Title: Your Choice Begat Mine
Pairing: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Summary: Erik went away, taking from Charles the things that meant so much to him. But it's what he left that leads to secrecy and embittered thoughts. It's their son that Erik should never know about.
Warning: Slash. Mpreg.
Rating: T - for language

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This was supposed to remain a brief epilogue instead of a full third chapter, but it got away from me. No big deal. Sometimes it's nice to have longer works.

Chapter Three: Repeat the Process but Change the Variables

Four Months Later

—

The twisting of the door handle was almost as quiet as could be. It rattled only a little, a clink of metal tumblers that must have been either incidental or a question of permission.

Charles situated his bookmark very gently between the pages he was reading, tucking it in for the night. Then he placed the book upon his nightstand and waited.

As though the outside presence had been anticipating and watching, the french doors to his balcony drifted apart, slow and quiet— a magnificent contrast to Erik's usual method of operation.

The man himself appeared within seconds, gently dropping upon the stone of the balcony and framed by the doorway. He wore his helmet, which was ridiculous in its superfluousness yet not as much so as the costume. Deep and lifeless colors it housed, a promise that no mercy nor compassion was to be found in the man beneath them, not unless he wished it.

Erik closed the door behind himself in a way that felt presumptuous. Walking the short miles of the room, he seemed anxious already to divest himself of cape and other articles. He removed only his helmet.

"I don't need my powers to know why you are here, Erik."

"Good evening, Charles," came the calm reply. The three innocent words hid in speech under the guise of a greeting, but they were so much more. A question, a plea, a confession. Charles broke them apart on every level.

"Good evening, Erik."

It was his consent.

There was nothing rushed or passed over between them. Passion was muted in its tenderness. Desire burned and overflowed through no more than a soft touch. Erik held him as though he might break, a delicate china doll that should have only ever been sat upon the shelf and never played with. Charles took comfort, not offense, from his treatment, reveling in the feel that Erik knew he shouldn't touch, shouldn't play, but could not stop himself.

They knew what consequences were and the actions that caused them. Then they ignored both with a clinging desperation.

Though absent in words, they each voiced upon the other with no more than the flit of an eye a wordless discussion of what may come, what they wanted and feared in equal measure.

Motive was a tricky, unasked, and ignored thing, diluted further in its reasoning when shared between two minds. Maybe Erik wanted a registered blip of involvement. Perhaps Charles was looking for a second chance, to prove himself and try again where he had fallen short before. But he could not and would not confess to his own reasoning, for to admit to such a possibility would be to label David as a failure, and on that path of thought there laid nothing but guilt and self-loathing.

Charles would have sounded arrogant to say he knew that same night. And he didn't, of course, but for the sense of deep foreboding within him, an ambivalence of hope mixed with despair.

Erik stayed the night but left the next morning, allowing only enough time to meet with and speak to Pietro— an arrangement that stood in place only because the boy's distaste for him was overcome by youthful intrigue. Charles understood his confliction better than anyone.

It was five months before Erik returned, again during the night, perhaps indeed mindful of the effect he could have on the children. With him came the near palpable sensation of curiosity, an unseen embodiment that lurked behind, that lifted his shoulders higher.

Charles forwent the man having to ask and rolled back the blankets, revealing the answer that lay beneath. Erik's expression was one first of joy, excitement, a swelling of pride and love. Then he crumbled upon himself, an ill built tower whose demolished rubble left naught but traces of its former glory, a field of debris and fear.

"I expect nothing from you, my friend," Charles told him, and there was a sad, resigned smile on his face. "Time has long since passed for us to do wholly right by the other. You are stuck on your path and I on mine."

Erik silently doffed his attire until nothing remained but the comfortable underclothes. He climbed unto the bed and Charles welcomed him with open arms, consoling him as a parent might their child after bad dreams.

They remained there, silent for most of the night. Charles petted his hair with unmasked affection, and Erik kept a firm hand upon his stomach, both of them at times.

"Set in our paths, you say?" Erik questioned of him.

Charles nodded, a slight movement that was barely more than a blink of his eyes. "I believe two men can only change one future so much," he replied. There was a disheartened relief in his tone. To himself, the resolution felt as though he had been pushing a large rock uphill, only to finally surrender and let the momentum of unstoppable force at last take it away from him. "Though, along with what we've altered thus far, I think perhaps she is already a new addition to the future."

"She?"

Erik was absent when she was born. It would have been a fallacy to ever want or expect anything else. Charles was not so cruel to himself that he waited for him to enter, brandishing arrogance and metal to any who stood in his way.

To anticipate such a spectacle would have been folly. Logic ruled he shouldn't. And yet logic had no place in the heart, no corner in which it was welcomed, and Charles found he could not ignore the faint disappointment that followed. However, and just as obvious, he knew he could not and should not dwell. It was inadvisable where Erik was concerned.

Making a decision that he hoped wouldn't backfire in any way, Charles relinquished naming rights to her older brothers in an attempt to let them feel involved. David was thrilled for the opportunity, but Pietro adopted a distasteful look that he had kept almost the entire duration— for show, of course, as Charles gleaned from his mind.

Erik met Lorna when she was three-months-old. By that time, tufts of hair had grown upon her head, and their green hue put to bed any fears Erik might have harbored before they even awoke.

So loving was he, so abundant was his adoration, that he didn't leave Charles's bedroom for a week, hiding from students and hoarding his daughter. He questioned her name, thinking it an oddity to have come from Charles's mind, but was much more receptive after learning the source.

To keep David from Erik seemed pointless by then. The man had little chance of winning or polluting his mind. And of course, once David understood that his new sister was indeed his full sibling, he exhibited a fixation upon the man that Charles could not quell nor contain.

Erik was officially introduced to David when the boy was twelve and Wanda when she was eighteen.

Charles was endlessly relieved by the calm, mature conversations that could manage to take place in a room of four children regularly abandoned by their father. Granted, one was an infant, but she kept a respectable silence all the same.

It told on the unique temperament of each child that they didn't seem to blame Erik for his absence. They could converse with him or disagree with him— outright condemning his practices— but there was always an understanding of facts when he left. No one begged him to stay, just as no one expected him to do so of his own, uncoerced will.

Charles took his own sadness from that, but he often wondered if Erik did as well, if perhaps the man wanted just one moment of assurance that someone mourned his departures. But, as he confessed late one night in a darkened room amid soft sheets, there were Charles's children, not his. Even the older ones knew and embraced their place in the manor at his side.

Again Charles told him that they could not change what had happened, what was happening, or what would happen. Erik was sullen at the words that sounded like a judgment of weakness, but Charles was adamant that he could not want both goals to the same degree. One had to win, and neither man deceived himself with which it would be.

When she was two-years-old, Lorna cried as Erik said goodbye. He was so uncharacteristically weakened by the sight that he stayed the rest of the day, tucking her into bed. Then, once she was asleep and unable to miss him, Erik left. He must have thought the tactic a kindness, but Charles knew it for its cruelty, knew the heartbreak that would come with the morning.

It was the first time in a long while that the thought of denying Erik his open welcome crept into Charles's mind.

When David became of driving age, no one seemed good enough to teach him except a father who could move other cars out of the way, allowing him a certain recklessness. Erik stayed for more than a week, showing him the finer points and indulging the boy with small displays of power. But when it came time for his test, David held out as long as any young man could before finally letting Pietro take him in their father's place.

Charles tried comforting him by saying that Erik wouldn't have done well in a federal building anyway. His words were a mediocre bandage against betrayal, though, and the sight of it stung, even with David's assurance that he didn't care.

Erik did at least have the surprising decency to look ashamed when he showed up more than a month later. Charles met him alone, and they shared a conversation that incited a wrath long hidden from his eyes.

The bedroom was in a shambles when Erik left. Any trace of metal had been purposefully bent beyond practical repair. Not even his wheelchair was granted immunity.

Charles had given him an ultimatum, but as they both knew the likelihood of him changing his course by then, Erik had taken it as a cruel ruling.

They fell out of all contact immediately. Anything Charles ever heard regarding Erik's whereabouts, or even a confirmation to his health, came from newspapers or the television. It was a horrible, biased source that reported only the bad— as was its duty— and eventually Charles could take it no longer, abandoning that method of keeping tabs.

It was five years before Charles initiated contact, five years before he had a reason that dwelled beyond the realm of indulgent selfishness and yearning.

Not long after Lorna turned nine, she gradually began summoning a ring of metal that floated about herself, adding layer upon layer of oddities from the manor: a spoon, a coin, someone's pen. Charles tried to teach her calm control, but she became frustrated easily, scared as any young girl could be thought to be. Even living amongst mutants her entire life had not prepared her for the idea of her own uncontrollable powers.

If serenity was a wall for control, she had nothing else with which to brace it. To Erik, rage had granted raw power, but Lorna's somewhat charmed life thus far had given her an ill means of balance. It was not the control she lacked, merely the strength to be controlled. What was there acted without her consent.

The matter caused in her a depression, most sad to see in one so young. Students would make jokes over the orbit of metal around her, thinking it all in good fun. Eventually she stopped leaving her room. Not even the commencement of summer vacation and departure of a great percentage of students could bring her back out.

The effect it had on Charles was a special sort of desperation that only a parent could know. It gave him the prideless strength to quickly dissolve old grudges and demands. He pulled out an address to a P.O. box that he pretended he hadn't actually memorized years ago.

It took eight days for Erik to show. With the included delay for the letter to run its course and for the mailbox to be checked, Charles had not a doubt in his mind that the man had come straight away.

Charles took no offense when words of greeting or awkward pleasantries were ignored. When he arrived, Erik's eyes were only for his daughter.

Lorna had kept only one vague memory of him with nothing to support it but the occasional discussion from her siblings. Even that had become a dying occurrence with the twins away and David at college. She had no original thought in her head on how to consider the man before her. But when he waved his hand and the metal around her dropped, she latched to him like a lifeline, hugging him in a tight embrace she could not resist.

Charles perceived in Erik a love at once rekindled and enhanced. Lorna may have been raised in the manor, she may have been 'Charles's child', but that display of magnetic power created an immediate and prideful bond in him.

He and Erik did not share a bedroom for the duration of his stay. Charles wasn't sure whose idea it was or if either of them had even voiced it, but Erik remained in one of the empty rooms, of which there was an abundance in the summer months. All conversation between them seemed shallow, never delving beneath the surface of standard small talk between old friends. Charles knew that on his own end it was caused by a sense of regret and guilt. However, Erik— whose mind Charles would not invade even without his helmet— could have been held back by anything from awkwardness to passive aggression.

Instead Charles took a separate joy in watching him with Lorna. They were always together, morning, noon, and night. The two of them would find unoccupied rooms or walk the grounds in deep discussions that Charles hoped Erik managed to keep on a nine-year-old's level.

It had been so many years since their original breakthrough of true control. Charles did not doubt that in all that time Erik had developed new methods. The man had levitated an entire stadium and transported it, for goodness sake. Whatever it was he had found must have worked for Lorna because she slowly took hold of her abilities.

It was good to see her smile again, and most amusing to watch a game of chess between two opponents who never need touch the metal pieces.

Erik's time at the school must have ticked away faster than he thought, though Charles kept track of every day. It was close to the end of a month when a knock rapped twice upon the door of Charles's study. He bade the person to enter, and it was more surprising to see Erik approach him at all than it was the fact that he was wearing his helmet.

"Erik," Charles observed, "you come with ill intent." He finished the sentence he had been reading in his paperwork before turning his full attention to the other. His power over Erik's mind was not necessary in knowing the purpose of the visit. Simple and succinct, he told him, "You can't have her."

"She wants to go," Erik informed him. Though outward appearances of cold and stone were able to fool others, Charles could see the reluctance in his eyes. It was always there when Erik's own greed warred with his knowledge on how it would affect Charles.

"Yes," Charles agreed, not doubting it as truth, "but she's nine. She also wants a tea set and a pony."

"I can help her in ways you can't," Erik continued. Of the two of them, it was obvious which one he was trying to convince with his words and it wasn't Charles.

There was little hum of amusement in reply to that claim as Charles gave his head a dismissive shake. "You can help her become a weapon," he clarified, "a soldier. Don't dress up unpleasant facts, old friend. You've no place for children in the life you lead."

"It's what's best for her."

Charles could have laughed at the stretched logic behind such an assertion, but there was far more woe to be found in it than mirth. "If you truly believe that," he said, word for word imbedded with the resolve of what he was about to say, "then I no longer regret my choice to distance you from the children."

"Think what you want, Charles, but a future without bloodshed is nothing but a dream." Though Erik may have respected Charles— and, yes, even his choices— there was never a want for arrogance in his avowal of inevitable war. "You will leave our kind unprepared for their own destruction."

"You can't have her," Charles maintained. Of any arguing that would commence, it was a point from which he would never budge.

"I'll not let you risk my daughter's life on an ideal of pacifism and cohabitation," Erik spat.

"She will receive training here," Charles tried to reason. "We may not always be preparing for war, but we do believe in mastering our powers."

Erik did not withdraw from his pride, but he did change tactics, retaking his former ground and quarrel. "It's what she wants."

"It doesn't work that way, Erik." Charles gave him a smile, but it was a tainted little thing, soaking with sorrow. "It shouldn't. She doesn't know what it is she's asking for. All Lorna thinks is that she'll get to spend more time with her father."

"She would," Erik defended.

"Oh, yes," Charles quipped with a tired sigh. "I can imagine the situations you would drag her into, the unstable living conditions. You are not so foolish," he scolded, disappointed with the other's logic, grasping and desperate as he knew that it was. "Don't be blinded by how desperately you crave one child's love. You know this isn't right. You're not thinking clearly."

And then Erik did stop. He had been fooling himself, and they both knew it. Charles only wished he could be around more often to call the man on his bluffs before they were made. Life, and many things within it, would have been so much easier.

"She'll be upset with me," Erik uttered in his surrender.

"Tell her it's my fault," Charles offered. It felt like the least he could do. "She can only stay mad at me for so long."

Erik shook his head. "That hardly seems fair."

Charles smiled then, genuine and warm and an overall refreshing sensation to feel. That Erik could care— that he did care— over so small a thing was knowledge he truly welcomed. "I'm her father," he reasoned. "Quite often must I play the role of the villain. But you…" Charles tried speaking through the grin on his face, but took pause when it grew too wide to talk around. "In the past couple of weeks, you've become a hero in her eyes." It had been a most heartwarming display to watch, tainted only by the bittersweet knowledge of its inevitable end. "I have greatly enjoyed the sight, my friend. Thank you."

"I thought you were angry," Erik admitted, "suspicious of the idea of me turning her against you."

"You're projecting, Erik. It has never been my desire to drive a wedge between you and the children," he stressed. "You did that all your own."

"I believe I had some help, didn't I?" Erik argued. His brow sunk low beneath the rim of his helmet, casting shadow and dark lines against his eyes. "A keep out sign, as it were."

"You only saw it that way," Charles said. "All I have ever wanted was what I've seen this month: you, here, teaching and loving."

Erik sneered, a cruel and mocking expression. "Caged and obedient," he corrected.

"A father."

That brought the conversation to a halt, like dumping a bucket water upon a hot flame. Steam mixed with smoke, then arose and dissipated. "You raise them, Charles," Erik told him, and it sounded every bit like an order, as if Charles was being charged with a grand responsibility in which failure was not an option. "That's your job. I will shoulder the burden of making a world safe for them."

"A world that will fear them," Charles objected, finding himself outraged by Erik's vision for their children.

"All the better," Erik said, and he made it sound as though such a standing must truly be the way of it. "When I'm done, a new order will be my gift to them, a place where they may live free, without blood on their hands."

Charles slapped an open palm against the wood of his desk. "Don't raise them on your banner, Erik," he told him, reprimanded him. "They wouldn't appreciate the sentiment. You do this for you."

Erik shook his head purposefully. His presence turned imposing and he seemed immense in his frustration. "What I do is for all of us," he insisted.

"Stop," Charles said, holding a hand up.

"Why?"

"Because we have fallen into old routine, my friend." There was a sob in Charles's throat that used the cover of a false smile to disguise itself as a slight and humming laugh. "For your sake," he uttered sadly, "I will have this argument as many times as I can stand it, but this new twist of involving the children I cannot allow."

Erik descended from his arrogance, shrinking to the form of a man. It was in Charles's favor that no matter what transpired between them, he would always be able to pluck the hot coals from Erik's fury and set them out to wither for a time.

"They are my biggest motivation," he admitted, and suddenly it seemed like a shameful confession instead of a battle cry.

"Then I must ask you to keep that close to yourself," Charles pleaded. "I cannot take away what drives you, but if they knew…" He shook his head, shuddering at the mere idea of such a revelation made known. "Bloodshed in their name is a cruel gift, Erik."

Silence stretched for a small eternity, taking up space in the room with its heavy nothingness, choking the air itself. Erik kept his gaze locked with Charles in a battle of determination. To back down was to fall, and falling was to admit to being in the wrong. Therefore, it took some time and a loss of pride for Erik to relent with a slight and sluggish nod, conceding once more, as he had with the idea of taking Lorna. He didn't know it— and that alone was a tragedy— but the simple compromise made Erik a magnificent father in Charles's eyes.

"I'll leave now," the man said, and he bowed his head to go.

Charles called him back before he made it to the door. "Will you say goodbye to Lorna?" he asked, for her sake.

"It's better if I don't," Erik said, convinced it was the truth.

"You really are the most idiotic father, aren't you?" Erik looked most offended by the insinuation, but he dropped his anger in a hurry when he saw the smile on Charles's face, when he heard his bubbling laugh. "Say goodbye," he begged. "She will be sad, yes, and angry, but it is the far better choice. I promise."

Again Erik nodded his head, succumbing to Charles and his requests, and again he turned to go.

"Erik." He looked back over his shoulder but turned no further, feeling his nice shoes pressed too far already from spinning back and forth upon the rug. "Don't be a stranger."

"What," he smirked, weighing a callous response against one of bliss, "no more demands that I stay away?"

"No."

Then Erik did turn about, and Charles was fixed with such a stare that it would have had a weaker man on edge. The simple glance reached with groping fingers, prying for what could be taken from an expression alone, probing with the intensity of a telepath. If he searched for untruth in his tentative hope, he did not find it in Charles.

"Come as often as you like," he told Erik. "I ask only that you wipe the blood off your hands first, and that you leave bigotry and empty promises at the door."

"I will consider it," Erik commented, and to him the price seemed at once low and impossibly high.

"Please do," Charles urged.

Erik stood, his exit thoroughly ruined by that point, as if leaving then would be likened to a retreat. The longer he remained, the more it seemed that something was on his mind but not his lips, lacking courage to come forth. Charles would have had him on the edge of speech for hours if it delayed his leaving.

A difference of opinion felt like Hell misplaced on Earth. For all its simplicity, surely there could be no crueler torture. It was a device they had given themselves, and its true sting lay in the knowledge that either of them could end it at any time. It was torment and it was born from knowing that it wasn't something being done to them, an unjust act from which they could rightly beg relief. They did it to themselves and each other, making them at once a victim and a villain. And in all their pain, there remained but one reprieve, and it was a kindness in its consistency.

"I love you, Erik."

"I love you, Charles."

Bittersweet endings are the best.

While I was writing this, I got the funny image in my head that Logan wakes up in the altered future and there's this green-haired woman walking around who's all kinds of hot. And then he finds out who she is. Quickly. And painfully.

I feel like such a bad story teller for not addressing the progress of Charles and David's relationship more in this. But each chapter kind of had a very specific purpose. Oh well. I suck. There really wasn't much else for me to say though. Charles never really gets back what he missed out on. Because perfect endings and general happiness aren't my thing. So even though he refuses to admit it to himself, that is why he wanted a second child. Is it sort of selfish and horrible? Yes, but I'm not saying that Charles ever really gives up trying to be a good father to David either. Lorna was more or less a foolish attempt to turn back time and try again.

Goodness, somebody shut me up already.