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“Yes— love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason, but the love which I— while dying— first experienced when I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an object.” — war and peace, leo tolstoy
His older self must catch him staring.
“Do you want to talk to him?” he asks, following Charles’s gaze to where it’s fixed on the man he knows is Erik. He’s hardly recognizable, but Charles would know those eyes and that furrowed forehead and those little lines by his mouth anywhere.
“Could I?” Charles has to force it out. He can’t seem to breathe around the mass of feeling in his chest, the knowledge that he and Erik are together here. Whether by force, necessity, or something else.
His older self nods, and clears his throat. “Erik,” he says, “We have a visitor.” He smiles at Charles, gentle and reassuring. “Go on. Just touch his mind, like you’ve done with mine.”
Slowly, like a child taking its first steps, wobbly and uncertain, he reaches out. Oh, oh, he could weep. Erik’s mind is the same as it’s always been, sharp lines and steel edges and roaring waves of emotion, beautiful and pure and too strong for his own good.
Ten years since he’s felt it.
Erik looks up at him, unable to stop a small, surprised gasp. “I thought you might try to reach out,” he says, and he’s almost shy when he offers Charles that half smile. It’s so familiar, it nearly disarms him.
“Hi, darling,” Charles breathes, because he can’t think to say anything else.
“Hello,” Erik says, almost a whisper.
Charles has always feared he wouldn’t see what old age looks like on Erik, not even in a mugshot or on television. He figured he’d hear that he’d finally gotten himself killed one of these days, and Erik would be frozen in his memory young and perfect, skin unlined.
He can’t look away.
They stand there for a moment, staring at each other. Charles’s future and Erik’s past.
He’s gorgeous, Charles thinks. Weathered, but with those beautiful, bright eyes. There’s still passion burning behind them, and the gaze he’s set on Charles feels warm. Maybe even loving.
“Charles said ‘73 was a difficult year,” Erik says. There’s a kindness to his tone, somehow avoiding patronizing.
Charles is acutely aware of his gangly, greasy hair, the dark circles under his eyes. Even in this projection, he thinks his hands may be shaking, the withdrawal still creating a buzzing feeling at his temples, bleeding into his awareness even now. If his powers were stronger, if he’d ever tried this before, he could probably project a better version of himself. But it’s too late.
“It’s been a hard few years,” he admits, breaking their eye contact.
“I can tell how much pain you’re in,” says Erik. He reaches out to touch Charles’s hand, but thinks better of it.
“I’m not–”
Erik shakes his head.
“It’s in your eyes.” Before Charles can respond, Erik smiles sadly. “I’ve known you your entire life, you know.”
It hits Charles like a crack of thunder:
The reality that he and Erik are really, truly going to grow old. That these versions of them have known each other far, far longer than they lived without each other.
The knowledge that his life is doomed to be shared with this impossible man, who hurt him and left him and twisted up his insides into something black and rotting. He’s spent a decade trying not to need him, but he’s never going to get away from him.
It’s suffocating, and terrifying, and all he can think is–
Thank God.
Fuck, thank God.
It’s always felt alien, the way he feels about Erik. Too big for his body, too much to hold in his heart. But finally, finally, it makes sense.
Because at the end of the world, it’s him. It’s always going to be him.
His eyes are hot with tears – back with Logan, at the mansion, he must be crying for real.
“How do I survive it?” he asks, voice cracking painfully. “How do we…”
“You don’t need me,” Erik says softly. A protest rapts its fist against Charles’s chest, but he keeps it at bay. “I know it feels like you do. I… I felt the same way. But you go on. You do incredible things.”
“Without you?”
“All of it. Without me.” Erik steals a glance at Charles’s older self, who is moving quietly about the room, talking in low tones to the girl helping Logan.
“I tried to do it without you. I couldn’t.” It feels absurd to say it to this man who both is, and isn’t, his Erik. It’s too vulnerable, something he shouldn’t trust him with. But there’s a bravery that comes from being at the bottom: how much more can he really be hurt?
“You can, Charles. You did.”
I don’t want to. Have you ever considered that I don’t want to? He doesn’t say it. He’s probably never voiced it outloud, that he really doesn’t want anything for himself anymore.
“When I open my mind, it… all that pain. I can’t hold it all, I’m not strong enough, and I just want to turn it off. ” He’s so tired, too tired to hold that all up. You made me want to help them and do better and now it just hurts and I can’t do fucking anything. He doesn’t say that either.
“Darling,” Erik says, for the first time, like it’s spilled out of him. For the first time since… and if Charles closes his eyes, it’s his voice, it’s his Erik. He didn’t know how much he cherished the sound. “You are so much stronger than you know.” It’s so similar to something Charles told him once, and he wants to yell I’m not. “It hurts right now, but you will survive it. You survive it by connecting. By reaching out. Don’t take that from yourself. When they put me in that prison, when they took that from me, that’s when… When things changed. You have to reach out.”
At once, the parallel presents itself: Erik, down in that concrete cell, so alone, and Charles, shoring up walls around his mind, passing each day in a haze.
But Charles has a choice. Erik didn’t.
“Charles,” Erik says, not impatiently. “Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes.” It’s true as he says it. “I can… I can try.”
“That’s good enough. That’s all we need from you.” Erik smiles at him again. It’s hard to decipher his feelings like this, with all of his concentration on keeping the connection, but Charles thinks he feels proud. “You’ll have to go soon. Listen to me carefully, alright?”
“Alright.”
“I didn’t mean to leave you, that day. I know it… I know that betrayal never fully goes away. And I’m sorry. I told you that, eventually, but I should’ve said it sooner.” You did say it sooner, Charles wants to say, but doesn’t dare interrupt. “I never stopped loving you, Charles. I never will, my entire life. I’m not… I wasn’t good at loving. I didn’t know what it meant or what to do with it. And I know you thought for so long that I’d stopped, or I never loved you in the first place. But I loved you since you pulled me from the Gulf, Charles. I want you to remember that.”
“That’s not…” Charles shakes his head, stumbling backwards. This Erik has been kind, affectionate. But he knows better, he knows. Erik might be sorry, but he doesn’t love him. You don’t do what he’s done to someone you love. “That’s not true. Maybe you two… Reconciled, but that’s not. My Erik… He doesn’t love me.”
“I know you’ve had to believe that, Charles,” says Erik, sounding so measured as Charles’s insides churn, anger and heartbreak and hope at once. “But I do. It’s the only thing I kept with me, all these years. When I was in prison, I used to talk to you, in my head. There are so many things I wish I told you.”
“He had his chance to tell me!” Charles is shouting, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t have time for games. He doesn’t have time to be toyed with. This isn’t why Logan brought him here. “We broke him out! He had his chance! And he— he ran away again. He doesn’t…” He’s hardly had time to process it, that Erik’s gone and left him again, but it hurts like burning, and this is all too much. He was wrong to think it couldn’t hurt more.
Erik’s face crumbles, an expression he’s only seen maybe once in a moment of vulnerability. “Read my mind. Please. When you go back… You can’t give up on me. If this war never happens, and we never come back together— you need to find me. I need to know you’re going to find me.”
Charles shakes his head fiercely. He's too afraid that it's not true. That he’ll reach inside and find an empty pit where once, a lifetime ago, he felt an outpour of affection when they touched.
"Charles,” Erik says, desperate in a way Charles guesses he isn’t often. He's a leader to these people — but here, in front of Charles, he’s stripping his walls down. “I need you to look.”
It’s a strain on his powers. Like he'd once taught Erik, he draws just enough of his rage and all of the small well of hope their conversation has bred. Uses it all to push, weaving into the steel labyrinth of Erik’s mind.
For a moment, Charles is transfixed. He’s wandering a maze, surrounded on all sides by hedges entirely made of thorns. Upon further inspection, there are a few tiny roses, just beginning to bloom.
He touches a bud — and feels thick steel beneath his fingertips.
Under his touch, it begins to unfurl, petals forming. Beautiful, he thinks.
He’s only entrenched himself in someone's mind like this one other time, when he’d picked Moira’s mind clear of memories of him. But this place knows him. Knows his fingerprints.
He hears Erik’s voice in his mind, almost like it's coming from overhead. Charles. Keep looking.
There's a furnace burning somewhere, a center of light and heat from inside the maze. He follows the warmth until he’s standing in front of a hearth. When he looks around, he’s no longer in the maze at all.
It's a room, he realizes. It’s his study.
There’s a chess game set on the table. He knows it immediately: this game sits untouched in his real study.
Erik’s playing black. He's winning.
Charles has an eidetic memory — and he knows undoubtedly that each piece is in its right place.
This room feels warm, safe, home. And there in front of him is a young man, green-eyed, in a soft black turtleneck. Grinning, not unlike a shark.
“Sweetheart,” Erik breathes, stepping towards him. “Where have you been?”
Promise you'll find me, he’d said.
The scene dissolves.
Erik’s in front of him, older again. He wants to go back, wants to see his Erik again, maybe take his hand.
“Fuck,” Charles croaks, swiping his eyes with the back of his hand. It doesn’t feel wet, doesn’t feel like anything, because he’s not really there. But he knows he’s crying. “You really remember everything. Even now.”
In that bright corner where Charles had once sought memories of Erik’s mother — there’s a place for him there.
“I told you. You’re the only thing I keep with me.” Erik moves to touch his cheek. His hand passes through, like Charles is a ghost, but Charles smiles weakly, letting him know it’s alright.
“I’ll find you,” he chokes out.
“Then I’ll see you again.” Erik smiles back at him, and his younger self is there, just behind his eyes.
The older Charles has wheeled closer. Maybe he’s watched the whole thing. “Go make something better,” he says. “Together, if you can.”
“I’ll try my best.” Charles takes a deep breath, taking one last look at both of them. His older self takes Erik’s hand, lacing their fingers. “Good luck,” he tells them, and closes his eyes to concentrate, crossing his connection with Logan back to his own time.
When Charles opens his eyes, he’s in his wheelchair, the itch of dried tears on his cheeks.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Logan asks.
“I found what I needed,” he says. “I know what I have to do.”
(later)
Logan watches as Charles puts the Cerebro helmet on. He still looks pale and drawn, but with a quiet determination to him.
This time, Cerebro seems to sing to him. Charles lets out a small, relieved gasp as he dials in. Logan has always been able to feel the pulse of the Professor’s telepathy when it’s amplified like this. It wraps all around them, impossible to describe, raw power spindling out like life beginning. It’s working this time.
Charles smiles, then. A real smile, the only one Logan has seen since he arrived in 1973.
“Oh, darling,” Charles says. “There you are.”