Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Erik found himself standing on a beach. The sun was warm, the weather perfect.

He had no idea how he’d got here. No idea how he’d get back. He had his wallet and a fake ID, but he doubted he was still in the US, and he had no passport, and not enough money to obtain a fake.

His body ached. The aches had started up a few weeks after he went into hiding, after Alcatraz. He couldn’t tell if it was the mutant ‘cure’ working its way through him, ruining his genetics, or if it was just that he was getting old.

He really was getting old.

As much as he knew he was no longer young, he’d still done his best to run the Brotherhood with the strength and vigour of a younger man, making up for his aging body with power and strategy. But his power was gone and his strategy had failed.

Still, he’d gain nothing by staying on the beach. Erik had stopped liking beaches after Cuba. He hadn’t been able to go near them without imagining Charles’ blood in the sand, Charles’ bright blue eyes in a look of pained accusation. They might have seen each other now and again over the years, but he’d lost Charles Xavier that day in nineteen sixty-two. The next forty years had just been stretching out the farewell.

Erik trudged through the sand. It was getting into his shoes and he found he didn’t care. He wanted to summon whatever scrap metal was closest and rip the beach to shreds, but he couldn’t have moved a pin if he wanted to. Couldn’t have moved a single spec of iron ore.

Then he saw two figures running towards him.

Two impossible figures.

Scott Summers and Jean Grey were dead.

Yet they were here, Scott in light slacks and a button-down shirt, Jean in a green dress and sandals.

They stopped just in front of him. “What the hell…” Scott trailed off.

Jean looked at Erik. He had the distinct sensation that she was rifling through his memories. Then she glanced at Scott; Erik guessed she was passing on what she’d found. “We need to get him out of sight. Nobody can see this.” She pulled out a phone and sent a text, then took a photo of the beach. Seconds later, Nightcrawler teleported in.

He started when he saw Erik, and Erik nearly started too. Kurt was dressed in some kind of uniform, dark blue and white. It suited him well, and had clearly been tailored to fit his less-than-typical mutant body. A stylised ‘M’ decorated one shoulder.

“He’s not…?” Kurt asked.

“He isn’t,” Jean agreed. “But Magnus needs to know. Take us to the palace.”

Kurt nodded, everyone joined hands, and the world blinked.

Kurt left them in a side room of what was definitely a palace: high ceilings, elaborate plasterwork, tastefully decorated. But Erik had no idea what kind of palace it could be, or who ruled here.

Scott left soon after, saying something about how he’d have to clear guards from the halls so that no-one could see. That left Erik alone with Jean.

“Where am I?”

“Genosha,” she told him, “I know you won’t have it in your world, but in this universe, it’s an island nation. A mutant nation. You – well, a version of you – founded it sixteen years ago.”

Erik took a moment to process. It seemed crazy, but he was already looking at a woman he knew to be dead.

A mutant nation. A bastion, a refuge. In all his years of fighting, he’d never achieved anything like that in his own universe.

A few minutes later, Scott came back to tell them that “He’s ready.”

Nobody explained to Erik who ‘he’ was.

They led him along several corridors, taking several turnings, the surroundings getting larger and grander as they went, until Jean opened a large set of double doors with a wave of her hand.

The room beyond was huge and stately. Erik had already guessed who he’d see sitting the silver-and-red throne, yet when he laid eyes on himself, he felt a profound sense of wrongness. This man was him, yet was not him.

After the sense of wrongness, Erik tasted a sickening jealousy. This version of himself looked stronger, healthier, younger, dressed in black trousers and a well-cut magenta jacket. This version of himself certainly still had powers.

And this version of himself was clearly just as disturbed as he was.

The other Erik’s face twisted. “Do we know what that is?”

Erik raised an eyebrow. “Surely your people have already informed you?”

“They have. I just refuse to believe it’s coincidence or chance that you ended up here. You’re a poor copy of me, but a copy nonetheless. Someone has an ulterior motive, even if Jean is certain that it’s not your personal scheme.”

The other Erik sat back on his throne. “Summon my stepson. I want to know how this happened, and why.”

“He’s still in negotiations in Attilan,” said a woman’s voice.

Erik realised that he’d been so focused on himself that he hadn’t noticed the green-haired woman standing to one side, wearing a pale green dress, metal jewellery at throat and ankle. Lorna. He’d always been so careful to stay away from his own children, convinced that his presence in their life would only bring danger. In this world, it seemed, he’d kept his offspring close.

“Perhaps Magik could do it instead, Magnus.” said Scott.

Magnus? Was that what people called this other version of himself? Erik wondered how their pasts differed, why, in this world, he’d ended up preferring one codename over another. He’d used the name Magnus once or twice, but it had never stuck. He wondered if ‘Magnus’ had ever gone by Erik Lehnsherr, even if it was only for a single day, a week.

At least Magnus didn’t go by Max Eisenhardt. That was too close, too personal for anyone to know. That was a name for the past.

“Illyana might be able to determine how this other version of myself got here,” Magnus was saying, putting stress on ‘might’, “And she might be able to send him back, but there would be no guarantee. With David, we would be certain. Call him back from Attilan. Tell him I need him here, and that he should find an excuse to absent himself. Jean can send the message.”

Jean nodded. “On it.”

Erik realised that he’d missed something important. Whoever David was, he was Magnus’ stepson. Sure enough, there was a silver wedding band on Magnus’ finger.

After losing Magda, who had Magnus married? And in this world where a version of himself sat a throne, had it been political? Or for love?

Erik did not have to wait long to find out. A swirling golden portal appeared at one end of the room, and two mutants stepped out, dusted in flakes of snow.

The one in front must be David. He looked to be in his early twenties. His long black hair blew about in the wind from the portal, and his eyes glowed golden until the portal behind him faded, and they faded out to reveal one eye that was blue, the other, green. He was dressed to give a lasting impression in dark blue trousers, an asymmetric blue tunic, and a diaphanous blue-green cape that made it look as if he was wearing the sea.

At first, Erik thought he wore metal gauntlets, but as he looked again he saw that David had wrapped golden fabric around his forearms like strange bandages.

The young woman behind him wore close-fitting silver armour, with a helm that covered everything except her mouth and chin. A bodyguard? She carried no visible weapons, but for a mutant, that meant little.

“God, I love the Himalayas,” said David. “God, I hate the Inhumans.”

“Negotiations went badly?” asked Scott.

“Negotiations went fine. Black Bolt appreciates that I know sign language. I just wish I could mention the elephant in the room. Nobody ever talks about the fact that he married his second cousin, and I do feel someone should say something.” David made a face. “Unfortunately, you decided to make me a diplomat, so it can’t be me.”

David strode down the length of the room, the woman keeping pace just behind. His eyes were on Erik now, and it felt awfully like being under a microscope.

There was something fundamentally wrong about David. He was built like a gymnast, but he didn’t move that way. His steps were too hard, too clunky. Erik had the sense that he moved through the world, and the world moved around him. The sense that the floor rose up to meet the soles of David’s boots, instead of his feet stepping down to meet the floor. He did not blink often enough.

David stopped just in front of Erik, still staring. “Now, this is interesting.” Up close, his blue eye was too blue, and his green eye was too green. His black hair was too black.

Up close, as David circled him, Erik realised something else as well.

Some people look nothing like their parents. David looked a lot like both his parents.

Gabrielle Haller’s forehead. Charles Xavier’s brow. Gabrielle’s cheekbones. Charles’ jawline. Gabrielle’s black hair and Charles’ mouth.

Erik had noticed that Charles and Gabrielle were close, in the few months they’d spent in Haifa in nineteen eighty, a brief collaboration that had not come anywhere near to lasting. He wondered if Gabrielle had a child in his own universe. If so, Charles almost certainly didn’t know.

And if David was Magnus’ stepson…

Erik had admired Gabrielle, when they’d met. He might have admired her enough to love her, except she’d already had her eyes on Charles. He could certainly imagine marrying her, if the stars aligned that way. But what if…

What if he’d married Charles?

What if, in this world, Charles Xavier was alive, and they’d made it work? They’d built a mutant refuge, a centre of mutant power. They’d brought their children together and made a family.

David was still circling him, looking as if he were picking Erik’s existence apart atom by atom and analysing each proton. Erik supposed he must have inherited telepathy from his father, but he could barely feel David in his mind.

“I think I hate him,” said David, eventually, “Just a little. Just a lot. He’s worse than you, stepfather mine.”

David’s eyes narrowed, and Erik flinched as his mind was assaulted by his own memories. Charles, in the sand of a Cuban beach. Charles, under Erik’s fists. Charles, kidnapped by Apocalypse as Erik looked on. Erik, ordering Mystique to poison Cerebro, so that Charles would be out of action when they started the next phase of their plan at the Empire State. Erik, walking out of Stryker’s version of Cerebro, knowing that he was leaving Charles there to die. Telling himself that it was the right choice for mutantkind, that the death of one was worth the survival of the rest, even if the one happened to be Charles Xavier.

“Explain,” said Magnus, the word falling dead even in the flawless acoustics of the throne room.

“Oh, nothing nefarious. He’s just a piece of shit, that’s all.”

“Do you know how he got here?”

David shrugged. “Multiversal anomaly. These things happen. People slip through the cracks. Nothing to threaten us.”

“Can you send him back?”

David tilted his head slightly. “Yes. But I’ll need a few days to think through the best way to go about it. I know you don’t want him here, but if the thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. Ruth and I will discuss the method. I’d ask that we’re undisturbed, but let’s face it – the servants hate going into my rooms on the average day anyway.”

David offered an arm to the silver-clad woman, and she took it. He turned and they walked together out of the throne room, as Erik mentally upgraded the armoured woman from ‘bodyguard’ to ‘lover’.

When the throne room doors closed behind them, Magnus said, “Scott. Escort Magnus to a guest apartment. One of the ones for holding guests we don’t trust. Station a guard outside the door, someone we know will hold their tongue; lock the balcony door as well. I doubt he’d be able to escape via the balcony without his powers, but I don’t want some unsuspecting gardener to look up at him from below and wonder why I suddenly look older and weaker.”

Magnus stood, dismissing all of them with a look as he left the room by a side door, his daughter glancing back at Erik only once before she followed him out.

David didn’t need to eat, but he enjoyed the habit. Though right now, he was regretting turning up to dinner, especially since Ruth had decided to pay an evening visit to her great-grandmother, leaving her usual space beside him empty.

David knew it was cliché to say you missed your spouse as soon as they left the room, but god, he missed his wife.

“The dining room hasn’t been this quiet since I joined the family,” he called out into the silence. “And it’s not just because Wanda and the twins are away.” Wanda, on a diplomatic mission to shore up relations with Atlantis after Pietro’s mess of a bid for power. The twins, on holiday with friends.

David glanced up the table. Pietro and Lorna across from him, and his fathers at the head of the table. “Are we really not going to talk about it?” The servants had gone after laying out the food; there was no risk of being overheard.

“I would prefer not to,” said Magnus.

“It’s unhealthy to refuse to face things like that,” said David, who knew plenty about what an unhealthy mind could look like. After his return from Attilan, he’d ditched the diplomacy couture, leaving the cape in his wardrobe and unwrapping the gold cloth from his arms, baring the surgical scars on his forearms from the Muir Island doctors and their failed attempts to make him sane.

David continued. “You just don’t like the fact that there’s a version of you out there who failed. You need to come to terms with the fact that he is not you. He’s just very similar.”

“How was Attilan?” asked his father. The message was clear: change the subject.

“Fine. Pietro’s annoying ex-wife hit on me, and I had to remind her that just because she’s addicted to adultery doesn’t mean I am, but aside from that, it went well.”

Pietro glared at David from across the table. “Did you have to mention Crystal?”

“To be honest, I don’t think I’m even her type. I think she was just bored.”

“Shut up,” said Pietro.

David looked at Pietro from under his eyelids. “Your opinion does not matter, you unmitigated wanker,” he said lazily.

“Seconded,” said Lorna. “David, please keep talking about my brother’s failed marriage.”

“Bien sûr.”

Magnus’ two main weaknesses were mutants and family. Pietro was both, which was why, in the aftermath of his failed coup, he was neither dead nor imprisoned. Instead he was under house arrest, his powers dampened so that he was fast, but nowhere near what he had once been.

But just because Magnus had let Pietro’s actions slide didn’t mean that David or Lorna would let Pietro forget what he’d done. Pietro had teamed up with Namor to take Magnus down, and in the wake of Namor’s death, Wanda was desperately trying to smooth things over with Atlantis. David had to take over Pietro’s role as a diplomat, taking him away from the mental health clinic where he really wanted to be working.

There was also the fact that, to keep David and Charles out of action while Pietro tried to seize the throne, Pietro had thrown them into the path of Apocalypse.

David did not like to kill, and the fight had been hard, brutal, and exhausting. By the time he’d limped back to Genosha, carrying his father – Charles’ wheelchair had been bent almost beyond recognition, and far beyond use – he’d missed the whole affair. He’d found Ruth unconscious on their bedroom floor. Pietro had taken her out with a high-grade stun gun. One more thing that David would not forgive.

But even as he and Lorna playfully tortured Pietro with a conversation centred on his myriad personal failings, David kept his mind at the head of the table.

They might be refusing to talk about it, but his father and Magnus were still thinking about the other Magnus – Erik – who’d turned up earlier today.

David wondered if Erik was thinking about Charles and Magnus too.

Chapter Text

The guest apartments were comfortable and airy, as fine as any room in the palace, and far finer than anywhere Erik had ever lived.

There were clothes in the wardrobe, nicer than anything he’d ever owned, and when dinner was brought to him on a tray, it was delicious. A very comfortable cage.

He slept surprisingly well, in spite of his situation. He supposed that his old bones could appreciate a comfortable bed.

He washed and dressed himself, and was presented with a breakfast tray at exactly nine am. He ate a little fresh fruit and a little cereal, but the prospect of more food turned his stomach.

He knew what he had to do.

Half an hour after his breakfast tray was taken away, Erik went to the guard on the door. It was Mystique, still blue, still with her powers. Still herself.

“I need to talk to Magnus. Tell him it’s important.”

“So what’s so damn important?”

Magnus wore dark grey trousers and a cream shirt, and he stood in Erik’s room like he owned the place, which, in fairness, he did.

Erik looked at his other self levelly, and told himself that they were still equals, in spite of everything. “I need to know how you did it,” he said. “How you set up,” he gestured to the palace around them, “All this. If I go back to my own world… I probably can’t do it myself, not now that they’ve made me a baseline. But I could tell someone else. Pass on the knowledge, pass on the fight to someone who can see it through to completion. I need to know how you did this.”

After a moment, Magnus nodded. “Fine. Charles and I met because I wanted to kill Sebastian Shaw, and he wanted to stop Shaw.”

“That happened to me, too. We traced him to Cuba.”

“Cuba. It was a hard fight, but I managed to kill Shaw, though Charles had always told me it wouldn’t bring me peace. Well, he was right about that, and he didn’t like what I’d done, but afterwards, we kept working together.”

“You… stayed together after Cuba? What happened? What exactly happened after I – after you killed Shaw?”

“I showed Shaw’s associates his body, told them it was over. Then I told them that if we killed the humans mindlessly, we’d be justifying everything they ever did to us in retaliation. I’d already lived through one war that had been started by a group of people deciding they were inherently superior to another group. I wasn’t about to go through another. Not that I had much of a choice, in the end.”

“That… isn’t how it happened with me.”

Magnus gave him a suspicious look. “No, I suppose not. We kept to ourselves, after that. Worked in the shadows to further the mutant cause. Moira went back to the CIA and started working for us on the inside, and managed to recruit a few sympathetic humans to our side as well. Eventually, as mutants became more common and prejudice against our kind increased, we decided on a grand gesture. Genosha used to be an island where mutants were enslaved. Our invasion force changed all of that. We freed the mutants, forced the governor to surrender, and allowed the humans to leave peacefully.”

Erik couldn’t imagine doing that in his position. He’d have wanted to make an example of Genosha’s humans. A violent example to any human who put a mutant in a control collar.

“Charles was paralysed in the fight when a human super-soldier brought a building down on him, but he was much better at accepting his injury than I was. After we were certain no mutant healer could do anything more for him… I didn’t really enjoy what came after,” Magnus admitted. “I wanted shows of strength, but Charles insisted on diplomacy. It felt debasing, to go to heads of state and ask them to recognise us as a country, acknowledge what we were as a nation. But I did it because Charles insisted.

“Right up until assassins crept into the palace and put a knife in Charles’ chest. He survived, but while he recovered, I decided I didn’t give a damn about diplomacy. It had been an American assassin, so I attacked the US. Killed the mutant-hating vice president and brought the president to his knees. It turned out to have all been a ploy, to draw me out, make me angry enough to do something public and dangerous, to justify the US firing missiles at Genosha.”

Magnus gave a wry smile. “Except, it turned out that all the diplomacy had been worth it. Because the countries I’d visited at Charles’ behest came to our aid. The missiles were shot out of the sky. Moira and her human allies published classified documents online, proof of the anti-mutant conspiracy. The US government lost all credibility, and Genosha took its rightful place on the world stage. We waited a few years, and once Genosha was stable enough, Charles and I married. How did I get here, Erik? I stood by what I believed in. I became a diplomat even though I hated it. I fought for what was right. And when I made mistakes, I was lucky enough to have allies to catch them.”

Magnus looked Erik up and down. “You seem short on allies, yourself.”

He turned, and left Erik alone in his pretty cage.

Charles had been right.

He had been right.

Collaborating with the humans, talking, diplomacy… he’d been right about all of it.

It was infuriating.

Erik wanted to despair.

If only… if only he hadn’t done ten thousand things. Then Charles could be by his side. Mutants would have power.

If only.

Erik was too late to fix a single thing.

Erik wasn’t ready to see Charles Xavier, but when the door opened to reveal this universe’s Charles, he did not ask him to leave. Erik could not ask him to leave. Not when Charles Xavier was before him, alive and whole in the sleekest wheelchair Erik had ever seen.

Instead, he watched as Charles wheeled himself in, watched the guard close the door – not Mystique, the guards had apparently changed, it was Logan this time – and tried to figure out what to say.

In the end, he sank onto a sofa, and winced as his body complained. “I don’t know how I’m so old compared to Magnus.”

“It’s the cure, I think,” said Charles softly. “Mutants age slower than humans. Some only get about twenty more years than a human lifespan, but others age very slowly indeed. My daughter-in-law’s great-grandmother is two hundred years old, but she barely looks seventy.”

“Daughter-in-law?”

“Ruth, David’s wife. You met her in the throne room.”

“I see.” Erik wanted this world to be his so very badly. He wanted the family Magnus had, he wanted the powers Magnus had retained. He wanted the husband Magnus loved. “So now that I’m essentially human, my age is catching up with me faster than before.”

“Yes. Though things may ease up a little once your powers are back.”

“What?” Erik went very still.

Charles raised his eyebrows. “You don’t know? The cure isn’t permanent. David told me he could feel it wearing off you.”

“I – how long until –?”

“It’s hard to estimate without properly examining you, and if you’re being sent back tomorrow, we really won’t have time to take a look. But approximately a year before you feel any serious effect. Then two or three years before you’re back to full strength.” Charles’ eyes hardened. “I’d advise against a return to mutant terrorism in that time. Let the X-Men do their work. Repair the damage you’ve done. God knows you’ve done enough.”

Erik nodded wordlessly. His powers would return… he wasn’t worthless after all. Not just him, but Mystique too, every mutant who’d ever ended up on the wrong end of those awful syringes. “I… I only wish that Charles. My Charles… hadn’t…” Though he had no right to refer to Charles as ‘his Charles’. He’d lost that right long ago.

“He may not be dead.”

Erik nearly choked.

“A sufficiently powerful telepath can survive without a body, if they know what they’re doing,” Charles explained gently. “He may have survived, but there’s no way for me to tell. You have hope, though.”

“Even if he’s alive, I have no right… Not after everything I’ve done.” Even before everything went so spectacularly wrong, there had never been a right time for it. And then there had been no time left.

Charles – not his Charles, but a Charles, and perhaps that was close enough – Charles smiled at him and said, “Oh Erik, do you really think he won’t forgive you?”

Erik nearly sobbed, but he held it back. “He shouldn’t.”

“But he will. Of course he will.”

“I should have told him that I loved him. I should have said it years ago.”

“If he’s alive in your world, you will still have time.”

After Charles left, Erik still felt like a broken-down old wreck. But he might be a broken old wreck with a future.

They gathered the next morning, after breakfast.

Charles and Magnus to watch him go, David and Ruth to ensure he went properly. Erik was dressed in the clothes he’d worn when he was transported to Genosha. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by wearing fine clothing in the run-down part of New York.

Ruth, it turned out, wore a blindfold when she wasn’t wearing her helm. Erik was curious about what was under it, but he supposed he might never know.

David was dressed in black jeans and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up baring old scars, and Erik wondered briefly at this person who might have been his son, if only things had been different. David raised his hands, body glowing with silver-white light, and –

Erik was standing on the street, only a few blocks away from his safe house.

He walked until he found a corner store and bought a newspaper for a few coins which he still couldn’t move, even with the hope of one day regaining his powers.

The date on the newspaper told him he’d been gone two days.

Two days, yet everything had changed.

Erik might not have his powers back yet, but his mind was still sharp. He monitored what he needed to monitor, so he knew almost to the hour when Charles Xavier returned to the Westchester mansion. He didn’t know how yet – he had to restrain himself not to head there immediately – but he told himself to be patient. To give Charles time to adjust. To give himself time to get his thoughts in order.

Then he packed his suitcase.

Erik had always told himself he was a realist, and hoping to be allowed to move in to the Westchester mansion immediately was not realistic, but Charles had always been keen on the concept of hope.

Aside from clothes, shoes, and toiletries, letters also went into the suitcase – letters from his children. He’d written to them, and they’d eventually started writing back.

Along with the letters there was a file. Doctors’ reports from the Muir Island Institution. A photograph of the graduating physics students of St Andrews university, though Erik only had interest in one of the dozens of faces in the photo. A photocopy of a picture he’d found in a newspaper, of a mutant-human alliance meeting being led by a young man with long, messy black hair and mismatched eyes.

Far from the couture of a Genoshan prince, this version of David Haller dressed in scuffed jeans and a battered black leather jacket. Behind him, in the photo, a woman took notes. She wore a yellow blindfold that matched her blouse. It was hard to tell with the blindfold, but Erik thought she was looking at David.

It was a gift he’d prepared for Charles, along with an email address that Erik hoped David checked regularly. If he didn’t, then, well. Charles was a telepath. There were plenty of ways he could get in contact.

In a feat of superhuman restraint, Erik waited a week before he took a cab to Westchester. Lately he’d managed to move a paperclip across a table, and he tried to hang on to that sense of triumph to distract from the nerves gnawing at him.

He drew a lot of stares as he walked up the driveway and into the house, but nobody stopped him. Erik supposed that no-one here knew yet that the mutant cure wasn’t permanent. They all assumed he was still out of action.

He let himself in to Charles’ study and for a few seconds he just stood there and stared.

He could hardly believe his own eyes, this vision of Charles – his Charles – alive. Sitting behind a desk in a well-cut grey suit as if he’d never been gone.

Erik set down his suitcase as Charles wheeled himself around the desk.

They were perhaps three feet apart.

“I have so many things to tell you,” said Erik.

“I get the sense that you do.”

Once, Erik would have been angered at the implication that Charles was brushing through his surface thoughts, but that anger seemed so petty and unimportant now.

He’d wasted so much time. He didn’t want to waste any more.

Erik took two steps forward and kissed Charles full on the mouth.

When he pulled back, he watched Charles go from shock to surprise to unfiltered delight.

It was almost difficult to watch, difficult to realise that through all the years of fighting, Erik could have made Charles happy through something so simple.

Charles must have caught the thought because he said, flushed, “Oh, let yourself be happy, even if it’s only for a moment.”

Erik thought of his children, Lorna in Manhattan, Wanda travelling around Europe, Pietro down by the coast. He thought about David in London.

He could do it, he knew.

Stand for what he believed in. Be diplomatic even though he would hate it. Keep fighting for what was right. Know that he’d have allies who could catch him.

Erik squared his shoulders and looked into Charles’ eyes. “I was hoping for something longer than a moment.”