[fic] Not Half As Blinding 3/6
Jul. 18th, 2011 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Not Half As Blinding 3/6
Rating: 14
Genre: drama, fix-it fic
Pairings: Erik/Charles
Wordcount: 30k
Warnings: I choose not to warn
Summary: Cuban beach AU. Charles discovers that death does, in fact, solve everything.
Author’s Note: X-men canon, it has been said, resembles a plateful of spaghetti in terms of continuity and coherence. Most of my knowledge comes from the movies. Also? American spelling is hard! ):
Betaed byyami_tai and twelve_pastels. <3
Charles is woken by a loud bang. Erik stands at the door, and before him a metal tray hovers in the air.
Charles nearly drowns in the pride that sweeps him, because the water in the glass doesn’t even ripple when the tray floats his way.
“Hank says you need to eat,” Erik says. The storm cloud around him is controlled now, netted in with iron ropes, which blanket the raging inferno beneath. Charles feels a pang of shame for his earlier outburst. He wants to forgive Erik, he thinks he may already have forgiven him, but he cannot let it happen just yet, even if Erik has taken the children home and made it safe for them.
“Thank you,” he whispers as the tray settles on the bedside table and he struggles to sit up. There is something nagging at him, clawing at his skin from the inside and roaring to get to Erik, and this, precisely, is why he won’t offer forgiveness just yet. He needs to deal with this creature, needs to eradicate it before it wrecks a tender understanding, which it will, if Charles lets himself forgive and forget too easily.
“Hank is researching physical therapy,” Erik informs him. “When he is not redesigning Cerebro.” He stares at the wall opposite.
Charles smiles tightly and lifts the spoon to his mouth. He spends the next five minutes coughing pathetically into a napkin. His mouth is on fire and he has a feeling he will never be capable of smelling anything, ever, because the inside of his nose has been cauterized forever.
Erik’s hand is scalding on his shoulder and it might be the only thing preventing him from landing in the soup face-first.
Charles turns to him with tear-filled eyes and what a picture he must make, with his mouth half-open in an effort to quench the fire he is sure is burning him. “Hot,” he manages.
“It’s not. It’s lukewarm.”
“Too spicy.”
“It’s chicken soup, Charles,” Erik says stiffly.
Too late does Charles remember how bland the last meal he had in the hospital was, and what it implied for the entirety of his life to date. Not his life, Matthew’s.
“I got a visit from Azazel, Riptide and Angel,” he says when the tray floats back and he gives the soup one more chance. This time he is ready for the flavor and manages to swallow the spoonful, even if he needs to chase it down with water. “They said you invited them to stay.”
Erik studies the wall, as though it contains the secret answer to the mysteries of the universe. “It seemed only polite.”
“And the little girl?”
“She was next on the list.”
The third spoonful has him nearly in tears and he shoves the bowl away.
“Keep eating,” Erik says and folds his hands across his chest.
“You eat it, if you’re so keen.” Charles says. “I’m done.”
“You will eat it, or I will force-feed it to you.”
“Try and I will make you sing ‘twinkle, twinkle little star’ to every person in this household, starting with Azazel.”
Erik glares at him and opens his mouth. “Twinkle, twinkle little star,” he sings, “How I wonder what you are.”
He gets to the second verse before Charles starts giggling into his sleeve.
“Eat the soup,” Erik says and the storm raging inside him looses some of its intensity.
Charles complies, which proves, in the long run, to be a terrible mistake on his part. It seemed innocuous at the time. Chicken soup in bed is a pleasant surprise, even if it kills him to finish the bowl -- his taste buds are unused and easily excitable -- so Charles lies down exhausted by the action of lifting the spoon to his mouth.
Erik stares at him as he pulls the duvet up and keeps staring, even as the tray lifts gracefully into the air and away.
“You should blink,” Charles says sleepily. “It’s not healthy to not blink.”
Erik says nothing, but despite the raging storm within, his presence proves soothing. Charles is asleep in minutes.
*****
Charles is woken around midnight by the urgent need to go to the toilet. His private bathroom is only yards from his bed, so there should be no trouble managing to get there without alerting a sympathetic crowd of onlookers. His mind drifts off briefly to the hypothetical scenario, and he wants to die a little inside when he hears the cheers and clapping when he manages to hit the bowl without drenching the bathroom in the process.
He shoves the covers off and lies still for a moment, to rest. This will not be reality, because physically he might have been a two year old in a coma for thirty years, but mentally he is a grown man who hasn’t been in a coma for thirty years, and he is perfectly capable of going to the bathroom by himself.
He’s starting to be able to reconcile the two versions of himself in his mind. It’s easier, he supposes, when one consists of an empty, sunlit room.
The window opposite the bed is open, when it wasn’t before, and Charles sighs in bliss. Someone must have opened very recently, because it is snowing and there is only the finest white dust on the floor, and only a few drops of water, when the windowsill is covered with the stuff. The smell of a winter night is sharp, biting and divine. Intellectually he knows that this is far from the first time he’s smelled it, but his nostrils flare and his brain elevates the odor to entirely new levels of sublimity.
At least it seems that way, until he opens his eyes and sees a little bird skewered by his favorite pen and pinned to the tree branch.
He screams bloody murder. He blames it on the shock. He’s not used to finding little dead birds outside his window.
Of course nothing is quite so simple anymore. He screams and the shock takes him a step back, which his inner ear, lazy from a lifetime of not having a job to do, doesn’t handle too well, and he topples to the floor, at about the same time as the door flies off its hinges and Erik strides into the room, with murder and panic in his eyes and a four-year-old on his arm.
He is followed by everyone, except Azazel, who is suddenly standing in the corner of the bedroom. The instant he takes stock of the situation he looks amused.
“What is that?” Charles asks, and he is proud to sound only a little hysterical.
Erik glares at the window, searching for the cause of the disruption, and finds none. Charles, without thinking about it, shoves the image of the skewered bird into his mind, highlighting it with extra colors, for poignancy, not that it needs more, what with the ruffled feathers and bright blood against white snow and black tree bark.
“It’s a lark,” Erik says.
“Oh my god,” Raven gasps. “You killed a bird! With a pen!”
“It was being loud.”
A tense moment follows, during which everyone checks for the nearest metal implement and tries to move away from both it and Sean, who slaps his hands over his mouth and tries not to breathe, while keeping absolutely silent, even as their minds focus on the vehement need to be wherever Erik’s not. Charles won’t allow himself to sift through the memories that made it so, but he latches onto the hints that this is not news, that this is routine, that this is how things are.
He doesn’t spare it much thought. He keeps glaring, instead, because there is a dead bird pinned to a tree branch outside his window and no one seems to have a problem with this, he is sitting on the floor, and his coccyx feels like it’s trying to scratch the wooden floorboards through his skin and feeling deeply unhappy about not being able to.
Jubilee sticks her fingers in her mouth and Charles feels an overwhelming need to take her away from Erik and hide her under the bed, even though she seems to be perfectly content where she is.
Instead, he presses the heels of his hands into his eye-sockets and sighs.
“Could someone help me up, please?” Charles can get up. It’s not hard, with the proper application of leverage. He’d need to turn a little, so that both his hands would be on the floor and then pull his legs underneath him and then scramble for something steady to hold on to, while he waited for his vertigo to relinquish its hold.
It takes a moment, during which everyone watches Erik with varying degrees of trepidation, but eventually Alex inches around the group and -- all the while holding his hands awkwardly in front of him, well within Erik’s field of vision, Charles can’t help but notice -- helps him stand up.
Charles holds on to his elbow, just in case.
The tension breaks just as soon as Erik leaves the room and everyone breathes a little more freely. It’s suffocating to even be on the same planet as this man, Charles hears, it’s so much worse when he’s in the room.
Charles takes a cautious step back and lets go of Alex when his head asserts his position and holds on to it, without an overt balancing act.
“You okay?” Alex asks.
“Yes, thank you, I was just startled. I’m perfectly fine.”
“You look tired.” Raven crosses the room to peer into his eyes. Charles manages the facial expression that is the equivalent of shaking one’s head, which he prefers not to try given his recent bout of falling to the floor at the slightest provocation.
“I really need to go to the bathroom,” he says. “Then I think I will go back to sleep. Could one of you close the window for me?”
There are some embarrassed grins, especially from the boys, but he is left in peace.
It will be fine, Charles tells himself, leaning his forehead against the cool tiles of the bathroom. The face in the mirror is wasted, the bones seem to be only edges and hollows, stretching his skin in a grotesque mask. His eyes seem huge, in comparison to those in his memory, shining with fevered blue from the shadowed eye sockets. Charles touches the mirror, drags the pad of his finger left to right as his mirror double does the same right to left.
His hair is short. There is the hint of stubble on his face, he would need to master standing still long enough to shave, he thinks. Not tonight, he’s too exhausted to bother, but soon.
Charles returns to bed and the effort it takes to pull the covers up to his chin is unbelievable. Oh well, he thinks and his eyelids drift downwards. He has time.
*****
Erik wakes him. Charles knows it’s morning, because the sunshine coming through the window is bright and fresh, unpolluted by the day.
“Eat,” Erik says as he sits down and folds his arms.
There is a tray on Charles’ knees, with toast, orange juice, eggs and jam.
“Thank you.”
Erik watches him eat. Charles watches the clouds move across the rectangle of his window and tries not to notice the much darker and turbulent clouds that whirl around the bedroom ceiling, threatening unspeakable destruction should the rain be allowed to fall.
The tray lifts itself from his lap the moment he’s done and Erik with it. Instead of leaving, however, the man grasps Charles’ arm and pulls, until they are standing side by side.
“I was planning to get up, thank you,” Charles says, but Erik is not listening.
“It’s time for your therapy,” he hears by way of explanation, as Erik hauls him out of his bedroom and into the adjoining sitting room, which has been stripped of the very comfortable couch and chairs, and has instead become an intellectual’s gym.
“Therapy?” Charles manages, because he feels as though a strong gust of wind would topple him, never mind walking, and Erik shoves him in the direction of the bench, which has weights attached to its side.
Charles very nearly faints ten minutes into the workout (which is pathetic in of itself, he isn’t even lifting anything but his own stubbornly unwieldy torso off the bench, to the tune of Erik’s toneless counting). Given the way his week has been going, this should beget earnest panic, but instead Erik fetches himself a seat, gives him water, waits until the dizziness passes and then continues his chant.
Charles doesn’t remember getting back into the bed, but when he wakes, some hours later, he is treated to a glass of orange juice, an aspirin, and another hour in the gym library.
Mercy is a foreign word to Erik, in any of the fifty-seven languages he speaks.
The days pass. Sometimes Erik brings the girl, Jubilee, along. She turns the pages in a cardboard book and points at various animals as Erik either nods or corrects, while Charles does his utmost not to fall over and die of exhaustion.
He learns very little during those sessions, other than Jubilee is very happy where she is, Erik is nice, the orphanage was a very drab place, and she likes this colorful house, where no one recoils in fear when lovely sparkles shoot out of her fingertips. Her little mind is a bundle of color, happiness and security and Charles shamefully picks at its edges, clinging to the comfort it offers.
The other kids are no more forthcoming with information, whether through complaints or casual conversation. Charles doesn’t pry, but the sheer terror that wafts throughout the house when Erik walks the corridors is palpable. He understands that -- Erik on the warpath is no less comforting than a charging nuclear tank manned by kamikazes -- but he feels there are some things he should be informed of, some things should be stopped, some things should have no place in a home.
And yet, somehow, the kids choose to remain. Charles is not quite so blind to think the children are helpless, he knows they can easily find their way in the world, they had before they met him. He watches them, whenever he feels he can spare a neuron not devoted to keeping himself breathing.
He sees Erik terrorize the living daylights out of Sean; he sees the way the boy hides in any room that’s open when Erik crosses the hall. He sees Erik pause by the closed door and deliver a minute-long speech on the finer points of hiding in plain sight and, incidentally, if he stopped worrying about hitting the ground, he would fly better, because a controlled fall is every bit as important as the flight itself.
He sees Alex get his plasma bolts deflected into the walls of the shelter by metal discs, he sees him on the verge of exhaustion and getting pummeled into the ground, he sees Erik hold out a hand to help him up. He sees Alex come back the next day for more.
He sees Raven, running naked through the grounds, keeping pace with Hank, even if she is exhausted by the time they round the mansion. He sees Erik look at her with pride in his eyes, he sees how she straightens when she, too, sees.
He sees Riptide and Azazel memorizing the plan of the grounds; he sees them discuss and then help Erik install metal fixtures at crucial points of what he recognizes as defenses. The metal fixtures, he realizes soon, are to Erik what a canon is to an artillerist.
He sees and he isn’t sure what he thinks. Fortunately, he rarely has time to find out more, because by then Erik usually finds him and therapy commences until Charles cannot see straight.
*****
“You look better by the day,” Moira tells him. She fiddles with her cup of coffee, but when he goes to fix himself one, she stands and guides him back to the chair.
“I am sick of orange juice,” he says petulantly, glaring at the glass she puts before him.
“Hank says you are not to have any coffee. Erik says we must listen to what Hank says, or else.” Moira’s hair falls over her shoulders to obscure her face. There is the line of scars on her neck again, hundreds of tiny circles in a row, and right below the smooth metal band, free of clasps or other fastenings.
“Moira,” he starts and she shakes her head.
“It’s fine. We all understand it’s a necessity.”
“How is it necessary?”
Her reflexes are better than his, and she snatches the glass from the table before he can knock it over.
“You must calm down.”
“Moira!”
“He doesn’t trust me to stay. Why is this such a shock to you? I’m grateful to be alive, at this point.”
“He cannot, he has no right!”
“I work for the CIA, Charles. For the United States. Not for you, not for your cause. Even if I am sympathetic, I am an outsider here.” She straightens up and smiles. “In any case, it is not worth bothering over.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Charles says, desperately. “We can trust you. There’s no need for that.”
“But you cannot trust me, Charles.” She flicks her hair over her shoulder and stares him down. “I am an agent of the CIA, which I wouldn’t be, if I didn’t believe in what they do. I took the oath, and my alliance to you was part of my assignment. For the good of this country, I will do what I must. The moment I’m free to leave I will report back, because I am a good agent, because I believe that what the agency does is necessary.”
“Your agency tried to kill you,” Charles can’t help but say, but she merely shakes her head.
“My agency reacted to an unknown threat on foreign waters. Overreacted, perhaps, but I can understand that. I did that, too, when I shot you.”
“But Erik…”
“We killed you, Charles.” Moira returns the glass of juice to him and stares pointedly until he starts sipping. “He and I. He won’t forgive himself for curving the bullet as he did, I won’t forgive myself for shooting. There is nothing you can say that will make it better for either of us.”
“Does it count for nothing that I am alive?”
“Through a miracle only, and not the usual medical kind. That is no excuse.”
“I can’t… You can’t ask me to stand by and do nothing when you wear a collar about your neck, in my house. It’s wrong.”
Moira looks down. She is bracing herself to speak, he can tell. “You are my friend, Charles, so I need you to understand this. They will ask about you,” she says. “You spooked them, when you read their minds the first time you were there. If I go back, they will ask about the telepath they can use in Cerebro to spy on people, about the device that pulled the submarine out of the water. They will ask where you are, who you are, and there would only be so much I can hold back without betraying my country’s interest. So yes, there is a need for this. Until an alternative presents itself.”
Charles shudders. “Moira…”
“I won’t lie to you and say I don’t mind,” she says and smiles. “It would be pointless. However, I need you to understand that after everything that happened, this was my choice, not Erik’s.”
She leaves him alone in the dining room, staring off into space.
*****
It is late in the evening when he runs into a girl of about fifteen in the corridor. Charles pauses, only partly because he needs to catch his breath.
“Hello,” he says kindly. “I don’t believe we have met.”
“I’m Naiad,” she says. Her palms are scarred, probably by fire, which failed to remove the fine webbing between her fingers, and there are twin lines on either side of her throat. Charles would think these were scars, too, were it not for the fact that as he looks the skin flaps, as though moved by breathing.
“Remarkable,” he says. “Are those gills?”
“Yes, they are.”
“It’s astounding! You can breathe underwater, then?”
She nods, enthusiastically, and Charles feels the mental tally he has of all the different mutations, and possible future ones to consider, expand. It is remarkable and it is heady, the knowledge of all the things he has yet to discover, of the people he has yet to meet, the wondrous potential the human race holds.
“How did you get here, if you don’t mind me asking?” he asks, because soon he will have to retire and this is one other thing he desperately needs to know before he does.
“I was working with my brother in a water park,” she says. “With the dolphins. He’s a mutant too, only he can’t breathe underwater. Mr Erik found us. Said we’d be safe here, until we could be safe everywhere.”
Charles hears the speech Erik made as loudly as though he was present for it. It’s considerably tamer than what he expected, but the undertone makes his hackles rise. This girl is at peace, though, so he fixes the smile on his face as she asks about his mutation and, when she politely excuses herself (her brother is paranoid, she says, but then they were living in fear of people noticing that they were different), he turns on his heel and makes a beeline for the kitchen.
The beeline, of course, feels like a marathon and requires pit stops, during which Charles leans against a wall and wheezes. Finally he collapses on a kitchen chair and rests there, until his legs stop shaking and he chances a search of the room.
Someone has taken all the alcohol, he discovers after the arduous trek. The fridge usually had at least a few beers, there ought to be vodka in the freezer and a couple of bottles of cheap whiskey in the cupboards, a legacy of Mrs Cook, the cook, who imbibed whenever the occasion presented itself and often when it didn’t. There was nothing of the sort here now.
“Goddamn it!”
In retrospect, Charles thinks as he slides onto the floor, with the fridge as his sole support, kicking the offending piece of furniture has been a mistake.
“Professor?”
Something large is blocking the light. Charles squints and makes out the shape of Hank.
“Are you alright?” Hank asks and crouches before him.
“Hank,” Charles says and sighs. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t. He wishes he could erase the day from his memory. “I just met a girl called Naiad. She lives here, apparently, because Erik invited her and her brother.”
Hank doesn’t move. “She does. Her brother’s name is Will. I’m not sure if it’s his actual name, or a pseudonym. They mostly keep to themselves, they are very young.”
“How many other surprises await me?”
Hank scratches his head. “There are no more new mutants living here, if that’s what you wish to know. Just the three. There have been a few other children, but Erik left them with their parents. One was very old and didn’t want to leave his home.”
Charles closes his eyes. “Erik went recruiting mutants.”
He senses a nod. It is a little different from seeing the nod.
“Why?”
Hank hesitates and Charles looks at him. Glares, even.
“He held you after you were shot,” he says quietly, struggling to form a coherent reply, because -- Charles sees this quite clearly -- he doesn’t understand it himself. “After you died, he just… Asked. Politely. Azazel took us all home. There was a funeral. He still plans, I think. This is why Moira isn’t allowed to leave.”
“I need a drink.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Professor,” Hank starts, “You are considerably thinner than you used to be, and…”
Charles glares. “Hank, I am fully conscious of the fact that when I invited you to stay I have invited you to make this house your own. I want it to be your home, all of you. But so help me, this is my home too, and tonight I really need a drink.”
There is a little too much irritation in his voice, but it seems to work, as Hank stands (gracefully -- he became so graceful when his formula enhanced his mutation) and goes into the pantry. He returns moments later with a couple of bottles of chilled beer, which he pours into glasses.
The fizz confuses Charles for a few moments, before he remembers the trick to letting the bubbles burst on the back of his tongue. It flows considerably smoother after that. He drains half the beer in what he wishes was one gulp, but it seems his talents in that department need practice, too.
When he finishes the glass he skewers Hank with a look that usually sends students fleeing.
“What happened?” He keeps his voice low and urgent. He hasn’t been a great example thus far, fleeing from the answers, fleeing from the truth, but no more. He needs to know.
The beach flickers through Hank’s mind, even as he tries to push it down and drown the memory in beer.
“You bled out,” he says in the end. “We’re not sure how it happened, exactly, it was so fast, but Moira started shooting at Erik and he kind of swatted at the air and a bullet went through your neck. You-- you were in shock, I think. Erik held you and I don’t know, I think you said something, but no one heard.”
Charles waits. He thought he didn’t want to know, but now he can’t draw a breath, can’t make himself move, cannot think, as he waits for the answer to the question that’s been plaguing his mind.
“The missiles fell into the ocean,” Hank says, quite possibly saving Charles’ life with only a handful of words. “And Erik hasn’t been right since. He tried, I think, but he’s been not fully there. Not whole.”
“What do you mean, not whole?”
“He is going to kill me for this,” Hank says, resigned.
“Has he actually killed anyone for talking?” Charles tries to be helpful and teasing, he does, but Hank winces.
“Not kill as such, no, but there have been incidents.” Hank said incidents like he said there has been a situation in the laboratory, like something caught fire and the fire had since turned into a bigger fire, which gained sapience and periodically exploded. Which never happened, not as such, but it remained a possibility.
“Erik hurt someone?” Charles says slowly, and his heart hitches up and lodges in his throat, messing with the way he inhales, messing with his thoughts.
“Riptide made a comment about you. We, uh. It took us an hour to cut him out of the debris. Which is also why your Bentley is no longer in the garage.”
Charles is sure the room is spinning around him, even as he bullies poor Hank into a refill. He liked the Bentley. “Erik wrapped a car around someone, for making a comment?”
“I’m not quite sure what it was he said, to be honest. But he wasn’t hurt too badly. And not permanently. He screamed, and Erik stopped.”
“That’s all?”
Hank stares at the foam in his glass. “We were a little afraid to try anything more. We hoped that you would, you know.”
“That I would what?”
“Calm him down.” Hank ducks his head and Charles feels the need to put his hand on his neck and pet him. He wonders how the fur would feel on his fingers.
“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” Charles says, even as the bubbles return with a vengeance and he burps. “So it’s not enough to die uncomfortably and somehow come back to life, no, I have to nurse Erik to health, too. Because he is emotionally fragile. Well, Hank, my boy, let me tell you, this is not fair.”
“Professor…”
“No, it really isn’t. Contrary to popular belief dying is not easy, nor is it fun. It hurts. It’s dark and it’s cold and I really would like some comforting from the lot of you, or at least shock. I was in shock when I woke up, and I was there. Is a moderate amount of surprise too much to ask for? Oh, I understand that this is America’s prime spot for the unusual these days, that Azazel alone makes it supernatural central, but it is not everyday people come back to life, or to be more precise, turn out to have had two bodies all along. Which is only a little strange, as far as strange happening go. Is it strange to you? I mean, obviously, you are not exactly pedestrian yourself, what with that remarkable brain of yours, honestly, the things you get up to in that lab! It’s truly astounding. Did you make any discoveries while I was in the process of being less dead then anticipated?” Charles blinks at Hank, finding him very confused. “Speaking of death, why is there a desk on my grave? Not that I mind, mind, it’s a very nice grave, you chose my favorite spot, I certainly don’t mind being dead there, but why the desk? Why the playpen?”
“Ah,” Hank says and tries (unsuccessfully) to wrestle the glass from Charles’ hand. “The desk is there because Erik likes working there. He usually takes Jubilee along, hence the playpen, as she likes him best out of all of us.”
What he doesn’t say is that he is a close second, as Jubilee finds him fluffy and warm and alive, therefore superior to her stuffed bear. Charles picks up the thought before he can catch himself and it is amazing how warm it is.
“That’s good!”
“Professor, I think--”
“I always wanted my grave to be useful for something,” Charles confesses. “I understand it is very hubristic of me, don’t get me wrong. I was rather hoping for a Nobel prize, or Xavier prize, as it were, but I guess a playpen is just as good. At least someone is happy there.”
Hank coughs.
Charles looks to the ceiling, then back at the frowning feline face. “Erik works on my grave?”
“Ah. Yes. We tried to persuade him to move indoors, but it was difficult enough just to get him to bury you.” Behind his eyes Hank reviews the memory, of Erik, keeping everyone else at bay, watching the unnervingly familiar corpse laid out in the little clearing. He remembers, or Hank remembers, the bits and pieces of metal floating around him, around them, stopping everyone from approaching as Erik sat unmoving, barely even noticing when day turned into night.
In the end Raven morphed into Charles, and the likeness in Hank’s memory was fascinatingly accurate, Charles had to admit, though it very nearly cost her her head, when Erik woke enough to see what was in front of him and lashed out.
“That’s worrying,” Charles says and watches the lights overhead. He never noticed how poorly lit the kitchen was. The few light bulbs hovering overhead were a standing testimony to his mother’s belief that kitchens were for servants and decor was a thing wasted on them. He would need to do something about this, do something soon. “Inability to let go can be a sign of underlying mental problems. Unresolved issues.”
“A little worrying, yes.” Hank’s head is hanging beneath the line of his shoulders and Charles watches the fine fluff on his nape. It’s blue and looks downy.
It is feathery soft, he discovers. “It’s so fluffy!” he says, fascinated at the way the hair slips between his fingers, even though Hank goes stiff from shock and is watching him with an expression of utmost disbelief on his face.
The door of the kitchen swings open of its own volition just as Charles’ fingers trail lightly to Hank’s ear and back to the nape of his neck. “So. Fluffy!” he says, delighted at the turn of events. “Erik! Look how fluffy Hank is! Isn’t fluffy a groovy word? We should absolutely use it more often. Fluffy! Beer is fluffy, too. Hank is fluffy! Which is also adorable.”
“What?” Erik grinds out, glaring at Hank. Charles hears a rumble and the whole of the kitchen shakes, the metal thrums, the parts that aren’t metal stand close to something that is and the entire room is vibrating.
“No, you don’t,” Hank says, unexpectedly, and his mind reforms from the usual racetrack of little wooly sheep, powered by nuclear cores, into a clock of metal and diamond and hard edges and crackling electricity. He gets up and somehow Charles is on his feet as well, and then he is leaning against Erik, who is a very bad pillar of support, considering, with the smell of cologne and washing powder and a light sheen of sweat. Charles wants to bury himself in the smell, even as a part of him screeches in panic. “Take him to bed, and for god’s sake, talk it out already! You think it’s fun for us, walking on eggshells, while you stalk about like you are about to kill anyone who looks at you wrong? It’s not! You ruin the electrical installation while you walk! I’ve had to rewire the salon twice already and I am out of copper wires at the moment. So, no, you don’t get to skewer me right now, you get to take the Professor upstairs, talk and get over yourself!”
Erik watches him with, what Charles knows, by looking at his mind, is a metaphorical open mouth. He can’t help the giggle. Hank has come a long way.
“What did you give him?” Raven asks as her fingers dance before Charles’ eyes.
Hank grimaces. “He really wanted a beer.”
“You gave him alcohol?” Moira looks shocked. She is funny when she is shocked. Her mind turns pink and hedgehog-y. “You said he shouldn’t even have coffee!”
“Bad idea, I know it now. But it was only a beer, and I watered it down.”
“He got this drunk on a single beer?”
“He weighs what, a hundred and twenty pounds? At most? And he’s never had alcohol before, if you think about it,” Hank shrugs and his guilt smells like ginger to Charles. “Now, excuse me, I think I need to leave before I get a fridge wrapped around me. Seeing as I’m the only one who even knows what a plasma cutter is, I don’t think we should risk it.” He turns on his heel and runs, before Erik can change his mind about the fridge and it is a very close thing. Charles watches, enthralled, as the fridge inches from its place, how its movement corresponds to the bursts of raw emotion, so tangled he cannot even decipher what it is, which Erik’s mind lets out.
“Raven!” Charles beams at his sister meanwhile and pokes her scaly face. “Did you know your scales are positioned similarly to the patterns on the exotic fish we used to have in the garden? I think I should remember the name. It was in Latin. They were very colorful. Swimming up and down the pond. Also, did you know the blue looks really good on you? You should wear blue more often. It’s pretty!”
“Charles, did you perhaps entertain the possibility that you may be a little drunk?” Raven asks gently and Charles scoffs.
“Ridiculous. I only had a couple of beers. That’s hardly enough to get me drunk. Besides, I am not slurring my words, am I?” His traitorous feet choose that moment to fail him and he staggers into the nearest person, who turns out to be tall and red. Charles gives in to momentary incomprehension but then he remembers Bugs the Bunny. “Did you know you look like a cartoon devil?” he says. “You even have a tail. It’s so groovy. Tails are super groovy. It’s got to be really useful. It is, isn’t it? I saw you fight, or I saw someone who saw you fight, I can’t remember.” Charles watches the tip of the tail swing as he tries to untangle the memory and find the culprit. “It’s prehensile, too.”
Azazel is giving someone a look over Charles’ shoulder and he is smirking, which Charles finds fascinating, because bone structure! Red, actually red, skin! The mutation possibilities are endless! The tail, swishing back and forth and someone grabs Charles’ elbow.
“You are going to bed,” Erik says in that tightly controlled way of his.
Charles doesn’t argue. He doesn’t want cars wrapped around him, even if it does sound like a fun way to spend an afternoon. He might possibly be a little drunk. Maybe. He doesn’t fully comprehend why, but it seems like a plausible explanation for the fact that the floor is uneven and is swaying gently as he walks.
“Did you install a sea floor by any chance?” he asks when the hardwood persists to meet his feet in unexpected places. “It seems odd to me. It’s moving.”
“You are drunk,” Erik says.
“Maybe a little.” Charles focuses but the gale raging through Erik and consequently through the house upsets his balance.
It is a bad idea, a part of him says as they reach his bedroom and the storm shows no signs of stopping, but Charles shoves that part underwater and lays his palm on the side of Erik’s face. “You need to calm down,” he says out loud and in his mind, sending the words spiraling on a gentle wind into the eye of the storm. It is gratifying to see the dark clouds shift minutely and open up.
The success instantly becomes a disaster, when Charles glimpses what lies beyond, because what he finds is an abyss.
Alright, so he is drunk. He is prone to overreaction. He still doesn’t think he should be drunk, he didn’t drink a whole lot, but as far as excuses go, finding the abyss of death in his friend’s mind is one of the best.
He pulls Erik’s head to touch their foreheads together and pushes until the torrent of his mind blankets the protests of Erik’s. He casts himself into the abyss, grasping at its edges, because it is death and annihilation, but it cannot harm him while he’s on solid ground, it cannot touch him and he is stronger than it, he is alive and he has nothing to fear. He feels the wood underneath his feet and the warm skin beneath his hands, he feels Erik’s breath on his face and though his head is swimming his mind is careful, precise.
He can’t close it fully. He can’t make it disappear. But Erik stops resisting, at least, and when he does Charles shows him how to have it fold in on itself, until it is no longer occupying the forefront of his thoughts. He can direct the storm to its fringes, so that it no longer fills the emptiness with rage, because it doesn’t need to.
There is a sound, something much like a sob, but it can’t be a sob because that requires for a throat to hitch and Charles is certain that neither of them does anything but breathe calmly.
“Charles,” Erik says, and Charles sways on his feet.
“I swear it was an accident,” he says when he finds himself in Erik’s embrace. “I’m prone to accidents. I don’t think it means I’m turning into a Victorian-era heroine, despite the swooning.”
“You’re drunk,” Erik simply says -- god, this is embarrassing -- picks him up and deposits him on the bed.
Charles discovers, with no surprise whatsoever, that his hand is tangled in Erik’s turtleneck and that it would take the breaking of bones to untangle it. He is fine with that. He is very fine with the fact that Erik sighs and doesn’t resist, but carefully lies down beside him, and he shouldn’t feel this comfortable next to a man who was the cause of him living through death twice, but he does.
He shouldn’t feel this comfortable lying next to a man, period.
“You know dying is not a pleasant affair,” he says and it is a brilliant bedtime conversation starter. “But it isn’t horrible, either. There’s the point when you teeter on the edge and then another when you just fall and it’s all there is to it. No horror, just free-fall.”
“It is horror, when I stand on the edge and watch you fall.”
Erik stares at the ceiling and very pointedly does not look at Charles, who cannot, for the life of him, tear his eyes away.
“What happened?” he asks quietly. The alcohol he exiles to the edges of his mind, until he is alone and sober in the middle. “Erik, what happened?”
“You held on, is what happened. To me. In my head. You died in my mind, you made me watch your death from the inside.”
Charles takes the words in. He writes them across the canvas in his head, to see them in print, in person. The printed word has a physicality to it, makes the words more real. Makes the concept behind it more real.
“Oh, my friend,” he whispers, and it is instinct that makes him press his body against Erik’s. “I am so sorry.”
He remembers very little and what he does remember is half real, half what his fevered mind concocted to help him deal with the reality of death. He remembers Erik, anguished above him and he remembers the helmet, which was like death in itself. He remembers the helmet disappearing and Erik’s mind latching onto his and then the darkness encroaching on them both.
He feels shame pouring into him, thick, hot, viscous. He should have been better than that.
“I’m so sorry,” he says again. “I shouldn’t have put you through that.”
Erik says nothing for the longest time, long enough for Charles to remember more of the day. “Oh dear lord. The others -- please tell me I didn’t also do it to the others.”
“You didn’t. It was just me.”
No reaction would be the right one, so Charles says nothing. He closes his eyes and turns his face into Erik’s shoulder. The steady flow of his thoughts washes over him, fragments of memories he could piece into something bigger but doesn’t have the energy to. He’s content to have them floating past, kissing at his skin.
“Don’t leave,” he begs when he feels the sleep beginning to take hold, even though Erik makes no move to vacate the bed. “Please don’t leave me.”
He gets no reply.
four
Rating: 14
Genre: drama, fix-it fic
Pairings: Erik/Charles
Wordcount: 30k
Warnings: I choose not to warn
Summary: Cuban beach AU. Charles discovers that death does, in fact, solve everything.
Author’s Note: X-men canon, it has been said, resembles a plateful of spaghetti in terms of continuity and coherence. Most of my knowledge comes from the movies. Also? American spelling is hard! ):
Betaed by
yami_tai and twelve_pastels. <3Charles is woken by a loud bang. Erik stands at the door, and before him a metal tray hovers in the air.
Charles nearly drowns in the pride that sweeps him, because the water in the glass doesn’t even ripple when the tray floats his way.
“Hank says you need to eat,” Erik says. The storm cloud around him is controlled now, netted in with iron ropes, which blanket the raging inferno beneath. Charles feels a pang of shame for his earlier outburst. He wants to forgive Erik, he thinks he may already have forgiven him, but he cannot let it happen just yet, even if Erik has taken the children home and made it safe for them.
“Thank you,” he whispers as the tray settles on the bedside table and he struggles to sit up. There is something nagging at him, clawing at his skin from the inside and roaring to get to Erik, and this, precisely, is why he won’t offer forgiveness just yet. He needs to deal with this creature, needs to eradicate it before it wrecks a tender understanding, which it will, if Charles lets himself forgive and forget too easily.
“Hank is researching physical therapy,” Erik informs him. “When he is not redesigning Cerebro.” He stares at the wall opposite.
Charles smiles tightly and lifts the spoon to his mouth. He spends the next five minutes coughing pathetically into a napkin. His mouth is on fire and he has a feeling he will never be capable of smelling anything, ever, because the inside of his nose has been cauterized forever.
Erik’s hand is scalding on his shoulder and it might be the only thing preventing him from landing in the soup face-first.
Charles turns to him with tear-filled eyes and what a picture he must make, with his mouth half-open in an effort to quench the fire he is sure is burning him. “Hot,” he manages.
“It’s not. It’s lukewarm.”
“Too spicy.”
“It’s chicken soup, Charles,” Erik says stiffly.
Too late does Charles remember how bland the last meal he had in the hospital was, and what it implied for the entirety of his life to date. Not his life, Matthew’s.
“I got a visit from Azazel, Riptide and Angel,” he says when the tray floats back and he gives the soup one more chance. This time he is ready for the flavor and manages to swallow the spoonful, even if he needs to chase it down with water. “They said you invited them to stay.”
Erik studies the wall, as though it contains the secret answer to the mysteries of the universe. “It seemed only polite.”
“And the little girl?”
“She was next on the list.”
The third spoonful has him nearly in tears and he shoves the bowl away.
“Keep eating,” Erik says and folds his hands across his chest.
“You eat it, if you’re so keen.” Charles says. “I’m done.”
“You will eat it, or I will force-feed it to you.”
“Try and I will make you sing ‘twinkle, twinkle little star’ to every person in this household, starting with Azazel.”
Erik glares at him and opens his mouth. “Twinkle, twinkle little star,” he sings, “How I wonder what you are.”
He gets to the second verse before Charles starts giggling into his sleeve.
“Eat the soup,” Erik says and the storm raging inside him looses some of its intensity.
Charles complies, which proves, in the long run, to be a terrible mistake on his part. It seemed innocuous at the time. Chicken soup in bed is a pleasant surprise, even if it kills him to finish the bowl -- his taste buds are unused and easily excitable -- so Charles lies down exhausted by the action of lifting the spoon to his mouth.
Erik stares at him as he pulls the duvet up and keeps staring, even as the tray lifts gracefully into the air and away.
“You should blink,” Charles says sleepily. “It’s not healthy to not blink.”
Erik says nothing, but despite the raging storm within, his presence proves soothing. Charles is asleep in minutes.
*****
Charles is woken around midnight by the urgent need to go to the toilet. His private bathroom is only yards from his bed, so there should be no trouble managing to get there without alerting a sympathetic crowd of onlookers. His mind drifts off briefly to the hypothetical scenario, and he wants to die a little inside when he hears the cheers and clapping when he manages to hit the bowl without drenching the bathroom in the process.
He shoves the covers off and lies still for a moment, to rest. This will not be reality, because physically he might have been a two year old in a coma for thirty years, but mentally he is a grown man who hasn’t been in a coma for thirty years, and he is perfectly capable of going to the bathroom by himself.
He’s starting to be able to reconcile the two versions of himself in his mind. It’s easier, he supposes, when one consists of an empty, sunlit room.
The window opposite the bed is open, when it wasn’t before, and Charles sighs in bliss. Someone must have opened very recently, because it is snowing and there is only the finest white dust on the floor, and only a few drops of water, when the windowsill is covered with the stuff. The smell of a winter night is sharp, biting and divine. Intellectually he knows that this is far from the first time he’s smelled it, but his nostrils flare and his brain elevates the odor to entirely new levels of sublimity.
At least it seems that way, until he opens his eyes and sees a little bird skewered by his favorite pen and pinned to the tree branch.
He screams bloody murder. He blames it on the shock. He’s not used to finding little dead birds outside his window.
Of course nothing is quite so simple anymore. He screams and the shock takes him a step back, which his inner ear, lazy from a lifetime of not having a job to do, doesn’t handle too well, and he topples to the floor, at about the same time as the door flies off its hinges and Erik strides into the room, with murder and panic in his eyes and a four-year-old on his arm.
He is followed by everyone, except Azazel, who is suddenly standing in the corner of the bedroom. The instant he takes stock of the situation he looks amused.
“What is that?” Charles asks, and he is proud to sound only a little hysterical.
Erik glares at the window, searching for the cause of the disruption, and finds none. Charles, without thinking about it, shoves the image of the skewered bird into his mind, highlighting it with extra colors, for poignancy, not that it needs more, what with the ruffled feathers and bright blood against white snow and black tree bark.
“It’s a lark,” Erik says.
“Oh my god,” Raven gasps. “You killed a bird! With a pen!”
“It was being loud.”
A tense moment follows, during which everyone checks for the nearest metal implement and tries to move away from both it and Sean, who slaps his hands over his mouth and tries not to breathe, while keeping absolutely silent, even as their minds focus on the vehement need to be wherever Erik’s not. Charles won’t allow himself to sift through the memories that made it so, but he latches onto the hints that this is not news, that this is routine, that this is how things are.
He doesn’t spare it much thought. He keeps glaring, instead, because there is a dead bird pinned to a tree branch outside his window and no one seems to have a problem with this, he is sitting on the floor, and his coccyx feels like it’s trying to scratch the wooden floorboards through his skin and feeling deeply unhappy about not being able to.
Jubilee sticks her fingers in her mouth and Charles feels an overwhelming need to take her away from Erik and hide her under the bed, even though she seems to be perfectly content where she is.
Instead, he presses the heels of his hands into his eye-sockets and sighs.
“Could someone help me up, please?” Charles can get up. It’s not hard, with the proper application of leverage. He’d need to turn a little, so that both his hands would be on the floor and then pull his legs underneath him and then scramble for something steady to hold on to, while he waited for his vertigo to relinquish its hold.
It takes a moment, during which everyone watches Erik with varying degrees of trepidation, but eventually Alex inches around the group and -- all the while holding his hands awkwardly in front of him, well within Erik’s field of vision, Charles can’t help but notice -- helps him stand up.
Charles holds on to his elbow, just in case.
The tension breaks just as soon as Erik leaves the room and everyone breathes a little more freely. It’s suffocating to even be on the same planet as this man, Charles hears, it’s so much worse when he’s in the room.
Charles takes a cautious step back and lets go of Alex when his head asserts his position and holds on to it, without an overt balancing act.
“You okay?” Alex asks.
“Yes, thank you, I was just startled. I’m perfectly fine.”
“You look tired.” Raven crosses the room to peer into his eyes. Charles manages the facial expression that is the equivalent of shaking one’s head, which he prefers not to try given his recent bout of falling to the floor at the slightest provocation.
“I really need to go to the bathroom,” he says. “Then I think I will go back to sleep. Could one of you close the window for me?”
There are some embarrassed grins, especially from the boys, but he is left in peace.
It will be fine, Charles tells himself, leaning his forehead against the cool tiles of the bathroom. The face in the mirror is wasted, the bones seem to be only edges and hollows, stretching his skin in a grotesque mask. His eyes seem huge, in comparison to those in his memory, shining with fevered blue from the shadowed eye sockets. Charles touches the mirror, drags the pad of his finger left to right as his mirror double does the same right to left.
His hair is short. There is the hint of stubble on his face, he would need to master standing still long enough to shave, he thinks. Not tonight, he’s too exhausted to bother, but soon.
Charles returns to bed and the effort it takes to pull the covers up to his chin is unbelievable. Oh well, he thinks and his eyelids drift downwards. He has time.
*****
Erik wakes him. Charles knows it’s morning, because the sunshine coming through the window is bright and fresh, unpolluted by the day.
“Eat,” Erik says as he sits down and folds his arms.
There is a tray on Charles’ knees, with toast, orange juice, eggs and jam.
“Thank you.”
Erik watches him eat. Charles watches the clouds move across the rectangle of his window and tries not to notice the much darker and turbulent clouds that whirl around the bedroom ceiling, threatening unspeakable destruction should the rain be allowed to fall.
The tray lifts itself from his lap the moment he’s done and Erik with it. Instead of leaving, however, the man grasps Charles’ arm and pulls, until they are standing side by side.
“I was planning to get up, thank you,” Charles says, but Erik is not listening.
“It’s time for your therapy,” he hears by way of explanation, as Erik hauls him out of his bedroom and into the adjoining sitting room, which has been stripped of the very comfortable couch and chairs, and has instead become an intellectual’s gym.
“Therapy?” Charles manages, because he feels as though a strong gust of wind would topple him, never mind walking, and Erik shoves him in the direction of the bench, which has weights attached to its side.
Charles very nearly faints ten minutes into the workout (which is pathetic in of itself, he isn’t even lifting anything but his own stubbornly unwieldy torso off the bench, to the tune of Erik’s toneless counting). Given the way his week has been going, this should beget earnest panic, but instead Erik fetches himself a seat, gives him water, waits until the dizziness passes and then continues his chant.
Charles doesn’t remember getting back into the bed, but when he wakes, some hours later, he is treated to a glass of orange juice, an aspirin, and another hour in the gym library.
Mercy is a foreign word to Erik, in any of the fifty-seven languages he speaks.
The days pass. Sometimes Erik brings the girl, Jubilee, along. She turns the pages in a cardboard book and points at various animals as Erik either nods or corrects, while Charles does his utmost not to fall over and die of exhaustion.
He learns very little during those sessions, other than Jubilee is very happy where she is, Erik is nice, the orphanage was a very drab place, and she likes this colorful house, where no one recoils in fear when lovely sparkles shoot out of her fingertips. Her little mind is a bundle of color, happiness and security and Charles shamefully picks at its edges, clinging to the comfort it offers.
The other kids are no more forthcoming with information, whether through complaints or casual conversation. Charles doesn’t pry, but the sheer terror that wafts throughout the house when Erik walks the corridors is palpable. He understands that -- Erik on the warpath is no less comforting than a charging nuclear tank manned by kamikazes -- but he feels there are some things he should be informed of, some things should be stopped, some things should have no place in a home.
And yet, somehow, the kids choose to remain. Charles is not quite so blind to think the children are helpless, he knows they can easily find their way in the world, they had before they met him. He watches them, whenever he feels he can spare a neuron not devoted to keeping himself breathing.
He sees Erik terrorize the living daylights out of Sean; he sees the way the boy hides in any room that’s open when Erik crosses the hall. He sees Erik pause by the closed door and deliver a minute-long speech on the finer points of hiding in plain sight and, incidentally, if he stopped worrying about hitting the ground, he would fly better, because a controlled fall is every bit as important as the flight itself.
He sees Alex get his plasma bolts deflected into the walls of the shelter by metal discs, he sees him on the verge of exhaustion and getting pummeled into the ground, he sees Erik hold out a hand to help him up. He sees Alex come back the next day for more.
He sees Raven, running naked through the grounds, keeping pace with Hank, even if she is exhausted by the time they round the mansion. He sees Erik look at her with pride in his eyes, he sees how she straightens when she, too, sees.
He sees Riptide and Azazel memorizing the plan of the grounds; he sees them discuss and then help Erik install metal fixtures at crucial points of what he recognizes as defenses. The metal fixtures, he realizes soon, are to Erik what a canon is to an artillerist.
He sees and he isn’t sure what he thinks. Fortunately, he rarely has time to find out more, because by then Erik usually finds him and therapy commences until Charles cannot see straight.
*****
“You look better by the day,” Moira tells him. She fiddles with her cup of coffee, but when he goes to fix himself one, she stands and guides him back to the chair.
“I am sick of orange juice,” he says petulantly, glaring at the glass she puts before him.
“Hank says you are not to have any coffee. Erik says we must listen to what Hank says, or else.” Moira’s hair falls over her shoulders to obscure her face. There is the line of scars on her neck again, hundreds of tiny circles in a row, and right below the smooth metal band, free of clasps or other fastenings.
“Moira,” he starts and she shakes her head.
“It’s fine. We all understand it’s a necessity.”
“How is it necessary?”
Her reflexes are better than his, and she snatches the glass from the table before he can knock it over.
“You must calm down.”
“Moira!”
“He doesn’t trust me to stay. Why is this such a shock to you? I’m grateful to be alive, at this point.”
“He cannot, he has no right!”
“I work for the CIA, Charles. For the United States. Not for you, not for your cause. Even if I am sympathetic, I am an outsider here.” She straightens up and smiles. “In any case, it is not worth bothering over.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Charles says, desperately. “We can trust you. There’s no need for that.”
“But you cannot trust me, Charles.” She flicks her hair over her shoulder and stares him down. “I am an agent of the CIA, which I wouldn’t be, if I didn’t believe in what they do. I took the oath, and my alliance to you was part of my assignment. For the good of this country, I will do what I must. The moment I’m free to leave I will report back, because I am a good agent, because I believe that what the agency does is necessary.”
“Your agency tried to kill you,” Charles can’t help but say, but she merely shakes her head.
“My agency reacted to an unknown threat on foreign waters. Overreacted, perhaps, but I can understand that. I did that, too, when I shot you.”
“But Erik…”
“We killed you, Charles.” Moira returns the glass of juice to him and stares pointedly until he starts sipping. “He and I. He won’t forgive himself for curving the bullet as he did, I won’t forgive myself for shooting. There is nothing you can say that will make it better for either of us.”
“Does it count for nothing that I am alive?”
“Through a miracle only, and not the usual medical kind. That is no excuse.”
“I can’t… You can’t ask me to stand by and do nothing when you wear a collar about your neck, in my house. It’s wrong.”
Moira looks down. She is bracing herself to speak, he can tell. “You are my friend, Charles, so I need you to understand this. They will ask about you,” she says. “You spooked them, when you read their minds the first time you were there. If I go back, they will ask about the telepath they can use in Cerebro to spy on people, about the device that pulled the submarine out of the water. They will ask where you are, who you are, and there would only be so much I can hold back without betraying my country’s interest. So yes, there is a need for this. Until an alternative presents itself.”
Charles shudders. “Moira…”
“I won’t lie to you and say I don’t mind,” she says and smiles. “It would be pointless. However, I need you to understand that after everything that happened, this was my choice, not Erik’s.”
She leaves him alone in the dining room, staring off into space.
*****
It is late in the evening when he runs into a girl of about fifteen in the corridor. Charles pauses, only partly because he needs to catch his breath.
“Hello,” he says kindly. “I don’t believe we have met.”
“I’m Naiad,” she says. Her palms are scarred, probably by fire, which failed to remove the fine webbing between her fingers, and there are twin lines on either side of her throat. Charles would think these were scars, too, were it not for the fact that as he looks the skin flaps, as though moved by breathing.
“Remarkable,” he says. “Are those gills?”
“Yes, they are.”
“It’s astounding! You can breathe underwater, then?”
She nods, enthusiastically, and Charles feels the mental tally he has of all the different mutations, and possible future ones to consider, expand. It is remarkable and it is heady, the knowledge of all the things he has yet to discover, of the people he has yet to meet, the wondrous potential the human race holds.
“How did you get here, if you don’t mind me asking?” he asks, because soon he will have to retire and this is one other thing he desperately needs to know before he does.
“I was working with my brother in a water park,” she says. “With the dolphins. He’s a mutant too, only he can’t breathe underwater. Mr Erik found us. Said we’d be safe here, until we could be safe everywhere.”
Charles hears the speech Erik made as loudly as though he was present for it. It’s considerably tamer than what he expected, but the undertone makes his hackles rise. This girl is at peace, though, so he fixes the smile on his face as she asks about his mutation and, when she politely excuses herself (her brother is paranoid, she says, but then they were living in fear of people noticing that they were different), he turns on his heel and makes a beeline for the kitchen.
The beeline, of course, feels like a marathon and requires pit stops, during which Charles leans against a wall and wheezes. Finally he collapses on a kitchen chair and rests there, until his legs stop shaking and he chances a search of the room.
Someone has taken all the alcohol, he discovers after the arduous trek. The fridge usually had at least a few beers, there ought to be vodka in the freezer and a couple of bottles of cheap whiskey in the cupboards, a legacy of Mrs Cook, the cook, who imbibed whenever the occasion presented itself and often when it didn’t. There was nothing of the sort here now.
“Goddamn it!”
In retrospect, Charles thinks as he slides onto the floor, with the fridge as his sole support, kicking the offending piece of furniture has been a mistake.
“Professor?”
Something large is blocking the light. Charles squints and makes out the shape of Hank.
“Are you alright?” Hank asks and crouches before him.
“Hank,” Charles says and sighs. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t. He wishes he could erase the day from his memory. “I just met a girl called Naiad. She lives here, apparently, because Erik invited her and her brother.”
Hank doesn’t move. “She does. Her brother’s name is Will. I’m not sure if it’s his actual name, or a pseudonym. They mostly keep to themselves, they are very young.”
“How many other surprises await me?”
Hank scratches his head. “There are no more new mutants living here, if that’s what you wish to know. Just the three. There have been a few other children, but Erik left them with their parents. One was very old and didn’t want to leave his home.”
Charles closes his eyes. “Erik went recruiting mutants.”
He senses a nod. It is a little different from seeing the nod.
“Why?”
Hank hesitates and Charles looks at him. Glares, even.
“He held you after you were shot,” he says quietly, struggling to form a coherent reply, because -- Charles sees this quite clearly -- he doesn’t understand it himself. “After you died, he just… Asked. Politely. Azazel took us all home. There was a funeral. He still plans, I think. This is why Moira isn’t allowed to leave.”
“I need a drink.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Professor,” Hank starts, “You are considerably thinner than you used to be, and…”
Charles glares. “Hank, I am fully conscious of the fact that when I invited you to stay I have invited you to make this house your own. I want it to be your home, all of you. But so help me, this is my home too, and tonight I really need a drink.”
There is a little too much irritation in his voice, but it seems to work, as Hank stands (gracefully -- he became so graceful when his formula enhanced his mutation) and goes into the pantry. He returns moments later with a couple of bottles of chilled beer, which he pours into glasses.
The fizz confuses Charles for a few moments, before he remembers the trick to letting the bubbles burst on the back of his tongue. It flows considerably smoother after that. He drains half the beer in what he wishes was one gulp, but it seems his talents in that department need practice, too.
When he finishes the glass he skewers Hank with a look that usually sends students fleeing.
“What happened?” He keeps his voice low and urgent. He hasn’t been a great example thus far, fleeing from the answers, fleeing from the truth, but no more. He needs to know.
The beach flickers through Hank’s mind, even as he tries to push it down and drown the memory in beer.
“You bled out,” he says in the end. “We’re not sure how it happened, exactly, it was so fast, but Moira started shooting at Erik and he kind of swatted at the air and a bullet went through your neck. You-- you were in shock, I think. Erik held you and I don’t know, I think you said something, but no one heard.”
Charles waits. He thought he didn’t want to know, but now he can’t draw a breath, can’t make himself move, cannot think, as he waits for the answer to the question that’s been plaguing his mind.
“The missiles fell into the ocean,” Hank says, quite possibly saving Charles’ life with only a handful of words. “And Erik hasn’t been right since. He tried, I think, but he’s been not fully there. Not whole.”
“What do you mean, not whole?”
“He is going to kill me for this,” Hank says, resigned.
“Has he actually killed anyone for talking?” Charles tries to be helpful and teasing, he does, but Hank winces.
“Not kill as such, no, but there have been incidents.” Hank said incidents like he said there has been a situation in the laboratory, like something caught fire and the fire had since turned into a bigger fire, which gained sapience and periodically exploded. Which never happened, not as such, but it remained a possibility.
“Erik hurt someone?” Charles says slowly, and his heart hitches up and lodges in his throat, messing with the way he inhales, messing with his thoughts.
“Riptide made a comment about you. We, uh. It took us an hour to cut him out of the debris. Which is also why your Bentley is no longer in the garage.”
Charles is sure the room is spinning around him, even as he bullies poor Hank into a refill. He liked the Bentley. “Erik wrapped a car around someone, for making a comment?”
“I’m not quite sure what it was he said, to be honest. But he wasn’t hurt too badly. And not permanently. He screamed, and Erik stopped.”
“That’s all?”
Hank stares at the foam in his glass. “We were a little afraid to try anything more. We hoped that you would, you know.”
“That I would what?”
“Calm him down.” Hank ducks his head and Charles feels the need to put his hand on his neck and pet him. He wonders how the fur would feel on his fingers.
“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” Charles says, even as the bubbles return with a vengeance and he burps. “So it’s not enough to die uncomfortably and somehow come back to life, no, I have to nurse Erik to health, too. Because he is emotionally fragile. Well, Hank, my boy, let me tell you, this is not fair.”
“Professor…”
“No, it really isn’t. Contrary to popular belief dying is not easy, nor is it fun. It hurts. It’s dark and it’s cold and I really would like some comforting from the lot of you, or at least shock. I was in shock when I woke up, and I was there. Is a moderate amount of surprise too much to ask for? Oh, I understand that this is America’s prime spot for the unusual these days, that Azazel alone makes it supernatural central, but it is not everyday people come back to life, or to be more precise, turn out to have had two bodies all along. Which is only a little strange, as far as strange happening go. Is it strange to you? I mean, obviously, you are not exactly pedestrian yourself, what with that remarkable brain of yours, honestly, the things you get up to in that lab! It’s truly astounding. Did you make any discoveries while I was in the process of being less dead then anticipated?” Charles blinks at Hank, finding him very confused. “Speaking of death, why is there a desk on my grave? Not that I mind, mind, it’s a very nice grave, you chose my favorite spot, I certainly don’t mind being dead there, but why the desk? Why the playpen?”
“Ah,” Hank says and tries (unsuccessfully) to wrestle the glass from Charles’ hand. “The desk is there because Erik likes working there. He usually takes Jubilee along, hence the playpen, as she likes him best out of all of us.”
What he doesn’t say is that he is a close second, as Jubilee finds him fluffy and warm and alive, therefore superior to her stuffed bear. Charles picks up the thought before he can catch himself and it is amazing how warm it is.
“That’s good!”
“Professor, I think--”
“I always wanted my grave to be useful for something,” Charles confesses. “I understand it is very hubristic of me, don’t get me wrong. I was rather hoping for a Nobel prize, or Xavier prize, as it were, but I guess a playpen is just as good. At least someone is happy there.”
Hank coughs.
Charles looks to the ceiling, then back at the frowning feline face. “Erik works on my grave?”
“Ah. Yes. We tried to persuade him to move indoors, but it was difficult enough just to get him to bury you.” Behind his eyes Hank reviews the memory, of Erik, keeping everyone else at bay, watching the unnervingly familiar corpse laid out in the little clearing. He remembers, or Hank remembers, the bits and pieces of metal floating around him, around them, stopping everyone from approaching as Erik sat unmoving, barely even noticing when day turned into night.
In the end Raven morphed into Charles, and the likeness in Hank’s memory was fascinatingly accurate, Charles had to admit, though it very nearly cost her her head, when Erik woke enough to see what was in front of him and lashed out.
“That’s worrying,” Charles says and watches the lights overhead. He never noticed how poorly lit the kitchen was. The few light bulbs hovering overhead were a standing testimony to his mother’s belief that kitchens were for servants and decor was a thing wasted on them. He would need to do something about this, do something soon. “Inability to let go can be a sign of underlying mental problems. Unresolved issues.”
“A little worrying, yes.” Hank’s head is hanging beneath the line of his shoulders and Charles watches the fine fluff on his nape. It’s blue and looks downy.
It is feathery soft, he discovers. “It’s so fluffy!” he says, fascinated at the way the hair slips between his fingers, even though Hank goes stiff from shock and is watching him with an expression of utmost disbelief on his face.
The door of the kitchen swings open of its own volition just as Charles’ fingers trail lightly to Hank’s ear and back to the nape of his neck. “So. Fluffy!” he says, delighted at the turn of events. “Erik! Look how fluffy Hank is! Isn’t fluffy a groovy word? We should absolutely use it more often. Fluffy! Beer is fluffy, too. Hank is fluffy! Which is also adorable.”
“What?” Erik grinds out, glaring at Hank. Charles hears a rumble and the whole of the kitchen shakes, the metal thrums, the parts that aren’t metal stand close to something that is and the entire room is vibrating.
“No, you don’t,” Hank says, unexpectedly, and his mind reforms from the usual racetrack of little wooly sheep, powered by nuclear cores, into a clock of metal and diamond and hard edges and crackling electricity. He gets up and somehow Charles is on his feet as well, and then he is leaning against Erik, who is a very bad pillar of support, considering, with the smell of cologne and washing powder and a light sheen of sweat. Charles wants to bury himself in the smell, even as a part of him screeches in panic. “Take him to bed, and for god’s sake, talk it out already! You think it’s fun for us, walking on eggshells, while you stalk about like you are about to kill anyone who looks at you wrong? It’s not! You ruin the electrical installation while you walk! I’ve had to rewire the salon twice already and I am out of copper wires at the moment. So, no, you don’t get to skewer me right now, you get to take the Professor upstairs, talk and get over yourself!”
Erik watches him with, what Charles knows, by looking at his mind, is a metaphorical open mouth. He can’t help the giggle. Hank has come a long way.
“What did you give him?” Raven asks as her fingers dance before Charles’ eyes.
Hank grimaces. “He really wanted a beer.”
“You gave him alcohol?” Moira looks shocked. She is funny when she is shocked. Her mind turns pink and hedgehog-y. “You said he shouldn’t even have coffee!”
“Bad idea, I know it now. But it was only a beer, and I watered it down.”
“He got this drunk on a single beer?”
“He weighs what, a hundred and twenty pounds? At most? And he’s never had alcohol before, if you think about it,” Hank shrugs and his guilt smells like ginger to Charles. “Now, excuse me, I think I need to leave before I get a fridge wrapped around me. Seeing as I’m the only one who even knows what a plasma cutter is, I don’t think we should risk it.” He turns on his heel and runs, before Erik can change his mind about the fridge and it is a very close thing. Charles watches, enthralled, as the fridge inches from its place, how its movement corresponds to the bursts of raw emotion, so tangled he cannot even decipher what it is, which Erik’s mind lets out.
“Raven!” Charles beams at his sister meanwhile and pokes her scaly face. “Did you know your scales are positioned similarly to the patterns on the exotic fish we used to have in the garden? I think I should remember the name. It was in Latin. They were very colorful. Swimming up and down the pond. Also, did you know the blue looks really good on you? You should wear blue more often. It’s pretty!”
“Charles, did you perhaps entertain the possibility that you may be a little drunk?” Raven asks gently and Charles scoffs.
“Ridiculous. I only had a couple of beers. That’s hardly enough to get me drunk. Besides, I am not slurring my words, am I?” His traitorous feet choose that moment to fail him and he staggers into the nearest person, who turns out to be tall and red. Charles gives in to momentary incomprehension but then he remembers Bugs the Bunny. “Did you know you look like a cartoon devil?” he says. “You even have a tail. It’s so groovy. Tails are super groovy. It’s got to be really useful. It is, isn’t it? I saw you fight, or I saw someone who saw you fight, I can’t remember.” Charles watches the tip of the tail swing as he tries to untangle the memory and find the culprit. “It’s prehensile, too.”
Azazel is giving someone a look over Charles’ shoulder and he is smirking, which Charles finds fascinating, because bone structure! Red, actually red, skin! The mutation possibilities are endless! The tail, swishing back and forth and someone grabs Charles’ elbow.
“You are going to bed,” Erik says in that tightly controlled way of his.
Charles doesn’t argue. He doesn’t want cars wrapped around him, even if it does sound like a fun way to spend an afternoon. He might possibly be a little drunk. Maybe. He doesn’t fully comprehend why, but it seems like a plausible explanation for the fact that the floor is uneven and is swaying gently as he walks.
“Did you install a sea floor by any chance?” he asks when the hardwood persists to meet his feet in unexpected places. “It seems odd to me. It’s moving.”
“You are drunk,” Erik says.
“Maybe a little.” Charles focuses but the gale raging through Erik and consequently through the house upsets his balance.
It is a bad idea, a part of him says as they reach his bedroom and the storm shows no signs of stopping, but Charles shoves that part underwater and lays his palm on the side of Erik’s face. “You need to calm down,” he says out loud and in his mind, sending the words spiraling on a gentle wind into the eye of the storm. It is gratifying to see the dark clouds shift minutely and open up.
The success instantly becomes a disaster, when Charles glimpses what lies beyond, because what he finds is an abyss.
Alright, so he is drunk. He is prone to overreaction. He still doesn’t think he should be drunk, he didn’t drink a whole lot, but as far as excuses go, finding the abyss of death in his friend’s mind is one of the best.
He pulls Erik’s head to touch their foreheads together and pushes until the torrent of his mind blankets the protests of Erik’s. He casts himself into the abyss, grasping at its edges, because it is death and annihilation, but it cannot harm him while he’s on solid ground, it cannot touch him and he is stronger than it, he is alive and he has nothing to fear. He feels the wood underneath his feet and the warm skin beneath his hands, he feels Erik’s breath on his face and though his head is swimming his mind is careful, precise.
He can’t close it fully. He can’t make it disappear. But Erik stops resisting, at least, and when he does Charles shows him how to have it fold in on itself, until it is no longer occupying the forefront of his thoughts. He can direct the storm to its fringes, so that it no longer fills the emptiness with rage, because it doesn’t need to.
There is a sound, something much like a sob, but it can’t be a sob because that requires for a throat to hitch and Charles is certain that neither of them does anything but breathe calmly.
“Charles,” Erik says, and Charles sways on his feet.
“I swear it was an accident,” he says when he finds himself in Erik’s embrace. “I’m prone to accidents. I don’t think it means I’m turning into a Victorian-era heroine, despite the swooning.”
“You’re drunk,” Erik simply says -- god, this is embarrassing -- picks him up and deposits him on the bed.
Charles discovers, with no surprise whatsoever, that his hand is tangled in Erik’s turtleneck and that it would take the breaking of bones to untangle it. He is fine with that. He is very fine with the fact that Erik sighs and doesn’t resist, but carefully lies down beside him, and he shouldn’t feel this comfortable next to a man who was the cause of him living through death twice, but he does.
He shouldn’t feel this comfortable lying next to a man, period.
“You know dying is not a pleasant affair,” he says and it is a brilliant bedtime conversation starter. “But it isn’t horrible, either. There’s the point when you teeter on the edge and then another when you just fall and it’s all there is to it. No horror, just free-fall.”
“It is horror, when I stand on the edge and watch you fall.”
Erik stares at the ceiling and very pointedly does not look at Charles, who cannot, for the life of him, tear his eyes away.
“What happened?” he asks quietly. The alcohol he exiles to the edges of his mind, until he is alone and sober in the middle. “Erik, what happened?”
“You held on, is what happened. To me. In my head. You died in my mind, you made me watch your death from the inside.”
Charles takes the words in. He writes them across the canvas in his head, to see them in print, in person. The printed word has a physicality to it, makes the words more real. Makes the concept behind it more real.
“Oh, my friend,” he whispers, and it is instinct that makes him press his body against Erik’s. “I am so sorry.”
He remembers very little and what he does remember is half real, half what his fevered mind concocted to help him deal with the reality of death. He remembers Erik, anguished above him and he remembers the helmet, which was like death in itself. He remembers the helmet disappearing and Erik’s mind latching onto his and then the darkness encroaching on them both.
He feels shame pouring into him, thick, hot, viscous. He should have been better than that.
“I’m so sorry,” he says again. “I shouldn’t have put you through that.”
Erik says nothing for the longest time, long enough for Charles to remember more of the day. “Oh dear lord. The others -- please tell me I didn’t also do it to the others.”
“You didn’t. It was just me.”
No reaction would be the right one, so Charles says nothing. He closes his eyes and turns his face into Erik’s shoulder. The steady flow of his thoughts washes over him, fragments of memories he could piece into something bigger but doesn’t have the energy to. He’s content to have them floating past, kissing at his skin.
“Don’t leave,” he begs when he feels the sleep beginning to take hold, even though Erik makes no move to vacate the bed. “Please don’t leave me.”
He gets no reply.
four
