Fic: Iridescent | part one: wisdom (x)
prologue: headlines
part one: wisdom (x)
august 1963
0.
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” he repeated, and leaned back in the chair.
A frustrated hiss rippled down the lines of black-suited men and they glared, pulling themselves taller like they could intimidate him into agreeing.
He bit down on a smirk. As if they could intimidate him.
“Mr. Lehnsherr,” the man at the head of the table said slowly, like he was talking to a child or a dog.
Or a mutant, Erik thought, and stifled it ruthlessly.
“Mr. Stryker,” he said instead, in the exact same tone.
Stryker frowned.
“Mr. Lehnsherr,” he continued, acting like there hadn’t been an interruption at all. “You have to understand that this is a matter of national security. You’ve been watching the news and reading the papers. You know how close we are to an all-out war. The people are calling for blood, for laws that will reduce your kind to nothing.”
Erik studied Stryker, taking in his pressed suit, his hard expression. This was the man in charge of the CIA’s Mutant-Relations Division and Congress’s favorite consultant on the Anti-Mutant Bill, and that made him the single largest threat to Erik’s newborn people.
It made Stryker an enemy.
What came next was a force of habit.
Weak knees, Erik thought. Badly out of shape. Soft hands. Moves too slow.
He mentally noted Stryker’s weaknesses and flattened his hands on the table. The wood was smooth and cold.
Between Erik and Stryker, eight men sat on each side of the long table; members of the Mutant-Relations Division, Congressmen, FBI agents. They were the ones leading the charge against his people, and after sitting in a room with them for ten minutes, he knew their weaknesses well enough to kill them all with pens, if he wanted to.
He didn’t, though. He could’ve, easily, but he didn’t, and probably never would.
Erik wasn’t going to be the one who started the war, not this time.
“Do you understand, Mr. Lehnsherr?” Stryker repeated, in the same slow, patronizing tone. Erik twitched and tried not to imagine gutting him with a paperclip.
“Yes,” he said evenly, and he was proud of the way nothing shook.
“Then you have to see-”
“I fail to see what rebuilding Cerebro will do for mutant-human relations,” Erik cut in sharply.
“Cerebro is a device of immense power,” Stryker rumbled. “According to the data recovered from the Mutant Division facility, Cerebro could locate any mutant in the world.”
“With a trained telepath using it.”
“We have a telepath.”
“Frost?” You’re idiots, Erik almost said. All of you. It’s amazing he hasn’t destroyed you all yet. “The telepath must be willing to use Cerebro-it is not a device you can control. The telepath controls it, and if Emma Frost is in control, there is very little that can stop her from killing you.”
An uneasy whisper rippled through the room.
“Dangerous,” Erik heard.
“Too dangerous.”
Stryker frowned again.
“If Cerebro fell into the wrong hands,” Erik pointed out quietly, hating to do this, to make him more the enemy.
More murmurs, this time of agreement, shot through the room. X was a telepath and this committee knew it. They were still unsure exactly what made a telepath (or any of the mutants, really, aside from the obvious ones) dangerous, but they were learning.
Erik wasn’t sure if this was good or bad.
“Cerebro would soothe the public’s fears,” a Senator said. “If we told the press we had a device that could locate X and his followers-”
“That would be lying,” another Senator, Edward Kennedy, argued. “It’s like Mr. Lehnsherr-” he nodded to Erik, the first sign of politeness the mutant had seen all day- “said. If we didn’t deliver X on a platter within a few days, they’d be furious.”
Stryker’s face was sour. “Fine,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Next item on the agenda, then.”
Erik met his eyes across the table, and they were cold and ruthless. The message in them was clear: I’ll let it go for now, but I will not forget.
This one, Erik thought, will be a problem.
“The mutant terrorist called X must be captured,” Stryker said.
Erik’s heart sank.
“If we capture him, we can stop this war before it starts,” Kennedy agreed. “Cut off the head, as it were.”
The rest of the room seemed to agree, and Stryker’s eyes flashed triumphantly.
“So, Mr. Lehnsherr,” he said. “You came to us saying you wished to stop the war.”
“Yes,” Erik murmured, and tried to keep the metal fixtures from rattling.
“Who is X?”
Erik stared at him, long and hard. “First, give me your word that if you imprison X, you will also imprison the leaders of the Friends of Humanity. It’s not just the mutants’ fault. Humans are starting this war too.”
An uneasy ripple-the committee didn’t like that idea.
Steel straightened Erik’s spine.
“Humans started this conflict,” he said lowly. “Mutants saved you at Cuba, and when we were revealed we did not attack humans, humans attacked us.”
“Mutants are dangerous,” another man protested. “The powers they have are a threat to the public. You’ve read the news. They can blow themselves up, spit acid, throw cars. They need to be controlled, much more than Friends of Humanity does.”
“Humans can shoot,” Erik shot back, and anger rose violent and bitter in his throat. The numbers etched into his skin burned. “Humans can stab. Humans can maim and kill and create death camps. You’ve read the news. Two human parents drowned their eight-year-old daughter a week ago because her power manifested. They drowned their own child.”
Several of the suited men shifted, uncomfortable, and Erik smiled sharp and hard. “Humans are just as dangerous as mutants are,” he said. “You don’t see us calling for you to be branded, locked up, and exterminated.”
“We have more self-control,” the man-an FBI agent, Erik thought-argued. “Mutants can’t control themselves.”
“Really?” Anger, old and familiar, hardened in Erik’s gut. Men like this were the reason his people, young and afraid and confused, were forced to hide. Men like this were destroying them, driving them out of their homes. His power surged and the metal in the room sang; without stopping to think he reached out to the man’s buttons, cufflinks, and belt buckle and tugged-
The man yelped and flailed wildly as he was lifted out of his chair and Erik narrowed his eyes, keeping his hands flat on the table.
“My God!” Stryker yelled, and most of the room seemed to feel the same way.
Edward Kennedy, however, watched his colleague float (not even that fast, really, the man was overreacting) to the ceiling with interested eyes and a tiny smile on his face.
“What are you doing?” Stryker turned to Erik, his face purple with fury and fear.
“Proving a point.” Erik watched until the man was pressed against the ceiling and held there, his buttons shoved against his skin, sticking him to the stucco like magnets.
“So,” Erik continued quietly, like he hadn’t just pinned a man to the ceiling.
“Put him down,” Stryker snapped. “Now.”
“No.”
“What are you trying to prove?”
“Do I have control over myself, Mr. Stryker? Can I control my ability, or is the unfortunate bigot up there going to drop?”
(“I don’t want to die,” said unfortunate bigot wailed.)
“A fall from that height won’t kill you,” Erik snapped. “Now be quiet.” He refocused on Stryker. “I came here for peace,” he said, “and to stop an unnecessary war. I am not the Brotherhood. I do not hate humans or think that the only way for my people to survive is to crush yours. I would like to think we can resolve this peacefully.”
“Put him down-”
“When I am done. I want you to listen to me very carefully, Mr. Stryker. You are asking me to betray one of my own brothers, to turn him over to you.”
“You-”
“I will do it,” Erik said, and he kept his face very still. “I will tell you what you need to know. But first, in writing, I want your word, Stryker. I want everyone in this room’s word that you will not provoke mutantkind. You will not lock us up in facilities, you will not experiment on us, you will not treat us like animals because we are different than you. You will punish the Friends of Humanity the exact same way you punish the Brotherhood. Do you understand?”
Stryker’s jaw twitched and Erik saw his fists were clenched.
“I do not want to go to war,” he continued, softer this time, gentler. “I’ve had enough war for a lifetime. But you will treat mutants equally, Mr. Stryker, or there will be a war, and I will not let my people be exterminated.”
Something very old and cruel flashed across Stryker’s face. “What can you do?” he said. “So you can lift a man. In a warzone, what can you possibly do to an army?”
Kennedy made a soft, warning sound.
Erik smiled. “Do you really want to see?”
“Enough, Stryker,” Kennedy snapped, standing up. “For God’s sake, man, can’t you see Mr. Lehnsherr only wants his people to be treated fairly? Is that so wrong? We’re not Nazis; mutants deserve the same as humans.”
Stryker finally looked away from Erik, choosing instead to glare at Senator Kennedy. The man pinned to the ceiling whimpered.
Kennedy looked at Erik. “We accept your terms,” he said. “Don’t we?”
Everyone else nodded hastily.
“Write it up,” Erik said. “I can wait.”
Stryker nodded to a young man sitting in the corner with a typewriter in his lap. The boy’s nametag gleamed-KELLY, it read, in big blocked letters-and he typed furiously, trying not to meet Erik’s eyes.
Stryker glared at the window and Kennedy watched Erik, and Erik watched all of them with wary eyes. He knew this could end badly, but he couldn’t bring himself to care all that much. He would not tolerate a Holocaust on the mutants. He wouldn’t. He’d kill every person in this room if he had to. He didn’t want to, but he would. They needed to know that right now.
“Done,” the young man murmured, tugging the completed document out of the typewriter. He handed it to Stryker, and Erik stuck out his hand. The paper was comfortingly heavy in his hands, like a reassurance, and he read it twice just to make sure.
It was everything he had said.
“Sign it,” he ordered, finally lowering the man (a little rougher than necessary, but still) back to the floor, and the paper went around until Stryker was the only one who hadn’t signed it.
He stared at the paper, frowning, the pen frozen in his hands.
“Sign it, Stryker.”
“You’ll tell us who X is,” the old man said.
“Yes.”
Stryker’s eyes never left Erik’s as he signed slowly, carefully, and then passed the document back.
“Who is he, Lehnsherr?”
Erik swallowed pain and closed his eyes briefly, keeping his hands pressed flat into the smooth, cool wood. I’m sorry.
“His name is Charles Xavier.”
april, 1964
1.
He woke suddenly to flickering blue light and the phone screaming in his ear. For a second he flailed, caught in the half-space between awake and dreaming, and he felt Cuban sun on his face and sand in his hair. His mouth tasted like blood and saltwater.
The phone was ringing. He reached for it with his power automatically, and caught sight of the clock as he did-2:48 A.M. His heart sank. The phone hit his outstretched hand with a solid thunk and he lifted it to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Lehnsherr.”
Erik bit down on a curse. He knew that voice.
“Mr. Stryker,” he said heavily.
“We have him,” Stryker said.
Erik went very still. “Charles,” he murmured.
“We have him,” Stryker repeated, smug. “We expect you in Langley in three days. A car will pick you up outside LaGuardia at ten on Monday.”
He hung up and Erik was left with the dial tone ringing in his ear. He didn’t put the phone down.
“Charles,” he whispered. They caught him.
His thoughts whirled, screaming at each other. Where was he? How did they get him? Is he alright? Was it my fault?
He dropped the phone, staring blankly at the flickering blue television screen in his study. He’d fallen asleep watching the news-another day of tense peace between humans and mutants, remarkable only in the fact that no one died or was beaten or blown up.
Erik scrubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to rub sleep and the feel of sand from them. His chest felt tight.
The CIA had Charles.
They better have Frank Collin, the functioning part of his mind snarled. Stryker swore.
The CIA had Charles. Erik wondered, briefly, if they had the rest of the Brotherhood as well, or if Charles was their only catch tonight. Not that it mattered-without its leader the Brotherhood would collapse within months. Hopefully Friends of Humanity would be the same, though Erik doubted that it would be a real solution to the problem.
The Brotherhood might collapse, but another group would take its place.
In the year and a half since Cuba, mutants had been discovered all of the world at an alarming rate-there were thousands of them, everywhere, and Erik knew many felt the same as the Brotherhood.
Hell, he thought tiredly. Sometimes I agree with the Brotherhood.
And that attitude was, of course, the reason why mutants and humans had been hovering on the edge of war since August.
Agreeing with the Brotherhood-accepting their methods and ideals-led to supporting their actions, offering them help, and then finally going out and physically helping them.
And Erik would not do that. He couldn’t-he had children to worry about, an entire race to take care of. He wouldn’t lose them, not again, not another people.
Strangely, this thought did nothing to soothe the tightness in his chest.
“Prof?”
Erik turned so fast he heard the bones in his neck crick, reflexively grabbing hold of all the metal scattered across the room.
“Woah,” Alex said, holding up his hands. His hair stuck up in all directions and sleep bagged under his eyes, but he seemed alert and aware, watching Erik keenly. “It’s just me.”
“Alex,” Erik said tiredly, forcing his shoulders to relax. For the first time since waking, he realized how rough his voice sounded.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
Alex tilted his head, eyes sharp, and Erik was uncomfortably reminded of Charles. He looked away.
“I’m fine, Alex. Alles ist gut.”
“Right,” the younger man said and carefully picked his way through Erik’s wreck of a study, clearing old newspapers off the sagging sofa. He paused to watch the TV for a moment, taking in the blurred screen. “When you’re done watching the news, you can turn it off, you know.”
Erik blinked and the TV shut off-the room was suddenly much darker, and Alex was turned a shadow.
“Prof,” the younger mutant said softly.
“Don’t call me that.”
Alex fell quiet and Erik felt his eyes on him, and he was glad it was dark.
“Who called?”
Erik didn’t answer, calling a paperclip into his palm instead. It glinted in the faint moonlight and he stretched it, trying not to feel the ache in his chest.
“The CIA,” he said after awhile, when the paperclip was looped and twisted on itself. “Stryker.”
He looked at Alex’s shadow briefly. Alex didn’t move.
“They caught Charles,” Erik continued, steadily, he thought, even though the pens on his desk were rattling slightly. “I’m to go to Langley in three days.”
“Prof,” Alex said. “Man, I’m sorr-”
“Don’t.” If he was a little more awake, a little less jarred, Erik would be snapping, angry with Alex, drawing inside his shell like he always did when something hurt. Shaw had taught him that. Hide yourself always, under as much as you can. Be steel, be iron, impenetrable.
Alex shut up.
“I’m going to tell everyone else in the morning,” Erik said softly. “Don’t tell them now. Let them sleep.”
“Okay.”
For several minutes they sat in silence, the shadows around them long and deep.
The CIA has Charles, Erik muttered to himself, stuck on that one thought. It looped in his brain, over and over and over, and the pens rattled and the paperclip twisted. The CIA has Charles, and I told them his name.
“Erik,” Alex said eventually, and Erik saw the pale flash of his face as he shifted. “It’s not your fault-”
“Don’t!” Erik snapped, and metal groaned threateningly all around them. “Go back to bed, Summers.”
“Prof-”
“Bed, Alex.”
The young mutant was quiet and still for another heartbeat, and then he stood abruptly and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him.
“Not a fucking child,” Erik heard him say, but at this point he largely didn’t care. Alex was young. He was stupid. He stuck his nose in business that didn’t concern him.
Erik didn’t need him, especially right now.
He didn’t need Alex telling him it wasn’t his fault, because it was.
With teeth bared in a snarl Erik flicked the tangled paperclip with all the force he could muster, and it rocketed from his hand and punched through the window, whistling out into the grounds.
It was Erik’s fault.
He’d made the deal with Stryker; he’d told them Charles’s name, revealed him, betrayed him-
Not betrayal, said the cold part of his mind. Retribution. He is not your friend, not anymore.
Charles had abandoned Erik. He’d left him on that fucking Cuban beach and gone off to wage a war. He had shown, quite clearly, that he didn’t need or want Erik. He’d betrayed them all, left them on the beach with two armies bearing down, and gone off with Shaw’s people.
After Cuba they didn’t hear from Charles for months. And then the Brotherhood fought its way to the surface and Erik knew it was Charles, he knew it. When the leader was revealed as “X,” Erik had leaned back in the chair and held Raven while she quietly cried into his arms.
Charles abandoned them.
It was only fair, only right, that Erik betray him.
Erik smirked bitterly. The argument sounded weak even inside his head.
It’s for the greater good, he told himself. Charles was trying to start a war.
Erik stared at the moon through the tiny hole he’d made and wondered, vaguely, when it had all gotten so fucked up.
The chess match, he guessed, and tried not to remember the warm fire, Charles’s laughter, the buzz of scotch on his tongue and the tight, hot feeling in his chest that leaped every time he looked Charles in the eye.
Killing will not bring you peace.
I know.
Erik turned the television back on and watched the blue, flickering screen. He did not go back to sleep, and he could still taste Cuba on his tongue.
His back hurt.
He thought it always would.
***
Breakfast was quiet. Alex wasn’t looking at anyone but Erik, watching him eat mechanically. Raven seemed to know something was wrong; she fixed her yellow eyes on her cereal and waited. Hank shifted, nervous, perhaps smelling the tension in the air. Even Sean, who was usually cheerful even if he didn’t feel like it, sat and ate in silence, tense as if expecting a blow.
Erik ate his cereal quickly and tried to pretend it didn’t feel like rocks in his throat. His spoon vibrated in his hands.
“Oh my God,” Raven said suddenly, pushing her breakfast aside and pinning Erik with her eyes. He glared, rattling her spoon warningly. She, as per usual, ignored him. “Just spit it out already,” she snapped. “The tension’s killing us.”
Erik carefully took another bite of cereal, aware that they were all watching him. His face betrayed nothing. Slowly he set the spoon down and pushed his mostly-empty bowl away, meeting everyone’s eyes one at a time.
They all looked at him apprehensively, nervously.
“Charles,” he said softly, “has been captured by the CIA. They called early this morning.”
“Charles is in custody?” Raven’s eyes flashed a confusing mixture of worry and hurt. “Federal custody?”
Erik nodded.
“Where are they keeping him?” Raven’s fingers were curled tight around the edges of the table. She suddenly blazed with a fire that had been missing for months, and Erik remembered with a sharp, sudden pain that she’d been sleeping in Charles’s room for weeks now.
“Langley,” he said. “I’ve been ordered to go on Monday.”
“I’m coming,” Raven said immediately, standing up like they were leaving right that moment.
“No,” Erik told her. “You’re not. None of you are.”
Instantly the table exploded with violent protests.
“We have to go!”
“It’s Charles, we need to talk to him-”
“He’s my brother-”
“Enough,” Erik said, and the silverware rattled against the table. “None of you are going.”
“Why not?” Raven’s eyes glittered dangerously.
“I am not taking you into the CIA base of operations. They don’t know about all of you. They know about me, and that’s it. They think I’m alone. I plan to keep it that way.”
“We’re not kids,” Sean said. “We’ve got a right to chose. I want to go.”
Hank growled in agreement, showing his teeth.
“No,” Erik said flatly.
“You can’t keep us from going,” Raven said. “It’s Charles, Erik, what’s he going to do-”
“Leave us again.” It was Alex who said it, glaring at them all.
“He wouldn’t-”
“He would. Grow up, Raven, he left us once, he’ll do it again. There’s no point in going to see him.”
Raven’s whole body flickered and she glared, anger rolling off her in waves. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Charles loves us. He’s just… confused. We can talk to him, make him see that he’s wrong, it’ll all be okay again-”
“Raven,” Erik cut in sharply, harsher than he meant to.
The shapeshifter looked at him with wet amber eyes. “You’re wrong,” she whispered. “You’re wrong, Erik, I’m sorry, you’re wrong.” She shoved out from the table and all but sprinted out of the dining room. Erik heard her feet on the stairs and he sighed, frustrated.
He didn’t know what to do.
Hank looked after Raven and growled lowly in the back of his throat before pushing himself up and following her, his clawed feet thumping heavily on the stairs.
Sean looked out the window, at the fridge, anywhere but Erik and Alex. “Um,” he said. “Professor, may I be, um, excused?”
“Go,” Erik muttered, dismissing him with a hand. He didn’t even order Sean not to call him Professor; he didn’t want to deal with it right now. He wanted to, to-
(curl up and sleep, rewind the clock about two years, chase Shaw to Argentina on a different day, and never meet these people at all)
“Prof,” Alex said. “About last night-”
“Alex,” Erik interrupted.
“Right,” the younger mutant said, also standing to go. “Make sure you eat some fruit or something, I’ll keep everyone out of your hair. Try not to wreck the mansion. I’ll get everyone training, okay, just take a break and chill the fuck out. You’re gonna kill someone by Monday, and it’s not gonna be me.”
Erik stared at him, surprised.
Alex rolled his eyes, grabbed the bowls of cereal, and left for the kitchen, leaving Erik sitting at the table alone in a house full of angry, hurt young mutants.
Charles, Erik thought, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. The pain in his back flared up again, jagged, white-hot. Charles, you’re going to kill me.
2.
Three days passed slowly. Raven avoided him completely, all but barricading herself in Charles’s old room. Sean spent most of his time flying, endlessly looping and screaming and twisting in the sky. Hank had a suitcase half-packed in his lab; he thought Erik didn’t know about it, but Erik did. The suitcase had been half-packed for three months now, and Erik knew it was only a matter of time.
Only Alex still spoke to and spent time around Erik willingly, dropping in every few hours to make sure he was eating, sleeping, and “chilling the fuck out so he didn’t fucking kill anyone with paperclips, Jesus.”
The whole time Erik watched the news, or read the papers, or stared out the windows with the taste of scotch and saltwater in his mouth, trying to rid himself of Charles’s wide blue eyes and the memory of Cuba.
On Monday morning, Erik slipped quietly out of the mansion at dawn and took the car down to New York City, waiting at LaGuardia for four hours before the car drove up.
When it did pull up, he got in without question and didn’t say a word during the entire ride, all the way to Langley and the front doors where Stryker was waiting smugly, beckoning him inside.
“Mr. Lehnsherr,” he said, as suits surrounded them. Erik watched them tiredly, looking deep into the hallways as though Charles was standing there, waiting for him. “This way, please.”
The sun rapidly disappeared as they went through door after door, deeper and deeper into the building. The CIA suits flanked him, two on each side. Stryker prowled in front, triumph rolling off of him in waves, and Erik smirked because they were in a building made of steel; if he wanted to, he could kill them all and free Charles, and they’d never catch him.
But he wouldn’t. He already had his chance to do something about the CIA; he didn’t act then, and he won’t act now. The consequences now were the same as they were in August. Mutants were still a fledgling race, disorganized, and separated. War would still destroy them, and Erik wouldn’t lose another people. He would protect them, even if it meant this, meant tolerating their hate, their arrogance, their fear.
There are some good ones, he reminded himself. Do not judge an entire people based on the actions of a few.
They moved down the hallways and the metal sang to Erik, sighing, calling to him. He memorized as much of the floor plan as he could, out of habit (just in case), and tried not to look at the men who walked beside him and kept their hands on their weapons.
This was nothing like the facility where they’d trained, when Charles’s people had been the CIA’s pet project. This place was a maze, all stark, grim hallways and sharp corners. Erik didn’t see any rec rooms or lounges; just cold interrogation rooms and blank cells, one after the other.
It was a little too like Auschwitz’s research facilities for his liking, and he clamped down on his power, trying to keep it from leaking out.
Charles, he called, more to distract himself than anything. He didn’t expect Charles to answer, of course, but it was worth a shot.
I’m sorry, Erik said. It was for the greater good.
Charles didn’t answer; either he couldn’t hear or he was too angry to reply, and Erik stopped calling out to him.
The agents walked for several minutes, flanking him, hedging him in, and they stopped in front of a locked steel door. There were no windows, no bars, no gaps; only smooth, endless steel and a heavy lock.
Charles, Erik thought, and fought back the urge to rip the door off its hinges.
Another group of agents came from the opposite end of the hallway, all armed and grim-faced, and one of them carried a silver box. They glared at Erik, knowing what he was, perhaps, and handed the silver box to Stryker.
“Put this on,” Stryker said. In his hand there was suddenly a helmet made of smooth, shining metal; it called out to Erik and he stared at it, horrified.
“That’s Shaw’s,” he said, and the numbers carved into his arm seemed to burn.
“He can’t touch you out here,” Stryker explained, and Erik heard the cruelty in his voice. He knew what this helmet was. He knew what it meant. “We plated his cell with the anit-telepath mirrors from the submarine. His telepathy can’t get out. But once you’re in there he can use all his powers on you. This stops that. We can’t have him taking control over you.”
They’re learning.
“I’m not wearing that,” Erik said flatly, and the building shook a little, tremors shooting up the walls. The helmet was exactly the same, even a year and a half later, down to the dent in the side where Erik had thrown his coin and knocked it loose, and then Charles had-
The building shook harder. The suits twitched, nervously fingering their weapons, watching the walls ripple and tremble. He didn’t have to be a mind reader to see that they wanted to lock him up too, and his students, his entire race, and anger swelled hot and familiar in his gut.
Maybe Charles is right, said that little part of him that Shaw created. They hate us.
There’s always good, he said back to it, remembering his mother, his daughter, the men who took him from the camps even as he howled and fought and tried to claw out their eyes. There are Nazis and those who fight them. Not all humans are our enemy.
Keep telling yourself that.
“Put it on,” said Stryker gleefully. “Or you don’t go in.”
Erik glared, but he would give in and the agent knew it. “Fine,” he bit out, and took the helmet. It wasn’t as heavy as he thought it would be. The metal hummed in his hands, friendly and familiar as any other metal, and he saw Shaw for a second, smiling, friendly Herr Doktor, so strong and clear he tasted the sea in his mouth and felt the heat of the sun, the grit of the sand, the crack of the gun and the missiles-
He put the helmet on and felt something heavy shake in his gut, and Stryker smiled, cold and cruel and satisfied, a Nazi of his own little world.
Erik hated him at that moment. The building shuddered one last time, lights flickering, walls groaning, and then it was still.
“You have ten minutes,” said Stryker, and he opened the cold steel door.
Erik wanted to say that his breath caught, that his heart twisted, that his mind sang out and knew, but it didn’t. The door opened and he felt nothing but guilt that tasted like saltwater in the back of his throat.
Charles sat at a simple table in the middle of the stark room and he smiled when he saw Erik. The smile made Erik’s chest tight-it was the same, even after everything that had happened. It was still that smile that made you feel like you were the center of the world, that he was hanging on to your every word, and Erik didn’t want to look at it.
Charles’s eyes were soft and sad and gentle, such a contrast to before at the beach that Erik’s hands went weak and he almost did blow a hole in the wall and take Charles with him, back home to Westchester, to the mansion, to his students.
“My friend,” said Charles. “You came.”
Always, Erik almost said. He dipped his head and the helmet felt strange, unbalancing him. Charles looked at it oddly, his face dark and unreadable.
“They wouldn’t let me in without it,” Erik felt compelled to explain. “Stryker thinks you’ll take control of me and escape using my abilities.
Charles nodded. “My telepathy can’t get out of this room,” he said quietly, and his eyes went hard (Jesus, when did that happen?) as the door swished shut. “But once someone’s in here, they’re mine.”
Erik looked at him and he was sad for a moment, overwhelmingly sad, and Charles must’ve pick up on it because he smiled again and waved a dismissive hand.
“I wouldn’t hurt you like that,” Charles said. “Never, do you understand?”
Erik smiled sadly because he did, he really fucking did.
“I’m surprised they let you in here, actually.” Charles was looking everywhere but Erik’s eyes. “With a power like yours. They underestimate you, don’t they?”
Erik shrugged and tried to look uncaring. “Most likely. They certainly don’t underestimate you, though.” He looked around; the room was full of shining submarine-metal, reflecting dull, blurred images of the two men. “Can you hear anyone’s thoughts at all?”
The smile Charles gave him was raw and open. “No,” he said, and Erik thought he heard a note of fear. “No one at all.”
He’s lonely, Erik realized. Utterly, truly alone. “The children wanted to come see you,” he said.
“You didn’t let them, did you?”
“No.”
“Good,” Charles murmured, still not looking at Erik. This close, Erik could see a faint bruise on the back of his next-needle mark, he was familiar with those-and more on the insides of his wrists. Fingerprints. Someone had grabbed Charles, hard, and held him down while a needle was shoved in his neck.
Fury roared in his blood, white-hot, and the entire room rattled. He tasted blood and iron on his tongue and his fingers curled, denting the walls.
“Erik,” Charles said, and grabbed one of his hands. “Erik, you must calm down, they’ll take you away from me-”
Abruptly Erik breathed out, forcing it down, bottling it up. Later, back at the mansion, he would rip something apart, tear it to molecules, but now, here, he couldn’t.
“I’m fine,” he said, through gritted teeth.
Charles laughed a little. “How is the school going?” He was trying to get Erik talking, get his mind off of his overwhelming anger, and the gesture is so Charles Erik wants to, to-
“Good,” he said instead, thinking of the kids who had somehow grown, these last few months, and weren't really kids anymore. He still thought of them as children, though, and probably always would. “We’re thinking about expanding, finding some new children, making it into a proper school.”
“That’s good,” Charles said, almost wistfully, and Erik remembered long nights of chess and scotch and dream of the future, their future, and he hated what they have become.
They miss you, Erik didn’t say. They call me Professor Magneto. Sean stopped asking about you two months ago and Raven still sleeps in your room. Hank is thinking about leaving us and Alex makes sure I eat at least twice a day. Moira’s been missing for a year now; the kids think she’s been killed. They’re scared. We fought three days ago; I don’t want to lose them. I need you. I don’t know if I can do this on my own.
“They think you’ll take over me,” he said again, suddenly instead of all these little things that were cracking inside of him. “Force me to use my power to break you out. That’s why they’re making me wear the helmet. They had to have gotten the idea from somewhere. They have to know.”
Charles looked away and Cuba swelled between them.
“Would you?” Erik asked softly.
Charles didn’t answer.
“Would you, Charles?”
Charles looked him in the eye and his eyes were the color of the Cuban skies. “I did it once,” he said bitterly, harshly, as if the words were causing him actual pain. “Who’s to say I won’t again?”
Erik bowed his head. “My friend,” he said heavily. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” Charles snapped. “It’s not your fault, you didn’t make me-”
“I told them your name,” Erik murmured. “They asked me, back in August, who X was. And I told them.”
Charles reeled back suddenly, eyes wide as if he had been punched.
“In return, they promised not to torture mutants, to treat the Friends of Humanity as terrorists, and the Anti-Mutant laws didn’t pass.”
Charles was silent, his eyes vivid and cracked.
“The greater good,” Erik said softly, and he wanted to take off the helmet, to show Charles what he felt, the anger, the guilt, the saltwater taste he couldn’t seem to get rid off.
“Erik.”
“I’m sorry, Charles.”
“Stay,” said Charles suddenly, explosively, reaching out and grabbing his hand. “Please. Stay with me. We’ll talk this out. We’ll be together again. Think of what we could do, as us. We could make the world safe for our people. Please, Erik. We want the same thing.”
Erik was, for the first and final time, grateful for Shaw’s helmet because Charles would never hear his heart crack in two.
“Oh my dear friend,” Erik said, as he turned to go. “No we do not.”
“Erik!” Charles stood, sharp and sudden and there was fire in his eyes. “Wait.”
Erik stopped by the door and his eyes were closed.
“I’m sorry too, my friend,” Charles said, barely louder than a whisper. “I never meant to-meant to hurt you, that day. It wasn’t your fault. I had to stop them, you must understand. I had to stop them and I was there, in their minds, and they wanted to kill us, all of us, even the children because of what we are.”
Erik smiled crookedly but Charles didn’t see it, and he remembered Cuba and Charles and painpainpain in his back, in his mind, his hands stretching out against his will and his body shuddering and the crack of Moira’s gun and finally nothing as he lay in the sand and couldn’t feel his legs.
“It was an accident,” Charles said quietly, pleadingly. “You weren’t supposed to get hurt.”
Erik nods once. “I know, my friend,” he said. “It was for the greater good.” And then he flicked a finger and wheeled himself out the door.
3.
Charles watched Erik wheel himself out and trembled. The door was only open for a few seconds but his mind reached out anyway, almost against his will, and bounced back hard as soon as the door slammed shut.
Charles Xavier shook.
He missed Erik already, the sight of him, the sound of his voice. It had been nearly a year and half since Charles had seen him, or heard him speak, and he missed it.
He’d seen the children, of course. He hadn’t shown himself to them, but he’d seen them, through Angel, Riptide, and Azazel. The two groups had clashed a few times, over the months, though mostly the Brotherhood stuck to fighting the Friends of Humanity.
But Charles hadn’t seen Erik, and he’d needed to know-
(how badly you damaged him, the voices whispered, bouncing off the walls, crazy, howling, he couldn’t let them out. how much he hates you now.)
The door clicked, a lock turning, and Charles was alone. Someone would come by later, of course, wearing a fucking helmet, just like Shaw’s, their thoughts sealed off from him, and they’d poke and prod and try to see what they could pull out of Charles.
Nothing, he thought fearlessly, and it echoed and bounced back at him, too loud-
Charles would give them nothing.
He knew what they wanted. He’d been living in other people’s heads since before he could walk-he knew what they all wanted.
Money, sex, power, the newest this, the best that. Charles knew what humans desired. And he knew what they’d do to get it, too.
Men like Stryker, like half the government, it seemed, would always do the same thing, to get what they wanted. They would kill. Not directly, of course. They were too “civilized” to do it themselves, instead manipulating others to maim and wound and destroy for them.
(They want to kill us-)
Others like the Friends of Humanity, who were all evil and anger and raw, starving hate, others like the frightened, vulnerable mutants of the world, who didn’t know how to use their own powers, let alone wage a war. Others like Erik, who were desperate to protect their families or friends.
(or lovers, laughed the voices. Charles flinched.)
A mass of feeling, the captured telepath offered the door a mirthless smile before standing and pacing, around and around the mirror-paneled room.
He missed Erik. He’d shouted thoughts at the helmet, hurled them like bullets, and they’d just bounced back. Nothing he’d said had gotten through. Not that he expected it too, really, but still, he wanted-
Too late for that, he thought to himself. Much, much too late. It’s been a year…
Charles shook the thoughts out of his head and kept pacing, around and around. He didn’t know if he was being watched- he doubted it, he couldn’t see how they would do so, unless they had a telepath on their side-and if he was, well, they’d think he was a crazy, damaged psychopath, which might actually be an improvement from genocidal, crazy psychopath.
(They want to kill us-)
Humans, Charles had learned, were not too bright.
They seemed to think, for bizarre reasons he couldn’t quite figure out, that Charles was somehow going to massacre them all. Which was preposterous. Even if he had the means to do such a thing-wipe out something like ninety percent of the world’s population-he wouldn’t. Genetically, every human had the potential to create a mutant, and every mutant, at least when paired with a human, had the potential to create a human.
Humanity was currently the dominate trait in their species, after all. Mutantism was recessive, and would remain so for some time. Killing off the humans would only limit the gene pool.
Besides, Charles thought, I’m not sure I want them dead. Not all of them hate mutants. Just… most of them.
No, Charles Xavier did not want to kill off the humans. He just wanted them to leave his people alone. He wanted them to stop torturing and killing and suppressing his race, which had only just been shoved into the light.
And he’d make them stop, because he could.
(I want to-)
He paced, around and around, his footsteps echoing off the mirrors, terribly, unnaturally loud, but at least they drowned out his fucking thoughts-
I’m going crazy in here.
The absence of thought, of other minds whirling and buzzing right against his own, was driving him mad. He needed others’ minds, needed them like a human needed air or Erik needed metal. This mirror-lined cage was going to kill him.
Or, at best, drive him mad enough that the government could justify killing him. After all, what did one do with a rabid dog, except put it down?
It didn’t matter if the dog wasn’t actually rabid, just a little unusual; a dog perceived as rabid was a dangerous dog, and should be put down before he infected others.
Before they’d taken him out-sneakily, actually, like cowards instead the real “righteous” soldiers they claimed to be-Charles had caught their thoughts, a hundred thousand howling hurricanes. The Americans were afraid that he would incite their mutant populations to revolt, that he’d draw them out from their rightful place and bring war down on good, innocent human heads.
Charles fought back the urge to sneer. He wanted mutants to be safe, so that made him a terrorist. He wanted to give his terrified, threatened people the tools to fight back, so that made him the villain.
He could live with that. He didn’t much care for what the masses thought, anyway-and if he really wanted, he could change their thinking, make him see his way, just maybe, if he pushed hard enough-so their names, their petty labels, didn’t mean much.
Locking him in a box, though, where all he could hear was his own thoughts, meant something.
It meant that, every second, he was losing his grip on his powers. He needed to touch others minds, he needed it, and all he could hear was his guilt-
(Erik, Erik, I’m so sorry, I never wanted to hurt you, they were going to kill us, I read it in their minds-)
It meant war.
Charles Xavier, by nature, was not a violent man. These last few months he’d become one, of course, out of necessity, but he much preferred the subtle, bloodless telepathic shifting to an all-out brawl.
And right now, he was wild enough to kill someone.
He paced, and shook, and his thoughts flew out of his head and tore back, razor-edged, through him.
(Erik I’m so sorry-
They’re going to kill us all-
I didn’t want-
I want-
I’m sorry-
I don’t want to kill-
But they do-
They do-
I can hear them-
I want to-
I’m so sorry-
I want to-
Erik-)
And something in Charles Xavier just… snapped.
part 1 con't