"Must I say that?" Erik grumbles, finally losing patience.
"Yes," Charles says. "The rest of it, too."
Really, Charles is just surprised it took him this long to interrupt. Charles has been going on for a few minutes now, and Erik does so hate being lectured. There's a reason he was so touchy about the sudden, tragic and not at all deliberate misplacement of that helmet of his several years and a few safe houses ago. It wasn't that he was worried that he has anything to fear from Charles; rather, he now has no way to tune Charles out and do whatever he's decided he wants to do without a running commentary. (Not that he's all that likely to do that anytime soon, but, well. Suffice to say there's been precedent.)
"Fine," Erik says. He looks thoughtful for a moment, and then adds, "I should at least point out that I'm good at tactics."
"I think you should stick with what you're bad at. Don't confuse the issue. Focus on the points I've mentioned instead of going off on tangents."
Erik gives him a flat look.
"Tangents are another of your flaws," Charles says helpfully, because Erik clearly expects him to say something along those lines. It's nothing but the truth, anyway. Erik's always had a tendency to start out with 'mutants should stand together and watch each other's backs' note, only to end up on 'and we should strike preemptively and subjugate humanity to our will' three minutes later.
Which is exactly what's been happening in the past, and why Charles is now doing his best to prep Erik to speak with his younger self in the same manner in which Charles just finished speaking with his own younger self. It could happen in a few minutes, or it could be in an hour or two—time seems to be going much more quickly for Logan in the past than it is for them in the present. He's been lying on that table since this morning, yet he's been in the past for several days.
(With that thought, Charles glances toward Kitty, brushes his mind over hers to see how she's doing. She's in pain, still, but at least she stopped bleeding an hour ago. Her injury from when Logan lashed out is serious but not mortal, and she's determined, absolutely determined to keep Logan in the past as long as she's conscious...Charles has never been prouder of any of his former students.)
When he looks back at Erik, Erik sighs. "I'm terrible at strategy. We're not a separate species. I should discuss my plans with you and listen to what you have to say instead of going off half-cocked. Is there anything else?"
"Actually, I think that just about covers it," Charles says.
***
A little while later, they're still waiting for young Erik to show up—assuming Charles' younger self and Logan manage to find him; assuming he doesn't simply dismiss them and leave again when they do; and assuming any number of other factors, few of which they're aware of since their younger selves are already on a different path than they ever walked themselves—when Erik says, "You never told me. About the serum."
"No, I didn't," Charles agrees, slowly. He'd hoped to avoid any such conversation now, too. When they first began to speak of their plan to send someone back, when they thought it might be Charles himself, he could have taken it to the past with him, and never let Erik learn of it.
Over the past few years they've been fighting side-by-side, Charles has spoken to Erik of many things he would never before have dreamed of telling him, back when flashing any weakness would have been begging for Erik to use it against him. Erik knows about Charles' mother, now. The Markos. Charles' tendency, years ago, to begin leaning too hard on drink whenever things got bad—which had been often, since things have never actually been good for mutantkind. That, when he manifested at the age of nine, he'd thought he was losing his mind.
(Granted, nearly every student who enrolled in the school after it reopened in the late seventies has heard that last one—it's a story Charles has told on hundreds of occasions, to show mutant children that they're not alone in their experiences or their fears—but Erik never did until Charles told him about it a year or two ago.)
But for all the things Charles has opened up to Erik about since they've been on the same side, he never breathed a word about this. He couldn't, too afraid that Erik would despise him for it. Charles despises himself for it, sometimes, just one among all the many ways he failed himself and everyone else for such a long time. The thing that surprised him the most, when speaking with his younger self just a little while ago, was how much tenderness and compassion he felt toward him, as if young Charles were another one of his students. He'd never felt that way about himself before.
Logan had to know what he'd be dealing with, and so Charles had to tell him. He couldn't look at Erik while he did. He can't even look at Erik now, and neither of them speak for a long moment.
"What of it?" Charles asks when it becomes obvious that Erik's waiting on him.
"You must have been in a great deal of pain," Erik says, and it's actually tactful, almost even kind, and for all the ways that Erik hasn't changed, and will never change, sometimes the ways in which he already has leave Charles completely stunned.
"Yes," Charles manages, and perhaps they might have gotten into it more, and perhaps Charles even wants to—but one of the things that's never changed about Erik is how abysmal his timing is, and so of course that's when younger Erik finally shows up.
***
Erik's performance is magnificent. Of course, it's been some time since he's had the chance to give a speech, so he's primed for it. (He actually tried to give a speech earlier in the day, right before Logan left this morning, but was interrupted by Bobby to say that he'd been sent back from the future to let them know that they were all going to die if Magneto was allowed to keep talking. Erik was rather peeved about being made fun of, so Charles made sure to tell Bobby he appreciated his sacrifice in hearing said speech so the rest of them would never have to.) He does go off-topic, a bit, but rather than being mutant supremacy, it's the names of the dead, his real fears and regrets, all the personal things he's never said even to Charles, even though they both know they're there.
When young Erik leaves again—and, God, he's even more prickly and damaged and raw than Charles remembered, and the tenderness he'd felt for his own younger self pales to that he feels for Erik when he was young—Charles says, "That was incredible. Do you think he'll listen?"
"Have I ever?" Erik asks, but then: "I don't know. He means to, I think. He might."
"If we can work together, then why not them," Charles mutters, which has been the theory behind this whole plan since the beginning anyway.
"Let's hope," says Erik, and they settle back down again to wait.