What if Charles hadn't only spoken aloud before Jean killed him?
Read my mind.
Three simple words that echoed in their history. When Erik had tried to leave the government facility only days after they had met, Charles had projected them confusingly into his thoughts. In the end, it had been why he stayed: because he'd wanted to, found himself needing to more than he needed to locate and kill Shaw. When they would fight over their differences of opinion after the rag-tag group of original X-men were in their beds, the words would play in his head as if Charles truly thought he could. Their 'divorce' (as Raven had taken to calling it) on the beach was when he'd first decided to give up on trying to do as Charles must've known he couldn't, even though the words had bounced around his brain long after Azazel had spirited them away. For years afterward the words would come to him in the dark of the night, always calling him back to his only true friend. And each time he saw the wheelchair-bound mutant, he would block out the words and grow angry at the unfairness of it all. When the telepath had died, they had been the last words Erik heard, crystal clear in the din created by Jean's destruction of her childhood home.
Erik sat up on the rickety bed in his apartment. He was what he despised, a human, though he could feel the power in him returning, slowly, so very slowly. He was restless, and at first the aged ex-mutant could not figure out why.
"Read my mind."
The words played amongst his thoughts as they had done for months now, since the death of the man he…the man he'd betrayed. Erik jumped as a spoon he'd left on his bedside table embedded itself in the far wall. He couldn't control his returning powers, it was as if he were a child again and they were first forming, sitting like a hot coal inside of him, waiting to flourish at the right touch. Much like when he'd been a child, they became aggressive in response to high emotions.
"I can't, Charles!" The elder man screamed at the empty room.
"Read my mind."
That was when Erik realized that the words he'd heard for the last few months were not an echo of his broken heart. He stood eagerly, storming from the room and out of his apartment before he could realize he had no idea where he was going. His beloved friend lived, it was all that mattered.
"Read my mind."
The metal-bender sped up his footsteps as he neared the private hospital Charles had been taken to after that fateful day on the beach. The words were clearer, and Erik could feel an invisible force pulling him inside. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten there, or even how he'd known where to look, but like he was on invisible strings, he stood now at the end of the bed where lay a comatose patient.
Erik stood there silently for several moments as the words repeated over and over in his mind. "Why, Charles, why do you ask me to do the impossible?" He breathed. A familiar smirk formed on the unfamiliar features, but otherwise the body lay still as before. "I want to, I've always wanted to, but I never could."
New words echoed in the ex-mutants head. "Calm your mind, Erik." The metal-bender gave a half-sob, half-chuckle at the memory, feeling tears spring to his eyes as he closed them, doing as the telepath commanded. There, on a beach so similar to the one from their past, stood the man he'd watched die. For a moment, everything blurred, and when it came back into focus, they were as youths once more.
"I have only ever asked what I knew you were capable of, Erik."
"I could never read your mind, Charles, you know that."
Suddenly, the young Charles was in front of him, blue eyes staring into grey with only inches between them. "You're wrong, Erik." It was strange to see the Charles of the past speak with the voice of the Charles he'd last seen. "You are the only man who ever could. Read my mind."
As the two stood there, on the fated beach of their memories in bodies they no longer possessed, Erik understood what Charles was asking of him, had always been asking of him. He leant forward cautiously, afraid that at any moment he would wake and discover each moment had been a dream. Slowly, deliberately, he slid a young hand behind the shorter boy's neck and closed the distance between them. The touch of lips was light, no more than a whisper, Erik still terrified that the images would wash away with the next tide and leave him trembling on his bed in his one room apartment, old and forgotten by the world. The spell broke almost instantly when he felt a cool, familiar palm brush against the back of his other hand, feather-soft fingers wrapping around his work-roughened ones to draw him closer. Tears fell unbidden down his cheeks even has he let go of his trepidation and wrapped an arm around the slim waist, pulling their bodies flush together. The kiss deepened, Charles encouraging him with lips, teeth, and tongue, hands curling into his short hair as their tears mingled against their cheeks.
When Erik finally pulled away, just enough to draw air into his lungs, he opened his eyes to see the smile he hadn't seen in more than forty years. "Charles, I…"
"Don't apologize, Erik," The telepath hushed him lightly. "You chose your path years ago, and nothing can ever change that. I have lamented our lost time enough for the both of us, and want nothing more than to use the time we have now more productively. Please, Erik."
"No, Charles," The metal-bender told him, frowning. "If not for you, I will apologize for my own self. I have selfishly wasted our lives, time we could have spent together if I had but listened to you when we met, or even when we last stood on this beach together, and I regret every second of it. You were right, you were always right."
The telepath smiled gently. "You never could listen to reason, my friend. I have missed you so much these years. So much time has been wasted on a pointless war."
Erik smirked. "You read my mind." The two fell into one another, drawing each other closer as if trying to pull the other into himself, communicating almost fifty years of pent up passion and love.