Three does stood together in a copse of trees at the edge of Charles' estate. Not too close to the path for their comfort, not too far from it for Erik's. As Charles' chair approached, the feel of gliding metal was joined by the crunching of wheels on gravel, and the lead doe's ears flicked back and forth. For a moment she tensed, and might have bounded away, but then she settled, and her sisters with her.
"You'll catch your death of cold, standing out here without a coat."
"I'm fine." Erik turned long enough to glance at Charles, to see his face was red, his lips chapped, the former at least due to his trek all the way out here from the house. The paths close to the house were all paved, but the ones out here weren't often used, nor did they seem to be maintained with any degree of regularity.
"It's November. We're supposed to have snow tomorrow. You should at be wearing a jacket."
"I don't own a jacket." This was a lie, and there came a sudden sweet memory, one of many: readying himself to go out with Magda and Nina, for a picnic or a walk in the woods. Other families stayed in during the bleak months, but ever since Nina's gift had come, they'd gone out daily, no matter what the weather was like. They'd gone out so often he'd kept one coat in the front closet and another on the hook by the kitchen door, just so he'd never have to cross the house in order to follow his daughter's laughter outside.
It had been so long since he'd heard her laugh.
He didn't know how long he stood there, watching and remembering, before Charles said, in a subdued tone, "That's not quite true. You left this here."
Erik turned again. This time he saw what Charles was holding out to him: a brown leather jacket, cracked with age in various places.
"You still have that?"
"Apparently it's immortal," Charles said. "Or, rather, the wall we found it under was slightly less demolished than the rest of the house."
There were other memories, beneath the surface. These, Erik had no time for. Not here, not now. To make room for the sense memory of all the times he'd bumped shoulders with Charles while wearing that jacket was a distraction he didn't need.
But so was arguing about it, and so he took the jacket and slipped it on. He'd barely noticed the cold before he did. There was a chill beneath everything, these days, a fear and grief that left him frozen so much of the time, uncertain of where to turn or what action to take. It had been there when En Sabah Nur had come for them, had only deepened after his defeat, when everything slowed down enough for him to catch up with everything that had happened.
He'd barely noticed the cold before he put the jacket on, but as soon as he did, he felt a little warmer, the wind no longer digging into his bones.
"You really don't have any idea what you're going to do?"
This time, when Erik glanced back at Charles, he was watching the does, too.
"First, I'm going to finish rebuilding your house." It was the least he could do, after what Charles had done for him in Cairo, when everything Erik had had left had been at stake.
"You could stay, you know. Once you and Jean are finished."
Erik hadn't seen this coming, though he didn't know why--it was the obvious thing, what Charles had always been going to ask. Perhaps it was even the smart thing. He didn't know if he could do this by himself. Every time he tried to think of how, he came upon the same blankness. It was as if the woods and En Sabah Nur had conspired to take away his ability to so much as list his choices to himself--much less act on them.
"I don't know."
"I think it would be good for you. For both of you."
"Perhaps," Erik said.
From the trees, Nina looked up suddenly from her discussion with the does. It was the same way she'd looked for him a hundred times daily since the woods, an exaggeration of the way she'd looked at him from the time he'd decided she was old enough to hear something of her heritage. A thought rose in the blankness, as it had so many times in the past months: that perhaps he'd caused this, brought this on them. Perhaps the burden he'd given her had been too much for her to bear, and that was why it had all happened. His fears had seeped into her, through stories she'd been too young to know after all. Perhaps it had even traveled to her through his blood and bone, the moment he'd had his part in making her.
When she looked around for him, he waved, and said, "Ten minutes."
"Yes, Papa."
Erik waited, to see what Charles would say. Once, he'd had something to say about every one of Erik's thoughts. The darker they'd been, the more likely Charles had been to assure Erik he wasn't a monster. This had been fine twenty years ago, when they'd orbited around each other as if there were no one else...but Erik knew he couldn't bear such words, not now.
Charles must have changed, too, for although Erik waited, he said not one word.
In the silence, Erik thought of how it would be to stay. He thought of Nina, who was so cautious with her powers now--who had had to be cajoled for three days to come even this far outside. Who had treated these doe friends so much more gingerly than any of the friends she'd had in Poland, at least so far. She deserved training, the kind he was unequipped to give her. She deserved, too, the chance to get to know other mutants around her age. There had been no one like her at her other school, one of the very few things Erik had regretted about their life there.
"We could stay," he said.
"That would be wonderful."
"It won't be like it was. Between the two of us." It couldn't be, not after everything. Even if, eventually...but that was a thought Erik couldn't complete, not yet. He didn't know if he ever would be able to, if he'd ever want to.
"I never imagined it would be," Charles said, with a wink. "The last time you lived here, I could outrun you."
Erik snorted, the closest he'd come to a laugh since...since. "No, you couldn't."
"Well, it's not as if you can challenge me to a rematch now, is it?"
"Try me."
"Tempting, but I think I'll pass. You'll just have to live with the memory of your defeat."
They both grew silent. As they stood there, watching Nina and her tentative friends, Erik had another thought: That he ought to take Nina home. To say goodbye to her friends, to their house. To pack up the things they'd had to leave behind when they'd gone. To leave flowers on her mother's grave. All the things he'd never had the chance to do for himself, when he was a boy; the things he found he couldn't bear not to do, now that he was a man and a father. Now that he was widowed.
"I could go with you, if you'd like. If you could use a friend."
"Perhaps." A few minutes later, Erik said, to Nina, "It's time to go back in."
Nina sent her friends off with a few more quiet words, unable to be heard from the path. She came to Erik with her coat still on and her hat askew. As they headed back toward the house, Erik adjusted it so it would cover her ears properly, then wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
The fear remained under the surface, as it always had and always would, but there was something else, too: A fierce gladness that she was still with him, that though they'd lost so much, they weren't lost to each other; and a sense of a relief, that the question of what to do next had been decided upon, and that he hadn't had to do it alone.