A/N: Inspired by a review left on my Cherik drabble, 'Wisdom And Age Actually Don't Mix,' in which dramalover914 says, "At first I was thinking that Erik would go to the beach and save Charles, knowing it wouldn't change anything, just for the sake of feeling like he saved him. But I guess that's another story for another time :) "

And thus, I typed up this little drabble to play such a thing out, because the notion is sad-but-sweet. C:

"I have this mutation where I go backward and forward in time sporadically, and sometimes by will, if I have an exact moment to return to," the young lad explains with a shrug. "…You really want something like that in your 'Brotherhood'? 'Cause I gotta say, man, too many humans have tried to round me up to use my power for themselves, so I can't help but be a little suspicious of ya."

"And I understand that completely," Magneto nods, flashing a minute smile through his wrinkles before touching a leather gloved hand to the older teen's shoulder. "Because I've been through the same thing myself. But in the Brotherhood, you don't have to worry about that. We offer protection and longevity, as well as privacy and freedom to use your abilities as you please. And… we plan on rising to power above the human race, for the better of mutanity."

The time traveling mutant grins. He's nineteen; fresh blood like a lot of the ones Magneto has been recruiting, beating his rival to the punch every time. And this boy in particular is a golden nugget amongst stones, and he's proud to have found and gotten to this boy before Professor X had.

"That sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Sure, man, I'll join you. I saw you move some stuff to get those guards off of me; what can you do?" the boy asks as he starts to walk alongside Magneto.

"I can bend and move metals, of course. Namely magnetic ones, but many metals will do. I can do just about anything with metal if I so choose," he relays in his tired voice. He's nearing his seventies in a few years, and he isn't too pleased about it. "And you will soon meet a great many of our brethren who have powers even more impressive than mine. My right-hand woman, Mystique, can shift into any person she chooses, voice included, for example."

"Really? That's so fucking cool, man. But, hey, I bet you didn't save me and give me the offer for free. I know there's a catch. You wanna use my power just once, right? Not like the humans do – harness or whatever – but you would like to, wouldn't you? Go back in time, just once. I bet you even have a time and day and year in mind, right off the bat," the young mutant says, snapping his fingers on the word 'right' for emphasis.

Magneto tries to shake his head and lie. He starts to say, "No, no, of course not –" but the young lad is sending him a look, and Magneto sighs, relenting. "I don't know what good it will do. I believe in the Butterfly Effect, and that speaks of how –"

"No matter what you do, some things are meant to happen. Yeah, I know that. And a lot of the times, when I go back in time and forward again to the time I left, nothing changed, as if I had never went there at all, and no one remembers a thing. And it sucked, because I tried to ditch classes and then make up for them again in high school, but it didn't work out that way. But still, man, for the sake of seeing something in the past, maybe feeling like you could change things… Wouldn't you do it? I have," the boy goes on, and he's looking at Magneto rather oddly, as if he is aware of Magneto's regrets. But that's absurd; the boy couldn't possibly know Magneto's exact regrets. However, every old man has regrets, and the boy could be exaggerating that.

Magneto sighs and runs a hand through his gray hair. "You caught me. But the question is, my boy, would you let me do it? Go back just once?"

"Well, sure; I mean, you just saved my ass, and you're letting me into cult-that-isn't-a-cult," he teases. "So yeah, sure. I'll have to come with you because I can only take others if they're touching me, but if you tell me when and where, I can get us there. We'd only have about five minutes, though, depending on how far back you wanna go. I can't keep great distances stable, and I can't go further back than the Depression. Believe me, I tried; I wanted to go to the Roaring '20s, but I couldn't. It sucked."

The boy is a talkative one, but Magneto simply nods along with the lad's words. "I have a time in mind. When we're back at my base of operations, would you take me then?"

"Yeah, of course. Sooner I pay you back for kicking those guys' asses, the better!"

XXX

Five minutes is all he needs.

They touch ground in the line of trees near the crashed Blackbird on sandy Cuban soil. The boy is shock still, taking in the sights of the '62 Cuban Missile Crisis in effect.

"Man, did they ever lie to me in school…" he whispers. "One big fucking government cover-up, huh? It was mutants, not the Russians and Cubans, and all because of some guy with a crazy WWIII idea in mind?"

"Hush!" Magneto hisses, spinning on the boy and pinning him to a nearby palm tree with a hand to the boy's chest. "I need to know at what point we're at, and if I have time to save –"

And right then and there, Shaw emerges from the submarine, metal cuffs on his hands keeping him lifted in the air, and using the metal trinkets on his suit, Magneto watches himself – young, unwise, power-hungry after killing the one man who was a roadblock in his life for so long – levitate down to the sand, and call out to all the mutants on the beach.

And then Magneto's head skips a beat in his chest,. Feeling as it has stopped completely, when he sees Charles walk out onto the beach. Walk, on both his legs as easily as he should always be able to do and yet cannot in present-day time.

Magneto secures his helmet to his head. He can't have this young, devastatingly handsome Charles hear his thoughts, know where he came from, know who he is. And in his cape and cloak, he's an enigma, and it works for him.

Breathing out cautiously, he watches part of the scene unfold, and he curses himself for not listening to Charles at the time, for not dropping the missiles when Charles clearly knows so much better, and yet, in the same token, he knows that if he had to do it over again, he would still try to kill the humans in those ships, but he also knows that he would have killed Moira McTaggert first. (He resents that bitch more than anyone on his beach, himself included, which is saying quite a lot.)

And then, here it comes, the moment that Moira fires the first shot.

Magneto rushes forward, exposing himself from the trees, everything happening too quickly to be calculated. One of the stray, deflected bullets narrowly misses the time traveler's shoulder, and Magneto knows that if the young lad gets hurt, this could all fall apart.

So he wastes no time.

He brushes past Beast and Havok and Banshee and tears the gun from Moira's hands from a distance, the metal flying to pieces, becoming useless. She screams, staring at him, yelling something like, "Who are you? Where did you come from?" but Magneto ignores her.

His younger self stares in shock at him, before sending an appreciative half-grin. "I don't know who you are, but you must be a mutant. Where you on Shaw's ship? And your helmet…"

And still, Magneto ignores them, even himself, and he looks to Charles, whom is panting heavily and staring with confusion. Magneto stands before Charles, gaze wavering, and he murmurs, "You would have been paralyzed, Charles. One of those bullets would have struck you. But at least I was able to save you, just this once. Just to say that I had saved you, just to know that I could have done something more to save you."

There are tears in his old, tired eyes, and, bless Charles even at this age, because he slowly nods like he understands, and says, "Thank you, Stranger. I will remember this."

Erik is frowning now, jerking backward on Magneto's shoulder and demanding that he explain himself.

But now, there's no time left. Magneto has come, he has seen the efforts Charles went through to stop him, he was able to bring Moira's actions to an end, and now, there is nothing left to do but go home.

"We need to leave; I can feel time pulling me back," the young mutant says, gripping Magneto's other arm. His form is beginning to shift and fade in and out, like watercolors being smudged and running into one another. Through the haze of them both being brought back, the young man says, "I hope this helped you in some way, man."

And then, in a nauseating blink of an eye, they're back in present time again, at Magneto's hideout. Magneto steels himself and nods, slipping his helmet off. "Yes, in fact, it has. Thank you, lad. You may go to your room and rest, now; traveling so far must have been tiring."

"Not to mention that heat," the nineteen-year-old tries to joke. It falls flat, and he shakes his head. "Anyway, yeah, I'll be going to bed now. …Uh, take care, okay? And don't let this fuck with your head; you did what you wanted, and whether it stuck or not, who knows? And that's something, right?"

"Absolutely," Magneto says quietly, and soon, the boy is gone and Magneto is left to himself. He sighs, closes his door from a distance, and drops to sit on his bed. For all he knows, Charles will be paralyzed again anyhow form some other incident, and he indirectly gave himself the idea for his odd clothing because he saw himself, and multiple other things occurring with the same end results by different means, but he honestly doesn't care.

Magneto had been able to rescue Charles just this once, and even if it didn't do a thing and it had been as though he were never even there, he can at least take solace and find peace in the feeling of saving Charles' life (or part of it) for just a fleeting moment.