A/N – Sorry for the delay in updating, but yay! Final chapter. Now I actually have to go back to the essays and assignments that I have to hand in very shortly. Maybe I should actually stop procrastinating…

Anyway, enjoy.

…

It was over. Kurt Marko was dead and he would be staying dead this time.

It was over.

The thought brought a pang of sadness that Erik didn't dare examine. Why should he want it to be anything but over?

Erik entered the apartment, just like he had all those other times, but perhaps there was something different in his expression, or perhaps Charles was reading his mind (though he doubted it, Charles usually respected his privacy, unless he was 'shouting' as Charles put it) but Charles just looked up, not even asking and Erik said, "Yes, My Maus, it's over."

Charles took a moment to process what he had said, "Maus? You're calling me your mouse? I'm not a mouse."

"It's affectionate. You should take it as a complement."

"All right then, Sharky boy. And … it's really over?"

"Yes Maus, it's really over."

…

Charles was going back to his own apartment. Going home as Charles himself had said. Erik was not watching Charles pack his bags, he was sitting in his own apartment feeling ridiculously like a teenage girl. It shouldn't be this difficult to ask the man who had become his friend for a phone number, for some way to keep in touch, yet here he was, sitting and not doing anything.

Thankfully for Erik after about an hour or so of moping (not that he would ever admit to moping) there was a small knocking at the door which revealed one Charles Xavier.

"Hi. I just came to say goodbye and perhaps … well, we are friends, aren't we?"

"Course we are. Do you want to come in, get a drink?"

Charles grinned, stepping in, his eyes devouring every surface. It occurred then to Erik that Charles had never been inside his apartment before. Knowing Charles he would be examining every item and fitting them to his personality.

"So what do you make of the humble abode?" Erik said, teasing.

"It suits you."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Oh, good. Definitely good."

…

His eyes were brighter, Erik decided. His eyes were brighter, livlier. Bluer, if there ever was such a thing. He wouldn't normally give in to something that was so helplessly poetic and not really factually true, but with Charles it might be. He was a telepath, it wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility that his mental state could directly affect his appearance.

All this theorising was an attempt to distract himself from the painfully obvious – Charles was refusing to look at him. He would skim round the edges all the while making bright conversation. He wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been looking for it.

Perhaps he really wanted to be gone. Erik's job was over and Charles was now free, after all. Perhaps Charles was just being painfully polite.

But it was Charles who had checked that they were still friends, Charles who had come over. To say goodbye, admittedly, but he had still come over.

"Erik?" Are you listening to me? Goes unsaid, but the hurt is plain enough.

"Of course Maus," and Charles' nose wrinkles and Erik wasn't quite sure what he had said wrong now. The only thing he knew was that something was clearly wrong between them. He just wished he knew what.

"Is that it then? I'm just something to protect?" It made sense, then. When he had first met Charles he had been a shivering wreck, something that had to be protected and saved at all costs. Now Charles was longing for some confirmation that their friendship was equal, that Erik didn't think that he was still a child to be coddled.

"I suppose literally it could be taken as in an insult, but it is a genuine term of affection, and although if I had my way," I would brutally murder anyone who laid a finger on you? I want to take you to some place where I could always keep you safe and I could treasure you? "nothing would ever hurt you again, I do not think that that is an unreasonable wish between friends. And I do know that, at full tilt, your power would beat mine, anyone's really, hands down."

"Thanks, and likewise. I don't want anybody to hurt you."

Perhaps, but he had still come here to say goodbye and thank you for a job well done.

…

And so it went, letters and long distance chess games. Erik heard of the Professor, a genius of Genetics. Raven never questioned his sudden and obsessive interest in the subject. Charles visited his sister but never him, though he was always included.

Then came the dream.

Usually Charles even in his first broken days staying with Raven was able to shield himself so that his dreams didn't bleed into others. The few times they had Charles had been mortified and apologised ceaselessly, but they had never been angry for Charles' slips. They had only made them more determined.

That night Erik visited the prison cell of his dream, a small memory and spark of consciousness reminding him that this was not his dream. The prison cell was sickeningly familiar, he'd only seen it twice before but it was enough. Except this was different; it wasn't Charles tied and poked until he screamed. It was Erik.

Erik woke sweating, desperately trying to force his mind to distinguish fantasy from reality, the distant echo of nonoErikpleasenothimno coming from the other room.

He splashed water on his face and robotically made himself some coffee. He didn't believe that what people dreamt about held any kind of insight into their minds. Dreams were the frazzled, nonsensical waste of the subconscious. Dreams might be based on memories as this nightmare was, but they were usually twisted barely recognisable versions of memories, as, indeed this was. Erik refused to believe that there was some meaning in the dream, after all, if you were to take a meaning, it might mean anything. Did Charles see himself as Erik? Did he want to be Erik? Did he feel protective of Erik? Did he want Erik to be tortured?

At any rate, he couldn't ponder on it any more because Charles was currently bursting into his apartment.

"Erik, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for the dream to bleed over like that, you know that, don't you? And that dream was just plain … wrong."

"So you don't want to see me tortured then?" Charles turned white, or at least, whiter.

"No! Of course not. I'd die if something like that happened to you!"

"Sorry Charles. Please, I didn't mean it. It was meant as a joke. I forgot I'm not very good at jokes, you should remind me more often."

"Your jokes are normally fine," Charles mumbled.

"Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?"

"That you'd die if something happened to me?"

Charles didn't answer and began to look angry with himself and Erik, on some primal instinct that he didn't know he had, took Charles into his arms.

"We are friends, aren't we, Maus?" Charles nodded against his chest, "I think we should see each other more often then, as we're friends, we wouldn't make so many mistakes around each other if we knew each other better, don't you think?" Charles pulled away slightly and looked Erik in the eyes.

"I think I could used to that."

Erik was never quite sure of what happened next, though he was quite sure Charles' telepathy had something to do with it, not that he was accusing Charles of mind controlling him, which was what Charles thought when he first suggested it to him. Charles disagreed, and said it was love, and that if he had been using his telepathy they wouldn't have made a mess before hand and they would have got together much quicker. And by the way, damn his morals.

Erik compromised and said it might just have been a combination of the two, because whatever the feelings most first kisses are more bumping noses and fumbling hands than what happened there, which just happened to be perfection. And he would kill anybody who suggested he was getting sappy. He was only sappy around Charles, that was a very specific sappyness, and not sappy in general. There was a difference.

And so then Erik was presented with quite a conundrum. He was quite sure he could spend the rest of eternity kissing Charles, but he was also quite sure he could spend the rest of eternity just talking to Charles and finding out every single thing about him (and shouldn't they be doing some talking, really? Since they had only just started … whatever it was they were doing. They should probably clarify that sort of thing) but then there were hands and Erik's mind went blank. Except for the kissing. And the hands.

But then there was a knock at the door and an announcement that Charles' taxi was ready and Erik tried desperately to think of all sorts of amazing arguments as to why Charles shouldn't leave when Charles said, "I've seen your apartment, it's about time you saw mine, isn't it?"

Erik grinned. It seemed perfectly reasonable. Apart from the fact that he was never going to let go of his Maus again, he couldn't exactly ask Charles to move into his apartment with no notice. He was a professor; he couldn't just leave like that. He, however, could easily move shop.

Charles said a quick goodbye to Raven, and gave her a quick explanation (to which she looked completely unsurprised) and got in the taxi with Erik, along with a couple of bags with all the stuff he could shove it. He'd come back for the rest later. If it had been a film they would have driven into the sunset, but they didn't. They didn't mind, they weren't looking at the scenery.