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It was a moment like a million years, and like the inversion of an atom—the first sound, less than a shout, as though the bullet had been through his throat, because surely the sound should have been more than that—and then the scream, or shout, or sound, or haze, or—and there was a sound on the sand, his knees, they would have hit first, he wasn’t turned yet enough to see past the protruding edge of the helmet—and then the fourth sound; Charles caught himself by one arm, his left, a softer sand sound and Erik did see that one in full, though he didn’t know then that it had left hairline fractures—and then—
“…you did.”
Power on his fingertips and sand beneath his knees and Charles, Charles warm—too warm, a strip of heat across Erik’s thighs—and Charles’s hair between the fingers of one hand and something else—metal—the bullet—
And sounds becoming words and words becoming meaning—
And Charles, Charles’s face, almost angry, though he was never angry—and of course, of course he was hurting Charles again. That was what he did now, wasn’t it?
Erik dropped his hand.
Charles breathed out.
The bullet was a cold ridge between his second and third fingers, hidden in Charles’s orderly mess of almost-curls.
Both his hands were on Charles now, and that was better anyway.
Charles with a rasping shout that went and went and went and the sound of hitting sand and a bullet between his fingers from—and he had known, always, for such a long time, that all the fragile things that one could love can break too easy.
You did.
No. No. Not this.
Charles didn’t look angry now, not like enemy, another enemy, not like walking away—but maybe that was just his lips pressed together in pain, and his eyes, his eyes were still hard and dark and you did—
Erik shook his head minutely, stiffly. “Us turning on each other…” trying to think—“it’s what they want.” And perhaps it was just Charles, the way he was—manipulation comes with telepathy and Charles hated to kill and it wasn’t anger, not from Charles, just another way to make Erik back down, another way to step before another bullet—“I tried to warn you, Charles.”
It was every breath of Charles’s body twice, the hand on his ribs and the arm behind his head that jerked every time he gasped in air, and the way he relaxed like giving up, like letting go, like all the things he couldn’t lose again, not again, not now—
“I want you by my side.”
As though anything else could matter, and cold breaths underwater—
“We’re brothers, you and I.”
—and we’re not alone anymore—
“All of us, together, protecting each other—“
—like family, if that’s what he wanted, like dreams, like nothing else could possibly be, like he had never known he would tear Charles to pieces and Charles had never looked at him like he knew it to because he didn’t, he didn’t want to, he just knew, knew that for a dream like Charles clung to you had to push through the pain—
“We want the same thing.”
As though there had ever been a chance of Charles believing it—believing him.
Charles’s voice was bitter like it was never meant to be. “Oh, my friend…” laughing, if laughing were the way a knife scrapes bone. “I’m sorry…” like always, like always Charles, always sorry and never angry, always above and beyond and brighter than the world--and so simple. “But we do not.”
As though they had not always been plummeting toward an end.
And he really was sorry, eyes wide and blue full of everything left in the world that mattered, where Erik didn’t have the soul left to know what sorry meant.
The pain on his face was transparent too—he didn’t have Erik’s practice hiding it. He needed a doctor. Erik held on a moment longer—Charles’s head in the crook of his arm, by him, beside him inside him where no could reach or touch or hurt—Charles’s breath beneath his fingers where it couldn’t flee—and then focused, and found purpose, and found a plan.
He beckoned the agent over before he stood; she was scum but she would keep Charles focused on consciousness while he fixed this.
The others were staring like they’d never seen a man fall before—and they hadn’t, really. They’d known the taxi driver boy less than days and he’d turned to ash. They were not children, but nor were they men. Still. They were what he had. They were a beginning. And it was, all, that simple, really.
“Their society won’t accept us.” Not even Charles, who no one should ever have wanted to hurt. “We form our own.” And we fight, before nine of them on a beach become a register of names and guns and missiles learn not to be made of metal. “The humans have played their hand!” Because he had been right, because he had always been right, and Charles had made him weak but he could still be strong enough for both of them. They were still both breathing. “Now we get ready to play ours.”
Nine of them, seven strong in one way or another, the others with potential. Sean’s talent had already proved useful today, and the winged stripper could at least defend herself. It was a start, a start that could be built on. Charles’s world, just built with Erik’s hands.
“Who’s with me?”
And they stood, as though the starlight Charles imagined had them all too blinded to move.
Except—yes, the choice was already made in her eyes—the choice had already been made when she’d come to him last night, of course. He held out a hand. “No more hiding.”
And she came, a third to make a people more than just them two.
She went to Charles, of course, as it should be, and perhaps she’d get rid of the agent before he had to fight with a wounded Charles about the stupid bitch, and—
“You—you should go with him.”
With us.
“…it’s what you want.”
What they wanted, what they all wanted, the three of them, Erik and Charles and of course his sister—
“You promised me you would never read my mind.”
And Erik already knew the answer to that, because Charles didn’t need to, Charles hardly ever needed to, he knew things already because his eyes were so wide open, like he’d take the whole world in and remake it beautiful—
“I know. I promised you a great many things, I’m afraid.”
Which was true—Charles had been a blind idiot and Erik should have slapped him for it sooner—but there was still time, if Charles would only stop talking like he was dying, and if Charles would refuse to understand his sister then Erik could explain it, if he really had to, and that would please Charles, that would help to ease his clinging protests, and—
“I’m sorry.”
And he kissed her hand like saying goodbye, and Erik felt his lungs and heart and most of the rest of him set like lead and stone.
Raven leaned forward to kiss her brother’s brow.
They were both saying goodbye. And even if Charles wasn’t thinking straight, Raven had to be able to see he wasn’t dying, as though Erik would possibly let him die, so—
Oh.
Erik had a great deal of practice at showing nothing, at giving no satisfaction to watching eyes, and it served him well.
Raven was planning to follow him, of course, it had been clear since last night that—but Charles wasn’t.
He looked at the spike of his helmet between his eyes, unfocusing them and refocusing them close, then at the palm trees, some singed, beyond the beach, then at the figures, the boys, posthuman, better than this, lined up like toy soldiers in yellow suits—
But Charles had to come. Charles was necessary. Charles wasn’t safe alone, was just as likely to personally offer his head to the CIA on a platter, to swim out to the fleet of ships and try to reason, to throw himself on the mercy of a world that only knew how to hate, and—
Charles had to come. It didn’t—nothing—Charles was—Charles was not thinking straight.
Of course. Charles was soft, not soft but smoothed, glowing, open, vulnerable to that sharp darkness that hid in the hands of men and Erik was an idiot to expect him to think straight in these circumstances, sweaty and sandy and clearly in pain on a bloody and still patchily burning beach with a bullet just out of his back.
That was easy, then. He could take care of this. He could take care of this for both of them, for now.
He held out the hand for Raven as he stood, ignored the bile that rose in his throat as she actually tried to give her brother to the simpering vixen that had begun this mess. Shaw’s three came easily then, the stripper who, it appeared, was inclined to take whichever side asked in a convincing voice, and the other two, probably well-cared-for mercenaries he suspected, willing to work for whoever would keep them now Shaw was gone—dead, empty, removed, erased, sawed through, gone and gone and gone and gone and gone like the most impossible thing.
The three boys were still standing, staring. Well, any nation had its children.
Raven opened her mouth to speak and he silenced her with the smallest smile—a raising of the corners of lips without the usual snake’s eyes, carefully. She had come to him, when even Charles had apparently in his shock lost his senses, and if a few small efforts would bring these few he had close enough to make this work, then he could do that, he could learn that until Charles was well enough and rational enough to do it for him.
Erik’s eyes went to the water, to the sky, wordless, closed things. “They’ll be coming. When they get here this beach should be empty of us.” The slight emphasis on the last word was hate of the practiced kind; his gaze skipped deliberately over Moira like an elision in the landscape.
Angel next to him hunched half in on herself as though the ragged edge of her glassy wing were deforming her; the darkly parodic head of Azazel nodded once downward, smirk no less pronounced than it had been with Shaw alive.
Raven pulled in a breath and Erik could almost see her coming around, coming more and more to his side—Charles was wrong, of course he was wrong and she was seeing that. If Erik hadn’t held off two fleets of missiles, all of them would be dead. She didn’t look at her brother, and perhaps that was just as well. “Westchester’s still secure.”
Erik forbade himself to look at Charles. “No.”
“Only Moira knows,” Raven persisted, “And—“
“Charles is not on our side at present.”
Raven’s lips tightened just a fraction—she did look.
Eric remained impassive. “We do not begin a conscientious resistance by letting him broadcast our location to anyone he trusts on a whim.”
On the sand, Charles made a breathless, incoherent sound, slightly strangled.
Eric did glance then, just a little; shifted his weight that way just barely as his gaze shifted smoothly, sharply back to the remnants of Shaw’s force. In control. “What did he own that we can use?”
Angel had let go his hand to rub at her scorched edges and was hardly likely to know—the other two were surveying him thoughtfully—measuring him, he knew—but Charles got in first regardless. “Eh—k—“he broke off in a cough.
Erik swayed very slightly, the faintest pull in that direction, something like magnetism—he was metal, as much as man, and Charles had pulled all of them in, hadn’t he?—but otherwise ignored him.
Charles swallowed a fourth or fifth cough, spasmed oddly through his shoulders and then, somehow, managed—“Theh-re…children, my friend—I know…you said—were, but—“three panted breaths, four, and—
“Be quiet. Don’t strain yourself, Charles.” He raised one expectant eyebrow at the one called Riptide, standing on Angel’s other side. He’d clearly spent too long with Shaw to be easily intimidated.
Riptide tipped his head to one side, half of a shrug. “Is there a particular part of the world…?”
“It’s done, Erik…” Charles rasped, panted several seconds, “They did—we—“a gasped breath, three in and out, slightly more slowly—“They’re not an army, my friend.”
Erik shifted just slightly, just that same sway of weight, away from the body in the sand. “Not the United States. Not the USSR. Not Britain.” His gaze shifted inward a moment, a suspended breath. “South America somewhere. Argentina would do.” He knew Shaw had land there, at least.
Charles’ hand was moving disconcertingly in the sand—disconcerting because it was not at all clear what he was trying to accomplish, like scrabbling in slow motion. His head tilted back awkwardly, a pitiful-looking attempt to see the conversation. His breath was less snatched than it had been but shallower, not particularly improved.
He swallowed, the movement visible under the stretched taut skin of his neck, and croaked—“Please. Er-hk…what we are…” intense, intent, like everything for Charles “…should not damn them…”
He shut his eyes; his teeth bit sharply into his red, too-red bottom lip, chewed too hard, the futile attempt to block out other pain. One shallow breath, two.
“We’ve been to Argentina,” Riptide noted, half an eye on Charles though he clearly reported to Erik. “Easy.”
“Please,” Charles—not hissed, something more fervent than that, something with less agency. Charles was an optimist, always, and it spoke in that he asked anything at all in his state, but he was not utterly naïve. He did not delude himself that he could demand.
Erik’s eyes went inward—perhaps. They drilled no one person’s skull, at least, and remained so as he murmured; “What do you need to know to travel?”
The one corner of Azazel’s mouth that formed his permanent smirk lifted a little further. “Coordinates. Or a map. Or good directions. ”
Erik nodded, eyes still elsewhere. He turned abruptly, half a turn, not enough to face his friend but enough to prefigure—“Charles. Show him Westchester. Give him a map.”
Charles’ eyes widened, darker than blue with his pupils huge, then half shut again as though his face could not sustain it. “Erik?”
“If Charles shows you a map, you can take these three—“he gestured perfunctorily toward Hank, Alex and Sean—“there, and return here?”
“Hey,” Alex took half a step forward—and stopped, defensive but still, at Erik’s gaze.
“The Professor can come with us,” Hank interjected more carefully.
Erik ignored him. “This is your chance, Charles. Send them back, if you like.”
“I—” Charles shut his eyes hard, shoulders pressing down, rigor-like, into the woman’s leg. “My—” He tipped his head back again, and Erik gestured one hand at Azazel, a beckoning motion with all the welcome of a harpoon.
Azazel took two steps forward, then a third, until he was in Charles’ line of sight. He inclined his head very slightly. His voice was husky. “Telepath.”
Charles looked stricken—that same slow scrabbling for a moment—then the laboured lifting of his arm, two fingers more falling onto his temple than placed there. His eyes shut one breath, two, and—
Azazel stepped back. Alex stepped back as well, perhaps instinctively—reactionary, recoiling.
“Alex…” Charles’s voice had weakened again; strained, choked—thin.
Erik felt—impatient was perhaps the wrong word, but something close. Unwilling to stand further in one place. He turned back to the boys. “You are welcome with us. Unlike Charles, I am aware that none of you are children. However—“
“Why don’t we all go?” Sean sounded more than a little hysterical, though the almost-steadiness of his voice was to his credit. “Let’s all go back. Home. To Charles and Raven’s. And then when the Professor’s feeling less fragged you can talk about it—“
“Go, Sean.” There was the thinnest, saddest smile on Charles’s face, but his words were clear. “And you Hank, and Alex. Look after each other. Just—wait. Be safe. Look after each other.”
One of Erik’s fists was clenching ever tighter against his thigh, betraying what his face would not. Charles didn’t want to come with him, and that made it essential that he take him with him as soon as possible. He gestured meaningfully, silently—efficiently—from the teleporter to the yellow-suited teenagers. Alex stepped forward again, more decisively. “We’re not—“
“Hank.” Charles’s voice broke over Alex’s, ‘we’re not just’ something that died as he glared fury at the prone professor. Charles’s voice was single-mindedly forceful and Erik saw it coming, just, not enough to form a conscious thought but enough to raise his eyebrows—but Charles was so emphatically, righteously reserved with this, always, and the others so emphatically trusted him, that when—“Take their hands,” he directed at Hank, both silent and spoken, calm and deadened—neither of the other boys expected the immediacy, the directedness with which Hank responded, and before either could think to pull away, or to protest, or to be outraged, Azazel had stepped in at Erik’s order, a word ‘go’, a single nod, and they were gone.
Charles slumped down on the agent’s lap, her arm failing to hold his weight without his co-operation, life gone from hands and breath and shoulders, the full length of one arm crushed awkwardly in the sand. Raven released Erik’s hand and took a few steps toward her brother, a half-instinctive check that he was breathing. Erik gestured for Riptide and Angel by him to wait, to stand, and they obeyed without question.
“I should be with them, Erik.” It was a whisper, fight gone, Charles’s eyes half open on the sky above the water, above the boats, where missiles were not now.
Erik said nothing as he knelt perfunctorily in the sand by his friend’s side. The agent looked for a moment as though she might try to fight him—and he held her eyes until her pathetic brain grasped the futility of that, and she murmured something—“Sorry,” perhaps—to Charles before she withdrew, careful, at least. Erik’s arms were strong where the woman’s were not, and it was easy to support Charles so his back was raised properly, so his head was supported and he didn’t have one shoulder sitting in the sand.
Azazel reappeared where the boys had been moments ago, a slight nod at Erik’s glance.
“I will not fight your war, my friend.”
Erik slid his right arm carefully under Charles’ limp body, down at the knees, moved his left to span Charles’s shoulders instead of just propping his head. He kept his eyes on his hands and not Charles’ face.
Charles tried anyway—Charles always tried. “There is nothing to be gained in—“
Words broken off by a high-pitched gasp, the slightest gurgle to it in the throat, as Erik stood and lifted him in one clean movement. Charles hung doll-like in the crooks of Erik’s elbows, head against Erik’s shoulder, hands moving erratically, stiffly above laboured breath, eyes rolled back disturbingly and then returning, pupils huge.
Erik settled the mostly-dead weight of his only and utterly unwilling friend safely against his chest and nodded once more to Azazel.
Raven placed a hand where Erik’s hand rested against Charles’ ribs, and Azazel joined hands simply with Riptide, who connected in turn to Angel, who wrapped her hand probably as tightly as she could manage around Erik’s upper arm, and as Moira stumbled forward, apparently recovering some of her fight at sign of action, a slightly unhinged “He needs a doctor,” and then, eyes wild, “Charles I didn’t know, I—I’ll say nothing, your house—the secret’s safe with—“
If she thought of more to say—of words to forgive two fleets of missiles in the sky, or to disavow the path from difference to fear to hatred to violence, or to rort the will of the metal man evolved beyond her species—then it was said to the shallows, and to the sand, and to the drone of a state-of-the-art helicopter of Marines coming with plans to succeed where missiles had failed.
They would not succeed. This was as close as Erik was willing to come to losing this—to losing everything again—and he would look after them both now.
Somehow, he would look after them all.
Everything was going to be okay.