Chapter Four:
From A Dusty Bookshelf
It wasn't something he thought or felt, he just knew—knew as his eyes opened to endless, seamless black that despite all evidence to the contrary, he wasn't alone. Last time he was subjected to such darkness he'd been blind in every sense of the word, had nearly suffocated under the weight of his own dread. He couldn't place how, but this time it was different. Charles experienced nothing but the slow onset of peace as it filtered through the air, filled his lungs on the inhale and didn't quite leave him once he breathed back out again.
He was liberated, free. Not from the past, but from the uncomfortable pressure in the forefront of his mind that had lingered ever since the Brotherhood collected him from the side of the road. It was nothing but a memory now.
A sound echoed in the distance, loud and clanging. Charles strained his ears to listen. It sounded like a name—his name.
"Charles."
Suddenly, the void around him was awash with color. Charles reached out to run his hand through the thick strands of paint that trailed in the air but they avoided his wandering fingers with surprising skill. The rivulets formed an elegant spiral around his wrist and never once touched him. They pulsated and spun in nonsensical shapes, a dazzling array of blues, greens, oranges and reds. A veil of white-silver-blue trickled down over his face, reminded him of the breathtaking light that suffused Justice's every movement. That suffused his every movement now as well. There was no snap or crackle of lightning, but the streaks of color humbled him all the same.
"Charles."
The whisper grew more insistent in his ear and the licks of paint suspended in the negative space around his body thickened to twice their original size. It was appropriate somehow that, when Charles couldn't reach either of them, they were more alluring than ever.
Charles abandoned any hope of touching the grey-green-brown to his left, or the stream of lavender-pink laced tightly under his arms, and focused instead on what he could hear rather than see. The voice arrived intermittently, at first softly and then with urgency as time passed. He waded through the darkness, surrounded by every conceivable hue. Charles tilted his head up—for, if they gave him nothing else, the streaks of color were an anchor around which he could establish a centre of gravity—and pushed with all his might.
He hurried towards what he hoped was the waking world and Erik, whose soft voice spoke circles around him, more beautiful than anything his mind could conjure. He infused as much of his own will as possible into the idea that he would open his eyes and see his friends again.
Charles pushed at the edge of his consciousness a single, final time. The liquid color writhed like a thing alive as he breached the surface, rippled away like the ocean waves as awareness struck him. He shut his eyes to the bizarre sensation, resonating in his chest, his back and the arches of his feet. When he opened them, the world snapped into focus. Only it wasn't what he'd expected at all.
The hallways were bathed an incandescent blue, an unearthly brilliance that Charles saw reflected on his skin as he pressed his hand to the wall. He walked down the length of the corridor, steps slow and measured. The worn wood of the doorframe was a comforting presence in his palm. He stood in the threshold, surveyed the room and strode into it. There were no cracks in the ceiling, no splintering in the shelves. If not for the ethereal glow that lit it up from the inside out, Charles' library looked the same as it always had.
His scars healed, his memories returned—but the pain of separation wasn't so easily forgotten.
His eyes followed the luminescence on the walls as it stemmed and knotted in varying shades of liquid blue. It enthralled him to see them interlace, skitter over bookshelves and weave between desks, projected in the air all around him. He longed to touch them, but knew the instant he thought so that it wasn't advised. The light was linked to Justice, of that he was certain, but he couldn't place how. It wouldn't do him any good to meddle in something he wasn't supposed to, especially if Justice sought to protect him by it.
In the silence, someone made a small, involuntary noise. Charles turned to face the source of the sound and stopped dead in his tracks.
Erik approached him tentatively, as though Charles would disappear if he moved too quickly. His hair, almost always combed off his face, fell forward into his eyes as he watched Charles watch him. His jaw clenched, accentuated the lines around his mouth, pulled into an unhappy frown. Charles blinked, lips parted in stunned disbelief at his presence. It must have been Erik, then, who was responsible for the cocoon of safety and warmth he felt when he first woke up. He thought it was Justice, but he was more than glad to admit that he was wrong.
Erik watched him carefully in the cold, blue light, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing either. Charles dropped his gaze to the object in Erik's right hand and, for the second time in so many seconds, felt a rush of surprise at what he found.
"You're more amazing than you realize," Charles announced, voice rough as sandpaper. He swallowed, or tried to, but his mouth was barren and dry. "That you're here at all is a phenomenon in itself. But those—"
Charles motioned to the thick tome in Erik's right hand.
"Those books are impenetrable to anybody but me or a fellow telepath. Or they were supposed to be."
Erik stared at the book and then at Charles, intrigued.
"What are they?"
His answer was simple enough. "Me."
Erik's reaction was instantaneous. He surrendered the book in his hand to the shelf closest to him and backed away from it.
"You mean, they're your—?"
Charles' eyes narrowed. There was something in Erik's expression that looked suspiciously like guilt, which made little to no sense where this was concerned. There was nothing to feel guilty about; Erik didn't what the books were and what they meant to him. Unless...
"My memories?" Charles said absently, "Yes, they are. But you already knew that, didn't you?"
Erik didn't have to speak because the tell-tale silence that followed did it all for him. But Erik wasn't like everyone else. Charles wasn't surprised in the least when he decided to forgo all awkwardness and murmured, "I guessed."
"Erik, it's okay," Charles reassured him, at a loss of what else to say, and it was okay.
"It's not," Erik retorted immediately. The shame on his face was assuaged by frustration, but it was an anger directed at nobody but himself.
"Erik..."
"It's not," he repeated forcefully. "It's not okay."
The words sparked something deep inside of him, and he knew.
"Ah," he said, numbly.
The silence that ensued was fraught with tension. There was a sinking sensation in the pit of Charles' stomach, and the library took on a darker hue. Erik's head snapped up at that, the way the walls closed in around them both. It was so easy to forget where they were when everything was so tangible. Charles could never forget, not really, for it was under his own power that he remained, but the moments passed quicker and more painlessly than ever before with Erik there. He barely felt the strain at all.
"I saw it," Erik confessed. His voice was ragged and distraught. "I saw it, Charles. I saw it all, and I—"
Sympathy and pain drove Charles to interrupt, "I'm sorry."
Erik stared at him like he was mad.
He struggled to elaborate. "That you had to see that, I mean. I wasn't at my best."
The disbelief on Erik's face bled into a look of complete indignation. "Your be—Charles, do you honestly think I'm upset about that?"
Charles sighed. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair.
"No, I don't. It would be so much easier if you were," he admitted reluctantly.
"You passed out," Erik continued, quietly. His anger was gone. In its absence he sounded devastated. Forlorn. "You passed out and suddenly, it wasn't you anymore. Emma was furious; she calls it an abomination."
"He's not," Charles said, gently. "He's not an abomination. You'll be wise not to mention that to him either. It's offensive."
The temptation to ask was painted all over Erik's face. Charles could hardly blame him. His memories from that time, while accounted for, had yet to be arranged into any kind of working order. For someone to stumble across them without any telepathic background, it would be chaos. Not to mention the nature of the memories themselves. No, Charles didn't blame Erik at all for wanting to make sense of it.
"In any case," Erik said, in a conscious attempt to pick up the previous thread of conversation. "She wasn't happy."
Charles smiled sympathetically at him. "My companion is certainly... unique."
"'I have no name, only the virtue to which I aspire'," Erik recited.
The smile on Charles' face went from sheepish to amused in an instant. "Is that what he said to you?"
In contrast, Erik was sombre. Charles tried to mimic the air he projected, but couldn't. It was clear that, while Erik had experienced Charles' incarceration as if it were his own, their thoughts on the matter were greatly divergent.
"It said it was a spirit of Justice. It wasn't surprised you hadn't told us about it." It came out harsh, like an accusation.
Charles huffed. "I should hope not. He was the one who convinced me to keep it a secret."
"So you knew? All this time?" And that was an accusation, no doubt about it.
"No," Charles impressed. Erik's brow eased back in confusion, but his eyes remained hard.
Charles dropped his head into his hands, scrubbed his palms over his face and expelled all the air in his lungs in a rush. He breathed into them shallowly until the dark shadows in the nooks and crannies of the room slunk away. When he'd gathered himself the best he could, he pried his fingers from his cheeks. Charles then bypassed Erik completely and made for one of the plush, leather seats in a small corner of the library. He collapsed into it, felt the hiss as the cushions were compressed under his weight.
"Tell me," Erik said softly. He sat beside him, slung his arm over the headrest and leaned forward.
His thigh pressed tightly to Charles', a warm presence in the half-light.
"You know how complicated it is. You heard it from my own mouth, before I remembered. I was protecting someone, the same someone who saved me from dying in an explosion that I may or may not have caused."
Charles waited long enough to see Erik nod, and the troubled frown that dwelled on the other man's lips at the words 'that I may or may not have caused', before he continued. "Nothing I remembered made much sense, and that's how I knew. I knew I'd been tampered with. Emma was right, Erik. The only person who could wipe the mind of a telepath or distort their memories with any degree of success is another telepath. It wasn't her, so it had to have been me. How do you confront memories that were so terrible, you erased them from your own mind?
"I also knew that I–that I had been harmed. I didn't have the broken bones or the bruises, but I had the muscle memory. Not even the most skilled telepath can erase a body's base reaction to certain stimuli. I knew it even if I didn't remember it and I, I couldn't—"
Erik's eyes, when he curled his fingers under Charles' chin and lifted his head, were very, very blue. Be it a trick of the preternatural glow that played all around them or the unparalleled sadness he felt at Charles' admission, they blazed. Erik leaned in, hesitancy written into the downward turn of his lips. Charles remained rooted there, giving Erik all the time he needed to make his decision.
His uncertainty burned to ash, left only embers on the outskirts of his expression. His fingertips grazed Charles' lower lip for an evanescent second before he kissed him feverishly. Charles moaned into Erik's mouth, the heat that sparked to life between them, a fire of its own right.
When he pulled away, Charles slumped forward to rest his head on Erik's shoulder. Erik's fingers massaged into his hair and held him there in a loose embrace. He didn't want to move. He thought that maybe neither of them did.
"You're wrong," Erik said when the silence had trickled on too long.
Charles snorted into Erik's neck. The sound tapered off into a soft sigh as the hand in his hair continued its gentle kneading. "I'm often wrong about a great deal of things—to which are you referring?"
"You didn't do this, Charles, at least not all of it."
Erik spoke with conviction, which Charles both loved and hated him for. Hate, perhaps, was too strong a word; Charles was jealous of the confidence Erik wielded, even as he knew it had been hard-won and well-deserved. He added, "Did you ever think to wonder how I got here?"
"I assumed Frost brought you here," Charles surmised with a confused frown. It deepened when Erik shook his head.
"No," he countered, "though not for lack of trying. Any attempt on her part to connect me to you failed spectacularly. Your friend did it."
Charles' head snapped up. "Did he tell you why?"
"It—he was distressed. He said he hadn't realized that shielding himself from you to allow you both time to recover would cause such a strain on your mind. He said he was responsible for the hallucinations you've been having." Erik's lips twisted in displeasure at the thought.
"He also said he couldn't reach you," he continued, "or that he wouldn't, because it wasn't worth the risk of damaging your mind further. That it was the damage that caused you to retreat in the first place."
Nothing Charles thought to say was good enough. In the end, all he had was the truth. "I was overwhelmed."
"Charles," Erik said, and his voice was pleading, desperate. "If I'd known, I—"
He shut his eyes to the urgent tone, watched the inside of his own mind fade to black. That was why he didn't want to say anything, because anything he did say would sound like a justification, even when it wasn't intended as one. But what was done was done.
To Erik, he shook his head and said, gently, "There's nothing you could have done."
When Charles chanced a look at Erik's face, he was taken aback by what he found there. It was an odd combination of shame and disdain, as though what he'd said and what Charles had assumed he'd said were two different things entirely, and now he had something else to regret.
"No, not the facility, though it's bad enough you were there for a week and a half and I didn't know about it," Erik snapped gloomily. Charles fought the urge to flinch at the spiralling anger in Erik's tone, and reminded himself yet again that it wasn't him Erik was addressing. The idea that Erik continued to possess so much self-loathing rubbed Charles the wrong way. This was part of Erik he never envied—his confidence was always assuaged by such deep, restless guilt over things that nobody else in the world would ever blame him for.
"I meant what happened on the beach, what McCoy said about..."
Erik swallowed.
"About your injury."
Three words, and all of Erik's anger was gone. In its place was sorrow, broad and sweeping and Charles—couldn't.
He was purposefully vague when he asked, "You saw, then, in my memories?"
Erik shook his head. His eyes were twin pools of pain, but the rest of his face was impassioned. "I didn't see it, Charles, I felt it. I wasn't there as a silent observer, I was there as you. I never wanted you to go through that. I never wanted you to experience the agony of being helpless, or the fear. You were supposed to be the ignorant one, the naive one, the one I had to convince of this desolate world's hatred. But this, this changes everything because it proves that you have seen, and you do know... Pain. Anger."
Me.
The word went unsaid, but it was the clearest of all.
Charles wanted to address that—needed to address it—but there was something else he had to say first. "I'm not about to break, my friend. I am certain of that. If what I experienced before was a result of Justice's power returning, of his awakening, then I have nothing more to fear."
"That's not what I meant," he answered, just as Charles knew he would.
He leaned forward, captured Erik's gaze as tenderly as he would his hand had he extended it and requested, "Tell me what you mean."
Erik's face went blank, which Charles recognised as a defence mechanism. It was also a tell—it meant that whatever Erik was about to say was either deeply personal or would hurt. Charles bet on both.
He was right.
"All the reasons I had—that you didn't understand, that you were incapable of it—are gone," Erik began numbly. As he continued to speak, however, a spark ignited. "You came face-to-face with evil, both literally and figuratively, and you overcame it. You overcame it and you still believe in your precious little ideals and I'd ask you how except I know how because I felt it too and I..."
The wall of steel that made up Erik's guarded expression crumpled inwards and fell. What lay behind it was pure agony, so strong it stole his breath just to lay eyes on it. Charles didn't know what to say—there was nothing to say, really, that could even hope to alleviate the pain—but he had to try. Anything was better than sitting in cold silence as his heart bled and Erik's hardened further.
"Erik—"
"I don't know what I'm doing anymore," he confessed, in a voice so profoundly miserable that Charles' body ached to hold him. But Erik had never reacted well to being pitied, especially not by Charles, whose opinion he valued higher than most people's. He refused to be demeaned by the emotions of others, something Charles had accepted but hadn't understood before his paralysis. Now, he knew the feeling intimately.
"I can't—I can't make this fit," Erik whispered. "It doesn't fit."
Erik was right, but not for the reason he thought. It didn't fit, Charles knew, because it wasn't supposed to fit. Erik was never meant to experience what happened to Charles. If, for whatever reason, this crisis of conscience was preordained, it had to come about of his own free will—not by being on the receiving end of Charles' errant memories.
Charles knew what he had to do.
"Erik," he said, carefully, and took Erik's hand in both of his. He had two reasons to do so: one, because he needed to get Erik's attention, and two, because he had to establish a physical connection between them if he had any hope of convincing Erik that this was what had to be done, for both their sakes. There was no telepathic manipulation of any kind in the gesture. Just touch.
"I know how closely you guard your thoughts, but if you want—and only if you want, mind—I can get rid of those memories for you. It would be painless, and all of this confusion would go away. You could have clarity again, if that's what you need."
Erik looked up sharply, shocked. Then, as Charles' words sunk in, his expression hardened.
"Unbelievable," he said, with no tone or inflection.
Charles felt the blood freeze in his veins. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply—"
Erik's lip curled in anger as he turned his gaze to the middle of the library, where the shadows fluctuated in time with the dread in Charles' chest. When he spoke, it was low and dangerous. "You have the chance to tell me I'm wrong, to convince me to abandon a cause that we both know you can't condone, and instead you offer to take that away? What could very well be your only chance to make me see the error of my ways and the reason in yours and you, you—"
He laughed.
The sound shook Charles to his very core, as did the wonder in Erik's eyes when he said, "You didn't even hesitate. You just discarded it, like my peace of mind is worth more to you than being right."
"It is," Charles said, without pause. "Always. And if that makes me weak, I don't want to be strong."
Erik's answering smile was sad. "It doesn't make you weak. It makes you better."
Charles opened his mouth to protest, but Erik shook his head. The smile waned, but the imprint remained. It lingered, just below the surface.
"If every person was like you, Charles. If I was like you. Except there's a part of me that is now. I didn't understand what you meant all that time ago when you told me you knew my agony..."
He trailed off.
"But now you do?"
Erik nodded. His eyes, when they searched for Charles, were bright. "I do."
That one look conveyed everything he had ever wanted to see, to hear and to feel from Erik. The moment should have been perfect—deserved to be perfect—but it wasn't. As long as he had his reservations, Charles could never reconcile this with the Erik he knew.
"All disbelief aside, I'll take them from you without a second thought if you want me to. Before you say anything—" he added, hand raised at the burgeoning look of annoyance on Erik's face. "—let me remind you that I'm a telepath, Erik. I've spent my entire life doing this. Having my memories, seeing what I saw and feeling what I felt, thinking what I thought—it will affect you in ways you can't imagine."
"I think it already has," Erik interjected quietly.
Charles steepled his fingers and bowed his head in thought. He watched Erik through his eyelashes. "All the more reason to remove them. I guarantee that Emma will agree with me. I don't want my memories to influence your decisions, and I mean any of your decisions, whether I like them or not.
"I can erase the emotional transference and leave the events themselves. You'll be distanced from them while still recalling what happened. It's the best solution I can think of under these circumstances," Charles offered, a path of light cutting its way across the library towards him. It drew their eye to a section of the library tucked behind an old, oak desk. In that section, he knew, was their solution.
"No."
Charles' eyes widened. "Erik, please."
But Erik had none of it. He stood, fingers slipping from Charles', and paced the length of the sitting area. When he reached the chair and Charles, he stopped. "If you think this has influenced my decisions, or is capable of it, then you don't know me as well as I thought you did. I know my thoughts from yours. I know what's truly mine."
Charles, while appropriately chastised, remained unconvinced. Judging by the way the determination on Erik's face faltered, it showed.
His resolve didn't falter for long. "If you're that worried about my judgement, I'll just have to prove it to you then."
"How?" Charles asked, careful to keep his scepticism in check.
Erik sighed, resumed pacing in quick, short steps. "I don't know how. I'll wear the helmet—"
One look at Charles' face and he raised his hands.
"Or not," he added, voice strained. "I'm sure to find a way, Charles. What happened to me hardly changed your opinion of humanity."
"That's what I've been trying to tell you," Charles snapped, unable to hide how frustrated and inexplicably hurt he was by that remark, or the way Erik sounded so sure when he said it. "It did change me."
Erik stopped in his tracks.
"Say that again," he demanded.
"It changed me," Charles repeated, and pressed on despite the tremor in Erik's words. "I've spent my entire life like this, seeing things through the eyes of others, feeling what they felt. When one is exposed to that for so long, they become almost desensitized to it. I imagine some simply stop caring, while others—others can't allow themselves to care. Their minds can't cope with the level of stress, which is why telepaths have shields around their minds to block most of it out. But when I met you, when I experienced what happened to you, what Shaw did and the years that followed after, it. It changed me. You may not see the change and I may not show it, but it's there."
Erik remained silent for a long time. So long, in fact, that Charles looked up just to make sure he hadn't disappeared like Emma had last time. But no, he was still there, lost in a world of his own devising while seated soul-deep in Charles. His presence was a balm to the torn, cracked edges of Charles' psyche; the rain after a stiflingly hot day. Charles stood and walked past him, into the library proper.
"And in knowing this, the pain it's caused us both, would you erase those memories?" Erik asked at long last.
Charles paused by a shelf full of books with bright, colored spines—remnants of his childhood with Raven.
"Never," he answered, and couldn't bring himself to regret it, even if it proved Erik's point in one word the way hundreds couldn't for him.
"Then don't ask me to do the same," Erik countered from behind him.
Charles frowned, still staring at the bookshelf. He ran a hand down one of the hardback novels on the middle shelf. It was titled simply: The Davenport Incident. He smiled, but it was a fleeting thing.
He turned on his heel to face Erik and said, "It's your mind and your decision, Erik, and I accept that. I will say, however, that if it ever becomes a matter of removing them to save you—personality or otherwise—I will not hesitate to do so."
Shock bled into his expression, only to bleed out again a few seconds later. Had Charles not been staring right at him, he'd have missed it.
"Okay," he agreed.
Charles nodded in confirmation. "Okay."
Luckily, Erik was nothing if not in tune with Charles. They both sensed the need for a change of subject, dove for one when it presented itself. Erik took the opportunity to look around the library, a small smile on his face as the shadow of Charles' negative emotions flickered out of existence. "This place is magnificent. I can't imagine anyone else's mind is this organised."
Charles was startled into laughter. "No, they most certainly are not."
Erik's voice lowered. "And mine?"
Charles looked up to see the teasing glint in Erik's eye as he regarded him through the rows of books.
"Your mind is... not something I can easily describe, I'm afraid," Charles answered honestly.
"Is it really that bad?" he asked flatly, looking distinctly unimpressed.
Charles chuckled. Of course he would interpret it that way. "No, not at all. Your mind reflects who you are. In your case, it's absolutely exceptional. If you're that interested in seeing it, and don't mind my hanging about, I'll show you one day."
"I might just take you up on that offer."
Erik's response was equal parts sincere and flirtatious. He walked the length of the aisle in barely concealed wonder, ran his long fingers down the spine of one of the books on the shelf. The white-blue light danced across the length of the narrow passage, hovered in Erik's face for a short time and disappeared into the books themselves. He'd noticed them earlier no doubt, as Erik was nothing if not prudent, but there'd been nobody to answer him. Now, however, he had Charles.
Erik looked up at him pointedly as the illumination faded.
Charles scrabbled for a way to explain. "Justice is—renovating."
It was a particularly awful answer. Charles winced. He hadn't meant to sound so vague, or dismissing. Could Erik have taken that as being dismissive? One would think, as a telepath, that Charles would have a better understanding of social cues.
One would be horribly, terribly wrong in this case.
Erik surprised them both by laughing. "It looks spotless. What happened to all the—?"
He made a complex motion with his hand, in an attempt to encapsulate the entire library. Charles stifled a laugh at how useless the gesture was. Charles surveyed the room, perfectly whole save the ethereal lightshow overhead.
"I assume you mean the damage?" At Erik's nod, he continued. "Like I said, Justice is renovating. He did the same thing last time."
Charles didn't have to read Erik's thoughts to know exactly where the conversation would lead to next. It was clear from the calculating look in his eye that Erik was piecing the puzzle together quickly, quicker than Charles had, in any case.
"He stopped, didn't he?" Erik asked. He pinned him with a piercing stare.
Charles, despite his composure, couldn't hide the way he flinched at the loaded question.
Erik's gaze sharpened further. "What happened after the two of you came together?"
No matter how badly he wanted to know, Erik was careful to keep any trace of compulsion from his voice. The question, when he asked it, was gentle and resounded with sincere curiosity and concern. There was suspicion there, of course, and no small amount of apprehension at the answer. He watched Charles like a hawk. Nothing passed by him unnoticed and Charles...
Charles didn't try to slip away with the help of half-truths. Even he could see the futility in lying to him.
"You saw what remained of the CIA facility, didn't you?"
Erik hesitated, but nodded anyway.
"Then you'll understand what I mean when I say you'll be glad you didn't witness it, firsthand or otherwise," Charles answered quietly. The smell of burnt flesh lingered on his skin, as did the sulphuric aftertaste of the Fade.
Charles looked up just in time to see Erik surge forward with unimaginable agility, and draw him into a fierce hug. He made a muffled sound into his neck, pleasantly surprised by the show of intimacy. This was still new for the both of them; there was a vulnerability that hadn't existed before, a whole new level of tension. Erik twined his fingers through Charles' hair, pressed his lips to the crown of his head and breathed him in. He murmured something in a language Charles couldn't quite place, unfamiliar words forming long, fluent sentences in the soft timbre of Erik's voice. They blurred into sensation, a litany of pleasant sounds in his ear. Charles had never felt so close to him.
Which was, of course, Erik's cue to go and ruin everything. "I think it's time to go back now, don't you?"
Charles hummed in agreement, but wrapped his arms even tighter around Erik's waist. He burrowed into the other man's warmth. Erik's laughter rippled through them both and he argued weakly, "That's counterproductive, Charles."
He allowed Charles to cut him off with the hot slide of his lips, and gave as much as he received. Erik kissed Charles like he was drowning, as if every second they weren't connected he fell further into the deep. He grazed his lower lip with his teeth, massaged it with his tongue; he swallowed down every noise that Charles made, that they made together.
Charles burned for him, for his skin and for his taste. He feared he could not survive another minute without it, without this, without Erik. He feared that it might already be too late, and he feared that he felt no fear at all. He wanted to push until there was nothing left between them, until Erik's thoughts were his and his were Erik's. It was a beautiful, impossible, terrifying thought.
"I'm ready," he told Erik when they pulled apart. Erik smiled at him and Charles smiled back.
Then he shut his eyes, braced himself and pushed.
'I apologise, Charles Xavier, for not keeping my promise to you.'
Charles turned to the suit of armor beside him, Justice's chosen image, and frowned. "If I recall correctly, you promised me that when I woke up, I'd be free. This"—he motioned to the library around them, safe and intact—"for me, is freedom."
'Be that as it may,' Justice intoned in the same old, profound voice that echoed with glorious purpose, 'I also promised you that you that you would return to yourself once I repaired the Veil. It has been repaired, and yet I am still here, a burden upon you.'
"You're not here without a reason, Justice," Charles reminded him. "Erik told me you were weakened, that my hallucinations were a consequence of you healing. He said he heard these things from you. Is it true?"
'Yes.'
A smile curved Charles' mouth. "Then you have done no harm."
'Thank you, but that is not the only reason I must apologise to you. I must call upon your services once more.'
His smile deepened. "I know."
'How?' Justice reached out questioningly. Charles filtered the memory through to him, astral fingers curling around the book in his hands.
"I knew even before I remembered," he admitted once the spirit had returned. "The pieces fell into place long before then. I couldn't tell why, not exactly, but I sought out my best man and put him on the job."
'Your best man... is not the metal-caller?'
He chuckled. "The 'metal-caller' is special. He also has a name."
The suit of armor lifted a shoulder in an attempt to shrug, and Charles laughed brightly.
"But no," he continued, running his hands over the books in front of him. He chased the ghostly light with his fingertips as it darted over shelves and in between volumes. "I'm talking about someone else, my second-in-command so to speak."
'If you harbor no ill will towards me—'
"Which I don't."
'—perhaps we should see what answers the investigation has yielded?' Justice asked, as if Charles hadn't spoken.
"You took the words right out of my mouth," he said cheerfully.
'I don't—ah, idiom.'
"This," he announced with a laugh, "is going to be interesting."
Charles woke.
He groaned softly at the light, pulling a hand up to his face to stop it from filtering in. As soon as he made the gesture, however, it flickered out. The bed dipped beside him as Raven crawled back on top of the covers, wrapping her arms loosely around his waist. They were alone.
"How are you?" she asked carefully, voice carrying in the quiet.
Charles shifted so that his arm was underneath the pillow behind her head. Raven settled into his side and placed her head against his chest. As their breathing relaxed into an easy tempo, he answered. "I'm okay."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
Her arms tightened. "Good."
They lapsed back into silence, until Charles thought to ask, "What time is it?"
Raven laughed in his ear, smooth and melodic like a wind chime in the breeze.
"Three in the afternoon," she said, the smile evident in her tone. "You woke up at around ten, but you were out of it."
Charles sighed at the idea of another day wasted away in sleep. "I don't remember."
Raven shifted beside him. He felt the fine scales on her forehead press into the level skin of his collarbone. He shut his eyes and revelled in the feeling of holding his sister—his first and oldest friend—in his arms. In those nine months, Charles had wondered if he'd ever see her again. It had been impossible to tell how she felt about him, considering the argument they had before Cuba and all the promises he'd admitted to breaking. In his darkest moments, he hadn't wanted her to come back at all, a feeling borne of both anger and shame.
He didn't need telepathy to know that she was thinking the same thing. Her legs moved closer to his unconsciously, a warm weight over the blanket. He'd ask her if she was cold, but Raven didn't feel the elements as he did.
He considered asking her anyway, just to break the silence, but she beat him to it.
"Charles," she whispered in a small, broken voice. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know. You have to believe me, I didn't know."
Charles pressed a kiss to her temple, brief but hard. It carried with it all the warmth he felt for her, an overwhelming torrent of love and affection. "I know you didn't. It's childish, but I never wanted you to find out, certainly not in the manner that you did. I didn't want an accident to stop you from doing what you needed to do, regardless of whether I agreed with it or not. But—" He cut himself off.
"Yes?"
He shut his eyes, breath caught in his throat.
"But if I'm honest, I didn't tell you because I didn't want it to change the way you saw me," he admitted heavily. "I couldn't walk; I couldn't even bring you home. I was a failure, in every sense of the word.
"I hope you understand why Hank and Alex reacted the way he did," Charles continued, away from words that were getting too close for comfort. "It was hard for them to live through so much turmoil—to see their mentor, their carer, fall to pieces. It must have been terrifying."
He should have known better than to hide from her, though. She was far too clever for her own good.
"What about you?"
Clever, clever Raven.
Charles shuffled onto his side and faced her in the low light of the room. He could see the faintest outline of her face in the dark.
Unlike Erik's room, there were no windows here, no breathtaking view of the veritable mountain range just outside. She shut her eyes at the feel of his fingers against her cheek as he told her how he felt, received and transmitted by touch, like he did when they were children.
"In the span of a few hours I lost my friend, my sister and the ability to walk. How do you think I faired?"
Raven drew away, taken aback, but Charles followed her. He pressed their foreheads together, a comfort to the both of them.
"I'm not saying this to make you feel bad," he whispered to her. "On the contrary, part of what went wrong was that I never told you how much you meant to me. I took you, what we had, for granted. But after... I guess you could say I took it badly. At times, very badly."
"Something tells me that's an understatement," Raven murmured.
"It is, but I've made peace with the past. I have a second chance now, courtesy of Justice, and I plan to make the most of it." He smiled.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing? With Justice?"
Raven's worry inundated him, filtered through the connection between them, which she broke abruptly by sitting up. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, chin resting in the valley they formed.
Charles followed her, sitting alongside the wall. He reached over and switched on the light, casting her exotic features into sharp relief.
"Where's the Raven I know, hm?" he ribbed gently, equal parts play and concern. "The one not afraid to speak her mind."
Her look of concern collapsed into a roll of her eyes and a half-smile.
"She's worried about her fool brother. Answer the question." She nudged him with her shoulder for good measure.
Charles snorted and nudged her back.
"I think I do," he mused thoughtfully. "Despite our physical bind, Justice and I exist separately. He makes it a clear distinction at all times. 'To do anything else,' he told me, 'is an act of abomination.' I'm not without reservations, but I made the best out of a bad situation."
Raven sucked in a breath. She appeared to gather all her courage just to ask, "Will you tell me what happened?"
Charles frowned in confusion. "Erik didn't—?"
She shook her head.
"Magneto didn't say a word to anyone but Emma, and that was to argue with her," she said, lips twisting unhappily.
"Ah."
Raven raised her eyebrows and bumped him twice in rapid succession. "No more distractions. Talk to me."
"I never said I'd tell you," he pointed out.
"Charles."
Charles sighed, exasperated, but his eyes were bright with affection when they met hers. He gathered Raven beside him, pillowed her head on his shoulder, and began to speak.
He told her everything he could think of until the words died out. He held nothing back.
In the silence that followed, Raven raised her head to stare at him, her expression thoughtful.
"So let me get this straight," she said at length, "you let a spirit of Justice run amok in your head, he powered you up and together you escaped from your cell, where you battled actual demons with your groovy new lightning gig and threw them back into a portal to the great beyond, which you shut behind you figuring that was it, except it exploded on its way out which—really, you're surprised?—brought the whole place down around you. Is that what happened?"
She watched him carefully. Charles considered all she had said for a moment and nodded. "That's right."
Raven settled back into place beside him. "Huh."
And that was that.
Except...
"You can come out now," Charles called to the two retreating figures in the hallway.
Realizing the futility of the situation—Charles was, after all, a telepath—Hank and Alex emerged with twin looks of guilt on their faces.
"Charles—"
"Professor, I'm—"
"It's quite all right," he said, raising a hand to silence them. "At least I won't have to repeat myself."
Alex's body relaxed but Hank remained tightly wound, uncomfortable. "It doesn't excuse us, or our behavior at the warehouse."
"Maybe not," Charles agreed. "But considering how many conversations I eavesdropped in on during my childhood"—he exchanged a knowing look with Raven, who nodded vigorously—"I'd be a hypocrite to scold you for your curiosity."
"Hey," Raven said suddenly. "I haven't taken you for the tour yet!"
She grinned wildly at the two boys, eyes dancing with mischief.
"Do you have a lab?" Hank took the chance to ask.
Raven considered the question.
"I… have absolutely no idea," she confessed with a shrug. "Look with me?"
Hank agreed readily, not willing to pass up the opportunity observe the Brotherhood's operation first-hand. Raven uncurled from Charles' side, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek before she bounded off the bed after Hank. Her grin softened. "Stay safe."
Hank handed him a small notebook before he left, bound in soft, read leather. Charles opened it to find pages of written text, but had neither the time nor the inclination to decode it just yet.
Alex lingered at the door for a moment and hesitated. Charles glanced up and frowned at the turmoil on his face.
"Is everything all right, Alex?"
Each boy, Charles learned, approached problems differently. Alex confronted the issue, whereas Hank and, to a lesser extent, Sean, tended to bury it. At the same time, Charles found it easier to get the latter two to speak to him. Alex was best coerced gently, by remaining calm and accepting what he chose to give when he gave it.
Charles kept his face as open as possible, waited patiently for Alex to decide what he wanted to do.
Alex stepped back into the room and fisted his hands into his pockets.
"I don't know what anyone else has said to you, Professor, but I get it. I know what being in solitary is like, just like I know how it feels to lose control." He drifted closer as he spoke, to stare at Charles with hard, blue eyes that softened as he lost himself in thought.
"Until I met you, until I trained and became part of this team, all I could think about was how my powers were a curse."
He fell into the chair by Charles' bedside, stared at the metal railings on the bed like he saw right through them. "Even now, I'm still responsible for the lives I took. I can't go back and I will never wipe my hands clean of that. All I can do is go forward and hope that every good thing I do will some way help towards making the world a better place.
"You gave me that purpose," he said, his eyes jumping to Charles, "and I can never thank you enough for it. So I thought I'd do one better and let you know that I'm always here to talk if you need to."
Charles digested this for a long moment.
"Thank you, Alex," he said with a warm smile. "I'm so proud to see you come into your own."
A smirk curved Alex's mouth. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but so am I."
They fell into a companionable silence. Charles flicked idly through the pages of the book Hank had given him, neither reading nor taking in any of the diagrams on its lined pages. Instead, he considered his team, how lucky he was to have them. How lucky they all were to be there.
"They'll be coming home soon, won't they?" Alex murmured, voice pitched low and soft.
Charles' smile grew. "I hope so."
"But they won't stay."
"Not forever, no," Charles breathed deeply. "And that's okay."
It took a lot for him to admit it, but the words felt right.
Alex nodded and leaned back in his seat. He laughed quietly to himself, then again when he spoke up to Charles. "Guess we should be thanking this Justice, then. He's a total drag, but still a bad-ass."
"Justice isn't easy," Charles reminded him. "It's righteous. It's hard."
Alex shrugged.
"Not cool to insult the guy in your head, I guess," he said, conceding to the point. He stood up, moved his chair out of the walkway and ambled backwards to the door. When he reached the threshold, he gripped its metal frame in his hand. "I'll catch you later, Professor. Take care."
With a final grin, he was gone.
Charles leafed absently through the book. The first few pages were filled with Hank's neat cursive, detailing the search parameters and the channels he chose to use to find the information. It was what came after that caught his eye.
Attached to the next page was a computer print-out with a list of coordinates. Coordinates, the notes stated, to a second CIA facility with the same power readings as the first, and a paper trail that saw the transportation of over fifty 'prisoners' from one base to the next.
Charles stared at the book in astonishment. Hank had found it. He'd actually found it.
Hank was busy designing a set of carbon-fiber wings for Sean when he tracked him down. Always on the look-out for a new perspective, he offered his own. His knowledge was nowhere near as extensive as Hank's but it was, as the younger man put it, 'inspired' and they relaxed easily into familiar banter over the struggle for practicality in design.
"Do you have a moment?" Hank asked when their brainstorming hit a low.
"Sure," he said. "What's on your mind?"
Hank hesitated, which worried him. Post-serum Hank wasn't afraid to address the harsher topics. Charles could hardly fault him for being cautious, though. The last time he spoke his mind, things hadn't exactly gone to plan.
Except that they had, in a way, better than he hoped for.
Charles' collapse ensured that his X-Men and Erik's Brotherhood worked together to get him out of there and, if he believed the testimonies he received so far, Justice was responsible for salvaging that particular relationship.
It didn't surprise him that Justice understood more than he let on. Charles felt a burst of fond exasperation at the mad company he kept, including Hank, who still wasn't speaking—who had no idea how to begin, it seemed. It didn't feel right, bringing up the book just yet, but there were other things he had to say that did fit.
"Hank, I think you should know that—"
"Charles, I—"
They both cut off abruptly with a laugh. Hank gestured. "You first."
Charles perched on the end of his chair and fixed Hank with a piercing stare.
"At the warehouse," he began softly, "after you told the Brotherhood about my injury, I said I was sorry you felt that way and I was undeserving of the loyalty you gave me. I know what I said afterwards may have detracted from that, but I want you to know I meant it."
He drew in a deep breath and plowed forward. "I'm afraid what I thought and what I said were two very different things."
"So what did you think?" Hank eyed him warily.
He studied his hands until it became clear that the best way to communicate his sincerity was to look at Hank when he spoke. The last thing he wanted was another misunderstanding. They were family, and, on top of that, Hank was his friend.
"I wanted to tell you that I've already accepted my responsibility in what happened, just as I've forgiven Erik for his and Moira for hers." Hank's amber eyes snapped up. Charles watched him coolly. "It was an accident. Unfortunate? Yes. Devastating? Most certainly. But I'm an adult and recent events aside, I don't need coddling.
"You can't put words in my mouth like you did back there," Charles implored with a rueful smile. "I may be willing to set aside my differences, to mend the bridges burnt in anger and pain, but make no mistake. I know who is trustworthy, and who is not."
A long silence followed his words. Hank ruminated where he sat, eyes fixated on his large, furred claws. Between his genius-level intellect and hulking appearance, it was easy to forget how young he was. When he lifted his gaze to Charles' face, he looked well beyond his years.
"I'm sorry, Charles," he said at last.
The armrests on the chair rattled as Charles pushed off them and stepped over to where Hank sat. He knelt in front of him and took Hank's hand in both of his. He clasped it tightly, without even a hint of trepidation. Those hands had helped him up more times that he could count. He had nothing to fear from Hank, the beast's animal nature tempered by the prodigy within.
"Apology accepted," Charles replied with a smile.
He patted Hank's hand and stood. "I'm sorry as well. The past week and a half couldn't have been easy on you. Or the others, for that matter."
Hank stared at him in stunned disbelief. Then he shook his head and laughed fondly. "Only you, Professor."
Before Charles could ask what he meant by that, he sighed and said, "I won't lie to you; we were on edge for a long time. Ororo was convinced Farouk had something to do with your disappearance, and that it was her fault you were missing."
Charles breathed in sharply. "Is she—?"
"She's okay. We told her otherwise, and I think she got the message after the hundredth time. We were quite adamant." He smiled wearily.
Charles released the breath he was holding. "Good. That's—good."
The conversation lulled. In an attempt to avoid another awkward silence, Hank asked, "I take it you went over the data?"
They both latched onto the change of subject with fervor. Hank explained the results of his search while Charles helped extrapolate what, exactly, those results were. Justice, who rested quietly during their conversation before, provided support through Charles. Justice was curious about everything Hank spoke of, so much so that it became easier to understand what he meant when he said that 'Justice' wasn't his name, it was the virtue he chose to embody. He was capable of emotion; he just chose not to let it cloud his judgment.
When questioned about the possibility of another tear, Justice grew concerned. 'It is but a theory. I believe something different, something infinitely more powerful, is at work here. Your world was never meant for my kind or theirs.'
"What are you saying?" Charles said out loud, for Hank's benefit as well as his own. It was hard to distinguish between their voices when they were both thinking at the same time, and it was common courtesy to let Hank know when Justice was speaking to him.
'I am saying,' the spirit spelled out patiently, 'that I believe it wasn't a demon who tore the Veil, but one of your own.'
He relayed this information to Hank, who shifted back into his seat.
"It's difficult to pinpoint what caused this when a lot about mutation is a grey area," Hank mused. "But it makes sense."
Hank leapt up from his seat and started to pace—long, brisk steps within the crowded room. He made a few circuits, then turned to watch Charles closely, an idea on his lips. "If these demons could tear through our reality so easily, then they would have done it before. If they had, it's possible I don't know about it, but something tells me that Justice would."
'Yes.'
"Yes."
The spark in Hank's eye grew brighter. His blue lips curled into a grin. "Could the power readings you had me track come from a person?"
"I think so," Charles said carefully. "How did you find them anyway? I wasn't exactly specific on what I wanted you to look for."
Hank frowned. "I thought you knew where they were from. You were the one who put me onto him in the first place."
Charles wracked his brain for something, anything that made sense. His jaw dropped. "Wait—Alistaire? He's alive?"
"Were you expecting something different?"
He shook his head, still caught up in the idea. "I don't know what I expected, but of course. I told him to talk to you." His face broke into a grin. "That's fantastic. So he contacted you when? Before or after I called you?"
Hank's expression twisted in dismay. "After. If he'd called before, he and I would have had a different conversation."
"Different?"
"One involving threats," he said, deadpan.
"Ah."
'The doctor...' Justice started, stringing thoughts from the both of them together. 'I have seen him only in your memories, but he is a good man. Should he offer more help to our cause, we would be wise to accept it. Or ask for it.'
"Did he give you any contact details?" Charles asked by way of reply.
Hank pointed to the book in his hand. "It's all in there."
Charles grinned sheepishly. "I admit, I haven't read it all. I got to the part where you'd found the second facility and came right over."
The thought elicited a laugh from Hank, deep and rumbling.
"Is he more like you then? In comparison to someone like Magneto, I mean," he said carefully, as if it might offend the spirit.
Charles shrugged. He truly didn't know. "Justice's true enemy is complacency. So long as someone is fighting for it, be it peacefully or otherwise, the idea will live on. I think he toes the line between Erik and me, though emotion could drive him down the darker path if he let it.
"Would he remain my friend Justice, or would he change?" Charles asked the room at large. "I don't think I'd like the answer."
His mind was deathly silent.
Hank laughed again. "I'm sure glad he chose you, then. He'd change for sure if he was in me."
Charles smiled sympathetically. "You don't know that. Besides, you witnessed a great deal of my anger yesterday."
"You're a telepath," Hank reasoned. "I'm not. Try as we might, neither of us can truly imagine what it would be like if Justice possessed someone without your abilities. I hope we never have to. As for that facility, whether we find another tear or the mutant who caused all this, we'll go in and we'll fix it."
To Hank, he nodded.
To Justice, he thought, 'We go tonight.'
Charles skirted out of the rooms assigned to Hank and Alex, treading carefully away from them even with their occupants rooted firmly in sleep. They'd retired later than expected, but it hadn't compromised the plan like he thought it would. Charles was still on schedule, albeit more on edge. He'd tied up the last of his affairs in the form of a letter for each of them, and for Raven.
He had one last stop before he left, a final letter he'd delayed in giving for as long as possible, but could delay no longer.
Erik's door loomed in front of him, its owner ensconced in dream. Charles lingered in the hall and bit his lip. Was he doing this?
Yes, he was.
He moved to force open the door, only to stop at the feeling of another mind drawing closer to his—a waking mind.
"Xavier."
Emma appeared in the hallway, a splash of color in the shadow. Her hair hung loose and damp around her shoulders, a white silk robe cinched tightly around her waist. As he turned to face her, Charles marveled a how young she looked without make-up on. Her eyes were the only part of her hardened persona that remained and they stared him down ruthlessly.
"Miss Frost," Charles said graciously, as if she hadn't just caught him in the act of breaking into her leader's room.
They watched one another for a long moment before she spoke, voice unexpectedly soft.
"Be careful."
Charles felt his eyebrows knit together in surprise and confusion. "I will."
Emma tilted her head slightly, as if doing so would bring understanding.
"You don't need luck," she mused, her eyes distant. They refocused on him with shocking clarity. "Good luck."
"You too," he replied, a knee-jerk reaction to her unexpected courtesy.
Nothing made sense to him anymore. This wasn't the way Charles Xavier and Emma Frost interacted with one another, at least not in his experience. There were no barbs or threats, no sarcasm or insults. Just as he wore his bravest face, Emma had deconstructed hers piece by piece until all the smoke and mirrors were gone. The question on his mind wasn't why she'd done it, but why now.
Emma's lips twitched. "I suppose you'll ask me to take care of them."
"Will you?"
"I will," she promised. Her blue eyes, when they met his, were fierce. "Don't mess this up, Xavier, though I suppose that's inevitable."
"Why do you hate me?" Charles asked suddenly, her words striking a chord.
"I don't hate you," she argued with a roll of her eyes. "I just don't believe you. I don't know who this Justice figure is, but it isn't what it says it is. Everything about it is unnatural. It's not supposed to be there; I know you know that."
"Once the problem is dealt with, Justice returns back to his world and I to mine. Then you can have your precious control back."
The words came out through clenched teeth, frustrated and fatigued. Emma watched him carefully. He felt the first tendrils of true anger, but knew it was uncalled-for. She wasn't the one who got him into this mess. That was all on him, one-hundred percent. His fingers twitched by his sides and he longed to run them through his hair in aggravation. Doing so would be an admission of defeat, so he didn't.
His next words were a dismissal, but a courteous one. Emma could blow his plan wide open if she refused to cooperate. That deserved respect.
"If you'll excuse me."
She stepped back and out of his way as he opened Erik's door and crept inside. He shut it behind him, felt her mind retreat down the hall to her own quarters, where it stayed. Charles walked on his toes towards the figure lying half-naked on the bed. Erik's face was slack and unresponsive, the gentle rise and fall of his chest illuminated by a strip of moonlight that filtered in through the window.
He didn't stir when Charles kissed him goodbye, the gentle press of lips to his forehead, his cheek and his mouth. Charles' throat closed at the sight of Erik curled around the bed sheets, finding peace in a far-away dream. He only wished reality could be so kind, to either of them.
He placed the letter on the table and turned away. Emma seemed ready to keep to her promise; it was time he kept his.
Charles was half-way to the surface when the tentative silence around him was disturbed.
'I have not seen a mortal world in many years. It's very different to where I am from,' Justice said airily.
It took him a moment to realize what was happening. Justice never said more than was required—he responded to cues, yes, but didn't see a need to fill the void with idle chatter. Then it clicked. He was trying to distract Charles from his nerves.
The bigger shock came when it actually worked.
"What's it like, where you're from?" he asked. Justice had spoken on the subject, but never anything of substance until now.
'The Fade is impermanent, forever shaped by the minds of dreamers and the will of the spirits within,' he explained. 'It is ever-shifting, in a constant state of flux as it's made and remade. Be still and I will show you.'
Charles stilled.
'Close your eyes.'
He closed them.
Justice's voice continued to speak in a low, haunting whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
'Because of the Veil, some believe the Fade is a different place entirely. But there is no 'this side' and 'that side'. You do not cross over into the world of the spirits so much as you... open your eyes to it.'
A weighted pressure rested atop his closed eyelids. Justice's presence slipped away, leaving him alone in a world of unrelenting black. Fear of the dark was never an issue for a boy who could read minds, but it stirred in his chest all the same. It reminded him, terrifyingly, of his cell. His hands itched to touch the walls, but considering he could barely feel the ground under his feet anymore, Charles wasn't sure he wanted to.
"It feels like a lifetime is passing me by and I can't see it," he said in frustration.
As quickly as it came, the pressure dissipated and Justice returned to stave off the darkness. The spirit reached out and laid a hand on his chest, just above his heart. When he spoke, he spoke in both mind and voice.
'Open your eyes.'
As his eyes snapped open, a rush of air hit Charles square in the face. He felt a sharp tug of wind against the worn leather jacket he'd appropriated from Erik's wardrobe, and drew it tighter around him in response. When it died down and Charles could finally see, the first thing he noticed was that the Brotherhood's base was gone, that he was...
Elsewhere.
"Oh. Oh my god."
The clouds in the sky were unlike any he had ever seen. They looked like the curling tendrils of the Aurora Borealis, a lightshow of unimaginable depth. They were a hybrid of colors—grey, white, sepia and yellow-green, all striving to carve a place for themselves.
The fields stretched out for miles on either side of him, but in the distance, there was a city. When he peered closer, however, Charles felt his incredulity reach a fevered pitch. The city wasn't level with him at all. It was... hovering, for lack of a better word, in the indistinct space between land and sky—a hulking black mass suspended in the air. Its edges rippled and blurred.
'Unable to create for ourselves, we restructure our world from what we glimpse in yours. There's only one permanent fixture—the Black City, forever in the horizon. It never draws closer, nor will you ever lose sight of it completely. It's a reminder of our failure, the greed and corruption that blackened its golden streets. I believe the story is similar to that of your Bible, where first man's folly cost him dearly.'
"How did we get here?" he asked, the moment the question occurred to him. "Did we sunder the Veil?"
'No.'
Justice gathered his bearings and expounded, 'The tearing of the Veil is an aberration, a tangible link that should not exist. In places of great death and destruction, the Veil grows thin, and where it can be seen or felt is called a tear. If you think of the Fade as opening your eyes, think of the Veil as your eyelids—you must transition between one place and the next, but you never truly travel. You are adjusting your perceptions. It's imprecise in any case, a metaphor used by mortal scholars to explain away what they don't understand.'
"I'm having a hard time of it myself, to be honest."
'You are closer than most, Charles,' Justice replied with something akin to fondness.
"Careful now," Charles warned with a tut, smile widening by degrees. "That's almost a real emotion you have there."
'I'm capable of emotion,' Justice argued, managing to sound both proud and disdainful of the fact.
"Unsettling, I bet?"
'It is easy to feel unsettled when everything around you is different,' the spirit huffed.
He hadn't realized that Justice might take actual offense to what he was saying. He opened his mouth to apologize, only for it to snap closed and Charles—Charles hadn't been the one to do that.
"Hey!"
Justice's amusement filtered through the bond between them. Either Charles was incredibly slow on the uptake, or that sneak knew a hell of a lot more about emotion than he was letting on. 'The mortal world I visited was very different indeed. There was more excrement, for one, and you walked your way to travel. You did not use these—automobiles.'
"Are we really standing here—in a metaphysical realm, might I add—talking about cars?"
'It seems so.'
"Let's get out of here," Charles said, exasperated. "Where is 'here'? Not in the Fade, but physically?"
Justice was silent for a long moment before he said, in a tone that suggested he knew exactly how much trouble he was getting himself into, 'I believe you mortals call it "Canada".'
Charles stared at the discolored field around him and the way it shifted and changed depending on which way he turned his head. Then, with agonizing slowness, he dropped his head into his hands. His frustration bled into amusement, until he was shaking with it. Charles laughed and laughed until his lungs burned and the corner of his eyes prickled.
"I think I'm actually going to miss you," he said through the web of his fingers, voice thick with mirth.
If he had the chance to look back and could choose a memory to encapsulate his experience, it would be that moment; Justice thrummed within him, a beacon of strength in an otherwise insubstantial world, and for the first time in a long time, Charles felt truly safe.
tbc
