Whew, okay would have gotten this out a bit sooner but it took longer to get to a good stopping point than I thought. So long chapter for ya'll, lol. Anyway, can't wait to hear from ya'll! Please enjoy and thanks so much!

Chapter 12

When they were both finished eating Erik took his and Charles's dishes to the sink, washed them along with the pan and spatula he'd used, and put everything away. Charles was sitting quietly with his sister as Raven ate, and when Erik approached the table again he wasn't quite sure what to do then.

"Back upstairs?" he asked, when Charles looked up at him.

Charles looked like he wanted to say yes, but he pulled in a breath and glanced back at Raven for a long moment, who gave him a pleading look that he didn't seem able to resist. He let out the breath, slowly, and shook his head a bit. "No, actually."

Erik raised an eyebrow. "Well I'm not going to carry you around all day." He didn't like to say it that way, but just as dragging Charles down here in the first place had been for his own good saying it was what he needed to hear if he was ever going to begin to truly adjust to the inevitable changes in his life.

Charles laughed once, and unlike much of the last few weeks he managed to actually infuse humor into it. "No, I certainly don't expect that." Then he was serious again, expression not quite trouble but not easy, either. "I suppose I'll be needing that chair then...if you wouldn't mind."

Raven reached to squeeze her brother's hand, hiding a melancholy smile behind her orange juice, though Charles still looked at Erik.

Erik looked back for a long moment, wondering if he was serious or if he might back down, but he didn't. After a moment Charles nodded minutely, and Erik nodded in return and understanding. No telepathy needed. "I'll be right back," he said, and Charles smiled in uncertain thanks as he left.

The wheelchair was still near the bed, and he had it to the door before he remembered that Charles only had socks on; if he was going to be about downstairs today he might feel a bit more civilized with shoes.

Charles? Shoes?

A sense of confusion in his mind before the telepath realized what he meant, and then the answer. Ah. Yes. That would be wonderful, thank you.

Raven had had everything else that had been at their apartment at Oxford shipped here by now to supplement what they'd brought with them when they joined forces with the CIA, which meant everything they owned was here now. There were so many pairs of shoes lined up neatly on the closet floor that Erik was almost surprised it was a man's closet. He heard a chuckle in his mind, and his eyes were directed to a pair by the door that looked a little more worn than the others-though they were all immaculate and expensive, of course.

Those are fine. Raven put them there for a reason; they're my favorite, I suppose. Quite comfortable. A sudden pause. Though I suppose that doesn't really matter now.

Erik winced and didn't reply as he bent to pick up the shoes. He didn't know how he could have replied to that. He crossed back to the door where he'd left the chair, and dropped the shoes onto the seat before he brought it downstairs-or floated it, to be precise. It wasn't heavy and would have easy to pick up if he had the use of both hands, but it was ungainly and couldn't be handled with one.

Stop it, Charles, he thought suddenly, when he felt the faintest brush of sympathy at the edge of his mind. You don't want it from us and I don't want it from you. You said it yourself; we're still in this together.

He felt his friend's assent. I know. I'm sorry.

Erik set the chair down at the base of the stairs and pushed it into the kitchen, where Charles had pushed his chair back on his own or perhaps with a bit of help from Raven to keep it from tipping. Erik stopped the wheelchair a few feet back and picked up the shoes first, but when he went to kneel in front of Charles's chair Charles protested.

"I can-"

"I know you can."

Maybe Charles didn't have the energy to argue anymore or didn't want to do it in front of Raven, or maybe they were simply getting better at understanding each other, but Charles didn't say anything else. He balanced on the kitchen chair and let Erik put the shoes on him and tie them, and he was quiet when Erik brought the wheelchair closer and gently lifted him up and over into it. He didn't say anything else until he was settled in the wheelchair.

"Thank you," he said then, and Erik only nodded because his throat had inexplicably clogged.

Charles looked at his sister then, straightening the chair to face her and raising his eyebrows as he parted his hands in question. "Well?"

Raven smiled weakly. "You look great. But something has to be done about that chair. Completely boring; not groovy enough for you." She smirked at the last bit, and Charles actually laughed. It was the first real laugh any of them had heard from him since he'd woken, and it was one of the most wonderful sounds Erik had heard in his life. It put him suddenly a little more at ease-made it easier to believe that they were going to being okay.

Charles rolled himself closer to his sister's chair, and she leaned out to make it easier for him to kiss her cheek. Then he backed up and looked at the kitchen door, and took a deep breath.

"Here goes nothing, I suppose," he sighed.

Erik followed him out into the corridor. "Hank could probably design something for you; something powered, maybe. Something sturdier, too, that wouldn't tip over so easily."

Charles made a face at the unintended reminder of what had happened earlier. "Yes, uhm...I appreciate your not telling Raven about this morning."

"Of course..." You can always trust me, Charles.

I know I can, my friend. Thank you.

And then Charles was continuing aloud, in answer to Erik's comment about Hank. "Anyway, I suppose he could, but I wouldn't want to take Hank's time from his other work. Where are the others, anyhow?" Charles asked, looking about and apparently finding the mansion much too quiet.

"It's not even eight in the morning, Charles. They're teenage boys."

"Ah. Yes...well, I never slept in like that."

"Neither did I, but we're strange, remember?"

Charles chuckled a bit and moved on toward the library, obviously still getting used to pushing the chair any farther than across his bedroom. They came to a plush accent carpet lying part of the length of the hallway, and he had trouble getting the chair across the edge of it much less any distance over it. There was no way to go around it; it was nearly as wide as the hallway. He made frustrated noises and his brow furrowed deeply, but Erik didn't move to help until he was asked to. Or it wasn't so much asking as Charles finally stopped and glanced up at him sheepishly.

"Erik..."

He didn't say anything to make it worse; he moved silently half behind the chair, taking one of the handles in his good hand, and half pushed and and half used his powers to push the chair across the offending carpet and back onto the hardwood floor of the corridor on the other side. Charles was fine from there, and when they made it to the library the carpet there was more compact and not so much of a problem.

"Perhaps I should take those exercises more seriously," Charles muttered in embarrassment, once they were safely ensconced in the room and Erik had seen to the fire. The fire was absolutely necessary, now that it was nearly February.

Not that Erik had noticed as much, being Jewish, but Charles had missed Christmas. They hadn't really had one. No one had been in the mood with the uncertainty of Charles's condition hanging over them, and they hadn't had time to plan anything anyhow. Raven had insisted on a nice dinner, at least, because they'd needed a bit of cheering up if nothing else, though as she couldn't cook she'd gotten it from town. From the way Raven talked it was nothing to compared to Christmas dinners she and Charles had had here as children, but it was still more food than Erik had ever seen at once. There were still a few leftovers of the the less perishable things in the refrigerator.

It had helped some, but no one had really relaxed until nearly two weeks later, when Charles had woken after having just missed New Years, as well.

"It's just going to take time, that's all," Erik told him. "And you started out at a disadvantage after losing weight from being in that coma-like-whatever-the-hell-it-was all that time. But you'll get stronger."

"I suppose I'll have to, if I don't want to freeze to death on the floor any time soon," Charles winced.

Erik glared at him. "You won't be doing that anyway. You're going to call me next time something like last night happens again or I won't be upset when you do freeze."

Charles opened his mouth as if to protest, but slowly shut it again. "Right," he murmured eventually, looking away.

"Charles."

"I said all right," he huffed.

Erik nodded in satisfaction and moved to sit in one of the chairs facing a small table that already had a chess board set up on its surface. Considering how much Charles loved the game-and how good he was at it-it didn't surprise Erik at all that there was more than one good set in the house.

"Are you coming?" he asked pointedly.

Charles looked up from where he still sat in his chair just a few yards inside the room, as if startled out of some reverie. "Hmm? Ah. Yes, of course," he said, when he saw Erik at the chess board. Erik realized, then, that there was another chair opposite the table, and he quickly jumped up to move it to the main seating area and out of the way so Charles could simply position his wheelchair where it had been. By the time he sat down again Charles was there, smiling some, and Erik sat back and let himself believe that he really wasn't crazy for hoping that, in time, they would be fine.

There was still plenty to deal, more than enough to get through...but it could be done, couldn't it?

Charles didn't tell Erik or anyone else that there was another reason he hadn't wanted to leave his room. He'd barely admitted it to himself and he wasn't about to voice any of it.

He didn't tell them how much he still felt the bruises, faint though they looked now. He didn't tell them how sometimes he still expected to see Shaw hovering over him every time he opened his eyes or looked over his shoulder. He didn't tell them that it was easier to deal with that if he was safely closed away in the bedroom he'd had since he was a child, and that was harder to deal with when he wasn't. He didn't tell them he wanted to jump at every loud noise or sudden movement.

He lied when he did jump, when he couldn't stop himself. He was very good at keeping himself under control, but everyone made the occasional mistake.

As he slowly became more used to using the wheelchair and wasn't always worried about it or angry at needing help at times that only left more room for the fear to creep in. It was irrational, and Charles knew it, but the harder he tried to bat it away and bury it the harder it hit him when he was least expecting. As it was there were good days and bad days...days when he was doing all right in learning to live without his legs and days when he wanted to curl up in bed and cry. Trying not to remember everything that had happened in that plastic room only made it worse, and often he felt ever so much like an emotional yo-yo.

Raven noticed something, and he knew she cared, but he managed to keep enough of it hidden that only Erik seemed to truly suspect anything. Hank, Sean, and Alex had taken to calling him "professor" and he did his best to act the part. He was suited for it, as Raven had told him once, and falling into that role gave him something to hide behind. From his wheelchair there was still enough that he could do in helping the younger mutants train, and he did it. He did everything he could, and it was welcome distraction. Maybe there was no crisis now, but gaining more control over one's powers was always a good thing.

Hank, too, was able to help the other two boys from a scientific standpoint, and he had also agreed immediately to designing a better chair for Charles. Not that Charles had asked about it himself; that had been Erik and Raven's doing, of course. He was relatively certain the two of them were helping him concept-wise, as well, though all of them refused to let him see any of the preliminary plans.

Apparently they wanted the completed thing to be a surprise, though there was no indication of how long that would take.

But he was all right in the chair he had, simple though it was. Slowly he did gain more strength in his arms and torso, as Erik had promised he would, and the physical training of his upper body helped speed up the process. He knew it would likely be going even faster if he were having a professional physical therapist come to the house or if he were going to see one, but he didn't want to. He was much more comfortable with Erik helping him, and he was content enough with the rate of his progress.

The last days of January gave way to February, February became March, and Charles shoved Shaw and the plastic room to the the back of his mind, finally began to dwell on it less, and convinced himself that it meant he was all right.

He was wrong, of course, and part of him knew it, but then again he had always been stubborn.

It started with the lamp. The lamp and the stairs and the rough hands and things flying at his head and nonowhyIneverdidanythingtoyou and he closed his eyes and when he opened them the library was plastic and unfriendly and there were hands all over him and they hurt him and it wasn't Kurt or Cain it was Shaw. It was Shaw and it hurt so much more than anything ever had and it was deliberate, and there was no smug smirk, there was no shouting; it was just cold calculation and how much could he hurt before he wasn't himself anymore and he was just the pain?

It was different and it was worse and it was nothing like before, nothing like Kurt and Cain, and he couldn't stop it like he'd learned to stop them. He couldn't protect himself he couldn't protect Erik he couldn't do anything. It hurt it hurt it hurt and the hands pressed into the bruises and he squirmed and he wanted to cry and he wanted to get away but he couldn't and he couldn't breathe and oh god this wasn't supposed to be happening nothing happened to him that he didn't want anymore why was this happening?

His ribs burned everything burned and Shaw was still there and still hurting him and it was agony and it wouldn't stop. One more moment and he would go crazy but he couldn't go crazy he had to be here for Erik but he had nothing to give but Erik needed him Erik was hurting too but right now he just wanted to curl up and die, oh GOD why wouldn't it STOP?

The hands were a violation on his skin drawing pain from everything and they were on his back now and nonononoNO he couldn't do that and he still couldn't breathe and he was sobbing now why was he sobbing? Because he couldn't stop it he couldn't do anything because he couldn't let Erik die but he didn't want this he didn't want to be broken but Erik and-

And the worst pain he'd ever felt. Worse than the deepest bruises and the broken bones worse than everything and oh god his legs were gone. They were gone they were here but they were gone and he couldn't think straight it hurt so much and all he could see was Shaw and Shaw standing over him hurting him and he still couldn't get away he could never get away now and GOD! Would it ever stop hurting? And-

No. No. He wasn't him. Him was her. Was a she. She was a her she was Raven, not Charles and she sat bolt upright in bed and she knew she was sobbing already. She was shaking and crying, and she had to calm herself enough to climb out of the bed and get shakily to her feet. Slippers and a robe and she was out the door, arms wrapped around herself and shivering anyway.

Charles. Oh god, Charles, it couldn't have been that bad, could it?

She wasn't alone in the hallway. Across the hall, beside Charles's room was Erik's and as she watched he burst out of his room and made a beeline for Charles's door and he was oblivious to her presence.

"Erik..."

He froze in reaching for the door handle and looked back quickly, and he was tense but he relaxed a little when he saw her. "You too?" he asked quietly.

Raven nodded and choked back a sob. When she spoke again her voice trembled much more than she wanted it to. "Erik, please tell me that was his mind exaggerating everything. Please tell me it was just a dream and it wasn't like that..." she pleaded desperately.

Apology. Even in the dim midnight hallway she could see the apology in his eyes and she knew everything had happened the way she'd seen it. Erik swallowed hard and approached her tentatively. "I could if you wanted me to lie to you," he said gently.

Raven couldn't keep herself from sobbing this time, a hand went to her mouth to clamp over it-the others were still sleeping it seemed to be just them and there was no reason to wake them-and it surprised her when Erik pulled her into his arms, even if he seemed rather uncertain about it.

"I'm sorry; I should have warned you before this happened. It was bound to happen, as bad as it was. I just...thought it was obvious, I suppose. He looked awful..."

She closed her eyes, her head against his chest-this new brother who cared about Charles as much as she did. At first she had been jealous but since bringing Charles home she realized that it was much better, not to be the only one.

"I should have known. I guess I did know. Part of me did, but I didn't want to think about it. I mean-" She cut off when she realized what she'd been about to say. Things happened when we were kids...things happened but nothing like that. Kurt and Cain were cruel and vindictive but Charles hadn't been tortured. Not really. Not like that. But Erik didn't know about that and she didn't know if Charles wanted him to.

Tortured. The word sent an ice-cold shiver down her spine but Raven knew it was the only word accurate enough to describe what had happened to her brother. Erik too, but...for Erik it wasn't the first time. She knew of that much even if she knew no details.

It wasn't her business.

But Charles was.

She pulled away from him and launched herself toward her brother's door-used it as an excuse for stopping mid-sentence. "I should go in there..."

"What going on?"

She stopped and glanced back down the hallway, and Hank was coming out of his room and looking at them in confusion. Raven still wanted to cry and seeing him only made it worse. She choked quietly, and then there was a hand on her shoulder.

"Let me handle this. I've been where he is; I know what he's going through."

And as much as she wanted to be sure Charles was okay she knew Erik would take care of him just as well as she could-better, maybe, in this case. She didn't think she would be able to go in there now without crying at some point, and that would only make it all worse. He would insist on trying to comfort her and it would all defeat the purpose.

Raven glanced back at Erik and nodded weakly in thanks, and he gave her a gentle push in Hank's direction. Hank had come closer now, his face a mask of confusion, and it only took a few steps before she could latch her arms around him and bury her face in his shirt.

"Raven...?" He returned the embrace immediately, holding onto her tightly, but he still didn't understand.

"Charles," she managed softly. "He was...he was dreaming. Nightmares. Projecting them. I guess only Erik and I got them. I don't know. I just...oh god, Hank, what Shaw did to him..."

His arms tightened around her as she started to cry.

The moonlight through the window was the only illumination in the bedroom when Erik slipped inside, but there was enough of it that his eyes quickly adjusted as he closed the door behind him. He could make out the silhouetted form huddled in the bed, turned away from him and shivering.

He could also hear the not-so-muffled sobbing, and realized that Charles had not noticed he was there. He hadn't told him to leave, or tried to tell him he was fine, or anything of the sort.

"Charles?" he said aloud. There was no answer and he crossed to the bed and reached out tentatively for a shoulder. "Charles...?"

The moment his fingers brushed fabric Charles was fighting him, shouting, and Erik's first reaction was to roll him onto his back and pin him down until he'd calmed, but he knew that would be too much like being strapped to that damned plastic table and he didn't do it. Instead he quickly moved in closer and tightly wrapped his arms around Charles from behind, pinning his arms against his body and hugging him close.

"Charles, calm down! It's me! It's Erik! Calm down! Charles!" Slowly he began to stop his thrashing, and Erik continued to whisper in his ear to calm him, his friend's sweat-soaked hair in his face. "Charles, it's all right. You're safe. It's over, Charles. It's over..."

Finally Charles was limp in Erik's arms, still crying so hard his chest was shaking and he was coughing between sobs. He had cried enough before, at the beginning, when he couldn't accept what had happened to his legs-the soft muffled sounds Erik had heard through the door and the wall-but never like this. Nothing like this. This was different. All fear and pain and helplessness and everything he had suppressed for too long, Erik realized now.

He'd thought Charles's mind was recovering with the rest of him. He should have known better. He'd felt at the beginning that Charles should talk about this, but he never had, and as he slowly got used to being in the wheelchair he'd seemed fine, recently, and Erik had put his misgivings aside.

He shouldn't have.

"It will never...be over," Charles sobbed, when his crying finally began to taper off as well.

"It'll never be over if you don't let it be over," Erik told him firmly. "You have to let it be over. You can't let him win." He was quiet for a moment, and he swallowed hard. "I let him win for twenty years, Charles. You can't be like me. You're too good for that."

And he'd begun to realize, since Charles had stopped him, that if he had killed Shaw the man would have won irrevocably. Shaw would have accomplished what he wanted and Erik knew he wouldn't have been the same again. He wouldn't be here right now.

Charles made a small choked sound, and he was squirming in an attempt to loosen Erik's grip and Erik resisted until he realized that Charles just wanted to face him. Erik loosened his arms accordingly and helped his friend turn over, and once they were face to face Charles buried himself close again, still trying to catch his breath to some extent.

Erik just held onto him, because he didn't know what else he could do. He was just there, because apparently that was what Charles needed right now.

"Why...why can't I let it go?" Charles managed finally. "I-I'd seen everything in your mind, felt everything he did to you, but this is...I still feel it. I..."

"Those were my memories you had before. It's not the same. These are yours."

Charles closed his eyes wearily. "But...you don't understand. You aren't a telepath. You don't know how much what I glean from other's minds feels so real...like I'm there. How little difference there seems to be between others' memories and my own if I've been deeply enough in their mind..." He swallowed. "There shouldn't be any difference. I could deal with what I'd seen in your mind and I should be able to deal with this..."

"Maybe I'm not a telepath, Charles, but I know what it's like to be hurt. I know you couldn't really understand if you weren't there, no matter what you felt through my memories. Seeing them didn't prepare you for what Shaw did you. It couldn't have. Looking through my memories you could stop it any time you wanted to." Erik made a face, remembering the feelings from Charles's projected nightmare and tightening his grip on his friend a little. "When you're there and you can't stop it it's an entirely different story," he said quietly.

Charles sobbed once. "I can always stop...anything. I tell myself I don't control people on a whim, but since I learned to do it nothing has ever happened to me that I truly didn't want. I-I...I've never been helpless like that..." he whispered.

"I know," Erik said gently. "And that's half of it right there. I know that."

Charles was shivering against him now. "Doesn't it wake you up at night?"

He let out a breath, and answered honestly. "Of course it does. What happened when I was young still wakes me up. All of it does...but I'm used to it. You're not, and that's okay. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Will it ever stop?"

Erik was quiet for a moment. "I don't know. But I know you can't even start to put it behind you if you try to do it alone. Twenty years I was alone and it controlled me."

He hated that Charles needed this advice. He hated that they had this in common now-being hurt by Shaw. Changed. He would rather it be something else...anything else, that they had in common. As long as he still had this man as a friend. He just wished it wasn't this.

But it was this, it was the pain and the fear and everything that went with it, and he would be here. He wouldn't let Charles get through it alone and he supposed he couldn't try to do it alone himself anymore.

Charles's face pressed into his chest, and the next thing Charles said was silent. Not alone. We're not alone...

It sounded as if he were thinking it as much for his own benefit as Erik's, and probably more so.

"No," Erik said aloud. "You're not. I told you that. You told me that." The night they'd met. Charles had latched onto him from behind and pulled him out of the water, kept him from drowning.

I suppose you've returned the favor, Charles thought to him.

They were both quiet after that, for a long time, and finally Charles pulled back and started to sit up. Erik sat up and watched him, looking for any indication that he needed help but it never came. He got himself up against the headboard with ease enough, and Erik noted with satisfaction that he was getting stronger, and he already knew that Charles was certainly no longer the stick figure he'd been when he'd woken. Hopefully that was helping.

A flick of his wrist and the bedside lamp was on. He hadn't meant to catch Charles in the midst of attempting to dry his face, but he was only squinting at the light and not in embarrassment. The silence they were sitting in now was comfortable, quite unlike the silence the night Charles woke up, more than two months ago now. He'd been awake as long as he had been gone, and they had come a long way in that time time...Charles trusted him even more than before and didn't seem to mind so much anymore having to rely on him sometimes.

But they hadn't come far enough. Erik hadn't seen this coming, and he should have.

"I'm sorry," he said suddenly.

Charles looked at him strangely. "For what?"

He shook his head as he tried to find some way to put it into words. "For...I should have been helping you deal with this, too. I didn't."

The telepath let out a breath. "Oh my friend, it is most certainly not your fault. I didn't want help. I foolishly assumed that I would somehow miraculously get past it on my own." He grimaced and looked away. "I am not used to needing help. In any way. Even while I was learning to accept it in its physical form I couldn't admit that I needed it in another way."

They were quiet again, and Erik knew he had to tell Charles the truth of why he had known to come here in the first place. "Charles..."

"Hmm?"

Erik winced in apology. "Charles...you were projecting," he said quietly.

Charles paled immediately. "What? Oh god who else-"

"Raven. It was just the two of us."

His face crumpled, and he groaned. "Oh god...god, she was never supposed to know any of that. She-" He looked up suddenly. "Where is she? Is she all right?"

"Hank woke up when he heard us in the hallway. He's with her."

"But is she all right?"

"She's upset, Charles, but she'll be all right."

Charles moaned again and curled farther into the headboard. He knocked his head back into it once or twice in frustration and let out a sharp breath. "I'm sorry. I-"

"You don't have to apologize to me." Charles just looked at him, and Erik looked back intently. "But you do have to tell me where the lamp came from."

Charles blinked. "What?"

He wasn't going to back down on this, either. He'd seen the beginning of the dream. The nightmare. He remembered it now better than the rest because it had been unfamiliar to him. The lamp swinging toward his head and the stairs coming up to meet him too fast and many more things like that and the smirking faces of a man he'd never seen before and a boy that looked like him.

"The beginning, Charles. I remember that too. That wasn't from what happened with Shaw."

Charles looked at him for a long moment, before he finally licked his lips and winced. But instead of answering right off he pulled open the top few buttons of his pajama shirt and pushed it off of his left shoulder, the one near Erik. His fingers found the scar that was there without looking, framed it, and Erik's eyebrows climbed to his hairline. How had he not noticed before, all of the times he'd changed his friend's clothes while he was still unconscious those long weeks? It wasn't large but it wasn't small, a jagged line maybe an inch and a half long, and it was faded but not enough to completely blend into Charles's pale skin. There were other dots and lines around it, tiny and barely noticeable unless one squinted, but they were there.

"It was the base of the lamp that hit me over the head, and it was sturdy enough that it stayed in one piece but the glass shade shattered against my shoulder. A concussion and stitches all at once...Raven was irate."

Erik's jaw clenched. "Who? Who did that to you? The people in the dream? Who are they?"

"My stepfather and his son," Charles answered quietly. "They both did their share of wrong, but it was the son who perpetrated the lamp incident. Cain." He didn't look like he wanted to be saying anything about all of this at all, but he frowned to himself and just kept talking. "I was thirteen at the time. It was within the first few months Raven was with us and beyond being incredibly angry she was terrified. I'd been able to keep their cruelty from her until she walked in on that incident. She was so frightened I told her that she didn't have to stay if she didn't want to, but...she did. She didn't leave me."

A surge of anger and protectiveness, every bit as strong as what he'd felt in that plastic room. "Why did you never say anything?"

Charles pulled his shirt back over his shoulder and buttoned it again as he spoke. "There was no point. You assumed I didn't know what it was like to be hurt, and this was so much different, worse, that it hardly mattered that the concept was not, in fact, alien to me. I still wasn't prepared; you weren't wrong in that."

Erik stared at him, cursing his throat for clogging when there was so much he wanted to say. "Charles..."

Though Erik had tried to keep it out of his voice Charles must have picked up on the distress one way or another, because he looked up sharply and his expression quickly softened. "Erik, it's all right. If I had really wanted you to think any different than you did I would have said something sooner."

"Still, I shouldn't have assumed..."

"I didn't mind. I preferred it that way, really."

Erik glared suddenly. "The you wouldn't have told me if this hadn't happened?"

Charles's mouth dropped open, but at first nothing came out. "I...I don't know."

He pushed angrily off the bed and walked a quick circle in the floor beside it, more than once, some sort of pacing to burn off the sudden anger. "I can't believe you...!"

"Erik-"

"You know everything about me, Charles!"

"So I'm not allowed anything that's private?" Charles asked hotly.

"After everything we went through together and everything you know it hardly seems fair that you kept this from me."

Charles huffed and felt silent. He looked away and Erik just watched him, trying to tell himself he shouldn't be angry but unable to help it.

"I suppose you may be right," Charles said finally. "But it was hardly something I could bring up in casual conversation."

Erik deflated. That much, at least, was true. He trudged back to the bed and dropped onto its edge. "I'm sorry."

"It seems we both say that far too often even when not in crisis."

Erik reach out and braced a hand on Charles's shoulder, letting his thumb run over the spot where he knew the scar was though the pajama shirt covered it now. "I guess we do." Charles reached up to cover the hand with his own, the corners of his mouth tugging upward, and now the silence was comfortable again.

"I don't believe I'll be getting back to sleep tonight," Charles said at length. "I should see that Raven is all right, anyhow."

Erik started to stand. "Do you need any-?"

"Help? No, thank you. I was merely commenting," he said, smiling a little. With that he threw off the covers and swung himself down into the wheelchair by the bed on his own. He brought the chair out from behind the bed and contemplated the closet and the door for a moment before heading for the door. There was no reason to change yet; it was still the middle of the night.

That, and Erik supposed he was anxious to check on his sister after the projection episode. Erik followed him, and Charles didn't head for Raven's room or Hank's room but for the elevator, and he supposed he'd located them telepathically. They found the pair in the kitchen, sitting close at the table with nearly untouched hot chocolate in front of them.

"Charles!" Raven jumped up immediately when she saw them, and Erik could see that she was coming in fast and quickly flicked a finger to put the wheelchair's brakes on before she ran into her brother and latched her arms around him. She sank to her knees by the chair and left her face buried in Charles's chest, and she was crying again now but didn't seem to care that Erik and Hank were in the room, too.

"Oh god, Charles, I'm so sorry..."

Charles, for his part, had quickly wrapped his arms around her and pushed his face into her orange hair to kiss her head. "Shh, it's all right. It's all right..."

And now that he knew that their childhood had not been perfect Erik suddenly saw their relationship so much more clearly. He understood how much they meant to each other, and it warmed his heart and broke it all at once.

He looked up and exchanged a glance with Hank, who hadn't moved either, seeming to understand as Erik did that this moment was not for them. The look in his eyes seemed to indicate that Raven may have told him something of the past, too.

Erik motioned back toward the corridor, and Hank silently stood and followed him out, leaving brother and sister alone.