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Chapter Text

Angel was the first to leave. Two or three weeks after Cuba, she cornered Erik in the kitchen, where he sat with his second cup of coffee of the morning. 

“I’m leaving,” she said, pouring herself a cup. “I’ll tell the professor later today.”

“Okay.” Erik wasn’t sure why she was telling him. The kids tended to get along best with each other, and Charles was the one in charge - it was his house. 

“Why are we still here?” Her wings were still folded onto her back, but as she jumped up to sit on the counter, she seemed to float. “Shaw’s dead. The CIA doesn’t remember us. What are we doing?”

Erik thought for a bit about that. He’d wondered about it himself, and in these early days after Cuba, he found himself thinking about it more and more. There had always been a goal to his life, a steady task of hunting down Shaw and his associates, the path of revenge taking him across the world and never leaving any time for… whatever this was. Playing chess with Charles and trying to learn to cook nice things just because they were nice, going to the movie theater with Raven and Alex and Angel and Sean not just to protect them but to actually enjoy a film. Waking up next to Charles in the morning rested and content. 

“We’re living, I think.” 

Angel looked unconvinced. “Well, I wanna live out there. It’s nice here and all, but it’s too nice, you know?”

Erik nodded. “It doesn’t quite feel like real life.”

“‘Cause it’s not. Living up here in this castle and shit. That’s why I’m going back to LA.” 

“LA is far away.”

“LA is where I live.” Angel’s gaze was pointed, a dare for Erik to disagree. “Janos is coming with me.”

Janos, one of Shaw’s crew, had defected to their side in the middle of their fight on the beach. He didn’t speak much, and nobody knew much of anything about him, but he seemed to have been terrified of Shaw and looking for a way out. Erik could understand that. 

“With you?” Erik echoed curiously. 

Angel hunched her shoulders a little and screwed up her face. “Yes.” 

Erik raised his eyebrows and made a hmmm noise. “Okay.” Janos hadn’t gotten along well with most of the kids due to his having helped Shaw try to kill them, but he spent a lot of time with Angel. As far as Erik could tell, Janos still barely spoke when he was with her, but at least he looked calmer. “Stay safe,” he said. 

“I can take care of myself,” Angel said, clicking her tongue. “I’ve got pretty good aim now.” 

“I don’t doubt it,” Erik said with a chuckle. The last time he had seen Angel practicing, she’d nearly hit him. It was only Charles’s swift assistance with the garden hose that kept Erik’s shoes from catching fire. 

“Shut up.” 

“What do we do now?” Erik asked Charles that night over their game of chess. Angel had left that afternoon, after Charles extracted a promise that she would visit them, or maybe just make a phone call every now and then. 

“What do you mean?” 

Erik thought for a moment. The fire crackled peacefully in the fireplace behind them, and rain hit the windows. “How long does everyone stay here? What do we do with our lives?”

Charles leaned forward in his chair to move his chess piece. His mind was, as always, entwined with Erik’s, and right now Erik could feel the gentle hum of Charles’s concern. “Do you want them to leave?”

“No.” He never wanted to leave this moment. 

“Then they don’t have to.” 

“You brought us together for a reason,” Erik said. He isn’t really suspicious of Charles, but there’s never been a time in his life where he could have something as nice as this and not have it taken away. “That reason is gone. Is there something you still want from them?” From us?

“Of course not,” Charles said, looking repulsed at the thought. “But I won’t kick them out. Where would they go?” 

“Tell them that.” Erik looked at Charles. The chessboard in front of him, the firelight illuminating his face and his ornate chair. Everything about Charles looked like money, and Erik was so glad that, of all the things Charles could do with his wealth, he had decided to help those kids. To help him. “They’re worried.” I was worried. “We broke Alex out of prison, Charles. Make sure he knows he never has to go back.”

Charles’s eyes widened. “I didn’t even think about that.” 

“I know.”

“I’ll speak to them in the morning,” Charles decided. “You know that applies to you as well. You are welcome to stay here as long as you like.” 

“Yes, because I thought you might kick me out,” Erik said dryly, projecting various memories of him and Charles kissing. 

Charles flushed. “I mean it. Even if you were to decide you didn’t want to continue our relationship, you would always be welcome here.” 

Erik thought the house was big enough that, if that happened, they could both comfortably live there without seeing each other for years. But he still felt so much for Charles, he couldn’t imagine purposely leaving him. “Lucky for you, I’m enjoying our relationship,” Erik said with a small smile. He moved his knight. “Check.” 

“Damn,” Charles said, surveying the board. “You distracted me!” He moved a bishop to take Erik’s knight. 

“I win fair and square,” Erik said, moving his queen. “Checkmate.” 

To say Alex was happy when he heard the news would be an understatement. He thanked Charles three times, each time looking awed. Erik could relate. That Charles would take a kid he didn’t know out of jail, feed and house him, and expect nothing was shocking. That he would take in more than one was unbelievable. 

And yet the house remained almost as full as it had been before Cuba. The only vacancy was Angel, and she had phoned from LA as soon as she and Janos arrived. She couldn’t make it for Thanksgiving, she told Charles, but she promised to be back for Christmas. 

Alex used the phone to call his parents that afternoon. They weren’t on the best of terms, but from what the others could gather, they seemed relieved that Alex was no longer in prison. After he hung up, Alex retreated to the bunker and blew up several piles of junk. 

“It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Alex observed the next day. Everyone clustered around the TV, piled on the couches or, in Sean’s case, lying sprawled out on the floor. The weather was on, and a little turkey animation floated above the next day’s high temperature. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

“What should Thanksgiving feel like?” Raven asked with mild interest. She lay upside down on an armchair, head hanging off the seat and legs kicked over the back. 

“I dunno. Busy. Usually my grandparents would come over and the kitchen would be full all week.”

“We could fly you home, if you want,” Charles offered. 

Alex seemed to draw into himself. “I… don’t think that would be the best idea. Thanks, though.”

“I’d completely forgotten about the holiday,” Charles said. “Does anyone else want to spend the time with their families?”

A pause. 

“I always spent Thanksgiving with my mother,” Armando said. “She passed in March. Nobody else to go back to.”

“Pretty sure the foster home has reported me missing,” Sean said. “They probably wouldn’t be too thrilled if I showed up.”

The only sound for a minute was the news anchor, currently discussing the following day’s football matchups. 

“We could do Thanksgiving here,” Charles said. “If people wanted to.”

Hank nodded. 

“Yeah,” Alex said. 

“Don’t let Charles in the kitchen,” Raven said. “He can burn water.”

“I know how to make a thing or two,” Armando offered, “but Erik is easily the best cook.”

Erik, who had never thought of cooking more than what he needed to survive before moving into the mansion, and who had certainly never cooked a huge, culturally important meal for anyone before, said “I’ve never done Thanksgiving.”

Raven sat up. “Never done it like never cooked for it or like never celebrated?”

“Celebrated.” Raven’s mouth dropped open in shock, so Erik said somewhat defensively, “I’m German. It’s an American holiday.”

“I’m honored you’re spending your first Thanksgiving with us,” Charles said.

Erik rolled his eyes on instinct, though he was genuinely touched. “Aren’t you English? Why do you do Thanksgiving?”

“I grew up here,” Charles said at the same time as Raven added “But I’m not.”

“He keeps the accent just to be posh,” Raven fake-whispered.

Erik laughed, and Armando said “I think there was a turkey recipe in one of those cookbooks,” and Erik thought that, aside from his long-dead family, there was no one he would rather be spending this ridiculous holiday with. 

He slightly revised that opinion the following day, when he found out that, aside from Armando, everyone else was truly hopeless in the kitchen. For all she had mocked Charles, Erik quickly figured out that allowing Raven around a stove was not any safer of an option. Sean genuinely tried to help, but while chopping bread into cubes for the stuffing, he accidentally sliced off the tip of his pointer finger, which left him with a thick bandage and a large amount of unusable bread cubes. 

Armando was in charge of the kitchen, calmly preparing the turkey and directing Alex on what vegetables to chop and Erik on what recipes to follow. Hank poked his head into the kitchen once before excusing himself on account of his blue fur shedding. He returned an hour later with two pies from the grocery store. 

By the end of the day, the table was piled high with food and the heat from the kitchen was nearly unbearable. 

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Armando said, wiping his forehead with the neck of his T-shirt. 

Erik raised an eyebrow and wondered why Americans celebrated a holiday that seemed to be so much work. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“We used to go around the table and say something we’re thankful for,” Sean said when everyone had gathered for dinner. His face was red and, though Erik wasn’t the telepath present, he could tell Sean was embarrassed.

“That sounds like a great idea,” Charles said. “Who wants to start?”

There was a moment of silence as everyone tried to think either of something they were thankful for or a way out of saying anything at all. Erik had no idea what he would say. This whole event, sitting around the table with a group of mutants like they were family, was something he’d never had. Shaw was dead and he was still alive, and he had no idea how to say he was thankful for that.

“I’ll go,” Hank said. He was finally getting used to being blue, but he’d been ashamed of his mutation for so long, Erik couldn’t imagine him being thankful for it becoming more obviously visible. “I’m thankful we stopped a nuclear war.”

“When you say it like that, it sounds like we saved the world or something,” Alex said. “I’m thankful I’m not in prison.”

“We kind of did, didn’t we?” Raven pointed out.

“We totally did. CIA’s superhero division, right here!” Sean waved a hand to encompass the group at the table. “I’m thankful… to be a part of something.”

“Me too,” Armando said.

“Me three,” Raven agreed.

“I’m thankful we are all here,” Charles said. “That we were able to come together and harness our mutations.” He sounded so much like the professor everyone accused him of being in that moment that it was almost cheesy, but the emotion behind his words was painfully genuine. 

“I’ll drink to that,” Ssean joked, taking a long drink from his apple juice. Charles had absolutely refused to even have wine at the meal on the grounds that some of them were underage, though who exactly that was was up for debate. Sean and Alex certainly, but none of them knew how old Hank was, and though technically Raven was twenty-three, her mutation slowed her ageing, so her body was only twenty. 

“Should we start eating then?” Armando asked.

“Erik hasn’t gone yet,” Raven pointed out. “What are you thankful for?”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Charles hurriedly pointed out after Erik didn’t immediately begin speaking.

“No, it’s all right,” Erik said. “I’m thankful for… being here, I suppose. Surviving.”

A hush fell over the table as the fact that they could have died sunk in. For some of the younger mutants, it was the first time this possibility had crossed their minds.

Sean broke the silence by beginning to pile sweet potato casserole on his plate.

“Hey! Don’t take all of that!” Alex said, reaching to take the serving spoon out of Sean’s hand.

“What even is that?” Raven asked, looking at the marshmallow topping curiously. She reached across the table and swiped a finger through Sean’s helping, eyebrows shooting up when she tasted it. “Give me some of that!”

Charles looked pointedly at Sean and Alex, then at the green beans he was scooping onto his plate. “Don’t just eat dessert,” he said, sounding incredibly parental. 

“How was your first Thanksgiving?” Charles asked. They were back in their room, having cleaned up after dinner and barely managed to stuff all the leftovers (that, despite Alex, Hank, and Sean eating a seemingly impossible amount, they still had) into the fridge. 

Erik sat on the bed, legs folded under him. The dinner had been strangely normal, which unnerved him. He was getting used to this, eating dinner every night with their group of mutants, and he liked it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he worried that this would be taken away, just as every other nice thing had been, but that was an issue for another time.

“It was nice,” he said.

Charles could definitely tell that wasn’t all Erik was thinking, but one of the nice things about Charles, especially compared to other telepaths he had met, was that he wouldn’t pry. Even knowing Erik’s mind was troubled, he would never enter it without Erik’s permission, and even then he preferred to hear Erik say things aloud. 

“I’m glad,” he said. “I really am thankful we are all here. That you are here.”

“I’m glad I’m here too,” Erik said quietly, “but sometimes I don’t know why I am.”

“What do you mean?” Charles moved to sit next to Erik, on what had become over the last couple of months Erik’s side of the bed.

“Charles, what you have here feels like a family. I didn’t think that was something I could ever have.” He looked Charles in the eyes and said calmly “I always assumed killing Shaw would kill me.”

After a moment, Charles asked, softly and unsure of himself, “Did you want it to?”

“I think so.”

“Do you wish it had?”

Erik reached out and grabbed Charles’s hand, tangling their fingers together. “No,” he said slowly, “but I miss the certainty of it. Knowing that my life was working towards something, that every action had a purpose, and that there would be nothing afterward.”

“I’ve always thought,” Charles said, letting go of Erik’s hand in favor of placing that arm around his back and pulling him closer, Erik leaning against Charles’s side, Charles leaning on the bed’s headboard, “that part of the joy of living is being able to experience the moments that don’t have purpose. Like sitting around the dinner table tonight.”

“Before I met you, life hadn’t been joyful for a long time.”

“I thought I was supposed to be the sappy one in this relationship,” Charles joked.

“You are.”

“Wherever you go from here, it’s your choice,” Charles said. “Shaw is gone. The rest of your life is only up to you.”

And the government , Erik thought, mind running through the hatred for nearly everything he was. The fear they felt for what they didn’t understand, whether that was his religion, his mutation, or his relationship. 

“You’re right,” he said, feeling that familiar anger and purpose start to resurface under his ribcage.

Chapter Text

Alex hung back after dinner the next night. The others usually left soon after the meal to avoid the risk of having to wash dishes, but Alex loitered as Erik gathered the used plates in the sink and Charles re-wrapped the turkey leftovers that they somehow still had. 

“Alex?” Charles asked inquisitively. His voice was muffled by the fact that his head was largely in the refrigerator.

“Professor,” Alex began.

Erik said nothing and filled a bowl with soapy water.

“What is it?” Charles asked, this time from the outside of the refrigerator.

Alex looked very determinedly at the floor. “My parents called today.” 

“Oh. Are they doing well?”

“Yeah, they’re… they’re fine.”

“And your brother?” Erik asked.

Alex shoved his hands in his pockets and kept looking anywhere but at Charles. “My parents asked if he could stay with us.”

“For the holidays?” Charles asked.

Erik rinsed the soap off a plate. “When did he manifest?”

Charles looked at him in astonishment as Alex said “Last week.”

“How did you know?”

“They don’t just want him to stay here for the holidays, do they?” Erik asked, ignoring Charles’s question.

“They said they can’t deal with him,” Alex said bitterly. “He’s twelve and they were more concerned he blew up a wall than that he can’t open his eyes anymore.”

“Of course he can stay here,” Charles said. “For as long as he wishes.”

“Oh. Great.” Alex turned to leave but spun back around after only a few seconds. “Thank you.” 

“Mutants have to look out for each other,” Erik said.

“Do you know how many mutants like Alex’s brother are out there?” Erik asked that night. Charles was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and Erik stood in front of the window, looking out at the perfectly manicured night. “Mutants whose families can’t or won’t take care of them, who end up on the streets because they have nowhere else to go?”

Charles spat his toothpaste in the sink. “Erik, when I was in Cerebro, I felt all of them.” 

“What a terrible way to find out a family’s love isn’t unconditional. To manifest and lose your home.”

Charles left the bathroom and nodded. Even wearing pajamas instead of his cardigans, he looked unbearably young for all the responsibility and power he held. “I’m glad we can help Scott,” he said. “I wish we could help all of them.”

“How much did you let the government remember?” 

“Erik, even I’m not powerful enough to make them forget everything.”

Erik thought that Charles was a lot more powerful than he thought and probably held himself back out of habit. But then he thought of the hundreds of soldiers and sailors on those ships, of the spectacle of him lifting Shaw’s submarine out of the water and of the kids (though they weren’t really kids, were they) defending him. Maybe that wasn’t something they could cover up.

“They know about us now,” he said. “They will be afraid.”

Charles sat on the bed. “They don’t have to be.”

Erik forcefully projected the image of a submarine in the sky, of a man who looked like the devil lifting blue-furred Hank into the air with a puff of smoke. 

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Charles said sadly. “The world’s first glimpse of us was destruction. I wish it hadn’t been.”

“What’s done is done. We are dangerous, Charles. There’s no avoiding that.” 

Charles projected memories of Erik using his powers to open doors, to mend a stubborn spring on the couch. Of Sean flying with Angel. “That is not all we are. They don’t see that.” 

“No one is only danger.” Erik thought Shaw might have been, but he pushed that thought to the side. “But we have more power than most, and so we are more dangerous than most.”

“I think much of the government thinks like you.”

Erik frowned and sent a feeling of offense to Charles. “I think this way to celebrate our differences and keep the humans from seeing us as fancy magic tricks. The government would think this way to classify us as weapons.” 

“They haven’t done anything yet,” Charles sighed. “Not even publicly acknowledged the existence of mutants. You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself.” 

“Am I?” Erik projected flashes of memories. The noise of gunfire. A yellow cloth star, a red armband. The pain of the tattoo gun carving numbers into his forearm. “I know what the world does to those it views as dangerous or undesirable.”

“That is not the only outcome.” Charles stood and walked to where Erik stood by the window. He took his hand. “There is a future where mutants are not feared or hated but accepted, and it is that future we have to work toward.” 

“As long as that acceptance doesn’t mean suppressing our mutations to appease the humans.” Erik looked out the window into the night. He had Charles beside him, and the grounds were still and dark. Moments of that kind of beauty were rare. Charles had seen so many more of them, and Erik thought that was why he could believe in this future acceptance so strongly.

“You say ‘the humans’ like you aren’t one of them. We may be mutant, but we are still human, Erik.”  Charles gently tugged Erik back to the bed. Erik let him. “We can’t let our differences separate us.”

Erik said nothing. He thought their differences already separated them, that if people were ready for slaughter over something as simple as a religious difference there was no way they could accept someone like Erik, who could kill them with pocket change. But some part of him wanted to believe in Charles’s utopian future, so he remained quiet.

“Will you go with Alex to pick up his brother tomorrow?” Charles asked a few minutes later. 

“Wouldn’t you be better suited to this?” Erik was good for many things, most of which involved being extremely threatening or actual murder. What he was not good for was comforting small children and not offending their bigoted parents. 

“You will do fine. Hank will pilot the plane, and you should be in no danger.” 

It was not danger that worried Erik. “You have a plane?”

Charles nodded. “I bought one recently. I thought it might come in handy. Hank is looking into constructing an underground hangar on the property, but for now it’s at the airport.”

Once again, Erik was struck by the fact that Charles had enough money to just buy a plane on a whim. He couldn’t deny, however, that he was grateful not to have to take a scared mutant kid on a cross-country commercial flight. “I’ll go,” he said, knowing that there had never been a chance that he wouldn’t. 

“Excellent,” Charles said. “Can you get the light?”

Erik turned out the light with his powers, and as he lay down to sleep he thought that no matter what the government thought after the scene they’d made in Cuba, at least they were helping this one kid.

The flight to Alaska was not the longest of Erik’s life. It felt that way, though. 

There was a calm that came with his previous life, an acknowledgement of mission that allowed only for the possibility of success. When he had flown from Germany to Argentina, he had done so knowing that within a day, he would have lowered the amount of Nazis in the world. That kind of knowledge was calming. This flight offered no such reassurance. Erik sat with Alex as they traveled across the country to pick up his little brother, a scared kid who had manifested something dangerous. This was the sort of mission that involved a lot of feelings and compassion, both things Charles was much better at than Erik.

The long plane ride offered plenty of time for conversation. Erik and Alex sat in silence. 

As the plane descended into the small Anchorage airport, Erik saw a car parked beside the runway. Alex sighed; clearly he saw it too.

“I know you don’t like my parents,” he said. “I don’t either, sometimes. But please don’t…” he waved a hand in Erik’s general direction.

“Don’t what?” Erik asked innocently.

Alex glared at him. “Threaten them. Scare them. Make them regret sending Scott to live with us.” 

“Why would they regret that? They didn’t seem thrilled to have him at your house.”

“There are… doctors, for people like us. Don’t make them regret sending him somewhere he will learn to embrace his mutation instead of somewhere they think would cure it.” 

The plane touched down. The jolt shook Erik from what had promised to be a truly awful spiral of memories, all of which involved Shaw and the camp. “If you give me the names of those doctors, I will kill them.” 

“I don’t know them,” Alex said. “And I don’t know anyone who has gone to one. But this is what I mean. You can’t make death threats around my parents. I know you’re not joking, and they will too.”

Erik thought of a variety of fun ways he could kill doctors who promised to ‘cure’ a mutation. He also thought of Hank’s failed vaccine and the blue fur that had sprouted from his skin when he tested it. Mutations weren’t a disease to be eradicated.

“Fine,” he said.

Alex’s parents were waiting for them when they exited the plane. Hank stayed in the cockpit, citing that he was just the pilot, but Erik knew he was staying out of sight to avoid shocking anyone with his appearance. Erik hated that Hank had to do that.

On the grass beside where the plane had come to a stop, the Summers family stood beside a parked gray car that, though a few years old, was clearly kept up well. The Summers themselves were unremarkable - Alex looked a lot like his father, but with blond hair in place of his father’s dark hair. Standing slightly behind his mother was a small child with a blindfold tied around a pair of sunglasses. 

Erik hung back, standing by the base of the steps down from the plane. This wasn’t the place for him to intervene. He would only make things worse. 

“Hey, Scott,” Alex said, voice soft. “Mom. Dad.” 

“Alex,” his father said. “It’s good to see you.” 

“It’s been a while,” his mother said.

“Alex?” Scott asked. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, bud. It’s me.”

“Mom and Dad say I’m gonna live with you now.”

“If you want to. We’ve got a pretty cool place.”

“‘Course I want to. I haven’t seen you in forever.” Scott took a step towards Alex, making sure to stay behind his mother.

“Great. That’s great,” Alex said as his father asked “Who is ‘we?’”

“Me and some friends of mine.”

Erik waved and smiled his least welcoming smile. 

“These friends aren’t other criminals, are they?”

Alex frowned and crossed his arms. “They’re the people that got me out of prison, no thanks to you.”

“We should go,” Erik called. “It’s a long flight back.” Really, he just didn’t want to stand here and listen to Alex and his family pretend to be civil any longer.

“You coming, Scott?” 

Scott nodded and carefully stepped out from behind his mother, walking very slowly to Alex. 

“His suitcase is in the trunk,” Mrs. Summers said, rushing to the back of the car. She unlocked the trunk, and Erik floated the suitcase across the tarmac by the metal reinforcements in its corners. The Summers’ mouths dropped open. 

“Erik, I told you,” Alex hissed.

“What?” Erik asked fake-innocently. “I’m not threatening them.”

“Goodbye,” Alex said to his parents. They stood a good ten feet apart, the empty tarmac between them speaking volumes. 

“Call us when you get there,” his mother said.

“Let us know when you get this figured out.”

Alex nodded and put a hand on Scott’s shoulder, helping him navigate up the stairs and to the plane. 

Erik had a very strong urge to scare the Summers, to take one of the marbles out of his pocket and send it spinning around their heads. But Alex didn’t want him to, and he knew Charles would be disappointed in him if he did. So he levitated Alex’s suitcase onto the plane and climbed up the stairs himself, not looking back as he shut the plane door behind him.

Erik tried not to eavesdrop on the flight back to New York. He really did. But closing his eyes did not make him fall asleep, and the cons of there only being three people on the plane meant that conversation did not get drowned out into casual background noise or buried under the sound of the engines. So when Scott started speaking to Alex, Erik heard.

“Dad said you were in prison?” Scott asked shortly after the plane had lifted off. 

“They didn’t tell you?”

Scott shook his head.

“Yeah, I was in prison for a little under a year. I’m out now, though.” 

“What did you do?” Scott still had not taken off his blindfold, and everything about him sounded like a scared kid. Erik was briefly confused by the surge of protectiveness he felt before he realized that he had been this kid, once. But in his case, his parents hadn’t chosen to give up on him.

Alex was silent for a moment, clearly trying to think of a way to explain this to his little brother. “I was getting evicted,” he said, “and I didn’t have any money and I was scared of living on the streets. I couldn’t control my power, so it went off. I didn’t find out until the police came the wall I’d destroyed had fallen on my landlord.”

“That’s not fair,” Scott said, screwing up his face. “You didn’t mean to.”

Alex shrugged before realizing Scott couldn’t see him. “Nobody cared whether I meant to.”

“Everybody’s scared of us, aren’t they. Because we’re like this.” Scott tapped his blindfold.

“Not everybody. Not where we’re going.”

“I might blow it up accidentally, though. And then they’d kick you out too.”

“Do you know how many things I’ve blown up there? They encourage it.”

Erik decided now was a great time to stop pretending to sleep. “Nobody’s kicking anybody out.”

“Who’s that?” Scott asked.

“That’s Erik. Who was supposed to be asleep,” Alex practically growled.

“Does he live where we’re going too?”

“Yes.” 

“There’s a lot of people there,” Alex said.

“Do you blow stuff up too?” Scott asked curiously.

Erik chuckled. “I do sometimes. That isn’t my gift though, no.”

“Mine’s not much of a gift. If I open my eyes, stuff starts to explode. I can’t go to school and I accidentally caught the neighbors’ mailbox on fire.”

“Everyone’s mutation is unique. They are scary when they manifest, but we can help you make your gift work for you.” Erik was not suited to comforting scared kids, but this he believed in. “You don’t have to be scared of it. Mutant and proud.”

“The professor helped me a lot,” Alex said. “I can control my power now. He’ll be able to help you with yours too.”

“Is Erik the professor?” Scott asked.

Erik burst out laughing, as did Alex. “No, he’s not. You’ll meet him when we land.”

“Why is that funny?” Scott asked. Erik kept laughing and did not answer.

Chapter Text

The first thing Scott asks Charles upon arriving is “Are you the Professor?”

Charles, who had introduced himself with his first name, chuckled. “Yes, I am. Have Alex and Erik been talking about me? Only good things, I hope.”

Scott rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “You’re supposed to help me,” he said quietly.

“Well,” Charles said, “I will certainly do my best. Why don’t you show me what you can do?”

Alex opened his mouth to speak, but before he can, Scott said “That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“His power is a lot like mine,” Alex said. 

“I blow things up,” Scott simplified.

“That’s okay,” Charles said. He raised his eyebrows, and though no one could hear what he telepathically said to Scott, the boy burst out laughing. 

“Did you really do that?” Scott asked his brother. “Chop a statue’s head off?”

“I must’ve chopped the heads off an entire Macy’s worth of mannequins by now, kiddo. But yeah, the Professor used to have some statue over in the garden there, of an ancestor or something?.” Alex began to point before realizing that Scott, with his blindfold, couldn’t see him. “Anyway, he doesn’t anymore.”

“You don’t have to show me your powers now,” Charles said, reassuring. “But I do need to understand your gift so I can help you learn how to control it.”

Scott nodded. “Will I be able to open my eyes again once you teach me?”

“I can’t promise that, but I hope so,” Charles said. Erik was struck by how good Charles was with Scott, especially considering that for the last few years, he had interacted mainly with fellow university students, academics, and Raven. Calming down terrified children seemed to be an innate part of his skillset, and it was impressive.

Two days later, Charles and Hank enthusiastically rushed out of the bunker, followed by the Summers brothers and a cloud of thick smoke. Erik couldn’t make out their words, but he heard “Marvelous” and “from his eyes .”

“They seem happy about this,” Scott said to Alex.

“They’re nerds about mutations,” Alex said, “but I gotta admit, yours is pretty cool, buddy.”

“It’s just like yours.”

“And mine is pretty cool too. Seriously, though, laser eyes? I bet you Hank and his weird feet are jealous.”

“I am not jealous,” Hank called.

 “He is.”

“It’s fascinating, the variety of mutations,” Charles said one night. “To think, everyone’s gifts come from the same cluster of genes.”

Erik did not have anything to say to this, so he nodded. Genetics as a concept didn’t make a lot of sense to him, probably a result of not having any kind of formal high school education. He knew enough to understand that mutants were an evolution of homo sapien, that they were the next form of humanity, and that was all he needed to know. 

“Scott’s mutation is so similar to his brother’s, and while that has to be due to their being siblings, I can’t help but wonder why Scott’s is localized to his eyes while Alex’s is not. I’m curious if there is any difference in the energy they emit, or if it is essentially the same-”

“You know I don’t approve of running tests on kids,” Erik cut him off.

Charles’s jaw dropped. “I would never! You’ve shared what happened to you, and I never want anyone to go through that. I’m merely curious as to the reason for the differences in mutations, though I doubt there is any ethical way to study that.’

“Do we need to know why?” It seemed to Erik that, if a genome could be read to determine a mutant’s power, it would be that much easier to identify the ‘dangerous’ ones from the ‘harmless’ ones.

“I think it would be fascinating to know.” Erik felt Charles on the edge of his mind, and knew that he had heard all Erik’s fears about what Charles was saying. “I do agree that the potential for misuse of this knowledge is… great.”

“What matters isn’t why we have these mutations, it’s that we have them. There are so many more issues facing us that aren’t something anyone can solve in a lab.”

Charles sighed. “Erik, no one even knows about mutants yet. You’re acting like people have already set out to destroy us.”

Erik’s voice was icy. “They will.”

“I don’t want to argue with you. We both want the same thing.”

“And what’s that?” Erik crossed his arms.

“To help,” Charles said. Erik could not disagree.

Scott raced out of the lab, nearly running into Erik. “I can see!” he practically yelled. “Look at my new glasses! I can see!”

“Make sure those don’t fall off,” Hank called from the lab.

“Look!” Scott said again, pointing at his face. He wore a large pair of glasses, the lenses made of a thick, reddish material. Behind them, Scott’s eyes were open. 

“That’s great,” Erik said. 

Scott looked up, craning his neck back to see Erik’s face. “Who are you again?”

Erik’s mouth quirked up in the beginnings of a smile. “Erik,” he said. 

“Okay. I’m gonna go show the Professor my glasses!” He ran off down the hallway. 

Erik leaned on the doorway to the lab. “He seems happy.”

“He is.” Hank did not like Erik, and he couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had a conversation.

“Good work.”

Hank seemed confused, as though he had expected an insult. “Thanks.” He turned back to his equipment, and Erik took that as his cue to leave.

A large, as yet undecorated Christmas tree stood in the corner of the main room. Its tallest point nearly brushed the ceiling, and that was without the ornaments that were sure to be added. Christmas was next week, and Charles had warned him that Raven took her decorating very seriously. 

Tomorrow, though, was the first day of Hanukkah. Though Erik had grown used to (or if not used to, comfortable with) living with a large amount of people he could almost call a family, the obnoxiously tall tree taking up much of the room was a reminder that, unlike the last time he’d had a family, no one else here was Jewish. 

Everyone knew he was Jewish, of course. He by no means kept it a secret, and though he didn’t wear short sleeves often, when he did, the numbers tattooed onto his arm were impossible to miss. That, and the way he politely but firmly avoided any pork that found its way onto the dining table. But Erik was sure that he was the only one in the house that knew when Hanukkah started, or why he would celebrate it. 

Over the last several years, Erik had celebrated quietly. Much of the reason he had continued lighting the menorah and saying the blessings year after year had been from spite - he had been through hell for his religion, and even a detailed, continent-hopping revenge quest couldn’t get him to give up those traditions. So he’d lit a small menorah on the dresser of whatever hotel room or safehouse he’d been staying in and watched the flames long into the night, and that had been enough. But after this summer, when Charles had unlocked his childhood memories of celebrating with his family, Erik wanted to reclaim that feeling of joy and community he now remembered. 

The tree blocked the window, so Erik placed his menorah on the mantle of the fireplace. It was small, barely bigger than his hand, and he frowned. Next to the nearly eight-foot tree, such a small menorah felt dwarfed in comparison. Erik concentrated, and iron from the poker and silver from a spoon someone had left on the coffee table joined its steel until his menorah was the size of the one he remembered from his childhood. This was a different time, he knew, with Charles and the others instead of his mother and father, in a New York mansion instead of a small home in Poland. But the echo of that peace flowed through him, and he smiled softly as he left the room. 

“Dude, why the fuck are you grating a potato?” Sean peered blearily at Erik. 

The sun rose late in the winter, so despite what Erik thought to be a perfectly reasonable hour, it had barely cleared the trees surrounding the mansion. Still holding both the potato and the grater, Erik turned and raised an eyebrow at Sean. “Did you just call me ‘dude?’”

“Uh, yeah, whoops,” Sean said, pouring himself a cup of mostly half and half, to which he added a very minimal amount of coffee. “Erik, then. Why the fuck are you grating a potato?”

“I’m trying to make latkes,” Erik said, frowning at the grated potato and onion in a bowl before him. Cooking was a lot more difficult when Charles had no useful recipes and his only memories of the food were from his childhood, when he watched his mother cook. “And if you’re drinking that to wake yourself up, a caffeine pill would be more effective. You barely have any coffee in there.”

Sean made a thoughtful hmmm noise and took a sip of his coffee. “‘S probably a placebo thing. I think I’d wake up even if this was just milk if I thought it was coffee.”

“It practically is just milk.”

“Not all of us are international assassins that drink our coffee black.” Sean wrinkled his nose. “It’s disgusting.”

“Assassin implies someone was paying me,” Erik said, grabbing a bag of flour from a cabinet. “All I got for killing those men was the satisfaction.” His smile was sharklike. 

“Okay, weirdo. Good luck with your…” he waved his arm vaguely. “Potatoes.” 

Erik nodded absently, trying to remember what sort of spices were supposed to be in these. 

By noon, Erik had a batch of latkes he thought were reasonable. He had also used up a lot of the house’s potatoes, had a trash can half full with cakes that were either tasteless or burned beyond recognition, and his left arm sported a spattering of burns from the oil popping in the pan. They were nowhere near as good as his mother’s, he thought as he bit into one, but they would do. 

Three days before Christmas, Raven dragged a large suitcase into the main room. She dropped it in front of the couch and practically ran back out, returning only a moment later with a trash bag nearly as tall as she was, full to bursting. Charles followed her, carrying a few shopping bags on each arm. His smile was apologetic, Raven’s was near manic. 

“Christmas is in three days!” she exclaimed. “Angel’s plane lands in five hours! People, we have some decorating to do!”

Alex unzipped the suitcase to find ornaments nestled among bubble wrap. Softer cloth ornaments and yards of tinsel spilled from the trash bag, which Raven untied. 

“Let’s go, people!” she said, rousing the crew she had herded into the room from their momentary shocked stupor. 

Scott was the first to scramble for the ornaments, pulling out what appeared to be a red crocheted cross from the top of the trash bag. He tossed it aside in favor of a small snowman, which he hung from a branch at his eye level. 

“My grandmother crocheted that,” Charles remarked as the cross landed under the coffee table. 

Soon, nearly everyone had ornaments in hand. Hank tripped over Scott after completely missing that Scott had knelt down to reach the tree’s bottom branches in front of him. Alex attempted to wrangle with the tinsel by himself, which mostly resulted in getting himself horribly tangled until Armando helped him, laughing. 

Erik was content to sit back and watch. This wasn’t a scene he felt he should intrude on, but with the holiday music from the radio (currently playing “Let it Snow”) and everyone’s laughter, he didn’t feel entirely excluded either. 

“I bought you these,” Charles said, sitting on the couch next to Erik. He handed him two shopping bags, one filled with blue tinsel, and the other with string banners that read “Happy Birthday,” among other messages. “They don’t really sell Hanukkah decorations, but I thought you could rework the letters into something with a little more… holiday cheer.”

Erik didn’t know whether to laugh at the string banners or to hug Charles. He had a lot of thoughts about both the seeming omnipresence and the commercial aspects of Christmas and its decorations, but that Charles had thought to get him what little decorations he could find was surprisingly touching. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

“You’re welcome,” Charles said, flushing red. “I’m sorry about… how haphazard it is, but I really do want you to be included, and I wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do-”

Erik cut off his rambling with a kiss. “Thank you,” he said again when he pulled away. 

“Did you know being a stripper on a television show pays less than being a stripper for real?” Angel asked Erik that night. She had arrived at the mansion shortly after dinner, and after greeting everyone. The greetings ranged from welcoming (Charles) to enthusiastic (Alex and Raven). She now perched on the edge of an armchair, drink in hand. Erik sat on the couch in what he considered to be a much more normal sitting position.

“I can’t say I’d ever thought about it,” Erik said truthfully. 

“You don’t get to keep the tips,” Angel said mournfully.

Sean poked his head into the room. “Hey, Angel! Did you say you’re gonna be on TV?”

“I didn’t.”

“But you are, aren’t you? That’s awesome!”

“Yeah,” she said, half her mouth turning up into a smile, “it sure is.”

Sean was off, hurrying down the hall to the kitchen where Raven and Hank had been sneaking some ice cream. “Guys!” he said loud enough for Erik and Angel to hear. “Angel said she’s gonna be on TV!”

“Did she say what show she will be on?” Hank asked.

“... No.”

“How’s LA?” Erik usually hated small talk, but it surprised him that this time, he genuinely wanted to know.

“Same as always,” Angel said, drawing her legs up onto the seat of her armchair. “Loud. Busy. Old job wasn’t available, but I got one that pays better.”

“And Janos?” Janos had not so much as said hello to Erik when he arrived with Angel that evening. It turned out that Erik levitating a submarine with him inside was enough to make him permanently (and justifiably) terrified of Erik. 

“Good. He drives limos. And… it’s nice having him around.” 

Erik nodded. “If you’re ever in trouble, let us know.” He made a couple of marbles whir at high speeds around the room as he said “I’m told I can be very threatening.” 

Angel laughed. “You’re not the only one,” she said, and Erik suddenly remembered how dangerous going to the garden had been when she was still practicing her aim. 

“Still,” Erik said with a smile, marbles returning to his pockets.

“If spitting acid doesn’t fix whatever trouble I’m in, I’ll give you a call.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment before Angel asked “How have things been here?”

“Peaceful.”

“Must be weird for you.” 

Erik had never told Angel exactly what he’d done before Charles found him, but after Cuba, there had been no point in pretending Shaw had been anywhere near his first kill. “Yeah.”

“It’s weird for me, and I just moved back home. Working for the CIA, seeing someone like Shaw, it makes going back to normal feel wrong somehow.”

“I’ve never stayed in one place this long before,” Erik said instead. Not since the war. 

“How’s it treating you?”

He thought of Thanksgiving and everyone stuffing their faces and laughing around the table. Of the way everyone makes an effort, albeit an initially awkward one, to keep the kitchen kosher and of the two candles lit above the fireplace. Of the way Scott had smiled the first time he wore Hank’s glasses and could safely open his eyes.

“Well,” Erik said. “Too well, sometimes. There are so many wrongs in the world, and I live here like I’m somehow unaffected by them.”

Angel nodded. “That’s why I left. I don’t know how Charles and Raven didn’t forget about the real world, growing up here.”

Erik shrugged. That’s what he’d wondered too, at first. Sometimes he wasn’t convinced they hadn’t. “I don’t want to leave. But- have you met Alex’s brother?” Angel shook her head. “He lives here now. We started helping him learn to control his mutation almost as soon as it manifested. If all mutants could have people like Charles to help them, think of how much better off they would be.” He did not say Think of how much better off I would have been , and he did not mention Shaw. 

“You sound like Charles.” 

“I suppose I do.” Erik didn’t hate the thought.

Chapter Text

“I’ve been thinking,” Charles said. Christmas had been a day or two ago, but Raven had insisted they keep the tree up through the new year, so the reflections of its lights from the other room twinkled along the kitchen wall. 

“When are you not?” Erik asked. Charles and Hank had been working on Cerebro, which meant Charles heard the thoughts of almost everyone. 

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Hm?” 

“Scott is just a kid. Everyone else is old enough to have graduated high school at least, but he’s twelve. He will have to go back to school next month.”

“Do you think he’s ready for that?” Scott had been working with Charles, but he had only been at the house for a little over a month. Hank was working on synthesizing something so that Scott could open his eyes without his lasers hitting anything, but the latest version was still very much a prototype. If the glasses he was currently wearing slid too far down Scott’s nose… well, they’d had to put out more than a few fires.

“I think he could be,” Charles said. 

Somehow, Erik knew that wasn’t the end of what Charles was trying to say. “But?”

“But I don’t think he has to be. Look how successful we’ve been helping everyone here work on their powers. I think we could expand that. Start teaching Scott from here and open the house up as a school for mutants.”

“You want this place to be a school?” Erik didn’t know why he was shocked. He’d been thinking for a while about a way to help other mutants, especially those in Scott’s position who were young and scared. But the idea of Charles, who wasn’t even thirty, opening a school in his own home blew him away.

“It already sort of is.”

Erik nodded.

“We would have to talk to the others about this, of course. But I wanted your opinion first.”

Opening a school was another level of ambitious. When it had just been the seven of them training to bring down Shaw, with the backing of the CIA behind them, it had been difficult. Now that the government had forgotten all but the spectacle of Cuba? All they had were seven teens and twenty-somethings, only one of whom was qualified to teach. 

“I think you should do it.” 

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Charles’s eyes lit up. “Will you help me with it? We’ll have to find teachers, get accredited, figure out the logistics-”

“I’ll help you. I want to help other people like us, and this seems like the best way. I won’t be one of your teachers, though. I don’t think that would work out well for anyone involved.” Erik did not mention the inevitable difficulties of opening a school for mutants when the majority of the world did not know about mutants and when the government was most likely afraid of them. They both knew. 

“Thank you.”

“This can’t be all we do, though. If the government tries to pass anti-mutant legislation, I will fight it.” He let Charles interpret ‘fight’ however he liked. With violence or with lawyers, he wasn’t picky.

“Of course. As will I.”

“You really are going to be a professor now, aren’t you,” Erik said.

Charles smiled. “I guess I will be.”

Later that week, everyone gathered around the small television in the main room, waiting for the New Years ball to drop. Erik had never put much time into celebrating the new year before, mostly because it didn’t matter. Whether he killed a particular Nazi in December of one year or January of the next hadn’t made a big difference. But this time, the change of the year felt like something more. The next year would bring the school Charles had talked about. If Erik had anything to do with it, it would bring hope to as many mutants as possible.

Angel and Raven had bought everyone tacky glasses that said “1963,” and Scott ran around with a noisemaker, which he would blow every time the screen showed the ball. 

“In just under a minute, Times Square will ring in 1963,” the program host was saying, an overly made-up man in a sharp suit. He also wore a headband proudly proclaiming the new year. 

Times Square wasn’t all that far from Westchester. It was definitely close enough that the ten of them could have packed into a car or two and gone to join the huge crowds that the camera showed. Erik was very glad they hadn’t. That place, huge and packed full of people, would have been a nightmare. Here though, Raven could watch the program in her blue-skinned glory and Angel could fly just off the ground to sneak up on people and steal their sodas, which she had done to Hank and Sean already. Darwin, who was smiling softly despite being squished into an armchair with Alex sharing the seat and Scott perched on the armrest, could be there with them. 

“Ten, nine, eight…”

As the countdown started, the smaller side conversations trailed off. Everyone chanted excitedly, growing louder and louder as they approached “three, two, one!”

When the ball touched down, fireworks exploded onscreen. Scott blew his noisemaker extra loudly, right (accidentally) into Sean’s ear. Sean jumped out of his seat.

Erik didn’t see what else happened, because Charles turned to him and said “Happy new year, Erik,” with a soft smile. “Should we, um.” He very pointedly looked at Erik’s lips. “It’s tradition.”

Erik rolled his eyes. “Yes, because I have no reason other than tradition to want to kiss you.”

Charles was still smiling as he pulled Erik in for a kiss. The kiss lingered, and when they pulled away, Erik thought that was another thing they couldn’t have done in Times Square.

New Year’s Day dawned gray and dark. The clouds that had hovered over the mansion all night had broken sometime after everyone had gone to bed, and a thick layer of snow fell over the gardens. That snow was still falling as the sun rose invisible behind the clouds. 

By midmorning, the clouds had gone. The sun shone on a bitingly cold day, and the snow had fallen to depths several of them had never before seen. Erik himself was no stranger to snow, having seen plenty of it as a kid in Germany and during his travels. Charles, too, growing up in New York and England, saw snow fairly regularly. Some of the others… didn’t.

“Shit,” Sean summed up when he stumbled out of his room around 10 am. His eyes were still mostly glued shut from sleep, but he immediately threw on the first coat he saw and ran outdoors.

Five minutes later, he ran back in. “Fuck, that stuff’s cold,” he said, nose and ears as red as his hair. He turned on the hot water in the kitchen sink and shoved his hands under it.

“Yeah, it’s frozen,” Raven rolled her eyes, carefully layering and making sure to pull on gloves. 

“Do ya wanna have a snowball fight?” Sean said, turning off the sink. “That’s what people do, right? Snowball fight?” 

“I’ve never had a snowball fight before,” Angel said. She leaned against the doorway, arms crossed over her chest. “But you’re all going down.”

“Yeah, right,” Raven said. “I got so much practice pelting Charles. I’ve got great aim.”

Erik took a sip of his coffee. “It’s also possible Charles sucks at hiding.”

“He really does,” Raven agreed.

Sean put gloves on this time and Angel somehow found a coat that her wings could fit through, and the three of them raced out the door. Erik followed, topping off his coffee before he left the kitchen. He could hear them run into Hank in the hallway, and his halfhearted protests before he too was dragged into the snowball fight.

Erk watched, holding his coffee, as the four of them raced around the yard. Angel took a couple snowballs and flew up in the air, dropping them on Raven’s head. In response, Raven fired a volley at her, which Angel quickly dodged. 

Not too long after the snowball fight started, Janos slipped out the door and stood next to Erik, watching the fight. 

“You can join them, if you want,” Erik said quietly. 

Janos shrugged and shook his head. 

“It’s dripping down my shirt! Holy fuck that’s cold, it’s going down my fucking shirt!” Sean yelled as Hank’s expertly placed snowball hit him on the back of the neck. Raven laughed.

Erik stilled. Something wasn’t right. There’s someone else here, Charles projected into his mind.

Who?

I can’t tell.

Erik reached out with his powers. He felt large earrings and a silver bracelet, and thought back to Charles, It’s Emma.

Sure enough, a shape that had at first appeared to be yet more snow moved steadily toward them. “Everyone come inside,” Erik yelled, marching across the yard to her.

“Oh, you don’t want them to see me?” Emma asked, smiling. Her coat was white and shiny, as was everything else she wore. The earrings Erik had sensed were silver-mounted pearls. She wore no hat. 

“Why are you here?”

“You’re not even going to invite me inside? In this weather? How rude.”

Erik knew she wanted him to bring up her role in Shaw’s attempt to start a nuclear war. Instead, he smiled sharply and said “No one’s ever accused me of being nice.”

“Fine,” Emma sighed dramatically. “I heard about your little school and I came to see what all the fuss was about.”

“Heard from who?”

She smiled. “A little birdie told me.”

Erik crossed his arms. “From who.”

Emma walked past him. “You’ll never know! I’ll just let myself inside, then.”

“No.” Erik slammed the front door with his powers. He trusted Emma just about as much as he trusted the CIA, which was to say, not at all. She’d been Shaw’s right-hand man, and he had no reason to believe she had changed.

“Sugar, if I was going to kill you as some sort of revenge plot for Sebastian, I would have done it by now,” Emma said in a mock-sweet tone. “And I certainly wouldn’t have announced myself. So are we going to wait out here all day? Because only one of us is going to get cold.” Her skin rippled to her diamond form. 

Hank, Raven, Sean, and Angel peered out from the window beside the door, watching the confrontation. Erik was tempted to drag them all away by the zippers of their coats, and he didn’t only by acknowledging that it would distract him.

Erik, let her in. I do not think she means harm, Charles spoke in his head.

Are you sure? She tried to kill us.

Which one of us is telepathic?

Emma’s voice joined the conversation. I am.  

Get out of my head, Erik projected forcefully. Not you, Charles.  

“So I take it Charles is the one I should speak to about the school, then?” Emma asked, turning to walk towards the front door, reluctantly, Erik opened it for her with his powers. 

I hope you know what you’re doing, Charles, he thought.

“Can you please stop projecting how much you don’t like me? It’s really very annoying.” Emma sat in Charles’s office, her white coat draped over the back of her chair. Charles sat across from her, and Erik stood leaning against the wall, unwilling to sit down lest he let his guard drop. 

“No.”

Charles gave him a look. “Erik,” he said.

Erik sighed dramatically. “Fine.”

“I get why you don’t trust me. I wouldn’t trust me either, if I were you. But I’m not here to hurt you.” Emma said, examining her fingernails.

“Why are you here?” Charles asked.

“I’m letting you know I support your little school. And extending the offer to help me make a real change.”

“Is that ‘real change’ starting another nuclear war no one would survive?” Erik asked, eyebrows raised.

Emma laughed a clearly fake laugh. “Oh sweetie no. That was Sebastian’s plan. Believe it or not, I don’t actually want to kill all the humans. I just want to make sure they know their place.”

“And what is their place?” Charles asked coldly. 

“How did you put it? We are the next stage in human evolution?” 

“I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have written that line,” Charles said wryly. “What I intended to illustrate was that Neandertals peacefully coexisted with homo sapiens for thousands of years, and that such a thing is also possible for mutants and baseline humans.”

Erik did not recall a time in his life he had felt humans could peacefully coexist with him. As soon as his powers manifested, he had been tortured for them. “What’s your plan, Emma?” he asked. “Turn the tables? Victimize them before they can do it to us?” He hated that less than a year ago, he would have enthusiastically supported such a plan.

“If necessary, yes.”

“I don’t condone violence,” Charles said.

“I’m not asking you to. But if any of your students want to fight for a real difference in this world, for mutants not to be looked down on or ignored, send them my way. And if I meet anyone who would rather hide away here, I’ll be sure to give them your name. Sound good?”

Charles’s entire body was tense as he said “I hope to make a difference for mutantkind, just as you do. But I will not support mutant supremacy.”

“You know I agree with her,” Erik said when Emma was far enough away to not telepathically hear him. “I won’t join her, but we can’t hide from the world to keep the peace.”

Charles sighed. “I know.”

***

Erik sat on a bench (because of course Charles’s gardens were big enough to have benches in them), twirling four metal marbles a few inches above his hand. He wasn’t really doing anything per se, aside from avoiding the kitchen, where what had started as Darwin listening to a record while cooking quickly turned into him and Raven having an enthusiastic Elvis sing-along. It was chilly out, but the lack of wind made the temperature tolerable, and Erik’s gloves kept him from feeling the brunt of the cold. 

He hadn’t been outside very long when he heard footsteps shuffling near him. Turning, Erik saw Alex, face bright red and looking more nervous than Erik had ever seen him, even in Cuba. 

“Alex.”

Alex sat down on the bench with a thud. “Hey, Erik,” he said in a failed attempt at being casual. 

“Yes?” Erik prompted after a few moments. 

“Uh, yeah,” Alex said. His fingers tapped rapidly on his thigh, and he stared at the leafless hedge as though it were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. “So. Um. You’re gay, right?”

Erik stopped levitating the marbles. “No.”

“Shit. Fuck.” Alex sprang to his feet. “Forget I said anything. I’ll just-”

“You can sit back down, Alex. I’m not going to kill you.”

“I really am sorry. I thought-”

Erik raised an eyebrow. “You thought Charles and I were together? We haven’t been keeping it a secret.” He’d thought that at the very least the kiss at New Years would have made that obvious. 

“Oh. Okay.” Alex sat back down, his knee bouncing at a furious rate. “But you’re not gay?”

“There are many more things to be than gay or straight,” Erik observed.

From the silence, Erik guessed that this had not occurred to Alex. 

“What made you ask?”

Alex hesitated to reply. “I wanted to ask you how you knew. Because I think I might be?”

“And you came to me instead of Charles?” Erik was genuinely confused. He’d been pretty sure everyone knew the two of them were together, though they’d never made any sort of official announcement, or even told anyone. But of the two of them, Charles was infinitely nicer and more approachable. 

“There’s no bullshit with you.”

Erik nodded slightly.

“So you’re not gay. But how did you know you weren’t straight?”

“It turns out other people experience sexual attraction,” Erik said with a humorless laugh, “and they enjoy sex when they have it. Why do you think you aren’t straight?”

“Wait, so you and the Prof don’t-”

“That’s really none of your business,” Erik said, voice icy.

“Sorry,” Alex muttered. “And, uh, because sometimes I want to kiss Darwin.”

Erik’s eyebrows raised in surprise for a second before he schooled his expression back into passive interest. 

“I think I’m straight, I mean I kissed some girls in high school, I more than kissed some girls in high school, but… he’s really smart, you know, and obviously I’ve noticed how he looks and sometimes he’ll say something or smile and it’s like every other thought I have is just gone and does that make me gay?”

“It certainly makes you not straight.”

“My parents… they already kicked me out for being a mutant. They’d disown me for this.”

Erik felt a brief flash of rage at the Summers family. “You don’t have to make your parents happy.” Every day, Erik wished he’d had more time with his parents, that they hadn’t been ripped away from him when he was still a child. He couldn’t imagine parents that voluntarily stopped associating with their child. He felt nothing but disgust towards those people. 

“It feels like everything I am disappoints them. A queer mutant criminal.”

“Your parents aren’t here. Do what makes you happy. Who you are and who you like isn’t something you choose, and if they’ve got a problem with that, then fuck them.” Erik wasn’t sure what Charles would have said. Something about staying true to yourself, probably. Something that sounded a lot nicer and less hostile, that was for sure. But it was like Alex said, no bullshit. 

“Thanks.” Alex stood up, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, and turned toward the house. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for prying. It’s just- this shit’s really scary, you know?”

“Yeah,” Erik said, thinking of all the years he had practically prayed to find someone attractive, to want them in the way he knew others had wanted him. “I know. Good luck with Darwin.”

“Hell do I need luck for?” Alex called from a few feet down the path. “I’m not trying anything!”

Erik smiled and shook his head. “Sure,” he called back.

Chapter Text

The government publicly acknowledged the existence of mutants in April. The news broke early in the morning on April 2nd, early enough for the morning news, and at first, the newscasters seemed to think that it was a late April Fools joke. Erik had turned on the 6 am news as he drank his coffee, preparing to go on a run, and watched the newscasters’ expressions of disbelief.

“The CIA,” the woman said, clearly fighting back a laugh, “has informed the public this morning of the existence of superpowered humans. These so-called-” Here she laughed and shook her head, motioning for her co-anchor to continue.

“These so-called mutants,” the other anchor began, succeeding in keeping slightly more of a lid on his amusement, though his disbelief was clear as day, “were somehow involved in the Missile Crisis this past fall, though the details of that incident are classified. All we know now is that these individuals live among us, and have mutations that allow-” he broke off for a moment, squinting at his script to confirm what it said. “That allow for such things as flight, telekinesis, or mind control.”

“We will keep you informed about this breaking story,” the female anchor said, having regained a serious face.

Erik shook his head. He knew he would spend the next hours, not on a peaceful run through the gardens, watching the sun rise, but glued to the TV screen, anxiously awaiting any developments.

At 6:15, Sean stumbled into the room. “Man, are you watching the news? It’s way too early for that shit.” Judging from the bowl of extremely colorful cereal he held and the slightly manic light in his eyes, Sean had not yet slept.

“Shut up,” Erik said. He pointed to the screen, and Sean perched himself on the armrest of an empty chair to watch.

“In this morning’s developing story, the government has now released more information on the mutant humans that live among us.” The anchor had become extremely serious, and Erik was worried about whatever script she’d received at the commercial break. “The Missile Crisis of last year, we are told, was orchestrated by a mutant, and prevented by the actions of other mutants, some of whom seem to be involved with the CIA. The CIA will neither confirm nor deny this involvement, though they repeat that the orchestrator of the situation, one Sebastian Shaw, died at the scene.”

The screen did not display a photo of Shaw, presumably because there were none to find. None that didn’t feature the hole in his head courtesy of Erik, anyway. He was glad. He didn’t think he could stomach seeing Shaw, even on a television screen, even after all this time. 

Erik realized that the couch he was sitting on had levitated an inch or two off the ground and that the antenna on the television was wavering enough as to seriously endanger their signal. He forced himself to calm down.

“The existence of these mutants, though a surprise to most, will quickly become a part of our new normal. These people could be anyone. Neighbors, coworkers, family. Though a spokeswoman from the CIA assured us that Mr. Shaw’s violent schemes are likely the exception, not the rule, to mutant behavior, the extent and severity of the crisis is testament to the damage only one mutant is capable of.”

For a couple seconds, Erik and Sean were both stunned into silence. Sean stirred his cereal around his bowl, let out a long breath, and muttered “ Jesus ” under his breath.

“They don’t even need a reason to come after us now,” Erik said angrily, “Shaw’s given them all the reason they could ever need.”

“We tried to stop him. Shouldn’t that count for something?”

Erik snorted. “As if. People only ever see what they want to see, and what they want is anyone different to be a threat.”

Sean sat on the armrest for another minute in silence. “Fuck,” he said, picking up his untouched cereal and shuffling out of the room.

The room slowly filled up as the morning progressed. Scott darted downstairs shortly after seven, all the energy of a child who couldn’t believe everyone else was still asleep.

“What’re you watching?” he asked, squinting through his glasses that warped the colors of the television. 

Erik had never been a believer in sparing someone bad news, but he didn’t know how to tell Scott. “The news,” he said. “Why don’t you go get some breakfast?”

Scott took the hint.

Darwin showed up shortly afterward, followed by Hank. “Shit,” Hank said when the commercial break ended. 

“No,” Darwin breathed, shaking his head.

When Charles came downstairs an hour or so later, Erik cut off his “Good morning.” “It’s happened,” he said. He watched Charles’s face briefly twist in confusion before crashing down in understanding. “They know.”

Erik called Emma.

“Finally seen the light, have you?” she asked upon picking up the phone. 

“What are they planning.” It was a demand more than a question. Erik’s voice was rough, strained; he was barely keeping himself together.

“Sugar, the news just broke this morning.”

His fingers tightened around the phone. “And you’re a telepath. If I know you at all, you’re in Washington right now.”

Emma sighed. “I can’t see any plan. I’ve looked, but all I see is fear and hatred. It drowns everything else out.”

“They have to have a plan. Why say something now?”

“I don’t know.”

A pause. “I know Charles doesn’t approve of… the lengths to which you will go,” Erik said slowly. “You know I have no such reservations. I will not allow us to be legislated into nonexistence.”

An approving hum. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

Emma hung up before Erik could thank her.

This early in April was, strictly speaking, too early in the year to spend time in the gardens. There was an undercurrent of cold still in the air, not quite offset by the sun when it deigned to break through the clouds. The gardeners had not yet been by to plant flowers, and the roses had not even started to bud. Erik dragged Charles on a walk through the gardens anyway, leaving Alex, who had spent the last thirty minutes leaning into Darwin’s side, staring at the tv screen with a blank expression, strict instructions to yell for him if there was any more breaking news.

“We knew this would happen,” Erik said. “And we never made a plan for it.”

“I find it difficult to make plans based on hypothetical scenarios,” Charles hummed. “Besides, we enjoyed ourselves, didn’t we? While we weren’t worrying about the future?”

“I suppose we did.” 

Erik wanted to take Charles’s hand and walk through the empty gardens like they have so many times before. Like the government had held off for just one more day, and he could stay in that warm, happy time where he was not afraid.

“The future is here, Charles. What do we do?”

Charles did take his hand, anchoring Erik firmly by his side. “We protect as many as we can.” There is a steel in his voice that Erik hasn’t heard in a long time.

“And what about the ones we can’t?”

Charles sighed. “Erik, no one man can save the world. We just do the best we can.” In that moment, Charles sounded nothing like the twenty-six year old Erik knew he was. He understood why the kids called Charles ‘Professor,’ though he was only a couple years older than some of them. There was something wise about Charles, somehow, that he often buried under his smiles and blundering cheerfulness. 

“So, nothing new then.” Erik kicked a pebble out of the paved path. “We keep trying while our people suffer.” 

“No one ever said it would be easy. If you weren’t a mutant, could you understand why they fear us? Why the idea of someone who can plant thoughts into their mind they could never know weren’t theirs terrifies them?”

“Just because your power scares you does not mean it will scare everyone.”

Charles stopped walking. “That is not what I-”

“Then what did you mean? Because it sounded like you have spent a long time not utilizing your abilities because you’re afraid of them, and you think that the humans will stop being afraid of mutants if we’re all like you and make ourselves out to be harmless.”

“That’s unfair,” Charles said quietly. 

“Nothing about this is fair,” Erik said bitterly. 

“I’m not advocating for harmlessness. What I want is for mutant children to grow up in a world where they can be accepted, where they don’t have to be afraid of their gifts. And I hope that the rest of the world can understand that mutations are natural, not something to fear.”

Erik ran his thumb gently over where he still held Charles’s hand in his own. “That sounds like a dream,” he said. 

“I’d like to think it’s possible. That is the point of the school, after all.”

“You really think you can still open a school for mutants? You’ll be regulated to death.” 

Erik has seen all of the forms Charles has had to fill out already. He’s spent most of his days making arrangements, ensuring that the mansion is up to code, preparing for certification with the state of New York. And that was with no mention of mutants, passing the school off as a place for advanced students. 

Charles tapped his temple and smiled. “Yes, I think I can.”

“Erik! Phone’s for you!” Raven yelled in the middle of the afternoon. There had been nothing new on the news, only the repetition of the same few facts the CIA had released about mutants and Cuba. So far, there had been no mention of any names besides Shaw, but Erik still waited for the other shoe to drop, for an anchor to name Charles Xavier as the mutant leader of the CIA’s special team. 

“Erik!” Raven yelled again. “Somebody really fucking rude is on the phone for you!”

Erik practically jumped out of his seat and ran to the front parlor, where Raven stood holding the phone several inches away from her ear. 

“Your friend is even more of an asshole than you are,” she said as she passed the phone over.

Erik shrugged.

“Don’t worry. You’re an asshole in a good way. Her, on the other hand…” Raven side-eyed the phone. 

“What did you find?” Erik asked in lieu of a greeting.

“Now that’s no way to greet a friend,” Emma said. “You could at least say hello.”

“Are we friends? I seem to recall you trying to start a nuclear war and then trespassing in my home.”

Emma laughed. “You’re the one who called me, honey.”

“Maybe I should have called someone who would actually tell me what they find instead of dancing around it for a laugh.” Erik could have said this in a manner that would indicate he was joking, that implied he was grateful for Emma’s assistance. He did not.

“The only other people with this intel are not the kind of people who will answer your calls. Luckily for me, I don’t need to ask them for information. I can just look.” 

“And?” Erik stood stock-still. 

“They want a list. Not all of them, but enough. Some senators are thinking of making mutants register themselves ‘so they know what they’re dealing with.’” The disdain practically dripped off of Emma’s words. 

“And what happens to the ones they deem dangerous?” Erik’s fist clenched, hard enough for his fingernails to dig into his palm. 

“I don’t know, sugar. But my guess? Nothing good.”

Erik was silent for several moments. He hated that the first thought that jumped into people’s heads was registration. A way of removing all anonymity, of providing anyone who hated mutants with an easy list of targets. A way of filtering out the dangerous from the innocuous. 

“What’s your move?”

Emma sighs. “I don’t have one yet. We can’t kill all of them, too many people are thinking this. Half the House would be targets.”

Erik knew what Charles would say. Killing anyone would put an unnecessary target on their backs, would only provide fuel to the anti-mutant fire. “We don’t need to kill them,” he said to Emma, surprised at his own words. “How strong is your telepathy?”

“Strong,” Emma said, affronted.

“If you place a thought in someone’s mind, would they be able to tell it wasn’t theirs?”

“Of course not. I’m not an amateur.”

“In that case,” Erik said, a dangerous smile spreading across his face, “this shouldn’t be difficult at all.”

It didn’t take long before Erik was driving down I-95, a hastily packed bag of clothes in the backseat of the car he had borrowed without asking from Charles. He refused to think of it as stealing, as he was going to give it back, and he’d lived in the mansion for so long he had stopped thinking of everything in it as distinctly someone else’s possessions. He’d considered leaving a note, but had refrained on the assumption that Charles probably knew where he was going, and if not, he could just use Cerebro to look for him.

He’d run into Darwin on his way out, and Darwin had just looked at the bag slung over his shoulder and Erik’s cold, fixed expression and said, “Don’t do something you’ll regret.” 

“I’ll regret doing nothing,” he’d said, and left.

It was, Erik thought, good that he’d thought of even a rudimentary plan. He passed over that plan as he drove, strengthening it and working through some of the finer details until he was confident it would succeed. Without a plan, things could have been a lot more violent. He hadn’t killed someone since Shaw, and though he had not suddenly developed a conscience about that sort of thing, he thought it was probably safest that this plan could be accomplished with no bloodshed. 

Erik sat in his hotel room, the news running on the television screen but the volume turned down low. He didn’t want to hear the same fear and disgust that had been spewing from the anchors’ mouths all day, but he couldn’t switch it off. In her adjoining room, he knew Emma was doing the same.

“Erik, what are you doing.”

Charles stood in the center of the room. Despite knowing he wasn’t really there, Erik threw a quarter at him. It passed cleanly through Charles’s shoulder and thudded against the carpet behind him. 

“I know today has been difficult,” Charles began.

“Charles, if you’re projecting yourself into my mind, you know what I’m doing and you know that you can’t talk me out of it.” 

“I know that I can’t talk you into doing nothing,” Charles said, his tone still infuriatingly soft and understanding. “All I ask is that you don’t do anything rash.”

Erik smiled thinly and met Charles’s eyes, a challenge. “When have I ever done anything rash?”

“Please,” Charles said, ignoring Erik’s remark. 

“I’m not going to kill them, Charles,” Erik scoffed. “Emma and I have a plan. All I ask is that you trust me.”

“I do. And I ask that you remember the stakes. The whole world is watching us now, Erik. Don’t give them a reason to justify their fear.”

Erik shook his head. “They don’t need a reason,” he muttered, but Charles was already gone. 

Erik’s plan, though simple in theory, required the better part of the following day to put into effect. It started like this: Erik and Emma perched in a cafe booth, two empty tables between them and a group of suit-wearing, comb-over-sporting men. 

“I’ve got pre-season for the Phillies,” one of the men said, a smug smile taking over his pudgy face. “Flyin’ out next week. Hope this mutie business is settled by then.”

Erik was disgusted that, in less than 24 hours, politicians had already come up with a derogatory nickname. Across the table, Emma winced.

“Tell me how it is,” said another man, this one thin and insubstantial-looking with thinning blond hair. “I was gonna get tickets for me and the wife to see the Nats this year, as a treat for our fifteenth.”

“Fucking Nats,” a third man said. 

Emma took a sip of her coffee and closed her eyes. Though Erik knew that she couldn’t use her telepathy in diamond mode, there was still something hard about her like this. Every part of her tensed, body rigid and unmoving as she rifled through the congressmen’s minds, selectively deleting ideas. 

“You could fly out to Minnesota,” the first man said, mocking. 

“Fucking as if,” the second man replied. “I’m no traitor. Think I’ll just take a vacation when all this is over with.”

Emma opened her eyes. She nodded.

“The sooner the better, if you ask me,” the third man said. “Those mutants are weird as shit, but we’ve got bigger problems. If we’ve gotta be in session, they don’t even make top ten.”

Erik smiled, showing his teeth. His relief only showed in his eyes. “We did it,” he said.

“I did it,” Emma corrected, drinking more of her coffee.

Normally, Erik would have insisted on credit for his ideas. Today, he just nodded. “You did it.”

The entire day wasn’t quite as simple. Over four hundred men served in the House of Representatives, and Erik and Emma had to reach all of them before any could publicly share their disastrous ideas. Thankfully, not all had come up with the idea of registration, and a few congressmen even seemed to think positively about mutants. But they were a very small minority. 

Emma worked through everyone’s minds slowly, Erik acting as lookout. She lurked in hallways, dipping into the men’s minds when they took a bathroom break or stepped outside for a smoke. 

Not all telepathy worked alike, and Emma’s and Charles’s were entirely different. Though Charles would never admit it, altering others’ minds and controlling them was as easy as breathing. Emma’s powers lay more in defense.

This would be so much easier if Charles was here , Erik caught himself thinking around lunchtime. They walked through a small park, trailing a group of Midwestern delegates as inconspicuously as possible.  

Emma’s voice spoke in his mind, colder than usual. You’re right, this would be easier if your dumbass boyfriend didn’t have such a ridiculous and extreme moral compass, but here we are. I’m just as powerful as him, and I’ll thank you not to disparage my skills.  

Sorry , Erik thought.

Shut the fuck up , Emma replied. I’m working .

By the time Erik and Emma sat in an upscale bar, ten feet from the last group of congressmen (delegates from Arizona, of all places), the day had taken its toll. Emma, usually polished to where any crack in her exterior would be unnoticeable, had begun to fray. Dark circles were forming under her eyes, and a few strands of her blond hair stuck out in odd directions. If anything, Erik thought, she looked somehow more dangerous like this. 

“If I have to hear another fucking thought about baseball,” Emma said, “I am going to slit someone’s throat.” She threw back a shot of what Erik suspected was straight vodka, face impassive. 

Given the voting record of some congressmen in the bar, Erik thought that throat slitting, while extreme, would not be entirely unjustified. “I’m surprised there are coherent thoughts in there for you to read,” Erik observed, swirling his scotch around the bottom of his glass. 

“Surprisingly few.” Emma nodded her agreement. “You’ll be thrilled to know your legislators think only about sports, sex, and intolerance.”

“My legislators?” Erik breathed through his nose in a weak approximation of a laugh. “I’m not a US citizen.”

“You live here.” She shrugged, feigning nonchalance, and projected a startlingly clear image. It was from a memory - hers, of visiting the mansion a few months ago. Through her eyes, Erik seemed to at once blend in and jump out from the house, to not belong and to belong nowhere but where she’d seen him - by Charles’s side in his study. 

Less than a year ago, Erik would have disputed any assertion that he lived anywhere. He’d lived in motels, slept on planes. Now, he nodded. 

“I should get back there.” The suggestion was halfhearted. Not because he didn’t want to go - he wanted nothing more, at this moment, than to be in his own bed, Charles curled up against his side - but because he was exhausted. Westchester was a long way from Washington, and it was late. 

“Tomorrow,” Emma said. “Tonight, you are going to finish your drink and drive me back to the hotel.” Somehow, even visibly worn out and frazzled, Emma’s voice was imperious. She did not make requests, she issued commands.

Emma did not fall asleep during the drive, though she clearly wanted to. She didn’t trust Erik enough for that, and he didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t fall asleep in her presence, either. For all he knew, he might end up kidnapped.

“Thank you,” he said as they waited for the elevator. 

“I didn’t do this for you,” Emma said disdainfully. “This is for all of us.”

Erik found he did not have it in him to thank her again. “I know,” he said instead.

As he fell asleep, lying in a hotel room so impersonal as to be stifling, Erik considered calling the mansion. The lights were off, throwing most of the room into darkness. He stared at the phone, plugged into the wall behind the room’s nightstand, and thought of what he could say. He fell asleep still trying to find a way he could hear Charles’s voice without discussing what he’d done.

Raven met Erik outside the gate to the mansion. He’d left Washington early enough that the sun had risen on his drive, and he’d expected to be back long before anyone would expect him. 

Raven, wearing her blond skin and a leather jacket, crossed her arms. 

“Hi,” Erik said through the rolled-down window, raising his eyebrows.

“Charles is fucking pissed,” she responded. “We all are.”

Erik said nothing. He put the car in park.

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell anyone where you were going? Did you think none of us would have helped you? You’re not the only one that gets hurt by this, you know.”

He did know. This was simply not something that had felt vital when he’d left.

“I do get it, in case you forgot. You’re not the only one who’s suffered for their mutation. Stop fucking acting like the rest of us weren’t just as terrified as you.”

Erik decided an apology would probably not be the best course of action, as while he admitted she had a point, he was not at all sorry for his actions. “Do you want a ride back to the house?” he asked instead.

“Not if you’re going to act like you didn’t fuck up.” The early April wind blew Raven’s hair around her face and brought red into her cheeks. Spring was coming, but it wasn’t here yet, and the long walk back to the mansion would be cold.

“Washington was going to push for mutant registration. Now they’re not. I fail to see how that’s ‘fucking up.’” Erik did not fail to see why Raven would be upset that he would go to a terrorist who had participated in a nuclear war plot not too long ago instead of her. If she had telepathy, he might have. But the facts remained that he’d worked with Emma because it was easier than navigating Charles’s morals, and this was something he regretted only for the argument it would cause. 

“You’re fucking insufferable,” Raven said, turning away from his car and starting the trek down the driveway. “At some point, you have to understand you aren’t in this on your own anymore.”

Charles, somehow, reacted even more negatively to Erik’s actions.

“You could have asked to borrow the car,” he said through an impassive expression that was clearly taking considerable effort to maintain. 

Erik locked the car and handed Charles the keys. “I assumed this was a ‘better to ask forgiveness’ scenario.”

“It certainly was not.” Charles pocketed the keys. “You leave the house, don’t tell anyone where you’re going, and I find you in the hotel room next door to a wanted terrorist?”

When he put it that way, it really did look bad.

“What were you thinking?”

This was, Erik thought, a lot like being scolded. Charles’s assumption of moral authority gave him a sense of righteousness, and his carefully controlled voice did not hide the fury behind it. It was a completely unfamiliar experience, and he did not care for it at all.

“I was thinking,” he said, “that I could save people’s lives.”

“By suggesting manipulating the minds of legislators? By allowing - no, facilitating a mutant supremacist’s access into their heads?”

“If that’s what it takes.” 

Erik had not argued with Charles in a long time, not over something so serious. The last time they fought, which had also been the first time, their argument had lasted weeks, neither side willing to budge an inch. Erik hoped that didn’t happen this time. He would not compromise, but he didn’t want to push Charles away either. 

Charles raised an eyebrow. “You have no way of checking what thoughts she altered.”

This was a fair point. Erik thought he should find it odd that he trusted her with something like this when he would not trust her to do just about anything else. “I don’t,” he said, “but she was in the same situation as all of us, Charles. She gains just as much as we do from sticking to the plan.”

There was a long moment of silence in which neither Erik nor Charles made a move to walk out of the garage. Erik knew he needed to wait for Charles to make the first move, do anything to indicate how Erik should proceed.

After what felt like an eternity, Charles sighed. “At least you didn’t make a scene. For all the world knows, both you and Miss Frost were very far from Washington, DC yesterday.”

Erik very much wanted to point out that nobody had died as a result of his plan, which had to be a positive from Charles’s view. Instead, he said “I’m not an idiot.”

“I know.” Charles projected a memory of the fall. Erik, flying out of the wrecked submarine, levitating Shaw’s dead body to his left and Shaw’s helmet to his right. But you do like a spectacle. 

There was nothing he could say to that, because Charles was already walking away.

Angel called the house that afternoon. 

“Emma told me what you two did,” she said as soon as Erik picked up the phone. 

“You know Emma?” Of course she did, Erik reminded himself. Angel lived with Janos, and he had worked alongside Emma for years. “Er, you and her talk?”

Angel laughed softly. Erik didn’t need to see her to know she was rolling her eyes. “We get along. You know, I was always surprised we ended up where we did. Working with her… it’s tempting.”

“I didn’t think you were involved with this stuff anymore. Weren’t you living a normal life?” Erik said nothing about himself. He knew just how tempting Emma’s ideas were, and if he didn’t feel such strong loyalty to the mutants living at the mansion, he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t join her. 

“I am. But living a normal life doesn’t mean ignoring what’s going on. She told me you helped her, and I’m sure Charles is beyond pissed at you for it.”

“He is,” Erik admitted. 

“Thought so. So I thought you should know that in my book, you and Emma did the right thing.”

“Thanks. I just wish he saw it that way.” 

“You stick around him, he might start to understand. You seem to understand him a lot more than you did last summer, so who knows? Might work the other way around.”

Erik hummed in agreement. He hoped so, that just as he could tell Charles had mellowed some of his more violent and extreme beliefs, he would start to make Charles understand that appearing mild-mannered and unthreatening wasn’t a sure-fire way to stay safe. 

“Also,” Angel said in a strangely light tone, “if you want to see me on TV, try next Wednesday at 8. It’s a one-time deal.” 

“Done with acting?”

Angel laughed, for real this time. “Hell yeah. That shit sucked.”

Erik smiled. “I’ll check it out.”

“You better.” Angel’s voice had a smile in it as she hung up the phone. 

Angel appeared in the background of a shot for less than thirty seconds. Most of the time, she was largely blurred into oblivion as the cameras focused on the protagonist. She was in focus for one pan over the show’s setting, in which she had her back to the camera. Her wing ‘tattoos’ were on full display.

Erik called her afterwards. He, Sean, and Raven crowded around the phone and told Angel she was a born actor until Angel laughed and told them to shut up, and then they told her once more.

Chapter Text

The school would open in two weeks, and the mansion was busier than Erik had ever seen it. It would be busier than this, he knew, when the students arrived, but now, with the crews of workmen installing chalkboards and hauling in desks, making sure each dormitory room was equipped with sheets that actually fit the bed, and otherwise bustling around, every corner of the house felt full. Even when he left and jogged around the lake, the busy sounds coming from the house never fully faded. 

For July, the air wasn’t too hot or humid, which was good, as the front doors stayed propped open for most of the day as furniture was moved in and out. This did not stop someone from knocking just past 3pm. 

“Someone’s outside the door,” Charles observed as he watched a crew wheel a long chalkboard down the hall. “Two someones, actually.”

“There’s people everywhere, Charles,” Erik pointed out. He hadn’t been continuously exposed to such large amounts of people in a long time, and it wore on him.

“They’re knocking,” Charles said, turning around and walking in the direction of the far-off front door. 

Erik could not hear a knock, but he did not doubt Charles could.

Charles arrived first, having walked much more purposefully. Erik could hear him greeting someone, warm and distantly polite. He hung back, moving even more slowly than before. This was not his scene. Greeting people, being nice to them, was something that did not come naturally, even after a year living at the mansion.

“I came to see if there are any places at your school,” a woman’s voice said. “For my son.”

“Of course. I’d be happy to speak with the two of you about the possibility of enrollment,” Charles said, sounding very smooth and knowledgeable considering that only a few months ago, the very idea of this school seemed impossible. “Why don’t we head to my study? We ought to be able to hear ourselves think in there.” He chuckled apologetically, motioning to the workmen. Erik knew Charles was also chuckling about slipping a telepathy joke into conversation, and something in his chest felt warm when he thought how ridiculous that was.

The woman and her son followed Charles inside, heading in the direction of his study, which was a few doors behind where Erik stood, keeping out of the conversation and out of the way. They abruptly paused upon turning the corner, when Erik felt himself freeze.

The woman was young, in her late twenties. Her dark hair was pulled into a ponytail, but several strands had fallen down to rest on her shoulders. The dark circles beneath her eyes and the beginnings of pockmarks on her cheeks stood out in the opulence of the hall, as did the vague smell of cigarette smoke that came with her. She looked human, and blended in with the workmen more than with Charles. 

As soon as she caught sight of Erik, her face hardened.

“Max?” she exclaimed, one hand subconsciously balling into a fist. 

 A little boy stood beside her, wide-eyed and with shocking silver hair. His shirt bore an illustration of the moon. 

“What’s wrong, mama?” he asked. 

“Not now, honey,” she said. All the tenderness that had been in her voice as she spoke to her son left, replaced with fury and surprise, when she spoke to Erik. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Hello, Marya,” Erik said with an awkward half-wave. “It’s… good to see you.”

Erik? What’s going on? Charles’s voice asked in his head. Do you know her?

“It certainly is not good to see you,” Marya said, seething. 

Erik??? Charles repeated, more insistently.

“Don’t trust him,” Marya said to Charles, whose expression of confusion was so complete as to be almost comical. “Sure as hell don’t rely on him. It won’t end well for you.”

“Erik,” Charles said once again, this time aloud, “what is going on.”

“Marya, I think you and I might need to talk,” Erik said.

“You think?” She crossed her arms. “Peter, sweetie, go on into the professor’s study. I’ll be along in a moment.”

The boy darted down the hall, and Charles followed him, sending Erik one last burst of confusion before closing the door behind them.

“He called you Erik.”

“That’s my name.” Erik would have rather been almost anywhere but here. Marya was not someone he ever thought he would see again, and he had been almost grateful for that. But no, the mistakes he made eight years ago were coming back to haunt him. “Though I suppose I did go by Max back in ‘55.”

Marya sighed. “Why?” She didn’t say it, but the rest of her sentence was obvious. Why did you lie to me? Why did you leave?

“I told you what I did. I killed people, Marya. A lot of them. Sometimes that means using a fake name for a while.”

“But you go by your real name now.”

“Yeah. I do.”

Marya glanced at the closed study door. “Peter’s seven,” she said. “Starting the second grade.”

“Good for him.”

“He’s yours.”

Erik felt like the floor had been ripped out from under him. First, Marya turned up, an ex he had left on a bad note eight years ago. (A very bad note. Leaving in the middle of the night with no warning-type bad note.) That, though, he could deal with. He’d had plenty of practice getting people to leave him alone; just smiling menacingly enough usually worked. But now she told him he had a child, and he had no idea what to do with that.

“He’s what?”

“I found out a couple weeks after you left.” Marya looked him in the eyes, and her stare was defiant. 

Erik had never been good with words. Even at the best of times, he preferred to speak as little as possible, and this was far from the best of times. “Shit,” he said.

“You think?” Marya motioned for him to move aside. “If I had known you were here, I might’ve come sooner just to deck you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see about my son’s education.” 

Erik didn’t process her leaving until he heard the door to Charles’s study click shut behind her.

Nearly an hour later, Erik sat on the roof of the mansion. Most of the builders and other workers were beginning to leave for the day, but the summer sun was still high in the sky. 

“Erik?” Charles asked hesitantly from the top of the stairwell. He had opened the door onto the roof, but not yet stepped outside. 

Yes? Erik projected. 

“May I join you?”

He nodded. Charles sat next to him, in one of the few spots of shade on the mansion’s roof.

“Peter is enrolled in our school,” Charles said. “He’ll be back to move in with the other students next week.”

At another time, Erik would have been surprised and proud that Charles had managed to find dozens of mutant students to attend his school, that the school had even been able to open, let alone done so successfully. Now, the only thing he could think was, “Peter is my son.”

He’d mumbled the words, but in the quiet of the afternoon, removed by five stories from the chaos of the ground, they were loud and clear. Charles froze when he heard them.

“Your son?” he asked, overly cautious and polite.

Erik shrugged. “Apparently.”

“You… um… how? I mean I do know how , but…” 

Erik had never seen Charles at such a loss for words. “The same way any other man and woman would have a son, I suppose.”

“I thought you didn’t have sex?”

He gave Charles a look. “I don’t.”

“So you used to? Or just with her?” Charles definitely didn’t mean to project it, but Erik heard it in his head loud and clear anyway. Is it because she’s a woman and I’m not?

“Now is not the time to be jealous, Charles,” Erik snapped. “I was twenty and thought that if I slept with someone I liked enough sex wouldn’t make me uncomfortable anymore, and it didn’t work because that’s not how this fucking works, and what matters here is that I have a son .”

Charles, thankfully, fell silent. 

“He’s already seven,” Erik said quietly. “I missed seven years of my son’s life. I don’t know when he took his first steps because I got scared and ran.”

“You can be there for him now.”

“I want to be. But Marya hates me, for good reason, and I don’t know that he even wants a father. For all I know, she’s with someone else who’s been able to be the father he deserves.”

“Marya doesn’t hate you,” Charles said. He looked out into the blue sky of the Westchester summer, and Erik thought Charles looked like something angelic. “She’s angry, certainly, but I do not think that she is permanently set against you.”

“Charles, I abandoned my pregnant girlfriend because it was easier to hunt down Nazis than to tell her I didn’t want to have sex anymore. I wouldn’t blame her.”

Charles took his hand and squeezed it. “You made a mistake. That’s a scary conversation to have, God knows I fucked it up when you told me. But your mistakes are in the past, and you didn’t know about her pregnancy. Peter will move into the school soon enough, and you live here too. If you want to be a father to him, I suggest you start by getting to know him when he arrives.”

Erik nodded. “Thank you.”

He felt a wave of something wash over him, a projected feeling from Charles that made his heart swell in his chest. He couldn’t name it, but it was somewhere between acceptance and love.

As it turned out, Erik didn’t have to tell Peter they were related. He and Marya arrived the following weekend to move Peter in, and Erik ran into them in the hallway.

“So you’re my dad,” Peter said, crossing his arms and eyeing Erik. 

Erik was not prepared to have this conversation now. Or ever, possibly. “I guess so,” he said, setting down the box of another student’s belongings he had been helping to move in. 

“You don’t look like a dad.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“All of my friends’ dads mow lawns and wear shirts with collars and they always look like they’re ready to play football in the backyard,” Peter said, speaking very rapidly. Well, Charles had said that his mutation had something to do with speed. “You look like you should be in a movie. One of the spy ones, maybe, and your character totally would have a gun.”

Erik wasn’t sure whether or not to be offended at his son’s incredibly accurate description of him. No matter how much he’d thought about it over the last week, he couldn’t imagine himself having a child. He could barely grasp that he had a family here and a stable relationship with Charles, and he’d had those things for a year. 

Peter did not wait for Erik to think of something to say. “If you’re my dad,” he said, eyes narrowing, “how come I’ve never seen you before?”

Somehow it seemed like an incredibly bad idea to tell a kid he’d had no idea that he existed, so instead Erik said “I’ve been very busy. I’ve had to spend a lot of time in Europe for business.”

The ‘business’ was that he had lived in Europe, as had an alarmingly high concentration of Nazis he had needed to kill, but Erik wasn’t going to tell a seven year old that he had spent most of a decade killing people. That wasn’t the impression he wanted his son to have of him.

“But you’re here now?”

“Yes.”

Peter nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I know you and Mom don’t get along, but now that I go to school here I’ll see you at school and Mom at home.”

“Your mother and I-” Erik began, unsure of where he was going with that, and feeling incredibly old as he said it.

“I’m gonna go put my stuff up,” Peter said, cutting him off. “You’re pretty cool, but it’s super weird to think about my mom dating you, so I’m gonna try and never think about it. Okay?”

As soon as he finished speaking, Peter bolted, running down the hall to his room so fast Erik didn’t see him leave so much as notice his absence. This left Erik standing in the middle of the hallway, a box by his side, feeling slightly bewildered as to how this whole ‘being a parent’ thing was supposed to work.

“I see he’s talked to you,” Marya said. She had just come up the stairs, which were behind Erik, and she dragged a heavy-looking suitcase with her. 

“I can get that for you,” Erik said.

“Don’t bother trying to be a gentleman. That ship sailed.”

“No, just-” Erik sighed. The suitcase had metal attachments, which he used to float it into the air next to Marya.

She crossed her arms, eerily reminiscent of Peter’s behavior only a few minutes ago. Like mother, like son, he guessed. “I should have known,” she said, quirking an eyebrow up.

“I should have told you.” There were a lot of things he should have told Marya.

“You never did tell me much.”

It was true. Back then, Erik had excused keeping all his secrets as necessary for his line of work. Now, he wasn’t sure a deep-seated fear of vulnerability hadn’t played into it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Marya looked between him and the suitcase, still floating at her side. “I think you are,” she said. “But if you hurt my son, there will be no place you can hide from the hell I will visit on you.”

“Duly noted.”

“I’m glad you understand. Now, could you float that thing down to Peter’s room? He’s the third door on the right.”

Erik nodded, and the suitcase began moving down the hall. As Marya started to head back downstairs, though, he spoke again. “I truly am sorry. Especially for leaving you the way I did. That was wrong of me, but please believe me when I say I never meant to hurt you.”

Marya looked back at him from where she stood partway down the stairs. She cocked her head to the side. “Maybe being here has done you some good. I don’t think you ever would have apologized to me like that before.”

Chapter Text

In the last year, Erik’s life had changed completely. A year ago, Charles was awkwardly and obviously hitting on him in a Los Angeles strip club as they traveled the country preparing to fight Shaw. Now, Shaw was long dead and Charles and their small, makeshift family of mutants had opened a school. Much of the mostly-empty mansion had been converted to either classrooms or dormitories, and they’d had to completely refit the house to make their institution accessible and welcoming. 

Despite his repeated refusals to teach, Erik found himself in charge of two classes, both upperclassmen electives: introductory German and Mutant Politics. As it turned out, teaching German was much harder than speaking it, especially since Erik had grown up speaking the language. He had skimmed over a textbook during the summer and thrown it out in disgust - the difference between his German and the book’s German was incredible. Still, after spending what seemed like years remembering and condensing the rules of grammar, Erik had written a syllabus, and Charles had approved it. The way Charles had smiled when Erik handed him the syllabus made him think Charles had always known he would teach, even when he himself didn’t. This air of Charles’s was remarkably infuriating.

Teaching mutant politics was considerably different than teaching German. For one, it had a much less set syllabus. Since mutants’ existence was, in the government’s eyes, brand new information, there were no existing policies or legislation to learn. Instead, the class - which consisted of just three students, a quiet girl named Anna Marie, Kitty, who tended to accidentally phase into incorporeality when she got excited, and Bobby, who reminded Erik a lot of a younger Alex - tended to consist of debates over the future of mutant legislation in the United States and worldwide. One week, they argued whether or not mutants were included under nondiscrimination policies, especially in the workplace, and wrote mock statements to explicitly include mutants.

“Look, I’m just saying,” Bobby said, hands up in a placating gesture. “With shit like - sorry Professor, with stuff like race-based discrimination, there’s no defensible reason for it. There are no underlying genetic differences to separate people, and they separate themselves anyway. With us… mutations come from genes.”

“Everything comes from genes, Bobby,” Kitty sniped. “They don’t just exist to give people mutations.”

“Having a mutated x-gene shouldn’t be used to separate us legally, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t,” Bobby said.

“Have any of you read Charles’s thesis?” Erik asked. No matter how many times he was reminded that it was best for him to refer to Charles as ‘Professor Xavier’ in front of the students, he blatantly refused on the grounds that high school students should be aware their teacher has a first name. “He has a truly ill-thought-out sentence in there about the Neandertals encountering homo sapiens, which he likens to humans realizing the existence of mutants.” 

He does not refer to mutants as ‘homo superior’ in class due to Charles getting very angry about the designation. “We may have mutations, but that does not mean that we are superior to the rest of humanity,” he said exasperatedly whenever Erik mentioned the topic. This often-repeated argument was what had led to Erik memorizing Charles’s Neandertal line, so as to quote it at him with a look of smug satisfaction on his face. 

Anne Marie fidgeted with her gloves, which reached over her elbows, almost to the sleeves of her dress. “If I’m the next stage in human evolution, that won’t work out very well.”

“Species are always adapting to better suit their environment,” Kitty said. “We’ve just adapted a little faster.”

“Melanin is an adaptation.” Barely two weeks ago, millions of people had listened to Dr. King proclaim his dream in front of the Lincoln Memorial, a dream that even after years of sit-ins and protests and court cases seemed very far away. 

“We’re off-track,” Erik reminded his students. “I believe what Bobby was trying to bring up was the possibility of an argument for separation of mutants due to the manifestations of our powers. If this happened, how would we counter it?” 

In moments like these, Erik could barely believe himself. He was casually and civilly debating, never letting his or his students’ emotions run too high, and never storming out in the way he often did when similar arguments with Charles got too personal. Part of this, he knew, was due to his approach - always action-oriented, never falling back into Charles’s habit of suppressing the othering nature of mutations or encouraging conformity at the expense of individuality. The rest was due to him calming down.

Still, that didn’t mean the anger that had fueled him for so long was gone. 

“This isn’t enough,” Erik had practically hissed to Charles one evening a month or so after school began, pacing around their room. 

“What isn’t?” Charles had been sitting on the bed, red pen and a student’s paper in hand. 

Erik waved a hand to indicate generally everything. “Sitting around debating our future. Creating this little… island away from all the bullshit they’re thinking up in Washington. Not being out there, doing something.”

Charles set down the paper. “What, exactly, would you be doing?”

“Something useful.”

“Something like what Miss Frost is doing?” Charles raised an eyebrow. 

Erik huffed. Emma had recently made national headlines after Azazel had teleported her in front of a mutant gas station attendant being harassed by a group of drunk young men. The attendant was nowhere to be found, and the young men were long dead by the time the police arrived on the scene. 

“What you’re doing here is useful, Erik,” Charles said. “You’re helping these kids know they’re not alone. You’re thinking through possible policies before they can even be introduced, and you’re helping the children come up with so many plans of action.”

Erik sighed and stopped pacing, coming to sit on the edge of the bed near Charles. “And it’s not enough. I’m not made for sitting and thinking and teaching like this.”

Charles put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed his back, slowly and reassuringly. “You’ve been doing brilliantly so far. Aside from hunting down anti-mutant activists, what would you rather be doing?”

But even that thought didn’t bring the satisfaction he’d had during his years hunting Shaw. For Charles, it had been about saving the world; for him, it was about revenge. But he saw no need to get revenge on unknown people who hated him for being a mutant. Or more accurately, there would be no joy in doing so. “I’m just not used to sitting still,” Erik said, and hoped Charles understood his meaning. 

Considering the way Charles leaned into his side, he thought he had. “Sitting still isn’t letting them walk over you,” Charles said, his voice coming from somewhere near Erik’s shoulder. “It’s fighting back in a different way.”

Some days, Erik truly did feel he was helping. Those were mostly the days when Peter spent time with him - it was a lot easier to see the impact Charles’s school was having on young mutants when one of them was his son. 

“D’you wanna race?” Peter said, hopping excitedly on his feet. He’d come across Erik on his run and seemed thrilled to find him there. (Erik had forgotten that, unlike the young adults he’d lived with for the last year, children get up early.)

Erik did not want to race. Peter was already much faster than any human could possibly be, and if his mutation was still developing, as Charles suspected it was, he could easily break the sound barrier by the time he entered high school. This was much different than the nice early-morning jog Erik had signed up for. But Erik also did not want to be a spoilsport, so he said “Sure. What’s our target?”

Peter ran in a small circle around him, barely more than a blur. “That tree,” he said when he stopped, pointing to a clearly newly-planted sapling nearly halfway across the spacious lawn.

“Ready?” Peter ran up beside Erik like the two of them were standing behind a starting line. “3, 2, 1… go!” 

Practically before he’d finished the word, Peter was off. He ran a celebratory circle around the tiny tree before Erik had made it twenty feet. “I win!” he called from across the yard.

“That you do,” Erik agreed. 

Peter zipped back to where Erik stood. He tilted his head up to see Erik’s face and asked, “Wanna go again?”

“You still don’t seem like a dad,” Peter said to Erik one day, a little more than a month into the semester. 

Though Erik was outside in the general vicinity of a group of middle schoolers playing kickball (with cheats, as one of them had wings and another a strange elasticity of limbs that made catching very easy), he resolutely refused to accept responsibility for watching them. Charles might have gotten him to teach classes, he hadn’t yet gotten him to agree to monitor recess. Alex was doing that, though judging by Sean’s presence next to him and his animated hand gestures, he was probably very distracted. 

Peter, Erik thought, was right. He’d never in his life considered being a father. Even the thought of getting a dog seemed far-fetched. 

“I mean, the Professor acts more like a dad than you,” Peter continued. Possibly he was monologuing. “Does he count as my dad? Since you’re together and all.” A flash of some emotion passed across his face, too quickly to identify. “No, that’s weird. Never mind.”

Distantly, Erik thought Raven would be amused to hear her brother described as dadlike. More pressing was how Peter knew about him and Charles, since that wasn’t exactly common knowledge among the students. At least, he hoped it wasn’t. “Do you want me to act differently?” he asked. 

Peter thought on it for a moment, which for him probably counted as a few minutes. “No. That’d be weird too. Just, like, you don’t have to do your whole mysterious thing. If you’re gonna be my dad, I should probably know about you.”

This was fair. Erik did not have the least idea how to go about it.

(That night, Charles told him that opening up to people didn’t have to be something Erik avoided. “You have to let some people see who you are,” he said.

“I already did,” Erik responded. The crew they’d gathered to fight Shaw, the ones still living at the mansion and running the school - those were the people he’d let in. Those were his family. 

Charles sighed and flipped a page in the book he was skimming. “Letting people in isn’t a bad thing,” he hummed. “There isn’t a quota of how many people you can be close to.” 

“I know that,” Erik huffed. “It’s just hard.”

I have faith in you , Charles said in his mind, and Erik nodded. He could do this.)

“Can I have ice cream?” Peter asked. 

Erik looked up from the test he was grading. “It’s 10 in the morning,” he said, spinning his red pen in his fingers. “No.”

Peter pouted exaggeratedly. “Please?” He dragged out the word please for at least ten seconds. 

“No.”

“I’m gonna ask the Professor.” Peter crossed his arms. 

Erik sighed. “Peter, Charles is not your father,” he said, but Peter was already gone. 

“It’s sort of sweet,” Charles remarked one evening, “how Peter treats us like we’re his parents.” The chessboard between them was familiar, a routine they’d fallen into when they first met. Charles never used his telepathy to cheat, and that meant they were pretty evenly matched. 

“It does take some getting used to,” Erik said, carefully examining the board. Charles was going to win this game, he realized, but he didn’t have to make it easy for him. 

Charles nodded. He’d seen the same flaw in Erik’s strategy and moved his bishop to press his advantage. “You’re doing admirably.”

Being a father, Erik thought, was not something one could ‘do admirably’ at as though it were a course to pass or fail. Instead of saying this, he said “He’ll be less excited about having three parents when he’s a teenager.”

“Three times the people to rebel against,” Charles countered. 

Erik chuckled. Despite being seven, Peter already showed clear signs of the troublemaker he’d be when he grew up. He moved a pawn to take Charles’s bishop and cursed when he realized it left his knight open. 

“This all feels a bit like a dream sometimes,” Charles observed a few moments later. With the school, and your son, and you.

“I couldn’t dream this.”

Charles didn’t have the nightmares Erik did, but they’d both been through far too much to trust that their dreams could contain the kind of happiness they’d found here. 

In the hall outside Charles’s study, a teenage student cracked a joke Erik couldn’t hear, though he could hear her friend’s answering laughter. 

Charles pushed his queen across the board. “Check,” he said. Erik just nodded.