[fic] xm: fc - the mystery which binds me still - part two
Part One
***
The phone is buzzing when Charles opens his eyes.
It's shaking everything on the table, actually. There's a pen tapping against an empty glass that pings with every ring. The loose change he pulled from his pocket a few days ago shakes. A water bottle lying on its side is buzzing with the vibrations.
There's a pounding, too, but Charles realizes that's farther away when he picks up his phone and the pounding keeps going. It's Moira on the line, but he's not quick enough, and before he can accept the call it goes to voicemail. Rather, it joins the six other voicemails he currently has. And the nineteen missed calls. And nine texts.
Charles gets to his feet, groggy and disoriented, and walks as quickly as he can to the source of the banging, the front door. His phone starts to ring again just as he pulls the deadbolt and opens the door. Moira, as he suspected, is on the other side. She looks apoplectic.
"Where the hell have you been?" she shouts. Her voice is so high it must hurt. Her face is red. "I was two fucking minutes away from breaking into your fucking house you fucking idiot!"
"Moira," Charles says, but it's all he says before she elbows past him and slams the door hard enough that the end tables on either side shake with the force.
"I've been calling you since I left Manhattan," she says. "I thought you were dead."
"I'm sorry," Charles says. He follows after her as she stalks back towards the library. "I was asleep, I--it's a long story. Yesterday--"
"I'll bet it was a long story!" she says. "Let me tell you a shorter one. Last night I put your friend Schmidt's name into our system. I got as far as finding out he has an alias before being denied further information. This morning, before I can even pour myself a coffee to get ready for the drive to my idiotic meeting in Danbury, I get called into my boss' office. The assistant director was there to lecture me on snooping around in things that are above my pay grade."
Moira grabs the bottle of whiskey on the table and takes a swig. Charles rubs hard at his eyes and tries to cut through the fog to focus.
"You're telling me Schmidt is classified?" he asks.
"So fucking classified that I'm lucky I'm not being tailed right now," she says, wiping her mouth. "I made up some stupid story, about how he worked with your dad and how you just moved back into the house and were thinking about him and wanted to know if he had any family. 2012 and we might as well still be in the dark ages because they bought my 'I'm just a silly lady with lady feelings' act and told me he did some contract work, but died in the fire and had no family. Lies, I'm sure."
Charles sits on the couch. It's a lot to process.
"What the hell was this Schmidt guy into, Charles?" Moira asks. "What was your stepfather into? What have you dragged me into?"
Everything in Charles, from the moment he returned to this house, has been pulling him away from the labs. He can barely look at the entrance to the catacombs without being filled with the urge to look away. He's avoided so much as opening the door.
He can't avoid it any longer.
"I don't know," he tells Moira. "But I know where we can find out."
***
Moira has a heavy duty flashlight in her car and Charles manages to find another in the kitchen. He tries not to think as he passes it back and forth between his sweaty hands, leading Moira out back towards the labs.
"I realized today that I have a significant amount of gaps in my memory," he tells her as they walk. "Mostly around Kurt and Schmidt and what happened down in those labs."
"Shaw," Moira says. "His name is Sebastian Shaw. Klaus Schmidt was an alias that he used in Germany and brought over here for a few years."
"Whatever his name was," Charles says. "I have no memory of what happened there. I know that I went down to 'help' Kurt sometimes, but what actually happened is...it's like a block." He rubs his temple. "I start to get a headache if I think about it for too long."
"You blocked the memories out, you think?" Moira asks. They're outside the doors, now. Ten, maybe twelve feet away from what's been haunting Charles since he returned to this house, maybe his entire life.
Charles nods.
"I don't know what we're going to find down there," he admits. "I can't--I can't grasp it."
Moira only purses her lips and nods. She unholsters her gun and jerks her elbow back.
"Get behind me," she says. "We'll go slowly."
Charles eyes the gun warily.
"There's...something else," he says. "I--I saw the man again yesterday. The one who--the one from that night."
Moira doesn't need further elaboration but, to her credit, she allows him to continue before unleashing the invective he can tell she's storing up for him.
"I really think he's--I think he's on our side, Moira," Charles says. "He could have hurt me, but he didn't. He didn't even come near me. He just told me that he knew Shaw survived the fire." He didn't tell her how. He didn't want her shooting at the man before Charles could get an explanation out of him. "There's something--I swear I know him from somewhere. And I think he has the answers we're looking for. At least some of them."
"So I can't shoot him on sight?" Moira asks.
"No," Charles says.
"Fine," Moira says. "Let's go."
Moira pushes the door open with her shoulder, flashlight tucked under her arm and gun pointed down the narrow metal staircase. Charles stays close behind her, nearly on top of her as the door creaks shut behind them. There's enough light leaking in around the warped door frame that they're not in total darkness yet, but his stomach is already crawling by the the time they reach the bottom of the stairs. Another door, this one still mostly functional. It must have been open when the firefighters arrived. It's closed now, dirty and solid looking.
"Stand against the wall and pull the door towards you," Moira says. "Don't step in front of the empty doorway. I'll go through first."
"There's a light switch on the wall," Charles says. His voice is steadier than he would have guessed. "I don't know what the circuitry is like after the fire, but it's worth a shot."
He positions himself against the wall the way Moira instructed and pulls the door to him. It opens easily--suspiciously quietly, actually--and Charles holds his breath as Moira marches through, her sneakers slapping against the concrete.
There's a moment of silence before she says, "We're clear. Come on."
As Charles slides himself out from behind the door, Moira flips the switch on the wall. Charles isn't expecting much, but there's a sputter and then a low hum, after which the tunnel lights up.
It's not much. This first tunnel, the outer labs, is really nothing more than rooms carved out of the concrete bomb shelters of some past Xavier paranoia. The ceiling is low and lit by single bulbs that flicker from years of disuse. None of them are very bright, and somehow the low light makes the space seem even smaller. There are maybe a dozen of them in a line all the way down the corridor, to the heavy steel door a hundred yards away. The walls and doors are dark with scorch marks, the remnants of the fire that took Kurt's life, the fire that Charles thought must have killed Schmidt--Shaw--whatever his name was. Is.
One of the bulbs overhead pops and sputters out. Charles jumps, but Moira takes a hand off of her gun to touch his shoulder in an attempt to calm him.
"What's in these rooms?" she asks, even as she walks towards one. The door is half open and blackened, but not charred. The problem with the fire wasn't that the walls caught--the concrete and metal used in the construction were largely fire resistant. No, it was the smoke and the chemicals that kept the flames going, trapping Kurt inside, unable to breath and then unable to escape the flames that crept closer and closer once he was unconscious.
The doctors assured Charles and Cain that Kurt was dead before the fire reached his flesh, but the hollow words did nothing to rid Charles of the image of what was left of Kurt's body when the firefighters found him.
He tries to push the image out of his mind now.
"Labs and offices, mostly," he says. "Mostly filled with computers and desks. Research materials. Things like that."
Illuminated by Moira's flashlight, the charred remains of desks and bookshelves are covered with a layer of dust. The metal door at the bottom of the stairs must have been enough to keep the wildlife out for the past seventeen years. Charles doesn't want to think about anything else keeping the wildlife out, but Moira isn't letting herself be so complacent. She continues to stalk forward with her weapon pointed ahead of them while Charles shines his flashlight beam into the various rooms they pass, still only a hair's breadth from Moira. He's glad her hands are full, because he's quite sure if they weren't, he'd be squeezing one in terror right now.
He pauses at a door that's mostly closed and nudges it the rest of the way open with his foot. It's slow to move, but when it does, the contents of the room is almost eerie in its placidity. The door must have been shut during the fire, because it's untouched, now. Dulled by dust, yes, but still as new and pristine as it was when Charles was down here, getting weighed and having his temperature taken and--
His ears are ringing and his head is aching, all of a sudden. He shakes his head clear, but it just makes it worse as he stumbles back from the room. He realizes, abruptly, that his wallet is back at the house. He didn't bring his pills with him. He's going to have to tough it out.
"Are you okay?" Moira asks. "What's wrong?"
"Headache," Charles says, rubbing his temple with the heel of his hand. "I'm fine. I've had worse."
"We should have called the police," Moira mutters under her breath, but she doesn't stop moving slowly forward, glancing into the room on either side and keeping Charles behind her. "I should have made you call them that first night. I should have made them come out here."
"It's better they didn't," Charles replies. "I--there are things that--my stepfather was not a nice man."
"I know," Moira says. "Generally, nice men don't smack their stepsons around."
"Yes, well," Charles says. He quickens his pace until he's walking side-by-side with Moira, brushing occasionally against her arm as they creep forward. "Then you'll understand what I mean when I say Klaus Schmidt was worse than my stepfather."
"I can hazard a guess," Moira says. "Nice men generally don't have confidential government files and aliases, too."
"Quite," Charles says. "And the way he used to hurt--"
He winces at another stab of pain. There had been a memory right there, something sharp that made him so angry and so desperate, Schmidt casually raising his hand and--
It's gone, so close he can almost see it, but when he tries to focus his head throbs like his skull is going to crack open. Schmidt had hurt someone. It wasn't Charles, but it was someone dear to him. He can't fathom who--there wasn't anyone dear to him here in this house.
Moira stops, lowering her gun to point at the floor. She bites her lip. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asks. They're close to the door at the end of the hall, now. It's rusted and soot-darkened, looming in front of them. It would be so easy to tell her he's changed his mind, to go back to the house and take one of his pills and lie down and forgot today happened.
"Yes," Charles says, though his throat is dry and his stomach rolls at the thought of going through that door. His headache is getting worse, but he needs to see this through. There's a part of him that's missing, that's been missing for years. He needs to remember. He needs to make sure Schmidt is gone for good.
He needs to help the stranger who broke into his house. He doesn't know why, but he can't shake the compulsion.
"Okay," Moira says. She raises her gun and nods towards the door. "Same as before, all right? Open it and stay out of the way."
Charles grips the handle and swallows back the bile creeping up his throat.
"On three," she says. "One. Two. Three."
Charles closes his eyes and pulls open the door.
Erik is shaking and Charles wants nothing more than to stay and help him, but Kurt's steel grip on his arm is dragging him away.
"I'll be back tomorrow!" he shouts after Erik, and earns a slap across the mouth for his efforts. The casual cruelty enrages Erik, who tries to lunge for Kurt but falls when his weakened legs can't hold him up. Kurt laughs at his sprawl across the floor and Charles struggles to get away, even though he knows it will just earn him another slap. "Erik, no! I'll be back tomorrow, I promise!"
He meets Erik's eyes and they're dark and desperate and Charles wants to go to him, wants to help him, wants to sit down and cry because it's not fair, it's not fair, Erik's been through so much, Charles deserves this, maybe, but Erik doesn't and Charles should be able to help him, to protect him, but he can't.
He can do one thing, though, and as Kurt pulls him away, he reaches out and says, Erik! Erik, in here. What do you want, Erik? Where should we go? and Erik--
"Charles!"
Charles blinks and then blinks again. It's not Erik in front of him. It's not--Erik is--
"Charles!" Moira says again. "You're freaking me out. You opened the door and kind of...went blank."
Charles' head is splitting apart, but he forces himself to shake free of the memory and focus on Moira.
"Erik," he murmurs.
"Who's Erik?" Moira asks. "Charles, I'm--"
"Moira, I know," Charles says. "Sorry, I just--Erik is...Erik is the man. The stranger. The person who broke into my house. It was Erik."
"You know him?" Moira asks. "Charles, you need to explain."
Charles steps fully into the newly revealed room and leans against the wall to catch his breath. His heart rate has skyrocketed and he can barely think for the strength of his headache. He glances around the room, almost absently. He remembers it. The antechamber. Long tables and hard plastic chairs that they waited on before testing. Everything in shiny white and chrome, just like it was, but it shouldn't be. This was the room where they found Kurt's body, it should be a burnt out shell. It shouldn't look just like it did back then. It does, though, down to the chairs where he'd sit against the wall, waiting, and sometimes, when Erik looked particularly drawn or pale and pained, they would hold hands while they waited for Kurt or Schmidt or the woman--what was her name?--or one of the scientists to come fetch them.
How had he forgotten Erik? How had he--
"I...I remember," he says to Moira faintly. "Erik was a boy. From Germany. Schmidt brought him here. He was like me. He was my friend, my best friend, and I would have done anything for him."
Moira's cool fingers brush against his brow.
"What do you mean 'like you?'" she asks. Charles shivers as another stab of pain pounds at his skull.
"We weren't alone," he says, closing his eyes.
The boy is crying, though he's trying to hide it. He's scared and sitting on the far edge of the cot and Kurt and the other man have gone away, so Charles isn't sure what he's supposed to do. He wants to help the boy, though. He likes the boy already--his mind is sharp and bright and beautiful, so unlike the minds of the people up at the house, of his mother and Cain and Kurt.
The boy's name is Erik. Charles sits next to him and touches his arm.
"My father died too," he says.
Erik looks up and sniffles. He's wary of Charles, but so desperate for affection that Charles' chest aches. He wants to pull away, but Charles' touch is the first compassionate one he's known in a long time.
"I want to go back to Germany," the boy says in surprisingly good English. It's slow and stilted, but out of caution and care. Charles is impressed; Mother has been making him take French lessons for a year and he still can't understand it unless he's in his tutor's mind.
"I'm sorry," Charles says, because he doesn't know what else to do. Erik doesn't pull away, though. He's hunched over and very thin--Charles thinks he's probably tall when he stands up, taller than Charles, at least. Erik is older, too. He's almost nine to Charles' seven.
Charles doesn't want Erik to go back to Germany. Charles hasn't had a playmate in so long, and it's very lonely at the house. Plus, if there's another boy here, maybe it will make the tests better, maybe it will make them hurt less.
"Until you do," Charles says, carefully giving Erik at least a little hope, "maybe you can be my friend?"
Erik is still and quiet for a long time.
"Maybe," he finally says, but he doesn't push Charles away.
Charles doubles over. God, his head.
"Charles, dammit, look at me!" Moira orders, and it's only by virtue of years of friendship that Charles can hear the panic there, the fear. "Charles!"
He wants to respond but he can't. It's like reality is turning inside out, like his entire life is being shove back into his head all at once, through a pinhole. He can barely stand. God, it's all right there, but he can't put it together, he can't put it in order.
"Charles, tell me what's wrong!" Moira shouts.
"He can't help it," says a voice out of Charles' nightmares. "He's remembering."
Charles manages a gasp and slides the rest of the way to the floor, pressing his head between his knees. Distantly, he registers Moira pointing her gun at Schmidt, who's already pointing one at them, but he can't focus, not when it's all pounding back. There are too many memories, he's not big enough, they're going to overwhelm him and there's so much noise--the orderly whirling of Moira's mind as she assesses the situation, a thick wall of maniacal glee from Shaw, everything that's ever happened to him shifting into a new focus. He can't put things in order. His memories are like a shuffled deck of cards and he's screaming from the electrodes at his temples, he's pounding on the door that he knows they've taken Erik behind, he's crying in his bed alone at night, he's at his mother's funeral, he's telling his father what the other men in the lab are thinking, he's listening to Kurt's vile mental commentary on his mother, he's looking up at the woman, Ms. Frost, as she goes pure and clear and quiet, he's hiding away with Erik in a mental playground of his own making--
Erik. Erik's here. Oh god, Erik's here.
The rest becomes quiet as he zeroes in on that, on the sleepy echo of Erik's mind. He's asleep--no, unconscious--but it's as crisp and clear and bright and beautiful as Charles remembers. He sinks into it, falls into Erik and tries to block out the cacophony of noise and pain and memories.
Erik wakes with a gasp and Charles sees through his eyes for a split second before he jerks upward and gasps himself as he comes back to his own mind. He opens his eyes and looks past Moira, past Schmidt, and focuses on Erik, bound in thick ropes and lying dazed on the floor. He's awake, now, but still reeling from the hit on the head, dizzy with disbelief and sick with pain and horror because, fuck, Shaw has Charles, Shaw's going to hurt Charles, after all these years Erik's found Charles again and Shaw is going to take him away, no, he needs to fight the way the room is spinning, he needs to protect Charles, he needs--
A chair lurches across the floor feebly, dragging Charles from Erik's thoughts, and Schmidt laughs.
"Oh, Erik," Schmidt says. "How noble. All these years and you still carry that torch. It's very sweet, really."
Charles' head is still pounding. It's an effort to focus on what Schmidt is saying.
Above him, the safety clicks off Moira's gun.
"Someone needs to fill me in before I start shooting indiscriminately," Moira says.
Schmidt turns his sickening smile on Moira.
"Well, it's young Dr. Xavier's legacy, but he seems a bit indisposed at the moment," Schmidt says. "Ms. Frost will be glad to hear that the tampering she did to his memory lasted nearly seventeen years, though. I suppose being away from the house worked too, on top of all of those lovely drugs we've been pumping into his system. So trusting, Doctor, taking those pills all these years! We were sure we'd have to intervene at some point."
Charles can't make sense of what Schmidt is saying. Pills? Memories? Schmidt waves his gun from side to side in a parody of a tsking gesture.
"Nevermind all that, though," Schmidt says. "That's later. This all starts with Dr. Xavier's father and his big mouth. He noticed his little boy had a gift--he could answer questions before they were asked. He knew what people were thinking. And, being a scientist, Dr. Xavier senior decided to test his son further. Bad form, I think, experimenting on your own child, and I suppose Dr. Xavier agreed, because he told his secret to his co-worker, Dr. Marko, and asked for his help. Marko saw only the money, though. He didn't appreciate the power, but he knew others would, and that's where I met our boy."
He says it with a fondness that would turn Charles' stomach if he wasn't already sick from pain and from Schmidt's confirmation of the memories that were slowly returning. It had been fun, at first. Games. Charles liked the attention from the man who usually preferred books to his own son. He liked being useful. But the tests made him tired and sometimes they hurt, but he could tell his father wanted to take them farther, make them longer, and he just wanted to make his father happy.
Schmidt takes a step forward.
"Don't get any closer," Moira growls.
"Don't touch him!" Erik wheezes.
Schmidt just laughs.
"So protective, both of you. I would never hurt Charles." That awful smile is back. "Well, not permanently, at least. I know power when I see it. I understand power. I appreciate it. Marko sold out your father, Charles, who sold you out. It's a cycle of betrayal, really. Marko thought the government might have use for a boy who could read minds, and as it happened they could. As long as they could control it, of course. Your father didn't like it, so we had your father...removed."
Charles can see it in Schmidt's mind, the panic on his father's face as Schmidt held a cloth over his mouth and nose, holding him still until he stopped struggling. Schmidt had killed Brian Xavier and hadn't even blinked. He'd been in the way, and Schmidt had a job to do, had a goal, and Brian Xavier was nothing more than a minor obstacle.
"My father," Charles says. "You--"
"Marko wasn't happy about that," Shaw continues blithely. "But that only lasted as long as it took for him to deposit his first check. He certainly took up with your mother soon enough. Moved right into the bedroom, and then we started working. The government wanted a way to control these powers. A weapon's not useful unless you're the one pulling the trigger after all. We were discovering more people with strange abilities and we couldn't let them go unchecked. We started coming up with a suppressant. There was a lot of trial and error involved. It was painful, but it was for the greater good."
Trial and error. Torture, was more like. God, it was all rushing back and there was so much of it. Arguments between Kurt and Schmidt--'She'll notice if he's stoned off his goat!' 'Dr. Marko, your stepson can't stand up and he's still more sober than your wife.'--writhing on the gurneys in agony, shot after shot after shot and then asking him to try and read their minds, hooking him up to machines, running electrical current through him....
"Charles and Erik were up to the task, though," Schmidt says. "Admittedly, Erik took a little more than the young Mr. Xavier. He had a mother, after all, not that she would have noticed. The staff, on the other hand, might ask questions, and we wanted to keep things clean, simple."
It was awful, watching Erik poked and prodded, watching him get doses twice and three times as high because they knew no one cared. No one but Charles, who watched and sobbed and begged, but it never stopped. He did what he could. If they let him near Erik, after, he helped clean his wounds and curled up with him. When the pain was the worst, he dipped into Erik's mind and invited Erik into his fantasy world, the one he had been constructing in his head for as long as he could remember. He got headaches, sometimes, trying to keep Erik tethered to him for so long, but it was worth it. Anything he could do was worth it.
"I can't believe I forgot you," he says, looking to Erik, hiccupping on a sob. His head hurt. It had never hurt this much before. "I can't believe she took you from me. I'm so sorry."
"Not your fault," Erik says. His focus is clearer, now, but he still sounds distant and dazed. It's an act, Charles realizes. He wants to look worse than he is.
Do you have a plan? he asks. Erik winces--it's been so long since Charles communicated that way, since he even realized he could. It hurts, talking like that, but everything hurts so much that he barely notices the change.
I do, Erik responds. Hearing Erik's voice so clearly makes Charles' knees weak with relief. God, how could he not have realized how badly he was missing this?
"Of course, all good things end," Schmidt says. "Charles' mother died and left everything to Charles, including this property. She left Charles in the care of her brother, and that was the end of it. The boy would go off to England, the house was to be boarded up, and we had nowhere to go. It was just as well--we had the drug. The government was already putting it in Ritalin and Xanax and Penicillin, pumping it into the water supply, making sure it reached everyone. They wanted to move onto new projects. Now that we knew we could control these people, they wanted us to find them. It was messy, clearing out the evidence so quickly, taking our findings with us, having my dear friend Ms. Frost make sure there was nothing that Charles could do to implicate us, but we would have managed. Poor Erik, though, couldn't stand the thought of leaving his little friend behind. He started the fire. You know the rest."
Charles looks back to Erik, though Moira's eyes don't leave Schmidt. Erik nods.
"I started the fire because they took you away from me," he says. Something changes in his eyes, then. They turn hard and intense and he murmurs, "I won't let it happen again."
Something slams against the desk. Schmidt turns towards it, and Moira uses the distraction to fire her weapon. The bullet hits Schmidt square in the chest, but before Moira can so much as lower her gun, his entire body ripples. He grins at them, almost gleeful.
"Oh, very cute, honey," he says to Moira. "But I suppose I forgot an important part of the story. Charles and Erik aren't the only people who have these powers. This?" He holds up the gun. "This is mostly for show. To make you nervous. I don't need it to hurt you."
He drops the gun carelessly on the ground and then his whole being ripples again. There's a ping that echoes in the quiet of the chamber. It's the bullet, twisted and warped. When Charles looks back up, Schmidt is still smiling.
"Would you like to try that again?" he asks.
Moira doesn't speak or flinch, but Charles can hear her panic broadcasting outward, sharp and suffocating. Schmidt's mind is behind steel doors, save for the glee he feels at watching them suffer, at wielding his power. And Erik--
Erik uses the distraction to jump to his feet with more agility than Charles would have thought he could muster at the moment. His one wrist is loose, the ropes ragged at the edge, a screwdriver on the floor where he was previously crumpled. He swings the rope around Schmidt's neck and yanks back hard, as Moira fires another shot. Schmidt tosses Erik off and takes a step towards Moira and it's so loud. Charles wants to help, but he has his hands clamped over his ears and his head between his knees to try and dull the pain. His head is pounding, aching, coming apart. The noise is rattling in his ears and head alike, echos of different perspectives, commotion from shouting and objects bouncing around, and he just wants it to stop.
It does.
Charles notices the external silence first, and slowly opens his eyes. Moira, Schmidt, and Erik are all still. They're more than still, they're completely unmoving save for their breathing. He's blocked their minds as well--he can see Moira's rapid breathing, but the panic she was feeling is distant and muted. Schmidt, already mostly blocked from the inside, is silent. Erik's intense focus is on Charles.
Charles, he thinks, and Charles hears it clearly. It slips past his defenses as if it belongs there. Sebastian Shaw needs to die.
No. No, Charles won't be party to murder. He can't kill this man. He can't kill anyone! Good god, how has this even happened? Three weeks ago, he just wanted to finish his book somewhere quiet where he could concentrate. How has it escalated to this? What's happened to his life?
What was always meant to happen, Erik tells him. You've always been special. This has always been inside of you. That's what you used to tell me, at least. That this was a gift.
It doesn't feel like a gift. It feels like Charles' brain is imploding. He can't think, but the one thing he knows is that he can't just condemn a man to die.
He's done terrible things, Erik reminds him. His words are almost gentle. It's incongruous in this conversation, incongruous coming from Erik who's been churning with anger and purpose this whole time. He tortured us when we were children who couldn't defend ourselves. He hurt us because he enjoyed it. He left your stepfather to die, and he was probably responsible for your father's death as well.
He was. Charles has seen as much, now. Schmidt suffocated Brian Xavier because he was in the way. He hurt them, all those years. He tortured Erik for fun and because he enjoyed the pain that Charles felt at being so helpless to stop it.
He killed my parents, Erik adds, haltingly, as if it hurts him to think it, even after all these years. He saw what I could do and he killed my parents to get to me. I was seven years old. Charles--he has to die.
"I can't!" Charles says out loud. "I can't just--I can't do that, Erik! I can't allow it! What does that make me, then? What do I become if I do this?"
I'll do it, Erik replies. You hold him still, and I'll do it. I wouldn't want anyone else to have the pleasure of killing him anyway.
"Can't we just call the police?" Charles asks, even though he knows it's impossible. The police can't control someone with so much power.
When we were little boys, you trusted me, Erik tells him. You trusted me more than anyone else in the world. That's what you told me then. I thought you were dead--he told me you died in the fire, that it was my fault. I thought it right up until that night, when I saw you up close and I realized...I thought you were dead for all these years. You were everything to me, once upon a time, and even if you can't remember, you have to trust me, trust that it was true. I lived all my life thinking Shaw had taken away everything I loved. I can't leave him the chance to do it again. Please, Charles.
Charles rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand and closes his eyes. There's truth to Erik's words and, more than that, Erik's feelings. The affection there, the trust and the pain of separation, the shame in not recognizing Charles immediately--Charles can see it in Erik's mind, the moment he pulled Charles up by his shirt and saw his face, his eyes clearly for the first time. The shock, the denial, the disbelief as he fled, stumbling through the house, ashamed with the new knowledge that Charles had been alive all that time, that Erik had taken Shaw's word as truth and not even looked--
Charles shakes himself free of Erik's thoughts and then, careful not to project the order to the whole room, lets Erik go.
Erik remains still for a moment. When he moves, he only turns slowly to Charles.
"Charles," he says. His voice breaks.
"Just do it," Charles says. He looks at the floor. "Do it and get it over with, please."
He hears footsteps on the concrete. He doesn't look up.
"Hello, Shaw," Erik says. "Do you recognize this? It's the bullet you left with my mother. I think it's time I give it back to you."
There's a terrible, heavy pause and then a terrible, deafening noise in Charles' head as Schmidt bursts past his own mental barriers and then through Charles' as well. It's fear so primal that Charles can't parse it, intense pain, and panic and Charles wants to start screaming and never stop and he is screaming, his throat is raw with it, his world is going white around the edges and then--
And then there's blissful darkness.
***
The first thing Charles notices as he slowly begins to drift towards consciousness is T. H. White.
He's familiar with the story; he read The Once and Future King to tatters when he was in school and he knows there's a new copy somewhere on his nightstand, buried under edits for his own book. The strange part is the additional commentary that comes with it--a stark, painful relation to Lancelot, the memory of being a boy who was broken and put back together wrong. It's enough to draw Charles out--those aren't his thoughts, those aren't his feelings, and he thinks Erik... as he opens his eyes.
Charles is in his bed. The room is bright with autumn sun and the chair next to his bed is occupied by Erik, his nose buried in White. He pushes himself up on his elbows and blinks at Erik. Now that he's more aware, it's not just Erik. He can hear Moira, too, pacing about downstairs, drinking coffee, texting her boyfriend, sending a report for work, and worrying about him simultaneously. If he pushes out even farther, he can--
He winces. Okay. More pain. Not ready to reach out farther, then.
"Be careful," Erik says. He puts the book down and leans over the edge of the bed. He looks the same, of course--he's the same person. But there's still something about him that's different. He's smiling and less severe--his features are softer. There's something inviting in his eyes and the curve of his mouth.
"My head is still killing me," Charles says. He rubs his forehead.
"It'll take a few more days," Erik says. He curls a hand around Charles' shoulder and and urges him back down against the pillows. "When I first came off the suppressants, I had to lock myself in a motel room alone for a week. Things just kept...flying off shelves and sticking to me."
Charles can't hide his smile, but Erik ducks his head, smiling as well.
"A few more days?" Charles asks. "What day is it?"
"It's--" Erik stops to say, then frowns. "I'm not sure, actually. But you've been sleeping for two days. Almost three, now." He lifts his hand, but hesitates after he does so, his hand hanging in the air for long seconds. Charles stares at it, studies Erik's long fingers and the shape of his palm. Bits of his past are still fuzzy, but there's so much more there now. He remembers the hours he spent with Erik, talking and sitting close and sharing stories and making up new ones. He remembers Erik trying fruitlessly to protect him and remembers doing the same to protect Erik. I think he's sweet on you, Schmidt--Shaw said to him once. And Charles had been frightened at the prospect, thinking about all the ways that Shaw could use that against Erik, could use it to hurt him, but he'd also preened, just a little bit, in the very back of his mind.
"I remember there was a night when my mum was out and Kurt kept me down there so late--we sat in your room all night and you showed me how to make shadow puppets," Charles says. "At the end you got so shy--you tried so hard to protect me, you thought it was your job because you were older. You didn't want me to think you were a baby."
Erik swallows. His thoughts are going too quickly for Charles to latch onto them without trying harder than he'd like. There's a general sense of relief, of triumph, along with other things that are more complicated. Affection, definitely. Shock, still. Erik reaches out and brushes Charles' hair behind his ear. His fingers linger on Charles' cheek.
"I thought you were dead," Erik says. His voice is quiet, barely more than a whisper. "He told me you died in the fire. That I killed you. Whenever I did anything that displeased him, he'd bring it up. Remind me that I was good for nothing, that I ruined everything I touched."
"I'm not ruined," Charles says. "I'm alive, you never hurt me. You wouldn't hurt me."
"I didn't mean to scare you that night," Erik says. "I never expected you to--I thought you were dead."
"I'm not," Charles says again. He covers Erik's hand with his own and then he feels it, clear as day, so bright that Charles doesn't know how he missed it.
Oh, Erik, Charles thinks. Erik tries to pull back, but Charles refuses to release his grip, refuses to let Erik get far.
"It was over fifteen years ago," Erik says. There's an edge to his voice, but it's fear, not the anger he wants Charles to think it is. "I was thirteen years old. I don't know you anymore. I was in love with an eleven year old boy who held my hand when I told him about my mother. I don't know who you are."
"I want you to get to know me," Charles insists, and cups his hand around the base of Erik's skull, pulling him down for a kiss.
They kissed just once when they were boys. It was the night Erik showed him the shadow puppets. It was close to the end, maybe a week before the fire, maybe two. Charles made a comment about how it made him feel like a little kid again and Erik got so embarrassed. No, it's good, Charles assured him, and then kissed him. They were so young--barely more than children. It was chaste and quick, but Charles carried it with him until he couldn't anymore. He spares a moment to hate Shaw, to hate Emma Frost, for taking something so important from him.
It's okay, though. He has it back now. There's no need to dwell in resentment when the memory is his again and he's already actively working on making some new ones.
Erik exhales against his lips and pulls back just far enough that they can look at each other without going cross-eyed. He runs his thumb over Charles' temple, down his cheekbone, across his lips. He doesn't speak, but he also keeps his thoughts to himself, studying Charles in silence, learning the curves of Charles' face, the shape of his mouth.
"Come here," Charles says quietly, after long moments of Erik's silent contemplation. Erik doesn't argue or protest; he pauses only to kick off his shoes before climbing into bed next to Charles. He stays on top of the covers and lies on his side, sharing Charles' pillow and facing him. They stare at each other in continued silence.
"I'm sorry," Erik says quietly. "It's just--I can't explain--I know I keep saying it, but I never thought I'd see you again. All these years. I used to know everything about you. Now I don't know where to start."
"Oh, well, that part's easy," Charles says. He takes Erik's hand in his own and rests them in the narrow valley between their bodies. "I went to London to live with my uncle and his family. I finished school there, started at Harvard when I was sixteen. I met Moira there, graduated early, got my PhD in genetics, made a bit of a name for myself with some papers I published, and now I'm working on a book."
"Genetics?" Erik says. "Maybe your brain was trying harder to remember what happened to us than you though. Shaw was always going on about how genetic mutation was what made us the way we were."
Charles laughs. "Not quite," he says. "My field of expertise is bioinformatics, which deals primarily with analyzing the methods of storing and--you don't care." Erik looks slightly abashed and Charles placates him with another kiss, chaste and quick and familiar, despite the fact that it's only their third. "Life's not like the movies, unfortunately, and while you and I now know that magical abilities do exist, I would have been laughed out of Harvard at 16 for suggesting it."
"I've looked for books, papers, anything," Erik admits. "If the government has been covering this up since we were children, they've been doing a good job."
"Mm," Charles agrees. "Believe me, if it was out there, I'd know about it. I don't have much of a life outside of work. A series of unfulfilling relationships with people who asked questions I wasn't comfortable answering. People I could never really make that connection with."
He doesn't say, Because some part of me must have known I still had that connection with you, even though that's the sappy thought that's running through his mind as he looks up at Erik. He can't just throw himself at Erik, he has more self-respect than that.
Slightly. Probably.
Erik doesn't seem put off by his longing looks. He kisses Charles again, tugging Charles closer and holding onto him with a hand flat at the small of Charles' back. It's possessive. Charles likes it more than is probably proper.
"We'll see if we can change that," Erik says. Their noses are still touching, their lips barely parted. It reminds him of when they were children. He used to crawl into Erik's bed when Erik was too weak to get up or when Kurt and Schmidt forgot about Charles and left him to his own devices until late. They'd lie like this, facing each other and barely touching, talking long into the night. Erik was the person Charles loved most in the world. He'll never forgive himself for forgetting, even if it wasn't his fault.
He'd like to stay curled up with Erik, making up for lost time, but he can hear Moira approaching. She's far enough away that there's no sound from the stairs or the plush carpet, but he can hear the gentle whirring of her thoughts as she thinks about how she doesn't entirely trust Erik, but she trusts him more than she trusts the government right now, that she can barely believe this, that she wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it, that Charles had enough shit in his life without this, that they need to figure out what they're doing next.
"Moira," Charles says quietly, and inches backwards just enough for polite company. Erik scowls at that, but doesn't pull Charles any closer and is mostly placated by Charles' hangdog look by the time the bedroom door opens.
"You're awake," Moira says. She ignores Erik and sits on the opposite side of Charles' bed. "How are you?"
"Tired," Charles says, craning his neck to look at her properly. "My head still hurts, but it's better than before."
"Good," Moira says. She takes his free hand and squeezes it. Charles squeezes back. "You need to rest for a bit, or are you ready to talk?" She glances at Erik. "Or would your rather neck with your new boyfriend and talk later?"
Charles would rather like to neck with his new boyfriend. Old boyfriend. Whatever Erik was. Erik, too, sends Charles a very detailed image of what he would like to be doing. Still, best to take care of business first. He ignores Erik as best he can, pushes himself up again, and says, "Let's talk."
Moira raises her eyebrows and Charles registers her wave of surprise. Well. He can be focused when he needs to be.
"Okay," Moira says. "Well, this is all well and good--people with powers and you reading minds and your friend doing...whatever it is you do--"
"I can manipulate magnetic fields," Erik says.
"Right," Moira says. "The point is, Schmidt--Shaw, whatever--was clearly part of some bigger picture. He made it sound like there are hundreds of people with these powers who don't even know it."
"More, maybe," Erik says. He sits up too, leaning against the headboard and turning enough that he can see Moira. He looks down at Charles and adds, "You told me what you've been up to. My story's not quite so cheerful. Shaw dragged me with him for years. He left here to work on another government contract. They had the formula to suppress powers, they were pumping it into all sorts of pills--Ritalin, Xanax, about every major anti-depressant and anxiety medication. They even pumped it into some of the drinking water. They had Shaw consult to help build a machine that could track people with powers. Shaw's friend Frost--do you remember her?"
"She was a telepath, like me," Charles murmurs, remembering a woman in short white dresses and tall white boots who could turn to diamond. She was the one who took his memories. He swallows back a wave of remorse.
"She could use the machine," Erik says. "None of the rest of us could. But she and Shaw had a fight and she left and took her rich family's money with her. Without the funding or the ability to work the machine, Shaw became useless. When the government started to dig into his past, he stole a copy of the plans to the machine and fled. He left me behind. I think he was starting to realize that I was getting too old to control. I was never going to be his perfect soldier. But I had no one else. I had nowhere to go."
"You could have come to me," Charles says quietly. "If I had known, if I had been able to break through Frost's tricks earlier--"
"It doesn't matter," Erik says. "I looked for Shaw. I found you. Here we are."
"So," Moira says, steering the conversation back to the topic at hand, "the government has a machine? And you know where it is?"
"And I know how to get the plans," Erik says. He looks at Charles again. "There are things you can do, Charles, things you haven't even dreamed of. You could make every person in that facility look the other way while we walk right in and take them."
Charles' stomach twists. He bites his lip. Storming into a government facility seems a bit much. He glances at Moira for reassurance, but her face holds none of the shock or disapproval he expects.
"You can't seriously be okay with this," he says to her, even as he dips into her mind to discover, to his surprise, that she definitely is. "You work for the government!"
"Yeah," Moira says. "That was before I found out that they tortured two little boys for years, unchecked, so they could have complete control over other people's free will. You were a kid and they let your stepfather and Shaw experiment on you, on him--" She gestures at Erik. "--until the money ran out and suddenly it wasn't a good idea anymore. They're pumping chemicals into the water? They're trying to weaponize people? They need to be stopped."
Erik is staring at Moira with narrowed eyes. He doesn't trust her.
"How do I know we can trust you?" Erik asks. "He says you work for them."
"I'm a junior field agent with the FBI," Moira says. She rolls her eyes. "I have about as much access to this type of thing as the janitors. Maybe less. Also, who dragged your ass above ground, made sure you didn't have a concussion, and fed you for three days? If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it while Charles was sleeping."
"We can trust Moira," Charles says, curtailing Erik's response with a squeeze to his wrist. "I just think--I don't know that I can do that anymore. Make people not see me, not see us. I can barely control my powers as it is."
"You'll have two weeks to work on it, at least," Moira says. Erik raises an eyebrow. Charles brushes past her mind just deep enough to discover her plan. "I'll have to give my two weeks at work so they don't get suspicious. I'll tell them I'm getting married, I've decided to devote myself to raising my kids. They're stupid enough to buy it. Nick'll tell his boss the same thing. That leaves four of us to get in, get out, and start this thing."
"Who's Nick?" Erik asks.
"We can trust him," Moira says.
"And I'm supposed to take your word for it?" Erik asks.
Charles rubs his forehead. His headache is flaring up again. "We can," he insists.
Erik looks at Charles and then Moira.
"We meet him," Erik says. "Charles reads his mind. Then we decide if we can trust him."
There's a tense moment when Moira and Erik stare at each other, unflinchingly, the determination enough to be suffocating.
"Fine," Moira says. "I'll call him and have him head up here as soon as he can manage so we can tell him the whole story."
"If we decide we can trust him," Erik reminds her.
"Fine," Moira repeats. "Once we get through all that, we can--"
Charles holds up a hand to stop her and uses the other to cover his eyes.
"This is all going very quickly," he says. "If I could have a day to deal with the fact that six years of my life were almost entirely erased from my memory, that my childhood best friend has returned, that my stepfather was a mad scientist, that I can read minds...."
He lifts his hand from his eyes and tries to ignore the way his brain feels like it's bouncing around his head. Moira and Erik are both quiet. There's a heavy mixture of shame and concern and resolution rolling off of them.
"I'll go call Nick," Moira says. "Why don't you and Erik try to get some rest? I'll re-heat some pizza for dinner."
"Thank you," Charles says. Moira kisses his forehead and, with one last look, leaves the room.
It's just Charles and Erik, now. Charles closes his eyes again and slides back into the pillows. It's only a moment before Erik follows him, his movements light and gentle as he wraps his arms around Charles.
"My head is killing me," Charles says softly.
"I know," Erik says against his ear. "Just rest. We'll start training later. Baby steps."
Charles presses his forehead against Erik's collarbone. His entire world is changing. His entire world is being remade from scratch. He wasn't ecstatic about his life before, but, god, it was familiar. It was comforting. It was the same thing every day, but it was safe. It was secure.
Charles hates change. Charles is terrified of change.
"I don't know that I can do this," he admits. "I'm a teacher, Erik. I...give lectures and do research and lab work. I write papers. I drink tea and grade. I'm not some kind of superhero."
Erik is quiet for a long time, his fingers combing through Charles' hair. It's soothing, actually. It's doing wonders for his headache.
"Do you know what one of the first things you said to me was?" he asks.
"No," Charles murmurs.
"'You're not alone,'" Erik says. "I'd been waiting for years for that assurance. It changed my life, Charles. And, I think, knowing you weren't alone, either--I think it changed yours, too. Think of all the kids out in the world who are waiting for the same reassurance. This isn't about what you can or can't do or what your life was like. This is a chance for you to be a part of something much bigger than yourself."
All those years that Charles spent wandering listlessly through school in London, the times he clung to Moira because she was all he knew, terrified of going out and meeting new people, inexplicably nervous about making new friends. All the years thinking there was something awkward and different about him, something he shouldn't think about too closely. All those years of not fitting in and accepting that was just how life had worked out.
He's in pain. He's exhausted. He's terrified. But he's never felt as free as he does now. He's never felt so open and so loved.
Charles opens his eyes and looks up at Erik.
"Okay," he says. "When do we start?"
***
The phone is buzzing when Charles opens his eyes.
It's shaking everything on the table, actually. There's a pen tapping against an empty glass that pings with every ring. The loose change he pulled from his pocket a few days ago shakes. A water bottle lying on its side is buzzing with the vibrations.
There's a pounding, too, but Charles realizes that's farther away when he picks up his phone and the pounding keeps going. It's Moira on the line, but he's not quick enough, and before he can accept the call it goes to voicemail. Rather, it joins the six other voicemails he currently has. And the nineteen missed calls. And nine texts.
Charles gets to his feet, groggy and disoriented, and walks as quickly as he can to the source of the banging, the front door. His phone starts to ring again just as he pulls the deadbolt and opens the door. Moira, as he suspected, is on the other side. She looks apoplectic.
"Where the hell have you been?" she shouts. Her voice is so high it must hurt. Her face is red. "I was two fucking minutes away from breaking into your fucking house you fucking idiot!"
"Moira," Charles says, but it's all he says before she elbows past him and slams the door hard enough that the end tables on either side shake with the force.
"I've been calling you since I left Manhattan," she says. "I thought you were dead."
"I'm sorry," Charles says. He follows after her as she stalks back towards the library. "I was asleep, I--it's a long story. Yesterday--"
"I'll bet it was a long story!" she says. "Let me tell you a shorter one. Last night I put your friend Schmidt's name into our system. I got as far as finding out he has an alias before being denied further information. This morning, before I can even pour myself a coffee to get ready for the drive to my idiotic meeting in Danbury, I get called into my boss' office. The assistant director was there to lecture me on snooping around in things that are above my pay grade."
Moira grabs the bottle of whiskey on the table and takes a swig. Charles rubs hard at his eyes and tries to cut through the fog to focus.
"You're telling me Schmidt is classified?" he asks.
"So fucking classified that I'm lucky I'm not being tailed right now," she says, wiping her mouth. "I made up some stupid story, about how he worked with your dad and how you just moved back into the house and were thinking about him and wanted to know if he had any family. 2012 and we might as well still be in the dark ages because they bought my 'I'm just a silly lady with lady feelings' act and told me he did some contract work, but died in the fire and had no family. Lies, I'm sure."
Charles sits on the couch. It's a lot to process.
"What the hell was this Schmidt guy into, Charles?" Moira asks. "What was your stepfather into? What have you dragged me into?"
Everything in Charles, from the moment he returned to this house, has been pulling him away from the labs. He can barely look at the entrance to the catacombs without being filled with the urge to look away. He's avoided so much as opening the door.
He can't avoid it any longer.
"I don't know," he tells Moira. "But I know where we can find out."
***
Moira has a heavy duty flashlight in her car and Charles manages to find another in the kitchen. He tries not to think as he passes it back and forth between his sweaty hands, leading Moira out back towards the labs.
"I realized today that I have a significant amount of gaps in my memory," he tells her as they walk. "Mostly around Kurt and Schmidt and what happened down in those labs."
"Shaw," Moira says. "His name is Sebastian Shaw. Klaus Schmidt was an alias that he used in Germany and brought over here for a few years."
"Whatever his name was," Charles says. "I have no memory of what happened there. I know that I went down to 'help' Kurt sometimes, but what actually happened is...it's like a block." He rubs his temple. "I start to get a headache if I think about it for too long."
"You blocked the memories out, you think?" Moira asks. They're outside the doors, now. Ten, maybe twelve feet away from what's been haunting Charles since he returned to this house, maybe his entire life.
Charles nods.
"I don't know what we're going to find down there," he admits. "I can't--I can't grasp it."
Moira only purses her lips and nods. She unholsters her gun and jerks her elbow back.
"Get behind me," she says. "We'll go slowly."
Charles eyes the gun warily.
"There's...something else," he says. "I--I saw the man again yesterday. The one who--the one from that night."
Moira doesn't need further elaboration but, to her credit, she allows him to continue before unleashing the invective he can tell she's storing up for him.
"I really think he's--I think he's on our side, Moira," Charles says. "He could have hurt me, but he didn't. He didn't even come near me. He just told me that he knew Shaw survived the fire." He didn't tell her how. He didn't want her shooting at the man before Charles could get an explanation out of him. "There's something--I swear I know him from somewhere. And I think he has the answers we're looking for. At least some of them."
"So I can't shoot him on sight?" Moira asks.
"No," Charles says.
"Fine," Moira says. "Let's go."
Moira pushes the door open with her shoulder, flashlight tucked under her arm and gun pointed down the narrow metal staircase. Charles stays close behind her, nearly on top of her as the door creaks shut behind them. There's enough light leaking in around the warped door frame that they're not in total darkness yet, but his stomach is already crawling by the the time they reach the bottom of the stairs. Another door, this one still mostly functional. It must have been open when the firefighters arrived. It's closed now, dirty and solid looking.
"Stand against the wall and pull the door towards you," Moira says. "Don't step in front of the empty doorway. I'll go through first."
"There's a light switch on the wall," Charles says. His voice is steadier than he would have guessed. "I don't know what the circuitry is like after the fire, but it's worth a shot."
He positions himself against the wall the way Moira instructed and pulls the door to him. It opens easily--suspiciously quietly, actually--and Charles holds his breath as Moira marches through, her sneakers slapping against the concrete.
There's a moment of silence before she says, "We're clear. Come on."
As Charles slides himself out from behind the door, Moira flips the switch on the wall. Charles isn't expecting much, but there's a sputter and then a low hum, after which the tunnel lights up.
It's not much. This first tunnel, the outer labs, is really nothing more than rooms carved out of the concrete bomb shelters of some past Xavier paranoia. The ceiling is low and lit by single bulbs that flicker from years of disuse. None of them are very bright, and somehow the low light makes the space seem even smaller. There are maybe a dozen of them in a line all the way down the corridor, to the heavy steel door a hundred yards away. The walls and doors are dark with scorch marks, the remnants of the fire that took Kurt's life, the fire that Charles thought must have killed Schmidt--Shaw--whatever his name was. Is.
One of the bulbs overhead pops and sputters out. Charles jumps, but Moira takes a hand off of her gun to touch his shoulder in an attempt to calm him.
"What's in these rooms?" she asks, even as she walks towards one. The door is half open and blackened, but not charred. The problem with the fire wasn't that the walls caught--the concrete and metal used in the construction were largely fire resistant. No, it was the smoke and the chemicals that kept the flames going, trapping Kurt inside, unable to breath and then unable to escape the flames that crept closer and closer once he was unconscious.
The doctors assured Charles and Cain that Kurt was dead before the fire reached his flesh, but the hollow words did nothing to rid Charles of the image of what was left of Kurt's body when the firefighters found him.
He tries to push the image out of his mind now.
"Labs and offices, mostly," he says. "Mostly filled with computers and desks. Research materials. Things like that."
Illuminated by Moira's flashlight, the charred remains of desks and bookshelves are covered with a layer of dust. The metal door at the bottom of the stairs must have been enough to keep the wildlife out for the past seventeen years. Charles doesn't want to think about anything else keeping the wildlife out, but Moira isn't letting herself be so complacent. She continues to stalk forward with her weapon pointed ahead of them while Charles shines his flashlight beam into the various rooms they pass, still only a hair's breadth from Moira. He's glad her hands are full, because he's quite sure if they weren't, he'd be squeezing one in terror right now.
He pauses at a door that's mostly closed and nudges it the rest of the way open with his foot. It's slow to move, but when it does, the contents of the room is almost eerie in its placidity. The door must have been shut during the fire, because it's untouched, now. Dulled by dust, yes, but still as new and pristine as it was when Charles was down here, getting weighed and having his temperature taken and--
His ears are ringing and his head is aching, all of a sudden. He shakes his head clear, but it just makes it worse as he stumbles back from the room. He realizes, abruptly, that his wallet is back at the house. He didn't bring his pills with him. He's going to have to tough it out.
"Are you okay?" Moira asks. "What's wrong?"
"Headache," Charles says, rubbing his temple with the heel of his hand. "I'm fine. I've had worse."
"We should have called the police," Moira mutters under her breath, but she doesn't stop moving slowly forward, glancing into the room on either side and keeping Charles behind her. "I should have made you call them that first night. I should have made them come out here."
"It's better they didn't," Charles replies. "I--there are things that--my stepfather was not a nice man."
"I know," Moira says. "Generally, nice men don't smack their stepsons around."
"Yes, well," Charles says. He quickens his pace until he's walking side-by-side with Moira, brushing occasionally against her arm as they creep forward. "Then you'll understand what I mean when I say Klaus Schmidt was worse than my stepfather."
"I can hazard a guess," Moira says. "Nice men generally don't have confidential government files and aliases, too."
"Quite," Charles says. "And the way he used to hurt--"
He winces at another stab of pain. There had been a memory right there, something sharp that made him so angry and so desperate, Schmidt casually raising his hand and--
It's gone, so close he can almost see it, but when he tries to focus his head throbs like his skull is going to crack open. Schmidt had hurt someone. It wasn't Charles, but it was someone dear to him. He can't fathom who--there wasn't anyone dear to him here in this house.
Moira stops, lowering her gun to point at the floor. She bites her lip. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asks. They're close to the door at the end of the hall, now. It's rusted and soot-darkened, looming in front of them. It would be so easy to tell her he's changed his mind, to go back to the house and take one of his pills and lie down and forgot today happened.
"Yes," Charles says, though his throat is dry and his stomach rolls at the thought of going through that door. His headache is getting worse, but he needs to see this through. There's a part of him that's missing, that's been missing for years. He needs to remember. He needs to make sure Schmidt is gone for good.
He needs to help the stranger who broke into his house. He doesn't know why, but he can't shake the compulsion.
"Okay," Moira says. She raises her gun and nods towards the door. "Same as before, all right? Open it and stay out of the way."
Charles grips the handle and swallows back the bile creeping up his throat.
"On three," she says. "One. Two. Three."
Charles closes his eyes and pulls open the door.
Erik is shaking and Charles wants nothing more than to stay and help him, but Kurt's steel grip on his arm is dragging him away.
"I'll be back tomorrow!" he shouts after Erik, and earns a slap across the mouth for his efforts. The casual cruelty enrages Erik, who tries to lunge for Kurt but falls when his weakened legs can't hold him up. Kurt laughs at his sprawl across the floor and Charles struggles to get away, even though he knows it will just earn him another slap. "Erik, no! I'll be back tomorrow, I promise!"
He meets Erik's eyes and they're dark and desperate and Charles wants to go to him, wants to help him, wants to sit down and cry because it's not fair, it's not fair, Erik's been through so much, Charles deserves this, maybe, but Erik doesn't and Charles should be able to help him, to protect him, but he can't.
He can do one thing, though, and as Kurt pulls him away, he reaches out and says, Erik! Erik, in here. What do you want, Erik? Where should we go? and Erik--
"Charles!"
Charles blinks and then blinks again. It's not Erik in front of him. It's not--Erik is--
"Charles!" Moira says again. "You're freaking me out. You opened the door and kind of...went blank."
Charles' head is splitting apart, but he forces himself to shake free of the memory and focus on Moira.
"Erik," he murmurs.
"Who's Erik?" Moira asks. "Charles, I'm--"
"Moira, I know," Charles says. "Sorry, I just--Erik is...Erik is the man. The stranger. The person who broke into my house. It was Erik."
"You know him?" Moira asks. "Charles, you need to explain."
Charles steps fully into the newly revealed room and leans against the wall to catch his breath. His heart rate has skyrocketed and he can barely think for the strength of his headache. He glances around the room, almost absently. He remembers it. The antechamber. Long tables and hard plastic chairs that they waited on before testing. Everything in shiny white and chrome, just like it was, but it shouldn't be. This was the room where they found Kurt's body, it should be a burnt out shell. It shouldn't look just like it did back then. It does, though, down to the chairs where he'd sit against the wall, waiting, and sometimes, when Erik looked particularly drawn or pale and pained, they would hold hands while they waited for Kurt or Schmidt or the woman--what was her name?--or one of the scientists to come fetch them.
How had he forgotten Erik? How had he--
"I...I remember," he says to Moira faintly. "Erik was a boy. From Germany. Schmidt brought him here. He was like me. He was my friend, my best friend, and I would have done anything for him."
Moira's cool fingers brush against his brow.
"What do you mean 'like you?'" she asks. Charles shivers as another stab of pain pounds at his skull.
"We weren't alone," he says, closing his eyes.
The boy is crying, though he's trying to hide it. He's scared and sitting on the far edge of the cot and Kurt and the other man have gone away, so Charles isn't sure what he's supposed to do. He wants to help the boy, though. He likes the boy already--his mind is sharp and bright and beautiful, so unlike the minds of the people up at the house, of his mother and Cain and Kurt.
The boy's name is Erik. Charles sits next to him and touches his arm.
"My father died too," he says.
Erik looks up and sniffles. He's wary of Charles, but so desperate for affection that Charles' chest aches. He wants to pull away, but Charles' touch is the first compassionate one he's known in a long time.
"I want to go back to Germany," the boy says in surprisingly good English. It's slow and stilted, but out of caution and care. Charles is impressed; Mother has been making him take French lessons for a year and he still can't understand it unless he's in his tutor's mind.
"I'm sorry," Charles says, because he doesn't know what else to do. Erik doesn't pull away, though. He's hunched over and very thin--Charles thinks he's probably tall when he stands up, taller than Charles, at least. Erik is older, too. He's almost nine to Charles' seven.
Charles doesn't want Erik to go back to Germany. Charles hasn't had a playmate in so long, and it's very lonely at the house. Plus, if there's another boy here, maybe it will make the tests better, maybe it will make them hurt less.
"Until you do," Charles says, carefully giving Erik at least a little hope, "maybe you can be my friend?"
Erik is still and quiet for a long time.
"Maybe," he finally says, but he doesn't push Charles away.
Charles doubles over. God, his head.
"Charles, dammit, look at me!" Moira orders, and it's only by virtue of years of friendship that Charles can hear the panic there, the fear. "Charles!"
He wants to respond but he can't. It's like reality is turning inside out, like his entire life is being shove back into his head all at once, through a pinhole. He can barely stand. God, it's all right there, but he can't put it together, he can't put it in order.
"Charles, tell me what's wrong!" Moira shouts.
"He can't help it," says a voice out of Charles' nightmares. "He's remembering."
Charles manages a gasp and slides the rest of the way to the floor, pressing his head between his knees. Distantly, he registers Moira pointing her gun at Schmidt, who's already pointing one at them, but he can't focus, not when it's all pounding back. There are too many memories, he's not big enough, they're going to overwhelm him and there's so much noise--the orderly whirling of Moira's mind as she assesses the situation, a thick wall of maniacal glee from Shaw, everything that's ever happened to him shifting into a new focus. He can't put things in order. His memories are like a shuffled deck of cards and he's screaming from the electrodes at his temples, he's pounding on the door that he knows they've taken Erik behind, he's crying in his bed alone at night, he's at his mother's funeral, he's telling his father what the other men in the lab are thinking, he's listening to Kurt's vile mental commentary on his mother, he's looking up at the woman, Ms. Frost, as she goes pure and clear and quiet, he's hiding away with Erik in a mental playground of his own making--
Erik. Erik's here. Oh god, Erik's here.
The rest becomes quiet as he zeroes in on that, on the sleepy echo of Erik's mind. He's asleep--no, unconscious--but it's as crisp and clear and bright and beautiful as Charles remembers. He sinks into it, falls into Erik and tries to block out the cacophony of noise and pain and memories.
Erik wakes with a gasp and Charles sees through his eyes for a split second before he jerks upward and gasps himself as he comes back to his own mind. He opens his eyes and looks past Moira, past Schmidt, and focuses on Erik, bound in thick ropes and lying dazed on the floor. He's awake, now, but still reeling from the hit on the head, dizzy with disbelief and sick with pain and horror because, fuck, Shaw has Charles, Shaw's going to hurt Charles, after all these years Erik's found Charles again and Shaw is going to take him away, no, he needs to fight the way the room is spinning, he needs to protect Charles, he needs--
A chair lurches across the floor feebly, dragging Charles from Erik's thoughts, and Schmidt laughs.
"Oh, Erik," Schmidt says. "How noble. All these years and you still carry that torch. It's very sweet, really."
Charles' head is still pounding. It's an effort to focus on what Schmidt is saying.
Above him, the safety clicks off Moira's gun.
"Someone needs to fill me in before I start shooting indiscriminately," Moira says.
Schmidt turns his sickening smile on Moira.
"Well, it's young Dr. Xavier's legacy, but he seems a bit indisposed at the moment," Schmidt says. "Ms. Frost will be glad to hear that the tampering she did to his memory lasted nearly seventeen years, though. I suppose being away from the house worked too, on top of all of those lovely drugs we've been pumping into his system. So trusting, Doctor, taking those pills all these years! We were sure we'd have to intervene at some point."
Charles can't make sense of what Schmidt is saying. Pills? Memories? Schmidt waves his gun from side to side in a parody of a tsking gesture.
"Nevermind all that, though," Schmidt says. "That's later. This all starts with Dr. Xavier's father and his big mouth. He noticed his little boy had a gift--he could answer questions before they were asked. He knew what people were thinking. And, being a scientist, Dr. Xavier senior decided to test his son further. Bad form, I think, experimenting on your own child, and I suppose Dr. Xavier agreed, because he told his secret to his co-worker, Dr. Marko, and asked for his help. Marko saw only the money, though. He didn't appreciate the power, but he knew others would, and that's where I met our boy."
He says it with a fondness that would turn Charles' stomach if he wasn't already sick from pain and from Schmidt's confirmation of the memories that were slowly returning. It had been fun, at first. Games. Charles liked the attention from the man who usually preferred books to his own son. He liked being useful. But the tests made him tired and sometimes they hurt, but he could tell his father wanted to take them farther, make them longer, and he just wanted to make his father happy.
Schmidt takes a step forward.
"Don't get any closer," Moira growls.
"Don't touch him!" Erik wheezes.
Schmidt just laughs.
"So protective, both of you. I would never hurt Charles." That awful smile is back. "Well, not permanently, at least. I know power when I see it. I understand power. I appreciate it. Marko sold out your father, Charles, who sold you out. It's a cycle of betrayal, really. Marko thought the government might have use for a boy who could read minds, and as it happened they could. As long as they could control it, of course. Your father didn't like it, so we had your father...removed."
Charles can see it in Schmidt's mind, the panic on his father's face as Schmidt held a cloth over his mouth and nose, holding him still until he stopped struggling. Schmidt had killed Brian Xavier and hadn't even blinked. He'd been in the way, and Schmidt had a job to do, had a goal, and Brian Xavier was nothing more than a minor obstacle.
"My father," Charles says. "You--"
"Marko wasn't happy about that," Shaw continues blithely. "But that only lasted as long as it took for him to deposit his first check. He certainly took up with your mother soon enough. Moved right into the bedroom, and then we started working. The government wanted a way to control these powers. A weapon's not useful unless you're the one pulling the trigger after all. We were discovering more people with strange abilities and we couldn't let them go unchecked. We started coming up with a suppressant. There was a lot of trial and error involved. It was painful, but it was for the greater good."
Trial and error. Torture, was more like. God, it was all rushing back and there was so much of it. Arguments between Kurt and Schmidt--'She'll notice if he's stoned off his goat!' 'Dr. Marko, your stepson can't stand up and he's still more sober than your wife.'--writhing on the gurneys in agony, shot after shot after shot and then asking him to try and read their minds, hooking him up to machines, running electrical current through him....
"Charles and Erik were up to the task, though," Schmidt says. "Admittedly, Erik took a little more than the young Mr. Xavier. He had a mother, after all, not that she would have noticed. The staff, on the other hand, might ask questions, and we wanted to keep things clean, simple."
It was awful, watching Erik poked and prodded, watching him get doses twice and three times as high because they knew no one cared. No one but Charles, who watched and sobbed and begged, but it never stopped. He did what he could. If they let him near Erik, after, he helped clean his wounds and curled up with him. When the pain was the worst, he dipped into Erik's mind and invited Erik into his fantasy world, the one he had been constructing in his head for as long as he could remember. He got headaches, sometimes, trying to keep Erik tethered to him for so long, but it was worth it. Anything he could do was worth it.
"I can't believe I forgot you," he says, looking to Erik, hiccupping on a sob. His head hurt. It had never hurt this much before. "I can't believe she took you from me. I'm so sorry."
"Not your fault," Erik says. His focus is clearer, now, but he still sounds distant and dazed. It's an act, Charles realizes. He wants to look worse than he is.
Do you have a plan? he asks. Erik winces--it's been so long since Charles communicated that way, since he even realized he could. It hurts, talking like that, but everything hurts so much that he barely notices the change.
I do, Erik responds. Hearing Erik's voice so clearly makes Charles' knees weak with relief. God, how could he not have realized how badly he was missing this?
"Of course, all good things end," Schmidt says. "Charles' mother died and left everything to Charles, including this property. She left Charles in the care of her brother, and that was the end of it. The boy would go off to England, the house was to be boarded up, and we had nowhere to go. It was just as well--we had the drug. The government was already putting it in Ritalin and Xanax and Penicillin, pumping it into the water supply, making sure it reached everyone. They wanted to move onto new projects. Now that we knew we could control these people, they wanted us to find them. It was messy, clearing out the evidence so quickly, taking our findings with us, having my dear friend Ms. Frost make sure there was nothing that Charles could do to implicate us, but we would have managed. Poor Erik, though, couldn't stand the thought of leaving his little friend behind. He started the fire. You know the rest."
Charles looks back to Erik, though Moira's eyes don't leave Schmidt. Erik nods.
"I started the fire because they took you away from me," he says. Something changes in his eyes, then. They turn hard and intense and he murmurs, "I won't let it happen again."
Something slams against the desk. Schmidt turns towards it, and Moira uses the distraction to fire her weapon. The bullet hits Schmidt square in the chest, but before Moira can so much as lower her gun, his entire body ripples. He grins at them, almost gleeful.
"Oh, very cute, honey," he says to Moira. "But I suppose I forgot an important part of the story. Charles and Erik aren't the only people who have these powers. This?" He holds up the gun. "This is mostly for show. To make you nervous. I don't need it to hurt you."
He drops the gun carelessly on the ground and then his whole being ripples again. There's a ping that echoes in the quiet of the chamber. It's the bullet, twisted and warped. When Charles looks back up, Schmidt is still smiling.
"Would you like to try that again?" he asks.
Moira doesn't speak or flinch, but Charles can hear her panic broadcasting outward, sharp and suffocating. Schmidt's mind is behind steel doors, save for the glee he feels at watching them suffer, at wielding his power. And Erik--
Erik uses the distraction to jump to his feet with more agility than Charles would have thought he could muster at the moment. His one wrist is loose, the ropes ragged at the edge, a screwdriver on the floor where he was previously crumpled. He swings the rope around Schmidt's neck and yanks back hard, as Moira fires another shot. Schmidt tosses Erik off and takes a step towards Moira and it's so loud. Charles wants to help, but he has his hands clamped over his ears and his head between his knees to try and dull the pain. His head is pounding, aching, coming apart. The noise is rattling in his ears and head alike, echos of different perspectives, commotion from shouting and objects bouncing around, and he just wants it to stop.
It does.
Charles notices the external silence first, and slowly opens his eyes. Moira, Schmidt, and Erik are all still. They're more than still, they're completely unmoving save for their breathing. He's blocked their minds as well--he can see Moira's rapid breathing, but the panic she was feeling is distant and muted. Schmidt, already mostly blocked from the inside, is silent. Erik's intense focus is on Charles.
Charles, he thinks, and Charles hears it clearly. It slips past his defenses as if it belongs there. Sebastian Shaw needs to die.
No. No, Charles won't be party to murder. He can't kill this man. He can't kill anyone! Good god, how has this even happened? Three weeks ago, he just wanted to finish his book somewhere quiet where he could concentrate. How has it escalated to this? What's happened to his life?
What was always meant to happen, Erik tells him. You've always been special. This has always been inside of you. That's what you used to tell me, at least. That this was a gift.
It doesn't feel like a gift. It feels like Charles' brain is imploding. He can't think, but the one thing he knows is that he can't just condemn a man to die.
He's done terrible things, Erik reminds him. His words are almost gentle. It's incongruous in this conversation, incongruous coming from Erik who's been churning with anger and purpose this whole time. He tortured us when we were children who couldn't defend ourselves. He hurt us because he enjoyed it. He left your stepfather to die, and he was probably responsible for your father's death as well.
He was. Charles has seen as much, now. Schmidt suffocated Brian Xavier because he was in the way. He hurt them, all those years. He tortured Erik for fun and because he enjoyed the pain that Charles felt at being so helpless to stop it.
He killed my parents, Erik adds, haltingly, as if it hurts him to think it, even after all these years. He saw what I could do and he killed my parents to get to me. I was seven years old. Charles--he has to die.
"I can't!" Charles says out loud. "I can't just--I can't do that, Erik! I can't allow it! What does that make me, then? What do I become if I do this?"
I'll do it, Erik replies. You hold him still, and I'll do it. I wouldn't want anyone else to have the pleasure of killing him anyway.
"Can't we just call the police?" Charles asks, even though he knows it's impossible. The police can't control someone with so much power.
When we were little boys, you trusted me, Erik tells him. You trusted me more than anyone else in the world. That's what you told me then. I thought you were dead--he told me you died in the fire, that it was my fault. I thought it right up until that night, when I saw you up close and I realized...I thought you were dead for all these years. You were everything to me, once upon a time, and even if you can't remember, you have to trust me, trust that it was true. I lived all my life thinking Shaw had taken away everything I loved. I can't leave him the chance to do it again. Please, Charles.
Charles rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand and closes his eyes. There's truth to Erik's words and, more than that, Erik's feelings. The affection there, the trust and the pain of separation, the shame in not recognizing Charles immediately--Charles can see it in Erik's mind, the moment he pulled Charles up by his shirt and saw his face, his eyes clearly for the first time. The shock, the denial, the disbelief as he fled, stumbling through the house, ashamed with the new knowledge that Charles had been alive all that time, that Erik had taken Shaw's word as truth and not even looked--
Charles shakes himself free of Erik's thoughts and then, careful not to project the order to the whole room, lets Erik go.
Erik remains still for a moment. When he moves, he only turns slowly to Charles.
"Charles," he says. His voice breaks.
"Just do it," Charles says. He looks at the floor. "Do it and get it over with, please."
He hears footsteps on the concrete. He doesn't look up.
"Hello, Shaw," Erik says. "Do you recognize this? It's the bullet you left with my mother. I think it's time I give it back to you."
There's a terrible, heavy pause and then a terrible, deafening noise in Charles' head as Schmidt bursts past his own mental barriers and then through Charles' as well. It's fear so primal that Charles can't parse it, intense pain, and panic and Charles wants to start screaming and never stop and he is screaming, his throat is raw with it, his world is going white around the edges and then--
And then there's blissful darkness.
***
The first thing Charles notices as he slowly begins to drift towards consciousness is T. H. White.
He's familiar with the story; he read The Once and Future King to tatters when he was in school and he knows there's a new copy somewhere on his nightstand, buried under edits for his own book. The strange part is the additional commentary that comes with it--a stark, painful relation to Lancelot, the memory of being a boy who was broken and put back together wrong. It's enough to draw Charles out--those aren't his thoughts, those aren't his feelings, and he thinks Erik... as he opens his eyes.
Charles is in his bed. The room is bright with autumn sun and the chair next to his bed is occupied by Erik, his nose buried in White. He pushes himself up on his elbows and blinks at Erik. Now that he's more aware, it's not just Erik. He can hear Moira, too, pacing about downstairs, drinking coffee, texting her boyfriend, sending a report for work, and worrying about him simultaneously. If he pushes out even farther, he can--
He winces. Okay. More pain. Not ready to reach out farther, then.
"Be careful," Erik says. He puts the book down and leans over the edge of the bed. He looks the same, of course--he's the same person. But there's still something about him that's different. He's smiling and less severe--his features are softer. There's something inviting in his eyes and the curve of his mouth.
"My head is still killing me," Charles says. He rubs his forehead.
"It'll take a few more days," Erik says. He curls a hand around Charles' shoulder and and urges him back down against the pillows. "When I first came off the suppressants, I had to lock myself in a motel room alone for a week. Things just kept...flying off shelves and sticking to me."
Charles can't hide his smile, but Erik ducks his head, smiling as well.
"A few more days?" Charles asks. "What day is it?"
"It's--" Erik stops to say, then frowns. "I'm not sure, actually. But you've been sleeping for two days. Almost three, now." He lifts his hand, but hesitates after he does so, his hand hanging in the air for long seconds. Charles stares at it, studies Erik's long fingers and the shape of his palm. Bits of his past are still fuzzy, but there's so much more there now. He remembers the hours he spent with Erik, talking and sitting close and sharing stories and making up new ones. He remembers Erik trying fruitlessly to protect him and remembers doing the same to protect Erik. I think he's sweet on you, Schmidt--Shaw said to him once. And Charles had been frightened at the prospect, thinking about all the ways that Shaw could use that against Erik, could use it to hurt him, but he'd also preened, just a little bit, in the very back of his mind.
"I remember there was a night when my mum was out and Kurt kept me down there so late--we sat in your room all night and you showed me how to make shadow puppets," Charles says. "At the end you got so shy--you tried so hard to protect me, you thought it was your job because you were older. You didn't want me to think you were a baby."
Erik swallows. His thoughts are going too quickly for Charles to latch onto them without trying harder than he'd like. There's a general sense of relief, of triumph, along with other things that are more complicated. Affection, definitely. Shock, still. Erik reaches out and brushes Charles' hair behind his ear. His fingers linger on Charles' cheek.
"I thought you were dead," Erik says. His voice is quiet, barely more than a whisper. "He told me you died in the fire. That I killed you. Whenever I did anything that displeased him, he'd bring it up. Remind me that I was good for nothing, that I ruined everything I touched."
"I'm not ruined," Charles says. "I'm alive, you never hurt me. You wouldn't hurt me."
"I didn't mean to scare you that night," Erik says. "I never expected you to--I thought you were dead."
"I'm not," Charles says again. He covers Erik's hand with his own and then he feels it, clear as day, so bright that Charles doesn't know how he missed it.
Oh, Erik, Charles thinks. Erik tries to pull back, but Charles refuses to release his grip, refuses to let Erik get far.
"It was over fifteen years ago," Erik says. There's an edge to his voice, but it's fear, not the anger he wants Charles to think it is. "I was thirteen years old. I don't know you anymore. I was in love with an eleven year old boy who held my hand when I told him about my mother. I don't know who you are."
"I want you to get to know me," Charles insists, and cups his hand around the base of Erik's skull, pulling him down for a kiss.
They kissed just once when they were boys. It was the night Erik showed him the shadow puppets. It was close to the end, maybe a week before the fire, maybe two. Charles made a comment about how it made him feel like a little kid again and Erik got so embarrassed. No, it's good, Charles assured him, and then kissed him. They were so young--barely more than children. It was chaste and quick, but Charles carried it with him until he couldn't anymore. He spares a moment to hate Shaw, to hate Emma Frost, for taking something so important from him.
It's okay, though. He has it back now. There's no need to dwell in resentment when the memory is his again and he's already actively working on making some new ones.
Erik exhales against his lips and pulls back just far enough that they can look at each other without going cross-eyed. He runs his thumb over Charles' temple, down his cheekbone, across his lips. He doesn't speak, but he also keeps his thoughts to himself, studying Charles in silence, learning the curves of Charles' face, the shape of his mouth.
"Come here," Charles says quietly, after long moments of Erik's silent contemplation. Erik doesn't argue or protest; he pauses only to kick off his shoes before climbing into bed next to Charles. He stays on top of the covers and lies on his side, sharing Charles' pillow and facing him. They stare at each other in continued silence.
"I'm sorry," Erik says quietly. "It's just--I can't explain--I know I keep saying it, but I never thought I'd see you again. All these years. I used to know everything about you. Now I don't know where to start."
"Oh, well, that part's easy," Charles says. He takes Erik's hand in his own and rests them in the narrow valley between their bodies. "I went to London to live with my uncle and his family. I finished school there, started at Harvard when I was sixteen. I met Moira there, graduated early, got my PhD in genetics, made a bit of a name for myself with some papers I published, and now I'm working on a book."
"Genetics?" Erik says. "Maybe your brain was trying harder to remember what happened to us than you though. Shaw was always going on about how genetic mutation was what made us the way we were."
Charles laughs. "Not quite," he says. "My field of expertise is bioinformatics, which deals primarily with analyzing the methods of storing and--you don't care." Erik looks slightly abashed and Charles placates him with another kiss, chaste and quick and familiar, despite the fact that it's only their third. "Life's not like the movies, unfortunately, and while you and I now know that magical abilities do exist, I would have been laughed out of Harvard at 16 for suggesting it."
"I've looked for books, papers, anything," Erik admits. "If the government has been covering this up since we were children, they've been doing a good job."
"Mm," Charles agrees. "Believe me, if it was out there, I'd know about it. I don't have much of a life outside of work. A series of unfulfilling relationships with people who asked questions I wasn't comfortable answering. People I could never really make that connection with."
He doesn't say, Because some part of me must have known I still had that connection with you, even though that's the sappy thought that's running through his mind as he looks up at Erik. He can't just throw himself at Erik, he has more self-respect than that.
Slightly. Probably.
Erik doesn't seem put off by his longing looks. He kisses Charles again, tugging Charles closer and holding onto him with a hand flat at the small of Charles' back. It's possessive. Charles likes it more than is probably proper.
"We'll see if we can change that," Erik says. Their noses are still touching, their lips barely parted. It reminds him of when they were children. He used to crawl into Erik's bed when Erik was too weak to get up or when Kurt and Schmidt forgot about Charles and left him to his own devices until late. They'd lie like this, facing each other and barely touching, talking long into the night. Erik was the person Charles loved most in the world. He'll never forgive himself for forgetting, even if it wasn't his fault.
He'd like to stay curled up with Erik, making up for lost time, but he can hear Moira approaching. She's far enough away that there's no sound from the stairs or the plush carpet, but he can hear the gentle whirring of her thoughts as she thinks about how she doesn't entirely trust Erik, but she trusts him more than she trusts the government right now, that she can barely believe this, that she wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it, that Charles had enough shit in his life without this, that they need to figure out what they're doing next.
"Moira," Charles says quietly, and inches backwards just enough for polite company. Erik scowls at that, but doesn't pull Charles any closer and is mostly placated by Charles' hangdog look by the time the bedroom door opens.
"You're awake," Moira says. She ignores Erik and sits on the opposite side of Charles' bed. "How are you?"
"Tired," Charles says, craning his neck to look at her properly. "My head still hurts, but it's better than before."
"Good," Moira says. She takes his free hand and squeezes it. Charles squeezes back. "You need to rest for a bit, or are you ready to talk?" She glances at Erik. "Or would your rather neck with your new boyfriend and talk later?"
Charles would rather like to neck with his new boyfriend. Old boyfriend. Whatever Erik was. Erik, too, sends Charles a very detailed image of what he would like to be doing. Still, best to take care of business first. He ignores Erik as best he can, pushes himself up again, and says, "Let's talk."
Moira raises her eyebrows and Charles registers her wave of surprise. Well. He can be focused when he needs to be.
"Okay," Moira says. "Well, this is all well and good--people with powers and you reading minds and your friend doing...whatever it is you do--"
"I can manipulate magnetic fields," Erik says.
"Right," Moira says. "The point is, Schmidt--Shaw, whatever--was clearly part of some bigger picture. He made it sound like there are hundreds of people with these powers who don't even know it."
"More, maybe," Erik says. He sits up too, leaning against the headboard and turning enough that he can see Moira. He looks down at Charles and adds, "You told me what you've been up to. My story's not quite so cheerful. Shaw dragged me with him for years. He left here to work on another government contract. They had the formula to suppress powers, they were pumping it into all sorts of pills--Ritalin, Xanax, about every major anti-depressant and anxiety medication. They even pumped it into some of the drinking water. They had Shaw consult to help build a machine that could track people with powers. Shaw's friend Frost--do you remember her?"
"She was a telepath, like me," Charles murmurs, remembering a woman in short white dresses and tall white boots who could turn to diamond. She was the one who took his memories. He swallows back a wave of remorse.
"She could use the machine," Erik says. "None of the rest of us could. But she and Shaw had a fight and she left and took her rich family's money with her. Without the funding or the ability to work the machine, Shaw became useless. When the government started to dig into his past, he stole a copy of the plans to the machine and fled. He left me behind. I think he was starting to realize that I was getting too old to control. I was never going to be his perfect soldier. But I had no one else. I had nowhere to go."
"You could have come to me," Charles says quietly. "If I had known, if I had been able to break through Frost's tricks earlier--"
"It doesn't matter," Erik says. "I looked for Shaw. I found you. Here we are."
"So," Moira says, steering the conversation back to the topic at hand, "the government has a machine? And you know where it is?"
"And I know how to get the plans," Erik says. He looks at Charles again. "There are things you can do, Charles, things you haven't even dreamed of. You could make every person in that facility look the other way while we walk right in and take them."
Charles' stomach twists. He bites his lip. Storming into a government facility seems a bit much. He glances at Moira for reassurance, but her face holds none of the shock or disapproval he expects.
"You can't seriously be okay with this," he says to her, even as he dips into her mind to discover, to his surprise, that she definitely is. "You work for the government!"
"Yeah," Moira says. "That was before I found out that they tortured two little boys for years, unchecked, so they could have complete control over other people's free will. You were a kid and they let your stepfather and Shaw experiment on you, on him--" She gestures at Erik. "--until the money ran out and suddenly it wasn't a good idea anymore. They're pumping chemicals into the water? They're trying to weaponize people? They need to be stopped."
Erik is staring at Moira with narrowed eyes. He doesn't trust her.
"How do I know we can trust you?" Erik asks. "He says you work for them."
"I'm a junior field agent with the FBI," Moira says. She rolls her eyes. "I have about as much access to this type of thing as the janitors. Maybe less. Also, who dragged your ass above ground, made sure you didn't have a concussion, and fed you for three days? If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it while Charles was sleeping."
"We can trust Moira," Charles says, curtailing Erik's response with a squeeze to his wrist. "I just think--I don't know that I can do that anymore. Make people not see me, not see us. I can barely control my powers as it is."
"You'll have two weeks to work on it, at least," Moira says. Erik raises an eyebrow. Charles brushes past her mind just deep enough to discover her plan. "I'll have to give my two weeks at work so they don't get suspicious. I'll tell them I'm getting married, I've decided to devote myself to raising my kids. They're stupid enough to buy it. Nick'll tell his boss the same thing. That leaves four of us to get in, get out, and start this thing."
"Who's Nick?" Erik asks.
"We can trust him," Moira says.
"And I'm supposed to take your word for it?" Erik asks.
Charles rubs his forehead. His headache is flaring up again. "We can," he insists.
Erik looks at Charles and then Moira.
"We meet him," Erik says. "Charles reads his mind. Then we decide if we can trust him."
There's a tense moment when Moira and Erik stare at each other, unflinchingly, the determination enough to be suffocating.
"Fine," Moira says. "I'll call him and have him head up here as soon as he can manage so we can tell him the whole story."
"If we decide we can trust him," Erik reminds her.
"Fine," Moira repeats. "Once we get through all that, we can--"
Charles holds up a hand to stop her and uses the other to cover his eyes.
"This is all going very quickly," he says. "If I could have a day to deal with the fact that six years of my life were almost entirely erased from my memory, that my childhood best friend has returned, that my stepfather was a mad scientist, that I can read minds...."
He lifts his hand from his eyes and tries to ignore the way his brain feels like it's bouncing around his head. Moira and Erik are both quiet. There's a heavy mixture of shame and concern and resolution rolling off of them.
"I'll go call Nick," Moira says. "Why don't you and Erik try to get some rest? I'll re-heat some pizza for dinner."
"Thank you," Charles says. Moira kisses his forehead and, with one last look, leaves the room.
It's just Charles and Erik, now. Charles closes his eyes again and slides back into the pillows. It's only a moment before Erik follows him, his movements light and gentle as he wraps his arms around Charles.
"My head is killing me," Charles says softly.
"I know," Erik says against his ear. "Just rest. We'll start training later. Baby steps."
Charles presses his forehead against Erik's collarbone. His entire world is changing. His entire world is being remade from scratch. He wasn't ecstatic about his life before, but, god, it was familiar. It was comforting. It was the same thing every day, but it was safe. It was secure.
Charles hates change. Charles is terrified of change.
"I don't know that I can do this," he admits. "I'm a teacher, Erik. I...give lectures and do research and lab work. I write papers. I drink tea and grade. I'm not some kind of superhero."
Erik is quiet for a long time, his fingers combing through Charles' hair. It's soothing, actually. It's doing wonders for his headache.
"Do you know what one of the first things you said to me was?" he asks.
"No," Charles murmurs.
"'You're not alone,'" Erik says. "I'd been waiting for years for that assurance. It changed my life, Charles. And, I think, knowing you weren't alone, either--I think it changed yours, too. Think of all the kids out in the world who are waiting for the same reassurance. This isn't about what you can or can't do or what your life was like. This is a chance for you to be a part of something much bigger than yourself."
All those years that Charles spent wandering listlessly through school in London, the times he clung to Moira because she was all he knew, terrified of going out and meeting new people, inexplicably nervous about making new friends. All the years thinking there was something awkward and different about him, something he shouldn't think about too closely. All those years of not fitting in and accepting that was just how life had worked out.
He's in pain. He's exhausted. He's terrified. But he's never felt as free as he does now. He's never felt so open and so loved.
Charles opens his eyes and looks up at Erik.
"Okay," he says. "When do we start?"