He slept fitfully, despite the pills Ceci had forced on him, and when he woke for the third time in 30 minutes, he gave up trying to rest. His head hurt and his body ached. Bed was the best place for him but then when did he ever do what was best?

Pulling on a blue and white striped shirt, buttoning it half way up before he lost focus, Charles mindlessly grabbed a pair of dark trousers that still lay in an untidy pile on the floor from the night before they'd left the mansion for Shadowside Creek. Neatness had dropped down his list of priorities like a stone; amazing how little the small things in life meant when something so huge was at stake. Losing Erik would be the end of the man he was now, of the Professor everyone here seemed to find some kinship with. He couldn't imagine running the school, searching for mutants, living alone, without his anchor, without his lover.

That scared the hell out of him.

Bare footed, he padded out along the corridor to the main staircase. Scratching his head, ruffling his own hair, he walked through the silence of the mansion the way he used to as a child. This had always been a house rather than a home, even when Raven had arrived and stayed. It had been a place to play, to learn, to develop. But not until he'd brought the children here from the wreckage of the CIA facility with Erik at his side that it had truly become a home. He loved the place now, now that it was theirs. Without Erik... He stumbled, catching his balance before he fell face-first down the stairs. A sob almost choked him, accompanying a fierce pain in his head; the injury caused by the severance of his connection with Erik. It couldn't be stitched, couldn't be treated and dressed. Not until Erik was healing, conscious and strong enough to reconnect. If he wanted to.

If he didn't...

Charles wasn't scared to admit that he needed the anchor. It was why he'd made the connection in the first place, or at least it was one of the myriad and complex reasons that he hadn't thought about doing it before, just as he hadn't thought about the consequences or the repercussions. But he wouldn't force Erik into it again. He knew all too well how much the break was hurting him. He had no idea if Erik had been affected, if he even knew their connection was missing. He had no idea and he wanted to know, so desperately. He stood still, hand gripping the banister, closed his eyes and ran a mental finger over the jagged tear. There was nothing of Erik left in his mind except for memories and a bereavement so painful it stole his breath and pressed tears into his eyes.

He blinked, let them escape over his cheeks and stood for a moment, waiting for the pain to pass, reminding himself that Erik was downstairs, in the best place now, with the best care. He was alive. Soon enough Charles would be able to look into his eyes and see him smile. He took a deep breath and carried on down the stairs, one step at a time.

He was the only one awake in the entire sprawl of the mansion. He didn't want to be disturbed, he didn't want company, so he kept an open awareness of the house as he was doing of Erik. If Erik even made a move towards consciousness, Charles would know.

He headed for the main lounge, closed the door behind him but left the lights off. He poured himself a large brandy, drank it back in one swallow and poured another. Then he took it and the bottle to the other end of the room, to the huge bay window overlooking the front path, the lawn, and beyond the substantial grounds, the satellite dish they'd played with during their first eventful week here. Sean, Banshee, had flown over it. Erik had moved it. They'd both felt, that afternoon, like they'd moved the world.

With Erik, he always felt like he could move the world. Erik was his anchor in so many ways; not just the grounding for his telepathic mind, but for his whole life. Erik was his strength and his heart, the other half of his soul. Because of this quest of his, this obsession, this desire to find all the other mutants in the world, he'd almost sacrificed the one mutant who meant everything to him. None of it meant anything without Erik, and Erik wasn't indestructible. None of them were. It was a hard lesson to learn but he was determined this time not to forget it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he became aware of Raven waking, and without really thinking he sent her back to sleep, making sure she would dream of only good things. He loved Raven, but he couldn't deal with anyone tonight, not even his beloved sister. He emptied the glass, barely feeling the burn of the brandy at the back of his throat, and refilled it. He wanted to be blessedly numb, didn't want to feel the razor-sharp cut in his mind, the still-bleeding wound left by the severed bond. He wanted everything to stop hurting. He was to blame for Erik's wounds, Erik's pain, Erik very nearly - fuck - dying...

He swiped at the tears in his eyes, sank the next glass and refilled it.

He was being self-indulgent, he knew that. He was being selfish. He knew what was expected of him, what everyone else needed from him. The children looked to him to be not just their teacher but a surrogate father. The school needed his leadership, the others needed his strength. He felt then that he needed to curl up and cry until his body had given up everything and his dry husk turned to ash in the wind. Baring that, he needed to be drunk, and since he was able to sober himself up from all but the worst of states just with a thought, he decided an entire bottle of brandy should do the trick.

He was being childish.

He felt like a child. He remembered the day his mother had married his step father and lost whatever small amount of interest she had ever had in him. He remembered making the nanny leave with a single thought. He remembered wandering the house, hearing the laughter of his mother's friends, learning by pulling thoughts from the heads of adults. He remembered being alone, every minute of every day, until Raven had showed up.

She had saved him, and he had gone on to great things, got himself into Oxford; a degree, a doctorate.

Then Erik had come along, and he'd found his strength in him as an adult just as he'd found it in Raven as a child.

He used people. He had used Erik, anchoring himself to him because you had no choice. Because he had been scared of losing him. Now he had almost been the cause of his death. He couldn't re-establish the connection between them, he wouldn't. He longed for it, would mourn it, want it and need it for the rest of his life, but he wouldn't take again what he didn't have permission to. He respected... no, loved, Erik too much to do it again.

He just missed it, goddamnit!

He emptied the glass, lifted the bottle to refill it and thought better of it. Turning suddenly in a moment of pique he hurled the crystal tumbler across the room and watched it shatter against the slate fireplace. Wiping more tears from his cheeks with his hand, he lifted the bottle to his lips and swallowed a couple of gulps the way he used to drink ale in Oxford.

His was starting to feel drunk, finally, but it was the worst kind of drunk; his head was heavy and his stomach was nauseated. With the bottle hanging from his fingers, he left the lounge and headed down through the house, into the warren of lower levels. He paused next to the door to Cerebro and it opened automatically, sensing him there. He considered entering, but only for a moment. Drunk in charge of a mind-control device didn't sound all that safe, for himself or for every other mutant out there. Besides, he knew the exact whereabouts of the only mutant he cared about right now. He took two steps past the door and it slid closed and locked.

Charles headed to the infirmary, checking ahead to make sure Erik's only companions were the electronic type. On one hand he hated the idea of Erik being left alone in the state he was in, on the other an exhausted doctor wasn't an alert doctor, and the electronics would keep a better watch of Erik than any human being, mutant or otherwise. If anything changed in his condition, for the better or for the worse, alarms would sound and likely the whole house would be woken, depending on how Ceci had set up the system, depending on where she'd chosen to sleep.
The doors slid open as quietly as Cerebro's had, welcoming him silently. He was proud of what they'd achieved here. It meant so much to so many, yet without Erik... He curbed the thought, reaching Erik's bedside, his hand hovering over Erik's fingers.

::Erik...::

He was talking to a void, a hole in his mind, an open wound. There was no one there to hear him.

"Erik."

His voice cracked and broke, tears sliding unneeded over his face; part alcohol, part exhaustion, part emotion. He couldn't stop them and he didn't try. Erik would need him to be strong, would expect him to carry on with his duties to the school and to the children, to the other mutants out there.

No! A tiny voice in his mind rebelled. It was his search for mutants that had done this to Erik and left him with a deep cut in his head where his lover should have been. It had cost too much already! He couldn't pay a higher price and survive.

But how much was finding other mutants really worth? Could any price be too high? He and Erik, they were the start, they weren't the end. They were two out of an entire species, the species he'd spent years writing his thesis about, predicting, knowing he was right. Now he'd been given the chance to pull everyone like himself, like Raven and Erik and the others together, to help integrate mutants into society. Could he really turn his back on that because of a single mistake?

A mistake that had almost cost Erik his life, he reminded himself. A mistake that had cost him his anchor, his connection to his lover, the thing he treasured above anything material, above anything else except for the mirror of his heart in Erik's. He smiled to himself. Christ! Now he was getting poetic. Drunken poetry. Raven would be amused.

He let his hand fall lightly, finally, on Erik's fingers, feeling their warmth, closing his eyes, concentrating; sensing the blood running through Erik's veins, his strengthening pulse, wounds just beginning to heal. The only thing missing was a mental presence and that would be missing for some time to come. The coma was for the best, for Erik at least and he was the important one right now, he was the one that mattered. That fact, that being unable to reach Erik, to feel him alive in his mind, was tearing him apart, wasn't the least bit important.

He curled his fingers around Erik's hand and held on loosely.

::I...:: "I love you, Erik."

He wasn't drunk any longer. It hadn't taken more than a few minutes to forget he was supposed to be. And he was suddenly weary. But leaving would have taken more willpower than he was capable of, was going to be capable of for a while. So reaching behind him, he pulled up a chair with his foot and sank into it, still holding Erik's hand. He was asleep within minutes, and finally the half-empty bottle of brandy slipped from his fingers and smashed on the sterile floor.

x x x x x x xx x x x x x xx x x x x x xx x x x x x xx x x x x x xx x x x x x xx x x x x x xx x x x x x xx x x x x x xx x x x x x x

Charles felt cold. Not physically; psychically.

Cold and torn to pieces.

Cold and too sober.

Cold and alone.

He was looking at the anchor line in his mind, trembling fingers touching the sharp edges that hurt him with every caress. He was bleeding. No physical wounds at all. All in his head. A lonely, dark place that was crying for something that had shattered.

No, not shattered. He didn't believe it was gone. Erik was still there, barely, but there. Swathed in bandages, hooked up to so many machines he was lost in a sea of cables and monitors, and every screen told Charles that his partner was alive. He would survive.

Hank had read him the riot act when he had found the mess on the floor, the shattered bottle, the broken glass. His temper had blown up right in Charles' face and the telepath had taken it.
Because Hank had been right. Because he was behaving like an idiot.

Reaper's black eyes had looked at him, no emotions in her face, but there was judgment.

Charles had cringed and gone to his own room like a scolded five-year-old, taking a shower, shaving, dressing in clean clothes and having breakfast. From the look of Raven's scowl, she had heard of the mess he had made.

"Charles."

He tried to ignore her, but Raven couldn't be ignored. Not just because of her blue skin and yellow eyes. She had grown into an impressive woman with an iron will, a lot of authority and quite a verbal repertoire when it came to talking sense into her brother. Most of it was rather censored, but she managed to get her point across.

Not this morning. She took his hand, squeezed it, smiling at his startled look.

"It's okay to be human," she only said.

Be human. Feel. Cry. Let it all out. And then handle it.

Good advice. But he was a telepath with a void in his head that was self-inflicted. How was he to handle this?

x x x x x x x

He was back in the medical wing after breakfast. Hank just threw his hands up, muttered something uncomplimentary, but he didn't kick him out again.

Reaching out, snaking his hand past cables and tubes, Charles curled his fingers around the limp broad hand of his lover's.

::Erik:: he pleaded faintly.

There was nothing. Only darkness and the echo of his own voice. Erik was deep under, inaccessible, and Hank had told him that the artificial coma was needed. The injuries were too severe to let him experience them consciously.

Sometimes Charles thought he felt little twitches at the edge of his consciousness. As if the anchor was trying to reattach itself.

He wouldn't let it. Not to a man who had no idea what was happening to him. He had done it once, four years ago, out of desperation and the need for a grounding mind that kept him from going insane with the backlash of what he had done. Charles had used Erik. There was no other word for it. He had used him for his own purposes, had forced the anchor on him, and while Erik had accepted it, it had been a breach of privacy. And more.

I won't do it again, he vowed silently. Not without your consent. I've lived for so long without the benefits of an anchor line. I survived it. I could handle myself. I'm a grown man and I know my powers. I don't need grounding 24/7. It was just because of so many minds…

He squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the tiny voice that told him that an anchor was so much more than an emergency switch that could be thrown when the psychic stress became overwhelming.

But it would be Erik's choice. His conscious, informed choice.

Until then Charles would continue like he had for all his life.

x x x x x x x x

Ceci started to decrease the amount of drugs that suppressed Erik's consciousness a few days later. He wouldn't wake, but he wouldn't be completely comatose either.

From a telepathic point of view it made no difference.