[fic] Not Half As Blinding 5/6
Jul. 19th, 2011 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Not Half As Blinding 5/6
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 swathed in white. The light hurts his eyes. He wonders if he’s finally dead.
Someone laughs. Charles squints and barely makes out a female figure, clad in white smoke. Her hair is golden and her smile is heavenly.
I’m flattered, sugar, but you couldn’t be more wrong.
Emma Frost, he thinks at her. The memories are slow and disjointed, but there is a face there, to go with the voice, which is not a voice, but a smell, a look, a sound, all rolled into one, and it is hard as diamond and just as cold. The telepath.
Oh, Mr Xavier, so long as you persist on calling yourself a telepath, the rest of us are merely very intuitive.
Her attention waivers and Charles gets the impression someone is being shaken.
What is going on?
Oh, don’t worry. It’s just that your friend doesn’t appreciate being out of the loop, no more.
This time she thinks in two directions at once, which Charles knows, because there is a certain echo to her words.
He is fine, Erik, she thinks. Or thinks and says. He isn’t sure. He overdid it. Burned too bright with too little fuel. Give him time.
Emma flinches. The reply was not to her liking, whatever it was. I can’t. He is here and he is conscious, but I wouldn’t count on any chess games anytime soon. He needs time.
The mind is not unlike a muscle. He overexerted it. It can happen. He will recover on his own terms, forcing it will hurt him. Can I please have a coffee and some sleep now? I believe I earned it.
Erik wants to know if you’re okay, she thinks and it’s a single, irritated voice this time. He is being extremely unreasonable about it.
Charles hesitates. I am… okay, he allows. I think I’ll be fine. Provided he could negotiate his way out of this endless expanse of white, which, despite being entirely shapeless, managed to be a labyrinth. Wonderful.
*****
It’s not that he wakes, precisely, because he is still dreaming the most claustrophobic dream he has ever had. He thinks he stopped being unconscious a long while ago. This is more like regaining the use of his senses.
Strangely enough, smell is the first to return. There’s soap and washing powder, a little cologne and sweat in the air. Medical supplies, disinfectant. It combines into a hospital, a little room with not enough air and too much doctor. His mouth tastes stale. He wonders how long has it been and if anyone has bothered to brush his teeth.
Sight returns next. There is a blinding white light overhead, periodically obscured by faces. Charles recognizes Hank, who is there most often, to shine more light into his eyes. Miss Frost leans over him with a smirk on her lips, as she informs the audience that it shouldn’t be long now, which he guesses, rather than knows, because she doesn’t bother to think it at him, but he can see her lips move.
Raven is there to kiss his forehead, which is the first thing he feels. After the kiss there is the hardness of the bed, the rough material of the sheets, the warmth of skin touching his.
“Reacting to stimuli,” Hank says at the same time as something sharp pricks his fingertip. Charles turns in his direction. He feels like a cotton pad, white, soft, muffled.
“Hank,” he manages. “What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.” There is a moment’s pause. “March the first.”
Charles sits up. He’d expect dizziness, if he were awake, but there is none. He is fine, other than the stiffness of his joints. He can slide off the bed and walk. “March the first?” he asks, because that part doesn’t make sense. “But it’s February, it’s not even Valentine’s Day yet.”
“You were out of it for two weeks,” Hank says. “Miss Frost says you overtaxed yourself. She says not to worry, it happens to telepaths who don’t know their limits. Does it?”
Charles stares and tried to remember. “It never happened to me.”
Hank nods. “Miss Frost usually comes in first thing in the morning, to check up on you. Do you want to sleep? I could give you something for sleep.”
Charles takes in the room. He recognizes it as one of the servant’s quarters in the eastern wing, adjoining to the garage Hank has claimed as his laboratory.
“Professor?”
“No drugs.”
“Will you be comfortable here?”
“Aren’t you going to sleep?”
Hank ducks his head. “I find I rest better if I nap for an hour every now and then.”
“I see,” Charles says and lies back on the narrow bed and clenches his teeth as Hank relieves him of the catheter. There are wires taped to his chest and his head, he realizes for the first time. He reconciles the steady beeping with the drumming of his own heart and it is strangely soothing.
He watches the ceiling, trying in vain to see the shape of Hank’s mind as he tinkers with the equipment, but there is nothing, just the blue fur on his head, the humming under his breath, the occasional comment Charles is sure he is not meant to hear.
There is something shaped like a chandelier in his hands. It is the second Cerebro, Charles deduces after a moment. Incredible.
He has no sense of time passing, which he finds not at all strange. He closes his eyes and evens out his breath when Hank looks his way and curls on the couch. Feigning sleep, even in a dream, after so many years of nothing but sleep is hard, his body wants to move, wants to dance.
It is seven in the morning when there is a knock on the door and Miss Frost enters, closely followed by Erik, whose head is encased in that ridiculous helmet. Charles would like to say he hates it, but he knows he has no one to blame but himself for its presence. He will be lucky if he ever sees Erik again, so for now the dream will have to be enough.
“So you are awake, fascinating.” Her slender hand touches his forehead. Can you hear me?
Charles shakes his head, stares at her until his eyes water, but he manages to sense nothing.
Erik glares at no one in particular. “You said he would be fine.”
“I also said what he did was the mental equivalent of you lifting the Statue of Liberty and walking on its shoulders across the Atlantic.”
Erik scoffs. “He managed projection just fine in Russia. It shouldn’t exert him like this.”
“It wasn’t with the same brain, then, unless the story you’re telling me is a gross exaggeration, which to be fair it sounds like. Knowing exactly how to do something is not the same as being capable of doing it.” Emma turns away from Erik and strides confidently to Charles’ side, her hips swaying as she walks. “Can you hear anything? Feel anything?”
“I heard you,” Charles says. “But the rest, no. I can’t.”
Behind him the machines beep at a frantic pace. He doesn’t quite understand why, he is calm, there is no reason for the machine to start a frantic concert, he is well. He is fine.
His head is wrapped on all sides with wool, white fuzzy wool. No one is around, he is alone, but there are people in the room and he is dreaming, yes, he must be dreaming, because it is only in dreams that he can’t know people by the shape of their thoughts.
The machine is roaring now and that is fine, that’s well, the alarm will wake him and it will be fine. His fingers tighten on the edge of the bed and he feels the hardness of the frame, feels it dig into his skin, it cannot be long now, he will wake up, he will wake up, he will wake up!
“Make him stop,” Emma commands. Charles hears her loud and clear but she is not real if she has no cerebral echo, she is not real. Nothing is real. “I can’t talk to him if he panics, he will shut me out.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Take the silly helmet off, for starters.”
Erik glares. “Certainly not with you here.”
“It’s either that, or knock out a telepath in a state of panic. Which is never a good idea, as panic tends to cling, and when he wakes up he will lash out. Trust me, I have been there. I don’t think my nurse has ever stopped dribbling.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“Let me put it thusly: if I woke and was unable to feel the minds around me, I would naturally assume there were no people around me. If I came across something that looked human and wasn’t projecting thoughts, I would likely ignore or kill it, depending on how in my way it was.” Emma takes a seat and extends an exquisitely manicured hand before her. “Your Charles is on the verge of hyperventilation because he has no idea what’s real. He feels the physical sensations, but if he is anything like me, his dreams would have been palpable up until now, so physical sensation proves nothing. The only way he can be sure he isn’t dreaming is to hear people’s minds. Which he doesn’t presently.”
“Again, how does me not having the helmet on help? You said he’s locked in.”
“Oh, honey, you cannot possibly be that dense.” Emma smiles, showing off a row of perfect teeth. “You said he died in your mind, when no one else felt a thing, that he did it unconsciously. I really don’t think there is time for a lecture on how telepathy works.” She rolls her eyes at Erik’s growl. “But please yourself.
“Projecting thoughts requires conscious effort and dying tends to turn people’s minds inwards. There is no death I have witnessed that didn’t start by the dying turning inwards. Really good telepaths may be capable of latching onto people they want to drag down with them, and he is very good, but you tell me he didn’t mean it. So, him reaching out for you as he died required an open pathway. You had to let him in and it doesn’t matter how good he is. If you didn’t welcome him in then, he would slink back inside his own head, like everyone else, and die quietly. Or move on quietly, as the case may be. I’m guessing if there’s one mind he can feel right now, it is yours, if it weren’t conveniently blocked.”
Emma spares a glance at Charles. “He is distressed, because he thinks he can’t wake up, and you are not making it any better. Any moment now he will start panicking in earnest and then there’s two ways it could go -- he will either try to startle himself awake by jumping out of the window, or he will grasp at his powers and start flinging them about. He is not ready for telepathy yet. If he tries it now, then it’s back to the coma. Do you want that? Because I can promise you, it will be no more fun next time around. Or the next. Eventually he will go too far, which is far more serious than you can imagine, and then what you will have is a vegetable Charles to water and wheel out into the sun.” Emma pauses and smirks. “If it helps any, I have no interest in reading your mind. I have nothing to gain.”
Erik’s anger could poison the entire ocean, by the look on his face, but he reaches for the helmet. He tries to, at any rate.
Behind Charles the machine goes wild.
“No,” he manages and he lunges at Erik, wrestles his hands away from the metal. “Don’t, no, no, no.” He can’t take it off. If he takes it off and he, too, is silent, if he is just an image, a vision, not really there, no.
It might be a dream, Charles thinks, but at least he can hope.
“Calm down,” Erik says, and a little of the panic shows on his face as well. He grabs Charles’ wrists and the helmet lifts itself from his head.
Nothing. There is nothing. He is dreaming, then, Erik isn’t real, this isn’t real, the pain digging into his hands isn’t real and still he doesn’t wake.
Charles throws his head back and screams, until his lungs burn.
Somewhere off to the side someone says, “Oh, do shut him up,” and suddenly there is a pressure against his mouth, warm and insistent. Charles’ eyes open wide and he sees Erik, comically serious as he kisses him.
Slowly, the beeping eases into a more comfortable rhythm. Charles’ eyes water but he won’t close them, he won’t blink, because he sees Erik. It’s faint, this aura, this edge, whatever it is, but he sees it. He feels the fragile suggestion of thoughts, and he cannot tell what they are, but they are there and they are Erik’s -- he recognizes the shape, the texture, the taste of them.
He wraps his hands around Erik’s neck and holds on while the world reorganizes itself around them.
“It is adorable, yes,” Emma says. Someone is standing beside her, which Charles knows only because they are shuffling their feet. He cannot be bothered to look. “Shall we move on now?”
Emma stands beside them and touches her fingertips to Charles’ temple. Relax, she thinks at him. Mr Xavier, relax. You will not be able to feel anyone for some time, that is not a cause for panic.
She slithers in his head. Charles can feel her in his mind, razor-sharp and ice-cold. How is it not a cause for panic?
She conjures a memory for him, cuts it out of liquid crystal and lets it play. A teenaged girl, feeling the shift of minds for the first time, feeling the spill of secrets: hers, others’, everyone’s. He feels her panic and the surge of power within, as she screams and everyone around her drops to the ground in agony.
I was in a coma for a month, he hears. When I woke I thought it went away, but of course eventually I started hearing things again.
This never happened to me. Charles feels Erik’s hands grip the shirt on his back.
“Emma…” he says with a hint of a growl.
“Hush.” New brain, Mr Xavier. You assumed its limits would be the same as your old one’s, and in time, with practice, perhaps they will. Right now, you have hurled yourself at the sun and burned your little wings off.
She withdraws. Charles clenches his eyes shut. Her touch is unpleasant, hurtful, but it is real. She is human, the only human he can feel that is real, more real than Erik. That alone cuts him like a knife.
“Well, then. Do you need anything else?” Miss Frost straightens and flicks a mote of dust off her shoulder.
“No.” Erik says without looking at her. “You can leave.”
She smiles. “Thank you.”
The door clicks shut behind her, but doesn’t stay shut for long. Raven is already there, but then rest of the team files through the door and Charles digs his fingers into Erik’s shoulder and bites his lip. He can’t feel them. They are shapes in the space before him, but they have no minds. None that he can see.
“You are not dreaming,” Erik reminds him.
Right. Right. Charles hides his face in Erik’s neck. He feels blind and deaf and dumb. The silence is weighing him down. It is like a tomb designed specifically for him.
“Professor?” Alex says as he steps into the room. “Are you alright?”
He doesn’t even understand. He hears the words and they make sense, but the meaning is gone. The steady beat of his heart speeds up and he tries to keep it down, but this half-reality is too frightening.
*****
He burrows in his bed, shoving his head underneath the pillow as far as he’s able to go without suffocating himself. The pillow is feathery and he can almost, almost make himself believe that the blank emptiness he feels is the result of feathers around his head.
“Charles, get up,” Erik says around midday.
“No.”
“You will eat. Then physical therapy.”
“No.”
“The kids are beginning to wonder if you are even still alive.”
“I’m not.”
He gets no verbal reply. Erik rips the covers off and makes a grab for the pillow. “Get up.”
“I can’t go out there,” Charles says. He will not beg, but he is not above implying he is. “Erik… I lost control. I stopped you. Everyone. Held you down against your will. I made you, Erik, I forced you to do what I wanted.”
“You solved a problem.” Erik shrugs. “You did it well. But don’t ever do that again.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Don’t be stupid. You will do it again, if you need to.” Erik crawls onto the bed until he is on his hands and knees over Charles and grins and his gaze is smoldering, setting Charles’ insides aflame. “You will do what must be done to protect us all. The kids know this. They understand.”
“I never wanted that. I wanted…” What did he want? Peace, he answers immediately. For the children to be safe, to feel special. To know that someone will fight for them.
“I know how you wanted it. It isn’t possible.”
“I will not make this a war.”
“It is a war. You just don’t want to see it yet.” Erik is merciless and the faintest tendril of his exasperated affection caresses Charles from within. He shudders, holding in the moan. “Stay, then. For now. I’ll bring you something to eat, but you are not talking your way out of therapy.”
He gets off the bed and moves towards the door. The moment he disappears Charles feels the emptiness descend, burying him in something solid and transparent, something he can see through, but not breathe in.
It takes him all of thirty seconds to catch up to Erik.
*****
He knows what it looks like, him trailing behind Erik like a pathetic puppy, unwilling to let him out of his sight, unwilling to not have physical contact. He knows Riptide, at least, is making comments and it doesn’t take a genius or a telepath to hear the Mercedes wake in the garage and inch towards the man’s immediate future.
He sees the pitying smiles on the children’s faces. He sees the wide berth Azazel gives him and the smirk on Riptide’s lips.
He can feel the acute beating his ego receives every time his head turns to follow Erik, every time he grips Erik’s sleeve to stop him from leaving. He hates himself a little bit for it. He digs his fingers into Erik’s arm, rests his forehead on his shoulder and hates himself a little bit more for the show of weakness.
Erik is still the only thing that is real to him.
He sleeps uneasily, but it is waking that is the worst, when the world is no different from the dream and he isn’t sure whether he is awake or asleep and he wonders if Emma was lying, that he will never get his abilities back.
He experiences, for the first time in his life, a panic attack, when he dreams of Erik. It is a very odd dream, he concedes, warm and full of flickering fire and patchouli scented chess and Erik’s hands on his sides, tracing the shape of him, proper shape, not the skin and bones he is now. It is almost … pleasant, Charles wonders, the feel of a man’s fingertips against his skin, of hard muscles and stubble.
Erik’s mouth is against his, sliding open as they kiss, gentle and slippery. There’s a brush of tongue against his mouth, a crackling of fire, a hand on the small of his back. He is naked and their mouths open, their bodies slide together, hard and heated. He breaks away because it is too much, too soon, and stares at Erik and the emptiness behind his eyes.
He startles awake. The bed is empty, he is alone, and whatever arousal the dream caused (oh god, he was dreaming of Erik!), it was gone because he was alone, Erik wasn’t there.
“Charles!”
It is only when he has Erik’s weight pressing him into the bed, the weight of Erik’s mind forcing order onto his, that he realizes he is hyperventilating. “Breathe, Charles,” Erik says. His hand is heavy against Charles’ chest. It forces effort into every breath, conscious work, and, after a while, it soothes. “What the hell happened?”
Charles turns his head, feeling his face redden. “Nothing.”
“Don’t ever lie to me,” Erik says, gripping Charles’ chin and turning his head. “What happened?”
“You weren’t here. I woke up and you weren’t here.” Charles wishes he was feverish, but he knows it is shame which brings the color to his face.
Erik sighs. “I was in the bathroom.”
“It’s too far,” Charles says in a broken whisper and he pulls the duvet over his head. “It’s too far,” he repeats and it sounds just as puerile this time around.
The duvet lifts and Erik slips into the bed beside him, wrapping himself around Charles in the darkness, until there is nothing in the world but Erik and him.
Only then Charles lets himself sleep again.
*****
Charles feels like weeping when, the very next morning, Hank turns to him and there is a cogwheel of a thought triggering a cascade of movement within his brain. He speaks about Cerebro but Charles isn’t even listening, he watches in wonder as the wheels turn and shift and Hank’s mind unveils the machinery before them.
He comes to understand, slowly, that the smiles of the children are good-natured and not pitying, that while Riptide and Azazel are amused, the mockery carries a touch of respect, borne from the show of power earlier. They are fully aware of what it means to upset a telepath and Charles is a little frightened when his distress brings the memories of Emma’s displeasure to the fore. He wishes to soothe their apprehensions, but they don’t have much there. They seem content where they are, so long as the mutant cause moves on and they have a job to do, and Erik has that under control.
“You need to control yourself,” Emma says one morning, less than a month later, sipping coffee from Charles’ mother’s prized porcelain cup. He has trouble understanding why is she still here, when Erik quite explicitly told her to go.
“Don’t trouble yourself figuring it out,” she says and her flesh flickers into diamond. “I remain because this is where entertainment is at, these days.”
“You tried to start World War Three,” Charles says, reaching for the coffee, but the memo has made its rounds and Emma pushes a glass of orange juice his way. He grimaces, but his mouth is parched and to his dismay he likes the juice, omnipresent as it seems to be. Erik makes a point of there being fresh oranges in the house for the express purpose of hydrating and vitaminizing Charles’ wasted body.
“Yes. It didn’t work out. Shaw was always going to go out with a bang, now that he has, it’s time to look for other options.”
“So you choose to remain here.”
“I have my reasons.” Charles sees a flicker of doubt on her face, at least he thinks it’s doubt, it is hard to tell on a face carved from such an exquisite stone. “Your abilities need honing.”
“I am perfectly comfortable, thank you.” He isn’t, not entirely. He can feel the minds around him with something approaching ease, he can hold a conversation without opening his mouth, but it is still not enough.
“You nearly killed yourself before.”
“I’m sure your concern is appreciated.” There’s more to it. Charles watches her face as she returns to her fleshy form and behind her eyes there is greed, awe and not a small amount of fear.
“Consider it a token of my good will,” she says. “I want you to teach me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Mr Xavier, I may be your only hope of getting back into shape.” She smiles at him, blonde, coifed, perfect like a porcelain doll. “All the others, even your precious Erik, are so simple. You can control them without even trying. I’m sure you could learn to control their abilities, too.” The fragile cup is so thin, it is nearly transparent, like the wonder in her voice. Charles watches the flow of the liquid within, transfixed. “Me, on the other hand,” she says and her fingers trail down her substantial cleavage, “I am diamond. I can help you train. I can be a challenge, and believe me, you need one right now, if only to know your limits.
“In return, you will teach me your tricks.” Emma raises the cup in a mock salute. “I would consider this a fair exchange, wouldn’t you?”
“Miss Frost, you have no moral fiber. Why should I teach you anything that make me uneasy to even consider?”
“Come on, Mr Xavier. We both know morals are just as fluctuating as the minds that beget them. We have seen into the hearts of men, you and I, and what, precisely is within? Chaos.” She pours herself another cup and stirs into it two spoons of sugar. “The future is what we make it, Mr Xavier. And we could make it anything.”
“We could, yes. But I’m afraid it is not one I could ever live in. Thank you for your offer, Miss Frost. I’m grateful for your help, but I have to decline further assistance. You are welcome to stay, of course, if you so desire.”
“It doesn’t worry you?”
“What?”
“Leaving me in your house, unattended? With your children running free?”
Charles smiles, but it is the smile of a shark. “Miss Frost, I may be indisposed at the moment, but rest assured, the moment I find the hint of your presence in any mind that isn’t your own, you will find yourself two years old. Permanently.”
“Touché.”
She watches him leave the room. He can feel her grin chase him all the way up the stairs, even as he takes them head on, one step at a time and panics, because it was not his voice. He is not capable of thinking of such threats, how can he deliver them, then, when he is not capable of dealing out such punishment, he cannot, no.
Erik meets him on top of the staircase, one hand holding Jubilee’s. He stares, uncertain and Charles shakes his head, grateful to have the excuse of vertigo to lean against him and breathe.
“What the hell?” Erik asks.
Charles shakes his head again.
“What the hell, Charles?” he asks louder, mindless of the child. The thought of a swear jar flickers through Charles’ mind and he nearly laughs. Erik would go bankrupt and Jubilee would never want for money.
“I threatened Miss Frost.”
Erik’s gaze flicks between the staircase and him, and at first he is amused, but then he frowns. “What did she do?”
“Nothing,” Charles says. “She did nothing.”
*****
Charles is in the kitchen when it happens. Jubilee sits on the table and together they are baking cupcakes, one of the few edible things Charles feels competent enough to make. She giggles at him and carefully coats the sweetmeats in flour while he mixes the batter.
“Now just a cup of milk,” he says and turns to the fridge. He returns, carefully holding the cup before him, when something inside him shifts and the voices pour in, relentless and urgent.
The milk splatters over his shoes and the kitchen floor and Charles very nearly follows. He grasps the edge of the table for support and lowers himself to his knees.
“Charles!” Jubilee cries, peering at him from her perch. There is flour on her face and her little mind reels with worry and surprise, because it happened so fast, and Charles can hear Hank, in his laboratory, letting out a whoop of delight as he puts the finishing touches to Cerebro, he can hear Alex’s panicked “oh shit” when Erik sends a sheet of metal his way, Erik’s glee when the metal is shattered by a plasma blast.
He sees through Emma’s eyes as she raises an eyebrow at him in the mirror. She is brushing Angel’s hair and in the background there is Raven, who looks up, startled by his presence. A smile breaks on her face.
Charles sits on the kitchen floor, in a puddle of spilt milk and laughs.
“I’m okay,” he tells Jubilee. I’m okay, he tells himself and feels a knot of worry in Erik’s mind disappear.
six
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 swathed in white. The light hurts his eyes. He wonders if he’s finally dead.
Someone laughs. Charles squints and barely makes out a female figure, clad in white smoke. Her hair is golden and her smile is heavenly.
I’m flattered, sugar, but you couldn’t be more wrong.
Emma Frost, he thinks at her. The memories are slow and disjointed, but there is a face there, to go with the voice, which is not a voice, but a smell, a look, a sound, all rolled into one, and it is hard as diamond and just as cold. The telepath.
Oh, Mr Xavier, so long as you persist on calling yourself a telepath, the rest of us are merely very intuitive.
Her attention waivers and Charles gets the impression someone is being shaken.
What is going on?
Oh, don’t worry. It’s just that your friend doesn’t appreciate being out of the loop, no more.
This time she thinks in two directions at once, which Charles knows, because there is a certain echo to her words.
He is fine, Erik, she thinks. Or thinks and says. He isn’t sure. He overdid it. Burned too bright with too little fuel. Give him time.
Emma flinches. The reply was not to her liking, whatever it was. I can’t. He is here and he is conscious, but I wouldn’t count on any chess games anytime soon. He needs time.
The mind is not unlike a muscle. He overexerted it. It can happen. He will recover on his own terms, forcing it will hurt him. Can I please have a coffee and some sleep now? I believe I earned it.
Erik wants to know if you’re okay, she thinks and it’s a single, irritated voice this time. He is being extremely unreasonable about it.
Charles hesitates. I am… okay, he allows. I think I’ll be fine. Provided he could negotiate his way out of this endless expanse of white, which, despite being entirely shapeless, managed to be a labyrinth. Wonderful.
*****
It’s not that he wakes, precisely, because he is still dreaming the most claustrophobic dream he has ever had. He thinks he stopped being unconscious a long while ago. This is more like regaining the use of his senses.
Strangely enough, smell is the first to return. There’s soap and washing powder, a little cologne and sweat in the air. Medical supplies, disinfectant. It combines into a hospital, a little room with not enough air and too much doctor. His mouth tastes stale. He wonders how long has it been and if anyone has bothered to brush his teeth.
Sight returns next. There is a blinding white light overhead, periodically obscured by faces. Charles recognizes Hank, who is there most often, to shine more light into his eyes. Miss Frost leans over him with a smirk on her lips, as she informs the audience that it shouldn’t be long now, which he guesses, rather than knows, because she doesn’t bother to think it at him, but he can see her lips move.
Raven is there to kiss his forehead, which is the first thing he feels. After the kiss there is the hardness of the bed, the rough material of the sheets, the warmth of skin touching his.
“Reacting to stimuli,” Hank says at the same time as something sharp pricks his fingertip. Charles turns in his direction. He feels like a cotton pad, white, soft, muffled.
“Hank,” he manages. “What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.” There is a moment’s pause. “March the first.”
Charles sits up. He’d expect dizziness, if he were awake, but there is none. He is fine, other than the stiffness of his joints. He can slide off the bed and walk. “March the first?” he asks, because that part doesn’t make sense. “But it’s February, it’s not even Valentine’s Day yet.”
“You were out of it for two weeks,” Hank says. “Miss Frost says you overtaxed yourself. She says not to worry, it happens to telepaths who don’t know their limits. Does it?”
Charles stares and tried to remember. “It never happened to me.”
Hank nods. “Miss Frost usually comes in first thing in the morning, to check up on you. Do you want to sleep? I could give you something for sleep.”
Charles takes in the room. He recognizes it as one of the servant’s quarters in the eastern wing, adjoining to the garage Hank has claimed as his laboratory.
“Professor?”
“No drugs.”
“Will you be comfortable here?”
“Aren’t you going to sleep?”
Hank ducks his head. “I find I rest better if I nap for an hour every now and then.”
“I see,” Charles says and lies back on the narrow bed and clenches his teeth as Hank relieves him of the catheter. There are wires taped to his chest and his head, he realizes for the first time. He reconciles the steady beeping with the drumming of his own heart and it is strangely soothing.
He watches the ceiling, trying in vain to see the shape of Hank’s mind as he tinkers with the equipment, but there is nothing, just the blue fur on his head, the humming under his breath, the occasional comment Charles is sure he is not meant to hear.
There is something shaped like a chandelier in his hands. It is the second Cerebro, Charles deduces after a moment. Incredible.
He has no sense of time passing, which he finds not at all strange. He closes his eyes and evens out his breath when Hank looks his way and curls on the couch. Feigning sleep, even in a dream, after so many years of nothing but sleep is hard, his body wants to move, wants to dance.
It is seven in the morning when there is a knock on the door and Miss Frost enters, closely followed by Erik, whose head is encased in that ridiculous helmet. Charles would like to say he hates it, but he knows he has no one to blame but himself for its presence. He will be lucky if he ever sees Erik again, so for now the dream will have to be enough.
“So you are awake, fascinating.” Her slender hand touches his forehead. Can you hear me?
Charles shakes his head, stares at her until his eyes water, but he manages to sense nothing.
Erik glares at no one in particular. “You said he would be fine.”
“I also said what he did was the mental equivalent of you lifting the Statue of Liberty and walking on its shoulders across the Atlantic.”
Erik scoffs. “He managed projection just fine in Russia. It shouldn’t exert him like this.”
“It wasn’t with the same brain, then, unless the story you’re telling me is a gross exaggeration, which to be fair it sounds like. Knowing exactly how to do something is not the same as being capable of doing it.” Emma turns away from Erik and strides confidently to Charles’ side, her hips swaying as she walks. “Can you hear anything? Feel anything?”
“I heard you,” Charles says. “But the rest, no. I can’t.”
Behind him the machines beep at a frantic pace. He doesn’t quite understand why, he is calm, there is no reason for the machine to start a frantic concert, he is well. He is fine.
His head is wrapped on all sides with wool, white fuzzy wool. No one is around, he is alone, but there are people in the room and he is dreaming, yes, he must be dreaming, because it is only in dreams that he can’t know people by the shape of their thoughts.
The machine is roaring now and that is fine, that’s well, the alarm will wake him and it will be fine. His fingers tighten on the edge of the bed and he feels the hardness of the frame, feels it dig into his skin, it cannot be long now, he will wake up, he will wake up, he will wake up!
“Make him stop,” Emma commands. Charles hears her loud and clear but she is not real if she has no cerebral echo, she is not real. Nothing is real. “I can’t talk to him if he panics, he will shut me out.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Take the silly helmet off, for starters.”
Erik glares. “Certainly not with you here.”
“It’s either that, or knock out a telepath in a state of panic. Which is never a good idea, as panic tends to cling, and when he wakes up he will lash out. Trust me, I have been there. I don’t think my nurse has ever stopped dribbling.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“Let me put it thusly: if I woke and was unable to feel the minds around me, I would naturally assume there were no people around me. If I came across something that looked human and wasn’t projecting thoughts, I would likely ignore or kill it, depending on how in my way it was.” Emma takes a seat and extends an exquisitely manicured hand before her. “Your Charles is on the verge of hyperventilation because he has no idea what’s real. He feels the physical sensations, but if he is anything like me, his dreams would have been palpable up until now, so physical sensation proves nothing. The only way he can be sure he isn’t dreaming is to hear people’s minds. Which he doesn’t presently.”
“Again, how does me not having the helmet on help? You said he’s locked in.”
“Oh, honey, you cannot possibly be that dense.” Emma smiles, showing off a row of perfect teeth. “You said he died in your mind, when no one else felt a thing, that he did it unconsciously. I really don’t think there is time for a lecture on how telepathy works.” She rolls her eyes at Erik’s growl. “But please yourself.
“Projecting thoughts requires conscious effort and dying tends to turn people’s minds inwards. There is no death I have witnessed that didn’t start by the dying turning inwards. Really good telepaths may be capable of latching onto people they want to drag down with them, and he is very good, but you tell me he didn’t mean it. So, him reaching out for you as he died required an open pathway. You had to let him in and it doesn’t matter how good he is. If you didn’t welcome him in then, he would slink back inside his own head, like everyone else, and die quietly. Or move on quietly, as the case may be. I’m guessing if there’s one mind he can feel right now, it is yours, if it weren’t conveniently blocked.”
Emma spares a glance at Charles. “He is distressed, because he thinks he can’t wake up, and you are not making it any better. Any moment now he will start panicking in earnest and then there’s two ways it could go -- he will either try to startle himself awake by jumping out of the window, or he will grasp at his powers and start flinging them about. He is not ready for telepathy yet. If he tries it now, then it’s back to the coma. Do you want that? Because I can promise you, it will be no more fun next time around. Or the next. Eventually he will go too far, which is far more serious than you can imagine, and then what you will have is a vegetable Charles to water and wheel out into the sun.” Emma pauses and smirks. “If it helps any, I have no interest in reading your mind. I have nothing to gain.”
Erik’s anger could poison the entire ocean, by the look on his face, but he reaches for the helmet. He tries to, at any rate.
Behind Charles the machine goes wild.
“No,” he manages and he lunges at Erik, wrestles his hands away from the metal. “Don’t, no, no, no.” He can’t take it off. If he takes it off and he, too, is silent, if he is just an image, a vision, not really there, no.
It might be a dream, Charles thinks, but at least he can hope.
“Calm down,” Erik says, and a little of the panic shows on his face as well. He grabs Charles’ wrists and the helmet lifts itself from his head.
Nothing. There is nothing. He is dreaming, then, Erik isn’t real, this isn’t real, the pain digging into his hands isn’t real and still he doesn’t wake.
Charles throws his head back and screams, until his lungs burn.
Somewhere off to the side someone says, “Oh, do shut him up,” and suddenly there is a pressure against his mouth, warm and insistent. Charles’ eyes open wide and he sees Erik, comically serious as he kisses him.
Slowly, the beeping eases into a more comfortable rhythm. Charles’ eyes water but he won’t close them, he won’t blink, because he sees Erik. It’s faint, this aura, this edge, whatever it is, but he sees it. He feels the fragile suggestion of thoughts, and he cannot tell what they are, but they are there and they are Erik’s -- he recognizes the shape, the texture, the taste of them.
He wraps his hands around Erik’s neck and holds on while the world reorganizes itself around them.
“It is adorable, yes,” Emma says. Someone is standing beside her, which Charles knows only because they are shuffling their feet. He cannot be bothered to look. “Shall we move on now?”
Emma stands beside them and touches her fingertips to Charles’ temple. Relax, she thinks at him. Mr Xavier, relax. You will not be able to feel anyone for some time, that is not a cause for panic.
She slithers in his head. Charles can feel her in his mind, razor-sharp and ice-cold. How is it not a cause for panic?
She conjures a memory for him, cuts it out of liquid crystal and lets it play. A teenaged girl, feeling the shift of minds for the first time, feeling the spill of secrets: hers, others’, everyone’s. He feels her panic and the surge of power within, as she screams and everyone around her drops to the ground in agony.
I was in a coma for a month, he hears. When I woke I thought it went away, but of course eventually I started hearing things again.
This never happened to me. Charles feels Erik’s hands grip the shirt on his back.
“Emma…” he says with a hint of a growl.
“Hush.” New brain, Mr Xavier. You assumed its limits would be the same as your old one’s, and in time, with practice, perhaps they will. Right now, you have hurled yourself at the sun and burned your little wings off.
She withdraws. Charles clenches his eyes shut. Her touch is unpleasant, hurtful, but it is real. She is human, the only human he can feel that is real, more real than Erik. That alone cuts him like a knife.
“Well, then. Do you need anything else?” Miss Frost straightens and flicks a mote of dust off her shoulder.
“No.” Erik says without looking at her. “You can leave.”
She smiles. “Thank you.”
The door clicks shut behind her, but doesn’t stay shut for long. Raven is already there, but then rest of the team files through the door and Charles digs his fingers into Erik’s shoulder and bites his lip. He can’t feel them. They are shapes in the space before him, but they have no minds. None that he can see.
“You are not dreaming,” Erik reminds him.
Right. Right. Charles hides his face in Erik’s neck. He feels blind and deaf and dumb. The silence is weighing him down. It is like a tomb designed specifically for him.
“Professor?” Alex says as he steps into the room. “Are you alright?”
He doesn’t even understand. He hears the words and they make sense, but the meaning is gone. The steady beat of his heart speeds up and he tries to keep it down, but this half-reality is too frightening.
*****
He burrows in his bed, shoving his head underneath the pillow as far as he’s able to go without suffocating himself. The pillow is feathery and he can almost, almost make himself believe that the blank emptiness he feels is the result of feathers around his head.
“Charles, get up,” Erik says around midday.
“No.”
“You will eat. Then physical therapy.”
“No.”
“The kids are beginning to wonder if you are even still alive.”
“I’m not.”
He gets no verbal reply. Erik rips the covers off and makes a grab for the pillow. “Get up.”
“I can’t go out there,” Charles says. He will not beg, but he is not above implying he is. “Erik… I lost control. I stopped you. Everyone. Held you down against your will. I made you, Erik, I forced you to do what I wanted.”
“You solved a problem.” Erik shrugs. “You did it well. But don’t ever do that again.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Don’t be stupid. You will do it again, if you need to.” Erik crawls onto the bed until he is on his hands and knees over Charles and grins and his gaze is smoldering, setting Charles’ insides aflame. “You will do what must be done to protect us all. The kids know this. They understand.”
“I never wanted that. I wanted…” What did he want? Peace, he answers immediately. For the children to be safe, to feel special. To know that someone will fight for them.
“I know how you wanted it. It isn’t possible.”
“I will not make this a war.”
“It is a war. You just don’t want to see it yet.” Erik is merciless and the faintest tendril of his exasperated affection caresses Charles from within. He shudders, holding in the moan. “Stay, then. For now. I’ll bring you something to eat, but you are not talking your way out of therapy.”
He gets off the bed and moves towards the door. The moment he disappears Charles feels the emptiness descend, burying him in something solid and transparent, something he can see through, but not breathe in.
It takes him all of thirty seconds to catch up to Erik.
*****
He knows what it looks like, him trailing behind Erik like a pathetic puppy, unwilling to let him out of his sight, unwilling to not have physical contact. He knows Riptide, at least, is making comments and it doesn’t take a genius or a telepath to hear the Mercedes wake in the garage and inch towards the man’s immediate future.
He sees the pitying smiles on the children’s faces. He sees the wide berth Azazel gives him and the smirk on Riptide’s lips.
He can feel the acute beating his ego receives every time his head turns to follow Erik, every time he grips Erik’s sleeve to stop him from leaving. He hates himself a little bit for it. He digs his fingers into Erik’s arm, rests his forehead on his shoulder and hates himself a little bit more for the show of weakness.
Erik is still the only thing that is real to him.
He sleeps uneasily, but it is waking that is the worst, when the world is no different from the dream and he isn’t sure whether he is awake or asleep and he wonders if Emma was lying, that he will never get his abilities back.
He experiences, for the first time in his life, a panic attack, when he dreams of Erik. It is a very odd dream, he concedes, warm and full of flickering fire and patchouli scented chess and Erik’s hands on his sides, tracing the shape of him, proper shape, not the skin and bones he is now. It is almost … pleasant, Charles wonders, the feel of a man’s fingertips against his skin, of hard muscles and stubble.
Erik’s mouth is against his, sliding open as they kiss, gentle and slippery. There’s a brush of tongue against his mouth, a crackling of fire, a hand on the small of his back. He is naked and their mouths open, their bodies slide together, hard and heated. He breaks away because it is too much, too soon, and stares at Erik and the emptiness behind his eyes.
He startles awake. The bed is empty, he is alone, and whatever arousal the dream caused (oh god, he was dreaming of Erik!), it was gone because he was alone, Erik wasn’t there.
“Charles!”
It is only when he has Erik’s weight pressing him into the bed, the weight of Erik’s mind forcing order onto his, that he realizes he is hyperventilating. “Breathe, Charles,” Erik says. His hand is heavy against Charles’ chest. It forces effort into every breath, conscious work, and, after a while, it soothes. “What the hell happened?”
Charles turns his head, feeling his face redden. “Nothing.”
“Don’t ever lie to me,” Erik says, gripping Charles’ chin and turning his head. “What happened?”
“You weren’t here. I woke up and you weren’t here.” Charles wishes he was feverish, but he knows it is shame which brings the color to his face.
Erik sighs. “I was in the bathroom.”
“It’s too far,” Charles says in a broken whisper and he pulls the duvet over his head. “It’s too far,” he repeats and it sounds just as puerile this time around.
The duvet lifts and Erik slips into the bed beside him, wrapping himself around Charles in the darkness, until there is nothing in the world but Erik and him.
Only then Charles lets himself sleep again.
*****
Charles feels like weeping when, the very next morning, Hank turns to him and there is a cogwheel of a thought triggering a cascade of movement within his brain. He speaks about Cerebro but Charles isn’t even listening, he watches in wonder as the wheels turn and shift and Hank’s mind unveils the machinery before them.
He comes to understand, slowly, that the smiles of the children are good-natured and not pitying, that while Riptide and Azazel are amused, the mockery carries a touch of respect, borne from the show of power earlier. They are fully aware of what it means to upset a telepath and Charles is a little frightened when his distress brings the memories of Emma’s displeasure to the fore. He wishes to soothe their apprehensions, but they don’t have much there. They seem content where they are, so long as the mutant cause moves on and they have a job to do, and Erik has that under control.
“You need to control yourself,” Emma says one morning, less than a month later, sipping coffee from Charles’ mother’s prized porcelain cup. He has trouble understanding why is she still here, when Erik quite explicitly told her to go.
“Don’t trouble yourself figuring it out,” she says and her flesh flickers into diamond. “I remain because this is where entertainment is at, these days.”
“You tried to start World War Three,” Charles says, reaching for the coffee, but the memo has made its rounds and Emma pushes a glass of orange juice his way. He grimaces, but his mouth is parched and to his dismay he likes the juice, omnipresent as it seems to be. Erik makes a point of there being fresh oranges in the house for the express purpose of hydrating and vitaminizing Charles’ wasted body.
“Yes. It didn’t work out. Shaw was always going to go out with a bang, now that he has, it’s time to look for other options.”
“So you choose to remain here.”
“I have my reasons.” Charles sees a flicker of doubt on her face, at least he thinks it’s doubt, it is hard to tell on a face carved from such an exquisite stone. “Your abilities need honing.”
“I am perfectly comfortable, thank you.” He isn’t, not entirely. He can feel the minds around him with something approaching ease, he can hold a conversation without opening his mouth, but it is still not enough.
“You nearly killed yourself before.”
“I’m sure your concern is appreciated.” There’s more to it. Charles watches her face as she returns to her fleshy form and behind her eyes there is greed, awe and not a small amount of fear.
“Consider it a token of my good will,” she says. “I want you to teach me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Mr Xavier, I may be your only hope of getting back into shape.” She smiles at him, blonde, coifed, perfect like a porcelain doll. “All the others, even your precious Erik, are so simple. You can control them without even trying. I’m sure you could learn to control their abilities, too.” The fragile cup is so thin, it is nearly transparent, like the wonder in her voice. Charles watches the flow of the liquid within, transfixed. “Me, on the other hand,” she says and her fingers trail down her substantial cleavage, “I am diamond. I can help you train. I can be a challenge, and believe me, you need one right now, if only to know your limits.
“In return, you will teach me your tricks.” Emma raises the cup in a mock salute. “I would consider this a fair exchange, wouldn’t you?”
“Miss Frost, you have no moral fiber. Why should I teach you anything that make me uneasy to even consider?”
“Come on, Mr Xavier. We both know morals are just as fluctuating as the minds that beget them. We have seen into the hearts of men, you and I, and what, precisely is within? Chaos.” She pours herself another cup and stirs into it two spoons of sugar. “The future is what we make it, Mr Xavier. And we could make it anything.”
“We could, yes. But I’m afraid it is not one I could ever live in. Thank you for your offer, Miss Frost. I’m grateful for your help, but I have to decline further assistance. You are welcome to stay, of course, if you so desire.”
“It doesn’t worry you?”
“What?”
“Leaving me in your house, unattended? With your children running free?”
Charles smiles, but it is the smile of a shark. “Miss Frost, I may be indisposed at the moment, but rest assured, the moment I find the hint of your presence in any mind that isn’t your own, you will find yourself two years old. Permanently.”
“Touché.”
She watches him leave the room. He can feel her grin chase him all the way up the stairs, even as he takes them head on, one step at a time and panics, because it was not his voice. He is not capable of thinking of such threats, how can he deliver them, then, when he is not capable of dealing out such punishment, he cannot, no.
Erik meets him on top of the staircase, one hand holding Jubilee’s. He stares, uncertain and Charles shakes his head, grateful to have the excuse of vertigo to lean against him and breathe.
“What the hell?” Erik asks.
Charles shakes his head again.
“What the hell, Charles?” he asks louder, mindless of the child. The thought of a swear jar flickers through Charles’ mind and he nearly laughs. Erik would go bankrupt and Jubilee would never want for money.
“I threatened Miss Frost.”
Erik’s gaze flicks between the staircase and him, and at first he is amused, but then he frowns. “What did she do?”
“Nothing,” Charles says. “She did nothing.”
*****
Charles is in the kitchen when it happens. Jubilee sits on the table and together they are baking cupcakes, one of the few edible things Charles feels competent enough to make. She giggles at him and carefully coats the sweetmeats in flour while he mixes the batter.
“Now just a cup of milk,” he says and turns to the fridge. He returns, carefully holding the cup before him, when something inside him shifts and the voices pour in, relentless and urgent.
The milk splatters over his shoes and the kitchen floor and Charles very nearly follows. He grasps the edge of the table for support and lowers himself to his knees.
“Charles!” Jubilee cries, peering at him from her perch. There is flour on her face and her little mind reels with worry and surprise, because it happened so fast, and Charles can hear Hank, in his laboratory, letting out a whoop of delight as he puts the finishing touches to Cerebro, he can hear Alex’s panicked “oh shit” when Erik sends a sheet of metal his way, Erik’s glee when the metal is shattered by a plasma blast.
He sees through Emma’s eyes as she raises an eyebrow at him in the mirror. She is brushing Angel’s hair and in the background there is Raven, who looks up, startled by his presence. A smile breaks on her face.
Charles sits on the kitchen floor, in a puddle of spilt milk and laughs.
“I’m okay,” he tells Jubilee. I’m okay, he tells himself and feels a knot of worry in Erik’s mind disappear.
six
