Pairings: Several possible ones implied.
Notes: This was written at 03.30 on a stormy Sunday night. It was fun to write, I hope it's as fun for you to read. I'm a little worried about the end though.
Chapter I
There was a clock.
Somewhere in the room there was a damned clock and now, in the darkness, the constant 'tick tick' was robbing him of his sleep. As he sat on the end of his bed Erik contemplated how the most of mundane household objects could so easily become a form of torture far more maddening than anything the Chinese could have come up with. He stifled a yawn as the idiotic thought that Logan had placed the clock purposefully in attempt to drive him out of the house. But it was by far too subtle for the likes of him.
Scott perhaps? The young man certainly wanted rid of him as much as Logan did, even if he was more careful to hide his hostility. Between the two of them Erik considered Scott to be the most dangerous by far. Logan would rush into a fight without thought, whereas Scott would let his own anger stoke the engines of thought and he would bide his time waiting for the perfect moment when an attack would be most likely to succeed. Of course, the minor detail that the metal buried deep within Logan's thoughtless body sung out to him whenever the idiot strolled within a hundred yards had nothing to do with his disregard for him.
With a solemn expression Erik stood up and fumbled in the dark for his dressing gown. There was no way that he was going to get any sleep with the insidious tick tick tick running through his head. So, instead he pulled on the dressing gown and fled the clock before it drove him entirely out of his mind.
As the door snickered closed behind him he stumbled to a halt staring down at the carpeted floor and his naked feet. An odd, empty gnawing feeling ate its way through his system and forced him to look up and right. And there it was. He shook his head bitterly unsure why for a moment he had thought it might have changed, as if the years and the pain between would have altered the architecture of the house itself.
He stared for a long while, the sounds of the slumbering house going unheard in the distance, as his head argued with his heart. Eventually his fear won through and lowering his gaze he turned his back on Charles' door and walked away.
He tried not to think about how easy it would have been to draw back the bolt and slip inside. About how many times he had done it before, years ago now, on those dark nights when the nightmares had seemed endless. Everything was so familiar and yet so strange as he walked away shying from the memories. There was no going back, he knew that better than anyone, so why did he still dream of it?
Erik suddenly frowned, snapped out of his thoughts sharply as he noticed that there was a light up ahead. It was the blue-grey flickering light cast by a television in a dark room, the kind that any insomniac learned to loathe and love early on.
There was no sound as he approached the communal lounge warily, thinking that perhaps some of the students were being rebellious and staying up to watch things not meant for young eyes. Standing in the doorway he was paused for a long moment unsure of what he should do. The shadows danced across the silent room as he stared at the back of the couch; the back of her head. Erik cleared his throat.
"Sorry!"
Rogue gasped out the word as she snapped to her feet spinning around in guilty fear. She hadn't meant to be up so late, she hadn't meant to get caught either. Wide-eyed she could only stare at the figure silhouetted against the hall light in the doorway. She almost screamed. But as her jaw dropped the sound died deep in the back of her throat, escaping as little more than a sigh.
"You stopped coming to visit." His voice was as smoothly charming as she remembered, making him sound like a cultured European Count, but now it held an edge of accusation in it that set her hair on end.
"Ah…sorry." As soon as the broken apology escaped her lips she wanted to call it back. Why was she apologising to a man who had tried to kill her? The truth of it was perhaps something neither of them cared to admit, but she had made her real peace with him long ago in those few clandestine visits to the prison.
The first trip had been the hardest, as she had spent weeks convincing the professor that it really was a good idea for her to visit Erik. To find that 'closure'. When she had, they had simply sat for an entire hour staring at each other across the plastic table in that plastic hell. His memories had been too fresh, his nightmares too raw in her mind for her to be able to bare the confinement. How he had coped she would never fully understand.
"I was concerned that perhaps something had happened." He spoke softly, moving carefully towards her, and then stopping to lean against the back of the couch.
"Nothing…bad happened." She murmured, somehow not knowing how just how to explain those events of nearly a year gone to him.
"Logan?"
She'd forgotten how perceptive he was and now she found herself nodding. "He came home. He nearly tore the place apart when he smelt you on me. I couldn't…"
"I understand."
"And then your lawyer made mincemeat of the prosecutors…" Rogue gave a quick weak, but heartfelt, smile. "I was glad when they let you go. And with an apology too!"
"With a little help from Mystique acting as Senator Kelly, it opened a lot of peoples eyes to the mistreatment of mutants." Erik replied stiffly and she knew that there was more too it than that. To be locked up again, to be denied his most basic freedoms and abilities that he'd fought so hard to make his own, it must have brought the horrors of his earlier confinement in the death camp flooding back with unnatural clarity. It must have been like living in hell.
"I should have visited…"
With excessive casualness he shrugged and brushed the comment aside with a dismissive wave of his hand. She watched as he moved around the couch to take a seat and patted the place next to him.
"How are things going here in the school for you?" The question was so mundane and sat on the sofa in his neat little dressing gown and pj's he looked laughably like some benign old uncle come to visit.
She dropped down onto the cushion next to him and smiled slightly shyly. "My classes are going well. And for the first time in a long time I fell like I actually belong somewhere. I've made a lot of friends…"
"Boys?" he asked with a slightly amused look.
"A couple. There's two I really like but-" She broke off the sentence, choking back a silent sob. What was the point of falling for any guy when she would never even be able to hold hands with him?
"Tell me about these young men?"
"Remi and Bobby." She said softly, staring down at her safely gloved hands. "I think Logan hates them both."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Erik said quietly, sharing with her a conspiritial grin.
"Bobby is lovely, he's cute and kind, and I think he likes me too. Remi…Remi likes me a lot. But nothing can ever happen, can it?" She looked up at him to see his intense eyes cast sideways to watch her carefully. She hunched over her crossed legs, suddenly feeling entirely foolish. Here she was in the early hours of a Monday morning moaning about the angst of her teenage love life - or lack of it - to the man she shared so much more with. His fears had pointed out her own. His purest hopes and dreams had highlighted all that she believed well in the world. Oh, he had his own dark and twisted dreams too, those that were tainted by his experiences in the past that had warped his 'dream' of a better future. But having shared his memories she could understand all of that, perhaps better than anyone. Erik saw all of that, or at least the edges of it, there was so much of him in her that her understood her now better than she understood herself at times. Or at least that was the way it seemed.
"My dear," he said gently as he reached out to stroke her hair, the feathery white streaks she had inherited from him, "You're young and you have all of your life ahead of you to meet boys, to find love. You'll learn to control your gift as we all do, and then you'll be free. Have a little faith?"
And then she was sobbing silently, his arms wrapped around her as she laid her head down on his lap. She hadn't meant to be up so late. She hadn't meant to get caught either. She certainly didn't mean to fall asleep on Magneto's lap.