Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to 20th Century Fox, Disney, Marvel, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: wfergsfd Sorry this took me so long to write! I started it back in December and got like 2.5k in, then last month rewrote that and got up to 4k, then this weekend rewrote that and finished off the chapter. I was not expecting it to be this long lol. But, I wanted to do it properly, and I think I got everything just how I wanted it to be.

Reminder: Charles is an addict in this chapter. His thoughts kind of go back and forth in this chapter, contradicting each other, and etc. But this does not mean he's unreliable.

Don't ask me what the next chapter is going to be called. I went back and forth on this chapter's title forever, trying to find the right song for it. I have some ideas for it, since Adele's catalog is only so big, but I haven't decided on one single song yet.

Anyways, as always, hope you enjoy,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~turning tables~

~chapter 7: remedy~

It was a broken Charles that Logan came to find in 1973.

The years had not been kind to him. Well, to some extent, they had: he still had Lorna and Jean, and Hank, and Edina, and even Alison's cat Beryl. He still had his health for the most part, when he wasn't drinking it away or getting high, both of which were practically all the time. He still had the manor, although with his wealth, it would've been hard to get rid of – and the wealth, too. He knew. He'd done the math himself when he'd thought about blowing through it all years ago, just for the fun (read: spite) of it.

He tried to act normal when Lorna and Jean were around, however he knew he never quite succeeded. He'd enrolled them in the nearest school so that they could have some interactions with children their age and not just him and their pathetic excuse of a family, albeit he never admitted that last part out loud. Lorna was nine years old when Logan came in March of 1973, and excelling in school. She participated in gymnastics and the school's science club, not letting anyone bring her down. When people questioned her about her hair with snubbed noses, she merely informed them with all the grace and charm of Erik that it was a birth defect, to which people usually became too embarrassed to formulate a response. It was a true pleasure to watch her. She was sarcastic and effervescent, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

Jean, meanwhile, was six, and in kindergarten. She insisted on wearing her copper hair in pigtails to school every day, and had the same love for learning that her older sister did. The two of them were alike in so many regards. Admittedly, she did make friends easier than Lorna had when she'd first started goin to school last year, but that was probably due in part to her age, her features, and her more reserved nature. She hadn't manifested her powers yet, either, and for this, Charles was extremely thankful.

He knew he was going to have to stop taking the serum in order to train her for her telepathy when the time came, and he was dreading every second of it. No doubt she was going to accidentally enter his mind when she manifested, and be privy to things he'd hidden from everyone but himself. Sometimes, even himself.

Some things, many things, a child was better off not knowing about their parents. He knew from experience.

Lorna and Jean were at school when Logan came, which was the only reason why Charles even thought about entertaining his ridiculous, bullshit tale of his future conscious coming to temporarily reside in his current body to save them all of their fate. Still, he found himself scoffing into his bottle of beer, regardless of the fact that the man seemingly knew him so thoroughly, both inside and out – that could be explained with telepathy, after all, and he was too high and too drunk to know one way or the other, the former all the time and the latter ever since this morning, after his girls had left for school.

"Say I believe you," he said, his neck and head subtly jerking every couple of moments. At the bottom of the stairwell, standing next to Logan, Hank seemed prone to agree with his doubt. Even Edina, standing in the main archway to the left, didn't believe the story either, although she had a hand pressed to her mouth to hide her frown. "Actually, why should I believe you?"

Logan was grim-faced. "Because your daughters die, Charles."

And that –

That had him stopping short.

"Tell me everything."

"I will, if you'll give me the chance."

"Tell me again how they die."

Logan looked distinctively uncomfortable as they sat across from one another on the private plane Charles had acquired in the years since Cuba, for some reason he couldn't care to remember now (no, that was a lie, he did know the reason: it was because he'd wanted to take Lorna and Jean to the UK when they'd gotten old enough, before everything had fallen apart. He just didn't want to admit to it). Hank was at the helm, acting as their pilot and flying them towards Washington DC. Logan had said he had an "associate" of his living there who would be helpful in breaking Erik out of the Pentagon. Charles couldn't even begin to imagine what the younger man and his now-longest companion besides Raven was thinking about all of this. He didn't want to.

"Professor, I don't think that's a good idea."

"Don't tell me that," he snapped. Nervously, his hands shaking from the combination of chemicals running through his veins, he pressed his fist into his mouth, only to bring it away. "Those – that's my Lorna and Jean you're talking about. I deserve for you to tell me again what happens to them."

"Okay, okay," Logan said softly, as if he was speaking to a child. Perhaps he thought he was. The man had to be, what, a decade older than himself at least in this body to look like that? And he'd known Charles as an old man, not the forty-year-old bloke he was now. "You're right.

"Lorna was first. She died when she was twenty-one," he began to explain once more. "Erik had just broken out of prison. You two hadn't...met up again yet, it was her death that spurned that on. She went to go find him, to bring the two of you back together and tell him the truth about her and Jean. But Erik had his enemies, even back then. Especially back then. Baselines who wanted to get revenge against him in anyway possible for what he had done. They quickly figured out Lorna was his daughter from their shared powers. They attacked her, and..." He faltered.

"Say it," Charles bit out, closing his eyes. He had to hear it this one more time, no matter how agonizing it was for him.

"They raped her. Killed her," continued Logan. "Jean experienced her death through her powers. It...broke her. You told me it shattered her mind, splitting her in two. One side was Jean, who didn't have any memories about watching Lorna being tortured and killed. The other was Phoenix, who named herself after what you guys called the 'phoenix' inside Jean, because of how her powers work. When Jean eventually sacrificed herself to save us, it was Phoenix who took over her body. Jean couldn't maintain control."

"And you killed her because of it."

"Yes."

Charles opened his eyes to look directly into Logan's own. "And you don't regret it."

He had the pleasure of watching a series of emotions fly across Logan's visage: anger, disbelief, reluctance, irritation. And yes, regret. Try as he might, Logan was not that good at keeping a poker face. Charles knew without a doubt that, whatever he might say, the man did regret killing his daughter in the future. "I loved her. I know you probably don't want to hear that, 'cause right now she's six and I'd find some way to castrate and kill myself if i was that kind of person," this last part, he said as Charles made a face from rage and disgust, "but it's true. I loved her so much, I was willing to kill her, because after she'd killed you and her partner, and all of the destruction she'd caused and would keep on causing unless she was stopped, it was a mercy. I'd do it over again in a heartbeat if I could."

Charles raised an eyebrow. "You don't think you're going to eat your words with that?"

Logan snorted. "That's why I was sent here, Professor. To prevent that future from ever happening."

"Even at the expense of your own daughter?"

Logan was not surprised that he'd figured out he had a daughter of his own. Then again, Charles didn't need his powers to pick up on certain things. "Do you believe in fate, Pro – Charles?"

"I don't particularly believe in anything."

Not even myself.

Logan huffed. "So I figured. I don't really believe in anything, either. Not like that. But I do believe there was a reason why I was found by you, besides the obvious. I'm the only one who was able to make this trip; everyone else would've died, including you. And I believe, because of that, I'll still have Marie after all of this is over, and we'll still find each other again one day."

"You have to believe that."

"I do." Logan's gaze diverted away from him. "Fuck knows the Universe owes me after everything it's put me through."

Charles didn't – couldn't – say anything to that. He simply looked away as well, and took a sip of his scotch. It was easier than paying attention to the sheer grief going through him, and the hole in his heart.

He did have one more question to ask, though:

"And you promise you won't tell Erik about Lorna and Jean?"

"Like I told you earlier: not my circus, not my monkeys."

...There was that, he supposed.

Breaking Erik out of the Pentagon was surprisingly easy.

Perhaps it shouldn't have been. They had the speedster with them, Peter, albeit Charles wasn't sure if speed was his actual mutation or if there was something more convoluted to it like the slowing down of time, given how even with a cursory glance he could tell the teenager's powers defied the laws of physics. Regardless, he was a good kid. A kleptomaniac and annoying in Charles' opinion, but good.

They'd gone to his house in Washington DC, where he was living with his sister. Wanda Maximoff had watched them warily from the kitchen as they'd walked in, red glowing in her eyes after she'd opened the door for them and while she'd made the dishes wash themselves, her dark auburn hair curled around her features. "I know who you are, and what you want," she'd said, a distinctive, Slavic accent to her voice, wholly unlike her brother's polished American. On top of her psychic energy manipulation, she seemed to have telepathy, possibly more. She was powerful, that was for certain. "Pietro's downstairs waiting for you."

"Peter!" his voice had called out.

"My brother," Wanda had repeated, rolling her eyes. "He is the one you want. I have no interest in being part of this mess." Then she had gone back to her chores in the kitchen.

The brother and sister lived on their own, despite having only just turned eighteen and having no income besides Wanda's job as a waitress and Peter's thievery, as he'd later revealed. Judging by the pictures Charles had seen on the walls of the entryway and the living room, this hadn't always been the case, as it appeared they had lived with possibly an aunt and an uncle – he didn't think they were their parents based on their different features, though he didn't want to be presumptuous – as well as a cousin. He didn't know what had happened to these relatives. He didn't ask.

Tragedy just seemed to follow mutants wherever they went.

When he saw Erik again for the first time in almost six years, Charles felt his legs almost give out from underneath him, despite him not being due for a dose of the serum for several hours yet. Erik looked just the same as the time he had seen him last. Handsome. Dashing.

But Charles...

He knew what he looked like. He saw himself whenever he looked in the mirror, after all. There were bags underneath his eyes, his hair was a mess, and he had a constant five o'clock shadow because after two pregnancies wreaking irrevocable havoc on his hormones, that was all his body could produce. He was thin, terrifyingly thin, his cheeks gaunt. Not to mention, there were needle marks all over his arms. His leather jacket helped in that regard, obscuring them from view.

But Erik cared about none of that, outside of how worried it made him. One glance at his face when they saw each other for the first time in years, and even without his powers, Charles knew that.

He hated it.

He knew he did not deserve it.

They didn't truly speak to one another until they were on the plane and heading to Paris, Peter having been left behind with his curiosity and many questions. At least, they did not speak in the way that Erik obviously wanted them to. Charles had resumed his seat from earlier when Erik came over and sat down across from him, where Logan had been. Logan was now sitting on one of the couches, pretending to flip through one of the magazines as he gave them conspicuous lances. For someone who had claimed not to care, his actions spoke louder than words.

"Mein Leibster," his lover said softly.

Charles flinched back. "Don't."

Erik quickly became perplexed. "What?"

"Don't...call me that," he replied through clenched teeth. "Please."

The corners of Erik's mouth turned downwards. "Are you...mad at me, Charles?"

"No," he said.

He wasn't angry at Erik. Truthfully he doubted he could ever be angry at him, not when he wasn't after how he'd left before he could finally tell him about Lorna all those years ago.

No, Charles was angry at himself.

He was angry because he knew that Erik wanted him to be the person he had been almost six years ago – no, the person he had been over ten years ago, but he wasn't and couldn't be that person anymore. Like he'd said, he was a broken person. A shell of a man.

He was angry because apparently things didn't get better after everything he'd already been through, they got worse. His daughters died – would die, however you wanted to say it. He hadn't protected them. He should've, and he could've, but he hadn't. And in the future, they had been dead for years. In the future, Erik hadn't even known that Lorna was his daughter or the existence of Jean until Lorna had died. Charles knew because of his, that he should tell Erik like he had been planning the last time they'd met. He deserved the truth now, plain and simple.

But Charles was a coward, and he'd grown weak from his addictions. He didn't have the courage, the strength, nor the energy, not anymore.

He was angry about that, too.

Erik changed the subject, clearly feeling he had to walk on eggshells around him. "How did you lose your powers?"

He chuckled darkly. This wasn't any better of a conversation topic than their previous one had been. He decided he could rip off this truth like a bandaid unlike the other one he was holding close to his chest, because it was one he could bear to give up. It was simpler, and it would hurt Erik. And, like the monster that he now was, Charles wanted Erik to hurt along with him.

"You know that you paralyzed me with the bullet in Cuba. You thought Hank had found a cure for my legs. But he didn't, Erik," he explained bitterly. He watched as shock rippled across Erik's features, followed by comprehension. This, in turn, was followed by tremendous guilt. "He found a treatment for my spine to let me walk again. But the heavier of a dose I take, the more my powers go."

"You're taking too much," Erik observed.

"So what if I am?"

Erik reached across the table for his hand, and just like he didn't have the courage to tell him the truth, he didn't have the heart to deny him. His hand was so much warmer than Charles' own; he didn't have the greatest of circulation these days. "You'd trade out your powers for your legs? Is the silence in your head truly worth it?"

The tenderness was short-lived, for Charles ripped his hand away. "What would you know about it?" he muttered. "You haven't been around, have you?"

He got what he'd wanted. "That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" Charles seethed. "You heard what you did in the future! You broke out of prison and hurt so many people! You didn't come back to me, either! No, you abandoned me, again. Me, the so-called 'love of your life!'"

After their daughters dying (eleven years, he had eleven years until Lorna died if they were unable to change anything, and it felt like the last threads of his heart were coming undone at the thought), that was the thing which bothered him most about the dismal future, even more so than the fate of mutantkind as a whole. Erik hadn't come back to him after breaking out of prison, not in the way he'd always want. He'd only discovered Lorna and Jean were his daughters after Lorna's death, but instead of coming to yell at Charles for not telling him about their daughters, or to come home so they could comfort each other after their loss, or...something, he hadn't. Up until almost the bitter end, they'd become and stayed rivals more than friends, then friends more than lovers.

And yes, he knew this was the fruit of his own labors. To keep the existence of their children from Erik for so long was too deep of a gap to fill, even though Erik did not know that undoubtedly had to be the reason why they hadn't reunited. Everything was always Charles' fault, this he knew.

But still, it hurt.

And inflicting his pain onto Erik was the only way he could deal with his hurt, when he couldn't presently drink himself into oblivion in the safety of his home.

"If I recall correctly, I wasn't the only one who was unwilling to return to what we once had," Erik reminded him coldly. "You didn't do anything to resume our romantic relationship, either."

What could he have done to repair the unrepairable? "I wonder why? Didn't you hear what kind of person you made Raven become, Erik? I raised her better than that!"

"I didn't make her do anything, she's her own person! And you didn't raise her, Charles, you grew up alongside each other!"

He opened his mouth to say something, probably something he wouldn't have been able to take back.

"Hey!" Logan warned then. He came over to them, stepping in between them, since they were now both standing up and squaring off with each other, jaws locked and eyes hardened. "I think you two need a break."

Erik made a noise at the ridiculous nature of it: a man from the future, who knew what had become of them in the future, acting like their troubled relationship wasn't set in stone. True, perhaps it wasn't. But if fate was really to be believed in...

"I'm not asking. With your powers, you could crash the plane, Lehnsherr, and I don't feel like watching you two die today," Logan told them. "You stay here. Charles, go hang out with Hank in the cockpit." He gestured his head towards the front of the plane.

With one last furious look at Erik, Charles did just that, although the action made him feel like a petulant child.

Before he put on the headphones, he heard Erik say, presumably from a show of Logan's claws, "Imagine if those were made of metal."

Logan did not take the bait. "I know you're playing it tough," he responded. "Just like how I know you're hurt at what Chuck just did. But you don't know what he's been through since the last time you saw him."

"And you do?"

"I have a pretty good idea."

Charles put the headphones on before he could hear anything more.

They did not talk again for the rest of the plane ride.

They had to stay in a hotel in Paris for the night, as the morrow was when the Paris Peace Accords would be signed and Raven would make her move. Logan and Hank got them four rooms, which made avoiding Erik entirely too easy. There was an entire room he could hide in, an entire city at his fingertips to run through so he would not have to go through a second confrontation.

But Charles did not go fair, simply because he did not feel like it. He went to a nearby street corner shop to get a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter, then to one of the hotel's balconies that was open for all of the residents. Smoking was not a habit he had cared for or ever would in the future, but on a night like this one, it seemed warranted. His head was spinning from all of the revelations he'd received in the past less than forty-eight hours and all that had happened because of them, and even his high and the thrum of alcohol in his system could not stop it. He'd already tried the latter by going to the hotel's bar earlier, to no avail.

Igniting the flame, he lit the cigarette, ignoring the way his chest seized as he took in the nicotine. Logan had offered him a cigar before they'd parted ways for the night, but one cigarette was already bad enough.

And yes once more, he knew he was deluding himself in believing there would only be one cigarette for him tonight.

Tapping off the ash when it was necessary, he gazed out at the city. It was beautiful at night. He'd been here as a child, but it was different now that he was older. Moreover, with the signing of the Accords looming on the horizon and an end to the war, there were already celebrations going on in the city.

Charles wished he could be like them. He wished he could feel happiness properly right now, or just simply one more timethat was not fleetingly like the moments he'd experienced it over the past three years. He wished he wouldn't keep on feeling the empty hollows of despair.

Or, in lieu of those options, he wished he couldn't feel at all. It would probably make him a better father, if nothing else.

As soon as his first cigarette was finished, he lit a second one. The additional smoke made him cough, but he didn't mind this at first. Not until his coughing turned into a full-blown fit, and he was hacking into his elbow. He was barely aware after this of someone taking his cigarette before it could fall from his hands, but when he looked up, he saw who the person was.

"What are you doing here...Erik?" he managed, having to pause the once in order to cough, as he glared at the man who he loved with all of his heart and soul along with their children, taking a drag from his cigarette.

"It's a public balcony, Charles," Erik returned with faux-boredom. "I'm a free man once more, thanks to you. I can go where I want."

"So you've decided to bother me?"

"Apparently, nothing else I will do in the future works," he quipped. He took another drag of the cigarette, which finished it, then held out his hand for another one. In this, Charles was unable to deny him as well, giving him additionally the lighter.

They each went quiet. Charles didn't want to smoke another cigarette, one and a half seeming to be his limit, nor did he want to be around Erik right at this moment. Not to mention, he knew from the way his legs were beginning to feel, the barely noticeable wobble before one domino crashed into a member of its kin, that the serum's effects were beginning to fade. He was going to need his next dosage soon.

But the air of the Parisian night felt good, so he didn't want to leave.

This was what he told himself, a humble lie.

Towards the end of his second cigarette, Erik spoke up. "I thought I would be doing the right thing." His voice was so faint, it practically vanished with the breeze. Charles had to strain his ears to listen. "Everything that I did, it was because I thought I was doing the right thing. Apparently, it'll all amount to nothing."

Charles didn't know where he was going with this. He didn't try to ascertain the reason why anybody did anything anymore, not unless he felt like he had to. "Are you saying I'm right?"

"If you were entirely right, we would not be in this predicament." Erik put out the cigarette under his shoe, before tucking it and the other's carcasses underneath his shoelaces, like this was a practice he was used to. Then again, Charles supposed he wouldn't know either way. "But I'm not saying you are entirely wrong, either. Trying to stop them before they can stop us obviously won't work."

"'Obviously,'" Charles quoted dubiously.

Erik paid no heed to the jab. "But one thing I do not understand, from the present or the future," he said. "Is who was or has been there to catch you when you fall, Charles."

Between his high, the nicotine rush, and the alcohol, Charles was confused. "What?"

"I know Logan must've told you this, because he also told me," Erik continued, his mouth curling into a sad smile, as if he could not fully believe what he was saying. "But even before his present, you didn't seem to have many people who you could rely on. You were the headmaster of your school until it was forced to close for the second time, and you had your former students who remained with you to teach the students instead of going elsewhere. But that is a different relationship than one you would've needed, and one you currently need. Besides Hank, who has been there for you, Charles? Who will be there for you after he's left?"

Charles stilled. Erik was regarding him with those green eyes, the same ones their daughters had, something swirling deep inside them.

Erik had a point, if he was willing to be truthful with himself. According to Logan, Hank had left for better things after Lorna had died in his timeline. Charles couldn't blame him for that. Logan also wasn't familiar with Edina, and his gut kept on twisting at that, fearing the worst, but her not being there could be explained by so many other things. Just because Lorna and Jean, and so many more mutants, died, it did not mean that every one of them was destined for a horrible future. Death came in many forms, some of which were peaceful; it was inevitable with the passing of time, regardless of when it sought a person out.

A part of him wanted to say he would have Jean in the future, up until she died, but he knew unless he was willing to give up the truth he would have to frame her as a former student as well. More than that, the idea made him uncomfortable, to say the least. He didn't want to rely on Jean for support. He knew what such a relationship was like, having been on the child end with his mother himself.

The truth was, he'd been a parent long before he had ever become one, and before he had met Raven.

But he had a suspicion of where Erik's mind was going, and he didn't like it.

"I don't need anyone to catch me, Erik," he said.

But then, just as soon as he'd spoken, fate pulled a cruel trick on him: he must've been too much of many things notice the serum was fading faster than he'd thought. His legs started to give out from underneath him as the voices started to return, a mere murmur, but they were still so loud so loud so loud –

He gripped the railing of the balcony for support, only for Erik to come up behind him. "I think God just said otherwise, mein Leibster," he whispered.

Charles' face flushed with humiliation. If the serum was going this fast, he would not be able to make it back to his hotel room on his own. "Can you – ?"

Like it was something they did all the time, Erik picked him up in his arms as if he was a bride. He tried to protest this. "Erik."

"Relax," Erik replied. "No one will see us."

Indeed, nobody did. Somehow, they managed to get all the way back to his hotel room without being seen.

By the time that they did, the voices were beginning to become louder and more decipherable, turning into a roar. Charles grimaced, pressing his hands to his temples. Even in Paris, even in the hotel, even in the room right next to his, there was so much pain. So much suffering. "Stop," he mumbled, his eyes squeezing shut. Then, he groaned. "Oh God, make it stop."

He was vaguely aware of Erik placing him on his bed. "Charles, everything's going to be alright," he attempted to soothe.

But his voices, physical and mental, were just one of a growing multitude. "No," Charles gasped. He opened his eyes, looking around the room frantically. "My – my bag. Where is it?"

His surprise was muted, like it or he was underwater, when he saw Erik fetch his bag off of the armchair for him. He opened it up without another word, taking out the travel kit for his serum and the associated supplies. He unlocked it and took out the syringe after putting a new needle on it, the elastic band, and the barely used antiseptic. He hesitated. "Charles – "

But Charles was already pulling off his jacket. He felt no shame anymore about his needle marks as he reached out. Erik deposited the syringe and band into his hands before turning on the light, as if Charles would've needed it. He knew how to find his veins, even in the dark and dehydrated from alcohol like he was now – and on a regular basis.

The voices stopped within two minutes of him injecting the serum. He exhaled shakily. "Thank you."

Erik picked up on his hidden meaning. "I might not like your choice to silence your powers, but I respect it," he told him. "I respect all of your decisions."

Not all of them, you wouldn't.

Gently, Erik took one of his hands in both of his own. "I'm sorry about what I said earlier on the plane," he said. "When I first saw you, I couldn't understand why you were so angry, but I think I do now. The physical prison isn't the only kind there is."

Tears burned in Charles' eyes. "Stop," he rasped.

Erik tilted his head. "Why?"

"Why?"

Why did he want him to stop?

Charles reminded himself of the reasons. "I'm not the man you knew ten years ago, Erik. I can't – I can't do this again." He didn't have to clarify what "this" meant. "I can't give you what you want."

"You think all I want is sex?" Erik scoffed. He got up on the bed, and Charles flinched at this, but he couldn't get his body to move like he wanted it to. He was exhausted. Just so, so tired from the past three years and losing himself into the bottle and his highs, and acting like he couldn't see the disappointment on everyone's faces in what he had turned out to be, save for his daughters'...most of the time. "Mein Leibster, no. I don't want that, not tonight, if you don't want to."

"Then what do you want?"

"To catch you," Erik said simply. "You caught me when I was at my lowest ten years ago, and then again four years after that. I know you, Charles. I know this is what you need. Fall. I'm here."

And maybe this was what Charles had needed all this time, ever since the immediate aftermath of his using Cerebro to look at the Vietnam War: somebody to catch him, with no strings attached. With terrifying ease, he allowed himself to fall over the edge.

Before he knew it, he was sobbing into Erik's chest. His arms wrapped around him, tethering him to the here and now instead of the dark, twisted images of his mind. His breath tickled at his hair. "Ich bin hier," he said. "Don't worry." This was followed by a litany of sweet nothings, him invoking them like an incessant prayer.

And slowly, it became clear to Charles that it wasn't just the images he had seen of the Vietnam War and the accompanying loss of the last shreds of his innocence that he was grieving. For the first time ever, he was allowing himself to grieve the loss of Raven properly, of his legs, and the life that he had wanted before Lorna and Jean had arrived, although he wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. He grieved over the additional losses of Alex, Sean, Laurence, Alice, Alison, Megan, and the rest of his former students. He grieved over the alternative life he and his daughters could have had, if Erik had stayed with them rather than departing early the last time they had met. He grieved over the destinies that were to doom them all, if what they did tomorrow changed nothing.

It was strange. For so long he'd repressed his emotions, even in this pit of misery he'd launched himself into, that he was not prepared for their intensity. And once he let them out, like the wicked and evil things from Pandora's jar, he could not push them back into the box he'd put them in. They fell through his metaphorical cupped hands like a stream of water.

But Erik was there. He'd always been there, even with miles and years separating them. Just because there wasn't a physical presence, it did not mean he had left, because he hadn't.

When he was able to regain the usage of his mouth, after crying nonstop for what had to have been an hour, that was all Charles could think about. "You can'," he slurred, but it didn't quite sound right, so he gave himself a moment before speaking again. "You can leave again after this, Erik, if you want – "

"I won't," Erik vowed, interrupting him.

"You can," he insisted, sitting up a little. Call it the pessimist in him, call it being realistic: but Charles had a feeling he would, after all of this was said and done. Erik had been in prison for so long, his escapes notwithstanding, it would be cruel to tie him back down to the manor. He was always the freer soul of them. "But promise me, you'll come back to me. I can't...lose you again."

"I promise," Erik said. He hesitated, tracing a finger along his jaw. "I don't know if you remember our conversation that night..."

"I remember."

"You told me you had two things to tell me. One of those, I'm assuming, was the fact there wasn't a proper cure for my...paralyzing of you." Erik looked so pained at admitting to it, Charles could not bear it. He leaned up to kiss the frown away from his face. It was short, sweet, and chaste, allowing him to continue his train of thought afterwards. "But there was something else."

"Yes," he admitted. His throat tightened. "I should tell it to you now, but – " Once again, I am pathetic. I am a coward.

"Shh," Erik hushed him gently. "It has kept for this long. It can wait."

...That was true. He doubted Erik would be of the same mind once he found out the truth, but still.

They basked in each other's presence for hours more to come. Naturally, if somewhere between then and the appearance of rosy-fingered dawn on the horizon, it led to something more, that was neither here nor there. In any event, this time, Charles made sure Erik wore protection, courtesy of the toiletries in his room's bathroom.

...But, he thought as he watched the morning light begin its trek across his lover's face as he slept, himself unable to do the same due to how used he was to their daughters' sleep schedule, perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing if something...took. The condom made it highly unlikely and he wasn't in a good place mentally now to have another (yes, he was acting like he been in a good place with Lorna and Jean when he'd been pregnant with them), not to mention if Erik left and did not come back until the pregnancy was over, it would be yet another reason for him to be furious with him.

He thought this, because for the first time in a long while, he felt that last thing left in Pandora's jar, the one spirit that had refused to leave: hope.

He didn't know why he was feeling it now, after everything that had just happened and everything else to come tomorrow if they failed, and everything that would happen if they did, like the loss of his daughters.

But, in the face of oblivion, after Erik had given him the one thing he'd always secretly needed so perfectly and without question, he did.

"Papa! Papa!"

"Hello, my darlings," Charles said, chuckling at how his two daughters maneuvered around his chair to hug him. Behind him, he felt Hank's tired contentment at their coming home. In front of him, he felt Edina's pure, unadulterated happiness at seeing father and daughters reunited once more.

It had not been easy. The day of the Paris Peace Accords, Erik had done as was his wont, trying to "solve" their problem by killing Raven without fully understanding the ramifications of such a choice. Erik had then dropped a baseball stadium on him in an even more dangerous choice, but Raven had stopped him from going too far. She'd left, too, after it was all said and done, although she'd stayed with them for a while after they'd stopped Erik. "You're different now, Charles," she'd said as they'd eaten lunch together, staring at the planes and angles of his face with rapt, gold eyes. It was the only thing she had kept, changing the rest of her form so they could eat in peace. The eyes were the window to the soul, and she was bearing hers to him once more in its entirety.

"Ten years have past since you last saw me, Raven," he'd reminded her gently.

But she was his sister, and she'd always been able to see through him. "No, it's not just that," she'd said, but she'd shaken her head. "You don't have to tell me right now what it is. I can tell you're not ready."

And that was true. She was his sister and he would always love her as such, but they were different people than the ones they had been ten years ago now. He was not willing to divulge the secret of his and Erik's daughters to her yet.

He'd taken a sip of his drink, swallowing it. "I will be...one day."

She'd nodded. "And when you are, I'll be there."

It wasn't a closure between the two of them, merely an acknowledgement neither of them were ready to begin to reforge their relationship in the current time.

After everything had been said and done, he and Hank hadn't immediately returned to the manor, though they each had very much wanted to. The words from his older counterpart still in his head, he'd decided to go off the serum, cold turkey. But rather than staying at the manor and subjecting his daughters to undue trauma, he'd decided to stay in a rented-out cottage for a month, to go through the effects of withdrawal away from them. Hank had stayed with him, as his caretaker and longest friend. Charles had talked to his daughters every day on the phone, not wanting to part from their voices for any longer outside of that.

But now he was home, and he was reminded of how their voices over a phone call could never compare to the real thing – to them, living and breathing, in the flesh. "You've both grown," he noted, his chuckles turning into laughter as Jean climbed up onto his lap, throwing her arms back around him. "Or perhaps I'm just shorter now."

Lorna, being the preteen that she almost was, rolled her eyes. "Very funny, Papa," she said. But then, she burrowed her face into his shoulder, mumbling, "I missed you."

The double meaning was not lost on him. And I missed you, he sent to her, running a hand through her green curls.

"Promise you won't leave again?" Jean asked him.

"Ah, I can't promise that, my dear," he told her, pressing a kiss to her forehead when she looked up at him with a frown. "But I do promise you, I will always come back to you." Like your father will to us, one day, he added, but only to himself. He had Erik's promise. He knew he would keep it.

And when he did, there was one thing he knew for certain: they would be ready.

Word Count: 6,897

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