that unrealized sexual frustration, was part of why he felt so angry all the time when he was younger. Not that he didn’t have good reason to be angry, and not that he isn’t still angry, but slowly, in the years after he met Charles, he's learned how to put that all away at the end of the day and climb into bed and be happy, and enjoy his life. That was a feeling he never found with a woman, not even his first love, his childhood sweetheart, his wife. He loved her so much; he didn't even realize he wasn't giving her all that he had. He had no idea how much more there could be.
“I can't believe you have a daughter,” Charles whispers into the dark, carding his fingers through Erik's hair.
“I can't believe I have a daughter with a woman who calls herself Sunshine.”
Erik can feel Charles' smile when he kisses the top of his head. “Yes, that's much worse than having dozens of children with a man who calls himself Professor X.”
“That's different. We're not just some dumb hippies.”
Charles hums his agreement and strokes his fingers along Erik's sideburns, which now reach almost to his jawline. “She is just like you, you know. I can already tell.”
“Poor kid.”
“This is going to be a good thing. You'll see.”
Erik doesn't say anything, just pulls Charles a little closer and closes his eyes.