Lurching like a drunken man on the beach, Charles fights to stay conscious and focus.
Moira …
Charles! Don't fob me off—where are you!
He tells her and a mental image of his surroundings, then collapses in the sand to the sound of the waves gently lapping the shore and the last thoughts of Hank: We've coming … don't worry about anything … just don't move!
Sean: We sure missed you … you're one wanted guy … but not like on the criminal list ...
Alex: You don't know what we would have given for a telepath these past few months …
A few hours later, Charles is safely wrapped in blankets and sleeping fitfully on the floor of a compact, silent helicopter designed by Hank technically for government purposes.
In fact, only Hank and Moira are really needed for the present, the former to pilot and the latter to care for Charles, but Alex had argued loudly about emergency situations and once Banshee opened his mouth, everyone else shut theirs.
Moira closes her eyes and tightens her comforting grip on Charles' clammy hand. The telepath is very pale and drawn, and from his troubled murmurings it is clear that his dreams are not pleasant.
"Will the Professor be okay?" Sean asks in a whisper which suppressed emotion causes to screech a bit. The window panes rattle in irritation, everyone winces … and Charles remains motionless. Hank calls from the front, "We've already checked his vitals—nothing's physically wrong with him."
Alex chews on his lower lip, and mutters, "But everything's not all fine ..." The immediate area around his chest glows red just a very little bit, and immediately detecting the rising temperature from the control panels in the small enclosed space, Hank growls a warning.
Moira tries to smile encouragingly. "Come on, boys. We need to give Charles more time than three hours to recover from whatever he's been through." Pressed by urgency, they had forborne from investigating the rest of the tiny island; they had what they had come for.
Alex asks earnestly, "You'd tell us if the situation was really bad, wouldn't you?"
"Of course not," Moira quips warmly. "What kind of honest person do you think I am?"
Sean grins, then starts to blink tiredly. "I think … I'll take a nap," he announces. Without further ado or bothering to change clothes, he settles down comfortably beside the sleeping Charles and forthwith nods off. After a few minutes, Alex's eyes droop and he tilts precariously from his perch on the other side of Charles until he's snoring softly as well.
They'd been pulled at a moment's notice from their beds in the wee hours of the morning, but now that they had acquired their precious cargo, they can rest peacefully.
Moira blinks back tears. Her boys. But when Hank begins to emit deep-throated yawns, she quietly threatens to sing bawdy Irish songs with a Scottish accent.
/
Several days later, when Erik wakes up, he does so laughing.
Mystique, who is standing beside the hospital bed, flinches back as though he has gone insane. In all probability he has. Riptide stares and if anything can be discerned from Azazeal's forever imperturbable crimson face, he too is troubled at the possibility that their leader has mentally snapped. Only Frost shrugs, but even she is at least mildly surprised.
"Why are you laughing?" Mystique demands in bewilderment, after many moments pass and Erik continues to chuckle wildly. "I don't see anything funny about this situation!"
At last his ironic mirth subsides, but he's still grinning, an expression infused with a pained grimace. "My God, Charles," Erik finally whispers breathlessly, spent from his fit of terrible merriment. "Between rage and serenity, eh?"
/
At night the dreams of the four in the mansion are disturbed with blurry flashes of images involving an oddly distorted Magneto, but mostly feelings of unbearable loneliness and a building fury.
Charles is projecting again.
After the flight, as if on cue Charles had woken and asked for some water. In response Moira had cajoled him into eating as well. He had smiled weakly at the numerous questions about his present condition, but for some strange reason no one could bring himself (in Moira's case, herself) to ask about what had happened. Surely Charles would tell them in his own time.
He goes through the motions of rehabilitating with a personal physical therapist and a doctor to monitor his progress to strengthen his body. The physician says frankly that he is shocked at the medical anomaly of Charles managing to walk at all. It's almost as though, he adds, Charles mentally willed himself to walk again.
Moira and the boys don't argue with that assessment. After all, Charles might very well be capable of it.
But despite outward signs of progress, clearly the past few months bother him greatly. He frequently stares off into nothing, lost in his own troubled thoughts. When the helicopter rescuing him had first landed at the mansion, he had stared and stared as if he had never seen it before.
To be honest, Hank, Alex and Sean are afraid to broach the subject of their mentor's obvious internment, while Moira tries desperately to give her dear friend the space he needs. They are all worried that, while the release of words may bring healing, it might cause a complete breakdown as well, one from which the sensitive and currently vulnerable Charles will not recover.
However tightly Charles reins in his emotions during the day, he cannot control them when he sleeps and his careful guard dissipates into unconsciousness. The first night Charles slept without the others in his room Sean had actually woken up screaming, a strident alarm which had the effect of gathering everyone into the living room. Charles had been the last to arrive, pallid and appearing sickly. He had paused in the doorway, blanching further as he quickly scanned everyone's minds.
"I'm so sorry," he says quietly. "I didn't mean for this to happen." He sighs wearily. "I think it would be best if we separated, and—"
"No," Hank says immediately and decidedly for all of them. "We want to be here." He smiles reassuringly, and jokes cautiously, "Besides, remember that we have nowhere else to go?"
The three boys almost in unison suddenly recall with striking clarity the offer both Shaw and Magneto made them, to join them in their cause of forcefully championing mutant supremacy. Not one can deny that he was tempted, but after recalling the kindness with which each had been received, especially Charles' warm reception, they had pulled back from that abyss. And now, after seeing what the potential violence of Magneto's ideas, they think that he can keep them to himself.
After a long silence, Alex is the first, with a timidity uncharacteristic to his usual brashness, to ask, "… why?"
The empty metal helmet on the fireplace mantle, incongruous beside dainty figurines and porcelain wares, glints an eerie crimson in the light of the dancing flames. Charles glances over at the memento a moment before meeting the gazes of his friends; he runs a hand over his tousled hair and tries to smile. In addition to her worrying, the fastidious woman in Moira notes that he needs a haircut. "It's … difficult to express."
It is at this point that each of them wishes he was a telepath.
/
"I should kill you," Charles hisses, a frightening snarl distorting the usual ineffable smile.
Erik can only squint at him uncomprehendingly from the ground, darkness washing in and out of his vision. His head and lower back throb agonizingly, and he can feel but does not understand a warm wetness trickling down his neck.
For a few heartstopping moments Charles simply stands unsteadily with the helmet raised in his hands, glaring down at Erik. Then he collapses to his knees and half-sobbing, screams hoarsely his frustration and impotent fury, a trembling wreck of the man he had been.
Soon Charles gathers some control and drags himself to Erik, who is still staring dazedly at the white ceiling. "You … will never … hurt me again," he promises bitterly. He places the fingers of one hand on his temple, and presses the others to the side of Erik's bloodied head.
And then there is oblivion.
"Charles!" Magneto abruptly comes awake, heart pounding. The metal in the devices monitoring his condition begin to rattle alarmingly.
In a chair beside him, Mystique jolts from a light doze, blue skin rippling in alarm. "What's wrong?" she inquires immediately in concern.
For a few moments he doesn't answer her, rather occupied with finding that answer out for himself. As blank succeeds blank, however, he has to concede defeat. "What just happened?" Magneto asks finally, pressing the palms of his hands to his burning eyes. Directly before waking, he had grasped something very important—
Mystique automatically starts to answer, and then pauses. "What do you remember?" she presses instead.
He tries to think, and his thoughts sputter out in fragments. "A white room—a red flash of pain—Charles standing over me—black—"
Her lips thinned in anger at this revelation of past events, Mystique nevertheless reminds him gently, "That was a week ago. You've been in and out of it ever since."
Even as he looks at her, uncomprehending of the amount of time he has lost, the memories return with violence and shutter through his mind like the horrendous fast forward of a film on a theater screen. Magneto goes stiff, his face becoming blank in reaction to the internal conflict roiling within.
"We know what happened," Mystique assures him, completely misreading his expression. "Don't blame yourself. You couldn't have stopped Charles if he wanted to leave." Her features harden. "He must have lost his mind and just struck out. That's the only way I can believe he'd hurt anyone like that."
Magneto stares at her. If they all know, how can she sit there so calmly, so anxious to comfort him?
She thinks she knows what happened, a dry voice says in his mind. And it is then that Magneto notices the absence of his helmet. And I await your directions, Magneto, as to whether I should continue to allow her misapprehensions.
A headache begins to build, and absently he rubs his temple. I … I'll tell her myself. And get out of my head, Frost, he adds as an afterthought. With a turn of a mental high heel, Emma complies.
Once a potential ally and brother-in-arms, Charles is now a terrible liability and loose cannon. Magneto can admit his own destructive role in the dynamics of their relationship, but if Charles had only listened … fuck. Everything has gone so very wrong.
"Tell me what you found in Washington and Moscow," he instructs Mystique brusquely. She smiles in relief at this return to normal behavior and begins to report.
Later, he thinks. I'll tell her the truth … and think about what to do with Charles … later. He doesn't think he can take Mystique's betrayed expression at the moment.
Sometime afterward Mystique pats his hand and leaves as Magneto cites a headache. In fact images of his former friend occupy his thoughts despite his attempts to thrust them from his mind, and the myriad ugly possibilities sink brutal teeth into him.
If he'd assumed Charles could be forced into submission, he had certainly been proven wrong. Magneto is furious for allowing himself to be so easily deceived; he had assumed Charles' blank pliancy to be the sign of a bending mind, and all the while it had been a convincing act to allay suspicion. And then, from that heady moment on the beach, when he had held all the cards of fortune on his side and Charles had been helpless to stop him, he had arrogated the notion that he was the more powerful.
But he had underestimated Charles' ability for subterfuge, though really he ought to have known better. Had he not prided himself on his ability to read men and their dark natures? And if a metaphor had to be made, Magneto thinks wryly, Charles had let him wallow in that arrogance and then drowned him in it.
There is still that damnable part of him that wants the man's company—his advice—his friendship, just as much as when he first tried to forcibly keep Charles by his side. But he has forfeited all that; mortal battle lines have now been drawn, and there will be no return to happier times.
Still, such irony, that although their goals take such different routes, their paths will inevitably intersect.
Charles opens his eyes. He is in his bedroom and it is dark. But in his mind he is still in a blindingly white prison.