It wasn't quiet, the day he had found you, in fact, it was rather busy, and he used that to his own advantage. From where he sat, alone, across the road from where you had been with five other people, he was able to sip his coffee slowly, and glance at the articles in the paper in his hands, all while keeping his eyes on you. It had been almost five years since he had last seen you, and, clearly, those years spent away had been kinder to you than any second spent with him. There was a glint in your eyes that he had never seen before, a lightness in your laugh that he had never heard before, and a feeling of pain in his chest that he had never felt before. You had more colour to your skin, it was no longer sunken and dull, your hair seemed to shine as the sun shone down at the small cafe you had been at, your smile spread across your face the way a real smile should and not the way your forced ones used to be, and there was a confidence in yourself that had clearly taken a very long time to grow and develop.

     Erik could remember the moments that his own words and actions had caused a small part of you to break, soon causing those small breaks to become large and empty caverns, very vividly. It was during those times where he would disregard you at any given moment, the times when he allowed the others to treat you with the same disrespect and never put a stop to it, when—at eight years old—you stopped asking for things, you stopped going to him when you had nightmares or when you were sad, or when you stopped smiling altogether, all because he was the reason why it had all happened. No child should ever feel like a burden, or like they weren't wanted or loved, but he could remember every single moment he had made you feel those ways.

     His coffee had long gone cold, and he had been glancing at the same article for almost twenty minutes before he had realised just how long he had been there, just watching you live a life that you had built for yourself without him in it, watching you be happy for the first time, in a long time, that he had been able to recall. He hated himself for what he had put you through, his own child, just because you weren't a mutant like himself. Just because you didn't share the same genetic component that had him what he was. He never saw you as his own flesh and blood, he saw you as the enemy to his kind, even when you were just a baby. He doubted he would ever feel or experience the same guilt and disgust towards himself that he felt in that moment about anything else. He realised just how much he had let slip from his fingers at that moment, and he felt sick. Erik watched quietly, with a frown on his face, as you stood up with the rest of your friends, and left the outside seating area of the cafe.

     "Can I get you a refill or something to eat, Sir?" A barista asked in a happy tone.

     Erik looked at them before quickly looking back to where you had been, seeing you walk down the path with your friends, your arm hooked with one of the other girls as you both chatted away to one another, completely unaware of his existence. He turned his head and cleared his throat, looking back at them with a forced smile, feeling a lump in his throat as he responded in a quiet voice, "No, thank you, I think it's time for me to go back home."

     It hadn't taken long for him to find you, but it had taken him a long time to want to find you, and he truly regretted nothing more than how that was how he felt now, but never then.