Warning for graphic description of torture and past rape.
Chapter Six
Neither Erik or Jean had nightmares that night. Charles made certain of it. No longer were their individually beautiful minds haunted and destroyed each night by something that Charles acknowledged as evil. His mutation allowed him access to so many minds, their hurts and joys and fears. It had allowed him to know of that his mother was deathly afraid of loving him, enough that she poisoned herself with alcohol to escape the hell and world in which she had to endure to live. It allowed him to realize that all humans, or mutants when he realized exactly of what he was, had something beautiful in their minds. There was good and lightness in all of them, if someone simply tapped into their innermost thoughts and feelings. Erik. Still inside in his mind he could see the younger man he had met, less and more broken than the figure sleeping beside him now, crying as he moved the satellite dish. Even if he touched a thousand more minds, the telepath would never forget the moment he had shared with Erik.
Charles was of many things. Mystique had asked him one time, shortly after Erik had left, how he could remain still so trusting of the world. "Do you lie awake sometimes, wondering if they will come for you, and your children?" The telepath had answered his sister that he believed in people because he believed there was a good part in all of them. But the truth was, Charles had seen the reason behind the majority of all fear Erik stated that humans had for them. "People will fear what they don't understand, Charles. It starts with as something as human as fear…until it becomes a monster." They were afraid of what mutants would do to them, and their children. Charles remembered seeing a memory of Erik as a child. The child with whom he would share such a complex bond with had no idea of what kind of man he would become. Dark hair and brown eyes, with hopeful eyes and loveMamalovePapawhereareyouIwanttoseeyou…
That beautiful mind had been destroyed, irreversibly damaged by what had happened to him. Charles might forgive his stepfather for his abuse towards his mother and himself, but he would never forgive Shaw, or of the system that gave birth to the hate and violence, for destroying parts of Erik that were still hurting.
There were times when Erik would shake from his nightmares. Charles would hold him, his arms tight around his friend as the mutant attempted to fight off the nightmares in his mind. It was always, somehow, a more nightmare itself to see Erik's suffering when asleep. The thought of Erik's pain as his body attempted to rest was enough for Charles to stay with Erik even in his nightmares. Which is what he did. Charles was always within his old friend's mind whenever the unspoken horror of the camps or the torture at the hands of the unknown mutant whose hands were always wet with blood and smiling even if he himself wanted to die. Erik's screams of agony and pleads in German and Polish, both as a child and as an adult who had lost his wife Magda and daughter Nina burned in Charles' mind until it was something he could hear in his own dreams. Although Charles had wanted to erase Erik's agony and nightmares, with unfulfilled screams at the back of his throat and crying out, Healer had told him that he thought it was best for Erik to experience nightmares. "A mind heals better with the memories intact than with no memories at all." His blue eyes appeared to bore in Charles' own, and seep into his mind. Almost as if he knew. The telepath had shaken away the thought before it could continue further. I did for the thought of Erik's well-being; Charles had thought to himself late into the night after soothing Erik from another nightmare. It had been the second night, the first of which Charles had held Erik in his arms. "It's okay, my friend," he had whispered as Erik shuddered and attempted to pull away once he woke. The agony drowning in those eyes, growing with each passing minute, caused Charles to pull Erik into his arms. "I'm here now, Erik," the bald telepath had whispered as he rested his cheek against Erik's shoulder. "I'm here. I'm not going to leave." The metal-bender hadn't said anything as Chares continued to speak to him in soothing words. Eventually he fell asleep, the sound of his deep breathing and of the heartbeat – the living heartbeat – allowing Charles to fall asleep as well.
Charles had been stunned when he had woken up and Erik was no longer there. In childish panic, he had hurriedly lifted himself into his wheelchair and had barked to Mystique where Erik was. His sister, in the middle of eating breakfast with runny-side eggs, rolled her eyes and told her that Erik was outside. "He has to be the biggest stubborn idiot, trying to run when he just started healing –" The telepath hadn't been able to pay any more attention after those words, and found himself wheeling as fast as he possibly could to the outside of the mansion. Erik? Charles shouted telepathically, trying in vain to hold his panic. Erik! Where are you?! Raven just told me –!
"Hey, Prof." Charles' erratic thoughts had stopped at the sight of Peter, who was in running shorts and a t-shirt in mid-September. His silver hair was slightly slick with sweat. "I think we ought to give that one over there a new nickname." His thin finger pointed into the other direction.
Charles stopped himself short from wheeling over as he saw Erik leaning over his waist. He too was wearing running shorts and a t-shirt. The t-shirt, Charles saw, was slick with sweat, and for some reason his throat constricted when Erik suddenly turned. He had looked more alive than he had in ages. His eyes were calm, and his chest was heaving not from a breathtaking nightmare, but from physical exertion. A small smile turned framed his face at the sight of Charles, and Erik lifted himself to his feet and walked – a little unsteadily in his opinion – over to him.
"He decided to go running today," Peter continued, oblivious to the fact that Charles attention was elsewhere. "I don't know why – Healer would likely embed a thousand blades into my body if he found out but, well…"
"I can't heal if I do anything than simple exertion," Erik stated simply. Charles nodded, his gaze looking towards of how alive his friend appeared to seem, with sweat trailing down his face and onto his throat. I, Charles thought as he attempted to not stare, have never seen something so…
"He should be the one to be called Beast, from the way he ran until he collapsed," Peter stated simply, running his hands through his hair. Then he suddenly stopped talking and stared at the telepath, who was observing his friend through a wide smile that suddenly appeared on his face.
"This an excellent development," was the only thing he could think of saying.
A month had passed. Charles opened his sleepy eyes, so unfocused in the early morning, and was pleased to find the room warm and comfortable. It was unfortunate that heaters in the conjoined rooms had no longer been working for ten years. Charles had borne it, although it was hell in the winter months. Many times he had thought about fixing – or more specifically, Hank trying to fix the heater – but Charles always ended up distracted and forgot about the heater by the time winter was over.
So warm… Charles thought. For a moment, he wanted to burrow under the covers like a child and not the professor of Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters. His eyes closed shut for a moment, peacefulness entrapping him in its embrace until he heard something.
It was a sleepy voice. Charles' heart jumped at the sound of the groggy German echoing in the room, and turned slowly on his side. Erik was holding him. Their limbs had gotten entangled with one another, with Erik's legs entangled with Charles'. His head was lying across Charles' shoulder, his hands placed a couple inches from the telepath's neck. His breathing was deep and calm, enough for Charles to deduce that his friend was still asleep. Instead of feeling embarrassed, as he would in a compromising situation, Charles' mind filled with affection.
Erik…you look so peaceful. His friend's face was calm and still as he was asleep. Charles' smiled, and almost reached to smooth the short hair growing on Erik's scalp before stopping himself. I shouldn't wake him. Not when he is like this. It had been a peaceful night. Somehow even without any nightmares, Charles had held Erik in his sleep. And his friend didn't let go. No, more than that. He was embracing him as well.
Charles' eased his mind and was pleased to find Erik dreaming peacefully. Ever so carefully, the telepath made allowed himself to fall in Erik's mind.
When memories were faint, there were foggy or had a faint white wisp over them. Charles could still remember being in Erik's mind for the first time, the memories crisp and clear as if the decades of time had not occurred. There was so much pain. So much anger that Charles had winced. He had seen what had happened to the mutant named Erik Lehnsherr. Being told to do something that no young child should do, and a precious life paid for it. How alone he was. How he believed, that there was no one like him. Charles had seen his memories, flashes or full images, of all of blood and hate and screams. Not one of happiness or love. "There is so much more to you than you know." Charles hadn't known why Erik had discarded all the happy memories he must have had as a child, of the love that his mother and father had for him. The thought belonged, he realized now, to an arrogant mind who had not yet experienced the defining pain of love to understand what if meant to lose something more precious than your own existence.
When Erik had left him – yes, he had said that they did not agree had allowed him to go – but that was the most painful. Erik had left him. Had left him and had taken away his sister. The absence of Erik was almost as if Charles had been shot in the heart, leaving nothing of the tender organ behind. How naïve and cruel he had been to his own mother when he only thought of how it damaged his life and his love for her that she was an alcoholic and paid no attention to him. "Oh, of how the tables had turned," Charles had laughed to himself after an extreme case of euphoria of taking-who-knows-drug. It had never hurt to live as much as it did then. Losing a person who he had loved and taken in as a sister, and a single being who changed his world, changed him, was enough to make Charles wonder why he still breathed.
It was the serum that saved his life. If he had taken the drug, Charles would have taken his own life. Nothing could stop the pain. Not the drugs. Nor the alcohol. Nor teaching. It was easier later to turn it off. Turn off his telepathy. Having the other voices of his own mind, their own pain and agony haunting him, was enough to make him remind him of his own.
He buried the love he had for Erik deep inside of him, so deep not even it could be reached by even the strange time-traveler Logan who apparently was sent back in time to stop the war that would end the mutant race. Even when enraged at the mention of him, Charles could still not acknowledge the memories he had with Erik. He knew that he had lied when the broken man he had been had said "You said "Go fuck yourself.'" Perhaps the kind Logan had forgotten about the encounter, or maybe he had simply not mentioned the fact that there had been two people, not one, who had tried to recruit a cigar-smoking mutant in Canada.
When he had seen Erik again, Charles had punched him. He had knocked him over, filled with the self-righteous rage and hurt that he felt he deserved. It took him many late nights to acknowledged that he, Charles Xavier, was at fault as well. He had allowed Raven to feel ashamed of her own skin, making her hide and feel ashamed whenever she revealed her true self. Charles had thought he understood Erik. He thought their understanding and respect of each other was enough. He had thought, that Erik would be the better man. And…
Charles Francis Xavier had never known Erik Magnus Lehnsherr's agony of his wounds until he had experienced the agony of living when feeling more alive than dead. Charles suspected that if Erik did not have vengeance to sustain him, the rage and violence that he thought defined him, perhaps Erik would not exist. And when Erik left Washington D.C., Charles had realized that a world without Erik was not a world at all.
It was a memory bathed in light. Love was seeping from Erik's mind, and Charles felt warm hands holding his small body. A lullaby was in his ears. Beautiful, the telepath thought, the words, even though I cannot understand them, are pure love. Charles thought perhaps that Erik was being held by his mother, but the hands were too small and gentle to belong to a grown woman. He looked up, and stared at the gentle face. She had long dark hair. Freshly-ironed clothes covered her, and her blue eyes… Erik, Charles thought immediately when he stared into her eyes. They were exactly the same shade and shape. The girl, around seven or eight years old, continued to sing. Her hands were stroking his face, with so much love.
Erik-lin… Even in the memory, Charles could hear her thoughts. Mein Erik-lin…
Suddenly, the memory cracked. The girl's face, whoever she was, was split into two like glass. A vivid crack appeared, and suddenly it was dark.
Someone was screaming.
Someone was dying.
The child's cries became a man's, crying out for someone to hear.
Charles! Charles! A gasping sound, a sickening crack as numbers were counted. White-hot pain pouring through his body. Charles couldn't pass out. He couldn't fall unconscious. He could only hear the numbers in his mind, as vague as they were like a faraway nightmare.
CHARLES!
The telepath had never felt as terrified as he had then, hearing and feeling his friend's pain but not able to know where he was. Soon all he could feel was pulsing agony. Pain became who he was too much toomuchtoomuch –
"ERIK!" Charles shouted. He dragged himself forward, almost howling from the amount of pain. "ERIK!" He didn't know where he was. He had to find Erik. He had to find –
Erik was still. He was alone. His eyes were open, alive, but there was nothing in them. "Please…" His body was at an unnatural angle, half of his entire body limp and… "Make it stop…please…"
Tears rolled down his cheeks.
Thick and leaking from his eyes, Charles stared at the horrifying nightmare of Erik's broken body.
"Kill me."
"Erik…?"
Charles' voice rasped, like a dying creature's. He could not stop the trembling in his voice. He was aware of his heartbeat echoing too fast against his chest, but Charles didn't care. His only focus was on Erik. At the sound of his name, the mutant whom had been sleeping peacefully before was now looking at his friend through haunted eyes. Raw grief shone through the pained blue depths, and Erik bowed his head.
"I'm sorry. I... You shouldn't have seen that, Charles."
"Erik…" Charles tried.
"Nein," Erik said. A glazed look appeared in his eyes. He started speaking feverishly, his thoughts and words mincing together. The words were lost to him, but Charles understood. Slowly, the telepath breathed and lied his forehead against Erik's.
For a moment, Charles just breathed as Erik's thoughts muddled and then started to calm. The feel of Erik's skin across his own felt good, even more as Charles felt the nightmare slowly becoming less painful.
"Tell me," Charles whispered. "Tell me what happened, Erik."
Erik swallowed. For a moment, he couldn't speak, and his breathing started to unravel until Charles pressed his forehead closer.
"I don't know…what day it was. I saw her, coming in. Usually she doesn't…didn't…speak, but that day…" Erik gritted his teeth and Charles told himself to calm at the sight of Erik's pain. It was agony for him to form the words. "She decided…to break my bones." Erik's voice rasped, a mere whisper as images flashed through Charles' mind. A smile on her face…talking happily…bones snapping…screaming…so much screaming… "All one hundred for of them, she said."
Charles' mind recoiled in horror at the memory of reading the "record" of Erik's torture. He fought the urge to vomit, and instead focused on his friend, who was attempting to speak of the horror he had relived.
"I…perhaps I could have understood if given a reason why I was tortured." His voice sounded detached, as if too much pain of the memory removed him of the agony of what had happened. "But…they gave me none. They shaved my hair, stripped me…and tortured me every day." Charles held his hand. Squeezed it. But it had no effect. "Seeing the memories of the camps…Mama's death…and the agony as they almost killed me…so many times was enough for me to almost go insane."
"Then, one day…she came again. My…torturer." Wearing a white mask stained with blood. Hands, slim and long like they belonged to a musician but whose nails were stained with dried blood. Plain clothes, of medium height, infected laughter that echoed across the barren torture cell as Erik's screams and pleads echoed in her mind. The other, a tall male, standing over Erik, his hand over his face, talking to the female and smiling. "Destroy…his mind…" Scalpels and knives…an older man, the feel of his touch healing the wounds across Erik's body. His brown eyes blank and dead to the world. The smile of the woman...
"She didn't…just break half of all my bones…I was…made to count by sevens in Polish…to make it so that I could not faint and deprive her of pleasure."
"Erik." Charles heaved a breath and touched Erik's face with his hand. His hand trembled, and he was certain that whatever was leaking out of his eyes were tears as he stared at his friend's empty expression. "Erik, you don't…have to speak –"
"And when I started to scream, or pronounced the number wrong…" Erik's voice was empty and his voice faraway. "She broke another bone. I was only kept in sanity by the numbers…but she broke so many."
"How…?" Charles rasped. "How many, Erik?" He fought the urge to sob.
"One hundred seventy-three."
The agony. White-hot, pulsing, never-ending agony, begging to for anything, begging to die, begging for Herr Doktor to –
Charles' tears stopped. His face paled, and his mouth opened to a soundless cry as he stared at the emptiness in Erik's eyes.
"Yes, Charles. It is true."
"Why?" Charles cried. He was aware of his agony pulsing in waves, and his hands clenching the sheets painfully. "Why? Erik –! "
"Power," Erik intoned as Charles continued to sob. "It is one of the reasons for it, is it not?" A long sigh came from him, and he stared at the sobbing telepath with saddened eyes. "I had…begged him to stop his experiments. Anything, I begged him. I would work in the camps. Anything other than this pain, this fear that I felt every time he wanted to see my power."
"Anything?" The doctor was slightly smiling. Staring at the boy who was struggling not to cry. The child – the beautiful Erik Lehnsherr, nodded, hoping that he would work, that anything would be better than torture and experimentation by the doctor would be better than anything.
Then his hopeful eyes faded as the doctor came closer to him. "Doktor?" His voice faltered, sharply turning into pleas when the doctor suddenly placed his hand on his thigh. "Doktor, was...machen...? Stoppen!" The sound of screams and pleads. Coming on deaf ears. Clothes being torn off before his eyes. Shaking, being told to not scream, fear, deathly fear, pain –
"He raped you," Charles whispered with rage coiling in his stomach. "He raped you, Erik." Rage increased, a half-scream in his mind as he stared at the empty gaze of his friend. "Erik –!"
"They had already taken who I was, Charles. They took…everything." Now Erik breathed, and his forehead rested against Charles' chest. "Everything. And…it made my rage grow stronger Charles, what had been done to my body…having Shaw do what he did. My powers grew stronger because of it, and Shaw…I don't know why…but as I screamed…"
Erik… Charles breathlessly thought. Erik… Oh, my Erik…
"…I wanted anyone to save me. I wanted you to save me, Charles, but you never came."
Now, Erik looked up and his tears spilled as he stared at a crying Charles Xavier.
"Why didn't you save me? I begged for you…for you, and you didn't come."
"There are…no words that I can say…that can tell you why, my dear friend," Charles whispered. I'm…I'm… "No words that can express how horrified and aggrieved at your agony, your despair you suffered at the hands of those I am ashamed to known as our kind. I'm sorry," he whispered.
"I'm so sorry."
Erik's face crumbled. He started to cry, tears sliding onto his cheeks until sobs forced from his throat. Charles held him. He held Erik as violent sobs came from him, his entire body shaking as his body poured out the entire agony his body and heart and mind had suffered throughout all this time.
"You deserve this, you know. For all that you had done." Her voice echoed in Charles' mind, in Erik's mind. Burning. Destroying all that was good. "It is like what the doctor said."
"You. Are. Nothing. But. Anger. And Pain."
"Destruction. Tragedy. That was why your family died. All that you touch, dies, because you exist. That…is what is you thought when Apocalypse came, and he reminded you of what you truly are."
"You should have died in the camps, Erik Lehnsherr."
"Erik." Charles called. "Erik." The man known once as Magneto looked at him. Looking at him through stunned eyes as Charles called out to him, ever so softly. His hands gently cupped Erik's face, smoothing over his skin and looking soulfully into Erik's beautiful, agonized eyes.
"Listen to me." His forehead touched Erik's, and he breathed softly so that Erik's breathing matched his own. "Listen to me. Erik. My dear Erik." The other's face that looked back at him was stunned. "You…of all people…did not deserve what happened to you. None of it, my dear Erik." Charles swallowed, moving his thoughts forward to Erik's beautiful laughter. "Erik, mistakes have been made but those do not make of who we are. This," Charles stated, touching Erik's forearms with his fingers with a loving feather-like touch, "is not your shame. You surviving when so many did not, including your family, is not your shame, nor are your choices."
"Erik…" Charles breathed. His thoughts calmed, a calm gentleness overtook him as Erik stared at him, tears running down his face, but agony slowly receding as Charles whispered.
"You are you because you are Erik Lehnsherr."
"Why…do you always, always, believe in me, Charles?" A rasped sob came from Erik, and his heart-broken gaze tore through Charles' bleeding soul at the sight. He wanted… But the words wouldn't come. They wouldn't come, as they were logged in his throat.
"Because there is goodness in you," came the whisper.
Softly, Charles whispered the words over and over again, telling him that it wasn't his shame, that he didn't deserve the torture that had been done to him, that there was goodness in him.
He started to hum at first, his hands touching Erik's hair softly, gently as the thoughts started to calm and the heartbeat slowed.
Then, a soft singing emerged from him. He didn't know where it came from. Charles had never sung before, not even when Raven was frightened by a nightmare and her parents were trying to kill her. Charles had no idea what he was singing until he remembered the glowing memory.
He was singing the same song of Erik's childhood.
"Liebeling…" Erik murmured. Charles smiled through half-lidded eyes as the love projecting from Erik enveloped him. He didn't know why. But carefully, Charles leaned down and pressed a soft kiss on Erik's forehead. His swollen blue eyes stared at the sleeping man in his arms.
Charles closed his eyes and for a moment and instructed to Hank that all classes would be cancelled for today.
He would be spending the entire day by Erik's side.
