Title: The Road Less Travelled
Author: Milliecake
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Category: Angst/Adventure
Rating: T
Warnings: AU, bromance (new word of the month!) possibly slashy (I've been told) lots of spoilers for the end of the movie, including shameless dialogue theft
Disclaimer: Do not own, but if I did I'd make a sequel. And possibly make them do naughty things. For box office ratings.
Summary: What if Charles had been at Erik's side during the final confrontation with Shaw, would history be irrevocably changed?
Author's Notes: Thanks for the reviews. I was intending to leave this at the end of the confrontation with Shaw, but am debating whether to carry on into the entire beach scene and rewrite that for a more happier ending too. By the by, if anyone is looking for a laugh head to youtube and look for x-men first class crack by Jate. That vid had me in stitches!
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Agony and the bitterness of defeat swept through Charles as he stood frozen on the beach. The emotions were not his own and it was with some effort he distanced himself from them.
Behind him, at the wreckage of the Blackbird, he absently caught the sound of battle once again, but his focus was intent upon Erik. Hold on. Erik, just hold on, he implored the other man.
Erik was trapped now behind metal debris of his own making, Shaw carefully supporting his head, the gesture incongruous with the hurt he had casually inflicted.
I don't want to hurt you Erik, Charles heard Shaw say, low and earnest, as if negating Charles' silent accusation. I never did. I want to help you.
Erik's anguish was a tangible thing and Charles couldn't hold back the sting of tears as his friend's undiluted pain washed over him.
Shaw's tone dropped further, as if aware of Charles' own presence, to become a coaxing caress, beguiling in his sincerity. This is our time, our age. We are the future of the human race. You and me, son. This whole world could be ours.
In the last, there wasn't the promise of possibility, but a certitude of a rapidly encroaching future. Charles didn't have to read Shaw's mind to know the man was hell bent on a genocidal course, that it was only a matter of time before he took what he saw as his rightful place upon a dais of destruction. In Emma Frost's mind Charles had seen all too clearly Shaw's vision of a future, worshipped as a god, not among wretched men, but by a powerful mutant brethren.
Erik would surely be destroyed before he joined Shaw for the extinction that was to come. Wouldn't he?
Chess had become the neutral ground where their diversive ideologies could meet and exchange their thoughts with relative peace. Evolution, the holocaust, the nature of human life to destroy that which it feared, Charles was under no illusions where Erik's loyalties had come to rest. Erik could only see in each mutant they discovered a potential victim, something to be registered, experimented on, corralled into camps...eliminated. He wanted to offer them strength instead, protection, a brotherhood, at the great cost of those who might one day do them harm.
But would a survivor's guilt, a desperate need to re-write the inhumanity of his past and defend an emerging, threatened people, eclipse the hatred Erik held for Shaw?
Fear spurred Charles into action and, struggling to hold onto their link, he ran for the second, shredded opening Erik had unwittingly blown in the submarine's side. One that led directly into the reactor room.
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Erik, don't give up.
Erik didn't raise his eyes. There was no need. The elation he had felt on raising the Caspartina had vanished, fallen into failure. The expectations of a dozen years had been stripped from him, his weakness exposed before the very man he had come to kill.
"Everything you did made me stronger, made me the weapon I am today." The confession spilled from his lips. There was no use in hiding. "That's the truth." His words cracked at the last.
Images of those he had mercilessly hunted and executed, men, women...soldiers whose crime had been to follow the orders of a mad regime, rose up around him. Yet all of it had been but a sidestep on his true mission and none of those deaths, messy, vindictive, cruel, had brought him the vengeance he had for so long craved. Shaw's power hungry gaze never left his face.
And there was no revelation to be had in this, no moment of self-discovery. "I've known it all along."
His eyes didn't flicker as saw movement in mirrored shards. He didn't need to look, didn't need a telepath's ability, to sense Charles had entered the devastated room, had heard his words, was even now gazing at him with that boundless compassion, azure eyes bright with unshed tears. And it wasn't simply Erik's pain alone inside his mind, Charles all too willing to martyr himself on the suffering of those whose minds he touched. No, it would be the man's enduring empathy, his kindness, his belief in Erik, that would cause him to weep. Naivety had been a kinder word than arrogance and so much more befitting.
Erik, you are so much more than this, more than just a weapon.
Charles hadn't spoken aloud, this wasn't for Shaw, but instead his friendship poured directly into Erik's mind, a single image held up to counter those of the brutal acts he had committed. A rare breakfast between them, not so long ago, the younger mutants still abed. A coffee mug held in an easy grip, early morning sun slanting through the panes of glass, warmth on his relaxed face, and Erik saw himself through his friend's eyes. A man at peace.
As if hearing Charles' silent plea, Shaw glanced behind him, grin wicked and widening at the sight of the telepath he had long sought, before his gaze returned to Erik, his craving naked, delighting in all that he had heard, savouring Erik's words, his surrender.
Erik looked at Shaw then, despising this man for flaying open his very soul. All what he was, all that he had become, was because of this man. The murder of his mother, the pain that had taught him, the hatred that had fuelled him. The loathsome words he had uttered at the Villa Gesell had not been wrong. He was Frankenstein's monster, the Adam of his enemy's iniquitous labours. He uttered them once more, what he knew Shaw longed to hear.
"You are my creator."
He had the briefest glimpse of Shaw's elation, his grinning triumph...before the snaking wires spread wide at his command and snatched the helmet from the man's head with the speed of a striking serpent.
"Now Charles!" he shouted and heard an echoing cry of effort from the younger man.
They had finally shown their hand, this plan Charles had concocted, their moment of truth; whether Charles was strong enough to contain Shaw and all his powers...or whether they would fail at the last as Shaw destroyed them all.
Shaw was no fool and had spun the instant he felt cold air hit his head, hand out-stretched. But not for the helmet, no, as it hovered tantalisingly above. Instead he was striking for Charles. Charles who had staggered under the strain of holding captive such a powerful mutant, with little more than the sheer tenacity of his telepathy, gloved fingers digging into his sweating temple. If Shaw were to break free, his first target would be the one and only real threat in the room.
"Charles?"
"I can only control him for so long," Charles warned, voice taut, breaking under duress. Shaw's hand trembled slightly before freezing once more.
It would be all the time Erik would need. He allowed the girder that had pinned him like an insect to fall and stepped carefully over the metal, coming to face his creator. Held immobile by Charles' telepathy, Erik could finally gaze upon his antagonist, not as the boy who was once his victim, but as the man who had come to kill him.
I've blocked his powers, Charles said, needlessly, into Erik's mind. The cost of speech was clearly too much, his focus entirely upon holding Shaw. But if he breaks free for even a second, he'll use them on me. I can see it in his mind.
The last said lowly, with a shred of disgust. Yes, naivety had been kinder than arrogance, but perhaps innocence would have been the better word. Charles, with his privileged upbringing, an ability that all but begged indulgence, held an idealistic view that saw goodness in everything...in a killer like Erik, in a race that would inevitably battle its own extinction. Maybe he'd even thought to find it in a man like Shaw.
How disappointing it must be, Erik thought, to come face to face with the reality. A reality he had suffered under long enough.
It was with a certain amount of contempt that he surveyed Shaw now, this thin, soft, seemingly fragile man in an expensive suede suit. With Charles blocking Shaw's own mutant powers, his absorption of energy, his impenetrable hide were nothing but figments. Here and now he was flesh and bone. Like any man. Like any human.
He won't sleep, Charles continued, sounding frustrated and Erik sensed him take both a physical and psychic breath. But I can still attempt to rewrite his memory, though something this complex I'll need time.
And Erik felt his anger boil up through that cold layer of iron to freeze along its frigid surface, darkness finally exposed to the light. In Charles' bright and hopeful mind he could see Shaw eking out a new existence as a reformed man. Quiet rage began to pour into every fibre of his being like molten steel into the forge.
Could Charles hold both Shaw and another? he wondered. In as much as Charles had taught and encouraged them all to push the limits of their abilities, their mentor himself had never been given such an opportunity to test his own boundaries, had shied from Erik's frankly cruel suggestions...as if using his telepathy to pick up girls had been any less ignoble.
But if he attempted to stop Erik, if in doing so it broke that critical concentration, Shaw might win free and his first target would be Charles.
A fear that was not his own abruptly filled his mind and he knew Charles had realised his intent, seen those ugly thoughts he had kept hidden just so this moment could arrive. He couldn't risk Charles loosing Shaw. And if were honest, he couldn't stand one more moment of the warmth, the disappointment, the sound of Charles begging inside his mind.
"Sorry Charles," he said aloud, as the wires responded to the briefest command, obediently lowering his prize into his hands.
Erik, please. Be the better man. You have it in you...
"It's not that I don't trust you," he continued, ignoring those low, beseeching whispers.
And he did, he did trust Charles. Foolish, insufferable, innocent Charles. Charles would try to do the right thing because he still believed in whatever good remained in Erik. Erik trusted him to do the right thing by his friend, but the right thing was not what Erik had come here for. He was Schmidt's creation, a weapon of metal and magnetism, and no weapon had ever been created to be merciful.
Alien material slipped over his head and he heard Charles' mental cry Erik there will be no turning back! And then silence.
END OF PART TWO