Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men: First Class.

"You know you could make a difference out there, Charles. We could put a stop to this, just say the word."

"And soil my hands with unwanted blood? Don't be ridiculous, Erik. It's their choice to fight like dogs. Why should I interfere with that decision?"

He should be happy.

This is what he wanted, isn't it? The callous, distant detachment, the hardened eyes, words...the bitter discontent towards anyone but his own person.

Yes...this is exactly what he wanted - what he tried so hard to instill the moment they met. The world is not a welcoming bubble accepting to change; only a fool believes such ideal fantasies. And Charles was a fool. A bright, brilliant, belligerent fool clinging to dreams like a child; blind to the bloodshed, the pain, the cruelty marring the world around him.

Give them a chance." He'd said once. "They can change, if only they're given the opportunity."

He doesn't say that any longer.

Charles doesn't say much anything these days.

In hindsight, it should have been expected: Erik knows better than anyone how years can warp a man for the worst. How isolation and inescapable pain pummel the heart, exhaust the mind and break the spirit. "Shut down or die" becomes the way of life, and to hope for anything contrary is as foolish as Charles himself had once been.

It breaks Erik's guarded heart to see him like this now. A flickering light that had once burned so strong...a man who had once been so strong, despite his childish ideals. A man void of hope, concern, sympathy for a life outside the one he goes through day by day...though "life" is as close a comparison as Erik is to the human rights activists.

Charles lives, yes. But he's no longer alive.

His eyes, his voice...his legs (though the doctor says physically, the latter should still work) died with him during those captive years; mummified and laid to rest with the fight once alight in his heart.

It's...unsettling, to see his hollowed shell, this scarred and crippled man that used to fill him with such hope. Such damn, foolish, naive hope he almost believed - once - that maybe, this world still offered something worth defending.

Maybe it still had someone worth protecting.

That is what he's doing here, isn't it? Three years past and he remains, while war ravages beyond the confines of this estate, waiting on this man hand and foot when he could be out there making some kind of difference. He was a soldier once, though the title's self-defined. He could turn the tides if he so chose.

But he can't. He won't. He made a promise; a promise to a man too removed to understand.

Four years Erik had spent with Shaw.

Three Charles had suffered under another's merciless hand.

Four years Erik waited for no one but the war's end or death if it came quicker.

Three years it had taken to plan, track down and rescue Charles.

Erik Lehnsherr had no one to save him, no one to care for him. No one to break down the doors and fight on his behalf.

Charles did.

Erik cared for Charles. Erik spent three years looking for him, going gray over him, planning to find him and bring him home. Erik had come to his rescue, Erik had fought for him and Erik was not going to leave him alone even if the entire bloody planet destroys itself with war.

There's more to this world than just pain and anger; Erik knows this now. But Charles has forgotten, and Erik's decided it is time he starts to remember again.

Use your imaginations ;)