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Erik calls Charles at nine in the evening, which in itself isn't that unusual, but considering that he went home just an hour ago, it is a little strange. What he wants is a bit unusual too.
"Could you babysit the twins for a couple of hours on the nineteenth?" he asks. Charles has never done that before; yes, he and Erik have watched them, and Charles has spent time with them at the Lehnsherr house, but this is new. Also, the nineteenth is in almost three weeks, which suggests long-term planning for something that must involve Edie, Jakob and Erik at least, and likely Lorna too. This is the first time Charles hears of it.
"Of course," he agrees immediately. He likes the twins, and he should be fine for a couple of hours. Any longer and he'd be nervous about his own ability. "What is this about?" he then asks, hesitating over the question a little. He doesn't mean to pry, but it is a little curious. He's never spent time with the twins without Erik or Lorna there.
Erik is silent for a long time, long enough for Charles to worry about what's going on. Maybe he shouldn't have asked, Erik is always so respectful of Charles' boundaries and Charles has been trying to learn patience from him, but clearly he has a long way to go still.
"I had a sister," Erik suddenly says, when Charles isn't expecting an answer anymore.
Had. Past tense, so he's not speaking of Lorna. "What?" Charles hears himself say. His voice is high, wavers a little. This can only mean one thing, and Charles doesn't want to be right.
"Anya," Erik says, voice a bit hushed, wrapping around the word tenderly as if it hurts in a well-beloved, familiar way. It's clear Erik loves her still.
All this vanishes when he says the next words. "She was murdered at Genosha."
Breathe, Charles reminds himself. With forced calm, he says the first thing he thinks to say, "There are no photos of her on the walls." The walls of the Lehnsherr house are plastered with photos, most of them of the last two years but also some of before Genosha, just enough to make the three year gap of Genosha and the recovery year between before and after visible, but not shoving it in anybody's face. Charles hadn't noticed an unknown girl in them.
"She's in a family photo, the Hanukkah one."
Ah, yes. It's a photo of not just the Lehnsherrs Charles is familiar with but of a number of relatives, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents. It's no wonder Charles didn't notice.
"But no others, no," Erik is continuing. "It's too painful for my parents." He takes a deep breath. "She was five when we were taken. They did the same things to her they did to Lorna, trying to get her to manifest, only she didn't, so it got worse. Eventually, she died."
Charles wants to weep for Erik and his whole family, the pain that was inflicted upon them that they didn't deserve – that nobody deserves. But this isn't about him.
As if he had known that Charles would need a moment to collect himself, Erik continues after a small pause, "We never really… talked about it. There was so much other stuff to talk about, to work through, and it was just too painful. I think we can do it now."
"That's good," Charles manages to say. He doesn't scramble to explain that of course he's sorry about Anya; Erik knows that, and anyway, Erik hates that sort of thing. Charles can never truly understand, and Erik doesn't want him to.
"Maybe we could have earlier, but not with the twins there, and there was nobody mama would have trusted them to anyway."
Charles swallows, really not sure what to feel anymore. A part of him is happy, wants to flush with pride because apparently Edie trusts him, but Erik's sister is dead, and that's horrible.
"I would love to watch the twins," he eventually says, because there is nothing else he can think of saying. He's not good with words.
"Okay," Erik replies. "I'll tell mama."
There's a pause during which they just listen to each other breathe; Erik's breath is not calm per se, a little shallow, but not upset. Charles tries to match the rhythm. He still feels like crying, but he doesn't want to do it while on the phone. He keeps getting upset about bad things, and then Erik has to comfort him, and while that's fine where Charles' own past is concerned, it isn't really when it's about Erik. Charles should be the one doing the comforting, instead of needing to be comforted. That's just not fair.
"Are you okay?" Charles eventually manages to ask.
"No," Erik says. His voice doesn't shake like Charles' did. "We talked about it, a little, today. Just enough to decide we needed to talk about it. Mama asked me to ask you to watch Wanda and Pietro – well, she wanted to ask you, but I wanted to talk to you first, because you didn't know about Anya. They're too young to understand, it would just upset them unduly."
"Of course," Charles agrees. Swallowing, he asks again, because Erik sort of deflected the question, "Are you okay?"
Erik draws a shaky breath. "Sometimes I don't think I will ever be, because there are so many things that will never be."
A small noise escapes Charles' throat, strangled and high. He curls in on himself and pulls the blanket over his head, squeezing his eyes shut and biting his lower lip, holding his breath.
"Charles, it's alright." It's not, Charles wants to raise his voice, because it isn't, it really isn't, but Erik continues, "It's only sometimes." He breathes. "It's okay," he says then, very gentle. "Whatever you're doing, Charles, I want you to stop it. It's okay to be upset."
"I always get upset," Charles says, voice wobbling terribly. Hot tears collect in the corners of his eyes only to drip out when he blinks.
"It's okay," Erik soothes. Charles wants to tell him that it's anything but, but refrains. He doesn't want to make this about himself again the way he does when he gets upset.
"Erik," he says instead.
"Charles," Erik returns, a challenge. Then he sighs. "It makes me feel… like it's okay to be upset, when you get upset. And ironically, that makes me less upset. …that sounds so wrong."
Charles sniffles. He really doesn't know anymore what he's thinking.
"You make me feel like it's okay," Erik murmurs quietly in his ear. "You don't even need to do anything, just knowing you're there for me makes me feel better."
"You too," Charles manages to say. He doesn't normally talk about this sort of thing, he doesn't like it when people know he isn't always happy. It makes him feel like he's putting pressure on them to make sure he isn't unhappy. But he thinks Erik deserves his honesty. "When I'm… when I'm not okay, thinking of you makes me feel better."
"Good," Erik says. He takes a deep, audible breath; Charles copies him, trying to calm down. God, he thinks with sudden clarity. Erik lost a sister, and as if that alone weren't bad enough already, the circumstances were completely awful. The mere idea of Raven going through half the things Lorna and especially Anya must have gone through makes Charles feel shaky, feverish with fear and pain and anger. He honestly admires Erik for having managed to learn to cope without becoming consumed with it.
"I did," Erik confesses quietly, making Charles realize belatedly that he said that part out loud. "It's the only way I survived there."
Charles remains completely quiet. They've never talked about it, not like that, in the whole two months since Erik had told him. It hadn't been a forbidden topic, Erik had talked about things directly related – therapy, friends – and he hadn't avoided it if it had come up somehow (like that time they had talked about something Charles did when he was twelve; Erik had been in Genosha at the time), but they hadn't talked about it like this. Charles had refrained from asking any questions, unsure whether it was okay to ask, scared of the answers. Just knowing Erik had been there had had a huge impact on Charles.
Erik's breath becomes ragged as he audibly struggles to say his next words, "Charles, I did something there."
It makes Charles feel incredibly helpless; if Erik were here he'd wrap his arms around him and bathe him in his affection, but over the distance he can't. The only thing he has right now is words and the hope that that'll be enough for now. "I love you. Nothing you have done could change that." And maybe it's naïve, but Charles truly believes that.
Erik swallows noisily. "There was this man. He… he was one of the bosses, he… he was a scientist, and he was one of us, Charles."
"Sebastian Shaw," Charles realizes. They had covered this briefly in Current History and Charles had investigated further out of his own volition before he had even known he was even more involved than just by being a mutant who had escaped on luck alone. Shaw had especially horrified him, not merely because of the things he had done, but because it hadn't all been just for science. He had clearly enjoyed himself, there were countless sources accounting for that – one of them maybe even Erik. Charles quite honestly feels better knowing the man is dead, and there are very few people he feels this way about.
"I killed him," Erik says, thoroughly stopping Charles in his track. Now that he's gotten that part out the words just pour to of him. "He had this special lab without any metal in it or nearby, for me, of course. When things started to fall apart he took his favorites and brought us there, he meant to flee and take us with him, he had a teleporter as an ally. He was wearing a helmet, because of Emma, and… Logan managed to knock it off him. Shaw threw him through a wall for that, he has the power to absorb energy and release it at will, and Logan lost consciousness. While Shaw was distracted Emma managed to take hold of him, for just a moment, just long enough. I took Logan and stabbed Shaw in the head with one of Logan's claws."
Erik and Logan were thirteen, Emma fourteen. Erik had talked about them before; Charles knows that Emma is a telepath and that Logan has superior healing powers. Logan's skeleton had been coated in adamantium, which explained how Erik could have used him.
"I don't regret it," Erik whispers. "I don't even think I should. He deserved it a hundred times over. And I don't think I'd be this okay now if Shaw had escaped, even if he hadn't taken anyone with him."
Silence falls between them, only interrupted by Erik's careful breathing – it's the way he sounds when he's trying not to cry, Charles knows. Erik has never cried in front of Charles, but he's come close.
"Erik," Charles says. His heart is pounding loud in his ears; he doesn't know what to think or say, what Erik expects and, more importantly, what he needs. It hurts to hear what Erik has done, what he's needed to do, but not more than hearing he'd been at Genosha to begin with had hurt.
"I don't regret it," Erik repeats, maybe a bit defiantly, like he expects Charles to pass judgment – as if he had the right. Charles knows very well that he doesn't. He's not been through what Erik's been through; he couldn't possibly understand, even if he had seen it all in his memories, which he hasn't at all. He's incredibly careful with that, only going where Erik explicitly invites him.
"I love you," Charles tells Erik again, because it's true, and because he can't envelop Erik in his feelings to show him the truth of it. "Nothing you could have done could change that. I'm incredibly sorry you had to do that, but I do understand, at least as far as I can. I'm just glad you're not consumed by your past."
Erik exhales. "I might have been," he cautions, but he sounds better now, less tentative. "I'm incredibly lucky nearly my whole family survived, and Emma says she couldn't have held on to Shaw for a moment longer. So much could have gone wrong. I sometimes look back and am amazed that I and my family got off so relatively well."
Charles thinks it's terrible that Erik, with all he went through, considers himself lucky, but Erik does know better than Charles. It makes him feel small and silly, and that makes him feel egoistical.
"I'm glad," he says firmly, because while that is selfish too, he's rather biased and he thinks it's forgivable. "I'm glad your family is fine, and I'm sad I never got to meet Anya."
Erik is quiet for a moment, making Charles worry if he maybe should have refrained form talking about her.
"She didn't have time to grow into herself," he says eventually, "but I think she would have liked you."
"You say that about everybody." The way Erik sometimes talks about him, Charles gets the impression Erik believes he could charm the whole world with his smile.
"And I'm usually right, aren't I," Erik returns unrepentantly. It makes Charles wish he were right only because Erik believes it, but he knows he isn't. His naturally sunny, friendly disposition draws people in, but some of them hate him for it. And then there's his telepathy that negates everything else, makes people withdraw, scared and hostile – and understandably so. Erik is one of the few people who has never worried about that.
He doesn't want to argue, though, especially not now, certainly not when it's about Erik's dead sister.
"How is your family?"
Belatedly, Charles realizes Erik might have been trying to steer the topic towards lighter, safer areas.
"Alright, I guess." Thankfully, Erik doesn't seem cross or uncomfortable talking about it. Charles had noticed that about him before; once his traumas are out in the open Erik is remarkably casual and matter-of-fact with them. He only gets careful when they're not his own; for example he never brings Kurt up if Charles doesn't do it first. "Not fine, of course, but this has been a long time coming, and we all know it. It's the hardest for Lorna, I think."
"What about her?" Charles asks carefully.
"She's worked through this whole thing during therapy," Erik relays readily. Charles knows that this means he has asked Lorna whether he is allowed to talk about it with Charles. It's a sort of thing Erik does where other people's traumas are concerned; he asks permission to talk about it with others, and if he doesn't get it he never lets on that there is something to talk about to begin with. Charles knows this because Erik explained it to him; he takes it very serious. Also, he asked to what extent he's allowed to talk about Charles' childhood with whom.
"Of all of us, she feels the most guilty for surviving, I think," Erik tells him. "But, more than my parents or even me, she was right there. She knows it's not her fault and that it was out of her control. Anya isn't the only one who was murdered when they tried to unlock her powers."
Very carefully, Charles does not think about the implications of that. He's read some of the scientific papers Genosha spawned, and some of them with their callous, casual cruelty still make him nauseous. If he thinks too much about it, especially in consecution with Erik, he'll start to gag.
"I hope we're going to talk about a grave," Erik reveals quietly.
Of course, she wouldn't have one; Charles remembers the pictures and horrified accounts of the ovens where the dead were burned.
"It would be good for mama to have a place to go for her."
For all of them, probably, Charles thinks. Graves are important, even if they're empty.
"There's a nice graveyard close by," Charles says. Inasmuch as graveyards can be nice, of course; he's always found that a weird thing to say. "My father is there." In the family mausoleum.
"Do you go there often?" Erik asks as if he doesn't know – Charles tells him when he goes, so he should.
"Every couple of weeks." He didn't use to go at all; first because his mum never took him, then because he nearly forgot he used to have a father at all. Only for the past year or so has he slowly started getting to know that part of his past again. He's learned that it's- not okay that his mum still gets upset when reminded of it, but that it shouldn't influence his own personal relationship with his father and early childhood. "You can come with me, next time I go."
"To your father's grave, or to see the graveyard?" Erik sounds surprised and vaguely apprehensive. It makes Charles realize that he might be overstepping boundaries a bit.
"My father's grave," he hastily clarifies. "I know that it doesn't even mean anything, that he's dead, but… I've been thinking about bringing you there." It's the truth. He can't really explain it on account of the fact that it's basically just a dead body and earth, crowned by a carved stone. His father isn't there; he's gone. He doesn't even go there for his father, really, but as a way of having a moment to himself. In a way he wants to share that with Erik – just to show him. Only once, because he needs this to himself, but he wants for Erik to know.
"Why doesn't it mean anything?" Erik asks.
"Because he's dead," Charles repeats, confused. "It does mean something, to me, but my father's dead." He could just as well go to the mansion, but that's a bit farther away and it's been closed down anyway.
"But that doesn't have to mean he's not still there."
"No," Charles says, a bit more forceful than necessary. "My father's gone. It's fine if you believe something else, but don't impose your beliefs upon me. He shot himself in the head, Erik, clearly he was quite desperate to leave, and he couldn't have found a more permanent or expressive way of doing so."
"Charles," Erik starts, but Charles interrupts.
"I found him with his brains splattered all over the wall. Don't tell me he's still here." For some reason he's breathing heavily.
Erik is silent for a while; long enough for Charles to calm somewhat and realize to his mortification that he might have overreacted.
"I'm sorry," Erik eventually says.
A small noise escapes Charles' throat. "No, I'm sorry. I overreacted." To his horror, he finds he's close to tears.
"No, Charles. I imposed where I had no business, and I'm sorry." Erik's voice is gentle, without reproach. "I know a bit about what that's like, so let me apologize."
"Okay," Charles says, the word wobbling a little.
Erik sighs. "I have a feeling this conversation can't get any worse by this point."
Right. They've talked about Anya and the things she went through, brushing over what happened to Erik's whole family, talked a bit about feelings and then Charles' father.
"The only way to make it worse would be if we had a disagreement," Charles agrees, trying to go for light-hearted, but his voice is still a bit too watery for that. He isn't sure they didn't just have one, either.
"Not going to happen," Erik says firmly. Then he sighs. "I wish I could be with you right now."
"You are," Charles replies, but he knows what Erik means. He would like nothing more than to hug Erik right now, bring their minds closer.
Erik makes a noise. "Tomorrow." He pauses. "Are you alright?"
Taking a shaky breath, Charles lets the air out slowly and thinks about it. "Not really," he eventually has to admit.
Well-aware that Charles generally does better in company, especially when he's not okay, Erik suggests, "How about you check out if Cain's okay?" He means, of course, that Charles should ask Cain if he can sleep with him tonight. It's clingy and dependant and probably also pathetic, but every now and then Charles can't bear to sleep alone, and his family is long used to it. Charles has a futon he brings to his siblings' rooms if they're okay with him sleeping with them.
"I will." Cain will probably be okay with it and if he isn't, Raven likely will. Even when they have fights, as they've been prone to lately, they're always there for each other in case of emergency.
"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yeah. I love you."
"You too. Goodnight." Erik waits until Charles replies before hanging up, leaving Charles with the dial tone.
For a couple of minutes Charles sits there quietly, just listening to the empty phone and breathing. Then he puts it away and goes to knock on Cain's door.