Who Shall be King Hereafter

by sherwoodfox

Summary:

Erik destroys the American and Soviet fleets in Cuba- now, the world is on the edge of toppling into nuclear war, and Shaw’s dream is coming true.

Erik takes Charles with him, but what they have is damaged, and he does not know if he will be forgiven.

Notes:

You don’t need to read the previous story in this series necessarily, it just follows the events from First Class with Charles and Erik having a romantic relationship instead of a platonic one. ^^

Chapter 1: The Battle’s Lost and Won

The embargo line in Cuba was a perfect picture of everything that human history had done wrong. It all seemed so incredibly silly, a bunch of ships full of men sitting around and watching each other, thinking themselves unimaginably different and yet all made from the same base things- metal and wire and blood and meat. Watching each other, and waiting to start the war that would destroy the planet, on the basis of what- the crossing of a made-up line in a body of water for made-up reasons. The sight of it all made me feel cold. I did not want anything to do with a society like this one. I hadn’t the faintest clue why Charles did.

I watched him very closely as he infiltrated the mind of one of the Russian soldiers, using another’s brain and body to blow up the Aral Sea. If he wanted to, now, he could blow them all up. He could have every man on those ships commit suicide, and not a single one of them would be able to stop him. His mind was a weapon worse than any of their reckless nuclear bombs.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be thinking about old arguments. Shaw was close- I could practically feel it, the way I felt all the metal. I could smell him on the wind. I did not have that wild, driving thirst that I used to- my bloodlust for him had settled into certainty, as heavy and solid as iron. He was going to die today- I just had to find him.

-M-

“Banshee’s got a location on Shaw,” Charles said to me, on the edge of breathless from the wind whipping about the chamber. “Are you ready for this?”

“Let’s find out,” I replied, and clambered onto the wheel. As the bay doors opened, I felt Charles reach out to me- oh, for an instant it was as glorious as always, feeling his little light flickering inside my head. He showed me where to look, and he did not withdraw when he was done the way I had expected him to.

I reached out into the water. Down, away, deep into its chill- ah, and there it was. A familiar cold hull and heavy anchor. For a moment I felt a flush of anxiety- I was taken back to a moment when I had been in the water, not above it, trying to hold onto this very same ship and failing- being tugged along like a thing in orbit, outside of my own control. How was this not the same? Had anything really changed? Of course, I knew it had, and yet still-

-remember-

Charles steadied me. That was right; I hadn’t had Charles, that first night in the water. Charles was the one who had made the changes, and he had changed everything. For a moment, I felt his heart beating against the buckle on his suit- too fast, too hot, a contrast to the gentle voice in my head.

-thepointbetweenrageandserenity-

I lifted the submarine.

-X-

Chaos broke loose at the hand of the man who created wind storms; I lost control of the world, or perhaps the world lost control of itself, spinning so fast that even reality was put out of place. For an instant the only certainty was Charles’ hand in mine, his body pressed against me as I tried to hold us down to the only solid thing I could find- a wall, the floor, the ceiling, I didn’t know. Perhaps I heard him yell; perhaps it was only in my head.

When the world settled again, providence was on our side. The jet was crashed, but so was the submarine- it had not fallen back into the water where it might slither away, like a fish let loose from the fisherman’s hook. Now we were all trapped on this beach; Fate had decided the setting for our battle.

I looked out the window at the ships- they were staring at us, dull-eyed and useless. Well, let them watch. A new era was arriving. After this, the world would never be the same again.

I tasted blood on my teeth- I must have bitten my cheek in the crash. I didn’t care.

-M-

Inside the submarine I turned off the nuclear reactor and stepped into what Charles called ‘the void’- how very fascinating, for I felt it too, the strength of his presence in my head dipped the moment I crossed the threshold of the lounge. This room was lined with a particular alloy of metal- when I felt for it, some part of it seemed to sing, its presence brighter and stronger than the rest of the craft that surrounded it. Interesting indeed.

For a moment I thought Charles was wrong- this was where he had said Shaw would be, but I did not see anyone- and then the door at the far end of the lounge opened, and there he was.

He looked like he was standing in another dimension- the crash had bent the inside of the submarine out of shape, and so the floor he stood upon was at an angle to the one I did. The room he was in glowed blue, a colour of light that did not occur anywhere in nature. I had never before seen anything with a design like the helmet he wore on his head- a helmet made of that very same alloy, the one that- I began to suspect- was keeping Charles out. Yet still despite it I recognized his face- his cruel little smile, his flat, hungry eyes. I would have recognized him anywhere. Here we were again, face to face- here for the first time since I had met Charles.

I realized suddenly that I stood between the two of them, now. Charles was behind me- a god from Heaven, straining to come in through the slender opening of the door- and Shaw was before me, a god from Hell.

“Erik,” said Shaw. “What a pleasant surprise.”

-X-

Punching him- acting on that first, childish urge- did nothing. I saw his figure ripple as he lifted himself back up to meet me, taking it like it was easy. I saw from the corner of my eye that I had split each knuckle on my hand striking that helmet- blood welled up between my fingers- but I did not feel any pain.

“I’m sorry for what happened in the camps,” Shaw said calmly- I could not hear an ounce of human emotion in his voice. “I truly am.”

With a tap of his finger my body was flung back against the wall- the impact was enough to knock the wind out of me, and possibly crack my ribs. It certainly did crack the wall of the strange little chamber- I did not see this happen, but I felt it, Charles was upon me in an instant, all care and worry and warmth. I tasted on my tongue the panic that my disappearing into this ‘void’ had instilled in him. For a moment, it almost made me smile.

“But everything I did, I did for you,” Shaw continued, in precisely the same tone as before. This was nothing to him- tossing me about like a toy hadn’t even expended an ounce of his energy. “To unlock your power. To make you embrace it.”

I looked up at him, and no doubt there was an expression of raw hatred on my face, for in that instant it was all I felt. How very smug he was- how utterly sociopathic. And yet he was right- he, too, had been my teacher. He was a perversion of Charles- or perhaps, the other way around.

He struck me again, and I let him- all to Charles’ enthusiasm, which came through increasingly loud in my head, though it was mixed with a wincing kind of sympathy at the ache of blunt pain in my abdomen.

-icanseehimbuticantyettouchhismind-

“You’ve come a long way since bending gates,” Shaw said with an empty, sharklike smile. “I’m so proud of you.”

I did not let him fling me into another wall. Half-mad now with my own anger I stood, the heat of my emotions banishing any of the pain in my chest from the injuries. This ‘void’ could stop Charles, but it could not stop me- it was only metal, after all, like all of the world’s best weapons. I tore down the submarine around me, the force raw and brutal- a reversion, perhaps, to the animal strength Shaw had trained into me. I didn’t care. I aimed for his head, over and over again, forming spikes from his own home and plunging them down towards his body. They always slipped to the side at the last instant, repelled. It didn’t matter. The walls were broken away entirely, Hell taken apart and forced back into the real world- Charles was at full volume inside my head.

Shaw pushed me back, pinning me between a fallen beam and the side of the submarine- he was gentle, though, this time. He suddenly seemed taken by his own fatherly words- I wondered if he even believed them.

“Think of how much further we could go,” Shaw continued, his voice on the edge of wistful. “Together.”

I growled, pushing back against the thing he was so easily pinning me with, and I felt it buckle between us. It was no use- I was not trying to move the metal, I was trying to move him, and he was something else entirely.

Actually, no...not entirely.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Erik,” Shaw was saying. “I want to help you. This is our age- we are the future of the human race. You and me, son- the world could be ours.”

He touched me as he said this- held my neck, a gesture as fond as it was threatening, and the disgust I felt at it was so strong I could not bring myself to look at him. Despite this, though, I realized something, and the knowledge came to me in a terrible rush- these were all things that I had said before. And he was right, wasn’t he? He hadn’t wanted to destroy me, back in that hateful camp. It would have been so very easy for him to do that. He had wanted to raise me, which was more than my biological father had ever done, and perhaps he had done it in the only way he knew how. Everything he had done to me- for me- had made me stronger, made me who I was now.

Only eventually, like all children, I had outgrown him.

“It’s the truth,” I said quietly. “You are my creator.”

And then I yanked the helmet from his head.

I felt Charles rush from me in an instant, pinning Shaw in place, taking away all his dreadful agency. Wasn’t there something Freudian about this? My two teachers- my father and my lover- and I had one holding the other to the ground.

The metal beam released me, no longer torn between two forces, and I made my way slowly around to Shaw’s face. He did not move. He did not use any of his incredible power. He was completely trapped- neutered and harmless.

I took the helmet in hand. Up close, I could see that the workmanship was beautiful- the metal was cold in my palms, and bright in my mind. A little piece of art, that’s what this was. It would be a shame to let it go to waste. I looked up at Shaw- his eyes, fixed forward in place, seemed to tremble with an entirely new expression- panic. I had never seen such a face on him before.

-erikplease-

“Sorry, Charles,” I said, my voice sounding like it came from a dream. But I wouldn’t let him stop me this time, not like he had in Russia. I lifted the helmet to my head.

-youcanbethebettermanerikPLEASE-

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I murmured, and slipped it on.

...but actually, I don’t.

Silence.

I felt nothing in my head.

I took a step closer to Shaw, looking at him. Taking in that terrible, wonderful expression on his face- that expression of terror. Was he giving Charles a good fight? Surely he was, but not good enough, no. Not enough to stop my angel.

The helmet was surprisingly comfortable- for no reason I could think of, it fit me exceedingly well. The quiet it provided seemed to go deeper than merely stopping telepathic interference- my own bustling thoughts stilled as well, replaced with calm, cool focus. I could see the path out from here as clear as day. What was to happen next would be as easy as breathing.

“I want you to know that I agree with everything you said,” I told Shaw. My voice sounded very pleasant in this new quiet, this new stillness that had consumed the room. “We are the future. But, unfortunately…”

Let him feel no hope, not even for an instant. Let him know his dreams will be taken by another man. Out with the old-

“...you killed my mother.”

I lifted from my pocket the old souvenir. ‘To remember’, en français- there was no better expression. I held it up for him to see. The ends of his fingers were trembling. I smiled.

“Now, I am going to count to three...and move the coin.”

-M-

Shaw’s body dropped to the sand with a satisfying crunch. He was a puppet now, his strings perfectly cut- empty and hollow on the inside. All the power he had taken into himself- all the power he had possessed on his own, in terms of cunning and charisma and leadership- was gone. He had been on this Earth for longer than I had been alive- indeed, I had never lived in a world without him- and just now I had ended him. The past was over. The future was just beginning.

“Erik!” I heard Charles call out to me, saw him come running across the sand. He looked wrecked, eyes wide and glassy and red-rimmed, cheeks as pale as death. I realized only then what had happened- what must have happened- when holding Shaw down for me, he must have felt the coin as though it had passed through his own head. I hadn’t intended that- but it was too late now. I looked away.

“Brothers and sisters,” I called out across the wreckage of the beach. “Take off your blinders. The real enemy is out there- I feel their guns moving in the water. All of them humans, united in their fear of the unknown. The Neanderthal is running scared, my fellow mutants!”

As I landed on the sand- flying, something I had hardly considered before, but which now seemed like the most obvious choice in the world- I admired the various expressions my speech was met with. From the former acolytes of Shaw, it was mostly disarmed curiosity, for they were now uncertain of their leadership, of the future of their cause- though they did not need to be. Dull fear was my reward from the children of the mansion- all of them wounded and exhausted, not accustomed to battle, not understanding what I was saying.

Charles was, as always, the most stunning of them all. The look of raw betrayal on his face was unmatched by anything I had ever seen. He was shivering, trying to walk steadily, his lips too red and his cheeks too white- he was probably in shock, after the pain I had just put him through with Shaw. I wanted to take him into my arms then, even if he didn’t understand- even if no one else here would understand (save Raven, who knew). Perhaps I yet would.

“Go on, Charles,” I said to him gently. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

He looked out across the water, two fingers at his temple, and I watched his expression shift from that beautiful horror to focus and then back to horror again. He looked over at MacTaggert (why always her, why not me) and she took off running towards the wreckage of the jet. That was more than enough confirmation for me. Everyone else could see it too- the turrets on the ships were turning to face us.

Could he really still believe in his utopia now?

There was a moment of breathless quiet- everyone waiting to see what would happen, the CIA agent shouting into her headset- but I had zero doubts.

The barrage they sent at us was so extreme I almost laughed out loud. Every single ship had fired- they would only have needed one or two to wipe out a group of humans our size, standing unprotected on a beach. But perhaps I wasn’t giving them enough credit. After all, we weren’t humans.

Still, they were fools. They had made a very terrible mistake. Had MacTaggert not told them about us- about me? As far as I was concerned, with a move like this they had simply sealed their own fates.

Holding up a hand, I stopped the missiles in mid-air before they were able to land, hearing Charles gasp ever so slightly beside me. The pressure of their burning engines was nothing to me- the metal of their shells was happy to feel my touch, eager to do as I bid them. I let them stand in the air for a moment, like loyal dogs doing a trick- stay, stay, now go! The sight of these death-machines brought to such a perfect standstill was almost beautiful.

With a turn of my hand, the missiles shifted, bending back to face the way they had come.

With this, my intentions were suddenly clear. Oh, no, it was not enough to simply save my people. Those ships out there were hateful things- arrogant things. They would do it again if I did not take this easy vengeance now.

“Erik,” Charles said desperately. “You- you said it yourself, we’re the better men. This is the time to prove it. Erik-”

His voice sounded so weak in the air, with nothing inside my head to support it. I could hear every pained breath that caught in his throat. I thought he must know I wasn’t listening to him- I didn’t even look over, focusing on my targets. The missiles took off- released from their leashes- and began to fly, joyfully, back to their owners.

“Erik, there are thousands of men on those ships,” Charles pleaded, his voice raising in pitch and volume. Thousands of men- well, of course it would bother him. Charles and his simple, childish form of morality. “Good, honest, innocent men! They’re just following orders!”

I finally looked at him, when he said that. His words had shocked me so much I nearly lost control of the missiles. What an incredible thing for him to say.

Had his losing the ability to see into my head made him an imbecile? Had I messed something up inside of him, sending that coin through another man’s brain? He who knew everything should know something as simple as this.

I had been at the mercy of men ‘just following orders’.

Never again.

I kept the missiles on course.

With a yell, Charles did something entirely unexpected- he ran at me, and tackled me to the ground. The surprise of the moment was enough to make me lose control, but only briefly- Charles was not unfit, necessarily, but he was small and rather clumsy. He was not accustomed to fighting with his fists- I had almost no doubt that this was the first time he had ever had to do such a thing- and so it was easy for me to reverse our positions, pinning him to the ground. I felt him scrabbling at me, trying to get some kind of purchase, and I pushed him down.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I growled. “Don’t make me.”

Some of his students ran at me- to help him, I didn’t doubt- and I shoved them away by the buckles on their uniforms (a design flaw, those had been). I looked back across the water- in the rush some of the missiles had fallen out of my grasp and detonated in the air, but I still had a sizable arsenal, and I pushed these remainders forward with more vigour. I heard Charles shout again, a pathetically desperate sound, and his fingers pawed at the edge of the helmet- trying to take it off, trying to give himself the advantage, put the world back in a shape where he was the one with all the power, where he could control anything he wanted. But I would not let him- no, I was the one with the power, the way we were now.

I struck him hard across the face with a closed fist, snapping his neck to the side. The flash of guilt I felt at this was brief; there was nothing else I could do, and I had warned him. I ignored the fragile, pained noise he made, and stood, concentrating my mind back on the missiles. Hitting him had cost me a few more, now the pickings were becoming slim.

Something pinged against the side of my helmet- a bullet- someone was shooting at me? I looked, and it was her again, that damned woman, actually firing her little gun at me- costing me focus with each one I deflected. She was an idiot! Did she really think she could hurt me with such a weapon? Humans really were all the same! They were incapable of learning even the simplest things! She knew what I was- her bullets belonged to me, and her gun belonged to me, and the silver on her uniform and the body of the jet and every single one of those missiles, and every single one of those ships, all of them were MINE. I was the king of their foolish weaponry, and they could not STOP me, NONE OF THEM COULD! I could turn away all her desperate efforts with less than half a thought-

-

-I felt one of her deflected bullets land in flesh instead of sand, but the sensation barely registered; I ignored it. She sent only three more useless scraps of metal my way, and then her gun was making empty clicking sounds in the open air, and someone else was screaming- and these sounds I ignored too.

In only another second the first of the missiles landed on target. The explosion that occurred was greater than the size of the ship itself, the damage having been enough to activate the other weaponry stored on board. The same was true for most- within a handful of breaths the ocean was lit up with red and black fireworks, the American and Soviet fleets alike set brilliantly ablaze. I felt the searing and twisting of the metal and it exhilarated me; this was not something I would have thought possible before, this was a culmination of my power behind my wildest dreams. The heat of the fire could be felt from the beach. I had been silly, not thinking of myself as a ‘god’, as well.

Charles made some horrible noise from beside me, and after a moment more of looking at the flames I turned to him- he was on his back, not quite where I had left him, propped up on his elbows. He wasn’t looking at me, rather out at my creation, his face as white as snow.

...and suddenly, I realized that there was something inside him, something that hadn’t been there before. As I did, Charles’ arms gave out beneath him, and his head fell back into the sand with a weighty thunk.

I could feel a bullet.

I was beside him before I had even realized my body had moved, searching, desperate- whether this was logical or not I had to get it out of him, it didn’t belong there. The wound was in his lower back- blood spilled from the tear in the suit, flooding into the sand below and over my hands at a surprising speed. No- not surprising. I knew what bullets could do to a body. I knew, and now it had happened to him…

I pulled the offending thing out- so tiny, not even as wide as a fingernail- and looked at it, trembling. It was slick and red, just like the coin. There was far too much blood.

“I’m sorry,” I said, barely aware of it. My fingers were wet- I couldn’t stop it- I didn’t know how. There was not enough iron in his blood for me to push it back inside. I lifted him instead, bringing his head into my lap- I didn’t know what to do. The other mutants approached again and I stopped them with a snarl. No one could come near him now- I had to protect him- he was hurt and vulnerable and I had never been any good at helping people, I had only ever been good at revenge.

My eyes snapped up at this thought, finding the woman- Moira MacTaggert. She was still standing there, like a criminal in a police spotlight- the gun was still warm in her hands.

Bitch.

“You did this,” I hissed, and saw more red than was on my hand when I lifted it. She was wearing dog tags. Metal, every single link. I closed them tight around her throat just as I had the bedstand in that Soviet official’s house- all these fucking women, hurting what belonged to me, hurting him too much, I was going to squeeze until the blood vessels in her eyes popped, until she drowned, it was what she fucking DESERVED-

“No,” Charles gasped from beneath me. “Please! She didn’t do this, Erik…you did.”

I released the woman in the shock of these frail words, looking back down at the person who really mattered- the person who lay there, now broken, in my arms.

And he had just said it- I had broken him.

Funny, how easy it had been- like a child carelessly throwing away a toy. I hadn’t even realized what was happening until it was too late.

Charles’ eyes flickered over my face, too wide, too pained (if there was any face that could make me ache with guilt, it was this one). I knew he was trying to touch me, trying to reach inside- to fill me with his terrible, lovely magic the way he always had. There was nothing he could get from me now, and wasn’t that an incredible thought? I was as silent to him as the rest of the world had always been to me. How desperate he looked.

For a moment the world whirled around me, incomprehensible and moving far too fast, and then I steadied myself- taking hold of the reins of my mind as though it was a wild horse, wrenching myself back to reality. I looked away from Charles, and was able to control myself again.

“Mutants,” I called out across the sand, my voice rough in my throat. “Come here!”

None of them did, of course, save Raven- she ran straight to Charles’ side, kneeling in the sand before me. In response to this I stood, leaving him in her arms, forcing myself into strength again.

“Us turning on each other, it’s what they wanted,” I declared, pointing back out at the burning remains of the fleets on the water. Some of the boats by now had sunk, their fires extinguished by the cold water flooding their broken skeletons. I felt both the heat and the chill on my own skin- but this might have been from panic, rather than my gift.

“We all want the same thing,” I continued. “Protection, togetherness, a community. This society won’t accept us- so we form our own. No more hiding.”

I could feel the weight of their eyes on me, and for a moment I thought I had been speaking in vain- but Shaw’s former associates approached me, then, coming to stand by my side like it didn’t even matter that I had just murdered their leader- perhaps, to them, it didn’t.

“Beast,” Raven cried out from behind me, her voice trembling. “Please- remember? Mutant and proud.”

And with that the children of the mansion slowly acquiesced, starting with the blue man himself. Alex and Sean seemed more hesitant, wide eyes darting out to the carnage in the water- to the ships that had gone so wonderfully silent. But still, they came anyway.

The human woman ran back into the husk of Hank’s jet- perhaps to hide (as though that was even possible) perhaps to attempt to contact her overlords again. I could have killed her- for a moment, I was tempted to- but ultimately I left it.

I didn’t want to hurt Charles any more. He had liked her, I knew, even if not in the way she had wanted him to.

I turned to the teleporter, the man with the red skin and the winding tail.

“Take us somewhere safe,” I said to him, and he grinned, revealing sharp teeth. He took my hand- as I watched, everyone instinctively huddled together, clasping hands and arms, holding breath in tight lungs- and then in a flash of darkness, the world disappeared.

-X-

The brimstone scented smoke cleared to reveal a finely decorated sitting room- white and posh, just like the interior of the submarine. I barely looked at it, immediately kneeling beside Charles again, who continued to bleed- now onto the rug beneath his back, instead of sand. I heard various exclamations of shock and disorientation from the children, but at the moment I had ears for only one person.

“Hank,” I said sharply, dragging the beast down with me. “You would have the most experience-”

But Hank leaned away, his animal eyes wide, black lips peeled back from his teeth in fear.

“No, I’m- I’m not a doctor, not like this,” he said, and even his monstrous paws trembled over Charles’ petit, bleeding body. Charles made a tiny, pained sound, and I almost snarled.

“Teleporter,” I snapped, looking up at the red-skinned man. “Bring a doctor here. Now.”

“Here?” the man’s tail curled with his lip. “This bunker is secret-”

“No one will know where it is if you just pop them in and out,” said Raven, her voice high with anxiety. “So, please-”

The man’s tail flicked behind his back, like the lashing of an angry cat, but still he disappeared again, alone this time. I looked down at Charles, smoothing his hair back from his forehead in the hope of soothing him- trying to ignore the puddle of blood forming on the cream-coloured carpet beneath him. Charles’ face had become too pale, and he looked like he was struggling to breathe- perhaps I shouldn’t have taken the bullet out, but I didn’t know, and the human body was too breakable. There was nowhere someone could be safely hit by a bullet- even if it hadn’t crossed his heart or his brain, he was still bleeding out beneath me, and the guilt of it threatened to overwhelm me at any moment.

“You’ll be alright,” I told him. “I...I promise. Help is coming.”

Charles shook his head, a minute gesture, his eyes too wide. He had begun to shiver.

“I…” he began, his voice little more than a whisper, and on instinct I hushed him- like some fool nurse in a war hospital, comforting the dying.

“It’s alright,” I told him again, more forcefully this time, as though by swearing it I could make it come true. Raven knelt on his other side, and I could see her eyes too were fixed to the blood, that slowly advancing line of red.

“I can’t-” Charles tried again, and it sounded like speaking was almost too difficult for him. All the colour had drained from his face, and I couldn’t stand it.

“Don’t try to speak, Charles,” Raven said to him, and perhaps she meant to be gentle, but her voice came out too shrill. Charles’ eyes narrowed for an instant, the blue becoming sharp, and Raven recoiled- gasping, covering her mouth with one hand.

“What is it?” I demanded. Raven only shook her head, yellow eyes wet and wide, and I knew Charles had told her something- but he couldn’t tell me, I still had the helmet on. I fumbled for it, in that instant not thinking of the danger for even a second, while Raven whispered:

“He said he can’t…”

As the helmet came off Charles finished for himself, out loud and in the strongest voice he could muster.

“I can’t feel my legs,” he hissed, and I felt my body go cold.

The pool of blood kept advancing across the carpet.

-M-

“How is he?” I asked the doctor Azazel had summoned, and perhaps I said it too harshly- or perhaps he was a coward- for he flinched away from my words as he peeled off his surgical gloves. The bunker had, perhaps not surprisingly, been equipped with a medical bay. I had only been able to watch half of the procedure- Charles, unconscious on his belly, the wound surrounded by blue tarp as the doctor picked through his bloody flesh- before leaving to pace the corridor beyond, training my thoughts away from the cool metal of the scalpel and the sewing needle.

“I- he’ll live,” the doctor said shakily, winding his hands in front of him. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but doesn’t need a transfusion, I don’t think…”

“What about his spine?” I asked, and the doctor’s jaw clenched.

“It’s hard to say without the right equipment,” he replied. “If you were to bring him to the hospital-”

I growled, and behind me a coffee table with metal legs lifted into the air- the man’s face drained immediately, so I kept it there. His bare fingers, I saw, were trembling. It had been Azazel’s grinning red face and Hank’s monstrous snarl that had convinced him to work on Charles. I wondered if he had thought I was ‘normal’.

“From what I saw in surgery,” the doctor continued carefully, “there is damage to the lumbar vertebrae. This could have long-lasting effects. If you would consider-”

“He’s not going to a hospital,” I repeated. I didn’t think I could stand to put him at the mercy of any more humans in such a way. And besides, the CIA would be looking for him; after the destruction of the ships in Cuba, everyone would be looking for him. The doctor stared at me, clearly frightened- I did not need to read minds to know the precise shape of his thoughts.

‘What are you people?’

“Tell me what he needs,” I said at length, carefully putting the table back down behind me. A show of calm; I had no right to lose my head over my own mess. The doctor nodded, and pulled out a notepad from his pocket to begin.

-X-

Once Azazel took the doctor away- perhaps returning him to his hospital, more likely killing and disposing of him, I neither knew nor cared- I moved Charles to a bedroom in the bunker, sleeping and attached to a morphine drip. He still looked unbearably sick, his cheeks too pale and the circles under his eyes a deep purple. My fingers traced the IV line where it entered his vein- it was obscene, but I could feel the needle pressed into him. It felt like an invasion- in an attempt at rationality, I tried to tell myself that it was better than his suffering.

“Will he be okay?” asked Raven, peering around the door at us. She was still dressed as herself, the yellow suit unbuttoned at the top and smeared with blood across her waist. She looked like she had been crying.

“He isn’t going to die,” I told her, but she did not look reassured. “...and as for the rest, we don’t know yet.”

She nodded slowly, gaze turning back to her brother. I wondered if he could hear anything, as he was now- if he had drug-induced dreams of everyone’s fear for him, of my shame. Perhaps it would reassure him, if it were so.

When Raven left, I raised his hand to my lips, pressing a kiss to his dry knuckles. I wanted him to know I hadn’t intended this. I had never wanted to break him.

-M-

“You killed Sebastian, didn’t you?” was the first thing Emma Frost said to me when Azazel teleported her into the sitting room of the bunker. She did not need to read my mind- in fact she couldn’t, the helmet I now wore acted both as proof and repellent. I nodded to her, my fingers gripping the metal tightly- a warning.

“Azazel said you also destroyed the fleets in Cuba,” she continued with a little smile, and I only nodded again. She hummed, and sat down leisurely on a white chair by the piano, her fingers tapping rhythms on the armrests.

“Everything might still turn out the way we wanted,” she said, seemingly more to herself than to me. “Humans are fools, after all.”

Her brow suddenly furrowed, and ice-blue eyes flicked back to me- considering something, perhaps, something I could not understand.

“Where’s the other telepath?” she said at length. “He hasn’t reached out to me. Did he die?”

“He was injured,” I replied tightly, thankful that the helmet protected me from her feeling the frigid lurch in my stomach when she said those words. “He’s asleep.”

Emma hummed again, one fine hand resting against her mouth, thinking. I supposed she had reason to be concerned- in fact, everyone did. I had a feeling he was much, much stronger than her, when she was made of flesh (instead of diamond). There was only one protective helmet.

...and I knew him better than to assume he would be happy when he woke up.

-M-

Emma stood by the tremendous HAM radio in the sitting room, having turned its dials to an American news channel, a report on the recent disaster- what was being called the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The others from the mansion had all been gathered from about the bunker and were seated in various places about the room, their faces holding disquieted expressions. I joined them. Their silences held every sense of exhaustion and shock.

It was Shaw’s former associates- with the exception of Angel- who were the most composed; Azazel’s tail flicked back and forth behind him, seemingly in introspection rather than agitation, and the man who made whirlwinds- Janos, I recalled- simply sat in a corner with his arms folded, face entirely inscrutable. Emma Frost seemed entirely unruffled, her poise prim and a faint, self-contented smile gracing her fine lips.

The radio told us that, though the UN’s rescue efforts were ongoing, no survivors had yet been found from either the American or Soviet ships. The cause of the incident, moreover, was still up in the air- the American source, of course, was easily claiming that the Soviets must have crossed the embargo line and/or opened fire, leaving the Americans no choice but to engage in a full retaliation- I had a feeling that Soviet-supported channels would say something similar, only in reverse. I considered the situation with a kind of cool distance- I wondered if the level of destruction would be enough to start the war Shaw had hoped for, and if the CIA (who knew what had really happened- after all, I had not killed Moira MacTaggert) would try to put a stop to it. At the moment, I felt like it didn’t really matter.

“You bastard,” said Alex suddenly, his voice too loud in the quiet we had formed. I realized vaguely that he was speaking to me. “You fucking bastard.”

Alex stood, and he strode across the room, grabbing me by the lapel of the shirt I had on (scavenged from the bunker’s extensive supplies- I couldn’t bear to wear that stained suit anymore, couldn’t bear Charles’ blood on my hands). The younger man’s eyes were wild, and for a second I felt the press of an unnatural heat against my chest- though this, thankfully, subsided.

“You killed them all!” he snapped, shoving me back, one trembling finger pointed in my face. “You killed them, and then dragged us here- you’re fucking crazy, that’s what!”

“It had to be done,” Angel cried out from the sofa. Her face was red with tears and pain- her wings, she had sealed back into her skin, and I wondered if the burn wound she had received in our fight would heal itself, or if she was to be disabled, too.

(This thought shocked me for a second- I hadn’t even realized I was going to think it.)

“Don’t you understand?” she continued, her hands clasped tight together in her lap. “This is the only way. We’ll come out on top, Alex, just like he planned.”

Alex let go of me, but he shook his head, unconvinced. I knew why- the weight of that ‘he’ clung to the air between all of us. ‘He’ was everywhere in this bunker- in the expensive rugs, the white couches, the fine liquor and the French music laid out by the record player. ‘He’ was dead, I had killed him- his body now lay, limp and empty, on that cursed beach in Cuba- but his ghost filled this place. It was his dream that was coming true on the radio.

“That’s fucking crazy,” Alex said again, his voice nearly at a shout. “You can’t all believe this. We have to get out of here-”

“And go where?” Emma Frost asked suddenly, her more delicate voice cutting over Alex’s with ease. “Back home? Your home is a cell at a military base, Alex. A cage. That is where we will all be kept, if we don’t stick together.”

“No, you guys will be in a cage,” Alex replied, waving a hand wildly across the room at Shaw’s associates- and, at me. “You will go to prison- you’re criminals! But I didn’t do anything wrong- and neither did Sean or Hank or Raven, or-or the Prof. We don’t belong here.”

The way he said ‘criminals’ sounded to me like a substitute for something else- ‘the bad guys’, perhaps, a moral view of the world based in Saturday-morning cartoons, in action figures and newspaper comics. The only view of the world Alex had been able to develop as a child, before his gift had made him too dangerous to be kept around other people.

“You’re a mutant,” Emma continued calmly, a coy little smirk curving up the ends of her lips. “That’s all that matters now.”

Alex just took a step back, still shaking his head.

“I’m getting out of here,” he said, and he looked pleadingly at those who he had proclaimed innocent. “Come with me, guys. I’m gonna blast out of here if I have to- I’m gonna go get help.”

Sean was the only one who began to stand, but before anything more could be said Alex’s eyes suddenly rolled back into his head and he fell to the floor, every muscle going limp. The sound his body made as it landed was very familiar to me.

“What did you do?” Raven asked shrilly, turning to Emma, and the other woman only shrugged, nonchalant.

“Nothing that hurt him,” she said. “I only let him sleep. Best not to let him go burning any holes in our safehouse. Now…”

Emma turned off the radio which had been dimly playing through the confrontation, and clapped her hands together gently.

“The plan will go on as intended,” she said, every part a queen laying out a royal decree. “I will accept no arguments there. I am happy to welcome the rest of you to our ranks- nothing will be done to you, provided you do not make any attempts to jeopardize our future. Is this understood?”

She said all of this with a smile, almost like it was a joke- as though everyone could understand how silly it would be, to ‘jeopardize our future’. She was clever in that way; I respected it. No one said anything- still in shock, perhaps, from seeing Alex’s body fall to the floor- but as I watched, the satisfied expression on Emma’s face slowly began to fade, replaced with rising concern as she looked out to the North wall, seeing something no one else could.

-erik-

...the thought was little more than a whisper, so soft against the inside of my ear it almost wasn’t there.

I turned immediately, striding from the room without another word.

“Where are you going?” Hank called after me, but I did not reply- I only heard what Emma said, her voice trailing me out the door:

“Xavier’s awake.”

-X-

Charles’ eyes flickered open when I entered the room, struggling to focus on me. The blue of them was almost eclipsed by black, his pupils blown wide and dizzy by the drugs, a thin sheen of sweat formed across his pale forehead.

-erik-

-I heard again, and I saw a red tongue peek out to touch a dry lower lip, and immediately poured him some water from the pitcher on the side table. I did not remember it being there before- I supposed Raven must have supplied it in those intervening hours, when everyone had slowly showered and dressed and gathered in that sitting room, trying to shake off the effects of a hugely life-changing day.

Charles drank in tiny sips, his throat working painfully, and he didn’t even manage half the glass before he requested I pull it away (with the uncharacteristically simple telepathic image of myself doing exactly that). I sat beside him, taking his hand in mine, stopping his fingers from trailing over the needle embedded in his other arm.

“How do you feel?” I asked after a moment, discarding a number of less sympathetic questions: how much do you remember, what do you know, how bad did it hurt, do you hate me?

Charles chuckled bitterly, his eyes out of focus on the white ceiling above him.

“High,” he replied in a haggard little voice, and for a moment he closed his eyes again, and I watched his breathing steady in his chest. I rubbed the back of his hand- silly, as though that could make up for anything- and Charles barely seemed to notice.

“Oh, Erik,” he continued weakly. “What have you done?”

And there was nothing I could say to that.

Chapter 2: Blasted Heath

Charles fell asleep again soon after speaking those damning words to me. He had barely been awake in the first place, too hopped up and sedatives and painkillers, the touch of his mind against mine sluggish and heavy; he had barely been able to say anything more, shivering as I stroked his pale cheeks, looking about the room like he didn’t understand where he was. I knew this was only a delaying of the inevitable. I had a feeling he would push me away the moment he was capable of it, so I stayed with him as the hours of the day turned to night, holding his hand and the illusion of peace that came with his sleeping. I did not attend to anyone else; I had no desire to.

Raven joined me after a while, seemingly relieved to find Charles asleep, and she sat down on the other side of the bed.

“Did he say anything, before?” she asked, and I just shook my head, too tired to want to explain. That heartbroken, accusatory look in his eyes- it felt like too shameful a thing to say out loud.

“You should get something to eat,” Raven continued. “I think everyone else already has. This place is...well-prepared.”

She swallowed uncomfortably, looking back down at Charles. He was not sleeping so restfully as he had been before- his brow was furrowed, his eyes occasionally shifting beneath their lids, as though he was having a bad dream.

“Do you really think there will be a nuclear war?” she murmured. “I mean, that’s what we wanted to stop- or at least...to be honest, I don’t know what you want.”

“Are you angry with me?” I asked her plainly, responding to the numbness in her tone of voice. “Or is it just that you don’t understand?”

“I’m not angry,” she said quickly, her shoulders hunched. “Not like Alex. He’s still out, by the way, we moved him to the couch…”

I supposed she still had an affection for me- but, I would concede, she had handled the rejection that night she had come to my room much better than could be expected. She hadn’t been enraged or disgusted, discovering the exact nature of my relationship with her brother- another thing, just like her blue skin and Hank’s fur and Azazel’s tail that made living among humans impossible.

(Even if he hadn’t thought so.)

“Charles was wrong,” I said to her gently (I said to myself). “That’s all. I know he meant well, all those years- keeping you from yourself- but he was wrong.”

“How do you know?” Raven asked. “Alex had a point- wouldn’t we have been heroes, if you hadn’t….”

She gestured vaguely with her hands over the bed, likely meaning ‘killed all those people’ or something like it, and I almost laughed. I stopped the sound from escaping- it would not have been a nice laugh.

“Raven,” I said calmly, and I held my left arm out across the bed over Charles, pulling back the sleeve to reveal that meandering line of black numbers trailing across my skin, a black set too close to the blue of my veins. “Do you know what this is?”

Even with her natural skin she visibly blanched, leaning away from me as though I had brandished a knife in her face.

“You-” she began, and she put a hand to her mouth. Answer enough, that was. “Oh my God, Erik, I...I didn’t know.”

I pulled the sleeve back, the heat of her eyes on my skin unwelcome, and settled my arms on the bed.

“I pass for gentile well enough,” I said casually.

“How old were you?” she asked, clearly trying to calculate the years in her head, and I simply replied:

“I was a child.”

Quiet fell between us, more distinctly uncomfortable than before. It wasn’t the first time I had been rewarded with such a reaction, especially not from those considered properly ‘white’- Charles had never pulled away from me because of it, but then, he was different from most. He had always known everything.

“This time, it will be worse,” I said after a while. “We have true, physical advantages, not something that can be chalked up to a...a financial conspiracy. The humans will try to destroy us. Shaw had good ideas- hopefully, we can make them destroy themselves, first.”

It embittered me a little to admit this, for it had always been easier to imagine Shaw as something other than a man- a monster, incapable of feeling, an icon of my hatred. Perhaps he truly had been that. But he had been right, also. Once more, I found myself thinking of the strange mirror that he and Charles made in my life: my teachers, one I hated but who saw clearly, the other I loved but who was blind.

The quiet continued. Raven was thinking, looking down at her brother, and I had a feeling that in the end, she would agree with me.

“I’ll go find some food,” I said, standing, giving Charles’ cold hand one last squeeze. “Take care of him.”

I didn’t need to ask her to tell me if he woke up- Charles could easily do that himself.

-M-

The bunker Shaw had constructed really was tremendous. It stretched for what was likely miles, deep under the earth of an uninhabited island near Madagascar (or so said Emma Frost). There were more bedrooms than current guests, suggesting that Shaw really had intended to extend a hand to the mutants who would be struggling through the coming war. A kind of Noah’s Ark for our kind, equipped with more than we needed- non-perishable food to last for months (possibly, if rationing was applied, even years), assorted medical supplies alongside the bay and laboratory, clothing, cleaning equipment, and facilities with hot running water. More than that, there was luxury- many of the rooms were finely decorated with expensive art and furniture, each bedroom had a private ensuite bath, there was a gymnasium and an overly well-stocked bar. It was an emperor’s version of a doomsday shelter, built on obscene wealth. I wondered how many years Shaw had been alive, working towards this- I wondered how much of the Nazi gold he had collected in Germany during my youth had been put towards it. It seemed he had been concocting his plan for much longer than I had thought.

I did not suppose him a saviour- I had little doubt that his desired role in the new world would have been as an Augustus, a god-king, in a position of egotistical power above all the rest. I was glad I had taken that from him- but it didn’t mean I wouldn’t also take advantage of what he had done.

The others already had- even the children of the mansion had claimed rooms, some more tentatively than others. I supposed that Alex and Sean would be the most difficult to convince- after all, Raven and Hank couldn’t really live among humans anymore, even if they wanted to. A strange quiet seemed to fill the space, as fragile as a pane of glass; everyone was waiting to hear what would happen next. I wasn’t any different.

Yet, after eating, I felt stronger than I had before, my blood pumping more warmly in my veins. I was completely confident, now, that I had done the right thing back on the beach in Cuba. Perhaps my method could have had more finesse, but that wasn’t my fault- there had been no other option, the humans had backed us into a corner. That woman had fired the gun.

In the end, time would side with me.

-X-

Emma Frost approached me as I put away my dishes, dressed as she always was like some cross between a whore and an empress, entirely in white. Her arms were folded under her breasts, and her eyes were very hard as she looked at me. I supposed I had been expecting this.

“Did you love that man?” I asked her, unwilling to even say his name- there was too much of him in this place already. Emma raised one fine eyebrow, and I thought I had surprised her- I didn’t know why- and she snorted, the sound from her as delicate as such a thing could be.

“Of course not,” she said calmly. “But he was good at what he did. I believed in him.”

“You couldn’t have stopped me,” I told her. No one could have- not even Charles, and he had certainly tried.

“The past isn’t my concern,” Emma replied, turning her head to one side, curious. “The future is.”

I felt something suddenly- a touch inside my head, but it was not familiar, cold instead of warm and hard instead of soft. A feeling like ice creeping into the corridors of my memory. I jerked my head to the side, and all of the knives in the kitchenette where we stood came to life, flying through the air and stopping dead a few millimetres from Emma’s perfect face. She left my mind instantly- though to her credit, she did not flinch.

“Stay out of my head,” I snapped at her. I did not remove the blades. Harshly, I brought forth the memory of Russia- when I had tied her to a bed and tortured her, nearly breaking her skull from her lovely spine- and launched it towards her, hoping that in her mind it sounded like a scream. I would do it again, I would do worse, and I would not hesitate- she had to know that.

But, “Why should I?” was what she said to me, the only sign of her discomfort a faint furrowing of her brows. “You let him in all the time. And baby, let’s be honest- I probably make better company.”

I only glared at her, my jaw set, determined not to let any response to that slip through. Slowly I put the knives back where they had come from, the movements of the metal graceful and fluid in the air. Another warning- I had perfect control. I was aware of the metal on the zipper of the sleek white jacket she was wearing, on the backing of the diamond studs in her ear. I had never torn the earrings from a woman’s skin before- usually, I dealt with men, and tooth fillings were more straightforward- but I wouldn’t hesitate to try.

Emma let out a little sigh, more like a huff than anything, and I wondered how much she had heard- I hadn’t been trying to keep the volume of those thoughts down, after all.

“Well, I suppose it’s no business of mine if you bat for the other team,” she continued, as though the threats didn’t matter to her. Perhaps they didn’t- I felt a spark of annoyance at that. “What matters is that you don’t get in my way.”

“‘Your’ way?” I echoed sharply, and now it was her turn to glare.

“I’m in charge now,” she said, her back as straight as a ramrod and her eyes as hard as ice. “And I’m grateful for your help in Cuba, but from now on, don’t make any big moves without my say so.”

“I don’t think so,” I said with a laugh, amused by her too-confident stance, her bold words. I reached out across the underground complex, searching for something in particular, and felt it begin to race eagerly towards me- like a lapdog, happy to do my bidding.

“Oh, you men are all the same,” Emma replied with a faint ‘tsk’. “Just because you’ve got something to hang doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. I know this plan better than anyone-”

“Believe me, I know what I’m doing,” I growled. I wondered if I should have put the knives away so lightly. “I took care of things on that beach- and where were you?”

“‘Took care of things’?” she snapped, now angry for the first time. “Your only plan was revenge, the rest was just circumstance. And for the record, I was gathering information- the minds of the CIA’s best and brightest, right outside my door! What, did you think I was just lying there, waiting to be rescued? You’re too simple, Erik Lehnsherr, too single-minded. Without Sebastian, you don’t have a clue what you’re doing anymore, do you?”

The helmet I had called whipped about the corner of the door at Emma’s elbow, and she jumped to the side like it had clipped her (perhaps it had). I caught it with ease and placed it upon my head, and the moment it was there any last vestige of her touch- the ferns of frost that crept up window panes during winter- was cut away. The look she gave me was absolutely filthy, but I smiled.

“I prefer ‘Magneto’,” I told her. She grit her teeth for a moment and then shook her head, turning to leave the way she had come. Incapable of holding a conversation if she couldn’t see across the surface of her partner’s head, it seemed.

“Men,” I heard her say with no little disgust, and I waited until I could not hear her footsteps anymore before taking the helmet off again. I didn’t want to block out anyone else’s calls. But I supposed it would be best to keep it closer, from now on.

-M-

Charles did not wake again until the morning of the second day. This time, he did not call for me directly, but still I felt him flickering across my mind- a distant presence, curious and wary- and went to his side immediately.

When I arrived I thought he looked better than he had before- he was sitting up somewhat on the abundance of pillows beneath him, and was fiddling with the IV drip next to the bed, a frown on his face. Still, ‘better’ was only a little finer than ‘destroyed’- he looked exhausted, more haggard than I had ever seen, the sense of youthfulness and brightness that I associated with him (that he always possessed, even at his most miserable) was wiped completely from his features. The sight of this shocked me enough that I froze in the doorway for a moment, my fingers clenched into fists. When Charles looked up at me, his blue eyes were as flat and hard as coins, made strange in the bed of purple shadows they sat upon.

“How are you?” I asked foolishly, and Charles sighed, a sound so weak I almost didn’t hear it.

-thewrongquestion-

“Fine,” he replied out loud. His voice was small and dry, and once again I moved to pour him water from the jug at his bedside, and once again he accepted. I saw his eyes trace the path of the helmet I had follow me into the room, watching me set it down on one of the chairs. “...a little dizzy. I’m not in any pain.”

When he drank he was thirstier than he seemed to expect, some of the water dripping down his chin in his haste, and I poured him more. This scene we were in felt strange, but I couldn’t say exactly why- perhaps, because all my eyes could focus on was the tremor in Charles’ fingers, and he looked at the helmet, instead of my face.

When he was finished I put the cup back on the table, and finally he turned to me. I felt him brushing against my mind, but it was a wordless presence, a dull pressure that was unlike him.

“Close your eyes,” I said and, after a second too many, he did so.

I kissed him then, a gentle press of my lips to his- not so very different from the first time we had done this, when he had so effortlessly lured me back into the CIA building, promising me nothing and everything all at once. Letting me know that I was safe, understood and wanted in a way I never had been before, not with anyone.

(‘I could, but I won’t…’)

I rubbed the palm of my hand over Charles’ thigh, the touch firm to compensate for the blanket separating our skin. Charles did nothing- he barely returned the kiss, his breathing weak against me- and so I pulled back, watching his eyes flicker back open. He must have seen my intentions somewhere, understood what I was doing without having to look, because ever so slowly he shook his head.

“You can’t feel it?” I asked, and now it was my turn to sound weak. Charles looked down, and I rubbed him again, more firmly this time. Still, he said nothing. With a frustrated noise- one I hadn’t entirely intended to make- I tore the blankets from his lap, ignoring how he flinched, and how only his upper body did so. I ran a hand down his leg now, the motion too much like a stableman trying to lift the hoof of a horse, but Charles didn’t move. I gripped one knee, squeezing it, and Charles closed his eyes with a sigh.

“Erik,” he said dully, and I ignored this, stroking his shin, pinching the end of his bare foot. I could feel his skin there, it was warm and solid and real, and the thought that he might not made my head spin.

“That’s enough, Erik,” Charles continued, and he lay his head back down on the pillows. There was a long pause in which he sighed again- he sounded so tired, and he couldn’t even tell if I was touching him or not, and it felt to me like the worst horror in the world. A shiver ran down my own spine- the thought of being in his position, trapped in a bed and powerless forevermore, gave me a sense of panic that turned the edges of the world white. Even the thought was unbearable to me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said through clenched teeth, and perhaps the wave of self-directed anger and shame that flooded me was too bright, because Charles opened his eyes again to look at me with a little frown, turning his head to the side. “I did this to you.”

In my carelessness, I had made him a prisoner in his own body. I did not know if such a thing was forgivable. Certainly, were I him, it would not be, and this knowledge burned inside me like acid.

Charles seemed to consider all this for a moment- what I had said, and very likely what I had thought- and then he spoke slowly, each word careful and somehow meticulous on his tongue:

“‘This’...this was an accident, Erik. But what you did to those men was not.”

For a moment, the shock of this was so strong it was all I felt. That he was more upset about that...how could it be so? Something inside of me was reeling, and I realized that though I had loved him all this time, I didn’t really understand him at all. Of course, we always disagreed, but this...! Was he still too high on the painkillers? Did he not understand what had become of him? He would never walk again-

“Bringing us all here was not,” Charles continued stubbornly, despite the quiver in his strained voice, as though speaking over my thoughts. “You made that choice for us, Erik, and now we’re all fugitives. Not everyone would have chosen that.”

“You would have stayed on that beach?” I asked incredulously, and Charles glared at me, the look in his eyes suddenly surprisingly strong despite the weakness writ large on his every other feature.

“Yes,” he said firmly. He sounded mad to me; he might as well say he would throw himself into a volcano with such certainty. “I would have. I would show that we do not all think the same. And I would not have been alone- Alex, Sean, Hank…”

-he faltered at this, and though I do not think he intended me to hear it, a questioning, uncertain echo fluttered across my mind-

-raven?-

“...not everyone is content with terrorism, Erik. With murder.”

-MENSREA-

I felt, for an instant, a burst of fury that was not my own, hot and burning against the inside of my head. I saw the silhouettes of the boats burning on the Cuban horizon, and I heard something I had not heard at the time- the sounds of human screaming, human pain, human death. Consciousnesses set on fire and then stifled, blazing brilliantly in horror and fear and then going silent. I realized this was all a memory- but of course, it was not mine. I wasn’t the one who could feel people die.

I could count up all of my sins from that day, now- I had made him feel what Shaw felt as that coin passed through his head, I had made him die thousands of painful deaths on those boats, and I had left him paralyzed. It was a terrible conceit of mine that he should want to see me at all.

Hearing this, perhaps, Charles pulled from my head completely, and the look he gave me was almost cold, his lips pressed together so tightly they had turned white.

“It’s not about me, Erik,” he said lowly. “Do you really not understand that?”

“Maybe I don’t,” I replied, my voice too harsh, my mind spinning. I realized I was still squeezing his leg, something he didn’t even notice, and I let go. “Shaw deserved it, and the others were only human. But you…”

This should never have happened to you.

Charles watched me a moment more, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, and then with another sigh he looked away, covering his face with his hands. Part of me thought I shouldn’t be arguing with him- he was sick, recovering from a horrible injury, and his veins were still swimming with drugs- and another part knew that he did not deserve to be patronized. Besides, what was this, if not our regular disagreement? The words were different, but the positions behind them were just the same.

“Frost wants to finish Shaw’s plan,” I said quietly. “The humans will be embroiled in a nuclear war, and our kind will inherit the earth.”

Charles said nothing to me at that; I think he understood what I had left unspoken: I want to finish it, too. I took one of his hands (he let me) and lifted it to my lips, pressing a kiss to the pale skin there.

“I want you by my side,” I continued, breath soft on his knuckles. “In the end, you’ll see- we want the same thing.”

I did not wait for him to dismiss me after that; I imagined I had already outstayed my welcome. I folded his hand back on his chest, clasping it warmly in farewell, and left him there. There was something I needed to do.

-M-

I went to Shaw’s room.

No one stopped me along the way- I did not even see another face, and I wore the helmet, my intentions obscured from any prying eyes. Within the confines of the metal about my skull, I felt very alone. It was easy to imagine that there was no one else here.

It was easy to tell that this particular room had been intended for Shaw- it was larger by far than any of the other unpersonalized guest quarters, and it had a wealthier appearance to it, as well. There was a record player in the corner, and the stack of vinyls next to it was topped with Edith Piaf- I did not bother to look any further. The bed was centered across from the door, in the coffin position, and this thought almost made me laugh. For a moment, a wave of brutal satisfaction spread through me- he had been so confident in his future, hadn’t he? He had only ever imagined that he would end up here, a king of the new race, a ruler bowed to and beloved by all. He had thought his sins in the human world wouldn’t matter.

Charles had said Shaw’s death would not bring me peace, and perhaps he was right, but it certainly had brought me pleasure. It was not what I regretted from that day on the beach.

Ignoring the dead man’s luxuries I turned to the right-hand wall, running my hand across it. I could feel something behind it- something metal, more metal than should have been there. He did like his secret doors, didn’t he? It was just like I had thought.

After a few moments of fiddling I found the key in his bookshelf; by pulling back a false copy of The Divine Comedy the wall cracked open, sliding apart to welcome its master with flawless ease. Blue lights within the secret chamber flickered on, but this time there was no nuclear core- that was further into the building, downstairs, I had already found it.

No, here there was a cache of weapons. Most were familiar- guns of all sizes, and lines of ammunition, a sight terribly American. He hadn’t needed such things, I knew- but it made sense that he would want to keep all the power to himself, his and only his to dispense to his adoring followers. But there were other things, too, not all of which I recognized: more designs of the helmet that I now wore, and pieces of armour, chest plates and vambraces and rings stamped with a variety of insignia. The largest of these depicted in its center a crown surrounded by flames- I felt vaguely disgusted. This was how he would seal his letters? He would have been more like a feudal lord than a Caesar, then.

I stepped back from the armoury and raised my hands. None of this was needed here, and something else was. Bullets had already done enough harm.

With careful consideration I melted the metal down into fluid, taking from it every sense of the original violent, egotistical shapes. Silver and red brass and steel, all of these drifted in the air before me, cleared of their imperfections and ready to be remade. With a soft exhale I put them to work- following a pattern of design I had only vaguely in my memory, and making adjustments as needed. I wanted this to be beautiful, as beautiful as I could make it, at least.

Slowly, the swirls of metal began to take on a new form. Slender spokes and wide, silver tires, a round seat and back to make what could have been a throne. I tried to keep my guilt out of mind- this was not an attempt at atonement, only what was deserved.

When I was finished I let the metal settle for a moment, and then gave the wheelchair a little push, testing to ensure it glided smoothly across the floor. I thought about the corridors and door frames of the safehouse- something I never would have bothered with before- and concluded that there would be no difficulty. For the first time in my life, I began thinking about such things as cars and sidewalks and stairs, and for a moment I was lost in it, before coming back to myself with a sigh. I remembered, distantly, the vision I had had for a future kingdom of mutants- the paradise on earth, where no love was shameful, and no gift was uncelebrated. I decided almost angrily that if ever such a place were to be made, there would be ramps and elevators for every floor of every building.

I turned to leave Shaw’s room, bringing the wheelchair with me. As the door closed, I sealed the metal lock with less than a thought, out of dislike as much as anything- at some point I should like to destroy all the remnants in this place of that hateful man, but for now that would do.

Charles was not alone when I returned to his room- as I approached from the corridor I saw his door was open, and voices filled the air, all familiar. For a moment, I was disarmed by this, and I stood just out of sight in the shadows by the doorway, feeling every bit a spectre. Was there a line drawn somewhere, one that I shouldn’t cross? After all, I didn’t quite belong in the same class as the others, not anymore. I had hurt him, when they had not. And I was still wearing the helmet- he didn’t even know I was here.

Tentatively I stepped around the corner and into the light, taking off the helmet as I did so. The conversation in the room died so fast it felt like I had drowned it. All eyes had turned to me- Raven, Hank, Sean, and of course Alex, whose arms folded across his chest at the sight of me.

“Hey Erik,” Raven said lightly, but I did not look at her- then, I had eyes only for Charles, the only one whose gaze was lowered. I saw he had a plate of food on his lap, barely touched even as he moved to place it carefully on the bedside table.

“I have something for you,” I said around a tightness in my throat. Charles looked up at me then, and I felt a spark of his curiosity on the forefront of my mind, though it swiftly withdrew. Habit, more than desire, then- I wondered with no small amount of bitterness if he no longer wanted to spend time inside my head.

I stepped aside and pulled the wheelchair forth into the room, letting it roll to the side of the bed. I heard Raven make a small noise- surprise, perhaps- and when the thing came to a standstill Charles reached out to touch one of the elegantly shaped armrests, his fingers trailing the cool metal.

“Thank you, Erik,” Charles said in the quiet that had fallen, and finally he looked back at me, his eyes just as tired as before. “Really.”

I bowed my head to him in response, and then turned away. He had enough company at the moment, I didn’t want to ruin that for him. I ignored the metal I had placed in his room, pretending that I didn’t know he was still touching it, a warm palm resting across the armrest.

-X-

In the evening, many gathered in the sitting room again, listening as Emma Frost connected the tremendous radio to the world news to pick up on the movements of the humans. It was not everyone, as it had been last time- Sean, Alex, and Raven were missing, though Hank had come, pushing his glasses up his snout awkwardly. I didn’t doubt he felt an outsider, even though Angel smiled at him- the other former members of the Hellfire Club simply behaved as though he wasn’t there.

The news was precarious, if not damning. Investigations were still being done in regards to the events in Cuba, with no conclusions reached, and though the United States had reached out to the Soviet Union to open discussions, no response had been made. Azazel smirked to himself when this was said, his tail lashing eagerly back and forth behind him, and Emma raised a delicate eyebrow in an expression unmistakable for satisfaction. Which side would fire the first bomb? It was madness- mutually assured destruction. I viewed the prospect with a certain degree of emotional detachment. It seemed only a matter of time- when the bomb had been built, the end of humanity had been ratified, it was as simple as that.

A sound broke the quiet that had fallen over the room- the faint ringing of metal singing against itself- and when I turned to the doorway from where it came I was entirely shocked by the sight that greeted me.

Charles was there- he had come, pushing himself down the corridor in his wheelchair, seemingly all alone. He was only dressed in the same slacks as before, his feet and arms bare, and in the crook of his elbow I saw an ugly bruise where he had removed the IV from his flesh. He looked too pale, too fragile, like a man made of eggshells- his cheeks too white and his veins too blue, standing out from beneath his skin. I could hear his breathing from across the room.

He looked at me only briefly- a wordless brush across my head, simple, evaluatory- and then his eyes flicked over to Emma, so mine did too. They stared at each other in absolute silence for what felt like far too long. My head swiveled like a spectator at a tennis match from one to the other, even though of course I could not see the ball. Charles rubbed lightly at his lower lip, seemingly contemplative, while Emma fixed him down under a haughty glare- her posture, I thought, looked much tighter than his. Perhaps, more uncomfortable. I noticed for the first time that the colours of their eyes were very nearly identical- perhaps that was a trait common with telepaths, eyes as clear and blue as the winter sky.

I didn’t know who won their battle- what I could only assume was a battle- for though Charles looked away first it was Emma who let out a sharp sounding sigh, smoothing the front of her tight-fitting jacket with faintly trembling hands. The radio kept playing, and without saying anything Charles turned to listen to it, but I had a feeling he was the only one- everyone else shifted uncomfortably, eyes darting this way and that, trying to navigate the change in the room’s atmosphere. I couldn’t say what exactly had happened. Still, all of my attention focused easily on Charles- how tired he looked, had she hurt him the way she had in Russia? Had he really dragged himself here without help? He could have asked me, even if he didn’t want me anymore-

-didn’t love me, how could he after what I had done to him-

-I would always be there for him. I wanted to be there for him.

Charles looked up at me, something like surprise in his expression, but he said nothing- and Emma Frost turned the radio off.

There was quiet for a moment, and I wondered if Charles would ask her to put it back on- I would do it for him in an instant if he did, the knobs were made of metal...

“Well,” Charles said mildly, and somehow his feeble voice penetrated every corner of the room. “What a disaster.”

He rubbed his eyes with a dull-sounding sigh, and no one made any move to reply. It was as though we were all paralyzed by him- to test this, I lifted the helmet from where it sat beside me into the air, but I was not stopped. It was just the sight of him, then, that kept us trapped.

“Do you people know what a nuclear war would really entail?” Charles asked suddenly, his words scraping the inside of his throat on the way out. “Have you actually pictured it- the sheer amount of destruction?”

I found I was rather amazed by the strength of his words- how it contrasted with every other part of him. He didn’t seem cowed in the slightest, even though he was so vulnerable, gooseflesh on his arms and surrounded by powerful, able-bodied mutants. I was hyper-aware of their eyes on him in a way I never had been before.

“The radiation may lead to greater numbers of the mutant gene manifesting,” Charles continued tartly, “but the most affected would be babies in-utero. Those babies have to be born, to be raised- what kind of world would you be leaving for them? Nevermind those killed in the blasts- the highest concentration of humans and mutants both are in large cities, exactly where the bombs will be targeted. Even if you don’t care for human life-”

-at this, I felt Charles’ temper flare inside my head-

“-you will be killing thousands, even hundreds of thousands of your own kind. Could you bear that?”

“There can’t be so many,” Angel said in shock.

“And if there are, they wouldn’t all be in the United States or the Soviet Union,” Emma continued, her voice sharp. Then, suddenly, she flinched, and I felt it too- a shard of something hot and painful, lancing into my skull and vibrating there. It was gone as soon as it came, but still I shuddered, and I saw this same sentiment reflected across the room. I had never felt him do something like that before- perhaps he hadn’t meant to, perhaps he was still out of sorts from his surgery. But then again, perhaps he had.

“You think it will end with them?” Charles snapped, as though nothing had happened. “You think their allies won’t join in? Honestly, have none of you taken a history class, think of the Great War! And they aren’t the only ones with nuclear weapons- what about China? England? What about Japan? Do you think they will sit idly out of such a conflict, knowing first-hand what these bombs can do?”

“Sacrifices will have to be made,” Emma tried, but Charles silenced her, I saw it, saw her eyes squeeze close in obvious pain- she shifted suddenly to diamond form, but he was already speaking over her, his voice louder and harsher than it had been before. He was nearly shouting, and it clearly exhausted him.

“And for those in safe locations, the chain of supply will be disrupted,” he continued. “Regular people will die in droves from radiation sickness, and later cancer. The clouds will spread across the planet and infect everything- killing crops, livestock, most natural resources. Have you ever heard of the black rain that fell in Hiroshima? The world economy will break down, those who are not already sick will starve, and we’ll be sent back to the Dark Ages.”

Charles looked at me suddenly, with an intensity in his eyes so brilliant it took my breath away. Somehow, in that moment he was more beautiful than I had ever seen him- burning as bright as a star inside my mind. I thought I saw a cross behind my eyelids, turned on its side and set on fire, a fire that was impossibly blue.

“...is that the mutant paradise you imagine will come from this?”

There was silence for a moment. Charles was out of breath, I could see it, and for an instant his eyes fluttered closed before slowly opening again. I stood to go to him- how could I not, after that- and I thought that no one would dare say anything more to him.

“Our people will rise from the ashes,” said Emma, proving me wrong. Still- and perhaps this was an illusion- I thought she did not sound quite as confident as before. “...like a phoenix.”

“There’s no such thing as phoenixes,” Charles said dizzily. His voice gave out on the last word, his body beginning to tremble, and his touch against the forefront of my mind became hazy, the clear ‘X’ dissolving into mist. “Or at least, I have never met one...not yet…”

I thought he was delirious, now, and when I put the back of my hand to his forehead- even in this, he did not stop me- it was too warm. Before he could make any objection I began steering his chair back out the way he had come, the wheels turning smoothly for me, just as I had designed them.

“You need to rest,” I told him, in a voice loud enough for the others to hear. “You’re still recovering…”

Charles gave Emma one last pointed look, but he let me back him out the door and down the corridor, and as soon as we were out of the others’ sights his eyes slipped closed and his neck fell lax, leaning against the back of the chair. He looked like he was struggling to catch his breath- he had exerted himself too much. Seeing him like this- wounded, weak, paralyzed- put in me an unfamiliar and rather desperate desire to keep him safe. Perhaps it was only guilt, perhaps it was some buried instinct, something no one had ever managed to raise in me before. But Charles had been a first in so many things, it was undeserved to assume he couldn’t change me more.

When we were back in his room I settled the wheelchair beside his bed, and with a laborious sigh Charles opened his eyes again, bracing his hands on the armrests to lift himself.

“Let me,” I said softly, and Charles turned to me, wide-eyed. Of course, he wasn’t wearing any metal, but that didn’t matter- with one arm around his back and the other under his knees I picked him up as gently as I could from the chair, laying him back down against the mattress. He had never weighed very much, but for some reason he didn’t seem to have any substance to me now, and so the act was terribly easy.

“I don’t hate you, you know,” Charles said quietly against my cheek. “I just… I can’t reconcile it…”

I hushed him, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, which was still too warm. Damn- could that be a sign of infection? The doctor had given him antibiotics, there were some in the drug mix Charles had so inexpertly taken himself off of…

“Oh, yes please,” Charles mumbled next to me. “Please, turn it down again.”

And I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I did replace the IV line, finding his vein easily with the fine metal of the fresh needle. I thought Charles was already asleep by the time I was done, and so I lay the comforter over him, pressing one last kiss to his forehead before turning to leave.

-iloveyouerik-

The thought stopped me in my tracks, and I looked back at him. His breathing had settled, slow and deep and even. He did not say anything more.

It felt rather self-absorbed, how the relief of those words brought tears to my eyes.

Chapter 3: Double Trust

Notes:

A bit of a shorter one, this time! I hope you enjoy my determined attempts to systematically make all of Mystique’s love interests gay (except for Hank...probably).

The next morning, I went to see Charles early, but when I arrived at his room he was already gone. I couldn’t help the downwards lurch of my stomach- it was too easy, after the beach, to imagine him gone forever- and so I reached out through the complex, ignoring the settled metal in the walls and floors, looking for the wheelchair I had made for him. The sensation of the thing was smooth and cool in my mind, as though I ran my fingers over a fine sculpture made of silver.

I followed this faint sensation through the corridors at a brisk pace, unable to say precisely where it led me until I was there, turning a corner and hearing for the first time a murmur of voices coming from one of the dining rooms ahead.

Just like before, my appearance did something strange to the environment- the conversation, though it had not been lively, instantly stopped and all eyes in the room turned to me. I did not allow myself to be cowed, meeting their collective gaze- Alex, Sean, Raven, Hank, and strangely, Angel also, an Angel who was not dressed so well as she usually was, her head haloed by flyaways and her arms folded across her chest, wearing nothing more than loose pajamas. There were the remnants of a breakfast on the table around which they all sat, and only Charles still had a full plate, Charles who sat so naturally at the head. I saw he had brought the IV with him this time, its clear plastic tentacles rising from the pale flesh of his arm.

“It’s alright, everyone,” Charles said, his voice quiet and hoarse. I wasn’t wearing the helmet, so surely to all of them the implication was obvious: ‘I would have stopped him if it wasn’t.’ Charles’ eyes seemed distant when they looked at me, and I wondered if he remembered what he had said last night, right before falling asleep. “Erik, there’s still some eggs and bread in the kitchen, if you would like.”

“I’m fine,” I said and, emboldened by his lack of rejection, I took a discarded chair from beside the table (doubtlessly moved aside to make way for his wheelchair) and pulled it up, sitting between him and Raven. She offered me a little smile, but she was the only one- the look on Alex’s face was particularly hostile, and neither of these things really surprised me.

“What were we talking about?” I asked, even though I knew perfectly well I was not included in this ‘we’, not really, not anymore. That being said, however, the lines drawn in the sand had clearly been blurred- stirred up by too many feet crossing from one side to the other. Angel had been one of ours (mine and Charles’) and then she had been Shaw’s, and yet here she was again. They did not all look at her as though she was some fairytale monster come to life.

-shedidntkillanyone-

“We’re talking about what to do,” Charles said out loud, even as he spoke otherwise inside my head. I saw behind my eyes a metal fence raised up before an expanse of silvery mist, each individual chainlink a delicate, perfect ‘X’. A small warning- he was telling me I would not like what was going to be said next.

“I want to leave,” Alex said plainly, his voice firm. “I’m not going to help you people destroy the goddamn world.”

At ‘you people’, he looked at me, the set of his jaw one of perfect resolution. I dipped my head to him, a show of my own restraint, like I assumed Charles wanted.

“I won’t do it either,” Sean said, shuffling a little more uncomfortably in his own seat. His words stuck to each other as he spoke, and he sniffed, tucking his hands into the front pockets of his pants. “This isn’t what we set out to do. Actually, it’s kind of the opposite.”

“Where will you go?” I asked sharply, and I thought I heard-felt Charles say something like ‘please, Erik’ or maybe ‘shut up’, but I didn’t listen to him. “The war between the humans is beginning. You won’t be safe out there.”

“No war has been declared yet,” Charles said, his eyes slipping closed as though his head hurt, his fingers gripping the armrests on his chair a little too tightly. The blue of his veins stood out on the backs of his hands.

“You know, I’ve got family back in Ireland,” Sean continued, looking at the table instead of any person in particular. “Was only in ‘merica for school. And Alex’s got people, too.”

“That’s right,” said Alex, his gaze still boring into me- a small relief, perhaps, that it was not from his eyes that his deadly lights originated. “My parents don’t know about all this. What am I supposed to do, just leave them?”

I said nothing to this- more accurately, I realized there was nothing to say, nothing to refute. It seemed I had gone around making too many assumptions again- I hadn’t had a ‘family’ since my childhood, but of course that wasn’t true for everyone. And though my mother had been human, I knew without a doubt that were she still alive today, I would think it only natural to spare her from the coming violence. I couldn’t hold it against these people to do the same. I looked down at the table, and I heard Charles sigh, a very faint sound of relief. There was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t want this anymore,” said Angel suddenly, and her voice sounded so broken that it surprised me into looking back up at her. I saw now that she wasn’t wearing any makeup, the way she usually would- her eyes were bare and puffed, rimmed with a red that only came from the strain of crying. She worried her plush lower lip with her teeth, her fingers digging into her own arms, and she looked younger at that moment than I had ever seen her before. “I didn’t…”

She took a deep, trembling breath, closing her eyes, and a tear fell through the unadorned lashes of one.

“I didn’t really know what it would all mean,” she continued weepily. “I was just so sick of being treated like crap- he said we would live like queens- I didn’t think it would be so bad. I didn’t even know that he- that he killed Darwin!”

“It’s alright, Angel,” Charles said gently to her, when her words dissolved too far into tears. At her side, Sean gave her a rather awkward pat on the shoulder. “It’s not your fault. What you all went through that night with the CIA was very traumatic, and Shaw lied to you. No one could expect you to have figured everything out on your own.”

She shook her head, perhaps not believing him, and as I watched the look in Charles’ eyes slowly sharpened, concentrating. There was quiet for a moment, and I didn’t know what he was telling her, but by the end of it she managed to pull herself back under control, wiping her nose on her sleeve. I turned to Raven- to the rest of the table, so to speak, that with skin that was not pink but blue.

“And what about you?” I asked. “And Hank?”

“I’m staying here,” Raven said firmly, meeting my gaze with her own powerful one. Where had all the hesitation, all the shame in her gone? I saw none of it now. A small good thing to have come of all this. “You guys are my family.”

“I don’t want there to be a war,” Hank piped up quietly when she was done. “But I’ll stay too. It’s not like there’s anywhere else I can go, is there?”

There was the very faintest hint of a growl in his voice when he said that, an animal resentment turned inwards. No one offered him a pat on the back- not that I blamed them. The muscles in my throat twinged faintly in memory.

“I promise that none of you will be forced to do anything you don’t want to,” Charles said gently. He wasn’t looking at me- I realized he had barely looked at me at all since I had come in. “Alex, Sean, I’ll try to get you home to your families as soon as possible-”

I made a noise at that, a little growl of protest, transmitting to Charles an image of my own- a tower with a beacon at the top, flashing brilliant orange. Charles cut himself off with a little sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

“...which, unfortunately, cannot be just yet. Now, if there’s nothing else, I need to have a private word with Erik.”

With this said, the others slowly shuffled off, taking their plates with them back to the kitchen and murmuring to each other in low voices. Class dismissed, I thought wryly. Raven was the only one who hesitated, her yellow eyes darting between me and Charles until he reassured her with a feeble little smile. Then they were all gone, and there was quiet in the room once more. Charles looked down at his own cold plate, flicking a piece of scrambled egg with his fork, but he did not make any move to raise a bite to his lips.

“It’s too dangerous for them to return home,” I said plainly. “If a nuclear war breaks out, here is the safest place they could be. And apart from that, the CIA knows everything about them- they won’t be left alone if they return undefended.”

“I know all that, Erik,” Charles said dully, and now more than before he sounded exhausted. I saw him shift uncomfortably in his chair, picking at the IV line where it entered his flesh. “But they aren’t our prisoners. And I for one, certainly won’t force them into being soldiers for a war they don’t agree with.”

“I know that, too,” I said with a little smile, surprised though I was to feel it on my face. Charles and his prim, unshakable morality. I had not been able to convince him of my views before Cuba, why would anything have changed now? Though, something had changed, I thought- I heard it in his use of the ‘first person plural’.

“What about you?” I asked him, in as gentle a voice as I could muster. “Do you want to go home?”

Go home, without me?

Charles finally looked back at me, and as always to meet his gaze was a little shock, only now more so than ever. He still looked so terribly sick, his eyes glassy and bruised, his lips turned down at the edges.

“It’s a little late for that, I think,” he replied. “And, as Raven said...I suppose my family is here.”

In a rush I kissed him then, unable to resist, and he did not push me away. I ran my fingers over his cold cheeks and the fragile skin of his throat, and I felt the gesture returned ever so softly- an encouragement that almost made my heart burst. I tried to show him everything, stuffing the forefront of my mind with memories of him, a reminder if he already knew: I had truly fallen in love with him on the day we first met, when he had pulled me from the water. That pure, brilliant connection we had had in those early days, before it had become sullied by time and disagreements- it was precious, and I still wanted it; I had never felt for anyone the way I felt for him.

When the kiss broke, it was so he could breathe, and I rested my head in the crook of his neck. His skin there smelled faintly of soap- he must have bathed and, in an oddly clinical way, the background hum of my thoughts turned to the logistics of such a thing as he was now. If he needed any help, I resolved, he could ask me-

-Charles snorted to himself (likely in response), pinching the bridge of his nose again, and I sat back.

“Are you in pain?” I asked him, and he sighed slowly, looking up at the ceiling.

“If I say ‘yes’, will you be terribly upset?” he replied, and the spike of anxiety and self-directed anger that flashed through me at those words was probably answer enough, because he smiled a little wryly to himself. I took his hand, squeezing his chilled skin.

“Where?” I asked immediately, and he shrugged.

“My back hurts, on and off,” he said. “A very sudden, sharp pain, but it doesn’t last long. Otherwise, I have a rather terrible headache.”

“Can I do anything?” I asked, the natural next question.

“I could do with a cup of tea,” he said mildly. I reached out to the kitchen adjacent to the dining room, finding the kettle and lifting it over to the sink to fill it with water. The tab to begin heating it wasn’t made of metal, I realized, so I lifted a fork from one of the drawers and used it instead to start the mechanism. Charles watched me with some amusement, perhaps seeing the steps as they were taken from inside my head.

“That’s a nice use of your powers,” he murmured when I was done. “Very domestic.”

My own memory of the beach flashed behind my eyes, drawn up by his words- that which was not nice, the opposite of domestic- and he must have seen it because he looked away again, the little smile his lips had been toying with fading away completely.

“Do you want something else to eat?” I asked him, gesturing to the neglected plate of eggs- surely, a cold and miserable thing by now. He shook his head.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” he replied, and the strange finality of that statement made my own stomach twinge. It was true, I hadn’t seen him really eat anything since the morning before Cuba, and surely that wasn’t right- surely he needed to ‘keep his strength up’, or some other such thing-

“You’re not a doctor, Erik,” Charles said, rubbing his eyes. “Well, neither am I- but I was there during the surgery, with that fellow you brought here. Listening. I know what I need to do to take care of myself.”

“You were awake during the surgery?” I managed, a thought more disturbing than I had previously considered. Charles almost laughed- in a background kind of way, I knew that before all of this he would have laughed, but now when he was not on fire he was nearly asleep. The brightness of him that I remembered was still gone.

“I couldn’t feel anything,” he replied. “Don’t worry about that. I- my physical self- was asleep, but my mind had managed to...catch on to his. I actually learned quite a lot.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.

“Neither did I.”

The kettle in the next room began to boil, and the mechanics of getting together a tea tray through magnetism only was ultimately more effort than walking over and doing it by hand, so this was what I did, even though I found I did not want to leave him. I knew he had dodged my earlier question- I did not need to be a doctor to know that human beings needed food to live- so I brought with the tea a few pieces of bread and strawberry jam (only since there were no biscuits).

-yourelikeamotherhen-

“Quiet, Charles,” I said as I came back into the dining room. “Are you always listening so closely?”

He seemed surprised by this, his brow furrowing slightly, and I saw his fingers wind together in his lap, a familiar expression of anxiety.

“I don’t know,” he murmured at length. “I feel like I’m...”

He bit his lower lip, and I sat down beside him, laying my feeble attempt at comfort across the table before him. There were no proper teacups in the kitchen, only futuristic glass mugs, and I felt somehow that such a presentation was unsuitable for him.

“...it’s like I’m a child again,” Charles continued. “Everyone is too loud, too clear. I’m a little afraid of what will happen when I’m completely off these drugs...I think it’ll get worse.”

“Worse?” I asked, his logic (as was often) escaping me. “But- you mean, are you getting stronger?”

The thought of this was almost unfathomable to me. Even after all this time spent being a recipient of his gentle touches and unusual methods of conversation, I had trouble imagining what it must really be like inside his head. For someone trapped so entirely by their own skull as I was- as nearly everyone was- it could only be like trying to visualize a picture in four dimensions.

“That’s good,” I said, perhaps too eagerly, taking his hand again. “God, Charles, that’s- that’s wonderful! I’ve heard of such things- that when a man becomes blind his hearing becomes sharper- but I hadn’t assumed…”

“I don’t know if it’s like that,” Charles said. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know if I want it- I’d rather be able to sleep.”

I remembered then what he had told me once- my mind flashed back to a time before all this, a time that had been terribly innocent, watching the fish swim mindless circles in their tanks. He had told me he had struggled. Still, I found I couldn’t quite accept it- for me, this news was nothing but solace.

Charles shook his head faintly beside me, but he did pick a piece of bread from the tea tray, taking an ever so delicate little bite. I poured some of the tea for him.

“Let’s not talk anymore of it,” Charles said quietly. “Actually, for a little while, let’s not talk at all.”

To this, I agreed, if only because he sounded so far away when he said it.

-M-

After the tea Charles went back to his room to sleep again, having exhausted himself in the effort of sitting upright for so long. I saw how he turned up the morphine dosage on the IV, how he curled around his bruised arm, his useless legs spread out across the mattress. I didn’t dare look at the wound on his back, though his shirt lifted up slightly there, as though challenging me. I left him to rest. Perhaps it didn’t matter- perhaps his range was too great for it to make any difference- but just then, I supposed he would sleep better without someone else’s thoughts in his room.

For lack of anything else to do, I found myself wandering the bunker. In the radio lounge, I turned the hulking device on myself, though the time of day was not ideal- there was no fresh news on the Missile Crisis, only indecisive reruns of the night previous in assorted languages, and other unrelated material. An opera was playing on a very high channel, but static interrupted the notes, and I found I didn’t have the patience for such a thing anyway.

I found Azazel and Janos in one of the smaller lounges after that, playing checkers over a drink. Unlike with the children, they did not stop in their tracks to stare at me, slack-jawed. In fact, after a glance, neither seemed to care that I was there at all. The room was very quiet.

“May I join you?” I asked, and Azazel’s tail flicked once, though I couldn’t say if that meant he was amused or annoyed.

“If you would like,” he said. A Russian accent, or at least Eastern European- I had heard him speak, but never entirely considered it before. “But it is not a game for three.”

“That’s fine,” I said, and instead of pulling up a chair I went over to the bar, picking out a beer from the fridge. I hadn’t had a drink in a while. Perhaps I needed one. “I only want to talk.”

Azazel’s tail flicked again. Annoyance, I decided.

“Why did you work for Shaw?” I asked, bending the cap off my beer with a flick of my powers. At times like these, I supposed it would be more useful to be like Charles.

Azazel captured one of Janos’ pieces, and the other man smiled at him faintly, shaking his head as he took a sip of his own drink, like he was amused by something. The silence irritated me for a moment, and perhaps Azazel could tell, for his tail stilled and then arched predatorially over his own back, the spiked tip angled ever so slightly towards me (though I was still far out of its reach).

“He was a man who paid well for entertaining work,” Azazel said at length. “If it worries you, be reassured that I do not care for your blood feud, muy drook.”

I inclined my head to him, though his response amused me- I wasn’t ‘worried’ about Shaw in the slightest, not anymore. Perhaps that should be amazing, given that he had taken up so much of my life, but somehow it wasn’t- Charles had begun eclipsing him long ago.

“And you?” I asked Janos, who shrugged at me. There was quiet for a moment wherein I expected him to talk, but he didn’t- instead, with a similar faint smile he turned to Azazel, making a number of rapid gestures with his hands, silently mouthing something I did not understand.

“He says, ‘it’s good to work among friends’,” said Azazel, and his tail somewhat relaxed its sharp posture as the two turned back to their game. I huffed slightly to myself. I had thought my presence would be a little more intimidating- they had been on the beach, they had seen what I had done. Azazel still carried his blades by his side, but he should know that they were mine, as long as I could feel them.

“And I take it you are still here because you expect the human war will begin soon?” I continued, pushing the matter, though I failed to bring either of their eyes back to me. Janos made another series of gestures to Azazel, who snorted, tail curling and uncurling across the carpet. I was not given a translation.

“If it concerns you so, why not ask your darling?” Azazel said to me, tapping his temple with two red fingers.

“Excuse me?” I snapped when I had recovered enough to do so, feeling an irrational heat flush my chest and neck. Hypocritical- it was I who had told Charles he shouldn’t feel any shame, but I still hadn’t expected to hear such a thing from this man. Azazel laughed at me, and I thought Janos did too, albeit silently. Azazel raised his hands, palms up- a symbol of peace.

“Uspokoysya, no judgement here,” he continued. “He is pretty, isn’t he? But I mean, I have felt him poking around. Though, he is more gentle than Miss Frost.”

Janos began to say something again, and this time I watched more closely, though it was for nothing- I did not recognize whatever variant of sign language he was using, and possessed no particular skill for lip-reading. Whatever he said, it made Azazel laugh again, and that gave me pause- ‘no judgement here’, was it? Well then.

“So you’re out of a job,” I declared, confident again. “...would you be willing to accept new leadership?”

“Yours?” Azazel asked, claiming another piece on the checkerboard. “Or Emma’s? Or maybe…?”

I didn’t say anything to that. Perhaps the question surprised me, and perhaps it shouldn’t have. There came another flurry of motion from Janos.

“He says, ‘leave that until we know what’s happening outside,’” Azazel translated. “And I agree. We’re not working now, Magneto. Neither are you. Settle in, and take care of your paramour.”

I knew when I was dismissed, even if it irritated me to be so. Still, I turned and left with my beer, my last sight of the room that of Azazel’s tail flicking lazily back and forth beneath his chair.

-X-

Wandering the grand halls of Shaw’s empty lair, I felt too much like a stray cat, set loose from my collar and prowling the alleys at night. Of course, I had always been that way, but for once in my life I found I rather wished I had a bell to be rung- it would surely call me back into the little room where Charles slept. A silly thing to picture- he wouldn’t even feel it, if I were to curl up in his lap.

The air of this place was stagnant. How long had we been here, how long since the beach? Still, less than a week. The war Shaw had wanted- had expected would erupt, the moment the Aral Sea crossed the embargo line- was still stewing, humanity hovering by the edge of their own destruction. I really wondered for the first time what those fools at the CIA thought of all of this, and what they had done in our absence. Had they sacked Charles’ beautiful castle? Had they dismantled Hank’s brain-machine, or did they pick through it now, trying to figure out how to work it without him? I thought of the woman, Moira MacTaggert, who I had not killed. I wondered what she was doing now.

Annoyed with myself and with the atmosphere, I explored, looking through the many beautiful rooms with greater care than I had before. For a while, I did not come across anyone else- I imagined they were all locked up in their respective rooms, stewing as I was. The beer bottle was quickly emptied.

There was a kind of laboratory in one of the bunker’s lower rooms, near the generators, and when I casually approached the door to it, I found it was already open. A peek inside revealed a single inhabitant- the only one who could be expected, of course.

Hank was leaning over a microscope, his hulking new figure not having stopped him from donning a lab coat. I couldn’t tell from the distance if he was grimacing at what he saw, or if that was merely the state of his new face- regardless, I approached. Perhaps it was careless, but there was more than enough metal in the room.

“Good afternoon, Hank,” I said to him, and to his credit he only slightly startled, the animal pupils in his wide yellow eyes contracting at the sight of me. “What are you working on?”

It was good that someone was able to work, I figured, and I gave the lab a once-over with an appreciative eye. It seemed Hank had already put the place to good use while everyone else was meandering about, caught up in their own heads. Playing checkers, like nothing was amiss. Wishing they could play chess, like nothing was amiss.

“I…” Hank trailed off, and tapped clawed fingers for a moment on the table. I did not think he was afraid of me. Perhaps that was good. “...I had some ideas, a few nights ago. After we got here, after that doctor- well. Completely wild ideas, nothing really concrete.”

I looked down at the dish under the microscope- between the thin sheets of glass there was a smear of red. Probably blood. Hank’s, I assumed, there was no reason for him not to bleed red.

“What kinds of ideas?” I asked, for interest’s sake. Hank looked back down through the lense of the microscope. He didn’t hesitate much more than that- perhaps he had been waiting to tell someone.

“The serum I used to change my appearance was based on an agent that attacks DNA,” Hank said, with some of the youthful fervour I remembered of him, from the day we had met in the CIA’s institute. “Suppressing some elements, augmenting others. Rewiring. It didn’t work as I thought it would, but…”

“So you’re trying again?” I asked, gesturing to the blood. Some distant part of me was irked by the sentiment- still, he was so ashamed, and it was proof of the inferiority of human society because he shouldn’t have to be- but Hank shook his head.

“No, not for me,” he said. “I thought…well, the serum amplified the characteristics latent in my DNA, and had some pretty incredible physical effects, don’t you think?”

He offered a rather lopsided, fang-toothed grin that seemed entirely self-deprecating, and continued before I could say anything.

“And the human body has a natural blueprint in its DNA for how it’s supposed to appear and function- that’s how it knows what to grow into in the womb. So, with some modifications, a treatment like this could- maybe- be used to, well, to reinstate certain physical features that wouldn’t...wouldn’t be repaired under ordinary circumstances.”

“Such as…?” I began, but already I felt breathless, somehow knowing what he was going to say.

“Such as...parts of the nervous system,” Hank finished meekly, and I let out a long, low breath, bracing my arms on the steel table before me. The little dot of blood blurred before my eyes, and I had to close them.

“Is that...Charles?” I asked weakly, gesturing blindly to the microscope, and I heard Hank murmur his assent.

“He let me...I don’t think he believes it’ll work, but…”

I took another deep breath, and opened my eyes.

“Do you have everything you need?” I asked Hank in deadly seriousness, and he nodded, eager.

“In fact, I cooked up a prototype last night,” he replied (the world was spinning around me again) and he lifted from a stand beside the microscope a vial containing a thin yellow liquid. “But it was pretty hasty. I’m just testing it out on some of his cells now.”

I took the vial as it was offered, feeling the inaccessible chill of the glass against my palm. A wild thought crossed my mind- the stuff looked like brandy. Something through which the world was distorted. There was a tightness in my stomach that felt like the stampeding of feral horses, and when Hank cried out I realized the table beneath my hand had begun to vibrate, so I stopped it, closing my eyes again.

I opened my fingers and let Hank take the vial back, his paws surprisingly gentle against my palm. My mind was consumed with only one thought, a thought loud enough against the inside of my skull it nearly drowned me:

What if it works?

Chapter 4: Come Like Shadows

That night Charles did not partake in dinner, begging off on the claim of feeling tired and nauseous, and so he was left alone. I did not try to bring up the matter of Hank’s experiments with him- he probably saw them bubbling behind my eyes, so if he didn’t mention it, he likely didn’t want to talk about it. Still, it made my heart ache to see him this way, so feeble and quiet and dim- and I did not think I was the only one. I saw how Raven’s fists clenched, how her eyes turned down to the carpet when we were dismissed, we who wanted to help him more than anything in the world.

There was no fresh news on the radio that evening, and this clearly embittered Emma, who seemed to emerge from her private rooms only to engage in this nightly ritual (though she still looked perfect, as always). The radio room was too quiet (though I no longer expected Janos to say anything out loud). People congregated, and then departed, all separate spheres unbound to one another, set loose to do as they pleased between the white walls of the underground paradise. Everything felt fractured. This was not a community, not what I had imagined.

Charles was asleep when I went to him after this, someone else having covered his diminutive form in blankets, so I left him there. Anything louder than his nearly-silent breathing seemed like a disturbance in the atmosphere of his room, and that included my thoughts, which he didn’t need to hear.

This drug-weighted sleep of his, however, did not last the night.

I myself was woken a little after the witching hour (this, I confirmed, with a bleary glance at the electric clock on my night table) by the feeling of him reaching out for me, a wordless and perhaps even unintentional touch. I shook myself from sleep immediately, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and striding across my bedroom floor (a luxury I was capable of) without bothering to search for socks or shoes. I acted the same as I would have had he cried out with his voice.

Charles was sitting up slightly in bed when I arrived, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. He had turned on the lamp by his bedside table on his own, and in its warm yellow light I saw he was shivering.

“I’m sorry, Erik,” he muttered after a moment. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Are you alright?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed at his side. Charles looked at me, the blue of his eyes obscured by purple exhaustion and red distress, and he ran trembling fingers through his hair.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I was having a dream, but...I’m not sure if it was my dream.”

“A nightmare,” I murmured, and I took one of his hands in mine, rubbing a thumb over his cold flesh. The bone in his wrist stood out more than it should have.

“I have everyone’s nightmares,” Charles said bitterly. “I can barely sleep at night. As soon as I slip away there’s something else...a-a cruel priest is beating me, or I’m destroying my childhood school, or I’m in a cage before a mocking crowd...or my mother is being shot in front of me.”

I squeezed his hand, and he took a shuddering breath. I saw that the bruise from the IV on the inside of his elbow had only deepened in colour, agitated by too many adjustments. It looked like he was beginning to rot. I felt ice settle in the pit of my stomach.

“Can I do anything?” I asked, forcing myself to look away, back to his face, though this was not much better- had he really lost so much weight in so little time, to make his features appear gaunt? How had I not seen it before? He looked nearly translucent in some places, like he wasn’t truly there anymore. I grit my teeth. I couldn’t stand feeling so powerless- whatever he asked of me, I would do it.

Charles jerked his hand out of mine with a pained little noise- a laugh with no humour. His eyes, now, when I met them, were overbright with a wave of fresh tears.

“You care so much,” he said weakly. “You can be so kind. And yet…”

He shook his head, looking away from me, fingers bunching into the comforter that lay across his lap.

“You’re a killer…” he whispered, his voice broken, like something from a ghost story. “You should be in prison, but there is no prison on earth that could hold you.”

“That’s not fair,” I said, and I took his hand again, as though the warmth of my skin could burn into his, could remind him that I was real- not some hollow shadow from a nightmare. I realized, then, that he might not entirely understand that he was awake. “You knew everything about me from the moment we met. You knew everything I had done, and what I was going to do. The night before Cuba- you knew you couldn’t keep me from Shaw.”

“So what,” Charles gasped wildly. “I should have shut you down? Locked you away before you found that helmet- you, you would never forgive me. That’s worse...surely that’s worse…”

I didn’t understand him, and I reached out to touch his forehead, which felt too warm in contrast to the chill of his hand. Charles seemed surprised at the gesture, and only twitched out of reach after a moment, his eyes drifting about the room like he didn’t recognize it.

“And you know, I would have done it,” Charles whispered- a confession that seemed to tear at the insides of his throat. “On the beach- if not for that fucking thing on your head. Not for Shaw. For the men on the boats- innocent men-”

“They weren’t innocent,” I said to him calmly, and I turned to his bedside table, pouring a cup of water from the pitcher kept there. Charles brow furrowed, and wordlessly I felt him send me a query, seeing the very faint picture of a lightbulb flickering on in the corner of my mind. I shook my head at him.

“They were ‘just following orders’, were they?” I asked, and the words felt cold on my tongue. Charles shivered- I wondered if he saw it, the memory that those words brought to me: that of being a teenager still, my body tight and hungry and angry, huddled in a shack in provincial France, listening in on a smaller radio than the one kept in Shaw’s bunker, through which staticky voices creeped. Listening to the trials being conducted at Nuremberg, the coin spinning faster and faster between my fingers.

“No man who ‘serves’ is innocent,” I continued, as calm as before. “No matter how much he tells himself he doesn’t have free will, he always does- he always has. A state is nothing more than a group of people, of individuals. It’s always a choice, Charles, to ‘follow orders’. To do so and then claim you’ve done nothing wrong…that’s a special kind of evil.”

My voice had begun to shake, and my free hand was clenched into a fist, shaking. The pipes in the walls were moving with me (though, not Charles’ wheelchair, nor the needle in the IV) and the moment I noticed this I released them, taking a breath to steady myself.

“I don’t know,” Charles murmured quietly. “People are so weak, and so alone...something like the Third Reich- if I had been there, then...”

-anadultinyourchildhood-

“...how do I know I wouldn’t have…?”

The question shocked me to my core. I looked back at him, and he trembled, as though a wind had blown through the room. The man who knew everything about me- and yet he didn’t know this?

“You?” I said, and I almost laughed. “No, Charles, not you. Never you.”

“How can you be sure?” he asked me. I shook my head at him again.

“Look at how you protest me now,” I replied simply.

Charles sighed, his eyes slowly closing. There was quiet between us for a moment- I did not know if I had reassured him. I did not even know what we had really been arguing about- the core of the matter had skittered out of reach, like a mouse escaping a trap. He wasn’t well, that much I did know. When he opened his eyes again, I gave him the cup of water, but he took only a single slow sip. I saw there was gooseflesh on the backs of his exposed arms.

“Do you want to go back to sleep?” I asked him, and carefully he shook his head, as though moving too quickly would hurt him.

“Not now,” he murmured. “I don’t think I could.”

“Then I’ll make you some tea,” I said decisively. “Something to warm you.”

I stood, and Charles watched me go, his eyes still damp and faintly haunted. I couldn’t blame him- the long white corridors of the bunker were dark in their night-mode, and we were the only ones awake. In a strange way, it felt like we were alone, having slipped into another world.

I made Charles the tea and set up a tray with a few slices of white bread and strawberry jam, like before. If that was all that tempted him, so be it. When I brought it back to his room I found him picking absently at the tape holding the needle into his skin, eyes flickering back and forth at sights I could not see.

“Charles,” I murmured, and when I bent to put the tray on his bedside table I kissed his forehead, smoothing sweat-warm hair from his skin. “It’s alright.”

“There is nothing either good or bad,” Charles replied faintly. “...but thinking makes it so.”

“What?”

Charles turned to me with a small smile, one that seemed to take an unnatural amount of effort to bring to his face. From just beneath the neckline of his shirt, I could see his collarbones raising with each breath, thin and pale and pronounced.

“Hamlet,” he told me, and he let me sit again. “...you have seen it, haven’t you?”

For a moment, the absurdity of his concern made me grin; that after everything, he was worried I hadn’t had enough time for culture- for his culture, that is- in my brutal, starving, vicious life.

“Yes,” I said, and fondly I patted his thigh beneath the blankets, before remembering that such a gesture meant nothing to him. My fingers twitched away, but he caught them, putting his hand over mine for the first time and keeping it there. “...I’ve seen most of his plays. Not always in the finest of theatres, mind you.”

Charles gave me another faint smile- I knew he was doing this on purpose, because talking about nothing was safer than talking about what mattered when it came to us. I wasn’t going to protest.

“Which is your favourite?” he asked me lightly, his head turning loosely to the side against the pillow. I considered this, even though it was difficult to do so, with a fair amount of my attention being spent on the feeling of his cool fingers resting across mine.

“Macbeth,” I decided, and Charles hummed quietly.

“When shall we three meet again?” he murmured. “In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

Now, it was my turn to shiver. Even from him- or perhaps, especially from him- the words sounded inhuman, whispers from a blackened and far-away world, where the rain brought the smell of death into the air. Where there was a knife hidden in every friendly handshake, and blood pooled in every palm, and men were eager to kill their kings.

(“You’re a killer…”)

“No,” Charles muttered, his fingers twitching as though something had startled him. “No, that’s not what I meant. You’re not like...like that.”

“Where is the line?” I asked him, and I regretted doing so immediately, having spoiled our attempts at cordiality. Charles sighed and shook his head, running the trembling fingers of his free hand through his hair again. He looked exhausted.

“I don’t know, Erik,” he said miserably, in the smallest voice I had ever heard from him. “That, I don’t know.”

There was quiet between us for a long moment. For something to do with myself, I decided that the tea had steeped long enough, and set about pouring us both some. It was only a basic orange pekoe, but the scent still was comforting, for it did not seem like something belonging to a world of bloody midnight murders and barren, stormy heaths and witches who saw and heard things that no one else could.

“What’s your favourite play?” I asked him to break the silence, and he shrugged with one shoulder, looking down at the cup I had placed in his hands.

“I don’t know that, either,” he said hollowly. “But certainly not Macbeth.”

-yourenotmacbeth-

“Perhaps a comedy,” he continued, closing his eyes, and I wondered what he had meant by that little telepathic slip- if it had been an assertion, or a prayer. “Right now, I think I’d prefer that to a tragedy.”

“Are those the only options?” I asked- genuinely, I was not a scholar of such things, I had never truly gone to school- and he nodded at me faintly, a little smile touching the corners of his lips. “Then, what’s the difference?”

“A tragedy ends in a death,” Charles replied, “and a comedy ends in a wedding.”

“I see,” I murmured. “Then you’re right. I’d prefer a comedy, too.”

-X-

Charles drifted in and out of lucidity throughout the night, though I did not think he ever truly fell asleep again- I myself did not intend to, but come morning I found myself waking up in his bed next to him, my head on the pillow and one arm about his waist. I did not remember lying down. I wondered if he had made me, and then dismissed the thought. Beside me, his eyes were closed, but when I reached out to brush some of his hair from his forehead they opened again, his eyelids clearly dark with exhaustion and his irises fever-bright.

“Good morning,” I said to him, and he smiled at me faintly, before letting his eyes close again.

“I can leave you to sleep,” I said, more softly this time- perhaps it was easier for him to sleep when everyone else was awake, their thoughts focused on the present and the mundane, instead of the strange (and often terrible) world of dreams. Charles made a little noise in reply, his fingers reaching out for me-

-nostayravenwillbeheresoon-

“Alright,” I said, taking his hand gently.

-checkthewoundtrytomakemeeatandrunthebath-

“Bath,” I echoed dizzily, and I shook my head to clear it. Charles didn’t usually say so much telepathically at once, and the words hadn’t been very clear, impressions of sound accompanied by hazy images flickering behind my eyes. I wasn’t sure if he had actually been requesting anything of me, but still I made myself get up, walking into his ensuite bathroom to turn on the water in the tub. I caught a flash of myself in the mirror- my reflection, for a moment, was strange to me. I was tired, too (though not nearly as much as Charles) and needed a shave. I looked too much like a widower.

When I came back into the room Raven was at the door with a first aid bag in her arms, and she seemed surprised to see me.

“Oh, hey Erik,” she said, and then her eyes widened in a way that suggested that had she not been blue, she would have obviously blushed. “Oh- were you two, um…”

“Good morning, Raven,” Charles called from the bed, his voice muffled by the blankets. “Come in, you’re not interrupting anything. Erik just stayed the night.”

“Oh,” she said again. “Well, that’s good. Yeah.”

I folded my arms across my chest, a foolish kind of shield against her implications. She really was so very young. But she made me think of it, too, for the first time- would Charles ever be capable of such pleasurable acts again? I pushed the thought aside. I could only imagine it sounded unbearably selfish.

“You already had some breakfast?” Raven asked, gesturing to the remainders of the tea tray from the night previous as she sat on the chair by Charles’ side of the bed. He finally pulled the blanket away from his head, blinking owlishly in the brightness of the overhead light, brown hair sticking up in uneven spikes. I didn’t know if the sight was disheartening or adorable, but decided to opt for the latter.

“More like a midnight snack,” he replied, and as Raven pulled the blankets down around his knees he began to turn himself over onto his belly, grunting slightly with the effort. I moved to help him, but Raven was closer, and she turned his legs for him. When it was done he rested his chin on his pillow, folding his arms beneath it. I saw his eyes squeeze shut for a moment, obviously in pain- but he banished the expression with a fierceness that surprised me, his jaw clenching for only an instant before he schooled his lips into a smile.

“Let’s see my progress today, nurse,” he said, his voice nearly cheerful, and I knew then that he put on a much greater show for Raven than he did for me. The implication- that he trusted me with his weakness, even though I had caused it- turned the edges of my world soft.

Raven laughed a little, and lifted up his sweatshirt, exposing beneath an expanse of white skin and a square bandage, taped over the small of his back. I grit my teeth, and moved to lean across the other side of the bed, sitting opposite Raven. Above the site of the wound, his spine jutted slightly from his back, shifting under his skin as he breathed. For a moment, it was all I could look at.

Raven pulled a number of supplies from the first aid bag- cleaning wipes, another bandage, and some of the medical tape. She wiped her hands thoroughly with one of the wipes, and then began to peel back the tape holding down the bandage on Charles’ back, lifting the entire thing away. I took a breath, preparing for the worst-

-but underneath, the sight was not so terrible as my imaginings. The wound itself was very small- almost obscenely small, only a few centimetres in length, marked by a thin line of unobtrusive black stitches. There was no blood, only a deep red-and-purple bruise that spread out from the line, dipping down towards the hem of his pants and out, as though reaching for his hip bones. The entire thing seemed entirely too tame. It wasn’t fair.

“How did you sleep?” Raven asked him, and I saw him smile- a rather humourless smile.

“Oh, terribly,” he said with a chuckle. “But that doesn’t matter. I’ll nap this afternoon.”

Raven frowned at him- my face was probably the same- and gently she dabbed at the wound with another of the wipes, the gesture abundantly careful. When she was done she disposed of both wipes in the little garbage bin by his table, and paused. I could tell she was curating her words- a strange impulse. I had been with him for less time, and yet I knew such a thing was useless.

“Hank is...coming along,” she said quietly. “I stayed up in the lab with him last night.”

“I know,” Charles replied quietly.

“What do you think, Raven?” I asked her, unable to help myself. “Do you think that it could work…?”

“I’m not a scientist,” she said quickly, and I nodded, feeling a little bit a fool. Charles turned his head on the pillow to look at me, his eyes somehow too bright for his face. “...but it would be nice if it did.”

There was quiet for a moment, and then Charles rolled onto his side with a little huff, beginning to pull himself up onto his arms.

“Well, there’s no sense worrying about that,” he said, without looking either of us in the eyes. “If you’ll be so kind, Raven, as to pull that chair over for me…”

I did so before she could even turn, rolling the thing into position by his bed. The little flicker Charles sent me in reply was surprisingly warm- pink and orange in colour, I saw it, the sensation of ‘fond exasperation’- feeling it shocked me, for it was so much more like how he had been before, than how he was now.

“Why don’t the two of you go make yourselves something to eat,” Charles said lightly as he settled himself into his chair- the words were strained, just like his arms, and I saw that he made an effort to even his breathing when he was done. “I’ll wash up, and later the fresh bandage can go on.”

“Are you sure?” Raven asked, and he gave her a little smile- saying something, surely, because I heard him in my head, too.

-itsalrighterik-

...as though I was the one who needed comforting.

“You can bring me a bit of whatever you make,” he said, and now he looked to me. “I promise I’ll try it. That’s a compromise, isn’t it?”

The way he turned his head at me, eyes round and bright- for a moment, I thought he truly did look like himself again, and so I agreed to leave him, like he wanted.

(Anything he wanted.)

Only afterwards did I realize it must have been an illusion of some kind. A telepathic one, perhaps- but more likely simply a matter of light, and angles, and familiar put-on expressions. There was still something between us- a wall of glass, and though I could touch him he was separated from me.

Shaw’s palace was decaying around us. I did not know how much more of it I could bear.

Chapter 5: Vaulting Ambition

Notes:

This one’s a bit of a doozy.

Charles did eat a little of what Raven and I made for him- soft boiled eggs and toast, as she told me he liked- but he by no means cleared his plate. Raven bandaged the wound. I did not ask him how he managed in the bath- I did not think he wanted me to. Whatever indignities the act entailed he hadn’t wanted us to see, and even if that hurt a little I wasn’t going to argue with him over it. With his wet hair curled around his forehead he looked lovely, and I did say this, kissing his temple while Raven looked away, surely blushing. I thought he might have stopped me from such a thing in her presence before, but this time he did not- too tired, perhaps. As we cleared away his dishes he curled under the covers, pulling them up against his chin, the blue of his eyes disappearing into shadow as they slipped closed.

“You were right, Erik,” he muttered sleepily to me as I made my way out the door. “It is much easier to sleep when everyone else is awake.”

So that was that.

Charles spent the rest of the day sleeping, more or less, and I spent the rest of it thinking of him (more or less). What else was there to do? The only other man whose life had ever mattered to me was gone, I had seen to that.

That evening, however, when the congregation formed in the radio room- on time, as always, to catch the international news broadcast- Charles was a part of it, wheeling himself somewhat laboriously into the room, unhooked from the IV. He settled himself by the chair where I was, but he only looked at me once, not saying anything in greeting. The atmosphere was wrong for that anyway- no one spoke in here, all we did was wait, wait for Emma Frost to come in and open us up to the world.

“The United States has entered into discussion with the Soviet Union,” was what the radio told us that night. The announcer was a man, Australian I thought, and there was a poorly hidden sense of elation tucked inside the otherwise plain words. “Neither party has moved to escalate hostilities after the Cuban Missile Crisis. What this could mean for the two superpowers-”

“What,” Emma snapped, her voice louder than what came through the speaker. The apples of her cheeks began to flush, and as they darkened her eyes widened, perfect fingernails digging into the flesh of her arms. “...that cannot be right.”

Charles laughed beside me, and the sound startled me enough that I looked at him- of course, he was not laughing at her, his eyes were wet and red with relief. He reached out and took my hand- his grip was firm, but he trembled- and he shook his head, the first of the tears making its way down his cheek.

“Thank God,” he said dizzily, and I felt a swell of his happiness against the forefront of my mind.

“That’s not what’s supposed to happen,” Emma continued from across the room. “They’re supposed to destroy each other.”

She turned the radio off then, twisting the dials more vindictively than she would have normally. I remembered what she had said to me, at the beginning of all this: she had told me I did not know what to do without Shaw, and I realized then that she must have truly been speaking about herself.

“Discussions are not necessarily peace,” Azazel said calmly from the corner. Emma did not seem to hear, her eyes flicking over to me and fixing me in place. For a moment I felt a flash of her ice- a sudden, frigid touch- and then it was completely gone, Charles straightening somewhat in the chair beside me.

“This is your fault,” Emma hissed, pointing one manicured nail towards my chest. “If the Aral Sea had crossed the embargo, they would be at war now. But you blew them up- you blew them all up, both sides!”

“And they know the truth,” Charles said beside me, elated. “The CIA, that is. They know there was a third party on the beach…”

-moira-

-I heard him say. The fingers of my free hand formed into a fist.

“This is unacceptable,” Emma said after a moment. She folded one lock of golden hair behind her ear, composing herself. “Unacceptable.”

“A few more murders might change the tide,” Azazel said from the corner again. I turned to look at him- he was smirking slightly at Emma, perhaps amused by the cracking of her diamond facade, his tail flicking lightly back and forth by his feet. “On the side of the US, that is. Blame it on the Russians, and…”

“You’re right,” Emma said, her eyes and voice both as clear as crystal. “That could work. But we’d have to wipe the CIA somehow- if they know what we can do, they might be able to prove the conspiracy. And I…”

She pursed her lips- so perfectly controlled again, the emotional outburst from before had been a rarity, I knew. Still, I did not need to be a telepath to see she was on edge.

“...I’ve never tried to do that on such a scale. I don’t know if I could. It’s been over a week- at this point, so many people will know about us, in bits and pieces here and there. This sort of information is never perfectly contained.”

A conspicuous kind of quiet fell over the room. No one looked at him- we all had more tact than that- but it didn’t matter, for surely he felt it, the direction of everyone’s minds. There was a multitude of fat and arrogant arrows pointing straight at the man in the wheelchair.

Perhaps Emma could not wipe the memories of an entire organization, but Charles certainly could.

He said nothing, so at last I gave in and turned to him. His back was so straight, his gaze cast down, hands folded primly on his lap. Only the slight tightness of his jaw revealed his discomfort.

“We could break into their institute easily,” I said calmly- to everyone, but mostly to him. “While the operatives are...held...we could take any physical records- take back Cerebro. When it’s over, it will be like we never existed to them.”

-youstillwantawar?-

Charles did not say anything out loud, did not look at me. It was a terrible question he asked- terrible, because it called its answer from deep inside my mind, pulling it into the light where he could see it. I could see it, too- it was a murky thing, formed of thick black clouds through which distantly my old dreams of paradise appeared. An answer that seemed to come from the very darkest parts of my mind- perhaps, where it really came from was my heart. Before, it had not been fully realized, but now that it was there, I recognized it easily, and I didn’t doubt Charles did, too. For a moment, my heart hurt for him. It probably felt like another betrayal.

Because-

I do.

“But it doesn’t have to be this one,” I said out loud, and I did not lie. “Not like this.”

Not without you.

Charles looked up at me at last- his eyes were wet, and burning. In an instant I was breathless as always; it was impossible, he was too beautiful.

“The Hellfire prophecy will be completed,” Emma said. Her voice was cold, but it sounded put-on- a sheet of frost to hide the strain underneath. As though by saying those words with such conviction, it would make them come true.

“No,” said Charles, turning slowly to her- and though he was perfectly calm, a shudder inexplicably ran up my spine. “No, it won’t be.”

The two telepaths looked at each other for a moment- Charles’ expression did not change, but Emma’s did, her eyes wide and her cheeks draining of blood. In the next second she transformed herself into diamond, her fingers singing as they formed fists, and beside me Charles actually scoffed.

“I’m sorry, Emma,” he said to her gently. The sweetness of his voice did not sound as genuine to me as it usually did. “...but there will be other things to live for.”

With a sigh Charles adjusted his position in the chair, the matter apparently concluded- but Emma still looked poised to fight, her posture tight as though she was willing at any moment to launch herself over the coffee table that separated her from him and clamp her frozen fingers about his neck. There was metal in the radio, in the pipes around us, in the legs of the table itself- she wouldn’t make it that far, and I realized Charles must know that, too. Of course, he had no reason to be afraid of anything, here.

“It would be good to remove any traces of our presence from the government, though,” Charles said, musing out loud, entirely unconcerned. “Anonymity is the first line of defence- at the moment, we do need defence. And like this, the children will be able to go home.”

“We’d all be able to go home,” I said, in reflex- but I did not mean ‘we’, not really. There was only one person here who I knew had one, and the image of it flickered up behind my eyes- the mansion, with its long green acres and tall glass windows, where sunlight dappled white sheets in the early morning, and the air smelled of oak and hidden springs.

-yourhometooifyouwantit-

“Yes,” Charles said out loud, with a little laugh. “Though some retrofitting would need to be done for Cerebro. Nevermind, well…”

He looked down at his own lap, cheeks turning faintly pink, and the image in my mind instantly soured. Of course, that house was very old. That house had many, many stairs.

"We'll do it," I said, and he offered me a faint, sideways smile. A smile that was more polite than warm.

"You'll all be welcome to stay in Westchester, if you would like," Charles said to the room at large. Emma still had not returned to her human form. His words fell flat against the tension in the air.

"If we live by your rules," Azazel replied, and Charles gave him another nearly unkind little smile- his tail stilled for a moment only before resuming its slow rounds by his ankles.

"Yes," Charles agreed simply.

Quiet fell upon the room for a long moment.

"Well," he continued, his tone of voice light. "Tomorrow we'll listen in once more, shall we?"

Class dismissed, I thought again. It really was uncanny. Still, the room was silent.

I followed Charles as he wheeled himself back into his bedroom- a display of my allegiance, as clear as any. I had to resist the urge to help push the chair with my powers.

When we made it back to his room, however, he let out another long, tired sigh. His arms trembled as they braced themselves on the chair, preparing to shift into the bed- and I did bend to lift him then, taking his minuscule weight into my arms.

“I’ll have to do it myself eventually,” Charles muttered as I lay him back down against the pillows. The scent of his skin was sweet; for a moment, I held him there, just to feel him against me.

“Eventually,” I echoed, though the word put something cold in my stomach. “You’re still injured.”

Of course, in a sense, he would always be injured- this knowledge I pushed aside, though the wry little look Charles gave me showed that he had heard. He didn’t comment, though, turning away to adjust his legs while I gathered his blankets.

“I really won’t let you, you know,” he said absently. “I won’t stand for any more killing.”

“I know,” I replied, and Charles looked up at me, raw fatigue dampening the usual sharpness in his eyes.

"Emma Frost still wants a war," he murmured bitterly. "So do you. Azazel just likes it- likes violence- and Janos will follow him anywhere."

He closed his eyes, pale fingers rubbing over his forehead as though he ached there. He probably did.

"And I can't let any of you go through with it," he continued, his voice less than a whisper. His eyes opened again, and they pierced me. "Not even you, Erik."

I paused- unsure of what to say to that. The forefront of my mind prickled- the blue of his eyes burning me ever so slightly there, a feeling like putting a hand too close to the surface of an oven. Was that a threat? It seemed almost unlike him, if it were so- this entire evening, he had been different. But then, he had tried very hard to stop me from controlling those missiles, back in Cuba. And this wasn’t the first time he had said such a thing to me- perhaps I hadn’t been listening properly.

I had often imagined the glory that could come, should he choose to use his ability to its fullest extent- the sheer power he possessed, it had always attracted me. But perhaps I had been a moth all this time, not knowing he was a fire. Perhaps he really could burn me.

(I didn’t know if this thought frightened me, or made me want him more.)

Before either of us could say anything else the moment was interrupted by the appearance of Raven in the doorway. She hadn’t been in the radio lounge- and neither had the person who peeked past her shoulder, a second blue face: Hank, his shoulders still clad in his white lab coat and his yellow eyes wide.

“Charles,” said Raven. “Hank’s finished.”

“I see,” Charles murmured softly, and I saw his hands bunch the comforter on his lap into a ball, but I was barely attending to him anymore, my mind caught up in a sudden and almost ferocious hope.

“The serum?” I asked harshly, and Hank nodded, stepping carefully into the room. There was a capped syringe in his paws, the little device tiny in comparison, and contained within it were a few ounces of a familiar amber liquid.

“I tested it on your blood already,” he said to Charles, “and there were no compatibility issues.”

“That’s good,” Charles said, but he sounded wary, the posture of his upper body frozen and tight. It must have been with terrible anticipation, I could imagine nothing else for it was all I felt- an incredible desire matched only with fear. What if it didn’t work- but more importantly, what if it did? Charles could be saved from a terrible fate, escape a lifetime of imprisonment in his own body- that was the only way I could imagine his condition, and so my eyes were fixed to the end of the needle, feeling the thin line of the metal as though it lay beneath my fingertips.

“Do you think it would...amplify my telepathy,” Charles asked, his words forming with strange breaks between them. I saw with surprise that he was leaning away from Hank, not toward. “...the way the previous serum amplified your mutation?”

“This is a lot milder than that was,” Hank said. “And this test dose is very small. I doubt it would be able to do that much…”

“And Charles, it could fix you,” Raven interrupted. I could hear my own disbelief and eagerness echoed in her voice. “You could be able to walk again!”

There was quiet for a moment, and Charles’ eyes flickered back and forth from Hank to Raven, and once to me. I heard him take a shuddering inhale, and then he turned to the arm normally occupied by the IV, rolling up the sleeve with trembling fingers.

“Alright,” he said cautiously. “I...I’ll do it.”

“If you’re worried about anything-” Hank began, and Charles shook his head, flashing him a tight and bright-eyed smile.

“No, I trust you, Hank,” he said, and he held out his bare arm, the white skin of which so clearly displayed his veins. “Go ahead.”

His arm was trembling, I saw, but Raven was quicker than I, sitting beside him and bracing it for him. I stood back, the urge to pace the room nearly overwhelming, but I forced myself to stay still. This wasn’t about me, after all.

Hank uncapped the syringe and gave it a few cursory taps before lowering it towards Charles’ flesh; Charles squeezed his eyes shut, clearly gritting his teeth behind closed lips, and Raven murmured gentle platitudes into his ear, as though she was the older sibling. My entire mind was focused on the needle, narrowing in on the thin metal shaft- I looked away before it made contact but still I felt it, felt the insertion from the perspective of the needle, something cool and unyielding sliding through the barrier of chilled skin and into a bath of warm blood. I felt dizzy for a moment, and heard Charles let out a tiny, disquieted moan, and then Hank was taking it out and it was over.

I looked back- Hank wiped the place of insertion with a swab of rubbing alcohol, and Charles massaged his arm lightly with his other hand, teeth worrying his lower lip. Raven stood and took the blanket from his legs- another thing I would have done instinctively- baring them to all our eyes.

“Do you feel anything?” Raven demanded, her voice rough with emotion, and Hank held up his hands, saying:

“Give it a minute, at least…”

Charles shivered, and he struggled to keep his breathing under control; annoyed by my own selfishness thus far, I tried to project a quiet comfort his way. Breathe, I tried to tell him, you’re doing so well.

-notachilderik-

Charles shot me a sarcastic, if watery, little smile, and carefully he ran trembling hands down his own legs, as though coaxing blood back into them. The room was incredibly silent, save the small sounds of his movements; everyone else had become as still as a statue, eyes fixed to him. For a moment, I forgot breathe myself- this was the time when another might pray, but I had long lost the words for such things.

“I don’t…” Charles began, and then he frowned, looking down at himself with bemusement. I realized my fingernails were digging into my palms, and I forced my hands to relax. Time stretched on too long- the quiet and the anticipation both became too overbearing- and so it was relinquished, Hank shifting to awkwardly put the used needle on Charles’ bedside table. He opened his mouth to say something- I heard him inhale- and then Charles’ left foot twitched.

Raven gasped, her hands moving up to cover her mouth, and Charles let out a long, low sigh. As I watched, he bent his left leg at the knee, slowly lifting it up towards himself. One trembling hand ran down his own shin, fingers curling at the ankle, and the look on his face contained an emotion I couldn’t even begin to imagine- a kind of wonder, that of rediscovering what should have been long lost.

“Oh, Hank, you did it,” Raven cried, and she wrapped her arms about his shoulders in a tight squeeze. I didn’t attend to his reaction- I was too fixated on Charles, the look on his face and the slow, careful movements of his legs as he turned to the side, bare feet reaching gently down for the floor. The relief I felt in that moment was unlike anything I had ever felt before- not when escaping the camp, not when killing Shaw, the flavour of this relief was entirely different; it was as though a terrible weight had been lifted from me, a weight that (unlike these other burdens) I had known I had no hope of discarding on my own.

I stepped before him, and took both of his hands in mine, entwining our fingers- support to help him learn how to walk again. I saw him brace himself, his breathing light and high in his chest, and then he looked up at me- his eyes wide and bright and piercing, beautiful, but at the same time strange, more silent than I had ever seen them.

“Erik,” Charles said quietly, “...where did you go?”

“What?” I looked over at Raven and Hank, and they looked back at me, a confirmation that I had not somehow disappeared from the space in the room. I still felt his touch, his physical touch that was, his hands solid and real in mine. “I’m right here, Charles. I’m with you.”

“No...no you’re not,” Charles said, and he leaned slightly away from me, eyes narrowed as though in suspicion. “You’re not anywhere. Raven-”

He turned to her, and my grip on his hands tightened, watching the look in his eyes change from that wary curiosity to fear. His shivering began anew, and he began to shake his head, eyes darting from her face to Hank’s and out the bedroom door. I knelt before him, an imploring gesture, bringing his hands down to his own lap to remind him of it, that which had been given back to him.

“We’re all here, Charles,” I said, and I tried to project to him the same sentiment in words and colours, my best attempt at telepathic gestures, trying to soothe him. “What’s the matter? What do you see?”

“I don’t see anything,” Charles said, and he jerked one hand from mine, bringing his fingers up to his temple. “It’s completely quiet, Erik, you- you’re all gone- no one is here anymore-!”

Then, I understood him.

For a moment, the world reeled, as though somewhere a bomb had gone off. I didn’t see anything, and when my vision came back all I heard was a faint, high ringing. Strange- it was the bell they had used to signal morning in Auschwitz.

I released Charles’ other hand, and he drew away from me, his legs curling by his chest where he sat on the bed, like he was a frightened child. His eyes didn’t look the same anymore- the blue of them had become flat, like a thin disc of crystal, cut out and placed there by human hands. I could see his fear in them, but nothing else. The only thing inside my skull was me. The fire had gone out.

No...someone had extinguished it.

“I- it shouldn’t do that,” Hank said, clearly panicking, and his claws hovered in the air by Charles’ head, afraid to touch him. “It- calling up innate traits shouldn’t have affected your mutation!”

Charles backed away across the bed, his legs trembling slightly as they worked, and he licked dry lips with a pink tongue.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said to Hank weakly. “I can’t- I can barely hear you- it’s just words…”

“The first serum was for repressing mutations,” Raven said hollowly. She had stood, and now she hovered by the doorway, her hands still cupped before her chest as though in supplication. “You said this one had the same foundation.”

“The first one didn’t work,” Hank retaliated, turning back to her. His animal eyes were wide; the yellow stood out, like a pair of golden coins. “Look what it did to me, I- I assumed my theory was wrong!”

“You were wrong,” I said, and though my voice was quiet- in truth, I barely heard it- both Hank and Raven fell completely silent, staring at me. I realized only then that I had lifted the IV stand kept by Charles’ bed- it twisted itself out of shape, silent and dreamlike, the rejected needle pointing forward towards Hank’s face.

“Erik,” said Charles weakly. “...what are you thinking?”

I looked back at him. This was a mistake- it seemed impossible, and yet I almost didn’t recognize him. I wasn’t wearing the helmet, and still I felt absolutely nothing, no whisper or pale fire of his found its way to the edge of my brain. He looked unbearably small there, without it. He looked as flat and insubstantial as a piece of paper.

He looked…human.

The IV stand tore itself in three, dropping its plastic bags of drugs, and the pieces found their way about Hank’s neck and wrists, throwing him out the door and pinning him to the far wall. He snarled- in the background, Raven shrieked- and struggled, stronger than I expected, but certainly not stronger than me; I who could turn satellites and lift submarines. I turned away from the man on the bed. I didn’t know him anymore.

The rage I felt was overwhelming- burning hot and bright enough to drown out the grief that would surely follow. To think, less than an hour ago I had thought I would follow Charles anywhere, and now he was gone. Snuffed out in a moment, in one foolish mistake. It was my fault as much as anyone’s- deep down, I did know that, I had started all this on the beach, letting bullets fly without a second thought- but it was not only my fault.

“Let him go!” Raven cried as I pushed her aside, her fingers clutching at the fabric of the shirt I was wearing. “What are you doing, we don’t even know what’s going on-”

I stepped into the corridor and lifted Hank again, sending him flying to slam into the wall of the next connecting passage. He roared, a sound of animal anger, lionlike fangs shining wetly in the cold light. I did not answer in kind- I was not an animal- I was not human, either. I was better than both. We had been better than both.

“Erik, please,” said another voice, and only out of habit did I turn for it. Charles- what was left of Charles- stood on tremulous legs in the doorway, one hand reaching for me. But he could not stop me now. He could not do anything.

I turned away.

The metal bands tightened around Hank’s throat as I approached him, my footsteps even and measured on the concrete floor. I didn’t know if I wanted to kill him yet, or if I should torture only- if I should snap his spine, but only halfway, so he would be trapped in his own body. That seemed fair enough- an eye for an eye was all I had ever known…

“Erik, don’t hurt him,” the man cried from behind. “Please, if you have ever loved me, do not hurt him!”

That made me pause- the words were like a knife wound, piercing my heart- and before I could make up my mind again the door to the radio lounge (located between myself and Hank) opened. Emma Frost stepped out into the corridor, turning first to the beast, and then back to me, frowning as she looked at something past my shoulder.

“Oh my God,” she said after a moment, eyes wide. “He’s gone. What did you people do?”

“Don’t get in my way,” I spat at her, and she raised her hands innocently, leaning back against the side of the door.

-wouldntdreamofithandsome-

-and the fact that her voice sounded different in my head only made me angrier, the rage turning to hatred in the pit of my belly. My eyes were burning- could that be tears?- and my hands were shaking, the pipes in the entire building moving with me. The beast- how great a fool I was, letting this base creature do anything to my angel, a fool for my own blind hope- was still growling at me, his chest heaving as he tried to break free. He was still wearing the lab coat. I squeezed the metal rings tighter.

“Charles, get out of the way!” Raven called from behind me, and I turned to look- at the other end of the corridor, she had appeared with Alex, the pair running towards me. I reached for something to strike them- it didn’t matter what- but the boy was faster, clenching his fists and sending at me a blast of his powerful light.

I was spun about for a moment- the heat blinded me, knocked the wind from my lungs- and I found myself on the floor several metres from where I had been standing, a faint smell of singed cloth in my nose. I heard the metal rings hit the floor with a clang, and Hank jumped over me, loping on all fours back to the protection of his friends. I stood slowly- shaking off the pain from my landing- and then it was my turn to snarl, the warmed metal dividing itself again, this time into thin, bullet-like spikes. Alex braced himself, charging up for another shot-

“That’s enough,” said Emma Frost, who was now closer to them than I was, and as she raised her hand Alex fell to the floor, like he had on that first night. Hank leapt over him towards her, but she stepped aside, and in the same motion he too fell asleep, failing to catch himself as his furred body hit the floor. Lastly, Emma looked at Raven, who only had time to swear before it was her turn as well to crumple to the ground, her breathing even and slow.

Emma turned back to me, and let out a huff of breath, as though the act had exerted her. I supposed it probably had, and tried not to think of how easy it would have been, for someone else. I glared at her, daring her to do the same to me, but she only smiled.

“Now, Magneto,” she said primly. “Nothing will stop us- how would you like to start a war?”

From behind me I heard the sound of Azazel’s teleportation, a wave of brimstone-scented heat hitting my back. I looked at them- Azazel and Janos- one with his swords at the ready and the other with his hands in his suit pockets, prepared to at any moment spin the air into a whirlwind.

“Erik…”

Charles had not been put to sleep- he appeared from the doorway of his room again, looking down in horror at the fallen bodies of his students. He was trembling all over, the steps he took strangely clumsy as his bare feet made their way around them, his fingers stretched out to the walls on either side to balance himself.

“Erik, you cannot do this,” he said. His words sounded so hollow, so fragile with nothing to support them- like eggshells that had been cracked. Alongside my anger, now, there was suddenly pity. Even in comparison to the unconscious children on the ground beside him, he was nothing. He was nothing at all anymore.

I looked away.

“Not for me,” Charles continued, his voice strained. “Not because I told you to- it’s not about me, or you, why can’t you understand that? I-it’s about right and wrong, and...think of all the people you will be killing!”

“Humans,” I said. I sounded too calm; I didn’t recognize my own voice. “I’ll be killing humans. Like you.”

Charles made a horrible little noise then, a cross between a gasp and a sob, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut. When I opened them again, my heart felt as cold as ice.

Emma smirked at me- I felt the tentacles of her frost creeping up the sides of my mind, and this time I did not push her away. I had become very used to a telepath’s touch- without it, I wondered if I would begin to feel empty. She raised her hand towards me, palm open, an invitation.

Her to replace Charles, and me to replace Shaw- a bargain.

I stepped forward to accept.

“No,” Charles whimpered, and from the corner of my eye I saw him stumble towards us- but he didn’t make it far enough, his legs suddenly giving out, knees slamming into the cement floor with a hollow crack. “Erik-”

I focused on Emma again, reaching out, and my fingers brushed her palm. Her eyes- such lovely blue eyes- had suddenly gone wide, and her lips parted, her expression now one of shock instead of satisfaction.

I only had time for the beginnings of a question to form in my mind, before the world turned black.

Chapter 6: Dagger of the Mind

I woke.

The room around me was very quiet. Above me- the sight upon which my eyes opened- there was a plain white ceiling, so featureless it took a second before my understanding of depth returned. Beneath my body was a mattress, beneath my head a pillow, though I was not covered in a blanket. My fingers twitched, reminding me of my limbs- I found I was fully dressed. There was a light on, I could see by it. I swallowed. My tongue was dry.

I remembered that I was in Shaw’s bunker, the same place I had been for some time now, since Cuba. What a terrible place it was, so heavy and stagnant and sick. What terrible things had been said and done here...

...and then, I remembered everything.

I sat up abruptly, my eyes searching the room, and what they found was Charles- of course, it was Charles. He was sitting by the bed where I lay, sitting in his wheelchair, cheek resting against the knuckles of one hand. He was watching me, completely silent- out loud and in my head.

“Charles,” I gasped, and then; “Shit.”

I brought one hand up to my mouth, rubbing- there was a growth on my chin that seemed rather more than was warranted; I had shaved only this morning. There was a faint pain against the inside of my temples. I tried to think- what I supposed were my most recent memories (of Emma’s cold smile, and Azazel’s bitter smoke, and Charles calling for me, reduced to a fraction of his former self) did not make sense in context; they were not complete, frames had been cut from the reel. I was missing time. How had I ended up in bed? What about the CIA? We had been going there to kill, but had we made it? Had we ever left the underground island-?

“No,” Charles said (the Charles who was there, in the room with me, not the one in my wild memories). “No, you never left.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, but did not stand, looking at him. He was different, too- he was wearing a suit, not those white hospital pajamas. He still looked tired- he was so pale he almost disappeared- but there was a watch on his wrist. I recognized it, it was an old model from an expensive brand; it belonged to him, and he used to wear it all the time, only he hadn’t brought it with him to Cuba.

He hadn’t brought it with him to Cuba.

“It’s been three days,” Charles told me. “...since you tried to leave.”

My mind reeled. A dull feeling of horror was beginning to rise up inside me- the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong. My fingers gripped the sheets beneath them. A suspicion I did not want to put to words.

“I went to the CIA,” Charles continued, his tone maintaining an eerie calm. “With Raven, and the others. We took back Cerebro, and destroyed all their records of mutant activity- you know, they had built quite a case file on the events in Cuba. Quite a case file on you.”

Charles closed his eyes slowly, taking a shuddering breath.

“You were right about some things, Erik,” he whispered. “The things they were thinking- the plans they were making- they were…”

He opened them again; now that I was paying attention, I thought that the blue did not look so flat as before. He did not look so empty, the way Hank had made him with that cursed serum.

Charles frowned at me, a little reproach, and with a start I realized I felt it in my head.

“Angel, Sean, and Alex have all gone home,” Charles continued, his tone clinical once more. He held a hand up to stop me before I could say anything. “...they wanted to. They know how to contact me should they need any help.”

“And the others?” I asked, my voice harsh on the inside of my throat. Charles smiled at me- a smile that looked more sad than anything, without an ounce of tender feeling.

“The others have opted to stay,” he replied evenly. “I woke you last.”

...and the implication of that made me shiver.

“You stopped us from leaving,” I said. “Didn’t you? But, the serum…”

It should have been impossible. The tricks of that terrible science had destroyed him- made him nothing more than a man, I had seen it, it had happened before my very eyes. He shouldn’t have been able to do anything to me.

“The serum wore off quickly,” Charles said, and I thought he sounded colder, this time. “The dose was so small, the effect only lasted a few minutes. I…”

He turned his head at me, faintly curious.

“...I thought you saw me fall.”

I heard the sound of it again; the cracking of bone striking the cement floor.

“I did,” I replied. I looked down at his legs. I wondered if there were bruises there he could not feel.

“You…” I began again, and the pain in my temples flared briefly before dying back down. Other salient facts were clamouring for my attention, making my heart rate pick up, thumping hard in my chest. “...you put me to sleep for three days.”

“I did,” Charles said, echoing me. I put one hand up to my head, running my fingers through slightly greasy hair.

“How did you get me into this bed?” I asked, and his mouth turned down, a faint grimace.

“I made you walk,” he replied, his tone too even. “I made you walk here, and then lie down.”

“I don’t remember,” I said, and to my surprise my own voice was shaking.

“You wouldn’t.”

Silence fell. I rubbed my arms, as though bringing them back under my own control- changing them from the wood of a puppet to the flesh of a man. Charles looked at me, but only with his eyes- he was so quiet, and I couldn’t feel him at all. Everything was wrong about this. I shuddered. My heart was beating too fast- I was still processing what had been done to me, and as my thoughts expanded so did the horror I felt blooming in my chest. It was complete terror- that is, the feeling of coming home, only to find that everything you own has been replaced by an identical copy. Only it was not my home that had been so altered in my absence, it had been my mind.

And that was infinitely worse.

“I’m sorry, Erik,” Charles said quietly. “...you left me no choice.”

“Because you- you can’t stand killing?” I gasped. I wasn’t thinking straight- my usual attempts to understand him, to mitigate how I disagreed with sympathy, were gone in the face of my panic. “Why? Why do you care about them- the humans? They’ve never done anything for you!”

Charles blinked, as though startled. I had the urge to shake him; he looked too collected, too in control, when all my control had been wrested from me. My fingers now were digging into the flesh of my shoulders.

“Because…” Charles murmured. “...every time, it’s the end of an entire world.”

…

-for an instant, I thought I really understood him, then.

But the feeling was fleeting, overtaken almost immediately by nausea, by the unfamiliarity of my own body despite my attempts to bring it back to me. It was a violation, and oh, Charles might think me a hypocrite- always admiring what he could do to others, and now look how I became when he did it to me- but I couldn’t help myself. I realized that I had no way of knowing if the thoughts flying across the forefront of my mind were my own, after all, he could easily have placed them there! And the same went for every memory- the memories I did not have, and the memories I did. Everything I thought I knew was under his control, with no way for me to verify otherwise. I could not know myself, and that terrified me to my core.

“There you go,” Charles muttered, and he laughed bitterly. His eyes were wet, I saw. “You know, that’s most people’s first reaction to finding out what I can do. But you...you always thought I was beautiful.”

I was calling for something, and I did not care if it scraped a few walls on the way, so desperate was I to have it; the helmet shot through the open door to the bedroom and into my hands, but as soon as I felt it I froze, the relief I had been expecting not coming. He could stop me right now. He could stop me and make me forget this thing ever existed- throw it into the Pacific Ocean to rot at the bottom of the sea- and I would never be the wiser. He could do anything to me, and once I had found that thought exciting, arousing even, and now it only made me feel sick. A cold sweat had broken out across my back. Three days and all my agency had been taken from me.

“I could do all that,” Charles whispered hoarsely. I could see he was trying hard not to cry. “I could, Erik. But I won’t.”

“But…” I didn’t understand. How was I not a puppet, now? How wasn’t everyone? “If I put this on, I could leave. I could do what you don’t want me to.”

Charles glared at me then, his eyes and cheeks both shining, but he didn’t say a word inside my head. I had never seen him so bitterly angry, and the image shocked me even more.

I put the helmet on, and he looked away. The cool of the metal about my ears was not as comforting as it had been back in Cuba- Charles hadn’t been touching me this time, not in the slightest. He wasn’t begging for me to stop, to be the better man. Now, he didn’t know what I was going to do- he couldn’t even watch me through a dead man’s eyes.

I didn’t feel any satisfaction at this reversal of the power dynamic; still, all I felt was ill. I stood without saying anything, and turned away, striding from the room. Just then, it seemed unbearable to breathe the same air as him.

-X-

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I went outside.

The entrance to the bunker- located atop a long metal ladder, up which I floated- seemed a grandiose thing, opening aside a helicopter pad. The first breath of fresh air felt like one taken after a long period of suffocation- I hadn’t realized just how stale the air inside that place had become. Stale, and sick. It was a place that reeked of Shaw’s taste and Charles’ blood, and I couldn’t bear either.

The day was overcast, but bright- the tarmac was wet, revealing that rain had fallen recently. Surely, a warm rain, and a rain that tasted sweet on my tongue. The trees- palm trees, I noticed- were stirred by a light, spirited breeze, one that sought out gaps in my clothes as they were whipped about my body, cooling the fevered flesh underneath.

I had brought with me the pieces of Charles’ old IV stand that I had torn into weapons; they had been left on the floor where the fight had taken place, as though too dangerous to touch. Now, I changed their shape again, forming beneath my feet a thin metal circle upon which to stand.

This makeshift platform rose, and as it did I tried to force myself to think of nothing but the rain which might fall again, about the clouds towards which I ascended. I took deep breaths of the fresh air; first steadily, deliberately, in the way a councillor might tell an angry child to, but soon I lost control and began gasping for it, sucking in the air like I had been drowning, my chest heaving like a dying man’s. I didn’t know what was wrong with me- or maybe, I did.

I only stopped rising when the height of my fall would obliterate my bones upon impact with the tarmac below. The air was not yet thin- in fact, it was thick with the moisture in the atmosphere- but still I felt lightheaded. If I fell, would I be able to catch myself? I wasn’t entirely sure.

For a long time, I did not think of anything.

I looked out across the island- so far below, now, the trees were tiny, nearly invisible for the forest. There were a few patches of land here and there- fields atop rolling hills- and of course, a line of clear white beach. From my height, I could see out into the Pacific Ocean- the more dangerous of the two, for she contained within her the Ring of Fire, while her twin was cold. The water looked gray from up here- reflecting the uneasy, rain-laden sky- but when I squinted into the far distance, there was a hint of blue, right up against the edge of the horizon. A place where the sun must shine.

After a while, my breathing came back under control, settling so gradually I didn’t notice the change until it was over. My heart returned to a normal pace inside my chest. The skin of my face felt faintly damp- the wind had water in it, and it left droplets upon me, the condensation of a kiss.

Charles.

My fingers bunched into fists, and then released themselves again.

Charles!

That word had so many meanings inside my head. A million memories all clamoured over one another at its call, trying to define what was undefinable: the feeling of his arms about my chest in the Atlantic Ocean, his lips against mine the first time we kissed, the way the sun turned the edges of his hair gold and revealed freckles on otherwise pale skin. His eyes. Oh, I had infinite impressions of his eyes. I remembered how happily he could laugh (chasing cars in Washington), how honestly he could cry (at the mansion, in the sun- ‘there is no homosexual gene’), how he collapsed inwards when he was in pain (white walls, white sheets, white night clothes), and how deeply he cared for me.

(The satellite.)

I had thought him perfect, once, when I had first met him- wildly, I had likened him to a fairytale prince- but of course, he was not perfect. He was stubborn, and paternalistic, and inclined to self-dislike, and had a capacity for a certain kind of wickedness that was greater than I had originally assumed.

But who in the world was perfect?

I looked back out across the water, up into the sky. The distant waves were beginning to form white caps close to the shore, and the clouds above me had darkened. Perhaps it would rain again soon.

I realized that my panic from before had faded completely, so much so that the sensation of it was like a distant memory- somehow, more distant than that of Charles’ sleeping face, resting next to me as the sun dawned on his sprawling home. Certainly, more distant than the terror I had felt seeing what that bullet had done to him on the beach.

I considered this. Perhaps I was the victim of some manipulation- perhaps I really did not know myself. But if that were so, it was true for everyone who met him, and had been true since the night he had pulled me from the water. Did that make my love of him-

-for yes, I did, I deeply and desperately loved him-

-not worthy of having in my heart?

I considered this for a while.

After all, I could fly away, now, with the tools at my disposal- West to Africa, or East to Australia. I could start my life over again completely, and with this helmet he would never be able to find me, never be able to affect me ever again. I could do anything I wanted, and for a moment, the possibilities flickered before my eyes: I could complete Shaw’s dream for me (go to the White House, assassinate the American President to kick off nuclear war) or that of my mother (could go home to Germany and find a nice Jewish girl- if there were any left in that country- and settle down with her, work in a factory and have children, maintain a pretty little house in the woods). I could reinvent myself completely, become what I never had been: a soldier, or a businessman, or a poet. I could do what I had come to dream of: fight for mutantkind, create a new paradise for my people, and shed all the blood that was needed- only, without him by my side. Charles had let me put on the helmet, and so he had no way to control me anymore.

I remembered buying him a white flower, in the wake of Shaw’s attack on the CIA. It had been a double-edged kind of symbol, even then- a token of my affection, and also a statement of truth: if he wouldn’t stop me, I would do anything I wanted.

And now, another truth came to me: what I wanted was him.

All of these other futures seemed cold, miserable things in comparison. Oh, perhaps they held their own rewards, but only after what would surely be years of heartache- the thought of leaving him now to make my way across the oceans, all alone and with nothing but my memories of him as a comfort, it was unbearable. I had spent my entire life starving, and now that I had something- something more precious than any amount of gold or glory- I didn’t want to give it up. It would be painful, giving it up.

Of course, any amount of pain I would survive- but I wasn’t content anymore, with surviving.

Rain began to fall around me, making a faint sound as it hit the outside of the helmet. I turned my face up to meet it- it was a warm rain, the warmest I had ever felt upon my skin, and I opened my lips to drink it in.

“...in thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

I laughed suddenly at the memory- perhaps he had given me some accidental truth, there, something even he didn’t really know. Was the address of his monstrous estate not Graymalkin, Salem, Westchester? Perhaps he was a witch, as simple as that, and the spell he had cast upon me had only five words: I could, but I won’t.

But it was hardly fair to think of myself as nothing but a victim of an enchantment- I was also a knight, and not a gentle one. Charles, the prince and the witch, had been hurt by me, too.

And moreover, I realized, if I left now the story would be a tragedy- and that was something neither of us had wanted.

I looked out across the landscape, admiring how it was changed by the tropical storm, and then- mind made up- I used the circle beneath my feet to lower myself to the ground, stepping off onto the damp tarmac again. For a moment, I considered the floating metal- it wasn’t hideous, this alloy, it was strong and it shone, creating before me a blurry mirror. Not true silver or fine gold, but it would do, at least for now.

Most of the substance I discarded, plucking from it only the clearest, purest threads of its core to wind around, bending and reshaping until what spun in the air before me was a small, simple circlet, a hoop of shining metal. I took it in hand- it was warm from my manipulation, and I waited until it cooled, becoming firm and more sure of itself in the new shape before I tucked it away inside the watch pocket on the front of my pants.

Now, I moved with purpose, opening the hatch and descending the ladder, striding through the empty white halls. I was going back to him.

-M-

Charles was not in his room- he was in mine, I discovered, almost exactly where I had left him. He had dragged himself out of the chair, however, and was curled on his side atop the blankets, face pressed into the pillow. At the sound of my footsteps- not my thoughts, I still wore the helmet- he looked up at me, and it was very clear he had been crying.

“Erik,” he said raggedly, and the hope in that one word made my heart burn. “...you didn’t leave?”

Strangely, this phrase was a kind of antonym to what he had said to me before, on the night I had first kissed him: Erik, you decided to stay?

“No,” I said, and I crossed the floor to take his hand- but no, this was too quick, and moreover the wrong time and place. His fingers were warm against mine, curling into the faintest suggestion of a grip, as though he wished he could keep me there.

“I’m sorry for what I did to Hank,” I told him firmly, sitting down on the bed in the hollow formed by his useless knees. “I’m sorry I rejected you like that, after the serum took effect. I...I felt like I had lost you, or destroyed you, and it made me cruel.”

Charles sniffed, and wiped his red cheeks with the sleeve of his fine suit, not caring if the salt would sully it- of course he wouldn’t, he had a million others. The way I was feeling now, the gesture made me fond.

“I’m sorry I put you to sleep,” Charles murmured in reply, his voice still thick with tears. “I didn’t have to, not like that, not for so long. I...I was a coward, too weak to face you, to talk to you like you deserved.”

In reply, I squeezed his fingers. Forgiveness.

“I’m sorry for the bullet,” I said, before the words escaped me. “On the beach, I…”

But Charles shook his head again, hushing me, like he had before.

“No,” he replied quietly. “It was an accident. Friendly fire.”

He smiled a little wryly at me, and then looked away. Even like this- his lips a deep red and eyes swollen from crying, in every way fragile- he was terribly pretty. I realized faintly that he didn’t know I was thinking that- but I couldn’t remove the helmet just yet.

For a moment, I considered if he might want me to apologize for the deaths of the men on the boats- but I doubted it. As he kept saying, that hadn’t been about him, and I knew it really hadn’t been. The apology wouldn’t be genuine anyway; a lie was no way to preface what I planned to do.

“Then,” I murmured, breaking the silence that had fallen. “...I suppose we’re even.”

Charles looked up at me again- tears caught in his eyelashes, clumping them together- and his lips shifted into what was, unmistakably, a pout. It wasn’t intentional, I was sure, but my heart stuttered anyway.

“Not even,” he mumbled. “You’ve been- what, in the bath-”

-he gestured with his free hand at my wet clothes, the raindrops on the helmet-

“-for over an hour, and I’ve been in here, all alone, thinking I’m never to see you again. It’s been miserable.”

“I’m sorry,” I said honestly, rubbing my thumb over the knuckles of his hand. “I had to think. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

Charles smiled at that, but the expression died almost immediately, and he turned his head at me curiously, a stray tear leaking from the corner of one clear blue eye and down his temple.

“What did you think about?” he asked me, narrowing in on what mattered to him most- and like this I saw the witch in him again, but I didn’t mind.

“I realized that we could spend a lifetime fighting one another,” I said calmly. “It’s in both our natures. It might even be easier than staying together. But…”

Charles searched my face- what was visible of it from behind the helmet- and he looked desperate, clinging onto every word. How he must strain to understand me, when he could not hear my thoughts.

“...but that would be unbearable, wouldn’t it?”

Charles nodded, but he didn’t speak, the words clogged in his throat by a wave of fresh tears that he covered rather poorly with the palms of his hands. I took to rubbing his back, above the site of the wound, where he could still feel it.

“We’ve betrayed each other enough,” I said as he began to rein himself back under control. “Let’s stop this now, before it can go any further. After all, we want the same thing.”

“Do we?” Charles asked, and he bit his lower lip, fingers winding in the sheets by his side. There was silence for a moment, while we both considered this- but my answer stayed the same.

“I don’t want to kill people,” Charles continued at length, and though his voice shook it was firm. “I won’t let you...won’t let you become a wanton murderer, not for anything.”

“I won’t sit idly by,” I countered, “while the humans destroy us. I will fight for our kind. For our future.”

There was another silence for a moment, sharper this time, and then Charles smiled, a quiet kind of smile.

“I think we’ll need to find a compromise, then,” he murmured. “Do you think it will be terribly difficult?”

“Oh, certainly,” I replied.

Charles laughed a little at that, and sniffed again. A tension released from his body- one that had been there for our entire conversation, without my noticing- and he melted back into the bed. I stood.

“Come,” I said gently. “Let’s go outside.”

Charles watched me, wide-eyed, as I carefully gathered him in my arms, his own wrapping about my neck. When I had lifted him his fingers trailed across the metal ridge of the helmet, but he did not ask out loud for me to remove it. Perhaps, it meant he trusted me.

I did not put him back in his chair, instead opting to carry him. He did not protest this, either, though I thought it surprised him some. When we arrived at the exit I opened the hatch and used the metal rungs of the ladder to lift us up both with magnetism; as we began to float he startled slightly, his grip about my shoulders tightening, hiding his face in the crook of my neck.

Outside, the rain still fell, but not heavily- and it was a wonderfully warm rain. The wind had picked up some, bringing sweet scents of the surrounding forest and the not-so-distant sea, and I heard Charles take a deep breath. When he looked up at the bright gray sky, his eyes took on some of its colour.

“Oh, this is lovely,” he murmured. “I’m very glad it will not be destroyed by a nuclear winter.”

His lips curled up slightly at the ends, and I saw he was teasing me.

“Perhaps that wasn’t a very good idea,” I replied and, adjusting his weight in my arms briefly, I took him across the tarmac, to the edge of the trees. There, at the base of one I laid him down- it was not sheltered entirely from the rainfall here, but it didn’t need to be, the light patter of the water from between the palm canopy was refreshing.

Charles took several deep breaths of the fresh air, as I had, his fingers curling in the dirt by his sides. Before, I had never been the kind to take much appreciation in nature- there had never really been time, between my self-imposed tasks and the struggle for survival- but now I found it hugely pleasant in comparison to soulless, stylish white walls and blood-red rugs. Anything was better than in there, beneath the earth, where only dead things belonged.

Of course, these favourable feelings were made even more true by Charles’s presence- it was charming, how he looked absently up at the sky, how the wind made curls in his hair. The raindrops had left a pattern on the shoulders of his suit jacket, one that mimicked the faint freckles on his nose and cheeks.

Now was a good time, and a good place.

I knelt on the damp earth by his side, my knees sinking slightly into the dirt, and took the helmet off, placing it on the edge of the tarmac, just beyond both our reach. Charles smiled at me immediately, one hand raising to touch my cheek, and I felt a wave of his relief flood my mind- relief, I could tell, at what was for him the return of my being into existence. I heard him sigh, and with that sound another tension was gone, and for a moment he looked happier than I had seen him in some time.

Then his expression shifted again- a perplexed frown- he had caught on something inside my head, just as I had known he would. I grinned at him, and he startled, his hand pulling away in uncertainty.

“But…” he said. “We- we can’t, not really. That’s...it goes against the very definition. No one would officiate.”

His eyes flooded abruptly with new tears- not that the old ones had yet been given a chance to really fade- and he looked away from me, cheeks flushing red.

“I don’t care,” I told him firmly. “We don’t have to live by their rules- we can make our own.”

Charles chuckled softly- rather sadly- and still he was blushing. Underground, all the colour had been sucked from him by the atmosphere and the stress of his injury, but out here he was somehow restored- so much more like he used to be. There was nothing more beautiful.

“Oh, but I won’t always be so pretty,” Charles said, the words catching on his own stuttered breath. “Someday I’ll be old and spotty- maybe I’ll be bald, can you imagine that- and then-”

“I’ll be old, too,” I said with a chuckle of my own. “And I think I’m more likely to go bald.”

I ran my fingers through my more closely cropped hair, loosening it from the mould the helmet had made for it, all in an attempt to humour him. Charles toppled forward in reply, pressing a kiss to my lips with surprising earnestness, and I returned it. When it broke, however, he leaned away slightly, and I did not yet see in his eyes the answer I hoped for.

“People won’t understand,” he whispered; an admission of a weakness I had seen in him before. “We’ll only be…looked down upon. Do you really want to make everything more difficult?”

“It won’t be difficult,” I murmured. “...if you don’t care what people think.”

Underneath that, in my mind, I was sure he heard something else- something he probably liked less: after all, nothing can stop us.

It was true. We weren’t children trapped in some small American Bible town, with nowhere to go and no money in our name, we were two of the most powerful men in the world. To keep ourselves trapped in secrets and shame- for nothing more than the favourable judgement of feeble human eyes- seemed like an absurdity to me.

(And besides, everyone who mattered- the mutants, that is- had figured it out already.)

-hankhasnt!-

I just looked at him in response to that, and slowly he sighed. He didn’t look at me directly, and so I couldn’t say just what was going on inside his head- but I had become used to that particular imbalance. I didn’t need to see his thoughts to love him. I could wait until he gave them to me himself.

“I suppose that’s the end of my objections,” Charles murmured at length, and his voice sounded ragged from tearing against the tightness in his throat. He looked back up at me, and I was struck for an instant by how afraid he looked- he was practically trembling with restrained terror. But he made no move at all to run away. “Are you going to say it, then?”

His eyes flicked down towards my watch pocket, and as I reached for it he sat back. The metal of the ring had cooled completely since I had made it, and now felt perfectly solid- as though it had always held this particular shape.

Charles looked away, and then back, cheeks still unbearably red, and I could only imagine he didn’t know what to do with himself. Not the future expected of the heir to the Xavier fortune, I knew- but he was nothing anyone could ever really expect, and I wanted him to know I admired him for it. I placed the ring in the center of my palm- in the absence of any box- and said with all the gravitas I could muster:

“Charles Francis Xavier, will you marry me?”

-yes-

“Yes,” Charles gasped, though I had already heard him in my head, the answer coming almost before I could finish the question. He hid his face in his palms immediately, and I had to wait, my own hand still held open in the warm air. In spite of it all, I found myself grinning at him, my heart surprisingly light- lighter than it had been in a long time. It was too cute, how shy he became like this.

-notcute-

“Yes, you are,” I told him with a laugh. “Now let me give it to you.”

He pulled one hand away from his face and held it out, shifting to hide his expression in his elbow instead. Briefly, I caught sight of a smile, and I was sure my face was much the same, as I slipped the thin loop of metal about his finger. It fit perfectly, of course, as I had designed it to.

“There,” I said gently, and raised his hand to my lips, pressing a kiss to the blue veins beneath his skin. At long last he looked at me again, braving my eyes, and to reward him for it I leaned in to kiss his lips as well.

“I’ll have to get you something,” Charles murmured against my cheek. “When we go home, back to the mansion. Something to match.”

“Anything you want,” I told him- the same words I always found myself saying for him, even if we both knew they were a lie. He smiled at me, faintly, and our fingers intertwined- selfishly, I thumbed over the ring, to feel how it met with his cool skin. Charles took a deep breath, and looked back up through the canopy, the raindrops that fell between it landing on his cheeks and gathering there, too light and little to fall.

“Let’s rest here a while,” he said. “The weather is so beautiful.”

And to that, I agreed.

Chapter 7: Comedy (Epilogue)

One Year Later

The bite of the metal handles I clutched made my palms sting, and as the great whirring machine around me powered down I felt a spike of physical relief. The spinning sphere within which I was encased slowed its wild motions, and the electric grip the thing had on my body released, unlocking my muscles. When it was done I was out of breath, and my body ached, soaked in sweat as though I had run a marathon.

“That’s great, Erik,” Hank called from below the platform on which I stood- his blue face was pressed close to the measuring tools at the base of the machine, paws eagerly snatching up the printouts. I wondered if he secretly took any vindictive pleasure in my pain from this- I hadn’t been kind to him, after all. “That’s the farthest you’ve pushed it yet!”

Not far enough, I thought, but I accepted the victory, stepping down from the machine on weakened legs. Always, powering the device with my magnetism- the only way we had determined would allow it work without exploding- exhausted me. Still, I looked back up at it once I was on the ground, rubbing my faintly singed palms. It was a challenge, certainly, but I wouldn’t give up- I wanted very much for it to work.

(A machine that activated the X-gene in humans, transforming them into mutants, forcing their evolution- how could I not want it to work? It was a perfect solution, one that bent the world to our cause, and one that did not kill a soul.)

“Are you alright?” Raven asked me, and she took one of my hands, grimacing slightly at the sight of the reddened flesh. “That looked like it really hurt.”

“It was fine,” I said calmly, brushing her aside. “I can do it.”

“Can you?” said Emma Frost sharply- she was sitting away from the machine, her legs crossed gracefully across a lawn chair that looked too much like a throne. “You’ll have to extend the energy barrier much further, to catch everyone at the UN summit.”

I shot her a sharp look, and she only took a sip of the drink she held in one fine hand, raising her eyebrows. Of course, I knew she was right.

With a crack Azazel and Janos suddenly appeared behind her chair, their hands tightly clasped together. Both were dressed finely, but much more casually than they ever had before, in Shaw’s employ. Azazel looked up at the machine, tail flicking curiously across the grass.

“Just missed it, boys,” Emma told them. “But I’m sure there’ll be another demonstration later.”

“Not tonight,” I said, trying to hide the tremor in my voice. I looked out across the lawn- the sun was just beginning to set, the blue of the sky fading into pink and orange. My thumb ran across the ring I wore on my left hand- it was made of gold, and engraved with a beautiful spiraling pattern that resembled the ivy growing across the mansion’s walls. Feeling it, of course, made me think of him.

“If it does not kill him, that is,” Azazel said sarcastically to Frost, and I ignored them both, turning back to Raven.

“If everything’s alright here, I think I’ll retire,” I said to her, flexing my fingers a few times to rid them of the pain. I was sure I looked exhausted from my effort, and so of course she acquiesced, a knowing little quirk in her lips as she bowed away.

“I’m sure he’s up by now,” she replied coyly, and she went to Hank’s side, listening as he began to espouse the technological marvels of the invention to her, his innocence apparent on his every feature despite the fur, and teeth, and claws. I smirked a little to myself- they were better matched than I had originally assumed.

I went back into the mansion, enjoying how the scent of the air turned from summer-sweet to that of strong old wood; a scent my mind now linked inextricably with ‘home’. Despite my fatigue I climbed the stairs instead of taking the elevator- perhaps, I meant to test how weakened I really was- and I made it to the third floor without terrible difficulty, which was a relief. I was strong- I had enough power in me to do this on my own, if only I kept trying.

-goodeveningerik-

I heard these words just as my hand found the doorknob to the third-floor bathroom, and with a smile I slipped inside.

Charles lay comfortably in the tremendous claw-footed tub, the water milky with perfumed bubbles, obscuring too much of his fine white skin for my taste. The wheelchair was parked beside the bath, already covered in fluffy towels for when he was done, and I pushed it away to kneel at his side as he reached for me.

Charles was a sight far healthier than he had been in those strange, stifling days in Shaw’s bunker after Cuba- he had gained back a bit of necessary weight, and his skin was no longer sallow from the effort of healing a wound (a wound which, now, left only the smallest of scars on his lower back). His eyes were still shadowed somewhat, though- one thing that he had not been able to recover from that time was his telepathy. He really had become stronger after the injury- intolerably stronger, in his mind. Even out here in Westchester, where the surrounding human settlements were thin, it was impossible for him to sleep at night. He simply heard too much.

(There was no question of having Hank try to make a serum to help him with this, or with his paralysis- only by chance had the first attempt not been permanent in its effects. Charles never discussed that event with me anymore. Why would he- I had wronged him.)

I kissed the back of his outstretched hand, selfishly admiring how the smooth metal ring I had made for him looked against his skin (my symbol, as the gold and ivy were his). He laughed a little at me, and then lightly touched the side of my face, lips pursing in curiosity, no doubt reviewing my memories of the day he had spent asleep.

“That machine takes too much out of you,” he told me. “We’ll have to modify it- I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I won’t be,” I said, and he frowned outright this time, an exaggerated expression, his fingers running through my hair in examination.

“No? I think I see some gray in here,” he said, humour to cover up what I knew was concern. “You’re a little young to be going silver-fox, darling.”

“I think it would suit me,” I said in reply, and he grinned.

“Well, I won’t deny that.”

A companionable quiet fell between us- I looked at him, and he looked out across the mansion, out across the world, eyes darting back and forth at that which I could not see. After a few moments he came back to himself, and he seemed surprised to see me still kneeling there.

“Aren’t you going to get in?” he asked, flicking a little cloud of soap bubbles my way, and with a snort I stood to undress. Charles smirked at me, entirely self-aware, and I was given a reflection of myself through his eyes- his way of letting me know he was paying attention. As part of the game, I didn’t reward him overmuch.

The hot water soothed a surprising number of aches as I sunk into it opposite Charles, and I groaned. I had never possessed such luxuries in my youth- still, I was not accustomed to them- and Charles clearly knew this, looking as satisfied as the cat who caught the canary. Even though he could not really feel it, I stroked his shin beneath the water, tapping at his knee so the vibrations would travel up his body.

“What do you want to do, when this is over?” Charles asked me. The bath, I assumed he meant, and I pictured our bed- Charles chuckled. “No, the plan for the UN summit. I mean, it’s quite a ways off yet- but once it’s over…”

I thought about this for a moment. I could only imagine that there would be more problems to solve- peace and acceptance could never truly be bought with a single climactic act; life was not like the Hollywood films. Retirement was a long ways off, I imagined.

“Keep fighting,” I told him. “Wherever there are battles.”

“Such militaristic language,” Charles told me, half in reproach, and he pushed a little wave of the bath water my way. “I hope by ‘battles’ you mean peaceful protests, support of new legislation, the creation of foreign aid groups...”

“Perhaps,” I replied with a smile. “And you? Do you want to do something?”

Charles pursed his lips, looking up at the ceiling, and I had a sense that whatever he was about to reveal meant very much to him- that it was a hope he kept close to his heart.

“This place is rather empty, don’t you think?” Charles said to me. “So many rooms with no purpose, so much useless land. It seems unnecessarily selfish, to keep it all to myself.”

I didn’t say anything to that- I had never really thought much of it. His house had always been too big for him, my cell in Auschwitz too small for me; it had only ever seemed a natural part of our differences.

“I think I shall turn it into a school,” Charles continued primly, crossing his arms in the water. “A boarding school for young mutants, those who have difficulty fitting in because of their powers. That would suit very well, in my mind.”

For a moment I was only surprised- the proposal was not something I would ever have considered- and yet, very quickly I realized he was right. It would suit him very well. Absurdly well. In fact, there was probably nothing that would be more fitting for him in the entire world. At the thought of it, my heart swelled, and for how he smiled at me I didn’t doubt he felt it.

“Professor Xavier,” I said with a laugh, and he splashed me again.

“Of course,” he replied. “Headmaster Xavier, in fact.”

“Naturally,” I agreed, amused by the image of him like that, and I settled down into the water.

It was strange- for the first time in my entire life, I had within me a sudden confidence that the future was going to be bright.

Notes:

And that’s all, folks. Let me know what you thought! ^^

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Conscience and Consequence