{Okay, I don't own Xmen}
Eric stood fiercely in front of the stuttering doctor. Cords of muscles stood out on his crossed arms as he tried to restrain himself from just coldcocking the bastard. "How many times do I have to say no?" he asked coldly. German curses almost spewing from his lips instead. "Charles will not have the surgery until I have time to speak with him. I know he will want to have a say on being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I will not take that away from him."
'That and I think if we can find the boy again, this is not even an option.' Eric glared. "I have the right to speak for him until he can speak for himself, and I want you to wake him up so that Charles can. If he chooses to have surgery then I will step aside and let you work as you must. Until then, fuck off."
The man actually squeaked and stepped back. "Fine. But, if Mr. Xavier's back is truly broken and he never walks again, because you didn't let us do our job, then it is on your head and soul."
"I can live with that." What he could not live with was that it was his fault Charles laid in this hospital room. Eric spun on his heel and stepped back into the ICU room. The man lying limply on the bed looked like a corpse. A bag of blood hung above him draining slowly into needle-pierced veins.
A blond Raven already sat beside the bed clutching Charles's cool hand to her face. "Well?"
"They can't do anything until he wakes up. When he does, he can tell us where to find the boy. I will get him here and Charles will be fine. But he has to wake up first." Eric sent a mental glare at his unconscious friend for making them wait in terrified suspension.
The pained cry Charles had issued as he dropped to the sand still echoed in his ears. It rang around in his head like a death knell. He had thought it was. The horror clenching his heart then had rivaled the shooting of his mother.
Charles had been coming out of the crashed jet, blood streaming from his noise from the strain of living the death of a man from the inside, even as Eric exited the submarine leaving his nightmare dead on the floor. It had been over. Until Moira grabbed a weakened, unshielded Charles and put a gun to his head.
"Nobody move. You are all under arrest for suspected terrorism." Moira's once soft voice turned hard and commanding. "The CIA and a few other people would like to talk to you." Eric had heard in her voice the kind of 'talks' they would be having. Just like Shaw all over again.
Glancing into Charles's eyes, he could see that the man was in no shape to stop Moira himself. He had felt the echoing pain of the coin's passage through Shaw's head from Charles. The shielding helmet had lain crumpled into a ball at their feet where Shaw threw it as soon as Eric had started to shrink it on his head. Charles held the insane man still as Eric killed him. Eric regretted only that he had wounded his friend doing it.
Moira dug the pistol harder into Charles temple. "You can't deflect a bullet when it had no space to deflect from. He will die. You are all monsters and it is time to get you under control."
"Don't hurt him!" Raven sobbed. "Don't hurt my brother."
"You will all line up on the beach and kneel with your hands behind your heads. A team is coming to pick you up and taking you for retraining. You are all the government's dogs now. A special team of monsters to find and kill other monsters." Moira lips twisted with and ugly sneer. "Kneel now. You, red demon thing, get anywhere near the others and I will shoot them instead. No poofing around."
Azazel snarled, but did as told. Charles he might not have any care for; but two of his people were stuck here on this beach and he had very few friends.
Eric did not move even as young Raven tugged at his arm with a sob. Slowly he brought his arms up lacing his fingers behind his head, and still locking eyes with Charles sank, to his knees in the sand.
Pained and betrayed as Charles eyes were, trust in Eric gleamed stronger. They had seen this coming, or something like. Enduring his stepfather's wrath and the ever-pressing thoughts of the people surrounding him had erased most of Charles faith in the people from a young age. He tempered Eric's need to kill anyone who angered him, but did not have any faith in humans in general. This was obviously true and being proven now.
'Do it.' Charles mental voice whispered faintly. 'Do it now.'
Eric kept his face cold, stony. His power swept out in focused force feeling all the metal around them, even the strange, old things buried deep beneath the sand. He ignored everything accept all the metal upon Charles and Moira. Metal wove through the black and yellow suits Beast designed as a protective layer, and Moira wore her tags and several buckles and clips adorned her flight suit. The gun pressed into Charles temple sat in his senses like a bomb.
Eric poured all of the power he had used to turn a huge satellite dish against its gears into those few pieces. 'Now!' He called to the metal, pulling that in Charles suit towards him and tightened Moira's dog tags into a choking collar. The gun he locked. It might as well have been a block of fused metal. None of its parts would move while he held it under his power. The magazine bent and twisted until it was useless, the bullets held within broken and trapped. Charles's body flung at him his feet leaving furrows in the sand, woven metal flying to his call. The bullet in the gun's chamber split and shed its metal shell.
Moira brought her free hand up to pry at the chain digging into her throat, cutting off her airway. Fear flashed through her eyes as she straightened the aim of her gun. Eric continued to choke her as he caught Charles and released everything else to make sure he was okay.
Eric pulled back enough to look Charles in the face. "Are you hurt?" He wiped at the trail of blood still streaming from the telepath's nose.
"Nothing that won't heal quickly. Thank you my friend." Charles gave him a proud smile.
A single gunshot shattered the silence. Charles cried out and slumped into Eric's chest falling to the sand.
"No!" Eric bent over him feeling desperately for a wound. Hot liquid flowed over his fingers as he reached the middle of Charles's back. The tingle of metal whimpered beneath his questing fingers. He called it gently pulling the broken bullet from the wound. A moan made him cringe. "I've got it. You are going to be fine. Everything is fine."
The split and smashed bullet emerged from the skin with a squelch of flesh; gleaming, wet with crimson blood. Eric levitated it in front of his face. Looking beyond, he saw Moira still strangling from her dog tags. "You did this." Flinging out his hand towards the traitor, he flung the bullet with it. The tiny chunk of metal plowed through skin, muscle and bone with unstoppable force. Entering her heart it exploded slivers of metal piercing the tissue and exiting out into her lungs and studding the inside of her ribs with steel.
Raven landed into the sand beside him, "No, no, he has to be alright. He cannot die. Not now. I need him. He thinks I'm mad at him. I am not, Charles, I'm not mad at you. I love you. You are my brother. Don't leave me!" She pressed her small hands over Eric's putting pressure on the bleeding hole in Charles's back.
Slumped in the crook of Eric arm staring out over the ocean at the multiple ships they had just saved from war, Charles laughed weakly. "Raven, ssh. I know. I love you too. We need to leave. Now. They are coming. Moira's team. I can feel them out there. They are telling the ships to just leave, that they have it under control. That's good actually. The ships were about to open fire on us with everything they have." Eric swallowed around the lump in his throat. Even having live another's death and having been shot, Charles was still trying to protect them all, straining to his limits to do it. He pressed harder against the wound ignoring how the pooling blood made his fingers slip against the suit. "Azazel?" Charles called, "If you would, please take us all out of here. I don't believe I wish to meet Moira's friends today. We won't pursue you anymore, Shaw was our target. World War III might not be the best way to survive the humans. Think about it sometime. A hospital might be nice if you could? Seeing's how I cannot feel my legs I think that might be the best destination."
A change of beat in the constant beeping of the machine monitoring Charles heartbeat brought Eric back to the present. Azazel had dropped them off in a shadowed corner of the hospital's entrance, Alex and Sean rushed into the emergency room yelling for help at the top of their lungs. Sean's voice immediately getting attention above any interference.
Beast had disappeared into the alley with fearful, anxious glances back. "See you at home. Call me as soon as you know anything!"
The beep quickened again. Leaning over Charles prone form, he stroked Raven's hair, "Wake up I think he's coming around."
That did it. Raven jolted up right. "Really?" The heart monitor answered her faster than Eric could, bleeping steadily faster.
Blue eyes slit open against the light of the room. 'Eric? Raven?' Even Charles's thoughts sounded drugged.
"We are here," Raven, answered quickly. "How are you feeling?"
'Sleepy, nothing hurts.'
"Charles they want to do surgery on your back. This is important do you hear me?" Eric asked urgently.
"Eric, I hear you." Charles croaked out load.
"Good, do you remember that boy we talked to months ago? When we were recruiting?"
"Yes."
"Can you feel him still even without the Cerberus?" Anxiety made him harsher then he meant to be.
"Hmhm." Charles was starting to drift he could see it.
"Can you show Azazel? Quickly, before they realize you are awake!" Eric commanded.
"Hmkay," Charles signed and turned his face into his pillow.
"Charles." Not a twitch. "Shit. He's fallen asleep again."
A cloud of red puffed into the corned out of sight. "Come, I will take you to this boy and bring you back, then we are done." Azazel gestured Eric to come.
"Stay here and don't let them take him anywhere."
Raven nodded solemnly grasping tighter on her brother's hands.
Azazel grabbed his arm and they were elsewhere. A moment of suffocating nothingness screamed at him and then they were on a quiet urban street. Azazel pointed across the street to a small blue house. "I saw him there. Go I will wait."
Eric sprinted across the road, glad there were no cars. He would have stopped them and attracted attention. Pounding on the door, he resisted the urge to yank both the doorknob and the lock out of the wood and barge in. Footsteps within were likely all that actually stopped him.
The door swung open a crack. A teenage boy peered out. "Why have you come back? I already told you I won't join you."
Eric wanted to grab the kid and drag him back to Azazel and the hospital. "I'm not asking you to join us, I'm asking you to save him. Charles, the man who was with me before. He got hurt and I can't help him, but you can." Eric drew a deep shuddering breath. "Please. Just help him. That's all I want."
"That's all?"
"Yes I promise."
The boy studied him sternly. Eric met his gaze firmly. The boy nodded once. "Okay, wait here." He closed the door before Eric opened his mouth to protest.
After several long minutes, the door opened again. A man stood there barring the door protectively. "I know I can't stop him from going, but if my son is hurt, you will regret coming here again."
"I will protect him. Nothing will get passed me."
A pale hand pushed at the man's shoulder. "Dad, stop being bearish and move." The man obeyed with a final warning glare. "I will be back soon, there's lasagna in the oven and it comes out in twenty minutes. Don't let it burn."
"Okay."
Eric headed down the steps and waited impatiently on the sidewalk. He led the boy across the street. "Don't freak out, Azazel won't hurt you. He's going to take us to the hospital with his power."
The teenager frowned. "Okay?"
Azazel stepped out of the shadows.
"Oh! Cool man." The boy said appreciatively to the red mutant.
Azazel raised a black eyebrow. "Thank you. Hang on." Again the drowning blackness and then the bright sterile lights of the hospital.
"Arran," Charles greeted sleepily. "Thank you for coming."
"Mr. Xavier. Do you mind if I 'see' the problem?"
"No, Arran. Go ahead. I can shield you from the other rooms if you like?" Charles said with a knowing air.
Arran scowled and concentrated for a moment before nodding and stepping up to the bed. "It would make it easier if I can't feel the other people's pains too." He reached out and rested his hand on Charles stomach. Eric leaned his back against the door locking it with his power.
There was nothing to see really, except the color coming back to Charles face and draining out of Arran's. Arran's face was a frown of concentration. Ten minutes slipped away into fifteen and then twenty. The nurse would want to barge in soon. Eric was confident that Charles could handle it though when it happened. That at least the rest had helped. His power practically hummed through the room. Distracting a nurse would be no problem.
Arran swayed and sat down in the chair Raven hastily shoved beneath him. "It's done. There will is no damage left. It might take a bit before the nerve signals compute smoothly but you will walk again, Mr. Xavier."
In obvious proof of Arran's truth, Charles's toes twitched under the sheet and then both of his legs turned and flexed.
Eric sagged and slid down the door with a sob stifled behind the hand clamped over his mouth. Raven didn't hide her happiness, "Thank you! Your power is the best I've ever seen."
She grabbed the teenager in a hug and kissed him soundly.
Charles laughed and pushed the button on the bed so he could sit up instead of lying flat on his back. Using the wall for leverage Eric climbed shakily to his feet and stumbled over to the bed to help Charles with pulling the needles out of his skin.
"Thank you my friend. I don't know how I can repay you," Charles said to Arran after Raven released him.
"Don't worry about it, just leave me alone now. I don't want my family being hurt because I have this power and attracted the attention of the wrong people."
Charles and Eric nodded in unison. "You have my word," Charles said with calm certainty. Eric was sure that they would go farther than just leaving them alone. They would become a shield for this boy and his family.
The mansion's door opened smoothly and Eric waited for Charles to move first. He stepped stiffly over the threshold and into the entry.
"Charles is home and okay!" Sean shrieked from the hall to the kitchen where he'd just come from. Eric winced as the sound hurt his eardrums at the volume only Sean could produce.
Footsteps pounded through the old house and Alex and Beast slid across the wooden floors in their haste.
Charles laughed, "Yes I am fine. Everything is fine. We are all home now."
Raven stepped in and Eric followed feeling comfortable in his own skin for the first time in his life. Nothing plagued him. Grief didn't try to drown him and fury didn't burn in his veins. Here he belonged and here he would stay. Here they would build a school, a fortress against the unyielding humans, and here they would build a protected future for the mutants.
Finite
Yay! It is all done. This just popped into my head today at work and I came home and sat down and poured it out in like four and a half hours straight.
Anyway I figured that with all the different mutants out there why not healers. Logan heals himself, why can't there be one who can heal others and why should Charles be stuck in a wheelchair if there is.