Erik had been lying when he had declared his intention of sleeping. Even as he said the words, he knew that would be next best to impossible. The anger boiling in his head did not allow for sleep, which came hard anyway these days – his body was too corded with tension, his mind too prickled by anxiety, his responsibilities too onerous to allow for real rest. The best he could hope for was exhaustion, the total weariness of body and mind that could commit him to oblivion for a few hours. But Raven's arrival had put paid to even that scant relief. He found himself, for the first time, giving serious thought to the fantasy that had tormented him every few hours since he'd left the mansion – of picking up the telephone and calling Charles.

He must be out of his mind with worry, Erik surmised, hating himself for the wheedling tone of his own thoughts. It would just be a courtesy – to let him know where Raven is. To tell him that she's safe. To tell him- to tell him what, exactly? That Erik had been strong-armed into recruiting Charles's sister to his army? That Raven had no intention of going back? Erik groaned, leant his head on his arms where they rested on the rough-hewn board that served as dining table, meeting place, and strategy headquarters for their ragged band.

Army, indeed. Erik snorted despairingly. Aside from Erik himself, and Azazel of course, so far he had recruited almost no mutants with readily utilizable powers. His surreptitious overtures for others of his kind to reveal themselves and join the fight for freedom had yielded few candidates so far. Either the need for discretion meant that the message wasn't getting out, or those mutants who could have been of use were so accustomed to looking after themselves that they saw no need to expose themselves to unnecessary risk for the greater good of the species.

Emma Frost had been an unexpected exception. She had turned up almost as soon as Erik had left Charles, haughtily assuming that with her powerful gifts she would be welcomed with fawning delight. She had been surprised – if a telepath could be surprised – to find it wasn't so. Azazel, her former comrade-in-arms, had been extremely cool towards her, having long since realised that she must have been complicit in Shaw's lies, that she could not have been hoodwinked like Azazel and Janos. And as for Erik, the first thing he did upon becoming aware of her presence was to jam Shaw's helmet on his head and demand what she wanted here.

Her perfect face and imperturbably bored expression hadn't changed at that, any more than it had over a year ago when Erik had been sent by Charles to 'rescue' her from the CIA. He had wondered then if she experienced emotion in the way that other people did. Perhaps her only defense against the Babel of emotional minds constantly vying for her notice was to scorn them all, to just detach. Certainly she hadn't ever displayed any of the feelings you might expect from a woman whose lover had just died, being asked to move in with his killer. He never saw her cry, or even so much as wince when Shaw's name was mentioned. The only thing that could cause her to evince any emotion, beyond the casual spite that was her signature, had been Charles.

Charles had evoked, without even trying, a volcanic, almost unbalanced rage in Emma that sat strangely with her glacial beauty. For the duration of her brief stay at the mansion after Erik had broken her out of the CIA's facility, she had avoided Charles as much as she could; and when she couldn't, the two of them seemed locked in some kind of silent struggle that no-one else was privy to but everyone was implicated in.

To be in a room with the two of them was physically unsettling; raw power seemed to crackle in the air. Charles would sit and regard her with a gentle appeal, as Emma grew ever more visibly incensed, before eventually either exploding in a foul-mouthed fury and exiting the room, or narrowing her eyes to white-hot slits and shifting into diamond form (the damage Erik had done to her in Russia having apparently been of short duration). At which point Charles would twitch as if he had been stabbed, then drop his head in obvious defeat and either leave the room or shift his focus to somebody else.

Erik had asked about all this, of course. And Charles had been as open as he could.

"I'm trying to persuade her to talk to me – really talk, the way only two telepaths could do. To open up her mind to me. She and I can both keep each other out, of course, up to a point – I can even extend my shield to protect other nearby minds from hers, which annoys her – I don't think she can do the same against me. But just imagine how deeply we could let one another in! I feel so much – damage in her. So much rage. It isn't safe to let her stay here, not the way she is. But I don't want to give up on her; if she could just let me try to help her come to terms with whatever it is that caused her to become-" Charles had broken off, shaking his head.

"Such a bitch?" Erik had supplied drily, hoping to take that worried frown from Charles's face, to make him smile. He had, reluctantly and disapprovingly.

"If you insist on putting it that way, yes. She's one of us, Erik. But just being a mutant doesn't mean her intentions are good. She can't be trusted, not yet. I've already caught her up to mischief more than once, trying to foster mistrust between people, playing mind games. It's her idea of entertainment. All just a way of exercising control; that's what she cares about most, I think, control. She must have been so badly hurt. But by what? I don't know. I think I can guess, but I can't know unless she lets me. Or unless I make her. That's when she gets angry, when I push that bit too hard to touch her mind; it make her aware I have the greater power – or at least, greater command of what power I have. That's when she shifts to diamond; stalemate, you see? She's utterly impenetrable to me in that state, but equally she can't employ telepathy herself. Her powers are manifested as an either/or, it seems. I put her on the defensive, and she hates me for it."

Erik had grown more and more concerned as the days went by, and Emma's antipathy for Charles had grown ever more vitriolic and unhinged. Both telepaths grew pale and tense, Charles with obvious exhaustion, Emma with a glittering fury that was almost beautiful in its jagged intensity. Matters had come to a head when Charles had suddenly cried out in pain and fallen to the floor one night at dinner. Erik had instantly seized Emma's arm and been run through with a wave of agony, all his worst memories flashing through his head at ultrasonic speed, but sickeningly from Klaus Schmidt's point of view, overlayed with his sadistic satisfaction. The moment passed as quickly as it came, however, and Erik had come tremblingly back to himself to find Charles leaning over him protectively, his blue eyes fixed blazing on Emma Frost, crouching against the wall in diamond form. The two powerful telepaths held one anothers' gaze for a moment, and then Emma had leapt through the window, raining splinters of glass down on the alarmed party as she fled, not to be seen again. Charles had been reluctant to talk about it, but eventually, under Erik's probing, he confessed.

"It was the only rule I gave her – she wasn't to use her power to harm the mind of anybody else. If she did that, I would be forced to either make her leave, or stop her any way I could. I couldn't let her harm anyone else here; she knew that. Least of all you."

"What do you mean, 'anybody else'?" Erik had queried. Charles had looked guiltily away, cupping his whisky glass in his hand.

"She's so full of anger, Erik. She had to put it somewhere. She would try to hurt me, sometimes – lashing out. I think she was trying to provoke me, testing me to see if I had meant it when I told her I wanted her to stay, wanted to help her, that I had hope for her, that she could be a good person. She was trying to prove me wrong. It was very hard, sometimes, to allow her that. To let her do her worst, and still be there for her. But we had a bargain; me, and no-one else. Tonight she broke the bargain."

Erik had pulled Charles into a punishing, frustrated hug.

"Charles Xavier, I don't know sometimes if you're a saint or just a holy fool. You've been letting that harpy torture you for the best part of a week just to try and save her soul? What's the matter with you?" Charles had shaken his head, already slurring his words as sleep stole over him.

"It was worth it, Erik, while there was a chance I could help her. I'll always consider it one of my greatest failures that I could not."

Erik had kept his own counsel about Emma Frost after that, but he was left with the view that if even Charles couldn't find any good in her after over a week of hard hunting, there like as not wasn't any to find. However, it wasn't that which made him turn her away from his army. He wasn't in any position to be picky about the characters of his recruits.

The reason he couldn't entertain the thought of Emma fighting alongside him was nothing to do with her after all – it was to do with Charles, or more specifically, Charles's telepathy. The voice in Erik's head which had welcomed him to his own species; had broken him open and built him back anew; had comforted his wounded heart, and confided in him as no other had done; and once, one single, fatal time, had taken away Erik's command of himself, undone the one thing he had built his world around – his complete trust in Charles.

Erik still felt his spine chill when he remembered his utter helplessness in the face of Charles's power. No. He wouldn't have a telepath by his side; never again.

Emma had been insulted, of course. She had insisted on her own worth, told him he was a fool to refuse her, that they couldn't do without her. He had affected nonchalance, all the while wondering if she wasn't right.

"I can't trust you, Emma. And to be frank, you're awful company." Her mouth had twisted dangerously.

"If you didn't have that helmet on-" she had hissed. He had cut her off imperiously.

"But I do, my dear. You can thank your boyfriend for that. Or maybe not. I'm not sure whether even your telepathic power can stretch to the seventh circle of hell, where he is burning even now – I hope."

Her eyes had widened with incredulous rage – but then she had dropped her head, and muttered "please. I've got nowhere else to go. There's nothing for me now. It was supposed to be our world. And now – they're hunting us. The humans. And they know my face, my name, what I can do. It's only a matter of time before they find out about the Russians' helmet, make them for themselves. I-"

The beautiful lips had twisted around the words. As she looked up at him, she had tried and failed to quell the indignation and hatred in her eyes.

"I ask your forgiveness. Let me serve you, as I once served Sebastian. I will be loyal. We want the same thing, Erik. To kill them all. To rule."

For a long moment, he had held her hot blue gaze, and had an intimation of the bottomless well of hatred for humankind that lay behind them. He could have used that hatred, used her gifts. But no. He shook his head.

"I will not have you with us. Leave now, and never come back."

Azazel had taken him aside afterwards. The red man rarely questioned Erik's decisions – most likely because they so often accorded with his own inclinations. But Erik's dealings with Emma had obviously confused him.

"Comrade. You are sure about this thing? Emma is not good comrade, this is true. But she has power; she could help us much. And I believe what she says; she will not betray us. She wants to follow you, because only she knows how to follow, not to lead. She does not know how to do anything except hating, so she needs us more than we need her – she will do what you say because of this. Do you want that I find her and bring her back? She will come back I think, if you say so."

But Erik had simply repeated "No."

Azazel had shrugged, but hadn't raised the matter again. Erik had come to value the strange, wild mutant who had become his lieutenant so much, not least for this – his ability to accept what he could not change, to deal with the world the way it was without complaint. Erik sat up at the table, narrowed his eyes at the wall bitterly. How could he not have foreseen that Azazel's support had always been entirely contingent on the fact that Erik did not ask anything of him he was not willing to give?

Erik didn't doubt for a moment that if he had pressed the point about Raven, Azazel would have done just as he said, would have left their cause without a backward glance. Like so many of their kind – like Erik himself - he was a lone wolf, not a pack creature. Erik was swimming upstream, against his own nature as well as his peoples', trying to bring them together to fight their common enemy, trying to bring them out into the light when all they had ever known were the shadows. If it weren't for the fact that the alternative didn't bear thinking about, Erik sometimes wondered if he could ever pull it off.

"Hey."

He sprang to his feet, a hand reaching out and summoning a knife from the block on the sideboard. Raven held up both hands placatingly.

"Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to freak you out. Or to fight. I just want to talk."