Author's Note: Okay, guys, we collected all the really terrible stuff in one chapter. If you don't want to see a hell of a lot of misery, just wait until the next update and skip this one Or, alternatively, scroll to Erik's scene, which is far less upsetting. Trigger warning in Charles' section for drug abuse, mentions of child abuse, suicidal ideation. Charles had a hard first year or two, but we've contained the majority of these things in this one chapter and added a scene where he ended up at the end of the chapter to lighten the load somewhat.

I'm not kidding, I'm really not kidding. Trigger warning, guys. Skip to Erik's section if you want to avoid all the drugs and ideation.

Chapter title is from "Rivers and Roads" by the Head and the Heart

Charles: 2008

Was this rock bottom? Charles curled in on himself slowly, trying to ignore the colors that exploded across his walls like fireworks, smearing into each other and fading before brightening again relentlessly. His body was shaking, maybe even seizing, his arms trembling against the hard slats of the wooden floor. His mind flickered through thoughts and memories in an offensive onslaught, tearing him back through the past two years.

"I don't know when Shaw's coming back! I keep waiting for him, every moment, around every corner, but I don't know! And I can't keep waiting!" Charles' fingers dug at his arms and Moira moved forward, grabbing his fingers and holding them away from his skin tightly.

"Charles," she said sharply. "Charles, look at me. Stop, you need to stop, you need to breathe-"

"I don't know why I'm here!" The words burst out of Charles like a wild, feral, living thing. "I don't know why I'm here, I don't know why I'm alive! I don't know when he's coming back for me or why he let me go or why he killed them! I don't know why I didn't die with them!" The last sentence came out broken, fragments of a question that had been bleeding him from the inside for two years. "Why didn't I die with them, why didn't I go then, why is he gone, why is it all gone…" he doubled forward, a low keening sound torn from his throat, and Moira wrapped her arms around him tightly, climbing into the bed beside him and hugging him against her.

"Charles," she whispered, brushing his hair back from his face. "Charles, I don't think he's coming back for you. And you're not wrong. I don't know that for sure. I don't know the answer to any of that. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that I don't. I wish I could give you the answers." She hugged him tighter, resting his head against her chest, and Charles squeezed his eyes shut, the tears burning as they came out. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, Charles. But this, doing this to yourself… it's not the way out, it's not the answer."

"It makes it feel less bottomless," he whispered, suddenly too tired even to raise his head and look at her. "It makes them quieter. There's so many voices, Moira."

"I know. But hold on. Please just hold on. It'll get easier, it has to get easier. It just takes time." She squeezed him tightly. "Go back with Raven, Charles. Please. Go back to school. Go learn, go be you. I'm begging you."

"I don't know if 'me' is left anymore," he rasped, the sound hollow and broken. "I don't know how."

His mouth was dry and his eyes were too, staring up at the ceiling as he dragged his hands slowly through his hair. His fingers felt sharp and clumsy, like claws rather than fingers, and he experienced a surreal moment of horror, wondering if he would ever be able to turn pages with claws for hands

"You'll stay up here," Kurt stated shortly, glancing down at Charles. He didn't move, slumped forward in the chair that he may as well have been shackled to. His fingers tugged loosely, aimlessly, at the links of his bracelet, shifting them this way and that. He didn't look up at his stepfather, didn't bother to acknowledge the smile that spread so assuredly across Kurt's face. Not so high and mighty now, are you? How the little prince has fallen. The thought was filled with scorn and Charles felt his hand clench briefly, lapping around the chain at his wrist.

Kurt chuckled and turned. "I'll bring you food eventually, if I remember. Feel free to help yourself to the kitchens… if you can make it down to them." He laughed then, at his joke, and Charles resisted the urge, the word on the tip of his tongue that would make Kurt be silent and harmless forever.

He could say it. He could end him.

But Kurt wasn't the one he wanted to end.

Oh, fuck, this wasn't normal. Charles struggled to sit up with the realization, fell back to his back almost immediately. There was something wrong with the dilaudid, something off about it. He should have known better than to buy from Delaney but he'd been desperate and Dr. Samuels had decided to cut him off, had suspected that he was abusing it. He hadn't had any other choice, he wasn't strong enough on his own, but this wasn't the wonderful, soft high that fuzzed out the world and the voices within it, this was something entirely other-

"Stop here, stop, stop the car!" Charles slammed his hands on the dash, staring in horror at the ruin in front of them. The manor was smoldering, a wreckage of a building, the walls just barely standing here and there. "Let me out," he demanded, and the driver obeyed, pressing buttons to lower the ramp. Charles didn't look to see if he was reacting out of his own will or Charles', simply wheeled himself down the ramp and onto the gravel rapidly. He ignored how much harder it was to maneuver the chair on the rocks, pushing forward through it.

"Erik!" He screamed it in his mind and outside it, letting the projection echo for miles around them. "Erik! Eleven! Ten!" He wheeled harder, finally reaching the front door. He heard the driver scrambling out of the car, no doubt in an attempt to stop the crazed boy in the wheelchair trying so frantically to make his way into the still-faintly-burning building. He continued screaming for them even as the driver ran across the gravel to catch up with him. He kept shouting, kept searching, demanding for a different answer than the silence that was ringing out like a gong both in his mind and outside it.

They weren't here.

It's fine, Charles told himself desperately. It's fine. Shaw moved them, I can find them, I can look. There must be clues inside the house and that's why they burnt it down but Erik's fine, he has to be fine, he's just somewhere else. He has to be. He pushed his chair forward and it caught the edge of the doorframe, sending him crashing onto the floor. He ignored the driver's concern, shoved his hands off when the man tried to help pull him up, and then

He

Saw

Her.

No matter how butchered, it was so clearly Ten, and all Charles could hear was screaming, and he couldn't tell what was his and what wasn't.

Charles let out a low whimper, rolling onto his side and dragging himself toward his bedside table. He needed to call Raven. He needed to get to a hospital, to purge some of this out of him. It wasn't right, this wasn't right.

Or was it?

He stilled, his fingers shaking in the air as they hovered above the wood of his nightstand.

Could he lean into this? Let it go?

Could he stop hearing voices and thoughts, stop being overwhelmed by his own pain and misery and that of others?

Could he see Erik again?

But then he knew exactly how bad the drugs coursing through his bloodstream were, because he could see Ten. She was leaning against the wall, her ankle hooked loosely around her leg. She was bloody, deep cuts ripping along her skin and clothes, but her eyes were exactly the same, watching Charles impassively. She lit a cigarette with her fingertip as he watched, letting his body sink slowly onto the ground, and then she took a drag. She blew the smoke at the ceiling, not looking away from him, and tapped ash onto the ground with slow, deliberate movements of her fingers.

"Privet,"she greeted him, and he was stunned by how thick her accent was, how beautiful. Had he ever told her how beautiful it was? She never would have accepted the compliment, but that didn't make it less true. "You're a mess, Twelve."

"Yes," he agreed hoarsely.

"You're more than the drugs. You're more than your legs! God damn it all to hell, Charles, I need you!" Raven had been crying as she threw the bottle of dilaudid across the room. "You're all I have!"

Ten tilted her head, lifting the cigarette to her lips slowly, and Charles shook his head mechanically, fingers twitching and tapping against his chest. "She's pretty," Ten noted mildly, as if she could see the memory in his eyes. Maybe she could. It wasn't as if she were anything but a figment of his mind, anyway, fracturing under stress, grief, and drug abuse. "You never spoke much about her."

"Didn't want… Shaw to find her." He tried to take in a breath, found that it was hard. If he was going to call for help, he needed to do it. His time was running out. Raven wanted him, loved him, but the wealth would go to her. She would be well-taken care of as his beneficiary and she had always, always been stronger than him…

He was so fucking tired of fighting.

"Hm." Ten blew out smoke again, then crossed and crouched beside him. He tried to focus on her eyes, not the way her raven-dark hair was matted with blood and her bones were visible through the gashes that had been torn through her body. Charles let out a breaking noise.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Ten. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

She reached out, tapping Charles' forehead very slowly, and the drugs must have been good because he felt it, her skin of substance in the arctic air around him. "Yesli vy pozvolite yemu slomat' sebya, pogibnut dva cheloveka vmesto odnogo,"she murmured, leaning in close to whisper it against his ear.

"I can't… I don't have your mind, I don't know…" He reached for her as she leaned back.

"If you let him break you, two people will die instead of one." She watched him, eyes dark. "Call the hospital, Twelve. Then rest. Wake up yourself. Don't let him win."

He obeyed with trembling fingers, his eyes barely able to keep track of the numbers, and she stood, crossing the room for the door. "Don't leave me," he begged, reaching for her. "Ten, don't leave me, please, I'm- I can't do this, I don't know how, please don't leave me-"

"Twelve." She cast him a somewhat-disparaging look that didn't quite cover the fondness in her bloodied expression. "You are freaking out. Breathe."

And then she was gone. It was only minutes before the sirens reached him, before Raven broke through the door with them. If this was rock bottom, Charles decided slowly as hands grabbed at him, checked for his pulse, lifted him onto a gurney… If this was rock bottom, then he would find a way to climb his way back up. There was nowhere to go but back up.

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h4Erik: 2011h4

Erik spent a lot of time trying not to think these days. He was trying not to think now, as he watched the car below him creeping along the street. He couldcrunch it and all the people in it into a little ball and set it up at the top of the Eiffel Tower like a macabre Christmas star, but that lacked elegance, and the contract had asked for a less obvious hit. So few people allowed him to really funnel the seemingly endless ocean of rage into anything approaching creativity or a revenge fantasy, so he was stuck with the little silvery balls that spun around his hand as he sat on the roof, watching his target's car move slowly down the street. Not that there was anything wrong with them, per se. They were more effective than any gun, than any other weapon he could think of. They would never miss, he didn't lose control of them when they left his hand, and he could reshape them into tiny needles and truly be subtle, winding them through a victim's body like glass, puncturing organs and arteries alike with very little evidence.

He had lost track, after a while, of how many people he had fulfilled contracts on. For a while he had kept a vague count but no longer, because there was honestly no reason to do so. No one would ever want to know the number, and he would kill many more before this was all over. The spinning balls went slightly off their perfect figure-eights as Shaw's face flickered across Erik's mind, their spherical shapes malforming a little as his near-perfect focus wavered.

He hadn't heard from Shaw in months. The trail had gone cold weeks ago. Erik was in Paris because he had heard rumors that Shaw was recruiting, but it had come to nothing, and Erik was at a loss. His plan, if one could call it that, was to track down every name that he had collected over the last few years and get them to talk. He had ways of making people talk, was shockingly good at it. The now-crunched balls returned to their smooth figure-eights and he continued watching the car, not having actually moved in long enough that pigeons were pecking at the moss behind him on the roof, hoping to find a nut or seed someone had dropped there.

Shaw had been right about a few things. Very few, but Erik did have to give him credit where credit was due. Shaw had developed Erik's abilities in a way that few would or could have. Erik was exactly what Shaw had created- beautiful monsterstill rang in his head sometimes, when he was trying to sleep. That was accurate. He wasn't particularly beautiful, Erik didn't think- too many scars collected over the years, too much hardness and anger and lack of proper sleep or food. One could only live on rage for so long, and Erik was pushing the limits on it, practically vibrating with fury sometimes and sending everything metal around him corkscrewing and knotting in on themselves. He'd heard nervous descriptions of him as sharklike, and that, he felt, wasn't too far off.

But like a monster, Erik was very good at the terrible things he did, and in a way, Shaw was responsible for that. But Shaw hadn't realized- or maybe he had, and that was part of his reasoning for doing what he'd done- that the finesse and control needed to truly master Erik's power lay not in pain, not exactly, but in rage and grief and a lust for vengeance. He had given Erik the keys to unlock the rest of his gifts, and Erik had snapped the locks in two as he learned everything he physically could to complete his new mission in life.

Speaking of missions, though… the car slowed finally, the back right door opening. The balls above Erik's hand stopped, poised, and as a tall man got out, looking around furtively to see if he was being watched, Erik flexed his hand and let them fly.

His first contact had been to track was a man in England, someone who ran a set of warehouses that, it was whispered, Shaw used to store things and sometimes people. A locked-up warehouse was no match for someone like Erik, and he tore through the gates and locked doors, making his way up to the top floor of the office building that oversaw the warehouses in question.

"What do you want?" the manager cried as Erik ripped the door off its hinges and stepped inside. He was a small man, with a ratty kind of face and a high voice. Erik relaxed as the man spoke- he had been hoping to avoid anyone with the more southern accents. He had been in for a nasty shock when he ran into someone who had graduated from Oxford a few months ago. Although they had lacked Charles' gorgeous voice, the accent had been spot on and the voice had been similar enough that it had made Erik's chest hurt. He was glad then, that the man he needed to question today had a perfectly normal northern accent, far from the round, smooth tones of the boy whose absence still burned like acid against his bones.

"Information." Erik flicked a hand and the man was immediately pinned against the back wall, pieces of his desk helpfully molding up against his arms and legs to keep him there. "I need Sebastian Shaw. I hear that you have a relationship with him."

"Never met him," the little man squeaked, terrified and shaking. "I don't know him, I just- just keep the units he emails about!"

"And how does he pay for it?" Erik asked in a quiet voice. Very few people really saw the anger anymore; he had learned to freeze it, turn it into hard ice that could cut. Most thought he was unnaturally calm, actually, which was one of the few things Erik thought was funny. "You don't give it to him for free, I would imagine."

"No, sir, but I can't say- I can't tell you his banking information!" The man's eyes widened in true fear. Erik tilted his head. He, like many others, made the terrible mistake of believing that Shaw was more dangerous than Erik Lensherr.

Maybe that had been true once, but that softer version of Erik had died with Charles. This version didn't believe in mercy. Erik flicked a finger and a small piece of the metal leg of the desk tore off and rested against the other man's throat. "This is very simple," Erik said, watching him panic and feeling no sympathy. The man took money from Shaw and was currently shielding him. "Either you give me the information and risk the chance that I find Shaw before he finds you, or you continue to block me and I do to you what Shaw will do."

Ten minutes later, Erik strode out of the complex with a printout of Sebastian Shaw's banking information, complete with last-known address and a contact number. He was fairly certain that the address was fake and the contact number was probably a burner phone as they had been before when he had gotten this far, but every scrap of information he had on the man would be useful, might lead to another fragment of information and another and another. At somepoint, it would connect to something real. You could only use fake addresses and burner phones for so long. Something had to stick.

Maybe he could catch him unawares and Shaw could be fooled into believing that whatever he was risking storing in a public warehouse was being damaged in some way. Erik could easily stage a fire, or a chemical spill, or any number of other things. A fire might be particularly fitting— Ten had died too, after all. She would have appreciated that. She would have loved to help burn Shaw's shit. He headed toward the unit in question, snapping off the lock with just a flick of his fingers, trying not to allow the memories rise, of Ten's glowing eyes when she lit a fire, of Charles' voice saying well, why does he lock it if he knows it can't stop you?

Erik raised the door to the unit with a flex of his hand and his mood soured. Not books, not files, nothing even vaguely useful. Just a bunch of cars. Beautiful cars, admittedly, but definitely bugged and tracked, so he couldn't even steal one for his own personal use. Erik vented his frustration by reducing a gorgeous ocean-blue 1953 Buick Wildcat into little more than a duffel bag-sized lump of metal and glass, unable to look at that particular color blue for longer than a few moments without pain racking his chest in a very real way that was not at all physical, the image of sparkling blue eyes too forcefully ringing back to him.

I'm going to kill you, Shaw, Erik growled as he continued to destroy the convertible, pretending it was Shaw's skull. You had just better hope that you're in the fucking desert with no metal for miles and miles and miles when I find you.

That was okay, though, if it's what happened. Erik always carried some metal with him, and he had gotten very, very good with making a lot of what little he had. He had Shaw to thank for that, too.

There was a beep from his phone and he spared a glance down at it. There was a new contract in London, one that would pay enough to get him across the pond and start hunting for Shaw in America again. His money seemed to run out as quickly as he made it, constantly being spent on more and more resources and more and more information. Erik confirmed briefly and began pouring gasoline across the cars from a can he found hiding in the back of a little golf cart the lazy manager used to get around the facility.

The next beep came with a photo of the target, a tall and cheerful man with a beard standing in front of tall spires and white stone. Luke Legies, professor at Oxford University, $25,000 upon completion,the text beneath the image stated. Erik found himself hesitating, his fingers on the matches, his mind flickering to Charles' ridiculous and immense pride in his school. He wouldn't approve of blood spattering those white stones.

But he needed to get back to America, where the trail was leading now, and he didn't have the money without completing the job. He would just make sure that if he found the guy in the library, he'd drag him somewhere else, first. He wouldn't sully Charles' favorite place like that. He still had that much soul left.

Erik lit a match and dropped it in the gasoline, watching the beautiful cars burn, the paint peeling up and running. I'll get him, Charles,he thought, allowing himself to think his name for a moment. I promise. I'll get him for all of us.

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h4Charles: 2014h4

"You can do it, Alex." Charles offered him a smile, relaxing back in his chair comfortably. He felt a strange, perverse kind of pleasure in the fact that he was using the overly-expensive garden statues Kurt had once purchased as targets for the boy. "You're not going to hit me, I trust you." He absently turned the bracelet on his wrist, not fully aware of the now-normal motion. "Hank says the suit should greatly improve your aim, and I trust him implicitly. I see no way in which this could go wrong."

"Uh-huh." Angel tossed a piece of popcorn in her mouth, then threw one at Sean, who caught it deftly in his. They were sitting with Darwin and Hank at the back of the room, safely ensconced behind the stone half-wall. "Nope, no way at all. Alex, if you explode a man in a wheelchair, you're just… so going to hell."

"Angel, you aren't helping." Charles sighed it as she laughed and Alex looked at them nervously, then focused on his professor.

"Sir, I know we joke about me blowing up the car but I don't really want to blow you up. And not because I'll go to hell if I do," he added. "Which, she's right. Straight to hell. Like, a hellmouth would open right here, they wouldn't even wait for me to die."

"Oh, come on. The suit lookscool at least," Darwin called, standing closer than Charles would like, leaning over the wall. He knew Darwin would be fine if he was hit, it was the nature of his gift, but that wasn't really the point. Charles fixed him with a look and Darwin grew a thick, armorlike skin, then reluctantly returned to sit beside Angel when Charles didn't look impressed.

"Thank you," Charles said, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "Alex, I have the utmost faith in you. You've been running your ability with fear and anger for too long. Sometimes trust is a better motivator. I know you, and I trust you, and I love you. You're not going to kill me. And if you do… well, good luck with Raven as your new headmaster." He grinned to lighten the mood. "You're going to do wonderfully. Just focus, breathe, and aim."

"Okay, having Raven as a headmistress is motivation enough," Alex said with a nervous laugh, mentally bolstered by the praise. For so long he'd allowed himself to be afraid of his own gifts and afraid of himself, and it had taken the boy a long time to fully accept that Charles was, in fact, in his right mind when Charles told Alex that they all cared about him.

Alex focused on the statues, positioning himself more firmly on the grass, repositioning the harness, and let his power go. It streaked out and absolutely obliterated Kurt's very favorite statue, a truly terrible replica of Winged Victory, severing the wings and cutting the body into several pieces that fell to the ground, on fire.

Alex whooped, flopping back to the ground in relief and exultation and punched the air, and Charles felt a brilliant smile crash across his face, caught up in the joy radiating from Alex and the pride that he himself was projecting.

This was what it should have been. The only one in danger was the one running the tests, the training, which was built on pride and care rather than sadism and pain. Alex had worked so bloody hardand come so bloody farand none of it had been through pain. None of it was anything Shaw would be proud of.

"Wonderful job, Alex." Charles beamed and Angel let out a shout of excitement herself, the true tension in her mind at the thought that Alex may actually burn him to a crisp evaporating. Sean threw her bag of popcorn with a victory screech, sending the flaming pieces of statue skidding back several more feet. They ran to congratulate their peer and Charles turned to Hank, nearly glowing as Hank crossed the grass to his side. "Excellent job, Henry. I was a bit worried about the calibration, truth be told, but you did as marvellously as always."

"Thanks." Hank pushed his glasses up with a cheerful smile, caught up in the infectious mood. "I tried. I have some more modifications I've been planning for Sean's flight suit-"

"I'm going to fly!" Sean howled triumphantly, punching Darwin cheerfully in the stomach, and Hank rolled his eyes.

"-and this will actually help a lot in helping me figure out the fibers and diagnostics," he finished dryly.

Charles watched the four young mutants on the lawn, tilting his head with a smile as he fondly watched them celebrate, bouncing around each other like the happy children they were. He wasn't at the top of life, per se, but he was nearly as far now from rock bottom as he could be. "Raven comes back soon," he noted to Hank, who predictably began flustering about that in his own head. Hank couldn't figure out how he felt about Charles' sister, and it sent him into little fits every time she decided to come back to the school for a visit.

"Does she?" Hank asked mildly, checking his notes with an unconvincing expression of studiousness. Charles laughed, starting to wheel himself back up toward the school.

"She does," he agreed mildly. You might want to get a haircut,he added silently.

"Speak for yourself!" Hank called across the grounds after him, and Charles' laughter continued until he was in his study. He paused to glance at the painting that hung above the door, mind flickering to four other young mutants once in training, and then he left the study and headed up to his room. He had a party to get ready for, and Raven's visit to prepare for before that. He was going to be busy.