Chapter Text
Dear Erik,
The doctors are saying there’s no hope for my legs. Hope is the one thing I rely on. The one thing I cling to, so I can stand on my two feet.
Don’t you care?
Your dear and distressed old friend,
Charles Xavier
To Magneto,
One of your loyal cronies injured a student of mine. I’m sending you the hospital bill.
If you continue to harm your own kind the way you are right now, I suggest you think twice, lest you want to find yourself outnumbered in the long run. You can’t start a revolutionary uprising with three mutants and a toad.
Regards,
Professor X
Erik,
Please think twice.
Charles
And then something terrible happened.
It all stopped.
———
The sight had become so easy to get used to.
Mystique, only Mystique, was allocated the duty. Every envelope looked the same in exterior, and she knew the drill. Her brother’s handwriting was always immaculate. Similar to her own, Erik was once able to note, the discovery preceding the realisation that Charles would’ve taught her how to curve and shape her letters.
Today, Mystique was late. She was yet to breeze into his office, dump the envelope on his desk, and snap at him for watching himself on the television.
“Don’t be vain,” she’d add, pressing the button that blurred the evening news into a fading grey dot.
And then she’d linger. Erik would begin slipping his gloves off, one motion for each hand, and then sit back in his chair as he waited for her to leave.
Mystique would proceed to make thoughtless, haphazard inquiries, amber eyes always trained on the sheet of paper unfolding in Erik’s hands.
Like their routine, Erik’s demand was unchanging,
“I won’t say it twice. Please show yourself the door.”
By now it had been a few weeks - since. She was Mystique only by name. Mysterious in her changeable skin, her flitting armour. She was still Raven, when she’d silently insist on staying, when she’d let out an agonised growl as she was told to leave.
Perhaps he’d really pissed her off this time. But - she couldn’t slack off like this. Afternoon was dwelling. Erik had remodelled the metal chair legs to stud out with spikes, impatient. What could be keeping her?
Had Charles forgotten to send him a letter today? No, Erik thought fiercely. Charles didn’t simply forget. And he never ran out of words or ways to chide Erik, so unless he ran out of ink and paper—
Unlikely. The man was running a school.
Erik shot up from his seat in an instant.
There was a pile gathering in his desk drawer where his collection of letters sat. Frequent readings had embedded sentences into his memory. But he still had to remind himself that they existed, that Charles had tried to reach out to him time and time again, despite of the helmet over his skull.
The helmet. It was uncomfortable. Ill-fitting.
At least, soon, he’d have his own custom made.
It would be equally uncomfortable.
He stalked out into the foyer of the desolate, abandoned old hostel that was their current hideout, turned to face the halls and staircase, and thrust his arms out, wide apart.
The building responded. Most of it, for a large part of its composition felt the summon of an attracting force. The metal crusting a dresser upstairs, the pillars in each corridor, pipes and screws and locks. Everything that made his power real - they spun, vibrated, eagerly indicating their presence.
Satisfied with the jarring, sonorous noise reverberating back at him from the furthest wall, he dropped his arms. Sighed, and waited.
Frost came down first. Erik heard stilettos clinking against the floorboards as she elegantly descended the steps, hands sweeping down the banister, apparelled in blinding white.
Riptide skipped down the stairs two at a time, and once he’d reached the landing, Azazel had appeared with a red cumulus cloud, tail erect and alert.
Mystique was last to arrive, or trudge, rather, as though she was encumbered by the weight of her limbs. Erik eyed her, ignoring her reluctance with all his efforts, content to pass it off as fatigue. Homesickness wasn’t something he was going to address.
Her hands were completely empty.
Erik turned his head away. He kept his eyes averted as he asked her,
“Anything for me this morning, Mystique?”
She kept quiet for the length of a shrug.
“Nothing today,” she informed, and for all that his mail didn’t concern her, nor did she ever read it - there was disappointment in her voice.
He gave his heavy head a nod. The helmet shifted around, and he readjusted it, feeling foolish. This day was bound to come.
Charles Xavier was a patient man, but Erik had made him wait for too long. Now the man had given up.
Erik hadn’t replied to a single one of his letters, his pleas. He treasured them all and clutched them to his chest, pressed them to his nose in hunt for a scent, but he didn’t once reciprocate.
And he couldn’t if he tried. He couldn’t write a list of all the things about Charles that tormented him. He, without a doubt, would run out of resources. For there wasn’t enough ink and paper, not enough words to describe just how much he cared for his old friend. Just how much he missed him. How often he thought of him, when he wasn’t already being haunted by his memories.
It would’ve been easier if he didn’t still remember every moment with that man. The way he tucked a wave of his hair behind his ear after laughing, the way he laughed when Erik spoke, the way he spoke when Erik was angry.
But it would’ve been much, much more easier if he didn’t vividly remember every inch of him, from shade and texture to taste and smell. He might as well have trashed the helmet, for all it did to keep Charles out of his head. He was always in there, smiling red and wide, feeling softer than he looked, tasting better than he smelled, and Erik was a coward because he couldn’t tuck any of his feelings into a letter, and he’d rather sulk instead.
“Thank you,” he said, strained. He wasn’t thankful, but he supposed Raven needed to hear it. Raven, not Mystique. Mystique needed to suck it up and stop infecting him with her contagious case of Charles Xavier deprivation.
He turned to the others gathered around him. Knowing that an angled lift of his head would cast his eyes into the shadow of helmet, he utilised the opportunity, stretching his neck and raising his chin. There - that should’ve left the rest to be easy, effortless, on impulse of a commandeering role. He swallowed down his hesitance and delivered his words stoically.
“I believe there’s an update on the recruitment of the weather witch.” His gaze roved over his affiliates, anticipating. “Well?”
Frost parted glossed lips, “Tempest and the others are returning tonight. They said the girl was difficult to convince.” Frost heaved a sigh. “They then said that she was approached by another team of mutants who sold her to a school. At this point Angel repeated the word ‘school’ with incredulity.”
Erik could almost relate to her - for entirely different reasons - and the urge to go slightly hysterical. Next to him, Mystique’s folded arms fell to her sides.
“The Xavier’s School For Youngsters. Charles’s school,” she whispered lowly, as though it couldn’t be said aloud, not unless it was mentioned with derision.
Frost hummed. “Frankly, we need to work on our pitch. How we lost a teenage girl to an academic institute is beyond me.”
“Charles always… had a way with words,” Raven mused, a smile accompanying the thought. Suddenly she was Raven again, and Erik had to look away.
“Speaking of whom,” the White Queen intoned, directing her gaze at him, “Charles Xavier left a message for you.”
“Where?” Erik bellowed, his brain hearing what it chose, and all it registered was Charles, another message, something good or something bad but mainly something, and it shattered his authoritative demeanour in an instant.
Frost found Erik’s desperation amusing, naturally. Her grin curled into an open-mouthed laugh.
“Up here,” she said, pointing to the crown of her head with a gloved finger.
At this moment, Erik despised the woman for what she knew. What Charles could’ve easily scribbled into a letter was now what she knew, and Erik didn’t just despise her, he envied her, resented her, because she had nothing to do with them, and yet—
Frost cupped each of her elbows and ended her laughter with an exhale as she recalled, “His exact words were: you’re a dickhead, Erik, I saw what you did on the telly.”
Erik blinked.
At least, it explained a great deal.
He wordlessly dismissed the meeting, ducking out to flee into his office. A taut, convoluted knot of emotions was forming at the base of his stomach. But he felt himself smile, a sad, weary smile, at the thought of Charles’s message—yes, he certainly had a way with words. And if Erik was going to succeed, he would have to remain impervious to Charles’s sweet talk.
Everything Erik was doing, Charles would soon realise, was for the good of mutantkind. For him and for them.
———
A dozen guards were stationed around the perimeters, armed and alert, and each of them fell like ragdolls onto the gravel. They collapsed as easily as the chain link fence, and the gate that stood behind it was stubborn, but nothing a vigorous tornado of whistling wind couldn’t bring down.
Side by side, they trooped forward, an alliance of mutant solidarity on legs, wings and paws. Worthington Labs was just a start. Every flask and tube of samples destroyed was a mere warning. The ruined machinery and dead scientists were a precaution, a defense against their own abolishment. Every substance and strategy that crafted their demise was crushed under their boots. Toxic spills, fire alarms, scattered files. Every shackled prisoner kept captive was freed. Given a choice to make: fight back or live in fear of becoming a victim again.
Mutants were amassing. Runaways, disowned, liberated mutants of every variation imaginable were forming the Brotherhood.
They grew.
And for every addition, the silence between him and Charles grew tenfold.