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Erik hears a tap at his door and he rushes to it, expecting Charles. He startles backwards when he finds Elder Shaw on his threshold instead, looking serious.
“You’re still thinking of leaving the village,” Elder Shaw says, his voice hard and his face stony. Erik feels cold all over. If Charles truly could see color when looking at someone, his would be a brittle blue, fragile like the icicles that hang from his eaves in the winter. “We shall speak of the humans only once and I want it to be the end of it.”
Erik nods, hastily. Some of the Afflicted, from time to time, disappear. It always happens at night, they don’t arrive at the morning shared meal and everyone knows what has happened but no one dares speak of it. They go on like nothing has happened and Erik wonders if that will be the case when he disappears, if Charles will simply go on, eat his breakfast, hold class and find someone else’s color to admire.
“Your mother tried to hide what you were, tried to hide you. They killed her because of you, because of what you are.”
Erik feels the cold spread, twisting and becoming a horrible numbness in his extremities. Anything metal in his house from the pot set over the fireplace to the hinges on his door start to jitter. “Why are you telling me this blackness?”
Elder Shaw is looking about the room, at the jittering fixtures and trembling door. There’s something almost hungry on his features and he smiles, the expression as cold as Eric feels. “So you will understand the risks from what you desire.”
“It’s not desire,” Erik spits and something inside can’t believe that he is speaking to an Elder this way, that he’s being so bold. Shaw is a man who had a hand in saving everyone in the village and continues to do so. Erik isn’t exactly sure where he was plucked from considering he was too young to remember but he knows at least Remy has a few tales to tell, scars from experiments and night terrors. Even Remy doesn’t know specifics but in his younger days, before he became closed off and surly he would speak of creatures in masks that cut him and cut him and cut him, trying to make him scream.
Trying to force him to make items he touched explode.
“I care about the Afflicted. I care for us and do not want to see another of us die senselessly,” Eri k says.
“There is always sense in death,” Elder Shaw says, shaking his head slowly. “You’re just don’t understand yet. I only fear for your life and the lives of all we protect here.”
“Is that what you fear?” Erik asks and is surprised when Elder Shaw’s eyes narrow. He hesitates before responding, something Charles always told him was the liar’s pause.
“We can bring forward your Migration,” Elder Shaw says abruptly and it doesn’t sound like an offer, it sounds like a threat. “You might just be ready for it now, hmm?”
Erik opens his mouth, but then closes it again. Once more his thoughts turn to Charles, whether Charles would miss him if he were gone, whether Charles would do something reckless. It’s this that freezes his tongue to the roof of his mouth, unable to press the issue. Elder Shaw watches him for a moment and then seems to see something that satisfies him. He nods once slowly, a barely perceptible up and down motion of his head. “Maybe Charles might be-“
“No,” Erik blurts, putting his hands up in an unconscious gesture of surrender. “We’re both... I’m sorry, I’ll drop it.”
“Good,” Elder Shaw says, seemingly appeased. He claps his hand together and this time his nod is a vigorous one. “Now, I hear there might be a wedding?”
“If you, Elder Frost and Elder Stryker would approve,” Erik says, thrown by this turn in subject but also grateful for it.
“Of course. A celebration will be just what everyone needs,” he says with a smile.
Charles is woken again by a sound that at first he thinks is a scream. He starts to rise when the sound resolves itself properly and gooseflesh breaks out all over his skin. There’s a loud banging at his door and Charles swings his legs out of bed as he hears the sound of Raven’s bare feet running to the front of their house. The door bangs open and then there is the sound of panicked voices.
“Did you set the alarm off by accident?” Charles demands when he reaches the living room and the blurred shapes of Raven and what he assumes to be Sean and Alex move towards him. “It’s not a toy.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Raven says, her voice thready with fear and that chases whatever lingering grogginess Charles had clinging to him away. Charles reaches out and heedless of the Law, grabs a handful of Sean’s shirt at his collar and shakes him.
“Is this true?”
“I saw the bad lights in the distance,” Sean says in a rush. “The ones we were always told to watch out for. The red lights.”
“If this is some kind of joke,” Charles begins but then he feels Alex gently ease Sean away from him, put himself between Sean and Charles.
“I was in the Tower with him. I saw them too,” Alex says.
“Right,” Charles says and waves the three younger ones towards the large rug in the center of their living room floor. “There’s no time for you to make it back to your own homes. Quickly now.”
Raven darts towards the rug and flings it aside, revealing a trapdoor. A similar trapdoor can be found in every house built inside the village. Raven pulls the hatch up, revealing a crude staircase and a small space under the floor and Alex and Sean dart towards her as panicked cries start to filter into their home.
Alex and Sean have disappeared and Raven is halfway down, propping the trapdoor open with one hand when she looks back to Charles who hasn’t moved from the doorway of their house. “Charles, please close the door,” Raven whispers hoarsely.
“I think... Erik is outside,” Charles says slowly, not certain why he is sure about it, but he is.
“He’s safe inside his own home or somewhere else. Everyone’s heard the alarm by now, Charles please!” Raven implores as Alex and then Sean’s heads reappear, eyes both wide and frightened.
“He’s coming to make sure we’re safe,” Charles say s, more determined now, feeling like he is glued in place.
“You said we’d hide,” Sean pipes up, voice high and panicked. “Charles, you’d said we’d hide. They’ll come and take us away.”
“He’s-“ Charles starts to say and then he’s squinting, almost having to shield his eyes because something bright is coming his way, fast. Something brighter than the sun. He’s grabbed around the waist, almost lifted clear off his feet and the door is slamming shut behind them. He’s being passed down the stairs, Raven’s hands grabbing at him and the light dims, resolves itself, becomes more familiar.
Becomes Erik.
“You’re fearless in a way that I’ll never know,” Charles says when Erik explains his confrontation with Elder Shaw, how he nearly brought ruin on them all.
Why he feels responsible for the Sentinels looking their way after all the years of peace.
“I know fear,” Erik says, wishing he could grasp Charles’ hand in his own but knowing he shouldn’t, not with the bustle of wedding preparations around them. Hank had been surprised and pleased with Raven’s non-to-subtle advances and had leaped at the opportunity to accept her proposal even if he was the one who ultimately asked the question for appearances sake.
Raven made him sink to one knee in the center of the village and had Sean ring the gathering bell to make sure everyone bore witness.
“Just not as others do,” Erik says and sighs as Angel darts over to them, pleading with Charles to follow her, he was desperately needed.
At the long banquet table, Charles sits to Raven’s left, her right taken by her new husband. The wedding feast is only the second part of the night’s celebration, the first having already taken place and been the exchanging of vows and the third the planned dancing to the small hours of the morning still to come.
Everyone is expecting Hank to say a few words and Charles feels Hank’s growing nervousness, the almost palpable nature of it making Charles queasy. When the murmurs start up, impatience at having to wait for the feast to begin, Charles abruptly rises much like he did in the meeting hall and he hears Hank let out an audible sigh of relief.
Charles raises his glass and he hears all others do so also. Charles clears his throat and says, “We are grateful for the time we have been given.” It’s an odd toast, Charles knows it as soon as he’s uttered the words and it’s met with silence, everyone else not sure what to make of it. Slowly, glasses are brought to lips and then the awkward moment passes as impatience snaps and the wedding feast begins.
Charles sits, Raven leaning into his space and poking out her tongue. She’s smiling at him straight after it though as she passes Charles a sweet roll. “Must you always be so odd,” Raven chides and Charles chuckles.
“You’d be disappointed if I weren’t,” he says.
Later, Charles sits on the hillside with the others, the greenhouse, now converted into a dance hall, not yet ready to receive them according to Angel. She’d stolen most of Charles’ class to help string lights and apparently they’d made a hash of things and Angel had been forced to set everything to rights herself. Someone drops down beside him and Charles immediately bristles, recognising Remy.
“I had a sister,” Remy says and Charles blinks, unprepared for this bit of news.
“What was she like?” Charles asks, curious despite himself.
“Saucy and we fought endlessly,” Remy says and Charles is surprised into a laugh. He can feel someone’s gaze on the back of his neck and he knows immediately that it’s Erik, that Erik was probably on his way to join Charles himself when Remy beat him there.
“I can relate,” Charles says. “Can I ask her name?”
Remy doesn’t answer for a moment and Charles feels Erik’s attention like something weighted. He doesn’t mean to press but Remy holds himself apart from everyone except maybe Janos and Charles knows it isn’t good for him, that this might be the only chance he has to get Remy to unburden himself, perhaps offer some measure of solace. “Why didn’t the Elders bring her here?”
“They told me that she didn’t survive, that she tried to fight,” Remy says and Charles absorbs that information, swallows hard. “There’s evil outside this village and if Erik persists, he’ll bring it here,” Remy hisses, his genial tone disappearing.
“He wouldn’t do anything to threaten the village,” Charles insists and Remy snorts.
“He can’t see past his own ridiculous ideas. He thinks he knows what’s best for us but he doesn’t know anything. I won’t let him take us down with him.”
“You’ll do nothing to harm him,” Charles snaps, turning on Remy who has stood and moved away a pace. Charles can feel Erik approaching and wishes that Remy would go before this becomes a confrontation he can’t control. Erik has been volatile of late and Charles has started to fear what he might do if pushed.
“I won’t do anything unless he does,” Remy grates out and prudently flees just as Erik reaches Charles’s side.
Erik thinks he was quiet but being quiet enough not to wake others and quiet enough not to wake Charles are very different things. Charles emerges from his house, looking delightfully rumpled and with a section of hair at the back of his head sticking straight up. As soon as Erik notices it, Charles makes an annoyed noise and pats at it before finding Erik unerringly in the darkness like he always does, dropping down beside him with bare inches between their thighs.
“Do you think the Elders will come about the Sentinels?” Charles asks through a thick yawn. He pulls the robe he’s wearing tighter over his sleeps pants, fingers plucking at the knot at his waist.
“To see why we attracted their attention?” Erik asks and Charles nods. He tips sideways a little, swinging closer to Erik like he’s going to drop his head on Erik’s shoulder but stops just shy of doing so.
“Yes,” Charles agrees. He yawns again and this time it’s accompanied by a shiver.
“It’s cold outside. You should go back in,” Erik urges gently, looking out towards the small ring of houses at the center of the village and the meeting hall further down. There’s mist on the ground, a fine coating that makes everything look almost dream-like. Erik can’t see his house from Charles’, and couldn’t see Charles’ from his.
The meeting hall stands between them.
“Why are you sitting on my porch Erik?” Charles asks gently, his voice also pitched low like any kind of volume will break the spell between them.
“I just... it’s not safe,” Erik says, unsettled by Shaw’s visit, his threats. Erik is frightened to go to sleep in his own house, to wake in the morning and find Charles gone like the mist will be.
“There are other porches,” Charles says. When Erik doesn’t respond, he lets a small sigh escape. “Do you find me boring?” he asks and Erik swings his gaze to Charles, studies his profile and the way it’s softened by broken sleep. “I always wanted to do exciting things, like that game at the Stump. You held the record and they still say it’ll never be broken.”
“It’s a stupid child’s game,” Erik dismisses. “It’s not that you couldn’t play but that you would never have bothered. What made you think of it anyway?”
“You’re brave,” Charles says simply and Erik snorts, the sound ripped from the back of his throat. Charles can’t have been more wrong if he tried. Fear drove Erik out of his bed, made him break out in a cold sweat at the very thought of... “I saw you out the window,” Charles says and when Erik’s attention snaps back to him instead of Shaw again Charles chuckles. “I’m still not going to tell you what color you are so you might as well stop asking.”
“Doesn’t it make you angry?” Erik asks, thinks of Daniel and how fragile he’d been. He had fallen maybe a foot, possibly only a tiny bit more but he’d smacked his head on a jutting rock and had bled to death on the inside, or so Elder Frost had told them. He’d bled to death on the inside where they couldn’t see, where they couldn’t staunch the flow.
Despite their Afflictions, they had been able to do little to save him, nothing really.
“What?” Charles says, quiet.
“That your sight is going, that eventually you’ll be completely blind.”
“I can see perfectly well,” Charles huffs and when Erik looks at him, Charles smiles, something small and secret in it. “Just not like others do.”
“Well I feel fear too,” Erik says and when Charles makes an unbelieving noise, Erik very deliberately takes Charles’ hand in his own, threads their fingers together and squeezes for the barest of seconds. He hears Charles’ breath, a sharp intake that sets Erik’s own heart racing. “Just not like others do. When I feel fear, it’s thinking about what could happen to you.”
Erik drops Charles’ hand but Charles reaches out, grabs a bunch of fabric at Erik’s shoulder and tugs sideways. Erik goes, not really sure what this is but then his face bumps up against Charles’, foreheads colliding and sliding. He’s got Charles’ warm breath on his face and it’s thrilling unlike anything he’s ever felt before and then their lips meet and it becomes so much better, sparks running across his skin like he’s on fire, like they both are.
Charles groans, a helpless sound that breaks any kind of willpower Erik has or was capable of having. His brain is working just enough to know that anyone could see them where they are, that either Janos or Remy would love the excuse to bring the might of the Elders down on their heads, bring their Migration forward or just have them disappear. They’re breaking one of the most fundamental Laws and Erik can’t find it in himself to care.
Erik grabs double-handfuls of Charles’ robe, unmindful of the way it pulls apart in his hands and drags Charles off the porch and around to the back of his house. There’s deep shadow behind, Charles’ house unlit by the lanterns that dot the village because the space between his house and the next one is narrow, no one walks behind it.
Erik pushes Charles’ robe the rest of the way aside, hasty now and Charles grunts when the bare sweep of his shoulder blades meets the cold wall of his house. Erik releases Charles’ robe and gets one hand dug deep into Charles’ sleep pants, grabbing at the hot firm length underneath. Charles lets out another sound, high and desperate, a sound that’s going to echo through Erik for years to come.
“How do you... how do you know what to do?” Charles manages to get out, more a grunt than actual words. He’s becoming harder in Erik’s fist, slippery now with want and his head has dropped back, throat exposed in a long pale line in the moonlight, the most beautiful thing Erik’s ever seen.
“I know what pleases me,” Erik says, dirty and low. “I often please myself at the very thought of you.”
Charles laughs before he groans again, back bowing out and pushing himself up harder into Erik’s moving hand, rutting with abandon now. He’s obviously starved for touch, as Erik knows he is himself if being so close without Charles so much as getting a hand on him in return is any indication. Then Charles does reach out, gets a hand up and underneath Erik’s own jacket and shirt, pushing them up and out of the way and his fingers scrabbling at the bare flesh he finds.
Suddenly Erik is seeing how Charles sees, how Charles sees him. It’s like a feedback loop of pure want and light, the darkness retreating from even the very corners of the village under its power. Erik gasps and Charles does too. Erik wants to say I know what you mean now, when you say you can see perfectly well but that would require more coherence than Erik is capable of at the moment because Charles is coming, hot and messy and perfect in his hand and Erik is too, untouched but only physically, the orgasm wrenched out of him as much as he’s wrenched it out of Charles.
Charles feels mushy-headed, registers dimly that Erik tucks him back inside his pants, pulls his robe back around tight and ties it. He’s walked back around to the front of his house and right before they hit the circle of light cast by the lantern set on Charles’ porch, Erik gives him a little shove and lets go. His fingers trail up, brush over the bare space at Charles’ nape where his hair curls and then the touch is gone completely and Charles tries not to make too obvious a noise at the loss of contact.
The problem with having something forbidden that you didn’t know could be so good is that Charles knows he’s now going to crave it, pure and simple. It’s going to occupy his waking thoughts, the way Erik pushed him back, took him apart and the way Erik had alluded to thinking of him when he touched himself in the same way.
Charles wants to touch Erik in return, wishes fervently that he’d had the chance but he knows that he did in his own way and that he’s broken more than the one rule this night, that he’s in a lot of trouble when the Elders return because they have a way of just knowing what happens in the village.
They don’t speak again, Erik merely watches Charles until he’s back inside his house, perhaps reassured by the rising sun. Charles isn’t sure what exactly happened to make Erik so... fearful is not the right word but Erik is certainly worried about something, found an interesting way to change the subject when Charles was about to ask him that Charles couldn’t argue with.
Charles is worried that Erik regrets what they’ve done, that perhaps it’s ruined the fine balance they’ve maintained throughout the years. When Charles risks a glance back however, he’s reassured to see Erik smiling gently, possibly even a little dopily.
Charles had watched Erik at Raven’s wedding, at the celebration afterwards. He’d watched Erik dodge many invitations to dance, didn’t blame him because the dancing was always stilted even though everyone tried to have a good time because not being able to touch made things awkward. Raven and Hank made it work though, moved around each other in a way that seemed more intimate than if they’d been in a hard clinch, no space between them.
“Will you dance with me at our wedding?” Charles calls right before he disappears inside his house, feeling bold. Erik laughs, a fully body thing and any remaining nervousness Charles is feeling drains away at the sound. He turns to his door but hears footsteps behind him, a quick clatter that he turns into and there Erik is, almost touching again.
Erik doesn’t close the distance but he’s leaning in close enough that Charles is curved backwards so that their eyes are still locked. “I will do whatever you ask of me,” Erik says. He smiles, a lift of just one side of his mouth. “Even if it’s that I must dance with you at our wedding.”
Erik is heading for the main building and the communal meal when something hits him in the back of the head. He looks down in confusion and sees a spoon at his feet. Erik leans down to pick it up and this time a fork catches him on the cheek, not exactly painful but surprising.
Erik straightens slowly, sees Janos and Remy standing behind him, Janos with a handful of cutlery which is almost absurd enough to be funny. If it wasn’t a fistful of metal objects, Erik might have even thought it was funny. Something clenches tight in his stomach though when he sees Janos and Remy, the look on their faces, the intent there.
“What are you doing?” Erik asks slowly, hoping despite everything that this is just another of their harmless pranks, that they don’t really mean to do what Erik thinks they are doing, to force his hand and show his Affliction. To break the greatest of their Laws.
To reach a point of no return.
“No, what are you doing?” Remy asks, a sneer on his face. Janos hands him something, a large dessert spoon and Remy palms it, tosses it up in the air a few times. Erik thinks the items Janos has in hand are probably not all harmless spoons and forks, actually he knows as much as the metal calls to him, tells him exactly the size and shape of itself, snags at his awareness.
Remy is just working up to his finale, perhaps gathering his nerve to do what he thinks needs to be done.
“You’re putting us all in jeopardy, taking our lives in your hands,” Remy says and flicks the spoon at Erik. He doesn’t move, lets it glance off his shoulder even though it’s hard to resist the temptation to take it, snatch it out of the air and turn it back on his attacker, make it a sharper weapon, shape it and let it find flesh and bone. “You don’t know what’s out there.”
“Neither do you, not really,” Erik spits. “You were just a child when you came here and you were told horror stories like we all were. I know you have snatches of memory, that terrible things were done to you but how do we know that that’s all there is waiting outside for us?”
“The Elders tell us,” Janos cuts in but his voice is just the tiniest bit wobbly, a touch unsure. Janos has a mean streak, it’s true but he’s also a born follower and Erik can tell that something in his voice, in his presence has Janos almost itching to listen to him, to fall in line. Remy seems to sense it too because he jostles Janos with his shoulder, forces him a couple of steps sideways and Janos gives him an annoyed look.
“We live in fear, cowering like children under their blankets when a storm hits but do we need to? Do we really need to?” With Erik’s question, hearing it out loud he wonders why he himself has put up with it for so long, bent to rules that others have set down for reasons that become murkier the older he gets. The Sentinels have never breeched the village, nothing but their light passing over their heads and the whole thing has started to reek to Erik of deception.
Erik remembers Shaw, how he’d seemed almost hungry in Erik’s presence, like he was waiting for something. There’d been a shine in his eyes when Erik had rattled the metal in his house, something akin to satisfaction, a look that Erik thought might be on his own face when what he was working on came out exactly how he was expecting or maybe even better than he was hoping.
Erik had left himself vulnerable and worse still, had left Charles vulnerable. It’s easy to claim that you’ve saved someone when they’re too young to know any better. It’s easy to lie to the very young, have them grow up believing that lie with all their hearts. He doesn’t know anything about the Elders other than what they’ve told him, that much he knows for sure and Erik doesn’t know why it hasn’t occurred to him before now how very wrong that is.
Something sharp catches him in the forehead, unexpected and Erik does flinch this time, feels the warm trickle of blood at his brow. Erik plucks the nail that caught in his shirt when it bounced off his head and holds it tweezed between two fingers, contemplates it and how such a small thing could be lethal in his hands.
Is that what this is then, Erik wonders. Are they not being kept safe from the world but the world being kept safe from them?
The idea is so reasonable, so rational that Erik is sure that it’s true. The Sentinels are just farce, a story to keep them in check. Monsters that have no emotion, whose only purpose is to destroy them and those of their kind. The disappearances are the work of the Elders, they don’t pretend otherwise but they also remain unexplained, the Elders feeling confident that all within the village are young enough, impressionable enough to remain silent and not question them.
Erik is suddenly, horribly angry. More angry than he’s ever felt in his life. He’s sick to death of being at the mercy of others and when something else comes at him, Erik stops it. It’s a butter knife this time, dull and so probably about as dangerous as the dessert spoon but Erik halts it all the same, no longer content with being powerless.
He hears a tiny gasp from Janos and a grunt from Remy. He turns the knife over and over in the air, touching it with nothing but his thoughts, contemplating the way it’s his, that every piece of metal in the village is his to do with as he commands. Erik wishes Shaw, Frost or even Stryker were in front of him but since they’re not, Remy and Janos will have to do.
Erik snatches the remaining handful of cutlery and odd nails from Janos’ hand. He feels resistance, Janos making an instinctive grab for the items but the metal wants to come to Erik and it does, circling him like birds of prey. Erik feels how malleable each and every piece is, soft like butter and he shapes them, forks and spoons and butter knives alike into points. They sing as they slice through the air like their edges are sharp enough to cut even the wind.
“Remy,” Janos says, a sound like a frightened moan. Janos, Erik can see out of the corner of his eye, takes a step backwards, two more before Remy snaps a hand out and grabs his sleeve, holds him in place.
“The Elders are going to take you,” Remy says, voice high and hysterical but triumphant, his eyes huge. “You won’t be up for Migration, you’ll just disappear.”
“What makes you think I would let them do that?” Erik asks. The swarm of metal around him spins faster and for a fraction of a second Erik’s attention lapses and he feels the bite of one of the blades on the back of his hand. He thinks crazily that now they’ve tasted blood, they’ll want more.
“They’ll... they’ve got to,” Remy says, suddenly unsure himself. His face is starting to pinch closed like he’s realising that the situation is spinning out of his control. Erik flicks one of the refashioned blades at him, not a lethal strike but it clips Remy’s upper arm and he cries out, clapping a hand to the injury, blood oozing between his fingers.
“Stop it!” Janos calls, shaken. A wind whips up around him, a small grey funnel that sends some of Erik’s blades into the dirt before he gets proper control of them. So distracted, he doesn’t see Remy dip and grab up a handful of stones, see them glow to life in his hand.
Remy tosses the stones at Erik and he ducks sideways. The stones explode when they hit the ground at Erik’s feet and he’s tossed over, the breath knocked out of him and tiny fragments of stone catching him in the cheeks, across his brow. He’s dropped his own projectiles in his surprise but he now reaches out and takes them up again, sensing but not seeing someone coming at him from the side.
Some deep-down self preservation instinct kicks in and Erik blindly strikes out with one of the reshaped blades, nothing getting through to him but that someone is moving at him, fast. Erik hears a pained grunt and then suddenly silence, Janos’ wind died down to nothing.
Erik swipes at his face, blood in his eyes from the cuts on his face. His vision is blurry at first and he sees someone on their knees, slumped over with their forehead pressed to the ground like they’re prostrating themselves. Erik thinks it’s an odd thing to do but then through the haze he recognizes that curve of back, knows it as intimately as his own because he’s watched it from a distance and more recently up close for more years than he can remember.
“Charles,” Erik breathes through a throat that suddenly feels closed. He registers briefly that Janos and Remy are frozen lumps standing together, white and shocked but then Erik is climbing to his feet and someone is screaming Charles’ name again and he thinks it might be him.
Erik skids to a stop on his knees, almost mirroring Charles’ position as he gets a hold of Charles’ shoulders, pulls him upright. He sees Charles cupping something at his belly and when he pries Charles’ hand away he sees what he’s dreading, the hilt of one of his sharpened blades protruding from Charles’ stomach.
Charles makes a pained noise when Erik turns him over, lowers him so Charles is cradled against his chest. He starts to say, “Don’t... don’t... don’t...” but he doesn’t know what, can’t finish the sentence for the life of him. He looks up, pins Janos with his gaze and says, “Go get some help, for fuck’s sake go get some help!”
Janos jerks like he’s been poked and then spins and runs back towards the cluster of buildings at the village’s centre. Erik’s attention switches to Remy, narrows on the chain around Remy’s neck, the one leftover he has from his childhood, the one possession he brought into the village with him. Erik feels it leap under his concentration, jerk up and backwards. Remy immediately scrabbles at it as Erik watches bruises bloom under its tightening hold.
Charles’ fingers bump up against Erik’s jaw, touch light but insistent. “Don’t,” Charles manages, unconsciously repeating Eric’s earlier plea. “He didn’t do this.”
You did, Charles doesn’t say but Erik hears it anyway, as clear as if Charles had spoken aloud.
Charles casts his mind out, grown careless by the fog of pain and the need to find something to ground him. He bumps up against Raven first, her thoughts narrowed in a way that's familiar and also expected. There's a lot of worry, more than she's letting on and there's also a survivalist's brain ticking away, weighing options and making plans. Her thoughts snag on the bare library they have, the range of books on offer and whether anything can help.
Charles moves farther out, almost trips over Sean and then Alex, huddled together on Charles' porch, reminding Charles of he and Erik what seems like years ago and must have only been days or even hours before now. Sean's mind is a jumble of worry much like Raven's but it's more disorganised, a fidgety mess that Charles is reassured by because it’s familiar.
Alex is more closed off but Charles manages to parse that while there is concern there for Charles himself, Alex is already worrying about what it means for the rest of them too. Charles is surprised to find that Alex has the mind of a leader, will probably take his and Erik's place as the person the others will look to when they leave. Alex is quiet and contained which means it was easy to look over his potential when stood next to his brother.
Charles stretches further out still, to the very edges of the village until the murmur of background voices drops away and there is only one, the mind he’s looking for, the one he probably always will be drawn to. Charles is feeling exhausted in a way that doesn't have much to do with his injuries but he gathers himself enough to say, not even going to say goodbye?.
He feels Erik reel, startled and searching. When he confirms to himself that he's alone, he's able to figure out what's happening, where the voice in his mind has come from. He doesn't shy away though as Charles fears but instead seems to mentally grab a hold of Charles, yank him close.
Am I going somewhere?
I feel... it's like you're already out of my reach
Charles knows the truth of the words bone-deep as soon as he lets them go. Erik has always held himself apart from everyone, even Charles on occasion but Charles has never felt Erik so distant before, like a great chasm opened between them as soon as blade met flesh. Something was cut loose in Erik at that moment.
I'm sorry, I...
It's an apology, not a denial.
I'm too dangerous, Erik continues and Charles sighs.
You, my friend, are someone I will never fear, Charles says and feels Erik chuckle, an odd reverberation through his skull. Will you come back for me? Charles presses, hating the note of desperation he knows is in the thought, also wary of the power of it. Charles knows that he could make it a command instead of a question so very easily, compel Erik to do as he wishes, remain close. I could make you stay.
He also knows he could never actually do that.
I'm not going anywhere, Erik tries to reassure him, but even though he doesn't put the actual thought into words, the funny thing about having a purely mental conversation is Charles hears the yet as clearly as if Erik had.
“I’ve closed the wounds, but there’s still the risk of infection.”
Erik watches Raven fidget, shuffle from foot to foot with a book clutched to her chest. She looks pensive, wanting to ask but not sure how. Erik doesn’t need to be able to see into minds to know what she wants of him. “What can we do?”
“Hope for the best?” Raven says, biting at her lip, white against blue that’s always a little startling.
“If there was no limitations, what could we do?” Erik presses. He’s still at the edge of the village, has been at the border for hours. He can’t bear to see Charles pale against bedsheets, knows he’s a coward but just can’t handle it. Helplessness has never sat well with him and he wouldn’t be able to abide it, not Charles’ but his own in the face of it.
“What are you asking me?” Raven says slowly and Erik sighs, a long, low sound.
“Answer my question,” Erik says levelly.
“If the chance infection is contained, he could survive,” Raven says, words a flood now he’s given her permission. “There are medicines.” She holds the book up and out to him, fingers tripping over words he doesn’t bother to read. “Nothing we have here but maybe the Elders-“
“You know they’ll just take him away. We’ll never know what happens to him. Do you want that?”
“No,” Raven says, startled into tears by the very idea. “No, Erik, please-“
“If he dies...” Erik begins, curling his hands into fists. He turns to Raven who has once again pulled the book back towards herself, is hugging it like it can offer any kind of protection. “Make a list of what he needs,” Erik instructs and Raven nods quickly.
“I can come-“
“Stay with Charles,” Erik says quickly. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
“Will he really return, do you think?” Charles asks because he’s not sure. Erik isn’t close enough to feel anymore and there’d been such a distance to him, shadows clouding over his color even before he left that it had become difficult to read his intentions.
Raven puts a cool hand to his brow, strokes lightly. “Always to you,” she says with a smile in her voice.
The forest that surrounds their village is dense. Erik pushes through branches with bare hands, unmindful of the scratches and cuts. When he’s been walking for three hours, the sensation of metal all around him is so strong and all encompassing that it drives him to his knees, panting and overwhelmed. He’s lucky because at that moment two men pass by where he is crouched, talking to each other in low voices.
Erik stares, surprised. They wear matching outfits of drab green, almost blending into the forest. He would have missed them had he not stopped, run directly into their path. They have metal at their hips, a feeling of leashed power he’s never felt before. These men are human, Erik thinks with wonder.
They don’t look quite so nightmarish up close.
There’s a rustle behind him and a third man Erik hadn’t seen is there before Erik can react, is staring at Erik in shock. “Where the hell did you come from?” the man demands, raising a long black object and pointing it at Erik.
“I’m not... I just need...” Erik begins to explain, goes to dig into his pocket for the list Raven gave him and he hears the man scream something at him and then there’s a sharp crack.
Erik blinks at the small, metal object that’s stopped inches from his nose. It’s the size and shape of the end of his finger and he recognizes it from one of Raven’s books. A projectile from a weapon, a bullet. It rotates slowly in the air in front of Erik’s face, vibrating with unspent volatility. The man behind it has his mouth hanging open. “Oh my god, you’re one of-“
Erik hears the sound of the two other men crashing through the undergrowth behind him and he spins, snatches the metal, the guns they both have in hand and slams them up and back. The men both go down, knocked out by their own weapons and Erik turns back to the third man, the man’s face draining of color before his very eyes. Erik reaches out and plucks the bullet out of the air. Before he can do anything, the man flees.
Erik turns back to the overwhelming feeling of metal, makes towards it. He stumbles to a stop when he emerges from the treeline and sees a metal wall in front of him, taller than two people and the looming shape of a Sentinel beyond it, just like they were described in the stories.
Erik lets out a bark of pure, joyous laughter because the Sentinels are also metal. He can feel it down to his bones. The laughter dies on his lips though because something’s very wrong here, the Sentinel he’s looking at is hollow, nothing more than a statue. Erik reaches out his hands, curls his fingers and a section of wall in front of him curls back in on itself, crumples and peels away. Erik steps beyond it, sees the thing they all feared, how it’s mired in mud, has weeds growing around its feet and up its legs, rust dotting its body.
It’s a motionless metal man, as dangerous as one of Raven’s dolls.
“His will to live is very strong,” Alex says as he drags a chair up beside Raven. Charles can hear them moving around, wishes he could reassure them but everything is going grey, fuzzy-edged and indistinct.
“I thought it was safer for us here, safer for the people out there,” Alex says, voice a low reassuring rumble. “I’d... hurt people. I didn’t mean to but I couldn’t always control it. Shaw came for me, came for my brother. My parents were scared of us, thought we were monsters and I suppose... I could see why. They didn’t care where he was taking us, as long as he was taking us. They looked relieved.”
Raven makes a small noise and Charles isn’t sure what it means.
“But this isn’t the answer,” Alex continues. “I thought maybe there was something wrong with us but... Charles isn’t evil. How can someone like Charles be dangerous? Why is he here?”
“You and Scott aren’t evil,” Raven says. “Did you really think that?”
“Maybe but... now I’m not so sure.”
“I think I’m starting to figure out who the monsters are,” Raven says, voice like a firm line. “It isn’t us.”
“Oh my god.”
Erik had been so distracted by the Sentinel before him, at puzzling at the lie that it represented that he hadn’t heard anyone else approach. He spins in place now and finds a woman with long dark hair and a heavy coat. She’s standing in front of yet another metal object, a large box resting on rubber. She’s hugging her coat to herself, a ribbon that had tied her hair back pulling free in the wind.
There’s no weapon on her like the men had and Erik relaxes just a fraction, still wary.
“Did you... did you come out of there?” she asks, pointing at the wall.
Erik’s not sure how to answer. He knows now that the Sentinels were a farce but the human’s willingness to hurt them seems to have at least been true. The first ones he encountered attacked him and now this woman... he’s not sure what to make of her. Erik steels himself because Charles is at risk and therefore he needs to take one. “I need a healer, a doctor. I need medicine,” Erik says.
The woman blinks at him for a second before concern clouds her features. “Are you hurt?”
“Not me,” Erik says quickly. He digs into his pocket and pulls Raven’s list free. “I need these things. Do you know where...?”
The woman starts to approach him but then hesitates. “Did you come out of there?” she asks again and when Erik turns to see the wall he peeled back he notices something written a little way up from the hole he’d made.
Shaw Wildlife Preserve.
Erik just stares at the words for a moment, knows the meaning of them but doesn’t know what it all means. “It’s just-“ the woman starts up again. “I’ve been trying to get access for years, ever since the agency passed this case to me but I’ve been stonewalled at every turn. There’s some higher ups very interested in keeping whatever is in there a secret. They don’t even fly planes overheard, all the routes were changed but I know what’s going on-“ the woman cuts herself off, her eyes going wide, probably realising she’s said too much considering she doesn’t know who Erik is or where he came from.
“Can you get these things?” Erik presses, holding the list out again and this time the woman makes it all the way over to him, takes the list from his hand. She frowns at the list for a moment. “There’s a small doctor’s surgery not too far from here. It’s closed and my lockpicking skills are a little rusty but I’m sure I can...” the woman looks up again. “Is someone hurt?”
Erik nods and the woman’s mouth firms up, a stubborn expression that reminds Erik strongly of Raven. “My name’s Moira MacTaggert. I’m looking for Charles Xavier.” Moira presses forward when all Erik can do is gape at her. “My god, you know the name, don’t you?”
“I know Charles, yes,” Erik manages to get out through a suddenly dry throat. He feels shaken, too much information to process all at once. “How do you?” he demands.
“I was hired by Charles’ parents, retained by their estate when they died. They’d been looking for their son ever since he was taken. They never gave up hope. My investigation dead-ends here, at this place.” Moira fixes him with a level gaze, unflinching. “Did you come out of there?”
“I live in there, or I did,” Erik confirms and one of Moira’s hands darts to her throat, clutching at the scarf tied there. She pulls it free and squeezes it, something lit up in her face.
“I knew it,” she says. “I knew there was something they were hiding and-“
“What are these?” Erik asks, waving a hand at the Sentinel behind him, at the one he can see in the distance.
Moira makes a face. “Something garish put up by the Shaw Foundation,” she says. “An installation. They’ve been there for years, as long as I can remember.”
“They’re not dangerous?” Erik asks because even though he thinks it’s true, he’d like it confirmed.
Moira snorts, an indelicate sound that’s endearing. “They’re just statues.”
“Just statues,” Erik murmurs and nods but there are more urgent matters at hand. “Look, can you get this stuff?” Erik says, clicking fingers at the list now in Moira’s hand.
“Yes. Can you take me to Charles Xavier?”
“If you get that stuff, now,” Erik says and Moira nods, spins and runs back to her metal contraption.
“Stay right there, don’t move,” she calls, high color in her cheeks and excitement in her voice.
“You hold on, Erik will be back soon,” Raven promises, warm voice against his ear.
I’m trying, he tells her without words.
Another group of men had come for Erik while Moira was away and she steps around the pile of them gingerly, looking worried when Erik leads her through the wall. “They’re unconscious, not dead,” Erik says, assuming that will be reassuring but she doesn’t look reassured.
“There was a pattern to the disappearances,” Moira explains to him as they work their way back through the forest, a paper sack containing the precious medicine clutched in Erik’s hand. “There’re dead ends in every case but this was unbelievable. Promising leads would go cold, records disappeared, it didn’t add up. We couldn’t really do much until the Xavier’s contacted us. They had enough money to throw at the problem and keep on throwing.”
“They died?” Erik asks, noting the way Moira speaks of them in the past tense.
“In a car accident, together,” Moira says, sounding disgusted. “I couldn’t prove anything about that either but it was suspicious as hell, ow!”
Erik glances back, offers her a hand when he notices she’s snagged a sleeve on a tree branch. She smiles ruefully. “I wasn’t exactly wearing my cross country outfit.”
“What do you know about Charles?”
“Not much,” she says. “He was very young when he was taken and the Xavier’s only came to me after of course. They had been approached about sending Charles to a special school for the gifted only weeks before he disappeared, said a very firm no because they didn’t like the man that approached them.”
“They wanted him back,” Erik breathes, cheered by the thought. He’d always felt a little unredeemable himself but couldn’t understand a world where Charles had been tossed aside, unwanted. Charles was lovely in every way and to find out that he had parents that had devoted everything to having him returned to them gave Erik just the tiniest sliver of hope to cling to that the world outside their village wasn’t completely irredeemable. “What about his sister?”
Moira stumbles to a halt and Erik thinks she’s tripped again but she’s just staring at Erik. “Charles doesn’t have a sister,” she says slowly and Erik frowns, thinks that’s something he’ll have to ask Charles about when he gets the chance later.
He almost smiles at the thought of Charles taking Raven in like a stray pup on a whim.
“We must hurry,” he says abruptly instead, knowing that every passing minute might be bringing them closer to something that doesn’t bear thinking about.
Moira pulls up short when they reach the boundary of the village and Erik can feel her surprise like a palpable presence at his back. He can’t take the time for her to get over her shock though, breaking into a run for Charles’ house as soon as he’s able to.
Charles isn’t dead and he is infinitely pleased and stunned by this development.
Erik is at his bedside, asleep with his head on Charles’ mattress and his body awkwardly hanging off the edge of his chair. One hand rests curled by Charles’ hip and this is what Charles picks up and holds against his cheek for a moment, because he can.
“And who might you be?” he asks, turning slightly to take in the woman sitting in the corner of the room with a notepad across her lap and a stubby pencil gripped in her fist. As soon as he asks the question her name floats across her mind. “Moira, nice to meet you.”
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to meet you,” she says, voice a low whisper so as not to disturb Erik. Charles doesn’t bother to tell her that Erik is miles under, would probably have to be pushed out of his chair to even stir. “When I left the office a few days ago I wasn’t expecting to...” She flaps the notebook around in the air, trying to encompass the entirety if what has happened. “It’s unbelievable,” she finally settles on, letting out a high-pitched, nervous laugh.
Moira stands and approaches, biting at her lip. “I really think you need a hospital,” she says finally and Charles sighs and sits back.
“I agree that we have to leave before the Elders come at the very least.”
“Erik talked about your Elders,” Moira says. “One of them sounds like the man I’ve been trying to track down since I started looking for you. I’m not really sure what’s going on here but it isn’t good, that’s for sure.”
“I think I can agree with you there,” Charles says and at that moment Raven bursts into the room. Erik startles into wakefulness at her exuberant entrance.
“I told you to get me if he woke up,” she snaps at him and Erik just blinks blearily at her, Charles unable to do anything but smile at the both of them a little helplessly, so much affection for them squeezed into his chest that he has no idea how he has the room for it.
“I told you I’d be back,” Erik says and takes Charles’ hand back, their grip broken when Erik had woken.
Part One | Part Two | Epilogue