Petals on a Wet, Black Bough, Chapter 2
A/N: This chapter contains mention of non-graphic violence, injury, rape and the Holocaust. For more detailed trigger-warnings, just write me a comment and I'll get back to you!
By the way, the details about Charles’s power, e.g. his range, are taken from canon. ‘Twasn’t I who made him uber!
- Chapter 1 -
Chapter 2
The strangest thing about it all is how Raven seems to know exactly what to do.
She asks Erik to free the unconscious Frost from the metal surrounding her and tells Moira and Alex to put her into the bunker below the house and keep guarding her. Then she carefully gathers Charles into her arms, her body morphing into a generic muscled form while her face stays her own, and she carries the man like a familiar burden, his head resting on her arm, his limbs slack and unresponsive.
She carries Charles up all the way to his room and even has the presence of mind to flick back the covers before placing him on the bed, while the rest of them scatter around her like frightened chickens (not Eric, though. He’s a very angry chicken).
Then she fetches a cardboard box from Charles’s wardrobe and tells Hank to install the IV-equipment she takes from it. She secures the position of Charles’s arm with a silk scarf from the box (Why’s there a silk scarf hidden in a cardboard box in Charles’s bedroom? And why the hell an IV?).
Raven places the needle herself, movements quick and efficient, and instructs Hank to start a slow drip to keep Charles hydrated.
“No telling how long this’ll last,” she murmurs, then looks up, catches their eyes, and scoffs.
“Oh please,” she says. “With the way a mutant puberty works, do you really think this has never happened before?”
“So he’ll be alright?” Sean asks eagerly, not bothering to hide how dependent he is on Charles after only a week.
Raven’s face twitches, and Erik realizes that she’s frightened but doesn’t want the others to know. It seems he has underestimated her.
“He’s Charles,” she says, and tries to shrug. “He’s always done things nobody else could, but…”
“But?” Hank asks, and Raven’s too young not to confide in her friends.
“But the last time this happened, his telepathic range was only about a hundred miles,” she says quietly, teeth worrying her lower lip.
Erik doesn’t have to say that there’s nothing ‘only’ about that.
“And now?” He asks instead, angry at the same time that he doesn’t know, has no clue about it, when Charles knows everything there is about their abilities and limits.
Raven shrugs again.
“200 miles? 300?” She hazards a guess, and it hits Erik like a punch in the guts.
“Are you serious?” Sean asks. He’s awed by the sheer power of it, a fitting response, but Erik’s busy doing the numbers. If all of Charles’s shields are gone, and he can hear that many people…
“He’ll go crazy,” Erik says darkly, because illusions are never helpful in the long run.
“He won’t!” Raven protests. “He’s Charles! It might just take some time!”
Meaning he’ll be out of it when they go after Shaw, which will probably happen very soon. Meaning that Erik won’t have the one ally at his side he’s truly counted on. But he can’t even bring himself to worry about that right now.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” He asks instead.
Raven reaches for the box again and removes a few bottles of pills.
“These are just valerian, but they should help us relax,” she explains. “He’s reading all our emotions and thoughts right now, or will as soon as he wakes up, and the most important thing for us is to stay calm. Do happy, focused things, but nothing too intense. And try not to think about him too much, it’ll only worry him.”
Again her hand sneaks out and pets Charles’s hair, and Erik wonders how they found out that these things would work, whether there was anyone around to help them when it happened the first time.
Raven catches his eyes, and she seems to understand the question.
“Charles had excellent control by the time I met him, and he already knew all of this,” she says quietly. “He was a very clever boy, even at eight. And he was very motivated.”
xXx
They do not talk about it as the afternoon progresses, but Charles’s absence is visible among them as they move through the house, concentrate on their training, watch President Kennedy threaten Russia with war.
It’s in the way Sean opens his mouth, then closes it as he realizes the person he wanted to speak to isn’t in the room. It’s in the way Hank can’t meet anybody’s eyes, his shoulders hunched up almost to his ears. It’s in the way Alex keeps edging away from them, as if he can’t trust his newfound control without Charles there to guide him.
It’s in the way Moira keeps looking at them all, contemplating if they can do this, if they have any hope of succeeding without the man that brought them together.
Raven’s the only one acting as if nothing has happened, but Erik has seen enough people under pressure to notice the signs. As a shapeshifter, Raven can control her expressions and the tone of her skin, probably even her voice, but she can’t hide how she keeps looking at the doors of whatever room they’re in, as if expecting Charles to walk through at any moment, or how she strains her ears, listening for any sign of her brother.
Erik takes over the planning session, forcing them all to concentrate on the matter at hand, not allowing them to doubt the feasibility of tomorrow’s mission, because no matter what happened to Charles, there is still Shaw and the threat of war, and Erik has lived long enough to know that your own personal tragedy will never matter in the face of things to come.
But he, too, feels Charles’s absence like a loose tooth you can’t help worrying.
It’s more than missing his friend, his ally and comrade in all this, the one who could manage the others without being too harsh or demanding, the one who could fuse them all together so easily.
It is this: He’s keenly aware that, whatever Charles is going through, they have left him to face it alone.
Erik’s been alone too many times in his life, and he knows that feeling abandoned and lonely can add despair to pain, can tip the balance towards the unbearable.
He doesn’t want that to happen now, because Charles? He’d never leave any of them on their own in a moment like that. Charles jumped into the damned ocean to save Erik, just because he heard him cry out in his mind. Charles would never let a mission keep him from comforting a friend.
“He wouldn’t want you to be there. Back then he even forbade me to sit with him,” Raven tells him as they sit silently around the kitchen table.
And Erik doesn’t say maybe that’s because you’re his sister or maybe he doesn’t want you to see him hurt, but he’d know I could bear it or maybe that’s because you don’t know very much about being in pain.
Because Erik knows from personal experience that no one ever truly wants to suffer alone. It’s just that many people do not have it in them to reach out for help. Charles gave it without being asked, and that is what Erik will do this once, too.
So Erik doesn’t heed Raven’s advice as he bids goodnight to all of them and then takes the stairs to the upper level that holds both his and Charles’s bedrooms.
xXx
The place is dark, not a light on, and the moon outside is waning. Erik’s eyes dart through the room in a routine of detection and paranoia that’s been his companion for many years, but there’s no one here.
It takes him a few seconds to find Charles, because the bed can only be called ‘bed’ in the broadest sense of the word. It’s more like an ocean of pillows and blankets, and Charles is not stretched out on it as expected.
He’s huddled against the foot of the bed, instead, curled in on himself, arms crossed over his head as if he’s protecting himself from the rest of the world, and although something in his posture tells Erik that he hasn’t moved for a long time, he is panting wildly, straining to draw enough air into his lungs.
His eyes are wide open, but the things he sees are not in this room.
“Charles?” Erik whispers, not knowing whether to come any closer or stay right where he is.
As absolutely sure as he was about coming, now that he’s here he finds that he has no idea what to do. He has no experience with a scenario like this - the suffering part, yes, the being alone and in pain part, but when has he last tried to comfort someone? Or, now that he thinks about it, has been comforted? How does one do that sort of thing?
“Charles… are you…,” no, he’s not going to ask whether Charles is alright, he’s not that stupid. “Is there anything I can do?”
Charles blinks once, twice, his face a study of pain and helplessness, and Erik wants nothing more than to back out of the room. If only he had left, that night at the CIA facility. He’d probably have confronted Shaw already and been dead or victorious. He wouldn’t have to deal with this.
Charles draws another laboured breath. His face is wet from sweat or tears or both, and as his mouth cracks open, there’s a thin thread of spittle stretching between his lips. Erik almost looks away.
Not because this is distasteful to him - he’s seen much worse in the camps and after (the people he killed usually didn’t die gracefully), but there’s something fundamentally wrong with a Charles that has lost all elegance, all pose, that is reduced to this panting, whimpering wreck of a man. It feels like a violation, witnessing this.
“Erik? Why are you…” That is not Charles’s voice, either, this hoarse, shattered, ungainly thing. Charles’s voice is rich and confident, and his friend is not supposed to break apart like that, right in front of his eyes. “You shouldn’t be here…”
“No. You shouldn’t be alone right now,” Erik counters, and whom is he trying to fool? This is nothing like their usual easy banter, not even remotely comparable to the eloquent to and fro that’s the basis of their connection. Charles always seems so delighted by Erik’s mere presence, so interested in his every word, but what does Erik have to give to a Charles Xavier that can’t even breathe properly?
“I’m dangerous,” Charles whispers and tightens his arms around his head. His eyes blink again, unnaturally slow, as if even that small movement is too great an effort. “You mustn’t be close to me… you mustn’t…”
The sentence devolves into a coughing fit, dry, hacking, ugly, and Charles curls into himself even further, eyes pressed against knees, hands gripping each other so tightly that the knuckles shine palely in the moonlight.
“Charles?”
But Charles can’t stop coughing, it seems. He breathes like a man drowning. The coughing goes on and on, and Erik can’t bear this anymore, can’t bear these sounds and sights that don’t belong in this beautiful house (they belong in his past, in the barracks, the hunger and cold, not to this emperor-sized bed and untainted man), and he reaches out to soothe Charles, like his mother soothed Erik when he was small, like every living creature should reach towards suffering…
“No, Erik… don’t… this is dangerous…”
But it’s too late. Erik is already connecting, touching, and the feeling of Charles’s hot, feverish flesh drives him out of his own skin, away from his body, out of everything he’s ever known and into the space between their minds that is endless and oh, so full…
Erik’s knees connect with the hardwood floor, but by the time the pain reaches his mind Erik is already gone…
…dragged into Charles’s mind and through him into the unknown…
Alex is in the kitchen Moira is in the bunker Sean is flying Raven is in the study weeping Hank is in the lab Erik is in Charles’s bedroom why is Erik in Charles’s bedroom Charles is everywhere
the bacon smells wonderful this woman weirds her out the wind rustles his red hair why did this have to happen again if only I could help fix it my head my head my head
“Erik,” Charles whispers pleads whimpers. “Leave, my friend. Please. Leave.”
seven miles away a man waits for his wife to give birth the cramps in her belly are waves of pain washing against her consciousness the baby is afraid it hasn’t the thoughts yet to understand what’s happening ten miles away a couple is making love so good so deep if only this could last
You have to leave Erik leave now or it’ll be too late
fifteen miles away a man is dying from cancer his body aflame with agony twenty miles away a man is brushing his daughter’s hair thinking about his dead wife and why can’t you see how beautiful our child is why can’t you see her grow up
I’m so sorry Erik so sorry you should have left can’t stop this now I’m so sorry
But Erik doesn’t leave. He can’t. He doesn’t know which pair of legs is his anymore, which hands to use, which eyes to see through.
He hears a moan of pain, and some part of him that’s holding on to sanity with all he’s got left realizes that it is he who moans.
He’s swept away in the torrents of Charles’s mind.
fifty miles away a man is drowning lungs bursting but can’t breathe can’t breathe seventy miles away a boy practices Bach on his cello the notes softly washing through his soul making everything bright and happy
a hundred miles away there’s been an accident and the girl is lying on the sidewalk bleeding out her spine crushed oh God this hurts two hundred miles away a professor of mathematics is solving the equation of his life and he’s so close now so close the solution just around the corner
three hundred miles away they’re burning a man alive just because he’s black and he can feel his own flesh sizzling boiling blackening in the heat
Emma Frost’s mind is blank thoughts a polite hum of general interest no pain no knowledge no fear but he can’t rest there can’t risk touching it and ruining the wonder of a fresh start he must control himself
Erik are you still there are you still yourself
please be yourself please please survive this
he’s black and brown and white and blue his hearts beat his lungs fill his stomachs rumble he’s afraid he’s hungry he’s wanting he’s needing he’s hoping
calm down find the middle
Calm down
he’s feeling lust sorrow fear worry longing regret pain so much pain everywhere pain why is there always pain
Go back go back go back
he’s being born and afraid he’s one and loved he’s two and starving he’s three and hiding he’s four and has never wanted for anything he’s five and afraid so afraid why can no one do what she does why does mother look at her that way why are her eyes yellow why is her skin blue
No that’s Raven you need someone else calm down calm down
You need … Charles
You need to find Charles
“I’m so sorry, Erik,” a voice whispers into one of his ears (He has ears? There’s someone else who’s not him?). “I can’t… I need to see this through now. You need to hold on, dear friend, please, just hold on…”
He’s six and her younger brother dies he’s seven and his mother throws him out of the house he’s eight and he kills his family he’s nine and she’s never known her father he’s ten and they won’t stop hurting him
No
No.
He’s five. He’s five and his father’s just died the maid tells him and she pities him pities the little boy who seems to understand too much for his age, he’s five and there are voices in his head, whispering secrets to him, he’s five and the world is a place full of monsters hiding behind the faces of people, he’s five and there’s always pain, somewhere, though his own skin has never felt it, he’s five and he doesn’t understand
He’s five and afraid to sleep because he can never be sure who he’ll be when he wakes up.
He’s five. His name is Charles Xavier.
He’s different. He’s always alone but being lonely is something he can’t even imagine. He’s five. His father just died.
Two pairs of eyes snap open to the silence of the bedroom.
The voices are still there, everywhere, but now there’s a barrier between us and them, a barrier made of very thin glass.
Their hearts beat the same rhythm. Their lungs fill and empty in sync. Their minds are tangled together like Sleeping Beauty’s hedge of thorns. But at least there’s a they now. And a we.
xXx
Charles is five when his father dies and he can feel his mother weeping. She’s at the other end of the house and there are walls and walls between them, but he can feel her, as if she’s sitting right beside him.
No. As if she’s sitting inside his head. Her mourning seems like agony to Charles, so he reaches out with his tiny, fumbling, inexperienced mind, and tries to soothe her.
But he only adds horror to the pain.
Go deeper, go on, you got better, you need to remember how to control this, remember
He’s six when one of the gardeners has a heart attack. It’s quick and there isn’t much pain involved, but by then Charles’s mind has wrapped itself around the house and grounds and all its inhabitants, and he’s not just Charles, he’s everyone, always.
The sudden hole is like a tear in the fabric of his consciousness, and Charles nearly drowns in it before he can pull himself back. He gets a fever and almost dies.
His mother is in Paris at the time.
But you survived you survived, you need to survive this, too
Three months later a village girl is raped. Charles doesn’t speak for two weeks, and no one understands why he starts shaking whenever the milkman makes his delivery rounds.
Not your pain, you’re stronger than this, remember Raven, remember the children, they need you
On the morning of his first day of school, mother takes him aside and tells him, in a brittle voice layered with alcohol (always, always) to behave. There’s a terrible fear in her voice and Charles vows to make her proud, but of course he does everything wrong (always, always).
By the end of the day, he’s hailed as a child prodigy. He’s as knowledgeable as some of his teachers, and how couldn’t he be, since he takes the knowledge right out of their heads. He doesn’t know how not to.
That is the evening mother first slaps him.
He’s disturbed, because he knows from books that a mother isn’t supposed to do that, but he’s been slapped so many times, in so many bodies (the butler slaps the maid, the chauffeur slaps the car washer, cook slaps her cheating husband, and what’s an open handed slap against the pain-burning-shame-fear-panic-hate of what the milkman did to Lisa?), that he doesn’t really mind.
If anything, the experience is a relief, because he finally understands pain, physically, how it happens and why it feels the way it does, and that makes him realize that there’s an inside and an outside to what he is.
Outside, he’s just one small boy with a red, burning cheek. Inside, he’s everyone.
That’s important to know, and so he smiles at his mother, and thanks her. She calls him a monster.
Yes. Remember. There’s an inside and an outside. Pain is real, but it’s also relative. You can reach through it. Remember.
When he’s eight his mother marries again, a colleague of his father’s, and Charles isn’t sure what’s the more terrible thing: Kurt Marko’s mind, or that of his son Cain.
Charles runs away from home for the first time. Only to one of the guest houses, because it’s the middle of the winter and his legs aren’t as strong as Cain’s. But he’s learned a lot this past year and can hide himself from them as long as he’s awake.
They find him while he’s asleep. His room has a lock on the door now. It can only be opened from the outside.
Charles’s mind rushes over this period of time, refusing to acknowledge the way his young self painfully bounces from one Marko’s cruelty to the other’s like a bleeding little rubber ball. Later he will tell himself that he should be thankful to them, really, because his powers grow and grow in that year alone with them, his mother and the alcohol. They have to, if he wants to get through this.
You survived. You learned. You survived. Others lived through worse
And then there’s Raven, bursting into his life with smiles and companionship and blue-skinned glory, Raven, whom he can talk to in her head and who will look at him with awe and delight, not with hate or fear.
Raven, who makes him use his powers in ways he swore he wouldn’t, but he has learned a lot, and cook will never suspect that the little blonde girl is not her own flesh and blood, cook will love the girl like no one in the big cold house up the hill ever could.
That is the way you reach into their minds, just twist, just tweak, it’s so easy, but be careful, do not kill them
And if Raven looks betrayed because he doesn’t really make her his sister, well, it’s better this way, with her tucked away safely in cook’s cottage during the night, never the wiser, never forced to understand why being a Xavier is not half as pleasant as it looks.
Raven doesn’t want him to read her mind anymore, so he has to learn not to, because she’s Raven and made him happy and deserves everything he could possibly give her, even if it hurts.
They will never accept who you are, not deep down, but you have to understand them, they can’t help it
He’s ten when the war ends and the soldiers come home. Ten, and despite all he’s seen, he can’t understand what he sees in their heads (the hunger and the pain and the fear and, oh God, the camps). They open a hospital for war invalids two towns over and their thoughts and nightmares fill Charles’s every waking hour.
Living is difficult during that time. Smiling is impossible.
One of the officers treated there brings with him a man he’s befriended, a survivor of Buchenwald, and Charles can’t talk anymore, he can’t cry, he can’t sleep. He throws up every single thing he tries to eat.
He gets very good at shielding, very quickly.
Yes, of course, that’s the way to do it, keep them out, protect yourself, just keep them out
And then there’s fire, pain, fire, and Cain leaves the house and so does Kurt’s body, but the memory of his death never will, and Charles is alone with his mother and the bottles and the brittle silences between them.
And he’s fourteen now (a real man, his mother tells him unsteadily, look at you), and his tutors tell him he’ll be ready for university, soon, where would he like to go?
But before he’s free there’s one more thing for him to do.
His mother kills herself with alcohol, slowly, one intoxicated night a time. Charles is with her every step of the way.
People die but you don’t. People hurt and you do, too, but it’s not your pain. You hurt and you must never let them know, because they can’t protect themselves the way you can
He’s fifteen when he fumbles and it all collapses, down down down, months of work and control and discipline washed away by the hurricane of others’ thoughts in an instant.
He’s alone in the house and barely manages to scribble a note before he falls to his knees, hoping and praying that it will be Raven who finds him.
He’s unconscious when she does, and stays so for the two painful, endless days it takes to put it all back together again.
Put it back together, just put it all back, that’s right, patience, you can do it
He’s sixteen when he and Raven go to Oxford. Oxford, where only the voices of long dead authors whisper in his head, where the silence of libraries is punctuated by the well-ordered thoughts of learned men and the thoughtless joy of students who haven’t learned pain yet.
Charles’s control over his mind is less white gripped. He relaxes. He starts to fine tune. He trains himself to be pleasant company.
Yes. Be strong. Be harmless. Never let your guard down. Never let them see what you really are.
He’s eighteen when he perfects his shields. He seals one last crack with the finest tendril of thought, and then, suddenly, he’s done.
For the first time in his life, Charles Xavier is alone in his head.
He cries for an hour.
Then he goes out and gets horribly drunk. Because he can, now. For the first time, he’s safe from others. And, even more important: for the first time, the others are safe from him.
Being drunk is a victory all in itself.
xXx
The memories stop. The voices and thoughts and foreign minds do not, never will as long as he’s alive, but he’s master now, not victim.
He’s Charles Xavier, and this isn’t an ocean that can drown him, it’s a canal he’s built for himself, a canal that will take him where he wants.
It’s not fortified, not properly. This won’t hold for long, he’s very aware of it, but it will hold just long enough. He’s Charles Xavier. He won’t forget again.
But there’s also Erik. Erik, scattered in his mind, brave, kind, reckless Erik (my friend) who didn’t want to leave him alone.
If a mind could weep, Charles’s would. If thoughts could tremble and shake, his would as he collects the parts of Erik that are fused with Charles, softly, softly, and puts them back together.
He’s infinitely more gentle, now that it’s Erik and not him, because Erik’s not used to this, Erik’s too good to be shattered, Erik has suffered too much pain in his life already.
Charles takes all the care he can to put Erik back just the way he was, every part handled with love, every thought with kindness, his own regrets and shames (ImsorryImsorryImsorry) woven through it all.
And if the end result is more whole, more beautiful, shining brighter than Erik’s tortured soul used to be, Charles can’t help it, he can’t. This is the way he sees his friend, his brave, wonderful friend, who jumped after him into the dark waters of his mind to save him.
It’s not improvement.
Charles can’t make Erik a better man, because he already is.
xXx
Erik wakes abruptly, panting with shock, muscles knotted with tension, and in his mind the parting whisper of Charles Xavier:
I am so, so sorry, my friend. You should be alright now, and I really need to rest and strengthen my shields. Please forgive me for what I’ve done.
Charles himself is stretched out on the bed, deeply asleep, his face calm yet still drawn. It takes Erik a few very embarrassing moments until he’s sorted out his limbs and scrambled to his feet, but then he leaves the room without a look back.
He knows Charles will be alright.
Erik takes a shower, very hot, and lets his hands glide over every part of his body, feeling the reassuring firmness of muscle, the warmth of skin, the raised paths of old scars.
Slowly, he remembers what it means to be himself (notCharles).
His head hurts, and some part of him is screaming over what just happened to him, but he’s good at suppressing and shutting away, so he does that instead.
In less than eight hours, they’ll board the Blackbird on their way to Cuba, he will finally kill Shaw, and all he can think of is Charles, Charles, Charles.
He dreams of him and the chaos of his mind until the alarm clock rouses him to the next morning.
To the day that might start World War III.