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Four months after Charles leaves for his first assignment, he receives a letter from Raven. The cream envelope smells of her, lilac perfume drumming up ancient memories of afternoons spent weaving through the labyrinth of the Xavier House forest, blindfolds around their heads, arms out as they searched for one another amongst the trees and the bushes, the uneven ground and their laughter. This was before, when Charles knew nothing of the vicious knife living in Raven’s tongue, willing and eager to lash out.
He’s forgiven her but Raven doesn't believe it. The evening before Charles left for the war, she accused him of punishing her, doled out an ultimatum, “You leave and I’ll never speak to you again." She screamed until his mother’s maid stuck her head in Charles’s bedroom, eyebrow drawn up in concern.
“How many times do you want me to apologize?” Raven said. “I thought he was — How was I supposed to know you — That the two of you —”
“This has nothing to do with that.” Charles ignored the ever-present hole in his chest, filled only by a constant drip of guilt. “I won’t watch the Germans win the war. Not when I can make my telepathy available to the Allies.”
Raven’s fists tightened, golden eyes ablaze before her skin rippled, a wave of flesh-colored curtains. Her legs lengthened, her hips narrowed, her hair shrunk until it sank lifelessly on her head; dark strands combed neatly to the side, as thick as the toothbrush mustache on her upper lip.
“What about me?” she said, voice escaping from Adolf Hitler’s mouth. “The Allies could use me too.”
Charles turned away from her. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t hold that form for long and even if you could, mother would never allow it.”
He felt the retort form in Raven’s mind, a tangled knot of caustic thoughts, another boiling argument. Her current shape melted away, replaced by blond hair and pink skin.
“Now,” Charles said, cutting her off, “they told us to pack light but I’m willing to sacrifice something for a few textbooks. Help me decide what to leave behind.”
He unfolds Raven’s letter and weaves around the crowd gathered for their weekly rations. They spill out into the street, dark circles beneath their eyes, bags hanging limp from the crook of their elbows. Charles adjusts the bottle of champagne, tucked beneath his arm and wrapped in his jacket, a hidden slip of luxury unavailable to most Parisians. He blocks out their thoughts, the heap of minds running on a single track. Food, hunger. A mother shares a small ration of bread with her daughter, dusts it off when small hands drop it on the street. An old woman surveys her ration of three eggs in disbelief.
Charles focuses on Raven’s script, high and looped. The marks of a girl who spends her mornings by the pool and her evenings reading by the fire.
She writes: Hank’s coming around more. He says it’s to take care of your ridiculous plants (and honestly, Charles, I thought you dismissed the Botanical Sciences) but I know it’s to see me. He spends hours watching me try on different skins. He thinks I might be able to change into animals soon, if I keep practicing. Sharon thinks he’s gathering the nerve to ask me to marry him. I thought she was just…Saying things. You know, the way she always does when she’s had a little too much to drink, but I think she might be right. Could you imagine? Me? Mrs. Hank McCoy? Twenty pounds says our children will come out blue.
Charles tries imagine Raven, swollen and pregnant, a ringed hand resting on the outward curve of her stomach, but he can’t. He can barely swallow the realization that Raven is of marriageable age. At nineteen she’s no longer the girl he found in Westchester, hiding amongst the bushes like an overgrown berry, hair like softened autumn leaves. The girl who, her first year at the estate, slept in the chapel and prayed for a crack in her mutation, where she could stick her fingers and pull, stripping her pale like the Norton girls who live an hour up the road.
Raven has grown to love the gold shimmer of her eyes, the shape of her scales, the breadth of her power. “One day I won’t have to hide,” she told him once. “Erik says he’ll make sure of it.”
Charles stops, a knot twisting low in his stomach. His fingers tighten around Raven’s letter, sweat smudging a spot in the corner, painting his thumb black. Two children knock into him and Charles shuffles into an alleyway, back against the brick of an empty bakery. The knot grows fingers, a wrist, an arm, reaching beneath his ribcage and clawing at his heart. Charles stuffs Raven’s letter in his pocket. He can’t look at Raven’s handwriting while a ghost swims in his mind: Erik’s mouth curved around a sharp smile, the span of his fingers as they spread across Charles’s hip, pinning him to Erik’s mattress, drowning him in the morning light.
He hasn’t thought about Erik in weeks and yet Charles can remember every inch of their last evening together; Erik nervously fingering the knot of his tie, his shoulders barely filling out his poorly tailored suit. The lapels were too large, the pants too loose, the shoes scuffed at the heel, but Charles had always believed (still believes) Erik looked his best undone and disheveled.
They were celebrating Charles’s acceptance into Oxford, a grand dinner designed in his honor. Charles barely listened to his mother, slurring her way through a poorly constructed speech, lies falling flat on her wine-soaked tongue. “I’m very proud you,” she said, Erik’s foot brushing against Charles's ankle, leather caressing bare skin.
Has it truly been four years since Erik grabbed Charles’s wrist and tugged him into the library? Has it been that long since Charles felt a rush of laughter spin from his mouth and into Erik’s, their lips meeting somewhere in the middle?
If he closes his eyes Charles can replay every second, every brush of Erik’s fingers against the curve of his neck, every inch of Erik’s jacket twisted in his fists.
Charles shakes his head. He gathers up the memories and stores them in a locked safe, burying it beneath the floorboards of his mind. Today, it can’t afford to wander.
On the sidewalk, Charles passes by two young women, dresses flowing above their bare knees. They lean into one another, shamelessly holding Charles’s gaze. He smiles at them and dual smirks tug at soft mouths, flirty and open, an invitation as red as their lips. Charles ignores the sliver of Erik’s voice, snaking out from where it’s hidden, ribbing Charles for smiling at such delicate women, as if they could give him what he desires.
(Another memory springs to mind, Charles’s lips against the shell of Erik’s ear, Erik’s mouth against his throat. “I love you,” Charles said. “You’re all I’ll ever want.”)
Above them, a pair of Germans lean over a balcony, music pouring out of their apartment, coupled with the smell of cigarettes. They whistle at the women, call out to them in broken French. Soldiers on leave, Charles thinks. Young men taking a breath from dousing their hands in blood.
They eye Charles too, brows furrowing in suspicion. He knows he’s an odd sight, a young man without a uniform or visible purpose. He doesn’t need to peer into their minds to know what they’re thinking: Why hasn’t he been sent to Germany to work? Is he part of the resistance? If so, why hasn’t someone locked him up? He can almost taste their sense of duty, but before they can accost him, Charles sets their attention back on the women. They turn their heads right as he disappears from view.
| |
Charles is a pawn, a well-crafted chess piece in the hands of the Allied Powers. They’ve sent him to North Africa, Vichy, and Paris, to retrieve information and help them win the war.
He’s stretched the muscles of his telepathy, learned it’s limitations and the weight of his power. There’s more Charles can do, a greater power to be accessed, but presently he cannot change a deep-seeded ideology, only influence surface thoughts. He’s had to infiltrate the German army using a bulk of classic measures, lying and charming his way into their good graces, gaining enough trust for bits of pertinent information to blossom like rose petals, pouring open and ready for harvest.
The Germans know him as a traitor; a British solider sympathetic to the German cause. With his father’s money — a few sponsored dinners, a priceless gift to the Fuhrer — it was easy to convince them he was willing to spy on the Allies, but his service is coming to an end. Charles must retrieve the locations of the German work camps. Then the British will release him with a metal of honor pinned to his breast, and contacts in Mi6 interested in his theories on mutation.
“You bring us this and you’ll be a hero,” they told him.
Charles only hopes he won’t be too late.
| |
His plan is this: Meet Rickard Foeller, Personal Secretary to the Deputy Fuhrer, for a late lunch and fill him with enough champagne for his mind to blur at the edges. A single word is all Charles will need for images, maps, and plans to bubble up like a geyser.
Foeller spends a week of every month in a basement apartment the Germans have requisitioned, drinking, eating, smoking, and laughing between walls decorated with photos of strangers.
Charles knows little of the previous owners. He’s seen their smiling faces in black and white; a young Jewish couple with dark hair and similarly shaped faces. He imagines the husband, with his journal tucked beneath his arm and glasses teetering on the edge of his nose, might have been a writer. Maybe his wife spent her days meticulously caring for their home. Charles does know they were rounded up on a Sunday, forced into a one bedroom apartment with three other families and four teenage orphans. There was an infant too but — Charles had set down the family’s file, unable to read on.
He passes by the apartment’s windows, the curtains pulled shut. Paranoid, Charles thinks, but not overly so. The French Resistance is growing and Foeller tops their list.
Charles knocks twice. Foeller isn’t expecting him for another ten minutes but even undercover, he cannot shake what his mother’s taught him. Better to be early than on time; better to be absent than late. A swell of recognition grows in Foeller’s mind and Charles shuts him out. Eventually he’ll have to navigate the dark caverns of Foeller’s memory, the walls carved with the names of men, women, and children who have died at the hand of his gun or beneath the weight of his orders, but Charles will need two glasses of champagne to stomach their corpses without vomiting.
He knocks again.
“Herr Foeller, it’s Francis Graymalkin. Should I — Would you like me to come back later?” Charles hopes not. He doesn’t have much time. For every hour that passes, for every camp that remains in the dark, more lives are plucked carelessly from the earth.
Charles presses his ear to the door. On the other side the floorboards shift quietly, Foeller moving with as little weight as possible. Charles allows the tendrils of his telepathy to slide from their confines and sweep the room for the familiar teeth of Foeller’s mind. Charles brushes against it and his telepathy snaps back, wounded by the sharp edges of Foeller’s panic, wound around his brain like barbed wire.
A headache pulsates between his eyes but Charles ignores it, finding Foeller’s mind again, digging a bit deeper. He pulls at fresh memories: A glass of whiskey balanced on the coffee table, the apartment door abruptly swinging open, fear growing in the base of Foeller’s throat, a thick ball of metal striking his temple, his world titling on an axis as he falls to the floor.
There’s someone else in the apartment.
Charles reaches for the knife at his ankle, fingers around the hilt as he searches for the other mind. He finds it hovering near Foeller, a shimmering, brilliant, sandstorm of rage, attached to a head, a pair of shoulders, and two feet that spin around and billow straight for the door.
He — He knows that mind, but he — He can’t —
Charles abandons his knife beneath the leg of his trousers. He stands up straight, fingers trembling as the knob rattles and his tongue grows fat in his mouth. His knife's blade warms against his skin and Charles swallows a gasp.
It can’t be him.
He’s delirious.
This whole assignment must be driving him mad.
But Charles has come to learn that every mind is composed of it’s own distinct map, roads and oceans native to it’s host. Charles knows the depths of those valleys and the shape of those mountains. He knows those dark corners, those faded memories, that anger, that fear, that sliver of hope.
Charles forces himself to breathe, excitement and panic growing in his stomach.
It’s not him.
He can’t allow himself to hope.
His heart thumps wildly in his chest, the door cracking open, letting in the light from the hall. An arm spills out, fingers wrapping around Charles’s wrist, pulling him into the dark, and Charles knows.
He knows before the door is kicked closed behind him. He knows before his back is slammed against the wall. He knows before his knife is flying from his ankle and hovering inches away from his throat.
Charles should be afraid. After what’s happened between them, he should expect nothing less than a slice across the neck, but he’s met with bright eyes and a wave of emotion, so thunderous it makes his head spin. It’s such a glorious feeling, one he’ll drown in if it means remaining locked in this moment, his tongue loosening against the roof of his mouth, a single name flowing free.
“Erik?”
| |
There are versions of Erik who live only inside of Charles’s head. One who turned nineteen at Xavier House, a wash of buttercream icing along his chin; one who accompanied Charles to Oxford, knees bumping beneath the cramped tables in the library; one who pulled away when Charles urged him to, Raven’s footsteps clacking down the hall; one who waited to kiss him instead of whispering, “One more, that’s all I need,” against Charles’s mouth, lips wet from Erik's tongue. Those versions have never existed and are not the man who stands in front of him, arms crossed, one ankle thrown over the other. Black turtleneck and long sleeves, the left rolled up to his elbow. Charles knows that flash of black on the inside of his arm, has seen the numbers messily etched in the memories of work camp guards. A cruel tattoo; unclean needles ruthlessly tearing at the skin.
Erik’s eyes haven’t left him since he wrapped his fingers around the hilt of Charles’s knife and moved to the other side of the room, bathing himself in shadow. Charles feels heavy beneath his gaze, but what is he meant to say? He flips through a half-written script, mentally typed in the middle of a sleepless night, but the words fit awkwardly in his mouth.
“I want —"
Does it matter what he wants? Does he truly know? Charles wants Erik closer but he wants to remain pinned to the door. He wants to run his thumb along Erik’s upper lip, tracing the faint and new scar, while keeping his fingers curled in his palms.
“What could you possibly want, Charles?”
A warmth spreads from Charles's ears to his toes. It’s been four years since he last heard Erik’s voice. (“You love me,” was the last thing Erik said to him, nails digging into his Charles’s shoulders. “Don’t let them do this. You can stop them. Stop them. For me, please.”) His voice no longer holds the lightness of late adolescence, but is low, threatening, dangerous.
“Would you like a drink?” Erik says flatly, motioning to the bottle of champagne laying by Charles's feet. “Or maybe you would like to speak with Herr Foeller?”
Foeller. Charles has almost forgotten why he’s here. He knows Foeller is somewhere in the apartment but, Charles looks around, he’s not in the sitting room or the kitchen. Charles's eyes trail back to the tattoo on Erik's arm. It isn’t a leap to imagine Erik stuffing a rag in Foeller’s mouth and tying him to a chair, stowing him in a small closet as punishment for what he's done.
“What did you do to him?”
A humorless smirk spreads across Erik’s mouth. The earth shifts beneath him as Erik steps forward, flicking Charles’s knife in the air, spinning it with his power. Charles remembers Erik at thirteen, sweat pooling at his temples as he failed to flip a coin midair.
“Why do you care?"
Charles traps the truth behind his teeth. The British Armed Forces have shaped him into a locked box that cannot be broken, the nature of his assignment hidden inside. Charles doesn’t know why Erik is here, cannot bring himself to swim through the tangled web of his thoughts, but he can taste his anger, leashed like a wild dog at his feet. The odds of him working for the Germans are slim but not impossible. Charles has heard of Jews who've betrayed their own for a slice of freedom. Perhaps the Germans have released him to do their bidding. Perhaps they're holding his parent's lives over Erik's head.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Erik barks out a laugh and the sound scratches down Charles's spine. He barely has time to breathe before Erik's long legs are tearing through the distance between them. He crowds Charles's space, hand curved around his neck, affixing him to the front door. Charles feels like a hanged painting, nailed to the wood with little room to sway. At least Erik has left him his feet, sweeping across the floor as Erik knees at his thighs, parting his legs and stepping between them. Charles can see each fleck of grey in Erik’s eyes, can count each lash, can feel every curve of his fingers, pressing hard against his neck. Erik won’t kill him. Charles has to believe it even if his instincts don’t.
An unconfined heat burns in Erik's eyes, wild like bared teeth. “What did they tell you, Charles?" he growls. "Did they show you photos of dead children and convince you das Judenschwein bled them dry? Or maybe they stroked your ego? Did the Fuhrer feed you the line about being part of the Master Race?
“I don’t — Erik, what are you talking about? I would never —”
“Don’t lie to me!”
His hand tightens around Charles’s neck, yanking him away from the door and slamming him back against it. Charles steadies his head and keeps his skull from cracking against the wood.
“Have you told the Germans about your?” Erik taps his fingers to his temple. “Do they know about Raven? Do they…” Erik slinks closer, the blade of a smirk cutting against his mouth as his stomach and thighs press against Charles. “Do they know about me? The Jew you used to fuck?”
Charles’s words are caught beneath the weight of Erik’s hand. He cannot breathe. His fingers hook around Erik’s, desperate to loosen his hold, but Erik’s grip remains steady.
“Did you tell them how you used to beg me to hold you, to touch you, to open you up until you were squirming on my tongue. Did you tell them that, Charles?”
Charles attempts a breath. His mind swims with a foreign lightness, eyes rolling in the back of his head.
Erik loosens his hand and a rush of air fills Charles’s lungs. Charles inhales greedily, coughing and trembling as Erik holds him up by the neck. Charles’s body slumps forward, hands curling around Erik’s arms. He doesn’t miss the way Erik tenses beneath his touch, but he needs an anchor to keep himself from dropping to his knees.
A cruel memory bleeds into the forefront of his mind: Erik pressed against Charles’s locked bedroom door, fingers weaving through Charles’s hair, trousers pooled at his ankles, as Charles knelt at his feet.
I wouldn’t, Charles telepathically projects. Erik, I would never — I’m not — You have to let me explain.
Erik squeezes Charles’s neck again, as if he's testing the solidity of it. He swipes his thumb along Charles’s throat, a gesture that straightens Charles’s spine before Erik lets him go. His muscles are wound tight, the fabric of his shirt clinging to him like a second skin. Charles can make out every inch of him, shoulder blades shifting as Erik moves to the sitting area, circling the floral patterned couch.
Behind it, a slim console table adorned with photographs turned on their face. Charles wonders if that was the work of Foeller or Erik.
Once more, he remembers why he’s standing in the apartment, bottle of champagne knocking against his feet, but he can’t bring himself to ask about Foeller again. Not yet. Charles casts out his telepathy, checks that Foeller is still alive, and returns to Erik tracing dusty household items with the hand attached to his tattooed arm.
Charles knows the taste of his own guilt, knows how it grows in the lining of his stomach like mold. “I didn’t know."
Erik looks at him. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“I didn’t know they were going to — That you were going to end up in that place.”
Charles isn't looking but it's difficult to ignore the images that swell in Erik's brain: A crowded train car, small children torn away from their parents, armed guards with mouths like a wound, cackling as their guns slammed into the back of an elderly man's head. He can almost smell Erik's anger, as pungent as the unwashed bodies in his memories. His power hummed in his fingertips, feeling out the metal of the camp gates, the steel in the guard's boots. Erik couldn't take them all. If they rounded their guns on him he would have seconds before he was pumped full of bullets. He could save these people — his people — but he had to wait for the right time. Charles attempts to push to the moment he escaped from the camp, but Erik's mind goes blank, a searing projection of nothingness. The brightness buzzes like a siren, casting Charles out.
“No one knew," Erik says. Another humorless grin spreads across his mouth. “But be sure to tell your stepfather. He always said someone needed to put me in my place.”
Charles pales. There are hundreds of reasons for Erik to resent Kurt Marko. Their last night together, Kurt dragged the Lehnsherr’s from the servants quarters, Mrs. Lehnsherr in her nightgown as Kurt pointed a gun at Erik and said, “I should shoot him right now, the animal. Assaulting my stepson in my own home.” But even he doesn’t side with the Nazi's.
“Kurt didn't want this," Charles says. He can feel Erik's fury creeping into his surface thoughts, pricking his fingers until they curl into fists. "He only wanted —”
“To have me imprisoned for the rest of my life?" Erik shouts, voice loud enough to bounce off the walls. "To have my family's name dragged through the mud?" Erik spits out a laugh. "Oh, yes, Charles. Kurt made sure the whole of Dusseldorf knew about the queer rapist who molested 'his son'."
Charles jerks back, as if struck on the cheek. For years he's known why Kurt cast the Lehnsherr's off the Xavier estate, known why Raven screamed at the sight of them, but it's different, hearing the words spill so coldly from Erik's mouth.
Queer. Something Charles has convinced himself he isn't, because, for him, it was only and will ever be, Erik. But for Erik —
Charles remembers their hushed conversations, spun beneath Charles's sheets in the middle of the night. Erik's always known there was something different about him, something more than being a Jew. He dreamed of men and women in the same fashion, his hands curved around their hips, his mouth connected to theirs. "It's perverse, I know," Erik said. "But I won't hide from it. I refuse to deny who I am."
Charles pillowed his head on Erik's shoulder, their legs tangled together. "You shouldn't have to, Erik. There's nothing wrong with you."
There have been a few women after Erik. Girls, really, who caught Charles's eye in a crowded pub and were bright enough to keep his interest. A string of girls to convince Kurt, and Cain, and Raven, and his mother, that he wasn't That Way, no matter what Erik did to him. But if what the world says is true, if loving one man makes him queer, then he must —
"I wouldn't care," Erik continues, "if my parents..." He pauses, words catching in his throat. Another image crops up in his mind, his mother's tearstained cheeks, his father's stricken look. “Why didn't you stop them? I begged you. You could've wiped the whole incident from their minds."
"I tried," Charles says, but Raven had been the one to find them. She burst into the library and stopped dead at the sight of Erik nipping at Charles’s neck, pinning Charles’s wrists behind his back. Charles tried to exorcise the memory from Raven’s mind, but there was no way to remove it without tearing through chunks of her brain. “I couldn’t do anything without causing permanent damage.”
Something dark flashes in Erik's eyes. Charles's words echo in Erik's mind, permanent damage ringing like church bells.
Erik stalks closer. Charles expects another hand around his throat but Erik grabs his wrist instead. It’s difficult, not to react to the flat expanse of Erik’s torso as Erik shoves Charles's hand beneath his shirt, pressing it just below his chest. Charles remembers the first night they touched, virginal and trembling, his mouth watering with anticipation as Erik rucked his shirt over his head. But this not the same skin Charles has tasted and touched. There's a scar there now, raised and jagged, the shape of knife gnawing against his skin. Erik leads Charles's hand to the scar along his shoulder, to the wounds along his torso, to the bruise festering above his hip.
“Oh, Erik,” Charles says, his voice softening around the edges.
A wash of memories floods Charles's mind.
A pair of drunken guards drag a young man, a boy, from his shared bunk, waking the rest of the barrack. They line him against the wall, draw their guns, and aim. Even stuffed with drink they shouldn't have missed, but they empty two rounds in the space around his head. This happens for three more nights, until Erik finds the boy's body with six bullets in his skull. That night, a pale eyed man forces Erik's barrack to strip in the cold, waving his pistol between their heads. He demands to know how the dead boy managed to evade being shot four times over. Confusion, fear, hunger, and fatigue clouds the lot of them, until the man presses the gun to an elder's skull and Erik speaks up.
The man is Klaus Schmidt. He introduces himself with a smile that doesn't attempt to meet his eyes. He tells Erik to dress, throws his arm over his shoulders, and leads Erik across the camp to a guard's quarters, where Schmidt offers him a bed. Erik accepts but doesn't sleep. He stares at the ceiling, hands folded on his bare chest, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It does, the next morning, when Schmidt beats him until Erik's right eye seals shut. Erik's power trembles in his fingertips, reaching for the metal ring around Schmidt's baton, but each time he tries turn the blows around, Schmidt beats him harder.
Schmidt starves him, stabs cigars out on the stretch of his shoulders, carves him up with a metal blade. He cackles through the wave of abuse, tells Erik he can stop him, if he wants it badly enough. Erik wants, needs to break free from the weight of Schmidt's boot on his neck, to find his parents, if (and he hopes against hope) they're still alive. But with little food and water, his power has grown weak, laying almost dormant beneath his skin.
How did you escape? Charles thinks.
His words rope around the proper memory, pulling it close. There are whispers amongst the guards. The Fuhrer is becoming nervous, even he believes the Allies may win the war. Schmidt spits at their fleeting loyalty but one morning Erik wakes to find that Schmidt has fled the camp. The rage that boils inside of him eats away at his exhaustion, unearthing a sleeping energy that spreads his power across the length of the camp. He tears down the gates, turns the guns on the guards, and screams until his voice forms nails, scratching the inside of his throat.
Charles's hands are trembling as he pulls from Erik's mind, tears running along his cheeks and dripping inside of his mouth. "I —"
"Don't apologize." I don't need your pity.
Charles swallows the clot of tears, tastes the salt of them on his tongue. If he'd stopped Erik before Raven charged into the library, if he found a way to suppress Raven's memory before it was too late, Erik would've never known the extent of this depravity. And his parents —
"Your mother and father. Where are they?"
Erik looks away. They're still standing close, Charles's hand pushed beneath Erik's shirt, fingertips dancing along his chest. Charles can feel the beat of Erik's heart, stammering beneath his ribcage.
"I don't know. I was hoping Foeller could tell me."
Charles's hand lays flat against Erik's chest, another wave of guilt building in his stomach. How could he have thought Erik was working for the Germans?
"Where is he?"
Erik's gaze snaps up to meet his. Charles feels his mood shift before Erik's eyebrows knit together, his mouth tightening at the corners. Erik doesn't trust him. His mind burns with betrayal and disgust at who Charles has become. He grabs Charles's wrist, removing his hand from beneath his shirt, but Charles won't allow Erik to push him away.
Charles grabs his arm, sets his feet firmly against the ground. "I would never be one of them," he says, meeting Erik's eyes. "How could you — You know I would never — "
"It's been years, Charles. I don't know anything about you anymore."
Erik's words hit him low in the stomach, twisting until his insides burst open and bleed. His grip loosens on Erik's arm but Erik remains in his space, crowding him near the door.
Charles lifts his fingers, two of them hovering by Erik's temple. "Can I — I'd like to show you something if that's alright."
Charles braces himself for rejection, he deserves nothing less, but Erik nods.
He's only done this once before, with Raven, two years after Erik was dragged from the estate. He'd gathered enough courage to come clean about their relationship, sharing quick glimpses of their brief time together; afternoons where their hands brushed in the hallway, evenings spent at the Lehnsherr kitchen table, Erik besting him at another round of chess, the victor bestowing kisses in the moonlight drenched room. Raven's mouth curled when he was finished ("I'm sorry, Charles, but it's unnatural."), but it brought a new level of understanding between them.
The transference is clumsy, images barreling into Erik's mind at a speed only another telepath can understand. Erik grabs Charles's shoulders, fingers digging into the muscle as he winces, and Charles strokes his temple in apology.
He gathers the images and spills them steadily, droplets filling Erik's mental glass. Charles wants to show him everything — how he tried to find an address to write Erik, how he packed his bags, determined to move to Germany and search for him — but he focuses on the last few months. The anxiety of signing up for the Armed Forces; how terribly out of place he felt amongst the other troops; the gentle ribbing from his fellow soldiers for his posh background; earning their respect for not hiding behind his money; the realization that Charles could utilize his telepathy in the field; the offering of his services to his Sergeant; the relief when the Allies agree to use him.
Erik stares down at him, mouth slightly parted before, "They know about your telepathy and they haven't —" Committed you?
Charles's smile tugs softly at his mouth. "Not everyone trusts me and some of them think I'm making it up, but no. They haven't committed me quite yet."
There's something in Erik's eyes, a softness that tugs at his heart. They've had conversations, with Raven, with Hank, about how the world would never accept people like them. Charles knows, from dipping into the minds around him, that there are those who view him as a threat to be dissected and studied, but there are others whose curiosity is genuine and warm.
"Do you believe me now?" Charles says, fingers lingering along Erik's temple, stretching into his hair. "I'm only here for information about the camps."
"I believe you," Erik says. "Do you —" There are words on Erik's tongue but he allows them to fade, looking away from Charles.
Charles spreads his palm along his cheek, pushes Erik's gaze towards him. He could pluck the words from Erik's mind but he wants him to, "Ask me."
"Foeller says he doesn't know where Schmidt is. I don't — He's lying. He has to be."
Charles owes Erik so much more than he has to give. The least he can do is give him this. "I'll take a look and see what I can find. But you have to tell me what you've done with him."
"Why don't I show you?"
| |
Foeller is a pretzel, limbs bound and twisted to make him small enough to fit into the clothes trunk at the foot of the bed. Erik’s gagged him with a floral scarf, pale pink and red darkened from his spit. He stares up at Charles with narrowed, wet eyes, a string of curses muffled on his tongue. He jerks his wrists, his ankles, grinding the leather belts further into his flesh, a shock of red licked across his skin like paint.
Foeller’s mind is a morass of obscenities, directed towards Erik, who stands by Charles’s side. He imagines stringing Erik up by a rope, feet swinging in the air as a noose bites at his neck.
“Erik, would you mind?” Charles says, motioning towards the corner of the room. He’ll get nothing from Foeller if he’s singularly focused on Erik, the rest of his thoughts buried beneath the calamity. Erik’s jaw tightens and Charles is almost afraid he’ll allow his stubbornness to win out, but Charles reminds him, We have to find your parents and Schmidt, so Erik goes.
With Erik out of Foeller’s line of vision, Charles waits for his anger to dim before he presses his fingers to Foeller’s temple. “I’m looking for a man named Klaus Schmidt,” he says, before submerging himself in Foeller’s thoughts.
Charles can feel the ink of his memories, thick and cold, as the echo of Schmidt’s name leads him through a web of darkness. Foeller is trying not to think of him, but he does the opposite, pulling all memories of Schmidt to the forefront of his mind. A party where the two of them conversed over dinner; another evening where Foeller was running late for a meeting with the Fuhrer and Schmidt cornered him, hoping for a chance to speak with Hitler alone. That was months ago. Charles searches for something more recent but there's nothing pertaining to Schmidt aside from a reference to men who’ve abandoned in their posts. Germans who can no longer be trusted.
What about the camps? Charles thinks, loud enough to change the course of Foeller’s thoughts. There are hundreds of greyed out memories, tinted with the red of human blood. Ditches dug in the middle of a forest, whole neighborhoods lined up and slaughtered. A sliver of vomit crawls in Charles’s throat but he swallows it, mapping out train lines and car rides, memorizing maps the Fuhrer has shared with Foeller. Something hard swells in the base of his brain, a painful knot that splinters towards his ears, but Charles pushes forward. He isn’t finished just yet.
Jakob and Edie Lehnsherr, he says, projecting their faces, have you seen them? Charles knows the answer before he spirals deeper. There’s a possibility Foeller has come across them, but most of the faces in his memories are nothing more than a blur, a whirlwind of features melted together to form an indistinguishable crowd. But maybe — Maybe Mrs. Lehnsherr made an impression on him, maybe Mr. Lehnsherr said something that stuck in Foeller’s mind. Charles rifles through hundreds, thousands of faces, hoping something, anything sticks.
The knot in his brain spreads from his temples to the bridge of his nose, the sharp taste of iron painting the back of his throat.
“Charles,” he hears Erik say, a pinch of panic in his voice. “Look at me.”
Something shakes him and Foeller’s mind snaps shut, casting Charles out with the impact of a boulder slamming into his stomach. The telepathic connection shatters, shards of glass puncturing the inside of Charles’s skull, and yes, Charles thinks, his back slamming against the bedroom floor, that is blood he tastes.
“Charles,” Erik says with another shake of his shoulder. “Can you — Open your eyes, I need — Please don’t — Please look at me.”
Charles’s eyes blink open. When did he close them?
Erik’s kneeling over him, his palm curved around Charles’s cheek, thumb swiping along his top lip. “Your nose is bleeding,” Erik says, relief pouring over Charles like a wave.
Charles pushes himself to his elbows, the room spinning, a clot of blood pouring down the back of his throat. “I’ve never been inside anyone’s mind for that long before.”
Erik makes a humming sound as he stands and moves towards the dresser. Jewelry boxes have been opened and overturned, gold and silver and diamonds cleaned out. Erik’s fingers linger over a glass ballerina, painted ivory with pink cheeks, before he grabs a handkerchief and tosses it to Charles.
“Did you find anything?” Does he know where my parents are?
Charles pauses, the handkerchief resting along his mouth. “No. I’m sorry, Erik. If he’s ever come across them, he honestly doesn’t remember.”
The now familiar surge of anger grows inside of Erik like a volcano. “What about Schmidt?”
“He knows him, but…No. He doesn’t know where he’s run off to.”
The bed frame violently rattles, the snap of the brass ringing about the room as Erik begins to tear it apart. Charles expects a flood of fear from Foeller’s mind, but when he glances at the trunk, Foeller’s eyes are closed, his mouth slack. Charles peers inside his mind and is met with a blanket of darkness; a dreamless slumber. He must have, unknowingly, knocked him out.
“Erik, please,” Charles says, struggling to his feet. “Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down,” he barks, severing a leg from the bed frame. “My parents — They —” They’ve murdered them.
Charles steps closer. “Don’t say that. They could still be alive.”
Erik’s breaks the metal leg in two. “This war should’ve made you less naive. You know what happened — What’s happening to my people. Why would my parents be spared?”
“Because I know your mother. She would never give up until she knew you were alive. Your father’s the same.”
Another humorless laugh as Erik melts the brass down to a blade. “Do you think they had a choice?”
Charles cannot shrug off the weight of Erik’s sorrow. He touches Erik’s arm, moves closer when he doesn’t pull away. “I know where the camps are. By tomorrow evening the Allies will know too. Come with me and we’ll find them together.”
Erik looks down at him. “I’m still a criminal, Charles. None of this changes that.”
“Maybe not, but I’m sure if the British found out that Foeller was seconds away from killing me when you saved my life, they would be willing to pardon a hero.”
Charles refrains from looking inside of Erik’s mind, though it’s impossible not to see the wheels turning in his head.
“Please,” Charles says. “I know you’re going to look for your parents and Schmidt, but you can’t do this alone.”
A contrary thought swells in Erik’s mind. He’s been alone thus far and he’s done just fine, but there’s something else there too. A faint acknowledgement that Charles may be right.
“What about him?” Erik motions to Foeller.
“He’ll come to in a few hours or so. By then you and I will be on our way to London.”
“Will he remember this?”
“I believe so, but I’ve never put someone out unintentionally before. I may have disturbed something but there’s a greater possibility that I haven’t.”
Erik glances down at Foeller’s body, limp in his restraints. If it wasn’t for the rise and fall of his chest, he would resemble a corpse.
“Alright,” Erik says, looking back at Charles. “I’ll come with you.”
A light grows in the pit of Charles’s stomach, spreading out amongst his aged guilt. He has the foolish thought of pulling Erik down for a kiss, but he doesn't. There are conversations waiting to be had, explanations and apologies to be spun out at a later date. For now, all Charles can do is bask in Erik, here, now.
“Okay,” Charles says, biting back a smile. “I’m going to get cleaned up and we can go.”
There’s a bathroom across the apartment. Charles stares at himself in the mirror above the sink, blood beneath his nose and along his mouth, a few droplets staining his shirt. He looks deranged, his grin wide and red, an untamable joy sparkling in his eyes. They’ll have to head back to Charles’s temporary apartment before boarding the train. Charles will have to splurge for a private cabin, to keep Erik from attracting unwanted attention, and maybe…Maybe they’ll share a glass of champagne, or three. Maybe Erik will lick the taste from Charles’s mouth. Erik can weld the cabin door shut, locking them away from prying eyes. They would have to be quiet, but Charles remembers how to bite his tongue, keeping his moans trapped deep in his chest.
He's wiping the last of the blood from his mouth when a gun shot rings out.
Charles jumps, muscles knotting together as a cruel line of dread spills down his back. Foeller has woken up sooner than planned and managed to release himself from his bonds. He’s grabbed his service weapon and shot Erik, a bullet to the head. Charles swallows his vomit before his telepathy reaches out, searching for Erik’s mind. He finds it, burning bright and hot, satisfaction spilling over.
Oh, Charles thinks. Of course.
They meet one another in the sitting room, a splatter of blood on Erik’s cheek. Not his blood, but Foeller’s.
“There was no point in keeping him alive,” Erik says.
“That wasn’t your decision to make.”
Erik’s jaw twitches. “And whose decision is it?”
“There’s going to be a trial. Foeller and men like him would have been — Are going to be tried for their crimes. We can’t — It’s not up to us to be their executioner.”
Erik scowls. “You’re a solider, Charles. Are you telling me you’ve never killed anyone?”
“No, Erik, I haven’t.”
Erik’s scowl deepens. His shoulder brushes against Charles as he passes by. He grabs the bottle of champagne and tosses it in the air, long fingers around the neck. “You will,” he says. “And when you do, we’ll revisit this conversation. Until then, are we going?”
There are hundreds of responses building on Charles’s tongue, but he stows them away for later. On the train, in the car, in London, wherever they end up, they can have this argument then.
Charles straightens his shoulders and heads for the front door. Erik turns the knob with his power. Charles grabs his jacket from the floor and hands it to Erik. “For the champagne. Keep it hidden, I don’t want to be mauled.”
“Of course not,” Erik says, wrapping the bottle up. Would you be their executioner, then? Or would you allow the crowd to tear you to pieces?
Charles rolls his eyes, stepping out of the apartment.
"Don't worry," Erik says, on his heels. "I'll handle them for the both of us."