#i'll do a proper web weaving of this one day

[magnetosfavorite]

anyway it's "you're not alone" and "does charles judge me? no, i judge myself" and "promise me you'll watch charles" and "we're two of a kind" and "you worried if you felt how much he loved you--" and "bookends of the same soul" and "charles, you saw in me what mattered" and "you're so much more than pain and anger, there's good in you, i felt it" and "you saved my life and offered me a home" and "look at what we made" and "so it shall remain, as long as you return to us" and "are you sure i can't convince you to stay?" and "i'm sorry i can't leave him" and "i will bring you hope" and "all those years spent fighting each other, to have a precious few of them back," and it's erik leaving him on the beach but inevitably coming back, and it's charles in some dark future meeting his end because he feels the metal of erik's helmet for the first time in a millennia and hesitates, and it's charles flying off the handle because erik died in ororo's arms and not his, it's charles in erik's arms in the rose garden, it's erik's hand on charles's shoulder and charles reaching up to clasp it, it's them fighting side by side in a bar in haifa, it's erik coming back from the dead because charles needs him, it's erik taking over the school even though he feels unworthy, it's the fact that the dream of mutant paradise hinged on them working together, it's them, in a hundred universes in a hundred storylines and iterations, every single time, everywhere, finding each other no matter what, no matter when. it's that

[halcarols]

you were named for your father…