(A/N: Set during Days of Future Past. The story is currently complete, though there may later be a second chapter.)
"All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles. To have a precious few of them back..."
They are sealed in. He knows because he did it himself, and even though he could move the metal aside again in an instant, Erik still feels the pressing weight as though they are entombed. The truth is that they are. One way or another, they are never coming out of here. Either they'll never have been here at all, or this is where they'll die.
He sags against the pillar, and finds that it is hard to breathe. He doesn't bother pressing a hand over the wound. There's no point trying to stop the bleeding because he's not unconscious yet and that means he still has a few minutes, at least, and that's really all any of them have now.
It's not how I thought it would end, he thinks, and he might as well have said it aloud. Charles is looking at him in that way he's always had, saying that he understands without ever needing words. It's always meant more to Erik than he could ever have admitted, and now it's too late for so many things.
He shifts, and pain slices through him. He's old, in mind more than body; he never would have let something like that slip through, before. Now it was a splinter of metal that had embedded itself in his stomach. Before, it could have been a missile on Cuba. It just wouldn't have happened.
But the pain lessens, gently ebbing away, and it doesn't return. Charles' expression hasn't changed, and Erik doesn't say a word, but he knows.
That's how it's always been between them.
There are so many regrets. Not for all the things he's done, because isn't this, here, ultimate proof that he was right all along? But being right is a hollow victory when this is his prize. What he regrets is that it brought them here; that his hate and blind determination have led them to this future. He doesn't know what they could have done differently, but he sees now that they could have been something different.
When he finds his voice, he realises that he means the words with everything he has, and he knows Charles understands that they're an apology, a wish, a confession.
"All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles. To have a precious few of them back..."
Such regret, and such grief, for all that they've done and all they couldn't do, all they are and all they should have been. But he grips Charles' hand and he doesn't know if it's his own mind or Charles', but he finds himself thinking of the good that they have been, all the same. He thinks of chess and clinking glasses, he thinks of training and the house and nights talking by the fireside. He thinks of those they've loved, not in the moments where they were lost, but in the years for which they were saved.
He thinks what they could be, if they could start again.
It all happens so quickly after that, and they have precious little time left. Bobby goes to guard them with his life, Kitty is fading, and Wolverine is as close to dying as he can ever come.
Do you think it will make a difference? he thinks, looking away from Charles as the world ends around them. Metal screeches, ice cracks, and a man screams.
I believe it will work.
Erik almost smiles, because Charles never gives up. Not him, he amends, looking at the man groaning on the table. Do you think we will be able to change? Do you think we'll understand?
He isn't afraid of dying. He'll wake up to a new future or he won't wake up at all, and there's nothing he can do about that now. Somehow what he is afraid of is that he will never reach this point again in his own mind - that he will never realise for a second time that they should never have fought, that they could be so much more than enemies, that such a road led only to waste and ruin where there could have been so much life and joy.
If this works, then as young men they will have achieved something together. They will have learnt what happened, in one world. That they fought and they both lost and they came together in the end. Can that really change them?
People can evolve, but in his experience they don't change, not in the ways that count. Will they always come back to this, only realising the truth when it's too late to change?
Bobby's dead, and the Sentinels are coming. Heavy footsteps against stone count down the seconds until they die, or until this future does. Whatever happens, they're going to lose this one precious thing they've gained. Erik looks at Charles again, in the last moments that they have.
And he sees that Charles' eyes are blazing with fire that has nothing to do with the Sentinels, but is all him - all fierce hope and unyielding faith, believing in him more than Erik has ever done in himself, believing in both of them.
We will change everything.
The Sentinels are here. Logan has stopped moving. The room glows with flames, and Charles raises an arm to shield his face.
And in the last seconds of this life, Erik finds that same hope for the past.