A word for the readers. Yes, there is shipping in this fic. Yes, it is Charles/Erik. But it's pretty much just background noise, Peter trying on occasion to speak to his father about it (whether in the attempt to tease him or not), and informing the way Charles and Erik speak to each other on the rare occasion that they do in this fic. I think that as of DoFP, their relationship, whatever it was, is too broken for anything more than that.

Chapter summary: Day one of the road trip, part two. The car gets ditched.

"So, how'd you and Mother meet?"

They weren't too far from the border with West Virginia now. Unfortunately, driving through the George Washington National Forest had necessitated getting on to I-64; it was, as far as Erik knew, the most straightforward route through the forest. However, they'd likely be able to get off of it not long after crossing the state border. Erik wasn't sure why, but he'd feel better about all of this when he got out of Virginia.

Needless to say, he'd not been expecting a question like this.

Erik stared at Peter, who reacted as though he thought Erik hadn't understood. "I mean our birth mother. For the record, 'Mother' is our mother, 'Mom' is Aunt Marya, 'Munchkin' is Lorna, and 'that jackass from Toledo' is that guy Mom was dating a few years ago, Lorna's dad—don't worry, me and Wanda scared him off; he really was a jackass, not nearly good enough for our Mom. Anyways, how did you and Mother meet? I don't know how long you've been running around doing terrorist super villain stuff, but that doesn't sound like the sort of lifestyle that leaves a lot of room for romance. Unless…" Peter's eyes lit up conspiratorially. "Mother was a retired terrorist super villain! Now it all makes sense!"

That was not the sort of thing that bore dignifying with a response. Especially considering that Erik suspected that Peter had said all of that nonsense about Magda being a 'retired terrorist super villain' just to get a reaction out of him. "Your mother and I met in the Warsaw Ghetto," he said shortly, cutting off any other wild speculations Peter could possibly come up with.

"Oh… I… umm," Peter stammered, immediately sensing that he'd hit a nerve, and a raw one at that. "I'm sorry," he muttered, regaining control of his tongue. He was still stammering, just a bit. "I should have realized… Mom's got this weird spot on her arm; she told me she got the tattoo removed when she moved here. Mother did the same thing with hers." When he got no immediate answer (at least not one that came fast enough to ease his troubled conscience), he glanced nervously at Erik. "Look, I really am sorry, okay?"

There were a number of things that it occurred to Erik to say, each one of them sitting on some different end of the sliding scale of 'gentle reproof' versus 'stinging rebuke.' However, what came out of his mouth instead was a weary "It's not your fault."

Peter stared at him with huge dark eyes.

Anyone in this situation would have realized that Peter wanted to hear more than just the simple explanation of the physical location where his parents met. It was clear Marya hadn't given him the story; how much must Peter have wondered about this, as he was growing up? "After…" After the camp, after Shaw, after he ceased to be a number and started being Erik Lehnsherr again (Though there were times when, remembering his name as it had sounded out of Shaw's lips, Erik almost wished he could seek the anonymity of the number on his arm again). "…After the end of the war, your mother's family took me in. I had none of my own left. I already knew Magda, and her parents already knew me."

The Maximoffs were a huge family, the type that used a field rather than a house to host family reunions. Like every family who had been targeted during the Holocaust, they had lost some of their number, but they had still come out a large family. They, Magda's parents, at least, were aware of the 'interest' Shaw had taken in him. "Schmidt's pet", he'd been called in the camp, spoken with scorn by the guards and pity by the inmates. Even then, he didn't like to think that it had been pity that had motivated Magda's parents to take him in. He told himself that it was because he was their daughter's friend; Erik felt a little better about all of this when he'd realized that he wasn't the only orphan the extended Maximoff family had adopted after the end of the war.

"We married a few years later," Erik went on, deliberately as flat and detached as he could manage. Almost… He could almost believe that he wasn't hearing the undercurrents of anger rise in his own voice, rising like a river beating against a dam. "We settled in Vinnytsia, in Ukraine. Back when I was a different man."

He had tried to move on, at first. He had tried to put what Shaw had done to him and his behind him. Erik had tried that for years, tried living his life without revenge, without rage, without his powers. Only later had Erik realized how fragile that peace had been.

"The people there found me out." He cooled his rage, knowing it would not go well if he ended up crashing the car. "There was… an incident." A fire, and screams. Then more screams, and more, and more. "We never formally divorced, but your mother and I separated after that. I never saw her again."

Magda shrank from his touch when he had tried to embrace her, tried in vain to comfort her. She screamed at him to stay away from her. Screamed at him and fled into the night. Her face, transfixed in horror, was the last he ever saw of her. The sight of her face, transfixed in horror, had brought him out of his rage, but she was gone, and he had nothing left but rage. (It was a year before Erik realized that it wasn't that fact that he could move metal that had terrified her so much that night.)

Magda had told him to stay away from her, so Erik listened, and obeyed that demand for five years, before, at last, he decided to try to find her. He never did, knew now that she had already been dead when he put his search for Shaw on hold to try to find his missing wife. Erik tried to look up Magda's family, those who hadn't already relocated to America, in the hopes that she might be staying with one of them or that they'd know where she was, but had never found them, either. It was as though that large family that had once treated him as one of their own had vanished off the face of the earth. He eventually found himself standing in the empty house of one of Magda's maternal aunts, dusty and filled with mold and neglect.

The revelation that even if, by some chance, Magda was willing to accept him back into her life, even if she was willing to let him be her husband again, she wouldn't recognize him for the man he had become: a moment of terrible, unforgiving clarity. Charles, if he ever heard this story, would probably be disappointed to realize that this moment of clarity hadn't ended in Erik realizing that his desire for revenge had destroyed every good thing he had left in his life. Well, Charles was only half-right. Erik had realized what his desire for revenge had done to him.

In all those long years, Erik had never thought about what he would do after he killed Shaw. Killing his tormentor was, in itself, the endgame, and always had been. He was like a ghost that had been given flesh again to resolve its unfinished business. After he killed Shaw, he would be like a puppet with its strings cut. After he killed Shaw, he would really have no reason to be alive anymore; it wouldn't be suicide that got him so much as overwhelming apathy. (And it wasn't until, of all people, Shaw gave him a new reason to stay alive that he thought differently.) Erik suspected that Charles knew this, suspected it to be a large part of the reason Charles begged him repeatedly not to kill Shaw—he was trying to expand his lifespan. I don't want to lose you, I don't want you to throw your life away; his words had had all the stamp of that.

In that quiet, empty house, Erik had shed the name that Magda's parents had gifted him with, when he came under their care. They had tried to give him a name and a life that didn't bear the taint of the camps or of Klaus Schmidt. He was grateful to them for that. But he had only ever been 'Magnus' to them, 'Magnus' to Magda and her parents, and with them gone, so was he. He was a different man.

Peter looked at him, lips quivering strangely; for one horrible moment, Erik was sure that he was going to start crying. He had no idea what to do with tears. But instead, he said, "Okay."

And then: "And now you're in love with this Xavier guy."

"What?!"

Obviously, Peter had misunderstood the motivation behind that 'What', because he waved a hand (never taking the other off the steering wheel), and assured him, "Look, you swing both ways, that's fine. So do I! I ain't got no room to judge. And I don't think you're betraying Mother's memory or anything like that, you don't have to worry about that."

Erik glared at him. "We are not in love." Anymore, the ever-treacherous voice in the back of his mind chimed in.

Peter rolled his eyes so far back in his head that all Erik could see were the whites. "Oh, please," he scoffed. "The first thing he does upon seeing you for the first time in ten years is punch you in the face, and all you do is smile up at him and talk about how glad you are to see him. Then you spend the whole time we're in the car staring at the back of his head. Do you know how long that was? It was a really long time! We were in that car forever and you stared at him the whole time. Couldn't take your eyes off him!"

"We are not—"

"Do you know what I was seeing in the Pentagon?" It seemed impossible to dissuade Peter once he'd gotten on a roll. "I was seeing what I would swear to God was a couple who had obviously gone through the nastiest break-up in the past century, only to discover that they still had feelings for each other, and one of them—" at this, he pointed at Erik "—was a lot more comfortable with the idea than the other."

At this, Erik could only glare at Peter again. "Pietro—"

"Still Peter, man."

"My love life," Erik told him in an ever-so-slightly raised voice, "non-existent as it is, is none of your concern. Do you understand?"

Peter nodded entirely too meekly for Erik's liking, but short of actually contradicting him, he couldn't do a thing about it.

It got him thinking, remembering.

Erik could remember, on occasion, spotting a woman or a man at the bar or in a restaurant or just walking down the street, and finding them attractive. At first, guilt over what felt like betraying Magda had kept him back. After that, it had been the knowledge that there was no room in his life for anyone else, that there was no room in a life hunting down Shaw (and that would have no meaning left to it once Shaw was dead) for anyone he could love. On the rare occasions that he actually spoke to and interacted with these people, Erik usually skipped town not long afterwards, before it could become anything but a vague, ill-defined attraction.

Against his better judgment, he hadn't done that with Charles. Charles was the first other mutant he had ever met, the first person who, in all his time hunting Shaw, could tell him he wasn't alone and mean every word of it. He hadn't skipped town when he realized that he found Charles attractive, hadn't skipped town when he realized that the feeling was mutual. He'd accepted help for the first time, had stayed, and for a while, he'd felt… like he was home. Even when he knew that it wouldn't last, that this would end up being just as transient as every other city and apartment and hotel room he'd ever stayed in, he had managed to make himself half-believe that maybe this time would be different. For a day or two, Erik could actually see his life beyond killing Shaw.

But then, he'd found out where Shaw was, and all of that had vanished. It wasn't the first time he'd managed to let his rage destroy the relationship he had with someone he loved.

And now, he still found himself plagued with all those conflicting feelings.

(Charles had just looked so beautiful when he smiled.)

-0-0-0-

Peter was fumbling with his goggles again. He kept sliding them off, on, off, on, then off and on again. Erik could only suppose that he was at last growing bored with doing nothing but driving. After all, why do one thing when you can do four, or five or six, practically at the same time? He had to admit, Peter's mutation probably allowed him to get much more done in the space of the day than most others (Now, if only one could convince Peter of the value of this).

Erik remembered what he had thought the first time he'd seen Peter wear those goggles: What, are we going to have to swim through a shark tank to get out; I think that's a bit too 'James Bond' for my captors, even at their worst moments. An absurd thought, he would admit, but he was also still reeling from moving at speeds he still never wished to occupy again.

He had to ask: "Why do you wear those goggles?"

Peter looked at him, startled, as though he'd forgotten that Erik was in the car with him. By now, they had settled into an almost companionable silence, filled only with the strains of "Home where my thought's escaping, Home where my music's playing, Home where my love lies waiting silently for me." "Mom makes me," he said simply, elaborating only when Erik's eyebrows shot up as if to say 'Oh, you're blaming her for your questionable fashion choices.' "Trust me, there's a good reason."

"Then tell me."

At that, Peter's face actually reddened, embarrassment coloring his features. "One of the first times I went running after I got my powers I, uh, well, I got a bug in my eye."

"That…" Erik found himself wincing, sympathy coming up unbidden.

"Yeah." Peter laughed ruefully. "It was pretty nasty. It also hurt a lot, which is why Mom made me wear the goggles. She said that if I was going to be running around that fast, I needed to protect my eyes. Well, she also told me that I needed to keep my mouth shut and for pretty much the same reason, but I'm not as good at that."

"So I noticed."

"Hey!" But Peter's voice was devoid of any real anger. He stared at Erik out of the corner of his eye, mouth quirking downwards in a light frown. "Mom's always tried to look out for us, even when we gave her grief. I remember how freaked she got when I turned eighteen—when I got old enough to be drafted," he explained, and Erik winced again, but for an entirely different reason. "Mom doesn't like war to start with, and I guess she'd been hearing some bad shit about what was going down in Vietnam. She actually told me to run if my number came up! Seriously! First time she'd ever encouraged me to break the law," Peter muttered, and fell silent.

Marya had said that she was 'hearing things' which, given the context, likely had something to do with mutants, maybe even what Trask had been doing to them. Erik wondered exactly how much she had known, where she had gotten her information from. She'd always been like that, seeming to know more than it was possible for her to know. Maybe she was a mutant too, a telepath, and her telepathy was just more subtle than Charles's or Emma's. Alright, so she probably wasn't a mutant. But sometimes, Erik still had to question where Marya was getting her information from.

"Parents are like that," Erik said quietly, and set himself to staring out the passenger side window. He didn't look at Peter.

-0-0-0-

Eventually, they did have to stop at a gas station. The Nova got good mileage (Erik didn't know whether this was typical of the car or part of the "improvements" Peter had talked about), but the gas tank wasn't bottomless, and besides, apart from the few snack cakes Peter had managed to sneak into his bag, they had no food.

Peter went in to pay for the gas and to pick up some food; Erik didn't want to risk being spotted and recognized, and Peter could get in and out a lot faster than he could.

And, almost predictably, Peter came back with a bag stuffed full of snack foods, and another stuffed full of sodas and water bottles.

Erik inspected the contents of the bag full of food, and sighed slightly. It was full of granola bars and chocolate bars, bags of trail mix and M&M's, bags of peanuts and sunflower seeds, honey buns, and yes, Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Zingers, Ho Hos, and Sno Balls. His son, evidently, was determined to turn himself into a walking advertisement for Hostess. Not that he was going to complain about the contents. Erik had spent enough years of his life on the run (and in a concentration camp, and in the ghetto) to have adopted an attitude of 'Eat what you've got when you get it', and dietary laws were discarded along the way. However…

"Did you pay for all of this?" Erik asked suspiciously, indicating both the bag full of food and the bag full of soda and water.

"I paid for the gas," Peter said, looking remarkably nonchalant and not-guilty for someone who had just divested a convenience store of what was probably half its stock of sweets. "It cost me an arm and a leg; I don't think losing all this stuff'll hurt 'em very much." When he caught Erik's stern look, he held his hands up defensively. "Don't give me that look! You drop stadiums on presidents and you want to get on to me for shoplifting?!"

"Using your powers to shoplift is remarkably petty." Is this how Charles feels when one of his students—if he has any again at this point—misuses their powers?

"And, again, pretty small-time compared to what you do with yours."

"It's beneath you."

This has to be how Charles feels.

Peter drew a deep breath. "Look, I need to eat a lot because of my mutation, stuff high in fat and calories and protein and stuff like that." When faced with a skeptical look, he added, "Seriously! I lost fifteen pounds the month I got my powers! Mom thought I was dying and kept dragging me to all these different doctors!"

Erik rubbed his forehead. "Pietro—"

"Seriously, it's still Peter, man."

"If you are lying to me…"

"I'm not."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Erik could see no lie in Peter's eyes—that, or the boy was a better liar than he gave him credit for. "Alright." Peter grinned. "But next time, we get some food with substance, and we pay for it."

Having won yet another battle, Peter seemed willing to concede this point. "Sure, sure."

-0-0-0-

It was starting to get dark; the shadows of the trees were long and deep, and Peter had switched on his headlamps. He had also been persuaded to switch the radio to a news station for the time being.

"…And the search for mutant terrorist Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as Magneto, remains ongoing. Also ongoing is the search for the man who aided him in his escape." Peter's hands tensed on the steering wheel again. "Though the identity of Lehnsherr's accomplice remains unknown, he is described as a young mutant with gray hair and the ability to move at superhuman speeds."

Peter looked like he was going to be sick. Erik thought it prudent to turn the radio off.

-0-0-0-

"I don't want to kill people," Peter said very suddenly.

This, after he'd not said a word or taken his eyes off the road for half an hour. Erik had expected him to break into hysterics when he finally did speak, but asides from a slightly strained quality to his voice, he sounded remarkably calm. (Of course, it didn't occur to him that the fact that Peter sounded calm wasn't necessarily a good thing.)

"What brought this on?" Erik asked, perplexed.

Peter shrugged; his shoulders seemed to vibrate. "Well, you got to the point where you were willing to kill people, didn't you? And you didn't start out that way, did you? You didn't start out as someone willing to kill people; you had to get to that point. And now I'm, like, I'm on the run. Like Dillinger, man." He began to breathe very hard. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to kill people. I don't want…"He trailed off, sucking in shallow breaths and shaking like a pine tree in a thunderstorm.

Erik looked him over, catching sight especially of Peter's too-bright eyes; he really was going to start crying if he didn't say something soon. "Yes, you're right. I didn't start out as someone who was willing to kill." In the years before, in the years between the war and the hunt. "I had to become that, just like everyone else."

Apparently he had failed in the 'comfort your child so he doesn't break down crying while he's driving' department, because Peter's eyes, if that was even possible, grew even brighter, and Erik could clearly see tears forming around the corners. "You don't have to kill anyone if you don't want to. I would never ask you to," he assured him.

That was actually the truth, surprisingly enough. Erik still had the same opinion on the idea of recruiting Peter and Wanda: it wasn't a good idea, he absolutely wasn't going to do it, and he did not want them on the frontlines. He had no interest in recruiting children, no interest in risking their lives. Erik had seen children shot, seen them killed, and he never wanted to see that again.

Peter didn't appear terribly comforted by this either. What would Charles say? Erik wondered desperately. He pushed aside the suspicion that, at this point, Charles would have no interest in helping him and would only sit back to watch the fireworks. "Everything's going to be fine, Pietro," he said awkwardly, just as awkwardly patting the boy's shoulder.

Peter nodded and sucked in another breath that, nonetheless, sounded steadier than the ones he'd been taking before. "Umm… Why do you keep calling me 'Pietro?'" Peter asked, in a smaller voice than Erik would have liked. "That's really not my name, you know."

Erik didn't quite have an answer for him. At least, he didn't have an answer that would have allowed him to leave the car at any point in time with his dignity intact.

-0-0-0-

Peter's driving was starting to take a turn for the worse. Erik couldn't tell if it was because of the radio report or just because of the time of night. They needed to find somewhere to pull over, and soon. Sleeping in the car would be a better solution than finding a hotel room; at least, sleeping in a hotel wasn't going to be an option every night. Peter was a—still surprisingly—good driver, at least for a teenager who couldn't have more than a couple of years of driving experience under his belt, but the truth of the matter was that he had been driving all day, and had to be tired. Had to be nervous, after what he'd heard on the radio.

"Pull over. I'll drive the rest of the way until we find somewhere to pull off."

"No thanks, I'm good."

"You're not good. You keep weaving. You're speeding."

"What? Oh, yeah." A strained laugh. "Sometimes I've really got to concentrate to keep from overdoing it with the accelerator. You should hear how Wanda talks when I do that."

"I mean it. You're tired; it happens to everyone. I can drive."

"No, you really can't. Do you even have a driver's license? One that didn't expire while you were in prison? I don't think they give driver's licenses to terrorists; hate to burst your bubble."

There was no convincing him. Erik supposed he was just going to have take control of the car if it looked like Peter was going to hit something—or someone.

-0-0-0-

Inevitably, Peter got stopped by the police.

It had started with the flash of blue lights behind them, dazzling and too-bright in the darkness. Neither Peter nor Erik was stupid enough to think that trying to outrun the police on roads unfamiliar to the driver was going to end well, so Peter pulled over and rolled down his window. The police officer took Peter's driver's license back to his car to examine it. Erik, having never been arrested on a traffic violation in America, didn't know if this was normal or not. Peter didn't seem to know, either. He also asked for Peter's car keys, though, which was definitely not normal, though Peter didn't get nervous when that happened. He did, however, start to get nervous when five, then ten minutes passed, and the policeman didn't come back.

"Umm… Is it normal for them to take this long?" Peter asked anxiously.

"No," Erik said grimly, "I don't think it is."

Peter began to fidget in his seat—at least, his fidgeting was rather more pronounced than it had been before. "Do you think he recognized you? Do you think they've figured out I was the one who busted you out of the Pentagon?"

"I don't know. But that man is a fool if he thinks he can do anything to me."

Peter's eyes flashed. "You know, I think your ego just developed its own gravity," he hissed. "Wait, is that a satellite? It is! Congratulations, your ego has moons!"

"Do you want to get out of this situation or not?" Erik asked testily. One must not inflict violence on one's child, he reminded himself. Peter's voice was high-pitched and cracking; he was obviously nervous. One must not inflict violence on one's child. One must not inflict violence on one's child… Even if they're really asking for it.

There were probably a lot of things fathers wanted to do alongside their sons, though to be honest, what those things were escaped Erik at the moment. He was, however, quite sure that being arrested and herded into the back of a police car was not one of them. He seriously doubted that this was what Peter considered acceptable 'father-son bonding time' either. And it wouldn't be happening, not tonight.

Then, something else happened. A second police car appeared and pulled up just behind the other one. The two officers began to speak amongst themselves.

"Oh my God." Peter's voice was choked, his eyes huge in his face.

"Alright, here's the plan," Erik told him, in the sort of tone that brooked no contradiction. "I'll eliminate the police officers, you run out and get your license and your car keys, and we keep moving. We get off this road; we find a different route to Indianapolis. We don't come back this way, or through this state."

"Wait." It seemed that 'brooked no contradiction' wasn't the sort of thing that applied to Peter. "When you say 'eliminate', do you mean 'kill?'"

Erik nodded. "Yes. That's what most people mean when they say 'eliminate' in a situation like this."

Horror broke over Peter's face. "You can't kill them," he protested, his voice oddly hoarse.

"I don't see that I have much of a choice."

"Yeah, you do! Look—" Peter smiled weakly "—we've got another problems as it is without you just killing two random cops. Do you know what they do to cop killers?"

"If they die, there are no witnesses against us," Erik pointed out. "No one can prove that we were here."

Something very hard and very sharp came into Peter's face at that. "Okay," he muttered. "Here's the thing. I told you before. I'm not in it to hurt people, and if you're going to, I don't want any part of that. Here's my deal: you kill them and I will leave you right here, and I will try to forget that we ever met at any point in my life."

"Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack."

The message was crystal-clear: I have gone most of my life without you, and while I want you in my life, don't think for once second that I need you in my life. Don't think for one second that I'll put up with this just because I want you around.

Erik thought about it (for the few short moments that he could spare in such a situation), before he winced, and nodded. "Alright then, different plan."

"You want us to get out of here on foot."

"That would be correct."

Erik levitated the duffel bag over to his lap as furtively as he could and began stuffing water bottles and some of the more nutritious food items Peter had picked up from the gas station into it, until the bag was nearly too full to zip shut. He slung the bag over his shoulder and chanced a glance back at the police officers, who mercifully seemed unaware of what he had just done.

"You ready?" Peter asked. He put one hand on the door, and slid the other behind Erik's head. To prevent whiplash.

"Do I have a choice?" Erik retorted.

Peter grinned, bad feelings evidently forgotten. "Not really."

He was abandoning the car, their one reliable means of transportation that didn't leave Erik feeling like he was going to be violently ill, all because his eighteen-year-old son whom he didn't know for sure was even his son until today didn't want him to kill a couple of cops. Erik supposed that he didn't really need to be racking up any higher of a body count than he already had unnecessarily, but still, he could barely believe that he was abandoning the car on the whim of his son.

"Wanda's gonna kill me when she finds out I lost the Nova," Peter muttered. "Okay. On the count of three. One, two, three."

They left the car and the rural back road far behind them.

-0-0-0-

Peter came to a stop in the middle of a dense forest, far from the roads. And, of course, of course, Erik found himself doubled-over throwing up violently the moment they came to a stop. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so sick.

At some point, Peter had removed the duffel bag from his custody, and had taken a water bottle out of the bag. He proffered it to Erik when he was finally done vomiting, brow creased in sympathy. "You want some water?"

"Thank you." Erik's voice was raw and torn, still, his throat aching and burning, and he was grateful for the water, tepid as it was. "I don't suppose," he gasped, when he had drank what was probably at least half of the water bottle, "that you have a toothbrush and toothpaste in that bag of yours."

"Nope. Forgot."

"Of course."

Disaster (or at least, untimely arrest) averted, every last bit of nervous energy Peter clung to drained away. His shoulders sagged, his eyes drooping, and Erik considered how late it was, how long Peter had been driving without a break. "Get some sleep," he said shortly. "I'll stay up for a few hours, make sure the police aren't following us. We're starting early in the morning."

Peter didn't need any more encouragement than that. He flopped down on the ground, using the duffel bag as a pillow. "No problem; I don't sleep in much," he said thickly. "G'night, Dad."

"Good night…" Erik turned, only to see that Peter had already fallen asleep. "Good night, son," he said quietly.

Erik sat awake in the darkness under the trees and the moon and the stars, listening to his son breathe and the wind murmur against tree bark and pine needles. Occasionally, he heard a lonely birdcall high above; occasionally, he heard a distant wail of a car driving on a road, somewhere in the distance.

Eventually, he fell asleep. In his dreams, there were two children running around wearing strange costumes and playing at being superheroes in their backyard. In his dreams, Charles was smiling at him again and waving a chess piece in his face.