Erik Lensherr was deep in thought. He had been on a regular basis, ever since the incident in Cuba. He had rarely come out to eat or interact with the members of his Brotherhood of Mutants, which concerned everyone. Raven attempted to keep the others at ease by trying to explain to the others that he was probably formulating some sort of grand plan. No one believed the lie, not even her.
And sure enough, as he sat in the massive lounge chair in the now-out of commission Hellfire Club, Erik was not planning in the slightest. All that played through his mind was that same scene on the Cuban beach. His tension was so high; all of the metal objects in the room were floating harmoniously around him, like planets in orbit. But Erik paid no mind to that. He was fixated on the events that had transpired in Cuba. They just repeated themselves again and again, all while he tried to contemplate on what he could have done differently. How he could have stopped the gunshot. The gunshot that struck down Charles Xavier, his partner, his brother. Erik saw it hit him again and again and again. The screams that he uttered as the bullet pierced his flesh would most likely forevermore haunt Erik's sleepless nights, nights that were formerly occupied by the memories of years ago. Memories of Sebastian Shaw, the deceased former leader of the Hellfire Club and Erik's personal nemesis, shooting down his mother in cold blood, only to provoke him to demonstrate his mutant powers. Taking her from him just for a simple experiment.
Guns had always caused Erik nothing but pain. They had taken two of the people Erik had held closest. He had always hated them. He thought they were a weapon that could only bring about pain.
And now, all that Erik could question, is if he had used the weapon he that had destroyed his own life, to accidentally ruin the life of another. To hurt Charles, the one man in the world he could truly call "friend".
It pained him to consider the possibility. It had to have been the human, MacTaggert. She had fired at him, he was defending himself. It had been an act of self-defense. Charles had been caught in the crossfire. Erik himself could have died if that bullet had struck him. Then Charles would have been alone too. No matter what had happened, one of them would have lost the other. The crusade for mutant rights that the two had worked for, the plans they had made, would've all gone down in flames. Even now, Erik wasn't sure who would stand up for mutant-kind anymore, against a humanity more powerful than ever thanks to their nuclear weapons and knowledge of mutants' existence. He would have to take matters into his own hands. He only hoped Charles and his arrogance wouldn't stand in his way. The last thing Erik wanted to cause his old friend any more pain.
"But none of it was my doing was it?" He corrected his thoughts. Everything that had happened, Charles, everything! It was all because of that woman. That human. That INSECT.
Erik clenched his fists in rage at the thought of her, and the metal around him began to ache and moan.
Why couldn't Charles see it? See what he had been doing, what he was trying to do? Charles, who was struck down by a human himself! Charles, who had tried to stop him from preventing to stop the warring humans from wiping them out! Erik knew better than anyone, all the humans knew was fear and hate. Fear and hate at what they didn't understand.
Charles's ignorance angered Erik to no end. He would think differently about the humans if he had seen what Erik had seen! If he had slept amongst bodies as a child! If he had watched friends, lovers, family die around him, die at the hands of prejudice and bigotry! W single tear trickled down Erik's face. "Why couldn't he understand?" he wondered aimlessly. "Why couldn't any of them just understand?" If Charles had just seen what he had seen, if he had stood back and let him carry out the way of the future, then his dream would finally be accomplished. Then, Professor X and Magneto, could stand proudly together, as they observed the new world, their world, together.
But then he remembered. There was something. Something that could get the humans to understand. Something that could unite them all, human and mutant alike, just like Charles wanted.
He pulled a file folder out of his coat. He had stolen it from the CIA facility after he had been rescued from Shaw's submarine. Inside the folder were blueprints for a machine. An experimental device capable of inducing mutation. Capable of turning humans into mutants. Capable of uniting them, once and for all.
Erik grinned. This machine was the key to everything. He would order Raven to go with Azazel to find the parts necessary for its construction. The two worked the best together, and for a mission of this importance, Erik could only trust his second-in-command to see it through.
"But," Erik couldn't help but think doubtfully amongst his planning, "is this how Charles would want his dream carried out?" Would Charles feel satisfied when mutants and humans shared the same cause? And more importantly, when that happened, could they finally be friends again?
Whatever happened, Charles had to know what was on Erik's mind. And so Erik, for the first time since Cuba, took off the anti-telepathy helmet, the very one that had formerly belonged to Sebastian Shaw before his well-deserved death, and focused his thought on two words, words that he hoped Charles, wherever he was, would be able to pick up on:
"I'm sorry."
And, forty years later, as he lay in a state-of-the-art plastic prison, with a life sentence as punishment for attempting to mutate all of the world's leaders through a process that was discovered to result in immediate death, the man known only as Magneto, a well-infamous mutant terrorist known across the country as a man with a heart as cold as the metal he could manipulate at will, couldn't help but wonder if his oldest friend would ever respond to his desperate apology. And, more importantly, he wondered if he could forgive himself either.