Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men.

Warning: Spoilers for all X-Men movies, including First Class.

He was much too old, he thought, to be learning to live like a human. It took him an age to climb the stairs to his apartment, his knees aching with each step, body still chilled from his long afternoon in the park. His thumb fit into the groove on the banister, slid along the grain. Overhead a dying light bulb flickered.

He paused on the third floor landing to catch his breath. He had lost more than just his abilities on Alcatraz Island, he knew. Somehow the cure had stripped away his vitality, too, and left behind only this pathetic shell of a man.

He could hear the blare of a television. Somewhere up above a dog barked.

He rounded the bend and pushed himself up the last flight of stairs. On his own landing, he pulled his keys from his pocket and fumbled them with hands clumsy with arthritis or something like it. He fit the correct key into the lock with effort.

The apartment was small and smelled faintly of rice. His shoes went on the rack by the door, his coat on the one-armed coat rack he had rescued off the sidewalk not long after moving in.

He had money in accounts all over the world, of course. But that money felt as distant to him as Israel, or his own past. The effort of getting to it would be more than mere creature comforts were worth.

He was, perhaps, waiting to die.

He filled his kettle and put it on the stove, then sat at the kitchenette table, his head in his hands. There were no pictures on the walls. He had never been one to collect photographs, yet he wished now for a picture of Charles—Charles as he had been before their falling out, before that errant bullet destroyed his spine. He couldn't bear to remember Charles as he had last seen him, an old man ripped apart by forces he should never have sought to tame.

No, that wasn't right. Ripped apart by forces theynever should have sought to tame. He was done with shifting the blame away from himself. Alcatraz was his fault, he could see that now. Now that he was harmless, he could finally see the harm that he had caused.

"Oh, Charles," he sighed, and almost fancied his old friend could hear him. "I was wrong. So wrong."

And the world disappeared around him. It happened between one breath and the next, the walls melting away, his table and chair vanishing as if they never were, the floor falling out from under him. He barely had time to be startled before he found himself floating in a black void so soundless he thought for a moment that he had gone deaf.

Hello, Erik.

The familiar voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. He whipped his head around, searching for the source, but wherever he looked there was only the void.

"Charles?" he said uncertainly.

I'm here. The tone was gentle, a little sad. Do you know where you are, Erik?

That was Charles' teacher voice. In the past he'd found it highly irritating, but now—faced with the sudden, inexplicable possibility that Charles might somehow be alive—it filled him with fierce joy. "No. Tell me."

The world solidified around him, only this was not the time or the place that he had just left. He was young, his gift thrumming just beneath his skin, making him feel impossibly alive. He sat on the veranda of the mansion wearing sweatpants, his legs stretched out in front of him. Charles was lying perpendicular to him, his head in Erik's lap.

This was a precious memory. Erik reached out to brush a curl from Charles' face and remembered doing the exact same thing four decades earlier. He memorized the way Charles looked in that instant, his skin painted silver by the moonlight, so young, so naïve.

"The human mind is a structure infinitely complex and finitely malleable," Charles was saying, oblivious to Erik's fond smile as he prattled on. "I can make a person's body do whatever I want. I can make them see, taste, hear, even touch a world of my creation. But I can't change who they are. There's not a mutation on Earth that powerful."

The scene faded away as quickly as it came, returning him to the void. There was a sharp pain in his chest that had nothing to do with age.

Do you know where you are?

He took a moment to consider. "I'm in my own mind," he answered.

Yes.

Then he was notimagining that he could feel Charles' presence. Which meant that Charles was not actually dead. Which meant…

"For how long?" he demanded.

There was never any plastic prison, Erik.

His relief at Charles' survival was rapidly being swept under by a growing tide of rage. "Four years?" he hissed, his fists clenching at his sides. "You've kept me prisoner in my own mind for four years?"

The government would have killed you for what you did on Ellis Island. This was the only solution.

"Mental torturewas the only solution? Making me believe that you were dead, that I'd been the architect of so much destruction?"

I set the parameters for the world you lived in, Erik, but it was you who chose what to do within those parameters. It is my hope that you will learn from the experiences you have here. You must change, Erik, or I cannot release you.

Erik scowled, relying on his anger for strength and letting the emotion beat against Charles' mind. "Let me out," he said softly. "I am different now. I've seen the pain my mistakes have caused. Free me, Charles."

There was a long pause before Charles replied. Erik couldn't feel his mind being invaded, inspected, but he knew it was happening. And he knew what Charles would find.

He'd changed, yes. But not thatmuch.

A breeze seemed to pass through the void—a mental sigh.

Why must you be so inflexible? There was a time you believed that we could work together.

He sneered. "That was only ever a foolish dream. You were always too much of a pacifist for me, Charles."

Is that so? Charles sounded almost amused. Perhaps your memory needs some refreshing, old friend.

A world formed around him again. Cobblestones under his feet, a slender briefcase tucked under one arm. Erik stood in front of a familiar bank in Switzerland. With his gift he could feel the Nazi gold in his briefcase. Anger, his oldest companion, swirled through him, lending him control over his power. He was excited, too.

He was a hunter, and finally, after so many years, he was closing in on his prey.

Charles Xavier exhaled heavily and let his hands fall to his lap. His back ached from the hours he'd spent leaning over the head of Erik's hospital bed, his hands pressed to his old friend's face. It was a relief to gently disentangle his mind from the other man's, though he was forced to leave a tendril of himself behind to guide Erik's experiences.

"Everything all right?"

He lifted his head to smile wearily at Hank McCoy, who reached down to take Charles' arm, two giant fingers resting on the pulse point at his wrist.

"I'm fine, Hank," Charles said.

Hank hummed agreeably but didn't release Charles' wrist until a few more seconds had passed. "Your heart rate is elevated. I don't like these long sessions you spend with him, Charles. They're not good for your health."

"They're unfortunately necessary. I'm hopeful they won't have to go on much longer."

Hank shook his head. "I wish I shared your optimism. Erik Lensherr hasn't changed in forty years. I don't know why you think he would start now."

"Optimism, my friend," Charles said, his eyes straying to Erik's face, its harsh lines barely relaxed even in repose, "is what differentiates us from him."

He brushed a strand of gray hair from Erik's forehead, making a mental note to have Erik's hair trimmed. Erik would not be pleased with its shaggy state. A quick mental contact told him that this time around Erik had chosen not to kill the banker.

"See, Erik?" he murmured. "You're making progress already."

Then, his arms heavy with fatigue, he nodded a goodbye to Hank and rolled himself out of Erik's curtained corner of the med bay.