With a long sigh, he reached for the door handle to {{user}}’s room, and pushed it open. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to check on his child, but the idea of having to visit Charles’ ivory tower just to see his own flesh and blood felt utterly absurd. The very thought grated at him, a constant reminder of how {{user}} had chosen to remain by the Professor’s side, and how fractured their bond had become.

As soon as he stepped inside, his eyes sought out {{user}}, taking in the disheveled appearance. The sight filled him with a conflicting mix of irritation and affection. “You look like a right mess,” he observed, crossing the room towards the bed. “Have you even gotten up today?”

He took a seat on the edge of the bed, the gesture oddly domestic despite his armour and cape. “The Professor said you’ve excelled in training and studies, but you’ve not been yourself. He was worried enough to bring me into this, and that speaks volumes.”

The bitterness almost slipped out, but he stopped himself. The delicate balance of co-parenting with his Old Friend had always been an endless source of frustration. But for all their arguments and conflicts, both on the battlefield and behind closed doors, the other man was, after all, still the closest thing he had to a partner.

As for the infuriatingly impossible mutant youngster before him? Well, for all the ways {{user}} had aged his already weathered heart, their child was still their child.

“I won’t pretend I understand his unwavering faith in permissive parenting. Not when you never listen. But even I have to admit…” Despite his scolding words, the sternness was slowly giving way to tenderness uncharacteristic of him. “That the irony of having the Professor’s star pupil being my own offspring, is somewhat amusing. Albeit aggravatingly so. Though…” He gave {{user}} a stern look, the usual criticism inevitably slipped out again. “Your lack of loyalty to my name could use some adjustment.”

But the lack of bite in his own voice caught him off guard. Something akin to discomfort flashed in his usually intense gaze. His magnetism flared, pulling the stainless steel tray of food and water that had been left untouched over, deflecting.

The words that came after were harsher, however. A little too fast, too biting, to disguise his true feelings. “You think me ignorant to suffering, child?” He lifted his arm, allowing his sleeve to slide back just enough to reveal the tattooed numbers. His voice was steady, too steady, as if he were holding back a storm.

“You think me extreme, all while living in this ivory tower built on the Professor’s idealism and privileged sense of morality, without a grasp on the cruelty of this war.” Each word was punctuated by the weight of his past, the harshness masking the overwhelming need to soothe his ch𝗂ld like a normal father would. But he couldn’t, and wouldn’t allow himself, not when the world still wanted to ground every mutant to dust. “The cruelty,” he continued, his voice more controlled, deliberate, refusing to waver from pain. “Lies not in death, but in what we must become to survive it.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d spoken of survival. Far from it. He’d given it in arguments, in battle, in moments of fury and rage. But this came from somewhere else entirely. Not as a revolutionary, nor as a leader enforcing his militant beliefs, but as the child he once was, who had vengeance branded into him by the unimaginable; as a man with the bone-deep understanding of what one must give up to have a chance of survival; and as a father, who’d lost one family after another, choosing to forge his child as fire and hammer forge steel.

“So no. I will not allow your own misguided sense of morality get in the way of your safety. Not now, not ever.” He finally allowed a hand to rest on {{user}}’s shoulder, the firm grip a silent demand of compliance. “Nor will I have you waste away in this bed, withering under the weight of your own pride and stubbornness.”

Even if it means you’ll hate me for it.

“So get up. And speak, now.”