(Untitled)

[markedformore]

It happens, again.

One moment, Erik feels himself safe in the embrace of his mother -- Schmidt dead behind him and the nightmare gone -- and the next, he finds he is back at the beginning and watching in horror as Schmidt requests -- asks, demands, insists -- that he move the coin. His anguish must be palpable and easy to hear from continents away

Comments

[thebettermen]

It's dizzying. Back and forth and back again. Charles barely has a chance to catch his breath before the change happens anew, and he is once more standing in an increasingly familiar hallway. What power has brought them there remains a frustrating mystery, the island surely the only culprit to blame, though it is presently a world away. Even so, Charles can't waste the time to give the matter any more thought, rushing instead into the office, but careful to shield himself and Billy from all eyes save Erik's.

Erik.

Erik, whose hands are deceptively clean from the blood he just spilled in the name of vengeance. Erik, who stands before him as beaten as he did the day this was first lived. Erik, who will kill Shaw no matter what happens here. Had Charles been a fool to ever think he could guide anyone away from such a well-laid path?

What do you mean to do? he asks of Erik wordlessly, his voice that of his older self. Do you see, now?

[halfscarlet]

Billy blinks when they're back in the same damn building again to go through the same event. What will be different this time, they escape again? Or do they hold Erik down to keep him from killing the man? What does it even matter, if they're just going to end up here yet again?

He wants to be back home with Teddy, not going along with this new form of torture.

What now? he thinks at Charles, tired and wary and wanting to get out of there. He doesn't care where, he just doesn't want to be in this office with Erik's pain anymore.

[markedformore]

Erik doesn't know what he's meant to do. He stares balefully and pleadingly at Charles, as though asking what he must do -- what he possibly can do. I don't know what to do, Charles, he broadcasts, hopeless and tinged with the edge of despair. I don't know what I'm meant to accomplish by being here and soon, very soon, he's going to take her from me again.

His focus is being pulled in two different directions and he's finding it difficult to focus on the both.

[thebettermen]

Perhaps you are not meant to accomplish anything, suggests Charles, not unkindly for all that he is angry at what's been done -- at himself, at Erik, at Shaw. He could take control of the latter once more, but he is not eager to delve into such a mind again so soon, and besides that, he is equally at a loss as to what to do. Charles wants to save Erik's mother as much as Erik himself, wants no one to die, but they've tried that approach, and to what end? The events simply started again.

We're in the past, Erik. Whatever forces brought us here must know that all of this has already happened.

[giknsleph]

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