Erik looked up from his sprawled position on the floor of the service elevator. "Good to see you too, old friend," he said. Then he squinted as his eyes took Charles in for the first time in over ten years.

"What are you people wearing?" he asked, gesturing to the silver-jacketed boy at his side, the paisley hulk of a man beside Charles, and-his Charles, with long hair?

Charles hesitated in advancing on the man who had inspired such ire. "What? Oh, yeah," he replied as his mind caught up with Erik's question. Running a hand through his hair, he turned away from Erik's questioning eyes.

Logan looked puzzled as he stood behind Charles and watched them. "What?" he too asked with more impatience.

Charles looked Logan in the eye and actually threatened to smile a bit.

"He's been incarcerated in solitary for over a decade. He's missed a few things in world events and fashion trends, hair styles," Charles informed Logan with just a little bit of the sparkle Logan was used to.

"Oh, yeah," Logan agreed and repeated again. "Well, plenty of time to catch him up on the plane. Let's go."

"Plane?" Erik asked.

"So does the hair have to do with the treatment too?" Erik asked, only half joking. What had happened to the world in the past ten years?

They were halfway across the ocean, en route to Paris. The tension in the small aircraft was almost a scent in the air. The time pressure, the responsibility of rewriting the future, the broken shards of their connection drawing blood once more.

Charles scowled at him. "Contrary to your dreary existence in your little cell, the world did march on and change, Erik. And I with it," he informed the bewildered man.

Looking both Charles and Logan up and down one more time, Erik responded icily, "Bunch of loonies, running around with pant legs that are too wide and hair that's long and dirty. That's not the Charles Xavier I remember." Then he crossed his arms and looked down his nose at Charles.

Losing a battle with himself not to rise to Erik's baiting, Charles ground out, "I'm not the Charles Xavier you remember. I am the Charles Xavier you abandoned on a beach after shooting me in the back. Literally." He could feel his anger rising to strengthen his resolve to hold Erik accountable for his actions.

"It was an accident. And I am sorry," Erik offered more softly. But Charles waved off the words.

He was more angry with himself for letting Erik get even that much out of him. Erik didn't deserve to hear about what Charles had been doing without him all this time. The German had made his choices. And Charles had lived with them. He wasn't prepared to show all of the anguish he had gone through.

Erik didn't deserve to know that Charles had suffered as much for him as because of him.

"These pants don't breathe," Erik complained as he idly scratched a thigh and looked around the plane. "I need a coat too." His voice took on the tone of the iconoclast leader used to getting his own way.

"Stop talking about clothing. Jesus, what a couple of queens," Logan said around the cigar in his mouth from his perch behind Erik. "What does it matter as long as it keeps you warm? Isn't that the point of clothing anyway?"

Both of the other men pointedly ignored him completely.

"You're sorry you didn't finish the job, you mean," Charles said. He had had a long time to think about what he would say to Erik if they ever met again. Although he never imagined that he would be the one to initiate contact nor break him out of jail.

Erik had stopped his fidgeting with Charles' last statement. "I wasn't there to harm you, and you know it. I never hurt you on purpose," he said.

"No, just on accident. Thoughtlessly. On a whim. It must be a great comfort to know that the pain you inflict on those closest to you is simply a byproduct of being close to you. What a gift you have there," Charles continued to pour salt into the wound.

"Some things never change with time. You are still lecturing, Professor. What's the matter, you don't get enough of that during the school week?" Erik volleyed.

Charles' features froze. His mouth snapped shut, and the fire went out of his eyes. Erik was again perplexed at this sudden change of mood. He looked to the big lump in the chair behind him. "What did I say?" he asked.

Logan took the cigar from between his lips. "The school closed. Years ago," he said. Then he returned to chewing on his tobacco lollipop.

"Why?" Erik asked. "Not a funding problem, surely."

Then Erik's face changed. It slid into serious consideration, shedding the flippancy he had worn more comfortably than his polyester pants since they had all come face-to-face at the Pentagon. This face said, perhaps Charles has had problems too.

He turned this more serious face back toward Charles. The telepath's face was both white and ashen at the same time. Erik wouldn't have been surprised if he had dropped dead right there in front of him. The thought grieved him more than he expected.

Throughout his prison sentence, he had clung to the notion that Charles was still outside working for their goals, even if he was going about it in a vastly different fashion from Erik. They were both still mutants and both still cared too damned much.

"Well, there you are," Charles said between clenched teeth. "All things change-"

"But not always for the better?" Erik finished for him. Charles started, surprised that he had been thinking the same thing. And he used to be such an optimist.

Charles just shook his head and plopped down into a chair, swiveling away from Erik so that he didn't have to see the look of pity that was threatening in Erik's eyes. He didn't want Erik's pity. His respect, his loyalty, his love-

No, Charles chastised himself, shaking his head violently. I will not wish for what I should not want.

Erik took the seat across from Charles even though Charles had turned away from him. He sat quietly for a moment, centering his breathing, and thinking about his time in prison. In many ways, it was reminiscent of his time in the camps as a boy. True, there was no Shaw experimenting on him, but the dreary monotony and creeping hopelessness was the same. Wearing a number once again was even more grating than the lack of metal to connect with.

At least he was able to shed that number with his prison-issue uniform.

After so long in stark white environs, the color of the world felt alien to his eyes. He had forgotten the warmth of reds and oranges, the comfort of blues and greens. Even his formerly traditional black seemed colorful in comparison. He vowed never to wear white again of his own choice. He had had enough to last him a lifetime.

At lease these ridiculous clothes had a great deal of color. Purple pants weren't so awful after all-perhaps all he needed was a different cut or different materials.

Ducking his head to look out of the window, he drank in even more colors. He felt he was emerging from a vast winter of snow and ice. Spring had finally taken hold, and he was reborn. Magneto would rise again.

But not now. Not today. Today he would just be Erik. For Charles. With Charles. It shocked Erik to see Charles so broken. He was broken like shattered glass. He was also broken like a saddle horse. Charles had let the world get the better of him.

Erik tried again. "Well," he began cautiously. "Tell me about the new Charles, aged a decade in experience and wisdom." He willed Charles to tell him everything-good and bad.

Charles swiveled back around in his chair to face Erik, but crossed his arms and simply stared at him. Erik had to admit that the facial hair looked good on Charles. His own face felt suddenly naked.

Idly twitching his fingers feeling the metal of the plane around them, Erik went on after Charles did not take up the speaking role. "Because I can tell you my last ten years in one sentence. I ate, slept, meditated, and defecated in one room with no metal, no visitors, and no hope of reprieve." He kept his voice tightly non-accusatory.

And whenever I felt near to insanity, the thought of you brought me back from the brink, Erik thought at Charles, even though he knew he couldn't hear. But perhaps he could see it in Erik's eyes. Charles used to be good at reading my thoughts in my eyes, as I recall.

If he did read anything, he gave no indication, remaining impassive. He distrusted Erik's motives as much as anything else anymore. At least when they had first known each other, he could at least say that whatever Erik did was for the best interest of mutants. Now? He didn't know the man.

Sighing, Charles relented just a little. "I already told you. You took away what was most important to me. And without her-and you-I just didn't have the same strength to persevere. I watched mutant children lose control of themselves and die either on purpose or accidentally. I watched the world become more dangerous for humans and mutants alike. War, terrorism, bombings, police brutality. It was too much-" Charles felt his tears welling again. He stopped talking.

Erik kept his eyes on the other man. Nothing Charles could say would make him look away in disgust or disappointment. He could tell those were the reactions Charles was looking for. His self-pity was looking for validation. Erik wouldn't oblige.

"You can't save the world alone," Erik said. "And no one is expecting you to, except you." His own worst enemy, Erik knew.

Erik carried a great many regrets with him. But none weighed so heavily as his decision to cut ties with Charles. He had let his anger rule him that day and for many days afterwards. And while such anger had been useful on many other occasions, Erik admitted to himself that it had been his biggest mistake to follow it that day on the Cuban beach.

He could have preserved their association and still pursued his own agenda.

Normally, Erik would say that regrets got him nowhere. He couldn't change the past. However, given Logan's tall tale, perhaps that wasn't exactly true. And he already knew that his regrets about Charles were motivating him to be a better man now. Surely that was a positive outcome of such emotional torment?

"What can I do to help you?" Erik asked softly, trying to keep the great hulk behind him from listening to their private conversation. Arguing in front of someone was one thing, but speaking from the heart with sincere conviction was intimacy for Erik and Charles.

"You can't," Charles responded, the tears falling anyway. "No one can help me." Not if I don't want to be helped, he thought.

They both fell silent then for the better part of an hour. Neither knew where else to go that didn't hurt and make things worse between them. Erik occasionally scratched a thigh or shrugged his shoulders in his ill-fitting shirt. But otherwise, they both assumed postures of stillness in body and dizzying activity in mind.

When Hank announced that they were beginning their descent back to land, both sets of bright eyes locked to each other. Their time together, their quiet time, was almost over. Neither knew what would happen when they confronted Raven. Neither knew if they would ever have a private moment together again.

Once again, Erik reflected on how Charles' look suited him. The rugged, unkempt image seemed to reflect the turmoil inside as much as his buttoned-down Oxford look characterized him when the two had met.

Perhaps, Erik thought, this change has been good for Charles. Perhaps he needed to experience something not coming easily to him. Something he had to work harder for or pursue more doggedly. His school and his vision were not being handed to him. He was learning about how other people's lives often progressed-difficultly.

Erik did not wish harm or unhappiness on Charles, but he did appreciate the irony that the world Charles was trying to preserve had become the vessel from which issued this different version of 'Charles Xavier.'

Erik was content with the change.

The quiet moment passed.

TBC