November 3, 2008

Logan saw understanding dawn on the Professor's face at his words. Feeling relieved that he didn't have to explain himself any more, Logan sank down into one of the chairs in front of Charles's desk.

The world had been crazy enough in the past few minutes. It was good to have someone who understood him.

"Thank you Logan," Charles said quietly, "You have no idea how many times I've wanted to say that over these past few years. I even managed it once or twice. Not that you understand...but still."

"I probably thought you were nuts Chuck," said Logan.

"I daresay," Charles said.

He leaned back in his chair.

"But I mean it. Thank you for what you did Logan," he said, "Thank you."

"I saw Rogue and Jean on the way in here," Logan answered, "That's thanks enough."

Charles laughed and shook his head.

"It doesn't even begin to cover it," he said, "You changed so much more than just the war Logan."

Logan sat up a little straighter. Despite the weariness in his bones and the way his head was spinning from seeing his dead friends and the woman he'd loved and killed alive again, he was curious. Charles was looking at him with pride and a deep, profound gratitude.

"Whaddaya mean?" he asked.

Charles frowned.

"Surely you've noticed the differences in this time?" he asked.

"Beyond people who are dead walking around again?" asked Logan, "No."

His friend looked surprised.

"That comment on the last thirty years or so wasn't an exaggeration," Logan said.

Charles clasped his hands in his lap thoughtfully.

"Curious," he said, "I can remember both pasts, but you can't remember this world."

"Not a thing," said Logan, "Last thing I remember is getting tossed in the river by Mags."

He made a face.

"We don't work together now or anything right?" he asked.

Charles sighed.

"No," he said, "Erik is still...figuring things out."

Logan resisted the urge to comment on that. For whatever reason Charles still clung onto hope that his friend would come around. He didn't believe it himself, but he'd learned long ago that his observations on Magneto weren't particularly welcome.

"So that hasn't changed," he said.

"No," Charles said, "But other things have. For the better."

Charles shook his head again.

"Do you remember when Europe went black?" he asked.

Logan nodded. Things like that were hard to forget. He'd remembered hearing as every single European mutant contact they'd had had disappeared. America might have started the anti-mutant crusade, but Trask Industries's greatest market had always been in the countries on the fringes of the iron curtain. There had just been so much fear there of the Russians, of the Europeans, of mutants on both sides.

They had responded by doing the one thing they could within their borders: eliminate mutants.

"Do you remember Muir Island?" asked Charles.

He had to concentrate, but the name did flicker in his memory. He'd only ever run into it three times. He'd been used to combat threats in North America, both in Canada where the terrain was like the back of his hand and America.

He'd made one trip to Europe soon after the blackout, when they were trying to establish if anyone at all was still out there. Logan had managed to find a small fortress on Muir Island on the outskirts of Scotland. It was still holding out, still fighting and was willing to establish communications with them.

The second time had been when they had sent one of their operatives, a man in his early twenties called Cypher, to help with some hacking. Logan thought that his real name might have been Doug, he'd heard Charles call him that once, but he'd been key in getting some data on the Sentinels. He'd had a gift, both with technology and words. Logan hadn't had much to do with that: he'd been mostly used for his destructive powers. Sometimes it was good to be the best at doing things that weren't 'pretty.'

After that he hadn't heard anything else from them for the next three years. Then he'd heard that they'd fallen, that the entire island had been destroyed. Satellite images, back when they'd still had satellite, had shown piles of rubble where the island had used to be.

At the time he had felt a slight swell of defeat, but nothing that had come remotely close to breaking him. He'd barely known them, and they'd lost bases in the past after all. But now that he concentrated, he could remember that something had been different about the destruction of Muir Island.

"When it went down, you acted strange," Logan said.

"Strange?" said Charles.

Logan wasn't sure how to interpret his tone.

"You never said anything to me," Charles said.

"I asked Hank. He just said that the two of ya went way back, back before Cuba," he said, "Told me not ta bother ya about it."

"How like Hank," Charles chuckled.

He looked at his desk and reached out to one of the pictures. Charles picked it up and fingered the edges of the frame.

"You met the woman who ran it, didn't you?" he asked.

"Yeah, Maria, right?" Logan said.

"Moira," Charles corrected, "Moira MacTaggert. An exceptional woman. She adopted a mutant daughter, turned what little holdings she had into a sanctuary for her daughter and the rest of her daughter's kind."

He closed his eyes. A suspicion was beginning to form in Logan's mind.

"In the past that we were fighting to change, she died, along with her daughter and her daughter's fiancé on that island," he said.

"And here?" Logan asked.

Charles laughed.

"Here things turned out rather differently," he said.

Logan was about to ask for specifics when Charles turned the picture around. Charles was in it, bald but a good deal younger. A woman was kneeling next to him so that she could be level with him, twine her hands with his.

She was also, very clearly, wearing a wedding dress.

"I'll be damned," Logan said.

"Almost thirty years now," said Charles.

For the first time Logan realized that Charles was wearing a wedding ring on his hand. He wanted to smack himself in the forehead. He'd have to be much more careful in this present. Little details like that were going to mean everything in the coming days.

Still, the idea that Charles had gotten married in this world made him grin.

"And that daughter of hers?" he asked.

"She's called me father for that same amount of time," Charles said, "Anything and everything a man could want in a daughter. Rahne has always taken after her mother when it comes to being exceptional."

He put the picture back and reached for another one.

"In the past, I never had the courage to go out and find her," he said, "I'd wronged her, and I had just put it behind me, like I'd put so much else behind me. But when you came, when we changed the future, I believe that I became more responsible for my past actions."

"Ya apologized?" Logan said.

"I was willing to grovel, but it didn't come to that," Charles said, chuckling.

His friend was chuckling a lot now, a smile not far from his lips. He was much lighter than he'd remembered him, even before the war. Logan could tell that, whoever she was, Moira had been the cause of that. He had the feeling that he'd be finding out a lot about her in the coming years.

"But, once again, it was more than that," Charles said.

He was staring at the second picture earnestly now.

"In another world, our love was counted in days," he said, "In this one we were married for years, built two schools that supported each other even though they were separated by an ocean. Her daughter is my daughter, and when Moira gave birth to our son, our family grew a little bigger."

Once more, Logan wasn't given a chance to say anything. Charles turned the picture around. Charles and Moira were seated outside the school. Rahne was standing behind Moira, one of her arms around the shoulders of a teenage boy.

A teenage boy who looked almost exactly like Charles.

"David is, of course, older now. He's rather busy in Washington at the moment, so you won't see him right away," Charles said, "Our family has changed since that picture was taken, yet another thing I have to thank you for. When Rahne got married, she asked me to go down the aisle with her."

"Are ya trying ta tell me you're a grandfather too now Chuck?" Logan asked, incredulous.

Charles smiled.

"His name is Tir, after some ancient warrior," said Charles, "Doug, my son-in-law, is quite the scholar."

"Shit," Logan said.

Charles replaced the picture and folded his hands again.

"I wouldn't put it quite that way," he said, "But I will say that, sometimes, roads diverge. But sometimes, if you're lucky, those roads meet again. I'm happy to say that, once these roads met, they didn't diverge again."

The door opened. He had a feeling who it was, because most people knocked. Logan recognized Moira immediately when she walked in, even though she was older than she was in either picture. She was shuffling papers around, but stopped when she saw Logan.

"Meeting run late?" she asked, looking at Charles.

"Not exactly," Charles said.

Logan grunted and got up.

"Think I'm gonna have a lie down after hearing all of that," he said.

"You've got a class soon," Moira said.

"Tell em I'm sick," said Logan.

Moira looked like she was about to protest, but Charles shook his head.

"It's alright Moira," he said.

He looked over at Logan.

"He's earned it."


Moira watched as Logan left the room, shutting the door behind him.

"You give him too much leeway," she said.

"One day I'll tell you the full extent of what he's done for us, and then I think you'll understand," he said.

"I look forward to it," Moira said, "Because you let him get away with a lot."

Charles just smiled at her. She put the papers down on his desk. It could wait for a few minutes.

"Rahne called," she said, "She's going to be bringing her family down for Thanksgiving."

"Good," Charles said, "That means everyone will be here. David did confirm that he could get the time off, correct?"

"He did," Moira agreed, "He says airfare to Scotland is going up, but he's coming. Sam's already booked our flights over there."

She sat down on the edge of his desk.

"If we didn't own our own jet, our airfare would be outrageous by this point," Moira said, "All those trips back and forth. Of all the times for routine repairs."

"Well, it's not like we can let Sam have all of the fun on Muir Island," he said, "Although, we're going to have quite the discussion about where we're going to live when we decide to retire."

Moira smiled. She reached out and ran her fingers over the slight scar on the left side of his head. The scar had faded with the years, but she knew it intimately by now.

"I don't think I'm ever going to retire," she said, "You?"

"No," he said, "Not as long as you're by my side."

Moira smiled again. She leaned in and kissed him, letting herself get lost in his touch. After nearly thirty years of marriage and giving birth to his son, Moira had never gotten used to the way Charles kissed her, like she was his everything.

And the look in his eyes when he pulled away let her know that he never quite got used to it either.

"I guess we'll never retire then, because I'm not leaving," she said.

Charles grasped her hand and brought it up to his lips.

"I know," he said, "I know."


A/N: Thanks for reading everyone! I'm a big fan of the Charles/Moira pairing, although it doesn't seem to get enough love on this site. My first X-men fanfiction, "All We Are," was a Charles/Moira fic, but sometimes other pairings get put in there. For my long-term readers you'll notice some of my recurring couples, like Kurt/Amanda and Rahne/Doug.

One of the reasons I'm such a big Charles/Moira fan is that they're so alike and, in many ways, make a perfect team. They both see the world in the same ways and, independently, set up schools and sanctuaries for mutants. Moira's sanctuary was inspired by her son in the comics, but since she didn't seem to be married in the movies, I had it be inspired by her adopted daughter instead.

The big thing about this fic, for me, was having no major villain. Charles and Moira certainly encountered roadblocks, but most of them were internalized. "X-men: Days Of Future Past" has changed a lot abut the X-men films, possibly including the first two and certainly the third movie. The possibilities are endless, and I think it's fair to say that Charles's attitudes probably changed as a result of it.

Things are getting busy here, so you won't be seeing me for another two months. Until then, I'd like to give some special shout outs to WaitingForLife2Begin, who reviewed just about every chapter, Chocolate and Caramel, Knight of Wings, and Orihime-san!