Okay, yes this is shorter, but I'm writing fast, okay? More very soon. :) Lol anyway, here you go. Can't wait to hear from ya'll! Thanks so much!
Chapter 9
The long corridor finally turned, and just around the corner Raven found a door. It was large and looked heavy and again was made out of something else besides metal, and Raven knew immediately that her brother was on the other side. If Shaw was, too, she would deal with him. She would deal with anything.
But she knew that Charles was in pain, and she knew she had to get to him now. To hell with the consequences.
She was stronger in her natural form, and with a pull at the lever and a shoulder to the door it burst open easily. Raven all but tumbled through, barely regaining her footing in time to land in something resembling a defensive stance. But one glance around the strange plastic room revealed no one at eye level, and no reason to be on the defensive.
Her arms dropped along with her eyes as she straightened, searching in panic for her brother. She found him, on the ground, in Erik's arms.
Raven's breath caught in her throat when she saw them both-Charles limp and sweaty and with bruises covering what little of his skin she could see, and Erik without a shirt and peppered in cuts and burns. Erik was looking at her silently, and the look in his eyes worried her.
The way Charles was lying he couldn't see her, and he didn't even seem to know she was there. He should have known she was there. He should have felt her. She should have felt him in her mind by now, telling her he was all right, because he always said he was all right, even when he wasn't.
She ignored the other body on the ground. She knew who it was, and she didn't care if Shaw were dead or alive.
She hoped dead, but knowing Charles that wasn't the case. He wouldn't have killed the man, and he wouldn't have let Erik do it, either.
Charles?
Finally, some reaction. Charles twitched, made a small sound. In her mind, a groggy answer. Raven...?
The dim, confused onslaught of emotion and pain that slipped through with it sent her reeling backward into the door that had banged almost shut again behind her, and Raven sucked in a sharp breath and shook her head to clear it enough that she could hurry across the room. She dropped to her knees at her brother's side and stroked his cheek-the one that seemed less bruised.
"I'm here, Charles..."
He started to cry quietly when he saw her, and one of his hands came up to grip her forearm. "Raven! God...Raven..."
Shocked and confused by the reaction, all Raven could do was lean down to press her forehead to his-the closest she could get to a hug when he didn't seem able to lean up to meet her.
"Shh, I'm here, I'm here..."
Something was wrong. She'd known something was wrong. What she'd felt in the lift...what was wrong? There was something more. More than the fact that he looked beaten and exhausted. Charles didn't just cry. Not even when they were little. He held it back. He smiled and told her everything was fine.
He didn't cry unless there were a damn good reason to. Unless he couldn't deal with it anymore. Unless he couldn't help it.
She glanced up at Erik in alarm, but he looked away.
Oh god, Erik was crying too. Or his eyes were damp, anyway. Either way, it was most definitely not usual for him, either.
"What happened?" she asked anxiously. But neither of them said anything, and with no answer her imagination ran rampant. Part of her was suddenly terrified that there was internal damage-something she couldn't see that was bad enough that they both knew that Charles was not going to make it but they didn't want to tell her that, of course. She could see it in her head, like a bad movie.
"Charles?" she demanded. Her voice shook, though she didn't mean for it to. "Charles, you're okay, right? You'll be okay."
I will live.
A clarification. Not an affirmative. Why? A hand still on his cheek, she reached for his other hand, which lay on his stomach. But when she tried to hold it he gasped, pulled it away. Confused, she looked away from his tear-stained face long enough to glance at his hand, and saw that the first two fingers were swelling, and not quite straight anymore. Broken.
Raven bit back a yelp of anger, and that was when she saw Erik's hand, resting on her brother's chest. He wasn't moving it, and all of it was red and purpling and swollen, and none of the fingers looked right. She swallowed and wrapped her fingers gently around the rest of Charles's hand, avoiding the two injured fingers. He squeezed back a bit.
"What happened?" she asked again, more gently this time.
Finally one of them spoke, but it was Erik. "I'm sorry, I...I-I tried to protect him..."
"Erik..."
Charles looked up at him, and there was some sort of communication there, and Erik looked away again. Charles swallowed hard and pulled in a shuddering breath, trying to control the tears before he really looked at Raven again.
She stroked his cheek with the hand that was already there, helping him to dry some of his face, and his other hand released her arm to dry the rest of it. Then he covered her hand on his cheek instead of holding her arm again, his fingers wrapping around it, and they were cold but his cheek was warm. His cheeks were flushed, and growing up with him she'd seen him sick enough to know that he had a fever. She didn't need to feel his forehead.
His hands were shaking. Both of them, in hers, were trembling.
"Charles...?"
He opened his mouth, more than once, as if to say something, but nothing came out. Finally he sobbed again and relented to the fact that he wasn't going to be able to. He squeezed the hand against his face and turned into it more, and in a moment she understood.
Charles didn't show her, really. Raven got the feeling, too, that he wanted to keep that from her-the details. She only picked up the briefest flashing of images. Mostly she just understood, more than saw, what was wrong. She understood that Shaw had done something to him. She understood that his back was broken and that neither he nor Erik had been able to keep it from happening and that was why he wasn't moving much, just now. It hurt too much.
Raven understood, suddenly, that her brother would probably never walk again.
"No," she gasped, when Charles was done. She glanced down at his legs, and realized that they were lying there in something of an awkward manner, one of them splayed out at a strange angle and the other twisted just enough that it wouldn't have been comfortable at all if he could feel it.
But he couldn't feel it.
"No," she sobbed. "Charles, no. Oh my god...oh god..."
"Raven..."
She heard him, but she was crying now and she didn't know how to stop. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have gotten here in time. I'm sorry...god, Charles..."
"It isn't your fault," he choked out. "Not...not your fault...not Erik's fault...no one's fault..." His voice was tight. He was trying not to cry again, but there were already fresh tears on his face, and Raven sobbing was not helping, she knew, but she still couldn't stop.
She couldn't sit up anymore. Her folded legs slipped out from under her and she buried her face in her brother's shoulder, draped over him like a blanket, and she could feel him shivering under her. That only made her hold onto him more tightly, and he made a small sound of pain but he didn't protest. He clutched at her in return, clumsily.
No one's fault, he said. No one's fault but Shaw's.
When Raven had calmed down enough she heard Erik speaking over her head, tense and worried.
"Raven, you have to go for help. Charles needs help. We have to get him out of here. He needs a hospital. Now."
She sat up slowly and realized that Charles's fingers were tangled in her shirt, her hair...he wasn't holding on anymore. He was unconscious. His arms fell away now and she folded them gently over his stomach, fingers lingering carefully over his broken ones. She hiccuped and dried her face, trying to process what Erik had said.
Help. Her brother needed help. She knew that. Erik could use it, too.
Raven nodded wearily and staggered to her feet, and just doing that nearly sent her back to her knees. She had to fight not to cry again. She sobbed dryly and went for the door.
Charles...
Charles wouldn't get up again.
Hank was the first one to catch sight of Raven when she finally emerged from the Hellfire Club. Her eyes were red, the irises flickering yellow; she was barely holding onto even the human form she usually wore. He went to her quickly, taking her hand and not letting go this time as he bent close.
"What's wrong?" he asked worriedly.
She wouldn't look at him, but she squeezed his hand weakly. "I found them."
He blinked, suddenly fearing the worst. "Are they-?"
"They're alive," she whispered. "They need help." Then she cleared her throat and spoke more firmly. "Where are Sean and Alex? Shaw is out of commission; I can get us in if I change into him."
Hank motioned toward where he'd seen them last, and Raven pulled her fingers from his and headed off quickly. He followed her, and he was still sure that something was off. "Raven? What's-?"
"Not now, Hank."
Everything faded out with Erik holding him and Raven crying into his shirt, clinging to him, his hands caught in her hair, her shirt, wrapped around her, trying to calm her-trying to use his powers to calm her, even, but it wasn't working. He was too weak. He passed out, finally.
For Charles everything was fuzzy after that-that was fuzzy, later, but everything after it was worse. Too much pain. Physical and otherwise.
A flash of Raven bringing the others back. A makeshift stretcher. Erik wanting to help but needing help walking himself. Hank helped him. A dim corridor. An elevator that was too small. Being moved. Pain. Shouting. Blacking out again.
Bright lights. They were moving. More shouting. Different shouting. So many voices-the faint touch of minds he didn't know, but the minds he knew were there, too.
Raven. Raven who would always be there. Raven who had been there even when he'd let Erik go.
Erik. Erik hadn't left. Charles had severed the bond to protect him, but he was still there. He wasn't aware of much but he was aware of worry and anger and anxiousness rolling from his friend in waves. Before everything was black again he reached out wordlessly to the presence he couldn't see, and Erik responded immediately.
Softer light. Same bland ceiling. The feeling of being clean, finally, and warm and safe.
But different. Only half of him was there.
Erik. Still there. Always there. A blurry image of his friend in the next bed, looking at him anxiously, calling his name, hoping for a response that Charles couldn't give yet.
Everything in and out, in and out, unconsciousness and nothingness and sleep and dreams and dark and blurry light.
Raven beside him sometimes, sometimes in a chair by the bed, sometimes in the bed with him, wrapped around him, face pushed into his neck or his hair. Sometimes talking to him. Sometimes quiet. Sometimes sleeping.
Sometimes crying.
He could only feel half of her.
Erik talking to him, sometimes-sometimes out loud, sometimes thinking to him. Eventually not in the next bed anymore. In the chair, instead, by the bed. Sometimes a hand on his head, his shoulder, arm...sometimes even holding his hand. Sometimes it wasn't just talking. Sometimes the words had cadence, rhythm...reading. He was reading.
And sometimes the words were soft, his friend's voice pleading...not pleading with Charles. Pleading with someone else. Someone Erik hadn't spoken to since childhood. Since before the war and the camps and Shaw.
Sometimes the voices of the others...Hank, Sean, Alex. Where was Moira?
No. No Moira. Moira was gone. Darwin was gone. Everyone who had helped them at the base was gone. Half of him was gone, too.
Sobbing quietly; the first sound he'd made aloud.
The voices stopping. A large, warm hand on his shoulder. Erik's. A soft call of his name, questioning. A blurry view of them all, looking at him, waiting. Tears. His sister's smaller hand now, wiping them away.
Nothingness again, catching thoughts before it closed in.
Raven. All of us at once was too much. Too soon...
Did he even see us?
He looks like hell...scaring the hell out of me...
How long is he gonna be like that?
Charles, come back to us...
The last thought Erik's, desperate, sad, urging.
How long? How long like this?
But he didn't want to know. Part of him would rather this than really waking up. Part of Charles, what of him was aware, knew he should wake up. Really. If not for himself then for them.
The rest of him didn't care. The rest of him didn't want to face it. Any of it.
And then there was just nothing, for a long time.
When Charles shut down completely the doctors didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't a coma. He just didn't wake up.
Erik refused to leave his side, but Raven knew it wouldn't help. Charles would come out of it when he was ready.
But whether or not he would ever be ready was what worried her.
"We have to get him out of here," she told Erik finally. "We're in Nevada, of all places, and that's not helping. We need to bring him home."
"Home? Home where? We have nowhere to go."
"Yes we do. His home. Our home. We grew up in upstate New York, Erik; the house is still there. We haven't been there since he started Oxford, but it's the only home we have and its better than here."
Raven was on the edge of the bed, and Erik was in the chair he'd been practically living in since the hospital had released him. He glanced at his friend, prone on the bed with half a dozen things connected to him in some way, and shook his head in confusion.
"But...how would we take care of him until he wakes up?"
Until. He would. Erik was adamant about that, and Raven certainly wasn't going to correct him.
"Paying for whatever we need won't be a problem."
House? The Xavier estate in New York was huge, the mansion almost unbearably large and the grounds covering acres and acres of beautiful land. In another lifetime-before Shaw Round 2, before Charles's legs were taken from him-Erik might have been bothered by the fact that his friend had lived such a privileged life compared to what he'd had.
But he would have gotten over it, and as things were now jealousy didn't even cross mind. Instead, he supposed he was grateful that at least Charles had that.
And he had them. He would always have them.
Now he only needed to wake up and realize it.
Raven showed them which room was her brother's, and they had to have someone come to set up the equipment and show them how to use it and monitor it, but after that they took care of Charles on their own.
They never left him alone. Everyone took shifts during the day at his bedside, though only Erik and Raven took turns spending the night in his room. Raven slept atop the covers on the other half of the bed beside her brother when it was her turn, and Erik slept in the armchair that had been dragged over from the fireplace when it was his. Or he did until his back simply could not take another night of it, and he was forced to follow Raven's example.
He hoped Charles wouldn't mind, as long as he didn't wake up alone.
Time passed. Days and weeks. The boys trained because there was nothing else to do, though Hank worked to distract himself. Raven found him a room that worked well as a lab once it was set up that way. Once it was the young scientist took more than one stab at trying to determine if there were anything he could do to help Charles-either with the paralysis or the coma-like state-but he came up empty on all counts. No one had really expected anything different, but it was disappointing just the same.
When Erik wasn't in Charles's room or sleeping in his own on his off night, he was playing chess with himself and wishing Charles were sitting across from him. Or he stood aimlessly at a window-any window, really-staring out at the grounds that he refused to explore on his own.
Charles was going to wake up, damnit, and Charles would show them to him. If Erik had to push him in a wheelchair, if he had carry him, then so be it. But he would wait. He hadn't even wandered the rest of the mansion yet.
The fact that the cast on his hand was constantly in the way did not help his frustration. It wrapped around each reconstructed finger almost to the tip, and extended halfway up his forearm-stark and white and in the way and just there. Sean had suggested they all sign it, but Erik had only growled at him.
He couldn't feel much in the hand and was spared the plague of itching, but that was hardly much consolation.
They'd told him he would never have much use of it again.
And if all but losing a hand was this frustrating, what would Charles go through once he woke? Erik wanted his friend back more than almost anything he had ever wanted, but his chest ached when he thought about it.
But he would be here for him. That was all he could do.
