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Erik is holding Raven around the waist, and it is the hardest thing he has ever done. It's not a comfortable position for either of them, but he had to grab her very quickly when he saw her legs giving out. She is almost doubled over his arm, her hands in her blood-red hair, small, terrified noises pushing between her lips. He can't see her face from here. He doesn't want to.
The phone is sitting back on its hook. Poisonous plastic and ivory buttons. Erik watched Raven speak into it. "Thank you, Moira," she said in a soulless voice, and put it down. She stood where she was for almost a full minute. And that's when Erik saw that her legs were going to give and he crossed the room in a bolt to grab her around the waist.
He doesn’t ask, "What is it? What did she say?" but Raven doesn’t need to be a mind reader to know he needs an answer.
And when she speaks, holding her up becomes the hardest thing he has ever done, because all he wants it to run, to run and run and kill someone, anyone, everyone.
"He's dead. They did something to him and it went wrong and he's dead."
---
They had averted World War Three and hitched a ride home on the biggest ship in the US fleet. They had saved the human worms who infested this earth and Erik had actually, just for a moment, thought that Charles had been right. Back at the mansion, they had agreed to officially cut all ties with the CIA, but Moira promised to deliver any more news of young mutants who would benefit from the school Charles was already planning.
When the men in suits had called the mansion and turned up in their long Buick, Charles smiled and welcomed them inside. Erik loomed in the background, watching his friend discuss at length the 'classified matter' and 'national security' and 'last option'. Then Charles got his coat and started to lead the men back to their car.
Erik grabbed his arm. "Where are you going?"
"I'm trying to prevent another disaster," Charles said, rubbing the back of Erik's hand until he let go. "I'll be back in two days."
"I'm coming with you."
"No, my friend, I don't need a babysitter," Charles rolled his eyes. "And I'm not leaving the kids here on their own. You're in charge until I get back."
But two days later, someone had called from the Department of Mysterious Black Suits to say Charles was being moved to an offshore facility to finish his mission. Erik demanded to speak him, but he was rebuffed again and again, by the secretary and then her supervisor and finally someone who claimed to be an assistant-director. They wouldn't even give him a number to call this new facility. After almost two hours of arguing, they finally hung up on him. He called Moira, who called around her contacts, promising she would get in touch with Charles and ask him to ring the mansion as soon as he'd arrived.
Charles had been dead for almost twenty-four hours. There was no 'offshore-facility'. The suits had been buying themselves time. Lies, lies, lies. Desperate men lying to save themselves because they could, because nobody knew exactly what had happened, because nobody wanted to take responsibility.
---
The night after Moira told them the one truth that mattered, Erik dreams he is Charles. He dreams of the moment where Charles must have realised he was in danger. He dreams of the overwhelming ache of betrayal, of self-admonishment, of fear for his students back at the mansion. Erik watches as his arm - wearing Charles' wristwatch - reaches out towards a man in a white coat, blurred cries pouring from his mouth. He watches the man in the white coat run towards a panel of switches much like Hank's original cerebro, trying to shut off the machine, too late, too late. Then there is only pain, every nerve turned molten, his head burning like a newborn star, and then, and then--
Erik wakes lying on his side, curled into himself. He lies there for a moment, breathing steadily until his heart rate returns to normal. He hears a whisper in his head, Erik, and returns Charles' name to the cold night air. But it is only the echo of the dream.
---
Raven and Erik are having a raging argument in the front hall of the mansion. She is trying to button up her jacket and he is trying to stand between her and the open front doors. Outside, Moira is in front of her car with the passenger-side door open. Sean and Alex are crouched on the front staircase, watching silently and without expression, like mausoleum angels. Hank has been hiding in his lab all day.
“You’re not coming!” Raven yells at Erik, twisting out of his grasp and slapping him, surprisingly hard, on the arm. She is blonde and pink today, the lovely little sister Charles wanted her to be. “You’re staying here, Erik! That’s my fucking decision!”
“Listen to me, listen to me,” Erik growls, gripping both her arms this time. “We are not losing you too. That human bitch out there can’t protect you.”
Tears are pouring down Raven’s cheeks now. “And I can’t protect them from you,” she screams, childish but so very experienced in life’s cruelties. His hands drop away and she lowers her ragged voice. “If you come, you’ll kill someone. I know you will. You’ll kill someone and then they won’t give me Charles’ body and getting him back is more important to me than killing them, Erik. Can you understand that?”
He never had a chance to bury his parents.
He can understand that.
---
Late that night the rain is starting to drum on the windows and Hank has finally come out and made a huge casserole for everyone. The boys eat like they’re starving; without Charles to run things, meals have been erratic and self-prepared for the most part. Erik almost refuses dinner, but he hears Charles’ voice in his mind, almost as clear as it used to be - Hank needs your approval. I left you in charge, Erik. Go and eat.
He’s picking at a lump of mince when he feels the rolling approach of a vehicle’s metal chassis, something larger and more spacious than the car the women left in. He jumps up and storms outside into the rain, his clothes soaked through in less than a minute. A private ambulance eases around the curve of the driveway and crunches to a halt. For a moment Erik is terrified that Raven is hurt – but then she clambers down from the passenger side, blue-skinned and yellow-eyed, and Moira gets out of the driver’s seat.
Raven glances at Erik and then looks away. She and Moira both push open umbrellas and then open the back doors of the ambulance and between them, moving awkwardly as if they don’t really trust each other to do the job properly, they bring out a stretcher with a sheet over it.
---
Charles’ body is still in the woollen sweater and comfortable trousers he was wearing when he left the mansion. Blood has pooled on the underside of his arms. His eyes are closed. His face is peaceful. His shoes and socks are missing and there are red patches that may be electrical burns on the soles of his feet, but his body seems otherwise unmarked. Erik checks under his eyelids, still hoping that he will see a contraction of life there. Let it be a mistake, let it be a coma, a deep telepathic trance, let him be alive.
The white of Charles’ eyes are shot through with burst blood vessels. Erik gently closes the eyelid once more.
He takes Charles’ hand and presses cold knuckles to his own lips, to his forehead, feeling himself flood over, his tears so much hotter than what is left of Charles. With an animalistic desperation he puts two of Charles’ fingers to the dead man’s temple in a grotesque parody of life. He needs to hear that voice, that soft, assured voice that never really left him since the night in the harbour where he nearly drowned. But the voice is gone, and Erik realises how sick it is to puppet Charles’ corpse and puts the hand onto the unmoving chest. He strokes the cold skin in apology. He thinks irrationally, we could clone him. Or find a mutant who can bring the dead back to life. There must be a way. THERE MUST BE A WAY.
One of the boys arrives behind him, but Raven shoos them back to the kitchen with a couple of quiet words Erik can’t make out.
---
They bury Charles on the grounds, in the untended mess that used to be his mother’s rose garden. Erik promises himself that he will hire gardeners in spring to bring it back to full bloom.
---
On the fourth day after Charles’ death, his voice returns.
---
Raven has confirmed that they can all stay in the mansion as long as they want. She falls easily into the role of managing Charles' (not insubstantial) estate, while Erik avoids the very idea of doling out his friend's money. Charles' will, scrupulously catered to the needs of dependents he couldn't even have known he would leave, stipulated a trust fund to maintain the upkeep of the house and grounds, along with a stipend for caretakers. Raven is the main beneficiary, but a large portion of Charles' assets are specified towards a school he had evidently planned, or to charity if the infrastructure wasn't in place yet. Raven makes the five of them sit down and discuss it.
"He meant to start a school for mutants," she insists, blue and sleek in the firelight, still wearing the prim outfit she'd donned on her visit to the lawyer that day. "I know he did. We can still do that much for him. We can find others like us, pass on everything he taught—”
"We're not teachers," Erik grunts, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're not him, Raven. Charles would have understood that," the past tense sticks in his throat and comes out as a croak.
"And we can't find them without him," Hank points out. "I've got only a handful of coordinates left from Cerebro, and without Charles we can't even hone in on those."
"Then we look the old-fashioned way," Raven urges, spreading her hands. "Check the papers for reports of people with strange abilities. Ask at hospitals and schools. Advertise if we have to. There are children out there scared and confused, just like we were, and we need to help them."
"We can't even help ourselves," Sean mutters.
"What we need to do," Alex declares, slapping his thigh, "is take the goddamn money and bring down those bastards who did this to him. Before they hurt anyone else!"
Erik agrees; Hank and Sean immediately counter with a dozen reasons why it's a bad idea; Raven acts ambivalent, but Erik can see a hard flash of rage in her eyes as Alex points out how the government betrayed her brother.
---
They can't make a decision that night, nor the next, and Raven leaves things to stew after that. She and Hank are still prickly around each other, though they're mature enough to be civil about it. The three boys get along well most of the time, but without a shared goal Erik suspects that will not last.
For himself, his goal is finished, complete - he doesn't know what is the point of living these days. Before Shaw's death, he tried not to think about the future, but when it slipped like a golden thread into his mind he had envisioned building a better world. Without Charles, the dream wilts and dies in him. Without Charles, without Shaw, he has no definition.
He tries to keep up the children's training. He allows Hank to stay locked up in the lab for hours, but finds that Alex is good company, rough but eager to hone his abilities. To his surprise it is Sean who creates the most friction. Erik begins to realise that Sean adored Charles, in the easy-going, cheerful way that Sean approaches everything. The boy is not accustomed to death and the situation has left his good nature stranded. Erik is not patient with him, and Sean in turn refuses to help with the chores when Erik demands it, ignores Erik's suggestions that he keep up with his exercises, and can only find sarcasm as a reply to anything Erik says.
"Who do you think you are?" he sneers when Erik asks him to go into town with Alex to get groceries (Erik and Raven have done all the shopping since Charles died - Alex can't be trusted to stick to the shopping list and Hank has not yet found the courage to go into public looking as he does). "Our dad? You're a shit dad."
Erik has not been sleeping. He has spent every waking moment focused only on putting one foot in front of the other. A swell of rage he hasn't felt for a very long time floods through him and he grabs Sean by a clump of hair behind his ear and shakes him. He can't remember what he yells, but suddenly, with a brutal, wonderful clarity, Charles' voice rings in his ears.
Stop it! Erik, stop it at ONCE!
Erik lets go of Sean, who spits, "You're an effin' nutter!" (he even says that, effin', as if too shocked to swear) and runs off.
Erik slumps against the varnished wood wall and puts his hands over his face. Charles speaks again, soft and shifting in and out of hearing range, It's alright. It's going to be alright. You'll survive this. It will be better soon.
Erik takes deep, heaving breaths. "I'm going mad," he grunts to himself. "I've cracked at last."
No more than before, my friend.
The voice is so real he thinks he can feel Charles' breath on his face and the brush of Charles' fingers over the backs of his hands. He drops his arms, but the corridor is empty. Raven is striding towards him, barking, "What the hell did you do to Sean?"
---
Sean is leaving the mansion. Alex comes downstairs to say he's in his room, packing his bags. The look he gives Erik is more sympathetic than accusatory, but it's clear that he knows this is due to Erik. He still comes up to the older man, slaps him on the arm and nods. "Not your fault, man. It’s difficult for everyone right now."
Go and talk to him.
Erik looks away, the sharp spike of a migraine beginning to press in the back of his skull. He tells himself that the boy will have his tantrum and then forgive, because Sean is the least tenacious of anyone in this fractured family. But Sean doesn’t come down to dinner (Hank has cooked again, a herb-rich paella today) and Charles’ voice continues to whisper.
Talk to him.
“I’m going to go and talk to Sean,” Erik says, putting his knife down on the empty plate with a clink. Raven and Alex share a glance.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Raven asks, getting half out of her seat as Erik stands up. “I can come too.”
“No, I need to talk to him alone. To apologise,” Erik explains. Charles amends, If Raven comes, Sean will think you’re being coerced, and Erik adds, “If you come he’ll think you’re making me say sorry.”
Raven lowers herself back into her chair and picks up her cutlery without taking her eyes off him.
Upstairs, Sean doesn’t answer when Erik knocks, so he goes right in. The boy is sitting on his bed, his yellow and black jumpsuit hanging loose in his hands. His fingers are knotted in the striped flaps, meticulously repaired by Hank.
“Fuck off,” Sean mumbles. “I’m going home. My parents miss me.”
“I’m not going to stop you,” Erik says quietly, and hears Charles in his voice, speaking those words to him at the CIA base so long ago. He moves across the room so as not to block the door and leans against Sean’s bookcase. “And I can’t be Charles for you. I can’t replace him.”
“I wish you were,” Sean shoves himself to his feet, tossing the jumpsuit onto the rumpled duvet. “I wish you’d died instead of him. He was good for people, what the hell are you good for?”
He’s lashing out, Erik. Stay calm. Let him vent.
Erik sucks in a long, ragged breath. “I’m sorry about this afternoon.”
“You should be,” Sean is shaking now. He takes a few bold steps forward until he was standing right in front of Erik. “If you’re not going to help us, then why the hell are you still here? Go off and— and kill Nazis or whatever— let us build Charles’ school without you!”
I know that hurts, my friend. I know. But you deserve the chance to stay as much as he does. Tell him he needs to give you a chance.
“Give me a chance,” Erik echoes, and when Sean shakes his head, Erik reaches out, catching the back of Sean’s neck when the boy flinches away. He brings their heads close together. “Give me a chance,” he repeats.
Stay calm. Tell him you want to do right for him and the others.
“I want to do what’s right for you, and Hank and Alex and Raven,” Erik says in a low, firm voice. “And I want to do it for Charles, too.”
Well done.
Without thinking about it, Erik smiles, small and sad. And after a long moment Sean smiles back, equally hesitant. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll stay for a bit.”
Erik pats him on the shoulder and leaves him to unpack his bag.
---
He goes straight to his room and his legs give way almost as soon as the door closes. He makes it almost to the bed and collapses on the edge of it, face buried in his arms, hands clasped together like a sinner confessing at the alter. “You’re dead. You’re dead and I can still hear you and there’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?”
There is nothing wrong with you, my friend.
Erik scrubs his hand across his eyes. “You’re dead! You’re a damn memory!”
“I’m not a memory.”
Erik twists, gasping, but the room is empty. Charles’ voice was so clear, so real, this is insane! Is he dying? Is this all some drug-addled dream in a Cuban hospital, has everything been a dream since that day on the beach? But it hasn’t felt like a dream, and even his subconscious wouldn’t torture him like this—
“You’re me,” Erik snarls. “You’re just my mind playing tricks!”
If I were, how could I know things that you don’t know?
“What things?” Erik snaps.
Like what happened to me when you killed Shaw. I felt everything that he felt, Erik. You drove a coin through my skull, and it never even occurred to you to ask if it hurt.
Erik gapes at the empty air. “I didn’t… how could I know… that isn’t true!” he shakes his head and presses the heel of his hand to his temple. “And there’s no way to prove it is, because you’re dead!”
Ask Moira. She watched me scream until I couldn’t breathe, she watched me fall to my knees. She’ll tell you.
Erik gasps. In and out, in and out. His lungs felt too tired to carry on with this tedious routine. He closes his eyes. “Why? Why are you haunting me?”
I love you, Erik. I want you to be happy. I want you to live without me.
---
Erik spends two days defiantly not calling Moira McTaggart. He talks to Hank about new exercises for the boys, and Hank finds him a couple of notebooks in which Charles had scrawled ideas for the mansion’s improvement as a mutant training facility. He goes to the lawyer with Raven to discuss investment options for the charity money, and how it can best jump-start the school. There will be a school, they have both decided. The Charles Xavier Institute. They have a conversation on the way back about commissioning a painting of Charles to hang above the main staircase, and Erik eventually has to pull over because they are both laughing so hard at the idea of Charles posed in the front hall in full regalia, with the silly cushion hat that doctorate graduates wear.
In a moment of weakness, when even Raven has gone to bed after a night of pouring through paperwork and account statements, he picks up the phone and puts it to his ear. Moira’s office and home numbers are scrawled (in Charles’ flamboyant hand) on a piece of card pinned to the wall. For a moment he almost manages to back out, but then he dials.
She answers sleepily after only two rings. “Moira speaking.”
“Agent McTaggart, it’s Erik Lehnsherr,” he says quietly, glancing around as if he expects to catch one of the children spying on him. “I’m sorry to wake you.”
“Erik,” she says with a note of shock in her voice, and he hears the rustle of her sitting up properly in bed. “W-why are you calling?”
He pauses. “Why are you asking?”
“Nothing, just surprised,” she says quickly.
Erik clenches his fist around the receiver. “Moira, is there something you need to tell me?”
“No. Of course not. I’d have told you if there was something I needed to tell you,” Moira answers, far too firmly. “Why are you calling?” she repeats.
Erik pushes back. “Tell me why you think I should be calling, dammit! What’s going on?”
She pauses for so long that he thinks maybe she has hung up, but finally he hears her give a long sigh. “It was just… I learned something about Charles’ death. I thought it would upset Raven, so I didn’t want to tell you yet.”
“What is it?”
“I really don’t think we should do this over the phone—“
“Tell me! They didn’t give us a single bloody detail, McTaggart!”
Again that exasperated sigh. “They were doing some kind of… some experiment enhancing brainwaves, or something, using Hank’s blueprints of Cerebro. Trying to figure out how to give ordinary people the power to read minds like Charles does – like Charles did. It went wrong and he collapsed during the first test…”
Erik reaches out for the wall. His dream flashes in his mind. How could he have known? Could it be a coincidence?
“And that’s what killed him,” Erik guesses tonelessly.
Moira is silent for a moment. “No,” she replies finally. “That’s… I only learned this today, you understand. I should have told you sooner, I’m sorry. His heart stopped for about two minutes, but a technician performed CPR and they revived him in the facility’s medical bay. But when they tried to bring him back to consciousness, they found there was barely a detectable electrical signal in his brain. He had an activity pattern comparable to DOAs or people with extreme hypoxic damage. He was a vegetable. About seven hours later, they switched off life support.”
Erik feels every inch of him turn to cold, porous stone. He is shivering uncontrollably, and there is a burning pain deep behind his eyes. He says through gritted teeth. “No. No.”
“I’m sorry, Erik. It was totally unethical of them not to call Raven in, let his sister make the decision—“
“He wasn’t dead.”
“Erik,” Moira says, with gentle patience, “His brain was dead.”
“He wasn’t,” Erik groans, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. He squeezes them shut, blocks out the sight of Charles’ scribble of phone numbers. As Moira begins to speak again, he hangs up the phone and staggers to the kitchen bench, his face twisted with frustration and grief. He clutches his skull between his hands. “You weren’t dead. You were in here. You were in my head and you couldn’t get back to your body, you couldn’t wake up before they switched you off…”
And Charles whispers, soft and regretful that Erik has learned the truth, Yes.
“Erik?”
He twitches around, the cutlery in the drawers and the pots and pans on the walls rattling in response. Raven leans back warily, clutching her dressing gown around her body. She meets his eyes. “Are you alright?”
Erik wipes the tears away quickly. He will keep the truth from her, at least. Moira was right. It will hurt her far too much. “I’m fine. What are you doing up?”
Raven shrugs. “I dunno. Just had the feeling you were upset,” she yawns broadly, displaying the glowing inside of her mouth against her dark blue skin. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Well,” she shuffles forward to give him a one-armed hug, “don’t stay locked up in that thick skull of yours.”
She heads back to bed. Erik watches her go, frowning.
“Did she…?” he looks around as if hoping to see Charles’ ghost standing transparent beside him. “Why did she wake up?”
But his friend is silent.
---
For two days he balances his work at the mansion while communing with Charles behind his eyes. He’s aware that the change that has come over him is affecting everyone. Even Sean is getting along with him better than before. He finds himself understanding Hank’s scientific jargon much more clearly with Charles sitting in his head, unpacking the words for him. Prior to Charles’ death he had eyed Raven and her flirtations with restrained interest, but now he feels that she is a sister and nothing more. Only Alex seems concerned, as if he thinks Erik’s serenity is the build-up to a terrible violence. Erik just smiles at him.
It is all too easy to believe that Charles is not dead. He is just out of sight, but never out of mind.
---
Soon comes a night when he awakes to the sound of his bedroom door. He shudders and pushes himself onto one elbow, blinking against the light from the hall. There is a figure there, comfortingly familiar. Erik is still waking up and it doesn’t hit him until the figure closes the door and pads inside.
“Charles,” Erik croaks, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He is completely naked – the nights are too warm – and Charles steps at once between his knees and bends his head to kiss Erik’s forehead.
Erik gasps at the contact, feels Charles’ hands on his shoulders, moving up to cup his jaw.
“It’s an illusion,” he tells the impossible man, pulling away. He waves his hand and the lamp by the bedside flicks on, and yes, this is Charles, this is his face, the fall of his slept-in hair across his eyes, the stubby hands that have touched every surface of Erik inside and out.
Charles bends to kiss him on the lips, and Erik opens his mouth to him reaching up to wrap his arms around Charles’ waist and lean back into the bed, pulling his friend on top of him, and it is too much to bear, this perfect miracle, this wonderful man that is so unexpectedly alive inside his embrace—
No. No, it isn’t perfect. He can smell a perfumed shampoo, and these thin cotton pyjamas are patterned with polka-dots that he recognises from Saturday mornings around the breakfast table. Erik grabs Charles’ shoulders and pushes him away, sitting upright as he does so, forcing the other man to stumble backwards.
“Raven,” he growls. “What the hell are you playing at?”
“I’m not…” Charles frowns, reaches up to brush two fingers to his forehead. His eyes widen, and he looks down at his hands. Blue scales feather up as if under a faint wind. “I woke in the hallway,” Charles says softly. “I came straight to you, how can I be—”
Blue skin bleeds through the pink of Charles and with a shiver he becomes Raven. Her yellow eyes blink at Erik, sitting naked on the bed in front of her. She leaps back with her hands to her mouth. “Erik!” she squeaks, and looks around. “How did I get here?”
Erik stands up, grabbing his robe from the chair by his bed and covering himself up quickly. He is pretty sure she doesn’t notice his shrinking arousal. “You were sleepwalking, Raven,” he soothes. “You just walked in here. You should get back to bed.”
He escorts her to her room and leaves her at the door. She looks at him with a clear longing as he says goodnight, but he can’t shake the mutter of Charles in his head, my sister she’s my sister I’m in here too so don’t you think about her like that.
He locks the door to his room and lies on top of the covers, conversing quietly with his secret passenger.
“What was that, Charles?”
I don’t know. You were asleep, so I wasn’t properly conscious. I wasn’t aware of what I was doing.
“The hell you weren’t!” Erik snarls. “I was plenty awake for that damn kiss!” he turns his head against the pillowcase. “For a moment I really believed you were alive. Do you know how much it hurts to lose that again?”
I’m sorry, my friend. I just miss you so much.
“I’m right here.”
But we’re not really, Erik. We’re so far apart.
“Then what do we do?” Erik asks. “Tell me Charles, what do we do?”
I don’t know.
Erik presses his fingers to his temple. “How did you get into Raven’s head?” he asks.
---
He spends an hour at the lake with the boys the next day, swimming lengths and racing them back to shore. Sean wins every time, of course, even when Hank insists it’s cheating to use his voice.
“You can’t turn off your big blue muscles, Beast, so who’s really cheating?” Sean protests, laughing as Hank kicks a wave of water towards him.
Erik, grinning to himself, leaves them to it and wades back to the muddy bank, heaving himself up onto the grass. Alex, in a damp shirt and shorts, is sitting cross-legged on one of the towels. Erik holds his hand out for one.
Alex eyes him. Erik snaps his fingers. “Do I really need to ask nicely?”
Alex levers himself sideways and gives Erik a towel. “What’s wrong with you?” he grumbles.
Erik freezes, halfway through wrapping the towel around his shoulders. He tries to think of an answer, and when he can’t, he waits for Charles to give him one. But Charles is quiet, so finally he asks, “What do you mean?”
“You’re acting like their sweet big brother,” Alex says, with a simpering tone to the last three words. “How long are you gonna keep this up? You can’t pretend forever.”
“Pretend what?” Erik says irritably.
“That you’re Charles’ replacement,” Alex snaps.
---
Erik sits at the kitchen table. He has placed an iron skillet at the other end of the wooden slab. He can feel the gentle throb of it, like the heat from a pile embers. He reaches out a hand, concentrates, calls it towards him.
After several seconds, the skillet wobbles and scrapes with laborious slowness along the table until the handle is within Erik’s grasp. He lets go and slumps forward over his arms, panting heavily. That took more out of him than lifting the submarine, he would swear.
“I’m losing my powers,” he whispers. “I’m losing myself to you.”
I’ll find a way to bring them back, my friend. We’ll work it out.
“That won’t be enough,” Erik shakes his head. He pushes his hands through his hair. “We can’t both exist like this.”
The truth of what he has to do ripples through him like an icy spring welling up out of the earth.
“If I’m losing my abilities,” Erik rumbles, “then I’m also gaining yours, aren’t I? That’s how I called Raven to me, that night on the phone, and last night in the bedroom.”
Erik, let’s talk about this.
“There’s no need,” Erik says, with half a laugh. Having the last laugh. “You can’t help but read my mind.”
He puts two fingers to his temple.
Don’t do this. Erik, don’t. Listen to me.
“Your powers were so multi-faceted, Charles. Telepathy. Mind control. Memory erasure. It should be possible to erase an entire personality, shouldn’t it?” he closes his eyes.
Erik! Don’t do this! Erik, I love you, my friend, Erik, ERIK, DO NOT DO THIS ERIK, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON’T ERIK—
---
Raven hadn’t gone to the lake with the boys. She felt uneasy after her bout of sleepwalking the night before, and even more unsure about Erik’s strange – though pleasant – behaviour over the last few days. It was as if she’d glimpsed an intruder in the house, but they had disappeared before she could see their face. She wandered through the mansion, looking for something out of place, something that would tell her what was wrong.
There was a soft noise emanating from somewhere in the halls. Raven turned her head and followed it towards the open door of the kitchen. It was a quiet sobbing, a man’s low voice. It was Erik. Which seemed impossible, because Erik did not sob.
Raven stepped into the doorway and watched him for a moment, trying to reconcile what she was seeing against everything she knew about the man. After a moment, he raised his head from his hands, his eyes red and streaming.
“Erik?” Raven said quietly.
He shook his head. “No. I’m Charles.”