This chapter gave me a lot of trouble. I finished it at 6:30 in the morning, after a long night. If there are any spelling or grammatical errors, please report them in a comment and I'll fix them in a subsequent draft. Your help will be very appreciated.

I hate to make all of you my proofreaders, but I really wanted to get the new chapter posted.

That said,

Enjoy,

--P.

Eric throws another rock.

It sails several feet before hitting the water, bouncing off, hitting, and then bouncing again. It skips a total of six times before falling haphazardly into the glassy lake surface. Eric watches the ripples clear before he looks down at his feet for another flat stone. The lake is quiet and deserted and enchantingly beautiful. Thick bands of the tallest pine trees the boy has ever seen close in on the shore from all sides, allowing no wind to get through. Its surface only stirs when Eric throws a stone or a nearby kingfisher dives into the shallows.

Behind Eric, from the direction of the highway, Sarah shuffles through the bushes. The arched bone growths along her spine and shoulders catch on the brush as she passes, forcing her to move slower and weave to dodge the branches.

"How'd you get through here?"

"There was a path." Eric says, not bothering to look behind him at the voice.

"Didn't see it." Sarah grumbles, untwining some pesky vine from around one of her spires.

"It was there." Eric states, stooping to grab a rock. He sends it flying out over the water like the ones before it.

"Nice." Sara remarks, coming to stand beside him on the shore.

Eric doesn't reply.

"They're ready to go."

Again, Eric doesn't say reply. The ripples on the surface of the water die away. The boy moves a strand of his black hair out of his eyes.

Sarah pokes him with a finger. "Are you still with us here on Earth, kid?"

Stony. "Yes."

"Well, I don't think they're going to wait very long. We should probably head back to the road. Magneto got what he came fore."

"Did he? And what did he come for?"

Sarah pauses. "Something wrong?"

"No."

"Are you sure, it seems like something's bothering you."

"It's nothing." Eric breathes, tone low and--it seems to Sarah--a lot heavier than she's heard the boy speak before. Usually, if he says anything at all, it's a quick and quiet utterance of his general state (I'm hungry, could I please have some food?) or an attempt to cheer her up.

Eric turns on the woman, the tempered blue of his eyes meeting and overpowering the soft brown of hers. "There's nothing wrong, ok! I'll be back at the road in a minute. Just leave me alone!" A ripple emanates from the center of the lake, causing the stones on the shoreline to rattle as a flotilla of tiny waves crush against them.

Sarah takes a step back. She feels the strong need to say something, anything, but instead does not. She lowers her head and walks heavily back through the brush and brambles. When she's within the trees, Sarah stops and looks back at Eric.

"If I did something, you know, to make you mad. Well… I'm…" It feels strange to Sarah to try to form the words she feels a great and sudden swell to say. Usually, if someone yelled at her she'd impale them with a jagged length of bone, kick them, and then walk away. She doesn't back down, not like she just did with a relatively tiny mutant boy she could have easily ripped to ribbons. "I'm sorry, ok? If I did something to upset you, you know?" Sarah pauses for a moment, waiting for a reply. She gets none. Dejectedly, she leaves. The sounds of her retreat disappear.

Eric returns to looking at the lake. He's not mad at Sarah, and he makes a note to talk to her later, make it up to her in some way. He's considers the woman a friend, closer than any friend he ever knew in school, and she's only been in his life a millisecond.

However, the feelings inside him eclipse his usually unbreakable shell of propriety, even to the point of needlessly hurting Sarah. Eric is not upset at his friend.

He's upset because he is confused. Eric has had his entire belief system come unraveled in a single afternoon. Seeing Magneto kill innocent people hurt him. Hearing Sarah and her friends laugh at the destruction made him sick.

Conversely, the seeing the guns loaded with weaponized cure made him terrified, and then finally, horribly angry. Eric does not hate humans because he does not see the difference between them and mutant kind. However, Eric hates the humans that would want to change the very person he is.

Murder is wrong in Eric's mind, but now, he can completely understand how someone could be driven to murder in such a situation. He was horrorstruck at Magneto before, but now, he wonders why. Was it because he thought those men were innocent?

Is anyone really innocent?

All of the days realizations are tearing the boy apart.

Softly, so softly that Eric didn't hear him coming, Magneto walks to the shore and looks out over the water. He's side-by-side with the boy now, devoid of his peculiar helmet, but still swathed in his imperious black cape.

"A lot has happened." Magneto states, still gazing out at the lake. "I'm usually a lot more prompt and formal with my introductions to people, but in the case of you, I didn't even have time to catch your name before we had to be off. Now it all seems… well…moot, I would say."

With the boy as his side not answering, Magneto turns his face away from the water to look down at the black haired youth. "I'm sorry you had to see all of that." He offers, expression thoughtful. "I don't particularly like forcing such sights on the young, but, if you're to be part of the coming future, it's probably better that you saw what you saw."

Again, silence reigns between the two. Eric bends down to get another rock; Magneto watches curiously. When Eric sends the stone out across the water, the mutant general speaks up again. "That scarf you're wearing is rather unique."

"It was my aunt's"

"A response, we're making progress." Magneto jokes, face creasing into a smile. "Where is your aunt now?"

Eric's breath catches in his throat as he begins to speak. He manages to say the words. "She's dead."

The older mutant places a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'm sorry." His sentiment is genuine, not that Eric would know otherwise.

"She was human."

"And did she know about you?"

Eric shakes his head. "I never told her, but she knew. She never let on that she knew… but she did."

"You lived with your aunt, then?"

"Yes. She was sick." A pause. "I took care of her until…"

The rocks on the water's edge begin to hiss again as another seamless ripple passes over the surface of the lake. Magneto catches it out of the corner of his eye, but is more concerned with the boy at the moment. "You don't have to say anything else. It was rude of me to bring it up."

Eric's voice cracks. He sucks in air but the words fall out in a torrent before he can build up the force to stop them. "I fell asleep, I didn't go and get her, I didn't wake her from her nap! It's my fault! I let her die!" With every word, the boy's voice raises in pitch and volume.

Magneto opens his mouth to speak, but finds himself staring beyond the boy, at the now tempestuous scene. Thrashing violently, waves on par with the open ocean send torrents of water up and onto the shore. Magneto's shoes and the bottoms of his black slacks are soaked, but Eric is untouched.

The boy has stopped screaming, bit he's crying now.

"You have an amazing power inside you." Magneto soothes. "You understand that, don't you?"

Eric shakes his head, staunching his crying and returning his face to the mask it was before. The last of the large waves hits the shore; the lake becomes still again. "I don't know what to do."

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to go home… but I can't."

Magneto wraps his arm around the boy's shoulder fully, turning him away from the water's edge. "You can have a new home. It will never be like the one you left, but it can be good. I can teach you to develop your power. You can use it to defend your right to live."

"I don't want to hurt people."

Magneto shakes his head. "No one ever truly does, but sometimes it's the only way."

"There is no other way?"

"If there was, its time has long since passed."

Eric nods. They walk towards the trees and eventually the highway. Finally, Magneto breaks the silence.

"What is your name?" He asks. "You know mine, but I'm afraid I don't have the pleasure of knowing yours."

"Eric."

"I happen to like that name."