Erik wakes suddenly and takes a deep breath, and realises that there is nothing.

There are no wires, there are no pipes. There are no handles or clocks or buttons or zips. There are screws or divets or washers or bolts. There are no rings or necklaces or bracelets or cufflinks, no knives or forks or spoons. There are no bedframes or window latches or taps or plugs. There are no guns and no knives.

And his mind is just as empty; there is no comfort there. There is no quiet reassurance, no auxiliary layer of confidence and belief and hope that keeps him afloat when his own fails. There is no murmur of companionship, no unspoken promise of acceptance.

There is no soul brushing against his own, warm and affectionate and intelligent and terrifyingly powerful.

He opens his eyes and sees the room that surrounds him, the clinical white and translucent cage that is everything he is not. It is unfamiliar and unwelcoming and it is his prison for a crime that he hasn't committed.

Before Charles, he had metal to fill the aching gaps. Now he has nothing, and he has no idea how the world has ended so suddenly.


Charles wakes to the sound of hammering on his door, and voices.

He stretches lazily, the late summer sun streaking in through the half-open curtains. He's alone in his bed, but that's not unusual – especially since he's starting sleeping late into the morning on weekends. It's a luxury that he's not often allowed himself but one that he's finding he enjoys, regardless.

He rolls out of bed ungracefully, and stumbles across the room whilst his brain tries its very hardest to wake up. The voice that's calling his name through the door is distinctly female, but doesn't sound like Moira – Raven, perhaps, trying out a new form. He smiles as he reaches for the handle – he's always liked analysing Raven's disguises with her.

He opens the door and his smile slides off his face. He's fairly sure that the look of shock on the three strangers' faces is mirrored in his own, but he has no time to ask before the woman with the red hair reaches out, and then he's gone.


He wakes for the second time with a headache, and opens his eyes to a bright light.

The room he's in now looks like a medical room of sorts – it's very clean, all brushed steel and shining screens. There are machines that he's never seen before, but they all seem to be hooked up to him somehow with electrodes placed strategically all over his body, but mostly across his head where it isn't covered with hair.

He takes a moment, breathes, and spreads it out logically. There are new mutants in his house. In any other circumstances he would be delighted but these mutants attacked him, and have him in a strange room and appear to be monitoring him whilst he's unconscious. He needs to talk to these people – most importantly, he needs to contact Raven because they'll be wondering where he is. He could have been knocked out for ten minutes, or ten hours, he has no idea.

He doesn't even know where he is right now.

He eases his mind out of the room, down the darkened corridors that feel uncomfortably familiar even though he's never been here before in his life. There's a lift just a few feet away and he follows it up, and his stomach drops.

These rooms don't exist – they can't. And yet here they are, nestled deep underneath his own childhood home, a whole network of secret places hidden away that he's fairly sure were never here before. Even his step-father didn't build anything as extensive as this.

He widens his search, takes in the whole house, and his mind stutters at the sheer number of mutants wandering through the rooms – mostly teenagers, but adults too. He can sense a telepath, a pyrokinetic, a weather manipulator, a cryokinetic, there's a girl who controls plasmoids and one who walks through walls and his heart burns at the thought of so many, safe under one roof.

But he can't find his own mutants. There's someone who feels so much like Alex, and another whose mind reads exactly like Sean, but he can't find Raven. He can't find Hank. He can't find Moira. And he can't find Erik.

The momentary affection that he felt for these people is quickly crushed in the sudden loss of all of his closest friends, and now all he can feel is anger. The screens that are attached to all of those machines flicker briefly, and they beep a little louder and a little more urgently. And he thinks,they've taken her, and thinks that he's been calm and logical for long enough now, and the machines shudder in their places. And he thinks,they've taken him, and they scream in warning and overload as he rips the electrodes from his body.

He heads straight for the most powerful mutant that he can find in the house – the telepath, an omega. The corridors are slightly disorientating at first but this is his home and he needs to find them, and behind him the floor is littered with sleeping students that fell as soon as he saw them.

The three of them stand when he walks into the lounge, and the man's fingers shoot up to his face, but Charles is quicker. Before they've even taken one breath they're frozen, held in place but completely aware and Charles is almost disappointed that this telepath, whose power is nearly on par with Erik's, would succumb to his mind tricks to easily – he had been expecting a fight. He hadn't expected her to look at him almost helplessly from her chair, unable to move.

He refuses to believe that now, it might be fury that's driving him now but he can feel them fighting, can feel their minds trying to push him out. This is neither serenity, nor any point in between. He is not being the better man; he is being desperate.

"Whilst I have several questions that I wish to ask you, ranging from who you are to what mutations you have, there is one matter that is rather more pressing and I will only ask you once," he says, and he casts a glance through the very surfaces of their minds, and feels a dark and unpleasant sense of satisfaction when he finds fear lacing their thoughts.

"Where are my students?" he asks coldly, and they stare back at him with wide eyes that are locked into place. "Where is my sister, and where is Erik Lensherr?"


"I'm sorry you woke up alone down there," Jean says as she hands him a glass of water. She hesitates for a moment as though unsure what to do, and eventually settles for sitting down and smoothing her skirt over her knees. "We didn't expect you to wake up so quickly – I put strong mental blocks in your mind to keep you unconscious."

"Not strong enough to contain me," he says, a little sharply. She flinches, and he immediately regrets it. This is not her fault. "Though I'm impressed that you managed to knock me out in the first place. I don't expect many people would be able to do that."

In truth, she managed because he was still half-asleep and completely surprised by the mental attack and they both know it, but she smileS graciously and accepts the kindness that he's offering as an olive branch.

"I'm still not sure if I believe you," Scott says. "A telepath as strong as you could easily be manipulating everything here."

"And you're completely right not to trust me without proof," Charles agrees, and turns his attention back to Jean. "I would have thought that your first priority once I was unconscious would be to search my mind, to find out my intentions, who I am. Just out of curiosity, why didn't you?"

"I tried, but you seemed to have put up a shield. I couldn't get through at all, it just bounced straight back to me," she says, and he shrugs, and leans forward in his seat and rests his elbows on his knees, his head within arm's reach of her.

"So read me now. I'll keep my mind open – feel free to search through whatever you need to in order to convince yourself. I won't resist."

She hesitates – Charles knows that she has almost limitless power, but she clearly has no idea how to use it. She raises her hands but then falters, looking to Scott and Storm for guidance. Their faces are unreadable, and Charles leans forward ever so slightly until his temple brushes her right index finger with his mind as open as he can make it without broadcasting to the entire house.

It's all of the encouragement that she needs and she takes hold and dives in, and Charles experiences somebody else taking charge of his mind for the first time in his life.

It's strange, being on the receiving end for once – though he'd like to think that he is more elegant when he searches through people's minds, more graceful and tactful about what he does. He can't blame her though; her powers are untrained and undeveloped and maybe, if he stays a little longer, he can help her with that – or at least found out why he hasn't already.

He feels it when she finds his most recent memories of the past month or two. She must have seen enough already to know that he is telling the truth but she takes hold of the scene where he dives into the water and wraps himself around Erik, pulling him upwards, and Charles can feel her shock rippling through his own mind. This, she was not ready for. She clearly wasn't expecting any of those memories, all of the ones leading up to Kennedy's address, and when he says there's good, too, I felt it, she jerks away as if she's been burnt.

She pulls out of his mind and away from his body with a gasp with a suddenness that leaves him feeling inexplicably empty, but only for a few scant seconds before he gathers himself enough to lean back and watch Jean.

"He's telling the truth," she says after a long while, and her voice shakes as she massages her temples slowly. "He's the Professor, and his last memory is of going to bed on the twenty-second of October, 1962, when he and Magneto were preparing to prevent a mutant called Sebastian Shaw from starting World War III with the Cuban Missile Crisis."

"Magneto?" Storm whispers urgently, leaning forward towards Jean, but Charles ignores her in favour of standing and walking to the window. The students are mostly outside, socialising in the autumn sun, and he feels a deep thrill of pride that he did this. It might be several decades down the line, but he's succeeded in creating a place where young mutants can come and be themselves, be safe and be accepted and never judged.

"Thirty-eight years," he says quietly, and pushes his hands deep in his pockets. "From your collective memories, I should think it's fair to say that an awful lot has happened in those thirty-eight years."

"You achieved a lot of great things," Storm says, as though it's supposed to be a consolation, and he frowns despite himself.

"And yet here I am, without the people that I love by my side. What must I have done to drive them away?" he asks, and though he could search to find answers he doesn't really want them. "Was it time and distance, or was it something that I did? Does the blame lie with me?"

"Professor..."

"And you still haven't answered my question," he interrupts sharply, and pulls his focus from the space in the trees where just hours ago, a behemoth of metal had turned to face him and shone so brightly that Erik's smile reflected the light straight back. And Charles had looked at him in the fading light, the last vestiges of Erik's psyche skating around the edges of his own mind and he had thought, we were made for this.

Scott, Jean and Storm are looking at him expectantly. Their expressions might say that they've forgotten which question he means, but their minds say otherwise. They were hoping that he would forget; but he won't. He never could.

"I have opened my mind to you and answered any and all questions that you have posed to me, and the least that you could do is extend me the courtesy of doing the same. So I will ask you once more, and after that, I will pull the answer from your minds. Where is Erik Lensherr?"


They won't let him change into normal clothes; they insist that he continue to wear the tracksuit and Jean checks him thoroughly for any trace of metal. They can't allow anything to sneak into Magneto's prison, they say. He's dangerous and he will bring about the destruction of mankind.

Charles doesn't believe them. His Erik, his beautiful broken Erik, is more likely to destroy himself than anybody else – more likely to have his friend press the barrel of a gun against his forehead and urge him to pull the trigger. But that Erik isn't who he's being taken to see; it seems that Erik died, many decades ago, and Magneto was reborn in his place and from what he's heard, Charles isn't sure if he's going to enjoy this encounter.

He has seen in the deepest, most secret corners of Erik's mind the potential for absolute greatness, one way or the other. And whilst he has seen Erik kill and torture, it has been out of vengeance for the mother that he still mourns, whose death he feels so responsible for, and to find out that Erik will at some point between 1962 and now succumb to the darkest urges in his soul – it feels like a failure on his own part, an inability to save Magneto from himself, and it makes his heart ache.

He asks them, whilst they are sat in the car that will take them to Erik, what happened to twist everything out of control, but they have no answers. Their knowledge is limited to the time that they have personally spent with him, and any extra information that he might have decided to impart to them on a whim; it seems that whatever happened was so distressing, or horrific, or heartbreaking that he didn't want people to know.

He begins to feel Erik after they've been driving for about half an hour – just a tickle at the edges of his consciousness, a faint imprint of what he's used to, and he probably wouldn't be getting even that if he wasn't reaching out so desperately and concentrating on nothing more than finding him and bringing him back home.

But there's something wrong, he realises as they get closer and the link strengthens. Erik is there but he isn't aware of anything – his mind is present, solid and warm and familiar but there's no thoughts buzzing through his head, no emotions, no dreams, nothing, and it brings a sick feeling to his stomach. Erik's mind is often quiet, but it is never silent.

Jean and Scott are silent in the car as they drive – it's entirely possible that they're having their own telepathic conversation and if he wanted, Charles could listen in but he doesn't care. He's too busy staring out of the window and watching the new world whizz by in a blur of green and silver, and his entire focus is on calling out to Erik until he gets the response that he desperately craves.


The plaque on the wall beside the main entrance is decorated with a triangle, a shield and an eagle and the text around it reads Department of Domestic Security and Defence.

They are keeping them in a prison and even if he has changed so much that Charles no longer recognises him, he knows that everyone else in the room (possibly the entire complex) feels his absolute fury when he finds out what this place is. He says nothing; he knows what Magneto has done and he won't try to excuse it. But he can't help the sudden onslaught of emotions nor keep them in check and he won't apologise for them, even as he watches the people around him wince and clutch at their heads.

"Take me to him," he says, and if there is power in his voice, he'll pretend otherwise.


They have built the perfect cage, and they say that it was Charles who helped design it, and hearing that makes the bile rise up to choke him.

"There has been an... incident, shall we say, since you visited," the doctor tells them as they approach the entrance chamber to Magneto's cell. "But nothing that you need to be worried about."

"What incident?" Charles asks sharply, and the doctor gives him an almost indulgent look from behind his glasses. This man has no idea who he is; they had agreed in the car to keep that to themselves but he's almost regretting it now.

"As I said, it's nothing to be worried about."

"What incident?" he repeats, but the doctor ignores him in favour of swiping his card against the panel in front of them. It beeps once or twice then slides open with a faint whooshing noise, and even as tense as he is, Charles can't help but marvel at how technology has advanced since yesterday. Since 1962. Erik would have excellent fun, now that everything seems to be made of metal. He's sure of it.

One of the guards in the antechamber comes to them as they walk in, passing them each through a pair of uprights that seem to scan the person between them; it makes Charles feel extremely awkward, and he focuses instead on the walkway that's rising up in front of him, a bridge to the monster that Erik will become. He can't see Magneto from here, not really – he can see him lying on the bed, but nothing more. He tests the link again, his own telepathic bridge to him, but it's as unresponsive as it has been since it first opened.

The doctor's highly-polished shoes click loudly on the walkway as he strides ahead of them, and Charles glances at Jean and Scott before following.

"As I said, there has been an incident, but there's no reason to be alarmed," the doctor calls over his shoulder. "Magneto may not appear as he usually does but I can assure you, it is definitely him."

"Wait, what?" Charles demands, and catches up the doctor as his heart stutters in his chest. "What did you say?"

The doctor regards him coolly, and the doors to Magneto's prison slide open in an invitation. The doctor doesn't respond – he just indicates to where Magneto is lying on the bed, dressed all in white with his hands folded over his chest.

Charles tries to say his name, but it doesn't come out right – the only noise that he makes is a choked-off sound of surprise and affection and anger and relief as he scrambles to Erik's side, dropping to his knees on the hard floor and presses two fingers to the smooth skin at Erik's temple, unlined with age and weariness.

"What happened?" he snarls and glares up at the doctor, ignores the patent looks of shock on Jean and Scott's faces. The doctor shrugs, and leans against the glass table where there's a game of chess set out. It's halfway through the game.

"When the guard on duty brought him his breakfast, his body had changed appearance. He kept insisting that he had no idea where he was, and that he wasn't Magneto," the doctor says flatly. "He became violent when the guards came into the prison, so we sedated him."

"This is more than sedation," Charles corrects, because even in such close contact and with his mind thrown right open and pressing in on Erik's from all sides, he's still not getting a response.

"It was only supposed to be sedation – he should have woken up after four hours. We don't know why he's still unconscious."

"And when you came to work and found a man nearly forty years younger than the one that you're used to, did it not occur to you to perhaps contact the people responsible for putting him in here in the first place?" he snaps, furiously, and the doctor takes an uncertain step back. "Was it not perhaps the better idea to consult those of us who are considered experts in this field, rather than just blithely assuming that there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary, and you'd just sedate him and carry on as normal?"

"Of course we knew something wasn't right," the guard growls, the one who had put them through the scanner. "But we have our own systems here – not everything is run by mutants, you know. We already told you, we did the DNA test. Didn't see any reason to get you guys involved."

"There was every reason to get us involved, Mr Laurio, because you are out of your depth here and have absolutely no idea what you're dealing with here," Charles says, and turns away before the anger can rise any further. "Now don't interrupt me."

Both the doctor and the guard make noises of displeasure but Charles ignores them, satisfied that Jean and Scott will keep them quiet. Beneath his fingers, Erik's skin is warm. He reaches up to touch his other temple and pushes, but there's no response. His mind is still there, still unfractured and undamaged, but it's not active. It's as though once sedated, Erik made the conscious decision to stay that way, to lock himself down and block out what's happening outside. And once Charles flicks through his most recent memories, he can see why – the feeling of nothing upon first waking, of being locked in a cell for a crime he hadn't committed, of the hatred from people that he'd never met before and the ache. The ache in Erik's chest, the lack of everything, the lack of metal and Charles and –

Wake up, he thinks, the hardest that he's ever directed a thought at a single person, and Erik's consciousness twitches beneath him. And there is it, the flicker of activity, the gentle murmur of emotion that he's used to feeling when Erik's asleep. But it's not enough, it will never be enough.

Wake up, he persists, even as Erik's mind stirs into consciousness. Wake up, you stupid man. I'm here and you're safe, now wake up, wake up,wake up–.

"Ow, ow, Charles, stop it!" Erik shouts, surging awake and clutching at his head with his eyes flickering back and forth wildly, his whole body curling up on the bed and his knuckles white with the pain. "Charles!"

He lets go, fingers tingling and mind racing, and the prison is silent but for his own heavy breathing.

"Charles," Erik croaks, and that's all the prompting that he needs to take hold of Erik's head in his hands again and push back in, but so gently this time. He can feel the contentment flowing through the link, his overwhelming gratitude that Charles is here, and his confusion at the whole predicament.

"Oh, my friend, what have they done to you?" he whispers, and he can feel the stares of the other four people in the room, hot and judgemental on the back of his neck, but they're unimportant. In the grand scheme of things, right now, they are as insignificant as the dust in the room.

"Sixty-four hours, I couldn't feel you anywhere," Erik gasps, and he squeezes his eyes shut and leans forward to press his forehead to Charles' as though he's trying to sink right in. "I thought I was alone. I thought you must have left me."

"I've told you before, you're not alone. You never will be," he says, viciously, and projects his own most recent memories directly to Erik by way of some vague explanation. He can't ease Erik's mind but this will help, make him see that he's been trying. He wasn't abandoned; just displaced in time.

He turns to Jean and Scott as Erik processes the memories, keeps his hands pressed to his skin and keeps his mind open, implicit permission for Erik to climb inside and bury himself in Charles' emotions if that will calm him at all. And they look at him, look at them both, as though they're waiting for the world to end.

"We're taking him back to the mansion," he says and they glance between themselves, and at the doctor and the guard, and Charles knows what they're going to say before they've even finished thinking about it. But he won't hear it, not now. This is not something that he is willing to negotiate.

And he wants so desperately to be the better man, to never use this power for his own benefit and to never use it to harm humans – but he is finding it increasingly difficult as they continue to treat him like someone that they can't trust, someone who will turn on them. An enemy.

"I am taking him home," he says slowly, and he hates himself more and more with every syllable. "I would strongly advise that you do not attempt to stop me."

The humans may have no idea what he means but Jean and Scott do, and they nod without trying to persuade him otherwise. But even Charles helps Erik to his unsteady feet and walks him down the walkway with an arm wrapped around his waist, he can feel their gazes burning into his mind.

These people, who claim to be his allies and students and friends are looking at them with a mixture of pity and disgust, and Charles begins to wonder what choices he and Erik have made in their lives that would lead them to this moment.


The drive back to the mansion is oppressively quiet; as with the journey to the prison, Charles knows that Jean and Scott are speaking telepathically, but he has no more desire to listen to what they are saying than to engage in conversation with them out loud. He is fairly sure that whatever they are discussing will only make him angry, and he's experienced enough displeasure today. The last thing that he needs is another argument.

Instead, he wraps his fingers around Erik's wrist and his mind around Erik's own, and tells he has no idea what is going on but he will find out, and he will fix this. And Erik says yes, he knows that Charles will – he has absolute faith in him.

Charles is stuck between wondering what he did to inspire such devotion, and wondering at what point his and Erik's minds became so thoroughly entwined that he is struggling to separate their thoughts.


They tell me that Moira has moved to Scotland and has set up her own base of operations there, and Sean's staying with her at the moment. His daughter's here, at the School – her name is Theresa and she has the same poiwers, Charles says as the car crawls up the drive towards the mansion, familiar and strange all at once. Hank is trying to get into government; he's in talks to become the first ever Secretary of Mutant Affairs.

And I expect he'll be terribly successful at it.

Well, we can hope. Alex was last seen on the island of Genosha, but nobody has heard from him in months.

And Raven? Erik prompts, his eyes curious. Charles looks away and out of the window as his chest goes cold at the thought of everything that he's been told his sister has become; the path that she's chosen to follow that was laid out for her by Erik.

Raven has gone, he says, and until he can shake off the sense that he should be mourning her, that's as far as he's willing to discuss it.


Storm introduces them to the students as Max Eisenhardt and Francis Pembroke, and says that they are old friends that will be staying with them for a short while. The students, on the whole, are relatively disinterested and seem to quickly forget about them, going about their business as usual. Charles wonders just how different their reactions would be if they knew their true identities.

They have lunch with the students, between classes. And it's heartbreaking – surrounding him on all sides is his dream come to life, everything that he could have ever wanted in one place and flourishing despite the humans' persistent hostility. Yet it's not everything that he's ever wanted, because somewhere along the line Erik becomes Magneto and he stops being so terrifyingly important to Charles.

Jean takes him away from Erik as classes restart, and leads him into the bowels of the school and to a room so large that Charles has no idea how there's space for it underneath the mansion. She tells him that it's a machine called Cerebro, and it amplifies his power over the whole world. He thinks of Hank, and asks who built it – and she says you did, Professor, with Magneto's help, and his stomach clenches.

Erik isn't where he left him when he finally emerges from the underground levels – but it doesn't take long to find him in a room in the near-empty eastern wing, far away from the students. He's sitting on the bed, staring at his hands when Charles arrives – the room is bare and lifeless and the light filtering in through the open curtains is weaker than on the other side of the building, and it casts everything in a pallid glow. Erik looks up as Charles walks in, and he looks lost and utterly helpless.

"Scott said that this will be my room until they fix this," he says, and his voice is hoarse and unsure. "I don't have anything to put in it. No clothes, no trinkets, no research. I have nothing."

Charles crosses the room and pulls Erik to his feet, and guides him from the room with a firm hand in the small of his back. They walk together to the west wing, where the sun is warm, and Charles doesn't look back at the empty bedroom.


(part 2 coming soon)