Erik found them at the Connecticut safehouse three weeks after Moira had deemed Charles strong enough to be moved out of the nursing home and two weeks after she and Hank had deemed him strong enough to sit out on the front porch.
(There had been some argument about whether or not he ought to go outside at all, concern that he might be recognized—all a load of nonsense, in Charles' opinion. When you were dead, well, that was it, as far as most people were concerned. He hadn't exactly been Elvis, after all. Anyway, nearly everyone was too busy telling themselves not to stare at people in wheelchairs to notice two old bald men's resemblance to one another. He'd made this point, as well as a number of threats about kicking the both of them out of his house the moment his telepathy became more reliable, at least ten times before they'd finally given in.)
By now, Charles had grown bored of the out-of-doors, though nowhere near as bored as he was of everything else. He was particularly fed up with his physical therapy routine, considering he'd had most of the exercises mastered decades ago and it was indescribably irritating for them to be giving him so much difficulty now. He was also completely out of patience with Hank's refusal to have alcohol in the house. So what if he thought Charles had a tendency to drink too much when he was depressed? The entire world had gone to hell, and Charles had come back to life just in time to be a burden to people who cared for him right when a burden was least needed. Oh, he was weak as a kitten in this new body, but if his telepathy had bothered to show up for more than five minutes at a time, he could have been of some use. As far as he was concerned, there was no better time to drink his troubles away and no real reason why he shouldn't.
("Then you'd be a drunken burden," Moira had pointed out during her last visit. She seemed much more interested in his reflexes and mental acuity than his feelings, which was annoying if also fair enough. "Would that really be better?"
"I would feel better," Charles had said, meaning he wouldn't have to feel anything when watching the news, witnessing what had resulted of his life's work. The school had been gone since before he woke up. Everyone he'd loved was scattered to who-knew-where. At least twenty people knew of this location, but they had yet to hear from anyone. In short, everything had gone to shit.)
He had therefore begun people-watching. He'd always done that, more or less, but it had never been such a puzzling activity before. Why did the woman two houses down drive home every day with several plastic bags full of groceries when it would surely be easier to make one large trip every week or so? Why did the man across the street wash and wax his car every other day? Why did that relatively small child walk a Great Dane down the street twice a week? Charles had never before realized how strange people could seem when you didn't automatically know what they thought they were doing.
There was someone new today, and a new question—who was the man in the suit, and why was he staring so intently at Charles from down the street? As he began to walk toward the house, Charles wondered if the others hadn't been right about him being recognized. Then he saw the man's features clearly, and he knew they had been, if not in the way they'd meant.
"Erik?" he asked, hardly able to believe it. He'd asked about Erik after he’d come back, of course, but Hank hadn’t known anything about where he'd gone after that last battle. After having received the description thereof, Charles had done his best not to think about it. Erik hobbled, Erik human—it wasn't as if there wasn't some part of Charles that thought it was absolutely for the better not to have Magneto in the mix anymore, but the greater part of him was horrified for Erik's sake. He had done his best not to think about it, and most of what he hadn't been thinking was that Erik would never be able to stand it. That he was probably dead by now.
Yet here Erik was, and there was no denying that it was him, even if he had yet to speak. With his telepathy so spotty, Charles had some difficulty with faces, but not when it came to Erik's. He'd spent so many years underneath that helmet that Charles had long ago memorized his every feature. It also helped that he was wearing a trilby hat, which he'd always favored whenever he wasn't in the helmet.
Erik stopped at the bottom of the stairs—all the better, it seemed, to stare at Charles even harder. "So the rumors were true," he said. "Welcome back, old friend."
So there had been rumors, which meant someone out there had to have spread them—perhaps they'd be hearing from the others yet.
"Hello," Charles said, trying his best to sound as if he'd expected Erik to turn up today. He was expected to know things. He gestured at the plastic chair next to him. "Come sit with me."
Somewhat to his surprise, Erik did as he was bidden, his eyes not leaving Charles' face. Charles wondered what he was thinking. Erik was always thinking something when he looked at Charles like that, but Charles had only ever been ignorant of it previously when Erik had intended him to be.
"How have you been?" Charles asked, casually, doing his best to keep the sympathy out of his voice so Erik couldn't interpret it as pity.
In answer came a flat look, easy reading: 'Who do you think you're fooling?' But Erik said nothing. Instead, he reached into his pocket and brought out a chess piece, the black king from the metal set with which they had played against each other so many times. He placed it on the table, then leaned back in his chair. His eyes still had not left Charles, as if he feared that if he looked away for even a moment, he would find that Charles had disappeared in the meantime. "Watch."
"I'm watching."
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the king wobbled ever so slightly and rose several inches above the surface of the table.
"Well," Charles said, as if he'd expected this, too. "That's something, isn't it?"
(It was much more than just something. If Erik's powers were on their way back, all these months after he'd been Cured, then there was hope for everyone else who'd been Cured without their consent. Perhaps there was a way; perhaps their people, unique and diverse and so very beautiful, would stand a chance after all to not have their differences wiped off the face of the earth.)
The king advanced on Charles. Halfway there, the phone rang inside the house, and the king dipped in the air in response, threatening to fall to the floor. But then it recovered, and kept moving. When it had gotten close enough, a laborious process that lasted well into Hank speaking in a low voice in the living room to whomever had finally called this number—it wasn't Moira, couldn't be, for she called only on the weekends and today was Thursday—Charles held out his hand. The king continued to hover for a moment, then dropped into his palm, a warm heavy weight.
"Three days ago, I couldn't have so much as tipped it over," Erik said.
Charles laughed, closing his fingers around the king. "Oh, my friend. Don't lie: You couldn't have done this much half an hour ago."
It was true, and Charles knew that it was true in the same way he knew that it was Ororo who had called, and to whom Hank was speaking right now. He was giving her directions, and she and a few others would be arriving in a few days. He knew it was true because he could feel Erik's joy at finding that Charles had cheated death after all, and saw the way that joy had risen up, inspiring Erik's renewed gift as clearly as Charles' joy was informing his own.
Instead of telling Charles not to flatter himself, or any of the other rejoinders he might have come up with—though they flitted through his mind one after another, dismissed and left unspoken due to the gravity of the moment—Erik merely hmphed before saying, "No."
(Charles would have said them anyway, but Erik had always been a romantic at heart. He'd never tried to score even the easiest of points in moments like this—not that any of their moments had ever been quite like this one.)
Erik took Charles' hand, the one holding the king, and raised it to his lips. His lips were soft against Charles' knuckles, his breath warm. Then he rose in his seat, just enough to lean over and kiss Charles' mouth. It was a short, chaste kiss, lasting just long enough for Charles to return it, to reach out and brush Erik's shoulder with his free hand, cup his jaw and make it clear that, yes, despite everything that had happened over the last few years, he still welcomed Erik, welcomed this.
When Erik leaned back in his chair, Charles felt more than a little breathless. The possibilities—oh, there were so many now, where just a few minutes ago there had seemed to be so few. He wondered when Erik had decided to come back to Charles for good, despite of (or perhaps because of) the uncertainty of the present and of the future. He wondered if Erik knew that that was what he was doing, or if he would only realize it some weeks or months from now.
Well, there would be time for them to have this conversation later. Hopefully, there would be time. For now, there were things happening that were greater than the two of them.
"Let's go inside," Charles said, knowing that Hank was about to come as close as he dared to the front door to tell Charles that Ororo wished to speak with him. "I believe we have work to do."