After Raven left, what remained of Charles's life unraveled so fast it was as if she had been the last thread holding it together.
He had given up listening to the radio. The news was all bad, with the threat of war rumbling constantly away - and too often, broadcasting was interrupted by more reports of inexplicable attacks on government and private facilities by a shadowy terrorist organisation that issued no demands, took no prisoners, just hit its targets and faded away into obscurity again, leaving a bloodbath in its wake.
Sometimes Charles could swear he could hear the death cries, the wailing of the bereaved, even though he hadn't touched Cerebro in weeks. All that carnage, all that pain – the responsibility for it lay at his door, but he didn't have the stomach to face it, to stop it. He turned away from the guilt, from his friends, into the numbing shelter of alcohol and regret, and found after a very little while that to leave it was like stepping out into a howling storm. There had been no mention of Raven in any of the reports – Charles tried to take some thin comfort from that; but he couldn't help but remember that she scarcely had to show her true self if she had been there. In fact, it was her ability to conceal herself that would make her such a deadly weapon, such an efficient killer. Such an asset, from Erik's point of view.
He continued to take classes when he could, although several of his students had been taken away from the school by parents unsettled by the sudden instability of teaching staff and timetables. He listlessly shuffled the ever-growing piles of paper on his desk. But he couldn't bear to be with his closest friends – the ones who looked at him with pity and concern that he didn't deserve. He was avoiding all of them, Hank, Sean, Alex, Madeline.
Madeline was in similar self-imposed seclusion – if anything, she seemed more devastated than he was by Raven leaving. It had occurred to Charles that in his sister, she might have found an echo of the love that had existed between Maddy and her own sister, so cruelly cut short by her parents giving her up to Fiskel.
For whatever reason, Raven's departure had hit the healer harder than even Erik's had done. Like Charles, she went through the motions, but kept to herself. If he let himself, he could feel her pain across the mansion, a throbbing emptiness that called out to his own. But he actively resisted using his power these days, tried to squash it down as much as he was able.
The direction of his telepathy had always been somewhat subject to his own emotional state – that was part of the reason he had always worked to cultivate a positive, optimistic attitude. When he was afraid, or sad, or angry, those were the emotions and thoughts that spoke loudest to his mind. It had taken years of practice and restraint to bring his power under his control; with his heart weakened by sorrow and his body drained by abuse, when he allowed his mind to reach out to others, even when he was unguarded in his sleep, the pain and suffering of the world rang out inescapably, drowning out all signals of love, or joy, or hope. Charles had begun to take sleeping pills before going to bed, but still sometimes woke with a cry of horror two or three times a night as the dark voices whispered into his dreams. The lack of sleep weakened him still further, making it harder and harder to silence the voices out even when he was awake.
Maddy seemed to sense this, that her pain rebounded onto him somehow, and kept her distance. She had given up her blood training with Charles, her studies with Hank – she just stayed in her room, trying in private to rebuild something of the life which had barely begun before it had fallen in ruins around her. So Charles was surprised when she interrupted his reflections one November afternoon, walking into his study without even knocking and sitting down across the desk from him with a grim expression.
"President Kennedy's been killed."
Charles blinked at her owlishly. He felt vaguely ashamed; a man was dead, a man with children, a family, and a whole nation would grieve. But looking out from the rubble of his own family, his own life, Charles found it hard to care at all. Maddy gave him a wary look; he could feel the apprehension rolling off her as she continued.
"They've arrested Erik, detained him in the Pentagon ahead of trial. They say he shot him as he was driving through Dallas."
Charles had thought he couldn't be hurt any more by Erik's actions. After all the attacks, all the deaths of guards and soldiers and police, he thought he had at last accepted what he was, this man Charles had allowed himself to love. But somehow, this one death was worse. The idea of Erik killing the smiling, charismatic young president while he drove in the sunshine, of Erik shooting him like a common criminal, turned Charles's stomach. He put his head in his hands, bit his lip to hold back the agony that threatened to burst out of him. Madeline gave him a minute, then leaned over the desk, he green eyes burning into his as he looked up.
"We have to get him out of there, Charles. We have to. You have to go to Cerebro, find out where he is, we have to go in the jet and get him out of there right now."
Charles stared at her in total incomprehension.
"What can you mean? How can we get him out?" Madeline rolled her eyes in frustration.
"Charles, you're a telepath! You could make me believe that I'm a pot plant, or Hank believe he's a six-year-old girl. I'm sure it would be a simple enough matter for you to persuade a few guards to believe we have every right to stroll in there and take a prisoner into custody." Her sarcasm dissolved instantly, however, her face going dark with foreboding.
"I can't even imagine what they're doing to him in there. If they have any idea he was behind those attacks – and if they know somehow what he can do – if they want to figure out how he works-" her mouth twisted downwards, and she pressed her hands so hard into the arms of her chair they left indentations on the leather. "And you know Erik, Charles. He won't submit to that. He won't be able to. He's been a lab rat once before, remember? He'll fight them with all that he has. He'll make them kill him if he stays in there. We have to get him out; we're wasting time even talking about it here."
She was almost hyperventilating. Charles reached tentatively into her mind, then rocked back as the wave of terror ripped through him, images of being strapped down, cut up, tortured. They were Maddy's own images, her own pain, but her empathy with Erik's plight was none the less visceral for that. For a moment, Charles felt it too, her fear for him, her urgency, the need to get Erik safely out of that place. But then, the cloud of disappointment and disgust settled on him again. He leaned forward, put a hand over hers.
"Madeline, listen to me. Whatever Erik's fate, it is of his own making. He has killed so many people in his wicked vendetta against humanity; he has left his own humanity behind. If humanity can extract justice from him for this one death, it will stand for all the other deaths he has caused. We cannot intervene. He deserves to be punished for what he's done."
She looked at him disbelievingly, snatched her hand away.
"You don't mean that. You know it's more complicated than that! Don't you remember what Raven told us – the places Erik has been attacking are legitimate targets, places where mutants are being held and experimented on, used, killed! I know what Erik's doing is wrong, but it's no worse than what they are doing to us! And as for Kennedy – well I can't explain that, but don't you think he at least deserves the chance to explain it to you before you condemn him to God knows what fate?" Taking a deep breath, she tried to control herself, leaned across the desk and took his hand again. "Charles, you can't abandon him like this. You still love him, I know you do!"
Her words rubbed salt into a barely healed wound. Charles said, louder than he'd meant to:
"It doesn't matter if I do love him, or if you do. I can't keep making excuses for him! If I rescue him from due legal process, I'll be complicit in his murders, his crimes. I won't do that, Madeline, not for him, not for you!"
He knew it was dangerous to let himself get upset like this; but even as he tried to compose himself, a stab of pain, yellow and sharp-edged like sulphur, split through his head, letting in a howling wave of emotions, pain, fear, anger, despair, a Babel of voices weeping, yelling, screaming –
"Charles? Charles! What's wrong?" Maddy was leaning over him in his chair, trying to pull his hands down where they had flown in fists to his head, clutching at the lank strands of long hair as he tried to squeeze the tumult out of his unguarded mind. Charles heard an animal whine come out of him as he fought for control, for serenity. How had it come so easily to him once that he had been able to teach Erik, that bright point of the mind that let him focus and control his awesome powers?
CHARLES. Listen to me. Listen to my mind. Listen to ME.
Maddy had pressed her forehead into his, was staring into his eyes, was shouting her thoughts to try and reach him over the babble of agony that filled his head. He clung to her familiar mind, forced himself to focus on it to the exclusion of all else, saw her wince as she felt the weight of his attention but nod encouragingly.
That's right. Come back to me. Like you taught me. Balance. You know this.
Breathing hard, clutching her hands, Charles was able to force the voices down at last. They churned ominously just below the range of his power, and he knew they'd rob him of his sleep that night – but for now, at least, he had regained control. He sat back in his chair, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. Madeline sat back slowly in her chair, looking pale and alarmed.
"What just happened? You looked awful. Since when do you lose control of your powers?" Charles sighed, hung his head. He felt utterly drained suddenly, wanted nothing so much as to go to sleep for about a hundred years.
"It's been happening more often. Not getting enough sleep. Not coping. Normally I can choose what to hear, but recently, its been getting harder to filter things out." He squeezed his eyes tight shut, watched the yellow spots flashing on and off behind his eyelids as the migraine gathered steam. "Like I keep telling you, my dear. Control is something you learn, something you acquire – but it's not like riding a bike. It needs constant work, maintenance. A regime. I've been – lax, lately. Can't think why," he finished laconically, trying to lighten the tension that thickened the air between them. Their disagreement was forgotten in her palpable concern for his wellbeing.
"You should sleep then. Let me get you upstairs; we can talk again when you're feeling better." Charles was shaking his head.
"It's worse when I sleep – can't keep control." He lifted a bottle of gin out of the desk drawer. "At moments like this, only unconsciousness will do." She frowned darkly at this.
"I don't think-" Charles cut her off.
"I know what I'm talking about, my dear. Trust me." She stood up uncertainly.
"Charles. About Erik-" he held up a forestalling hand.
"I can't, Maddy. I can't. I know you love him; but I thought you and I had a bond as well. Please understand why I can't do what you ask. Erik has to face the consequences of his actions; just as I have to. And I won't help him escape justice just to be responsible for even more of the blood on his hands."