48. Conversion.

"We lost members of our family today," is spoken softly and brokenly as they look at the graves in the corner of the property. That same voice goes on to recount why the dead were loved, and how they will never be forgotten, and how revenge is not the route to go down, but restitution instead.

The plan is to address the president of the United States himself.

They go. They explain and plead and hold off guards and agents and speak civilly and calmly and prove how human they are, only with other gifts.

The president gives an address to the nation, and it's broadcasted all over the globe.

One long conversation. One even longer speech. One slow progression toward setting boundaries, ceasing battles, and building the beginnings of a road to acceptance, once city, one state, one country at a time.

The conversations grow and multiply. The years rush by.

The Xavier family grows from a household of fifty-plus students to over three hundred. They share rooms, they add an extra building, they become a fully realized institution. The government helps pay for it to help redeem themselves to the people they've wronged, the family they've broken up.

Rogue moves to take Bobby's hand through her glove, and give it a squeeze.

Jean presses a kiss to Scott's temple.

Storm turns her face into Beast's shoulder and holds him tightly.

Erik stands solemnly behind Charles, his hands on the telepath's shoulders. Before the war and its defining battle, Charles' legs fully regressed from older age, and he was reduced back into a wheelchair. But he remembers what it was like before, and that makes this time so much easier to bear.

The world starts to look a little brighter as more conversations and less breakout fights occur and spread across the States and across other continents.

Pathetically, a stern face-to-face conversation after pain and suffering was all that was needed to knock over the first domino and send the rest into a tipping chain to follow afterward.