"How the hell did I start a war?" I stared at Moira incredulously. "Did I invade a country without realizing? Seriously, you can't just say something like that and not explain it."

"God damn it, Erik!" My former partner slammed her fist down onto the dashboard. "You shot the biggest kingpin in the city! Did you seriously think you'd just kill Shaw and we'd all live happily ever after?"

"Of course not!"

"Oh yeah?" Moira scowled at me. "Tell me one thing that you were planning to do once you took out Shaw. One thing."

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. My mind was a blank. The look on Moira's face was half frustration and half pity.

"You don't even know. You didn't think past it at all, did you? You were so focused on one thing and one thing only that you didn't stop and consider what kind of an effect it would have on everyone else." She shook her head.

"I had to kill him! Shaw was evil Moira, you saw what he did! You saw what happened to Kitty Pryde!" She winced as I mentioned the girl that I had found naked, gagged and bound in a locked closet at Shaw's apartment. "He had to die. Anything else that came afterwards is collateral damage."

Moira stared at me, aghast. "Was that woman today collateral damage? Am I collateral damage? I've been working 24/7 for three years, Erik, trying to clean up your mess! I haven't slept in a week! I missed my father's funeral! Remember Levine? Worked in Homicide? He had a nervous breakdown last year. He's been in a sanitarium for the past 24 months. Have you ever had to spend Christmas visiting one of your best friends and watching him bang his brains out on a padded cell?" She paused for a second, taking in my silence. "No? Then don't talk to me about collateral fucking damage!"

"I… I didn't know."

"No. You didn't. Because you weren't here." She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, taking a deep breath. "Christ, Erik. It's been a long three years."

"Moira, what's happened?"

She shook her head, not meeting my eyes. "It's all wet, Erik. Everything's falling down around our ears. The city's rotten from the inside out." It was getting hot in the car, the windows rolled up tighter than a banker's purse strings. "Let's go inside, I need a drink."

The apartment was dark, the lights in the hallway ceiling flickering and buzzing like dying flies. I let Moira lead the way up even though I itched to sprint ahead, to touch the walls and feel the familiar curling paint under my palms. With every step I took my suitcase grew heavier in my hand, and I held my breath as if not inhaling could ward of the fear of… something, I didn't know. It wasn't like there were any monsters waiting to jump out of the closet at me, the usual skeletons aside.

We reached my old door, the frame around the window splintered in shards of dark wood. There was a thick slice of black electrical tape over the space where my name had been, and "Alex Summers, PI" had been scrawled on the plate glass above it. Moira stretched up on her toes and fumbled at the crevice above the door, falling back to the heels of her sensible shoes with a soft noise of triumph and a dull metal key clasped in her hand. I frowned.

"He shouldn't leave the key there. Too predictable."

"Not your house anymore, Erik." She twisted the key in the lock and pushed the door forward, huffing when it refused to budge. I leaned over her and shoved it open with my shoulder. I shrugged when she looked up, raising her eyebrow at me.

"The door gets sticky when it's hot." The smirk that poked at my mouth couldn't be helped- even if the apartment wasn't mine anymore, it used to be.

The faint strains of music echoed through the walls as we walked in. The closer we moved to the office, it's big glass windows blocked by shuttered venetian blinds, the louder the music got. The apartment itself wasn't very different- the furniture was all mine, albeit re-arranged and re-decorated, and all my book seemed to have been shelved and were gathering a not-inconsiderable layer of dust. I grabbed a photo off the mantle, a shabbily framed black-and-white of three boys: One tall and bespectacled, one no older than twelve, and one with blonde hair and a mischievous grin. Clearly Alex and his brothers. I wondered where the parents of the Summers Clan were.

"I don't think Alex is here." Moira crossed her arms over her chest. "He's probably at the garage. That's good, we can talk without being disturbed."

I gestured to the closed door of the office. "What's with the tunes?" I could still hear muffled crooning from the other room; Cole Porter was comparing the listener to a Waldorf salad, a Berlin ballad, and broccoli. Of those three, I could only think of one being "the top," and it certainly wasn't the vegetables.

Stalking over, Moira squinted in the window. "I can't see any shadows, and no one's come out brandishing a gat, so I'm going to make a wild guess and say that he just left the phonograph on."

"He's going to wear out the record doing that."

Moira threw up her hands. "Jesus, Erik, if it's bothering you so much, just turn it off! I forgot how much of an ickie you can be sometimes."

The door to the office was unlocked and it opened easily. The wood had always been an ill fit for the frame, and even swollen with heat it was still loose. Inside it was even hotter than out on the street, the rusty fan blowing in the corner doing squat but circulating the already stale air. The atmosphere smacked me in the face. All the windows were closed, it stank of booze, and the room wasn't half as neat as the rest of the apartment, the desk covered in stuff. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I was able to pick out the debris littering the space: there were black and white photos spilling out of a big manila envelope on the desk, interspersed with dirty empty glasses. The trail of pictures led down to the windowsill, the table beside the record player, and the chair, before finally coming to an end on the carpeted floor. I squinted at the dark shape there, warily trying to figure out what it was. I briefly considered calling to Moira for backup. Then, just as the song finished and the record started playing the next track ("You'd be so easy to love"-thank you Cole, you're the only one who thinks that), the figure stirred, lifting its head hazily. I blinked.

Charles Xavier lay on the floor, an empty bottle of scotch gripped loosely in one hand, his body curled protectively over the camera around his neck and his hair askew. He looked up at me and rapidly ducked his face back to the carpet, groaning.

"Oh dear, I'm still drunk, aren't I?"