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It happens, again.

One moment, Erik feels himself safe in the embrace of his mother -- Schmidt dead behind him and the nightmare gone -- and the next, he finds he is back at the beginning and watching in horror as Schmidt requests -- asks, demands, insists -- that he move the coin. His anguish must be palpable and easy to hear from continents away

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When they are gone, it's almost as if Erik's life now speeds up like film at its highest speed rushing before his eyes. He knows these events so intimately that they are burned into his brain and he need not watch them to remind himself what will happen -- he has never forgotten. Erik can see that Schmidt is disappointed in Erik and so he will bring out his lesson, his cautionary tale. Soon, he will take the brightest light from Erik's young life and snuff it out as carelessly as one might a candle.

Erik thinks, briefly, that he must stop the bullet. He thinks of their aborted and failed attempts and knows that stopping the events will not do them any good.

He thinks, then, that he must save his mother. He also knows that this will do him no good. It will bring him back here and acting as her saviour will only prolong this emotional torture. At the last minute, with Schmidt's finger on the trigger, Erik knows better. Shoot me, he remembers, I can stop it. But, now, heart heavy with grief and tired of this day, he's unsure that he wants to. It's why at the sound of the chamber releasing its lethal weapon, it takes little more than a moment's thought and curl of his fingers to divert the bullet's path.

He does not repurpose it towards Schmidt. It does not become forever lodged in a wall, rendering it harmless.

He directs the bullet on the swiftest path to his own heart, whispering soundless apology as he does to whatever deity might be listening to him. He could not have stopped this. The past is key to the present and to creating the future he wishes to see. He cannot change this. He cannot prevent it or avenge a death.

It must happen.

This is the last thought Erik holds to himself before the life begins to drift away from him and everything goes suddenly dark. Perhaps he cannot stop the events of this day, but he will not give Schmidt the satisfaction of having created something terrible. Charles will continue their work. Raven will keep him in check. Perhaps all that Erik Lehnsherr was meant to do was live and then die as soon as he learned his lesson.

He draws his last breath and thinks (and wishes) that there was a happier ending for any of them.