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After everything, Charles takes the helmet home with him.
Not much thought goes into the decision. Hank deposits Charles in one of the few chairs that hasn’t been flattened by the remains of the stadium while he finds an intact wheelchair. It’s just by luck that the seat puts the helmet in Charles’ line of sight and once it’s seen, Charles knows that he must bring it back with him. The temptation to hold it is so strong that he almost begins to crawl in its direction before anyone gets to it.
He should be more curious about how Hank finds a wheelchair so quickly, but he’s too wrapped up in the idea of holding the blasted helmet that he immediately tilts his head towards it. “I believe that’s ours,” he says. Hank—who oftentimes knows Charles better than he knows himself—doesn’t need clarification before he strides over, picks it up, and places it in Charles’ waiting hands. “Good. It’ll be safer with us than whoever gets to it next. Clearly.” History has already shown that. With that settled, they move on to more pressing matters.
“Let’s find Logan.”
They don’t find Logan. Charles had lost all sense of him sometime during his encounter with Erik and searching the old-fashioned way leads to nothing. Eventually, they return to the mansion to try their luck with Cerebro; it yields no clues. Grief, overwhelming and unexpected, accompanies the decision to accept Logan might be truly gone. Charles deals with the grief better than he would've a week earlier—he drinks himself to sleep for only one night before he’s floored by the guilt that Logan would never want this of him. The next night he only indulges in a glass and one of the cigars in his stepfather’s private collection. Hank joins him. It’s a strange type of funeral for a friend they have known for so little time.
Then again, they are mutants. It feels like they are doomed to short-lived friendships.
The grief abates and mingles with doubt. Without Logan, they don’t know if they were successful in preventing the future Logan had risked his life to avoid. Yes, the media coverage is overwhelmingly pro-mutant and anti-Trask. That could mean anything.
Charles chooses hope because he must, because the alternative is unbearable to him. He chooses hope and forward momentum and to live a life that Logan would be proud of.
He doesn’t forget about the helmet in those weeks. It sits protected in a safe Hank hastily constructs without metal. The knowledge that even Erik isn’t talented enough to take it without alerting them makes it easier to quell the instinct to go look at it. That it calls to him at all is surprising. While he held it it had vibrated in his hands unpleasantly, leaving behind a deeply uncomfortable tingle he does not wish to feel again.
Still, it belongs to him like a wedding ring belongs to a slighted mistress. He would rather see it melted down to slag than in the possession of anyone else.
Charles hopes Erik comes for it.
It takes a month before his desire to look at the bloody helmet overcomes his hatred of its presence. Charles can sense it throughout the mansion, but he wonders if he’s just imagining its pull. He is a scientist by education—something he forgets from time to time—so he must confirm his supposition.
He is glad that he does not have to peer inside Hank’s mind to figure out how to open the safe. That he even thinks the thought shames him, but he tries to carry the pain of that next to his guilt and his grief and his doubt. The doubt makes his fingers shake as they open the safe; maybe that’s just the effect of the helmet. His hypothesis is vindicated when he sets his eyes on it. He can feel the echo of it, like a sound traveling through an empty canyon, like his thoughts bouncing around and back towards him.
“You’re quite stupid looking,” he says aloud because his telepathy refuses to communicate with this void. “Very unflattering, really. Until you came along, I used to think Erik had an eye for fashion, but no. That’s clearly not true.”
If it was a month ago and he had still been dependent on the serum to get through the day, he would kick the helmet across the room. Even without it, Charles finds himself fighting the compulsion to pick it up and throw it. If Hank weren’t in the house, he probably would.
Charles doesn’t wish to be a cruel man. He finds his more uncharitable thoughts uncomfortable and he means it when he says he doesn’t believe anyone is too far gone for redemption.
Some nights he remembers the helmet sitting properly useless in his basement. For the longest time it had felt like a symbol of Erik’s rejection, a souvenir of his betrayal. But recently he’s come to a different conclusion. The helmet isn’t a symbol of Erik’s rejection, but of his fear.
Emma Frost had sat in a cell when Erik had first worn the thing; at that moment the two of them didn’t know any other telepaths. It was Charles that Erik was thinking of when he chose to wear the helmet. It’s Charles that Erik’s afraid of.
And in those moments when Charles lays awake at night, ignoring the helmet in the basement, he thinks good.
It takes six months for Charles to return to that safe. He’s been so busy in the intervening time getting the school off the ground that he only thinks about the dumb thing sporadically. He goes to see it because he knows that soon young mutants will be roaming the halls and his home will no longer really be ‘his’. It’s a good thing, a reclamation of this tomb of a mansion, but it also means his privacy will disappear. It makes sense to take advantage of these quiet nights while he can.
(It also makes sense to take advantage of his liquor cabinet before it goes into hiding behind lock and key. That he proceeds to take the opportunity to get drunk off his ass is a given.)
He manages to make it down to the basement with few problems; his lack of coordination is blunted by the fact that he can no longer trip over his own two feet. The safe sits where it always has, the combination is exactly what Hank told him when he first stored the thing away.
A thing is all that the helmet is, in the end. Charles does pick it up this time—if only to see if he made up that strange vibrating sensation—and studies it. “Are you lonely?” he asks. More words tumble out of him before he can make sense of that question. “You were made to be worn but instead I’ve locked you up. You’re useless down here.”
The helmet doesn’t respond. That he thinks it could be a sign Charles is too far gone.
It still feels wrong in his hands. It must be Charles’ telepathy. Hank made no mention of any strange sensations. That Erik chose to wear this thing as often as he did is surely a sign that he felt nothing but calming metal within it. “Your owner abandoned you,” he tells it while he runs a finger down the side. It’s smooth underneath the strangeness. “He likes to do that.”
Charles is surprised that—for all of its symbolism—he doesn’t now hate this inanimate object. It means nothing, it certainly meant nothing to him when it belonged to Shaw. What he hates is that Erik attempted to murder Raven and most likely killed Logan and almost crushed him with metal and concrete. What Charles hates is that he chose to be Magneto when all Charles wanted was Erik.
He continues to ramble. “He’s laying low at the moment. I refuse to check and see where, just as a matter of principle. But he’s going to return because he needs you for all of his epic plans. And when he does…” Then what? Charles will stand in his way? Mentally block him from opening the safe?
If his principles keep him from finding Erik then why wouldn’t they stop him from stealing what is already Erik’s?
Charles drops the helmet in his rush to put the thing back in the safe and spends the better part of ten minutes trying to pick it up without drunkenly falling out of his chair.
Years pass as the helmet remains undisturbed in the basement next to a growing number of strange artifacts that have been used to both hurt and protect mutants. Every time something is added Charles makes sure the helmet is still there.
Every time he feels an uncomfortable mixture of satisfaction and disappointment to see it glinting in the harsh light of the lab.
A familiar nightmare wakes Charles up. He tries to shake the vivid memory of a car crash from his mind while he telepathically reaches out to Jean. With great subtlety, he smoothes over her distress without waking her and encourages more pleasant dreams. As far as he can tell he’s the only one in the mansion who’s affected, but still, he scans the rest of his students just to confirm everyone’s at peace.
Charles knows he won’t sleep for the rest of the night. For all the control he has over others’ worries and fears, he’s long since come to terms with the fact that he has little control over his own. Normally he’d make himself a cup of tea and review lesson plans or financials to take his mind off the nightmare. That won’t be enough tonight; he’s too shaken. Despite being surrounded by people he feels tremendously alone in the darkness of the school’s hallways. He’s momentarily reminded of the liquor cabinet hidden in his study but ignores the impulse easily enough and makes his way to where it’s always bright—the basement.
Charles starts up Cerebro, taking extra care to check every connection in Hank’s absence. He rarely uses it without someone else present and never without altering Hank, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use it at all. In some ways, he feels like a small child knowing he can do anything as long as his guardian won’t see any evidence.
He shakes off that thought and begins to focus on the cacophony of minds around him. Mutentkind is a remarkable thing that never fails to make him feel small in the best way. As long as he has these minds, he’s never alone.
For some time he just lets it settle within himself. He doesn’t realize he’s looking for anyone specifically until he’s asking himself why he’s searching for a mutant in Eastern Europe. Poland, actually.
Erik’s exactly where he’s been the few times Charles has found him before. He first came upon Erik accidentally while searching for students. The second and third time, well…Charles’ principles have always been open to interpretation. He hopes that he bends so he won’t break and that he isn't twisting himself into someone unrecognizable.
That Erik has stayed in one place for so long is a surprise. After that debacle at the White House Charles had assumed Erik would move around, showing up in news reports with the same zeal he demonstrated that day. That’s not what’s happened. Since then Erik hasn’t shown up at all. No attempts to free mutants in government facilities, no dramatic stunts to draw attention to his cause. Nothing. He disappeared like a phantom.
He’s still unmistakably Erik; Charles could find him among thousands of mutant minds without confusion. But he’s also something unexpected. He’s…content. For lack of a better word, the feeling that Charles senses most from Erik is satisfaction.
And it only continues to grow.
Charles knows this is a good thing. He knows that this is all he’s ever wanted for Erik. It’s best that his friend is happy. It’s best if they aren't fighting.
Still…
Erik won’t return. There will be no late-night break-in, no mysterious attack. Charles won’t get the opportunity to appeal to Erik’s inner goodness. He probably won’t even see Erik again. And perhaps he’d grown too comfortable with the idea that if the two of them couldn’t be allies, then at least they’d be enemies—inseparable, in the worst way.
Charles shuts down Cerebro, taking great care to set everything back to right where it was before wheeling down the hallway towards a familiar room. The safe has changed throughout the years but he opens it as easily as he did that night all those years ago. With steady hands, he picks it up, looks at it, and tries to ignore the way it feels wrong against his skin. Curious, he slips it onto his head and suddenly he’s alone. Not figuratively, but truly alone, floating amongst nothing, like he’s been left in a dark room after a bright light has been turned off.
Is this how it feels to be someone else? His thoughts echo uncomfortably in his head and the rest of the mansion’s minds are a blank space. And to think he spent all those years medicating himself until he was numb. He hates it. With relief, he slides the thing off and places it back in the safe, watching with satisfaction as it disappears.
“And I think that’s that,” he says to himself.
The dreams and idle thoughts of his students and teachers come back to him, reminding him that he’s not alone, that he can never be alone, that there is an overabundance of love and care around him and within him.
Erik will not return for what’s his, whether it’s his helmet or Charles’ heart, but Charles won’t begrudge him for his happiness. Not when he can feel so connected to the people around him. Not when he also feels so content.
“I’ve been thinking,” Charles tells Hank the next morning. “Maybe it’s time we run some experiments on Erik’s old helmet. We might find something useful to help Jean with her nightmares.”
Hank’s silent, shocked, and oh, he has always known Charles far too well. It takes him a second to recover. “Any experiment might damage it.”
I can only hope, Charles thinks to himself. Aloud, he says, “I know. But it’s time.”