Summer Fic Exchange: Legion
Title: Legion
Author: lavvyan
Recipient: blumvale
Characters/Pairings: Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr; various X-people
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~ 2500
Warnings/Content: Major character death of sorts, minor character death for real, mind control, dubiously happy ending
Summary: For the prompt "No divorce on the beach - Charles goes with Erik": Charles may be dead, but that doesn't mean he's gone.
Notes: My unknown recipient said she wouldn't mind some evil-ish Charles and that she didn't have any squicks. So naturally, I wrote a ghost story. If I managed to hit any squicks after all, I sincerely apologise.
Many thanks, as always, to kisahawklin for the beta.
Legion
1.
Moira dies only moments after Charles.
Erik can't help it. He knows that Charles would have wanted her to live, but holding Charles, watching his clear eyes go dull and blind, Erik needs to lash out at something.
Moira comes first. The helmet, gleaming sharp and bright where Erik tossed it into the sand, follows suit. It crumples like tinfoil, Shaw's final legacy as useless as Erik's anger when it comes to protecting the things that matter. The people who matter.
Besides, Erik won't need it anymore, will he?
Charles is dead weight in Erik's arms. A few feet away, Raven cries openly. The rest of them are silent, even Shaw's former associates, and in a moment, Erik will have to decide what to do next. He'll have to guide them, protect them, and make sure they have a future.
His arms tighten around Charles.
In a moment.
2.
They end up in Westchester.
"He used to hate this place, but it's home now, for all of us," Raven says, still crying. No one contradicts her. In the privacy of his own mind, Erik has to admit that he liked the idea of having a home, however briefly. The grounds of the mansion are beautiful; it's a good place to rest. Erik takes care of the burial and lets the students put up a memorial stone. He's not used to that sort of sentiment, but it seems to help them. It also gives him time to sort out the new additions to their… team.
Azazel seems content to follow Erik for the time being. The windcaster - Riptide, from Azazel's one-word introduction - doesn't seem to care. Angel leaves the first night and Erik lets her go. He hadn't expected her to stay.
She has no ties to the mansion, not like the rest of them. Hank has holed up in the laboratory, Sean's spending most of his time outside, and Alex seems to be preparing for a war.
Good boy, Erik thinks. Charles may have believed in the goodness of mankind, but Charles is gone. Erik is the one who will build their future.
And Erik, unlike Charles, has always known that the future of mutantkind can only be built on the ruins of humanity.
3.
Sean's acting stranger than usual.
Erik finds him in the library late at night, sitting in what Erik has come to think of as Charles's armchair, whiskey tumbler in hand, staring intently at the chessboard. The half-finished game Erik abandoned in anger during their last night still sits there, untouched. Waiting for a next move Charles will never make.
Erik isn't overly familiar with regret, but he still recognises it when it takes his breath.
"What are you doing here?" he asks. His voice comes out rougher than he means it to.
"Thinking," Sean says. His voice, too, sounds… off.
"About?" Erik doesn't care, not really. Sean is just a kid. What does he know about the world? But something about the situation makes Erik uncomfortable, like sensing a danger he can't quite place.
"Nothing." Sean looks up and smiles. It's a very strange little smile. It doesn't belong on Sean's face. His voice, when he speaks, holds the slightest trace of a foreign accent. "The future, perhaps."
Erik stills. "If you think this is funny," he begins, tense with anger. Charles has been dead for three days; he will not be mocked.
Sean blinks. The smile drops off his face.
"Sorry," he says, and there's nothing unusual in that voice. It's just Sean, a hint of insecurity in his pale face. Erik lets out a slow breath.
"Go to bed," he says, not unkindly, and Sean all but flees the room.
Erik rubs a hand over his face and looks at the board. He's not entirely surprised to see that it's his move now.
What surprises him is that Sean has put him in check. It seems strangely symbolic of his life these days.
4.
Erik sleeps in Charles's bed.
He doesn't know why. The mattress is too soft, the pillow too fluffy. He has slept on the ground, in plush hotel rooms, in airplane seats and the back of more than one car with little trouble, but Charles's bed leaves him with a backache that goes straight into his head. The room is a mess of trinkets that mean nothing to him, but obviously held some significance for Charles. And the smell…
Charles's scent permeates the entire room, a little earthy, a little dusty, and far too familiar to be comforting.
Yet Erik can't sleep anywhere else.
Maybe he's going mad.
5.
Alex and Hank are drinking tea at breakfast.
Erik watches them with a frown. Hank usually needs at least two cups of coffee to get going, and the one time Charles offered to share his breakfast tea, Alex had simply claimed to be allergic. Now here they are, sipping contentedly while Sean looks on, cradling his own mug and smiling that weird little smile again.
The little hairs at the back of Erik's neck are rising slowly and he has to suppress a shiver. Something isn't right here. He doesn't know what, but he always trusts his instincts.
"I will get Emma," Azazel says suddenly. Erik nods. If Shaw's plans had been a chess game, Emma would have been his queen. Erik needs an asset like her. Maybe a telepath - and oh, that word carries an unexpected pang of hurt - can shed some light on the current weirdness. Maybe the kids are just missing Charles. Like Raven, who carried an armful of Charles's sweaters into her room and has refused to come out ever since, though Erik knows she raids the fridge at night.
But when Azazel arrives with Emma, she just pulls a face, says, "Ah," and turns on her heel. "I'd burn this house if I were you, Lehnsherr," she adds on her way out the door, and then she's gone, leaving everyone to blink after her. Erik's fingers twitch, but he doesn't stop her.
He could, but he doesn't.
6.
The next day, Erik sees Charles in the library.
Charles is standing by the windows, looking out at where Sean has lined up several of the old windows from the shed, apparently trying to shatter them one panel at a time. Progress seems to be slow, but Charles's paternal smile is oozing pride nonetheless.
God, Erik has missed that expression.
I'm going mad, he thinks, and then he says it out loud, rasping the words because most of his breath seems to have stuck in his throat. "I'm going mad." There is no other explanation for this… this vision.
Is this why Emma left as soon as she'd arrived?
He blinks, just once, and Charles is gone. Erik's heart hammers in his chest like he's just come back from a ten-mile run.
He needs to get out of this house.
The drive into town takes a while, but once he's there, Erik wastes no time in getting very, very drunk. Maybe he was wrong to come back to the mansion. Maybe they should have all gone somewhere else and started over.
Maybe he should have let Moira shoot him.
He wakes up the next morning in Charles's bed.
He has no idea how he got there.
7.
"I'm afraid not, my friend."
That's what Riptide says when Erik asks if he and Azazel know any more mutants. Erik gives him a sharp look but for all he knows, Riptide always talks like that. There's no reason for any suspicion, or even dread.
Erik has killed a lot of men. If he believed in lingering ghosts, he'd have drowned in spirits long ago.
And yet. The only one who isn't acting strangely is Raven - but she's grown quiet.
"Mutant and proud," she says with a sad smile, her yellow eyes bright. "Do you think he kept the printouts from Cerebro?"
Erik asks Hank. If they're going to keep mutantkind safe from humans, they'll need more people. Erik has a whole speech prepared about the necessity of standing together. It's time he starts to use it.
"I'm afraid not, my friend," Hank says affably, and something inside Erik grows very cold.
"You're not Charles," he says, because Hank isn't, he can't be. Charles is dead, dead and buried, and the dead don't return to take over the minds of other people.
Not even telepaths.
"Charles Xavier is dead," Hank agrees. His accent sounds very British.
Erik's hands clench, and he's about to do something very stupid - Hank has to outweigh him by at least fifty pounds - when the doorbell rings.
The sound is so ordinary, so banal, that Erik has to blink from the sheer absurdity.
"I think you should go," Hank says, his voice back to affable young scientist with an underlying growl, and all Erik can do is nod. And go.
The man at the door looks familiar, unshaven and with his hair sticking up wildly, but Erik can't place him until the man opens his mouth.
"Changed my mind," he says gruffly. It's the guy from that bar, the one who told them to go fuck themselves.
Erik wonders if his mind wasn't changed for him instead.
8.
Other mutants keep trickling in.
They're the ones who refused to come with them when Charles and Erik still worked with the CIA. They can't tell Erik how they found the mansion. They can't even say how they knew to start looking for it. The world is a dangerous place, they say, and mutants need to stand together. Humans won't accept them, they say. They have to protect each other.
That wasn't part of the original pitch, but it's exactly what Erik would have told them if he'd found them first.
He's seeing Charles everywhere now. In the library, fingers hovering over the chessboard. In the kitchen, staring forlornly at the kettle. On the grounds, running with Alex, laughing with one of the new recruits. He always disappears when Erik tries to talk to him. He can't be caught. He's taking Erik's pieces from him one by one and Erik doesn't even know the rules of the game.
Why are you doing this to me, Erik wants to ask, wants to scream at him. What do you want?
But he can't get the words out.
Besides, there is nothing Charles could do to him that Erik wouldn't deserve.
9.
So he runs.
He's never run away before, not even from Shaw, but he runs now. Doesn't pack his things, which all smell of Charles anyway; just gets into a car and drives and drives as fast as the damn thing will go.
He doesn't know how to fight someone who isn't there. Even if he could kill Charles for a second time - and he couldn't, he couldn't - he wouldn't know how to do it. The mansion is Charles's territory; let him have it. Erik will raise his own army somewhere else.
He stretches out in the back of the car when he gets too tired to drive, but sleep won't come. His thoughts are a hopeless tangle of Charles in the library, Charles on that damned beach, Charles in his arms. Charles driving across the country with him, recruiting mutants, sharing hotel rooms. There had been something between them, something playful and fragile, and Erik wishes he could have watched it strengthen. He wishes he had found the courage to reach out, just once.
Because Charles would have reached back, he knows. Charles was simply waiting for him to make up his mind. Erik could have walked up and kissed him, and Charles would have kissed him back. Charles would have let him touch and explore and let him take his time about it. Would have been playful. Heavens know that bed of his is big enough to be playful.
The things they could have done, together.
Erik only realises he's hard when his hand drifts between his legs. He stops, hesitates, before he jerks his jeans open almost violently and takes himself in hand.
He tries not to think about anything as he jerks off, but his mind is full of Charles now, smug and naked and smiling. His breath hitches when he comes, but it always does that.
All the wetness on his face can be explained by sweat.
10.
He wakes up in Charles's bed.
He has no idea how he got there, and it scares him shitless.
11.
Angel is back.
She's sitting calmly among the other mutants, her eyes just that little bit glassy. Her face just that little bit blank. Just like everyone else's.
"This is what you wanted."
Erik jerks. He doesn't drop the whiskey bottle, but it's a near thing. Charles is standing next to him on the balcony, dressed in one of his ratty cardigans and a simple pair of slacks. It's the first time he's talked to Erik, and of course he won't give Erik the initiative.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Erik manages after a moment. He has no idea what Charles thinks he wanted. A bunch of mind-controlled mutants? Charles dead? What?
Charles gestures at the small group training below. Alex. Sean. The woman who can turn sound into light. Riptide. "All of us, together." He smiles. "I'm giving you what you wanted, Erik. A home, a purpose, someone to protect. Everything you wanted." Charles steps even closer. His hand on Erik's shoulder feels almost warm. Almost real. "None of us will ever leave you."
A shiver runs through Erik that has nothing to do with the temperature.
"Out of my head, Charles," he says hoarsely.
"I'm growing stronger with every new arrival," Charles says, still smiling serenely. "I can give you peace, my friend."
Peace was never something Erik asked for.
"Out of my head!" The bottle shatters on the grey stone, but Erik doesn't care. This is wrong. Charles's words, his presence; it's all wrong.
You're dead, he tries to send, as clear as he can manage. You have no place here, you're dead, I killed you, go away.
Charles winces, disappointment crossing his face, but he disappears. Erik takes a shaky breath. One of them must have carried a bit of Charles in his mind that lived on after Charles's death. Maybe Sean. Maybe Erik himself. Or maybe Charles left a bit of himself in every mutant he ever met, like a virus, infecting mutant after mutant to make them gather and… what? Play happy family?
Erik laughs, sounding hysterical to his own ears. He could accept this, declare a mutant nation with this house as their seat of government, and destroy everyone who'd do them harm. Humanity would fall. What price free will?
But there's a part of him who knows that it has to be a choice, that taking away someone's free will is no less imprisonment than anything the humans would inflict on them. He can't do that. Not to mutants. He'll find a way to get Charles out of their heads.
Whatever the cost, he'll find a way to end this, once and for all.
Checkmate, my friend.
12.
He wakes up in Charles's bed.
He has no idea how he got there, but it doesn't matter. The room is messy as always, but the early morning sun makes everything look welcoming and friendly. Charles is there with him, warm and familiar at his back, one arm slung across Erik's waist. His nose is pressed lightly against Erik's shoulder blade, cool against his skin. Erik smiles, and lets his eyes drift closed again.
He can't imagine wanting anything else.
Author: lavvyan
Recipient: blumvale
Characters/Pairings: Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr; various X-people
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~ 2500
Warnings/Content: Major character death of sorts, minor character death for real, mind control, dubiously happy ending
Summary: For the prompt "No divorce on the beach - Charles goes with Erik": Charles may be dead, but that doesn't mean he's gone.
Notes: My unknown recipient said she wouldn't mind some evil-ish Charles and that she didn't have any squicks. So naturally, I wrote a ghost story. If I managed to hit any squicks after all, I sincerely apologise.
Many thanks, as always, to kisahawklin for the beta.
Legion
1.
Moira dies only moments after Charles.
Erik can't help it. He knows that Charles would have wanted her to live, but holding Charles, watching his clear eyes go dull and blind, Erik needs to lash out at something.
Moira comes first. The helmet, gleaming sharp and bright where Erik tossed it into the sand, follows suit. It crumples like tinfoil, Shaw's final legacy as useless as Erik's anger when it comes to protecting the things that matter. The people who matter.
Besides, Erik won't need it anymore, will he?
Charles is dead weight in Erik's arms. A few feet away, Raven cries openly. The rest of them are silent, even Shaw's former associates, and in a moment, Erik will have to decide what to do next. He'll have to guide them, protect them, and make sure they have a future.
His arms tighten around Charles.
In a moment.
2.
They end up in Westchester.
"He used to hate this place, but it's home now, for all of us," Raven says, still crying. No one contradicts her. In the privacy of his own mind, Erik has to admit that he liked the idea of having a home, however briefly. The grounds of the mansion are beautiful; it's a good place to rest. Erik takes care of the burial and lets the students put up a memorial stone. He's not used to that sort of sentiment, but it seems to help them. It also gives him time to sort out the new additions to their… team.
Azazel seems content to follow Erik for the time being. The windcaster - Riptide, from Azazel's one-word introduction - doesn't seem to care. Angel leaves the first night and Erik lets her go. He hadn't expected her to stay.
She has no ties to the mansion, not like the rest of them. Hank has holed up in the laboratory, Sean's spending most of his time outside, and Alex seems to be preparing for a war.
Good boy, Erik thinks. Charles may have believed in the goodness of mankind, but Charles is gone. Erik is the one who will build their future.
And Erik, unlike Charles, has always known that the future of mutantkind can only be built on the ruins of humanity.
3.
Sean's acting stranger than usual.
Erik finds him in the library late at night, sitting in what Erik has come to think of as Charles's armchair, whiskey tumbler in hand, staring intently at the chessboard. The half-finished game Erik abandoned in anger during their last night still sits there, untouched. Waiting for a next move Charles will never make.
Erik isn't overly familiar with regret, but he still recognises it when it takes his breath.
"What are you doing here?" he asks. His voice comes out rougher than he means it to.
"Thinking," Sean says. His voice, too, sounds… off.
"About?" Erik doesn't care, not really. Sean is just a kid. What does he know about the world? But something about the situation makes Erik uncomfortable, like sensing a danger he can't quite place.
"Nothing." Sean looks up and smiles. It's a very strange little smile. It doesn't belong on Sean's face. His voice, when he speaks, holds the slightest trace of a foreign accent. "The future, perhaps."
Erik stills. "If you think this is funny," he begins, tense with anger. Charles has been dead for three days; he will not be mocked.
Sean blinks. The smile drops off his face.
"Sorry," he says, and there's nothing unusual in that voice. It's just Sean, a hint of insecurity in his pale face. Erik lets out a slow breath.
"Go to bed," he says, not unkindly, and Sean all but flees the room.
Erik rubs a hand over his face and looks at the board. He's not entirely surprised to see that it's his move now.
What surprises him is that Sean has put him in check. It seems strangely symbolic of his life these days.
4.
Erik sleeps in Charles's bed.
He doesn't know why. The mattress is too soft, the pillow too fluffy. He has slept on the ground, in plush hotel rooms, in airplane seats and the back of more than one car with little trouble, but Charles's bed leaves him with a backache that goes straight into his head. The room is a mess of trinkets that mean nothing to him, but obviously held some significance for Charles. And the smell…
Charles's scent permeates the entire room, a little earthy, a little dusty, and far too familiar to be comforting.
Yet Erik can't sleep anywhere else.
Maybe he's going mad.
5.
Alex and Hank are drinking tea at breakfast.
Erik watches them with a frown. Hank usually needs at least two cups of coffee to get going, and the one time Charles offered to share his breakfast tea, Alex had simply claimed to be allergic. Now here they are, sipping contentedly while Sean looks on, cradling his own mug and smiling that weird little smile again.
The little hairs at the back of Erik's neck are rising slowly and he has to suppress a shiver. Something isn't right here. He doesn't know what, but he always trusts his instincts.
"I will get Emma," Azazel says suddenly. Erik nods. If Shaw's plans had been a chess game, Emma would have been his queen. Erik needs an asset like her. Maybe a telepath - and oh, that word carries an unexpected pang of hurt - can shed some light on the current weirdness. Maybe the kids are just missing Charles. Like Raven, who carried an armful of Charles's sweaters into her room and has refused to come out ever since, though Erik knows she raids the fridge at night.
But when Azazel arrives with Emma, she just pulls a face, says, "Ah," and turns on her heel. "I'd burn this house if I were you, Lehnsherr," she adds on her way out the door, and then she's gone, leaving everyone to blink after her. Erik's fingers twitch, but he doesn't stop her.
He could, but he doesn't.
6.
The next day, Erik sees Charles in the library.
Charles is standing by the windows, looking out at where Sean has lined up several of the old windows from the shed, apparently trying to shatter them one panel at a time. Progress seems to be slow, but Charles's paternal smile is oozing pride nonetheless.
God, Erik has missed that expression.
I'm going mad, he thinks, and then he says it out loud, rasping the words because most of his breath seems to have stuck in his throat. "I'm going mad." There is no other explanation for this… this vision.
Is this why Emma left as soon as she'd arrived?
He blinks, just once, and Charles is gone. Erik's heart hammers in his chest like he's just come back from a ten-mile run.
He needs to get out of this house.
The drive into town takes a while, but once he's there, Erik wastes no time in getting very, very drunk. Maybe he was wrong to come back to the mansion. Maybe they should have all gone somewhere else and started over.
Maybe he should have let Moira shoot him.
He wakes up the next morning in Charles's bed.
He has no idea how he got there.
7.
"I'm afraid not, my friend."
That's what Riptide says when Erik asks if he and Azazel know any more mutants. Erik gives him a sharp look but for all he knows, Riptide always talks like that. There's no reason for any suspicion, or even dread.
Erik has killed a lot of men. If he believed in lingering ghosts, he'd have drowned in spirits long ago.
And yet. The only one who isn't acting strangely is Raven - but she's grown quiet.
"Mutant and proud," she says with a sad smile, her yellow eyes bright. "Do you think he kept the printouts from Cerebro?"
Erik asks Hank. If they're going to keep mutantkind safe from humans, they'll need more people. Erik has a whole speech prepared about the necessity of standing together. It's time he starts to use it.
"I'm afraid not, my friend," Hank says affably, and something inside Erik grows very cold.
"You're not Charles," he says, because Hank isn't, he can't be. Charles is dead, dead and buried, and the dead don't return to take over the minds of other people.
Not even telepaths.
"Charles Xavier is dead," Hank agrees. His accent sounds very British.
Erik's hands clench, and he's about to do something very stupid - Hank has to outweigh him by at least fifty pounds - when the doorbell rings.
The sound is so ordinary, so banal, that Erik has to blink from the sheer absurdity.
"I think you should go," Hank says, his voice back to affable young scientist with an underlying growl, and all Erik can do is nod. And go.
The man at the door looks familiar, unshaven and with his hair sticking up wildly, but Erik can't place him until the man opens his mouth.
"Changed my mind," he says gruffly. It's the guy from that bar, the one who told them to go fuck themselves.
Erik wonders if his mind wasn't changed for him instead.
8.
Other mutants keep trickling in.
They're the ones who refused to come with them when Charles and Erik still worked with the CIA. They can't tell Erik how they found the mansion. They can't even say how they knew to start looking for it. The world is a dangerous place, they say, and mutants need to stand together. Humans won't accept them, they say. They have to protect each other.
That wasn't part of the original pitch, but it's exactly what Erik would have told them if he'd found them first.
He's seeing Charles everywhere now. In the library, fingers hovering over the chessboard. In the kitchen, staring forlornly at the kettle. On the grounds, running with Alex, laughing with one of the new recruits. He always disappears when Erik tries to talk to him. He can't be caught. He's taking Erik's pieces from him one by one and Erik doesn't even know the rules of the game.
Why are you doing this to me, Erik wants to ask, wants to scream at him. What do you want?
But he can't get the words out.
Besides, there is nothing Charles could do to him that Erik wouldn't deserve.
9.
So he runs.
He's never run away before, not even from Shaw, but he runs now. Doesn't pack his things, which all smell of Charles anyway; just gets into a car and drives and drives as fast as the damn thing will go.
He doesn't know how to fight someone who isn't there. Even if he could kill Charles for a second time - and he couldn't, he couldn't - he wouldn't know how to do it. The mansion is Charles's territory; let him have it. Erik will raise his own army somewhere else.
He stretches out in the back of the car when he gets too tired to drive, but sleep won't come. His thoughts are a hopeless tangle of Charles in the library, Charles on that damned beach, Charles in his arms. Charles driving across the country with him, recruiting mutants, sharing hotel rooms. There had been something between them, something playful and fragile, and Erik wishes he could have watched it strengthen. He wishes he had found the courage to reach out, just once.
Because Charles would have reached back, he knows. Charles was simply waiting for him to make up his mind. Erik could have walked up and kissed him, and Charles would have kissed him back. Charles would have let him touch and explore and let him take his time about it. Would have been playful. Heavens know that bed of his is big enough to be playful.
The things they could have done, together.
Erik only realises he's hard when his hand drifts between his legs. He stops, hesitates, before he jerks his jeans open almost violently and takes himself in hand.
He tries not to think about anything as he jerks off, but his mind is full of Charles now, smug and naked and smiling. His breath hitches when he comes, but it always does that.
All the wetness on his face can be explained by sweat.
10.
He wakes up in Charles's bed.
He has no idea how he got there, and it scares him shitless.
11.
Angel is back.
She's sitting calmly among the other mutants, her eyes just that little bit glassy. Her face just that little bit blank. Just like everyone else's.
"This is what you wanted."
Erik jerks. He doesn't drop the whiskey bottle, but it's a near thing. Charles is standing next to him on the balcony, dressed in one of his ratty cardigans and a simple pair of slacks. It's the first time he's talked to Erik, and of course he won't give Erik the initiative.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Erik manages after a moment. He has no idea what Charles thinks he wanted. A bunch of mind-controlled mutants? Charles dead? What?
Charles gestures at the small group training below. Alex. Sean. The woman who can turn sound into light. Riptide. "All of us, together." He smiles. "I'm giving you what you wanted, Erik. A home, a purpose, someone to protect. Everything you wanted." Charles steps even closer. His hand on Erik's shoulder feels almost warm. Almost real. "None of us will ever leave you."
A shiver runs through Erik that has nothing to do with the temperature.
"Out of my head, Charles," he says hoarsely.
"I'm growing stronger with every new arrival," Charles says, still smiling serenely. "I can give you peace, my friend."
Peace was never something Erik asked for.
"Out of my head!" The bottle shatters on the grey stone, but Erik doesn't care. This is wrong. Charles's words, his presence; it's all wrong.
You're dead, he tries to send, as clear as he can manage. You have no place here, you're dead, I killed you, go away.
Charles winces, disappointment crossing his face, but he disappears. Erik takes a shaky breath. One of them must have carried a bit of Charles in his mind that lived on after Charles's death. Maybe Sean. Maybe Erik himself. Or maybe Charles left a bit of himself in every mutant he ever met, like a virus, infecting mutant after mutant to make them gather and… what? Play happy family?
Erik laughs, sounding hysterical to his own ears. He could accept this, declare a mutant nation with this house as their seat of government, and destroy everyone who'd do them harm. Humanity would fall. What price free will?
But there's a part of him who knows that it has to be a choice, that taking away someone's free will is no less imprisonment than anything the humans would inflict on them. He can't do that. Not to mutants. He'll find a way to get Charles out of their heads.
Whatever the cost, he'll find a way to end this, once and for all.
Checkmate, my friend.
12.
He wakes up in Charles's bed.
He has no idea how he got there, but it doesn't matter. The room is messy as always, but the early morning sun makes everything look welcoming and friendly. Charles is there with him, warm and familiar at his back, one arm slung across Erik's waist. His nose is pressed lightly against Erik's shoulder blade, cool against his skin. Erik smiles, and lets his eyes drift closed again.
He can't imagine wanting anything else.