"Her name is Tabitha," Charles says, his hand resting gently on the girl's forehead as she sleeps on the medical table. "She's thirteen years old."
Erik crosses the room, manoeuvring the machines out of his way with wide sweeps of his hand. He peers at Tabitha as he reaches the table, taking in the bruising on her face and the swelling of her wrist, and Charles watches him catalogue the markings. The journey from Roanoke to North Salem took most of the previous day and partway through the night but the time has only deepened the colours of the bruises, not faded them.
"Who was it that attacked her?" he asks finally, and lightly touching the edges of her black eye with the very tip of his finger. She remains unmoving in her sleep, induced by Charles to promote a full recovery. The machines hum and beep around them in a comforting way.
"Her father," he says, and swallows down the bile that rises up in his throat. "He beat her when he found out that she was a mutant. She played a prank on him, a silly prank, and he just... she's his daughter, Erik. His own daughter. How can someone do something like that?"
Erik looks at him, and moves his hand from Tabitha's face to Charles', brushing the backs of his fingers against his cheek and Charles leans into the touch, leans into the comfort and empathy and understanding that he offers. He pulls his hand away from Tabitha and drops the mental link; he can only watch his own father kick himself in the stomach over and over for something that he can't help so many times.
"He did it because he was scared of her, like nearly all humans are when they first encounter us. And when humans are scared of something, they come to hate it. In this case, his fear of mutants made him turn on his own daughter and beat her senseless. It's how it's always been Charles; and how it always will be, until we do something to change it."
Charles closes his eyes and nods and feels a great sense of disappointment in himself – or at least the older version of him – that he has failed so disastrously in moving the world forward, in really making a difference to how humanity perceives mutants. Part of his dream was to provide a safe haven for mutants and that he has achieved, but nothing has progressed on the other front. Thirty-eight years and he has accomplished very little.
Give us another thirty-eight years, and then see what we've managed, Erik says firmly and Charles closes his eyes, relaxing into the familiar link.This time, we'll do it right.
He opens his eyes and looks at Tabitha's young face, marked with hatred, and thinks that this time he'll make sure that no other mutant is faced with the same sort of treatment at a human's hands. This time, humanity will learn to accept mutants and see that they're not going anywhere without a fight.
Charles can feel Erik's smile across the link, and it feels like a promise.
For a few intense hours three times a week, the students of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters are set free.
The training sessions are designed to push them up to and beyond their limits, to test their strength and their control, and they are demanding; Charles has seen young teenagers being hardened into warriors, being taught how to focus their powers to incapacitate and injure, and he hates that the sort of situation they're preparing for is still a possibility. Every time he sees one of his children leave the Danger Room with a bruise or a graze or a cut, he feels a massive well of despair that this sort of training is even necessary.
But despite the seriousness of what they're doing and the injuries that they sustain, the students love their sessions. It's their chance to be themselves, completely, without any fear of hostility or aggression of violence against them. The use of powers is meticulously restricted throughout the school – mostly for the safety of those in it. In training, however, the students can use their powers to their full capacity.
In training, then can be who they were meant to be.
It is Saturday, and the sun is hot and blinding, and the students that Charles and Erik are leading have already destroyed two trees and a fence and half of the pond is frozen over. It is Saturday, and training is well under way.
The target is twenty five metres away, and John has missed it every time. The fire that he pushes towards it tends to go straight but has yet to last the full distance and not fizzle out and die whilst John watches, fingers splayed and stretching out. John is getting more and more frustrated with himself at every failure and as a result, his aim is getting worse as his concentration falters. It doesn't help that Bobby has done consistently well so far during the session.
"I know that I can do it," John says angrily as another attempt sputters and smokes, and kicks at a stone on the floor in childish disgruntlement. "When my powers manifested I blew the roof off the home that I was at. I should be able to hit one lousy target!"
Charles gets to his feet from where he's been sitting on the bench beside Erik. Here is another young man, so full of rage and pain and anger and it's quite possible that he can use the same approach with John as he did with Erik to help him achieve his full potential. He takes a step forward, but it stopped by a hand on his arm, warm against his bare skin; he looks at Erik curiously as the other man stands, but neither Erik's face nor mind is giving anything away. So Charles sits back down and watches as Erik strides to where John is working himself up into a temper, firing short bursts of fire up into the sky.
"What is fire to you?" Erik asks as he approaches and John turns to look at him, eyebrows draw together and squinting in the sunlight.
"A weapon."
"Wrong. It's part of you, as much as your bones or your skin or your muscles."
"It's not a part of me," John scoffs, and turns away. "I can only manipulate it; I can't create it. It's just something that I can use."
"So you're telling me that you don't feel it?" Erik counters, stepping back into John's field of vision and staring him down. "When there's a fire, are you saying that it doesn't thrill you? It doesn't make your blood sing or your head feel light or your soul more complete? You're telling me that you can't sense the heartbeat of a flame from a hundred yards away?"
John glares back, mutinous and stubborn and unmoving. There's a few moments' silence that stretches on, and then there's a faint groaning sound. The earth rumbles gently, then more insistently; John looks down and sees the grass shifting and cracks appearing and steps back, looking to Charles for either an explanation or assistance. He offers neither.
Then there's a shrieking noise, and suddenly a writhing mass of wires and pipes lurch out of the ground, all around them, and John tumbles to the floor as it ruptures beneath his feet. The metal stretches and bends and pointedly does not break, and Charles sends a quick message inside the mansion that everything is fine; they're just giving a demonstration.
The writhing mass of metal hovers in mid-air, suspended in loops and whirls and figures of eight around them, and Charles can't tell if the look that John is giving Erik from his position on the floor is one of fear or awe. It's possibly a mixture of both. Erik leans down and holds out a hand, and John takes it.
"Whenever there's metal around me, I can feel it. It whispers to me in the dark and hums deep in my bones and when I was recently separated from it, it felt like part of my soul had been ripped away. I can't create metal out of nothing, just like Bobby can't create ice out of nothing – I have to use whatever's around me, and he pulls moisture out of the air. Your only disadvantage here is that you wield fire; you don't feel it. Make it a part of you, feel it in your veins, and you'll be able to blow roofs off again."
The pipes and wires shudder and ripple, and then drop back into the ground as quickly as they were raised. The ground is a battlefield where Erik pulled them up; Charles makes a mental note to ask Jean to fix the area later, and smiles at Erik as he sits back down next to him.
Novel approach, he remarks, and Erik shrugs, returning the smile.
It's true though – he's thinking about his power in the wrong way. I was exactly the same when I first got away from Shaw and started using my powers how and when I wanted to. I saw them as a tool, not an integral part of what makes me who I am, and it took me a while to reach the point that I was at when you first pulled me out of the water. He needs to understand his power before you can give him the rage and serenity spiel, he replies, and it's gently mocking and entirely endearing, and Charles shoves at his shoulder before turning his attention back to John.
He's standing very still, with his eyes closed, and his face hanging down towards the damaged ground. In his left hand he's holding his lighter, the flame flickering in the still air. A quick glance around shows Bobby to still be several hundred yards away, repeatedly freezing and unfreezing the pond as practice.
John transfers the flame from the lighter to his right hand, and the ball of fire grows to fit his palm. He flexes his fingers, and the fire twitches with him; he inhales, and the fire expands and contracts gently, breathing in time with him. Charles prods carefully at John's mind inquisitively – this method, this process of feeling the element, isn't one that he's ever had to experience before. His initially struggles with his powers in puberty were always more about reducing his range, filtering things out, dampening the nightmares screams. Charles has never found his power to be weak at any point (though sometimes he wishes that he did). He can sense it now though, the way that the fire is filling all of the empty parts of John's soul, and wonders if this is how it feels for Erik; wonders how it must have felt to wake up in the plastic prison, with a part of him utterly missing.
The grounds are silent; even the birds have stopped singing in anticipation. Erik shifts, pressing closer to Charles and opening up the mental link, and Charles can feel the expectation vibrating through his body.
John takes a deep breath and raises his hands to the sun, and the sky burns.
The next day, the President is nearly killed.
"Are you behind this?" Scott demands from his position by the window, and Erik immediately bristles beside Charles.
"Ignoring the fact that I've been here in the mansion with all of you for the last four weeks and so have had no opportunity to organise anything – why would I even want to?" Erik counters. Scott just scowls in response. "This Mutant Registration Act that you've talked about, surely an attack like this will just cause them to reintroduce it."
"Or worse, the President could declare a state of emergency and place every mutant in the country under arrest," Charles points out. Storm makes a noise of discontent from her chair and Jean shifts uncomfortably.
"But there's still a possibility that you planned this whilst in prison," Scott presses. Charles can feel the irritation rising to the surface of Erik's mind and reaches out to him. "Mystique could have been acting on your orders."
"No."
Everyone in the room turns to Charles in surprise, and he finds himself wondering belatedly why he's so adamant about it. The Raven that he knows and loves and misses so terribly would never, ever construct a plan for a mutant to kill the President, even on somebody else's orders; yet the Mystique that he's been told about, the woman that his sister has become, is dangerous and ruthless and focused. He has no idea what she is capable of now, having spent the last forty or so years under Magneto's wing, but he's almost glad that he hasn't been able to find her. He's not sure that he'd like what she has become.
"This is neither Erik nor Magneto's doing," he says firmly, and for the moment Scott seems to accept it, but he's still looking at Erik with the permanent distrust on his face. It seems that Scott, out of all of the X-Men, is still reluctant to receive Erik into their lives with quite the readiness that the others have managed.
"Do you think the assassin was working alone?" Jean asks after a moment, and Charles shrugs.
"We'll only know that if we find him before the authorities do. I can use Cerebro to try to track him, but I can't promise anything. My last attempt at using the machine were not as fruitful as I'd hoped," he says ruefully, and Jean smiles at him. "If I'm successful we can collect him and bring him here but if not, we'll just have to hope that he can evade those that would want him dead, or otherwise."
Then there's a twinge in the back of Charles' head; a familiar mind coming into reach that's inaccessible to him, mental scar tissue creating a natural barrier, but still makes him think of smoke and whiskey and old men in bars in 1962. It feels like this is one thing that he did manage to achieve, even when everything else might have failed.
Jean makes Erik and Charles stay well away whilst she explains to Logan what's happened in his absence; she says that it'll probably be safer if they're not around, and Charles can understand that given what they've been told about Liberty Island and the events leading up to it. So they go to Cerebro instead, and flatly ignore the raised voices coming from the hallway, and Charles wonders what would make a mutant want to kill the most powerful man in the world.
The room is pleasantly cool and so much more welcoming than the last time, as though it's promising that he can do this. He can find one man in over six billion; this isn't too much for him. He has this amount of power, and the control required for such a task. He can do this.
"Of course you can," Erik says mildly, and Charles starts, unaware that he'd been projecting his thoughts through the link. "You can do anything."
Charles sends a rush of gratitude and affection to Erik and kneels on the floor, the machine surging to life around him. He picks up the headpiece and settles it into place as Erik's hand curls around the nape of his neck fingers pushing under the metal of the headpiece to rest in his hair, and he thinks of all the mutants that he possibly can.
The room warps; the panels shrink and disappear and everything goes dark, momentarily. Then there's light – thousands of them, millions even – tiny pinpricks in the night and glowing red and alive. It takes a moment for Charles to realise that he's managed to create a map of the whole world around him. And he somehow knows, even though this is the first time that he can remember doing this, he knows what all of the lights are.
"I told you that you weren't alone," he says, and Erik's pleasure rumbles through him like an earthquake.
"How likely do you think it is that the President will turn against us?"
Charles pauses brushing his teeth, and looks up at Erik's reflection in the mirror. He's worried; Charles doesn't need telepathy to know that – it's clear from the way that his eyebrows are pulled in, from the downturn of his lips, the way that his arms are crossed tightly over his bare chest and his fingers are drumming on the side of his ribcage.
"I honestly don't know," he says around a mouthful of toothpaste, and at Erik's mildly disgusted expression, spits before continuing. "But you can understand why he might. I mean, you have to see how this looks to him. A mutant breaks into the White House, launching a full-scale attack on his men and trying to assassinate him? It's a perfect example of how the wrong person with the wrong power could destroy governments. Implementing the Mutant Registration Act would mean that he would at least be aware of any potentially dangerous abilities and in the light of this attack, it's not an impossible scenario, despite Mystique's efforts to remove the Act from consideration."
He bends down to splash water on his face and when he straightens up again, Erik has moved from his position where he was leaning against the doorframe to stand right behind him. He watches him for a moment, wiping at the water trickling down to his collarbone, and leans back slightly. Erik takes it as the invitation that it is and steps into him, wrapping his arms around Charles' chest and holding on, nose pressed into the back of his neck and breathing deeply.
"If he does decide to enforce the Act, we'll fight it," Charles promises, and takes a gentle hold of Erik's arms around him. He's warm and fresh from the shower, and Charles can feel the dampness of his towel-dried hair against his shoulder. "I don't know this President, but Jean seems to think that he can be reasoned with. We can stop this before it gets out of hand."
Erik is silent, and Charles waits, opening up to him and allowing him to settle into the comfortable pocket that he's hollowed out for himself, and Charles has kept open. He can feel their chests rise and fall together; can feel their hearts beating in time. It's a familiar, safe sense of peace and he can feel his eyes drooping, held in an impregnable embrace.
"They'll round us up," Erik says suddenly, his words quiet and muffled against Charles' neck. "They'll trace us through our families and friends and they'll come for us in the night. It'll start with a list of names. It always starts with a list."
"I will never let them take you," Charles says vehemently, and grips Erik's forearm tightly. "I would make them forget who they were before I would allow them to treat you like anything less than the phenomenon that you are."
And he can feel all of the emotion that Erik is pouring into his head, all of the gratitude trust belief admiration contentment love that he possibly can until the emotion feeds back on itself, mixing in with everything that Charles is until he feels complete and at peace, with Erik wrapped around his mind and body.
"Come to bed," Erik whispers, low and urgent against his skin and pulling his backwards out of the bathroom, and Charles goes with him. By the morning, Storm and Jean should have returned from their hunt and Charles can question the mutant, and they can prepare for the aftermath – but for now, until the sun rises and all hell breaks loose, it's just Charles and Erik and everything that they can be together.
It's more than enough, and Charles finds himself wishing that they could stay like this, apart from the world, forever.
(part 4 coming soon)