3 weeks later

Erik was sitting in Charles's study, in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair he'd purloined from the kitchen. Charles, of course, had no need of an office chair, so the space behind the desk was usually empty. Erik was trying, and failing completely, to get his head around the paperwork pertaining to the school, that Charles had always managed so effortlessly.

What was all this stuff for, anyway? Erik had thought you could simply call your building a school and the thing was done. How had he not realised how much bilge Charles had to wade through to get this thing off the ground? Registration, taxation, health and safety checks – and bills Erik hadn't even considered, for equipment, stationary, medical supplies, converting a wing of the mansion into dormitories (here was also some sort of construction bill related to the basketball court Erik wasn't even going to try to decipher; he had filed it behind a plant pot and was hoping it would somehow go away).

And the school wasn't even really up and running yet. At present, it was more of an informal sanctuary for mutant kids, with education doled out in a haphazard fashion by Charles, Mystique, Alex or Hank as their schedules and areas of expertise allowed. The real first term would begin in September – a date that had seemed comfortably far off before Charles's procedure, when Erik's every concerned question had been met with a seraphic smile and the reassurance "Everything's in hand, my friend. Now how about a cup of tea?" Now Charles had more or less checked out of his own life, it loomed alarmingly large, robbing Erik of what precious little peace he could scavenge nowadays.

At times, he thought of throwing it all in, cancelling the grand opening, sending all the children home - he'd never understood why it had to be a school anyway, when they should be preparing for a war. But he couldn't do that to Charles's dream. Even if Charles no longer seemed to care. About the school, or anything much else. Anyone else.

Erik put his head in his hands, ignoring an avalanche of paper sliding off the desk as he knocked it with his elbow. He hadn't been able to talk to Charles since the day he woke up. He stayed up in the sick bay, pleading exhaustion, sending out Hank to tell his anxious friends that he didn't feel up to visitors. Erik had tried to reach out to Charles with his thoughts, secretly suspecting Hank was enjoying the excuse to thwart his will. But Charles was keeping that door firmly closed as well.

It was the longest time they'd been apart since they had met; Erik was half-insane with worry, concern, loneliness – and the beginnings of frustration he tried to deny even to himself. He missed Charles more than he had thought he had it in him to miss anything. He couldn't sleep. He barely ate. Just sat here, futilely trying to keep the boat of Charles's life on course, even though the captain had abandoned ship. Trying to make sure he had something to come back to, if he ever did. Tried to hope, like Charles (his Charles, the one inside his head, not the isolated invalid upstairs) would have wanted him to. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyelids, watched the red, swirling darkness, tried to stop thinking for just a minute.

"Erik?"

Maddy's voice was laced with worry. Erik sighed; there was a lot of that going around.

"I'm fine Maddy. Just paperwork, you know."

She looked unconvinced. "It's getting late. Shouldn't you be going to sleep?" He looked at her balefully.

"I am a grown adult you know." She shrugged.

"Even grown adults need someone to look out for them now and then. You look like hell. If you won't eat, the least that you can do is sleep."

Erik thought about arguing with her, then changed his mind. After all, what was the point? Down here or up in his room, he wouldn't get any rest; even when exhaustion overruled his insomnia, his nightmares would see to it that he didn't sleep for long – without Charles, they had returned in force, the old horrors along with some new friends: Charles fitting, going limp, Charles pale and staring on the bed, Charles dead. Charles crying.

But there was no need for her to know. She couldn't help; and she did care. He acquiesced.

"You're right; I'll go up soon." She seemed almost as perturbed by his meek response as she had been by his working late. She sat down in the Chesterfield, heedless of the piles of paper everywhere.

"I'm worried about Raven. She can't believe that Charles won't see her, thinks Hank's lying just to spite her. They had a blazing row this afternoon. She's crying in her room right now, won't let me in." She essayed a weak joke. "These Xaviers and their hiding behind closed doors, huh?"

Erik didn't respond. He was concerned about Raven as well, but the feeling could barely find room in his heart beside the great, aching stone of anxiety for Charles that bore down on his lungs from the moment he woke up every day. She'll be alright, he sought to convince himself. She's a survivor. Once, he would have said the same of himself.

Maddy was still looking at him, her expression ran the gamut from concern to fury.

"This has gone far enough," she said suddenly, standing up.

"What do you mean?" Erik asked her, but she had already left the study.

"Charles?"

Charles hadn't heard Maddy's quiet approach. He had been concentrating – as he seemed to spend a lot of time doing these days – on not screaming aloud, with boredom, with anger, with misery. How had she even gotten in here? Hank must be busy elsewhere. He kept his eyes shut. Maybe if she thought he was asleep, she'd go away.

"Charles, I know you're not asleep."

He sighed. So much for that idea.

"Not now, Madeline."

He tried to keep his voice level; he didn't want to take his anger out on her. But she didn't leave.

"Why not now, Charles? You're what - busy?"

He blinked, sat up on his elbows and examined her. Her jaw was jutting out defiantly, and for once, someone was looking at him without the cast of pity and guilt that had become so familiar to him. In fact, she looked pissed off.

"I think you've been spending too much time with Raven," he eventually opined. "You're becoming altogether too - cheeky." She shrugged.

"Well someone has to step up to the plate. Raven isn't so cheeky nowadays. She's too busy bleeding over you." The bluntness of this caught him off guard, slipped a blade of guilt between his ribs. He shook his head, trying to ignore it.

"She'll heal." Which is more than I will, he thought bitterly. Madeline shook her head.

"Not without your help, Charles. Nor will Erik."

Erik. Much, much more than a blade of guilt. This time her words set off an atom bomb of emotions within his chest – love, concern, pain, obligation, inadequacy, and worst of all, a searing resentment, which Charles knew was irrational. He couldn't handle any of it; he could barely stand to be awake, wanted nothing more than for Hank to come back and administer another shot, to let him go to sleep. He turned his face away from her, into the pillow.

"This conversation is over. Goodbye."

"I'm not finished. Charles, I've been looking at your notes here. You're better now. In fact, you are in perfect health."

He scoffed incredulously into the pillow. She amended hastily.

"As good as you were before the procedure, in any case." Her tone changed, became softer.

"Hank won't discharge you until he thinks you're emotionally ready. I've tried to tell him that isn't going to happen as long as you're hiding up here, that only living life again will help - he won't listen. So now I'm telling you. You have to get up Charles, come back to us. Erik needs you. Raven needs you. We all do. There's so much that has to be done that only you can do." Charles whipped round upon her.

"What if I don't want to do it anymore?" He snapped bitterly. She flinched away, and he felt a flicker of shame. "What if I can't?" he whispered fearfully. She shook her head, emboldened to step forward, lay a hand on his arm.

"Yes you can. You're the strongest person I know." Charles rolled his eyes in disbelief.

"Strong? Hardly. All my life I've been protected. Everything that I've ever achieved has been down to money, to privilege, or to mutant powers – none of which I earned. And none of which can help me now. I'm a cripple, my dear. What is it that you think is so strong about me?" He looked at her, expecting her to be silenced by that unanswerable question. Instead, she began to speak as if she had been holding back the words.

"Your hope, Charles. Your resilience. Your heart. You have overcome so much that would have destroyed a lesser man. You grew up with terrifying powers, all alone; you could have become a monster, or gone insane. Instead you did the best you could by other people, took Raven in when she had nowhere to go, gave her a home. You took someone as broken as Erik and taught him how to love, how to be loved. You made this school, this family. It's only you that's holding it together – your love; their faith in you. Maybe one day what you've built here will be strong enough to stand on its own; but for now, Charles, it is standing on you. And none of that has anything to do with your money, or your privilege, or your powers. It certainly doesn't have a damn thing to do with your legs. It has to do with the amazing man you are."

She took a deep breath.

"You owe it to yourself to get through this. Take it from me, hiding away in a hospital bay for the rest of your life isn't going to bring you peace. You have the choice to live a life; you have to take it Charles, you just have to."

She looked at him expectantly, and Charles felt the full burden of her hope, her faith, her need, and those of all the mutants he had brought together here. He remembered what he had told Hank, so many months before, in his study. I carry on because I must. That was no less true now than it had been then; but never had the sweetness of life that had then sustained him seemed so remote.

"You think too much of me. I think perhaps I thought too much of myself; I thought that I could take the disappointment if it came, that I had nothing to lose. I worried more about how Erik would feel, and you. I never expected to be so… knocked for six."

He was dismayed to hear the sob in his voice, to feel the tears that came so easily these days welling up in his eyes again. She held his arm tighter, but didn't try to remonstrate with him. He looked up at her thankfully, saw the pain in her face mirroring his own. A tentative probe into her mind unearthed a well of guilt. None of this would have happened if I had never come here.

Gathering all his strength, he swallowed his tears, shook his head.

"You know I don't blame you for anything, my dear? None of this is your fault. It's just… fate, or biology, or something. Maybe this is just the way I'm meant to be; perhaps in some alternate universe, where I never met Erik Lensherr, never heard of Sebastian Shaw, I got run over by a bus instead." The weak attempt at humour fell flat, but she smiled gamely through her guilt, squeezed his arm. Then her face turned serious again.

"Charles, you say you don't blame me. Do you blame Erik then?" Charles's pupils contracted in shock.

"Why would you think that?" She shrugged.

"I don't know. It doesn't really make any sense. I mean, he's always blamed himself of course – but you didn't, of course you didn't. How could you have loved him if you thought that your maiming was his fault? But Charles, since the procedure failed, you won't see him, won't talk to him. What's he supposed to think?" Charles shook his head.

"I haven't been seeing anyone, but Hank. In fact, I wouldn't be talking to you if you hadn't so rudely barged in and refused to bugger off." His gentle tone took the sting from the words. "Why should Erik take it so personally?" Maddy rolled her eyes.

"Charles, please! I thought you were supposed to be a telepath. Anyone can see the guilt's eating him up. He feels responsible – not just for the original accident, but now for the procedure too – thinks if he'd never said anything to me, somehow things might have worked out differently. He's always felt unworthy of your forgiveness. And so when you say you won't see him, he takes that as the judgment he feels that he's deserved all along, just come several months late." Charles blinked.

"Are you sure you don't have a touch of the old telepathy yourself? I know you and Erik have formed a bond, but he's usually as close-mouthed as a clam – I can't believe he's said all that to you…" She pursed her lips.

"It's written all over him, Charles. If you weren't so set on shutting everyone out of your mind, you'd not be able to hear anything else." Charles flinched at the sharpness in her voice.

"I'm not being very fair to anyone right now, am I?" he sighed. She sagged, softened.

"Nothing about any of this is fair, Charles. Why should you be?"

Charles was perversely heartened to hear some of his own bitterness in her voice. A solemn silence fell between them, Madeline apparently prepared to simply stand with him while he processed his pain. Charles shut his eyes, tried to reach into himself and find the acceptance he had had before – or had it always simply been denial, forlorn hope masquerading as resignation? He closed his eyes. He was just so tired.

"I don't know if I can do this, Madeline. I don't know if I'm strong enough. But I will try. And I will see Erik, now; it's unforgivable of me to put him through this, just because I am in pain myself. Thank you for making me see that." She smiled.

"I'll send him up in a minute. Hank won't thank me, but he's just going to have to disapprove, I guess." She had something in her other hand, he noticed just as she turned her back. She paused over by the work bench, fiddled with something for a moment, then stood back to reveal the wireless.

"Don't forget what you told me, Charles: out there on the open sea, the winds keep blowing back and forth the same way as they ever have; the tide is treading its old pattern; in some sense, somewhere, all's right with the world."

With that she left him to the strains of Sailing By.