I have two other stories I should be working on now, but this scene wouldn't leave me alone, so I'm writing it. It might end up with an additional chapter if I feel inspired to include more feels, but for now we'll leave it at this.

The title comes from a quote by Stephen Ambrose: "The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope."

Nausea rushed over him in waves as he utilized Erik's unconscious mind for his own purposes. Not just because he was in Erik's mind for the first time in a decade (not to mention against the man's will). The day had been taxing. He hadn't used his powers so strenuously in, well, years. He could feel his former friend flickering back to consciousness. The realization of what was happening to him was quick to follow. Was the nausea he felt now a result of his own physical limitations or of Erik's horror?

Letting Erik have his mind back didn't solve the problem. Another wave slammed into him as Hank pulled him to his feet, this time accompanied by a deluge lightheadedness. He watched Erik regain control of his mind, felt the wrath at having lost it in the first place, yet another betrayal on top of the blow one-time second-in-command had dealt. He masked the stinging pain of it well, staring for a moment at the helmet. Charles wouldn't have known the difference a week ago. Pain and anger were easily conflated on the outside for how different they felt telepathically.

Odd how quickly one got reacquainted with what they'd lost.

Erik was looking at him now.

"If you let them have me I'm as good as dead. You know that."

Of course. Of course now he had to decide Erik's fate. As if there were a question as to what he'd choose. Charles had a response on the tip of his tongue when he felt his grip on Hank slip. He didn't mran for his head to nod forward, swinging the rest of his body with it into Hank's chest, but now that he was here, it felt rather pleasant.

Hank stumbled a couple of steps back with the addition of the unexpected weight. "Charles?"

His puzzlement tastes of blueberries, Charles thought as the world spun around him. Blueberries and snow. He was supposed to be doing something, right? There were important people nearby. He could hear them thinking important thoughts. Whatever it was, it could wait while he rested his eyes.

He must have projected because the puzzlement shifted to panic almost immediately. Why his thoughts would panic anyone Charles didn't know. He wasn't Erik, thinking about all the different ways he could kill the humans around him. Maybe he should think of something else. Something happy. Raven and training younger mutants and-

It wasn't working. In fact, the panic was increasing. And it wasn't just from Hank anymore.

Charles was taking far too long to respond. As if his fate was deserving of debate. Well, Erik wouldn't stand around and wait for the telepath to draw his conclusions, especially if they involved choosing humans over one of his own. If Charles wanted to stop him, he would. Magnetic fields wrapped around him like a blanket, and he was just about to lift off the ground when he heard Hank call Charles' name. The telepath was slumped over. McCoy staggered, eyes widening. There was the oddest echo, something about blueberries.

What the hell was going on?

Raven called Charles' name and started to hobble toward where the telepath was stood behind a hunk of rubble. Ah, the thought had come Charles. He'd never felt such a scattered projection from the man before. Something was wrong. He looked up in time to see Hank's eyes widening even further at something in the area blocked from Erik's sight by the stadium lighting that had fallen.

"Shit!"

Hank McCoy did a lot of things, but cursing was not one of them. Erik hadn't seen anyone go from concern to all out panic that fast since the Kennedy assassination.

"What's going on?" Raven called, her limping speeding up. Erik started to move forward as well, tried to keep his stride even, but losing sight of Charles as McCoy lowered his shockingly pliant body back to the ground put an end to that plan. By the time Raven arrived and her face crumpled with a whispered "Oh God", he was at a run.

He heard raised voices behind him. With a flick of his wrist, the humans were enclosed in their metal box again and the cameras shut off. No need to worry about them interfering in whatever was happening behind the chunk of stadium. Surely it couldn't be as bad as the others were letting on.

It was.

His momentum was enough that the beam blocking Charles from sight did a majority of the job stopping him. That left him bent over it at the waist trying to see what was wrong. Charles was blinking up at them, clearly unaware of anyone's presence. His eyes were rolling around in his head, never staying on one object for more than a second despite what appeared to be a valiant attempt at focus. He was breathing, but it was short and shallow, almost panting. All symptoms Erik had seen before. They could indicate a variety of injuries, but he'd seen it the most with-

His gaze moved down Charles' body, not sure whether he wanted his suspicion confirmed or not. His stomach dropped.

Charles' right pant leg was dripping with blood. Not the bleeding that came from a scrape or a cut. No, everything from just above the knee down to the ankle was saturated, puddling under him and absorbing into the ground. A hole torn in the pants revealed the culprit, a nasty wound ripped though his thigh. But how-

Erik glanced to the chunk of metal Charles had used him to remove. A jagged piece of the beam was tipped a solid two to three inches in red, probably from where it had broken off the top of the stadium. It was purely Charles' bad luck that it had fallen jagged-side-down onto his unfeeling legs where he couldn't have possibly known the danger he was in when he carelessly tossed it aside.

How long had he been bleeding out? The metal would have stopped the blood, so even if he'd been suffering from shock, blood loss wouldn't have set in until the wound was opened…maybe one minute ago. That was far too much blood for one minute. Something vital had been hit. He'd killed men like this before.

When he was being merciful.

When he wanted it to be quick.

Charles had five minutes max.

He'd tossed the beam blocking him to the side, finally able to kneel beside his friend. His cape was off before he even thought about it, and he pressed it to the wound. Hank was pulling his belt off. A tourniquet. It wouldn't be enough.

He could feel the blood leaving Charles' body. Felt his heart pumping it down, unknowingly accelerating its own demise. Hank buckled his belt just above the wound. The flow slowed.

Belated realization struck him. He was feeling Charles' blood with his power. Because blood had iron. And if blood had iron…then maybe he could control it. He'd never attempted it before. The thought had never occurred to him. He didn't even know if he was capable. But he had to try now.

Closing his eyes, he focused on the iron he felt coursing through Charles' leg. Stopping bloodflow completely would be bad, he knew that much, but if he could slow it, give them a chance to get to the hospital.

He could feel himself wavering where he knelt over Charles, hands clamped over the cape covering the wound like an eagle held its prey. It was difficult. But it was also working. He wouldn't need to hold it long. Just long enough.

"What are you doing?" Hank had clearly noticed a change in Erik's demeanor.

"Slowing the bloodflow. It's not a permanent solution-"

A smack sounded from the top of Charles' body. Charles was blinking dazedly, his pale (very pale…practically grey) cheek pinking as Raven pulled her hand back.

"Stay awake, Charles, you hear me? You stay awake."

"Raven?" the telepath slurred.

"Yeah, it's me."

"Mmm, thought you'd gone." Charles frowned. He tried to lift a hand, frowned harder when it didn't cooperate. He was shivering, appeared to be cold, clammy. Whether it was from the blood loss or shock, Erik didn't know, but neither option was good.

"I'm still here," she said, tears in her voice.

"We need to get him to a hospital," Erik said. "I'm slowing the bleeding, but it hasn't bought us more than half an hour."

"Erik?" Charles was blinking hard at him, focus still lacking, but better than before. "I thought you'd left too. Gone for a- a run. Or, no, um…I don't…I don't feel…"

His eyes rolled up and closed, and his head slipped to the side. Some of his ridiculously long hair slipped across his face.

Three panicked voices called out Charles' name. Three because, Erik realized, his own was one of them. His heart was racing. There was a burning behind his eyes. He was panicking for the first time in…he didn't know.

Hank shook. The hand he ran across his forehead left a streak of blood in its wake. "Ambulances should be on their way, but-"

"You can run with him," Erik said. "You're fast." At least he had been when he'd trained all those years ago.

Hank shook his head manically. "I- I can't. I took too much of the serum so the Sentinal would judge me as a human."

Ah, yes, the Sentinal he'd sicced on his fellow mutants. Erik glanced to Mystique, but his eyes landed on the still-fresh bullet wound in her leg instead. Both of Charles' options for help were taken out directly and indirectly by Erik's hand.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

Charles was going to die here, to bleed out in front of the White House. Their older counterparts had worked together to save the future and the first thing that was going to happen after they (presumably...hopefully) succeeded was that Charles was going to die. Charles had used him, gone into his mind and made a puppet of him for his own purposes...but that didn't mean he wanted to opportunity to reconcile ripped from him. No.

He gestured to the jacket Hank wore as he started unsnapping his armor. "Give me the jacket."

"What-"

"I'll get him to the hospital. My helmet was on. The news stations won't have my face to broadcast for at least another hour, probably more since I'd imagine the government offices that would distribute the pictures are in disarray. I'll land us a block from the hospital and run the rest of the way. He'll fit in with the rest of the casualties."

Hank tensed. "You just tried to kill at least a dozen people-"

"But not him!" Erik yelled. The last piece of armor fell away. "Would you like your mentor to die while we argue over who is most capable of caring for him?"

Hank pursed his lips but took his jacket off and threw it to Erik. Erik put it on. With the armor off, he was left in an innocuous maroon top and black pants. With Hank's dirtied jacket, he'd pass as an ordinary citizen who had been near the stadium when it fell. At least he wouldn't be shot at on sight when he walked into the ER.

He hoisted Charles into his arms. "Get to the hospital as soon as you can."

With that, he was in the air, rocketing towards the hospital.

When you're flying, you have time to think, even if you're trying to get the deadweight of your friend to a hospital. But thinking wasn't always a good thing, especially when half your mind is still set on the task it set out to perform.

He'd been thwarted again. Tried to show the humans the power of mutantkind and failed. Well, not failed. They'd seen what he could do. He supposed Mystique's actions might even put off the Sentinal-fuelled apocalypse for a few years. Yet the war was still coming.

And here in his arms was easily the most direct threat to his winning that war. Mystique would be problematic, but Charles…Charles could find him anywhere, make him think things he didn't think, do things he didn't want. Charles Xavier could make it so he didn't even know he'd wanted anything different from what Charles wanted.

That threat could be gone. Charles' life was literally in his hands. All he had to do was let go of the hold he was keeping on the man's wound and set them down too far from the hospital. It would be over in less than five minutes.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to do it.

He looked down at Charles' slack face, a face he would apparently still be working with in 50 years. The past had taught him that people betrayed you. Relationships never lasted. Others would only get in the way. Yet, in the future, they'd found a way around their differences, rebuilt the shambles of the relationship. Based on the past few days, he couldn't guess how, but they had. And the thought of being responsible for Charles' death now made him feel physically ill. It couldn't end here. Not knowing what the future might hold for them.

He hated Charles for doing this to him.

He also decidedly did not hate Charles. That was more of a problem than anything else.

And he was at the hospital. He stood for a moment in the alley he'd set them down in. No one had seen, what with all the chaos. A siren blared nearby. He could still…this would be his last chance.

Charles' shook in his arms. Erik closed his eyes, took a breath, and stalked out of the alley towards the emergency room.

"I need some help!"

"If you let them have me I'm as good as dead. You know that." is a direct quote from the movie.

Erik is hard for me to write because every single one of his choices baffles me. How did he think any of that was a good idea? Like, seriously. Who goes into a situation knowing that the future includes giant robots that can kill everyone and says "You know what will make this better? Killing the president and showing everyone why they might want robots who can kill us all." I'm sure there's some crazy logic to it, but I can't find it. So, long story short, Erik might be OOC based on the movie version of him. I tried.