Rage, Fear, Serenity
Title: Rage, Fear, Serenity
Author: Skull_Bearer
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,232
Warnings: Erik being Erik, some mention of sex
Summary: Sequel to Of Needles, Wars and Hands of Time and Stability, a Search For, All Friends and Kingdom Come and A Moment. A D/s world where Erik and Charles spend their lives believing the other to be dead.
Rage, Fear, Serenity
Erik wakes up, flat on his back breathing hard as though he’d run miles. He can still hear Shaw’s voice in his mind. The room is dark and alien and there’s a moment of panic when Erik doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing here, until Charles rolls over and throws an arm around his waist, curling around him, still asleep.
He lets his breath out in a long sigh, closing his eyes and burying his fingers in Charles’ hair. The world around them returns slowly, bit by bit as the sun rises outside, painting the room in shades of green through the drawn curtains. A surprisingly small room, considering the size of Charles’ family home. Painted pale blue and filled with clutter that still didn’t quite hide the low bookshelves and small bed stacked up against the wall.
Charles hadn’t mentioned it, and Erik hadn’t asked, simply clearing out the worst of the mess and moving in a bed large enough for both of them from a neighbouring room. Then lying down, eyes closed, holding Charles and listening to his memories of this room. Home for the few good years when he was young and his father still alive. So much of the house has bad associations, but this is the place he has been happiest in. Before his father died and Charles gained a self contained stepfather because his mother couldn’t bear to be alone or to look at him.
Erik had kissed Charles, held him and they’d rolled over and made love tenderly in that old, dusty bed. Erik’s back still stings where Charles had dug in his nails, and in his sleep, Charles is dreaming of him.
This can’t last. Erik can feel it. It’s like a tide, like magnets, something coming and dragging them both apart, sudden and inevitable. Erik can feel it inside his skin, under his bones. It’s so clearly there. It’s a warning, a clear signal that this can’t last, he isn’t made for happiness like this, it’ll break, or he will, and everything will be as it was. Cold. Numb. Alone.
No. Erik screams out inside, No, I will not let you take him. He’s mine. Take everything else, but I will never leave him. Even if he has to carry Charles off like Der Erlkonig, they will go together. Erik doesn’t have many ultimatums, but this is one of them. Never. Nevernevernever. Against him, Charles trembles, asleep but caught up with Erik’s thoughts even in his dreams.
He doesn’t know what he’s speaking to, whether Shaw or the world or himself. He’s never been this afraid, because he knows what’s waiting for them now, what being alone feels like. Never, never, I won’t, I can’t. Never. Charles is warm in his arms; he murmurs something, still asleep, lips brushing Erik’s shoulder.
How can he protect anyone when he’s this afraid? Fear isn’t enough, it doesn’t have enough control. He needs the hate and focus to fight. Surely, just once more, to be rid of Shaw now and forever. Surely that would be excusable, acceptable, to be rid of this threat...
... But Erik’s a fool if he thinks it will be just one threat. There are so few of them, and they are surrounded. Once Shaw is out of the way, it’ll only be a matter of time. It’ll be war, or worse than war, and they’ll be caught in the middle. Again. Too terrified to move, too afraid of staying still. Move and they’ll see you, or everything will break, stay and be cornered and killed.
“Shh.” Charles blinks up at him, hazy eyed, sad smiling. Such dark thoughts, my love.
Erik feels him in his mind like warm water, smoothing out the knots of fears until Erik can close his eyes and relax.
Nothing will happen. We’re safe.
For now, yes. But Moira is staying with them, and there’s nothing stopping her from-
She wouldn’t.
You trust so easily.
And you fear so much. Sleep.
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“There are other ways of using your powers.” Charles murmurs, half to himself.
Erik looks at him. They’re sitting outside, in the last glory days of autumn. He doesn’t answer, but Charles can see his thoughts too clearly. The last time he’d tried to use his powers without anger or hate his mother had been shot.
Charles gazes out over the grounds. The sun is shining hazily through a washed-out blue sky and the satellite dish in the distance gleams like gold.
“It’s the only way I have.” Erik says finally. “It’s the only way that’s worked.”
It can’t, not any more. Charles shifts over and places his hands on each side of Erik’s face. May I?
Erik closes his eyes, and Charles goes in. A thousand feather light touches inside his mind, as though his brain is blinking. It makes him smile, although it fades when Charles finds what he’s looking for. It’s tucked away, behind and inside until Erik nearly forgot it was there. That cold, hard self. The edge of control. Charles’ grasp slips and Erik gasps, flooded with the emptiness lurking beside it.
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I’m sorry. Hands in his hair. Hands in his mind. He did this to you. Shaw. I know, I saw what he did to Emma Frost. It’s like this. Worse with her.
“To be strong.” Erik can hear his voice in his own ears, and in Charles’ mind, like a double echo.
It’s almost a sob; his thoughts vibrate with the force of it. He was lying. You are so much more than this. Charles pulls an image from his own mind and shows it. It’s Erik in Russia, not with Emma, but just before. Standing over the downed guards in the hallway, wild joy in his face and power crackling around him like lightning. Exhilaration and triumph, no hate or fear or pain.
Erik opens his eyes, Charles is kneeling, so close their faces are almost touching; their eyes reflect each other endlessly like twin mirrors.
Erik reaches out a hand and cups Charles’ face, fingers brushing over the joint below his ear, the soft underside where jaw meets neck, the weak juncture of skull and backbone. Charles closes his eyes and smiles, leaning into the touch. The bond thrums with complete trust. You are a good man. I will never stop saying it because it will never stop being true. I wish you could see yourself as I see you.
“Even so,” Erik shakes his head, “I need to be there, I need the situation.” The anger.
“That’s not enough.” Of course Charles heard that. “Even without what it’s doing to you, it’s nearly gotten you killed.” His voice is steady, but Erik can feel the break in his thoughts. His hands tremble.
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Charles doesn’t want to do this. It feels wrong, although Erik doesn’t seem to mind. Guiding the others at using their powers - showing Sean how to fly, having Alex control his powers, even teaching Darwin how to force his adaptation without stimulus - that’s one thing, but this is Erik. His Dominant, who he is supposed to obey. Everything he is tells him to stop, to give in and stop fighting and trust Erik to look after them both. Isn’t this how it’s supposed to work?
In an ideal world yes, which this isn’t. In an ideal world they wouldn’t have been torn apart for twenty years, Charles wouldn’t have been forced to live alone until it because second nature; and Erik wouldn’t have been set on this path of self-destruction. Twenty years cannot be breached with one step. Or even three weeks of steps.
So he takes another breath, steels himself for swimming against the tide yet again, and speaks. “I’ve always believed true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity.”
And Erik, Erik who’s so brave and noble and kind, who hasn’t said anything about Charles lecturing him like a Submissive child, hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. He looks through his own mind, and only sees the darkness. Using his powers has always been so profoundly negative he can’t imagine it any other way. Charles braces his hands on each side of Erik’s head again, goes in and pulls.
Look.
There’s the most recent memories first, of them training-
Charles on the floor yet again after their latest sparring match-
Erik smiling broadly when Charles finally manages to knock the gun out of his hands-
and laughing-
Standing on top of the dish as Sean flies for the first time-
Lunchtime in the small kitchen, Raven’s latest food disaster-
just being-
A moment’s stillness in lovemaking, arching against each other, Erik looking down at him, hands cupping his face, thumbs dragging at the skin over his cheekbones - ich leibe dich -
Discovering the old chessboard in the study, Charles looking at Erik shyly - do you play?-
and deeper, the last few weeks together, that first night, the moment in the ocean which Erik still clutches at like a drowning man with desperation born of disbelief -how can I be so lucky?-
Then it feels like launching himself across the ocean in Cerebro again, so much darkness, but here and there, pinpoints of light. Charles grasps the largest and pulls it to the forefront of Erik’s mind. This. Remember this.
It had been lost, coated with layers of forget like a pearl to protect it from the outside world, and Erik for the memories of how good things had once been. Hidden by friends in Dusseldorf, who had found them a menorah and extra food for Chanukah. Together in the warmth of an extra ration of fuel, Jews and Gentiles, hands in the night, candles against the dark.
Charles’s finger knot in Erik’s coat, he can taste his own tears, and Erik’s.
How did you find that? I thought I’d forgotten it.
Of your memories of that time, it was the brightest. Erik- Their lips meet, messy and salty. They pull apart, and Charles gives him a slightly shaky smile. That was beautiful, my friend.
Erik looks away and Charles can feel him tentatively gathering the memories, the proud, fierce joy, the peace. He’s done it so often with hatred and rage that it feels like sacrilege to do it with these memories. And if it doesn’t work- that last time he couldn’t get his powers to work-
“It’s safe here.” That’s why we train.
Erik smiles, eyes still turned inward. Then he laughs, a bright, pure noise that makes Charles dizzy with joy. “What would you like me to do then?” A great deed to honour you, my own. And image of Erik as a knight out to slay monsters.
Charles laughs as well. “We’re rather short of those around here. But you could be a modern Don Quixote, I suppose.”
Erik doesn’t understand the reference, but he sees Charles looking at the satellite dish and smiles again.
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The dish is so huge Erik can feel it from here. He’d enjoyed going up it to see Sean fly, the metal frame all but howling in the empty air. It trills when he reaches for it, even from so many miles away.
It’s not like before, using hate and fear was like using a sword, sharp, precise, there not here. This is different. This is like being caught in a hurricane and somehow shoving it in the right direction. Everything Charles had shown him, everything so very good. The moment they were first pulled from the sea, a joy so huge and all-encompassing Erik couldn’t do anything but stay still and wait for it to run its course before he could even start to function. Everything. Twenty years of lost joy at once.
Like riding a thunderstorm, trying to control a flooded river. Hot and deep and wrenching, like reaching out with lungs and heart and arteries to catch and hold and turn-
The dish groans with the strain, not all of it is metal, but the gears, the joints, the skeleton. They remember, they hear. It creaks and howls in a voice only Erik can hear, slowly turning to face them. It strains against its stone skin, trying to reach closer. He can feel the girders start to bend-
I think that’s enough. Charles’ voice is pure delight. I don’t know what I’d do with a satellite dish.
Mount it on your wall as a trophy? Exhilaration is making him giddy.
Charles laughs and Erik lets go to look at him. His eyes are shining and he’s smiling so hard he can’t stop. Erik might be a failure in protecting Charles, but he makes him happy. It’s something, at least.
“I’d need a very large wall.”
Erik nods, unable to keep from grinning. “You’ll need one; I intend to mount a submarine there as well.”
He gives up any pretence at dignity, and they both burst out laughing.
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It happens just after a training session with Raven and Darwin. Charles and Erik take turns with training, Charles pushing at the limits of their powers, Erik testing them in a fight.
“The trick,” Charles continues to Darwin as they all head into the green drawing room - dubbed the TV room by everyone else - “Is to convince your body that there’s going to be a threat. Remember what it felt like to be in that kind of danger and replay it.”
“So I get this-“ Darwin waves a hand, “This whole bunch of danger feelings, and whenever I need the right shift, I play that.”
“Yes.” Charles smiles. “I’ll help you at first, if you like. But you should be able to do it yourself soon enough, with a bit more training-“
“Looks like that isn’t going to happen.” Moira sticks her head out of the door. “The President’s making his address.”
It’s the same heavy knot in his throat as when Moira had told them they were going after Shaw in Russia. That last week has been so good. He’d thought- he’d hoped- they would have had longer. It was foolish, he’d known this was temporary, but still.
Like Erik, he knows too well how bad things can get, enough not to want to move when things are good.
“That’s where we’ll find Shaw.” Erik’s pale but controlled. And only Charles can read the shaken, not ready, need more time he’s had to completely change his powers, he’s only had a few days. He’s not ready to do this. They need more time, and that’s the one thing they won’t get.
“How’d do know?” Alex has been a lot calmer over the past few days, since Hank finished his suit.
All the same, Charles thinks it best to answer before Darwin does. Alex is still difficult towards his Dominant. “Two superpowers facing off and he wants to start world war three. He won’t leave anything to chance.”
Erik nods, putting a protective - reassuring - hand on Charles’ arm. “I suggest you all get a good night’s sleep.”
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It was Charles who suggests the chess game before bed. Erik manages a smile. There’s always been something very soothing about the game, and Charles knows it. For all his excuses about lack of training, Charles is very good at looking after him. He even fetches some brandy.
“No losing to spare my dignity.” Erik starts setting out the pieces. Charles gives him a look that says that Submissive he might be, but he does have his pride.
The game starts. It’s good, a cool, clear focus like staring into a calm pool. Charles plays carefully, but with a sting in the tail. Erik prefers deceptively simple frontal assaults, backing them up with rooks and bishops when Charles takes the bait. It’s peaceful, for a while, but soon the tide turns and Erik realises the game is all but lost, and his mind moves back to move unpleasant topics.
He’s not ready, neither is Charles, or any of them. They’re half-trained at best, Erik might have the most experience but he’s using his powers in a completely new way. Sean is getting more confident, Alex more control, but Hank is still hopelessly reluctant to use his powers and Erik’s attempts to break him out of his self-loathing hadn’t worked at all. Raven was improving, yesterday he and Charles had her shift her shape’s musculature to lift heavier and heavier weights, and copy Darwin’s protective armour for when she needed it. She’d do well, but what they were expecting from Moira eluded Erik. She was an agent, yes, but her speciality had been infiltration and reconnaissance. She had precious little combat training and - she was human.
That was the heart of it. Erik picked up his newly lost knight and turned it over in his fingers. Why do this? Why throw their lives away for these people? Better to let Shaw have his little war, hide away where it couldn’t affect them, and take Shaw down when they were ready. On their terms, not his.
“Cuba, Russia, America, it makes no difference.” Charles is staring at him, absently moving his pawn in a half-thought move that puts his queen in danger. “Shaw’s declared war on mankind, on all of us, he has to be stopped.”
“He has to be killed.” They both know it’s true. Charles’ idea had been a good one, and right, but now- no country in the world could put Shaw on trial, and probably none had the means to execute him. Erik takes Charles’ queen. “But it’s gone beyond that. This can’t be done as a covert mission. Tomorrow, mankind will know that mutants exist.” And what happens then, Erik isn’t sure. Nothing good. He’s seen enough of humanity to know that. They’ll have to run, or stand and fight. “Shaw, us, they won’t differentiate. They’ll fear us, and that fear will turn to hatred.” They didn’t have Erik’s powers to turn that hate to harm, but they had other means.
“Not if we stop a war. Not if we can prevent Shaw, not if we risk our lives doing so.”
It’s almost painful. Erik wants to pick Charles up and keep him here, safe, far away from anyone or anything that might do him harm. He wants him never to know how badly someone can be hurt, how much pain you can take, what the world will do to dreamers like him.
Charles looks away. “We can be the better men.”
All seven of us. Against three billion of them. “We already are.” Pure, clean, untainted by past horrors and atrocities. Erik will not see his people destroyed again. “We’re the next stage of human evolution, you said it yourself-“
Charles blinks, cold refusal no through the bond. “Like Shaw?”
Erik feels his face twitch. “He is not-“
“He’s a mutant.” Charles sighs. “We can be as bad as they are, and as good. I want to show them just how good.”
“Like Moira?” Erik snaps. He loves Charles, but what he’s doing now is like offering your beating heart to a starving wolf. “Do you think they won’t battle their own extinction?”
A flicker through the bond, something of Charles’ thesis. “That’s not how it has to go-“
“But that’s how it’s always gone. You think they won’t turn on us?” So many. Erik remembers what it was like in the basement in Dusseldorf, having to be utterly quiet during the day, listening to the tromp of boots outside, terrified when any came into the house in case it was the Gestapo, come to discover them. And one day, it was. Like that again. So many, even Erik wouldn’t be able to stop them all. They’d be hunted down and killed. Again.
“And then what?” Charles spreads his hands, the game forgotten. Erik can feel what it’s costing him to fight this, to stand up for everything he believes in the face of Erik’s words. Because he can’t just lie down and submit; and for that, Erik loves him more than anything. “We fight again? We declare war on everyone, like Shaw? Nothing but war for the rest of our lives, however long that might be, no rest, no peace?”
Not in this world. “Peace was never an option.” But better that than genocide
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Charles makes the excuse to take the brandy glasses back to the kitchen, it doesn’t fool Erik, and he sees him reach out for him, a quick, half-seen motion, quickly quashed. Charles wants nothing more than to go to him and curl up in his arms, forget the world outside.
But, as Erik pointed out, the world won’t forget them.
He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts he doesn’t realise he’s not alone in the kitchen until the voice calls out, “Charles?”
It’s Raven. She’s sitting at the table, blue and in her dressing gown. She staring down at the wood of the table-top, and her voice is oddly tentative for his usually brash sister. She’s radiating carefully chosen blank, as he’d taught her to keep telepaths out.
Charles puts the glasses in the sink and goes back to the table, sitting next to her. “Are you okay?”
Raven brushes her red hair out of her face, her face crumples and the blank vanishes into a wave of unhappiness. Charles stares, she’d been so happy earlier, at training. She’d managed to knock Erik off his feet, and that was a first. “It’s going to be okay,” he wishes he believed it himself, “We’ll take care of Shaw and it’ll be fine.”
Raven give a rough laugh. “For a telepath, you’re pretty blind Charles.” Before Charles has time to take offence, she continues. “It’s Hank.”
Hank? He knew Alex was taking out his frustrations on him, but he hadn’t thought Hank the kind of person to do the same, and on Raven of all people. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this kind of indignant outrage on the part of his Dominant sister, but it’s fresh and clear now. “What did he do? If he-“
She waves him off, “It’s not that, whatever you were going to say.” A sigh. “He’s finished it, that serum he was talking about back in the facility. To make us normal.”
She looks at him, and Charles decides to keep quiet. She might call him blind, but he would really have to be both head and eye blind not to see how happy she’s been here, not having to hide, and when Erik compliments her true form. “You didn’t take it.”
“You’re not going to say I should have?” She challenges, hard and brittle. “You always said how I should always be hiding, in case anyone saw. I always thought it was for my safety, but you just didn’t like to look at me, you though-“
“Please.” Charles can’t take this, not twice in one night. Too much pressure, they’re starting to fray. “No, it was always for you. You’re my sister. I didn’t want anything to happen to you.” He puts his hand on Raven’s shoulder, under the fluffy dressing gown; he can feel the ridges and scales of her natural form. “Look, I-“ He doesn’t know. It’s all a bit too much, Erik’s harsh words, the fear, the hate. The feeling of the world as he knew it, a world that had briefly shown itself to be so very good, slipping away. “God, Raven it’s your choice. No one can make it for you. I’d stand by you anyway, you know that.”
Raven nods, “He said I’d never be beautiful.” It’s said very softly, and by the look on her face she didn’t mean to say it out loud.
And, whatever Charles might have said before, right now he wants to go to Hank’s room and beat him within an inch of his newly-normal life. There’s only one thing to say, he should have said it a long time ago. “You are beautiful. And- what does it matter what I think? Or Hank? She’ll find you beautiful.”
Raven smiles a little. “You think?”
“She’d have to be blind not to.” Charles smiles back, glad things are getting back under control, at least a little. “We’ll stop Shaw, and when this has blown over we’ll find her. Together, both of us. Okay?”
“Deal.” Raven sighs and gets up, Charles follows suit. “I’ll walk you back to your room; Erik might be upset at you walking the corridors alone.”
It’s a tease, but tonight she might well be right. Charles doesn’t dignify it with an answer. Maybe this talk did him some good as well; he’s feeling a bit more capable of seeing Erik again.
They can’t think about this now. Charles decides. Maybe the humans will attack them, maybe not, it’s no use getting wound up-
That would put us at risk; leave us without a plan because you want to believe your fantasy. They’re close enough for Erik to send, it’s raw and hurting and unhappy. I will not see us go into battle so unarmed.
Charles sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, Raven doesn’t notice, still talking. “And remind me to thank Erik tomorrow.” He glances at her; Raven gives him an innocent look. “For training you so well.”
She laughs at Charles’ glare and leaves him in front of his door.
Author: Skull_Bearer
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,232
Warnings: Erik being Erik, some mention of sex
Summary: Sequel to Of Needles, Wars and Hands of Time and Stability, a Search For, All Friends and Kingdom Come and A Moment. A D/s world where Erik and Charles spend their lives believing the other to be dead.
Rage, Fear, Serenity
Erik wakes up, flat on his back breathing hard as though he’d run miles. He can still hear Shaw’s voice in his mind. The room is dark and alien and there’s a moment of panic when Erik doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing here, until Charles rolls over and throws an arm around his waist, curling around him, still asleep.
He lets his breath out in a long sigh, closing his eyes and burying his fingers in Charles’ hair. The world around them returns slowly, bit by bit as the sun rises outside, painting the room in shades of green through the drawn curtains. A surprisingly small room, considering the size of Charles’ family home. Painted pale blue and filled with clutter that still didn’t quite hide the low bookshelves and small bed stacked up against the wall.
Charles hadn’t mentioned it, and Erik hadn’t asked, simply clearing out the worst of the mess and moving in a bed large enough for both of them from a neighbouring room. Then lying down, eyes closed, holding Charles and listening to his memories of this room. Home for the few good years when he was young and his father still alive. So much of the house has bad associations, but this is the place he has been happiest in. Before his father died and Charles gained a self contained stepfather because his mother couldn’t bear to be alone or to look at him.
Erik had kissed Charles, held him and they’d rolled over and made love tenderly in that old, dusty bed. Erik’s back still stings where Charles had dug in his nails, and in his sleep, Charles is dreaming of him.
This can’t last. Erik can feel it. It’s like a tide, like magnets, something coming and dragging them both apart, sudden and inevitable. Erik can feel it inside his skin, under his bones. It’s so clearly there. It’s a warning, a clear signal that this can’t last, he isn’t made for happiness like this, it’ll break, or he will, and everything will be as it was. Cold. Numb. Alone.
No. Erik screams out inside, No, I will not let you take him. He’s mine. Take everything else, but I will never leave him. Even if he has to carry Charles off like Der Erlkonig, they will go together. Erik doesn’t have many ultimatums, but this is one of them. Never. Nevernevernever. Against him, Charles trembles, asleep but caught up with Erik’s thoughts even in his dreams.
He doesn’t know what he’s speaking to, whether Shaw or the world or himself. He’s never been this afraid, because he knows what’s waiting for them now, what being alone feels like. Never, never, I won’t, I can’t. Never. Charles is warm in his arms; he murmurs something, still asleep, lips brushing Erik’s shoulder.
How can he protect anyone when he’s this afraid? Fear isn’t enough, it doesn’t have enough control. He needs the hate and focus to fight. Surely, just once more, to be rid of Shaw now and forever. Surely that would be excusable, acceptable, to be rid of this threat...
... But Erik’s a fool if he thinks it will be just one threat. There are so few of them, and they are surrounded. Once Shaw is out of the way, it’ll only be a matter of time. It’ll be war, or worse than war, and they’ll be caught in the middle. Again. Too terrified to move, too afraid of staying still. Move and they’ll see you, or everything will break, stay and be cornered and killed.
“Shh.” Charles blinks up at him, hazy eyed, sad smiling. Such dark thoughts, my love.
Erik feels him in his mind like warm water, smoothing out the knots of fears until Erik can close his eyes and relax.
Nothing will happen. We’re safe.
For now, yes. But Moira is staying with them, and there’s nothing stopping her from-
She wouldn’t.
You trust so easily.
And you fear so much. Sleep.
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“There are other ways of using your powers.” Charles murmurs, half to himself.
Erik looks at him. They’re sitting outside, in the last glory days of autumn. He doesn’t answer, but Charles can see his thoughts too clearly. The last time he’d tried to use his powers without anger or hate his mother had been shot.
Charles gazes out over the grounds. The sun is shining hazily through a washed-out blue sky and the satellite dish in the distance gleams like gold.
“It’s the only way I have.” Erik says finally. “It’s the only way that’s worked.”
It can’t, not any more. Charles shifts over and places his hands on each side of Erik’s face. May I?
Erik closes his eyes, and Charles goes in. A thousand feather light touches inside his mind, as though his brain is blinking. It makes him smile, although it fades when Charles finds what he’s looking for. It’s tucked away, behind and inside until Erik nearly forgot it was there. That cold, hard self. The edge of control. Charles’ grasp slips and Erik gasps, flooded with the emptiness lurking beside it.
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I’m sorry. Hands in his hair. Hands in his mind. He did this to you. Shaw. I know, I saw what he did to Emma Frost. It’s like this. Worse with her.
“To be strong.” Erik can hear his voice in his own ears, and in Charles’ mind, like a double echo.
It’s almost a sob; his thoughts vibrate with the force of it. He was lying. You are so much more than this. Charles pulls an image from his own mind and shows it. It’s Erik in Russia, not with Emma, but just before. Standing over the downed guards in the hallway, wild joy in his face and power crackling around him like lightning. Exhilaration and triumph, no hate or fear or pain.
Erik opens his eyes, Charles is kneeling, so close their faces are almost touching; their eyes reflect each other endlessly like twin mirrors.
Erik reaches out a hand and cups Charles’ face, fingers brushing over the joint below his ear, the soft underside where jaw meets neck, the weak juncture of skull and backbone. Charles closes his eyes and smiles, leaning into the touch. The bond thrums with complete trust. You are a good man. I will never stop saying it because it will never stop being true. I wish you could see yourself as I see you.
“Even so,” Erik shakes his head, “I need to be there, I need the situation.” The anger.
“That’s not enough.” Of course Charles heard that. “Even without what it’s doing to you, it’s nearly gotten you killed.” His voice is steady, but Erik can feel the break in his thoughts. His hands tremble.
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Charles doesn’t want to do this. It feels wrong, although Erik doesn’t seem to mind. Guiding the others at using their powers - showing Sean how to fly, having Alex control his powers, even teaching Darwin how to force his adaptation without stimulus - that’s one thing, but this is Erik. His Dominant, who he is supposed to obey. Everything he is tells him to stop, to give in and stop fighting and trust Erik to look after them both. Isn’t this how it’s supposed to work?
In an ideal world yes, which this isn’t. In an ideal world they wouldn’t have been torn apart for twenty years, Charles wouldn’t have been forced to live alone until it because second nature; and Erik wouldn’t have been set on this path of self-destruction. Twenty years cannot be breached with one step. Or even three weeks of steps.
So he takes another breath, steels himself for swimming against the tide yet again, and speaks. “I’ve always believed true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity.”
And Erik, Erik who’s so brave and noble and kind, who hasn’t said anything about Charles lecturing him like a Submissive child, hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. He looks through his own mind, and only sees the darkness. Using his powers has always been so profoundly negative he can’t imagine it any other way. Charles braces his hands on each side of Erik’s head again, goes in and pulls.
Look.
There’s the most recent memories first, of them training-
Charles on the floor yet again after their latest sparring match-
Erik smiling broadly when Charles finally manages to knock the gun out of his hands-
and laughing-
Standing on top of the dish as Sean flies for the first time-
Lunchtime in the small kitchen, Raven’s latest food disaster-
just being-
A moment’s stillness in lovemaking, arching against each other, Erik looking down at him, hands cupping his face, thumbs dragging at the skin over his cheekbones - ich leibe dich -
Discovering the old chessboard in the study, Charles looking at Erik shyly - do you play?-
and deeper, the last few weeks together, that first night, the moment in the ocean which Erik still clutches at like a drowning man with desperation born of disbelief -how can I be so lucky?-
Then it feels like launching himself across the ocean in Cerebro again, so much darkness, but here and there, pinpoints of light. Charles grasps the largest and pulls it to the forefront of Erik’s mind. This. Remember this.
It had been lost, coated with layers of forget like a pearl to protect it from the outside world, and Erik for the memories of how good things had once been. Hidden by friends in Dusseldorf, who had found them a menorah and extra food for Chanukah. Together in the warmth of an extra ration of fuel, Jews and Gentiles, hands in the night, candles against the dark.
Charles’s finger knot in Erik’s coat, he can taste his own tears, and Erik’s.
How did you find that? I thought I’d forgotten it.
Of your memories of that time, it was the brightest. Erik- Their lips meet, messy and salty. They pull apart, and Charles gives him a slightly shaky smile. That was beautiful, my friend.
Erik looks away and Charles can feel him tentatively gathering the memories, the proud, fierce joy, the peace. He’s done it so often with hatred and rage that it feels like sacrilege to do it with these memories. And if it doesn’t work- that last time he couldn’t get his powers to work-
“It’s safe here.” That’s why we train.
Erik smiles, eyes still turned inward. Then he laughs, a bright, pure noise that makes Charles dizzy with joy. “What would you like me to do then?” A great deed to honour you, my own. And image of Erik as a knight out to slay monsters.
Charles laughs as well. “We’re rather short of those around here. But you could be a modern Don Quixote, I suppose.”
Erik doesn’t understand the reference, but he sees Charles looking at the satellite dish and smiles again.
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The dish is so huge Erik can feel it from here. He’d enjoyed going up it to see Sean fly, the metal frame all but howling in the empty air. It trills when he reaches for it, even from so many miles away.
It’s not like before, using hate and fear was like using a sword, sharp, precise, there not here. This is different. This is like being caught in a hurricane and somehow shoving it in the right direction. Everything Charles had shown him, everything so very good. The moment they were first pulled from the sea, a joy so huge and all-encompassing Erik couldn’t do anything but stay still and wait for it to run its course before he could even start to function. Everything. Twenty years of lost joy at once.
Like riding a thunderstorm, trying to control a flooded river. Hot and deep and wrenching, like reaching out with lungs and heart and arteries to catch and hold and turn-
The dish groans with the strain, not all of it is metal, but the gears, the joints, the skeleton. They remember, they hear. It creaks and howls in a voice only Erik can hear, slowly turning to face them. It strains against its stone skin, trying to reach closer. He can feel the girders start to bend-
I think that’s enough. Charles’ voice is pure delight. I don’t know what I’d do with a satellite dish.
Mount it on your wall as a trophy? Exhilaration is making him giddy.
Charles laughs and Erik lets go to look at him. His eyes are shining and he’s smiling so hard he can’t stop. Erik might be a failure in protecting Charles, but he makes him happy. It’s something, at least.
“I’d need a very large wall.”
Erik nods, unable to keep from grinning. “You’ll need one; I intend to mount a submarine there as well.”
He gives up any pretence at dignity, and they both burst out laughing.
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It happens just after a training session with Raven and Darwin. Charles and Erik take turns with training, Charles pushing at the limits of their powers, Erik testing them in a fight.
“The trick,” Charles continues to Darwin as they all head into the green drawing room - dubbed the TV room by everyone else - “Is to convince your body that there’s going to be a threat. Remember what it felt like to be in that kind of danger and replay it.”
“So I get this-“ Darwin waves a hand, “This whole bunch of danger feelings, and whenever I need the right shift, I play that.”
“Yes.” Charles smiles. “I’ll help you at first, if you like. But you should be able to do it yourself soon enough, with a bit more training-“
“Looks like that isn’t going to happen.” Moira sticks her head out of the door. “The President’s making his address.”
It’s the same heavy knot in his throat as when Moira had told them they were going after Shaw in Russia. That last week has been so good. He’d thought- he’d hoped- they would have had longer. It was foolish, he’d known this was temporary, but still.
Like Erik, he knows too well how bad things can get, enough not to want to move when things are good.
“That’s where we’ll find Shaw.” Erik’s pale but controlled. And only Charles can read the shaken, not ready, need more time he’s had to completely change his powers, he’s only had a few days. He’s not ready to do this. They need more time, and that’s the one thing they won’t get.
“How’d do know?” Alex has been a lot calmer over the past few days, since Hank finished his suit.
All the same, Charles thinks it best to answer before Darwin does. Alex is still difficult towards his Dominant. “Two superpowers facing off and he wants to start world war three. He won’t leave anything to chance.”
Erik nods, putting a protective - reassuring - hand on Charles’ arm. “I suggest you all get a good night’s sleep.”
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It was Charles who suggests the chess game before bed. Erik manages a smile. There’s always been something very soothing about the game, and Charles knows it. For all his excuses about lack of training, Charles is very good at looking after him. He even fetches some brandy.
“No losing to spare my dignity.” Erik starts setting out the pieces. Charles gives him a look that says that Submissive he might be, but he does have his pride.
The game starts. It’s good, a cool, clear focus like staring into a calm pool. Charles plays carefully, but with a sting in the tail. Erik prefers deceptively simple frontal assaults, backing them up with rooks and bishops when Charles takes the bait. It’s peaceful, for a while, but soon the tide turns and Erik realises the game is all but lost, and his mind moves back to move unpleasant topics.
He’s not ready, neither is Charles, or any of them. They’re half-trained at best, Erik might have the most experience but he’s using his powers in a completely new way. Sean is getting more confident, Alex more control, but Hank is still hopelessly reluctant to use his powers and Erik’s attempts to break him out of his self-loathing hadn’t worked at all. Raven was improving, yesterday he and Charles had her shift her shape’s musculature to lift heavier and heavier weights, and copy Darwin’s protective armour for when she needed it. She’d do well, but what they were expecting from Moira eluded Erik. She was an agent, yes, but her speciality had been infiltration and reconnaissance. She had precious little combat training and - she was human.
That was the heart of it. Erik picked up his newly lost knight and turned it over in his fingers. Why do this? Why throw their lives away for these people? Better to let Shaw have his little war, hide away where it couldn’t affect them, and take Shaw down when they were ready. On their terms, not his.
“Cuba, Russia, America, it makes no difference.” Charles is staring at him, absently moving his pawn in a half-thought move that puts his queen in danger. “Shaw’s declared war on mankind, on all of us, he has to be stopped.”
“He has to be killed.” They both know it’s true. Charles’ idea had been a good one, and right, but now- no country in the world could put Shaw on trial, and probably none had the means to execute him. Erik takes Charles’ queen. “But it’s gone beyond that. This can’t be done as a covert mission. Tomorrow, mankind will know that mutants exist.” And what happens then, Erik isn’t sure. Nothing good. He’s seen enough of humanity to know that. They’ll have to run, or stand and fight. “Shaw, us, they won’t differentiate. They’ll fear us, and that fear will turn to hatred.” They didn’t have Erik’s powers to turn that hate to harm, but they had other means.
“Not if we stop a war. Not if we can prevent Shaw, not if we risk our lives doing so.”
It’s almost painful. Erik wants to pick Charles up and keep him here, safe, far away from anyone or anything that might do him harm. He wants him never to know how badly someone can be hurt, how much pain you can take, what the world will do to dreamers like him.
Charles looks away. “We can be the better men.”
All seven of us. Against three billion of them. “We already are.” Pure, clean, untainted by past horrors and atrocities. Erik will not see his people destroyed again. “We’re the next stage of human evolution, you said it yourself-“
Charles blinks, cold refusal no through the bond. “Like Shaw?”
Erik feels his face twitch. “He is not-“
“He’s a mutant.” Charles sighs. “We can be as bad as they are, and as good. I want to show them just how good.”
“Like Moira?” Erik snaps. He loves Charles, but what he’s doing now is like offering your beating heart to a starving wolf. “Do you think they won’t battle their own extinction?”
A flicker through the bond, something of Charles’ thesis. “That’s not how it has to go-“
“But that’s how it’s always gone. You think they won’t turn on us?” So many. Erik remembers what it was like in the basement in Dusseldorf, having to be utterly quiet during the day, listening to the tromp of boots outside, terrified when any came into the house in case it was the Gestapo, come to discover them. And one day, it was. Like that again. So many, even Erik wouldn’t be able to stop them all. They’d be hunted down and killed. Again.
“And then what?” Charles spreads his hands, the game forgotten. Erik can feel what it’s costing him to fight this, to stand up for everything he believes in the face of Erik’s words. Because he can’t just lie down and submit; and for that, Erik loves him more than anything. “We fight again? We declare war on everyone, like Shaw? Nothing but war for the rest of our lives, however long that might be, no rest, no peace?”
Not in this world. “Peace was never an option.” But better that than genocide
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Charles makes the excuse to take the brandy glasses back to the kitchen, it doesn’t fool Erik, and he sees him reach out for him, a quick, half-seen motion, quickly quashed. Charles wants nothing more than to go to him and curl up in his arms, forget the world outside.
But, as Erik pointed out, the world won’t forget them.
He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts he doesn’t realise he’s not alone in the kitchen until the voice calls out, “Charles?”
It’s Raven. She’s sitting at the table, blue and in her dressing gown. She staring down at the wood of the table-top, and her voice is oddly tentative for his usually brash sister. She’s radiating carefully chosen blank, as he’d taught her to keep telepaths out.
Charles puts the glasses in the sink and goes back to the table, sitting next to her. “Are you okay?”
Raven brushes her red hair out of her face, her face crumples and the blank vanishes into a wave of unhappiness. Charles stares, she’d been so happy earlier, at training. She’d managed to knock Erik off his feet, and that was a first. “It’s going to be okay,” he wishes he believed it himself, “We’ll take care of Shaw and it’ll be fine.”
Raven give a rough laugh. “For a telepath, you’re pretty blind Charles.” Before Charles has time to take offence, she continues. “It’s Hank.”
Hank? He knew Alex was taking out his frustrations on him, but he hadn’t thought Hank the kind of person to do the same, and on Raven of all people. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this kind of indignant outrage on the part of his Dominant sister, but it’s fresh and clear now. “What did he do? If he-“
She waves him off, “It’s not that, whatever you were going to say.” A sigh. “He’s finished it, that serum he was talking about back in the facility. To make us normal.”
She looks at him, and Charles decides to keep quiet. She might call him blind, but he would really have to be both head and eye blind not to see how happy she’s been here, not having to hide, and when Erik compliments her true form. “You didn’t take it.”
“You’re not going to say I should have?” She challenges, hard and brittle. “You always said how I should always be hiding, in case anyone saw. I always thought it was for my safety, but you just didn’t like to look at me, you though-“
“Please.” Charles can’t take this, not twice in one night. Too much pressure, they’re starting to fray. “No, it was always for you. You’re my sister. I didn’t want anything to happen to you.” He puts his hand on Raven’s shoulder, under the fluffy dressing gown; he can feel the ridges and scales of her natural form. “Look, I-“ He doesn’t know. It’s all a bit too much, Erik’s harsh words, the fear, the hate. The feeling of the world as he knew it, a world that had briefly shown itself to be so very good, slipping away. “God, Raven it’s your choice. No one can make it for you. I’d stand by you anyway, you know that.”
Raven nods, “He said I’d never be beautiful.” It’s said very softly, and by the look on her face she didn’t mean to say it out loud.
And, whatever Charles might have said before, right now he wants to go to Hank’s room and beat him within an inch of his newly-normal life. There’s only one thing to say, he should have said it a long time ago. “You are beautiful. And- what does it matter what I think? Or Hank? She’ll find you beautiful.”
Raven smiles a little. “You think?”
“She’d have to be blind not to.” Charles smiles back, glad things are getting back under control, at least a little. “We’ll stop Shaw, and when this has blown over we’ll find her. Together, both of us. Okay?”
“Deal.” Raven sighs and gets up, Charles follows suit. “I’ll walk you back to your room; Erik might be upset at you walking the corridors alone.”
It’s a tease, but tonight she might well be right. Charles doesn’t dignify it with an answer. Maybe this talk did him some good as well; he’s feeling a bit more capable of seeing Erik again.
They can’t think about this now. Charles decides. Maybe the humans will attack them, maybe not, it’s no use getting wound up-
That would put us at risk; leave us without a plan because you want to believe your fantasy. They’re close enough for Erik to send, it’s raw and hurting and unhappy. I will not see us go into battle so unarmed.
Charles sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, Raven doesn’t notice, still talking. “And remind me to thank Erik tomorrow.” He glances at her; Raven gives him an innocent look. “For training you so well.”
She laughs at Charles’ glare and leaves him in front of his door.