(no subject)
Three days. He allows three days to see the children somewhere secure, under Raven and Moira’s semi-competent management. Raven doesn’t say a word about it but he knows, he can feel the weight of her expectations.
He knows.
Shaw is playing a little game. Save their lives, give them space, as if he hadn’t murdered the boy called Darwin just to prove a point. Shaw doesn’t care about the children, really. He wants what he has always wanted. The one that got away.
Erik doesn’t flatter himself in believing that it’s an individual sentiment. To the Doktor, it was more the annoyance of a work in progress interrupted, that he would have charts filled out in careful, handwritten German that had to remain half blank. Shaw had not known he was alive all these years. It was, he knows now, the only reason he had gotten as far as he had. If Shaw had known about him, he would have come to collect him when it suited his fancy, just for the chance to fill in one or two blanks on those damn charts.
Shaw had not been angry about Cuba. Not to his face, anyway, speaking instead of their future together, what they could achieve if Erik would stop this rebellious nonsense and come home to his creator. His master.
Shaw had saved all their lives by ordering Azazel to get them off that beach, but he’d only done it so he could continue his conversation.
And now, because Erik had been too long in responding, he had taken Charles. Just as a friendly little reminder, he thinks (he hopes, oh god he hopes). Shaw has one telepath, surely he had no need for two, Emma was surely of far more use to him than a soft spoiled idealist. Surely.
All the same it forced his hand. He could not leave Charles in Shaw’s possession. He could not. So he waited for the sun to go down, and stood outside with his mind as empty as possible, and called Charles’s name silently in his head over and over. He could have used Emma’s name instead, or Shaw’s, but he chooses to call for Charles until he feels Emma slide between his temples, as harsh and frigid as Charles had been careful and warm in his thoughts.
You can stop that now, she informs him crossly, and he does, waiting uneasily. Shaw would let him make a trade, he had to, the man was insane but he thrived on his little bargains and promises and if Erik could just get him to agree to let Charles go if he went quietly--
Emma rolls her eyes, somewhere far away, and Erik feels it, tamps down on the surge of fury.
I don’t know what he sees in you, she says in a bored tone, and she could be lying or not lying and Erik doesn’t give a shit.
Tell me where to go. Tell me what he wants in exchange.
Just you, little Erik.
He doesn’t see himself bow his head, still the boy staring at the floor through his tears.
Come get me.
Azazel does, out of nowhere, and then is gone just as quickly, leaving Erik on the doorstep of what looks like someone’s private villa in Mexico somewhere. He stands uncertainly at the door, not because he thinks Azazel would bring him to some random location, but because, at this distance, maybe...
Charles? Are you here?
-----
Erik! Erik, what are you doing, Erik, please get out of here, it's not wo-
The mental thought is cut off abruptly, with a crack like a gunshot, and Shaw quirks his lips. The touch is Emma's - the projection likewise. She's spent enough time with Charles in the last few days to be able to passably mimic his psychic presence, and quite frankly he's curious how far the imitation can extend, whether or not it will work on someone with such... particular intimacy with his little protégé. But then, Erik was always rather hard-headed, wasn't he. And Emma had the perfect balance of stoicism and pain.
Shaw is seated at the end of a long table, facing the door. Azazel drops in at his shoulder, nods once with that half-cocked smile, and leaves as quickly. Thy will be done, thy kingdom come. The whole nine yards.
But he doubts that little mental plea can stay Erik's hand for long. So Shaw is content to sprawl in his chair with calculated elegance and lift the book he's reading. It's one of Charles' favourites, he's found, and it'll do well enough to feign the boredom he wants to present. Erik is of course more than welcome to break the door down.
__
Not just the door. Everything metal within a certain radius shrieks under Erik’s rage, formless and white hot and completely convinced by the trick. The snatch of a voice inside his mind isn’t enough to identify as Charles or not Charles.
The walls bend away from him as he strides forward without a single mote of hesitation. He had been afraid, that first moment, turning to see Shaw in the reactor. He is not afraid now, at least not where he can recognize it. Charles is his only focus, and he is so angry it’s become a sort of calm.
“Herr Doktor,” he says evenly in German, as the doors to the room that Shaw is in twist and crumple on their hinges like wringing hands. “Where is he.”
----
Shaw looks up from his book. He's wearing glasses (don't you remember the last time he wore glasses, Erik) and he squints in Erik's direction, almost as if he had no notion that he was there at all. Inconsequential.
"Erik. So good to see you again. Won't you sit?" His tone is perfectly genial, as if Erik's obvious rage were something entirely quaint. A little child with muddy knees.
__
“I’d rather not.” Ingrained, automatic politeness. Once upon a time, he’d been a very obedient child, when the rage had passed and left him hollow and he had seen no reason not to stand quietly in the Doktor’s shadow, allow the man’s affectionate hand in his hair. Out of the grip of pain and anger, there had been no reason for him to do anything except exactly as Schmidt had asked, because it meant nothing.
He recognizes that book, and dust sifts down as the walls shiver briefly.
----
Shaw tut-tuts with some amusement, tips the book closed and sets it carefully on the table, straightening its spine until it's perfectly parallel to the edge of the table.
"You misunderstand me," Shaw says, looking at Erik over the top of his glasses. "I say 'won't you sit' and you, Erik, say-" he trails off expectantly, and steeples his hands. To Emma, he sends a simple command.
Make him remember the taste of chocolate.
___
Oh God. He has to sit then, or let his knees unhinge and be sick on the floor. Such a simple thing, a taste, a smell, but his hands clench the table and he all but falls into the nearest chair.
----
Shaw smiles brightly. "See? Was that so hard?"
__
Erik shuts his eyes against that smile, ordering himself to breathe. The walls aren’t shaking anymore. That perfect serene rage is... slipping, and he knows he isn’t going to like what will take its place.
“Where is he.”
----
"There's only so much I can teach you about disregarding my questions, Erik. This is your first warning. The next time I have to bring it up, I will send Azazel to Charles. He is very creative, you know?" He mock-shivers. "Positively inspiring, in its own twisted, demonic little way."
__
He can’t help himself, even though he knows better than to give Shaw a vulnerability to work with. He’s half lunged out of the chair before the man is quite finished speaking, murder in his eyes.
“If you’ve hurt him--”
----
"If I've hurt him, Erik, you'll have no choice but to endure it, the same way you managed all those years. Because unless you can overcome me and my telepath - to say nothing of Azazel and Riptide, you have no other options."
Shaw does not move or indicate alarm in any way. However, Emma shifts, crosses her legs in the corner. She's restless, and she does have such a fascination with Erik's memories, thanks to the taste of them she'd gotten on the yacht. Still, now isn't the time for her just yet. Shaw has no problem handling Erik, not when he's like this. Broken and wrecked and vulnerable, all he'd have to do is count to three.
__
Goddammit goddammit goddamit. He’s right, and Erik swallows reflexively, resetting himself back to a neutral expression and demeanor. Of course Shaw would want to play games first.
---
"Emma," Shaw says, without taking his eyes off Erik. "You can leave us, please. And if you'd like to let Charles know his opposite number has arrived, that would do splendidly."
Emma stands, rolls her eyes. She isn't nearly as big on the theatrics, but he knows she'll obey regardless. "Sure," she says, her tone no more interested than if she were reading a phonebook.
"So, Erik. Where to begin?"
__
“Simple.” He will be calm if it kills him. “A trade. Me for him, he goes free and neither you nor your people ever go near him again.”
---
Shaw takes his glasses off, folds them neatly, sets them down on top of the book. This next part is said in German, of course.
"Erik, my son. Come here."
__
...oh no. Oh no, no no no no.
But to freeze or refuse will go back to Charles. He stands as slowly as an old man, as reluctant as possible while still obeying, and approaches warily.
---
And such a smile that conjures. It's nice to see that some things never change, certainly. Shaw indicates that he get on the floor. In any way that pleases him, honestly. Cross-legged, on his knees. Shaw is hardly picky.
__
Like a child. The implication isn’t lost on him.
There’s even more hesitation this time, a tremble in the metal of the room, until Erik simply folds and settles to both knees, resigning himself to this. None of it will matter someday. None of it will matter, because Shaw will be dead, and he won’t have to remember that he did this without a fight.
---
Do you feel fourteen and traumatized yet, Erik?
Shaw leans forward in his chair and, very carefully, takes Erik's chin in his fingers. The boy will no doubt know it's but a fraction of the force he can exert. "Do you honestly believe this would be solved so simply as with a trade?"
__
No. No he never did, and it’s clear in the way his shoulders drop slightly, his back losing that defensive tension. He was already fucked before he walked in here.
“What use would a weakling like that be to you.”
---
"Keeps you in line, doesn't he?" He slides his hand to Erik's cheek, and then up into his hair, which he ruffles with affection.
Of course, they both know he doesn't need Charles to keep Erik in line. But it is a pleasant incentive, nonetheless.
__
He should have known that was coming, Shaw had always liked to find him at his side and ruffle his hair like a father, or a fond pet owner. He can’t quite stop the shudder that takes him at the familiarity. As if he’d never left Shaw’s shadow.
---
Who's to say he ever did? Shaw just fists a hand in Erik's hair and draws him in close. They're barely a breath apart. And then, with a smooth, gentle gesture he kisses his forehead and pushes him away. Settles back in his chair as if he'd never touched him at all.
"I'm intrigued by the fact that you're so quick to offer yourself for Charles' security, though. How far does that loyalty extend, I wonder?"
__
That earns a real flutter of panic, wires crossing as he’s suddenly unable to differentiate Shaw’s hand in his hair from the memory of Charles, recent experience overriding instinct, and his lips actually part for the kiss that doesn’t occur.
He can’t speak for a moment, the spot on his brow where Shaw’s lips had touched taking up all his concentration with how it tingles. Now he wants to run. Now he wants to be sick, at what he would have simply let Shaw do.
“I can stop bullets now,” he hears himself say, calm and detached as if that had been the question asked of him. As if that was the only test Shaw might think to put him through.
----
"Yes, and we are all very proud of you for that." Shaw just watches him, his expression flat and neutral. It's no doubt one Erik recognizes, the one Shaw wore just before he would sink scalpels beneath his skin.
"But I've advanced beyond that stage as well, Erik." Oh and he'll just leave it to your imagination what exactly he means. Certainly it has nothing to do with the fact that you would have just let him kiss you.
__
He recognizes it. It was always the last thing that told him that, no matter what happened, no matter if he struggled or screamed or didn’t, he was already cut. There was nothing that would stop what was coming.
“You should have told me, when I was a child, that you were like me.” He hasn’t the faintest fucking clue why he’s still talking, or where the words are coming from. “It would have been different if you’d said something.”
----
"Erik," he says, so gentle and chiding. Like Erik just got a math problem wrong and he, the ever-tolerant teacher, is trying to herd him into finding the answer for himself. "My son, I am nothing like you."
And, for the errant pupil. Shaw reaches out, taps Erik against the forehead where he'd laid that kiss, and throws him against the far wall.
__
WELL THAT WAS JUST ABOUT THE LAST THING HE WAS EXPECTING not that it would’ve mattered, if he’d had any hint it was coming. The air leaves his lungs on impact and he hears more than feels his head crack against the wall, and things go a little wavy at the edges for a moment. He comes back to himself on hands and knees, and adrenaline brushes aside any bit of common sense. His teeth bare themselves and he reaches, calling anything and everything he can summon to crush or rend. ]
----
And Shaw, conversely, just looks bored. You know you can't hurt him, Erik. So he is going to just arch one eyebrow at you until you come to that foregone conclusion under your own power.
__
Well. He is just going to totally wreck your room, then. And then let everything drop, one hand on the wall and panting slightly, as shredded wires spark everywhere and bits of ceiling fall down and it quite looks like a bomb had gone off.
It is quite frankly a stupid notion that comes into his head, but he did just rip through most of the house, and he suddenly wheels around, gaze darting frantically through the missing sections of wall. Walls.
“Charles! Answer me!”
---
And Shaw just. Slowclap.gif there, boy. Emma's voice in his head, amused, Shall I do the honours?
Shaw puts a finger to his lips contemplatively, studies Erik's shoulders. There was a time when the boy could not stand the idea of turning his back to him, afraid of what horrors he might visit upon him unsuspecting. Now he finds it merely curious that Erik would do it for this Xavier boy.
Oh, very well.
Emma's pleasure is like the rest of her, sharp and knife-like and glitter pressed up against his mind and gone.
Shaw doesn't need to be a psychic to see her twist that knife in Erik. The image, the memory of Charles naked and on his knees, arms bound in a way that forced his shoulders against the natural joint. Every inch of him beaten and bloody and broken, infection crawling across his skin.
What's worse is the noise. That terrified little whimper that he makes. And - and here Shaw thinks this a particularly amusing touch - the way he whispers Erik's name. So she had been spying on them in her absence. She had grown more subtle and deft in touching another's mind. Had she noticed Erik's reaction to the kiss he'd laid against his forehead? Women were so effectively cruel in matters of love.
__
The fact that there is no coherent before and after, no movement, just Charles in front of him, doesn’t even register, which goes to show how susceptible to bullshit he is when he’s upset. If there was any color left in his face it washes out, and his knees hit the floor, but he doesn’t notice that. That’s not important. The important part is his hand, trembling and hesitant, reaching out to touch and unable to do so, terrified that there was literally no place on “Charles’s” battered form he could touch without causing more pain. White static seems to have replaced any coherent thought in his brain.
----
Anger and pain.
Shaw stands, and in a matter of strides he's standing next to Erik. If he wanted to apply a religious metaphor (and he detests those, but it feels appropriate) he would almost call this The Creation of Adam. The moment when little Erik, who had been so untouchable save through personal trauma for all those long years, was tugged back down to Earth and sweet mortality for a single moment's weakness.
Shaw threads his fingers through Erik's hair and pulls him snug against his thigh. Like a master with a hound.
"You know," he begins conversationally. "He's the reason you're here at all? I told him quite plainly early on that if he would only cooperate with us to bring humanity to the brink of its rightful curtain call, I'd leave you alone. He's quite a bit stronger than Emma, I was pleased to discover. He could fight off any attack she threw at him, and my dear girl threw a lot. He spouted nobility about how his mind was a weapon far too powerful to let fall into the wrong hands. Even when I threatened to bring you here if he didn't cooperate, he refused. 'Erik would understand', he said."
The image fades. Perhaps he'd been wrong about Emma's dislike for the dramatic; because her timing was nothing short of sublime. "Now you're both here. Both mine. Tell me, Erik, do you understand? He was willing to watch me break you to save humanity."
He's curious as to whether or not that will cut the way he wants to. He always has other blades.
__
He says nothing. He resists nothing, when Shaw pulls him against the warmth of his thigh. He thinks absolutely nothing, when the image fades beyond his useless fingers, and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t bring himself to touch because there had been nothing to touch.
To save humanity. Yes, he could believe Charles would do those things, not comprehending what it meant. The same way Charles had never understood what it meant to offer his idealism, his visions of the future, so carelessly to a man who knew better than to consider a future with himself in it.
He should probably answer Shaw, not that there is anything he can answer with. But oddly enough, the voice he can hear murmuring underneath all the static is someone unexpected.
He has confirmation from Shaw that Charles is here. Raven had stopped him in a hallway and asked, without a hint of anxiety, if he would simply let her know when Erik had found him.
Curiously, the betrayal and building rage seem completely detached from the rest of him at this point, and he has to wonder if that’s due to Charles and his training, or his meddling, or whatever it was he did when he invited himself into peoples’ heads convinced that he could make them better. Either way he feels that pressure rising like a valve on a nuclear reactor, and instead of trying to contain it or even direct it at Shaw, or any other target, he pushes it down. Literally.
Disrupting natural magnetic fields is different than raising a submarine or even turning a satellite dish. He feels it burn differently and is very aware that he doesn’t have the control or strength to do this safely right now, if ever. He can’t care. Raven had asked him for a sign.
Miles away but rippling towards them, through this city and its insect inhabitants, an earthquake starts. Miles away alarms are going off and buildings are shaking to pieces and no doubt people are screaming, but only the faintest tremors reach this particular villa, barely enough to rattle the foundations.
Erik breathes out.
----
Huh.
Now, that was a glass ceiling he'd never particularly expected Erik to push through. Shaw's eyes narrow and his hand in Erik's hair tightens. Not to hold him there. Not to hurt. Just a reminder.
Find out what he just did, Miss Frost. With extreme prejudice.
'Extreme prejudice'. He's never used that phrase with her, but there's a thought of acquiescence in his mind and then Emma's presence vanishes completely. That's a rare thing. She's usually tagging along in one way or another, his White Queen, and he doesn't mind in the least. They have very similar tastes, after all, and she's entitled to as much of his work as he cares to share with her. To have her suddenly absent is-interesting. Now, where has all her focus gone, he wonders.
__
She could pull it directly from Erik’s head, if she wanted, except what she would find there would not be very coherent. It hadn’t been his deliberate intent to cause an earthquake. To him, all he had done was reach down, which was not very different from how he reached for anything else, except he usually didn’t even consider trying to affect the planet’s own natural forces. To hear what he had just done would be a surprise to him, other than an accomplishment as a marker.
He’s not angry anymore. In fact he’s very hollow right now, as if he’d pushed too much of himself down into the Earth and not enough had come back up. The sharper grip on his hair earns only a slow blink, and resisting doesn’t even occur to him. There is no point in it. Moving doesn’t seem worth it. His weight is still evenly balanced on both knees, or Shaw’s hand would be the only thing keeping him upright.
A vague gnawing ache throughout his body, centering behind his eyes, tells him that he’s not going to be lifting anything larger than a book for the next few days, if not weeks. Over-exertion, lucky him.
----
-
He's not sure himself, Emma's voice sounds distinctly disgusted in his head. As if she's asking herself even now how someone could fail to recognize an action they'd taken. And make no mistake about it; Shaw recognized action when he saw it. Especially from Erik.
Whatever it did, it wiped him out. Almost like a part of him is missing. She's back to sounding bored, he can almost imagine her glancing disinterestedly at her nails.
"I see," he says aloud. His fingers resume their stroking motion. "Azazel."
The mutant's appearance was abrupt and heralded only slightly by the customary scent of sulphur. He inclines his head slightly, then tips it towards Erik with a questioning little quirk of his eyebrow. Shaw holds up his free hand, and steps around in front of Erik, hauls him to his feet with no more effort than someone manipulating a rag-doll. "I've decided you've earned a treat, Erik. Azazel here is going to take you to see Charles. You have an hour. And afterwards, my son, the training begins anew."
'Training'. Always such a terrifying word for poor little Erik Lensherr. Always it meant pain and anger and fear.
He lets go, and Azazel catches Erik before he so much as starts to fall. The teleportation is instantaneous, and immediately, everything is different.
Wonderful thing about being able to employ a teleporter that's as fearless as he is talented. He can go, quite literally, anywhere. But 'anywhere' in this instance is underground.
An old mine.
It's deep enough that the pressure of the air is a vicious contrast, but there's one more curious aspect to this place. There is absolutely nothing metal. Not near enough to make a difference. And there is no way out. The only tunnels to it collapsed years ago, making it an effective tomb for the workers that had been trapped beneath hundreds of tonnes of earth and rock.
Oh, and Charles is there. Looking nothing like the ghastly image projected by Emma, but instead healthy (if somewhat more gaunt, and with a split to his lip) and very, very angry. Startled more than angry perhaps because he drops what he's holding (a plastic bowl) and reaches a hand to his temple-
But Azazel is gone as quickly as he'd come, leaving them alone.
"Erik?" Charles' voice is sharp and hoarse and every ounce of that anger has gone. He scrambles forwards and, dear friend, he'll be catching you if you fall.
__
Falling definitely seems to be in the cards, because even though it registers to him when Azazel disappears that maybe he should try to stand under his own power, his body stubbornly refuses to mind, and he’d have hit the ground like a sack of potatoes if Charles hadn’t been there to catch him.
It takes a second for him to process the voice. A longer second to remember how to get his own to work.
“...Charles?”
And then he has to frown, because whoever said that sounds almost drugged, or about to pass out, and he had been hoping to not give that impression.
---
Oh god. Charles has never in their acquaintance heard Erik sound like that, not outside of his memories. He eases both of them to the ground and cradles Erik as best he can. "Easy, my friend." Generally, his first thought would be to dive wholesale into Erik's head, but although he clutches Erik close enough that his fingers are near his temple, he can't complete the motion. He can't.
"Are you-" he chokes a little. "Hurt?" Because Christ, does he understand all the things that single word can entail. Now more than ever. "Erik...?"
__
This is a clever illusion, Erik thinks. It even has warmth and solidity and scent, and he has no doubt Shaw would do this to him. Dump him in an empty room with a consolation prize of thin air and psychic illusion.
He lets the illusion cradle him anyway, because why the fuck not. It might be better than facing the real Charles, because then he will have to muster the energy to be angry at the real Charles over what Shaw had said, and he’s not sure who to be angry with yet, himself, Charles, or Shaw. Or all of them.
“Hurt.” Fffff. “No.” No it would hurt the next morning when the headache set in.
He makes a concentrated effort to get his eyes to focus on the face leaning over him. No blood and bruises this time. He prefers that. On the other hand...
“I would prefer it if you were real,” he groans, in the tone of one talking to himself, and makes a vague effort at trying to sit up.
---
No, no and no. Charles just sort of holds him in place. He's not been feeling particularly strong these last few days, but he's still more than capable of preventing Erik from sitting up.
"I am real, I assure you." He hunches over him, presses his forehead against Erik's. Emma had told him. She'd told him they had Erik and he hadn't believed her, it had all been some new level of deception, but this- his hands are shaking.
He pulls away after a moment. He has to get them onto his bed. Oh, yes, he has one of those, a little inflatable mattress he'd dragged into the middle of the mineshaft because he couldn't handle the idea of sleeping against the stone walls. But he knows that's just a stall tactic. Planning for comfort, material existence over mental health. Hasn't that always been his problem?
"Erik? May I?"
There's no mistaking what he's asking.
__
Oh.
He makes a small noise when Charles presses their foreheads together, because he’s come to associate that with the ironic desire, for a telepath, to be closer, as though it made any difference whether Charles was at his side or across the room when he touched Erik’s mind. Erik finds it endearing, secretly, as Charles tended to do it only in moments of pure instinct, driven by some overwhelming emotional need.
If this is a trick, and he is inviting disaster by saying yes and allowing Emma Frost into his mind, it can be no worse than refusing. He’s under no illusions that his own willpower is enough to keep her out when she wants in.
Yes, he thinks at Charles, very calmly. There is no point in pretending that he doesn’t want the confirmation of identity or the bizarre, addictive comfort of Charles’s thoughts pressing into his, filling in his gaps and empty broken places until he feels whole. He thinks of an iron wall surrounding his mind, seamless and impenetrable, and then he thinks of a doorway, something that is somehow Charles-shaped, like a man holding open a storm door to his friend-brother-lover-opposite-equal in the last few seconds before the hurricane is on them, ready to slam it shut against the world as soon as Charles is inside and with him where he belongs.
It is, needless to say, the most deliberate relaxing of his defenses that he’s ever managed, even when he was trying. Charles had told him matter of factly that some minds were ironically akin to physical bodies, subconsciously defensive and guarded against invasion, and Erik had given him the flattest stare he was capable of and asked if Charles had really just compared his brain to a virgin’s clenched thighs.
----
It's a little like falling, that first step into Erik's head. There's something about it that seems intrinsically wrong and he has no notion of what it could be, no idea where to put up the patchwork protection he so wishes could fix him. Still, Charles is as careful as he's ever been. More so, perhaps. He's damaged too. Emma's repeated psychic attacks hadn't made his life any easier, and they've been bloody well starving him. He's not at his best. But his best is exactly what Erik needs from him and so it's what he gets.
A minefield would have held less danger, for both of them. But Charles steps down to the mess and miasma that is Erik's mind and he does everything he can, instinctively and otherwise, to set him back to rights. Fills up those cracks and chasms with his own presence and blunts those knife-sharp edges.
What did you do?
The feeling he runs into is like the dark-mirror equal of the one he'd found in his mind after he'd moved the satellite. Still, his tone isn't accusatory, merely worried, gentle and tired. You atrociously ridiculous man, if you hurt yourself on his account-
__
He will never admit how much he craves this. When Charles is in his mind, more than just surface touches, he’s usually more concerned with implications and half-instinctive reactions, whether or not it was weakness, whether or not his mental landscape had negative effects on Charles, whether or not he should be bothered by the fact that this doesn’t bother him anymore. The closest parallel he has to the sensation is a drug, a sudden painful-not-painful alleviation of everything that is wrong with him, like a knotted muscle being undone by deft fingers. It felt good when Charles did this to him. Charles felt good.
And that was usually a bad thing, in his experience. A dependency or a vulnerability, and he knew that Charles knew he’d been lying every time in the past when he’d growled threats about staying out his head, that he was fine and he didn’t need what Charles could offer.
Right now he’s more inclined to be honest about it, exhausted and his usual defenses torn to bits thanks to Shaw. He does feel like a child again, that familiar state of purity when his world had only consisted of one or two simple emotions at a time. Fear of Shaw. Anger at Shaw. Reassurance and even comfort, that Shaw still believed he was special, was willing to let him go back (come home) to how they had once been and call him son, with his fingers carding absently through Erik’s hair. He hated Shaw of course, he always had, but the mind adapts to fit its surroundings and there had been a time when Erik didn’t resist being led into the operating room, when he had felt accomplished and even proud of the destruction the Doktor could call from him. There had been a time, in fact, when he’d felt like Shaw was the one controlling his power, and he was just the conduit.
Even if all of that wasn’t so close to the surface, he wouldn’t be able to hide it from Charles anyway, so he doesn’t try. He does worry, though, over the exhaustion and hurt he can feel in Charles. Charles isn’t built for pain. Charles had not been raised by it the way he had, hadn’t been conditioned to crave it.
I touched the Earth, he answers, and this is a child’s reply, so he has to think a moment before rephrasing it into something that makes sense.
Shaw wanted to see what I was capable of, I think. He showed me you, but it wasn’t you, it was just an image designed to provoke me. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I heard Raven-- before I left she asked me to find you, to give her a sign when I did.
… I think I caused an earthquake.
----
An earthquake.
Charles is suddenly so completely angry that his presence in Erik's mind ends up edged in the burnt cold of it. It takes an effort he almost can't manage to keep the brunt of it from the other man.
Charles is new to the idea of hatred. He knows too well what he could become if he stepped off the gilded path he's been on most of his life. Knows too well what he's capable of, what he could (can) do. In that moment he wants to do all of it to Shaw. Every dark impulse he's ever drowned out, washed down on the heels of cheap beer. .
No. Rage and serenity. As much as it's almost galling to have to follow his own advice, he does it anyways. Serenity in this instance is the hand he has splayed across Erik's chest, the beat of his heart, still strong.
He finds the answer to an unasked question in Erik's mind. An hour. Less now.
So soon. He chokes on it. With abrupt absurdity, he wants to cry.
It's Erik's concern that anchors him. Concern that he will not be able to handle whatever is coming. He half-laughs aloud, but he thinks it sounds equally a sob. Charles is a full grown man. Come into this with his personality formed and complete. Solid. The depth of what Shaw visited on Erik cannot - cannot - be stamped into him like a counterfeit coin. Charles is not as strong as Erik, god he knows it, but he's strong enough for this.
"If you've gone and made any ancient, magical cities disappear, Erik, I think you and I shall have to have words."
__
This is the part where, under other circumstances, he’d retort something sarcastic to hide the fact that he caused an earthquake and has no idea how, but at the moment he simply accepts Charles’s comment as calmly as he accepts the sudden roil of hatred. It hurts, when a telepath is given to uncontrollable emotions inside one’s mind, but he fails to flinch. It is only pain.
And because they do not have very much time, he gathers himself to sit up again, moving patient and slow like a cripple. He would very much like to waste this hour curled up on that excuse for a bed, Charles safe in his arms and in his head, but he thinks it would be worse to lay there and feel peaceful, knowing what was creeping closer with every tick of Shaw’s watch hand.
You need to show me everything that’s happened since he took you. What he’s asked of you, anything you’ve read off his pawns, anything about this place. I need to get you out of here.
There is no thought of escaping together. Shaw could be distracted but not deterred. Charles could get away, and Shaw would have his entertainment in punishing Erik, and maybe, maybe it would be enough time for Charles to disappear.
--
Charles winces at that little flash of pain in Erik's mind. His doing. He salves it immediately, with all the apology he has at his disposal.
It's short-lived, interrupted by Erik's next sentiment. Leave it to him to be the practical one between them. Charles lets Erik sit up, a hand on his shoulder to steady him, and when he's upright Charles stands, holds out a hand. There's no reason they can't do both of those things simultaneously, is there?
Erik. Come here.
The choice of words is deliberate. Shaw had said something very similar not too long ago now, but as much as Charles detests this, detests having to mimic the man, he needs to draw Erik back, reclaim him, ground him. Give him something to hold onto, some promise of what they'll have when they get out of all this.
And they will. Together, not - not by whatever means Erik has planned that he really doesn't want to dwell on.
__
He obeys. Of course he obeys, between Charles’s voice and Shaw’s words, without a shred of his customary hesitance.
---
And when he's got Erik on his feet, Charles just stands there a moment and wraps his arms around him and presses his forehead against Erik's shoulder. Thank you.
__
That’s not in the script. He glances down at the top of Charles’s head, confused.
---
"Come on," he says calmly. He slides his hand down to Erik's hand, twines their fingers together and heads for the bed. "There aren't any blankets. Shaw's courtesies leave something to be desired, I've found."
__
...this seems somewhat opposite of what he’d asked Charles to do, which was give him some information he could use to form an escape plan. Part of him gears up to stop, to protest, because they don’t have time for this.
The rest of him is willing to be overruled and led. More than willing. He acquiesces without a word, following Charles.
---
And Charles, true to form, gets them both to the mattress and pushes Erik down first, following a moment later to straddle his thighs.
It's not an intimate gesture, not the way they've been in the past; right now it's just the easiest way for both of them to be on the narrow mattress.
"He hasn't asked me anything. Azazel came to get me; I've spent some time with Emma. I've seen Shaw all of twice. We've barely spoken. Every time I've been with Azazel he's had a helmet. As has Shaw. I haven't seen Riptide. This place is completely sealed; I've been over it... more than once." He grimaces a little. He's just glad he's not particularly claustrophobic; otherwise he'd have gone mad by now. The silence of this place was bad enough. The solid rock was no better. He'd tried and tried and tried to force his mind through it, but there was too much interference. He had no idea how far down they were.
"And Erik? You are not getting me out of here. Not alone."
__
It’s also an easy position for Erik to tug Charles down to him, automatic and gentle, wanting to feel the steady beat of Charles’s heart and the rising and falling of his chest. It might be ridiculous to talk strategy like this, tangled together as if they were back at the mansion and taking advantage of the few quiet hours before dawn and the children, but there are no fucks being given right now. This is where Charles ought to stay, wrapped in his arms and away from Shaw.
“There’s no metal here,” he says quietly, realizing. Somehow, he doesn’t think this place was meant to be a prison for a telepath, however well it also serves that purpose.
This is where Shaw would keep him. This is where Shaw would lock him away, under miles of rock and earth.
“Shaw doesn’t want you. He has his willing telepath, to keep you she would have to be constantly struggling against you. It wouldn’t be efficient.”
What he doesn’t say, but what Charles can surely pick up from his mind, is that Shaw would probably relish the challenge of breaking a rebellious telepath. Threats or drugs or who knew, Shaw would no doubt delight in coming up with creative ways to bend Charles to his will.
As he had bent Erik.
---
Charles certainly isn't objecting. He'd endured nights alone and cold well enough, but if Erik has to be anywhere near to Shaw (oh, god how he wishes-) then it's better that they're together.
If that lasts. He's sure Shaw will do whatever he can to do them the most damage. Charles doesn't think he could long hold onto his sanity at the thought of Erik being elsewhere, alone with that monster.
"Well, he's stuck with me whether he wants me or not," he says, casually matter-of-fact, half-muffled against Erik's shirt, his tone as light and careless as if they were talking about drapery in Westchester. "I'm not going to leave you with him, Erik. And if he teleports me away I will come back, again and again and as many times as it takes, until we've beaten him." The pressure of his mind against Erik's backs the ferocious sincerity of the words.
But his resolve wavers, behind the closed doors of his own consciousness. At all the way Erik knows that Shaw will use. He's not brave. The thought of enduring those same tortures that Erik had gone through makes him want to be sick on the floor, but it would take more than the threat of torture looming over him for him to let Erik see how afraid he is.
Not just for himself. For both of them. Even seeing Erik like this - tired and so submissive - is hard to bear. The thought of adding bruises, broken bones to that-
No. He steps back from the speculation, calms his mind. They have half an hour. Charles will make it last. He has to.
"You don't belong to Shaw, Erik."
__
He wants to believe that. He wants so badly to believe that, fall into Charles’s conviction and let it bolster him. He wants to tell Charles not to worry, that Shaw is just one mutant, however powerful, and Erik is no longer a frightened child to be cowed by threats.
In Cuba, he had convinced himself that when he came face to face with Shaw again, he would not be afraid. He would let the rage take over and he would make himself a conduit for destruction again, as he’d always been good at. But then the moment had come and he’d frozen, the way the man had smiled at him, the way he always smiled...
Shaw doesn’t seem real to him, sometimes. The others are flesh and bone even with their powers, but Shaw is his very shadow, always walking a step behind or before him. Untouchable.
He has to close his eyes, grit his teeth to get the words out, choked with hate as they are.
“He made me. I have always belonged to him.”
----
"I found you," Charles counters, pushing himself away from Erik's chest to look down on him with all the steady assurance he can manage. He doesn't know what to say, all he knows is that this might be the only chance he has to keep Erik above water. He just starts talking, letting instinct overrule everything else. "I know you better than Shaw ever did. Than he ever will. You're mine. The past may have shaped you, but it's only a path that's brought you here, to my side. Where you belong. Do you understand me, Erik? You're mine."
He catches Erik's right hand, brings it to his mouth, brushes his lips across the back of it and then just holds it there against his cheek.
"No matter what Shaw does, he can only take that from you if you surrender it. And I know you better than that. You're a fighter. The strongest, bravest man I've ever met. Trust me, yes? And we'll both get out of this."
__
‘Where you belong.’
Twenty odd years of memories protest. Twenty years of nightmares, of scars, of haunted living, chasing his own personal demon. Shaw was everything to him, his past and future, and he’d always known that he would not survive the battle that would kill Shaw. He had already accepted that.
But Charles is still in his mind, and they are face to face, and there is nothing but fierce honesty in those words, that expression, and something in him twists painfully. For all Charles’s talk of the future they could have together, the school, the children, the future of mutantkind, he’d never really let himself believe. Even their first time together, when Charles had let just a tiny bit of control slip and accidentally overwhelmed him, he’d been shocked at the complete and utter sincerity of faith he’d seen.
He would like to belong to Charles, he thinks. He would like to be remade into this figure that Charles sees, this strongest, bravest man, who would teach their children the harsher lessons when they needed to learn them, so Charles would not have to.
Words refuse to come to him, so he has to act instead, surging up to claim Charles’s mouth in a harsh, bruising kiss, clutching him like a drowning man.
Yours, he agrees silently, desperately, even if not all of him believes it. That doesn’t matter, that has never mattered, he has always been someone’s vessel, and he would die to become the one that Charles thinks he could be.
The day I turned the satellite, I thought you could remake me. I thought it might be possible. I wanted you to, I would have let you--
But that wasn’t how Charles operated, with his kindness and his helpful little tricks, showing him how to increase his powers without pushing him. He had never claimed Erik the way Erik had wanted him to, never making the first move. Worried about permission. Worried that it had to be what Erik wanted, if not what he needed.
And that was of course why Erik had fallen in love with him.
---
Charles makes a noise against Erik's mouth he's not sure he can describe, but he doesn't pull away. He closes his eyes tightly, grabs Erik by the front of his shirt and kisses him back, everything he is laid down in that moment.
Don't speak in the past tense. We are going to be old men together, you and I. There's plenty of time. And I'll go bald and you'll go grey and we'll have to resort to speaking telepathically because neither of us will be able to hear after all the racket those bloody children are going to make.
__
The honesty in that is almost more than he can bear and he trembles under the weight of it, breaking the kiss to press his lips anywhere he can reach. The corner of Charles’s mouth, his eyes, his brow, every inch of available skin and every kiss is a whisper of his name. That future sounds like paradise, like the kind of reward reserved for saints, but Charles would make it happen. He knows that.
Charles.
Even mentally, he can’t shape the words. It has to stand in for what he doesn’t say, which doesn’t matter because the sentiment is clear in his thoughts and Charles already knew, anyway, long before today.
---
As much as he wants to do this, as much as he wants to keep doing this, just this, he can almost feel their time winding down, each atom and molecule of dust in the air a portent of what's on their horizon.
He's not quite strong enough to ignore it.
I know, Erik. I know.
He sits back, up and out of Erik's immediate reach. "We-ah. We're running out of time." He sounds completely lost, but it doesn't linger. "Erik, is there anything-is there anything I can do for you? To make this easier?" He lifts his hand, wiggles his fingers near his temple. He knows what he's asking. God, he knows.
I know you can endure it. Don't think that's why I offer. I - I'm -
He can't finish that sentence. Can't end it in one simple word. 'Afraid'. His hands aren't quite steady.
__
Yes, yes there is, but he doesn’t even want to say it because he doesn’t want to see the look on Charles’s face.
I’m not afraid of what he can do to me. It’s only half way a lie. What I cannot stand is the thought of what he’ll do to you.
“...the memories.” He says it with quiet reluctance, already hearing the protests. “If I didn’t...if I couldn’t remember you, he would have no reason to threaten you.”
No reason because if he didn’t remember, then Charles would mean nothing to him. His life after Miami would simply be gone. No weaknesses, no chinks in his armor. The man he’d been back then had been ready and willing to go down with Shaw, if that was what it took. Any means necessary.
---
You probably couldn't have gotten Charles' expression to go more carefully blank were he a television you'd just unplugged.
Very, very calmly, "This isn't about what Shaw will do to me. What he'll threaten me with. No matter what he does to me, Erik, I will come back to you. I will always come back to you."
He's angry, yes, but it's a wearier sort than he's used to, and none of it is directed at Erik. At Shaw, perhaps. At himself, for the foolishness of the offer. At how he is almost tempted to do it. He doubts it would go easier on him. Shaw would, if anything, be angrier that Charles had taken away that venue of torment for him. There would be nothing so subtle as counting to three.
But it doesn't mean he'd leave Erik untouched.
"That wasn't what I meant," he says gently. "I could dull your pain. I could render you unconscious if it gets too bad."
__
Bleak. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
Charles can probably feel it, that continuing sense of perfect dread that surrounds Shaw in Erik’s thoughts. It’s not a rational adult’s perception of a cruel and dangerous man. It’s a child’s fear of faceless, utter evil, the kind that gets past any defense simply by being what it is. There isn’t that much more Shaw could do to Erik physically, really, that would be new or unimaginable. He’s not afraid of his own pain.
But the thought of Charles under the scalpel. Charles strapped to the chair, the leather cutting into his wrists. The thought of Shaw’s hands on Charles, tilting his chin up, settling on his shoulders, leaves Erik weak and sick beyond words. If Shaw destroyed the one thing he had left, the way he’d destroyed everything else...
And of course Shaw would. That is what evil did.
“My pain is the last thing I’m worried about.”
----
"And it's the first thing I am worried about!" His voice is loud in the space, and it echoes, strange and broken off the walls, comes back to his senses harsh and unfamiliar and with the sadness borne of open, endless space.
He just grabs the front of Erik's shirt and jerks him a few inches off the ground. "I will not break, Erik. I know exactly what this man is capable of! I've been there beside you for all of it. I know. I know what he can do to me. What he no doubt will. I can't lie and say I'm not afraid, I'm terrified, actually. But my weapon has always been my mind. Erik, please. Please. Trust me. My friend, trust me. Believe in me, and I will give you that future I promised."
When he leans in to kiss him, he is intending to do what Erik asked. He honestly is. But he doesn't. As their lips crash together, as equally causing pain as pleasure, he does something else.
Instead, he reaches into Erik's mind. Deeper than he has before. Deeper even than those precious memories of his mother, his father, the happy family life he'd had before that bastard came and took it all away. He reaches for the darkest, most animal center of the man that he loves beyond words and he gives him the only thing he can think of to help him survive.
Hope. Like a candleflame left in a window to guide home all those weary lost souls of old. Erik needs it more than they ever did.
__
This is getting them nowhere, going in circles with who is more concerned for who. Erik bites his tongue when he’s grabbed, equally furious but waiting for Charles to finish his tirade before he retorts, because goddammit, how can Charles expect him to not be afraid for him, to cling to some idiotic notion that his belief would keep Charles from physical harm--
And then, the kiss. He opens his mouth for it despite himself, dragging Charles down even as he himself is being dragged, and he doesn’t pull away even when he feels that iron cold bullet of intention moving through him. Charles, moving through him as ruthlessly as Emma Frost had, as deliberately, and there is nothing he can do to stop the invasion.
Wait, Charles, wait, what are you--
Fear rises in his throat, but it’s too late for that, isn’t it. The man he loves is a telepath. His mind is as vulnerable and open to Charles at any moment as his flesh is when they share a bed.
There is nothing he can do but close his eyes and let it happen. And when it is done he has to clutch a hand against his chest, because he can feel something there, like an instrument left behind after surgery. It doesn’t hurt. It’s simply out of place, a foreign object buried inside of him like an encapsulated flame, and he is afraid of it.
“What have you done to me.”
---
---
He feels like he's going to be sick. What he just did, without invitation or permission, may well have broken something irreparable between them. And the worst part is, he isn't even sorry. He hates what he's just done - he'd promised never to do that to Erik. But cloaking himself in vainglorious morality isn't going to save them. Either of them.
He gets off of Erik, stands. Paces a short distance away to sit down again. "I gave you something Shaw can't take away," he says, and his voice is barely his own. It's too flat, too calm. "You had it once before. It just-it's been dormant for a very long time."
He leans back against the worn rock wall of the mineshaft and cannot help but feel deathly cold. "I'm sorry. I should have asked first."
But no matter how he justifies it to himself he knows that it's the first step of many that will take him to a very dark place. He presses his palms over his eyes, hard against the bone, and tries very completely not to cry. The tremble to his shoulders is more than enough.
And then there's the smell of fire and brimstone, like any hell he's ever heard of, and Azazel is there, equidistant between them like he'd been waiting for the opportunity for them to separate.
"Puzhalsta," he says calmly, holding out his hands to both of them. "Come." He's wearing the helmet, the same gods-damned helmet that keeps him out of Shaw's head, but that doesn't mean Charles doesn't reach out, try to make (force) his way into the man's mind. It's like hitting a wall, diamond-hard, unyielding, an empty spot where a human existence should be.
Charles grits his teeth.
He cannot slow time for Azazel, but he can speed it up for he and Erik. It's a strain, and it'll leave him hurting afterwards (not Erik, Charles is planning on taking the brunt of the repercussions for this, silent apology for what he'd done), but it's not theoretically difficult or impossible to accelerate the impulses of a normal human brain. He can buy them several seconds, passed off as understandable reluctance, but for them it will seem like several times that amount.
I think he's alone. Do we fight him?
If Charles simply moves against him, he has no doubt that Erik will fight. But matter of tactics and strategy and fighting - war - he knows to leave to Erik.
__
Erik holds himself very still when Charles offers his explanation. Holds in the automatic, knee-jerk anger, the hindbrain defensiveness that he knows is fueled by fear and has literally been the cause of every one of their arguments.
He is so fucking tired of being afraid. He is so fucking tired of waiting for betrayal, of his own hypocrisy when he’d admitted not even ten minutes ago that he would let Charles remake him. What did that entail, if not this?
So he doesn’t yell, or accuse, or even let himself think of moral lines crossed. Charles would not hurt him. Charles would not do something, here and now, that would hurt him. He lets his palm flatten over his breastbone as if he could feel the shape of the thing inside him.
Hope. He had gone his entire adult life and most of his adolescence without it. It calls old, old memories, the uncomplicated expectations of a child certain of the good things in his life still to come.
It links to Charles, now. Their future. Their school, their children, the things they could do to shape history. Together.
He pushes himself up even while Charles is apologizing, no doubt berating himself, but before he can say anything, I forgive you, I love you, I will trust that you were right in believing that I needed this, or even reach out, the teleporter is there.
Time’s up.
And it’s a good thing Charles contacts him, because Erik’s hands are already claws, seizing every scrap of metal so conveniently sewn into Azazel’s uniform. The helmet didn’t respond to his power, but brass buttons are another story.
I will fight, he sends back, hard and angry. Grab the helmet if you can while he’s distracted, but do not let him hurt you.
Or separate them, is his unspoken fear.
----
For a moment, Charles merely grinds his teeth in frustration, and lapses his control on both his and Erik's finer synapses. Time seems to slow, and everything settles back into its usual order.
Then he nods.
__
...alright he’d honestly expected an argument, and there’s a sense of grim vindication when it doesn’t come.
Without any more warning than that he launches himself at Azazel, not looking to connect with the wild swing but to distract as he rips everything metal he can from the teleporter’s clothing. Buttons will be his bullets, and he’ll be able to sense the mutant’s presence by the ones he leaves intact.
----
Azazel just cocks his head to one side. 'Amused' might be the term for it. He doesn't have his knives - the buttons are a pity, something he overlooked and not a mistake he'll be making again. It's of no matter to him; he's always been extraordinarily hard to catch. If the little chudovische thinks to outmatch him with a few copper buttons, he is sorely mistaken.
He teleports several feet to Erik's right. The wiser thing would probably be to grab the little telepath and use him as a human shield but, well, moments later that option is rendered invalid by the arrival of his companion.
Emma Frost. In her diamond form, stepping out of the shadows. Azazel smirks, avoiding a volley, as she grabs her opposite number by the throat. She's behind him, her fingers sharp and curving up under his jaw the pressure of her palm across his windpipe.
"You might want to stop what you're doing, by the way." she says, her tone bored and almost fractal in a way, like a single pinpoint of sound was being culled from a room of broken mirrors. "Shaw doesn't care if I kill him."
__
Fuck. Fuck.
He turns from Azazel and whips his projectiles at her, instead, each one unerringly but uselessly ricocheting off her diamond skin. If she’d been flesh, there would have been seven holes in her skull, each one neatly avoiding Charles.
Annnnd Azazel takes that moment to teleport in behind Erik and grab him in much the same way Emma currently has Charles. "Uspokaivat," he says in Russian, calm down, knowing that the man will understand him and also that at that moment he will very likely try to kill him. His presence there is long enough to say that single word and then he teleports away again.
Emma, on the other hand, merely arches an eyebrow. "Really, sugar?" she asks, tightening her hand.
Charles has both hands against her arm, but he's not in a position of particular leverage. Nor can he, at the moment, speak. Not out loud, anyways.
Erik, Azazel is our only chance out of here. Focus on him, I can handle Emma!
... He says as she slowly asphyxiates him.
__
No, you can’t, he sends back flatly, and his eyes aren’t entirely sane as he fixates on Emma.
“Let him go,” he says in harsh German, “or I will kill us all. I’ll collapse this place and even you will never be able to dig yourself out.”
----
"Oh, that's smart," she says, her inflection unwavering. "You do realize how overtaxed you are right now, don't you? That even trying to use a fraction of your power would kill you? And how much your death would affect Shaw. He would be positively beside himself, with nothing to take his considerable anger out on-oh." She rattles Charles a little. Like a bloody doll. "Except him."
She doesn't need to add it's your choice. The statement is implicit.
__
--stop.
He manages to keep himself from saying the word out loud, weak and alarmed as it is, but his thoughts are harder to silence. There’s a moment of internal struggle before he finally forces himself to relax his hands, the remaining metal in the air falling to the ground.
He can’t be responsible for handing Charles over to Shaw. He can’t.
“Let him go,” he repeats in English, softer and defeated.
----
"Gladly." She lets Charles go with a little push in Erik's direction, the latter stumbling for want of air. A nod to Azazel and the teleporter is at them in an instant, the mutual touch between the three of them enough to drag them to Shaw.
The room to which they teleport is one Erik might recognize. Not exactly - there are no metal implements hanging on the wall, for instance, but much else is similar. The tables. The acrid smell of antiseptic. And everything is chill and white and so completely, perfectly clean. And Shaw is just pulling on a set of gloves.
__
Oh look, they’ve travelled through time back to Erik’s worst nightmares. This day can’t possibly get any worse, can it?
Erik’s reaction is instantaneous, he catches Charles when Emma shoves him, and the moment they are in the white room he turns his shoulder into Shaw, cradling Charles away from him in the most basic instinctive response to a threat. Let the beast rake his back, and spare the person wrapped in his arms.
----
Erik, he's not a child. Charles shifts, pushing his shoulder against Erik's. He hates this, this response he sees in Erik; the fact that he knows exactly what has led to it. He tastes blood in his mouth and he's honestly not sure if it's one of Erik's memories or the possibility of having bitten through his cheek.
Erik. Shoulder to shoulder. Please. You trying to protect me will not make this any easier.
He wonders if Erik will hear the quaver in his mental projection, the unspeakable fear. The darkness was easier. The press of millions of tonnes of rock above them. The thought that he might never see the sun again, all of it the easier.
His fingers are tight against Erik's arm; pressing bruises there he can't help. He doesn't even realize his grip is so tight. But he looks at Shaw. Makes himself look. And then, he can't look away.
*
Shaw snaps the second of his gloves into place with no small amount of panache. He has a role to fulfill, perfectly villainous in nature, and he's in no particular hurry to delineate from his purpose. Not where Erik is concerned, and certainly not yet. Shaw has thought about the day when Erik will stand at his side, but that day is not yet, not now. Not without work.
And, if he were to be completely honest with himself, Shaw has always loved his work.
"Erik, I trust none of this requires explanation for you. And your little telepath friend no doubt has all the information he needs from your not-inconsiderable experience. But," he sets his hands flat against a (plastic, thank you) examination table. "The rules are going to change this time. Would you like to ask me how?"
__
No. He can’t have you.
It’s possibly the most childish response possible, and no doubt all of this is designed to bring that out in him. Shaw had enjoyed his panic attacks as a child. He’d always been utterly docile after them.
Letting go of Charles takes almost more strength than he can manage, forcing muscles that seem to be set in stone to move, to release him. Some small part of his mind, still young and terrified, is already sobbing, this is how it starts, first they are separated and then brought back together and then the coin, the gun, the bullet he can’t stop and the thud of a corpse on the floor, but when he turns this time it will be Charles Xavier in a boneless heap, and Shaw will be smiling at him--
And after that, one of two things will happen. He will try to kill Shaw, and be killed for it. Or he will try to kill Shaw, and fail, and Shaw will call him son and ruffle his hair and he will close his eyes and Erik Lehnsherr will cease to exist. Anything that remained would belong to Shaw.
He has to tell Charles to run, before he turns and faces Shaw. He has to say anything he wants to say now, because when he turns, he won’t be able to.
Save yourself, he says without speaking, and turns to face Shaw with a drawn, blank expression. Not quite shoulder to shoulder. He’s still edged in front of Charles.
“How, Herr Doktor,” he asks mechanically, in polite German.
----