Hi ya'll! We just had a short break, so I didn't get to write much before today this past week. It didn't help that the break was...eventful. Anyhoo. I'm back, and I hope you enjoy the chapter! I can't wait to hear what you think! Thanks so much for reading and reviewing, everyone!

NOTE: Also, I got bored at one point and fixed up this nice typed version of the playlist I listen to while writing this story. Either they inspired me, or continue to, or they just fit. The first one, of course, is the title track. Everything on the main list is easily found on iTunes (or on Youtube or elsewhere online freee...!) so have at if you wish to, lol.

Playlist:

1 – "Do You Love Me" Fiddler on the Roof (Motion Picture)

2 – "All We Are" Matt Nathanson

3 – "You Found Me" The Fray

4 – "Crawling (Carry Me Through)" Superchick

5 – "Memory (Acoustic)" Sugarcult

6 – "Shattered" Trading Yesterday

7 – "If I Never Knew You" Jon Secade and Shanice

8 – "Breathe" Superchick

9 – "Safe and Sound" Taylor Swift

10 – "My Love" Sia

11 – "How Far We've Come" Matchbox Twenty

12 – "The Inner Light" Jay Chattaway (2:50 piano/flute version, though the six minute something orchestral version is very nice too)

Bonus if You're Really a Geek (NOT easily found on iTunes; go elsewhere :P):

- "Love Will Find a Way" (From Lion King 2)

- "Inori ~You Raise Me Up~" Lena Park (Theme from Romeo x Juliet anime, or really anything from that soundtrack. It's a good soundtrack. It was also very influential in the writing of "These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends." Thus Shakespeare-inspired title and Romeo/Juliet ish tragic bits. If you like anime, watch it. It's amazing.)

Chapter 13

Now

"Erik? Erik, what's wrong? Erik…?"

Erik seems abruptly out of breath, maybe even dizzy, and he is staring off into nothing now; Charles doesn't intrude into his thoughts, but his emotions are broadcasting themselves. They're a jumbled, confused mass, fear and dread and hate and anger and pain and guilt and more, all negative and all worrisome.

"Erik? Erik."

He casts a quick telepathic glimpse upstairs and finds the twins asleep already, thank god, and now he remembers Hank going upstairs to put them to bed. And Ororo and Jean aren't here; they went across town to the library to visit with Moira. Doubtlessly Sean is with them and they won't be back until late, and it's only just now dark. He's glad for all of it at the moment, because the look on Erik's face scares him.

"Erik, what is it?" he asks urgently. His husband's hands are hanging over his knees between them and Charles takes them and grips them tightly. "Erik!"

Finally Erik startles out of his trance and looks at him sharply, but the expression there is haunted.

"Erik…? What is it?" he repeats. "Do you know that name?"

"More than the name…" Erik's answer is barely there, and once it's out he pushes unsteadily to his feet, pulling his hands free and staggering toward the bedroom door. It's proof of how affected he is when it doesn't open seemingly of its own accord; he fumbles with the knob instead, all but falling inside the room. Charles follows him quickly, a hand at his back to steady him.

"Erik, be careful—!" He knows more than the name? He knows the man, then? But how is that possible? Charles's chest is clenching, almost not wanting to know what could cause this reaction but needing to know, because he can't help if he doesn't know and right now he wants nothing more than to help. He knows something is wrong and he wants to make it better.

Erik goes to the windowsill at the far wall, a hand braced on the desk beside it. With the other hand over the flat wood of the sill he shakily pulls a nail from its place and lets it rolls away and clatter to the floor, more interested in whatever is under the thin plank of wood that came up a bit with the extracted nail. At his back Charles watches anxiously, and in another moment several small objects have been pulled up into his hand. He stares at them as if they might not be real, and he is still ignoring Charles.

The lamp in the bedroom isn't on, and Charles squints, and it's only thanks to the moonlight filtering through the window glinting off of the objects in Erik's palm that he's able to tell what they are.

Bullets. Most of them mangled from being fired.

"Erik…?" he asks again. His voice rises in worry and he can't help it, and finally his husband answers him again. But his voice is dead.

"They hit other things—not me," he explains briefly. "Most of them, anyway…" And his free hand rubs absently at his left forearm. Charles blinks, suddenly remembering the small scar there, but it had never occurred to him before to ask what had caused it.

Many who were alive during the war have scars; some more than others. Besides the C-section scar he's procured since then, he has one or two more of his own. No one asks about them, because there isn't any need. Erik is one of those who has more than others, but Charles has never thought there was anything in particular to that. The idea that there might be makes breathing harder.

And Erik is still talking, softly, almost automatically. "I didn't mean to take them with me. They fired but only one hit me and when I was out they were just there, in my hand."

Charles has to swallow hard before he can speak. "Out? Out of where?" He still refuses to intrude into his husband's thoughts without permission, but the emotions bombarding him are still sharp and biting. He isn't pleased by how out of breath he sounds, as he tries to process all of it. "What are you…? What happened? Do you really know this man? This…Schmidt? Shaw?"

Erik drops the ruined bullets onto the desk and lets himself fall heavily into the chair there. When Charles crouches by the chair Erik's eyes are all but vacant again.

"Erik, what is it? Show me," he ventures carefully. Erik ignores the request, but his hands grasp unsteadily for Charles's and hold them. Charles squeezes back. "Show me," he says again.

Erik shakes his head stubbornly. "No," he says firmly, though he sounds out of breath again himself. "Y-you shouldn't have to see that. I can't—"

What could be so awful? Charles's stomach twists along with everything else. "Then tell me," he pleads. And Erik's mouth opens, but nothing else comes out. He shakes his head again, this time in apology. Charles doesn't know what else to do; he moves up into Erik's lap on the desk chair and folds his arms around him. "It's all right," he whispers. "You can tell me. It's all right."

"It's not," Erik croaks out after a moment, but he's returned the embrace. He's holding on as if Charles might be snatched away. "I kept you out for a reason," he admits softly. "When we met. I asked you to stay out of my head. I had reasons. It was that I didn't trust you, or I didn't want to…I just didn't want you to see. I was so afraid you'd…god, when they told me you were a telepath…I was terrified…"

Charles sits back just enough to see Erik's face, but Erik won't look up at him. "Why? What on earth happened to you?" he asks anxiously. "Erik, please. I want to help—"

"You can't help…" Erik looks up at him now, wearily. "What happened, happened. You can't change it."

"But whatever it is, maybe I can help you to put it behind you," he offers.

"I thought it was!" The quiet exclamation is vehement, and what moonlight there is glints off the few tears that fall. Erik has focused away from him again, braced on the edge of the desk and the chair's back and trying to hold Charles all at once, and Charles gently dries the tears with his thumb.

Erik is trembling now.

Charles is trying not to panic.

"Erik, if you can't tell me what happened then please let me see. Please. You're scaring me."

"Seeing it would scare you more," Erik counters weakly.

"But it would help me to understand."

"You don't need to understand more than the fact that we're in over our heads, if Schmidt is really the one who's orchestrated all of this."

"I'm not going to give up. You know I won't. It's our children, Erik. I am not to going to stop fighting for their futures until I can't any longer. I might as well know what it is I'm up against."

Erik is shaking his head again, much more quickly this time. "No. No…Charles, please…I don't want to hurt you…"

"Hurt me?" The implication that whatever Erik is remembering could be so horrible clogs his throat.

He's known Erik since his husband was seventeen. He knows Erik has lived here, in this settlement, since he was thirteen or fourteen. Whatever he's remembering must have happened before then, and god, that would have made him so young…

"Erik, what happened?" Charles asks shakily. "What don't I know?" He kisses Erik's cheeks, kissing away new tears. "Please. You won't hurt me. I can—I can shield myself." He had to learn that quickly, when he was young—to keep others' memories and tragedies of the war from overwhelming him.

"Even right now?" Erik asks finally.

Charles nods wordlessly, and he isn't lying. His head is not hurting him too much right now, and Jean's blocks are keeping back what's there. He suspects they may also dampen other things if he tries, but not enough that shielding himself won't work at all. He'll be able to do enough.

That is, if Erik will just agree. "Please," he says again. "Unless you can tell me."

Erik swallows loudly. "I can't," he whispers. "I just—I can't. I'm sorry…"

"Then you'll let me see?"

I don't want to…I wish there were another way.

Charles pushes a hand through his husband's hair and presses a kiss to his forehead. It's all right.

I'm sorry. Erik apologizes again anyway.

Charles counters with, I love you. Whatever it is, we'll face it together. That's what we agreed seven weeks ago anyhow, isn't it? We're in this together now. All of it. Everything.

I never wanted it to include this…I hoped it would never have to. And Charles kisses him before he presses two fingers to his own temple. Be careful, Erik thinks then. God, please be careful. Charles's insides ache more fiercely at that, and his free hand settles splayed on the side of Erik's face, and Erik is holding onto him.

Show me where I need to go.

Erik, if with a healthy amount of dread, shows him, and he's there.

He sees the city in Poland, thirty-five years ago. He sees the bombs falling. He sees the wreckage that nearly crushes Erik and his family, and how Erik stops it, tossing it away just in time and his parents stare at him and he stares at his hands.

Erik is eight years old. He didn't know he could do that.

They run with everyone else. They seek shelter. They don't find much of it. Charles sees the man that appears later, almost out of nowhere, who offers them a place where they will be safe; he sees the face that matches the one in the elders' minds. Shaw. Schmidt. Whoever he is. And now another moniker from Erik's mind. The doctor. An outstretched hand, and there is so much distrust, Erik's father protests, but Erik's mother takes the hand, to save her child.

A flash of red, the smell of sulfur, and they are somewhere else.

Not just somewhere else. Somewhere cold, and dark—a room of stone. Air and minimal light filter through thin grated shafts to the surface, but nothing more. There isn't even a door—no, there it is. But it's been walled up by stone. It's safer this way, the man says. It's a bunker. They're far underground. The bombs can't touch them. Not even the worse ones they've heard about—the ones that vaporize. That make people sick.

But why did he save them? Why just them? Will he bring others? Save other children? Erik's mother asks, but the man doesn't answer. There is something like a toilet on one end of the room and a thin mattress on the ground in the other, and some small amount of food in one corner. The man points them out, and then he takes the arm of the man in the cloak—the one whose face they can't see—and both of them disappear.

There must be something different about the man in the cloak. Just like, Erik thinks, there must be something different about him. He moved that metal wreckage. He saved his parents and himself. He doesn't know how he did that, but now there is nothing metal here to try again.

He sits on the poor mattress with his mother and father, and waits for the war to end.

But his father was right, not to want to come here. He was right not to trust the man who offered them shelter. He was right not to trust Schmidt.

Days later, when the planet's war ends, theirs begins.


Thirty-Four Years, One Month Ago

Erik has been nine for six or seven months now, maybe more. He's lost count. His mother sang to him on his birthday. Trapped here in this dim stone room, she had nothing to give him but that. She held him close and sang to him and told him that it would all be over soon—that they would find a way out and she would never let the doctor hurt him again—but it never happened.

They're still here. Father is still gone. He was gone then.

The doctor killed him. Erik knows that. It looked like he got sick, but he knows the doctor did it. They weren't anywhere near the bombs. They never heard rumbling overhead here. It was the kind of sick they'd heard about, from the bad bombs, the…nuclear ones? Isn't that what people called them? But there were none of those here and Schmidt had said from the beginning they would be safe from those here. From anything.

But then he had wanted to know how Erik had moved the wreckage. How he had saved his parents. Erik didn't know how the doctor knew that, but he'd known. He wanted to know how Erik had done it. Just a few days after they were brought here the doctor tried to make Erik do it again—move metal. But he couldn't. And then the doctor grabbed Father, and touched him, burned him just by touching him, and Father got sick after that. Really sick.

Sometimes the doctor brought a girl with him after that, when he tried to make Erik do things—a blonde girl only a few years older than Erik. Schmidt told Erik that if he moved the metal, the coin or nail or button that the doctor brought with him too, that the girl could help Father.

The girl looked just as scared as he was.

Sometimes Erik moved something, just a little. When something moved the doctor let the girl help Father. She made him better, a little. Not all the way. She looked sad that she couldn't, but she only did what the doctor told her to do.

And Erik tried, tried hard, but he couldn't do enough.

Father died.

And Erik knows it's his fault. Schmidt reminds him of that all the time. He blames the doctor too, and Mama tells him it isn't his fault, that it's all the bad man's fault, but he still knows it is his fault.

Now Mama is sick. She's been sick for a long time, but the girl helps her, and Erik is still scared, and he can do more now, when the doctor wants him too, because he's scared.

He doesn't want his mother to die too. He doesn't want it to be his fault.

So he tries, so, so hard, and for a while he was making progress. For a while mother was almost okay again. Almost. Not really, but almost. For a while she was almost okay and the doctor didn't have the red man bring him away, to the lab. The doctor didn't hurt him.

But then he stopped improving. In the last few weeks he's been at a standstill, and the doctor takes him away so often now, and he doesn't tell Mama what happens when he's away. He's never told her what happens when he's away. Sometimes she can see, and she holds him, and she cries, but he never tells her. That would make it worse.

Now she's too sick to hold him. Or cry. Or anything. She can still sing to him at night, a little, but that's all. It's almost like she does it without thinking about it. He curls close to her and she sings, and he can barely hear it. But she hasn't really talked to him in days. The girl hasn't been here. It's been too long and right now Erik wishes the doctor would come back, so he could do something good, so Doctor Schmidt would let the girl come and help Mama.

"Mama…Mama, wake up," Erik whispers. He's lying beside her, using the rags of the useless blanket to wipe the blood from her nose and mouth. That happens a lot. Her hair is gone, too. It has been for a while now. It didn't come back when she was better for a little while, either. "Mama, please," he cries.

He doesn't want to cry—doesn't want to worry her if somehow she can hear him—but he can't help it. He doesn't want her to go. If she's going to leave he wants to go with her, and he wishes he would get sick, but he never has. She's been sick for so long, on and off, and he's been so close to her, so why has he never gotten sick? Is it because he's different?

The doctor tells him he's special. That all of this is only for his own good. But if he's so special why couldn't he save Father? Why can't he save Mama? Why does the doctor hurt him?

He hurts right now. He was with the doctor yesterday. His head hurts and his body aches and two of his fingernails are gone and he can't feel one of his toes. "Mama, please wake up. Mama…!" He wants her to wake up. He wants her to hold him so he can feel safe, even if he isn't.

Erik squeezes her hand and waits and tries not to cry, and it isn't until night is almost there that she finally opens her eyes.

"Mama…?"

He scrubs away what is left of the tears and tries to smile at her. And for the first time in a while she smiles back. "…love you…" It's all he catches of what she whispers. Then her eyes close again.

When Erik wakes up on her shoulder the next morning, she isn't breathing, and he doesn't bother to stop himself from crying.

Later the red man comes and takes her away, and then Erik is alone.


Now

Charles sees all of it—the years in that stone room even after Erik's parents were gone and the progress he made and how, eventually, he used it to escape.

Erik escaped at thirteen. He wandered for days and finally ran into a small group of mutants looking for the nearest new settlement, and together they found this place. Erik found out he wasn't alone. He wasn't different by himself. He found out, too, that he was in what had been England, and not Poland. He had never known the doctor and the red man had taken him and his parents so far.

The red man. The teleporter. The teleporter who impregnated Raven and left and Charles can see in Erik's mind that he never made the connection and he isn't angry at Erik but he's angry, but just for a moment. The anger is swept away by the pain and the sorrow and everything else, the deaths of Erik's parents and guilt and nearly five years of torment, torture, months and months of pain and loneliness and it isn't until Charles's fingers slip away from his temple, trembling, that he realizes he's sobbing.

"Erik…oh Erik…" He can scarcely breathe for the sobs shaking him, and Erik clutches him close. "I'm so sorry…I'm s-sorry…I'm—I'm sorry…" He wants to say more than that but he doesn't know what, and all he can do is bury his face in his husband's shoulder and cry brokenly, for the childhood tainted and the pain he can't erase.

They all have painful memories. Everyone who lived through the war. But not this. This is different.

"I'm sorry," Erik chokes, near his ear. "I shouldn't have let you see it. I should have just—oh god, Charles, I'm sorry—"

He wants to tell Erik it' all right. He wants to tell him it's good that he knows, that he saw, that he can understand now, but he can't stop crying. He's disconnected from Erik's mind but all of it is still with him, and he's never felt anything of this magnitude and especially now, when he's weak, he is having trouble putting all of it in its place and into perspective. He can't separate himself enough. He knows that he's here, and that he's himself, but part of him doesn't feel it. Part of him still feels everything Erik felt then.

The sobs are violent and he can't breathe much, and he can't stop, and his chest hurts now, and his throat, and his head feels as if it might split open. All he can do is cling to Erik and wait for it to pass. He knows it will—he hopes it will—but Erik isn't so certain.

"Charles? Charles?" Erik pushes him away enough to look at him, and he can only hang in Erik's grip and shake, because he can't stop the tears. He can't see anything for the blur. But he can feel the hands on his face when they leave his waist and grab his head and shake it. "Charles!" He cries out and the movement stops but the hands stay, one on his face and combing soothingly through his hair. "Charles…god, Charles, calm down, please. Charles…!"

Finally he manages to say something telepathically, at least. I-I'm trying.

"I'm so sorry," Erik cries softly. His forehead settles against Charles's and it takes more time but finally he calms, his body still shuddering with aftershocks.

"It isn't your fault," Charles whispers at length, and his hands trace back up from where they'd fallen to clutch at Erik's shoulders. "None of it. What happened, or its effect on me. It is not your fault…"

"You can't—"

"I can say that. I saw everything, Erik. I might as well have been there."

"Thank god you weren't there," Erik swallows.

Their foreheads are still together, and now Charles pulls back a bit to look at Erik more clearly. "And that's why you shut me out so quickly…"

"I was trying to protect you. You were fifteen, Charles." Erik looks him in the eyes. "For so many years I tried to keep my distance…but I fell in love with you."

Charles smiles a bit and traces the back of a finger over his husband's face. "I'm glad you did."

"Still?" The question is posed wryly, even if the sarcasm is weak and there is only barely a quirk of his lips on his damp face, but Charles knows he really wants to know.

"Of course," Charles says quite seriously, and at that Erik takes in a breath and when he lets it out it shudders in relief and his head drops and his shoulders slump. Charles nudges his chin back up and kisses him, and slowly the rest of him straightens and he holds Charles closer again. I told you…we'll do this together. We'll find him. We'll stop all of this. There will be justice for what he's done. He tells Erik this silently, because it's hard to speak with their lips crushed together.

But he has to break away after another few moments, because the sobbing stopped and his chest and throat don't ache so much now but the pain in his head did not stop. It aches sharply even through the blocks, and he doesn't want Erik to know but it's clear when he can't stop a groan and his head drops back to Erik's shoulder. Then there's another groan.

"Charles?" Erik's hold is more urgent then, one hand shifting up to the back of his head. The worries from the rest of the week return that quickly, and Erik's voice is tight, his heart heavy all over again.

I'm all right. Charles bites back a sob. "I won't leave you alone again," he manages against his husband's neck. "I…I won't. I promise. Not if I can help it."

He knows Erik wouldn't be truly alone if he were gone, he would have Raven and the children and their friends…but he is still so terrified of losing anyone else, and Charles can feel it now. He understands. In the beginning Erik was kind but distant on purpose, to avoid being hurt or hurting anyone else. But now that they've both given in to the love that has probably been there, really, from the beginning...

Now Charles wishes more than ever that this damned tumor weren't there; that they didn't have this to add to everything else.

"I love you," is all Erik says in return. Charles nods wordlessly against his shoulder, telling him he knows, that he loves him too, that they'll get through this, all of it, and Erik's lips on his neck are his answer.