Erik trailed Charles into the study, shut the door as the telepath rounded on him, his mouth white with tension, his eyes blazing fury.
"Erik, how could you do this? How COULD you?"
The betrayal in Charles's voice cut Erik to the quick.
"Charles, I'm so sorry. It was a horrible mistake, should never have happened."
Charles's jaw relaxed a little, and he looked slightly mollified. Erik, encouraged, took a step forward.
"You saw how it was, it all happened so fast – I should have pulled away sooner, but I was just so-" Charles rolled his eyes, exploded:
"Oh for God's sake, Erik, I wasn't talking about the kiss, I don't care about the bloody kiss!"
Erik blinked quizzically. He had been prepared to humble his pride, to beg if that was what it took – after all, that was no more than Charles deserved. Erik had broken faith with him in that second of shock when he had let himself kiss Madeline. How could that be forgiven so easily? And if it was, why was Charles still incensed?
"She wasn't in her right mind, would never have crossed that line if she had been. And what you and I have is more than physical fidelity – or it is for me, in any case. It's love that matters to me, Erik, not denial, I told you that after Cuba. Or had you forgotten?"
Erik hadn't. In the aftermath of Charles's injury, when he had become aware of all the capacities that he had lost, Charles had made it clear that if Erik were to seek release elsewhere, then he would understand. At the time, Erik had simply dismissed the question out of hand, certain that he would never want anything or anyone but Charles. And they had found ways to ensure that neither of them wanted for physical pleasure. Erik shrugged, not knowing what to say.
Charles was far from done talking, however.
"You know full well that wasn't what I meant. How could you put her through this, after everything that we agreed?"
Ah, so it really wasn't the kiss then. It was the blood. Erik sat down on the sofa, decided that the only way forward would be to just brazen it out. He lounged backwards, and adopted an exaggeratedly reasonable tone.
"I never agreed to anything, Charles. You talked at me, and as usual you only heard what you wanted to. I didn't mean to 'put her through' anything; I'm just trying to help her to become what she really is."
Charles threw up his hands.
"I just had to put her in a coma – at her own request I might add – because she was about to KILL that woman! She's completely out of control, and she's traumatised! How could you be so irresponsible?"
Erik sat up. He was willing to take his medicine for that moment of weakness with the girl, but he wasn't going to sit and be harangued for consequences that were none of his doing.
"I didn't know that was going to happen-"
"EXACTLY! You had no idea what would happen to her, but for the sake of satisfying your own bloody-minded curiosity you put her in mortal danger!"
Erik didn't think he'd ever seen Charles so angry, heard him shout like this. He felt his own anger rising, decided to give in to it, preferring its familiar burn to the sick shot of shame that had accompanied Charles's last words. He leapt to his feet, raised his voice.
"It wasn't about me, Charles, damn it! It's about HER. She has so much potential, and you don't want her to unlock it just because it frightens you!"
Charles went white with rage.
"How dare you?" he whispered. Erik shrugged negligently, and Charles's mouth twisted. He smacked the arm of his chair angrily. "I am trying to HELP these children, Erik, all of them. You just want to turn them into weapons!"
"And you just want to turn them into humans, when they're NOT, Charles!" Erik retorted. "Admit it – you're afraid of what she's capable of!"
"Bloody right I am, and so should you be! You didn't see inside her head like I did. Under all that fear and confusion, that was the mind of a predator. Acute, remorseless, joyful in the hunt…" Charles trailed off, his anger evaporating into something like awe. "It's like a drug to her, Erik. There's no telling what atrocity she might commit if she sets that side of herself free."
Erik crouched down in front of Charles's chair, gripped the arms as he leaned over his lover. He was struggling to control himself, and his words came out like bullets, each one making Charles wince.
"Charles, listen to yourself. You said it yourself, she's a predator. And do you notice how instinctively she chose her prey? Not me; not you, though both of us were close to hand. She didn't attack her own kind, Charles. She preyed on the inferior species, the species she was born to feed upon. She attacked the human. Just the human."
Charles jerked the chair back, knocking Erik's hands from the arms. He turned an incredulous look on Erik.
"I can't believe I'm hearing this. She is not 'the human'. Her name is Joyce Murdock; she has a mutant son who she wants to send here, and three other children who she adores. She likes historical novels, and swing music. She dances in the kitchen when nobody's home. She isn't anyone's prey, Erik, she's a person!"
Erik took a step back, stung by Charles's withdrawal. He rolled his eyes.
"For God's sake Charles, I know that. I'm not saying you should have let Madeline kill the woman just because that's her nature. But you have to admit that's what it is! Put the ethics aside for a moment: you can't deny the evolutionary step Maddy represents. She's made to feed on human blood; not animal, or mutant – human blood. It makes her stronger, faster, better. Have you ever seen her look so full of life? So right? You know that this is who she's meant to be!"
Erik paused for breath, saw Charles's expression harden. He turned away from Erik, looking from the window out across the grounds.
"I don't have to listen to this. Madeline needs help. She needs to learn to control those urges, to let her better nature-"
Erik felt some dark emotion building in his chest as he stared at Charles's back, heard him martialing all his rhetorical weapons in the service of his denial, his cowardice. Erik did something he had never done before – he seized the handles of Charles's wheelchair, forced him to turn around and face Erik.
"You can't admit it even now, can you? You can't control them all forever, Charles. You have to let them become what they are!"
Charles stared at him in wounded disbelief.
"Sometimes, I listen to you and I think that you don't know me at all. What do you think I'm trying to do here? What do you think this bloody place is for? I want them to be happy, to be safe!"
Charles's voice broke on the last word, and the anger in Erik collapsed into frustration, protectiveness, and an unidentifiable sense of loss. He stepped backward, pressed his fingertips into his eyelids.
"I know you do. I know. But you think the best way to achieve that is to teach them to suppress their abilities, to blend in and assimilate, perhaps let themselves off the leash now and again to perform some helpful service for mankind, to earn a pat on the head from their oppressors. Admit it, at least to yourself, to me: you're scared of mutants, as scared as the humans are, you always have been."
Charles flinched as if Erik had struck him a blow, then gasped, literally speechless with outrage. Erik pushed on, heedless of everything but the need to say his piece after so long bottling it up.
"You're scared of what our powers mean, inevitably – the extinction of humankind. The human in you is so strong you even scare yourself – that's why you'll never be half the force for good you could be, because you're too afraid to use even a fraction of the power you have-"
Erik stopped not because he had finished, but because he could no longer move his mouth. Or anything else. He couldn't even blink, could only stare disbelieving at Charles, who was holding his fingers to his head, gazing at Erik with an expression he had never seen in his lover's face before.
This wasn't the Charles that Erik knew - the gentle, kind professor who laughed and kissed and made love with a tenderness that had been Erik's comfort and his joy. This was a powerful telepath who could make Erik do anything that he wanted; anything at all.
Panic bloomed in the German's chest, the queasy terror only powerlessness could provoke in him. He heard Charles's voice in his head, the voice of a stranger, cold, vibrating with barely controlled fury.
Is this the power you would have me use to fight our cause, Erik? Is this the person you want me to be?
The moment stretched out for an eternity, and then Charles released his hold on Erik's mind. The metal bender sucked in a lungful of air; he knew that his face nakedly revealed the full measure of the shock and betrayal he felt. Charles's face was no less shocked; he was chalk-white, his red lips trembling. He put his head in his hands.
"Get out Erik. If you don't get out now, I may do something we would both regret."
The younger man's voice was no longer angry or remote. He sounded just like Erik felt – hollow; heartbroken. Erik took a step forward, instinctively – then turned on his heel and let himself out. He let the door shut silently and then, standing on the other side of it, allowed the bitter tears to fall, listened to Charles begin to sob in the study. Every sinew of Erik's heart strained at the sound, yearned to go back and comfort his lover – but a cold, dead weight lay heavy on his chest, wouldn't allow the feeling to escape. He couldn't go back. There was nothing left to say.
AN: I'm so sorry I had to do that! Really hard to write, but it had to be done. I'm afraid it's all going to get a bit sad from this point, but hang with me - a happy ending is still on the cards, and hopefully some drama and fluff along the way! How are people feeling about Raven & Azazel? I have a plan to follow then for a while, so let me know what you think about what I'm doing with that. Thank you SO much everyone who has reviewed and favourited, it makes my day whenever I get a notification that someone is enjoying my story :)