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Erik didn’t see Raven again until almost a week later.
This was something of a deliberate move on his part. Raven had been thoroughly remorseful in the days following her outburst; the cold, malicious side of her having apparently fled in the face of Erik’s ire and her own burgeoning guilt. She had managed to stay away for almost an entire day before returning to Erik’s door, tail between her legs and heart full of contrition. Erik was vaguely impressed that she had managed to stay away for so long, but still he did not open his door to her; the things she had said whilst in her mood had, despite his best efforts, cut him to the quick and left him full of self-doubt. Was he like the people who visited the Dollhouse? Was he just as bad as they were for feeling as much as he did for Charles?
He would often catch himself thinking this way and when he did, his anger at Raven came flooding back and any sympathy he had for her dried up. He didn’t care that Raven was sorry; he didn’t care that she had problems and issues. He was angry at her, and he would damn well stay angry at her until such a time as he felt ready to forgive her.
Besides, he thought grimly, it was better this way. With Raven no longer welcome into his home, she had no way of delving into the Dollhouse investigation. In this way she was finally fulfilling her promise to keep away from the case, albeit unwillingly. Keeping her distance from the Dollhouse and all things related to it would do her good, Erik was sure of it. Not only would she remain safe from unfriendly attention, but she wouldn’t be wound up so tightly all the time. Erik didn’t know what sort of problems Raven had, but it was easy to see that the investigation into the Dollhouse affected her a lot more than she would have cared to admit. Keeping her away from the case could only benefit her.
And so it was that Erik ignored her knocking and her pleading and her messages, and only left the building at ridiculously early hours when he was sure that Raven would be fast asleep, or otherwise not at all. He was met with success for five long days; on the sixth, however, Raven finally caught up with him.
It was early morning, the sun only tentatively peeking out at the world below, and Erik had just finished his morning jog, feeling tired and sweaty and pleasantly sore. He grunted as he pushed himself up the stairs, his gaze lowered as he took the steps two at a time, and so it was that he didn’t see Raven until she cleared her throat, alerting him to her presence. Erik turned his head sharply even as he angrily kicked himself for not being better aware of his surroundings; next time it might not be a friend waiting for him in a dark corner.
‘Hello,’ Raven said in a small voice.
She was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase to the next floor; if she hadn’t cleared her throat, Erik would have walked right past her in his desire to reach the door to his flat. The window at the end of their corridor threw some light on main hallway, but the stairwell where Raven was sitting was shrouded in darkness and she hadn’t bothered to turn on the light.
Erik hesitated. He was still angry at her, yes, but he had cooled down somewhat in the intervening days and he had found that he missed her. However, while he was not averse to making up with Raven, he couldn’t say that she had chosen a particularly good time to collar him; he was tired out from his run and he wanted nothing better than to go home and take a nice long shower.
As if on cue, Raven spoke.
‘I know that this isn’t the best time,’ she said calmly, ‘But you hardly leave your apartment and you don’t open the door to me, so I didn’t know how else to catch you.’
Erik paused before dipping his head in a short nod.
‘It’s all right,’ he said cautiously, moving around so that he could face her fully while he leaned his back against the wall. He tilted his head and frowned, trying to see her properly through the gloom that surrounded her. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked uncertainly. ‘Only you look … tired.’
Raven did indeed, from what little he could see of her, look exhausted, with her usually voluminous golden hair now lank and the circles under her eyes dark and puffy. She smiled at his observation though, and gave him a wry look.
‘What can I say?’ she said dryly, ‘You keep ridiculous hours.’
Erik smiled at that, despite himself. This, however, seemed to bring Raven back to herself as her own smile slowly faded from her face.
‘It’s not that, of course,’ she said quietly. ‘Well – not just that, at any rate. It’s more. I’ve been … thinking. A lot. About a lot of things.’ She looked up and brought her eyes to meet Erik’s unflinchingly. ‘What I said to you that day – it was wrong of me. So, so wrong. I cannot tell you how sorry I am that I said those things of you. I know-’ she swallowed, ‘-I know that you are nothing like those sick, twisted bastards at the Dollhouse. I know it. But I just – I was angry and frustrated and you’d never stopped me any of the other times that I was being a bitch so I pushed, and I pushed and I …’ she trailed off. ‘And I nearly lost you,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I pushed you and I hurt you and I almost lost you. It’s what I do,’ she said quietly. ‘I push too far and too hard. If people don’t stop me – don’t give me boundaries – then I take advantage of it and end up screwing things up.’ She made a face of pained amusement. ‘“Giving me enough rope to hang myself”, my brother called it.’
Erik watched in silence as Raven’s face screwed up in misery and he let out a mental sigh. Raven had said some awful things, it was true, but perhaps he had been too rash in condemning her. She was only a child, after all, and against all reason and logic she had forged something of a bond with him. His ignoring her … well, she seemed to have taken it badly, from the looks of things. Most people would have called Erik cold and unfeeling, but at that moment he couldn’t summon up the will or the inclination to turn away from the miserable creature on the stairs.
Sighing, he pushed the sweat-slicked hair away from his forehead before fixing Raven with an even look.
‘I won’t pretend to have been happy with the things you said that night,’ he said bluntly. ‘You’re right, you pushed and you went too far, and there are consequences because of that.’ He paused as Raven let out a small noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob, before meeting her eyes. ‘But – I forgive you.’ Through the darkness he could see Raven’s blue eyes widening in surprise and he snorted softly. ‘You’re not the only one with a horrible temper,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘Nor are you the only one to have said things in the heat of the moment that you later regret. There is a reason that I lack for friends, as you so frequently remind me.’
Raven winced slightly even as a tentative smile played on the end of her lips.
‘Just-’ Erik ran his hand through his hair again and sighed, tired, ‘Just don’t do it again. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ Raven readily agreed, the relief clearly apparent in her voice.
Erik nodded at that.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s that then.’ He then turned towards his apartment door, eager to wash the morning’s sweat and dirt off his skin.
‘Erik – wait.’
He paused, wavering for a moment before turning back around. Raven’s features were still in the dark so he could not make out the expression on her face, but when she spoke her voice was low and hesitant.
‘Erik,’ she said quietly. ‘Please don’t be angry with me, but – about Charles …’
Erik immediately stiffened.
‘Yes?’ he asked, unable to keep a hint of coldness from entering his voice.
Raven visibly winced but she doggedly continued.
‘Please don’t think that I … I don’t mean to hurt you – again,’ she said quickly, her words tripping over each other. She seemed unaccountably nervous, her placidity of moments ago replaced with an odd feverishness that immediately put Erik on his guard. ‘But I want – I need to know: why?’
Erik’s eyebrows lowered together.
‘Why what?’ he asked, frowning.
‘Why do you care?’ Raven burst out, sounding baffled and frustrated. ‘What is it about him? What makes him so special? You’ve known that Magda woman for years and yet when you talk about rescuing them it’s him you’re really talking about, it’s his picture that you always look at – and I want to know why! Why do you care about him, what do you want with him?’
Erik stared at her.
‘Nothing,’ he said blankly. ‘I want nothing from him.’
He couldn’t see her face, but even so he could clearly tell that Raven’s expression was one of scepticism.
‘Nothing,’ she repeated flatly. ‘You want … nothing.’
Erik grimaced at her disbelieving tone and looked away.
‘Okay, so that might not be completely true,’ he admitted, looking down at his feet. His stomach twisted slightly as he gathered the right words together in his head. He didn’t know why he was doing it but he felt that he needed to share this with Raven; that he needed to make her understand. ‘I just … I want him to smile at me,’ he said at last, feeling hopelessly stupid and soppy and ridiculous. He swallowed, but now that he had started he found himself unable to do anything but carry on. ‘I want him to smile at me the way he’s smiling in the picture. I want him to say my name and for him to know me, and for me to know him in return. I want him to be free. I want … that.’
He gritted his teeth together in the expectation of laughter or a scornful remark. He was therefore surprised when he heard nothing of the kind; instead, he was met with silence, the only sound that of Raven’s slightly elevated breathing and his own heartbeat thrumming in his ears.
It was a moment before Raven spoke.
‘You’re in love with him,’ she said in an odd voice, her expression still hidden by the shadows on the stairs. ‘I didn’t believe it – not at first. But you’re really in love with him. You don’t even know him, but you love him.’
Erik just stood there, silent.
‘Christ,’ Raven whispered to herself, a movement in the darkness showing her to have dug her fingers into her hair. ‘Christ. You poor bastard.’ She swallowed and looked up at Erik, a ray of light throwing her face into relief. ‘Do you even know what you are letting yourself in for?’
Erik frowned.
‘I think I can guess,’ he said, rather stiffly.
But Raven let out a hollow laugh.
‘No, Erik,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No, you really can’t. And the fact that you know and love him despite his being completely unaware of your existence is the least of it.’
Erik didn’t say anything.
‘Suppose we do it,’ Raven said suddenly, her eyes fixed on his. ‘Suppose we do manage to find him and liberate him from the Dollhouse. Let’s say that we get in there and miraculously manage to reset his mind and bring him out unscathed and the Dollhouse let us walk. What then?’ She ploughed on in the face of Erik’s uncomprehending look. ‘What if he has family? What if he has a lover? What if he’s straight?’
‘I …’ Erik started but he couldn’t continue. He didn’t know how.
‘Let’s go further,’ Raven said insistently. ‘Let’s say that he doesn’t have any family or any sort of past that he wants to go back to. Let’s say that the two of you … get together, as such. Would you want him then?’
Erik stared at her.
‘Well,’ he stumbled out, ‘of course I would want-’
‘But would you?’ Raven said, and her expression was filled with intensity. ‘What if it’s just the chase that you like? The quest? Or worse,’ she whispered. ‘What if it’s not Charles you love, but the image in your head that you have of him? What if you meet him and he’s not the sweet, wonderful man that you know and love, but something else, something that – that disappoints you?’
Erik was watching Raven closely now, his eyes intent on hers.
‘It wouldn’t matter,’ he said softly, and Raven’s eyes flew up to his. ‘Whatever I feel – or don’t feel, for that matter – it won’t matter. Charles has no idea who I am. He’s never met me. He won’t care either way.’
‘But what about you?’ Raven persisted, almost desperately. ‘What if you meet him and he’s nothing like what you thought he was and your view of him is tarnished forever?’ She swallowed. ‘What if, when you sat down and thought about it, you started to think that all these years – all this time that you spent hunting and searching, sacrificing so goddamn much … what if you felt that-’ she swallowed, ‘-that it wasn’t worth it?’ Her voice lowered to a barely audible whisper. ‘That you weren’t worth it?’
Erik was looking at her now, and he could tell that he was missing a very large piece of the puzzle.
‘Raven,’ he said slowly, taking a step closer to her. ‘Raven, what is this? What are we talking about?’
Raven looked up at him with red, tear-filled eyes.
‘It’s all my fault,’ she choked out, tears finally falling. ‘He’s in there, he’s being made to do god knows what, and it’s all my fault!’ She gasped, clutching her hands to her chest. ‘My Charles, my poor, poor Charles!’
‘Raven!’ and then Erik’s hands were on her shoulders and he was clutching her tight, his eyes fierce and his expression taut. ‘Raven, what do you mean? What are you saying? Who is Charles to you?’
And Raven looked up at him through, large, puffy eyes.
‘My brother,’ she said at last, tears falling from her eyes. ‘Charles Xavier is my brother, and I am the reason that he’s in the Dollhouse.’