FOREWORD: As promised, here is another chapter, more angst still to come. I simply cannot express how much I appreciate every review, so please keep reading and reviewing! Also, forgive typos and words which may not make sense. I type on my iPad/iPhone sometimes and autocorrect is -_-"

(I do not own characters. No. Not in a hell-hole chance. Also, James MacAvoy is indeed smexy, but any reader out there who prefers the brooding Michael Fassbender, who btw, is also equally delicious? Feel free to discuss in reviews!)

Charles would wonder, years later, how it all happened. How he could have said yes to a man who was clearly insane. Who was drunk on the power absorbed from so many thousands of sources over the years. He wondered how he could have just given up, broken down.

But say yes he did, because at that moment, all he could think of was Erik. Erik, whom he would watch sleep sometimes. Erik, whose every breath he stored in his heart, whose every move was imprinted in his soul. Charles only wanted to see Erik breathe again. He didn't care how, and he certainly didn't care if he had to give himself up for it.

Because Erik was everything to him. Erik, who stroked his hair and whispered sweet things in his ear even as he heaved, ragged breaths from a sweaty, rough, intense round of sex.

Shaw had laughed so hard Charles wanted to punch his teeth right out of his mouth. But as it were, he only gritted his teeth, steeled his resolve, and let Shaw touch the unbreathing, cold body that was Erik.

He stared as Shaw touched Erik's chest and sent sparks of blue straight into the heart.

He felt tears of relief prickle his eyes as Erik gasped, a shuddering breath, and his chest moved up and down, as he coughed flecks of blood from his lips. The fatal wound was sealed, leaving nothing more than a red welt.

"Charles!" Erik rasped as he saw Charles standing there with pain in his blue eyes.

Charles only mouthed the word "Sorry" as Shaw grabbed him from behind, possessively, and said "Now, Charles, my sweet. Now."

Charles closed his eyes as he reached out, and paralyzed Erik with his mind.

Stunned, Erik could only watch as Shaw kissed Charles's neck in appreciation, and smirked at him.

"Now Charles, I'm going to ask you to kill those four young mutants there because they've been bad," breathed Shaw, his hot breath tickling Charles ears, repulsing him.

"No!" protested Charles. "No, I won't do it!"

"Oh?" said Shaw. "I see. Then how about I give you a choice. See now my mutant friends are going to knife each and everyone of your students. You can choose to kill my mutants or they'll kill yours. I don't care what choice you make because all I want is to see if you can control your powers to kill."

Charles could not believe his ears.

"You foul- evil- you murderer," he said, his voice shaking, his hands trembling.

Shaw looked mildly amused. "I've been called murderer before but honestly not by such a beautiful pair of lips! What harsh words! They don't match your soft lips at all. Here, maybe I can help with that -" he crushed Charles lips to his dry ones, and bit down on Charles's lower lip.

Crying out in surprise Charles pulled away, but Shaw held him tight.

"Nah ah ah." He admonished. "Bad puppy."

He reached a cold hand down to Charles's buttocks. "Bad puppies get punished. Do you want to get punished?"

Charles grimaced. "No."

"No, what?"

"No... Master."

Shaw laughed. "Good boy! Now do as I tell you. Choose who you want to kill."

Charles decided his soul would have to wait. He had to try to save the people he loved, at least once. Concentrating hard, he tried to remember how his powers had exploded and killed the mutants who attacked that night.

He was shocked to find that inside his mind he knew just how to do it. That he had been repressing it all the while.

His soul too shattered to cry, he did it. He did as he was told, and killed Shaw's accomplices.

Shaw, who was delighted with the power his new toy displayed, was ecstatic, gleefully clapping his hands and motioning to another mutant to set them free.

"I'm going to set them free," he said as Charles sighed with relief. "But! You will wipe their memories. I don't want them poking around and taking revenge or some stupid thing like that."

Feeling only numbness Charles took a long last look at his family.

He looked into Raven's feline eyes. Her memory, he had to wipe from her childhood, when she stole food from his home and he had told her he'd protect her always.

He took one last look at Alex, at Red, at Hank and his ridiculous blue-roses scheme.

And most of all he looked at Erik. Erik, whose body was shuddering as he tried to fight the paralysis.

I love you, he projected as the last thought, as he probed their minds and wiped all memories since they day they met.

He wiped out their memories of him, of how he met them and recruited them and taught them. He wiped their recollections of the castle, of his horrifyingly bad omelets. It would be as if he never existed.

He erased himself from Erik's mind. That hurt the most. It hurt him so badly he thought he could die from it. Hurt him so that he felt it like an actual physical tumor gnawing in his chest.

Shaw smiled with bliss as he saw tears falling from the blue eyes. He stroked his new pet's soft, smooth hair.

"Good. Now render them unconscious. I'll set them free. I'm a man of my word, you know."

And so he was. He had them carried out of the dungeon he had trapped them in. He had them put in hospitals.

When they woke up they could not remember the events of the past six months. Raven could not remember her name, and who she even was. All she remembered was a hunger.

It was a fugue, said the doctors, who classified their cases as an anomaly, and subjected them to many tests that hurt and invaded before letting them go home - but none of them remembered home at all. They all felt a loss however, as if a huge chunk of their lives have been surgically removed.

Erik felt the loss more keenly than the rest, for their teenage innocence and resilience, as only teenagers could have, adapted to their situation quickly. Erik felt as if he had lost a part of himself, and worse, he couldn't even remember what was the part - or who was that part - at all.

So he returned to his wandering ways, returning to his lone-wolf habits, but every time he smelled a faint hint of citrus in the air, or saw a pair of blue eyes, he felt his heart skip a beat but didn't know why.

He also developed an aversion to omelets, and found he couldn't eat a single strawberry without blushing quite as red as the fruit. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, a name from a dream on his lips, but that name would disappear just as soon as he woke up. Nights like those he couldn't sleep, as his dreams were filled with hot flesh on hot flesh, a pair of soft, kissable lips, and a voice that cried out his name like it were oxygen.

Nights like those he drank to get them out of his head, but it never worked. He was deeply unhappy, miserable as hell.

He just didn't know why.

XXXX

"Charles?"

"Mmm?"

"You're beautiful. I want you."

"Not now, Erik, I'm trying to get some sleep."

"It's four in the afternoon!"

"Well, that's because you kept me up awake last night. The kids are all throwing themselves a little party and making a mess in the great hall downstairs and they won't bother me with their questions for at least four hours so I need some sleep –." He gasped.

Erik's wicked tongue had found itself a spot to taste, just at his collarbone.

"Erik. I really, really need to sleep. I cannot concentrate if I don't get enough rest."

But Erik continued downward, taking a nipple and licking it hungrily.

"ERIK!" warned Charles, pushing his head away. "Please! You are insatiable!"

But Erik was back again, this time at his neck, then his shoulders, then to his hipbone. Charles squirmed, trying to avoid the pleasure but at the same time, could not.

"Charles. You are a very intelligent man. Most intelligent man I ever knew or I'll ever know."

"Why, thank you." The tone was sarcastic.

"But you're very stupid if you think I'm going to be thwarted from ravishing you just because you say no. It will be much better if you just enjoyed this. I assure you. I will make it worth –" He nipped at Charles's wrists – "your while."

Charles couldn't help it. He laughed, a warm sound that rolled from his throat and went straight to Erik's loins.

"Erik, I would succumb, but I'm afraid I don't have the energy to keep up with you today. I'll be a most dreadful bottom, ahem, to your top, if I may be so blunt."

Erik shrugged. "Doesn't make a difference to me. Just lie there. I'm horny enough for the both of us." Charles now literally exploded with mirth as Erik growled.

"I don't appreciate getting laughed at when I'm trying to seduce someone."

"Oh Erik, my dear Erik. I love you. But I need sleep. Look at my eyes. They're bloodshot!" Erik looked at the laughing blue eyes. They were, indeed, bloodshot and red-rimmed with tiredness. Erik struggled between his heart and his lower extremities for quite a long moment, before his love for Charles won out. And anyway, it could give him an excuse to do unspeakably sexual and kinky things later.

He sighed. "Fine. What would you have me do?"

Charles smiled, pleased. "Hold me as I sleep. I'd like that a lot."

Sighing again, as if cuddling was a sin when one wanted rough, sweaty sex, Erik did as he was asked. Charles closed his eyes, warm in Erik's all-encompassing embrace. Bliss. Absolute bliss…

XXXX

Charles woke up, a scream on his lips. He could not remember his name from the pain that shot through his mind, the pressure that seemed to crush his brain from inside his skull, the leather straps across his chest biting painfully into his skin as he was tortured, mentally and physically, by the monster that was Shaw.

He could not remember the last second he took a breath that did not hurt, or moved a muscle that did not burn. His long, carefully combed brown locks had been sheared off cruelly with a pair of blunt scissors, leaving a tumble of short and long chunks that made him look like a David Copperfield orphan.

His body was gaunt from two weeks of near-starvation. He had nothing more to eat than a chunk of stale bread each day, which was practically shoved in his mouth everyday - along with other things.

He would feel ashamed, defiled by the rape and torture he was subjected to, but all he could think of was Erik. Only his memories of Erik remained, and each day as he lost consciousness from the 'experimenting' that Shaw did on him and his powers, he escaped into his memories of Erik.

No matter what Shaw does, he can't touch my memories of Erik, thought Charles with satisfaction.

It got harder as the days passed, however, as pain began to drive everything out of his mind. He could not remember Erik's face, or his scent, or his body as Shaw did unspeakable things to Charles's body.

Sometimes he wondered if it would have been easier to have died that day. To have given up his life along with Erik.

He didn't have an answer, but his answer became a more definite yes with each thrust of Shaw's hips, with each heavy invasion of his body.

He knew it was only a matter of time before he would be killed by this madman. But by then, thought Charles, maybe I will no longer remember who I am and what I did. Perhaps death would be a welcome respite.