[fic] Not Half As Blinding 4/6
Jul. 18th, 2011 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Not Half As Blinding 4/6
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
To say the hangover takes him by surprise would be like saying Erik had an unpleasant childhood. It waits patiently in the corner of the room, biding its time, until Charles opens his eyes, naive and trusting, ready to start the new day, at which time it pounces, biting into his throat with the savage brutality of a vampiric rhinoceros.
Fortunately, there is a glass of orange juice and aspirin by the bed.
Unfortunately, the aspirin is encased in unbreakable metal foil and the glass may well weigh a ton. Charles is not looking forward to sucking the juice out of his pillow so he lies back down and tries to think about light things, like ice-cream and bunnies, until the hangover gives up and goes away.
Then someone parks a tank outside his door and shoots three grenades into it.
“Charles?” Raven calls. “I brought you breakfast.”
“Can’t move,” he whimpers. “My head hurts.”
“Did you take the aspirin?” She settles on the edge of the bed balancing the tray on one hand.
“Too heavy.”
“Stop being such a baby.” The foil creases and breaks in her deft hands. Charles swallows the pills and gratefully downs the orange juice, with her help.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he says, even if the actual saving has yet to happen through the magic of chemistry, when she patiently feeds him pieces of toast. “You’re the best sister ever.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve nursed your hangover.”
“Not so loud.” Charles shields his eyes, just enough to block out most of the glaring light, but he watches her through his fingers. “You look happier. You look… wonderful.” She really, truly does look wonderful nude, even if the nudity makes him fix his gaze on her face and not stray, because blood or no blood, this is his sister. She smiles easily, her eyes are bright and her mind is sprawling, for a lack of a better world, no longer guarded, no longer hidden or unsure.
“I’m me,” she says.
Charles feels a pang of grief.
“Is Erik alright?” he asks as he chews on the last piece of toast and Raven sets the tray aside.
“He is calmer, I think. He’s in the drawing room with Jubilee.” She means to ask more and Charles waits for it, patiently. “Did you speak? What happened?”
“I nearly killed him,” he says. It’s all he can manage at the moment.
Raven looks at him fearfully, but doesn’t ask. She helps him stand, or to be more precise she lifts him out of the bed by his elbows, like he was a child. She is so much stronger than he ever was, Charles realizes, and wonders, for the first time, whether she has ever needed him.
It’s painful to realize that she hasn’t.
Raven doesn’t say a word as she deposits him in front of the closed door to the drawing room, and leaves him there alone, to catch his breath and wince, as the headache clings to his shoulders and swats at his head every time he tried to turn it.
He doesn’t knock. He figures the amount of time it takes him to turn the knob is warning enough.
Erik is reading a book. At his feet Jubilee is marching a doll up a house of blocks. She mumbles to herself, a string of words that aren’t quite words, but which color the story happening here and Charles smiles as she looks up and her round face lights up and a fleet of sparkles emerge from her fingertips in a miniature fireworks display.
“She helps, doesn’t she?” he says quietly. “Children are so easy to be around.”
Erik shrugs and turns a page.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Charles says. “I never meant to hurt you. I never… Erik.”
“One would imagine the score is settled now. I killed you, you dragged your death into my head in retaliation. Seems fair.”
“It’s not.” Charles seats himself on the sofa leaning against Erik and the backrest in equal measure. He pretends not to notice the flinch. “I had no right.” Then, as an afterthought, “You didn’t kill me. It was an accident.”
“I thought you infected me with your telepathy, for a time.” Erik folds the book on his lap and stares ahead. “I could barely stand to look at them all, because I could see their pity and their fear. They looked at me and frankly the abyss was better than them.
“And I couldn’t even leave.” He hesitates, but doesn’t turn. Charles glances at the wall, but it remains devoid of the great mysteries of life. Maybe there’s a particularly curious cable arrangement within, you never knew in those old houses. “I couldn’t leave. You were gone and I couldn’t leave.”
Charles closes his eyes.
“It wasn’t for lack of trying. I tried leaving once, when I thought they would suffocate me, but it was worse when I wasn’t here. I was alone all of my life, and I couldn’t be away from here for more than a few hours, before it started to swallow me up.” Erik starts shaking. The book creases in his hands and Charles removes it. “Why? I’m not afraid of death. I have been to hell, Charles, I have seen the bowels of hell, why should death scare me?”
He has no answer.
Erik glares at the floor, then at Charles, as though a new idea occurred to him. “Why didn’t it affect you? How can you hold a man through his death and walk away unscathed? You’re the telepath, you should be the one writhing in existential pain, not me, and yet you walked out after Shaw like it was nothing.”
“It wasn’t mine. I was there, but I was on the plane, too, with Raven and the others. It couldn’t touch me.” It is only a small lie. He wasn’t untouched by Shaw’s death, but then he had been expecting it, and when it came it was a breathless relief, when holding the man still was agony. “Erik…”
“I hate you,” Erik says. “Like I never hated him. He took from me everything I had, he made me into what I am, but you took away everything I chose to hold on to and you broke me. How can I not hate you?”
“Hate me,” Charles says lightly. His head feels strange. The bubbles are only now rising to the surface and he is floating on the foam in the glass. The room seems oddly bright all of sudden and it hurts his eyes, even as Erik leans forward, just an inch, and his face shields Charles from most of the light.
His scent invades Charles’ nostrils, worming underneath his skin, until it is everywhere and there is no way to remove it, but it doesn’t rest, it invades his mind, too, until he wishes it would never go, until it is a part of him.
It is most inappropriate, Charles thinks.
Erik’s mind is shaped like a giant, wordless “Shut up, Charles,” which is a very odd shape to consider in the real world, but when it is only them within their own heads, it makes perfect sense.
He is a little dizzy, in a way that has nothing to do with alcohol.
He is also ravenously hungry. The thought of food makes him queasy. He wants to run, he wants to jump, he wants it to rain, just so he can stand outside with his mouth open and feel the water on his body. He wants the sun and the snow and everything in between.
He stays still throughout it all. He’s not sure which want is his and that makes it impossible to move, because if he can’t tell what’s his, then he can’t tell what’s real, and what is he, then?
“Charles,” Erik says and his so close that when he speaks it is as though the words are flung against Charles’ mouth.
He draws away, as much as he can. His cheeks are burning and somewhere inside he hopes that Erik would do it, that he would lean in and kiss him and he hates himself for thinking that. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t be this confused.”
“You shouldn’t be a lot of things.”
Something tugs at him, calls to him outside. Jubilee is staring at him curiously, her chubby fingers slippery all the way to her palm, where she stuffed them into her tiny red mouth.
“What is it?” Charles asks quietly. Erik’s hand on the back of his neck burns like hot coal.
“Can I paint?” she asks.
Charles is inclined to say yes, but he isn’t sure he can move. He isn’t sure if he wants to move, even though he wants to, because it isn’t right, to be so tangled in Erik, to be so close they would kiss if either of them moved an inch. “There should be paper in the drawers of the desk,” he says. “Maybe a pencil, too.”
Jubilee nods and waddles across the room. It takes her a few minutes to work the first drawer open until she comes up with a pad of lined paper and a pencil. Charles resolves to buy some crayons the moment he is capable of moving again. With any luck he will get some before Jubilee starts high school.
*****
Erik doesn’t forget about the therapy that day. Charles sleeps for twelve hours afterwards, and would gladly sleep for twelve more, because when he wakes Erik is beside him, asleep. He is fully dressed and he is lying on top of the covers, but he is there, and Charles doesn’t know if he should cheer or panic and cry foul.
He doesn’t think he imagines the toasting going on in the kitchen.
*****
Somehow, Erik gets more paranoid as the time goes on. This takes everybody by surprise, as they had all imagined wrapping cars around people is as far as paranoia goes. Charles says nothing when he finds out about the midnight drills (to which he is never invited), the mandatory marathon sessions around the property (which, again, he is not invited to, and only knows about because Jubilee needs watching), the regime of honing abilities, which leaves smoking holes in the grounds (courtesy of Alex), frightens the squirrels away (Sean), calls the squirrels right back (Will), alternatively arouses the population and makes them gag (Raven, dear lord, Raven). Erik for his part makes an honest effort to learn about the electrical installations and thus spends a lot of time with Hank, so that the wires now strain towards him when he walks past, instead of tangling, which is only a nominal improvement.
“Well, at least they are not breaking,” Hank says. Jubilee squeals from her perch on his shoulders. “Which hopefully ensures no blackouts.”
There’s a sheet of paper spread before him, taking up the entire desk, and Hank studies it carefully. “It shouldn’t take more than a month,” he says.
“Only that? How long did it take to build it in the first place?” Charles folds his arms across his chest. His ribs get in the way, even through the shirt and the sweater. He winces and puts them on the edge of the desk, instead. He hates the feel of his wasted chest, hates the inability to run, or even walk at a brisk pace.
“A year, at least until we discovered it takes advanced mental capabilities none of us had, none of us imagined anyone had. Then it was another before you came along.”
Charles nods, already lost in thoughts. Cerebro will prove useful. If Naiad and Will were any indication, there were kids out there who needed a safe home, or even just the knowledge that such a place existed. He remembers the hundred of minds he seen in the first Cerebro and he aches to feel them again, to know that they are not alone. “Do we have everything we need?”
“Not by a long shot, no. But Azazel and I got the parts that would be hardest to come by from the old Cerebro, the rest we will pick up somehow. It shouldn’t be too hard. I estimate it would take about five weeks to have it operational.”
“There’s no need to rush,” Charles says genially. Hank is fascinating to watch as he bends over the schematics, the little girl squealing on his shoulders, and just talks freely about the connections, boosters, cables, about the software he needs to wrestle into submission, the lasers and the electromagnetic fields.
Charles only understands about half of what he is saying, and even then it is only the words, not the technology they signify, but that doesn’t matter.
“You know, it has been good for you,” he says when Hank pauses.
“What has been good for me?”
“The transformation. You are more certain now. You have no doubts about who you are.”
“Because there can no longer be doubts.” There is a note of bitterness in Hank’s voice and his hands curl against his sides.
“No,” Charles says and puts his hand on Hank’s shoulder. “You are a scientist, Hank. You are brilliant at what you do, you love what you do, you are proud of it. And now, finally, you let it show, without apologizing. It is most heartening to see.”
Hank looks at him. Words crowd at the forefront of his mind, angry words, frustrated exclamations, everything. Charles waits. “Erik did say that,” he says in the end. “I’m not so sure.” But somewhere, beyond the cogwheels and the springs, there is the seed of acceptance, even though it feels a little like resignation. Charles smiles. It is only a matter of time before it sprouts and then Hank will be unbeatable.
“Erik does make a good point, every once in a while.” Charles sighs. “Then of course he tries to kill people by the boatload, which rather negates most of his opinions.”
“To be fair those boatloads were trying to kill us at the time.”
Jubilee lets out a happy yip and tugs on Hank’s fur.
“Not you too,” Charles says. “I take it I’m alone in thinking we shouldn’t try to kill everyone who isn’t lucky enough to be a mutant?”
“Even if we tried, that would be very hard to achieve,” Hank says. Something in his mind flickers, shifts, and though his tone remains sober Charles realizes he is being teased. “I did work out an algorithm that should allow for maximum death toll in least possible time.”
“And?”
“Approximately twenty-seven years, assuming no significant improvement of abilities -- this is mostly regarding Erik, Janos and Alex, possibly Sean, as the rest of us are unable to contribute to mass murder in comparison -- and full dedication, but of course the planet would be in a very sorry state afterwards. A more reasonable approach would take anywhere from fifty-eight to three hundred years, depending on how we define mutations and just how much personal time we would intend to devote to it.”
“I see. And you have figured this out just to have something to do over lunch?”
Hank hunches his shoulders, which Jubilee greets with a merry laugh. “No. I, uh. I was pointing out flaws in Erik’s line of thinking.”
Charles considers commenting. He finds himself speechless.
“I think he is over it, mostly, if that helps any.”
There is a wealth of meaning in the casual “mostly”, one that Charles is certain he doesn’t like. It worries him. A lot of things worry him, surprisingly.
It is not so surprising that most of those things have to do with Erik.
He hides after his talk with Hank is finished. He climbs to the attic, which takes him half an hour, and hides in the highest room, where the dust is so thick the light is a palpable presence. Thoughts don’t exist up here, a curiosity of time-space, Charles believes, which is why he occasionally comes up here to think. Here he is a frightened child, who can sense people’s thoughts from twenty feet away, he is a teenager on the cusp of adulthood and a man, who’s come into his own and is at peace with the world and himself, and it was so ever since he was seven and first discovered this timeless place.
His mother doesn’t come here, the maid considers it her duty to once a month give it a cursory sweep, but other than that he is alone. He will always be alone here.
Here he is just Charlie.
He sinks to the dusty floor -- there hasn’t been a maid in the house for years -- and hugs his legs to his chest. He is so thin he should manage to wrap his arms around his knees twice, but the joints ache, and so he holds himself in a loose circle, only enough to huddle for warmth.
He has lost, he thinks grimly. Lost before he even began to fight. The children are following Erik now, resigned to his vision of the world, which hates them and needs subduing. Even if he chose to fight, he wasn’t sure he would be able to, not when Erik’s very presence throws his mind askew, when he can’t think about anything but kissing him when they stand too close.
Erik doesn’t even look feminine, which would make this somewhat understandable. But no, Charles has to concede that he does want to touch and kiss Erik and that he is a man and it is… frankly it is a little upsetting.
*****
Dust dances before his eyes as he wakes, carried on his breath. Charles sits up, hating the way his arms shake and fail to reliably support him. He startles when a thunderclap shatters the fragile peace and his hands crumble underneath him, sending him back to the floor.
He glares at the pathetic sticks he is forced to wield as limbs currently and, though he could swear the thought has never occurred to him before, he wishes Matthew Xavier had never been born.
The truth of it shocks him.
Perhaps it would have been simpler, he thinks. They are certainly getting on without him, no less happy and safe. Erik looks after them. Erik sees to it that they remain safe.
He really isn’t necessary here.
“This is idiocy,” he tells himself out loud, and reaches for the stray chair to help himself into a standing position. He wavers, but Erik’s regime of terror hasn’t been without merit. He still looks like a starved stray, but at least he can traverse his own home without needing to rest on every landing.
He exits the attic closing the door behind him. The latch clicks shut with a long-suffering sigh, unused to exertion.
He’ll be the first to discredit the notion of memories tied to objects. No, whatever the mind picks up at a touch originates within, and his finds the worn brass a comfort. He holds on to the doorknob. To him it is what the touch of mother’s arms is to other children. To him, the room is Charlie’s beloved blanket and playroom, unlike the bedroom, which has only ever been Charles’.
He makes his way downstairs mindless of the dust in his thankfully re-grown hair -- if nothing else, at least his hair still looks healthy. He yawns as he opens the door to the living room and makes a vague waving motion to indicate a greeting.
A few heads turn from the TV and he is treated to welcoming smiles. The rest of them are hilariously engrossed in the show. Charles watches the progress with some confusion, but then again he is baffled by most shows. Erik raises an eyebrow at him and the corner of his mouth tilts. They stare at one another for a moment, searching perhaps for words, for reason. At least Charles knows that’s what he is doing, and failing.
There’s no reason in it, just feeling.
Charles ducks his head, certain that there is a flush on his face, and watches his palms as his insides unfold and he feels warmth. Nothing else, just that. He smiles at his hands and basks in the glorious feeling for a moment. This is the first time this living room was ever warm in his memory.
His consciousness flickers then, expands, searching for the others. Jubilee is in her crib, soundly asleep. Two rooms down from her there are Naiad and Will, both on the verge of sleep, but resisting it for the time being, because there still are secrets to share. Charles ensures they feel comfortable, but doesn’t intrude any further.
Azazel and Riptide are in the kitchen, toasting the end of the final coil of barbed wire, which they were distributing evenly around the mansion, as a good job done, even as another lightning bolt strikes home not too far from the house and Charles sees, in striking clarity, twenty men ghosting through the mansion, quiet as ghosts and just as transparent.
He is on his feet before he can think about it. “Intruders!” he hisses, and in an instant the TV is off and everyone present turns to the door.
The glass of the window shatters, the doors bangs against the wall and cold, foreign minds invade the bubble of warmth.
“No, don’t!” he yells, but everything in the room that is metal shakes, there is a flash of red from where Alex is standing, still small and controlled, but unmistakably there, ready to rip forth and cut the attackers down. In the opposite corner smoke billows and Azazel straightens, ready for battle, with his hand on Riptide’s shoulder, whiskey glasses still in their hands.
The fingers that were too close to the triggers of the guns tighten and Charles experiences a moment then, when the world curls around him like a soap bubble. A touch, a whisper will burst it and then time will start again and people will die, in this house that he hoped would be safe, would be the haven for all those who need a haven.
“No,” he says, the bubble burst and everything stops.
Erik freezes with his hand extended to the head of the squad. A letter opener stops inches from the man’s forehead and falls to the floor.
Charles breathes in and feels the heartbeats thrumming in his head and focuses on those he does not yet know. Twenty. Twenty men. Twenty minds, twenty souls surging through his bloodstream, twenty very different lives circling through his vision.
They have come to their death tonight, and they know it.
Charles sinks to the floor clutching his head, gasping for breath as the pounding on the inside of his skull begins, insistent like the drums, but louder, bereft of melody, only the dreaded rhythm, boom, boom, stick against bone.
It isn’t fair, he tells himself.
Agent Stryker has a young son at home. Agent Buchs takes care of his elderly parents. Agent Kinnley has a mistress, which his wife pretends to ignore, because his two sons adore him.
Moira recognizes some of them.
Azazel harbors no particular ill-will towards anybody, he’d just as well be tending the roses in the garden, but he will kill to preserve himself, preserve them, without hesitation and without remorse.
Raven cries inside, but she is determined and she knows her way around a knife now.
Hank, Alex, even Sean…
Charles is crying. He can’t help it. His throat is closing up and he cannot breathe for it, and he pushes against the memories, against the foreign minds, but doesn’t release them, or anybody, just yet. This isn’t what he hoped for, this isn’t the future he planned, he wished for, he imagined. He will hold them still, because he is not ready, he cannot choose, they have no right to make him do this. It’s not fair.
He bows, until his forehead is against the floor and the room remains frozen in time around him. The illusion is perfect, but for the billowing curtains and the occasional flash of lightning.
There is a way out of this, he tells himself. He can hold them, of this he has no doubt, he can make them the perfect living statues to fill his empty home, until it all shatters and crashes around him with ferocity previously only encountered in atomic bombs.
When he stands, at last, he is resolute.
“There will be no killing in this house,” he says. He is quiet. There is no need to shout, when he can send the words directly into the cerebral cortices of any of their minds.
They listen. He knows they listen. He leaves them no choice.
He turns and walks to the leader of the squad, plucks the gun from his hands and lays his palm on the man’s temple. There are few enough memories. The sudden disappearance of Cerebro’s parts did not escape the attention of the Agency, which, in turn resulted in the Agent Stryker at their doorstep. He had been given orders. Simple orders. Track down, disable, kill only if necessary, report back.
This is a decent man. A good agent. He followed the tracks diligently, he located the target. His intention was to serve his country, no more. He thinks they are freaks of nature, of course, but has no ill will. He has seen what they can do, however, has seen them train -- the grounds are not so vast a pair of binoculars keeps them out of sight always -- and he knows the best chance of bringing anyone back is unconscious.
There are syringes in his belt and a vehicle converted into an ambulance, because the man is not quite so foolish to assume there will be no wound to tend to.
In fact, Charles discovers, a little mortified, the man is a little too smart. A lesser mind would have risked coming in with a smaller group, to nab a child while they all slept, but this one chose to go in guns blazing, because against a telepath he would have no defense but to shoot first.
Charles has to choose. Right now. He feels Erik’s gaze boring into his back, and he knows Erik stands exactly where he was left, with his palm extended, ready to kill for this place, for these people, for himself. He thinks of Erik’s gaze, of the power he wields, and knows that if he chooses wrong, there would be no force that would keep Erik with him, because even his tricks won’t be enough, when Erik is burrowed so deeply beneath his skin.
Charles clings to the belief that he should hesitate now, that he would hesitate, that he would be remorseful and apologize before his mind lifts in a tidal wave onto the sandy beach of the man’s memory, swallowing the castles and footprints there. He swears to himself he is remorseful, that this is mercy, that otherwise they would be killed, but he knows that he is lying to himself.
He lets the wave curl to the sides, around a precious phone call from the man’s son, but the moon that drives them is merciless, and the sweet voice is swept back into the ever hungry depths.
They came into his house, Charles thinks and the next wave arrives taller, stronger. There is a time for finesse and diplomacy, and there is a time for messages delivered in block capitals. He takes everything, from the moment the orders have been uttered in a nondescript CIA office.
When he is done the man blinks at him and lies down on the floor, obediently falling into sleep.
Charles turns and the other agents take their cue and lie down on the floor as well. He could go to them, one by one, but from where he stands he can see into them with perfect clarity: they have less information than their leader. They are field agents, soldiers; organized and precise. Charles makes a sweeping motion with his hand, the neurons crackle and snap and reform, and the memories are gone, leaving behind a white cloud. It is as easy as wiping the words written in the sand.
Erik fights his hold. He fails before he even began, but it is a valiant effort. Charles turns and looks into his eye, straight into the fury there. The face is motionless, but inside the furious storm rages. Charles stares it in the face and dares it to strike him.
“Azazel, take them all to Dixon, Missouri,” he says. “Leave them where they will be found and where no harm will come to them until they are.”
Azazel blinks, as though waking from sleep and Charles stares him down. His response does not matter, not when it comes to doing the deed -- Charles could make him obey, but doesn’t. Not yet.
He is profoundly relieved when the man bows his head and grasps the arms of the two agents closest to him and disappears in a puff of smoke.
Charles doesn’t move while Azazel flickers in and out of the room, until the last of the agents is gone. He catches an image Azazel sends his way, a quiet roundabout in the middle of the town, completely deserted at this hour, but would bustle with activity as soon as the sun is up. Charles nods, acknowledges a job well done.
He turns to Moira, next. “Erik, take that off her.”
He will not beg, he tells himself as he feels the refusal, as Erik glares and curses him in his mind, as he isn’t able to curse with his voice. Charles looks at him and feels the heartbeat within, feels the fury powering him from within, and he sweeps inside. The fury becomes his, becomes him, and he is strong with it; anger is Erik’s strength and now it is his, too.
Erik’s body turns towards Moira, holds out his open palm, and Charles is unmoving in the middle of the room, watching, feeling the hatred within grow with every passing second as the pressure inside his own skull threatens to splatter his brain on everything within ten-foot range.
“I know how to control you. I can learn to control your power through you,” he promises, painfully aware that his voice is breaking and his face is wet with tears. “Do not make me.”
This, perhaps, is his greatest failure of all. He doesn’t watch. He can’t bear to. He knows the collar unfolds from Moira’s neck and falls to the floor, he feels the metal uncurl as if it was moving against his own skin, because he hears the curses Erik utters, even if he doesn’t understand them.
“Charles,” she says, when the metal is gone, but he silences her.
“I’m sorry, Moira,” he says when his fingertips land on her forehead. “This is the alternative, and I’m choosing it for you.”
This is, if anything, worse than Stryker, because Moira is a friend. Her mind is prickly and balanced and its touch is familiar and soothing, but Charles makes it yield. He draws back time as she watches him with what would be fear, if she understood, and behind her eyes the months unfold and he carefully blanks out the faces, quiets the words, leaving behind only enough to comfort or torment. He leaves the bare bones of memories, the fondness and the guilt, which is too deeply ingrained to risk uprooting, the knowledge that she was held prisoner, threatened with painful death should she choose to contact her superiors. She has the scars to prove it.
When he is done, he brushes his lips against her mouth and whispers, “Sleep.” Her eyes slide closed as she pitches forward. He catches her, bearing as much of her weight as he is able, and deposits her in Azazel’s waiting arms.
When he straightens and pulls back within, when he dares to look up again, they are all staring at him. They stay still, even now, the terror that Charles thought to be their constant companion in the months since Erik became the de facto principal of the school has given way to something different, something far more primal and inexplicable. It hurts worse than the migraine pulsing in the back of his head, because that emotion will eradicate all else, with that in the soil no trust can grow and where there is no trust, there will be no friendship.
The drums keep going, only instead of sound it is now a heat wave that starts with an earthquake, which shakes the very foundations of the earth and crumbles its crust. The fires from the core sweep through him at each beat, and the first touch is agony, but immediately in its wake there comes another, and another, the sticks hammering onto the drumhead at hundreds of beats per minute.
There is liquid on his upper lip. His palm travels cosmic distances to rest his fingers on the curve of his mouth. He tastes salt and coin. He would like to say his fingers are stained red, but what isn’t?
“I won’t blame you if you choose to leave,” he says and makes the effort to look into their eyes.
The last thing he remembers is the red pattern on the Persian rug growing larger until he disappears in it, forever falling into the stylized plant that has no bearing on the natural world but which must have been inspired by something living.
five
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. <3To say the hangover takes him by surprise would be like saying Erik had an unpleasant childhood. It waits patiently in the corner of the room, biding its time, until Charles opens his eyes, naive and trusting, ready to start the new day, at which time it pounces, biting into his throat with the savage brutality of a vampiric rhinoceros.
Fortunately, there is a glass of orange juice and aspirin by the bed.
Unfortunately, the aspirin is encased in unbreakable metal foil and the glass may well weigh a ton. Charles is not looking forward to sucking the juice out of his pillow so he lies back down and tries to think about light things, like ice-cream and bunnies, until the hangover gives up and goes away.
Then someone parks a tank outside his door and shoots three grenades into it.
“Charles?” Raven calls. “I brought you breakfast.”
“Can’t move,” he whimpers. “My head hurts.”
“Did you take the aspirin?” She settles on the edge of the bed balancing the tray on one hand.
“Too heavy.”
“Stop being such a baby.” The foil creases and breaks in her deft hands. Charles swallows the pills and gratefully downs the orange juice, with her help.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he says, even if the actual saving has yet to happen through the magic of chemistry, when she patiently feeds him pieces of toast. “You’re the best sister ever.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve nursed your hangover.”
“Not so loud.” Charles shields his eyes, just enough to block out most of the glaring light, but he watches her through his fingers. “You look happier. You look… wonderful.” She really, truly does look wonderful nude, even if the nudity makes him fix his gaze on her face and not stray, because blood or no blood, this is his sister. She smiles easily, her eyes are bright and her mind is sprawling, for a lack of a better world, no longer guarded, no longer hidden or unsure.
“I’m me,” she says.
Charles feels a pang of grief.
“Is Erik alright?” he asks as he chews on the last piece of toast and Raven sets the tray aside.
“He is calmer, I think. He’s in the drawing room with Jubilee.” She means to ask more and Charles waits for it, patiently. “Did you speak? What happened?”
“I nearly killed him,” he says. It’s all he can manage at the moment.
Raven looks at him fearfully, but doesn’t ask. She helps him stand, or to be more precise she lifts him out of the bed by his elbows, like he was a child. She is so much stronger than he ever was, Charles realizes, and wonders, for the first time, whether she has ever needed him.
It’s painful to realize that she hasn’t.
Raven doesn’t say a word as she deposits him in front of the closed door to the drawing room, and leaves him there alone, to catch his breath and wince, as the headache clings to his shoulders and swats at his head every time he tried to turn it.
He doesn’t knock. He figures the amount of time it takes him to turn the knob is warning enough.
Erik is reading a book. At his feet Jubilee is marching a doll up a house of blocks. She mumbles to herself, a string of words that aren’t quite words, but which color the story happening here and Charles smiles as she looks up and her round face lights up and a fleet of sparkles emerge from her fingertips in a miniature fireworks display.
“She helps, doesn’t she?” he says quietly. “Children are so easy to be around.”
Erik shrugs and turns a page.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Charles says. “I never meant to hurt you. I never… Erik.”
“One would imagine the score is settled now. I killed you, you dragged your death into my head in retaliation. Seems fair.”
“It’s not.” Charles seats himself on the sofa leaning against Erik and the backrest in equal measure. He pretends not to notice the flinch. “I had no right.” Then, as an afterthought, “You didn’t kill me. It was an accident.”
“I thought you infected me with your telepathy, for a time.” Erik folds the book on his lap and stares ahead. “I could barely stand to look at them all, because I could see their pity and their fear. They looked at me and frankly the abyss was better than them.
“And I couldn’t even leave.” He hesitates, but doesn’t turn. Charles glances at the wall, but it remains devoid of the great mysteries of life. Maybe there’s a particularly curious cable arrangement within, you never knew in those old houses. “I couldn’t leave. You were gone and I couldn’t leave.”
Charles closes his eyes.
“It wasn’t for lack of trying. I tried leaving once, when I thought they would suffocate me, but it was worse when I wasn’t here. I was alone all of my life, and I couldn’t be away from here for more than a few hours, before it started to swallow me up.” Erik starts shaking. The book creases in his hands and Charles removes it. “Why? I’m not afraid of death. I have been to hell, Charles, I have seen the bowels of hell, why should death scare me?”
He has no answer.
Erik glares at the floor, then at Charles, as though a new idea occurred to him. “Why didn’t it affect you? How can you hold a man through his death and walk away unscathed? You’re the telepath, you should be the one writhing in existential pain, not me, and yet you walked out after Shaw like it was nothing.”
“It wasn’t mine. I was there, but I was on the plane, too, with Raven and the others. It couldn’t touch me.” It is only a small lie. He wasn’t untouched by Shaw’s death, but then he had been expecting it, and when it came it was a breathless relief, when holding the man still was agony. “Erik…”
“I hate you,” Erik says. “Like I never hated him. He took from me everything I had, he made me into what I am, but you took away everything I chose to hold on to and you broke me. How can I not hate you?”
“Hate me,” Charles says lightly. His head feels strange. The bubbles are only now rising to the surface and he is floating on the foam in the glass. The room seems oddly bright all of sudden and it hurts his eyes, even as Erik leans forward, just an inch, and his face shields Charles from most of the light.
His scent invades Charles’ nostrils, worming underneath his skin, until it is everywhere and there is no way to remove it, but it doesn’t rest, it invades his mind, too, until he wishes it would never go, until it is a part of him.
It is most inappropriate, Charles thinks.
Erik’s mind is shaped like a giant, wordless “Shut up, Charles,” which is a very odd shape to consider in the real world, but when it is only them within their own heads, it makes perfect sense.
He is a little dizzy, in a way that has nothing to do with alcohol.
He is also ravenously hungry. The thought of food makes him queasy. He wants to run, he wants to jump, he wants it to rain, just so he can stand outside with his mouth open and feel the water on his body. He wants the sun and the snow and everything in between.
He stays still throughout it all. He’s not sure which want is his and that makes it impossible to move, because if he can’t tell what’s his, then he can’t tell what’s real, and what is he, then?
“Charles,” Erik says and his so close that when he speaks it is as though the words are flung against Charles’ mouth.
He draws away, as much as he can. His cheeks are burning and somewhere inside he hopes that Erik would do it, that he would lean in and kiss him and he hates himself for thinking that. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t be this confused.”
“You shouldn’t be a lot of things.”
Something tugs at him, calls to him outside. Jubilee is staring at him curiously, her chubby fingers slippery all the way to her palm, where she stuffed them into her tiny red mouth.
“What is it?” Charles asks quietly. Erik’s hand on the back of his neck burns like hot coal.
“Can I paint?” she asks.
Charles is inclined to say yes, but he isn’t sure he can move. He isn’t sure if he wants to move, even though he wants to, because it isn’t right, to be so tangled in Erik, to be so close they would kiss if either of them moved an inch. “There should be paper in the drawers of the desk,” he says. “Maybe a pencil, too.”
Jubilee nods and waddles across the room. It takes her a few minutes to work the first drawer open until she comes up with a pad of lined paper and a pencil. Charles resolves to buy some crayons the moment he is capable of moving again. With any luck he will get some before Jubilee starts high school.
*****
Erik doesn’t forget about the therapy that day. Charles sleeps for twelve hours afterwards, and would gladly sleep for twelve more, because when he wakes Erik is beside him, asleep. He is fully dressed and he is lying on top of the covers, but he is there, and Charles doesn’t know if he should cheer or panic and cry foul.
He doesn’t think he imagines the toasting going on in the kitchen.
*****
Somehow, Erik gets more paranoid as the time goes on. This takes everybody by surprise, as they had all imagined wrapping cars around people is as far as paranoia goes. Charles says nothing when he finds out about the midnight drills (to which he is never invited), the mandatory marathon sessions around the property (which, again, he is not invited to, and only knows about because Jubilee needs watching), the regime of honing abilities, which leaves smoking holes in the grounds (courtesy of Alex), frightens the squirrels away (Sean), calls the squirrels right back (Will), alternatively arouses the population and makes them gag (Raven, dear lord, Raven). Erik for his part makes an honest effort to learn about the electrical installations and thus spends a lot of time with Hank, so that the wires now strain towards him when he walks past, instead of tangling, which is only a nominal improvement.
“Well, at least they are not breaking,” Hank says. Jubilee squeals from her perch on his shoulders. “Which hopefully ensures no blackouts.”
There’s a sheet of paper spread before him, taking up the entire desk, and Hank studies it carefully. “It shouldn’t take more than a month,” he says.
“Only that? How long did it take to build it in the first place?” Charles folds his arms across his chest. His ribs get in the way, even through the shirt and the sweater. He winces and puts them on the edge of the desk, instead. He hates the feel of his wasted chest, hates the inability to run, or even walk at a brisk pace.
“A year, at least until we discovered it takes advanced mental capabilities none of us had, none of us imagined anyone had. Then it was another before you came along.”
Charles nods, already lost in thoughts. Cerebro will prove useful. If Naiad and Will were any indication, there were kids out there who needed a safe home, or even just the knowledge that such a place existed. He remembers the hundred of minds he seen in the first Cerebro and he aches to feel them again, to know that they are not alone. “Do we have everything we need?”
“Not by a long shot, no. But Azazel and I got the parts that would be hardest to come by from the old Cerebro, the rest we will pick up somehow. It shouldn’t be too hard. I estimate it would take about five weeks to have it operational.”
“There’s no need to rush,” Charles says genially. Hank is fascinating to watch as he bends over the schematics, the little girl squealing on his shoulders, and just talks freely about the connections, boosters, cables, about the software he needs to wrestle into submission, the lasers and the electromagnetic fields.
Charles only understands about half of what he is saying, and even then it is only the words, not the technology they signify, but that doesn’t matter.
“You know, it has been good for you,” he says when Hank pauses.
“What has been good for me?”
“The transformation. You are more certain now. You have no doubts about who you are.”
“Because there can no longer be doubts.” There is a note of bitterness in Hank’s voice and his hands curl against his sides.
“No,” Charles says and puts his hand on Hank’s shoulder. “You are a scientist, Hank. You are brilliant at what you do, you love what you do, you are proud of it. And now, finally, you let it show, without apologizing. It is most heartening to see.”
Hank looks at him. Words crowd at the forefront of his mind, angry words, frustrated exclamations, everything. Charles waits. “Erik did say that,” he says in the end. “I’m not so sure.” But somewhere, beyond the cogwheels and the springs, there is the seed of acceptance, even though it feels a little like resignation. Charles smiles. It is only a matter of time before it sprouts and then Hank will be unbeatable.
“Erik does make a good point, every once in a while.” Charles sighs. “Then of course he tries to kill people by the boatload, which rather negates most of his opinions.”
“To be fair those boatloads were trying to kill us at the time.”
Jubilee lets out a happy yip and tugs on Hank’s fur.
“Not you too,” Charles says. “I take it I’m alone in thinking we shouldn’t try to kill everyone who isn’t lucky enough to be a mutant?”
“Even if we tried, that would be very hard to achieve,” Hank says. Something in his mind flickers, shifts, and though his tone remains sober Charles realizes he is being teased. “I did work out an algorithm that should allow for maximum death toll in least possible time.”
“And?”
“Approximately twenty-seven years, assuming no significant improvement of abilities -- this is mostly regarding Erik, Janos and Alex, possibly Sean, as the rest of us are unable to contribute to mass murder in comparison -- and full dedication, but of course the planet would be in a very sorry state afterwards. A more reasonable approach would take anywhere from fifty-eight to three hundred years, depending on how we define mutations and just how much personal time we would intend to devote to it.”
“I see. And you have figured this out just to have something to do over lunch?”
Hank hunches his shoulders, which Jubilee greets with a merry laugh. “No. I, uh. I was pointing out flaws in Erik’s line of thinking.”
Charles considers commenting. He finds himself speechless.
“I think he is over it, mostly, if that helps any.”
There is a wealth of meaning in the casual “mostly”, one that Charles is certain he doesn’t like. It worries him. A lot of things worry him, surprisingly.
It is not so surprising that most of those things have to do with Erik.
He hides after his talk with Hank is finished. He climbs to the attic, which takes him half an hour, and hides in the highest room, where the dust is so thick the light is a palpable presence. Thoughts don’t exist up here, a curiosity of time-space, Charles believes, which is why he occasionally comes up here to think. Here he is a frightened child, who can sense people’s thoughts from twenty feet away, he is a teenager on the cusp of adulthood and a man, who’s come into his own and is at peace with the world and himself, and it was so ever since he was seven and first discovered this timeless place.
His mother doesn’t come here, the maid considers it her duty to once a month give it a cursory sweep, but other than that he is alone. He will always be alone here.
Here he is just Charlie.
He sinks to the dusty floor -- there hasn’t been a maid in the house for years -- and hugs his legs to his chest. He is so thin he should manage to wrap his arms around his knees twice, but the joints ache, and so he holds himself in a loose circle, only enough to huddle for warmth.
He has lost, he thinks grimly. Lost before he even began to fight. The children are following Erik now, resigned to his vision of the world, which hates them and needs subduing. Even if he chose to fight, he wasn’t sure he would be able to, not when Erik’s very presence throws his mind askew, when he can’t think about anything but kissing him when they stand too close.
Erik doesn’t even look feminine, which would make this somewhat understandable. But no, Charles has to concede that he does want to touch and kiss Erik and that he is a man and it is… frankly it is a little upsetting.
*****
Dust dances before his eyes as he wakes, carried on his breath. Charles sits up, hating the way his arms shake and fail to reliably support him. He startles when a thunderclap shatters the fragile peace and his hands crumble underneath him, sending him back to the floor.
He glares at the pathetic sticks he is forced to wield as limbs currently and, though he could swear the thought has never occurred to him before, he wishes Matthew Xavier had never been born.
The truth of it shocks him.
Perhaps it would have been simpler, he thinks. They are certainly getting on without him, no less happy and safe. Erik looks after them. Erik sees to it that they remain safe.
He really isn’t necessary here.
“This is idiocy,” he tells himself out loud, and reaches for the stray chair to help himself into a standing position. He wavers, but Erik’s regime of terror hasn’t been without merit. He still looks like a starved stray, but at least he can traverse his own home without needing to rest on every landing.
He exits the attic closing the door behind him. The latch clicks shut with a long-suffering sigh, unused to exertion.
He’ll be the first to discredit the notion of memories tied to objects. No, whatever the mind picks up at a touch originates within, and his finds the worn brass a comfort. He holds on to the doorknob. To him it is what the touch of mother’s arms is to other children. To him, the room is Charlie’s beloved blanket and playroom, unlike the bedroom, which has only ever been Charles’.
He makes his way downstairs mindless of the dust in his thankfully re-grown hair -- if nothing else, at least his hair still looks healthy. He yawns as he opens the door to the living room and makes a vague waving motion to indicate a greeting.
A few heads turn from the TV and he is treated to welcoming smiles. The rest of them are hilariously engrossed in the show. Charles watches the progress with some confusion, but then again he is baffled by most shows. Erik raises an eyebrow at him and the corner of his mouth tilts. They stare at one another for a moment, searching perhaps for words, for reason. At least Charles knows that’s what he is doing, and failing.
There’s no reason in it, just feeling.
Charles ducks his head, certain that there is a flush on his face, and watches his palms as his insides unfold and he feels warmth. Nothing else, just that. He smiles at his hands and basks in the glorious feeling for a moment. This is the first time this living room was ever warm in his memory.
His consciousness flickers then, expands, searching for the others. Jubilee is in her crib, soundly asleep. Two rooms down from her there are Naiad and Will, both on the verge of sleep, but resisting it for the time being, because there still are secrets to share. Charles ensures they feel comfortable, but doesn’t intrude any further.
Azazel and Riptide are in the kitchen, toasting the end of the final coil of barbed wire, which they were distributing evenly around the mansion, as a good job done, even as another lightning bolt strikes home not too far from the house and Charles sees, in striking clarity, twenty men ghosting through the mansion, quiet as ghosts and just as transparent.
He is on his feet before he can think about it. “Intruders!” he hisses, and in an instant the TV is off and everyone present turns to the door.
The glass of the window shatters, the doors bangs against the wall and cold, foreign minds invade the bubble of warmth.
“No, don’t!” he yells, but everything in the room that is metal shakes, there is a flash of red from where Alex is standing, still small and controlled, but unmistakably there, ready to rip forth and cut the attackers down. In the opposite corner smoke billows and Azazel straightens, ready for battle, with his hand on Riptide’s shoulder, whiskey glasses still in their hands.
The fingers that were too close to the triggers of the guns tighten and Charles experiences a moment then, when the world curls around him like a soap bubble. A touch, a whisper will burst it and then time will start again and people will die, in this house that he hoped would be safe, would be the haven for all those who need a haven.
“No,” he says, the bubble burst and everything stops.
Erik freezes with his hand extended to the head of the squad. A letter opener stops inches from the man’s forehead and falls to the floor.
Charles breathes in and feels the heartbeats thrumming in his head and focuses on those he does not yet know. Twenty. Twenty men. Twenty minds, twenty souls surging through his bloodstream, twenty very different lives circling through his vision.
They have come to their death tonight, and they know it.
Charles sinks to the floor clutching his head, gasping for breath as the pounding on the inside of his skull begins, insistent like the drums, but louder, bereft of melody, only the dreaded rhythm, boom, boom, stick against bone.
It isn’t fair, he tells himself.
Agent Stryker has a young son at home. Agent Buchs takes care of his elderly parents. Agent Kinnley has a mistress, which his wife pretends to ignore, because his two sons adore him.
Moira recognizes some of them.
Azazel harbors no particular ill-will towards anybody, he’d just as well be tending the roses in the garden, but he will kill to preserve himself, preserve them, without hesitation and without remorse.
Raven cries inside, but she is determined and she knows her way around a knife now.
Hank, Alex, even Sean…
Charles is crying. He can’t help it. His throat is closing up and he cannot breathe for it, and he pushes against the memories, against the foreign minds, but doesn’t release them, or anybody, just yet. This isn’t what he hoped for, this isn’t the future he planned, he wished for, he imagined. He will hold them still, because he is not ready, he cannot choose, they have no right to make him do this. It’s not fair.
He bows, until his forehead is against the floor and the room remains frozen in time around him. The illusion is perfect, but for the billowing curtains and the occasional flash of lightning.
There is a way out of this, he tells himself. He can hold them, of this he has no doubt, he can make them the perfect living statues to fill his empty home, until it all shatters and crashes around him with ferocity previously only encountered in atomic bombs.
When he stands, at last, he is resolute.
“There will be no killing in this house,” he says. He is quiet. There is no need to shout, when he can send the words directly into the cerebral cortices of any of their minds.
They listen. He knows they listen. He leaves them no choice.
He turns and walks to the leader of the squad, plucks the gun from his hands and lays his palm on the man’s temple. There are few enough memories. The sudden disappearance of Cerebro’s parts did not escape the attention of the Agency, which, in turn resulted in the Agent Stryker at their doorstep. He had been given orders. Simple orders. Track down, disable, kill only if necessary, report back.
This is a decent man. A good agent. He followed the tracks diligently, he located the target. His intention was to serve his country, no more. He thinks they are freaks of nature, of course, but has no ill will. He has seen what they can do, however, has seen them train -- the grounds are not so vast a pair of binoculars keeps them out of sight always -- and he knows the best chance of bringing anyone back is unconscious.
There are syringes in his belt and a vehicle converted into an ambulance, because the man is not quite so foolish to assume there will be no wound to tend to.
In fact, Charles discovers, a little mortified, the man is a little too smart. A lesser mind would have risked coming in with a smaller group, to nab a child while they all slept, but this one chose to go in guns blazing, because against a telepath he would have no defense but to shoot first.
Charles has to choose. Right now. He feels Erik’s gaze boring into his back, and he knows Erik stands exactly where he was left, with his palm extended, ready to kill for this place, for these people, for himself. He thinks of Erik’s gaze, of the power he wields, and knows that if he chooses wrong, there would be no force that would keep Erik with him, because even his tricks won’t be enough, when Erik is burrowed so deeply beneath his skin.
Charles clings to the belief that he should hesitate now, that he would hesitate, that he would be remorseful and apologize before his mind lifts in a tidal wave onto the sandy beach of the man’s memory, swallowing the castles and footprints there. He swears to himself he is remorseful, that this is mercy, that otherwise they would be killed, but he knows that he is lying to himself.
He lets the wave curl to the sides, around a precious phone call from the man’s son, but the moon that drives them is merciless, and the sweet voice is swept back into the ever hungry depths.
They came into his house, Charles thinks and the next wave arrives taller, stronger. There is a time for finesse and diplomacy, and there is a time for messages delivered in block capitals. He takes everything, from the moment the orders have been uttered in a nondescript CIA office.
When he is done the man blinks at him and lies down on the floor, obediently falling into sleep.
Charles turns and the other agents take their cue and lie down on the floor as well. He could go to them, one by one, but from where he stands he can see into them with perfect clarity: they have less information than their leader. They are field agents, soldiers; organized and precise. Charles makes a sweeping motion with his hand, the neurons crackle and snap and reform, and the memories are gone, leaving behind a white cloud. It is as easy as wiping the words written in the sand.
Erik fights his hold. He fails before he even began, but it is a valiant effort. Charles turns and looks into his eye, straight into the fury there. The face is motionless, but inside the furious storm rages. Charles stares it in the face and dares it to strike him.
“Azazel, take them all to Dixon, Missouri,” he says. “Leave them where they will be found and where no harm will come to them until they are.”
Azazel blinks, as though waking from sleep and Charles stares him down. His response does not matter, not when it comes to doing the deed -- Charles could make him obey, but doesn’t. Not yet.
He is profoundly relieved when the man bows his head and grasps the arms of the two agents closest to him and disappears in a puff of smoke.
Charles doesn’t move while Azazel flickers in and out of the room, until the last of the agents is gone. He catches an image Azazel sends his way, a quiet roundabout in the middle of the town, completely deserted at this hour, but would bustle with activity as soon as the sun is up. Charles nods, acknowledges a job well done.
He turns to Moira, next. “Erik, take that off her.”
He will not beg, he tells himself as he feels the refusal, as Erik glares and curses him in his mind, as he isn’t able to curse with his voice. Charles looks at him and feels the heartbeat within, feels the fury powering him from within, and he sweeps inside. The fury becomes his, becomes him, and he is strong with it; anger is Erik’s strength and now it is his, too.
Erik’s body turns towards Moira, holds out his open palm, and Charles is unmoving in the middle of the room, watching, feeling the hatred within grow with every passing second as the pressure inside his own skull threatens to splatter his brain on everything within ten-foot range.
“I know how to control you. I can learn to control your power through you,” he promises, painfully aware that his voice is breaking and his face is wet with tears. “Do not make me.”
This, perhaps, is his greatest failure of all. He doesn’t watch. He can’t bear to. He knows the collar unfolds from Moira’s neck and falls to the floor, he feels the metal uncurl as if it was moving against his own skin, because he hears the curses Erik utters, even if he doesn’t understand them.
“Charles,” she says, when the metal is gone, but he silences her.
“I’m sorry, Moira,” he says when his fingertips land on her forehead. “This is the alternative, and I’m choosing it for you.”
This is, if anything, worse than Stryker, because Moira is a friend. Her mind is prickly and balanced and its touch is familiar and soothing, but Charles makes it yield. He draws back time as she watches him with what would be fear, if she understood, and behind her eyes the months unfold and he carefully blanks out the faces, quiets the words, leaving behind only enough to comfort or torment. He leaves the bare bones of memories, the fondness and the guilt, which is too deeply ingrained to risk uprooting, the knowledge that she was held prisoner, threatened with painful death should she choose to contact her superiors. She has the scars to prove it.
When he is done, he brushes his lips against her mouth and whispers, “Sleep.” Her eyes slide closed as she pitches forward. He catches her, bearing as much of her weight as he is able, and deposits her in Azazel’s waiting arms.
When he straightens and pulls back within, when he dares to look up again, they are all staring at him. They stay still, even now, the terror that Charles thought to be their constant companion in the months since Erik became the de facto principal of the school has given way to something different, something far more primal and inexplicable. It hurts worse than the migraine pulsing in the back of his head, because that emotion will eradicate all else, with that in the soil no trust can grow and where there is no trust, there will be no friendship.
The drums keep going, only instead of sound it is now a heat wave that starts with an earthquake, which shakes the very foundations of the earth and crumbles its crust. The fires from the core sweep through him at each beat, and the first touch is agony, but immediately in its wake there comes another, and another, the sticks hammering onto the drumhead at hundreds of beats per minute.
There is liquid on his upper lip. His palm travels cosmic distances to rest his fingers on the curve of his mouth. He tastes salt and coin. He would like to say his fingers are stained red, but what isn’t?
“I won’t blame you if you choose to leave,” he says and makes the effort to look into their eyes.
The last thing he remembers is the red pattern on the Persian rug growing larger until he disappears in it, forever falling into the stylized plant that has no bearing on the natural world but which must have been inspired by something living.
five
