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Out of the mansion’s gates, it takes Eric approximately five minutes to stop and turn back. And no, Charles hasn’t been counting down. Truly. His dear friend is brilliant at so many things, but he would rather dramatic exits - and leaving in general - had not been the top of the list.
“Uh, Charles.” Erik gives him a sort of a sheepish look, which is painfully nostalgic already. “I almost forgot - the pipe on the third floor.” He pauses, but then soldiers on: “I have been meaning to fix it.”
“By all means.” Charles gestures in invitation, making a mental note to ask Hank to cancel the plumber.
“I won’t be a minute,” Erik insists.
Charles just keeps smiling at him. “You are fast, my friend.”
“You might want to save that compliment for when we don’t have a mutant whirlwind on the premises.”
Charles studies him intently, which is to say, valiantly resists every urge to read the troubled mind behind the handsome face.
“He really doesn’t have a clue, does he?” Raven asks the moment the clueless father is out of the earshot.
“Say,” Charles counters, “isn’t Kurt’s skin a lovely shade of blue?”
“Yes, so?”
He coughs. "What are the odds of-" He catches her steely expression. "Never mind."
The pipe leads to another pipe, which reminds Erik about a beam he isn’t one hundred percent sure of. The beam is but one of many, and who would have thought that a building could need so much metal to function?
Most certainly not Charles. Erik is an unstoppable force when up against an unmovable object, and if his current perfectionist spree lasts them the next decade, Charles will be the last to complain.
“He is doing this on purpose, Professor,” Jean informs him.
“Oh, I know.” He pretends not to notice the question marks practically floating around her head.
Peter zips by, raining crisps in his wake. “He is kinda cool when he’s not murdering people, huh?”
Charles couldn’t agree more. He has been told that it might not be the wisest solution to put Magneto , of all people, to the task of rebuilding the school from the ground up, but honestly, when Erik decides to bring something down, he does so regardless of anybody’s construction efforts, including his own. And this way, perhaps he would have a fraction of a second thought, or at least figure out a way not to bury Charles under the rubble.
And it is good for the children, learning that Erik is as capable of fixing things as he is of breaking them.
“Magnetology 101.” Raven writes it on the blackboard, in a halo of little pink magnets. “What? The kid could use a couple of lessons.”
They all could.
As all Erik’s manias are wont to do, it gets a bit out of hand.
“Your wheelchair,” he says one day over the chessboard. “It isn’t optimal for all terrains.”
That is so sweet of you, darling, Charles doesn’t say. “I won’t be riding off into the desert anytime soon, I should hope!”
Hank just so happens to overhear Erik’s ensuing rant, and next comes a full-blown fight, followed by, yes, Erik’s dramatic exit.
“He’ll be back,” Raven comments to Peter reassuringly. “He still hasn’t fixed my shower.”
He pops back in to rearrange the fantastical beasts on the gates into heroes of the mutantkind. Then he remembers about a sconce he has bent out of shape in a pique of frustration. Between one thing and another, he erects a giant metal ‘X’ out of god knows what, right in the middle of the driveway, and no one can persuade him to take it down until Raven points out that it looks like a giant target mark.
“Thank you so very much,” Charles tells her sourly as Erik’s paranoia washes over him like one of Ororo’s stormiest moods.
“How do I even know he’s my Dad?” Peter won’t stop wondering. “I mean, when does a rogue Nazi hunter find the time to hook up with a hot but totally law-abiding suburban Mom?” Somehow, it never occurs to him that he could go straight to the source, as in, redirect his questions to her. “What is she not telling me?” He zooms away and returns with a whole box of twinkies. “Oh my god, my Mom isn’t who she says she is! She and Dadneto used to hunt Nazis together and then she got pregnant with me and didn’t tell him ‘cause I don’t make the rules, and then she used a memory-altering drug on him to make him forget her! Because reasons!”
Charles frowns. Why does that sound vaguely familiar?
“Romance.” Raven’s pointed tone does not escape him. “This is my new favourite soap opera.”
“Didn’t you mean to say ‘sitcom’?”
“Nah, only soaps drag on like this.”
“I can do the laugh track,” Peter offers.
“Charles,” Erik says one soulful morning. The two of them are alone in the kitchen, and it’s almost like the old times. “There is something I should have told you a long time ago.”
The urge to sneak a peek becomes so overwhelming that he has to distract himself with keeping track of Peter, which gives him an instant headache. “Yes?”
“The thing is, I can only be with people who are called ‘Magda,’” he continues with a straight face. “So could you please adopt it as your middle name? It would solve all our problems.”
“ Raven !” Charles snaps. “I’m not talking to you for another decade!”
Those beautiful eyes change to yellow. “And that’s different from the usual how, exactly?”
On the next day, Charles catches her on her way to steal his wheelchair and confess his undying love to Erik.
He pleads, he threatens, he bribes, and she... well, she changes targets.
“A daughter is someone you laugh with, tuck in before bed, and sing lullabies to,” Erik is saying grandly. “But I cannot see a future in which my son is not leading my mutant armies into battle.”
Peter’s lower lip wobbles. He doesn’t talk to Raven for the next… hour or so. The boy really is a gift to them all.
“Moira is such a wonderful person,” Charles gushes. “Such a groovy mind! I don’t know a thing about her, but the moment I saw her, it was meant to be.”
After a long, heavy silence, Erik growls Raven’s name.
“It’s not my fault you’re all so-” She gestures vaguely, unable to pick one word, so Charles catches the whole cloud of them..
At any rate, decorating a mansion is long-term project. Erik maintains that nothing could trump the classic ‘X’, but he is willing to experiment.
“Your favourite oak,” he mumbles, not looking at Charles. “I’ve noticed it missing and... made it better.”
Charles stares at the life-sized sculpture in awe verging on tears.
Peters whooshes in with a: “That’s so rad, man!”
Charles tries to talk to Erik about his son. Oh, he does. But they can’t even get past Erik’s strange fascination with the name ‘Magda’ yet.
His friend gives him a blank look, moving the bishop. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, there has been a Magda,” oh bother, this is so, so insensitive of him, “and another Magda before her?”
“You’ve read my mind?” Erik snarls, springing to his feet, the pieces leaping up into the air like nuclear missiles.
“Twenty years ago!” Charles protests, flooded with Erik’s surface thoughts. “I cannot un read it now.”
A whole parade of women lines up before his mind’s eye - alright, about four of them - including Nina’s mother but not Peter’s, for some reason.
Erik stays furious with the whole wide world until Raven buys him some new metallic paints.
Hank does not give up on his crusade to divorce Erik from his self-appointed job. Which is probably a reasonable idea, and also why there is a structural engineer knocking on their door.
She is short, brown-haired, neatly dressed and Hispanic with complicated ancestry.
Her name is Madga.
It takes her and Erik approximately three seconds to grow inseparable.
Peter lets loose a Sean-worthy screech. Hank won’t meet Charles’s eyes, even though nobody without a precog mutation could have foreseen this.
“I’ve totally blown my chances with him!” Peter whines, trying to pack his bag and succeeding only in multiplying the mess. “Now he’s going to make a new son, the mutant army leader! And I’ll be the next in line to get tragically killed! My baby sister will grow up a human disaster who marries a Senti-whatever.”
Charles is, or rather, aspires to be a patient man. But at times like this, he wants nothing more than to smack both father and son on their thick heads with those twin ‘X’ beams.
“How does your mansion not have a single access ramp?” Magda demands to know. “How do you get in and out?”
Is ‘Erik carries me’ a socially acceptable answer? Probably not.
Charles hides from this problems in the gardens, which are supposed to be a place of tranquility. Instead, he finds himself surrounded by metal sculptures - fauns, Greek gods, you name it - none of which are Magdas. In fact, they seem to bear a suspicious resemblance to what he has last seen in the mirror.
“Do you like them?” Erik’s voice behind him nearly gives him a heart attack. “I can’t work marble, and I didn’t remember what you used to have, so I’ve done what I could.”
“They are-” Beautiful? Would it be terribly vain of him to acknowledge that? They all have such lush hair. “Impressive. Truly impressive, my friend. You could make a living out of it, you know.”
Erik laughs quietly, which is an improvement over the cold dead eyes. Charles used to think that second chances came to those who waited, but that might or might not have been the bad acid talking.
“Erik. There is something I should have told you a while ago. No, I’m not Raven in disguise. But yes, I do want you to stay.” He smiles at Erik, holding out his hand. “Also, Peter is your father.” Hold on. “Er, son! I meant son!”
Judging by the look on Erik’s face, he might have to do that last one over.