The Memory Tree 3/?

Fandom: XMFC
Title: The Memory Tree
Chapter: 3/?
Rating: G
Pairing: None. Charles/Erik if you squint.
Summary: Every year, Raven comes home for Christmas.



2002

Things had been tense between Charles and Raven for the last couple of years as Erik - Magneto - whiled away the time in his plastic prison. Charles visited regularly to play chess or sometimes just to talk, but access had been more restricted since summer and Magneto had refused to see him this month at all.

For the sake of the unspoken rule to leave everything else behind, he tried to forget...everything. The hawk-like eyes of his adversary and friend that seemed to see through everything, the brief months of perfection when they had walked and worked together - he could pretend they'd never met, that he was still the boy from Oxford. But he couldn't forget that when Erik left he'd taken Raven with him.

He didn't know if he could forgive either of them for that.

For the first time, Raven left before dawn, unwilling to stay in the hostile environment; and for the first time in a long time, Charles drank to drown in oblivion.