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As expected, Hank hadn’t been too happy with the sudden need to go to travel to Pakistan. He’d spent the prep time muttering under his breath about visas and clearance and a hundred other things Charles was perfectly willing to deal with once they came up. (Really, he should be far more hesitant to use his telepath in such a way, but considering how suddenly they were cut off, Charles would be happiest if they had a teleporter in their ranks.)

Getting into Pakistan went much smoother than they’d expected, though considering the fact that Charles had slept for most of the flight at Hank’s insistence and therefore had regained his strength enough to impress upon every air tower in Pakistan that their jet was no threat and was perfectly fine. He recalled her location from yesterday’s interaction, and soon enough, he and Hank were working their way through the crowds. Charles was carefully scanning the town for her mind, at the same time impressing upon the general populace that his wheelchair was nothing too extraordinary.

He heard his name and honed in on her location. She was in a balcony not too far from them; in fact, she could see them well.

Up here, she directed, and Charles met her eyes. Look out for the pickpocket; your friend is about to lose his wallet.

Sure enough, there was a would-be thief getting rather close to Hank. Charles immediately sent him to a nearby vendor who had been thinking about getting himself an assistant.

Thank you for that, my dear, he projected. Now, are you able to come and meet us down here? And apologies for the sudden end to our conversation yesterday; Cerebro malfunctioned without warning. Are you all alright?

The girl gasped when his projection faded, and he caught images of a past experience with another mutant, one who could—no. No, no, no. It couldn’t be. And yet, it had to be. Erik was the only one Charles knew who was capable of controlling metal.

“You aren’t here,” the girl was saying. “You weren’t here. Where are you?”

I’m in New York, Charles admitted as she wandered around, concerned for the lives of her friends.

“Did you hurt them?”

No, I’ve only frozen them for a brief while. They are still breathing, still blinking, their hearts are still beating, he assured her. No harm will come to them, I can assure you. I simply did not want to cause trouble for you should they think you mad for apparently talking to yourself.

“Speaking in my mind,” she chided, “seems a good way to convince someone they are insane.”

Apologies for that, he offered. However, for the moment, it is the only way I can contact you.

The girl admitted that her mutation had been acting up, taking the opportunity to let sparks of red light flicker from her fingertips. “Come talk,” she offered. Talk to me in person.

Of course. I’ll be there as soon as I—

At that moment, Cerebro all but shut down on him. Charles let out a sharp cry as he was suddenly disconnected from her and all those he had frozen in place around her. He coughed and sputtered as he yanked the helmet off his head, hoping to a god he didn’t quite believe in that none of those poor girls were harmed as a result. It was always a fifty-fifty shot with that.

“Hank,” he coughed out as the doors opened and the scientist came rushing in. “Hank, ready the plane. We need to go to Pakistan as quickly as we can.”

“Yeah, I might go try it on some normal mutants,” Lana teased before agreeing to tomorrow’s meeting. She got up and headed toward the door, and Charles only got a small hint of warning before she teased again.

“Unless you get bored and feel like a bath.” Charles didn’t even get a chance to respond before she left the room. Just as well; he wasn’t quite up to dealing with such teasing any more. Talking about Raven and Erik had reopened wounds that hadn’t quite healed properly anyway.

He sighed and rubbed his temples before removing the extra shielding he’d put in place earlier. It had been well over a year since he’d seen them—nearly two years, come to think of it. Really, he should have gotten over all of it by now. And yet...

“You promised me you’d never read my mind.”

“We want the same things.”

Charles inhaled sharply. Those memories were bubbling over the walls he’d erected to keep himself sane, to keep himself functioning well enough to be of any use to anyone. And yet...he found himself lacking in the strength to truly push them back. The sister he’d adored since childhood, the man he lo—no. No, he wasn’t going down that trail of thought. Erik and Raven had both made their decisions, and as much as Charles hoped differently, the likelihood that they’d ever come home was small. He’d have better odds winning the lottery.

There was a faint ache in his chest, one he’d become depressingly accustomed to ever since Cuba. Or rather, ever since he became lucid enough from the morphine and whatever other painkillers and drugs the hospitals had pumped into his system for the months following that catastrophe. Every so often it would creep up on him, and the only way to shove it back was to hole himself up in his study and get spectacularly drunk while most definitely not looking at the half-finished game he and Erik had abandoned the night before Cuba in favor of sleep. (Five more moves and Charles would have had Erik in checkmate. Two moves and Erik would have captured his queen and checked his king.)

And so, Charles retreated to that very study, the one almost hidden in the furthest corner of the mansion’s first floor, with a bottle of his father’s finest scotch. As a child, it had been the one place in the estate where Charles could find some measure of respite from the minds in the house. Now, it was a place he went to every time he needed to indulge his worse habits without risking discovery. The boys all knew not to disturb him when he took to this particular study; it along with the rooms that were once Erik’s and Raven’s were not to be touched in the process of re-purposing the old building into a school. It was the unspoken condition they’d all agreed to.

Now, to drown the feelings in malt whiskey and hopefully kill them thoroughly enough that he would never again have to repeat this little ritual and he could finally deal with converting the three rooms into something actually of use, rather than let them stagnate for a foolish hope that his loved ones would ever return.

“It is easy to see someone from another walk of life,” Magda began, “and assume they have it easier than yourself. It never seems true, but I wish it was.”

Not without a bit of truth, though. He had been extraordinarily lucky in his life, regardless of what he’d gone through in his childhood. For all of Kurt’s cruelty, for all of his mother’s distance and alcoholism, he’d at least never had to worry about a roof over his head or whether or not he’d be able to at least locate food. He’d had access to an excellent education and had eventually acquired the most wonderful sister in existence. Really, when faced with something like what Magda had gone through? He really had nothing to complain about.

“What happened in you past, Charles, was very unfair of life to put on you. So many could abuse such a thing, but you seem regretful to even have it.”

Charles swallowed hard. Regretful wasn’t exactly the word. Yes, he was not at all fond of some of the repercussions of his mutation, but at the same time, he couldn’t imagine what his life would be like if he lacked it. To live life without his telepathy...it was like thinking about life without being able to see. His telepathy had become and integral part of him, something he couldn’t simply shut off whenever he so chose. It was like seeing or hearing or tasting, something so very natural and instinctual that going without it was unthinkable.

“Do...do powers come at birth for most, then?” Magda was certainly hoping to redirect the conversation into something much lighter, a diversion Charles was all too happy to oblige.

“It’s hard to say,” he answered. “I think it may depend a great deal on the mutation itself and the mutant’s own surroundings. There’s not much research to say definitively—for the moment my research is accepted as purely theoretical and that brings with it its own set of limitations. Though, for example, you were not exposed to much modern technology until you were older, correct? Perhaps your mutation actually activated much earlier than you realize, but you were unaware of it until you were in an environment where your abilities were able to show themselves.

“I’m working with a very small data pool at the moment,” he admitted, “just Raven, you, and myself. Though, so far I’m the only one who manifested any part of their mutation at birth, and I didn’t even fully manifest until I was much older. Still young, of course, but old enough to be mostly self-sufficient.”

“A check for a million dollars?” Raven teased with a laugh as she pulled the needle from her record. “It has to be something along those lines for you to be so excited.”

Charles laughed a little; like they had any need for a million dollars. Though, actually... Raven gasped when she noticed the letter in his hand. “

“Wait. Charles...is that the letter? From Oxford?” He nodded and she clasped a hand over her mouth, squealing in excitement. “You got in, didn’t you?” He nodded again, grinning like an idiot and shaking a bit from the excitement of it all.

“Congratulations,” she said, flinging her arms around him. “I’m so proud!”

He hugged her back, laughing and grinning like a fool and probably projecting his excitement to the whole house.

“I can’t believe it finally came...”

“Yes, and even more so that I’m accepted,” he responded as they broke the hug. “They have a spot reserved for me come the start of term in September.”

Charles could still scarcely believe it. The one thread of hope he’d been clinging to since the start of his final term at Harvard, and it had paid off. Come August, he and Raven would be on their way to England and could leave Westchester behind. Then there would be graduate studies, research, and reveling in their freedom. Well, provided Raven wanted to come along.

“We’ll have to decide what we want to do about housing, though; I’m not sure if the administration would be willing to let both of us live in the dormitories, especially since you wouldn’t be a student...but they do provide listings for apartments in the city!”

He paused for a moment and looked back at her. “That is, if you want to come with me. I mean, I can understand if you wouldn’t; we’d have to work something out with your own schooling, after all, and it can be challenging to adjust to a new environment on such short notice, but—”

He cut himself off, having the good grace to look a bit sheepish from his babbling. Charles didn’t want to leave Raven behind in Westchester; Kurt was a terrible man at the best of times, but downright beastly at worst and he would worry himself sick over her constantly if she stayed behind.

It was an innocent enough piece of mail: a standard envelope with a stamp in the upper right hand corner, an address scrawled in the center, and a return address scrawled in the upper left hand corner. The only thing at all stunning or spectacular about it was where the letter had come from: Oxford University, Office of Graduate Studies. Charles worried his bottom lip as he considered the envelope in his hands. The anticipation was going to kill him at this rate, but...what if Oxford had denied his application? He was remarkably young for a potential graduate student—only sixteen—and the fear that his best shot at getting away from his stepfamily had rejected him was enough to make him sick.

Charles took a deep breath and grabbed the letter opener. This was it, then: the moment of truth. He quickly sliced the envelope open and pulled out the contents. With his eyes closed, he unfurled the papers and slowly opened his eyes.

“Congratulations on your acceptance...”

With a breathless laugh of relief, Charles collapsed into a nearby chair and read over the words again and again until he nearly had the letter memorized word for word. Accepted. Oxford’s graduate program had accepted him. Come September, he’d be starting his graduate studies in Oxford, England. Hundreds of miles away from the Markos and Westchester. He could cry from the intensity of the relief of it all.

Raven. The thought of his sister immediately cut through the relief. Raven would want to know that he’d gotten into Oxford, that they’d be leaving for England in a few short months. Charles got up, grinning like an idiot before stretching his mind out to sense where his sister was. Sensing her presence, he immediately ran to where she was.

“Raven, you’ll never guess what came in the post today!”

Of course, the girl thought, I’m still pure. He wants to take me for a mistress.

The only part of working with Cerebro that Charles didn’t really care for was the fact that he couldn’t actively shield. The machine kept his telepathy wide open and amplified it, leaving him no leeway to actually shield himself from the thoughts of the minds he touched. And so, the misunderstanding became quite clear quite quickly as she eyed his projection, her mind working up terms.

“Tell me about you? Where do you live?” She touched what she could see—oh, how would she react the chair, he wondered—and her mind whispered her hopes. Make him rich and kind. “What is your name?”

I’m afraid you misunderstand me, my dear, Charles projected. I’m not interested in taking you as a mistress. Rather, I’m interested in offering you a safe haven. My name is Charles Xavier, and I run a school for people like us. If you’re interested, there will be a spot opened for you at your earliest convenience.

He had felt her fear of the upper rooms, of ending up in them and being forced to do something she did not wish to. Charles didn’t want her to be forced into anything she didn’t want to do—she was so young, had so much life ahead of her. She had a very interesting mutation, from the sound of it: something to do with luck and probability, skewing the odds in her favor.

It’s entirely your choice, though. If you would rather not, then I understand completely. However, if you would like to leave this place behind, I will be perfectly happy to offer you whatever assistance you may require.

“Nor I,” Erik admitted, breaking his attention from the game to focus on Charles. “What do you propose?”

Erik would never settle for peace. Even if peace could be achieved, Erik would chafe in it. He needed action, he needed the violence to keep himself going. If he had chosen to let those missiles fall in Cuba, if he had decided to return to Westchester that day, Charles had no illusions that Erik would have lingered long. Erik was a restless sort of person, unable to manage stability in the same way most others are unable to handle change. Quite like a shark, really, needing to keep moving forward because to do anything else would mean drowning and death. Charles took a deep breath before beginning.

“When I asked you here, I did so hoping that we could somehow locate middle ground between us.” Charles was doing his best to tread lightly, to carefully word his thoughts as not to incite an argument. Discussion, debate, that was fine. That, they could manage. “From what Logan revealed, and what I myself witnessed in his memories, neither of us manage much success in the long run as we were.”

Fighting, juxtaposed to the other, a constant balance of push-pull where nothing ever really got better and sometimes it only got worse.

“We have an opportunity, here,” he continued, “to change that. If we can manage to strike a compromise, find a way to work together as we once did, perhaps...perhaps we can truly avoid the horrors of that alternate future.”

Trask would not be the only human to get into a position where he could bring harm to mutants, Charles would freely admit that. Evil lurked in the hearts of all living beings, whether they chose to recognize it or not. Just as humans like Trask would never go away, mutants like Shaw would never disappear, either. And if they weren’t careful, Erik might one day become the very thing he spent so many years hating.

Charles wouldn’t condone senseless violence. He wouldn’t condone violent retribution for the acts of amoral humans and he most certainly would not condone such for amoral mutants. It was a cycle they needed to break, had to break if they stood any chance at creating a better future. Decades wasted fighting each other, rather than focusing on those like Trask and Shaw. And what did it all amount to?

“I don’t want us to spend decades against each other, Erik,” Charles said, looking his old friend straight in the eye. “I can’t—just knowing it ever happened at all pains me more than I could possibly say.”

But it had to be Erik’s choice to compromise, to try to work towards a middle road. He came without the helmet, leaving himself unguarded. Charles would not betray that to rework Erik’s mind.

“How willing would you be? To work towards a middle ground?”

“We fight to survive,” Erik shot back. “You may argue that humans do the same, but right now, there is only one race being hunted. We do not fight to feed into these lies, but humans have pushed us to this level. They provoked us. The point of having no other alternative. We either live in hiding, fear of discovery. Or we fight back against persecution.”

What Erik aimed to do was not fighting against persecution. It was only setting the stage for more persecution, both humans against mutants and mutants against humans. That Erik couldn’t see that made Charles’s heart clench. So many had died already, but if Erik kept up with his retribution, even more would die. Mutant children beaten and killed because those around them were terrified that they’d end up being as violent as Erik’s Brotherhood, human children raised in fear that mutants will kill them simply because they were human. It was a nightmare that Charles did not want to bear witness to.

“I fear how many mutants will be dead by the time we have successfully disproved their lies and prove to the world our innocence.”

So did Charles, but when the sentiment came from Erik, he could barely contain embittered laughter. Of all the thing for Erik to concern himself with, he picks the one thing that is a direct result of his actions. There would be no way to prove the innocence of mutantkind so long as Erik sought retribution for those already dead. More mutants would die because Erik reacted in violence, and he would respond in kind to their deaths, and the cycle would repeat itself and the body count would continue to rise. Oh, the irony of it all.

“We have a right to live. As free citizens of this world,” Erik insisted. “We should have nothing to prove. You speak of human allies? How many human allies thus far have you found to be helpful? What has Moira done for us?”

Charles bit his lip and tightened his grip on the armrests of his seat at the reminder. Erik had no idea, did he? Had no clue what had become of Moira, what Charles had done because Erik had left him no choice? Moira could have been their greatest ally, would have gladly played double agent to help them protect any mutants the government tried to take into custody. But when Erik decided that violence was the only response to violence, he made himself an enemy. And Moira, whom Charles would have trusted with so much, was always going to be a CIA agent in response. She would have reported him to her superiors and Charles, the idiot he had been, couldn’t let that happen.

“You say that human allies can be valuable, yet what has the CIA done for us, apart from give orders to destroy us? And the one human who knew us, who had the ability to advocate and defend us, did nothing.”

Because she couldn’t. Charles had stolen that away from her, all to protect a man who had left him to die. He bit his lip harder, trying to swallow the anger welling up in him.

“Once again, I admire your optimism and hope, my friend. But I am unable to share it. It is not a lack of patience that compels me to act. It is a lack of tolerance and a fear that our kind will continue to die each day we attempt to wait for humans to accept us.”

“I am not asking you to wait, Erik,” Charles began, his voice harsher than he liked. “What I am asking is for you to take a moment to think. You cannot prove the innocence of mutantkind through violent retribution for those who we could not save. A man does not prove his innocence in a murder case by killing his accuser. With every act of retribution you carry out, you give our opponents one more piece of ammunition to show to the world and say, ‘These mutants are dangerous! They want us all dead simply for being human.’”

He shifted in his chair, leaning forward a bit more. “You keep giving them reasons to capture more mutants, to lock them up and experiment on them until they die. Yes, what happened in Cuba was terrible, the combined fear of two superpowers who were shocked by the idea that there were people in existence who could do the work of whole armies with just a few individuals. Funny, that: people in power frightened by the appearance of those with more power.”

Charles was drifting quickly into bitter territory, but Erik’s mentions of Moira were enough to incite him. If Erik hadn’t threatened to return fire on the Soviet and U.S. fleets, Moira would have never pulled her gun. Moira would have never had any reason to go back to her superiors and divulge any secrets. But he had, and Charles couldn’t let her go and damn him when Charles had still be idiotic enough to hope that whatever good had survived in Erik would win out. Shaw had forced their hands and forced them to reveal the existence of mutants far too soon. Charles needed time, and Shaw had robbed him of that, so Charles had been forced to buy his own. Not that that hadn’t horribly backfired on him.

“As for Moira, she didn’t have the opportunity. You made yourself an enemy of the U.S., Erik. Moira would have returned to her superiors and told them all she knew of you, and I couldn’t let that happen.”