The bullet had bent. From the moment Charles first learned of it, a chill set in, suspicion unassuaged by Lee Harvey Oswald's subsequent arrest and murder or even the Warren Commission's findings (889 pages, which Charles read in full, as skeptical in the September of 1964 as anyone in the world would be then or later, if for different reasons than most).
The others, of course, were just as convinced as he that Erik had done it. None of them said as much to Charles himself, but they spoke of it unceasingly among one another in those first few weeks and months after John F. Kennedy's death, conversations that came to a immediate and grinding halt if Charles came into the room while they were in session. Charles had often been irritated at the way the three of them tended to keep things from him, as though his losses of Raven and Erik and his ability to walk meant he ought to be insulated from anything else that might upset him—but for this much, at least, he was grateful. He had no desire whatsoever to discuss either his suspicions or his regrets.
*
In October of 1966, Hank finished the new Cerebro. They couldn't just stick it in the backyard, as even Charles' gift couldn't prevent eyes in every passing aircraft from seeing it; they'd had to have a large space excavated below-ground before they could even begin, a process that couldn't be rushed if it was to be done safely.
At first, Charles kept his usage strictly to school business. He located prospective students and teachers, and that was it. But he could only hold out for so long, and so, on Christmas day of that same year, when Sean had gone home to his mother's and Alex had gone to see his brother, and Hank was holed up in his lab, drinking because he couldn't, Charles found himself with two choices: he could drink himself insensible over his fourth Christmas without Raven, or he could go looking for answers.
He wasn't skilled in locating human minds the way he was in locating other mutants, but though it took upwards of twelve hours for him to follow the leads to the handful of people in the world who had the security clearance to know the answer, by the time the sun had set that night, Charles knew everything there was to know about the Stryker Report. Their findings were nothing less than Charles had expected, but he hadn't anticipated the rest of what he found: that Erik had been captured in August of 1964, had been tried, found guilty and incarcerated in one fell swoop. Charles had spent the last few years dreading the day Erik would show up at his door, but Erik had been imprisoned underneath the Pentagon for most of this time.
The desire to read Erik's mind, now that he knew Erik's exact location, and that Erik had no defense against him, was a momentary thing. Charles dismissed the idea at once. The bullet had bent. That was all he needed to know, all he'd ever need to know.
*
By January of 1969, the mansion had been converted into a boarding school that would, Charles hoped, eventually house, feed, and educate hundreds of young mutants each year. They were eight months off from their first semester. It was not the time to begin having doubts, and yet, despite having put him out of his mind years ago, he found himself thinking about Erik.
Erik and guns, Erik and bullets. Charles had managed to forget, and perhaps he'd forgotten willingly, but Erik had never been any good with bullets. Guns, yes. If Erik fired a gun, he hit what he was aiming for, provided the target didn't move—but if he had to change the trajectory of the bullet after it had fired, well, the results were a crapshoot at best. He'd never spoken of it, not in so many words, but Charles had seen it in his mind before Cuba, the way Erik's hours and hours of practice in otherwise-unoccupied shooting ranges over the year had never seemed to help. He'd seen all the times Erik had been shot, written across Erik's very skin: scars on his right shoulder and left thigh, one particularly chilling one in his abdomen that had very nearly gone septic. Erik had no scars from any blade, but bullets...it was very possible the only bullets he'd ever more-or-less successfully deflected had been the ones fired at him while he was wearing a bulletproof suit. And even at his lowest, Charles had never suspected that Erik had hit him in the back on purpose.
Charles had seen enough to be skeptical of Erik's claims, that day he'd had Charles hold a gun to his head, and dared him to fire it. Then, he'd been afraid to seek out what Erik may really have been asking for, even if it was subconsciously. And, now, he felt a similar heaviness in his stomach, a sour taste in his mouth that he couldn't wash out, though he tried for days to forget it, not to think about Erik anymore, for Erik was where he belonged.
Charles couldn't afford doubt, not now, but once it had set in, he found himself unable to shake it, or to think of much else.
The bullet had bent. Erik had killed John F. Kennedy.
These were facts, and yet.
*
In March of that same year, Charles broke. He'd never done well with uncertainty, not when he had the ability to instantly learn the answers to any question, and he was not doing well with this.
He would, he decided, find Erik with Cerebro. He would verify what he already knew, so that he would doubt no longer. So that he could stop thinking of this, and start sleeping again.
*
If reading Erik's mind were a conversation—which it most certainly was not, as Charles took pains to make certain Erik wouldn't know he was there—it would have gone something like this:
"Did you?"
"I didn't."
"—Well, shit."
*
Falsely accused and falsely tried, Erik had been falsely imprisoned for the past four and a half years. Now that Charles knew the truth, something had to be done.
The others argued. At first, they didn't believe a word of it; then, even when they did, they didn't see why they should lift a finger to help Erik. He'd left them to die on that beach; why not leave him to rot in return?
But Charles wore them down, as he'd worn himself down over the two weeks between learning the truth and telling them about it.
The plan, in the end, was simple. Charles would stay outside, freezing everyone in place so that Alex and Sean could retrieve Erik, Alex activating the device Hank had made that would disable every security camera in the building and Sean breaking the glass. It went off without a hitch, and half an hour after they'd entered the building, Alex and Sean emerged again, with Erik between them.
His hair was longer, a bit curly in a way Charles didn't recall from before. He was wearing a slightly scorched prison outfit, complete with thin slippers with plastic soles. Charles wondered, irrelevantly and a little hysterically, what they were teaching in schools these days, if they had been unwilling to give Magneto access to rubber.
"Charles," Erik said. He looked pleased, and, when Charles looked into his mind, as he'd sworn up and down to himself the entire drive down that he wouldn't, he found Erik's satisfaction at having seen the evidence of Charles' power as they'd exited the building past hundreds of people who may as well have been mannequins for all they moved or saw or would remember later. He found Erik's joy at seeing Charles before him, when he'd thought of him every day since they'd last parted. He found Erik's regrets, too, all the more profound for this being the first he'd seen of Charles in his wheelchair (though he'd evidently known of it since Emma had told him, way back in the spring of 1963).
"Erik," Charles replied, and, while he'd considered punching Erik in the stomach or groin when he saw him again, just glimpsing Erik's affection had already softened him too much to go through with it, satisfying as he suspected it would have been. Erik opened his mouth, likely to say something maddening, but before he could, Charles said, "Shut up and get in the car. We'll talk about it when we get home. Or once we're on the highway. Away from the scene of the crime, at any rate. Unless you liked it your cell...?"
Erik shut up, a first for him and highly likely to be temporary, and got in the car.
"This is a stupid idea," Alex muttered, which was very much not a first.
He was most certainly correct in that, but still Charles couldn't bring himself to regret it. He wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that were to change by the time they returned to North Salem; he had no idea what he was thinking, bringing a fugitive home to what he meant to be a school; and yet, he couldn't see himself having done anything differently, knowing the truth.
*
At a rest stop in New Jersey, watching the bent-up frame of the car burn, Charles did regret it. Or at least, regretted bringing Alex. Not telepathically enforcing the peace, certainly.
Still, they all got home alive, and that had to count for something.
*
"A mutant school," Erik said, once Charles had finished explaining why Erik's former bedroom was now a classroom. (Charles meant to use it to teach highschool-level genetics, an irony he found rather amusing.) He looked thoughtful. "It's a good idea."
"I know it is," Charles said.
It took two more days, several games of chess, and a little too much wine for Charles to invite Erik back into his bed. He hadn't meant to, but afterward decided that he'd been very strong indeed to hold off even that long, considering the way Erik looked at him, the way he didn't even bother to hide how starved he was for touch (for Charles) after all these years without it (without him).
It took two months for Charles to ask Erik if he'd ever considered teaching as a viable career option. No one was more surprised than Charles when Erik said yes, and absolutely no one else was even the slightest bit pleased—though they all got over it eventually.