Chapter Text
He's been careful. Careful to guard his location, his identity, his heart—
But now there's someone. In his kitchen.
The someone is currently placing food into his fridge, so Erik can only see a tiny bit of him and the frame of his wheelchair.
"For heaven's sake, Erik, there was one carton of milk in here. And it expired last week," Charles mutters, wheeling backward and closing the fridge door.
"Hello, Erik, you can put the knife down now."
Erik swallows and tries a small smile. The knife behind Charles floats back into place. There's a lot he wants to ask him, but he settles for, "What are you doing in my kitchen?"
Charles smiles that soft smile Erik remembers.
The silence that hangs between them should be tense, but Erik finds he's unable to think about it.
"How have you been, Erik?" Charles' gaze meets his and Erik feels that familiar shock, the uneasy fear of having his secrets revealed.
"You wouldn't have to ask me," he replies. Charles nods, a quiet chuckle under his breath. "Not without your permission, I wouldn't," he says.
Erik looks away, trying to find something, anything, so he doesn't have to deal with this rush of emotion he gets when he sees Charles. His gaze lands on the wheelchair, and immediately he regrets.
"You should leave." Erik's tone is decisive, snapping his gaze from the wheels to his friend. It takes everything in him not to stumble back when Charles' gaze pierces his again. For a moment, Charles looks like he wants to say something, but then he looks down and makes his way toward the door.
"Take care, Erik."
"Erik!"
The person mentioned whirls around, random metal objects pointed toward the staggering, defenseless man.
Even in this chaotic, uncontrolled, wild environment (he's trying to take over the city here, no biggie) Erik's features soften.
"How'd you find me?"
He swears he sees Charles' left eye twitch.
"I heard a giant explosion and thought, well who could that be? And so I'm here."
It's then that Erik notices Charles isn't in a wheelchair. He looks like he's in a lot of pain and he's trembling and slipping, but he's walking. Erik sighs, the metal objects dropping. Every time he promises to stop stopping for this dumbass it doesn't work.
-
"Checkmate."
Charles chuckles. "Cheater," he accuses. Erik's eyes widen even as the frown lines across his forehead smoothen.
"Am not,"
"I was distracted!"
That isn't really my fault!"
-
It's his fault.
The atmosphere is tense, the air silent. Erik holds the ice pack to his head, letting his injured arm rest on the sofa arm as he recalls the feeling of punching that man over and over and over because it felt so good to physically let it all out.
Now he just feels terrible, because Charles is looking down at him in disappointment. Erik wishes they were playing chess instead, like old times. They'd stopped playing chess months ago.
When he left Charles in Cuba, crying out in pain from that bullet.
"So." Charles lets the word hang in the air for a moment before continuing. "What happened?"
Erik locks eyes with him for a moment before answering. "Why should I tell you? You can read my mind." Charles directs a look at Erik's bloody lips for a second, no doubt about to berate him for speaking and potentially harming himself further. Erik waits for Charles to lift a finger to his temple, to take the invitation.
Charles' answer holds no hesitation. "No."
Erik doesn't meet his gaze. "Why not?"
Silence is worth a thousand words, but this time it's just fucking awkward silence.
Erik is someone who is careful. He's only in the mansion to patch up, and then he's slipping away from Charles' office and out into the night. Erik stops for a moment to look back.
"You know, our doors are always open for you." Charles pauses, briefly looking uncertain for a moment before adding, "as are mine."
Erik looks at the person he's held closer to his heart than anyone else. I'll come back, is on the tip of his tongue.
"Take care," is what comes out instead.
-
Apparently, neither of them really took care. As evidenced by the near world domination and Charles' limp body in the backseat of Erik's car.
Hank opens the door of the mansion when they arrive, ready to lash out, but Charles just shakes his head at him.
Once Charles is inside, Erik turns to Hank, who expects anger and an admittedly eloquent speech about him not embracing his identity, his ability, why he isn't blue. But—
"Take care of him," is all he says.
Hank adjusts his glasses and nods, offering the fellow mutant a thin smile.
Erik doesn't know why he's doing this, but he stares at the giant exhibit. Bits of broken things recovered from concentration camps, donated by families, with passages of text describing them.
There's a new exhibit, apparently, that features mutants. Erik steps in and is immediately flooded by a whole amount of memories he buried long ago.
The concentration camps.
The place where the number—his one and only identity—had been burned onto his skin.
His mother dying, because of him.
The sheer anger, the desperation he felt. The helplessness of being too late.
The metal plaque rattles as he draws in a deep breath to calm himself down. The metal around him stops shaking, in time to avoid unwanted attention.
"Magneto?"
Apparently, not enough.
Erik clenches his jaw and turns to see a girl there—old enough to be a teenager, he thinks. She doesn't seem terrified, just...curious.
"Yeah." The word slips out before he can stop it. Just hear her out, a voice in his head says. (It suspiciously sounds a lot like Charles.)
"Woah. I didn't expect to see you today."
A sigh. "What do you want."
She grins. "Nothing. Just...to see the guy my parents pretty much call their hero is cool. I mean, destroying all the non mutants seems a bit extreme, but..." She winces. "Sorry. Hope you like the exhibit."
"Are you a mutant?"
"Yes and no. It depends. I've always thought of a question I'd ask you if I met you. It's about the whole...human-mutant conflict situation." A glance in Erik's direction seems to reassure her that he wasn't about to slam a metal pike into her, so she continues. "It's just, what really defines a human and what defines a mutant?"
Erik opens his mouth to argue, but nothing comes out.
"Both my parents are mutants. I didn't get anything flashy, just-" She exposes the markings on her right arm.
"I was born with them. They look like tattoos, so lots of people don't believe I'm a mutant. I know the whole X-gene and everything, but..." She trails off.
This is a trap. Erik takes a step backward, glaring at her. Her earnest expression looks back at him, and it reminds him of Charles trying to convince him that "there is good in the world, I just wish I could help you see it!"
He runs. Dashes out of the exhibit and straight into a group of people.
"Hey—"
"Isn't that Magneto?!"
"It's the mutant!"
"Someone call the police!"
Screams of terror and people rushing in from all sides assault him. He's shoving left and right, dashing, dodging.
Erik doesn't stop running until he's in an open park, gasping for air.
Call it instinct, impulsivity, anything, but he whips out his phone and breathlessly tells a somewhat confused Charles that he's coming over. His friend barely has time to get out a word before Erik hangs up.