There was a difference between reliability and trust. It was hard to miss, but for Erik that difference has always been the line he had a difficult time crossing.

Throughout his life, there have been very few people that Erik could genuinely say that he trusted. Trust always came with a sense of familiarity and attachment. Reliability, on the other hand, came with just enough distance that kept him safe. It became a way for him to rely on the ones around him while convincing himself that they were expendable— tools to be used, people to be manipulated until he had no use for them anymore.

Breaking out of that habit has been, in a word, hard. To treat people as friends and equals meant admitting that they mattered, and it meant having to look back at his actions to see just how cold and harsh he had become throughout the decades.

Jean Grey was someone he trusted. Funny enough, Erik wasn’t even sure of how exactly it happened. It felt as if one day he woke up and there she was, lodged in his heart in a way he never could have expected.

After his trial and after Wanda returned, Erik had kept to himself for a little while. There was a lot to keep busy with, of course, but he also found that it was easier to keep to himself to process everything that had happened. Days went by without him speaking to another person until the solitude finally began to eat away at hime.

So, he invited Jean to a game of chess.

Nate didn’t like to admit it, but the future was lonely.

He knew a lot about his own future. That’s just a side effect of being a time traveler— knowing too much, but sometimes even that wasn’t enough.

Nate knew that he would eventually find and raise Hope, that he would live a long life full of a lot of battles, a lot of pain, a lot of struggle. But he was tough. Tougher than that old version of him— of that much he was convinced. Maybe he wasn’t the most popular mutant around, but that older version of him was too soft.

However, as people loved reminding him, he was young. Maybe he only felt tough because he was naive. Maybe he only felt tough because he was stupid sometimes, because he made moves before thinking and so far has come out with his head still on his shoulders.

And another thing— being here, back in a time where he had parents and a girlfriend and maybe even a few friends— he was starting to understand why the older version of him had gotten a bit soft. You needed hard edges when living in the future he had been thrown into. That time period either turned bones into stone or ground them into dust. So, Nate adapted. He trained, he fought, he lived.

There was conflict here, but not like in the future. It was just, different. Nate found that it was difficult to put it into words. It was too much to explain to people who didn’t have any idea of how his mind and his reactions had been shaped.

But Jean Grey— Mom— even if she could never quite understand, she tried. She cared. She loved him. Nate had mentors, he had trainers, he had people who tried to tell him what to do. And he did what he did best: rebelled. But there was something with Jean that made him feel trusted for the first time in his life. It was warm and it was genuine and he wanted to make her proud.

Seeing her again was one of the biggest reasons he was happy with his decision to come back. He wasn’t supposed to want normal things because he would never be able to keep them. But a family? Parents? They were too good to not at least try to keep.

Krakoa was truly beautiful. It was green and warm and it was starting to rub off on him in a way he hadn’t expected. Nathan was used to doing everything on his own and he had convinced himself that he preferred being alone, but he found himself being drawn to this place. As he waited out in the open and took it all in, a twang of guilt hit him-- his older self had started to slack off, convinced that the young team of displaced X-Men were fine where they were. He had gotten attached, gotten a bit too invested, and Nate hated him for it. But now he stood here a day after killing him, and he was forced to come to terms with how easy it was to get attached to certain things and people and places and feelings.

That moment of gut wrenching guilt passed quickly and Nate straightened his spine, strengthening himself in the belief that no matter what he was feeling he needed to do what was necessary. It was a simple fact that someday, he would need to move on. Krakoa wasn’t his home like it was for the rest of the mutants now surrounded him. That cautious attachment growing inside him would have to be cut. His older self showed him what could happen when attachments interfered with the job, and there was no way he would let himself grow into the person he had pulled the tigger on.

A slight breeze hit him and he became aware of how naked he felt without his weapons. One holster on his suit remained after his utility belt was sliced in half during the fight-- so he wasn’t defenseless. But it felt wrong, even put him on edge even though this was the calmest he had felt in days.

Soft footsteps behind him caused an instinct reaction of placing his hand at the ready over his gun. Nate moved to toss a glance over his shoulder, and then his hand fell away from his weapon as his shoulders relaxed.