Erik (1)
It was a shameful truth that Erik had never liked Emma. By turns he’d respected her, worried about her, loathed her, feared her, cared for her in that abstract way he’d cared for everyone in the Brotherhood, but he had never been able to look at her without seeing the absence of Charles. He’d never forgiven her for being herself and not someone else.
They had spoken of it once. She’d found him on the balcony of their current safehouse, a mansion that had belonged to one of Shaw’s old cronies until Erik had slit his throat two days before. It was early enough in the life of the Brotherhood that Erik wore the helmet constantly but hadn’t yet become accustomed to the weight of it, the sweat that pooled and itched around the rim on the back of his neck, the partial deafness and impaired peripheral vision.
“Oh, honey, you’re not special,” she’d told him. “You think you’re the first man to not give a damn about who I am, just what I can do? You don’t even crack the top twenty. Save your self-loathing for worthier causes.”
There had been no way to protest that his wasn’t the dislike of garden-variety misogynists without revealing that it was a deeply personal irrational grudge instead.
“It would be a mistake to think you know what kind of man I am,” he had responded. Inadequate, but the closest he could come to the truth.
The news of her death had earned him another prison transfer. He’d been in Colorado then, or maybe California. The guards were all young and fresh-faced, the worst kind of bigots for barely being bigots at all. It was standard operating procedure for a pair of them to deliver his meals, one to carry the tray and one to keep a plastic gun trained on him at all times even though this prison warden had been overly fond of lacing the food with tranquilizers. Erik spent most of his time struggling to stay awake and cursing his watery muscles. The cell wasn’t soundproof and during one of his rare moments of lucidity he had overheard one guard ask the other what they would do with “the body.”
“It’s not like they can do an autopsy or cremation, y’know?” The boy’s voice had barely changed, he was so young. He sounded earnestly curious. “But like, real diamonds—talk about being worth more dead than alive, man.”
Even half-conscious, Erik’s rage had been volcanic. His weakened metal-sense had spasmed and he had flung it outward, where it caught on the door at the other end of the long corridor. The door itself was fortified against him but one of the guards had left it cracked open, barely an inch but enough for Erik to feel the metal in the room on the other side. He had hooked his powers into every atom of it and pulled with all his strength; the hurricane of computers, chairs, tables, and filing cabinets that had crushed the two guards against the cell like insects on a car windshield had barely registered before he’d fallen unconscious again.
The warden after that had preferred electroshock.
“Erik,” a voice said. Sharp, impatient. Then again, “Erik!”
Erik blinked several times, shook his head as he was yanked back to the present.
“With us?” Charles said. Raven looked alarmed but Charles was still too angry to be worried, cold and unsympathetic in that way he had when he was forced to leave an argument unfinished. Erik’s own irritation still hummed under his skin but his shock was louder. Once anger would have taken precedence over everything; now he was too easily overwhelmed by other emotions, forced to address them before he lost control.
“They lied to me,” he said, wondering at his own surprise.
“Or someone lied to them,” Raven said. “Seems obvious now. This goes deeper than the CIA—of course they’d spread it down the ladder that she was dead. No further questions, no more paper trail, officially she’s off the books, no one goes looking.”
“You couldn’t have known, darling,” Charles said.
“I should have,” Raven said without guilt or self-pity—like it was an irrefutable fact. “But that doesn’t matter now. We move forward. I’m going to fill in Hank and you’re going to sort yourselves out enough to be useful and then find Alex and meet us in the lab. Okay?”
As soon as she went back into the house Erik leaned over and picked up her remaining pancake, folding it in two and eating half in one bite. He was suddenly ravenous.
“Your sister’s getting very bossy,” he said as he chewed.
“Better her in charge of strategy than either of us, at this point,” Charles sighed. He seemed about to say something else; instead he closed his mouth and watched Erik polish off the rest of Raven’s breakfast with the fascinated revulsion of an entomologist observing a mating ritual that concluded with one partner devouring the other. Erik wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and licked his fingers clean when he was done, which he knew Charles found particularly obnoxious.
“You’re going to need to get over this one, Charles. I’m not going to apologize,” he said.
Charles didn’t look especially surprised or disappointed. “You’re a complete wanker.”
“You knew that.”
“And I’m in no danger of forgetting, so you really don’t need to keep reminding me.”
Erik cracked a wry smile. It wasn’t feigned. There was a part of him close to the surface that found arguing with Charles familiar, even comforting. Not the congenial bickering they’d engaged in since Charles first regained consciousness, about books or television programs or the children, but a real argument that threw the massive ideological divide between them into sharp relief and reminded Erik that cleaving together in a time of mutual trauma was not the same as learning to compromise. He had been forgetting that on his own, no telepathic influence needed. But there was no danger like complacency and as Charles healed, became more himself, their old disagreements grew more unavoidable. Before long Charles would realize that Erik, for all his current exhaustion and post-incarceration unsteadiness, had only cracked psychologically, not philosophically. Depending on whether that realization came consciously or unconsciously one of two things would happen: Charles would tell him to leave, that he was a danger to the school, or he would change Erik’s mind for him and odds were neither of them would ever know. Neither of those outcomes were acceptable.
The projection’s words had opened up a third possibility, however reluctant Charles was to acknowledge it.
Understandably reluctant, Erik could admit now that the news about Emma had blunted the edges of his anger. Charles needed to be a good man—or at least be able to think of himself as one. He couldn’t bear the thought that there was darkness in him, that he was no different from the rest of them in that way. It sickened him that he could so easily be a danger not only to those he loved but to the whole world. Erik had watched him struggle to piece himself back together in the aftermath of torture all these weeks and seen also the moment when he was effortlessly overwhelmed by that part of his splintered psyche that he pretended didn’t exist. Erik had always worked in tandem with his dark side; Charles’s had seized control without his consent. The resulting self-loathing—there was a logic to it.
But unless Charles made him forget it Erik would always remember the projection’s honest confusion when he said they couldn’t work together, the ease with which it had overturned all his assumptions about Charles’s moral inflexibility. It had been a manipulative creature, but not a liar. Just as it had promised, it had given him hope. They could face the coming war together if only Charles would exhibit the same pragmatism consciously and understand that letting humankind fend for itself didn’t make him any less moral, any less perfect, any less himself.
“If there is a chance,” he said carefully, “any chance at all that we can ensure Logan’s future never comes to pass, we would be fools not to take it. The Sentinel project was decommissioned but you know Trask wasn’t the last of his kind. They won’t rest and neither can we. The men who took you, the men who took Emma—they must be stopped.”
“And that would be enough?” Charles said, unimpressed. “Look me in the eye, Erik, and tell me it would be enough to take down a few dozen scientists, demolish a few labs. Because I don’t think it would be, not for you.”
“It would be a start,” Erik said. This moment was too pivotal to lie.
“And where would it end?”
“With a brave new world built out of whatever mutants and humans we please, just as you said.”
Charles sighed impatiently but he wouldn’t meet Erik’s eyes, which was several steps up from the unblinking glare of before. It meant he was thinking, no longer consumed with the kind of resentment that would make conversation impossible.
Then he laughed, quiet and bitter. “It hardly matters now, does it? Once Raven completes what I’m sure will be another terrifyingly efficient rescue mission, you’ll have your own telepath back. One who you know already agrees with you. I’m hardly worth the trouble when you have someone who won’t fight you every step of the way.”
That wasn’t true—Emma had disagreed with him more frequently than Mystique, in the old days—but it didn’t seem the right time to point that out.
Erik dared to lay his hand over Charles’s, then lace their fingers together when he didn’t pull away immediately. He had to play this carefully now, appear vulnerable but not uncertain. “It was always you I wanted, Charles. And I have no interest in remaking the Brotherhood as it was ten years ago. The world has changed, we’ve all changed. Mystique said we move forward—I say we do it together.”
“If you demand an answer from me now, my friend, you may not like the one you get,” Charles warned.
Erik nodded reluctant understanding. He looked away, gave Charles a moment to examine his own thoughts. The sun had risen well above the treeline now, encroaching visibly on the cool shadows of the verandah, and the students’ voices echoed high and loud from the mansion’s north face. A feeling like déjà vu swept over him, a familiar sense that time was running out. Even as he shied away from it he had found something close to peace here. Closer than he’d ever thought possible, in any case. The surface part of him that scorned Charles’s naiveté was undercut by a childish longing for stability, consistency. It shrieked in his undermind and sounded like himself during those first days/weeks/months of imprisonment, when he’d screamed until his voice had given out. Perhaps it was only subconscious telepathic manipulation that had made the last weeks seem so idyllic. Perhaps they really had been. There was no way to know and to that part of himself that had grown weak but just wouldn’t die it didn’t matter. His emotions stained him like blood, immutable even when they were no longer tangible, carried with him forever.
He wondered how long it could have lasted, if not for the news of Emma.
“We may not have a later, Charles. It could be now or never.”
He saw the moment Charles wrapped the mantle of Professor X around his doubts. Stern and cool, he said, “The X-Men will aid the Brotherhood with Emma’s rescue in any way we can. If she needs time to convalesce, she’s welcome here. And if she’s able I would—appreciate the perspective of another telepath regarding my own condition, as Raven suggested. After the mission you and I will talk again.” His voice softened. “An honest talk, about what we really believe. No matter how uncomfortable those truths.”
“Thank you,” Erik said. “I’ve never lied to you, Charles. I don’t intend to start now. All I ask is that you return the favor.”
Before Charles could respond there was the patter of bare feet running across hardwood floors from inside the mansion; they both turned just in time to see Ororo skid to a stop by catching her tiny body against the doorframe. She was panting and wide-eyed with curiosity and kept glancing back over her shoulder, too breathless at first to speak.
“Professor?”
“Yes, darling, what is it?” Charles said patiently.
“There’s a lady here? She says she’s an old friend of Mr. Magneto? I don’t think she feels good.” She lowered her voice a little like she was sharing a secret. “She’s really pretty, like a princess.”
Erik didn’t even have time to glance to the side and see if there was consternation on Charles’s face to mirror his own. A very pale, very slender hand curled over Ororo’s shoulder and Emma Frost stepped out of the darkness of the mansion and into the sunlight, almost imperceptibly leaning on the child for balance and still white as the ghost Erik had assumed she was until an hour ago. It was the pallor of sun deprivation and malnutrition and her ivory go-go boots and mini-dresses had been replaced by a white prison jumpsuit underneath a white denim jacket several sizes too big. Even in her human form something about her had always sparkled; she seemed duller now. Erik half-expected light to pass through her instead of reflect off her.
She managed a strained smile. “As fun as it is to watch you boys gaping like fish out of water and much as I’d like to catch up in a leisurely fashion, this princess has some bad news. Your kingdom’s under attack.”