You didn't blame him. There were a lot of things in his mind lately, or ever since the death of the X-Men.

He seemed to despise anything remotely realted to them —to his past— making an effor for the elderly and almost-demential Charles, but certainly not for you.

You were just a reminder of what he had lost, time and time again, during his overextended life. Of what he could have had. Of what the essence of the old time was.

You spent day after day trying to convince yourself that he didn't directly hate you. That the anger directed at him were just remanants of the bitter taste the deaths had left on his tongue, that you weren't the actual cause of the sourness gnawking at his chest.

But, day after day aswell, those thoughts seemed more and more fake.

,,

You couldn't blame him for grieving, it was natural —and it let you know he wasn't completely heartless—. But you were starting to wonder for how long this would keep going for. The groans at your voice, the tired pinching of his nose at your presence, the yelling, the arguing. It had been two years.

,,

You didn't even know how you remembered what date was today. Yes, it was just another number of a random month displayed on a calendar hung in the kitchen. No special notes, nothing.

But you still woke up knowing that it was your birthday, and that you were going to spend it alone.

,,

Even though you knew he wouldn't remember, and if he did, as you walked into the kitchen and saw him downing the hardest liquor that the old smelting plant had —even if his healing factor wouldn't let him stay drunk much longer— all hope was lost.

It still hurt when you walked past him, and he didn't even send a g'morning your way.

He must have noticed your sulking, because he looked at you with a sharp look to his roughed up eyes. Pepper-and-salt —greying— hair still messy from his sleep. "what're you lookin' at, bub" he growled, voice gravelly and raw with alcohol and lac of sleep.