Another Way by glacis. Rated NC17,
Erik/Charles.
~~
Charles
knew there was no way on God’s earth he could physically stop Erik from turning
the missiles around. Lying bruised and battered
on the beach, Erik straddling him, one fist pulled back, the other bracing
Charles’ chest, holding him down, his face conflicted with the need to confront
those he considered his enemies and aversion to hurting Charles.
He didn’t
have time, couldn’t find words, was stopped in his mental tracks by that damned
helmet… but he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t
take that many deaths tearing through his mind, especially on the heels of what
happened with Shaw. Not knowing how else
to put it, he simply blurted it out.
“It will
kill me,” he cried, voice rusty from screaming, staring up into cold green
eyes.
“You will
get past it,” Erik dismissed his concern, misreading it completely. “They’re trying to kill us!”
“That many
deaths – feeling that many deaths – it will destroy my mind!” Charles snarled
desperately.
That, at
least, got through. Erik froze. In the air behind him, so did the
missiles. In the bushes, Moira, holding
a gun in both hands, stopped and stared.
“What do
you mean?” Erik asked, staring intently at him, and for a moment Charles
wondered who the telepath was between them.
Those eyes cut straight through him.
He could give nothing but the truth.
“Feeling
Shaw died nearly broke my mind,” he choked out.
“Dobry
Boże,” Erik swallowed harshly and spat out, “You felt that?”
“S’not like
I could let him go,” Charles responded just as harshly. “With you wearing that bloody fucking bucket
on your head, it’s not like you could hear me scream!”
Charles
could hear Raven’s squeak, “Charles!” and Sean’s “I didn’t know he could cuss!” but his attention was
focused completely on his dearest friend.
Erik’s face was completely blank, but his eyes were tormented. Charles gave him a pleading look.
“Please,”
he said softly. “If you kill them, it
will destroy me,” he repeated.
Without so
much as a twitch, the outgoing missiles turned on one another and exploded in
the sky in a cacophony of screeches and tearing metal, a nightmarish fireworks
display. Charles had only a moment to be
overwhelmed with the relief and confusion of the sailors who’d narrowly escaped
death before Erik unclenched his fist, raising his hand to rip the helmet from
his head and fling it along the beach.
He must have used his powers, because the helmet took off like a bullet
itself, burrowing deep into the trees.
The
overwhelming concern washed over Charles like a warm bath. The void where Erik had been disappeared in
the blaze of his presence, back in Charles’ mind where it belonged, soothing some
of the residual agony, the ghost-pain of the coin’s path through his brain.
“Oh, thank
God,” Charles breathed, sending a wave of affection and relief back to Erik.
Erik
narrowed his eyes and leaned closer.
“This is not over,” he said clearly.
“They will come after us.”
“I know,”
Charles said.
Raven’s
voice broke in. “Can we talk about this
later? We have to get out of here before
they try to blow us up again!”
Erik swung
up off of Charles and for a moment Charles nearly pulled him back. Feeling oddly bereft with Erik’s weight
removed from him, Charles took the outstretched hand and allowed his friend to
pull him to his feet. Moira stepped
forward, Erik turned to confront her, and Charles sighed.
“Erik,” he
said softly, then shook his head.
Stepping between them, he smiled a little shakily at the woman. “Thank you, Moira. I’m sorry.”
She gave
him a puzzled look. “For
what?”
He reached
out and touched her chin. He didn’t need
to verbalize it, but did anyway, to let Erik and the children know what he was
doing.
“Forget.”
And she
did.
“Sleep.”
He tried to
catch her as she fell but he was too stiff, too sore, and Erik got there
first. Charles smiled at him.
“What did
she forget?” Erik asked, eyes darting between Charles and Moira.
“Everything
about us,” Charles said, regret heavy in his voice.
“Why?” Hank
asked behind them.
“Because
they could use her to find us,” Angel answered for him.
“Us?” asked
Azazel, skepticism heavy in his voice.
“Yes,”
Charles said firmly. “Us.”
His eyes
met Erik, shining with sincerity. He
believed they could work with the humans, and should, as they were all human,
after all. But recent events (and a
multitude of missiles) had also shown that the non-mutants would react
violently, with deadly force, to the perceived threat of the mutants’ presence.
Shaw’s plan
to have the humans kill each other off was stupid; the planet couldn’t survive
it. Erik’s plan to go to war with the
humans was premature at best, suicidal at worst; they weren’t strong
enough. Charles had the feeling his own
desire to peacefully coexist with the humans was overly optimistic.
The mutants
needed to stand together. Apart, they
would not survive.
Besides, he
didn’t want to fight Erik. Not only
would he lose, so would Erik. So would
the children.
All the children.
He tried to
tell them all this, mentally, but couldn’t quite come up with the words, so did
the next best thing. He summarized.
It was
probably good practice for teaching, if he ever got to that.
With a wry,
pained smile, he looked at Azazel. “If
you think of it as us versus them, they vastly outnumber us. We can’t fight amongst ourselves. We may not agree on how to do it, but we all
want to live.” He glanced over at
Raven. “Mutant and proud,” he said
softly, and she gave him a shocked smile.
“But for the moment, we need to regroup.
Azazel,” he turned to address the teleporter, “would it be possible for
you to remove us all to my home?”
“What about
her?” Sean asked, waving at Moira.
“She will
sleep until I wake her,” Charles responded, “and I won’t wake her until she’s
somewhere far from us.”
“How about Vegas?” Azazel grinned.
“Best I go where I know.” Charles
winced.
“That will
work.” Charles was starting to flag, the
long day of shock, pain, and stress undercutting his shields, and the psychic
shocks he’d suffered were catching up to him.
He gestured
for the children to join him. Alex and
Sean stared suspiciously at Angel, who glared back, Riptide at her
shoulder. Charles sighed and sent out a
wave of reassurance, wrapping their minds in it. The children relaxed. Riptide jumped. Azazel shuddered. Can we please get OUT of here? Charles’ voice
sounded plaintively in their minds.
Azazel
stepped forward, and the children joined them.
Charles took Erik’s free hand, as Erik was still holding Moira, and Hank
placed his paw on Charles’ shoulder, completing the link. A flash of red, a puff of smoke, and they
were at the Hellfire Club.
With the
last of his energy, Charles called up the memory of CIA headquarters, narrowed
his focus to a conference room, and placed the location in Azazel’s mind. Given Azazel’s lethal history with CIA
agents, namely dropping them from high places, he also implanted an order to
leave Moira unharmed. “If you would be
so kind?” he asked.
With a grin
that only heightened his demonic appearance, Azazel grabbed Moira by the arm
and flashed out. A moment later he
flashed back. He looked oddly
disappointed. Charles tapped his memory
and saw that Moira was safely away, sleeping in a chair, her head resting on
the table. He quietly closed the chapter
on mutant involvement with the CIA with her departure.
“Thank
you,” he told Azazel, who looked a little confused that he hadn’t followed his
instincts and squashed the woman, but nodded acknowledgement.
The
children were milling about, each to a side, staring at one another, hostility
barely suppressed. Charles sighed again,
slumping down to a sinfully comfortable leather couch. It was only when Erik settled beside him that
he realized he was still holding Erik’s hand.
Erik had
made no attempt to reclaim it, and Charles was too tired, and in too much pain,
to voluntarily give up the sole bit of comfort he had. He cleared his throat, and everyone in the
room stopped pacing and glaring to look at him.
His eyebrow raised and he smirked despite himself. For all their differences they were so very
alike.
“It’s been
a long day. We have a lot to talk about,
and none of us are in any state to make any sense tonight. So, dinner, then get some sleep, and let’s
deal with it come morning, all right?”
As he was
talking, Charles was wilting, until by the time the last word left his mouth,
he was curled up into Erik’s side, his head coming to rest on Erik’s shoulder,
his face resting against the side of his throat. It was warm there, and safe, and best of all,
he could feel Erik, solid as granite, surrounding him, mind and body.
He could
feel Erik’s discomfort in the tightening of his muscles, in the way his mind
shied away, but for once his own need for comfort overrode his ingrained desire
to stay out of others’ minds. He
transmitted a wordless mental plea, some mixture of please and stay and need,
and Erik relaxed. The hand Charles
wasn’t holding slipped over his shoulder, and a strong arm drew him in. Allowing himself the
luxury of blessed unconsciousness, Charles drifted off to sleep. Erik would keep him safe.
Dimly, he
heard Alex’s enthusiastic “Room service!” as Erik’s arm tightened around him. The future could wait until morning. For now, everything was as it should be.
~part 2~
Things
didn’t look better in the morning, but Charles was able to fight off the
lingering migraine and at least get started on fixing things. Someone, probably Erik, had put him to bed,
and his own exhaustion had kept him unconscious through it, as he was lying in
his skivvies curled up in a ball in the center of a sinfully comfortable
bed. Beside him, radiating heat and comfort,
Erik lay neatly, one arm flung over Charles’ waist,
the rest of his body precisely aligned along Charles’ front.
The sad
thought of how Erik had been trained to sleep, one amongst many, as still as
could be to deflect attention, and a sadder flash of
the pain of the death camp, then the thought was cut off abruptly as bright
green eyes glared at him.
Needing to
get their minds off the past as quickly as possible, Charles gave Erik a smile
that no doubt looked as pathetic as it felt, and mumbled, “Aspirin?”
Erik
blinked, then snorted softly. One hand came up to card his fingers through
Charles’ hair, as he’d done more than once when overuse headaches had caught up
with Charles on their road trip, easing the pain away with the same astonishing
gentleness Charles, and perhaps only Charles, had felt beneath the harsh
exterior. Erik Lehnsherr was a very
tough man, but his heart, once one touched it, was soft. Charles smiled at him in relief, raising a
hand to cover a yawn, and smacked himself in the jaw with Erik’s knuckles.
Oh. They were still holding hands. Fingers entwined, lying on the sheets between
their bodies. Had they held hands all
night?
“Yes,” Erik answered aloud, and tugged gently.
Charles’ fingers tightened instinctively, not letting him go. “As you see.”
Perhaps he
should have been embarrassed at his own neediness, but there was something so
blessedly reassuring about having Erik’s hand trapped in his own that, at the
moment, Charles couldn’t care less how needy it showed him to be.
“I’d say
sorry,” he said, but I’m not, he thought, and Erik huffed again, that little
shot of air that was as close as he usually came to laughter.
“No doubt,”
Erik said wryly, “but morning ablutions will go more easily if we each have our
hands back.”
Sighing,
sending Erik a mock-reproachful glance that lightened those green eyes even
more, Charles relented, slowly unwrapping his fingers from Erik’s. More slowly than he intended, actually,
because his fingers were a little cramped, and didn’t want to release. Once their hands were free, Charles looked up
at Erik and pouted, a little, though he’d deny it to his dying day.
“I suppose
we need to get up and take care of some things, then, yes?”
“Yes.” Erik looked both resigned and
determined. Charles gave him a wry
smirk.
“Then, much
as I dislike the idea, you’ll have to let go of me,” he said softly.
Erik
started, only then seeming to realize his arm was tightly wrapped around
Charles’ waist, holding their bodies closely together. For the first time he could remember, Charles
saw the hint of a blush staining Erik’s cheeks.
Just as well. It matched the tide of
color he could feel heating his own face.
Erik made
an abrupt move as if to fling himself away from Charles, but Charles stopped
him with a touch to his shoulder.
Thank you for keeping me safe last night, my friend, he mindspoke gently. Erik’s lashes dipped, hiding his eyes, before
he nodded, once, and his voice sounded in Charles’ mind.
Always.
With that,
he rolled easily from the bed and headed for the shower. If he’d stayed a moment longer, Charles would
have forgotten himself entirely, and kissed the man.
Who knows
what would have happened then?
Putting the
possible scenarios forcefully from his mind, before they leaked out and freaked
Erik out, Charles got up and got ready to face the day.
Coming down
the hall, he followed the sounds of rowing to find Alex and Angel standing on
opposite sides of a laden breakfast table, screaming at one another. Azazel was perched atop a white leather couch
in the corner, balancing himself with his tail as he forked eggs up from his
plate, watching the children squabble.
Sean was holding Alex back, while Raven tried to play peacekeeper. Riptide ignored all of them to raid the bacon
and pile it on pancakes, single-minded in his pursuit of food.
Charles
read anger, betrayal, fear, a tinge of boredom, and, from Riptide, the wry
thought that this was just like Shaw and Frost, only younger and shriller. Over his shoulder, he felt Erik’s warmth join
him, and he sighed.
“Silence,”
Charles said calmly, but the children, and Shaw’s crew, reacted like a switch
had been thrown. Everyone froze.
Charles
stepped into the room, Erik stepping around him to stare at the tableau.
“Your doing, Charles?”
At the
sound of his voice, movement resumed, and Charles answered, “Not exactly.” He hadn’t laced the word with command, but it
was still taken as such, at least until the surprise wore off.
The
argument was starting to brew again when Erik barked, “Shut up and sit down!”
Unsurprisingly,
they did. Even
Charles, who gazed at Erik wide eyed.
Erik glanced at him and shivered.
Charles’ brow rose.
Now, that
was interesting. But
for later, not for the moment.
Right now, they had more pressing concerns. True, they had averted World War Three with
the normals, but now they needed to avert mutant civil war.
“Let us
enjoy breakfast, then we can discuss our next move.”
A few
looked rebellious, but only for a moment before Erik glared them into
submission. Charles sighed. That look was oddly arousing. He’d have to watch himself, or he would scare
Erik all the way back to
A sizzle in
the back of his mind startled him, and he looked over to meet Erik’s eyes.
Oh. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as frightening as he
feared.
Chewing
slowly on his toast, he watched as the group silently ate, eyeballing one
another, but not being verbally or overtly hostile toward one another. In the corner, Azazel chuckled. He was broadcasting so loudly Charles
couldn’t help but overhear.
Daddy would
be so proud.
“Of what?”
Charles asked, and Azazel smirked at him, but didn’t answer. He stopped broadcasting, though, so Charles
manfully avoided the temptation to read him mind and concentrated on his
breakfast.
All too
soon, it was time to adjourn and discuss.
Before they got very far, the thought that had been niggling at the back
of Charles’ brain finally showed itself.
“Shite,” he
hissed, and the children looked at him in shock.
“Twice in
two days,” Alex muttered.
“Some kind
of record,” Sean agreed.
“Shut up!”
Angel snapped.
“What is
it?” Raven asked.
Charles
gave Erik a pleading look. Erik
responded by snarling, “Quiet!” with such venom everyone in the room clamped
their mouths shut.
With a
whisper of thanks in Erik’s mind, Charles got to work.
He didn’t
want to do this. By God, he didn’t want
to do this.
But they
weren’t ready for war. Might never be.
Erik had made a sacrifice yesterday.
He’d given in to Charles’ plea, pushed back his own moral imperative, one
forged in fire, pain, and death. He’d
been the stronger man.
Now it was
time for Charles to get over his own terror, his own remorse, and his own moral
qualms. It was time to truly use his
power, in ways he’d always abhorred.
Needs must, and this need overrode everything.
It was time
for Charles to be the stronger man.
He had to
make them forget. Had to track them down
and make them forget.
Wipe out
their existence in the minds of those with the power to hurt them, before those
powerful men wiped out his children. His people.
Wiped out Erik.
Stretching
his powers to limits he’d never before attempted, Charles sent his thoughts out
in a search pattern. The vast majority
of the sailors yesterday had, literally, just been following orders, and would
neither understand nor act against the mutants if not directed to do so. He could work around them.
The
commanders, though, were a different story.
Forcing his consciousness to expand, he followed the strongest imprints
of the memory of the missiles back to two naval fleet commanders, one American,
one Soviet. Pressing tightly, he found
the moment when they realized what was happening, the moment they gave the
orders, followed those memories until he had them… and he squeezed.
Something
popped.
Up the
chain of memory he went, to the Fleet headquarters, to the Pentagon, to the
Kremlin, to the CIA, to the Chairmen of the Presidium, to the White House. More memories, more decisions being made, and
he squeezed, twisted, blotted out, and kept pushing. He conducted a symphony of movement with his
mind, keeping track of every note.
Missing
even one would bring about catastrophy.
On the floor of the Supreme Soviet, a motion was to be made. The man bringing it forward stopped, stared
at his notes, then carelessly crumpled them. Premier Khrushchev moved the discussion on to
containing tensions after the previous day’s showdown, and the word mutant was never uttered.
In a secure
room in the White House, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff started to address
the mutant menace, but President Kennedy shook his head. Suddenly, it didn’t seem nearly as important
as the latest intelligence on MRBM sites in Sagua La Grande. The moment passed, and the mutants were
forgotten.
He couldn’t
hear Erik’s concerned voice in his ear, Raven’s cold hands on his face, the
questions flying about the room where his body sat, as his mind worked. He didn’t feel the blood begin to drip from
his nose, or his ears, or seep through his eyelashes. He was unaware of the pain as he bit his
tongue to hold back the screams… his… theirs.
Erik was holding him, now, and Raven was shaking him, but he didn’t feel
anything, didn’t hear anything. Could do
nothing but hold, and squeeze, and wrench memories away, grinding them to
nothingness.
In a cabin
aboard the USS Saratoga, a US Naval commander slumped over his bunk. The medic later put cause of death as a
previously-undetected aneurysm.
In the
middle of a meeting at the helm of the
Upon
leaving his office at the Pentagon, Colonel Hendry waved absently at his driver
and climbed into the back seat of a dark sedan, mind distracted by the newest
information on the mutant menace. He
didn’t see the oddly bright blue eyes staring back at him from his normally
brown-eyed driver. A few moments later,
he didn’t see anything, as the sedan rolled off a bridge and impacted a
concrete culvert a hundred feet below.
The resulting fireball from the petrol in the tank obliterated the files
he’d carried with him.
Sitting at
his desk at the CIA, Matt Craven locked the door and quickly shredded the last
of a series of files before settling back into his seat. He unlocked the lower right drawer of his
desk and brought out his pistol. Carefully
chambering a round, he brought the barrel to his temple, and calmly squeezed
the trigger.
Walking
toward a hidden laboratory, plans whirling through his mind, William Stryker
didn’t notice as his feet left the trail and his body went over a ledge,
falling headfirst to the rocks below.
His eyes still saw handrails and shrubbery, his
body still felt the soliditiy of metal rungs beneath his feet, until the moment
before he landed. A
flash of intense pain, followed by nothingness. At his home, his newborn son screamed, then cried. His
mother comforted him. The baby forgot
what he’d lost.
A rush of
air, of agony, of shock over his own lack of shame, of ohgod - didn’t mean to - had to - what a bloody mess - ohgod - so sorry
- had to - meant to – ohgod - it needed to be done - I’m a murderer - ohgod -
the children and Charles was back in his body. Looking up into Erik’s frantic eyes in a face
carved from stone, Charles tried to smile.
“They
forgot,” he choked out, and collapsed, unconscious.
~~
It was some
kind of nightmare, Erik thought, desperately holding on as Charles convulsed in
his arms, blood trickling from his eyes, his nose, his ears, over his lips
where he’d torn his tongue with his teeth.
“Hank!” he
screamed, as Raven sobbed beside him.
“Charles,” he murmured, his arms tightening around his friend’s
shuddering body, “hold on!”
“What kind
of fit is he having?” Angel asked, her voice high and tight, and Sean yelled,
“How the fuck should I know?” as Alex ran for the bathroom in search of a first
aid kit and Hank bounded over to Erik’s side.
Riptide stared at the scene for a moment then walked over to the bar and
picked up the house phone. Erik barely
heard him calling for a doctor.
His memory
worked strangely in times of crisis.
Everything slowed down, and moments were etched in crystal; Charles had
complimented him on it once, told him such clarity made it easy to find his
hidden memories, the comfort of his mother, the joy of his childhood before the
internment, before Hell broke them all.
Now that clarity was a curse, as events burned themselves into his mind.
Charles, arching, one hand twitching as
if he were strangling some phantom foe, the other curling as if firing a
gun. His head thrashed against Erik’s
chest, blood smearing across his shirt, and there was a reason he usually wore
black, though he’d never had to hide a friend’s
blood before.
Then the
shaking stopped, and Charles went ominously still. Raven gulped for air beside him, eyes huge
and yellow, in her natural form, holding onto Charles with all her
strength. Then Riptide was there, quiet
confidence and sure movements, and a human, but something off about him, was he
a mutant as well?
He must
have been, because his hands were glowing, deep azure, as he ran them over
Charles’ head, along his neck to his chest, then back up to cup his skull. Erik glared at him, but Charles’ breathing
eased, so Erik let him live, let him keep touching what was his. The doctor, the human was a doctor, the
mutant doctor? Erik took a deep breath
and ground out, “What is wrong with him?”
“Nothing
that rest and time won’t heal,” the doctor said, his words measured,
his demeanor calm. As he spoke, his calm
seemed to radiate over the room, easing tension as it went. Erik didn’t let that stop him.
“What –
happened?” he growled.
The doctor
spared him a glance, then did a double-take at the
fierce anger in Erik’s expression. For
the first time since he came in, the doctor appeared unsure. He gulped, then
shook it off.
“Overextension. Psychic
trauma. I’ve seen similar, with
Miss Frost, though not to this extent. He
will recover, given time and quiet. Keep
him warm, keep him hydrated, and keep him calm, and in a few days…” The doctor paused, then ran a glowing hand
over Charles’ forehead, expression intent, “perhaps a week, he will be healed.”
Raven
thanked him, and Erik let him leave, concentrating on Charles again. “What did you do?” he asked quietly.
In the back
of his mind, a tiny voice whispered, saved the children. Or perhaps save the children. Erik
couldn’t be sure. He looked over at
Hank.
“Take him to
his room,” he ordered, and Hank stepped forward to lift Charles and take him
back to his bed. It didn’t matter which
it was, and he would find out later from Charles, because his friend would wake
up, and would tell him then. He refused
to believe otherwise.
Until then,
he had a mandate to follow, or perhaps an example to emulate. He had children to whip into shape.
A brotherhood to form.
When better
time to start, than now.
~ part 3 ~
The next
eight days were a different kind of hell than Erik had gone through before, and
given his life experience, that was an accomplishment. He spent his nights by Charles’ side, first
in a chair, then perched on the side of the bed, then wrapped around the man. This sequence of movements began the first
night he watched and repeated every night thereafter… when he woke each morning
Charles was cuddled up to his chest, his face tucked against Erik’s throat.
It was a
little unnerving. Erik had never been a
cuddler.
Thankfully,
after the mutant doctor left, the bleeding didn’t come back. Erik had a wealth of experience with injury,
giving and receiving, but seeing Charles bleeding from everywhere his head
could bleed was one he never wished to repeat.
His dreams
were disturbed, and given that he didn’t usually dream outside of nightmares,
he had a strong suspicion they weren’t his dreams. Charles was lost, in pain, and trying for
denial, but failing. He wasn’t sure
exactly what Charles had done, but whatever it was, the guilt was drowning the
man.
So Erik did
the only thing he could do, the same as Charles had done for him when he was
literally drowning. He held on, and
called Charles’ name, and begged him to let go, to come back.
To survive.
~~
Charles
didn't know where he was, but it was grey and featureless and completely
silent.
It was
terrifying.
Gradually
the numbness passed, and when it did, he wanted it back.
He was
drenched in pain. Surrounded and crushed
by death. Screams echoed then died back
into the suffocating silence.
By his hand.
~~
The days
weren’t quite as fraught as the nights, for Erik, though there were
challenges. The first thing he did,
after sternly ordering the children to stop squabbling (and tying them up in
metal stripped from the window sills when they didn’t) was try to figure out
who still knew about them, to identify and neutralize the threat. He put Mystique in charge of doing something
productive with the younger mutants, did his best to track Azazel, and started
putting out the word to his contacts, trying to gauge the remaining
threat. Less than a day in, he was
startled to find what a good job Charles had done.
Even if it had nearly killed him.
Shaking off
the thought, he got back to work. On the
third day, he realized he’d forgotten something when Riptide sidled up and
asked, “What about the White Queen?”
It took a
moment before Erik realized he was talking about the diamond telepath. He blinked.
“Bring her here.”
Riptide
stared at him for a moment, then nodded and went off to get Azazel. In a matter of moments they returned with an
unconscious body. Erik quickly noted the
obvious dehydration and shook his head.
“They
forgot about her,” Azazel told him, looking down at the woman in his arms like
he didn’t know what to do with her.
“Call that
doctor, the mutant one,” Erik directed Riptide, but the man was already on his
way to the phone. Erik pointed at a
couch. “Put her there.”
Azazel
dropped her with more gentleness than Erik expected. While she was unconscious and incapable of
fighting back, Erik quickly bound her with metal stripped from the sides of the
table. Riptide looked askance at his
work when he returned, and Erik shrugged.
He didn’t bother explaining that it was better she not be able to kill
them in retaliation for Shaw, if that was her choice. He had no qualms about killing her first, but
the two men would cause some fuss, and most importantly, Charles wouldn’t like
it.
The doctor
arrived with minimal fuss and waved his azure palms over the woman,
concentrating on her torso and head, before diagnosing her with severe
dehydration and the early stages of shock.
Apparently before Charles made everyone forget about her, they’d already
stopped giving her food or water, and she hadn’t had any in at least five
days. Erik watched with little interest
as the man set her up in a bedroom off the side of the club, placing an IV in
her arm, giving Riptide instructions on her care.
At two
eighteen the next morning, as Riptide slept beside her, Erik concentrated from
the doorway and worked a tiny thread of steel off the needle of the IV. The thin blade slid under her skin invisibly,
and Erik guided it carefully to and through her brain, concentrating to create
a brief, fierce electric storm centered around it,
disrupting her brain chemistry completely.
Then he pulled it out through her ear and crumpling it to dust in his
pocket. The line on the heart monitor
jumped wildly then went flat, and a muted alarm sounded. By the time Riptide jerked awake, the woman
was dead.
She was
Shaw’s, and she was too dangerous to live.
There was only room for one telepath in Erik’s life, since he threw away
his helmet, and it wasn’t Emma Frost.
~~
Hank jerked
awake with a start. He'd never had a such a vivid... terrifying... vision - nightmare - night
terror - he didn't even know what to call it.
He was dead, or maybe he was Death, but he couldn't stop himself. They had to be crushed, and he crushed them,
and he liked it.
He liked
it.
It was
satisfying, knowing that they would never hurt his children again. Since when did he have children? The thought disappeared under the avalanche
of emotion churning through him. Never
hurt his friends, his family... his heart.
He'd been all alone for so long, then there were two, but he was still
essentially alone, then there were three, and he would never be alone again,
until they tried to take him... her? Him? Them?
His head
hurt, and it felt like he'd been beaten with a lead pipe. He fell out of bed and barely made it to the
bathroom before he threw up in the toilet, and kept throwing up until there was
nothing left to bring up.
Sweet
mercy, he didn't know what that was, and never wanted to go through it
again. The sheer satisfaction fought
with an overwhelming shame until it made him dizzy, something he really didn't
need when he was already feeling sick.
He didn't
sleep the rest of the night.
Nor the next two.
When he
finally did fall back in bed he was so tired he fell asleep as soon as his eyes
closed.
The terror
was gone.
In its
place was grief.
He gave up
on sleep and went to work in his lab.
Better an insomniac over-achiever than having his brain split open like
an over-ripe melon. When he finally did
need to rest… that’s what pharmaceuticals were for.
~~
Riptide
left the mansion, taking Frost's body with him.
He’d stopped by long enough to tell Erik that the woman had succumbed to
the shock, and Erik gave him a solemn nod that might have passed for sympathy
in bad light among strangers.
He didn’t
do sympathy well, but Riptide didn’t seem to notice, just left with his
burden. Erik didn’t know if they’d see
him again, and didn’t particularly care.
Recruitment
was Charles’ passion. Protection, and
tying up loose ends, was Erik’s.
He knew
Charles wouldn’t be happy that the other telepath was dead, but he also trusted
Charles enough to believe that he wouldn’t go rummaging through Erik’s
memories. If he did, well… she wasn’t
the first collaborator he’d put down. If
Charles hadn’t already taken care of MacTaggert’s memory, Frost wouldn’t even
have been the first one in the past week.
Nothing was
going to endanger his people now, if it was at all in his power to stop it.
In the
periphery of his attention, Erik noticed Angel and Mystique going through
Frost’s things, and for a while white leather was the dress of the day at the
Hellfire Club. The boys seemed to enjoy
it, if the slaps the girls gave them were any indication. Erik let them be, but his patience was
drawing thin.
Patience
was Charles’ strong suit. Killing people
was Erik’s. He wanted Charles to wake up
so they could each go back to doing what they did best. This waiting was making him twitchy.
People
tended to die when he got twitchy, and beyond Shaw’s woman, there wasn’t really
anyone in range he wanted to kill.
~~
Raven, or
Mystique as she'd begun to think of herself and insisted others call her, tried
everything she could think of to take her mind off her brother, lying still as
a corpse upstairs while life just kept on moving without him.
It wasn't
right.
She knew
why he'd done it. It wasn't the first
time he'd hurt an outsider to protect his family. It wasn’t even the first time he’d hurt
family, to protect the ones he loved… even if they didn’t appreciate it, like
she did. When she was small, and first
met him foraging in his fridge late one night, he'd been so happy to meet her,
so happy to make her part of the family.
His mother
wasn't so keen.
That was
the first time she'd seen Charles use his power to change someone's mind, then
keep having to do it, over and over.
Mother Xavier had a bias against anything that wasn't completely, 100%
normal, and no one could say a little naked blue girl with yellow eyes was
anything like normal.
It broke
Charles' heart every time he had to do it.
Wasn't
until a long time later, after he trusted himself enough to get drunk around
her, because he was a really talky drunk when he wasn’t focused on getting
laid, that she found out it wasn't the first time he'd had to make someone do
something they hadn't wanted to. After
all, his father hadn't wanted to stop smacking his mother around, and he hadn't
listened when Charles tried to make him stop, so Charles had stopped him.
The doctor
called it a heart attack.
His mother
called Charles a killer.
He wiped
her memory.
All he'd
wanted was for the mother he loved to be safe.
For her to love him. He could force her to, but that got tiring
after awhile, and it broke him in ways his adopted sister couldn't heal.
For every
promise he made her, for everything he tried to be for her, even if he
couldn't, she would do anything for him.
Yet here she sat, picking at fringe on a leather miniskirt and trying to
build a bridge with Angel, feeling more alone than she'd ever felt in her
life. The comforting buzz of Charles in
the back of her brain was missing for the first time in years, and if he didn't
wake up soon, she didn't know what she was going to do.
Too bad
that useless bitch of a telepath had died.
If nothing else, maybe they could have used her to get inside Charles'
head and make him wake up.
She cried
herself to sleep.
Every night.
She
dreamed, but she didn’t remember them.
That was her blessing.
~~
Burying
himself in paperwork wasn’t Erik's preferred option for keeping his thoughts
occupied, but it kept him from wholesale murder whilst waiting for Charles to
wake the hell up. A day into that
monster task, he came across a surprise.
Shaw’s will. In a trapped drawer that Erik had
no trouble disabling, if only because his power deflected the razor wire
triggered when he jiggered the panel off.
He stared at it in disbelief for a long moment, then
couldn’t help himself.
He laughed.
A whiff of
sulfur announced Azazel, who perched on the side of the desk and grinned at
him. “So you found it. Congratulations, heir.”
“What was
he thinking,” Erik asked in disbelief, “that I’d come crawling back to him and
he’d reward me for being a good boy?”
Azazel
snickered. “More that he was never going
to die, but if he had to disappear, he could pin it on you.”
Erik
nodded. “Motive,
then?”
Azazel
nodded in agreement.
Rocking
back in the leather executive chair, Erik read through the will, then gave a wolfish smile.
“Wouldn’t he be disappointed, then,” he all but purred.
Azazel
cocked his head, giving him a questioning look, but Erik didn’t need to explain
himself to Shaw’s last minion. Seeing he
would get no answers, Azazel shrugged and disappeared.
Erik was
pretty sure the face full of sulfur was deliberate.
Reaching
back into the drawer, he came up with nothing.
Focusing, Erik scanned the room, feeling for any dense reaction to his
powers that would indicate a storage box or safe, and
hit pay dirt on the wall across from the bar.
Behind an original Friedrich von Amerling, no doubt plundered from some
wealthy – now dead – Jewish family, Erik didn’t bother with the lock. He simply melted all the pins and ripped the
door off.
Inside he
found bearer bonds, enough to fund the revolution for decades even without
touching Charles’ inheritance, along with sets of books for several businesses,
and numbers Erik knew would trace to certain Swiss bastards.
He looked
forward to seeing them again. This time,
as a customer, just long enough to take it all out. Hit the greedy little parasites where it
hurt.
There was
something ironic, and fundamentally satisfying, in using the money taken from
his people, when he couldn’t protect them, to protect his people, now.
~~
Eventually
the grey landscape shifted in Charles' mind, but he hadn't been reassured by
what replaced it.
Corpses.
Piles of them.
He knew
them, had worked with some of them, knew the others intimately, through their
minds and their memories and the actions he had forced upon them. He also knew, dimly, that he was hiding, was
afraid to face the consequences of his actions, face his loved ones with the
mark of what he had done branded across his soul...
Except the
brand wasn't nearly as dark as he thought it should be. In fact, it was fading by the moment.
Because
along with their deaths, Charles was forced to think about their lives, these
men he had murdered. He knew their
minds, had used their thoughts to hunt them down, and as the shock and pain of
their last moments faded, the more powerful driving forces of their lives
became clearer.
It was, in
its own way, even more terrifying than their deaths.
There was
paranoia in many of them, a kind of malicious cruelty in a few, and fear buried
in all of them. He was used to normals
being afraid of him - that was one reason he hid so well - but this wasn't
personal, or was horrifically personal, in that it targeted all who were
different, all who might have any form of power that couldn't be controlled,
used, and destroyed.
This was a
fear of mutants that went beyond Us versus Them and
became Humanity turned into Inhumanity.
It was a
gut-wrenching, soul-deep realization that Erik had been right, and Charles had
known it all along, but had fought it because, deep down, he was still that
scared, foolish child who wanted his mother to love him.
Oh, Erik's
methods were wrong, or at least ineffective.
There was no way on Earth that a small, scattered, untrained force of
mutants, many of whom were deeply in denial or covering like mad, could fight
head-to-head against the combined might of the governments of the world. They would be wiped out like insects, rooted
out of their homes, penned together, and exterminated.
Erik's fear
was right on the money.
So if they
were going to do this, and it looked as if they would have to, they would do it
correctly. Sneakily. Using psychology and
surgical precision and carefully-placed moves, in the chess game of their
lives. He stared down at the
corpses of the normal humans who had declared themselves his enemies by right
of might.
If his
people were to survive, and thrive, and live without fear, then those who could
protect would have to do just that. He'd
always been a scientist, a researcher, never a warrior.
That had to
change. He looked around once more, as
the blood bled back to grey.
He had
already changed.
He would do
what he could to mitigate the slaughter, because such wholesale death was
intrinsically wrong. He would also kill
when he had to, because some enemies would not be subverted and had to be
eliminated, for the sake of his people.
He closed his eyes, and felt himself rise to wakefulness.
Erik would
know where to start, and Charles would be right beside him... if nothing else,
to change some minds, implant suggestions, remove thorns, and put a structure
for governance in place, before Erik killed them all and kicked off a war they
couldn't win.
~~
Two in the
morning seemed to be the witching hour, Erik thought, as the warm body in his
arms finally began to stir. Reddened,
sunken blue eyes flickered open, looking onyx in the dim light, then fluttered
shut again.
“Charles,”
he said softly, then more strongly, and while the eyes didn’t open again, the
faintest of smiles curved pale lips, and he knew he’d been heard. He unwrapped himself from Charles’ body and
ran for the door.
The doctor
didn’t seem to mind getting up in the middle of the night again, or perhaps he
was intimidated enough by Erik that he didn’t dare complain. Either way, he came,
he clucked, he glowed his hands, and he plucked out the IV and the
catheter. It was several hours before
Charles awoke again, and this time, half the household was in the room.
Charles
gave them a wide-eyed look, mumbling something around ice chips Mystique shoved
in his mouth. He wafted the word Hello
through their brains and they each relaxed a little at his presence, then he
went right back to sleep.
“Best thing
for him,” Sean said, trying to sound wise and coming off like a poor imitation
of his mother.
Alex patted
the bed awkwardly, then cleared his throat and added, “Should leave him
be. Let him get some rest, that’s, you
know, not a coma.”
Mystique
stopped sniffling long enough to roll her eyes, but Hank agreed, and Erik
shooed them all out to get some lunch.
When
Charles woke again, it was after dinner, and Mystique was there to meet him
with broth and toast and the ubiquitous tea.
Erik stood watch in the corner of the room, and wondered if he’d ever
get a moment alone with his friend.
Soon,
Charles’ voice spoke in his mind.
Erik
concentrated back, are you all right? sending along
with it the concern he’d felt, but trying to reign in the stark terror. He didn’t want to traumatize the poor
man. Charles had only just regained consciousness, he didn’t need the burden of Erik’s stupid
emotions on top of whatever he’d already gone through.
A feeling
not unlike an embrace pressed gently on his mind, and he started, before
relaxing into it. Sorry, he thought, and
knew from the gentle squeeze that he was forgiven.
Given what
his sources had reported, he had a strong inkling about what had caused the
trauma, already. His contacts in Mossad
had been especially useful, given the information they had for him on recent
deaths within the CIA and Department of Defense.
He wouldn’t
miss the bastards, anyway. McCone was a
security risk who knew too much, but Hendry and Stryker had been real and
immediate threats. He held a
poorly-disguised pride for Charles, taking them out so effectively, but thought
it would upset the man if he knew, so Erik tried not to broadcast that,
either. In all, it was a tangled knot of
emotions Charles would no doubt not appreciate, so Erik tried the impossible,
sending one thread out and hiding all the rest.
Thankfully,
Charles fell asleep again before Erik gave away too much. He hoped.
~~
It took
some time for the children to settle down, but Charles gave them reassurances
and smiles and comforting words. All the
while, his thoughts were going in circles, trying to figure out the best way to
go forward. Poor Erik was worrying
himself into a bundle of nerves, not that anyone could tell by looking at him,
but Charles was a telepath, and could feel and hear what others could not.
By the end
of the third day after he’d woken, Charles knew he could put it off no
longer. He was feeling perfectly well,
if psychologically unsettled, and he had to say something, before Erik went
ballistic.
He was not
looking forward to this conversation.
~ part 4 ~
Erik had
returned to his room once Charles was out of danger, but he couldn’t
sleep. After midnight each night he
found himself silently stepping into Charles room, settling near the bed, and
watching his friend sleep. The first two
nights, he stayed awake, ghosting back to his own bed sometime before dawn.
The third
night, his exhaustion ambushed him, and his body reacted automatically, as it
had every night Charles had been in the coma.
House shoes off, sitting on the side of the bed then gradually sinking
to rest beside Charles’ warm body, to wake up with the sunrise wrapped around
his friend.
This time, his friend was wide awake, staring up at him with bright blue eyes
that saw altogether too much. Erik
hastened to make a strategic withdrawal, but Charles’ hands caught his forearms
and hugged him close.
“Er,” was
Erik’s brilliant opening conversational gambit.
At least it drew a smile from Charles, for all that it faded much too
quickly.
“Please, my
friend, stay,” Charles whispered, the words sounding too loud in the still
morning air. “We have to talk. There are things I must tell you. Things I have done…” His voice trailed off, and Erik cleared his
throat.
“You
needn’t tell me now,” he offered into the silence that fell.
“If not
now, I may never find the courage,” Charles admitted.
Erik shook
his head. “I have never known a braver
man than you, Charles,” he admitted, only to have the declaration be met by an
immediate negative headshake.
“I’m
afraid,” Charles told him bluntly, “of so many things. Of being alone, of losing
control, of becoming… of being a murderer. Of having you turn from me.”
“That will
never happen,” Erik interjected fiercely.
“It would be hypocritical in the extreme for me to blame you for
anything you did – any steps you took – to protect our people.” To protect the children, to protect me, went
unspoken, but he knew Charles heard, from the wince and the guilty look in his
eyes. Intent on making his point
perfectly clear, Erik continued, “Whatever lives you took. I know your reasoning was sound.”
“Sound?”
Charles challenged him, incredulously.
“I was acting on instinct! I
hunted them down, hunted their minds down, and I crushed them, Erik, I killed
every one of them. Or made them kill
themselves, or manipulated innocent people around them to kill them, or -”
“Did what
you had to do,” Erik interrupted again, placing his forefinger gently against
Charles’ lips to stop the flow of words, thick with self-disgust. Charles should not be blaming himself, but it
was his way, and Erik had to make him understand that he would find no
repudiation from Erik for doing as he had.
Before he
could find a way to explain, he felt a nudge on his mind. May I? Charles’ voice asked silently, and Erik
agreed, without hesitation.
The next few moments were a stream of images.
A man in uniform clutching his chest, another holding his head and
falling dead, a third blowing his brains out, a fourth throwing himself off a
cliff, a fifth ceasing to exist in a ball of tangled metal and flame. The images were accompanied by a rush of
emotions, shame and anger, with a tinge of confessional relief and no
expectation of forgiveness.
In return,
Erik gave him acceptance. Understanding.
Pride.
Wide eyes
stared up at him. How can you be proud
of that? The words seemed to point to
the images.
Erik sent a
few of his own memories… a Nazi in a bar, shot with his own gun, another, neck
broken as he wallowed in his stolen treasures, a third, garroted in his bed… a
pause, and with an air of determination, two final images… Shaw,
and a coin piercing his brain, then Frost, and a needle sparking a neural storm
that shut down her system.
Shock held
both still, as a mirror image to Shaw dying came to Erik, and with it his
gut-wrenching realization that Charles had been present every agonizing second,
as in the periphery, he felt Charles shock at his efficient ending of Shaw’s
telepath.
“Charles,
mój Bóg,” Erik choked, then thought sorry sorry sorry sorry until Charles
reached up and physically slapped the back of his head. It was a weak slap, but it startled him
enough to break him out of his shock.
“Miss
Frost?” Why?
Charles was
upset, but not as upset as Erik had feared.
Perhaps he was still overwhelmed.
Erik gave a Gallic shrug and answered honestly, “She was his
creature. As he tried
to make me. I left. She stayed.
She could never be trusted, so I eliminated her.”
Faces
flashed through Erik’s mind, as Charles reviewed the men he’d killed for much
the same reason. Threats, who would become more worrisome, to be taken out before they
could become overwhelmingly dangerous.
He also felt that Charles didn’t believe Frost fit into that category,
but it was a fait accompli, and the telepath felt he had no moral high ground
left from which he could admonish Erik.
“Głupiec,”
Erik muttered affectionately, following up in English to make it completely
plain, as he wasn’t sure Charles knew Polish, or could understand the meaning
behind the words. “Don’t be an
idiot. We are different people, Charles,
but we have the same goal. We want the
same thing.”
A mental
protest began, the start of the same argument they’d been having in various
iterations since they met, only for Charles to strangle it, to Erik’s
surprise. He gave Charles a questioning
glance.
“You are
right… and wrong,” Charles forced out.
“How so?” A part of him felt vindicated, that Charles
would be forced to recognize the reality of the threat, but a part also
mourned, for the idealism that had been such a shining part of Charles’ soul.
Destroyed, by their enemies. As such innocence
always was, at least in those who survived.
“Yes, we
can’t trust the normal people, I can’t just call them humans, Erik, because we
are all humans, and I refuse to deny my humanity, OUR humanity, simply because
the ignorant and the fearful and those in power, who would hurt or use us, give
humanity a bad name. But we can’t kill
them all, damn it, because there are a lot of innocents in there, and that
would make us as bad as them, and I refuse to let us sink to that level. Practically, it is insane to confront the
power structure directly. We have to be
smart about this. We have to think ten
moves ahead, and plan very carefully, place our pieces and take out our
opponents, but without tipping them off or frightening them into war. We can’t fight a war, my friend, we would
lose! We need to be precise, surgical,
removing only those who would hurt us, leaving those who would support us, even
if it takes some manipulation, I would be willing to do that – very
willing! If it’s necessary, and I think
it will be. No, I know it will be, but
it can be done. I saw things, plans they
have in motion already, there are children, really, just children, mutant
children, captured, caged, we can break them out. We can keep them safe, and train them, and
while they’re growing up, you and I, Erik, we can do what we must to ensure
they have a world to grow up in and control when it comes to that-”
Erik let
the words wash over him, an odd, unusual feeling bubbling up in him. It felt like hope, or maybe pride, for
Charles, for his ideas for the future, for the fact that they would have a
future, and that this brilliant man could envision them together in it.
However, he
also knew that Charles would talk for hours if he didn’t find a way to shut him
up. Erik was so relieved that Charles
was actually in one piece, mentally, and slightly giddy both from relief and
exhaustion, that for the first time in years he let his control slip and
allowed his instincts to take over.
It was only
as his mouth closed over Charles’ and his tongue stopped the flow of words that
it struck him that his friend might not appreciate being kissed by a man. Or at least by Erik.
He was on
the point of drawing back, and perhaps apologizing, when Charles’ arms came
around his back, holding him in place, and Charles fairly shouted in his mind, Finally!
Were you
waiting for this? Erik thought, as his hands slid deftly under Charles’ pajama
top and stripped it off. A few buttons
pinged off to land somewhere in the room, but neither man cared.
God yes,
Charles murmured, talk later, this now, please.
Erik couldn’t tell if they spoke aloud or only between their minds, and
couldn’t care less. All his attention
was concentrated on the squirming body beneath him.
It struck
him that indulging in sex so soon after debilitating psychic shock and a
weeklong period of unconsciousness might not be the healthiest decision, but
Charles was panting into his mouth and pulling off his trousers and didn’t seem
to be the least concerned, so he let the thought go.
He let all
thought go, especially after Charles’ hand wrapped around his cock, and
Charles’ voice moaned in his ear and through his mind in concert. His hands spasmed, digging in to the long
muscles bracketing Charles’ spine, and he made a sound that might have been a
whimper in a lesser man.
His pants
were caught around his left ankle, his shirt was wrapped up in the top sheet,
he had one hand bunched in the waist of Charles’ pajama bottoms, and he
couldn’t stop kissing the man long enough to finish the job, but he desperately
needed to.
He also
needed to breathe – kissing Charles was like immersing himself in a hot spring,
mind and body completely overwhelmed, submerged, completed. And they’d barely touched.
With an
impatient growl, Charles tugged and kicked until he was completely bare, and
for the first time Erik felt all that wonderful heat pressed up against him
with nothing between them, from his chest to his ankles. Sweet, so sweet, and hot, so very hot, as
Charles pushed and strained against him.
Erik finally had enough of trying to pin the smaller man down, and
decided to exert some control.
Another deep kiss, a wicked thigh rubbing up under his balls, and a
cheeky string of suggestions, each more lewd than the other, streaming through
his mind, nearly derailed him.
Tearing his
mouth away, gasping for breath, a quick flick of his power, and a nearby candelabra divided into two parts. They were smoothed in an instant, no sharp
points to hurt his Charles, then in a heartbeat they were wound around those
distracting, knowing hands, and Charles found himself pinned to the headboard.
A flash of
memory, Frost, bound in a similar way to a bed in
Charles was much more appealing, and while this wasn’t the first time he’d tied
a lover up this way, it was by far the most enjoyable. With Charles relatively contained, Erik could
finally do some exploring of his own.
Erik,
darling, dearest friend, let me up, please, want to touch you, want to feel
you, Charles whined softly, and Erik knew it was in his mind because his mouth
was occupied. He smirked into the kiss,
dropped a gentle bite on a pouting lip, and took his time.
As his
mouth and hands roamed, mapping the soft skin and hard muscle beneath, learning
the curve of pectoral and the angle of hip and the line of flank, Charles’
mental pleas gained power, nearly, but never quite, tipping over into
command. Erik found himself enjoying
this new kind of power play, this new edge to sex, this closeness he’d never
found with anyone before.
He placed a
precise line of bites from shoulder to shoulder, down the center of Charles’
chest, over a nipple, down his belly, to his straining cock, before bypassing
it to nip at the tender flesh leading to the curve of his ass. Charles shuddered beautifully.
By the time
Erik settled down on his stomach between Charles’ spread legs and licked across
the head of his cock, the mental pleas had disintegrated into wordless moans
accompanied by incredibly filthy mental images.
Charles, sprawled across his desk as Erik moved
his fist in him… Erik on his knees on the terrace, sucking Charles in broad
daylight where anyone could see them… Charles, on his hands and knees in the
courtyard, Erik behind him, ramming into him…
Charles,
bound with metal, spread-eagled and upright in the library, facing the French
doors, sunlight streaming in, as Erik fucked him from behind, hands tugging at
his nipples, as Charles took it, helpless and begging for anything Erik wanted
to do to him… Erik, sitting on the kitchen table, Charles on a chair in front
of him between his splayed knees, Erik’s hands tangled in his hair as he forced
Charles’ head down, fucking his mouth as hard as Charles could stand it…
The pair of
them, sprawled in the back seat of a taxi, head to
crotch, cocks spilling from barely-opened trousers, fast and dirty… Charles
with his tongue digging into Erik’s hole, then a flash, and changing places…
Erik, standing behind Charles on the tube, both fully clothed, in rush hour,
Charles’ trousers pushed down just enough, Erik’s zip lowered, fucking slow and
deep with no one around them any the wiser…
He’d had no
idea Charles was such an imaginative little pervert. Erik approved. He dipped his tongue beneath Charles’
foreskin and the images fractured into pure heat, the mental cries broke forth
to become audible.
Sometime in the maelstrom, Erik considered, for a moment, gagging Charles. There were others in the mansion, and the
noise they were making might embarrass his friend in the morning. Then another mental image hit him, and he
forgot to worry about it.
Everyone in
the house was an adult, or close enough to it not to
matter, and he had intentions for Charles’ mouth that a gag would only impede.
Charles
came first, Erik sucking him strongly all the way through it, using the spill
and the sweat and his own spit to ease the way as he worked his fingers into
Charles’ hole. Somewhere along the way,
Charles managed to escape the metal straps, because as Erik slid his hands
under Charles knees and lifted, Charles’ hands joined his, holding himself
under his thighs, lifting his legs further apart. Erik took the invitation and worked his way
in, thrusting shallowly, then deeper, until he was fully seated.
Looking
down into Charles’ flushed face, dazed expression, his pupils blown, his mouth
wet and swollen, Erik felt something that had been missing all his life slip
into place. This was where he
belonged. This was his future.
Pulling out
slowly, then pushing in, a little faster, a little
harder each time, he matched his rhythm to Charles’ heartbeat, and by the time
he reached his peak, Charles came with him.
He
collapsed into Charles’ arms, as they lay together, slowly cooling off. When he tried to roll over, ease his weight
off, Charles wouldn’t let him, and Erik gave in, holding in return as he was
held.
The sex
wasn’t new to him, but the connection was.
Whatever he had to do to keep it, he would. However Charles planned to work this out,
Erik would make damned sure it happened.
Because
losing this would destroy him completely.
~~
They awoke
to Mystique’s startled gasp the next morning.
The breakfast tray she dropped was, thankfully, metal, and Erik caught
it whilst still half-asleep, absently floating it over to the side table.
“Um, I’ll
just… ah, Charles? Erik?”
“Yes,
Raven?” Charles asked in a voice too innocent to be believed.
Erik buried his head under the pillow.
Mystique
snorted. “Morning, boys,” she said, then
turned and left the room. “I’ll lock the
door on my way out.”
“We need to
remember to do that next time,” Charles said to Erik’s shoulder.
Erik pushed
the pillow up far enough to stare at him with one eye. Charles grinned at him. You’re adorable, he heard.
You’re mad
as a hatter, Erik thought back. He
didn’t have to ask if Charles was all right.
He knew. He wasn’t. But he would be.
~~
It took a
few hours for things to settle down, but once the children saw that Charles was
okay, they began to form a routine, such as it was. Alex and Sean worked with their powers,
adding Angel to the mix, at Charles’ insistence. Mystique kept a close eye on them to make
sure no lingering hard feelings erupted.
There was some talk of returning to
“It’s our
fallback position,” he told them firmly.
“We don’t yet know if we’re compromised,” though he had a strong hunch
they were covered. “We need to keep it
in reserve.”
“We also
need to keep it quiet because when we gather the other children, they’ll need a
safe haven,” Charles added, and that got everyone’s attention.
“What other
children?” Mystique asked. “I thought
you’d gone through all the possibles you found on Cerebro.”
“That was
recruiting,” Charles answered, a brief look of rage crossing his features
before he controlled himself. “This is a
rescue.”
Everyone
other than Erik looked unsettled. Erik
had an idea where this was coming from, having heard some of Charles’ babble
the previous night, before they were… distracted.
“There’s a
military facility housing a secret program, where they’ve been kidnapping
mutant children and holding them captive.
One of the men I… dispatched last week was a liaison between the
government and the scientists leading the program. I got the details from him, before I…
disposed of him.”
Now the
others were looking at him with various degrees of shock. Charles took a deep breath. “When I… over-exerted myself last week, it
was because I was…”
He trailed
off, and Erik decided to make it easier for him. He was more accustomed to euphemisms, and he
knew Charles didn’t want to lay bare his actions before the young people he
considered his children.
“Some in
the Department of Defense and the CIA would have attacked us, as they did at
the beach. Charles stopped them. End of story.
Now we have a mission to plan.”
Five sets
of eyes swiveled to meet his, four confused, one grateful. Erik nodded, once, before getting on with it.
The rest of
the afternoon was spent on logistics, as Charles briefed them on everything
he’d seen in the classified documents about something called Weapon Plus, that
in the second World War had given rise to Captain
Four men and one woman who would have to die.
A score of children who would be saved immediately,
and an indeterminate number of lives that would be saved in the long run.
Preliminary
plans in place, they broke for dinner.
They would have to move sooner rather than later, to keep the edge
Charles had given them with his pre-emptive strike. They had to deal with the scientists before
they ran to ground, now that their DoD and CIA
counterparts were dead.
As they
were finishing dinner, Sean started to snicker, then laugh out loud. Given the heavy conversation and the
combination of tension and dread that had lingered over the meal, Erik wondered
what the mad Irish kid had come up with this time.
“What?” Alex demanded.
Sean
grinned at him, then dipped his head toward Hank. “One good thing about sticking around Vegas,”
he chortled. “We can all go out in
uniform, or fur, whichever – and if anybody wonders, they’ll just think we’re
the floor show at the Stardust!”
Hank threw
a serving platter at his head.
~ part 5 ~
It appeared
that the book wasn’t quite closed on mutant involvement with the CIA, after
all. The most worrisome project Charles
had discovered in the files, and memories, of the powerful men had killed was a
program called Weapon X. It was an
offshoot of Weapon Plus, which had concentrated on augmenting normal humans to
create super soldiers to fight the Nazis.
They’d had one success, Captain
Weapon X
was the second generation, the first to include mutants in the mix. On the surface it was a refinement of the
super soldier project, with a team of mutants and augmented normals currently
deployed in the conflict in
On paper,
Eyes Only classified as it was, and in public, if
closed-door Congressional meetings were considered such, Weapon X was a covert
CIA team used to support the military mission in
That was
the public face, or at least the only face that showed when the usual
classification requirements were met.
But it wasn’t the whole story, of course.
Off the
books, there were other facilities, other missions, outside of US borders and
direct CIA control.
The
Canadian facility was the first to target mutants specifically, and the first
to target children. Rather than
augmenting existing powers, it sought to pin down the source of various
mutations, to replicate them in normals if possible, otherwise, to terminate
the experimental subjects.
The mutant
children weren’t people. They were
laboratory animals.
Charles
quickly muffled the killing rage that would have knocked out everyone in the
club if he’d let it go, and forced himself into clarity. This was too important to screw up with upset
and anger; there would be time for that later.
There were
five targets he had identified, and they would lead to the next objective,
rescuing the mutants currently held captive and wiping the memories or otherwise
taking out the ones doing the experimentation.
Early one
morning, before the heat became stifling, he left for a ride with Erik, needing
to get away from the harsh artificial lights and the harried greed that was
In the
stillness of the desert a few miles outside the city, one could completely
forget that the Mob and Howard Hughes had created a false Shangri-La and lured
half the suckers in the country to it.
There was nothing but sand, low brush, the scuttle of lizards as they
searched for sunning rocks, the wind whispering around them. Along the horizon lingered traces of pink and
orange from the dawn, quickly clearing away to bright blue. The air was so clear it felt like a mirage,
as if they’d stepped into a postcard.
Of course, within an hour, it would be hot enough to be unbearable for human
beings, at least those who’d spent most of their adult life in
Erik was
sitting next to him in the convertible, staring at him as if undressing him
with his eyes. Charles flashed through
mental images of Erik’s hands, naked skin, sunburn, sand in uncomfortable
places, and perhaps a scorpion or three, and Erik snickered.
Later,
Charles thought, and Erik nodded his head companionably, the smirk turning
lusty, before fading into seriousness.
“May I?” he
asked, and Erik nodded. Charles took a
deep breath, reached out to lay his hand along the side of Erik’s face, and
brought the memories of the classified documents concerning the Canadian lab to
the forefront of his mind.
It took
mere moments for Erik to absorb the information contained therein.
It took
several more moments for Charles to hang on and not be buried under the
whirlwind of plans and hatred and iron determination that rushed through him
from Erik’s mind. Images and directions
hit him like battering rams, shaking him, but he persevered and fought to make
sense of it.
Through it
all, Erik’s expression did not change one whit.
His body tensed slightly, and his eyes sharpened, but there were no
other physical changes to give any indication of the torrent of information
shaping up in his thoughts.
Dear God,
but the man was incredible. That
laser-sharp focus caused Charles to lose his breath. Erik blinked and looked at him with some
concern.
“All right,
Charles?” he asked quietly.
Charles
looked back a little wildly. “No wonder
you beat me to flinders in chess, my friend.”
Erik raised
a brow, then his eyes widened. “You saw
that?”
Charles
nodded, speechless, then projected, It will work.
Erik almost
smiled. His eyes were feral. Of course it will, he thought back.
Of course,
it did.
~~
Nine thirty
in the morning. Now
the witching hour.
The
facility lay quiet before them, nestled in a deceptively lovely plain next to a
large lake. They were in luck; a winter
storm had passed without snowfall, so they were shadows blending into the
landscape, not highlighted against a white backdrop, as they approached their
target. Charles spared the thought that
future missions would benefit from more control in that area, and wondered if
it would be possible to find a mutant who could control weather. Then he shook off the fanciful thought and
concentrated on the mission.
Infiltration
was relatively easy; Charles knew from pilfered memories whom
to approach, and Mystique took on the form of a requisition squad
commander. Two minutes later, Charles
ensured that the guards saw four soldiers instead of Alex, Sean, Hank and Erik,
along with two new mutant experimentation subjects – Angel and Charles
himself. He worked with the disgust and
boredom most of the soldiers felt, turned away the few whose sympathy was bound
by duty, and less than ten minutes after approaching the base, they were in the
heart of the labs.
The
extensive internal camera system would have been a problem, but Charles knew
where the security hub was. Filtering
into the minds of the two guards currently on watch, he ensured that no matter
what showed on the cameras, they would see empty hallways and unchanging
views. Then Erik quietly fused the
wires, and the screens went blank.
Neither
guard so much as blinked. First obstacle overcome.
They shrank back into the shadows and continued on to the laboratories.
Dale Rice was
the first to die. He’d been examining a
young boy with webbed hands, pinning them apart to delicately slice away
sections of thin membrane, ignoring the tears leaking from the paralyzed boy’s
eyes. Mystique slipped the IV out of the
boy’s arm as Erik used the pole to wrap around the man’s neck like a ribbon and
snap it sideways. Alex caught the
scientist’s body and with a quick burst of energy, incinerated it. Hank moved toward the central processing unit
of the mainframe computer, and set in place an invention of his own, a
time-delayed, self-replicating, destructive sub-program. It would begin in the lab and spread to every
computer with which it had contact.
None of the
records from this house of horrors would be used anywhere else, if he could help
it.
When he was
finished at the keyboard he rejoined his team.
Sean held the still-unconscious boy as they moved forward. Hank, Angel, Sean and Alex moved to the east,
following directions memorized from the map Charles had drawn for them toward
the pens where the children were held.
Charles, Erik, and Mystique headed deeper into the compound, following
Charles’ mental echoes.
Before Rice lost his final breath, Charles had ripped through his mind, and
found the other targets. He could feel
all three of them in the complex.
Abraham
Cornelius and Carol Hines were next.
They were arguing over the body of a young woman with a mutation similar
to Frost’s. Her body was covered in what
looked like armor, an extruded exoskeleton that moved like skin. Hines was prying at a seam in the armor,
ignoring the blood that was seeping onto the table under the body, and
Cornelius was bickering with her over the efficacy of simply removing a limb
then doing a cross-section analysis, whilst Hines was arguing that removing the
limb would cause the mutated skin to revert to normal.
Neither
paid any attention to the terrified expression on the teenager’s face. She was strapped down at the ankle, knee, thigh,
upper chest, elbow, wrist, neck and head, with a leather gag stopping her
screams. Apparently she had to be
conscious for her mutation to react to threat-stimulus.
Charles
cast a mask over the room, instilling calm and relaxed patterns over the two
scientists’ minds, sending the third to sleep, as Mystique came up to them in
the form of Dr. Rice. She caught their
attention and they turned to her. Erik
slipped into the room, and flicked his hand.
Electric cords leapt up from machines behind the two scientists and
wrapped around their throats. A twist, a
tug, and they were both dead.
Charles
reflected that it was almost pathetically easy, when qualms were set aside and
tortured innocents were involved, to take human lives.
Then he
turned to the closest waste bin and lost his breakfast.
Mystique
had dragged the bodies out of the way by the time Charles regained his
composure, looking an apology at his sister and his lover. Erik patted him briefly on the shoulder but
otherwise ignored Charles’ lapse, while Mystique looked like she wanted to join
him, but was too infuriated to be sick.
It was the
work of a moment for Erik to unbind the young woman, then
Mystique shifted into the form of a large man, and picked the her up. Taking her from the bloody steel table, she
brought her into the next room and placed her carefully on a cot. Charles sent a mental map to Hank and got an
affirmative response – the rescue team would make sure she was not left behind,
if the assassination team wasn’t able to pick her up on the way back.
The final
mind Charles could track was Thorton, alone in his office. He was speaking on the telephone as they
approached, and Charles mentally directed Erik and Mystique to freeze. Charles focused, and eavesdropped, on both
the audible conversation and the thoughts of the man holding it.
He was
vile.
The mind on
the other end of the line was equally horrible.
Thorton was
ruthless, and cold. He honestly saw
mutants as sub-humans, and had no more qualms about dissecting them than he
would a cat or a frog. He was seduced by
the knowledge he thought he could glean from the bodies, the power such
knowledge would grant him, and couldn’t care less about the fates of his
victims.
The man with whom he spoke, his mentor, was worse.
John
Sublime hadn’t been able to take Weapon Plus in the direction he’d hoped. He saw mutants as a threat to his existence,
for reasons Charles couldn’t quite fathom… his mind was alien in a way he’d
never encountered. Weapon X was merely a
cover, for Sublime, as a way to stamp out mutant kind completely.
Charles
noted everything he could about the man, the creature, and withdrew as
invisibly as he’d entered. He was an
enemy for another day. A moment later,
the conversation ended, and Thorton hung up the phone. Without hesitation, feeling tainted simply by
viewing the thoughts of the man before him, Charles struck.
His power
drove like a blade deep through Thorton’s cerebellum, then spreading like
lightning strikes crackling along the corpus callosum, branching into the
occipital, temporal and frontal lobes, leaving the parietal lobe for last.
He wasn’t
normally a vicious man, but Charles wanted Thorton to feel it.
The body in
the executive chair froze, then convulsed, then fell over onto his desk, dead
before it hit the surface.
Well, he hadn’t felt it long, but Charles was pretty certain the bastard had
felt most of it before he died.
Erik and Mystique were giving him identical wide-eyed looks. Charles gulped, wiped sweat, and a few tears
he hadn’t realized he’d shed, from his face with both hands, and grimly turned
away.
They had
kids to rescue. The trash could lay where it fell.
The rest of
the mission went by quickly, with no hitches, making several of the team
members sigh with relief. The series of
cages with the mutant children were lightly guarded, and Hank could move
silently for a being of his bulk. They didn’t
have to kill the soldiers; a light rap from Hank’s paws put them out for the
count. Then Angel spat fire into the
locks as Sean called out to the children to calm them, and Alex lifted out
those too injured to move, with Hank at his side.
They
rescued eighteen children that day, including the two they’d found on the
tables. Over a score more were already
dead in their cages.
They met
back at the junction by the offices, Sean and Alex redistributing the injured
among the survivors who could handle them, then moved together out the back
entrance of the labs. Charles covered
them, rendering the children invisible and clouding the guards’ minds, as
Mystique took Thorton’s form to lead the group.
No one questioned the supposed leader of the facility.
Once they
were well away, Charles sent out a pulse.
An alarm blared, and soldiers poured out into the entryway and along the
perimeter, readying to meet a threat that had already passed. Erik nodded at Alex, who steeled himself and
–pushed – flame shooting out to impact the center of the complex, burning down
through the buildings to the bedrock before exploding outward and upward.
The fiery
energy did precisely what it was meant to do… the entirely of the complex went
up in a massive ball of flame. Soldiers
scattered, blown away from the buildings.
Most of them, at least, were saved from certain death, a compromise
Charles had required of Erik, for all Erik’s hatred of those who ‘simply
followed orders.’
We are not
them, Charles sent to his mind, and Erik nodded, still not convinced, but
willing to go along. The leaders were
dead, at least here, and the children were safe, at least from this charnel
house.
One victory at a time.
~~
As Hank
carefully flew the nearly-overloaded jet back to
Moments
stood out, later. Visiting
the half dozen kids in the hastily-arranged infirmary. Staring around the kitchen
at lunch, then slowly going from one member of his team to the next, hugging
every single one of them. Alex
almost shrugged him off, but Charles was strong when he had to be, and in the
end, Alex held him back as strongly as Charles held on. Angel cried on his shoulder, and he was
pretty sure the fur under Hank’s eyes was wet as well. Sean shook, but held up well, and Mystique
didn’t want to let him go. He murmured
quietly to all of them, nonsense words for the most part, backing the sound up
with mental embraces and gratitude and pride at their accomplishments and love.
The last
one he hugged was Erik, and Charles needed it much more than Erik, so Erik
allowed it. Only then, when Erik was
holding him, could Charles begin to relax, but there was still so much to do,
so Charles didn’t indulge, letting go all too soon.
Later,
Erik’s voice ghosted through his mind, and Charles smiled grateful acceptance
at him.
Dinner was
hectic, but oddly quiet, as the new children were welcomed and helped by the
team. Charles thought of all of them as
children, but the newest members of their extended family to receive refuge
looked up to those who had rescued them.
Several of them clustered around Hank, and Mystique shifted into funny
faces for the younger ones. Sean told
stories, fairy tales, and his voice acted like a balm for the more frightened
among them. Angel let some of them pet
her wings, and Alex suffered a few leaning against him – he was surprisingly
good with children. Over it all, Erik
watched calmly, keeping an eye on everyone, while Charles did his best to
project peace and homecoming.
His mind
was completely exhausted by the time they made it to bed, but he also knew he’d
never get any sleep, as his body was still buzzing. He was perched on the edge of the bed,
staring blankly at the chess set and wondering if Erik might like a game, when
the subject of his thoughts walked in the door.
Closed it behind him.
Locked it.
Charles
raised an eyebrow. It would appear it
was now ‘later.’ Erik turned and leaned
against the door, staring at him, then sighed.
“I could
lie and say it gets easier. I wouldn’t
know. I have killed since I was a child,
and have cut out guilt until I can no longer feel it.” His voice was low and his gaze steady. “We are different, you and I. You will feel the guilt, every time, even
when they don’t deserve it. This is not
the last time you will be forced to kill.
You know this.”
He paused
for Charles to respond, but this was the most Charles had ever heard Erik say,
and he was too shocked to say anything himself.
Erik shook his head and walked forward, coming to a stop in front of
Charles, looking down at him.
“I cannot
take away your guilt. I don’t believe
you would want me to.”
Charles shook his head, no. His guilt
helped keep him human. Erik nodded as he
heard the thought.
“Not that
you’re not!” Charles quickly assured him.
In return, he got a half-smile, and the shadows in those beautiful green
eyes lightened a little.
“We are
different,” Erik repeated softly.
Charles
swallowed with a throat gone suddenly dry.
“This is why we will triumph in the end, as long as we are
together.” There will be more battles,
other enemies.
“You will
keep me human, and I will keep you alive,” Erik informed him, then firmly pushed
him back on the bed and knelt over him.
Gazing up
at him with wide eyes, Charles raised a hand and ran it up Erik’s chest, then
around his neck to draw him down into a kiss.
Tomorrow was for battle. Tonight
was to forget, and to feel.
Erik’s agreement
hummed in his mind as they moved together.
Kisses melted from mouths to chests to groins, hands roamed over tensed
muscles and left bruises behind, legs tangled together and slid apart. He wasn’t quite sure how they got out of
their nightclothes but it didn’t really matter, only that they did.
The duvet
ended up on the floor somewhere. It was
a wonder the lamp wasn’t knocked over.
The slipcover on one of the pillows would never be the same, after Erik
used it to prop up Charles’ hips and Charles eventually came all over it. Really, the pillow was a complete loss, too.
Hands
digging into the sheets, eyes closed against the sheer torrent of sensation as
Erik moved within him, blanketing him with heat and full and tight and too much
and never enough, Charles swallowed his moans and let himself go, knowing Erik
would catch him.
Erik’s mind
was as strong as his body, and when Charles couldn’t hold on anymore, Erik
happily drowned right along with him.
Minds whiting out, bodies falling together, Erik muffled his scream in
Charles’ neck and Charles tried to remember how to breathe.
Then
slowly, the heat bled off, and the chill crept around them. Seldom had Charles been so thankful for his
mother’s ostentatious taste as when Erik used the gold threads in the duvet to
pull it up over them, so he didn’t have to move, just rolled over a little and
let Erik wrap them up. Warm. Safe. Complete.
For all the
anguish of the day, there, that night, in the dark, Charles found his reason to
continue the fight.
~~
In the days
and years to come, the Westchester Institute for Gifted Youth would thrive
under the auspices of its headmaster and faculty. The combined strengths of persuasion and
power, forethought and intelligence, allowed Charles and Erik to keep a close
eye on the humans whilst building up a mutant civilization right beneath their
noses, gathering their resources for the day they could protect themselves
enough to either assimilate (Charles) or take over (Erik).
The argument was ongoing.
As was the adventure.
~ end ~