Friday

When Erik woke up the next morning, it was far past dawn and Charles was snoring into the crook of Erik's neck, his arm still warm and heavy around Erik's waist. Erik hadn't woken up with someone else in his bed since that unfortunate morning in Casablanca, so he'd completely forgotten the lazy contentment that went with it, the leaking of all tension out of his body. He was boneless and dreamy, two things he hadn't been in a very long time.

Charles murmured something into his neck, then appeared to wake up in degrees, first squirming away from Erik, then shuffling nearer when he'd woken up properly.

"Hello," said Erik, because it cost nothing to be polite as his mother had always told him. He turned onto his back, dislodging Charles from his neck, but the man's arm stayed wrapped around his waist.

Charles said "Mmph," groggily and less than politely.

His arm seemed to burn like a brand onto Erik's flesh. Erik swallowed around the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. "Charles," he ventured, "About what I said last night." He paused irresolutely. He was never one for beating about the bush but he was never one for talking about his feelings either.

Charles withdrew his arm from Erik's waist but only to stretch lazily, from head to toe. "It's fine," he yawned, sounding like he couldn't care less. "Everyone knows you're a grumposaur anyway."

Erik blinked. "A – what?"

Charles grinned. His hair was all ruffled and his eyes that morning blue which, Erik decided, should be made illegal. "Sorry, that's Moira's word," he said.

Erik rolled his eyes. "Of course it is."

Charles smiled again, but more softly. "Do you want to go fly Sean?" he asked.

Erik had no idea what had happened in Charles's head, but he seemed keen to forget the previous night altogether. Instead of being angry with Erik, or disappointed, which Erik had now realised would be worse, he was extraordinarily chipper. Even when Erik gave in to his overwhelming urge to push Sean off the satellite dish, Charles couldn't be completely angry with him. He simply smiled, barely reproachful, in answer to Erik's grin and they watched Sean fly in victory together.

Hank approached them as they were walking back to the house, Sean having been finally cajoled back onto the ground and chatting excitedly about what he was going to try on his next attempt. Hank was carrying two odd looking devices made of metal, which he waved at Charles. "I've finished them, Professor," he shouted.

Erik cast a curious look at Charles. Charles beamed. "Brilliant." He glanced at Erik. "I'll leave you to it then, Erik."

"Leave meto what?" asked Erik, but Charles was already leading the others away with a secretive smile, leaving Erik and Hank alone.

The two of them stared at each other in mutual dislike. Hank was - refreshingly, considering the attitudes of the rest of the team - scared of Erik, and also clearly jealous of how much Raven looked up to him. Erik, unable to resist a bit of casual bullying, had spent most of their interactions sniping sarcastically at him and getting disapproving looks from Charles in response. From the look on Hank's face, they were now into open hostilities.

"The Professor had an idea," Hank muttered. "Said you might be interested."

He flung the strange metal objects at Erik. Erik glared at them, grudgingly tugging them into his hands. "What are they?"

Hank hesitated, then pushed his glasses up on his nose with an air of a man who knew how clever he was and was going to show you whether you liked it or not. "You strap them to your shoes and legs. Then you - well, you either pull on them with your powers, or - or you push the soles of your feet, we're not entirely sure what'll work better. Anyway, theoretically, that means you should be able to - "

"Fly," Erik finished, dumbstruck.

Hank shuffled awkwardly. "That's the theory," he said.

Erik stared at Hank for a long moment. Hank waited in a state of obvious fear.

"Let's get them on," said Erik.

They spent a few minutes going over the different bits of metal and strapping them onto Erik. By the end of it, Erik's legs felt like he'd stepped into two bear traps and he was getting faint remembrances of Shaw strapping his legs down onto examination tables, but he was determined to give the thing a try.

They stood on the gravel together. "Okay," Hank said. "Try pulling at the metal."

Erik focused all his rage and pulled. He felt his feet jerk momentarily off the ground, like he was hopping up in the air, before he landed again.

"Right," Hank said, sounding unsurprised at this. "Now try pushing up at the soles of your feet."

Erik focused as hard as he could. It was difficult to twist his mind around pushing himself rather than an object, but the metal on his legs was eager to obey. He felt one foot rise into the air, and then another, and when he looked down he was about six inches off the ground.

He was flying.

"Mein Gott," he said in German, and lost his attention completely, thumping down to the ground again.

Hank beamed as if he were the one who had just achieved flight. "Try again," he said.

Erik focused, this time with more confidence and strength, and began rising off the ground almost immediately. He got to about the height of Hank's knees before the top of him started to wobble. "I'm a bit unbalanced," he said, and lowered himself down again.

Hank nodded, once again as if he'd expected this. "You need something for your top half. Like a helmet or something." He paused. "I could - I could make you one after the. After the…you know. If I survive."

The last bit was said with a touch of bitterness, and Erik sneaked a quick glance at him with renewed discomfort, remembering what he had said the previous night. He felt like he and Charles had given confidence to these kids just for him to take it away again. Once again, this was not going to help the ease at which he got to Shaw. These kids had to be warriors. "You'll do great," he managed.

Hank blinked at him. It was the first time Erik had ever said anything nice to him. Erik, awkward and even more annoyed, tried his flying again. This time he got to the height of Hank's waist before his wobbling got too much. He lowered himself a little, grinning. "This is fantastic. I'm flying!"

Hank smiled his slightly-less-than-nervous smile. "The Professor thinks that when you have more control over different sizes and complexity of metal, you'll be able to fly as easily as Sean. And with regular boots and buckles, not such an abundance of metal as you have here."

Erik thought of the satellite dish sourly and crashed back onto the ground, his knees protesting. "No doubt," he replied simply.

Hank showed him how to remove and put the boots back on a few more times, and as he was doing so, Erik remembered how he had mentioned to Charles that he would like to fly, so early on in the week over the first of many bottles of whiskey. And now Charles had tried his hardest to make this wish come true.

He couldn't understand why Charles was wasting so much of his time on him.

He and Hank practised his flying over and over again, until he was able to float the level of Hank's shoulders without wobbling and then, as night was falling and with aching legs, they went in for dinner.

Charles grinned at Erik when he came in to the dining room, metal in hand. "What do you think?" he asked.

Erik had no words – all he could do was smile but that was, apparently, enough. Charles's face lit up like the sun.

That night's dinner was the most excitable meal they'd had the entire week. It was the day of breakthroughs - all of them had advanced in some area of their training. Raven was constantly talking about the amount of weights she'd lifted, Hank was chattering about the miles he'd run, Alex was telling his story about his day of successful hits on dummies, and Sean and Erik were constantly talking over each other about how it felt to fly. Moira asked hundreds of questions, a fork of food held to her mouth and forgotten about, and Charles sat amidst it all and smiled so broadly Erik thought it was a miracle his head didn't fall off. They sat talking way past dessert, and it was only when Moira mentioned that they should get some sleep if they wanted to do as well the next day that they left, still chattering, for their rooms.

Charles and Erik retreated to Charles's chessboard, with a shared relief that it wasn't Monopoly, and played their way through a few games as was now fast becoming the tradition. They mostly played in silence until Charles, as Erik thought about moving his knight, murmured, "That's not a good move."

Erik glanced up at him sharply. "I did say stay out of my head - "

"No, no, I know - " Charles sat up in his chair, eyes suddenly wide and hands flapping. "You - you were projecting, that's all - I'm trying - I am trying, Erik."

Erik paused then sat back, game momentarily forgotten. It seemed that Charles had been aware of Erik's problems with his telepathy after all. He'd probably read it in Erik's head, Erik thought ironically. Aloud he said, "It must be difficult. Being a telepath, and one as strong as you…it must be difficult."

Charles slumped in his chair. "It is," he said morosely.

Erik steepled his fingers in front of him, now no longer interested in the game at all. "So where does it begin and end with you, Charles? How much free will do you allow someone to have and when do you curtail that free will?"

Charles blinked. "I try to never curtail it."

Erik arched an eyebrow. "Really?" He didn't believe that for a moment. "So when I woke from that nightmare the other night and you used your mind to calm me, even when I specifically said no - "

Charles looked like he was about to leap out of his chair altogether. "Erik, I didn't mean to…" he spluttered. "I just wanted to…I wanted to look after you."

The last words came out in a rush, taking Erik aback. They stared at one another. Erik was abruptly aware that they were skating close to something that they'd been avoiding for almost the whole week. Friends, he reminded himself, we're friends.

"All right," he said, changing the subject as swiftly as possible. "So imagine I was standing before you, and I was about to kill hundreds of people - would you stop me? With your mind?"

Charles looked at Erik as if he'd just suggested he'd make some cutlery dance for the President. "But you wouldn't do that," he said.

Erik felt a stab of irritation that, even now, even after he had seen all the nightmares and heard all the things Erik had said, Charles refused to believe that he was a bad person. What did he have to do to make Charles see it?

"You know I would," he said bluntly. "If I had good reason to. Would you stop me?"

Charles sighed, leaning back and looking away from him. "Erik…"

"Answer the question, Charles."

Charles set his jaw and looked back at him, and Erik saw one of those rare glints of steel in his eyes. It only came about when Erik was really pushing him, or when one of the kids was being deliberately difficult, but it reassured Erik to know it was there. It was good to know Charles wasn't the complete pushover he pretended to be.

"I don't know," Charles snapped. "All right? I don't know."

Erik sat back. "I do," he said.

Charles's jaw moved but he said nothing. Erik sighed. "You can't stay blameless forever, Charles. If you want to play the game properly, you have to do terrible things."

A troubled look passed over Charles's face, though he stayed silent, and Erik suddenly wished he'd said nothing at all. He turned his attention back to the game and soon enough they were playing as amicably as ever, if more quietly than before.

That night his mother was back, telling him "everything is good", the bullet lodged in her head and blood trickling down in an ever-steady stream as she stared at him with sad eyes. He was trying to get to her, to stop the blood with his hands, but there was someone holding him back and he couldn't get to her, he couldn't even breathe, he wanted to get to his mother, he wanted to hold her, he just wanted -

"It's me, it's me," Charles said in his ear, and Erik was suddenly awake and aware that he was thrashing around in the bed, Charles's arms around his chest, trying to stop him from doing himself any damage.

"Damn it," Erik panted, and relaxed. Charles let go of him instantly. "Damn it," Erik said again and slumped onto the bed, arm over his face.

"It's okay," Charles said, settling down on his side. He put a comforting hand on Erik's arm. "It's all right."

"You must be sick of this by now," Erik said into his arm.

Charles patted Erik's arm gently. "Not at all," he said.

Erik almost said you are so good to me. The words were even there in his throat, waiting to come out, and yet he couldn't say them. Instead he said, "Damn it," again, breathlessly, and kept repeating this until he fell asleep again.

Saturday

Erik awoke, for the second time, to someone else in his bed. Charles was curled up on his side, facing Erik and not snoring for once. He was still making noises, mumbling noises as if he were talking to someone, but at least it was less disruptive.

Erik was reminded, suddenly, that tomorrow would be the day of the President's speech. People had been panicking for the whole week about Cuba, diplomats urgently arguing back and forth. The few times Erik had watched the TV with the others, he'd made so many acerbic comments he'd been banished from the room. He didn't trust diplomats. He was all about getting things done and in his opinion diplomats did the opposite of that.

Which meant, of course, that tomorrow would likely be the last day of their training. The President would make his address and from that they would be able to work out Shaw's next move.

And that meant soon all of this would be over. Erik would have had his revenge at last, that blissful, perfect revenge, and then…what? What would he do next? Go and live an ordinary life? It sounded so unlike him.

Although, he thought, watching Charles mumble into his pillow, it could have its perks.

He went for a run, leaving Charles to sleep-talk alone, then stood and glared at the satellite dish for a while. It refused to move, and now the fear of that never happening, of him failing in his training and failing in his mission, came back stronger than ever. He could feel his chest tighten at the thought of it.

A grey blur in spectacles shot past him on the gravel, then stopped. "Morning," said Hank.

Maybe at the beginning of the week, Erik would have grunted or simply walked away. Now he found himself saying, "Morning," right back again.

Hank grinned at him. "Do you want to practise some more flying?"

They practiced with the metal shoes all morning until Erik was able to get as high as one of the trees. He was still wobbling like crazy, but Hank was full of promises of helmets and maybe metal shoulder-pads to correct this, and seemed thrilled by the prospect of inventing them. Once you got over the faintly insulting way the kid craved normality and his resentment at Erik's general…Erikness...he was a good person. Sweet, helpful and diplomatic, which made him perfect under Charles's command and useless under Erik's. Still, Erik couldn't help but like him. His earnest intelligence was very similar to Charles's.

By lunchtime, Charles and Alex had come out of his basement to practice Alex's shooting out in the open and Sean got back into his wings and did some more flying around. Hank and Raven had a race which Hank won despite Raven's attempts to trip him, distract him or otherwise cheat. Charles, who was focusing on Alex and occasionally shouting instructions at Sean, looked bright and happy, swapping in-jokes with Raven and smiling at Erik. It was the first time they'd practised their powers as a group and they were full of ideas, bouncing them off each other and peppering them with jokes.

It was, Erik realised, all very domestic.

In horror at himself, he split away from the group and half flew, half hovered his way to the stone balcony to try his luck one more time with the satellite dish.

It wouldn't move. It never did - no matter how much rage Erik pushed into his powers, he couldn't move it. He envisioned his mother dying, envisioned the torture he'd been through, the things he'd seen in the camp, and yet his power wasn't reacting. Sweat was dripping off his face by the time he gave up, so he relaxed and mopped miserably at his brow. All these thoughts about how great he was, and he couldn't even move a damn satellite dish. He had all this power and no access to it. Everyone else had improved so much in a mere week, and he was just as he was before.

Sometimes it felt like Erik was struggling against himself.

"For God's sake, Erik," Charles said behind him. "If you don't want me to read your mind, you need to stop screaming your thoughts."

Erik turned on him, grateful for someone to snap at. "I can't move the dish," he said. "Okay? I can't work out how."

Charles arched an eyebrow. "Even now?"

"What do you mean even now, I've never been able to do it and I never will, Charles, this is a waste of time."

"Not a waste of time," Charles replied. He looked thoughtful. "I was hoping you might work it out yourself, but…"

"But what?" Erik demanded.

Charles opened his mouth to respond, but then they heard a frightened yell, saw a flash of red light and then one of the trees near where they'd been practising caught fire. "Crap," said Charles, already retreating to where the kids were. "Erik, I'll promise I'll go through it with you tomorrow – Alex, did you take your breast plate thing off – I told you not to do that!"

He ran back to the kids and the tree on fire, the sounds of squabbling and blame-storming already reaching Erik's ears. Erik sighed, ignored the satellite dish and did a few laps around the gardens in his metal boots. At least he could do that, he thought.

At least he could fly.

"We're fantastic," Erik said at dinner that evening.

A rather shocked pause greeted this. It was likely, Erik thought, that by now everyone was starting to feel emotionally whiplashed by him. Just a few evenings ago he had been positing the theory that most of them were going to die and now he was telling them how wonderful they were. He saw more than a few disbelieving glances swapped around the table.

"I'm serious," he insisted. "We're amazing – all of us." He gestured to Sean. "Look at you, Sean, you can fly. And Alex, you can devastate any target. Hank can run faster than any human alive, Raven can look like any human alive, and Charles, you are – "

And then he glanced at Charles and promptly ran out of words. Charles was smiling that kind of gentle, sweet smile he sometimes wore when watching Raven talking, or Moira laughing, or any of the kids discussing the merits of their powers. Once Erik had glanced up from a particularly difficult chess move to find Charles bestowing that smile on him. It always seemed a shade sadder whenever it was turned on Erik.

There was a small pause while Erik tried valiantly to remember what he'd been talking about. "What I'm trying to say," he said, struggling on, "Is that all of us are brilliant. We could beat any human we wanted in any way we wanted." He felt Charles hesitate beside him, but carried on. "It's like Charles said, we're the next stage of evolution. We're superior to them."

"Uh," Charles stumbled, losing his smile, "I didn't quite mean we were superior – I mean – we shouldn't – "

"We're better," Erik decided. "As a team, we're an unstoppable force. The humans should be afraid of us."

There was an uncertain pause. "You said the other night we were likely to die," Hank said, finally. Since their work on Erik's flying, he'd been more vocal in his opinions than ever before, as if being close to Erik and yet staying alive was somehow a confidence booster.

"Well," Erik said, "I was wrong." And he smiled.

This didn't seem to make things any better, though Erik was sure they should. Didn't this cancel out the seeds of doubt he'd planted before? Was he smiling wrong? Raven was beaming at him as if everything he'd said made perfect sense to her, but he couldn't work out if this was because she thought the same or because, as he was starting to suspect, she had a crush on him. The others were looking different shades of nervous and worried.

Charles sighed and said, "Erik…" and then in Erik's head added why are you saying this?

I need them to be confident, Erik replied.

So that they can beat Shaw for you, Charles retorted, and Erik had no answer to that.

Instead, he picked at his dinner. The conversation had moved on in the group, and now Hank was explaining in very complicated scientific language how Sean's wings worked against air currents whilst Sean was interrupting with things like "it's freakin' awesome man!"

The more confidence they have, the less likely they are to die, Charles, Erik said at last. I thought you'd be pleased.

He caught a wave of concern and more than a little mistrust at Erik's motives, but Charles said nothing. Erik sighed. Just get out of my head, Charles.

Charles silently obeyed, and they returned to the conversation.

Erik remembered, later, watching them during that dinner, as they ate, talked and joked around, and thinking they could all die doing this. He, more than anyone, knew what it was like to go into battle, knew how easily lives could be lost, and yet he was letting these people he had helped train for a week, these children, fellow mutants, go into it anyway. Erik was sacrificing them like lambs, simply because he needed them to defeat Shaw.

If he were Charles, he would warn them, but Charles was too naïve to think like Erik. He honestly believed that the bunch of them would be enough to stop Shaw and only come out of the struggle with mere cuts and bruises. It was wrong. Erik should speak up. These were his people, these were mutants. He should be protecting them.

He said nothing. Maybe, he thought, there was such a thing as collateral damage.

He would miss them.

He would miss all of them.

That evening, instead of allowing Charles and Erik to scurry off to their chessboard, Hank corralled them all into the living room with the excuse that, "I've got a Polaroid camera I've been tinkering with." Considering Hank was always tinkering with something, sometimes several things at once, this came as a surprise to no one. "It should take colour photographs now, but I need some willing participants."

"I'm not willing," Erik said, but everyone, as usual, ignored him. A combination of Charles, Moira and Raven hauled him into the mix and suddenly Hank was taking photos of everything – Raven and Charles sharing a joke, their arms around each other, Moira smiling up from some paperwork, Sean and Alex shoving each other around and laughing. They even had a group photo where Erik lurked on the sidelines until Charles noticed and dragged him in.

For most of the evening, everything they did seemed to be accompanied by the flash of a camera and Hank making noises of interest and excitement. It was too distracting to play chess, so Erik whiled away his time in captivity by flicking through the channels on the TV with a twitch of his finger, ignoring requests and focusing mainly on the news. The others spent the evening chatting, sharing favourite books and berating his TV choices.

At one point Hank said, "I wish Darwin was here, I'd have loved to catch some of his adaptations on camera," and the noise seemed to lull, everyone around Erik suddenly quiet. Erik was surprised more than anything – Darwin hadn't really been mentioned since they'd arrived at the house and Erik had actually managed to forget all about him. He'd thought the kids, what with the amount of training they'd had to do, had forgotten him too, but maybe they hadn't. Maybe they never had. Maybe not talking about something was in itself a way of remembering it.

Raven put a comforting arm around Hank. "We all wish he was here," she said gently, and Sean and Alex nodded in answer, Charles placing a hand on Hank's shoulder. Erik had no idea what to say, so he said nothing.

He didn't know how to comfort someone about a death. No one had ever comforted him.

When he went back into his room that night, Charles was already stretched out on his side of the bed, yawning, dressed in his grey shirt and slacks.
"I thought this might save us more time later," he said, and grinned.

Erik couldn't smile back. He perched on his side of the bed, suddenly nervous in a way he couldn't explain. "I'll still have nightmares."

"That's all right."

"I'll wake you up."

"I mind not."

"Screaming."

"It's fine, Erik," Charles said, his voice already muffled with drowsiness, "As long as you get in the damn bed."

Erik got in the damn bed and switched off the bedside light. Darkness and awkwardness fell upon him equally. It was one thing to wake up in the middle of the night after a nightmare and then share a bed, it seemed entirely another to share a bed before the nightmare. His skin itched.

"This is odd," he said aloud.

He was answered with Charles's snores.

A/N: Hope you enjoyed, I had so much fun writing this. Thank you for all your lovely comments and love! x