The Second Brotherhood get bigger, their actions more destructive, and then, eventually, one of the X-Men come to Charles with the report that a group of them are planning to kill the President's current right hand man, General Horner, who has repeatedly influenced the President with his anti-mutant policies.

Erik has heard of the man and hated him, so when he hears about the plot to kill him, he merely laughs.

Charles, sitting with him around a table of hastily gathered X-Men and ex-Brotherhood members, raises an eyebrow. "I take it that means you won't be joining our mission to save the General then, Erik."

"What?" Erik stares at him. "Why would you do that? The man wants to exterminate mutants!"

Charles runs a hand through his hair. "You know why, Erik. By saving the General, we're showing him that not all mutants are bad. We're helping him to change his beliefs."

"Ah," Erik nods. "Emotional blackmail, I see. So you're going to be saving the General in the hope that he'll feel indebted to you."

He gets a few nasty looks from the X-Men because of that. Something that looks like real rage flickers in Charles's eyes. "Of course not."

"Yes you are." Erik leans forward. "If you really want to help the situation, Charles, you should let the General die. Then you get a mutant to replace him, and they can influence the President into more pro-mutant policies. It's obvious."

The table of mutants mutter to each other. Charles sits back and looks at Erik as though Erik has severely disappointed him. It's a look Erik has received many times before, and yet it has never failed to both upset and irritate him in equal measure.

"Can I get a show of hands from the people who wish to take on the mission to save the General," Charles says to the room at large, his voice soft.

All of the X-Men and half of the ex-Brotherhood raise their hands. Including Raven. Erik stares at her aghast, and she gives him a half-shrug, completely unapologetic.

He sits back in his seat, defeated.


Charles catches him up in the corridor afterwards, still with that same look on his face. "I had hoped," he says, sounding unbearably posh which Erik knows he only does when he is truly furious, "That you were going to be more help in there, Erik."

"Help?" Erik wheels around, glaring down at Charles. "What possible help could I be?"

"Your support would have convinced more ex-Brotherhood members to get involved," Charles replies bluntly. "We'll need them, and if you'd agreed to join us - "

Erik loses his temper. He leans down on the wheelchair armrests so that he can look Charles in the eyes. "You think I'm going to agree to join you on a suicide mission?" he hisses. "You think I'm going to persuade others into doing so? Because that's what this is Charles, make no mistake. Some of these mutants are going to die and for what? To save some bastard who hates the sight of us?" He leans forward, keeping his voice low. "You're going to have their deaths on your conscience, Charles. I hope you're ready for it."

1960s Charles would have accused Erik of being over-dramatic. 1970s Charles would have reeled with the repercussions, perhaps violently enough to give up the mission altogether. This Charles meets Erik's gaze, secure in his beliefs, and refuses to be frightened.

"They know what they're doing, Erik. If they die, they die saving a life. For some people that's a good enough reason."

Erik smirks and stands up. "Not for me."

He turns and starts to walk down the corridor. Charles's voice, raised and finally showing some of its anger, follows him. "For God's sake, Erik, have some basic humanity!"

Erik turns, walking backwards, and holds out his hands. "Why should I? I'm not human."


Charles does not speak to Erik again, and Erik, in response, refuses to hide how pleased he is that the General is soon to meet a grisly end. To his astonishment, more rather than less ex-Brotherhood members join Charles's cause, so that in the end most of the adults have signed up to the mission. Raven doesn't explain to Erik why she decided to go with them and nothing Erik says seems to affect her. In the end he gives up. She is her own person after all, just as she said.

Charles breaks his silence the night before the mission, knocking on Erik's door tentatively just before Erik is about to retire for the night.

"I've come to ask you a favour," he says when Erik opens the door.

Erik raises his eyebrows and leans against the door-frame. "Another one, Charles?"

Charles refuses to be baited. He locks gazes with Erik. "Will you protect the school while we're away?"

His voice is deadly serious, and it reminds Erik how important the school and its pupils are to Charles. More important than anything else, he is sure.

He drops his aggressive stance, softens his soul a little. "I will. I promise."

Charles doesn't quite smile, but something warms in his expression. "Thank you."

Erik wants to say something, wants to instruct Charles to be careful, wants to grip his arms and beg him not to leave, not to put himself in that danger, but his throat refuses to work, his muscles refuse to move. In the end he merely nods and closes the door behind him, then collapses against it and hates himself violently for a few minutes.


He sits on the mansion doorstep in the boiling heat the next day and watches the jet shoot off into the distance, and wonders, with a sinking heart, how many of its passengers will come back alive.

After a bit, Jean Grey comes up and offers him a cup of tea. She is midway through a heavy telepathic course with Charles that will give her power over her Phoenix side permanently, and it has temporarily made her powers too unstable to be anything but a liability on a mission. Erik has noticed her irritation, barely concealed, at not being involved, but she has said nothing to anyone about it. Every so often her good behaviour drives him right up the wall.

Despite his annoyance with her sometime-sycophancy, Jean has become oddly attached to him. She'll ignore his promptings that she should let the Phoenix side of her run free with a smile and shake of the head, but he sometimes suspects she listens more than she lets on. And she seems to enjoy his blatant disregard for rules.

Erik, in return, expected himself to like the Phoenix side of her, when it gets the better of her on rare occasions, but actually the Jean side has been wriggling its way into his affections – more slowly but with more persistence. Her gentle calm sometimes relaxes him when nothing else will.

It relaxes him now. He sips the tea and breathes.

"The Professor will be fine," Jean says. She sounds nervous as well, but more confident than Erik.

Erik shoots her a sidelong glance. "How can you be sure I was thinking of him?"

Jean smiles slightly and taps the side of her head. Erik huffs out a sigh into his tea. He'd forgotten there was more than one telepath in this damn school.

"Hank will look after him," Jean continues.

Erik closes his eyes against the pain.


The jet is back with them late that night, and as soon as the hatch opens, Raven is running out of it and into Erik's arms. She is scratched and bruised and shaking, and her fear makes Erik panic. "He's not – " he chokes out.

Raven stands back, her yellow eyes shining with tears. "He's alive, but only just. He got – he got injured – "

A stretcher with a crumpled body on it is carried down the hatch by Wolverine and Sabretooth. Jean lets out a little cry and runs to them.

Erik doesn't move. His legs have forgotten how they work. He clutches at Raven, and she clutches him back.


They wait while Hank and Jean and several other X-Men take Charles down to the laboratory. Erik sits with an undrunk whiskey and valiantly tries to remember that the lab is wonderfully well-equipped, better than any hospital, that it helped him and so it must help Charles, it must.

"Did you at least succeed?" he asks Raven, who paces until her legs are so tired that she has to sit down. She nods wearily.

"The General is alive."

"Right." Erik stares down at his whiskey. "So he's alive and Charles might be dead. Right. Right." He feels Raven cast a worried glance at him, but he's too panicked to reassure her, too panicked to do anything but grasp his glass and hope, hope, hope like Charles always wanted him to...

Hank comes to them just as dawn is breaking, grey with exhaustion. "He's stable," he says to their terrified faces. "He's unconscious but he'll probably be fine in a week or so."

Raven sags in relief. Erik, however, is immediately swamped by rage. He stands up. "No thanks to you," he snaps.

Hank's face is lined with fatigue, but his eyes sharpen behind their lenses. "Excuse me?"

"You were meant to protect him," Erik charges. "You were meant to make sure he stayed safe, now look at him!"

"Erik," Raven warns quietly, but Erik is beyond angry now, he is in that white hot space behind it.

"You're meant to love him," he snarls at Hank. "You're meant to care for him, what the hell did you do when he fell, were you even thinking of him?"

Hank's eternally calm demeanour finally snaps. "Me?" he hisses. "You want to accuse me? You weren't even there, Erik!"

"I was protecting the school!" Erik shouts.

"You were hiding!" Hank yells. "Like you've been doing since you got here! You've been hiding away, pretending you're like us when you're not, when you're exactly the Erik you were before – when you're still Magneto! You let him down time and time again, can't be bothered to listen to him, can't be bothered to defend him, can't be bothered to fight for a cause he believes in, to agree with what he wants because you care about him and you tell me I'm not thinking about him? You're a waste of his time, you always have been!"

Erik does what he has been aching to do and punches Hank in the face. Hank collapses spectacularly.

Raven runs to his side, glaring daggers at Erik and it is this that makes Erik reign in his fury and retreat. He runs blindly for the nearest door.


He plucks up the courage to go to the lab where Charles is less than twenty-four hours later. Charles is lying unconscious in a bed, looking very pale and small. Hank is sitting over him while monitors bleep and whirr around him. He has, Erik notices with relish, a rather impressive black eye. He glares at Erik when he comes in.

Erik hovers by the doorway. "You should get some rest," he points out. Hank looks about ready to drop.

Hank's glare intensifies. "I'm fine."

"You're no use to Charles if you're too exhausted to act when something happens," Erik snaps.

"Apparently I'm no use to Charles anyway," Hank snipes back.

Erik has to take a moment to collect himself. "Look," he says as patiently as he can. "He's stable now, right? So you should go and rest. I'll look after him."

Hank hesitates, but he is a logical man and Erik's reasoning has got to him. "You'll call me if anything changes? Anything at all?"

"Right away," Erik agrees readily. Hank is the best doctor in the place and he's not about to deny Charles that just because he has a grudge.

Hank half gets up from his chair. "You won't...do anything to him?"

"Like what?" Erik demands. "Molest him in his sleep?"

Hank bristles. "I didn't mean – oh, fuck it." He stands up and makes his way to the door. "Just call me if anything happens."

"Noted," Erik bites out. Hank favours him with one last glare and leaves.

And Erik is suddenly left alone with Charles.

He sits, rather awkwardly, on the seat Hank has vacated. The monitors around him all show different screens, all pumping different things into Charles and making different noises. The press of metal around Erik is comforting.

Have you been upsetting people again, Erik? a voice says suddenly in his head. Erik stiffens. It sounds like Charles but as if he is speaking from a long distance, or shouting across an canyon. He glances at Charles's face but it is peaceful in sleep.

"Can you hear me?" he ventures.

Just about, Charles echoes. I'm not awake though, I don't think. This must be what a coma feels like – it's fascinating!

Erik just about refrains from rolling his eyes. The man has the whole school worried sick about him and he's getting excited about a coma.

"We're all right," he says. "Everything is okay here. Just rest, Charles."

Yes, Charles mumbles. I rather need it. I'm terribly...I ache, Erik. Everything just...feels so...

"Shh." Erik leans over and takes Charles's hand before he can think about it. It feels unnervingly fragile in his tight grasp. "Sleep, Charles."

You're holding my hand, Charles says in some wonder. I couldn't feel anything until that.

Erik squeezes his hand, forcing down the lump in his throat. "I'm here," he says.

Don't let go. Charles's voice weakens, flickers in Erik's head. Don't let go, Erik.

"I won't," Erik promises, and hangs on.


Charles wakes just under a week later. Jean is looking after him at the time, and reports that his eyes simply opened and he was chatting to her in under a minute as though he had merely woken from a nap. His first request is for a cup of tea.

By the time Erik gets down to the lab, Hank has beaten him to it. When he gets to the open door, he finds that Hank is sitting with Charles, his hands around Charles's and his head bowed, and Charles is resting his cheek against Hank's head, eyes closed and a small smile on his face, as if he is greeting him after a long time apart.

Erik swallows down his emotions, and retreats.


A/N: Hope you enjoyed! This entire fic is almost written now, so I should be updating regularly soon. Next part in a few days! Thanks for all the reviews :)