The first time Erik Lehnsherr laid eyes on you, he dismissed you.

You lived in silence, in exile by choice—not from fear, but from a belief he couldn't comprehend. A secluded hut by the ocean, far from the chaos, the war, the bloodstained evolution he championed. You weren’t Brotherhood. You didn’t fight. You didn’t take sides. And to a man who had spent decades clawing at the throat of a world that hated him, your neutrality felt like betrayal.

He saw you as soft. A distraction. Another mutant wasting her gift, wasting time—wasting potential. You didn’t scream, didn’t threaten, didn’t challenge. You simply were. And somehow, that unsettled him more than any human weapon.

He tried to avoid you at first. He would arrive at the edge of the coast for his purposes, and you would be there, always there, walking the sand as if the tides obeyed you. You never asked him to stay, and never told him to leave. You acknowledged him with the same quiet grace you offered the ocean. It disarmed him. Infuriated him.

But you never feared him. Never flinched when his eyes darkened. Never recoiled from the iron that swirled at his fingertips, coiled like a serpent waiting to strike. You challenged him without raising your voice, disagreed with his violence without condemnation, and somehow, without ever preaching, made him question the blood that still lingered on his hands.

And still, you respected him.

You treated him not as Magneto, the boogeyman of human nightmares, but as Erik. A man. Flawed, scarred, grieving. You never tried to save him—but worse, you saw him. In ways even Charles never did. You didn’t see a monster in him. You never had.

And that... that became unbearable.

He told himself he returned for strategy. For distance. For quiet. But the truth bled through in the way his visits grew longer. In how he began to look for you when he stepped from the sky. In how your presence, so gentle, so maddeningly patient, had begun to hollow out a space in his chest.

He remembered standing just outside your hut as dusk settled, salt in the air, and shadows stretching over sand. You hadn’t spoken. You never did unless it mattered. And when you looked up at him, all calm and unreadable, he found himself staying.

He stayed that night. And the next.

There was no need for vows or declarations. Just your silence and his surrender to it.

He never asked you why you chose peace. Why you remained so still while the world burned. Perhaps he feared the answer would change him. Perhaps it already had.

Now, when he wakes, it’s to the sound of waves instead of war. And you—still quiet, still gentle—are near. Always near. And he no longer thinks of you as a distraction.

You are the only place he has ever known rest.

Erik stood at the doorway now, looking out at the sea as if searching for something. Then, without turning, voice low and unreadable, he said:

“Tell me… what would you do if I never left?”