Forgive Us Our Transgressions 2/?
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Charles/Erik
Rating: R
Summary: The mind is a strange place, as Charles knows all too well. Memories come and go, and sometimes are wiped away forever. is this finally the chance he's been waiting for?
Recovery, Reconciliation...Retribution?
Chapter One
In the door of the unused bedroom, Charles hovered, unable to draw himself away, but unwilling to enter. Erik lay in bed, his face turned into the pillow, and the soft rays of the late morning falling across his shuttered eyes. It wasn’t the serenity Charles remembered, the peacefulness that he had fought hard to win. Now his sleep was restless with dreams that buzzed into Charles’ mind, flashes of images, voices, dark and disconcerting. Fever raged in Erik, distorting his mind, but Charles worried that the dreams would not be all that different, even if Erik were well.
The things he had done since they parted...
Charles shook his head. What was his thinking, bringing this man-this killer-into a school, a safe house for children? He couldn’t even justify it to himself, let alone the other faculty members, and yet there Erik lay, shivering and sweating with his illness.
Vulnerable.
Charles resisted the urge to roll into the room, to smooth the hair back from Erik’s heated brow. To gentle his dreams with a touch to his temple, to soothe the rage that obviously burned inside him.
Erik wouldn’t want that. He had never wanted Charles’ help, his sympathy, his understanding. He didn’t want Charles’ soothing words, or his argued idealism. Erik wanted his rage, his hate, his vengeance. More than he had ever wanted Charles.
Knuckles white where he gripped his wheels, Charles rolled away.
He had lessons to teach, children to tend to. Hope to engender.
Erik was counter to all that his life had become.
_________________________________________
“What were you thinking?” Alex snarled.
“He’s ill,” Charles said, uncomfortably aware that Alex was merely voicing what they were all thinking, even himself.
“Boo hoo,” Alex said, raising his voice to Charles in a way he hadn’t done in years. “Send him to the doctors then, but don’t keep him here.”
Charles sighed. “You know we’d have to find a mutant doctor-and not one in our network. One that’s sympathetic to the brotherhood. Don’t you think Ra-Mystique would have located such a person, if one did exist? They came here for a reason.”
“Yeah, to fuck you over. Again,” Alex huffed, slamming back in his chair with crossed arms, looking so much like the teenager he and Erik released from prison all those years ago that Charles had to do a double take.
“What if it’s a trap?” Sean ventured, always hesitant to get involved in conflict.
“I wouldn’t put much past them, but Magneto is really sick,” Hank said reluctantly. “I doubt that even the Brotherhood would nearly kill their leader just to infiltrate this place. After all, it’s not that hard to break into. As they proved last night.”
Charles narrowed his eyes, nevermind that Hank was entirely correct. Security had never been as good as it should have been-as good as it would have been if Erik had stayed, his traitorous mind whispered-because Charles had the ability to monitor every consciousness in the house.
Except when he didn’t-and that’s what made the previous night rub so raw.
“Alex, call up Logan and start going over new plans for security for the mansion,” Charles ordered, admitting defeat.
“What?” Alex’s eyes widened. “Am I being punished for yelling at you? I thought we were supposed to be equals.”
“Talking to Logan is not punishment,” Charles scolded, although he was glad not to be tasked with it himself.
“Yeah right,” the blond snorted, pushing back his chair with a grinding scrape. Charles was gratified to see that he was heading for the phone, at least.
“So, what?” Sean asked, when Alex had slammed his way from the room. “We’re going to play nursemaid to Magneto, get him back on his feet, and then send him out to try and kill us again?”
Charles groaned, rubbing at his temples, and trying to soothe his burgeoning headache before it leaked over to everyone in the room. “I don’t know, okay Sean? I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Despite all their talk of being equals, Sean’s eyes grew wide with the admission. “Hey,” he said, leaning across the table to pat awkwardly at Charles’ arm. “We understand. We all know you’re still in love with the guy.”
“Sean!” Hank barked.
“What? He’s practically got Erik+Charles scrawled inside the cover of all his genetic books. We’d have to be blind not to notice.”
“Go…do something else,” Hank said weakly, gesturing the young man away, commanding despite the fact that they were roughly the same age and equals in the house. Sean had never really grown up in any of their eyes. Charles wondered if he ever would. The boy-man-was too earnest, too easy-going to seem like a real adult. And too prone to putting his foot in his mouth, Charles thought with a shake of his head.
“He’s not wrong, though,” Hank said as soon as Sean had left the room.
“Et tu, Brute?” Charles said weakly.
“I just want to make sure you’re not letting your emotions cloud your judgment.”
“Of course I am,” Charles said with a shake of his head. “But when don’t I? If I looked at the world in an entirely detached, reasonable fashion, I would have joined Erik’s Brotherhood years ago.”
“Don’t say that,” Hank said sadly, bushy blue brow creasing with his concern.
Charles merely shrugged. The sleeplessness night, the presence of Erik in the house, and the argument had worn him down.
“Professor…” Hank began.
Charles held up a hand, cutting him off. “I’ll be fine, Hank. Just worry about your patient. I promise to keep well out of your way.”
____________________________________________
Of course, that wasn’t a promise he could keep. He found himself lingering at the end of the disused hall, eyes straying down to the closed door that marked Erik’s room. He rolled past time after time, pausing but never directing his chair down to that door, the blank wooden face of it somehow managing to call to him.
He knew Erik was still unconscious, could feel the unfamiliar buzzing of his feverish mind. It wouldn’t hurt to go in, he told himself. No one would know. He wouldn’t have to talk to Erik, to confront him, to face the fact that they were enemies now. He could just…look at him, remind himself how Erik looked when he was un-helmeted, features relaxed. It had been so long since Charles had seen his face not twisted with rage, furrowed with righteous indignation.
It had been so long since he had seen Erik and not Magneto.
He was halfway down the hall before he realized what he was doing.
Hank would know, would smell him in the room, would give him that look, scolding and pitying that made him feel about ten years old. And yet he wheeled himself forward.
The door creaked open under his hand and Charles peered in, squinting to make out Erik’s form in the dim light.
Charles wheeled forward slowly, reluctant to break the silence of the room. Erik was sleeping peacefully, for a change, his breathing even, his eyes serenely closed, his mind a soothing hum. The fever must be breaking, Charles thought, and reached out, pressing his hand gently against Erik’s sweat-damp forehead.
“W-what?” the man murmured, his voice hoarse.
Charles jerked his hand back with a gasp.
“No, wait,” Erik said, eyes still closed. “Your hand feels so nice.”
Charles could only stare. Erik’s eyes fluttered open, revealing blue depths that Charles hadn’t gazed into in years. “Your hand is so cool,” he sighed lowly.
Erik was looking at him, talking to him, and yet he wasn’t pulling away, wasn’t yelling or threatening. Wasn’t turning his back or walking away.
It wasn’t right, but it felt so good, and so Charles reached out with a shaky hand, pressing his palm to Erik’s heated cheek.
“Mmm,” the man sighed, eyes fluttering shut again. “Thank you.”
“You’re-you’re welcome.”
He could feel Erik drifting back to sleep, but that wasn’t what made him frown, his brow furrowing at he stared down at the man in front of him.
He had blamed the feel of Erik’s mind on his illness, assuming the foreignness to be generated by the fever.
But Erik’s fever was breaking, he had been awake and lucid and yet his mind still felt-wrong.
Or, not wrong, but different. Quiet. Peaceful.
Not like Erik at all.
Charles pressed in, trying to feel for the man he knew, but all he found were empty spaces and sensation, the heat of Erik’s skin, the drag of the bedclothes over his flesh, and the beautifully cool feel of Charles’ hand, cupping his face.
Charles drew back.
_________________________________________
“He’s not himself,” Charles insisted, pulling Hank along behind him.
“Well, he’s been feverish for days, he’s disoriented…”
“No,” Charles said firmly. “He’s not Erik. Not the man we knew.”
“Magneto wasn’t the man we knew, either,” Hank pointed out, but allowed himself to be dragged along, ignoring how ludicrous it was, a paraplegic pulling a man of his bulk and stature down a hall.
“This is different. His mind feels…wrong. Empty, somehow. There’s no hint of Shaw, of his mother, of the camps. There’s no hint of us,” Charles flushed as his voice broke. He rarely mapped his own mind, but he knew there had to be a huge portion of it, boarded up and closed off, devoted to Erik.
But Erik’s mind had been completely devoid of him.
“Well,” Hank said thoughtfully, as they paused in front of the door to Erik’s temporary bedroom. “Fevers as high as the one Magneto had can, in some cases, cause brain damage.”
“Brain damage?” Charles choked.
Hank shrugged his large shoulders. “A temperature of over 102 can start to…fry the brain, to put in crudely. I suppose memory loss is possible.”
Charles blanched. Memory loss. If that was the case, what had Erik lost? Apparently any memory of Charles, and how unfair was that? There were some days-dark days-when he would give anything to lose his memories of Erik, of what he had once had and subsequently lost.
There were other days when you would have to pry them from his cold, dead hand.
Charles shook his head, trying to focus. Erik didn’t seem to remember him, or the X-Men in general.
But what of the Brotherhood?
“Hank, what if he’s lost all memory of his crusade for mutant supremacy? Of his desire for vengeance?”
Hank frowned. “The world would be a better place.”
Charles set his mouth in a hard, determined line. “Exactly,” he said, and pushed open the door.
Erik lay where he had left him, his sleep deeper and less troubled than it had been since he arrived at the mansion.
Hank busied himself with his patient, checking his temperature, his pulse. “His fever is definitely going down,” he said with satisfaction.
“What did you give him?” Charles questioned, rolling closer.
“Oh, I just mixed something up in the lab.”
“And that couldn’t have caused-?”
“Brain damage?” Hank scoffed, indignant. “No, it was the illness, not the medicine, that caused any damage there may be.”
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Charles sighed. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened. If it was chemically induced, he might revert back.”
“But with a fever, it will probably be permanent,” Hank said, completing Charles’ thought. “I see.”
Charles gave him a sharp look at his tone. “This isn’t about me,” he denied. “This is about the safety of the world.”
“Of course, Professor,” Hank agreed, ducking his head over his patient.
Charles’ shoulders slumped. He wished his colleagues didn’t know him so well.
But the idea of an Erik unburdened of Shaw, of the Nazis, of his personal vendetta against humanity. The idea of an Erik purged of rage and retribution…
It was very, very tempting.
_________________________________________
Chapter Three
~
Pairing: Charles/Erik
Rating: R
Summary: The mind is a strange place, as Charles knows all too well. Memories come and go, and sometimes are wiped away forever. is this finally the chance he's been waiting for?
Recovery, Reconciliation...Retribution?
Chapter One
In the door of the unused bedroom, Charles hovered, unable to draw himself away, but unwilling to enter. Erik lay in bed, his face turned into the pillow, and the soft rays of the late morning falling across his shuttered eyes. It wasn’t the serenity Charles remembered, the peacefulness that he had fought hard to win. Now his sleep was restless with dreams that buzzed into Charles’ mind, flashes of images, voices, dark and disconcerting. Fever raged in Erik, distorting his mind, but Charles worried that the dreams would not be all that different, even if Erik were well.
The things he had done since they parted...
Charles shook his head. What was his thinking, bringing this man-this killer-into a school, a safe house for children? He couldn’t even justify it to himself, let alone the other faculty members, and yet there Erik lay, shivering and sweating with his illness.
Vulnerable.
Charles resisted the urge to roll into the room, to smooth the hair back from Erik’s heated brow. To gentle his dreams with a touch to his temple, to soothe the rage that obviously burned inside him.
Erik wouldn’t want that. He had never wanted Charles’ help, his sympathy, his understanding. He didn’t want Charles’ soothing words, or his argued idealism. Erik wanted his rage, his hate, his vengeance. More than he had ever wanted Charles.
Knuckles white where he gripped his wheels, Charles rolled away.
He had lessons to teach, children to tend to. Hope to engender.
Erik was counter to all that his life had become.
_________________________________________
“What were you thinking?” Alex snarled.
“He’s ill,” Charles said, uncomfortably aware that Alex was merely voicing what they were all thinking, even himself.
“Boo hoo,” Alex said, raising his voice to Charles in a way he hadn’t done in years. “Send him to the doctors then, but don’t keep him here.”
Charles sighed. “You know we’d have to find a mutant doctor-and not one in our network. One that’s sympathetic to the brotherhood. Don’t you think Ra-Mystique would have located such a person, if one did exist? They came here for a reason.”
“Yeah, to fuck you over. Again,” Alex huffed, slamming back in his chair with crossed arms, looking so much like the teenager he and Erik released from prison all those years ago that Charles had to do a double take.
“What if it’s a trap?” Sean ventured, always hesitant to get involved in conflict.
“I wouldn’t put much past them, but Magneto is really sick,” Hank said reluctantly. “I doubt that even the Brotherhood would nearly kill their leader just to infiltrate this place. After all, it’s not that hard to break into. As they proved last night.”
Charles narrowed his eyes, nevermind that Hank was entirely correct. Security had never been as good as it should have been-as good as it would have been if Erik had stayed, his traitorous mind whispered-because Charles had the ability to monitor every consciousness in the house.
Except when he didn’t-and that’s what made the previous night rub so raw.
“Alex, call up Logan and start going over new plans for security for the mansion,” Charles ordered, admitting defeat.
“What?” Alex’s eyes widened. “Am I being punished for yelling at you? I thought we were supposed to be equals.”
“Talking to Logan is not punishment,” Charles scolded, although he was glad not to be tasked with it himself.
“Yeah right,” the blond snorted, pushing back his chair with a grinding scrape. Charles was gratified to see that he was heading for the phone, at least.
“So, what?” Sean asked, when Alex had slammed his way from the room. “We’re going to play nursemaid to Magneto, get him back on his feet, and then send him out to try and kill us again?”
Charles groaned, rubbing at his temples, and trying to soothe his burgeoning headache before it leaked over to everyone in the room. “I don’t know, okay Sean? I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Despite all their talk of being equals, Sean’s eyes grew wide with the admission. “Hey,” he said, leaning across the table to pat awkwardly at Charles’ arm. “We understand. We all know you’re still in love with the guy.”
“Sean!” Hank barked.
“What? He’s practically got Erik+Charles scrawled inside the cover of all his genetic books. We’d have to be blind not to notice.”
“Go…do something else,” Hank said weakly, gesturing the young man away, commanding despite the fact that they were roughly the same age and equals in the house. Sean had never really grown up in any of their eyes. Charles wondered if he ever would. The boy-man-was too earnest, too easy-going to seem like a real adult. And too prone to putting his foot in his mouth, Charles thought with a shake of his head.
“He’s not wrong, though,” Hank said as soon as Sean had left the room.
“Et tu, Brute?” Charles said weakly.
“I just want to make sure you’re not letting your emotions cloud your judgment.”
“Of course I am,” Charles said with a shake of his head. “But when don’t I? If I looked at the world in an entirely detached, reasonable fashion, I would have joined Erik’s Brotherhood years ago.”
“Don’t say that,” Hank said sadly, bushy blue brow creasing with his concern.
Charles merely shrugged. The sleeplessness night, the presence of Erik in the house, and the argument had worn him down.
“Professor…” Hank began.
Charles held up a hand, cutting him off. “I’ll be fine, Hank. Just worry about your patient. I promise to keep well out of your way.”
____________________________________________
Of course, that wasn’t a promise he could keep. He found himself lingering at the end of the disused hall, eyes straying down to the closed door that marked Erik’s room. He rolled past time after time, pausing but never directing his chair down to that door, the blank wooden face of it somehow managing to call to him.
He knew Erik was still unconscious, could feel the unfamiliar buzzing of his feverish mind. It wouldn’t hurt to go in, he told himself. No one would know. He wouldn’t have to talk to Erik, to confront him, to face the fact that they were enemies now. He could just…look at him, remind himself how Erik looked when he was un-helmeted, features relaxed. It had been so long since Charles had seen his face not twisted with rage, furrowed with righteous indignation.
It had been so long since he had seen Erik and not Magneto.
He was halfway down the hall before he realized what he was doing.
Hank would know, would smell him in the room, would give him that look, scolding and pitying that made him feel about ten years old. And yet he wheeled himself forward.
The door creaked open under his hand and Charles peered in, squinting to make out Erik’s form in the dim light.
Charles wheeled forward slowly, reluctant to break the silence of the room. Erik was sleeping peacefully, for a change, his breathing even, his eyes serenely closed, his mind a soothing hum. The fever must be breaking, Charles thought, and reached out, pressing his hand gently against Erik’s sweat-damp forehead.
“W-what?” the man murmured, his voice hoarse.
Charles jerked his hand back with a gasp.
“No, wait,” Erik said, eyes still closed. “Your hand feels so nice.”
Charles could only stare. Erik’s eyes fluttered open, revealing blue depths that Charles hadn’t gazed into in years. “Your hand is so cool,” he sighed lowly.
Erik was looking at him, talking to him, and yet he wasn’t pulling away, wasn’t yelling or threatening. Wasn’t turning his back or walking away.
It wasn’t right, but it felt so good, and so Charles reached out with a shaky hand, pressing his palm to Erik’s heated cheek.
“Mmm,” the man sighed, eyes fluttering shut again. “Thank you.”
“You’re-you’re welcome.”
He could feel Erik drifting back to sleep, but that wasn’t what made him frown, his brow furrowing at he stared down at the man in front of him.
He had blamed the feel of Erik’s mind on his illness, assuming the foreignness to be generated by the fever.
But Erik’s fever was breaking, he had been awake and lucid and yet his mind still felt-wrong.
Or, not wrong, but different. Quiet. Peaceful.
Not like Erik at all.
Charles pressed in, trying to feel for the man he knew, but all he found were empty spaces and sensation, the heat of Erik’s skin, the drag of the bedclothes over his flesh, and the beautifully cool feel of Charles’ hand, cupping his face.
Charles drew back.
_________________________________________
“He’s not himself,” Charles insisted, pulling Hank along behind him.
“Well, he’s been feverish for days, he’s disoriented…”
“No,” Charles said firmly. “He’s not Erik. Not the man we knew.”
“Magneto wasn’t the man we knew, either,” Hank pointed out, but allowed himself to be dragged along, ignoring how ludicrous it was, a paraplegic pulling a man of his bulk and stature down a hall.
“This is different. His mind feels…wrong. Empty, somehow. There’s no hint of Shaw, of his mother, of the camps. There’s no hint of us,” Charles flushed as his voice broke. He rarely mapped his own mind, but he knew there had to be a huge portion of it, boarded up and closed off, devoted to Erik.
But Erik’s mind had been completely devoid of him.
“Well,” Hank said thoughtfully, as they paused in front of the door to Erik’s temporary bedroom. “Fevers as high as the one Magneto had can, in some cases, cause brain damage.”
“Brain damage?” Charles choked.
Hank shrugged his large shoulders. “A temperature of over 102 can start to…fry the brain, to put in crudely. I suppose memory loss is possible.”
Charles blanched. Memory loss. If that was the case, what had Erik lost? Apparently any memory of Charles, and how unfair was that? There were some days-dark days-when he would give anything to lose his memories of Erik, of what he had once had and subsequently lost.
There were other days when you would have to pry them from his cold, dead hand.
Charles shook his head, trying to focus. Erik didn’t seem to remember him, or the X-Men in general.
But what of the Brotherhood?
“Hank, what if he’s lost all memory of his crusade for mutant supremacy? Of his desire for vengeance?”
Hank frowned. “The world would be a better place.”
Charles set his mouth in a hard, determined line. “Exactly,” he said, and pushed open the door.
Erik lay where he had left him, his sleep deeper and less troubled than it had been since he arrived at the mansion.
Hank busied himself with his patient, checking his temperature, his pulse. “His fever is definitely going down,” he said with satisfaction.
“What did you give him?” Charles questioned, rolling closer.
“Oh, I just mixed something up in the lab.”
“And that couldn’t have caused-?”
“Brain damage?” Hank scoffed, indignant. “No, it was the illness, not the medicine, that caused any damage there may be.”
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Charles sighed. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened. If it was chemically induced, he might revert back.”
“But with a fever, it will probably be permanent,” Hank said, completing Charles’ thought. “I see.”
Charles gave him a sharp look at his tone. “This isn’t about me,” he denied. “This is about the safety of the world.”
“Of course, Professor,” Hank agreed, ducking his head over his patient.
Charles’ shoulders slumped. He wished his colleagues didn’t know him so well.
But the idea of an Erik unburdened of Shaw, of the Nazis, of his personal vendetta against humanity. The idea of an Erik purged of rage and retribution…
It was very, very tempting.
_________________________________________
Chapter Three
~