X-Men: First Class fic: First Breath After Coma (1/3)
I wrote 23,000+ in ten days. That is a record for me! Also, the title is from the Explosions in the Sky song, and I kept thinking it was just too obvious, but it stuck. So, yeah.
Title: First Breath After Coma
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Erik/Charles
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 23,800
Betas: ignipes made it so much better, dreamlittleyo was a fantastic cheerleader and beta, and sparky77 read through it to see if it made sense! You're all magnificent!
Notes: Written for this kink meme prompt: "Charles wakes up to find he's been in a coma for two years, and the world he thought he lived in is a lie. He's still a professor of genetics, but there are no such thing as mutants, there is no such person as Erik Lehnsherr. But why can Charles still read minds?" Also on AO3 here. ETA: Now with a gorgeous cover by estioe.
The sky is very blue.
*
"Charles?"
"Good morning, Charles. How are you feeling?"
*
"Charles?"
"Mmmh?" Charles answers.
"Charles?" The voice is familiar; if only he could concentrate, he thinks he might know who's speaking to him.
"Don't worry, dear, he might not respond for a while yet." An English accent, an unfamiliar voice.
"But this is still progress, yes?"
"This is excellent progress." Footsteps, two sets, walking away.
Maybe he didn't answer. Maybe he answered in his head.
The sky is very grey today.
*
The world is silent and grey. The silence worries him most, though he doesn't know why it should. Silence is nothing to be concerned about, surely?
A breath of sound. Just the faintest whisper, from a distance. A sound that's shaped in a way that feels comforting. Familiar. Familial.
He reaches out, and the whisper becomes a soft murmur, but he can't seem to pull it towards him or get closer.
*
"Charles?"
Someone is calling his name. He thinks he's heard her call his name before. Or perhaps that was just a dream. He's not certain if his eyes are open, if he's awake or asleep. He feels like he's floating, cocooned in light, and the sky is white, brilliant white, like high clouds on a sunny day.
He wants to answer. It's important. He forms a word in his head, shapes his lips around it, makes a sound. He means it to be hello, but it comes out malformed.
"Oh, Charles!" she says. He's not sure who she is, which is a puzzle, because she feels such a comfortable presence beside him. She's holding his hand now - stroking the back with her fingers, softly, as though she's worried she might hurt him, though he is quite certain that she won't. Nothing can hurt him, not while he's floating in his cocoon.
He closes his fingers around hers to reassure her, and her fingers tighten inside his clasp. There's a new sound, and Charles can't place it until he feels something splash on his face. A tear. She's crying.
Don't cry, he says, but he doesn't get any sense that she hears him.
He floats away.
*
There's a beam of sunshine falling across his face. It's golden warm, like summer on the front lawn at Westchester, and Charles tilts back his head to enjoy it. His head sinks into a pillow. He's in bed. He feels incredibly tired, but not sleepy, so he keeps his eyes closed and enjoys the sunlight. It's probably time to get up, but nanny will call him if it gets too late.
*
"Ah, Charles, you're awake, I see."
Charles blinks. He is awake, it's true. He blinks again, and this time his eyes remain open, and when he turns his head a fraction, he sees the person talking to him. A woman, in a pale blue uniform. A nurse.
His neck aches, just from moving his head.
There's a trace of bleach in the air, and the walls are bare, cheap white paint. He's in a hospital.
He was just on the beach.
Erik was by his side, the children massed behind them. Erik was holding the missiles back and then-and then he was sending them back up into the air towards the fleets, and Moira was shooting, bullet after bullet deflected by Erik. And then Charles was falling, hot agony in his back. Everyone on the beach was screaming in their minds, and it rained down on him, a cacophony of emotions: fear and hatred and worry and loss and uncertainty, all his mental filters in tatters. Erik was clutching Charles in his arms; face covered in anguish, but still hiding his mind from Charles, just flashes of emotions slipping through when the back of Erik's hand brushed his. Erik was calling something, words that Charles tried to make out, but they blew away on the breeze as Erik's face faded and his touch became fainter, until Charles can't remember anything more.
Charles gasps, a flash of pain hitting him as he inhales, suddenly back in the present. The pain vanishes as quickly as it comes, gone by the exhale. Phantom pain.
The nurse puts her hand on his chest - inside she's shouting at him not to try to move - but there's no need. He isn't floating any more, and his body feels divorced from his brain. "I'm just going to fetch your sister," she tells him, her external voice quiet and assured. Reassuring. "She went to get a drink, but she's only just down the corridor."
His sister. Of course. Raven. She held his hand.
He tries to stay awake for her, but he's so tired.
*
He's not sure if he just drifted off for a moment or if he's been sleeping for hours, but the next time he opens his eyes, Raven is smiling down at him.
"Hi," he says. His voice sounds scratchy and faint, but the word comes out and Raven lights up.
"Do you want a drink?" she asks, picking up a glass with a straw as though she knows his answer already.
Charles nods, and she puts it to his lips. It's orange juice, room temperature, but it tastes good. She pulls the straw away before he's had enough, but when he goes to say more, she shakes her head. "I think that's enough for now. You can have more soon."
"My legs?" Charles whispers. He can't feel them. He remembers telling Erik, looking up at him just before he blacked out, the words coming out hoarse through the pain, I can't feel my legs. He lifts his head a fraction, and he can see the shape of them under the blankets. But he can't move them, can't feel the weight of bedclothes or wiggle a single toe. It isn't just because he's so weak - his entire body is weak, but he can lift his hand, feel the pressure of the bed against his back. But he can't feel his legs at all.
"I'm sorry," Raven says, hand to her mouth as though she doesn't want to have to say anything
"How long?" he asks, because she looks as though she's blinking back tears, she looks exhausted, and that can't have happened overnight. He might have been here a day, more even. He has half-memories of waking before.
"I, um. I should call the nurse," she says, and that's not like Raven. Not like her at all. They tell each other everything. Almost everything, at least, and what can be so bad that she wants the buffer of another person present.
He puts his hand out to her, and she's just close enough for him to grasp hold of her arm. It's an effort, and she could shake him off if she wanted, but she doesn't move, as though his hold is a real tether. "Please," he says, because he's starting to get worried. "Tell me."
Raven swallows, and she won't look him in the eye. She sits down on the edge of the bed, lets his hand slide down her arm so that they're hand in hand, and finally looks at him. "Nearly two years," she says, and that can't be true. That's impossible, because he can remember Erik's arms holding him up on the beach and it feels like yesterday.
"Two days, you mean," Charles says, and he's begging her to tell him that of course that's what she said, what she meant.
She shakes her head. She doesn't say anything more, just bites her lip, and there are tears in the corners of her eyes.
"Two years," Charles says. His voice sounds scratchy again, but it's not because his throat is dry this time.
"You've been in a coma ever since the accident," she says eventually, and now Charles looks at her properly, he thinks she looks older. Easily two years older, which is strange because Hank said her cells didn't age the way ordinary cells do. He puts that thought to one side for now, though, because there are more urgent matters.
"The school?" he asks.
"They've been notified, of course," she says. "And they're holding your position for you." She looks slightly surprised that the fledgling school is his first question, but Charles was responsible for all of them, felt almost like a father to them, Sean and Alex and Raven. Even Hank.
Erik was the first who came to mind though. He remembers staring into Erik's face, unable to hear him because of that wretched helmet he took from Shaw, seeing the expression on Erik's face as Charles told him he was responsible for the pain Charles was in. Two years. A lot could have changed in two years. Charles has no idea what happened after he blacked out. If Shaw's people attacked them, if the armies fired again, if Erik turned the missiles on them unhindered.
At least Raven is here and safe. But what of Erik? So misguided, so tortured by the past. Charles can only begin to imagine how he might have faired.
"Erik?" Charles asks. He's not sure what question to frame.
"Erik?" Raven parrots back at him.
"Yes," Charles says, impatient now to have answers, whatever the question. "How is he? Where is he?"
"Who's Erik?" she says, as though he's talking about an old college acquaintance she can't remember meeting.
Charles can't breath. He reaches out with his mind to find out if he can feel the familiar shape of Erik's mind, but he can barely push beyond the boundaries of the room. There are active minds milling around nearby, but try as he might, he can't find a familiar one among them, not even the nurse he remembers from before.
He takes a deep breath. He sounds to himself as though he's been running, which is ironic because he can't feel his legs. Another deep breath. "Who's running the school?" Assuming, that is, that his plans were followed through, and there is a school. He was arguing with Erik at the end, lost consciousness before he knew whether his arguments were persuasive enough to make Erik see that there was a chance for them all if they worked together.
Raven shakes her head in puzzlement. "The Chancellor, I suppose, or the Dean. I don't know. Is it important?"
"Is it important?" Charles shouts. "Of course it's bloody well important. Two years of training. Alex needs to learn focus, and Sean n-needs-" He's gasping for breath now, and Raven's shushing him, holding him, and then a nurse comes in - a different one, in a darker uniform - and sticks a needle in his arm and the worry drifts away.
*
Next time he wakes up, it isn't gradual, and there is no moment of uncertainty. Everything rushes in on him at once, and he finds himself juggling a myriad of different questions: Erik, the other mutants, his legs, the school, Raven's strange reaction to his questions.
There's no one in the room - it's a private room, just his bed, a bedside cupboard, monitors, two chairs and a huge window - but the door is open and he can hear people passing by outside. He lifts up his head - it's easier than the last time he tried, but still an effort - and calls out. "Raven? Nurse?" He sounds like a helpless child, and it frustrates him, but not enough that he doesn't call out again when he doesn't get an immediate response.
He hears footsteps then, not quite running, but fast, and Raven barrels into the room.
"Are you okay?" she asks, then looks as though she wants to bite her tongue at such a stupid question. "Sorry."
"I need you to answer some questions for me."
"Of course," she says, though he can sense her drawing back even though he doesn't attempt to touch her mind.
"What happened after I was hit? I remember you walking towards me. At least, I think-" His memory after the moment the bullet hit him is blurry, the only vivid parts the pain in his back and the feel of Erik's arms.
"Walking towards you? I wasn't there when you had your accident."
Charles is beginning to feels as though they're having two different conversations. "Of course you were. You were on the beach. We all were."
"The beach?" Raven is broadcasting confusion. Confusion and worry, and a certainty that Charles isn't as well as he looks. Which considering he's apparently been in a coma for two years, doesn't bode well.
"Yes, the beach. When-" When Hank crashed the plane and Erik killed Shaw (and Charles helped him) and they all fought and they stopped a war. Their little band of mutants stopped World War Three. Only Charles can't seem to put it all into words because there are tears running down his face and he thinks he might actually sob if he opens his mouth.
Raven turns to go - to fetch a nurse probably - but Charles doesn't want to be sedated again. He can get past this. He just needs a minute. He holds up a hand to get her to wait.
He'll start again. Let Raven do the talking. "What happened?" he asks.
Raven pulls up a chair next to the bed, sitting forward in it so he doesn't have to strain to see her. "Do you want me to start from the beginning?" Charles nods. "Okay, so you were driving back to your flat. You'd been out in the country for the afternoon, on a boat trip on the Thames - sorry, the Isis, I know you hate it when I get the name wrong. Someone you'd been at Pembroke College with got their PhD, so you were all celebrating. Only the weather had turned bad, some freak thunderstorm, so you cut the boat trip short and you were driving back into Oxford to have dinner there instead. You were going to celebrate at that pub you always liked, The Turf Tavern. But your tire blew and you skidded and hit another car, and your car rolled and it-it was bad." Raven's talking faster and faster, like she can barely bring herself to remember it all and has to get it all out as quickly as possible, but it doesn't make sense. He was on the beach. It was a bullet. He was injured by a bullet, by Erik, not in a car crash. He misses some of her words. "-and they were both totaled. I saw your car afterwards, in the police compound. I don't know how you survived, Charles, or the girl who was with you - the police say it was a miracle - but-but I am so happy you did." She rubs at her eyes. They're blue, and her hair is blonde, and she's a beautiful, normal girl, and that's as false as the story she's just told him.
Charles doesn't ask about the girl Raven says was with him. He doesn't know who she was. There was no girl, there was no car crash. That isn't real. "Turn blue," he says.
"What?"
"Turn blue for me. Just quickly. No one will see. You can close the door if you're worried, but I'd know if anyone were coming in and be able to warn you in time."
Raven looks at him as though he's crazy, then the looks softens into concern. "Charles, you've been in a coma for nearly two years. It's going to take you a while to get back to normal."
"We're not normal, you and me," Charles says desperately, just a bit too loud considering the door is open. Something is very wrong. "Mutant and proud, remember."
"Charles, don't, please. I don't know what you're on about, but you're scaring me. Let me go fetch the nurse."
"No," he says quickly, schooling his face into a reassuring look. "No, there's no need. You can tell me more later. Would you fetch me a drink?"
"Of course," she says, looking relieved to do something simple for him.
Charles doesn't want to do it. He promised her he wouldn't read her mind, but he thinks he really might go crazy if he doesn't figure out what's happening. He lifts his right index and middle finger to his temple, needing the point of focus, and concentrates. His head feels flaccid, his mind an out-of-practice muscle, but he has to do this. He gets inside her head and-
And it's all wrong. Everything there is wrong. The important things are all missing: mutants, the team, working for the CIA. None of it is there.
The story she told him about the car crash, that's there. And two years of visiting him, sitting by his bedside, holding his hand, reading the paper to him. Missing him. The prognosis, that he may or may not wake up, and that if he does, he'll never walk again - he finds that, all too clear and stark. But no mind-reading or shape-shifting, no proud mutants, no fighting to make the world a better, safer place for them all. No childhood memory of meeting him in his kitchen and learning that she wasn't the only one. No fear that no one could ever truly love her real form or wistful longing to be normal. No searching for others like them, setting up a training camp, learning how to master who and what they are. Becoming an extraordinary family.
Instead, there's the faded trauma of her parents (his aunt and uncle) dying, and being taken in by his mother and stepfather. Growing up with him, games in the garden, creeping out of bed at night for midnight feasts, becoming brother and sister to each other.
It's all wrong. It's all sweet and charming and a terrible lie.
He's shaking with the effort of not screaming. He wants to howl like Sean, break all the glass in the window. He wants to burn the place down like Alex could. He wants to twist and distort and break things like Erik would. Instead, he turns into his pillow, muttering a sorry when Raven brings him his drink, and closes his eyes.
He can hear Raven hovering at his bedside. He can feel her pity and concern even though he's carefully avoiding going anywhere near her mind - it's in the awkward shuffle of her feet, the way she's moving the glass of water she poured for him from hand to hand, eventually setting it down as quietly as possible on the bedside table, in the way she clears her throat as though she's about to speak but doesn't say anything, and in the way she tip-toes out of the room. He's never been so relieved to get rid of someone before. He loves her, she's his sister, but he doesn't think he could have born another minute with her in the same room without screaming at her.
He wishes he could run away, but he can't. He's stuck in this bed, and he might never walk or run again, and all his sister's memories are a lie.
There are memories that Charles has always dipped into whenever he wanted to find peace. Quiet ones, that give him good dreams if he finds them before he goes to sleep. One has always been the look of joy on Raven's face when she first turned into her natural form in front of him and he couldn't help but grin at her happiness and relief.
He doesn't turn to those memories now. Instead, he sets up two images side-by-side in his mind. On the left he sets Erik. He's standing next to Charles, leaning against the wall below the front drive at Westchester, and they're staring at the huge satellite dish that dominates the skyline. Charles is certain that Erik has the ability to move it, if he can just balance his anger with something more stable. With love. He searches in Erik's mind for something suitable, and finds it, a beautiful hidden memory of his mother. He brings it up to the surface and he knows there's a tear running down his face - there are tears in Erik's eyes too - because it is such a perfect, serene moment. And it gives Erik the strength he needs; he moves the satellite, and, afterwards he's laughing so joyously and broadcasting so much love for Charles that Charles almost moves the hand resting on Erik's back higher, clasps him by the neck, and pulls them together for a kiss. Almost, but he doesn't - he doesn't pry to see if the love Erik feels is brotherly or more. He can't use his powers that way, and then the chance is gone because Moira's calling to them to come inside. He stops the memory there - that's enough.
On the right he places the story that Raven told him. He tries to picture a dinner cruise on the Isis, but he has no details. He doesn't know the color or size of the boat, or which faces to place around the table, or what they might have been drinking. He doesn't know where they disembarked or what route he took back into Oxford. He doesn't know if the girl in the car with him was blonde or brunette, if they talked about genetics or politics or the Beatles, if he'd ever kissed her. He doesn't know her name. There is no memory.
He plays and replays those minutes with Erik, and every time it is the same. A bright joyous memory, as vivid as if it happened days ago.
He tries to play the day of the crash, and it's like trying to create a movie in his head from a single paragraph in a novel. Insufficient data.
Raven has to be wrong. She isn't lying, not deliberately. Perhaps her mind has been altered. Perhaps Frost got to her, though why she would do this, Charles has no idea.
The effort has made him tired, so he doesn't fight falling asleep again.
*
He apologizes to Raven the next day. "I don't know what I was thinking," he says.
"I'm sure it was just the drugs," she reassures him, though he can tell she's still concerned about him.
He's very careful not to say anything that might worry her after that.
*
"How are you feeling?" the doctor asks. Her name is Jean Mabie, she's a senior house officer (those two things she tells him), and she has a soft highlands accent and curly dark brown hair (those he sees and hears for himself). She's about his age, and pretty. He'd flirt with her if she hadn't just been examining his useless legs while he lay there naked from the thighs down.
She's talked him through the injury to his back. His vertebral column was crushed, and the resulting pressure on his spinal cord compressed the nerve fibers. And while nerves can sometimes recover after being bruised (he clings to that idea), his are damaged beyond any chance of regeneration. The damage was to the lumbar nerves - he's lost the use of his legs, permanently.
He feels numb. Not just his legs, but everything.
At least his catheter has been removed. There are certain indignities to waking up from a coma that he can't wait to shed.
Charles forces a smile. He doesn't want to stay here any longer than he has to. He needs to get out of here, find everyone who matters, and work out what's happening, why his memories and Raven's are so utterly different. He needs to find a doctor who will give him some hope of walking again.
"Better, much better," he lies.
"Aye, well, don't rush it. It'll take some time for you to build up your strength. We gave you regular physiotherapy to protect your muscles and joints while you were unconscious, it's true, but that can never replace you working your own body."
Charles nods in the right places, says all the right things, skims the surface of her mind to check that she's satisfied with his responses. As soon as she's gone, he calls out to a passing nurse and asks for a newspaper.
She brings him the Daily Telegraph, his least favorite broadsheet, and moves his pillows to prop him up. It's the first time he's sat up. His head spins, but he steels himself and the room soon steadies.
As soon as she's gone, Charles reads the date on the front page. September 2nd, 1964.
He drops the paper in his lap. That much, at least, is true. It's been nearly two years.
Reading the words, it finally sinks in. He has lost two years of his life. The world has carried on, people living their lives, people dying, and he's been lying unconscious in a hospital bed. Governments could have fallen; wars could have been started, won and lost. There could have been earthquakes and famines. Giant leaps in understanding. Science has moved forward two years. Friends are all two years older, might have married or divorced, had children. Might have died. He's missed weddings and funerals, christenings and graduations. He's missed all the things he might have done in two years.
Two years. It rings through his head, a mocking refrain. An entire chunk of his life missing completely. 1964, and he never even saw 1963.
He picks up the paper again, once his hands stop shaking, and skims through it. He isn't looking for mentions of mutants, but for articles that might be explained by the existence of mutants or the use of them by the government. Any government. Any mention. He doesn't find anything, though at least the superpowers don't appear to be actively at war, just stuck in the same cold war he remembers. Next time he sees Raven, he'll ask her for some periodicals to bring him up to date with the world. He won't question her any more; he doesn't want her to sense his certainty that something is wrong with her mind.
In the meantime, he reaches out with his powers, trying to stretch them, exercise. He tries not to think of it as training, as that just makes him think of the team and start worrying again. There's no point in that right now, not until he can do something about it. He doesn't latch on to any one mind for too long, and doesn't go deep, just enough so that he can practice and regain his strength without intruding too much. He watches the activity of the hospital through the minds of staff, walking along the corridors with them. It makes his head ache, takes as much effort as it once took him to hide their team in the back of the truck, but he refuses to rest.
At least this exercise is something familiar. His body and his sister and the whole world are wrong, but his mind is still familiar, something he can control, and he finds some reassurance in the exercises.
He's in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. A private room. There's only one person younger than him in this ward, a young boy, Jim, who hasn't woken up from a fit. Charles and Jim are the ward favorites, and everyone on the ward is thrilled he's finally woken up.
One of the nurses, Beth, has a crush on him, but she's so full of pity for him, that he'll never walk again, that it smothers him whenever she gets near. He can barely bring himself to talk to her and she avoids him after a while, uncomfortable because of his obvious discomfort. Charles would feel bad about it, but he doesn't have the energy to spare.
He's watching the ward through the eyes of one of the auxiliary nurses when he sees him. A wonderfully familiar face. Darwin. Armando Muñoz, the taxi-cab driver who Shaw murdered. Charles can't help himself - he calls out, "Darwin!"
Darwin reacts, lifting his head from the patient he's bending over, and looking around.
Charles shouts again, "Darwin!"
Darwin whispers something to his patient, pats her on the shoulder, and heads towards Charles' room. He sticks his head around the door. "Did you call me?" he asks, surprised.
Charles can't help but grin at the sight of him. Alive and well. "Yes," he says. "I-" He's lost for words. He doesn't want to say too much in case Darwin's mind has been altered or erased, or whatever it is that's happened to Raven. And Charles is afraid too, afraid of what he'll find out. Afraid that Darwin's mind might be the same as his sister's.
"Are you okay? Do you want me to fetch a nurse for you?"
Charles shakes his head emphatically. "No, no, I'm fine. I just-I wanted to see how you are. How you're-adapting."
Darwin huffs out a laugh. "I'm adapting fine, thanks," he says, in a tone that suggests that he's humoring Charles. Then he tilts his head to one side. "How did you know my nickname? No one's called me that for years."
Charles can't seem to think quickly enough to come up with a good explanation. "I must have heard someone else use it," he says, slipping a persuasive edge into the statement, and Darwin nods as though that's perfectly logical. "So, have you seen Alex lately?" Charles asks. "Alex Summers," he adds, when Darwin looks puzzled.
"I don't know an Alex Summers," he says. "Is he a patient here?"
Charles shakes his head. "My mistake." He's going to have to look inside Darwin's mind. And do so quickly, because Darwin is turning to leave, and Charles isn't strong enough yet to do much from a distance. He goes straight for the part of the brain where the most important memories are stored, rifles through them, and-
Darwin's mind is exactly the same as Raven's mind. No knowledge of mutants. No mutation of his own. Nothing familiar in his memories that overlaps at all with Charles' memories. Darwin's a physiotherapist, and he's worked at the John Radcliffe for three years now. He was given the nickname Darwin as a child because his little sister couldn't say Armando, and Darwin was one of her failed attempts at the name. He's led a perfectly normal life, never been a cab driver, never been recruited to train with a group of mutants, never even been near a CIA facility.
Charles falls out of Darwin's mind and pulls up every guard around himself that he can summon. He sets up a do not enter aura at the doorway to his room and tries to make sense of it all.
There are two options: one, that there is something wrong with his mind, or two, that other minds, multiple people, have been affected, for reasons unknown and by persons unknown (though he can add some guesses to the theory).
Occam's razor. The simplest theory that requires the least new assumptions is that his mind is the one at fault.
He can't accept that. Not yet. Not until he's gathered more information.
*
His bed-frame is metal. Charles didn't notice at first, not until he'd been sitting up for a couple of days, but there are strange dents in the bar at the foot of the bed. Two sets of four hollows, a fifth just visible underneath each set. As though the metal was soft at one point, and someone pressed their fingers into it.
Charles can only think of one reason for the indentations. One person who could have made them.
He asks Raven about them, but she tells him she's never thought about it. Just stood at the foot of the bed sometimes, her fingers stretched out into the hollows. It's a stretch for her hands, which means they'd fit a man's hands. Erik's broad hands.
"I'd put my fingers there when I got frustrated, and pretend I'd made the hollows myself," she says. "Work out my anger with you for not waking up when I begged you to." She sounds guilty for having had such thoughts.
He smiles at her. There's nothing to forgive, but she needs to feel forgiven. "I'm glad you got angry. Maybe that helped me wake up," he tells her.
Eventually he asks one of the nurses - the ward sister who's worked on this ward for eleven years and knows everything and everyone.
"It's a funny thing, those dents," the nurse says. "They weren't there when you first came to the ward, but a couple of days after you were admitted, I noticed them one morning when I came to check in on you. I had the frame checked by maintenance to see if there was some weakness in it, and if we ought to put you in a new bed, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it. If anything, they said, it was stronger than they'd expect. So strange," she says, shaking her head in remembered disbelief at the experience. She's not the kind of woman to believe in anything out of the ordinary.
It's the first moment of hope he's had.
*
Charles has been promoted to the day room now, wheeled there daily by one of the nurses, or Raven, if she arrives early enough. There are stacks of well-thumbed books in the corner and on a trolley, a wireless on a shelf that's too high for Charles to reach, and two old ladies permanently asleep and snoring in armchairs. The walls are drab orange and the curtains are brown, faded at the edges; even with the south aspect and the sun pouring in, it's depressing.
He saw Hank yesterday. Hank looked the way he did when Charles first saw him, quiet and bespectacled and eager, talking to a colleague and gesturing so wildly that he nearly hit a passing doctor. He went bright red and stumbled through an apology, and his colleague laughed at him when they carried on down the corridor. He was so much like the boy Charles knows that it felt like a physical blow when Charles couldn't find any memories of him or the team or the work they did together. This Hank has never build Cerebro. Has no concept of it. No knowledge of mutations or any idea that such a thing as mutants exists. He's bright, incredibly smart, and shy, and is researching treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Charles deliberately made Hank think about his feet, but other than a corn on his left big toe, Hank's feet were perfectly normal.
Charles has a list. Raven, Darwin, and now Hank. Three people with memories utterly different to his, whose lives are completely different from the lives he remembers them having. The evidence is mounting up.
It's two in the afternoon, and Woman's Hour is just starting on the BBC Light Programme. Charles nurses a cup of tea, tries to forget about how exciting it was to work with Hank on Cerebro, and waits for a police officer to show up. The ward sister asked him yesterday if he felt up to a visit from the police. He'd said yes right away: he'd rather speak to someone now, when any confusion or contradictions in his story can be explained away by him just having woken up from a coma.
It should be an interesting interview. Charles snorts into his tea; by interesting, he means strange, very, very strange. But he might learn something from the questions, or from the police officer's mind. He'd welcome any clue at this stage.
When the officer walks in, it's a shock. It's Moira MacTaggert.
Charles learned his lesson with Darwin though, so he doesn't react, and he doesn't use her name until she's introduced herself.
"Good afternoon, Professor Xavier," she says, holding out her hand. Charles shakes it. "I'm Sergeant MacTaggert."
Charles schools his face into polite helpfulness. "What can I do for you, Sergeant?" he asks. She's wearing a white shirt, buttoned up under a black tie, and Charles can't help taking a quick glance at her neck. Last time he saw her she had vicious red marks where Erik tried to strangle her. There's no mark. No trace.
She pulls a chair up to the side of him and sits down. She has a notepad and pencil in her hand, but she doesn't open the notebook, just flicks the corner of the paper with her thumb. It's a nervous habit. Charles is sure she doesn't even notice she's doing it. "What do you remember about your accident?" she asks gently.
Charles truthfully replies, "Nothing." He gives her a wry smile that's perfectly genuine. "My sister's told me what happened, but I don't remember any of it."
"Nothing at all?"
"No. Nothing." He doesn't offer any further information. He certainly doesn't tell her that as far as he's concerned, he was injured on a beach in Cuba, hit by a bullet shot from a gun she was holding. That in his memories, there was no car, no blown tire, no accident. It's a surreal moment - seeing her makes the fight on the beach stand out even more vividly in his memories, and yet here she is, yet another person believing a completely different version of events. Another name to add to his list.
MacTaggert nods her head, as though that's what she'd expected. "You were very lucky to survive," she says.
"And the other driver?" Charles asks.
"Ah, yes, Erik Lehnsherr. He walked away with nothing worse than a few scrapes and bruises, some minor cuts from the windshield. Miss Solomon - she was in your car, I understand she was a friend you were giving a lift back into Oxford - she only had minor injuries too. You were all very lucky."
Charles' heart sounds incredibly loud in the quiet room. "Erik Lehnsherr?" he asks. "Are you sure that was his name? Would you check for me, please?"
MacTaggert consults her notebook, running her nail down the page. "Yes, that definitely was his name. He wasn't a local." She doesn't offer anything further, and Charles has to restrain himself from peppering her with questions, going into her mind and finding out everything she knows. He has another question he needs to ask first, and he wants to hear her answer out loud.
"You won't be pressing charges?" He doesn't know if he'd been drinking that day. He's still finding it hard to believe that day happened the way everyone says it did.
"No. It was an accident, no one's fault," she says, reassurance rolling off her. "This is all just routine, dotting the i's and crossing the t's if you like. We'll be closing the files now we know there's nothing else you can add to what we already know."
She stands to leave, and Charles asks, quickly, "Mr. Lehnsherr, do you have an address for him?"
"I imagine there is an address on file," Moira says, disapprovingly, "but if you're asking for it, you have to understand that such details are confidential."
"You can't give me a phone number, even?" Charles tries to keep his voice even, not to sound as though he's begging, as though his very sanity depends on contacting a man who, as far as she is concerned, he has never met.
"I'm sorry, but no, Professor Xavier." She does sound genuinely sorry, over and above the surprise that he would want to contact Erik, but there's no room for compromise in her thoughts. When he presses inside, he doesn't find anything definite, nothing that will lead him straight to Erik. There's just a vague recollection that Erik was a foreigner, just visiting the UK, and had mentioned that he was heading to the US.
It's a start. At least Charles now knows that Erik is out there somewhere. He's clinging to that.
But there's another thought, an ugly one wriggling its way to the surface of Charles' brain: what if Erik is like everyone else? What if Erik doesn't know Charles, is resolutely normal?
Charles has coped with everything so far. He's bent under the weight of each new revelation but not broken, but he thinks that would be too much. To have Erik look at him and see no spark of recognition in his eyes, no annoyance or amusement, no affection. Raven at least knows him, and he's building a new, different relationship with her, but Hank, Moira, Darwin, none of them remember him. He means nothing to them. If it were the same with Erik, it would be exponentially worse than growing up thinking he was alone. To find someone, and then lose them-
He won't allow himself to contemplate that possibility. Not yet. Erik is alive. He's certain Erik visited him while Charles was in hospital and melted the metal of his bed frame. That's enough to give him hope. And for now, he needs to concentrate on getting out of hospital and getting home. Then he'll be able to start searching for Erik.
*
His recovery is fast. He's still weak, but he's discharged three weeks later, and he flies straight to New York.
When the taxi pulls up outside the mansion, Charles half expects to see Sean swooping down out of the sky, or Alex shouting out hello from an upstairs window. He wants to hear laughter and noise, even crashes or the sound of breaking glass. It's all quiet, though. Just him and Raven. He's not sure that he wants her with him here, but she insisted, and he sensed the hurt when he tried to insist that she stay in England.
"I was only there for you," she says, and he can't reject her, even though everything in her mind feels like a rejection of him and who he is.
He can't help but wonder what she'd think about him if she knew about his power. How she'd react to the idea of mutants, people with crazy, impossible super-human powers existing right now, and her brother being one of them. She's been his lifelong ally, but he has absolutely no idea how she'd take the news that he can read minds, influence people's thoughts, manipulate them. She's still his sister and friend, but she's a stranger too, though he feels like he's betraying her just by thinking that.
His new wheelchair crunches over the gravel. He might have to redo all the gravel paths. Not just yet, though. For all that every doctor he's spoken to so far has assured him the damage to his spine is permanent, Charles refuses to believe it. He has seen miracles happen: he's seen a woman turn into living diamond, a boy fly with the power of his voice, a man lift a submarine from the ocean and fling it up on dry land. He won't accept that the rest of his life is going to be spent in this chair. Not yet.
part 2
Title: First Breath After Coma
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Erik/Charles
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 23,800
Betas: ignipes made it so much better, dreamlittleyo was a fantastic cheerleader and beta, and sparky77 read through it to see if it made sense! You're all magnificent!
Notes: Written for this kink meme prompt: "Charles wakes up to find he's been in a coma for two years, and the world he thought he lived in is a lie. He's still a professor of genetics, but there are no such thing as mutants, there is no such person as Erik Lehnsherr. But why can Charles still read minds?" Also on AO3 here. ETA: Now with a gorgeous cover by estioe.
The sky is very blue.
*
"Charles?"
"Good morning, Charles. How are you feeling?"
*
"Charles?"
"Mmmh?" Charles answers.
"Charles?" The voice is familiar; if only he could concentrate, he thinks he might know who's speaking to him.
"Don't worry, dear, he might not respond for a while yet." An English accent, an unfamiliar voice.
"But this is still progress, yes?"
"This is excellent progress." Footsteps, two sets, walking away.
Maybe he didn't answer. Maybe he answered in his head.
The sky is very grey today.
*
The world is silent and grey. The silence worries him most, though he doesn't know why it should. Silence is nothing to be concerned about, surely?
A breath of sound. Just the faintest whisper, from a distance. A sound that's shaped in a way that feels comforting. Familiar. Familial.
He reaches out, and the whisper becomes a soft murmur, but he can't seem to pull it towards him or get closer.
*
"Charles?"
Someone is calling his name. He thinks he's heard her call his name before. Or perhaps that was just a dream. He's not certain if his eyes are open, if he's awake or asleep. He feels like he's floating, cocooned in light, and the sky is white, brilliant white, like high clouds on a sunny day.
He wants to answer. It's important. He forms a word in his head, shapes his lips around it, makes a sound. He means it to be hello, but it comes out malformed.
"Oh, Charles!" she says. He's not sure who she is, which is a puzzle, because she feels such a comfortable presence beside him. She's holding his hand now - stroking the back with her fingers, softly, as though she's worried she might hurt him, though he is quite certain that she won't. Nothing can hurt him, not while he's floating in his cocoon.
He closes his fingers around hers to reassure her, and her fingers tighten inside his clasp. There's a new sound, and Charles can't place it until he feels something splash on his face. A tear. She's crying.
Don't cry, he says, but he doesn't get any sense that she hears him.
He floats away.
*
There's a beam of sunshine falling across his face. It's golden warm, like summer on the front lawn at Westchester, and Charles tilts back his head to enjoy it. His head sinks into a pillow. He's in bed. He feels incredibly tired, but not sleepy, so he keeps his eyes closed and enjoys the sunlight. It's probably time to get up, but nanny will call him if it gets too late.
*
"Ah, Charles, you're awake, I see."
Charles blinks. He is awake, it's true. He blinks again, and this time his eyes remain open, and when he turns his head a fraction, he sees the person talking to him. A woman, in a pale blue uniform. A nurse.
His neck aches, just from moving his head.
There's a trace of bleach in the air, and the walls are bare, cheap white paint. He's in a hospital.
He was just on the beach.
Erik was by his side, the children massed behind them. Erik was holding the missiles back and then-and then he was sending them back up into the air towards the fleets, and Moira was shooting, bullet after bullet deflected by Erik. And then Charles was falling, hot agony in his back. Everyone on the beach was screaming in their minds, and it rained down on him, a cacophony of emotions: fear and hatred and worry and loss and uncertainty, all his mental filters in tatters. Erik was clutching Charles in his arms; face covered in anguish, but still hiding his mind from Charles, just flashes of emotions slipping through when the back of Erik's hand brushed his. Erik was calling something, words that Charles tried to make out, but they blew away on the breeze as Erik's face faded and his touch became fainter, until Charles can't remember anything more.
Charles gasps, a flash of pain hitting him as he inhales, suddenly back in the present. The pain vanishes as quickly as it comes, gone by the exhale. Phantom pain.
The nurse puts her hand on his chest - inside she's shouting at him not to try to move - but there's no need. He isn't floating any more, and his body feels divorced from his brain. "I'm just going to fetch your sister," she tells him, her external voice quiet and assured. Reassuring. "She went to get a drink, but she's only just down the corridor."
His sister. Of course. Raven. She held his hand.
He tries to stay awake for her, but he's so tired.
*
He's not sure if he just drifted off for a moment or if he's been sleeping for hours, but the next time he opens his eyes, Raven is smiling down at him.
"Hi," he says. His voice sounds scratchy and faint, but the word comes out and Raven lights up.
"Do you want a drink?" she asks, picking up a glass with a straw as though she knows his answer already.
Charles nods, and she puts it to his lips. It's orange juice, room temperature, but it tastes good. She pulls the straw away before he's had enough, but when he goes to say more, she shakes her head. "I think that's enough for now. You can have more soon."
"My legs?" Charles whispers. He can't feel them. He remembers telling Erik, looking up at him just before he blacked out, the words coming out hoarse through the pain, I can't feel my legs. He lifts his head a fraction, and he can see the shape of them under the blankets. But he can't move them, can't feel the weight of bedclothes or wiggle a single toe. It isn't just because he's so weak - his entire body is weak, but he can lift his hand, feel the pressure of the bed against his back. But he can't feel his legs at all.
"I'm sorry," Raven says, hand to her mouth as though she doesn't want to have to say anything
"How long?" he asks, because she looks as though she's blinking back tears, she looks exhausted, and that can't have happened overnight. He might have been here a day, more even. He has half-memories of waking before.
"I, um. I should call the nurse," she says, and that's not like Raven. Not like her at all. They tell each other everything. Almost everything, at least, and what can be so bad that she wants the buffer of another person present.
He puts his hand out to her, and she's just close enough for him to grasp hold of her arm. It's an effort, and she could shake him off if she wanted, but she doesn't move, as though his hold is a real tether. "Please," he says, because he's starting to get worried. "Tell me."
Raven swallows, and she won't look him in the eye. She sits down on the edge of the bed, lets his hand slide down her arm so that they're hand in hand, and finally looks at him. "Nearly two years," she says, and that can't be true. That's impossible, because he can remember Erik's arms holding him up on the beach and it feels like yesterday.
"Two days, you mean," Charles says, and he's begging her to tell him that of course that's what she said, what she meant.
She shakes her head. She doesn't say anything more, just bites her lip, and there are tears in the corners of her eyes.
"Two years," Charles says. His voice sounds scratchy again, but it's not because his throat is dry this time.
"You've been in a coma ever since the accident," she says eventually, and now Charles looks at her properly, he thinks she looks older. Easily two years older, which is strange because Hank said her cells didn't age the way ordinary cells do. He puts that thought to one side for now, though, because there are more urgent matters.
"The school?" he asks.
"They've been notified, of course," she says. "And they're holding your position for you." She looks slightly surprised that the fledgling school is his first question, but Charles was responsible for all of them, felt almost like a father to them, Sean and Alex and Raven. Even Hank.
Erik was the first who came to mind though. He remembers staring into Erik's face, unable to hear him because of that wretched helmet he took from Shaw, seeing the expression on Erik's face as Charles told him he was responsible for the pain Charles was in. Two years. A lot could have changed in two years. Charles has no idea what happened after he blacked out. If Shaw's people attacked them, if the armies fired again, if Erik turned the missiles on them unhindered.
At least Raven is here and safe. But what of Erik? So misguided, so tortured by the past. Charles can only begin to imagine how he might have faired.
"Erik?" Charles asks. He's not sure what question to frame.
"Erik?" Raven parrots back at him.
"Yes," Charles says, impatient now to have answers, whatever the question. "How is he? Where is he?"
"Who's Erik?" she says, as though he's talking about an old college acquaintance she can't remember meeting.
Charles can't breath. He reaches out with his mind to find out if he can feel the familiar shape of Erik's mind, but he can barely push beyond the boundaries of the room. There are active minds milling around nearby, but try as he might, he can't find a familiar one among them, not even the nurse he remembers from before.
He takes a deep breath. He sounds to himself as though he's been running, which is ironic because he can't feel his legs. Another deep breath. "Who's running the school?" Assuming, that is, that his plans were followed through, and there is a school. He was arguing with Erik at the end, lost consciousness before he knew whether his arguments were persuasive enough to make Erik see that there was a chance for them all if they worked together.
Raven shakes her head in puzzlement. "The Chancellor, I suppose, or the Dean. I don't know. Is it important?"
"Is it important?" Charles shouts. "Of course it's bloody well important. Two years of training. Alex needs to learn focus, and Sean n-needs-" He's gasping for breath now, and Raven's shushing him, holding him, and then a nurse comes in - a different one, in a darker uniform - and sticks a needle in his arm and the worry drifts away.
*
Next time he wakes up, it isn't gradual, and there is no moment of uncertainty. Everything rushes in on him at once, and he finds himself juggling a myriad of different questions: Erik, the other mutants, his legs, the school, Raven's strange reaction to his questions.
There's no one in the room - it's a private room, just his bed, a bedside cupboard, monitors, two chairs and a huge window - but the door is open and he can hear people passing by outside. He lifts up his head - it's easier than the last time he tried, but still an effort - and calls out. "Raven? Nurse?" He sounds like a helpless child, and it frustrates him, but not enough that he doesn't call out again when he doesn't get an immediate response.
He hears footsteps then, not quite running, but fast, and Raven barrels into the room.
"Are you okay?" she asks, then looks as though she wants to bite her tongue at such a stupid question. "Sorry."
"I need you to answer some questions for me."
"Of course," she says, though he can sense her drawing back even though he doesn't attempt to touch her mind.
"What happened after I was hit? I remember you walking towards me. At least, I think-" His memory after the moment the bullet hit him is blurry, the only vivid parts the pain in his back and the feel of Erik's arms.
"Walking towards you? I wasn't there when you had your accident."
Charles is beginning to feels as though they're having two different conversations. "Of course you were. You were on the beach. We all were."
"The beach?" Raven is broadcasting confusion. Confusion and worry, and a certainty that Charles isn't as well as he looks. Which considering he's apparently been in a coma for two years, doesn't bode well.
"Yes, the beach. When-" When Hank crashed the plane and Erik killed Shaw (and Charles helped him) and they all fought and they stopped a war. Their little band of mutants stopped World War Three. Only Charles can't seem to put it all into words because there are tears running down his face and he thinks he might actually sob if he opens his mouth.
Raven turns to go - to fetch a nurse probably - but Charles doesn't want to be sedated again. He can get past this. He just needs a minute. He holds up a hand to get her to wait.
He'll start again. Let Raven do the talking. "What happened?" he asks.
Raven pulls up a chair next to the bed, sitting forward in it so he doesn't have to strain to see her. "Do you want me to start from the beginning?" Charles nods. "Okay, so you were driving back to your flat. You'd been out in the country for the afternoon, on a boat trip on the Thames - sorry, the Isis, I know you hate it when I get the name wrong. Someone you'd been at Pembroke College with got their PhD, so you were all celebrating. Only the weather had turned bad, some freak thunderstorm, so you cut the boat trip short and you were driving back into Oxford to have dinner there instead. You were going to celebrate at that pub you always liked, The Turf Tavern. But your tire blew and you skidded and hit another car, and your car rolled and it-it was bad." Raven's talking faster and faster, like she can barely bring herself to remember it all and has to get it all out as quickly as possible, but it doesn't make sense. He was on the beach. It was a bullet. He was injured by a bullet, by Erik, not in a car crash. He misses some of her words. "-and they were both totaled. I saw your car afterwards, in the police compound. I don't know how you survived, Charles, or the girl who was with you - the police say it was a miracle - but-but I am so happy you did." She rubs at her eyes. They're blue, and her hair is blonde, and she's a beautiful, normal girl, and that's as false as the story she's just told him.
Charles doesn't ask about the girl Raven says was with him. He doesn't know who she was. There was no girl, there was no car crash. That isn't real. "Turn blue," he says.
"What?"
"Turn blue for me. Just quickly. No one will see. You can close the door if you're worried, but I'd know if anyone were coming in and be able to warn you in time."
Raven looks at him as though he's crazy, then the looks softens into concern. "Charles, you've been in a coma for nearly two years. It's going to take you a while to get back to normal."
"We're not normal, you and me," Charles says desperately, just a bit too loud considering the door is open. Something is very wrong. "Mutant and proud, remember."
"Charles, don't, please. I don't know what you're on about, but you're scaring me. Let me go fetch the nurse."
"No," he says quickly, schooling his face into a reassuring look. "No, there's no need. You can tell me more later. Would you fetch me a drink?"
"Of course," she says, looking relieved to do something simple for him.
Charles doesn't want to do it. He promised her he wouldn't read her mind, but he thinks he really might go crazy if he doesn't figure out what's happening. He lifts his right index and middle finger to his temple, needing the point of focus, and concentrates. His head feels flaccid, his mind an out-of-practice muscle, but he has to do this. He gets inside her head and-
And it's all wrong. Everything there is wrong. The important things are all missing: mutants, the team, working for the CIA. None of it is there.
The story she told him about the car crash, that's there. And two years of visiting him, sitting by his bedside, holding his hand, reading the paper to him. Missing him. The prognosis, that he may or may not wake up, and that if he does, he'll never walk again - he finds that, all too clear and stark. But no mind-reading or shape-shifting, no proud mutants, no fighting to make the world a better, safer place for them all. No childhood memory of meeting him in his kitchen and learning that she wasn't the only one. No fear that no one could ever truly love her real form or wistful longing to be normal. No searching for others like them, setting up a training camp, learning how to master who and what they are. Becoming an extraordinary family.
Instead, there's the faded trauma of her parents (his aunt and uncle) dying, and being taken in by his mother and stepfather. Growing up with him, games in the garden, creeping out of bed at night for midnight feasts, becoming brother and sister to each other.
It's all wrong. It's all sweet and charming and a terrible lie.
He's shaking with the effort of not screaming. He wants to howl like Sean, break all the glass in the window. He wants to burn the place down like Alex could. He wants to twist and distort and break things like Erik would. Instead, he turns into his pillow, muttering a sorry when Raven brings him his drink, and closes his eyes.
He can hear Raven hovering at his bedside. He can feel her pity and concern even though he's carefully avoiding going anywhere near her mind - it's in the awkward shuffle of her feet, the way she's moving the glass of water she poured for him from hand to hand, eventually setting it down as quietly as possible on the bedside table, in the way she clears her throat as though she's about to speak but doesn't say anything, and in the way she tip-toes out of the room. He's never been so relieved to get rid of someone before. He loves her, she's his sister, but he doesn't think he could have born another minute with her in the same room without screaming at her.
He wishes he could run away, but he can't. He's stuck in this bed, and he might never walk or run again, and all his sister's memories are a lie.
There are memories that Charles has always dipped into whenever he wanted to find peace. Quiet ones, that give him good dreams if he finds them before he goes to sleep. One has always been the look of joy on Raven's face when she first turned into her natural form in front of him and he couldn't help but grin at her happiness and relief.
He doesn't turn to those memories now. Instead, he sets up two images side-by-side in his mind. On the left he sets Erik. He's standing next to Charles, leaning against the wall below the front drive at Westchester, and they're staring at the huge satellite dish that dominates the skyline. Charles is certain that Erik has the ability to move it, if he can just balance his anger with something more stable. With love. He searches in Erik's mind for something suitable, and finds it, a beautiful hidden memory of his mother. He brings it up to the surface and he knows there's a tear running down his face - there are tears in Erik's eyes too - because it is such a perfect, serene moment. And it gives Erik the strength he needs; he moves the satellite, and, afterwards he's laughing so joyously and broadcasting so much love for Charles that Charles almost moves the hand resting on Erik's back higher, clasps him by the neck, and pulls them together for a kiss. Almost, but he doesn't - he doesn't pry to see if the love Erik feels is brotherly or more. He can't use his powers that way, and then the chance is gone because Moira's calling to them to come inside. He stops the memory there - that's enough.
On the right he places the story that Raven told him. He tries to picture a dinner cruise on the Isis, but he has no details. He doesn't know the color or size of the boat, or which faces to place around the table, or what they might have been drinking. He doesn't know where they disembarked or what route he took back into Oxford. He doesn't know if the girl in the car with him was blonde or brunette, if they talked about genetics or politics or the Beatles, if he'd ever kissed her. He doesn't know her name. There is no memory.
He plays and replays those minutes with Erik, and every time it is the same. A bright joyous memory, as vivid as if it happened days ago.
He tries to play the day of the crash, and it's like trying to create a movie in his head from a single paragraph in a novel. Insufficient data.
Raven has to be wrong. She isn't lying, not deliberately. Perhaps her mind has been altered. Perhaps Frost got to her, though why she would do this, Charles has no idea.
The effort has made him tired, so he doesn't fight falling asleep again.
*
He apologizes to Raven the next day. "I don't know what I was thinking," he says.
"I'm sure it was just the drugs," she reassures him, though he can tell she's still concerned about him.
He's very careful not to say anything that might worry her after that.
*
"How are you feeling?" the doctor asks. Her name is Jean Mabie, she's a senior house officer (those two things she tells him), and she has a soft highlands accent and curly dark brown hair (those he sees and hears for himself). She's about his age, and pretty. He'd flirt with her if she hadn't just been examining his useless legs while he lay there naked from the thighs down.
She's talked him through the injury to his back. His vertebral column was crushed, and the resulting pressure on his spinal cord compressed the nerve fibers. And while nerves can sometimes recover after being bruised (he clings to that idea), his are damaged beyond any chance of regeneration. The damage was to the lumbar nerves - he's lost the use of his legs, permanently.
He feels numb. Not just his legs, but everything.
At least his catheter has been removed. There are certain indignities to waking up from a coma that he can't wait to shed.
Charles forces a smile. He doesn't want to stay here any longer than he has to. He needs to get out of here, find everyone who matters, and work out what's happening, why his memories and Raven's are so utterly different. He needs to find a doctor who will give him some hope of walking again.
"Better, much better," he lies.
"Aye, well, don't rush it. It'll take some time for you to build up your strength. We gave you regular physiotherapy to protect your muscles and joints while you were unconscious, it's true, but that can never replace you working your own body."
Charles nods in the right places, says all the right things, skims the surface of her mind to check that she's satisfied with his responses. As soon as she's gone, he calls out to a passing nurse and asks for a newspaper.
She brings him the Daily Telegraph, his least favorite broadsheet, and moves his pillows to prop him up. It's the first time he's sat up. His head spins, but he steels himself and the room soon steadies.
As soon as she's gone, Charles reads the date on the front page. September 2nd, 1964.
He drops the paper in his lap. That much, at least, is true. It's been nearly two years.
Reading the words, it finally sinks in. He has lost two years of his life. The world has carried on, people living their lives, people dying, and he's been lying unconscious in a hospital bed. Governments could have fallen; wars could have been started, won and lost. There could have been earthquakes and famines. Giant leaps in understanding. Science has moved forward two years. Friends are all two years older, might have married or divorced, had children. Might have died. He's missed weddings and funerals, christenings and graduations. He's missed all the things he might have done in two years.
Two years. It rings through his head, a mocking refrain. An entire chunk of his life missing completely. 1964, and he never even saw 1963.
He picks up the paper again, once his hands stop shaking, and skims through it. He isn't looking for mentions of mutants, but for articles that might be explained by the existence of mutants or the use of them by the government. Any government. Any mention. He doesn't find anything, though at least the superpowers don't appear to be actively at war, just stuck in the same cold war he remembers. Next time he sees Raven, he'll ask her for some periodicals to bring him up to date with the world. He won't question her any more; he doesn't want her to sense his certainty that something is wrong with her mind.
In the meantime, he reaches out with his powers, trying to stretch them, exercise. He tries not to think of it as training, as that just makes him think of the team and start worrying again. There's no point in that right now, not until he can do something about it. He doesn't latch on to any one mind for too long, and doesn't go deep, just enough so that he can practice and regain his strength without intruding too much. He watches the activity of the hospital through the minds of staff, walking along the corridors with them. It makes his head ache, takes as much effort as it once took him to hide their team in the back of the truck, but he refuses to rest.
At least this exercise is something familiar. His body and his sister and the whole world are wrong, but his mind is still familiar, something he can control, and he finds some reassurance in the exercises.
He's in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. A private room. There's only one person younger than him in this ward, a young boy, Jim, who hasn't woken up from a fit. Charles and Jim are the ward favorites, and everyone on the ward is thrilled he's finally woken up.
One of the nurses, Beth, has a crush on him, but she's so full of pity for him, that he'll never walk again, that it smothers him whenever she gets near. He can barely bring himself to talk to her and she avoids him after a while, uncomfortable because of his obvious discomfort. Charles would feel bad about it, but he doesn't have the energy to spare.
He's watching the ward through the eyes of one of the auxiliary nurses when he sees him. A wonderfully familiar face. Darwin. Armando Muñoz, the taxi-cab driver who Shaw murdered. Charles can't help himself - he calls out, "Darwin!"
Darwin reacts, lifting his head from the patient he's bending over, and looking around.
Charles shouts again, "Darwin!"
Darwin whispers something to his patient, pats her on the shoulder, and heads towards Charles' room. He sticks his head around the door. "Did you call me?" he asks, surprised.
Charles can't help but grin at the sight of him. Alive and well. "Yes," he says. "I-" He's lost for words. He doesn't want to say too much in case Darwin's mind has been altered or erased, or whatever it is that's happened to Raven. And Charles is afraid too, afraid of what he'll find out. Afraid that Darwin's mind might be the same as his sister's.
"Are you okay? Do you want me to fetch a nurse for you?"
Charles shakes his head emphatically. "No, no, I'm fine. I just-I wanted to see how you are. How you're-adapting."
Darwin huffs out a laugh. "I'm adapting fine, thanks," he says, in a tone that suggests that he's humoring Charles. Then he tilts his head to one side. "How did you know my nickname? No one's called me that for years."
Charles can't seem to think quickly enough to come up with a good explanation. "I must have heard someone else use it," he says, slipping a persuasive edge into the statement, and Darwin nods as though that's perfectly logical. "So, have you seen Alex lately?" Charles asks. "Alex Summers," he adds, when Darwin looks puzzled.
"I don't know an Alex Summers," he says. "Is he a patient here?"
Charles shakes his head. "My mistake." He's going to have to look inside Darwin's mind. And do so quickly, because Darwin is turning to leave, and Charles isn't strong enough yet to do much from a distance. He goes straight for the part of the brain where the most important memories are stored, rifles through them, and-
Darwin's mind is exactly the same as Raven's mind. No knowledge of mutants. No mutation of his own. Nothing familiar in his memories that overlaps at all with Charles' memories. Darwin's a physiotherapist, and he's worked at the John Radcliffe for three years now. He was given the nickname Darwin as a child because his little sister couldn't say Armando, and Darwin was one of her failed attempts at the name. He's led a perfectly normal life, never been a cab driver, never been recruited to train with a group of mutants, never even been near a CIA facility.
Charles falls out of Darwin's mind and pulls up every guard around himself that he can summon. He sets up a do not enter aura at the doorway to his room and tries to make sense of it all.
There are two options: one, that there is something wrong with his mind, or two, that other minds, multiple people, have been affected, for reasons unknown and by persons unknown (though he can add some guesses to the theory).
Occam's razor. The simplest theory that requires the least new assumptions is that his mind is the one at fault.
He can't accept that. Not yet. Not until he's gathered more information.
*
His bed-frame is metal. Charles didn't notice at first, not until he'd been sitting up for a couple of days, but there are strange dents in the bar at the foot of the bed. Two sets of four hollows, a fifth just visible underneath each set. As though the metal was soft at one point, and someone pressed their fingers into it.
Charles can only think of one reason for the indentations. One person who could have made them.
He asks Raven about them, but she tells him she's never thought about it. Just stood at the foot of the bed sometimes, her fingers stretched out into the hollows. It's a stretch for her hands, which means they'd fit a man's hands. Erik's broad hands.
"I'd put my fingers there when I got frustrated, and pretend I'd made the hollows myself," she says. "Work out my anger with you for not waking up when I begged you to." She sounds guilty for having had such thoughts.
He smiles at her. There's nothing to forgive, but she needs to feel forgiven. "I'm glad you got angry. Maybe that helped me wake up," he tells her.
Eventually he asks one of the nurses - the ward sister who's worked on this ward for eleven years and knows everything and everyone.
"It's a funny thing, those dents," the nurse says. "They weren't there when you first came to the ward, but a couple of days after you were admitted, I noticed them one morning when I came to check in on you. I had the frame checked by maintenance to see if there was some weakness in it, and if we ought to put you in a new bed, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it. If anything, they said, it was stronger than they'd expect. So strange," she says, shaking her head in remembered disbelief at the experience. She's not the kind of woman to believe in anything out of the ordinary.
It's the first moment of hope he's had.
*
Charles has been promoted to the day room now, wheeled there daily by one of the nurses, or Raven, if she arrives early enough. There are stacks of well-thumbed books in the corner and on a trolley, a wireless on a shelf that's too high for Charles to reach, and two old ladies permanently asleep and snoring in armchairs. The walls are drab orange and the curtains are brown, faded at the edges; even with the south aspect and the sun pouring in, it's depressing.
He saw Hank yesterday. Hank looked the way he did when Charles first saw him, quiet and bespectacled and eager, talking to a colleague and gesturing so wildly that he nearly hit a passing doctor. He went bright red and stumbled through an apology, and his colleague laughed at him when they carried on down the corridor. He was so much like the boy Charles knows that it felt like a physical blow when Charles couldn't find any memories of him or the team or the work they did together. This Hank has never build Cerebro. Has no concept of it. No knowledge of mutations or any idea that such a thing as mutants exists. He's bright, incredibly smart, and shy, and is researching treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Charles deliberately made Hank think about his feet, but other than a corn on his left big toe, Hank's feet were perfectly normal.
Charles has a list. Raven, Darwin, and now Hank. Three people with memories utterly different to his, whose lives are completely different from the lives he remembers them having. The evidence is mounting up.
It's two in the afternoon, and Woman's Hour is just starting on the BBC Light Programme. Charles nurses a cup of tea, tries to forget about how exciting it was to work with Hank on Cerebro, and waits for a police officer to show up. The ward sister asked him yesterday if he felt up to a visit from the police. He'd said yes right away: he'd rather speak to someone now, when any confusion or contradictions in his story can be explained away by him just having woken up from a coma.
It should be an interesting interview. Charles snorts into his tea; by interesting, he means strange, very, very strange. But he might learn something from the questions, or from the police officer's mind. He'd welcome any clue at this stage.
When the officer walks in, it's a shock. It's Moira MacTaggert.
Charles learned his lesson with Darwin though, so he doesn't react, and he doesn't use her name until she's introduced herself.
"Good afternoon, Professor Xavier," she says, holding out her hand. Charles shakes it. "I'm Sergeant MacTaggert."
Charles schools his face into polite helpfulness. "What can I do for you, Sergeant?" he asks. She's wearing a white shirt, buttoned up under a black tie, and Charles can't help taking a quick glance at her neck. Last time he saw her she had vicious red marks where Erik tried to strangle her. There's no mark. No trace.
She pulls a chair up to the side of him and sits down. She has a notepad and pencil in her hand, but she doesn't open the notebook, just flicks the corner of the paper with her thumb. It's a nervous habit. Charles is sure she doesn't even notice she's doing it. "What do you remember about your accident?" she asks gently.
Charles truthfully replies, "Nothing." He gives her a wry smile that's perfectly genuine. "My sister's told me what happened, but I don't remember any of it."
"Nothing at all?"
"No. Nothing." He doesn't offer any further information. He certainly doesn't tell her that as far as he's concerned, he was injured on a beach in Cuba, hit by a bullet shot from a gun she was holding. That in his memories, there was no car, no blown tire, no accident. It's a surreal moment - seeing her makes the fight on the beach stand out even more vividly in his memories, and yet here she is, yet another person believing a completely different version of events. Another name to add to his list.
MacTaggert nods her head, as though that's what she'd expected. "You were very lucky to survive," she says.
"And the other driver?" Charles asks.
"Ah, yes, Erik Lehnsherr. He walked away with nothing worse than a few scrapes and bruises, some minor cuts from the windshield. Miss Solomon - she was in your car, I understand she was a friend you were giving a lift back into Oxford - she only had minor injuries too. You were all very lucky."
Charles' heart sounds incredibly loud in the quiet room. "Erik Lehnsherr?" he asks. "Are you sure that was his name? Would you check for me, please?"
MacTaggert consults her notebook, running her nail down the page. "Yes, that definitely was his name. He wasn't a local." She doesn't offer anything further, and Charles has to restrain himself from peppering her with questions, going into her mind and finding out everything she knows. He has another question he needs to ask first, and he wants to hear her answer out loud.
"You won't be pressing charges?" He doesn't know if he'd been drinking that day. He's still finding it hard to believe that day happened the way everyone says it did.
"No. It was an accident, no one's fault," she says, reassurance rolling off her. "This is all just routine, dotting the i's and crossing the t's if you like. We'll be closing the files now we know there's nothing else you can add to what we already know."
She stands to leave, and Charles asks, quickly, "Mr. Lehnsherr, do you have an address for him?"
"I imagine there is an address on file," Moira says, disapprovingly, "but if you're asking for it, you have to understand that such details are confidential."
"You can't give me a phone number, even?" Charles tries to keep his voice even, not to sound as though he's begging, as though his very sanity depends on contacting a man who, as far as she is concerned, he has never met.
"I'm sorry, but no, Professor Xavier." She does sound genuinely sorry, over and above the surprise that he would want to contact Erik, but there's no room for compromise in her thoughts. When he presses inside, he doesn't find anything definite, nothing that will lead him straight to Erik. There's just a vague recollection that Erik was a foreigner, just visiting the UK, and had mentioned that he was heading to the US.
It's a start. At least Charles now knows that Erik is out there somewhere. He's clinging to that.
But there's another thought, an ugly one wriggling its way to the surface of Charles' brain: what if Erik is like everyone else? What if Erik doesn't know Charles, is resolutely normal?
Charles has coped with everything so far. He's bent under the weight of each new revelation but not broken, but he thinks that would be too much. To have Erik look at him and see no spark of recognition in his eyes, no annoyance or amusement, no affection. Raven at least knows him, and he's building a new, different relationship with her, but Hank, Moira, Darwin, none of them remember him. He means nothing to them. If it were the same with Erik, it would be exponentially worse than growing up thinking he was alone. To find someone, and then lose them-
He won't allow himself to contemplate that possibility. Not yet. Erik is alive. He's certain Erik visited him while Charles was in hospital and melted the metal of his bed frame. That's enough to give him hope. And for now, he needs to concentrate on getting out of hospital and getting home. Then he'll be able to start searching for Erik.
*
His recovery is fast. He's still weak, but he's discharged three weeks later, and he flies straight to New York.
When the taxi pulls up outside the mansion, Charles half expects to see Sean swooping down out of the sky, or Alex shouting out hello from an upstairs window. He wants to hear laughter and noise, even crashes or the sound of breaking glass. It's all quiet, though. Just him and Raven. He's not sure that he wants her with him here, but she insisted, and he sensed the hurt when he tried to insist that she stay in England.
"I was only there for you," she says, and he can't reject her, even though everything in her mind feels like a rejection of him and who he is.
He can't help but wonder what she'd think about him if she knew about his power. How she'd react to the idea of mutants, people with crazy, impossible super-human powers existing right now, and her brother being one of them. She's been his lifelong ally, but he has absolutely no idea how she'd take the news that he can read minds, influence people's thoughts, manipulate them. She's still his sister and friend, but she's a stranger too, though he feels like he's betraying her just by thinking that.
His new wheelchair crunches over the gravel. He might have to redo all the gravel paths. Not just yet, though. For all that every doctor he's spoken to so far has assured him the damage to his spine is permanent, Charles refuses to believe it. He has seen miracles happen: he's seen a woman turn into living diamond, a boy fly with the power of his voice, a man lift a submarine from the ocean and fling it up on dry land. He won't accept that the rest of his life is going to be spent in this chair. Not yet.
part 2