A reader prompt from MargotTenser. Thanks for the suggestion, I hope you enjoy what I've done with it.

This must be what it feels like to be Switzerland in the middle of a war… Thought Charles, rubbing his eyes tiredly as the two people in his office bickered at top volume. He had thought that this was a good idea, was trying to make peace between a family, but had soon realised that if he'd ever had an idea worse than this, he had most likely been too drunk to remember it.

"You expect me to just let you waltz in after twenty-six years and pick up where you left off?" Magda was screaming, "You must be even crazier than I took you for!"

"Crazy?! CRAZY? I'll show you crazy if you're not careful, woman!"

"Oh here we go again, what will it be this time? Another earthquake? Going to try to assassinate another President? That's a great example you're setting Erik, well done"

"How dare you bring my work into this, I –"

"Your WORK? Is that what you call it – "

"I swear to god if you –"

"SHUT. UP."

They both clutched their heads and staggered back a little as Charles' voice reverberated in their skulls, looking over at the man sitting between them in shock and falling silent. Still looking daggers at one another, but for now at least they had stopped shouting. Charles took a deep breath, tried to inject as much patience and tolerate into his voice as he possibly could.

"When you've quite finished, do you think we could discuss what we are actually here for?" he gave them both a hard look. Magda shrugged, waved a hand to bid him go on. Though Charles liked her very much, there were times when he could see that she was a good match for his old friend – she was every bit as stubborn as he was.

"She started it" Erik said sullenly

"Oh what are you, five?" Magda spat

"Stop it immediately!" Charles shouted out loud, running out of patience and sounding very much like the headmaster he was, "Do you think this is helping anything?"

All he had wanted had been to get the two of them in a room together to try to work out their differences like adults, thinking that as parents they would be able to understand the need for a truce. During one of his meditation sessions with Peter (awful experiences for Charles, he almost always ended up with a nosebleed from trying to grab hold of the boy's whirring mind) he'd come across that odd, dark place in him that had surprised him. The little speedster was usually fairly free with his feelings, didn't normally take coaxing to tell the Professor what was bothering him, but it had taken a lot for him to admit that he wished his parents wouldn't fight.

It seemed a very ordinary wish, one that any child of separated parents might have, and Charles had thought that it would be a simple thing to try to get two grown people to have a conversation about how they could get along for the sake of their son. Unfortunately, there were two things stopping that conversation from going well, one being Erik and the other being Magda. Exploring their thoughts in the little period of quiet, he was exasperated to find one idea dominant in both their minds – Protect Peter at any cost.

"I know you both care very deeply about your son," he told them, "But if you want to protect him then you're going to have to learn that he needs you to stop pulling him between you"

'Care' was a mild understatement for the passionate love her could feel in both of their minds, like a force-field around the image of their boy. Though he understood that Peter could be impulsive and was dreadfully good at getting himself into trouble, he couldn't understand why both Magda and Erik had this idea that he was so in need of their protection from the other. When he studied the images that Erik associated with him, along with the dreadful crack of broken bones and torturous screams, he had found the image of blood on snow, of twisted iron gates, and the smell of burning, and frowned at the association until he had understood. Erik had lost too many loved ones to allow anybody to come near Peter, now that he had found him. His protectiveness was fierce and furious, and seemed to exclude even his mother from knowing what was best for him. Magda on the other hand held so many thoughts of when her boy had been younger and so unable to have a normal childhood – her thoughts Charles understood. She'd been used for a long time to managing him and striving to make sure that the world didn't hurt him too much – so long, in fact, that now that he was grown up and becoming stronger all the time, she still felt reluctant to let that world have a shot at him.

"You spoiled him" Erik spat at her, "He'd have been better off being taught to fight, not coddled the way you did"

"So that he could be angry and hateful the way you are?" she replied, just as viciously, "Why would I want that for him?"

"He might not be so delicate now if you hadn't kept him locked up in that basement"

"That was his own choice, Erik! And maybe if you'd been there to see how people treated him then you'd understand why he wanted to hide away!"

"I would have taught them not to trifle with my son. I would have stood up for him"

"You would have taught him to deal with things the wrong way"

"I would have taught him strength! I would have taught him to be proud of who he was, not ashamed, he wouldn't have wanted to hide if you had been able to encourage his gifts instead of being frightened of them!"

"How *dare* you" she hissed, Charles felt scarlet anger blossom in her mind, "I was never frightened of him. I did everything I could to make him realise how special he was"

Erik laughed bitterly, shook his head. His hatred tasted like bile in Charles' mouth

"I should have known better than to leave a human to raise a more superior species"

Without warning, and before Charles could act to stop her, Magda lunged across and slapped Erik hard across the face. When he raised his head again, there was blood trickling from his snarling lip, and he glared at her with poison in his eyes. Magda was shaking with fury, hands balled into fists by her sides.

"It takes a human to teach someone humanity" he whispered, "You wouldn't have done that. You would have made him a weapon, you still might. Thank god he didn't have you when he was learning how to live"

"Oh no, instead he had you, and now he's such an emotional wreck he barely knows what he's doing half the time. You and your touchy-feely humanity nonsense. He's a Mutant, it's about time he learned how to embrace the power he rightfully deserves"

"Erik," Charles said quietly, "He doesn't get that from his mother"

Better than he could explain, Charles could feel the character of their minds, and knew that Magda was the calm, centred one of the two. There was no turmoil in her, and though her feelings ran deep and heavy, it was Erik who was the mess inside.

"You do realise it hurts him that you two fight, don't you?" the Professor continued, "He loves you both very much and just wants you to get on"

"I won't 'get on' with a Mutant Supremacist like him"

"Not even for Peter?"

She opened her mouth to speak, finding nothing coming out. Turning her large dark eyes that were so much like her son's on him. Charles' mind's eye picked out a strange image of a glowing sphere of the thinnest crystal imaginable, very like one that he had seen in Erik's study. She felt such sorrow and pain at her inability to love Erik, even to allow him into her life, but the inability was there nonetheless like a granite wall around her heart. Magda shook her head sadly

"Not even for him. I'm sorry, I would do anything for my son – but I don't think the two of us seeing one another is in his best interests"

"And how on earth would you know what his best interests are? You have no idea of what he could be if you hadn't made him so soft"

"I won't fight with you" she said firmly, "That's all I can do. I can't like you, Erik, and I certainly can't respect or love you, but I won't fight"

"No wonder he gets himself hurt all the time. You never taught Peter to stand up for himself"

"I never had to." She said, "I had to teach him to forgive instead. Not something you could have done"

Charles could feel her sorrow like a cold wave that slowly covered everything. At least in that their minds were in harmony – icy, unyielding, coming together like two storm fronts that could not help but produce lightning.

"I don't think we've anything more to say, Charles" Erik said coldly, turning on his heel, "Perhaps you can talk some sense into this woman. I'm finished"

When he had left, Magda had sat with the Professor for a while, before she had wiped her eyes and gone to leave. Her resolve felt like a needle in his mind's eye, but nonetheless her kindness was still there under the surface.

"You won't make us do this again, will you?" she asked. Charles shook his head, "I mean it, I won't fight with him. That much I can do. I will be as civil as I can, but I don't think you can ask anything more"

He felt her calm determination, felt how it flowed out of love for her son. Thought how lucky Peter was to have someone as strong and powerful as herself in his life, and smiled at her.

"I'm not the one who asked, I'm afraid" he told her.