Chapter Text
“Don’t,” Charles whispers, just barely shaking his head, on that beach in Cuba. His eyes are bright with tears, lips quivering as he breathes heavily, shakily. His body is dead weight in Erik’s hands, he’s still looking up at him—he can’t look anywhere else— bleeding out of a hole in his spine that Erik put there. Faintly, Erik can hear the last of the missiles splash into the sea, forgotten just as quick as Charles had collapsed to the ground.
He doesn’t budge. He makes Raven come over to help, and she yells to the others to ensure that they receive medevac from whatever hole Moira crawled out of. Charles is breathing shakily up at the sky, and Erik can do little more than try and keep him still. His thumb pets idly in Charles’ hair, but Erik can’t bring himself to say anything or look away. The words have seared themselves into Erik’s brain, whispered desperately by Charles as they wait: “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs.”
Erik didn’t go to the hospital. He stayed on the ground and let Raven and Hank get ushered onto the helicopter with Charles—Charles had tilted his head towards him as he took off, lips pressed together, tear tracks shiny on his cheeks, and Erik couldn’t look anywhere else. It takes Alex hesitantly patting him on the shoulder to get him to look away.
In the week that Charles is in the hospital, Erik comes and goes from the house. He’s more gone than not—bars, parks, homes that people had forgotten about, just not the house. The whole building aches from Charles’ absence. People skirt around corners and Erik has to pretend not to notice.
Charles must have pulled some strings, because after nine days, they set him up in his bedroom for recovery. Hank begins building Charles a wheelchair, and Erik can feel the new metal being pieced together. At night, when he can't do anything but stare unblinking at the ceiling, he tightens screws and makes sure Hank’s work is as elite as he says it is. (It is.)
Every time Erik leaves his room, he pauses in front of Shaw’s helmet. Sometimes he traces the top of it, fingers dancing along the metal and making it sing in his nerves. But he always leaves it, the invitation there, but as far as Erik can tell, never accepted. He tries not to linger outside of Charles’ room but some days he can’t help himself, hands clasped behind his back, watching the door and hoping something will happen. He can’t do it himself. How would he even begin?
An apology would be nice, comes Charles’ voice just at the edge of his mind, like he was standing right by his side. Erik looks around the halls for a moment before he opens the door, and he can’t find it in himself to be embarrassed as he looks at Charles. He’s in a hospital-issued wheelchair, wearing a flannel matching pajama set, sitting at his desk and taking notes. He doesn’t look up when he says, “Seriously, Erik, you’re thinking so loud you could be shouting.”
“I’m so sorry,” Erik breathes out fast, which does make Charles look up at him. Erik tries to say anything else, flitting through we just want the same thing and I’m so fucking sorry and get angry at me before he just closes his mouth.
Charles wets his lips and sets his pen down in the center of his journal, and laces his fingers together in his lap. “The doctors said I’d never walk again. I made Hank confirm as well,” he says matter of factly—as easy as he would describe the mutation process or the weather outside. “I have sort of come to terms with that. But you know what I don’t understand?”
Erik grits his teeth and shakes his head.
“Why didn’t you come to the hospital?”
Erik blinks, taken aback. “I wanted to.”
“But?”
“I didn’t think you’d want the man who did this to you to be waiting by your bedside.”
Charles hums in understanding. He looks back down at his notebook, closes it around his pen, and wheels himself towards Erik. Erik’s breath is stuck in his throat, but he stays still and schools his expression into something resembling neutral. He’s sure Charles can tell he’s anything but.
Charles stops right in front of Erik. It’s a little shaky, as he’s unused to having to wheel himself anywhere. He says, simply, “You left me.”
It’s like a gunshot goes off, Erik’s ears almost ringing with it as he flinches—just barely, right around the eyes, and Charles' eyes flick between each of Erik's. He swallows thickly and finally says, “That’s not fair.”
“Is it not? You almost took Raven and ran—don’t lie to me and say you weren’t, I don’t need to be a telepath to know that you wanted to do this the hard way. The violent way. Cause more death and destruction as revenge for all the death and destruction they caused, hm?”
“No,” Erik shakes his head, almost inclined to take the off-ramp that Charles had just laid out for him. But he knows Charles better than that. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“Blessing the house, no doubt. Oh, thank you for tinkering with Hank’s already perfect wheelchair for me, that’s too kind,” Charles spits, eyes cold.
“How was I supposed to know you’d want me there? It’s bad enough that I fucking—” Erik wipes a hand over his mouth, frustrated. He shakes his head. Shot you. He can’t make the words come out. He drops his hand back to his side with a thump.
Charles takes a deep breath. “I felt it. When you killed Shaw.”
Erik is about to interject, but Charles holds up a hand.
“I couldn’t let go of him, because then he would hurt you. It was awful, Erik—I, I don’t even know how to begin to describe it. Searing, mainly. Awful. But I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t leave you there.”
Erik wants to sink to his knees. He wants to beg forgiveness into Charles’ lap, no better than a dog begging for a meal, a human begging for their life. He feels uneasy, the coin heavy in his pocket. Charles is the only person Erik knows that can get him on the back foot. Sometimes, it scares him. Charles makes no indication that he can feel any of this, so Erik just echoes, “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re not,” Charles states. His eyes are shiny with tears again. “For the pain you caused me, sure, but not for Shaw. You would do it over again if it meant killing him, yes?”
Erik shakes his head. It’s the fastest response he’s given the entire time he’s been in here. “No, not like that. Not if I knew you could feel it.”
Charles grinds his teeth together, and doesn’t dare look away from Erik. “You shut me out. You didn’t trust me—”
“Of course I trust you, Charles, I said as much. I knew you would try and stop me from killing him.”
“And what good did it do?” Charles asks, voice finally raising. “All the news is talking about the missiles in the air, the mutants on the beach. They’re afraid, Erik. We could’ve had the government on our side.”
“Do you really believe that?” Erik laughs, and Charles scoffs and looks away. “Seriously, Charles, you’re the smartest person I know, but you can’t believe that if we handed Shaw over to the authorities they wouldn’t have tried to bomb that beach with everyone you care about on it. If we wave a big white flag and shout, ‘Don’t shoot us, we may look like the person who tried to start a world war, but we promise we’re different!’”
“We don’t know that because we didn’t try—”
“For all my life, Charles, I have been targeted for being different. I have never had the luxury of not being labeled other . I was a number, and then I was a weapon. I was the story parents tell their kids at night, not the professor with his—” Erik waves vaguely at Charles, “heart of gold and mind of steel. The world is horrible, Charles, and I wish I could see it your way. I really do.”
“Then try,” Charles pleads, one of the tears finally falling down his cheek. Erik’s fingers twitch. “You don’t see Raven as a monster, or Hank, or me, so why can’t you do the same for yourself?”
Erik’s voice wavers a little bit when he says, “I shot you.”
Charles shrugs and wipes under his eye. “We all have our flaws.”
Erik laughs before he can help it—the sound shakes the tension in the room and Charles is chuckling along with him. With a sigh, Erik crosses the room to take one of the seats in front of Charles’ desk, and he watches as Charles comes over. He stops right next to the seat he would normally take, and glances at it before he sets the brake on his chair.
For a long moment, they’re quiet. Erik scrubs his hands down his face and he can feel Charles’ eyes on him—not his mind, though, no poking or prodding that he could sense. He wonders briefly if Charles lets him feel it, since he asked that time outside the mansion, to make sure he’s never unwanted inside his mind.
“Thank you for staying.”
Erik’s head snaps up and Charles is, of course, watching him. His eyes are soft and too understanding, almost twinkling. He offers a small smile and adds, “I know it must’ve been difficult.”
“How can you forgive me?”
“I’m not going to lie, there were a few days in the hospital where I imagined strangling you.”
Erik hangs his head and sighs out a laugh. “I deserve it.”
Charles shrugs. “I feel…so much. My mind is open to so much emotion, so much… everything, really. It can be exhausting, but it’s only worse when I’m letting my own emotions,” he gestures towards the middle of his chest, wiggling his fingers, “fester and turn into something awful. I know you didn’t mean to, just like I know Moira didn’t shoot to kill you. Some things you just have to let go.”
“I don’t deserve that.”
Charles smiles softly, head tilted to the side as he sighs, “Oh darling, you deserve more than you could possibly accept.”
Erik shakes his head in disbelief, mouth a little bit open around a smile. It’s ridiculous—Charles is ridiculous, and part of Erik can’t believe that he thought this conversation would go any different. He almost wants Charles to get angry again, because anyone else in their right mind would. Shit, Erik would kick himself out if he were in Charles’ position.
“Raven was worried about you,” Charles says, and then he laughs to himself. “Well, no, for the first few days she threatened to strangle you for me.”
Erik chuckles. “Again, deserved.”
“But after that she told me you were just sulking around the house.”
Erik opens and closes his mouth a few times, head flinching backwards. “I— no, I wouldn’t say I was sulking.”
Charles’ lips are pressed together to keep from laughing. “Hank would certainly call it sulking.”
“Hank’s still mad at me because he thought I was making fun of him.” Charles opens his mouth to defend him, but Erik points a finger at him and interrupts, “Don’t tell me that’s not true.”
Charles holds his hands up in defense. “All I know is what they report to me.”
“And what they’re thinking. Sort of what you’re famous for.”
“Famous,” Charles echoes with a soft chuckle, running one of his hands through his hair to push it off his face. Erik follows the motion with his eyes—he generally keeps it pretty styled, but in his bedrest it’s softer-looking (somehow), and curling more around his ears. Erik scratches his nails against his pants. “The way they’re talking about us certainly doesn’t feel like it constitutes fame.”
“Infamy is still fame.”
“You are just full of wisdom,” Charles teases, folding his arms over his chest, “perhaps you should be a teacher here.”
“No,” Erik says quickly, adjusting in the chair, “I am not a professor.”
Charles tilts his head, looking up at Erik with a raised brow. “You paralyzed me, Erik, it’s really the least you could do to repay me.”
Erik barks out an unexpected laugh, and it clearly surprises Charles as well, because his eyes go a little bit wide before he laughs along with him.
“That’s not fair,” Erik says finally, still chuckling a little, wiping a tear out of the corner of his eye as he stands up to leave.
“Professor Magneto,” Charles sing-songs.
Erik flaps a hand dismissively and heads towards the door. “Absolutely insufferable.”
“What do you think Professor Magneto is going to teach?” Charles calls as Erik’s hand lands on the doorknob. When Erik turns, Charles has a large, shit-eating grin on his face, and Erik can suddenly hear his heartbeat in his ears.
“Half of these kids couldn’t throw a punch to save their lives. They really do take after you.”
Charles’ laugh echoes down the hall as Erik walks out and closes the door behind him. He’s still smiling down at the floor—as he passes a doorway, he sees a blur of blue tuck around the corner, followed by frantic whispering to get each other to be quiet. In his mind, Charles simply says, They’ve been out there for the last ten minutes. Sorry.