FIC: Utopia 4/? (WIP)
Title: Utopia
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairings: Charles/Erik
Genre: drama, angst, au, dystopia, future!fic
Rating: R
Word Count: 6400/?
Warnings: dubcon, emotional manipulation
Summary: Based on this 1stclass_kink prompt (and originally posted there).
"Erik has succeeded in taking over the world, but mutant utopia has yet to materialize. Charles is his reluctant companion."
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23
xxviii.
When Charles dreamed, it rarely had to do with his own life. Sometimes they were fabrications: glimpses into strange fantasies or horrors. At others, they were patches of other people’s lives.
He wasn’t sure which this one was.
The forest was deadly-cursed, maybe, or spoiled with radiation, or contagion-and below, he knew, there were monsters, creations and creators of their habitat. He (was he male in the dream?) didn’t know what they looked like; maybe they were people, or beasts, or spirits, or all three. It didn’t matter because he did know what would happen if he was caught.
This didn’t mean that Charles was frightened. Nervous, certainly, but not terrified; Charles could climb, could escape high above the danger. If he wished to, he could become an observer; a strange sort of wildlife ecologist.
Unfortunately, he had taken a fall, and every moment spent on the ground was like a dinner bell, loud in the gray calm. He could feel them out there, drawing closer, but every tree he tried to climb was smooth and slippery and-oh, this one had branches.
He was saved; he was up in the canopy and the shadows below milled with frustrated shapes (strange to have an ecology consisting entirely of predators, he thought). Then the wind began to gust, causing his perch to sway and buck, and Charles felt himself begin to slip-
Charles opened his eyes, confused to find that he was still shaking; a gentle rocking back-and-forth movement that he thought was in his mind until he heard the rattling. The window across the room was dark.
Oh, he thought, eyelids drifting closed. It’s an earthquake. This is Canada...
Moments later, Charles saw that there was faint gray light scattering in through the window. A dark shape loomed over him, and there was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. His own small earthquake.
Wait. Not Canada.
“Erik?” he mumbled, blinking groggily. It was hard to tell shapes from people when he couldn’t sense their thoughts. Also when he couldn’t really see them.
“Charles,” a voice that certainly sounded like Erik replied. “I have to leave for a few days. Behave while I’m gone.”
“What?” the telepath asked, dreadfully confused. Remaining conscious was difficult. “Where’re you going?”
“Mystique will explain in the morning,” Erik told him softly. “Go back to sleep.”
“Oh,” Charles sighed. He closed his eyes, felt Erik’s nose cold on his cheek followed by warm lips; he grumbled and turned onto his side, burying his head into the pillow.
Then Charles sat straight up in bed, looking around the room frantically; he could see clearly, in the rich morning sunlight, that nothing was out of place.
Nothing was out of place, but there was a small white bottle of aspirin on his nightstand.
xxix.
Raven surprised him by bringing Beast along with her to have breakfast in Charles’ rooms. He didn’t exactly have a table where they could all sit and eat, or really all that much in the way of seating, but once the chessboard had been moved they could set their cups on the end table-currently, therefore, the coffee table-and his two visitors held their bowls on their laps as they sat together on the couch.
The oatmeal wasn’t as fancy as the meals usually prepared for Charles, and the tiny sprinkle of sugar-just barely enough to remind him of what it could taste like if it was sweet-confirmed his suspicions that he ate better than nearly everyone else even within the mansion. He did not, however, mention this to his guests, preferring their company to luxury.
Beast peered around Charles’ rooms incredulously. “What do you do with all this space?”
“Not much,” Charles admitted. “What’s the news?”
“Some idiot’s decided to start a new continent in the center of the Atlantic, apparently,” Beast explained. “Which is excellent evidence for sea-floor spreading, but the atmosphere can’t take the additional volcanism and there’s no way the coasts can be evacuated in time to escape all the misplaced seawater.”
“Magneto’s mobilized the Brotherhood to prevent what damage they can,” Raven continued, defensiveness creeping into her voice; Charles noticed that the pair, while they sat near each other, were not quite as close as he would have expected had their past romance found its conclusion in the mansion. “He thinks it was the same mutant responsible for the Traps; he’s gone to try and stop her before she can do any more damage.”
“You say that as if Magneto didn’t ask for her help in the first place,” Beast scoffed. “If he’d consulted a geologist before he asked someone punch a hole through the crust, he’d have known it was a terrible idea.”
Raven turned her yellow-speckled gaze on Beast, and remarked coolly, “I’m sure he would have deferred to your expertise had you been present.”
Charles refrained from rolling his eyes, concentrated, and propped his heels, one after the other, up onto the table, crossing them with a minimum of fumbling. It had the desired effect, and both Beast and Raven immediately ceased their bickering to exclaim over his progress.
xxx.
Charles had thought it would be a relief not to see Erik for days, but really it only gave him less to do than he’d had before, as Raven could only visit so often and Beast, evidently, was not allowed unescorted into the wing where Charles’ rooms were located. This would not have been so much of a problem except that the leonine scientist had to deal with renewed urgency in the search for a miracle technology to clear the skies, so his schedule rarely overlapped with Raven’s.
Beast sent him notes whenever he had a moment, carried by Raven or Beth or on occasion helmeted people Charles’ didn’t know, and he read them eagerly despite the fact that they were no real substitute to talking with the man. Worse, they often referenced papers Beast had apparently sent but which had not reached him, leaving Charles burning with unsatisfied curiosity. After informing Beast of their absence, the scientist switched to mentioning his research with a frustrating vagueness.
More than he wanted to hear about science, however, Charles wanted to continue his prior conversation with Beast and decide what to do about Erik. Despite everything he’d done, Charles certainly didn’t want to see the ruler of the mutant regime dead, but surely the world would be a better place without Erik directing of it. Charles did not want to think about who the natural choice for world dominance would be after that.
Still, there remained the question of how; Charles didn’t have his own drinks cabinet, so he couldn’t offer Erik a drugged glass. Using a syringe to sedate him was impossible, as they had no metal-less needles and making one would look more than merely suspicious. The idea that Charles might overwhelm him by brute force was laughable, and he’d dismissed simply reaching for the helmet as being too obvious. Although…
This was the reason he needed someone else to talk to about it, and right then, when Erik was gone, would have been perfect except that he never got to see Beast without Raven around, if at all. Charles still loved Raven, of course, but there was no denying that she wouldn’t be pleased with that subject of conversation. She believed in the mutant utopia, even if neither of her companions did.
With little else to do, Charles finished the rest of the book Erik had begun reading to him. It took about two hours, and he found himself unable to hear the words in anything other than Erik’s smooth voice. Charles wondered what Erik might have said about the ending; something about humanity being like the wolves circling in on a lone, defenseless mutant revolutionary, probably; once a constant threat, now hunted and poisoned almost to vanishing. While Charles was still sure that Erik had read it before-the book was simply too Erik for him to have not-the other man had put on a good show of making remarks about the writing as if it were new to him.
After Charles closed the book, he sat for a while tapping the binding against his knee. The repetitive movement was a lot more soothing now that he could actually feel it, and necessary because the worse part was not the boredom-it was that Charles had begun to worry, and of all the people he could have been worrying about, the man responsible for placing everybody’s lives at risk in the first place didn’t seem to be a productive outlet for concern.
Still… Still, there was that small, unaccounted-for kindness of the aspirin bottle, and the way his leg muscles were no longer driving him, metaphorically of course, up the wall. Charles wanted to think it had been Beth, but she never came into his room that early and he could easily think of one person who had, and had also known about his request.
Perhaps there was still good in Erik after all.
So, as the days passed-did “a few” mean two or three days?-Charles attempted to occupy himself as much as he was able, and tried to spend as little of that time as possible thinking about what would happen if Erik was killed while Charles was trapped in a manor full of warlike mutants immune to his telepathy. He definitely didn’t consider how he, himself, would feel about Erik’s potential death somewhere out in the Atlantic.
Instead he wrote a list of ways to save the world-there was only one item, a large black ?-and jotted down notes to Beast. Charles also, once, because he wanted to try it, pulled himself up using the bar next to his bed and, leaning a little against the mattress and with most of his weight supported by his arms, stood. His legs cramped up almost immediately and it was only a couple seconds before his knees began to shake out from his control, but Charles was grinning too widely to care.
xxxi.
Charles managed to get all the way across the sitting room before he realized he wasn’t alone; Erik was sprawled over the couch, looking very much like he had decided to simply lie wherever he fell. He was dressed all in black, in a turtleneck for the first time that Charles had seen since… Well, for a very long time, and the only parts of him that stood out against the dark leather of the couch were his hands and the narrow shape of his face beneath the helmet.
“Erik,” Charles managed, after a moment of breathless shock. “I didn’t realize you had returned.”
“I’ve been back for a couple hours,” he replied, so softly that Charles had to move closer in order to understand him. As he did, he saw that the other man’s eyes were shadowed, and Erik’s face seemed in places to be a bit darker than accounted for by the helmet. “It’s an unholy commotion back by my rooms.”
Still edging forward cautiously, Charles asked, “How did it go? You went to stop that mutant who manipulates volcanism, right?”
Erik let his head drop back onto the cushions and exhaled heavily. “Well enough; at least the new air filters stand up to field testing.” He gestured carelessly for Charles to bring himself next to Erik, into the space where the end table had not yet been replaced.
Supposing he was lucky Erik didn’t simply pull the chair wherever he wanted with his powers, Charles wheeled over, backing himself in at an angle so that he could easily look over at the other man. His brakes levered down before he could reach for them, so instead Charles laced his fingers together in his lap. From up close, the little cuts and bruises on Erik’s skin were obvious.
Erik watched him from beyond the line of his helmet, unmoving, before remarking, finally, “It must be disturbing, not being able to sense when someone’s in the room with you.”
Charles tensed, searching Erik’s tone for ulterior motive before deciding, reluctantly, that there probably wasn’t one. But how to answer? There are no words, he wanted to say, but settled for “It is.”
Lips tightening almost imperceptibly, Erik gave a tiny nod. “Some day, maybe,” he promised vaguely. Something unfamiliar glinted in his eyes, but Charles didn’t trust himself not to interpret emotions that weren’t there.
“Did you kill her?” he asked instead, voice hard. Charles’ insides twisted a little; he wasn’t sure which answer he wanted.
Erik fell into deliberate silence before reaching for Charles’ hair with one hand. “You need a hair cut,” he observed, curling Charles’ increasingly whimsical fringe around his finger.
The telepath pulled his hair out of Erik’s grasp with a disinterested twist of his head and pinned the other man with his regard. “Well?”
Erik sighed and lowered his hand back to his knee. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t been one of the answers Charles had prepared himself for; for some reason, he had been certain that Erik would simply be able to stride out into battle and surmount whatever difficulties he found there. That he hadn’t was somehow worse than any of the bloody scenarios Charles had been able to manufacture.
“Why did you come to my rooms?” Charles inquired, and it was almost an accusation.
The corner of Erik’s mouth lifted. “Charles,” he chided gently, as if that was the only response he needed to give.
A tight frown on his face, Charles leaned over, his hand extended; Erik recoiled and seemed about to swat Charles away, but froze with his elbow raised and allowed the telepath to splay his fingers over the fabric of the turtleneck. Charles felt the smooth slide of cloth over bandages. “Dammit, Erik,” he muttered.
Erik’s hand covered his own and lifted it away, a wry smile on his face. He set their hands down on the couch’s arm rest and kept them twined there. “I don’t think I can be blamed for this one.”
Charles dropped his eyes from Erik’s face to their hands; Erik’s thumb lay light on the inside of his wrist and there was a pulse there, fluttery and fast. He couldn’t be entirely sure whether it belonged to himself or Erik, because it didn’t feel like the sort of rhythm his heart would beat, but if that was the case then it seemed even less like anything Erik might have in his chest.
Charles experienced a sort of vertigo, as if he were looking at something that might have been, had circumstances been different: a juxtaposition of reality and possibility. Here, Erik and Charles manipulated and feared each other; there, they held hands and enjoyed the warmth of each other’s company, exchanging pointless banter. For a moment he could see both; could feel what it would be like if he could relax in Erik’s presence even while he rejected the very idea as absurd. It was Schrödinger’s domesticity, perhaps, and Charles was afraid to examine it too closely because if he did, it might all fall apart and he’d be trapped with a truth he didn’t like.
But of course, poor Erwin had never actually experimented on cats, and so it was that the only real feeling that mattered to Charles at that moment was the pain of knowing that his life for the time being wasn’t his, no matter how tempting it might be to pretend otherwise. Charles pulled his hand away; Erik’s grip squeezed tighter for a brief instant and then he was freed.
Erik looked away, at the misplaced end table. “I had Ms. Frost check everyone in the lab for telepathic manipulation,” he said finally, his voice strangely flat.
Charles felt his breath stumble in his throat. “Oh?” It had been a test. Of course it had been a test.
Erik smiled. “She didn’t find anything. I think perhaps you’re ready to start attending Brotherhood meetings again, only-” he brushed his fingers against Charles’ temple, a casual gesture that nonetheless made the telepath shiver- “this time, without the blindfold.”
Charles glanced up, quick and suspecting. “You’re sure?”
The other man’s fingers returned to Charles’ head to weave through his hair, cradling the curve of his skull. “Of course,” Erik assured him, a scabbed-over cut on his face dimpling with the gentle curve of his lips.
Charles met his eyes and slowly raised his hand to Erik’s, holding it in place. He trusts you more than almost anyone else, Beast repeated in his mind. Charles was sure that Erik knew better than to accept Emma Frost’s findings as truth; was certain that Erik suspected, on some level at least, that Charles might be capable of hiding something even from another telepath. Still, for whatever reason… For whatever reason, Erik seemed willing to accept that possibility, for now, and maybe even to dismiss it.
Somehow, this did not bring him any comfort.
xxxii.
All of Charles’ tenuous optimism from the previous night suddenly seemed foolishly misplaced.
“You said I wouldn’t be restrained this time,” he protested, his fingers drifting unconsciously to touch the top button of his shirt, reaching for something that wasn’t yet there.
“I said that your powers wouldn’t be restrained,” Erik corrected. “Besides, Charles, this is more symbolic than practical.”
Charles eyed the fluid drape of gold lying over Erik’s fingers; he could certainly admit that it was symbolic, yes, but the unavoidable comparison wasn’t to anything pleasant. In fact, the word that sprang to mind was collar, although offered from anyone else it would only be a rather gaudy necklace.
With a flick of his wrist, Erik sent the chain to hover expectantly near Charles’ hand, and the telepath plucked it from the air reluctantly; it went limp in his grasp, freed of the force that had galvanized it moments before. Charles held it as he would a snake, without really closing his grasp over the chain; allowing it to rest undisturbed over his fingers.
“No matching earrings, Erik?” Charles asked, arching an eyebrow. He made no move to put it on.
A crease formed on Erik’s forehead; then he smiled. “I’m not going to strangle you with it, Charles.” Charles, however, could remember perfectly well that Erik had strangled people with less, so he arched his eyebrow further and stared at Erik until the other man glanced away. “All right, yes, it is a precaution-but only a precaution. I don’t intend to use my powers against you, and I don’t expect that you’ll make it necessary. This is, however, the only way you’re getting into that room with your telepathy unobstructed.”
Charles turned the chain over in his hands; the links were flattened and, while not very wide, still quite a bit larger than he deemed appropriate for a man to wear. Then again, Erik was wearing a cape and a magenta-no, be polite, maroon-helmet while Charles was otherwise dressed impeccably in a gray suit, so at least he could rest assured that he wouldn’t be the silliest-looking person there. That wasn’t Charles’ biggest concern, of course, but then it wasn’t as if he could complain about dignity and propriety now, or as if there weren’t a million other ways Erik could hurt him if he really wanted to.
Still, it galled a little to unclasp the chain and wrap it around his neck, especially when he couldn’t get it put back together again and he had to twist it around to see what he was doing. This, Charles thought as he fumbled with too-short fingernails, was exactly the sort of thing Erik could have done for him without even trying, except that the other man wasn’t even watching anymore; was instead looking through papers.
Finally, Charles found himself wearing a necklace, and with a little grimace of distaste he dropped it safely beneath his shirt. As luck would have it, though, Erik chose that moment to return his attention to Charles.
“No,” Erik said, raising his hand; the chain had no sooner touched Charles’ chest before it was slithering up again, cold and ticklish against his skin. “It needs to be visible.” With a few deft twitches, the metal slipped under Charles’ shirt collar; tucking his chin down, the telepath observed that it made a bright but unobtrusive U-shape against the white of his shirt-unobtrusive, but still in his opinion a bit tawdry.
Charles looked up at Erik to remark something to that effect, but his mouth froze when he saw that the other man’s eyes were still fixed on the gold, dark and intent, lips in a grim line of self-restraint and-Oh, Charles realized, swallowing saliva that wasn’t there, he likes the control.
Erik’s gaze followed the bob of his throat, traced the line of Charles’ jaw, and met the geneticist’s stare. Charles wanted to say something witty, or anything at all really, but in the face of Erik’s unshielded want and with metal mere inches from his throat, he felt suddenly not at all like a force to be reckoned with and instead turned to checking that his handkerchief was folded correctly in his breast pocket. It was just barely distracting enough that he managed to ask, “Now are we ready?”
He saw Erik nod, and this time when he looked up Erik’s eyes were cool and remote; professional.
xxxiii.
The conference room was on the first floor, and as the stairs drifted by under Charles he thought that, if he’d been more of a gambling person, he could probably manage to escape down them some night, using his improved mobility to lower himself from step to step. From there, he might be able to enlist someone without a helmet to help him out of the mansion, and possibly even off the grounds entirely.
Of course, the problem lay in the fact that this was a well-traveled stairway and, even if he didn’t meet someone wearing a helmet on the way out, the empty chair at the top of the stairs would certainly betray his activities.
Still, it was interesting to see the main part of the mansion again, now that Charles had something to compare it to; he had previously considered the décor to be barren, but now Charles recognized it as Erik’s unique style of utilitarianism: spare, but elegant. The granite floors were hard and resilient, and the trim looked to be the sort of wood that didn’t burn or splinter easily. Similarly, there were no convenient alcoves or protuberances of furniture for an invading enemy to hide behind, or heavy objects that might be used as weapons; nor were there priceless artifacts for Erik’s own people to worry about destroying.
Charles liked being among people again; while everyone in the hall gave them a wide berth and averted their eyes politely, he was nonetheless thrilled to find that he recognized many of them from his window, more tired and work-worn from up close. Even though he could not, for the most part, read any of their minds, he still felt as if he knew them and could conceivably be going to the same places they were, despite the relentlessly obedient glide of his chair beneath Erik’s power.
He was surprised, almost, to realize that he was in a good mood; he was seeing new places again, seeing new people, and while it was an illusory, cheap happiness, it was still more than he’d had before and Charles treasured it for the time being. He didn’t even protest when Erik leaned down to instruct him, in hushed tones, to call him Magneto in front of his followers.
This pleasant frame of mind made his entrance into the conference room a jarring shock. He had a moment to register nearly two dozen mutants seated at a long, wide table, then they saw him-shockfearangerbetrayal-and Charles had to fight not to cover his head with his hands, not to gasp, not to show any reaction because he was Charles Xavier and everyone here knew it, and knew that he knew it.
“What is the meaning of this, Magneto?” one Brotherhood mutant growled, pushing up out of his chair with a harsh screech of metal on stone. He was the mutant who had slighted Charles at his last attendance, now bristling with eerily silent feelers of electricity, eager for a target. Charles knew now that he went by the remarkably humble codename of Zeus. “Have you gone insane, bringing that-that telepath in here?”
One of the problems with being in a wheelchair was that it was difficult for Charles to look at people standing next to him without appearing unsubtle and overly curious, but he could hear Erik’s supreme disdain through his voice.
“This telepath,” Erik began, placing a hand on the back of Charles’ chair, “is our guest, and has agreed to observe only, for now. Please treat him accordingly.”
“And you trust him?” Zeus replied, aghast. The metal of his recently vacated chair popped and sparked as the electricity found it. “You trust this sympathizer not to wipe our minds and plant ideas in our heads?”
Before Erik could respond, Charles spoke. “I’ve made concessions in order to be here today,” he explained, ostensibly to Zeus but for the rest of the room’s occupants as well. Charles reached up to his shirt collar and plucked at the gold links. “As you can see, I have extended some trust of my own as well. You’re quite safe.”
The angry mutant glowered, but the tendrils of energy curling along his skin shrank and receded into an uneasy flicker of light darting between the buckles of his leather jacket. Another Brotherhood member-one of those who gave lie to the “brother”-draped her arm over the back of her chair and remarked, dryly, “Zee, honey, relax. If you have an intelligent thought, we’ll all know it isn’t yours.”
She cackled delightedly as Zeus’ flare of electricity caught his own pen on the table, the ink inside boiling and bursting out onto the wood. She can perceive and manipulate low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, Charles observed, intrigued. She referred to herself as Infrared despite-ironically, Charles thought-working primary with radio wave surveillance.
“If you have all reassured yourselves of my competence, I do believe we had a meeting planned for today,” Erik stated, an edge of irritation to his voice. It was a testament to how seriously the assembled mutants took the implied threat that they all immediately quieted and settled back down into their chairs.
Erik nodded once, satisfied, and strode toward the head of the table where a single, somewhat more ornate chair overlooked the assembled mutants. Without raising his hand past his waist, he gestured for Charles to follow; surprised that his chair didn’t leap to Erik’s bidding, Charles hesitated before moving to a spot near the Brotherhood leader’s side, an impersonal distance between them.
There, sitting in clear view of the world’s ruling mutants, Charles felt exposed, but not embarrassed; he might have, with the necklace-collar-around his neck, but by speaking up before Erik he had made it a point of pride rather than shame. Charles caught a quick glance from that other man; Erik’s eyes darted down to the chain before meeting his own, glinting with subtle amusement. Charles couldn’t resist the triumphant smirk he felt twitch onto his face.
Despite his determination to remain aloof, Charles found himself fascinated by the proceedings; he had spent the previous meeting confused and off-balanced, certain that he was missing undercurrents and meanings even beyond the jargon-like he’d been looking into a pond, knowing that there was life beneath the water, but only capable of seeing glimpses through the reflections at the surface.
Now he could see all of it, could perceive all the little petty rivalries and one-upsmanship and maneuvering, and while it wasn’t exactly heartening, it did add a new dimension to what was an otherwise boring meeting.
“Skink, tell me about the preventative measures along the coasts,” Erik ordered, and a dark mutant partially-covered with patches of glossy black scales leaned forward, one human and one clawed hand compulsively straightening the papers before him.
“As we all know, the mutant workforce is limited to paid volunteers and criminals, and while we attempt to divide useful abilities equally between companies…” Skink rasped, the pointed tips of his tongue darting nervously during pauses.
“Yes, I know you have bad news, or we wouldn’t be here today.” Erik picked out an incriminating report from those arrayed before him and displayed it to the mutant briefly. “Where were we hit hardest?”
Skink looked down, through a miniscule pair of reading glasses, and began, “Parts of West Africa and Morocco, of course, have almost no Brotherhood presence or warning system and were very badly affected. Local efforts prevented a significant amount of damage on the Canary Islands…” and so on, through Portugal (“bad”) back down to South America (“heavy damages”), through to the West Indies (“very bad”) and along the coastal United States (“not good”).
New York City, apparently, had been neglected as “no one’s supposed to be living there anyway,” and the less populous regions of Maine and Nova Scotia had also been largely overlooked. There was no estimated death toll because there was no way of knowing who had lived in any of those regions in the first place, or of just how much damage the relative scale of bad-to-not-good entailed.
Erik didn’t sigh, but he looked as if, had there been fewer people watching him, he might have liked to. “Restoration measures?”
Skink licked his lips. “Slow. We’re getting overwhelming reports of destruction from all along the coastlines. Contaminated water, spoiled food, flooded habitation… We simply don’t have the ability to relieve all of that. I recommend full evacuation from coastal city centers while repairs are made.”
“And how long will repairs take?”
The scaly Brotherhood officer looked around, waiting for someone else to reply; eventually, there was some unenthusiastic hemming and hawing from a variety of mutants farther down the arms of the table, all of them reluctantly in charge of roads or agriculture or water. None of them could say for sure when they could get anything done, but they all admitted a readiness to use emergency funding in order to get work started quickly-although in some of those instances, Charles knew, little of that emergency funding remained, and could perhaps be viewed in more tangible form at their places of residence.
Eventually talk turned to where refugees would go if they were evacuated, and the consensus seemed to be that the closest viable alternatives for most of the major North American and Portuguese cities were the human shanty towns located miles inland, displaced during the first few years of the war.
“They’re not just going to let a bunch of us walk in there and take over their shacks, or eat their food,” Zeus scoffed.
Skink peered at him severely over his spectacles. “In terms of convenience, it’s our best solution. Regulation mandates that all authorized human settlements are easily accessible by road, and certain water availability guidelines must be met in order to qualify for Brotherhood protection and jobs.”
“I repeat,” Zeus began, “they’re not going to let our people live with them. Those ‘towns,’ if you can even call them that, are hotbeds of resistance. You’re asking for trouble if you want to move mutants into those places.”
“What’s your solution?” Erik inquired, leaning on one arm of his chair, regarding Zeus with a single-mindedness that was almost a challenge.
“Not so different,” he replied, raising a hand to scratch absently beneath his jacket with gnarled fingernails. “I say if it’s going to turn to fighting-which it will-we strike first. Let the humans take whatever they can carry and go back to their old cities. Maybe they’ll even patch up the places for us, save some effort on our part.”
The scaled mutant frowned, and commented, “That wouldn’t happen. There’s a reason we’re discussing evacuation, and that’s because the coast isn’t just unpleasant: it’s unlivable. Anyone we send there to fend for themselves will almost certainly die, and then we’ll have to clean up their bodies, too.”
“And the problem with that is…?” Zeus asked, raising a sloppy eyebrow at Skink.
“Our first priority is mutant life,” Erik reminded them, straightening in his chair. “It’s our obligation to save our own kind first, where possible.”
Charles darted an alarmed look over at the Brotherhood leader, an irrational flash of betrayal jolting through his chest; of course, he hadn’t forgotten what Erik had done in the past, but this was almost too unreal, too perfectly insidious. “Erik, I’m afraid I must interrupt-”
Erik twisted to glare at Charles, and the words faltered in his throat at the sharpness of Erik’s eyes. “Charles,” he drawled pointedly, “that’s not the name you use at this table.”
Sensing that there wasn’t a person in the room looking anywhere else but at him, Charles froze for a moment, then grinned hesitantly and laughed, a little. “Don’t be silly, Erik, I-”
The movement at his throat was unexpected-a sudden invasive pressure to either side of Charles’ neck and while it didn’t hurt, while he could still breath, he felt his pulse strong and frantic beneath the metal as his vision narrowed to black and oh, carotid arteries, blood flow to the…
…Brain. Charles’ face pressed into the table. He didn’t remember falling, but judging by the way the wood hadn’t yet warmed to his cheek, it must not have been long ago. Erik’s hand gripped the back of his neck, pinning Charles down, and the shock of the other Brotherhood members permeated the air. Cautiously, he sought out the memory of his unconsciousness, and found it easily; not long ago at all, then. He’d only passed out for a second.
Charles had fallen-or been guided-so that he could see Erik, who leaned far over in his chair, almost lying on the table in order to get as close to Charles as he could without getting up. Rather than look absurd, he more closely resembled some sort of large, leonine cat, coiled over its prey.
Erik’s face pressed near, alarmingly feral; Charles couldn’t breathe and it had nothing to do with the chain around his neck. “Here,” he hissed, “you call me Magneto. Do you understand?” His fingers jabbed painfully under Charles’ skull to emphasize his question.
The telepath winced and attempted, more reflexively than purposefully, to sit up, to no avail. Dimly, he realized that this little exchange had probably rendered his previous bid for respect among the Brotherhood members useless. “Perfectly,” Charles grunted, and Erik’s grasp loosened but didn’t ease. “My mistake; won’t do it again-I just thought you should know: killing off the humans is a bad idea.”
Erik seemed interested enough to stop digging his fingers into Charles’ neck, but he kept his hand in place, effortlessly preventing Charles from righting himself. “I feel certain that I’ve heard those words from you before, old friend. Did you think interrupting me to say it again would make a difference?”
Charles tried to moisten his lips without also licking the table. “Well, no, I mean, that too, but now-killing the humans would be bad for you-us-this time, as well.”
Studying Charles’ face silently, Erik’s eyes narrowed in consideration; then, finally, he released the telepath and settled casually back into his chair. “Explain.”
Straightening, Charles brought his hands up to his shirt collar, which had been popped up by the chain’s movements, and folded it back down again, tucking the edges under his suit coat with hands that weren’t quite shaking. He resisted the urge to rub his neck, but he did brush the hair out of his eyes. Taking the time to re-order his appearance, Charles thought, would make it seem more like he had a choice in his actions.
Eventually Charles cleared his throat and began, “You can’t kill the humans because you need their genetic material.”
There were muffled chuckles from the length of the table. Infrared, who had been silent through the rest of the meeting, covered her mouth with her hand and whispered to her neighbor, “‘Human-lover’ in word and deed, apparently; this’ll be good.”
Charles glanced around the table, allowing his exasperation to show, before again meeting Erik’s gaze, continuing, “There are, what, a little more than three million mutants living in the United States alone? More in Europe, more in Asia; a large potential population in Africa… Despite everything, there are still quite a lot of us in the world.”
Erik dipped his chin in a short nod, his eyebrows furrowing at Charles’ seemingly self-defeating argument.
“All right, now tell me, how many functioning airports do we have? How many airplanes? How many cars, or fuel to power any of our vehicles?” Charles asked, lacing his fingers together on the table. He paused, to make his point. “Factor that in with the fact that each of the previously highly-developed continents have areas of impassible destruction, and that leaves us with small, isolated pockets of civilization, cut off from transportation and migration.”
“Are you ever going to have a point?” Zeus asked, affecting a mocking awe. Erik silenced him with a short movement of his hand without turning his attention from Charles.
The geneticist took a deep breath, scanned the thoughts of his audience, and decided he might as well skip to the end of his lecture. “My point is that we’re vulnerable to genetic drift. If not for the radiation, this wouldn’t be a problem, but because of increased mutation rates and small population size, harmful mutations-mutations that hurt the people born with them, or worse, those around them-will spread throughout these isolated areas within a few generations, no matter how quickly you manage to rebuild.
“Unless we bolster our numbers by accepting humans back into our society, we’ll be extinct within four generations. Maybe less,” Charles concluded.
The room was silent, except for someone’s soft curse.
Erik frowned, scrutinizing Charles’ expression. “Are you telling the truth?” he asked.
“Magneto,” Charles replied, the name strange and awkward on his tongue, “this isn’t anything you haven’t heard at one of these meetings before. Beast gave you a similar report two months ago.”
Erik gave Charles one last long look before turning back to the table, evidently finished with the conversation. “We’ll instruct refugees to travel to nearby human settlements,” he asserted. “And… Extend offers of compensation to the humans, as well as our appreciation for their assistance, in advance.”
Chapter Five
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairings: Charles/Erik
Genre: drama, angst, au, dystopia, future!fic
Rating: R
Word Count: 6400/?
Warnings: dubcon, emotional manipulation
Summary: Based on this 1stclass_kink prompt (and originally posted there).
"Erik has succeeded in taking over the world, but mutant utopia has yet to materialize. Charles is his reluctant companion."
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23
xxviii.
When Charles dreamed, it rarely had to do with his own life. Sometimes they were fabrications: glimpses into strange fantasies or horrors. At others, they were patches of other people’s lives.
He wasn’t sure which this one was.
The forest was deadly-cursed, maybe, or spoiled with radiation, or contagion-and below, he knew, there were monsters, creations and creators of their habitat. He (was he male in the dream?) didn’t know what they looked like; maybe they were people, or beasts, or spirits, or all three. It didn’t matter because he did know what would happen if he was caught.
This didn’t mean that Charles was frightened. Nervous, certainly, but not terrified; Charles could climb, could escape high above the danger. If he wished to, he could become an observer; a strange sort of wildlife ecologist.
Unfortunately, he had taken a fall, and every moment spent on the ground was like a dinner bell, loud in the gray calm. He could feel them out there, drawing closer, but every tree he tried to climb was smooth and slippery and-oh, this one had branches.
He was saved; he was up in the canopy and the shadows below milled with frustrated shapes (strange to have an ecology consisting entirely of predators, he thought). Then the wind began to gust, causing his perch to sway and buck, and Charles felt himself begin to slip-
Charles opened his eyes, confused to find that he was still shaking; a gentle rocking back-and-forth movement that he thought was in his mind until he heard the rattling. The window across the room was dark.
Oh, he thought, eyelids drifting closed. It’s an earthquake. This is Canada...
Moments later, Charles saw that there was faint gray light scattering in through the window. A dark shape loomed over him, and there was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. His own small earthquake.
Wait. Not Canada.
“Erik?” he mumbled, blinking groggily. It was hard to tell shapes from people when he couldn’t sense their thoughts. Also when he couldn’t really see them.
“Charles,” a voice that certainly sounded like Erik replied. “I have to leave for a few days. Behave while I’m gone.”
“What?” the telepath asked, dreadfully confused. Remaining conscious was difficult. “Where’re you going?”
“Mystique will explain in the morning,” Erik told him softly. “Go back to sleep.”
“Oh,” Charles sighed. He closed his eyes, felt Erik’s nose cold on his cheek followed by warm lips; he grumbled and turned onto his side, burying his head into the pillow.
Then Charles sat straight up in bed, looking around the room frantically; he could see clearly, in the rich morning sunlight, that nothing was out of place.
Nothing was out of place, but there was a small white bottle of aspirin on his nightstand.
xxix.
Raven surprised him by bringing Beast along with her to have breakfast in Charles’ rooms. He didn’t exactly have a table where they could all sit and eat, or really all that much in the way of seating, but once the chessboard had been moved they could set their cups on the end table-currently, therefore, the coffee table-and his two visitors held their bowls on their laps as they sat together on the couch.
The oatmeal wasn’t as fancy as the meals usually prepared for Charles, and the tiny sprinkle of sugar-just barely enough to remind him of what it could taste like if it was sweet-confirmed his suspicions that he ate better than nearly everyone else even within the mansion. He did not, however, mention this to his guests, preferring their company to luxury.
Beast peered around Charles’ rooms incredulously. “What do you do with all this space?”
“Not much,” Charles admitted. “What’s the news?”
“Some idiot’s decided to start a new continent in the center of the Atlantic, apparently,” Beast explained. “Which is excellent evidence for sea-floor spreading, but the atmosphere can’t take the additional volcanism and there’s no way the coasts can be evacuated in time to escape all the misplaced seawater.”
“Magneto’s mobilized the Brotherhood to prevent what damage they can,” Raven continued, defensiveness creeping into her voice; Charles noticed that the pair, while they sat near each other, were not quite as close as he would have expected had their past romance found its conclusion in the mansion. “He thinks it was the same mutant responsible for the Traps; he’s gone to try and stop her before she can do any more damage.”
“You say that as if Magneto didn’t ask for her help in the first place,” Beast scoffed. “If he’d consulted a geologist before he asked someone punch a hole through the crust, he’d have known it was a terrible idea.”
Raven turned her yellow-speckled gaze on Beast, and remarked coolly, “I’m sure he would have deferred to your expertise had you been present.”
Charles refrained from rolling his eyes, concentrated, and propped his heels, one after the other, up onto the table, crossing them with a minimum of fumbling. It had the desired effect, and both Beast and Raven immediately ceased their bickering to exclaim over his progress.
xxx.
Charles had thought it would be a relief not to see Erik for days, but really it only gave him less to do than he’d had before, as Raven could only visit so often and Beast, evidently, was not allowed unescorted into the wing where Charles’ rooms were located. This would not have been so much of a problem except that the leonine scientist had to deal with renewed urgency in the search for a miracle technology to clear the skies, so his schedule rarely overlapped with Raven’s.
Beast sent him notes whenever he had a moment, carried by Raven or Beth or on occasion helmeted people Charles’ didn’t know, and he read them eagerly despite the fact that they were no real substitute to talking with the man. Worse, they often referenced papers Beast had apparently sent but which had not reached him, leaving Charles burning with unsatisfied curiosity. After informing Beast of their absence, the scientist switched to mentioning his research with a frustrating vagueness.
More than he wanted to hear about science, however, Charles wanted to continue his prior conversation with Beast and decide what to do about Erik. Despite everything he’d done, Charles certainly didn’t want to see the ruler of the mutant regime dead, but surely the world would be a better place without Erik directing of it. Charles did not want to think about who the natural choice for world dominance would be after that.
Still, there remained the question of how; Charles didn’t have his own drinks cabinet, so he couldn’t offer Erik a drugged glass. Using a syringe to sedate him was impossible, as they had no metal-less needles and making one would look more than merely suspicious. The idea that Charles might overwhelm him by brute force was laughable, and he’d dismissed simply reaching for the helmet as being too obvious. Although…
This was the reason he needed someone else to talk to about it, and right then, when Erik was gone, would have been perfect except that he never got to see Beast without Raven around, if at all. Charles still loved Raven, of course, but there was no denying that she wouldn’t be pleased with that subject of conversation. She believed in the mutant utopia, even if neither of her companions did.
With little else to do, Charles finished the rest of the book Erik had begun reading to him. It took about two hours, and he found himself unable to hear the words in anything other than Erik’s smooth voice. Charles wondered what Erik might have said about the ending; something about humanity being like the wolves circling in on a lone, defenseless mutant revolutionary, probably; once a constant threat, now hunted and poisoned almost to vanishing. While Charles was still sure that Erik had read it before-the book was simply too Erik for him to have not-the other man had put on a good show of making remarks about the writing as if it were new to him.
After Charles closed the book, he sat for a while tapping the binding against his knee. The repetitive movement was a lot more soothing now that he could actually feel it, and necessary because the worse part was not the boredom-it was that Charles had begun to worry, and of all the people he could have been worrying about, the man responsible for placing everybody’s lives at risk in the first place didn’t seem to be a productive outlet for concern.
Still… Still, there was that small, unaccounted-for kindness of the aspirin bottle, and the way his leg muscles were no longer driving him, metaphorically of course, up the wall. Charles wanted to think it had been Beth, but she never came into his room that early and he could easily think of one person who had, and had also known about his request.
Perhaps there was still good in Erik after all.
So, as the days passed-did “a few” mean two or three days?-Charles attempted to occupy himself as much as he was able, and tried to spend as little of that time as possible thinking about what would happen if Erik was killed while Charles was trapped in a manor full of warlike mutants immune to his telepathy. He definitely didn’t consider how he, himself, would feel about Erik’s potential death somewhere out in the Atlantic.
Instead he wrote a list of ways to save the world-there was only one item, a large black ?-and jotted down notes to Beast. Charles also, once, because he wanted to try it, pulled himself up using the bar next to his bed and, leaning a little against the mattress and with most of his weight supported by his arms, stood. His legs cramped up almost immediately and it was only a couple seconds before his knees began to shake out from his control, but Charles was grinning too widely to care.
xxxi.
Charles managed to get all the way across the sitting room before he realized he wasn’t alone; Erik was sprawled over the couch, looking very much like he had decided to simply lie wherever he fell. He was dressed all in black, in a turtleneck for the first time that Charles had seen since… Well, for a very long time, and the only parts of him that stood out against the dark leather of the couch were his hands and the narrow shape of his face beneath the helmet.
“Erik,” Charles managed, after a moment of breathless shock. “I didn’t realize you had returned.”
“I’ve been back for a couple hours,” he replied, so softly that Charles had to move closer in order to understand him. As he did, he saw that the other man’s eyes were shadowed, and Erik’s face seemed in places to be a bit darker than accounted for by the helmet. “It’s an unholy commotion back by my rooms.”
Still edging forward cautiously, Charles asked, “How did it go? You went to stop that mutant who manipulates volcanism, right?”
Erik let his head drop back onto the cushions and exhaled heavily. “Well enough; at least the new air filters stand up to field testing.” He gestured carelessly for Charles to bring himself next to Erik, into the space where the end table had not yet been replaced.
Supposing he was lucky Erik didn’t simply pull the chair wherever he wanted with his powers, Charles wheeled over, backing himself in at an angle so that he could easily look over at the other man. His brakes levered down before he could reach for them, so instead Charles laced his fingers together in his lap. From up close, the little cuts and bruises on Erik’s skin were obvious.
Erik watched him from beyond the line of his helmet, unmoving, before remarking, finally, “It must be disturbing, not being able to sense when someone’s in the room with you.”
Charles tensed, searching Erik’s tone for ulterior motive before deciding, reluctantly, that there probably wasn’t one. But how to answer? There are no words, he wanted to say, but settled for “It is.”
Lips tightening almost imperceptibly, Erik gave a tiny nod. “Some day, maybe,” he promised vaguely. Something unfamiliar glinted in his eyes, but Charles didn’t trust himself not to interpret emotions that weren’t there.
“Did you kill her?” he asked instead, voice hard. Charles’ insides twisted a little; he wasn’t sure which answer he wanted.
Erik fell into deliberate silence before reaching for Charles’ hair with one hand. “You need a hair cut,” he observed, curling Charles’ increasingly whimsical fringe around his finger.
The telepath pulled his hair out of Erik’s grasp with a disinterested twist of his head and pinned the other man with his regard. “Well?”
Erik sighed and lowered his hand back to his knee. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t been one of the answers Charles had prepared himself for; for some reason, he had been certain that Erik would simply be able to stride out into battle and surmount whatever difficulties he found there. That he hadn’t was somehow worse than any of the bloody scenarios Charles had been able to manufacture.
“Why did you come to my rooms?” Charles inquired, and it was almost an accusation.
The corner of Erik’s mouth lifted. “Charles,” he chided gently, as if that was the only response he needed to give.
A tight frown on his face, Charles leaned over, his hand extended; Erik recoiled and seemed about to swat Charles away, but froze with his elbow raised and allowed the telepath to splay his fingers over the fabric of the turtleneck. Charles felt the smooth slide of cloth over bandages. “Dammit, Erik,” he muttered.
Erik’s hand covered his own and lifted it away, a wry smile on his face. He set their hands down on the couch’s arm rest and kept them twined there. “I don’t think I can be blamed for this one.”
Charles dropped his eyes from Erik’s face to their hands; Erik’s thumb lay light on the inside of his wrist and there was a pulse there, fluttery and fast. He couldn’t be entirely sure whether it belonged to himself or Erik, because it didn’t feel like the sort of rhythm his heart would beat, but if that was the case then it seemed even less like anything Erik might have in his chest.
Charles experienced a sort of vertigo, as if he were looking at something that might have been, had circumstances been different: a juxtaposition of reality and possibility. Here, Erik and Charles manipulated and feared each other; there, they held hands and enjoyed the warmth of each other’s company, exchanging pointless banter. For a moment he could see both; could feel what it would be like if he could relax in Erik’s presence even while he rejected the very idea as absurd. It was Schrödinger’s domesticity, perhaps, and Charles was afraid to examine it too closely because if he did, it might all fall apart and he’d be trapped with a truth he didn’t like.
But of course, poor Erwin had never actually experimented on cats, and so it was that the only real feeling that mattered to Charles at that moment was the pain of knowing that his life for the time being wasn’t his, no matter how tempting it might be to pretend otherwise. Charles pulled his hand away; Erik’s grip squeezed tighter for a brief instant and then he was freed.
Erik looked away, at the misplaced end table. “I had Ms. Frost check everyone in the lab for telepathic manipulation,” he said finally, his voice strangely flat.
Charles felt his breath stumble in his throat. “Oh?” It had been a test. Of course it had been a test.
Erik smiled. “She didn’t find anything. I think perhaps you’re ready to start attending Brotherhood meetings again, only-” he brushed his fingers against Charles’ temple, a casual gesture that nonetheless made the telepath shiver- “this time, without the blindfold.”
Charles glanced up, quick and suspecting. “You’re sure?”
The other man’s fingers returned to Charles’ head to weave through his hair, cradling the curve of his skull. “Of course,” Erik assured him, a scabbed-over cut on his face dimpling with the gentle curve of his lips.
Charles met his eyes and slowly raised his hand to Erik’s, holding it in place. He trusts you more than almost anyone else, Beast repeated in his mind. Charles was sure that Erik knew better than to accept Emma Frost’s findings as truth; was certain that Erik suspected, on some level at least, that Charles might be capable of hiding something even from another telepath. Still, for whatever reason… For whatever reason, Erik seemed willing to accept that possibility, for now, and maybe even to dismiss it.
Somehow, this did not bring him any comfort.
xxxii.
All of Charles’ tenuous optimism from the previous night suddenly seemed foolishly misplaced.
“You said I wouldn’t be restrained this time,” he protested, his fingers drifting unconsciously to touch the top button of his shirt, reaching for something that wasn’t yet there.
“I said that your powers wouldn’t be restrained,” Erik corrected. “Besides, Charles, this is more symbolic than practical.”
Charles eyed the fluid drape of gold lying over Erik’s fingers; he could certainly admit that it was symbolic, yes, but the unavoidable comparison wasn’t to anything pleasant. In fact, the word that sprang to mind was collar, although offered from anyone else it would only be a rather gaudy necklace.
With a flick of his wrist, Erik sent the chain to hover expectantly near Charles’ hand, and the telepath plucked it from the air reluctantly; it went limp in his grasp, freed of the force that had galvanized it moments before. Charles held it as he would a snake, without really closing his grasp over the chain; allowing it to rest undisturbed over his fingers.
“No matching earrings, Erik?” Charles asked, arching an eyebrow. He made no move to put it on.
A crease formed on Erik’s forehead; then he smiled. “I’m not going to strangle you with it, Charles.” Charles, however, could remember perfectly well that Erik had strangled people with less, so he arched his eyebrow further and stared at Erik until the other man glanced away. “All right, yes, it is a precaution-but only a precaution. I don’t intend to use my powers against you, and I don’t expect that you’ll make it necessary. This is, however, the only way you’re getting into that room with your telepathy unobstructed.”
Charles turned the chain over in his hands; the links were flattened and, while not very wide, still quite a bit larger than he deemed appropriate for a man to wear. Then again, Erik was wearing a cape and a magenta-no, be polite, maroon-helmet while Charles was otherwise dressed impeccably in a gray suit, so at least he could rest assured that he wouldn’t be the silliest-looking person there. That wasn’t Charles’ biggest concern, of course, but then it wasn’t as if he could complain about dignity and propriety now, or as if there weren’t a million other ways Erik could hurt him if he really wanted to.
Still, it galled a little to unclasp the chain and wrap it around his neck, especially when he couldn’t get it put back together again and he had to twist it around to see what he was doing. This, Charles thought as he fumbled with too-short fingernails, was exactly the sort of thing Erik could have done for him without even trying, except that the other man wasn’t even watching anymore; was instead looking through papers.
Finally, Charles found himself wearing a necklace, and with a little grimace of distaste he dropped it safely beneath his shirt. As luck would have it, though, Erik chose that moment to return his attention to Charles.
“No,” Erik said, raising his hand; the chain had no sooner touched Charles’ chest before it was slithering up again, cold and ticklish against his skin. “It needs to be visible.” With a few deft twitches, the metal slipped under Charles’ shirt collar; tucking his chin down, the telepath observed that it made a bright but unobtrusive U-shape against the white of his shirt-unobtrusive, but still in his opinion a bit tawdry.
Charles looked up at Erik to remark something to that effect, but his mouth froze when he saw that the other man’s eyes were still fixed on the gold, dark and intent, lips in a grim line of self-restraint and-Oh, Charles realized, swallowing saliva that wasn’t there, he likes the control.
Erik’s gaze followed the bob of his throat, traced the line of Charles’ jaw, and met the geneticist’s stare. Charles wanted to say something witty, or anything at all really, but in the face of Erik’s unshielded want and with metal mere inches from his throat, he felt suddenly not at all like a force to be reckoned with and instead turned to checking that his handkerchief was folded correctly in his breast pocket. It was just barely distracting enough that he managed to ask, “Now are we ready?”
He saw Erik nod, and this time when he looked up Erik’s eyes were cool and remote; professional.
xxxiii.
The conference room was on the first floor, and as the stairs drifted by under Charles he thought that, if he’d been more of a gambling person, he could probably manage to escape down them some night, using his improved mobility to lower himself from step to step. From there, he might be able to enlist someone without a helmet to help him out of the mansion, and possibly even off the grounds entirely.
Of course, the problem lay in the fact that this was a well-traveled stairway and, even if he didn’t meet someone wearing a helmet on the way out, the empty chair at the top of the stairs would certainly betray his activities.
Still, it was interesting to see the main part of the mansion again, now that Charles had something to compare it to; he had previously considered the décor to be barren, but now Charles recognized it as Erik’s unique style of utilitarianism: spare, but elegant. The granite floors were hard and resilient, and the trim looked to be the sort of wood that didn’t burn or splinter easily. Similarly, there were no convenient alcoves or protuberances of furniture for an invading enemy to hide behind, or heavy objects that might be used as weapons; nor were there priceless artifacts for Erik’s own people to worry about destroying.
Charles liked being among people again; while everyone in the hall gave them a wide berth and averted their eyes politely, he was nonetheless thrilled to find that he recognized many of them from his window, more tired and work-worn from up close. Even though he could not, for the most part, read any of their minds, he still felt as if he knew them and could conceivably be going to the same places they were, despite the relentlessly obedient glide of his chair beneath Erik’s power.
He was surprised, almost, to realize that he was in a good mood; he was seeing new places again, seeing new people, and while it was an illusory, cheap happiness, it was still more than he’d had before and Charles treasured it for the time being. He didn’t even protest when Erik leaned down to instruct him, in hushed tones, to call him Magneto in front of his followers.
This pleasant frame of mind made his entrance into the conference room a jarring shock. He had a moment to register nearly two dozen mutants seated at a long, wide table, then they saw him-shockfearangerbetrayal-and Charles had to fight not to cover his head with his hands, not to gasp, not to show any reaction because he was Charles Xavier and everyone here knew it, and knew that he knew it.
“What is the meaning of this, Magneto?” one Brotherhood mutant growled, pushing up out of his chair with a harsh screech of metal on stone. He was the mutant who had slighted Charles at his last attendance, now bristling with eerily silent feelers of electricity, eager for a target. Charles knew now that he went by the remarkably humble codename of Zeus. “Have you gone insane, bringing that-that telepath in here?”
One of the problems with being in a wheelchair was that it was difficult for Charles to look at people standing next to him without appearing unsubtle and overly curious, but he could hear Erik’s supreme disdain through his voice.
“This telepath,” Erik began, placing a hand on the back of Charles’ chair, “is our guest, and has agreed to observe only, for now. Please treat him accordingly.”
“And you trust him?” Zeus replied, aghast. The metal of his recently vacated chair popped and sparked as the electricity found it. “You trust this sympathizer not to wipe our minds and plant ideas in our heads?”
Before Erik could respond, Charles spoke. “I’ve made concessions in order to be here today,” he explained, ostensibly to Zeus but for the rest of the room’s occupants as well. Charles reached up to his shirt collar and plucked at the gold links. “As you can see, I have extended some trust of my own as well. You’re quite safe.”
The angry mutant glowered, but the tendrils of energy curling along his skin shrank and receded into an uneasy flicker of light darting between the buckles of his leather jacket. Another Brotherhood member-one of those who gave lie to the “brother”-draped her arm over the back of her chair and remarked, dryly, “Zee, honey, relax. If you have an intelligent thought, we’ll all know it isn’t yours.”
She cackled delightedly as Zeus’ flare of electricity caught his own pen on the table, the ink inside boiling and bursting out onto the wood. She can perceive and manipulate low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, Charles observed, intrigued. She referred to herself as Infrared despite-ironically, Charles thought-working primary with radio wave surveillance.
“If you have all reassured yourselves of my competence, I do believe we had a meeting planned for today,” Erik stated, an edge of irritation to his voice. It was a testament to how seriously the assembled mutants took the implied threat that they all immediately quieted and settled back down into their chairs.
Erik nodded once, satisfied, and strode toward the head of the table where a single, somewhat more ornate chair overlooked the assembled mutants. Without raising his hand past his waist, he gestured for Charles to follow; surprised that his chair didn’t leap to Erik’s bidding, Charles hesitated before moving to a spot near the Brotherhood leader’s side, an impersonal distance between them.
There, sitting in clear view of the world’s ruling mutants, Charles felt exposed, but not embarrassed; he might have, with the necklace-collar-around his neck, but by speaking up before Erik he had made it a point of pride rather than shame. Charles caught a quick glance from that other man; Erik’s eyes darted down to the chain before meeting his own, glinting with subtle amusement. Charles couldn’t resist the triumphant smirk he felt twitch onto his face.
Despite his determination to remain aloof, Charles found himself fascinated by the proceedings; he had spent the previous meeting confused and off-balanced, certain that he was missing undercurrents and meanings even beyond the jargon-like he’d been looking into a pond, knowing that there was life beneath the water, but only capable of seeing glimpses through the reflections at the surface.
Now he could see all of it, could perceive all the little petty rivalries and one-upsmanship and maneuvering, and while it wasn’t exactly heartening, it did add a new dimension to what was an otherwise boring meeting.
“Skink, tell me about the preventative measures along the coasts,” Erik ordered, and a dark mutant partially-covered with patches of glossy black scales leaned forward, one human and one clawed hand compulsively straightening the papers before him.
“As we all know, the mutant workforce is limited to paid volunteers and criminals, and while we attempt to divide useful abilities equally between companies…” Skink rasped, the pointed tips of his tongue darting nervously during pauses.
“Yes, I know you have bad news, or we wouldn’t be here today.” Erik picked out an incriminating report from those arrayed before him and displayed it to the mutant briefly. “Where were we hit hardest?”
Skink looked down, through a miniscule pair of reading glasses, and began, “Parts of West Africa and Morocco, of course, have almost no Brotherhood presence or warning system and were very badly affected. Local efforts prevented a significant amount of damage on the Canary Islands…” and so on, through Portugal (“bad”) back down to South America (“heavy damages”), through to the West Indies (“very bad”) and along the coastal United States (“not good”).
New York City, apparently, had been neglected as “no one’s supposed to be living there anyway,” and the less populous regions of Maine and Nova Scotia had also been largely overlooked. There was no estimated death toll because there was no way of knowing who had lived in any of those regions in the first place, or of just how much damage the relative scale of bad-to-not-good entailed.
Erik didn’t sigh, but he looked as if, had there been fewer people watching him, he might have liked to. “Restoration measures?”
Skink licked his lips. “Slow. We’re getting overwhelming reports of destruction from all along the coastlines. Contaminated water, spoiled food, flooded habitation… We simply don’t have the ability to relieve all of that. I recommend full evacuation from coastal city centers while repairs are made.”
“And how long will repairs take?”
The scaly Brotherhood officer looked around, waiting for someone else to reply; eventually, there was some unenthusiastic hemming and hawing from a variety of mutants farther down the arms of the table, all of them reluctantly in charge of roads or agriculture or water. None of them could say for sure when they could get anything done, but they all admitted a readiness to use emergency funding in order to get work started quickly-although in some of those instances, Charles knew, little of that emergency funding remained, and could perhaps be viewed in more tangible form at their places of residence.
Eventually talk turned to where refugees would go if they were evacuated, and the consensus seemed to be that the closest viable alternatives for most of the major North American and Portuguese cities were the human shanty towns located miles inland, displaced during the first few years of the war.
“They’re not just going to let a bunch of us walk in there and take over their shacks, or eat their food,” Zeus scoffed.
Skink peered at him severely over his spectacles. “In terms of convenience, it’s our best solution. Regulation mandates that all authorized human settlements are easily accessible by road, and certain water availability guidelines must be met in order to qualify for Brotherhood protection and jobs.”
“I repeat,” Zeus began, “they’re not going to let our people live with them. Those ‘towns,’ if you can even call them that, are hotbeds of resistance. You’re asking for trouble if you want to move mutants into those places.”
“What’s your solution?” Erik inquired, leaning on one arm of his chair, regarding Zeus with a single-mindedness that was almost a challenge.
“Not so different,” he replied, raising a hand to scratch absently beneath his jacket with gnarled fingernails. “I say if it’s going to turn to fighting-which it will-we strike first. Let the humans take whatever they can carry and go back to their old cities. Maybe they’ll even patch up the places for us, save some effort on our part.”
The scaled mutant frowned, and commented, “That wouldn’t happen. There’s a reason we’re discussing evacuation, and that’s because the coast isn’t just unpleasant: it’s unlivable. Anyone we send there to fend for themselves will almost certainly die, and then we’ll have to clean up their bodies, too.”
“And the problem with that is…?” Zeus asked, raising a sloppy eyebrow at Skink.
“Our first priority is mutant life,” Erik reminded them, straightening in his chair. “It’s our obligation to save our own kind first, where possible.”
Charles darted an alarmed look over at the Brotherhood leader, an irrational flash of betrayal jolting through his chest; of course, he hadn’t forgotten what Erik had done in the past, but this was almost too unreal, too perfectly insidious. “Erik, I’m afraid I must interrupt-”
Erik twisted to glare at Charles, and the words faltered in his throat at the sharpness of Erik’s eyes. “Charles,” he drawled pointedly, “that’s not the name you use at this table.”
Sensing that there wasn’t a person in the room looking anywhere else but at him, Charles froze for a moment, then grinned hesitantly and laughed, a little. “Don’t be silly, Erik, I-”
The movement at his throat was unexpected-a sudden invasive pressure to either side of Charles’ neck and while it didn’t hurt, while he could still breath, he felt his pulse strong and frantic beneath the metal as his vision narrowed to black and oh, carotid arteries, blood flow to the…
…Brain. Charles’ face pressed into the table. He didn’t remember falling, but judging by the way the wood hadn’t yet warmed to his cheek, it must not have been long ago. Erik’s hand gripped the back of his neck, pinning Charles down, and the shock of the other Brotherhood members permeated the air. Cautiously, he sought out the memory of his unconsciousness, and found it easily; not long ago at all, then. He’d only passed out for a second.
Charles had fallen-or been guided-so that he could see Erik, who leaned far over in his chair, almost lying on the table in order to get as close to Charles as he could without getting up. Rather than look absurd, he more closely resembled some sort of large, leonine cat, coiled over its prey.
Erik’s face pressed near, alarmingly feral; Charles couldn’t breathe and it had nothing to do with the chain around his neck. “Here,” he hissed, “you call me Magneto. Do you understand?” His fingers jabbed painfully under Charles’ skull to emphasize his question.
The telepath winced and attempted, more reflexively than purposefully, to sit up, to no avail. Dimly, he realized that this little exchange had probably rendered his previous bid for respect among the Brotherhood members useless. “Perfectly,” Charles grunted, and Erik’s grasp loosened but didn’t ease. “My mistake; won’t do it again-I just thought you should know: killing off the humans is a bad idea.”
Erik seemed interested enough to stop digging his fingers into Charles’ neck, but he kept his hand in place, effortlessly preventing Charles from righting himself. “I feel certain that I’ve heard those words from you before, old friend. Did you think interrupting me to say it again would make a difference?”
Charles tried to moisten his lips without also licking the table. “Well, no, I mean, that too, but now-killing the humans would be bad for you-us-this time, as well.”
Studying Charles’ face silently, Erik’s eyes narrowed in consideration; then, finally, he released the telepath and settled casually back into his chair. “Explain.”
Straightening, Charles brought his hands up to his shirt collar, which had been popped up by the chain’s movements, and folded it back down again, tucking the edges under his suit coat with hands that weren’t quite shaking. He resisted the urge to rub his neck, but he did brush the hair out of his eyes. Taking the time to re-order his appearance, Charles thought, would make it seem more like he had a choice in his actions.
Eventually Charles cleared his throat and began, “You can’t kill the humans because you need their genetic material.”
There were muffled chuckles from the length of the table. Infrared, who had been silent through the rest of the meeting, covered her mouth with her hand and whispered to her neighbor, “‘Human-lover’ in word and deed, apparently; this’ll be good.”
Charles glanced around the table, allowing his exasperation to show, before again meeting Erik’s gaze, continuing, “There are, what, a little more than three million mutants living in the United States alone? More in Europe, more in Asia; a large potential population in Africa… Despite everything, there are still quite a lot of us in the world.”
Erik dipped his chin in a short nod, his eyebrows furrowing at Charles’ seemingly self-defeating argument.
“All right, now tell me, how many functioning airports do we have? How many airplanes? How many cars, or fuel to power any of our vehicles?” Charles asked, lacing his fingers together on the table. He paused, to make his point. “Factor that in with the fact that each of the previously highly-developed continents have areas of impassible destruction, and that leaves us with small, isolated pockets of civilization, cut off from transportation and migration.”
“Are you ever going to have a point?” Zeus asked, affecting a mocking awe. Erik silenced him with a short movement of his hand without turning his attention from Charles.
The geneticist took a deep breath, scanned the thoughts of his audience, and decided he might as well skip to the end of his lecture. “My point is that we’re vulnerable to genetic drift. If not for the radiation, this wouldn’t be a problem, but because of increased mutation rates and small population size, harmful mutations-mutations that hurt the people born with them, or worse, those around them-will spread throughout these isolated areas within a few generations, no matter how quickly you manage to rebuild.
“Unless we bolster our numbers by accepting humans back into our society, we’ll be extinct within four generations. Maybe less,” Charles concluded.
The room was silent, except for someone’s soft curse.
Erik frowned, scrutinizing Charles’ expression. “Are you telling the truth?” he asked.
“Magneto,” Charles replied, the name strange and awkward on his tongue, “this isn’t anything you haven’t heard at one of these meetings before. Beast gave you a similar report two months ago.”
Erik gave Charles one last long look before turning back to the table, evidently finished with the conversation. “We’ll instruct refugees to travel to nearby human settlements,” he asserted. “And… Extend offers of compensation to the humans, as well as our appreciation for their assistance, in advance.”
Chapter Five