After Cuba, Charles seemed to just stop talking. It happened slowly so that they almost didn't realise it, but by the time they're reached the mansion again Charles seemed to have almost completely shut down in something like a coma. Raven, as soon as she recognised what was happening had warned them, told them that Charles sometimes just went inside himself, shut himself off from the outside world to protect himself. They had asked for more details, trying to understand but she had shrugged and just said 'telepath thing' and they had had to accept it, because really, as much as Charles had helped them, they knew nothing about telepathy worked.

Erik had at first been angry at Charles, because anger had always been his most comfortable protection, but he couldn't stay angry at Charles for long, especially not when he was so clearly suffering.

Raven started to really worry after a day and a half, because it had never gone on for so long, and Charles was clearly still deep in. This, of course, meant that Erik started to worry in earnest and he gave up trying to convince himself that Charles was okay.

Erik spent the next day redoing the wiring with Hank. It doesn't provide enough of a distraction; he's had to redo wiring before.

On the fifth day Erik tried shouting Charles! In his mind before thinking that if Charles had retreated into himself to repair, or whatever it was that he was doing, shouting in his head probably didn't help. Instead Erik sat by Charles' bed and tried whispering, or approximating mind whispering, he wasn't quite sure how one mind whispered. He understood shouting, as far as Charles had said it was allowing one thought to completely encompass you. He tried whispering about how everyone in the mansion needed him, about how the kids needed their professor back and Raven needed her brother back and he might have even said that he needed his friend back and he was sorry for the whole coin thing with Shaw, because really, that was what had caused this, wasn't it? If he had known that was what had been going to happen, he promised, he never would have done it. He still would've killed Shaw somehow, they both knew that, but he wouldn't have let Charles be hurt.

On the sixth day Erik is angry. Not at Charles, but at the world. He hasn't truly cared for someone since his mother and now that he does, now that he had managed to find some semblance of happiness the world saw fit to take it from him. He hates and rages until he is exhausted and returned to Charles' bedside to apologise for frightening the children.

On the seventh day Erik caught Moira communicating with her CIA bosses. Moira was left terrified after one talk with Erik.

On the eighth day Charles began to wake up and Erik didn't leave his bedside. By the end of the day he was awake enough to project pain when he saw Erik (not that Erik believed he did it deliberately. Charles wouldn't do that). Erik found himself guiltily relieved when Charles fell asleep again at the end of the day.

Erik felt that Charles was being frankly immature when, in the next few days, Charles talked to him as little as possible. Charles found time to talk with Moira of all people, but not him. Admittedly that talk had been to wipe her mind, but Erik thinks that if Charles is allowed to be immature then so is he. Erik knew that what had happened to Charles was largely his fault, but he had apologised for it in every way he knew how. He can't do any more. And he won't.

It was when Erik started to genuinely worry that Charles would never forgive him that Charles asked him for a game of chess. Damn telepaths.

"I suppose I need to explain."

Erik restrained himself from apologising again. If Charles hadn't got the message yet he'd never get it. And Charles owed him this explanation.

"When I was eight and my telepathy was just emerging I watched my father commit suicide."

Erik watched as Charles gulped. It was a tragic story, but Erik couldn't see its relevance. If Erik didn't know Charles better he'd suspect it was a ploy for sympathy.

"But, the thing was, I wasn't just watching. I felt him die. Feeling someone die, its not something you can really describe. But I watched him and I was begging and begging and I kind of dived inside his head but he just watched me and apologised. He was past reason, past anything, he was just … empty, almost. He'd gone so far, even me being there couldn't stop him."

Charles shuddered and visibly pulled himself out of the memory.

"The thing is, with Shaw, It was like that, almost. I was all the way in Shaw's head, fully this time, not just partially, like with my Dad. I had to be fully inside, to keep him frozen but then, it all got confused. The emptiness and the begging, and then, and then it was like you killed me. Despite me begging. And you put on that damn helmet. Where is it, by the way?"

"I destroyed it."

"Good."

There was a pause before Charles said, "The thing was I was even after I woke up I was still confused about you and the killing. I had to get my mind together before speaking to you, and I admit I was angry with you. Forgive me, my friend?"

Erik nodded. He can understand, he supposed. Generally the sight of Charles occasionally shuddering minutely when he saw a coin did it. He knew that Charles didn't really forgive him. You can't go through that sort of pain and immediately forgive the one who inflicted it, intentionally or not. Even if you were Charles and genuinely did want to forgive.

…

After that their friendship was changed and not changed. The urgency had gone; Shaw was dead and, after a little prodding from Charles, the CIA no longer had any interest in them. Charles was free to pursue his dream of a mutant sanctuary/school. Erik stayed on in the pretence that now he had fulfilled his life's objective in killing Shaw, he might as well find a new objective. And Charles was too soft on the children, anyway.

Everything was delicate. The school, which really couldn't be called a school as it only had one real teacher but even so was gradually collecting young (and some older) mutants, desperate for a home. The school might've toppled at any moment, even as it gathered its foundations.

Their friendship, with its loud arguments, which filled the whole house and quiet reconciliations. The way they didn't talk about that one night on the recruiting trip when they had had too much to drink and neither of them can remember anyway.

The way they both knew, how could they not? But neither of them will say, because everything is too delicate right now and they knew that something would happen in the future when everything was less volatile and feelings and emotions and governments were less likely to explode in their face. Sometimes they thought that hatred must be the larger part of love because when you care that much about a person they can hurt you that much more.

One day they'll have worked everything out. They'll agree more than they argue. Erik will trust Charles completely in his mind and Charles' will stop worrying about Erik's more questionable behaviour. They know, and for now, that is enough.