Work Text:
There are shouts of children at play drifting in from the open windows, but the study is otherwise quiet. Erik laces his fingers together, resting them against the cool wood of Charles' desk. On the other side, Charles is puttering about the portable stove, carefully pouring boiling water out of the kettle's spout into two cups. Idly, Erik reaches forward with his power, sending the kettle swinging just the tiniest bit. He could do so much more, he knows. En Sabah Nur may be gone, but his “gift” to Erik remains as potent as ever. He could disintegrate the kettle into the tiniest of shards, send boiling water pouring all over Charles.
“Sugar?” Charles asks.
Erik blinks, startled out of his reverie. “Pardon?”
“You never liked it before, but I try not to presume,” Charles says. He looks over his shoulder with an inquiring glance. “We've got milk and cream if you prefer those.”
Erik clears his throat. “No thank you,” he says.
“As you will,” Charles says, sounding unbothered. He turns around, a tray balanced precariously on his lap with two cups on top of it. Wheeling himself over to the table, he sets the tray on the table and gestures at one of the cups, the stainless steel one. “It's all yours.”
The metal of the cup sings to him, begging for his touch. Erik looks at it for a moment, tracing the smooth surface of the metal with his power. He has no doubt that Charles found this cup somewhere specifically for him, given that the other cup on the table is made of dainty porcelain. He reaches forward with his power, lifting it into his hand. Taking a sip from it, he allows himself the tiniest of smiles. Trust Charles to have only the finest of everything, particularly tea.
He looks up to meet clear blue eyes. Charles' gaze is thoughtful, lined with age and yet just as earnest as the day they met all those years ago. The baldness is something new, though, and Erik takes a moment to admit to himself that he's going to miss that hair. And those eyes. They're very much like Magda's eyes, beautiful and blue and so very warm. Just like Magda herself, embodied in everything she did: the way she welcomed him home every night, the way that she wholeheartedly embraced her mutant husband and daughter despite being human herself, the way she—
He blinks, breaking the held gaze. Maybe Charles won't notice, he thinks, but he scoffs at the thought even as it crosses his mind. Damn telepaths and their omniscience. He breathes in deeply, forcing himself to ride out the all-too-familiar rush of grief. Some distant part of his mind notes with dull surprise that there's no anger, not anymore. There's just a deep weariness, an exhaustion that's been held at bay through sheer adrenaline. He leveled a city for Magda. He destroyed Auchwitz for the memory of his family. He's killed and ruined and fought so hard for revenge, and in the end? he's just as empty-handed as when he started.
Charles is silent on the other end of the table. Erik takes a deep breath and straightens up. He glances at Charles' face and frowns a little at the look he sees: Charles isn't bleeding empathy like he's always done at Erik's inner turmoil. There's concern and curiosity, but it's strangely bland, almost distant.
For lack of anything better to do, Erik takes another sip of the tea. Outside, someone shrieks, hopefully in enthusiasm rather than agony. “I,” Erik begins, and then he stops. He can't talk about Magda or the life he led with her. He doesn't particularly want to talk about En Sabah Nur and Cairo. So that leaves—well, not much.
“I like what you've done with this place,” he says. It's inane, but it's a safer topic than anything else he can think of. “You dreamt of having a school for us, a safe haven. And now it's come true.”
Charles is silent. When he finally speaks, it's with a small smile that's tinged with something that Erik can't quite put his finger on. “It did. It has. Thank you for rebuilding the house, by the way. It would have been bothersome to find a new location.”
“Only you, Charles, could call this place a house,” Erik says, injecting just the slightest hint of causticity into his tone.
The smile broadens. “I'm doomed to be disgustingly rich. I'll try not to let it get to my head.”
“Too late,” Erik murmurs. And it's true that Charles has always been defined by his wealth, everything from his casual generosity to his unconscious arrogance. The wealth itself had never been something that Erik had envied, but in some ways he'd coveted the naivete that came with it. But that's long since been buried with the weight of the years, hasn't it?
He's staring at Charles, and he doesn't quite realize that he's waiting for the man to respond to the unspoken question until no such response comes. Charles merely raises an eyebrow, though, sipping his tea with ludicrous calm. “Yes, Erik?” he says. “Something on your mind?”
Erik frowns. “Wouldn't you be the first to know what I'm thinking?”
Charles doesn't answer for a moment. Then: “Would you like me to be?”
The answer, fast and instinctive, is no. He's got enough demons running about in his head that Charles can stay firmly out. The answer must show on his face, because Charles leans back in his chair with a shrug. “All right. Then you'll have to use your words, Erik. I can't read your mind if you won't let me.”
“Of course you can,” Erik says. It's not a statement of resentment, just a declaration of fact. “You could read the minds of the whole world if you wanted to now, can't you?”
“Yes, I can,” Charles says calmly. “And do much more besides. As for you, you could uproot the earth's core if you so desired. We're both very dangerous weapons, aren't we? Far more now than ever before.”
Erik frowns, studying Charles with a critical eye. That's exactly the line that Charles has always preached against, that Erik's more than just the weapon first forged by Sebastian Shaw and by so much thereafter. There's no hint of sarcasm or blitheness to Charles' tone, though, just an unrelenting certainty. “You seem very at home with your newfound power,” Erik says carefully.
The corner of Charles' mouth twists up in a wry smile. “Well, I briefly considered making myself world dictator, but I suspect that would just lead to more paperwork than I already have to deal with. You?”
Charles' words invite a joke in return, but that itself is a lie. There's an ugly, snarled mess underneath that tranquil tone, and Erik takes his time working out an answer. When he finally does, it's surprisingly simple. “No,” he says. “I'm done with that. No more.”
No more death. No more killing. Magda and Nina are dead. His parents are dead. Azazel, Janos, Emma, all the mutants who followed him in years past—dead. En Sabah Nur offered him revenge, power at the price of yet more lives. He's levelled countless buildings and killed more people than he cares to remember, and there's nothing but a swathe of destruction to show for it. He's done now, perhaps for good.
The last thought is startling in its resonance. He pauses, fingers playing with the handle of the cup. It molds itself obligingly under his touch, but there are no answers to be found in the metal. What does he even mean? What's next?
“So what will you do next?” Charles asks, enough of a perfect copy of Erik's thoughts that he can't help but startle a little. “Where will you go?” He pauses, and then adds softly, “You're welcome to stay here, you know.”
Erik expected the words on some level, but somehow they still manage to take him aback. “Of course I am. What would I have to do to not be welcome, Charles?” he asks, feeling oddly exasperated and fond all at once. “You're far too forgiving.”
“And you're not beyond forgiveness,” Charles says quietly.
Erik sucks in a breath, the fondness evaporating in an instant. There's something very plain and yet unbelievably arrogant to those words, and the retort is ready on the tip of his tongue. Charles thinks that Erik can be forgiven. Charles thinks that he's some sort of messiah, doling out grace to those worthy of it. Saintly Charles, good Charles, brave and noble enough to spit in En Sabah Nur's face even when paraplegic in the face of four gods and their master. And now he's saying this to Erik, like Erik needs his forgiveness, like he has to grovel for it like a dog.
He pushes himself away from the table, unable to sit still. There's metal everywhere in the room, starting with Charles' own wheelchair. He reaches out to it, trying to let its familiar presence calm him down. Charles is watching him, still so damnably calm, and Erik turns his back on him to stare out the window. He rebuilt this house. He knows every inch of metal inside of it. It's a measure of control where he has little else in his life right now.
The wheelchair is soundless, but Erik doesn't have to turn around to know that Charles is wheeling towards him, stopping the chair on Erik's left. “Mutant teachers are far and few in between, as it turns out,” Charles says. “You have experience. You have the patience for it, whether or not you'll acknowledge it.” Erik turns to look at him, and Charles smiles up at him, the expression wry but genuine for the first time since the conversation started. “And I daresay I pay a competitive salary.”
Erik breathes in, out, centering himself in metal. Finally, he says, “I don't need your charity, Charles.”
“This isn't charity. This is a negotiation. I—we—could use someone like you. And Raven's setting her X-Men project running off the ground. She would be a fine mentor, I'm sure, but a second voice would be very helpful.”
Erik raises an eyebrow. “A second voice? Are you distancing yourself from your combat troops, then?”
Charles laughs softly. “My mistake. I'm not too overfond of the idea, but I won't run away from claiming the responsibility. A third voice, then. Or a fourth. I think Hank is quite enthusiastic as well. I'm sure he's thrilled that you rebuilt his stealth plane.”
“It's an excellent piece of craftsmanship,” Erik offers gruffly. He pieced together the components to rebuild it, but he has no doubt that Hank still knows it far better than he ever will. “You told him to spare no expense, didn't you?”
“Not in those exact words,” Charles says, sounding rueful. “But Hank's ideas are generally quite good. I've learned that his judgment is very sound, probably sounder than mine. Evidently that translates to a multi-million dollar jet underneath my basketball court. We'll have to take it for its inaugural flight soon.”
“That'll be a sight. Make sure to clear the court before launch.”
“I'll let everyone know before it occurs,” Charles says, tapping his temple with a finger. “Although I suppose it does make the 'stealth' part of stealth jet rather redundant if I'm broadcasting it to the whole of the school. I'll have to build some sort of tunnel out into the woods somewhere.”
“Ask the boy to blast it,” Erik says with a shrug. “A Summers, I presume? I'm surprised that he came along instead of Alex. Where is he, anyway? Has your protege finally fled for better prospects?”
He meant it jokingly. To his surprise, a shadow passes over Charles' face, and the other man looks away. Erik knows that particular brand of silence far better than he should, and that familiar sense of numb finality settles over him. “What happened?” he asks. He thinks back to the last time he saw Alex Summers: when he came in with En Sabah Nur to capture Charles just a few days and yet a lifetime ago. The man was well and alive back then, even blasting at them in a farewell gift—
Oh.
“He was closest to the blast. Peter saved all the rest,” Charles is saying. “And you and Jean rebuilt the house. It could have been much worse, really.”
“I'm sorry,” Erik says gruffly. “For what it's worth.” Which, he knows, is not much. Sorry had never healed the grief of Erik's own losses, after all, and neither had revenge. He takes a breath. “He was a good man.”
“Yes,” Charles says. “He was.” He leans back in his chair with a sigh, still not looking at Erik. “He was one of the first, wasn't he? And now his younger brother is here to take up the mantle in his stead. I wonder what I'll tell his parents if another Summers boy dies under my watch.”
“Alex wasn't a boy,” Erik points out. “He was a man who made his own decisions. You're not responsible for the whole world, Charles.”
Charles huffs out something that might be close to a laugh. “One of the perils of being granted godlike power, I'm afraid.”
Erik pauses, choosing his next words with care. “I'm afraid that En Sabah Nur had nothing to do with that particular tendency. Old friend.”
“Are you saying that I martyr myself for the world, Erik?” Charles asks, and there's a hint of challenge in his tone.
“No. You're too controlling to be a passive martyr,” Erik says bluntly. “You'd rearrange the world, maybe.”
“Good thing I have some sort of conscience, then,” Charles says somberly. Erik's not too sure if the words are directed at him, and Charles' expression is distant again, yielding no answers. Erik wonders briefly where his thoughts lie—here in the room, or a thousand miles away skimming through some stranger's thoughts?
And the most frightening thing is that he'll never know if Charles is listening, because no one can know. Erik is no stranger to psychics, and he's learned how to build psychic shields. Even in the halcyon early days of his acquaintance with Charles, he'd always had reservations about a stranger poking around in his mind, and he's made it his business to know how to keep people out. He has no doubt, though, that Charles is powerful and subtle enough now to slip in and out without leaving a trace. Far more easily than Erik ever could, he could destroy the world in an instant.
Erik wants his helmet.
He doesn't want his helmet.
He forces the thoughts down, searching for a different topic.
“I'm surprised that you didn't try to find me after D.C.,” he says after a moment. He braces himself against the windowsill, tracing the wood with a forcedly idle finger. “Surely it wasn't out of a lack of the ability to do so.”
Charles' eyes focus on him, and Erik's absurdly glad for the razor-sharp attention in his eyes. It's been a very long time since Charles has looked at him in that way, and Erik can't quite put a name to the feeling it brings. “Well, you dropped a stadium on me and then floated away. I rather assumed that meant you wanted to be left alone.”
Erik clears his throat. “For what it counts, I didn't mean to drop it on you. You were just very close to the actual target.”
“Oddly enough, stadiums are not weapons famed for their delicacy,” Charles says, but he looks amused. “Or for their value as weaponry, while we're at it. Well. In the end, no one died, and that's what matters.” He tilts his head, leaning back in his chair. “All in all, I assumed that you would come find me when you needed to. You know where I live and all that.”
“True. But would I have been welcome?” Erik says wryly.
Charles' mouth curls up in a half-smile. “Fair enough. I don't suppose I would have been pleased to see you, that's true. But I wouldn't have sent you away if you truly needed help.” The smile fades, but the intensity in Charles' eyes remains. “I am truly sorry that I didn't help you when you needed it most. No one should have to suffer that kind of loss twice in one lifetime.”
The words are gentle, but they're unexpected, striking hard like visceral blows to where it hurts most. Erik sucks in a sharp breath, fingers scrabbling for balance against the windowsill. He contemplates briefly whether he should just leave and scatter this conversation to the winds. He wants to punch Charles right now, and he knows that the other man won't stop him from going.
He measures his words out carefully, making sure that his tone is calm and level before he speaks again. “It had nothing to do with you,” he says, and the words are stilted but controlled. “But I thank you for your concern.”
Charles' gaze is still fixed on his, so damnably empathetic. “I don't have to look in your mind to know how angry you still are, Erik.”
Erik offers him a smile, all teeth and no humor. “Charles, spare me the sermon. I stepped away from En Sabah Nur, that's true, but I don't need a lecture on the power of forgiveness.” He shakes his head. “And don't say that you understand, Charles, because you don't. Getting a glimpse of my mind doesn't nearly match having to live with it.”
Charles is silent for a moment. “All right,” he says finally, and something inside Erik involuntarily flinches at the concession. “One more question, then, and I promise I won't pry further. Is that all right?”
“Depends on the question,” Erik says warily.
“Why did you turn on En Sabah Nur?” Charles asks, and Erik lets out something that's half-laugh, half-snort. “You don't have to answer if you don't want to.”
“Trust you, Charles, to always pry,” Erik mutters. “What would you like to hear? That I decided that following a megalomaniac was one maniac too many? That I heard the siren call of love and friendship calling my name?”
“A little melodramatic, but yes, if you like,” Charles drawls. “Look. I'm not asking to judge you, Erik. I'm just curious.”
“You're always curious.”
“Incurably so,” Charles says, sounding almost teasing. He shifts in his chair, hands reaching out to adjust his legs to what must be a more comfortable position. Erik watches the movement: it's casual and unthinking, as if Charles drags about his dead limbs every day of his life. Which he does, of course, and that's an old guilt that Erik will never be able to forget. Yet another casualty of war left in his wake. He remembers Charles sprawled helpless on a beach in Cuba. He remembers him lying on the ground in Cairo as they looked upon the city like gods upon ants. Erik had turned away at En Sabah Nur's command, left him to an unknown fate at a madman's hands.
“What happened in the pyramid?” he asks quietly. Charles looks at him with an inquiring glance. “After Angel brought you inside. What happened?”
“You're changing the subject. Not very subtly, may I add,” Charles says dryly.
“Good thing I'm not trying to be subtle,” Erik says. He spreads his hands. “You went in with hair and emerged bald. I think that's something worth asking about.”
Charles laughs, but the humor is gone in the next instant. The question's brought something dark to life in his eyes, and Erik wonders if he should've asked. If Charles is good at finding Erik's open wounds, perhaps Erik has just inadvertently returned the favor. “He,” Charles says, and then he stops, licking his lips. A moment passes by, then: “He wanted me. Wanted my power.” He shrugs. “And he was prepared to do whatever it took to get it.”
There's a long story lurking behind those simple sentences. Charles drums his fingers against the armrest of his chair, and it's the first visible sign of uneasiness that Erik's seen from him. Erik takes a breath. “I shouldn't have left you,” he says quietly, and it's as close to an apology as he can make. “En Sabah Nur was wrong.”
“Better late than never, I suppose,” Charles says lightly. “You changed when it mattered. My students will be in awe of the Master of Magnetism for years on end.”
There's such a distance between them, Erik thinks suddenly, and the words pain him more than he wants to realize. They're talking about everything and yet nothing, because they can't talk about anything that matters. It shouldn't matter. He hasn't talked to Charles for a decade, not since that day in D.C., and there's no doubt that they've grown apart in the twenty years since they first met. They can go on like this, part ways like this. It's nothing that Erik isn't used to, after all.
A bell rings somewhere, low and sonorous. Charles blinks and shakes himself as if emerging out of a reverie. “That's the dinner bell,” he says. “Would you like to stay for dinner? Again, you're welcome to stay as long as you like.”
“Still trying to press that job offer on me?” Erik asks, only half-joking.
Charles' eyes are deadly serious as they meet his. “Always,” he says, and his voice is unexpectedly quiet. For a moment, just one frozen moment, Erik wants to say yes. Maybe he could have this. Maybe he can stay here, teach Charles' students, share Charles' beliefs, have Charles—
Charles smiles at him. It's warm, and yet Erik has the feeling that a mask has just slid back into place. “Come along. Mrs. Evans has brought her famous homemade apple pie, and you don't want to miss that.”
Erik swallows. Apple pie. That's nice. It's such a very American thing, plain and prosaic and safe. “Of course,” he says. He looks out the window, where the children are streaming in to heed the dinner call. “You go on ahead. I'll be right there.”
Charles looks at him searchingly for a moment, and Erik thinks that he might be about to say something else. Or perhaps he's just imagining it, what with the lost opportunity leaving an acidic taste in his mouth. “Of course,” are the words that come out instead. “I'll see you there, then.”
Charles wheels out of the room, leaving the door open just a crack behind him. Erik follows the pulse of his chair down the hall to the dining room where throngs of children have already gathered. There's metal everywhere—jewelry, cutlery—but the wheelchair shines bright in Erik's mind.
This isn't the place for him, he thinks, and the thought is tinged with a terrible melancholy. But what, then, is his place? He'd had a place with Magda and Nina. He'd carved it out from a life of solitary silence, and he'd lost it in a single moment. Does he have the strength to try again? But what would be the point if it can be taken away so easily?
There's laughter from the dining room, loud enough that Erik can hear it in the study. He steps out the door, heading in the opposite direction to the front door. He'll eat later, he decides. A walk through the vast acres behind the mansion will do well to clear his head right now. There's always food in the kitchen, and after all, Charles won't mind. He never does.
He doesn't end up walking so much as running. He sets a punishing pace for himself, running hard and fast through the woodland. He can see the occasional rabbit or bird flitting through the trees, and every one is a reminder of Nina and how she'd called to them so effortlessly. She'd manifested almost in the cradle, and Erik can remember the swell of pride and joy he felt at learning his daughter's gift. He can remember her laugh of delight as deer ate fearlessly from her hands, as birds preened curiously through her father's hair. He can remember everything, up to and including her senseless death.
Run. Faster. Up the hill, until it burns his lungs to breathe. Down again, across the stream, heedless of the water that sprays across his clothes. The sun is setting, but he doesn't stop. Maybe if he runs fast enough, their ghosts will leave him. But that's a futile hope—his parents still haunt him from decades past, after all. Sebastian Shaw is still a nightmare buried deep in his soul. Magda and Nina are yet another weeping scar that will never heal, and nothing will ever bring them back.
He crests the edge of a hill, his legs burning with a pain that rings close to penance. Ahead: there's Charles' mansion, the windows bright and welcoming. Dinner's over and the children have dispersed to their own devices. Even at this distance, he doesn't have to strain in the slightest to sense each and every metal object in the place. Maybe, Erik thinks wearily, maybe he'll just leave now. Vanish quietly into the good night. Charles probably won't try to find him, whether out of respect for Erik's privacy or just plain apathy. And so Erik will leave and go—somewhere—and Charles will continue to do good work, meaningful work here at his school. Erik may never agree with Charles' ideology, but he won't deny that the fruits of his labor are beautiful and precious to behold.
What should I do? he thinks. Charles. Are you listening? If you are empathetic as you always claim you are—if you were me, if you could truly feel what I feel—what would you do? What can I do?
There's no response. He's relieved about that.
The moon is bright in the night sky as he descends the last hill. The thicket of trees give way to grassy fields, which in turn become neater and more manicured as he approaches the mansion. The gate isn't locked, and Erik stares at it for a moment in exasperation. Not that a lock would stop him or anyone else who really meant to break in, but Charles won't even bother with a facade of security? Surely the man can't be that trusting.
...or he is, which isn't really that surprising at all.
Erik locks it pointedly behind him. Stepping into the mansion, he lingers in the opulent hallway for a moment, staring at the grand staircase with a sense of weary detachment. The occasional child passes by, giving him an odd look. He ignores them as he stares up at the window above the landing as if it might hold all the answers to life. He'd walked down that staircase so casually so many years ago on his way to and from Charles' room. Of course, Charles' room is on the first floor now for obvious reasons, and it's another stinging reminder of just how much things have changed.
Kitchen. He'll eat something and then he'll do something. That's a good order in which to proceed.
The kitchen is one of the easiest rooms in the mansion to find given all the metal within, but it's not until he rounds the corner that he notices it's not empty. Jean Grey sits on a stool, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate next to her. Her head is resting on her hand as she contemplates the book before her, but she looks up as he approaches. “Oh,” she says, looking startled. “Hi, Mr. Lehnsherr.”
He met her earlier, of course, but given the chaotic events and then the rebuilding work, they haven't really had a chance to talk. He gives her a nod of acknowledgment, striving to keep it polite if not exactly friendly. “Hello,” he says stiffly. “Am I bothering you?”
Her eyes are watchful, but she shakes her head. “Not at all,” she says. She worries at her bottom lip for a moment before adding, “I didn't see you at dinner.”
“I wasn't hungry,” Erik says, and it's the truth if not the whole truth. He heads over to the counter, where the leftovers of dinner sit partially wrapped. There's still a good chunk of a roasted chicken left and a few slices of the promised apple pie. He helps himself to a small serving of each, setting them down on the counter. He's acutely aware of Jean's gaze on him, but he firmly ignores her. After all, her staring can't be any worse than those idiots at the Pentagon. He sits at the counter, levitating some cutlery out of the drawer. Her eyes follow the movement of the knife and fork as they come to a rest in his hands. Briskly, he sets to work on the chicken. He can't taste much of anything these days, but he supposes that it's quite decently edible even when cold. Either way, it's filling, which is all that matters.
Charles has decades of experience behind his telepathy, and Erik doubts that his control has in any way regressed even with En Sabah Nur's enhancements. Jean Grey, on the other hand, is a teenage girl. A very powerful one, no doubt, given her display in Cairo, but there's still more flash than subtlety to her mutation. Erik carefully finishes chewing before he sets his fork down next to his plate with a twitch of his fingers. “Jean,” he says calmly. He looks up just in time to see the flash of guilt on her face before she ducks her head back down to her book.
“Sorry,” she says to the pages. “It's habit. Most people don't notice unless they're psychic themselves, and they never mentioned you were.”
“That doesn't give you license to go where you're uninvited,” Erik says. He's not angry. There's not a lot of energy left for anger now. “Didn't Charles ever teach you about respecting personal boundaries?”
She ducks her head even lower. “The professor may have mentioned it a few times.”
“You should listen to him,” Erik says. “He's very good at what he does.”
“I know,” she says. “It's a bad habit. I'm sorry.” She looks up. “For what it's worth, I didn't get anything. You're blocking me out somehow.”
“I learned how to do that from the very best,” Erik says dryly, thinking of Emma. He pauses. “Well. Second-best, perhaps. But that's beside the point.”
“Yeah,” she says. She bites her lip. “Sorry. I was just curious.”
Oh, Charles, Erik thinks with painful amusement. You have shared everything with your children, even your curiosity. For better or for worse, you have made them into what you are.
“Fine,” he says, turning back to Jean. “You get to ask one question. Then you sit and be quiet, or else you leave. Do we have a deal?”
She blinks. Nods. “Oh,” she says. “Um. I don't. I hadn't really thought of a single question.”
He folds his hands on the table in front of him, watching her with a steady gaze. He doesn't exactly know what the general story is concerning that fateful day in D.C., nor how unkindly history has painted him. No doubt it's as some kind of megalomaniac mass-murderer, given what happened in Pol—what happened. She'll probably want to confirm some inane fact about his convoluted history: yes, he's killed in the pursuit of revenge, for mutant rights, for any number of things. Yes, he spent much of a decade in prison. No, he didn't kill Kennedy. Yes, he destroyed Cairo and could do so again as easily as breathing.
She opens her mouth. He spreads his hands a little in a wordless gesture, and she takes a breath as if gathering her courage. “Are you,” she begins. There's another long pause, then: “Are you going to stay?”
Verdammt.
She really should have asked about Kennedy, he thinks tiredly. Kennedy would be so much easier to explain. Or Cairo. He can talk about the dissolution of metal for days. How it feels to run liquid metal through your hands and to manipulate the magnetic pulse of the earth. Pure poetry, that's what it is, and he'd much prefer to wax lyrical on that.
She must see something on his face. What exactly he doesn't know, but she adds, “I know you used to work with Mystique. But she stopped you that day at the White House, didn't she? And then you were on En Sabah Nur's side, but you decided to help us, and the professor, he—I was inside his head for a little while back in Cairo,” she says, her voice quieter. “And I felt his—I felt you and him—“ She looks down. “It was...strange.”
This girl was inside Charles' head? He must have let her in; there's no way she could have otherwise overpowered his training and control. And that leads to another question of why exactly he would do that: Charles is a trusting fool in some ways, but why would he present ancient history to his students? No, whatever the reason is, it's connected to the blaze of her power that he witnessed, he's sure, and to whatever happened inside the pyramid.
He's not entirely sure that he wants to know, given the darkness he remembers in Charles' eyes. Erik has more than enough darkness of his own, enough haunting regrets and terrible dreams to keep him up at night. He studies Jean, and to her credit, she doesn't falter or look away. “I don't know if I'll stay,” he says, keeping his voice as level as he can. A moment later: “Probably not.”
“Um,” she says. “Okay.”
She wants to ask more. It's clear from the expression on her face that there's a hundred other questions behind it, but he's here to eat his dinner, not to indulge the curiosity of some child. He ignores her, though, turning his attention back to his food. There's not much left, and he finishes it in quick, economical bites.
He stands up, bringing his dishes to the sink. She's looking at him, and he continues to ignore her as he turns to go. “Mr. Lehnsherr,” he hears her say, and he debates whether to just walk away. It's a tempting thought, but he looks over his shoulder nonetheless.
“Yes?” he asks.
She takes a breath. “Good luck,” she says. “With whatever you decide to do.”
He gives her a nod of acknowledgement before leaving the kitchen. Out of sight, he lingers in the hallway for a moment, feeling the horrible uncertainty claw at him. He could go to Charles' room. He could leave. He could go back to the room that's been assigned as his. He could leave. He could rip every inch of metal out of the surrounding area and kill every last person. He could leave.
There's a light under the door when he approaches, but he doesn't need anything so prosaic to tell him that Charles is in his bedroom, not with the wheelchair singing loud and clear in his gift. Charles' bedroom is adjoining to his study, no doubt for matters of convenience, and Erik wonders if Charles has managed to recreate a copy of his old room from upstairs. He hesitates for a long moment on the threshold, debating whether or not to knock. He should say goodbye at least, he thinks. It's only polite.
“Come in,” Charles calls at the knock, and Erik obediently swings the door open. Charles looks up, and Erik smiles a little to see the glasses perched precariously on the tip of his nose. He's sitting by the fireplace with a book propped open in his lap, and he looks dressed for bed. There's a glass on the table in front of him, something with a clear, amber liquid. Tea or a nightcap? Charles has always been very fond of both, after all.
“Erik,” Charles says, sounding—well, not delighted, exactly, but not displeased, either. “I missed you at dinner. Did you find something to eat?”
“Yes,” Erik says. Stilted, he adds, “It was quite good. Thank you.”
Charles smiles at him, somehow both warm and yet achingly distant. “I'm glad. Did you find everything you needed?”
Erik nods. Charles' eyes are scrutinizing his face, though, and his smile slowly slips off his face. Erik grits his teeth, abruptly irritated with his own lack of control. He jams his hands into his pockets, searching for something to say. Finally, he settles on, “You should really lock your gate. It's not safe.”
Charles raises an eyebrow. “No one's going to break in,” he says. “And if they really wanted to, a tiny lock isn't going to stop them.”
Which is actually very close to Erik's earlier thought, but still. “You should think more about security for this place, at least. Anything could happen.”
Charles tilts his head. “Define anything.”
“The next Bolivar Trask or Sebastian Shaw. Or Stryker's still out there somewhere, isn't he?” Erik paces the room, suddenly restless. “You should be more careful.”
Charles reaches up to take off his glasses, the movement slow and deliberate. He looks absurdly young without them, and Erik feels a clench in his gut. Damn him, how does he do it? “Erik,” Charles says. “If anything, I pity the poor fool who tries to break into my school looking for trouble.” He smiles, razor thin. “They won't be looking very long, I can assure you.”
It's a not-so-subtle reminder of how powerful Charles is, how dangerous they've both become—or rather, always were given the right motive. “What if you're asleep?” Erik persists. “Or drugged. Or drunk out of your mind.” He gestures at the glass on the table. “Or—”
“Kidnapped?” Charles suggests, sounding monumentally dry. “Spirited away by a teleporter from where I thought was sanctuary?”
Erik nods, jaw rigid. “Yes. What if.”
Charles leans back in his chair. “Then I have faith that the others will find a way,” he says, infuriatingly assured as always. “As they did.”
“The X-Men will swoop in to save the day?” Erik says, pronouncing the words with exaggerated care. “By which you mean your elite troops of four untrained children.”
“They're in training, thank you very much. Don't forget Raven,” Charles says, raising a finger. “I've long since learned that she's not a child. And there's Moira, too, to provide tactical support, and Hank, who can pack a surprisingly hard punch.”
“Fine. Four children, Moira the CIA Human, Hank and Raven. Those are your elite troops.”
“Troops is such a militaristic word,” Charles says musingly. “Although I'm at loss for a milder descriptor at the moment. Crew? Gang? Or I suppose that's what X-Men is for.”
“Charles,” Erik says, his temper fraying. “This isn't some joking matter. It's not safe.”
The next instant, Charles' gaze snaps to meets his. There's not a trace of levity in it, just a cool resolve that Erik's all too familiar with. “I'm aware that there's no such thing as perfect safety, Erik,” Charles says, voice low. “There will never be. But I have hope for the best, and I will prepare for the worst. That's all anyone can do.”
It isn't enough, Erik thinks. But then again, what would be? He's tried his hand at fighting for the mutant cause. When that didn't work, he tried to leave it all behind, but that didn't work either. So what does work?
“Erik.”
He looks down. Charles has moved the wheelchair somehow without him noticing to sit close to Erik, and now there—there's that look on his face, the one that Erik loves and hates with a passion he didn't know he could still feel. “Get out of my head,” he says hoarsely. “You said you would stay out.”
“I'm not—” Charles begins.
“Get out,” Erik snarls. Charles don't quite flinch, but Erik can see the wariness in his eyes. “This isn't a compromise I'm willing to make, Charles.”
An expression flashes across Charles' face, too quickly for Erik to discern and dissect. Charles swallows, Adam's apple bobbing up and down. When he speaks again, each word is slow and deliberate. “I'm not in your head,” he says. He straightens. “But I don't have to be to see that you're in pain.”
Erik crosses his arms. “Thank you for stating the obvious. There's not much you can do about it now.”
“That doesn't mean that I can't try,” Charles says, still so damnably hopeful. “I said that I could help you when we were in Cairo. I meant it.”
“And the price is to let you into my head?” Erik asks sharply. “You should know by now that's not acceptable. Perhaps you should learn to respect privacy for once in your life.”
“This may come as a surprise to you, Erik, but I don't delve into the minds of every student I've ever helped,” Charles says. For the first time, there's hint of anger to his voice, and Erik relishes it as a sign that he's finally gotten Saint Charles riled up, letting him taste a fraction of the rage that Erik has. “I don't need to.”
“I'm not your student, Charles,” Erik says coldly. “And I didn't ask for your help.”
Charles' nostrils flare as he takes a sharp breath. Erik watches, feeling oddly empty despite the victory, if he can even call it that. It's a long moment before he speaks again. “All right,” he says, and his voice is much quieter. “Then what are you asking for, if anything?”
He has so many things he wants to ask. There are questions spilling forth like blood on the earth, and all of them cry for answers that no one can give. Why did his parents die? Why did his family die? What guarantee does he have that years of time, love, effort won't be swept away in a single fell instant? And if he can't kill or take revenge, what else is left to cling onto when all else has been swept aside in the destruction?
Elohim, o Holy One, he thinks despairingly. Tell me. What am I supposed to do? What can I even do?
“How did you do it?” he asks finally. “How did you...after Cuba. How did you rebuild, how did you...how?”
He's asking this two decades too late, he knows. On that beach in Cuba, Charles lost his legs, he lost his sister, he lost—they lost—no. They both lost, but he won't deny that Charles got far worse in that exchange. Erik doesn't know if it rivals his own loss now, but what else does he have to go on, if not rage and anger? But Charles managed to find something, and that by itself must be a miracle. He moved on, he built this school, this life. If he can do it, maybe Erik can...
He looks at Charles, feeling as if his heart might constrict and stop in his chest. Charles' expression is somber as he thinks the question through. “With great difficulty,” come the eventual words, quiet and almost grim. “I honestly thought I might die on that beach, you know. I truly did. But I made it back to Westchester somehow, and I couldn't fall apart when there was just so much to do. So I tried to rebuild, and I did succeed to some extent—but just when I thought I'd achieved some measure of peace, the Vietnam War took everything away.”
Those years carry their own toll for Erik as well, what with his fledgling Brotherhood stripped away and hunted down one by one after his imprisonment. The main difference there is that Pentagon doesn't provide a wine cellar for its inmates, no matter how notorious. “And so you drank your brains out while taking Hank's serum,” Erik says, but there's no acidity to the words.
“Yes. Drink and drugs, quite a checkered past. Don't tell my students, I'd lose all credibility,” Charles says dryly. He sobers, shaking his head. “I thought I could run away from reality, is what it was. And I did for quite a while, but in the end—well. I had a part to play.” His eyes are distant as if recalling a far-off memory. “And beyond the droning call of duty? I had the hope that it would all end well.”
Erik barks out a bitter laugh. “Hope,” he says. “I wish I could be so idealistic, Charles, I truly do. It would make everything so much easier.”
“It's not so much about idealism,” Charles says, sounding thoughtful. He looks at Erik, and there's a strange light to his eyes. “And trust me when I say that it's anything but easy. I'm a telepath, Erik, and that's perhaps the most intimate confession I can ever give you. I can know and feel everything about a person: their joys, their sorrows, and above all, their pain.” He draws a slow breath. “And I couldn't take it, not when I had enough burdens of my own to bear. But someone—well, someone told me to embrace it, rather than running away. To take the pain, learn from it, become stronger.” He smiles. “And strangely enough, they were right.”
Were they really, though? There are enough demons in Erik's head to last a lifetime. There's just grief, so strong and overwhelming that it chokes him in his lungs, so much that he might die from it. And this is supposed to somehow strengthen him? The grief has always fueled his rage and destroyed his serenity, but now that he doesn't even have the anger to cling to, what does he have?
Charles can take away memories, Erik thinks suddenly. He can bring them back and take them as easily as breathing. He could take away Magda and Nina, take away Erik's loss. Erik has always jealously guarded his mental privacy, but for a moment he traitorously allows himself to entertain the thought. What would it be like to just forget? To let Charles into his mind, and to let go?
Once—briefly—he could do that. Once upon a time, before Cuba, after his initial reservations with Charles' power. There had been a time where he had trusted Charles more than anyone else. But those memories themselves are faded, replaced only by faint flashes of remembrance like stars against the night sky. He's drowning in the cold ocean with only Charles' voice in his head dragging him back to life. Charles' drawing forth the memory of his mother, giving him an untainted strength so unlike En Sabah Nur's. And late at night when all else was quiet, there's a shared contentment and joy and love of—
No. He can't.
“You once told me,” Erik says finally, “that you could make me stay if you wanted to. That you could, but you wouldn't.”
There's the briefest moment of hesitation before Charles answers. “Yes,” he says. “I did say that. If you're asking if the same applies now, then the answer is still yes. If you want to leave, Erik, that's your choice.”
Charles' voice is perfectly neutral. If he's thinking something, he's hiding it very well. As a young man, Charles always used to wear his heart on his sleeve and bleed emotions left and right. This calm demeanor is just another reminder of just how much things have changed: they're not the same men who met that night in the ocean twenty years ago. Perhaps they never will be again, not with all that they've suffered in the years between.
But, a voice asks, and it takes a minute for Erik to realize that the voice is his own. To suffer, to change, to grow—is that such a bad thing? Or is it another piece to a puzzle that we can only understand once the picture is complete?
He doesn't have an answer for that. In all likelihood, he never will.
He reaches out with his power, caressing the lines of Charles' wheelchair with a curious delicacy. He pulled Charles in it in the bowels of Cerebro, destroyed it in Cairo and rebuilt it along with the rest of Westchester. Even as his metal-sense spans across cities and continents, he knows that this chair—this mansion—this place—will always shine bright in his mind's eye as a third magnetic pole.
“I'm leaving,” he says to Charles, and the words settle a calm finality in his bones. The other man opens his mouth as if to respond, and Erik cuts him off with a quick shake of his head. “I need time. I need to—” grieve, mourn “—find my own way.” He takes a breath, wondering if he should say what comes next. Some impulse that he can't quite put a name to drives the words from his mouth. “But I think I would come back, Charles. If I am welcome at the end of it all, I mean.”
The answer is immediate. “Of course,” Charles says as if there was never any doubt in the world. “The gate is always open to you.”
Damningly enough, Erik believes him. Believes in Charles' hope and his idealism, all qualities that Erik can't even begin to grasp at the moment. But Charles does. Somehow, miraculously: Charles still does.
And that's enough, at least for now.