Chapter Text
Part 2: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
His head was aching, his body felt leaden, and his eyes burned as he peeled them open. He was in a wheelchair in an old house, his hands were heavy and wrinkled in front of him on the arms of the wheelchair, and the ceiling above him had a crack in it that someone had tried to fix and obviously failed. The wind rattled the window he could see across the room every time it blew.
In front of the noisy window, a man and woman stood together. Did he know them? He felt like he did, but their names escaped him. The woman was beautiful, with red curls that spilled down her back, but her face was contorted in complete remorse as she held onto the rugged hairy man in front of her, and he noticed the glasses perched on her nose were cracked as she whispered, “We put this off too long.”
The man pulled her to his chest, running a hand up and down her back, “I made this choice, Darlin’, not you. We didn’t want you to have to do this. I thought we could put it off.”
The woman sighed heavily, turned her head, and caught his gaze. “Oh.” Surprise colored her face, and she pushed back from the man, “He’s awake.”
The man cupped her face in his hands and kissed her firmly, “I love you.”
She smiled tightly, stepping away, “I love you too.” The woman started to walk towards him, a piteous expression on her face.
“Mama, wait!” A sharp voice said behind him as feet hammered on stairs, closer and closer, but before he could turn his stiff neck to look, another woman stood in front of him, younger than the other but the two shared several features. Sisters maybe, but hadn’t she said ‘mama’? They didn’t look far enough apart in age for that though. She had a tight smile on her face, which made the similarities between her and the red head eerie, despite her dark eyes and hair. “Hey, Gramps. How do you feel?”
He tried to answer, but no sound came out, not even a groan.
The red head sighed, “Laura, baby, he can’t really talk right now. Don’t stress him out.”
The brunette young woman spun to face her, “I am not!”
She got another long suffering sigh in return for her outburst, “He’s alright now, but you know it’s just a matter of time. It’s better to do this while he’s calm.”
The man put a hand on Laura’s shoulder, “The van just pulled up. It’s time, Laura.”
The woman protested, “But we can find Jamie, and he can…”
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” The man said harshly, but moved his hand to ruffle her hair, ‘Kit, why don’t you go out back and get some air.”
The red head moved to kiss the younger woman on the forehead, “This won’t take long. We’ve been preparing for a long time. Just remember that this is what he wanted.”
Laura sighed, but pulled away from the other two to stand in front of him. Tears glistened in her eyes, and he had a distant feeling that he’d once wiped tears from her face. She knelt down beside him, “I’m sorry we couldn’t stop this. I love you, Gramps.” She leaned in and hugged him so tightly it almost hurt before she walked past him and back down the stairs.
The woman looked to the man, “You good to do this? I can…”
“I’ll be fine, Maia. Will you?” The man hissed.
Maia nodded, “This has been a long time coming. I’ll be fine.” She knelt in front of him, “Professor, I’m going to help you feel better, I promise.”
Professor? He was a teacher? She nodded as if in response to his thoughts, and the man knelt next to him with a filled needle in his hand, “Don’t fight her, Chuck. You’ve given us enough trouble.”
“Logan.” Maia snapped, scowling.
Logan. The name stirred things in his head, and she started to look panicked.
The man, Logan, approached him, but looked at her, “Will they be able to keep him knocked out?”
Maia looked irritated, but kept her voice calm as she responded, “I managed it all in the paperwork and such. They’ll keep him in a coma.”
“Then let’s get this done.” Logan stuck the needle into his arm, and the last thing he saw was Logan wrapping his arm around Maia’s shoulder as he put a second needle in her arm.
When he opened his eyes, he didn’t hurt anymore, the house was repaired, Maia was still there, and, for the most part, he remembered himself. He was a mutant, Professor Charles Xavier. She smiled at him, “It’s good to have you back.”
He looked down at his hands, confused to find they were mostly unmarred from age, “What happened?”
“We made this together. You chose to restart in the time you were happiest.” Maia told him, walking to the window, “God, I’d forgotten how beautiful this place was. We really outdid ourselves.”
He rolled his wheelchair beside her, and stared out the window, “Miss Kinney, is that my sister?”
“Raven.” She said in agreement, shooting him a small smile, “I haven’t been ‘Miss Kinney’ for a while.”
Her glasses were still cracked, and her clothing was still dirty. The destroyed room had been the upstairs foyer of the X-mansion, his home. “What happened?”
The levity she’d been trying to foster died on her face, “Bad things.”
“I hurt people.” He whispered, the faint memories of screams coming to the surface.
Maia put a hand on his shoulder, “You can’t focus on that. Make this life better than the one you’ve lived.”
“How long do I have?”
She shrugged, “A few months maybe. To you it will feel like a lifetime. We made it that way.”
He remembered that vaguely, mentoring her in her dream-walking, helping her form the world that she could force his mind into when he started to lose it, a place so fortified that his power wouldn’t be able to penetrate it. Or rather, a place that he wouldn’t want to leave. He must have been farther along than he should have been for her to have been so upset. He saw something on the shadow of her face as they watched Hank walk across the green, “What did I do?”
She refused to look at him, “We don’t need to talk about that. I only came to shut the door behind you.”
“I hurt people.” She flinched at his assumption. He’d hurt people, but he knew her better than to push. There was a reason she was the one he’d trusted to rein him in. The woman wasn’t going to tell him anything. He looked at her ragged appearance, “How long have you been managing me?”
She blinked a few times, “Since 2006.”
“What year is it now?” He asked, loathing the look on her face.
“2017 is almost over.” Maia whispered.
He let out a gasp, “Eleven years.”
Maia finally turned to look at him, sliding her glasses off, and he saw the age in her eyes that her face repelled. Her face may have said she was no where near thirty, her eyes belied that she had lived the horrors of half a century. “No one ever told me my daughter was going to stay a teenager into her thirties. I’d love to say the last five years of hiding have helped mellow her, but really she’s just spent five years spoiling for a fight. I’m going to have my hands full with her and Logan.”
He felt like there was something he was supposed to tell her. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
She gave him a truly genuine smile, “We all love you, Professor.”
“Protect your family, Maia.” He told her, that thing he was supposed to tell her on the tip of his tongue.
She kissed the side of his head, “I am.”
When she pulled back he saw a drop of blood drip out of her nose, “You need to wake up.”
Maia wiped it away, “I know. But this is it. I shut the door, I can’t come back. Forgive me for stealing time.”
Something clicked in his brain, “Sentinels, Maia.”
“What?” She asked, more blood dripping from her nose.
“Sentinels.” He repeated, grasping at the threads of memory that were rapidly disappearing as Maia’s dreamworld took hold. “Our people are hurting. You have to help them, you and Logan.”
“I will.” She replied softly, blood pouring down her face. “We will.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Howlett.” He told her as footsteps sounded in the hall behind them.
She stepped away. “Goodbye, Professor. You don’t need to worry anymore. Love him, every part of him.”
“I will.” He said, and just as the door started to open and she turned to leave, he remembered something else, “Georgia. Go to Georgia.”
Covering her bloody face with a hand, Maia turned back around and gave a tight nod before she vanished from his mind forever and Erik walked in, just as achingly handsome as he’d been the day Charles had first met him. All at once the previous fifty years slipped away, and he left the fear and agony of all the mutants in the real world behind. For the first time in a long time, he was completely content.
In the real world, Logan carried Maia out the back door to join their daughter while a hospice nurse wheeled a comatose ‘Charlie Purcell’ out to a cheerily marked van to take him from the only place that had ever been his home.