[fic] Not Half As Blinding 6/6
Jul. 19th, 2011 12:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Not Half As Blinding 6/6
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
The new Cerebro is magnificent. Hank opened the roof of the garage to install a dome -- a spherical shape was somehow very important -- and a walkway that located the user precisely in its center.
“There’s still some fine tuning to be done,” Hanks says as he hangs upside down from the catwalk and fiddles with the cables beneath. “Would you like to try?”
“Emma should go first,” Erik says from the door.
Miss Frost, who stands behind him, folds her arms. “Thank you, no. I will not be a lab rat.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” Charles says and picks up the helmet. It is lighter than the one he remembers from the CIA facility. It feels much more comfortable on his head.
Then Hank does something and the world explodes in brightness. Charles clings to the railings because he is everywhere all of sudden and it is heady, fantastic and triggering an intense wave of vertigo.
Along with the memory of CIA base Moira flashes through his mind and he is there, with her, listening to the steady, organized stream of her thoughts. She is worried and apprehensive, she is scared, but resolute and--
“The mutants must be apprehended,” she hears, and Charles holds in the shock and slithers into her, unseen, unfelt.
Her eyes flicker and he is in a CIA office, sitting at the far end of a table.
“They erased weeks, months of people’s lives. What more do you need, Ezra?” The chubby man on the director’s side glares and continues talking. “If their telepath is good enough to do that, what else can he do? Drive a car into the White House and shoot the President? Any idiot can do that. This man can walk into the White House and walk out with every state secret without anyone being the wiser. Do you understand that? It’s a matter of national security!”
“We don’t know what he wants,” the director says. Indecision is written all over his face.
“Which is exactly the point. We don’t know. We let him in here, to wander about and who knows what he gleaned. They have Dr McCoy now, and that machine, and what have we got?
“Then there are the others.” The man flips a file open. “The Jew is capable of lifting submarines out of the water, according to the captain. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what could that mean, if a single man can lift vessels of that size into the air. Let’s face it, gentlemen, this is a crisis. Shaw, at least, had the decency to go about his plans covertly, through human means, but those people have no qualms about making a show of themselves. We will have a panic on our hands, the more certain the longer they remain at large.”
Charles’ focus wavers. He leaves Moira and is instead hurled among the millions of people populating the United States. He is weightless, formless, free…
He wrestles the helmet from his head and bends over the railings of Cerebro, trying to catch his breath. The spherical space seems to resonate, reverberating the thoughts even now, and he is in its center, listening, feeling, living.
There are hands on him, underneath him, and he is carried out of the sphere and into the much less crowded space of the lab. Erik sweeps the table clear with a thought, to Hank’s dismay, and Charles is extremely glad not many people are around to witness this. Erik doesn’t let go, instead he holds Charles close while Charles slowly wrestles his breathing under control. It is so hard to have a body again.
His head is still swimming, the vision of Moira, the elusive touch of her mind lingers on his, but there is more there now, the men listening to the reports, to the reiterations of the few memories of him that he allowed Moira to retain. He feels the beginnings of a headache, but for now it is still manageable.
“We have a problem,” he says.
Three minutes later the laboratory is a war-zone and he, Hank and Emma are hiding under the work table as everything not nailed down sails across the open air.
“I really wish he wouldn’t do that,” Hank grouses. “I have just finished putting everything into order.”
“There was order?” Emma smirks a little and uses a piece of a chromed plate to check her make-up. “I didn’t notice.”
“Don’t worry,” Charles says. Erik is calm, even as he stands in the eye of the storm and wills the equipment to orbit him. “He has it under control. It helps him think.”
“Do you?” Emma holds his gaze for far longer than necessary until Charles looks down.
“I’m afraid we will have to risk a trip,” he says. “I have to be in the same room as them, to be sure.”
“You are certainly not going anywhere,” Erik says. Most of the room settles. “But yes, a trip is necessary.”
In his mind there curls a vision of destruction and gruesome death for everyone involved. Charles sighs. “Really, Erik, is it too much to ask that not every plan of yours include copious amounts of corpses?”
“How many is copious?”
“One is too much.”
“My friend, your math teacher is weeping, wherever he is.” Erik grins and Charles cannot avert his eyes fast enough. His face feels warm, which is ridiculous, he is a grown man, not a teenager, and this is Erik, not some girl.
He tries to think of chess.
Emma considers her nails. “Did you perhaps consider having intercourse before planning battles? It would no doubt help us all keep focused.”
“How would it help you?” Hank asks.
“I wouldn’t have to listen to them skirting about the issue in increasingly convoluted metaphors, as entertaining as they are. It is not so complicated, gentlemen. I’m sure your scientist friend could draw you a diagram.”
“Miss Frost, I am fully capable of handling my affairs on my own. I would thank you to stay out of this.”
“I wouldn’t dream of interfering, Mr Xavier.” She smiles at him sweetly, but the vision she pushes his way renders diagrams redundant. Charles grits his teeth and Emma gasps for breath as her mind tells her she was doused by icy water.
“How much can you find out from here?” Erik asks. The storm is over; most of the equipment is back where it belongs, only a few stray pieces still hover.
Charles gives Cerebro a dubious look. “I’m not sure.” He’s found Moira by accident, finding her again and listening in would be easy, but further than the meeting it was anybody’s guess. He didn’t think he could read the minds he didn’t already know at this distance -- even slipping into Moira’s allowed him only the access to the surface level of her mind. “I will try to find Moira again, maybe the meeting didn’t finish yet.”
A part of him rebels at the invasion of Moira’s mind. She doesn’t deserve this sort of treatment, not after the sacrifices she made for them. What other choice is there, however? Charles gets up unsteadily, holding on to the table with one hand. “I need to get back into Cerebro,” he says.
Erik protests. Of course he does.
“I will be fine,” Charles assures him, when he walks into an immobile wall of flesh and anger. “I can handle a little more, I wasn’t anywhere near my limits. This is just listening, hardly an effort.”
Erik raises a brow and Charles rolls his eyes. They are getting quite adept at holding those conversations outside of telepathy and normal communication -- pretty soon they wouldn’t need either, he thinks with some humor, so long as they keep their eyebrows and ocular muscles they would be fine. This is something wholly different from mere telepathy.
“I will know,” Erik tells him, and Charles just stares. There’s something foreign in Erik’s mind and he realizes with a start that it’s him. He wishes for time to dwell on it, but Erik is already stepping away, freeing the path to the heart of the machine.
Hank fetches a chair for him. Charles grips the armrests and focuses on Moira. The hedgehog-like slant of her mind, the brightness of her gaze and the assured tone of her thoughts burn in the darkened sphere of Cerebro. Charles closes his eyes and when he opens them he is looking through her eyes.
The meeting is still on. He takes a deep breath, feels Moira’s fingers stretch and claw on the armrest of her chair and the room unfolds before him. Moira is a little irritated and not a little worried. She remembers nothing, but there is a tinge of fondness to the nothing, as though she knows there was some happiness there. She doesn’t dare speak, she is only a field agent and they are already stretching the regulations by inviting her along to this meeting.
“This telepath,” says the man Moira identifies as McAlester, “could be a weapon. The million dollar machine, you tell me, works like a dream. The stolen parts can be replaced, that much the engineers tell me. No damage has been done. All we need is a telepath to operate it.”
“A telepath we don’t have.”
“We could have him.” McAlester leans forward. “Sir, what we have here is an opportunity. Cerebro and that telepath can put us light years ahead of the Soviets.”
“Yes, except the last team sent to extract him returned with weeks of their life struck from their memory. How do you plan on fighting that?”
“We know the youngsters they recruited remained in his care.”
The pause is heavy.
“Blackmail, then.”
Moira recoils. “Sir, I’m sorry, do you mean to kidnap those children?”
“Sit down, agent.” Mr Ezra looks at her. “Sit down, or leave this room.”
Moira sits, but cannot settle. She is seconds from storming out. Charles calms her down. He needs to stay, he needs to listen.
“Do we know how many there are?”
McAlester winces. “We have the mansion under observation. Unfortunately, our scope is very limited, as we don’t know his exact range and coming too close would result in discovery. About twelve people, including a pair of young teenagers and a small child.”
“What of the other one, Shaw’s woman?”
“She hasn’t been spotted. Given how the Jew seemed to feel about Shaw, I doubt she is still with them.”
“I understand the gains.” Ezra leans forward and props himself on his elbows. “However, you propose to send our agents to abduct a child with, let’s not be afraid of the word, superpowers. We have seen one of the slice statues in half, we have to assume the small child you mention is capable of no less. You propose to blackmail a man who can take away memories and bring him here, against his will.”
McAlester winces. “The risks are great, I grant you.”
“The risks are horrifying, Richard, and I don’t like you dismissing them so easily. You’re asking me to send out our agents to face something against which we have no weapon.”
“This could very well win us the war.”
“Or it could destroy us.” Mr Ezra considers his folded hands. “I grant you, the prospect of the telepath in Cerebro is an attractive one.”
“Agent MacTaggert,” McAlester says, turning towards her. “How likely is it that this man would strike against us?”
Moira hesitates. She understands, now, that this question is the reason she is here in the first place. Her hands are restless. “He seemed benevolent. I don’t believe he would move against the CIA, while he had other options.”
Mr Ezra rubs his forehead. “Seemed benevolent. Hah. That’s all we have, ‘seemed benevolent’ to describe the biggest security risk this agency has seen in all of its existence.” His fingers drum staccato on the table. “Go ahead and make your plans, Richard. Observe. Question, if you can be discreet. Make me believe you can pull this off without striking years from anybody’s memory.
“You have two weeks to convince me there is a feasible way of recruiting Mr Xavier,” Ezra says and Charles wonders if the bright spots are a figment of his imagination, or whether the CIA has very talented interior decorators.
Moira’s mind closes in on him and then he is gasping for air with the dome of Cerebro overhead and the scent of Erik’s cologne in his nostrils.
“I wasn’t finished,” he gasps. “I need to go back, they weren’t done!”
“No.”
“It might be dangerous, professor, we didn’t have time to test it fully, the readings of the machine are fluctuating.”
“You put him in a fluctuating machine?” Erik asks, half-turning to Hank and if it’s possible for blue fur to pale, it is doing so now, while simultaneously standing on end and quivering and dear lord, Hank is an adorable ball of fuzz.
“Am I actually needed here, because charming as you boys are, I have better things to do than watch you beat each other over the head.”
Charles, it would seem, was voted out of having a vote in his own house. Splendid. If his head hurt any less, he would make a stand for himself, but as it were he was having trouble enough keeping his head above water.
He is grateful when he finds himself with a couple of aspirin and a glass of the damnable orange juice in hand, lying on the couch in his living room with an icy compress on his head.
Tempers fray when he finishes relating the conversation, and more than half the kids want to storm the CIA headquarters this very minute, to leave it in ruins. Erik’s vision is the most graphic one, but his is messy, whereas Alex’s leaves the place in neat little slices.
“We’ve done nothing to them!” Alex growls and Charles sees a flash of red about his chest, too quickly gone to do real damage, but there nonetheless. His control is slipping when he is agitated, which is of course no surprise. He has chosen the solitary for a reason. It worries Charles, because what other reason could there be for this but the deeply seated wish to not hurt anyone, and here he was proposing to go out and slay people for making plans.
Hank lays a paw on his shoulder and Alex settles, somewhat, still growling out loud and roaring in his mind.
“I’m afraid it is my fault,” Charles says quietly into the compress. The aspirin is taking its time, but it is fine, he can wait it out.
“How is it your fault, professor?” Sean asks, while still chewing on his fingernail.
“The show I made of myself when I was first invited to the CIA building. Some of the agents were quite shaken. Hank’s foray into theft put them on edge, and my recent display hasn’t helped matters any.”
“They would have shot at us,” Alex points out sensibly. “They came here, it’s not like we went after their super secrets, or whatever.”
“The possibility of us doing so is very much real. Given the ease with which we walk into the facility when we need something.” Charles shifts and winces when his brain rattles within his skull. “Plus, Cerebro is a magnificent tool, its possibilities are endless, and I put it in their minds myself. I’m sorry.”
“You said they know where we are. You said they are observing us!”
“I don’t sense anyone on the grounds or nearby,” Charles says, and gestures vaguely at Emma for confirmation. She closes her eyes, clearly humoring him, lets out a long sigh, but shakes her head.
“No one but us within two mile radius.”
“Well, if their plan relies on their Cerebro, then clearly it needs to go.” Erik flexes his hands and a forgotten letter opener rises from the shelf and buries itself in the woodwork opposite.
“That would solve most of our problems, yes. However, consider this: if we destroy the machine now, it would be a pretty obvious conclusion that we know of their plans. Therefore either we listened in, or someone is spying on them. Since Moira was there for the whole conversation and claims to magically not remember us at all, she would be their first suspect.”
Erik’s eyebrows furrow and Charles glares.
“No. I will not let anything happen to Moira.”
Erik rolls his eyes.
“I don’t care. She is on our side.”
“We hardly have a reason to attack overtly,” Hank says. “We could sabotage it. It’s useless without a telepath anyway, but if we rewire it, it will still work, at least look like it’s working, but it won’t be doing anything useful.”
“How easily can they fix it?”
“Well, if they know the trick, I’d say five minutes, but I don’t think they know the trick.”
“Is there a chance they could learn?”
“I built Cerebro. Unless they know more about it than me, I don’t think they will.”
“It’s not good enough.” Erik folds his hands. “Disabling Cerebro without letting anyone know it is disabled ensures only that they can’t use it. It won’t stop them coming after Charles, it won’t change anything.”
Hank ducks his head, ashamed. Then, immediately, raises his gaze. “There could be a wire in the house,” he says, panicked, and the mood is infectious because everyone sans Erik starts looking underneath the chairs and tables. There is a lot of frantic gesturing going on, and even more whispering. Charles winces because the pitch of frantic whispers is far more distressing than a regular conversation was.
“If you are quite finished,” Erik says as the letter opener flies obediently into his hand. Everyone pauses to watch the blade -- a dull, ornate blade, but a blade all the same -- fly through the air. It seems to grin at them, they think very loudly, it seems to burn. “I check the house for recorders and transmitters regularly. There are none.”
The children settle.
“We need to cause some mayhem,” Charles says, hardly believing his own words. It makes sense. A warning delivered with enough force would make them reconsider, hopefully, until something more permanent could be achieved.
Erik grins at him and Charles is a little bit ashamed of the approval and a little more for being ashamed of being ashamed of Erik’s approval. Fortunately his head is still pounding and he can dump the confusion on the migraine and pretend it is not his.
“There is a problem though,” he says in the tacitly approving silence. “We know that they know where we are, but don’t know how many know.”
“Not a concern. Miss Frost, you will accompany me to the facility,” Erik says. “We can find out who knows and we can take them out.”
“Erik.”
“They came to our house, Charles.” Anger curls in Erik’s voice, carrying though his mind into Charles. He feels its heat burning him up from the inside. “You will not ask me to wait until it happens again.”
Charles doesn’t. His eyes flutter closed. “All the same, showing up there and killing everyone in your path will be no better than declaring a war and then they will start looking in earnest and they won’t bother with spies and binoculars, they will bring napalm.”
“Killing everybody tends to put a stop to a war.”
“You can’t kill everybody.”
“No,” he agrees. The hard edge in his voice, however, says that he will try, if provoked, by god he will try, and he will achieve such carnage as the human world has never seen before he is stopped.
Charles closes his eyes and lets his head tip back. The pounding in his head has dulled to an ache, but the ache has migrated to his neck and shoulders. He doesn’t even notice when he falls asleep, surrounded by the concerned minds of his students and friends.
He wakes in his own bed. It’s dark outside. “How long did I sleep?” he asks Erik, who is busy pulling on a black turtleneck. There is a scar on his side. Charles feels his fingertips itch with the need to touch it.
“Six hours.”
“You should have woken me,” Charles says as he sits up.
“We are ready to move.”
“I expect wanting to go with you is quite pointless?”
“It is.”
Silence descends between them. Charles doesn’t dare to look away even if he knows he should, because this sudden quiet, this peace, it sends his heart fluttering madly and it is insane. He is insane. The covers crease in his grasp as Erik crosses the room and leans over him. One of his knees comes to rest on the bed, but neither of them dares to move any further.
Someone bangs on the door.
“As your awkward courtship amuses me, I don’t mean to interrupt, but we are on a tight schedule here! I fully intend to sleep tonight,” comes the voice of Miss Frost and Charles is torn between hysterical laughter and shoving her off the stairs.
“Promise me you won’t kill anyone,” Charles says urgently. He grips Erik’s shoulders and somehow it’s only too easy for his hands to slide to his neck until Charles holds his face and they are less then a breath apart. “Promise me. Please.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t kill men who haven’t done anything yet,” Charles whispers as their noses bump. It’s only marginally better than what he said a lifetime ago on the beach, by the way Erik’s mind flares, but it reaches home. “I don’t want blood on my hands, I can’t want it, not even Shaw’s, and I helped you kill him.”
When did it happen, he wonders, that blood on Erik’s hands became blood on his, when did they become so hopelessly intertwined that he could no longer judge their actions separately?
The question must have migrated through the ether, because there is sand on Erik’s mind now, sand, the sea and the beach, and Charles, bleeding in his arms, bleeding into his arms, into his mind and soul, and it will never go away. But that’s how it ended, Charles thinks, not where it began, because if Emma is right -- and there is no reason to suspect she isn’t -- then it began long before the Cuban beach. Charles feels his eyes close as their lips finally meet, mid word, mid breath, when there is no time for this, when they both have bigger issues to deal with.
“I will not let anyone give me a reason,” Erik whispers in the space between them, before he stands. “Check on Jubilee when you get up.”
Charles falls into the blankets and stares at the ceiling. His head is aching, but that is a mere inconvenience now. He closes his eyes and sweeps through the mansion, then the grounds, until he is certain he can count the rats in the cellar and the pigeons on the roof.
He feels Erik meet Emma, Azazel and Hank downstairs, he senses the moment they wink out of existence, out of his reach. He breathes in and the world becomes an inch smaller, then two, and he can reach as far as the village, where most souls are asleep in their beds, dreaming of a day that will start like any other.
Hank is returned, pleased with himself, twenty minutes later. Azazel gives the mansion a cursory sweep, reassures himself that all is well, and then he is gone again.
There is a child in the first house by the road, dreaming of ponies. Her sister, a few years older, dreams of going to school for the first time. Their parents sleep soundly, their dreams an ill-defined cloud of positive feelings.
Charles gets lost in the oneiric maze, falling on the verge of sleep himself. His headache has bowed out and disappeared, leaving a stiffness as a parting gift. He huffs.
Then, without warning, rage descends on him. All the hatred it is possible to feel in this world, concentrated into a weapon, a blade so fine it could carve atoms. The world screams in terror as the fires start and engulf the horizon.
Charles wrestles himself out of the bed and falls to the floor. His knees won’t thank him, but he is already running, bruises the furthest thing from his mind.
“Hank!” he yells out loud and, more subtly, remembering the hour, mentally. Hank!
It’s undignified, the way he crashes into the man, ending up hanging from his elbow, but a few seconds of recovery is all he can afford, maybe more than he can afford.
“I need Cerebro, now.”
“Professor, you just...”
“Now, Hank!” As an apology and explanation he pushes some of the rage into Hank’s mind, just a fraction of it, appropriately tagged and explained. I need to contact Erik, he says. Help me!
Hank, to his credit, merely nods, grasps Charles’ elbow and marches him to the garage. They pass a few of the children on their way -- Erik went with Emma and Azazel only, Charles knows -- who look at them anxiously and start following.
It takes four and a half minutes to get Cerebro warmed up. Charles paces down the walkway while Hank fiddles. “It’s still very raw, I’m sorry, professor, the materials are a little unused to what I do with them. The earlier session fried a few cables.”
“Just get it working. Please, Hank.”
Finally the lights flicker and the racetrack of Hank’s mind zooms through the finish line in a flurry of fireworks. Charles doesn’t wait for verbal confirmation, the helmet is on his head when Hank flips the switch.
It’s easy to latch onto Erik. Charles closes his eyes, breathes, and there he is, breathing alongside him, like they were standing back to back.
There is a storm of paper before them and a metallic cabinet, bent out of shape. A man kneels on the floor, sweating and frantic, and Emma’s wearing an expression of smug disinterest.
“Charles,” Erik growls and a hundred thoughts rip through his mind at supersonic speed.
Emma raises an eyebrow. “We have company now?” Erik glares at her and something in his expression makes her shift into diamond.
Don’t think I will let you stop me, Erik thinks.
You were supposed to break in, cause some havoc and gets out!
“They put a kill order on you,” Erik says out loud. The furniture rattle. Charles feels the nails in them vibrate. They feel like icy water on naked skin.
The man on the floor shudders, but says nothing.
Charles falters. He isn’t sure why, he should have expected it, but the words -- the thoughts -- are lined with such intense horror, which bleeds over the edges and latches onto the sands of memory, onto the Cuban beach. The threat of nuclear winter causes less dread than this. Erik is so tense Charles thinks if he ran his fingers down his arm he could get an Allegro in E minor.
“The two weeks he was given, was to find an alternative,” Emma says. She considers her nails. “And now I really want to kill him, because he is considering me instead. Bad idea, sugar. Trust me.”
Charles thinks.
“We should let him,” he says and doesn’t even notice that Erik speaks as he does. A vehement ball of “never do that again” strikes him in the stomach with the force of a speeding car and he grins ruefully. “Sorry.”
What do you mean let him? Erik thinks.
If we let the CIA assassinate me, then the problem is solved, isn’t it?
Never figured you for a a martyr, Erik remarks wryly.
I’m not. If we know they are coming, then we can anticipate them, give them a show. And… we even have a body.
Erik is silent. He watches the CIA official with a look that would make the Devil himself nervous. To the man’s credit, he manages to hold on to his bladder. Charles smirks when he spies the bottle of scotch on the desk. Liquid courage, available at a convenience store near you!
A body that’s been in the ground for half a year. They aren’t that stupid.
It’s enough to hold a funeral. Six months during wintertime in an iron coffin should leave enough for reconstruction. Enough for a casket funeral.
Erik hesitates. It’s not because of the thought of the corpse. It’s risky.
It’s doable.
What about him, then?
I have an idea. Charles hesitates. At least I think I do. May I?
Erik clenches his fists, but when he exhales Charles is there. It is different then mere telepathic contact. He feels Erik move alongside him, their minds entwined, he feels the anger and hears the blood rushing through their veins. He takes a step and it’s no harder than if he were on his own.
Emma watches him and, though her face remains impassive, she is fascinated. Charles smirks at her, or maybe Erik smirks, and Charles merely looks her way, he isn’t sure. He knows it’s him who touches Erik’s fingertips to Agent McAlester’s temple and focuses.
There is a ghost of hands on his shoulders. Erik is leaning into him and they are both towering over McAlester and it would be so easy to let himself be lost, with Erik, in Erik. Charles shudders.
It’s a question of balance, he tells himself. He is in three bodies simultaneously now, performing remotely what is an enormously tedious operation in person and he manages; it is like balancing a knife on his fingertip, like turning a satellite dish from a distance, like holding a dying man still from within.
The point between rage and serenity is halfway between him and Erik, and when they stand there they could move the foundations of the Earth.
He sifts through the memories Richard McAlester holds at bay. New memories take shape under his fingertips -- falling asleep at the office, a bad dream, waking, sifting frantically through the files and leaving them a mess, the inevitable deadline rushing his way, no ideas, nothing. The telepath would be so useful, but what if he can’t be made to cooperate? He already sent children into battle. Charles plants the seed of doubt, confident that within a week McAlester will understand that assassination is the only plausible course of action. The telepath is dangerous, he must be taken out. Outside the mansion in Westchester there is a grassy hill, a perfect spot for a sniper, Stryker mentioned in preliminary reports that Xavier’s office overlooks the hill.
It would take a single sniper, these mutants wouldn’t even know something was wrong before the man is returned to the base and without the telepath they would be harmless.
Charles withdraws and McAlester’s head lowers to the desk.
Fix the room. He will think he messed up the files himself, when he was drunk, he says. And come back home.
*****
The hardest part is not sitting still at his desk while the sniper takes aim.
It is a beautiful day, first of the truly warm days of spring, and the window is wide open. Charles reads a very interesting article on the intermediary between DNA and the protein product -- the postulated particle is not unlike DNA in nature, and serves as a messenger between the two -- and the sniper on the hill watches him through the visor of his rifle. He is kind enough to supply an image of what he expects to happen; he aims for the head, the subject should collapse without a sound. Charles fixes the vision in his mind and catches Erik’s eye.
This is the part the Erik protests the most, hates the most. His doubts roll throughout the room, dark and foreboding and tinged with desperation. He will not make a mistake, or it will be a mistake for which the world will suffer greatly.
Charles smiles at him, trusting, as the shot rings out and he collapses under the desk.
He sees that the sniper is on his feet the moment the bullet hits its target, already seeing the blood spouting from the wound, and he runs, as fast as his legs would carry him. A car awaits on a nearby country road and he speeds off into the distance, as Charles sits up and picks up the bullet, harmlessly nestled against his collar.
“Good catch,” he says, as Erik wraps his arms around him. He is shuddering, terrified now as he hadn’t been moments previously, and Charles holds him as the children file into the room, with their hearts in their throats.
“I’m fine,” Charles says. “It went well, the sniper is gone.”
So, no, getting assassinated is not the hardest part. Nor is it contacting Smith, Wentsworth and Chris, the ancient law-firm looking after the Xavier estate. They are appropriately sympathetic, in a quiet, shark-like way that all overpaid lawyers acquire over time, and they are relaxed. The proceedings are simple: Charles had the foresight to leave a will behind, in which he bestowed all the family fortune on his newly returned brother Matthew. Due to his condition and hopeful prospects, Raven is easily accepted as a manager of the estate.
Finding an embalmer to deal with the remains and keep his mouth shut about the actual state of the body is no problem when the grieving Miss Xavier is willing to handsomely reward the service, because she wishes to give her brother a proper funeral. Charles fights with Erik on the subject of erasing the man’s memories afterwards, and wins.
“I will not make it a reset button,” he says firmly. “Some things can be dealt with without memory erasure.” Besides, the embalmer is old and solitary -- his career has turned him into a bitter cynic, who is happy to turn a blind eye to murder for a handful of cash.
Charles tells Erik this, after the argument is won, and Erik sulks for the better part of the day.
The exhumation, whilst unpleasant, is almost funny in a way. Especially for Erik, when Charles risks a peek into the coffin and promptly looses his lunch.
“I can’t see how you are unaffected,” Charles tells him later, even though, of course, he already knows and tries to forget. Erik’s gaze softens then and he kisses Charles, a technique which has so far been proven to reliably reduce Charles to a flustered teenager. He combats it, not without some success, but for now he remains vulnerable.
The hardest part is pretending to be a prepubescent during the funeral.
Charles giggles inappropriately when the pastor recites a touching eulogy on the bright future of man and the acts of God. Raven elbows him in the ribs, and he settles, briefly.
He lasts until they are ready to move on to the wake, but he has had enough after the sixteenth person he vaguely remembers from school approaches Raven to offer their condolences. They never stay long -- all it takes is a good look at his face and the brief reiteration of the sorry tale of Matthew’s life thus far -- but there is a never ending supply of well-wishers.
At least three try to subtly ask if Raven is attached to anyone presently, and if not, would she consider going out with them.
A CIA liaison is present for the funeral. He and Moira approach the coffin at the same time and when she turns she gives an imperceptible nod, which the man reports into the cuff of his suit. Charles blinks in what he knows is a childlike fashion when they walk past him and smiles.
The man is satisfied with a cursory glance at the body. Moira is sad and confused. Charles resists reaching out to her. She will get better in time, he knows. There’s only so long one can grieve for someone one doesn’t even remember.
After the funeral it is a matter of a minutes hour to locate the watchers, who keep tabs on the mansion, and plants the suggestion the mutants left, fearing to remain where the telepath was no longer there to shield them.
*****
“I can’t believe that worked,” Erik says when Charles joins him in the library later that evening. The chessboard is already in place, the pieces awaiting the battle.
“It was a perfectly sound plan.”
“We shall see how much breathing room it gives us.”
It’s not over, Charles knows. The CIA considers him eliminated, but Erik and the children will remain a concern, festering in their minds and eventually the agency will try to seek them out. It won’t be for a while, Charles thinks -- hopes. They will have some time to figure out the next move.
His gaze lingers on the edge of the chessboard as Erik hands him a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks. Their fingers touch on the chilly glass, and Charles smiles.
“I graduated from orange juice to alcohol?”
“So it would seem.” Erik raises his own glass in a silent salute. “But only because you are adorable when you are drunk.”
“God, don’t remind me.”
“I thought it was exceptionally sweet. I know for a fact that Azazel still grins when he hears the word ‘groovy’.”
“You,” Charles says as he nudges a pawn two paces, “Are a horrible human being, my friend.”
Erik grins at him. “And proud.”
THE END.
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. <3The new Cerebro is magnificent. Hank opened the roof of the garage to install a dome -- a spherical shape was somehow very important -- and a walkway that located the user precisely in its center.
“There’s still some fine tuning to be done,” Hanks says as he hangs upside down from the catwalk and fiddles with the cables beneath. “Would you like to try?”
“Emma should go first,” Erik says from the door.
Miss Frost, who stands behind him, folds her arms. “Thank you, no. I will not be a lab rat.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” Charles says and picks up the helmet. It is lighter than the one he remembers from the CIA facility. It feels much more comfortable on his head.
Then Hank does something and the world explodes in brightness. Charles clings to the railings because he is everywhere all of sudden and it is heady, fantastic and triggering an intense wave of vertigo.
Along with the memory of CIA base Moira flashes through his mind and he is there, with her, listening to the steady, organized stream of her thoughts. She is worried and apprehensive, she is scared, but resolute and--
“The mutants must be apprehended,” she hears, and Charles holds in the shock and slithers into her, unseen, unfelt.
Her eyes flicker and he is in a CIA office, sitting at the far end of a table.
“They erased weeks, months of people’s lives. What more do you need, Ezra?” The chubby man on the director’s side glares and continues talking. “If their telepath is good enough to do that, what else can he do? Drive a car into the White House and shoot the President? Any idiot can do that. This man can walk into the White House and walk out with every state secret without anyone being the wiser. Do you understand that? It’s a matter of national security!”
“We don’t know what he wants,” the director says. Indecision is written all over his face.
“Which is exactly the point. We don’t know. We let him in here, to wander about and who knows what he gleaned. They have Dr McCoy now, and that machine, and what have we got?
“Then there are the others.” The man flips a file open. “The Jew is capable of lifting submarines out of the water, according to the captain. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what could that mean, if a single man can lift vessels of that size into the air. Let’s face it, gentlemen, this is a crisis. Shaw, at least, had the decency to go about his plans covertly, through human means, but those people have no qualms about making a show of themselves. We will have a panic on our hands, the more certain the longer they remain at large.”
Charles’ focus wavers. He leaves Moira and is instead hurled among the millions of people populating the United States. He is weightless, formless, free…
He wrestles the helmet from his head and bends over the railings of Cerebro, trying to catch his breath. The spherical space seems to resonate, reverberating the thoughts even now, and he is in its center, listening, feeling, living.
There are hands on him, underneath him, and he is carried out of the sphere and into the much less crowded space of the lab. Erik sweeps the table clear with a thought, to Hank’s dismay, and Charles is extremely glad not many people are around to witness this. Erik doesn’t let go, instead he holds Charles close while Charles slowly wrestles his breathing under control. It is so hard to have a body again.
His head is still swimming, the vision of Moira, the elusive touch of her mind lingers on his, but there is more there now, the men listening to the reports, to the reiterations of the few memories of him that he allowed Moira to retain. He feels the beginnings of a headache, but for now it is still manageable.
“We have a problem,” he says.
Three minutes later the laboratory is a war-zone and he, Hank and Emma are hiding under the work table as everything not nailed down sails across the open air.
“I really wish he wouldn’t do that,” Hank grouses. “I have just finished putting everything into order.”
“There was order?” Emma smirks a little and uses a piece of a chromed plate to check her make-up. “I didn’t notice.”
“Don’t worry,” Charles says. Erik is calm, even as he stands in the eye of the storm and wills the equipment to orbit him. “He has it under control. It helps him think.”
“Do you?” Emma holds his gaze for far longer than necessary until Charles looks down.
“I’m afraid we will have to risk a trip,” he says. “I have to be in the same room as them, to be sure.”
“You are certainly not going anywhere,” Erik says. Most of the room settles. “But yes, a trip is necessary.”
In his mind there curls a vision of destruction and gruesome death for everyone involved. Charles sighs. “Really, Erik, is it too much to ask that not every plan of yours include copious amounts of corpses?”
“How many is copious?”
“One is too much.”
“My friend, your math teacher is weeping, wherever he is.” Erik grins and Charles cannot avert his eyes fast enough. His face feels warm, which is ridiculous, he is a grown man, not a teenager, and this is Erik, not some girl.
He tries to think of chess.
Emma considers her nails. “Did you perhaps consider having intercourse before planning battles? It would no doubt help us all keep focused.”
“How would it help you?” Hank asks.
“I wouldn’t have to listen to them skirting about the issue in increasingly convoluted metaphors, as entertaining as they are. It is not so complicated, gentlemen. I’m sure your scientist friend could draw you a diagram.”
“Miss Frost, I am fully capable of handling my affairs on my own. I would thank you to stay out of this.”
“I wouldn’t dream of interfering, Mr Xavier.” She smiles at him sweetly, but the vision she pushes his way renders diagrams redundant. Charles grits his teeth and Emma gasps for breath as her mind tells her she was doused by icy water.
“How much can you find out from here?” Erik asks. The storm is over; most of the equipment is back where it belongs, only a few stray pieces still hover.
Charles gives Cerebro a dubious look. “I’m not sure.” He’s found Moira by accident, finding her again and listening in would be easy, but further than the meeting it was anybody’s guess. He didn’t think he could read the minds he didn’t already know at this distance -- even slipping into Moira’s allowed him only the access to the surface level of her mind. “I will try to find Moira again, maybe the meeting didn’t finish yet.”
A part of him rebels at the invasion of Moira’s mind. She doesn’t deserve this sort of treatment, not after the sacrifices she made for them. What other choice is there, however? Charles gets up unsteadily, holding on to the table with one hand. “I need to get back into Cerebro,” he says.
Erik protests. Of course he does.
“I will be fine,” Charles assures him, when he walks into an immobile wall of flesh and anger. “I can handle a little more, I wasn’t anywhere near my limits. This is just listening, hardly an effort.”
Erik raises a brow and Charles rolls his eyes. They are getting quite adept at holding those conversations outside of telepathy and normal communication -- pretty soon they wouldn’t need either, he thinks with some humor, so long as they keep their eyebrows and ocular muscles they would be fine. This is something wholly different from mere telepathy.
“I will know,” Erik tells him, and Charles just stares. There’s something foreign in Erik’s mind and he realizes with a start that it’s him. He wishes for time to dwell on it, but Erik is already stepping away, freeing the path to the heart of the machine.
Hank fetches a chair for him. Charles grips the armrests and focuses on Moira. The hedgehog-like slant of her mind, the brightness of her gaze and the assured tone of her thoughts burn in the darkened sphere of Cerebro. Charles closes his eyes and when he opens them he is looking through her eyes.
The meeting is still on. He takes a deep breath, feels Moira’s fingers stretch and claw on the armrest of her chair and the room unfolds before him. Moira is a little irritated and not a little worried. She remembers nothing, but there is a tinge of fondness to the nothing, as though she knows there was some happiness there. She doesn’t dare speak, she is only a field agent and they are already stretching the regulations by inviting her along to this meeting.
“This telepath,” says the man Moira identifies as McAlester, “could be a weapon. The million dollar machine, you tell me, works like a dream. The stolen parts can be replaced, that much the engineers tell me. No damage has been done. All we need is a telepath to operate it.”
“A telepath we don’t have.”
“We could have him.” McAlester leans forward. “Sir, what we have here is an opportunity. Cerebro and that telepath can put us light years ahead of the Soviets.”
“Yes, except the last team sent to extract him returned with weeks of their life struck from their memory. How do you plan on fighting that?”
“We know the youngsters they recruited remained in his care.”
The pause is heavy.
“Blackmail, then.”
Moira recoils. “Sir, I’m sorry, do you mean to kidnap those children?”
“Sit down, agent.” Mr Ezra looks at her. “Sit down, or leave this room.”
Moira sits, but cannot settle. She is seconds from storming out. Charles calms her down. He needs to stay, he needs to listen.
“Do we know how many there are?”
McAlester winces. “We have the mansion under observation. Unfortunately, our scope is very limited, as we don’t know his exact range and coming too close would result in discovery. About twelve people, including a pair of young teenagers and a small child.”
“What of the other one, Shaw’s woman?”
“She hasn’t been spotted. Given how the Jew seemed to feel about Shaw, I doubt she is still with them.”
“I understand the gains.” Ezra leans forward and props himself on his elbows. “However, you propose to send our agents to abduct a child with, let’s not be afraid of the word, superpowers. We have seen one of the slice statues in half, we have to assume the small child you mention is capable of no less. You propose to blackmail a man who can take away memories and bring him here, against his will.”
McAlester winces. “The risks are great, I grant you.”
“The risks are horrifying, Richard, and I don’t like you dismissing them so easily. You’re asking me to send out our agents to face something against which we have no weapon.”
“This could very well win us the war.”
“Or it could destroy us.” Mr Ezra considers his folded hands. “I grant you, the prospect of the telepath in Cerebro is an attractive one.”
“Agent MacTaggert,” McAlester says, turning towards her. “How likely is it that this man would strike against us?”
Moira hesitates. She understands, now, that this question is the reason she is here in the first place. Her hands are restless. “He seemed benevolent. I don’t believe he would move against the CIA, while he had other options.”
Mr Ezra rubs his forehead. “Seemed benevolent. Hah. That’s all we have, ‘seemed benevolent’ to describe the biggest security risk this agency has seen in all of its existence.” His fingers drum staccato on the table. “Go ahead and make your plans, Richard. Observe. Question, if you can be discreet. Make me believe you can pull this off without striking years from anybody’s memory.
“You have two weeks to convince me there is a feasible way of recruiting Mr Xavier,” Ezra says and Charles wonders if the bright spots are a figment of his imagination, or whether the CIA has very talented interior decorators.
Moira’s mind closes in on him and then he is gasping for air with the dome of Cerebro overhead and the scent of Erik’s cologne in his nostrils.
“I wasn’t finished,” he gasps. “I need to go back, they weren’t done!”
“No.”
“It might be dangerous, professor, we didn’t have time to test it fully, the readings of the machine are fluctuating.”
“You put him in a fluctuating machine?” Erik asks, half-turning to Hank and if it’s possible for blue fur to pale, it is doing so now, while simultaneously standing on end and quivering and dear lord, Hank is an adorable ball of fuzz.
“Am I actually needed here, because charming as you boys are, I have better things to do than watch you beat each other over the head.”
Charles, it would seem, was voted out of having a vote in his own house. Splendid. If his head hurt any less, he would make a stand for himself, but as it were he was having trouble enough keeping his head above water.
He is grateful when he finds himself with a couple of aspirin and a glass of the damnable orange juice in hand, lying on the couch in his living room with an icy compress on his head.
Tempers fray when he finishes relating the conversation, and more than half the kids want to storm the CIA headquarters this very minute, to leave it in ruins. Erik’s vision is the most graphic one, but his is messy, whereas Alex’s leaves the place in neat little slices.
“We’ve done nothing to them!” Alex growls and Charles sees a flash of red about his chest, too quickly gone to do real damage, but there nonetheless. His control is slipping when he is agitated, which is of course no surprise. He has chosen the solitary for a reason. It worries Charles, because what other reason could there be for this but the deeply seated wish to not hurt anyone, and here he was proposing to go out and slay people for making plans.
Hank lays a paw on his shoulder and Alex settles, somewhat, still growling out loud and roaring in his mind.
“I’m afraid it is my fault,” Charles says quietly into the compress. The aspirin is taking its time, but it is fine, he can wait it out.
“How is it your fault, professor?” Sean asks, while still chewing on his fingernail.
“The show I made of myself when I was first invited to the CIA building. Some of the agents were quite shaken. Hank’s foray into theft put them on edge, and my recent display hasn’t helped matters any.”
“They would have shot at us,” Alex points out sensibly. “They came here, it’s not like we went after their super secrets, or whatever.”
“The possibility of us doing so is very much real. Given the ease with which we walk into the facility when we need something.” Charles shifts and winces when his brain rattles within his skull. “Plus, Cerebro is a magnificent tool, its possibilities are endless, and I put it in their minds myself. I’m sorry.”
“You said they know where we are. You said they are observing us!”
“I don’t sense anyone on the grounds or nearby,” Charles says, and gestures vaguely at Emma for confirmation. She closes her eyes, clearly humoring him, lets out a long sigh, but shakes her head.
“No one but us within two mile radius.”
“Well, if their plan relies on their Cerebro, then clearly it needs to go.” Erik flexes his hands and a forgotten letter opener rises from the shelf and buries itself in the woodwork opposite.
“That would solve most of our problems, yes. However, consider this: if we destroy the machine now, it would be a pretty obvious conclusion that we know of their plans. Therefore either we listened in, or someone is spying on them. Since Moira was there for the whole conversation and claims to magically not remember us at all, she would be their first suspect.”
Erik’s eyebrows furrow and Charles glares.
“No. I will not let anything happen to Moira.”
Erik rolls his eyes.
“I don’t care. She is on our side.”
“We hardly have a reason to attack overtly,” Hank says. “We could sabotage it. It’s useless without a telepath anyway, but if we rewire it, it will still work, at least look like it’s working, but it won’t be doing anything useful.”
“How easily can they fix it?”
“Well, if they know the trick, I’d say five minutes, but I don’t think they know the trick.”
“Is there a chance they could learn?”
“I built Cerebro. Unless they know more about it than me, I don’t think they will.”
“It’s not good enough.” Erik folds his hands. “Disabling Cerebro without letting anyone know it is disabled ensures only that they can’t use it. It won’t stop them coming after Charles, it won’t change anything.”
Hank ducks his head, ashamed. Then, immediately, raises his gaze. “There could be a wire in the house,” he says, panicked, and the mood is infectious because everyone sans Erik starts looking underneath the chairs and tables. There is a lot of frantic gesturing going on, and even more whispering. Charles winces because the pitch of frantic whispers is far more distressing than a regular conversation was.
“If you are quite finished,” Erik says as the letter opener flies obediently into his hand. Everyone pauses to watch the blade -- a dull, ornate blade, but a blade all the same -- fly through the air. It seems to grin at them, they think very loudly, it seems to burn. “I check the house for recorders and transmitters regularly. There are none.”
The children settle.
“We need to cause some mayhem,” Charles says, hardly believing his own words. It makes sense. A warning delivered with enough force would make them reconsider, hopefully, until something more permanent could be achieved.
Erik grins at him and Charles is a little bit ashamed of the approval and a little more for being ashamed of being ashamed of Erik’s approval. Fortunately his head is still pounding and he can dump the confusion on the migraine and pretend it is not his.
“There is a problem though,” he says in the tacitly approving silence. “We know that they know where we are, but don’t know how many know.”
“Not a concern. Miss Frost, you will accompany me to the facility,” Erik says. “We can find out who knows and we can take them out.”
“Erik.”
“They came to our house, Charles.” Anger curls in Erik’s voice, carrying though his mind into Charles. He feels its heat burning him up from the inside. “You will not ask me to wait until it happens again.”
Charles doesn’t. His eyes flutter closed. “All the same, showing up there and killing everyone in your path will be no better than declaring a war and then they will start looking in earnest and they won’t bother with spies and binoculars, they will bring napalm.”
“Killing everybody tends to put a stop to a war.”
“You can’t kill everybody.”
“No,” he agrees. The hard edge in his voice, however, says that he will try, if provoked, by god he will try, and he will achieve such carnage as the human world has never seen before he is stopped.
Charles closes his eyes and lets his head tip back. The pounding in his head has dulled to an ache, but the ache has migrated to his neck and shoulders. He doesn’t even notice when he falls asleep, surrounded by the concerned minds of his students and friends.
He wakes in his own bed. It’s dark outside. “How long did I sleep?” he asks Erik, who is busy pulling on a black turtleneck. There is a scar on his side. Charles feels his fingertips itch with the need to touch it.
“Six hours.”
“You should have woken me,” Charles says as he sits up.
“We are ready to move.”
“I expect wanting to go with you is quite pointless?”
“It is.”
Silence descends between them. Charles doesn’t dare to look away even if he knows he should, because this sudden quiet, this peace, it sends his heart fluttering madly and it is insane. He is insane. The covers crease in his grasp as Erik crosses the room and leans over him. One of his knees comes to rest on the bed, but neither of them dares to move any further.
Someone bangs on the door.
“As your awkward courtship amuses me, I don’t mean to interrupt, but we are on a tight schedule here! I fully intend to sleep tonight,” comes the voice of Miss Frost and Charles is torn between hysterical laughter and shoving her off the stairs.
“Promise me you won’t kill anyone,” Charles says urgently. He grips Erik’s shoulders and somehow it’s only too easy for his hands to slide to his neck until Charles holds his face and they are less then a breath apart. “Promise me. Please.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t kill men who haven’t done anything yet,” Charles whispers as their noses bump. It’s only marginally better than what he said a lifetime ago on the beach, by the way Erik’s mind flares, but it reaches home. “I don’t want blood on my hands, I can’t want it, not even Shaw’s, and I helped you kill him.”
When did it happen, he wonders, that blood on Erik’s hands became blood on his, when did they become so hopelessly intertwined that he could no longer judge their actions separately?
The question must have migrated through the ether, because there is sand on Erik’s mind now, sand, the sea and the beach, and Charles, bleeding in his arms, bleeding into his arms, into his mind and soul, and it will never go away. But that’s how it ended, Charles thinks, not where it began, because if Emma is right -- and there is no reason to suspect she isn’t -- then it began long before the Cuban beach. Charles feels his eyes close as their lips finally meet, mid word, mid breath, when there is no time for this, when they both have bigger issues to deal with.
“I will not let anyone give me a reason,” Erik whispers in the space between them, before he stands. “Check on Jubilee when you get up.”
Charles falls into the blankets and stares at the ceiling. His head is aching, but that is a mere inconvenience now. He closes his eyes and sweeps through the mansion, then the grounds, until he is certain he can count the rats in the cellar and the pigeons on the roof.
He feels Erik meet Emma, Azazel and Hank downstairs, he senses the moment they wink out of existence, out of his reach. He breathes in and the world becomes an inch smaller, then two, and he can reach as far as the village, where most souls are asleep in their beds, dreaming of a day that will start like any other.
Hank is returned, pleased with himself, twenty minutes later. Azazel gives the mansion a cursory sweep, reassures himself that all is well, and then he is gone again.
There is a child in the first house by the road, dreaming of ponies. Her sister, a few years older, dreams of going to school for the first time. Their parents sleep soundly, their dreams an ill-defined cloud of positive feelings.
Charles gets lost in the oneiric maze, falling on the verge of sleep himself. His headache has bowed out and disappeared, leaving a stiffness as a parting gift. He huffs.
Then, without warning, rage descends on him. All the hatred it is possible to feel in this world, concentrated into a weapon, a blade so fine it could carve atoms. The world screams in terror as the fires start and engulf the horizon.
Charles wrestles himself out of the bed and falls to the floor. His knees won’t thank him, but he is already running, bruises the furthest thing from his mind.
“Hank!” he yells out loud and, more subtly, remembering the hour, mentally. Hank!
It’s undignified, the way he crashes into the man, ending up hanging from his elbow, but a few seconds of recovery is all he can afford, maybe more than he can afford.
“I need Cerebro, now.”
“Professor, you just...”
“Now, Hank!” As an apology and explanation he pushes some of the rage into Hank’s mind, just a fraction of it, appropriately tagged and explained. I need to contact Erik, he says. Help me!
Hank, to his credit, merely nods, grasps Charles’ elbow and marches him to the garage. They pass a few of the children on their way -- Erik went with Emma and Azazel only, Charles knows -- who look at them anxiously and start following.
It takes four and a half minutes to get Cerebro warmed up. Charles paces down the walkway while Hank fiddles. “It’s still very raw, I’m sorry, professor, the materials are a little unused to what I do with them. The earlier session fried a few cables.”
“Just get it working. Please, Hank.”
Finally the lights flicker and the racetrack of Hank’s mind zooms through the finish line in a flurry of fireworks. Charles doesn’t wait for verbal confirmation, the helmet is on his head when Hank flips the switch.
It’s easy to latch onto Erik. Charles closes his eyes, breathes, and there he is, breathing alongside him, like they were standing back to back.
There is a storm of paper before them and a metallic cabinet, bent out of shape. A man kneels on the floor, sweating and frantic, and Emma’s wearing an expression of smug disinterest.
“Charles,” Erik growls and a hundred thoughts rip through his mind at supersonic speed.
Emma raises an eyebrow. “We have company now?” Erik glares at her and something in his expression makes her shift into diamond.
Don’t think I will let you stop me, Erik thinks.
You were supposed to break in, cause some havoc and gets out!
“They put a kill order on you,” Erik says out loud. The furniture rattle. Charles feels the nails in them vibrate. They feel like icy water on naked skin.
The man on the floor shudders, but says nothing.
Charles falters. He isn’t sure why, he should have expected it, but the words -- the thoughts -- are lined with such intense horror, which bleeds over the edges and latches onto the sands of memory, onto the Cuban beach. The threat of nuclear winter causes less dread than this. Erik is so tense Charles thinks if he ran his fingers down his arm he could get an Allegro in E minor.
“The two weeks he was given, was to find an alternative,” Emma says. She considers her nails. “And now I really want to kill him, because he is considering me instead. Bad idea, sugar. Trust me.”
Charles thinks.
“We should let him,” he says and doesn’t even notice that Erik speaks as he does. A vehement ball of “never do that again” strikes him in the stomach with the force of a speeding car and he grins ruefully. “Sorry.”
What do you mean let him? Erik thinks.
If we let the CIA assassinate me, then the problem is solved, isn’t it?
Never figured you for a a martyr, Erik remarks wryly.
I’m not. If we know they are coming, then we can anticipate them, give them a show. And… we even have a body.
Erik is silent. He watches the CIA official with a look that would make the Devil himself nervous. To the man’s credit, he manages to hold on to his bladder. Charles smirks when he spies the bottle of scotch on the desk. Liquid courage, available at a convenience store near you!
A body that’s been in the ground for half a year. They aren’t that stupid.
It’s enough to hold a funeral. Six months during wintertime in an iron coffin should leave enough for reconstruction. Enough for a casket funeral.
Erik hesitates. It’s not because of the thought of the corpse. It’s risky.
It’s doable.
What about him, then?
I have an idea. Charles hesitates. At least I think I do. May I?
Erik clenches his fists, but when he exhales Charles is there. It is different then mere telepathic contact. He feels Erik move alongside him, their minds entwined, he feels the anger and hears the blood rushing through their veins. He takes a step and it’s no harder than if he were on his own.
Emma watches him and, though her face remains impassive, she is fascinated. Charles smirks at her, or maybe Erik smirks, and Charles merely looks her way, he isn’t sure. He knows it’s him who touches Erik’s fingertips to Agent McAlester’s temple and focuses.
There is a ghost of hands on his shoulders. Erik is leaning into him and they are both towering over McAlester and it would be so easy to let himself be lost, with Erik, in Erik. Charles shudders.
It’s a question of balance, he tells himself. He is in three bodies simultaneously now, performing remotely what is an enormously tedious operation in person and he manages; it is like balancing a knife on his fingertip, like turning a satellite dish from a distance, like holding a dying man still from within.
The point between rage and serenity is halfway between him and Erik, and when they stand there they could move the foundations of the Earth.
He sifts through the memories Richard McAlester holds at bay. New memories take shape under his fingertips -- falling asleep at the office, a bad dream, waking, sifting frantically through the files and leaving them a mess, the inevitable deadline rushing his way, no ideas, nothing. The telepath would be so useful, but what if he can’t be made to cooperate? He already sent children into battle. Charles plants the seed of doubt, confident that within a week McAlester will understand that assassination is the only plausible course of action. The telepath is dangerous, he must be taken out. Outside the mansion in Westchester there is a grassy hill, a perfect spot for a sniper, Stryker mentioned in preliminary reports that Xavier’s office overlooks the hill.
It would take a single sniper, these mutants wouldn’t even know something was wrong before the man is returned to the base and without the telepath they would be harmless.
Charles withdraws and McAlester’s head lowers to the desk.
Fix the room. He will think he messed up the files himself, when he was drunk, he says. And come back home.
*****
The hardest part is not sitting still at his desk while the sniper takes aim.
It is a beautiful day, first of the truly warm days of spring, and the window is wide open. Charles reads a very interesting article on the intermediary between DNA and the protein product -- the postulated particle is not unlike DNA in nature, and serves as a messenger between the two -- and the sniper on the hill watches him through the visor of his rifle. He is kind enough to supply an image of what he expects to happen; he aims for the head, the subject should collapse without a sound. Charles fixes the vision in his mind and catches Erik’s eye.
This is the part the Erik protests the most, hates the most. His doubts roll throughout the room, dark and foreboding and tinged with desperation. He will not make a mistake, or it will be a mistake for which the world will suffer greatly.
Charles smiles at him, trusting, as the shot rings out and he collapses under the desk.
He sees that the sniper is on his feet the moment the bullet hits its target, already seeing the blood spouting from the wound, and he runs, as fast as his legs would carry him. A car awaits on a nearby country road and he speeds off into the distance, as Charles sits up and picks up the bullet, harmlessly nestled against his collar.
“Good catch,” he says, as Erik wraps his arms around him. He is shuddering, terrified now as he hadn’t been moments previously, and Charles holds him as the children file into the room, with their hearts in their throats.
“I’m fine,” Charles says. “It went well, the sniper is gone.”
So, no, getting assassinated is not the hardest part. Nor is it contacting Smith, Wentsworth and Chris, the ancient law-firm looking after the Xavier estate. They are appropriately sympathetic, in a quiet, shark-like way that all overpaid lawyers acquire over time, and they are relaxed. The proceedings are simple: Charles had the foresight to leave a will behind, in which he bestowed all the family fortune on his newly returned brother Matthew. Due to his condition and hopeful prospects, Raven is easily accepted as a manager of the estate.
Finding an embalmer to deal with the remains and keep his mouth shut about the actual state of the body is no problem when the grieving Miss Xavier is willing to handsomely reward the service, because she wishes to give her brother a proper funeral. Charles fights with Erik on the subject of erasing the man’s memories afterwards, and wins.
“I will not make it a reset button,” he says firmly. “Some things can be dealt with without memory erasure.” Besides, the embalmer is old and solitary -- his career has turned him into a bitter cynic, who is happy to turn a blind eye to murder for a handful of cash.
Charles tells Erik this, after the argument is won, and Erik sulks for the better part of the day.
The exhumation, whilst unpleasant, is almost funny in a way. Especially for Erik, when Charles risks a peek into the coffin and promptly looses his lunch.
“I can’t see how you are unaffected,” Charles tells him later, even though, of course, he already knows and tries to forget. Erik’s gaze softens then and he kisses Charles, a technique which has so far been proven to reliably reduce Charles to a flustered teenager. He combats it, not without some success, but for now he remains vulnerable.
The hardest part is pretending to be a prepubescent during the funeral.
Charles giggles inappropriately when the pastor recites a touching eulogy on the bright future of man and the acts of God. Raven elbows him in the ribs, and he settles, briefly.
He lasts until they are ready to move on to the wake, but he has had enough after the sixteenth person he vaguely remembers from school approaches Raven to offer their condolences. They never stay long -- all it takes is a good look at his face and the brief reiteration of the sorry tale of Matthew’s life thus far -- but there is a never ending supply of well-wishers.
At least three try to subtly ask if Raven is attached to anyone presently, and if not, would she consider going out with them.
A CIA liaison is present for the funeral. He and Moira approach the coffin at the same time and when she turns she gives an imperceptible nod, which the man reports into the cuff of his suit. Charles blinks in what he knows is a childlike fashion when they walk past him and smiles.
The man is satisfied with a cursory glance at the body. Moira is sad and confused. Charles resists reaching out to her. She will get better in time, he knows. There’s only so long one can grieve for someone one doesn’t even remember.
After the funeral it is a matter of a minutes hour to locate the watchers, who keep tabs on the mansion, and plants the suggestion the mutants left, fearing to remain where the telepath was no longer there to shield them.
*****
“I can’t believe that worked,” Erik says when Charles joins him in the library later that evening. The chessboard is already in place, the pieces awaiting the battle.
“It was a perfectly sound plan.”
“We shall see how much breathing room it gives us.”
It’s not over, Charles knows. The CIA considers him eliminated, but Erik and the children will remain a concern, festering in their minds and eventually the agency will try to seek them out. It won’t be for a while, Charles thinks -- hopes. They will have some time to figure out the next move.
His gaze lingers on the edge of the chessboard as Erik hands him a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks. Their fingers touch on the chilly glass, and Charles smiles.
“I graduated from orange juice to alcohol?”
“So it would seem.” Erik raises his own glass in a silent salute. “But only because you are adorable when you are drunk.”
“God, don’t remind me.”
“I thought it was exceptionally sweet. I know for a fact that Azazel still grins when he hears the word ‘groovy’.”
“You,” Charles says as he nudges a pawn two paces, “Are a horrible human being, my friend.”
Erik grins at him. “And proud.”
THE END.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-02 07:17 pm (UTC)