A/N: I'm still working on the next chapter of Left and Right, but sometimes Erik insists on having a chapter of his own xD.
Takes place while they're escaping from the planet and Erik needs to bend a fence that's blocking the alley they're in.
Erik steps forward and grips the steel on the door. The metal thrums under his touch, barely perceptible, but he can feel their molecules trembling from his power. Just out of reach. It's impossible, what Charles is asking him to do. Once he could have complied easily, with barely a thought involved, but now, now the power slips away from his touch and not even a single atom will move for him.
It's impossible—but Charles is asking and Erik can't refuse. Won't fail him.
If he looks up, he'll see the Jedi and that Councilwoman who is apparently tagging along. He'll see Charles. And he'll see the fear written in every line of their bodies, even if they're trying to stay calm and not distract him. It's not really working though; Erik can feel the blood thundering in his ears, his heart pounding furiously and unwanted memories resurfacing.
"Just move the coin, Erik." Erik shudders and shoves at the metal futilely, snarling soundlessly. "Just move the coin."
He catches the elusive edge of his power as it thrashes and burns him. The Force has nothing to say to him, doesn't want to listen, but he grits his teeth, digs in his heels and yanks. And he can feel it now, like the first weak ray of sunlight on his face after leaving a dead sun world.
Erik waits for a little pool of power to form before he carefully starts to mold the metal under his hands; if this is all the Force that he has available to him, then finesse will be much more important than brute force. What was it that Charles had said about serenity?
There's a sudden burst of sounds that breaks him out of his concentration. Booted feet. That patrol of stormtroopers they had passed earlier. If they walked by, they would surely find the little group huddled at the end of the alley. Erik tenses. He's no use to anyone in a fight right now and somehow he doubts that Charles and his Jedi had ever fought in a skirmish against a group of opponents even as small a group as this one.
But the footsteps stop before they reach the mouth of the alley and Erik almost wants to go after them now, even if he only has a rather tenacious grasp on the Force right now. No matter; he can still take most of them out, he's sure, if he reaches for the Dark. But that would leave whatever soldiers he missed as well as all the rest of the stormtroopers and Sith on the planet for Charles to deal with. Erik glances up and catches a glimpse of Charles's worried, pinched look. The call of the hunt and promise of blood drains out of him and he slumps a little.
He hates backing down.
"Erik?" Charles says. What is the matter?
Erik presses his forehead against the cold, unyielding metal. This is happening because of him. Charles's work, his home, had been destroyed because of Erik. But he could still save them, if only he could do something as simple as opening a hole in the fence. Useless.
But he can't tell Charles that. Nothing's the matter, he replies, and puts Charles out of his mind as best he can.
The worried look on Charles's face stays in his mind though as he pours as much energy into the metal as he dares. Trying to make it work. Why won't it work?
He opens his eyes to find that the metal has bent outwards a little and he realizes that this isn't going to work. He can already feel the dullness of exhaustion licking at the edges of his consciousness and it's not going to work, and they'll be captured, and—and Erik will not go back to Shaw ever again. He'll never let Shaw hurt Charles again.
"I've tried it your way, Charles," he mutters. Well, kind of, anyways. "Now for something that works."
Erik calls up the memory that's guaranteed to give him the rage he needs, the one that's been weighing heavily on his mind this ever since they had stepped into the alley and found themselves blocked by a fence.
The music, loud and dim at the same time. Shaw—the emperor—staring down at him, a kindly look on his face.
"That's all I want from you," he says, smile still fixed on his face, eyes intent on Erik's.
Erik looks at the little piece of metal on the palm of his hand, puts his disbelief aside, and concentrates. He shoves at the metal.
Erik shoves at the metal, and he feels it creak. He doesn't dare look up, because if he does, he knows that he will find Charles's eyes on him, filled with hope.
He looks up when the metal doesn't move, looks over to where his mother is looking at him, confusion, desperation, and hope wavering in her eyes. I believe in you, her look says.
Erik looks away, the weight of her hope hard on his chest. He clenches his teeth and wills the coin to move.
So Erik ignores Charles's eyes, and the horrible, horrifying hope in them, the ever-present hope that Charles hasn't yet realized counts for nothing. He feels a growl escaping from his tightly clenched teeth and wills the coin—fence—to move.
It doesn't.
The metal bends furiously under his touch, writhing, wanting to escape his power but he doesn't let it, forces it to mold to his will.
The emperor sighs heavily, as if he hadn't really wanted to do this, but Erik had forced him into it. "This is what we're going to do." Erik shoots a terrified look at his mother, but all she has to offer him is love and hope.
Love won't move the coin. Hope won't move the coin. Only Erik can. Except Erik can't.
Erik gasps and distantly feels the metal bending, the molecules realigning to where he wants them to be.
"I'm going to count to three," Shaw says, pulling out a blaster. Points it at Erik's mother. Erik feels a sudden urge to beg, to throw himself at Shaw's mercy, but he already is, and there's no mercy to be found in his cold smile. "Now, Erik," Shaw says pleasantly. "Move the coin for me."
Metal twists under his fingers, moving far faster than the mere trickle of power Erik is using should allow it to.
"One." Erik concentrates, but the coin doesn't move.
The metal is moving easily under his power now, and his rage is towering higher than he can remember. Uncontrollable.
"Two." Erik looks at his mother desperately. I'm sorry, he wants to say, but his voice remains as frozen as the coin is.
Erik still refuses to look at Charles. If he does, all will be ruined. His rage won't stand in the face of Charles's disappointment at his use of the Dark side. And Erik knows the danger; he can sense the glee of the Dark in having Erik in its grasp again, even through his almost nonexistent connection with the Force.
But if the price for Charles's life is him slipping a little more down the steep slope to the Dark claiming Erik as its slave forever, Erik finds that he cannot refuse.
Three— Erik doesn't hear the shot ring out, but he does hear his mother's gasp of surprise before she hits the ground. It's the last thing he hears before the fury overtakes him and he finds himself standing with the emperor clapping him on the back like he's done something marvelous in an utterly destroyed room.
The fence explodes outwards and Erik barely manages to catch it before it clangs into the ground. They hurry through the hole he's created for them in the fence and he takes a moment to put the fence back together. It doesn't really look like it had before when he's done fixing it up as best he can, but he can't do careful and neat when his rage fills his vision with red.
Erik looks at where his mother had been standing. She—the body—is gone, but the blood remains.
The fury drains out of Erik in a rush, leaving him swaying slightly and feeling ashamed. He doesn't look at any of them as they ask if he's alright and follows them when they start moving. He doesn't look back at the wrecked fence brokenly put back together.
He's done it, done what Charles had asked him to do, and they're almost free, almost out of Shaw's grasp, but he can't dispel the bitterness that lingers deep in the dark shadows of his heart.