Please don't expect plot or booty calls to be made because I can't do either of that without failing. Also: Beast!Hank is like Suli from Monsters Inc. to me. OOTL Everything belongs to their respective owners.

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Last Chance

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4. You've seen all the skeletons in my closet, you just haven't seen the dirty laundry I've hidden under my bed, he declares.

Erik half expects the other to have his hand, or claws or paws, around his throat by now.

But he can still breathe just fine and Charles is nowhere to play referee again.

"Why did you agree?"

It is an hour of Hank explaining the blueprints in gruff words and about another half an hour of rough dissection of physics and wiring systems when he finally looks up from the papers and asks the question they have both come to the mutual agreement to leave alone. Erik isn't exasperated but he doesn't want to talk, he also knows he owes them this much.

If not everything else.

"Charles asked."

And he wishes these could be the magic words that could heal all of them. But it isn't and it doesn't.

"And you think it would a good idea?"

"I didn't think about it."

"I figured."

Erik merely glances up from the detailed scribbles that only Hank can understand and fixes the other with an even stare.

"I came here to build Cerebro."

"You are aware of the consequences it will have on the Professor."

"I'm not going to hurt him."

"Then what are you doing here?" But Hank doesn't let him interrupt; Erik catches the very human glint in those animal eyes. "You don't get it, do you? I took months to make these blueprints, at his request. I could have took—"

"Weeks."

"Days actually. He has headaches, another repercussion of your actions. They are brief but frequent and I don't know what Cerebro will do to that." He places a palm on the papers spread out on the makeshift table and Hank really doesn't know whether he should call him Magneto or Erik. Neither feels right anymore. He is a whole other person.

"…I didn't know."

All the ignorance in the world is never enough to soothe the guilt.

"No one does, not even Alex or Sean. The Professor is good with being subtle."

"And you."

Erik doesn't look away, he isn't trying to pry but he needs to know.

"He told me once, the one time it got so bad he broadcasted, Alex and Sean were off the mansion grounds." Hank watches carefully, catching on to the fine purse of that frown, the uncomfortable glint of regret and recognition flashing in those eyes before continuing. "It was a gun pointed at your head and blood pouring from your face. There was a satellite in the background that he couldn't stop focusing on. His hands were still shaking when I finally confronted him."

Hank doesn't know what it means but he knows that it means something, if not for the world then just Erik and Charles will do.

His hands clench around the edge of the table and there is a heavy humming of the metal reverberating in the air that is growing consistently louder. The indications are clear but the implications aren't.

The blue lines stretch and blur together. And in the horrible lighting of Cerebro's skeleton, Erik isn't sure what he is looking at anymore.

"If Cerebro hurts him, I will personally tear it down with my hands."

Hank just shrugs and calls it a day, he isn't in a hurry and he doesn't care enough to ask if Erik is on a schedule of some sort. He leaves the hollow sphere that doesn't quite resemble Cerebro and leaves Erik alone with his suffocating anger.

Slamming a fist down on the blueprints, he seethes with a well-controlled grip on his emotions. He is no longer wearing the cape or the red jacket but the sight of them discarded above the pile of debris only fuels him to come back to himself.

When Magneto speaks his mind, Erik wishes he could be a better man. If not for the X-gene sewn into his DNA, he should have been able to do it for the other man.

Just like it has always been a battle of wits and guns with him, it is always just the battle of the mind with Charles.

They are different but once upon a time, he has wished they weren't so much so.

5. You can't find me when I change and I change until I am the flip side of the moon, she tells him.

She arrives in the afternoon.

Human façade dissolving into blue as soon as she steps through the door. And although there are emotions gleaming bright in her feline eyes, she doesn't voice anything, just lets Charles pull her down to his level and this might just be the making and breaking of another bond between them.

His arms come to wrap around her neck, fingertips brushing at the ends of her hair.

"You're here."

He breathes into her ear and he sounds like he can't believe his eyes, like he can no longer trust himself to believe something real because he has been left alone for so long. She flashes back to her human body for barely a second but the gold curls that come to brush at his cheek brings a sharp clench to her heart, instead of his.

She is cold and unfeeling, she thinks.

"Hey Charles."

She tightens her arms around his body and the warmth of him gives her a recurring nostalgia that makes her eyes sting.

Her reasons are not pure but his are and for now, they are enough to keep them together.

Raven is standing in the kitchen when Hank comes up from below.

He stops in the doorway and watches as her skin flutters against her to create a makeshift set of clothes. She is still blue, her hair a dark burgundy red and eyes a monotone gold. Her faint smile fades into a line of lips when she catches sight of him and neither moves.

Charles turns in his chair and glances back at Hank with an apology already lingering along all of their minds. And Hank isn't sure all of this is supposed to mean something significant to him. He has already let go the day she decides to leave, he doesn't hate her for the choice she has made. He isn't even angry at Erik or Magneto or whatever he has adopted for taking her with him.

Hank is just a little sad it has ended this way, just so angry at why it all went out in a bang, bang, bang. He stands a little straighter and looks away from the Professor sitting at the table with a cup of tea in his hands.

And instead of formalities, they are much too familiar for that, he directs his question at Raven or Mystique or whoever the strange girl with the name he doesn't know how to formulate on his tongue anymore.

"Are you here to take him back?"

"…That is not a question you should be asking me."

Hank merely gives a shrug and steps through the frame of the doorway; he brushes right by her and continues. "I didn't want the Professor to have to ask."

She sighs and looks down at the blue, on her hands, on his hands. And are they really so different? She thinks. Charles takes a sip, noticing both the question and the thought.

"It's not my choice to make. I just want… confirmation."

No one asks what she is looking for.

"The water is still hot if you want to make anything to drink, Hank."

Charles offers with a raise of his cup and he swallows another gulp. He nods and drinks it lukewarm. Their positions in this war is constant, the silence is not.

"Where is he?"

Mystique asks with fingers running across the kitchen table, flitting and soft against old wood. Hank leans back against the counters and watches Raven's withdrawal as she does her duties.

"Down below the bunkers."

"What are you doing with him?"

Charles answers instead.

"He is building Cerebro." For me.

Mystique doesn't point out how wrong this is the same way Raven makes the mistake of replying.

"He misses you."

I miss him too.

Raven doesn't see his lips move but the sounds are the same as they fill up every single surface thought she has. And she is almost envying the feelings Charles has given over to Erik when they all belonged to her on days in their past she hasn't learnt to appreciate until now.

But she has done her share of wrongful deeds and she understands his sentiments because she has enough of her own.

She catches the sight of him in the doorway.

"Magneto."

And Charles visibly cringes at the name.

Erik isn't wearing the cape, the jacket is gone too. Charles almost smiles but he knows this is only the start of something that could end horribly wrong once again. Raven straightens up from leaning over the tabletop and regards him with golden eyes flickering shades of blue, like she can't decide what she wants them to see.

"How did you know?"

His voice is smooth and low, effortless and aggravated, and he easily conceals all his emotions but none of them are amateurs at playing this game anymore. Not after everything he has put them through.

And she replies just as easily.

"Azazel."

6. This is not for you, and this is not real, she promises with a heart of gold.

"Give us a minute, will you, Charles?"

Charles replies with a low hum in his throat. He drinks the tea and his cup is an endless supply of courage he can't afford to lose.

The two of them walk along the hallway until Mystique turns a sharp corner, he follows, and she closes the double doors behind them. She loses the clothes she puts on for her brother and Hank, regarding him with dangerous eyes. Voice spiking with a low tremor that threatens to spill over.

She isn't angry, or so she keeps telling herself. He hasn't meant to keep it from her, she knows he has his reasons.

"What are you doing here?"

"I can ask you the same thing."

"Emma knows."

"Of course she does."

"Then why? She can be planning a mutiny right now."

She splays a hand against the floral prints on the fabric as he sits down in one of the comfortable looking chair but she knows for a fact that they are less than so.

"She would if she could, she won't because she knows she isn't capable of doing it." He explains with thoughts of the White Queen doing all the dirty work for herself and he can only imagine her perfect nails and her white-white shoes. He looks up and finally catches her gaze, green eyes still no less convincing. "Trust me."

She does.

You must know how he feels. (Because sometimes, she can't remember he isn't the telepath. He is just too good with reading people, catching on to the unknown thing that makes them tick.) "Then why Charles? Why are you doing this to him?"

And he only has the reason he has given Hank earlier but he is kind enough to her to put it in words she can come to understand.

"I want us to be on equal grounds."

She shakes her head as she replies.

"It is never going to be the way it was again, Erik."

Raven sounds bitter and she looks hurt and haunted. Like the scars are healing up all wrong and the pain is still flowing like fresh blood.

She can't forgive herself. She isn't going to let him do the same.

"Let go."

It is a plead on every part of those two words, lonely and hanging in the air that smells strangely like library books and Charles. The day is still bright outside, blue skies, white clouds. It reminds him of a beach and the warm ocean breeze.

"Never again."

Erik has came home (yes because there is a firm belief that besides anything before Auschwitz this is the brightest memories he will ever have the privilege of owning) on the day the acres of land on the Xavier estate smell like fresh trimmed grass.

XXX Kuro

Uhh… I didn't actually realize that Charles and Erik didn't get to interact with each other until… now.