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Charles meets Erik Lehnsherr during a riot in what used to be New York City in 1964.
Charles is shouting into the crowd, pleading with anyone who will listen to stop - mutants and humans alike - and Erik is in the middle of it, egging the mutants on.
Charles has never seen him before in person, but like anyone alive today, he knows Erik’s face.
He’s the most notorious mutant on the planet, the one that started it all, the identification and the fear, driven by a single image - Erik, alone on a beech in Cuba, his hand outstretched, a hundred missiles hanging suspended in the sky, ready to fall at his command.
Charles shakes that image from his mind as he watches Erik snatch a gun from a soldier’s hand, watches him laugh as he makes it fire on its own, killing the man in an instant.
Charles shouts - then - not at the crowd but at Erik, reaching out to him with his voice and with his mind.
Erik turns, lightning quick, and their eyes meet, there amongst the teaming, seething crowd, and though the screaming and gunshots ring out all around them, for that moment Charles swears there is utter silence, calm, as he reads Erik’s mind, as Erik lets him.
The moment is broken by a shot - aimed at Erik and coming fast - but Charles is faster, ready for the bullet as if he saw it all happening millisecond before the gun fired, and he does the only thing he can think of - he sends a pulse into Erik’s mind, knocking him out, and watches as Erik collapses to the ground a second before the bullet can meet its target, missing his head as he falls and flying into the chest of another soldier nearby.
Charles swallows down his remorse at the scream of pain he hears ripped from deep inside the soldier’s mind, and forces himself into the crowd with elbows and the occasional mental shove, pushing and pushing until he has reached Erik, until he can drag the man up from the ground and somehow, finally, out of the riot and down into the empty streets surrounding them.
As soon as they are a safe distance away, he wakes Erik up, and tries to smile when Erik regards him with an astonished, possibly murderous look in his eye.
“I have brothers and sisters back there,” he hisses, already turning on his heel to return to the fight.
“So do I,” Charles says, stopping him.
“Then what the hell did you think you were doing?”
Charles shrugs, helplessly. “The only thing I could do. Saving your life.”
“My life doesn’t matter,” Erik spits, but Charles can smile, then, all-knowing disagreement.
“Yes, my friend. I’m afraid it does.”
---
In the two years since the great superpowers of their age met each other in the open water and subsequently sent missiles sailing across oceans and continents, nearly destroying each other and any genuine hope of peace, the world has been irrevocably changed.
It started with the bombs, of course, fired in a flurry of fear and confusion, killing millions in a matter of hours. Then there was the radiation, and more mass deaths, and finally, in the midst of the fallout, as what was left of humanity drew back from the fight to lick their respective wounds, there came the discovery.
Mutants - reported to be highly evolved and terrifically powerful - provided something new to fear, something for the humans to unite against. Those who weren’t affected by the radiation, those who were immune, became those hated most, resented and feared.
Charles spent a year trying to fight it - the fear and the distrust - from his family home, gathering all those like him and his sister that he could find, trying to offer them shelter, hope.
When his house was destroyed and half his friends killed in a raid 14 months after the first bombs fell, Charles gave up on hope, and has since then been trying to settle for finding shelter, food. They steal what they can from the military that remains in New York, sometimes having to travel further than that. It helps that some of them can fly, but not enough that they don’t go hungry, a lot of the time.
What remains of his old team, the students from the school he once thought he could build, live in an abandoned apartment building in what used to be Greenwich Village, and is now mainly a wasteland of ash and broken windows, collapsed buildings and empty, haunted streets.
Erik - the Erik Lehnsherr - who is reported to have started the war by some and to have attempted to avert it by others - lives on the opposite end of the city with his gang, the Hellfire Club.
Like anyone, Charles knows of him, but he isn’t just anyone, and so he knows considerably more than most.
He and Erik have been sharing this city for half a year, now, since the Club took Harlem by force, overtaking what was left of the human population and marking the territory as theirs, open to any other mutants who were willing to kill and to die for their cause. Since then, mutants have been spilling into the city in uneven waves, sometimes only a handful at a time, sometimes in droves, fleeing the rest of the country, where the humans still greatly outnumber them in some areas, fleeing the international coalition, the new world police, who have been charged with hunting down the mutant threat, containing what they can, and destroying what they can’t.
Erik and his followers have responded with force, driving back the military from the city in brutal skirmishes and covert raids on military bases, using their abilities and whatever weapons they can steal.
Charles’ own methods have thus far been considerably more peaceful, focused on protection rather than aggression, and so they’ve have managed to steer clear of each other, maintaining a fragile peace by not getting in each other’s way. He’s lost two of his youngest and a half dozen others to the Hellfire Club, but they’re safe, as far as he’s been able to tell from the occasional peek he’s taken into their minds, and while their methods are different, their goals are the same.
He reassures himself of all this as Erik and two of his lieutenants - another telepath, like Charles, and a rather imposing man called Riptide - drag him across the city in the boot of an abandoned cab, their minds somehow locked away tightly against his ministrations.
It remains this way as they haul him from the boot and into their headquarters, what was once a nightclub from which they borrowed their name. Charles has heard rumors that there was once a second club just like it, bearing the same name, in Las Vegas, where Erik is reported to have first met Emma, where he took her from Shaw.
The club is cavernous, dimly lit, and Charles can smell smoke and blood in the air.
“Like what you’ve done with the place,” he observes cheerfully, surprising Erik, making him laugh, short and unexpected.
He glares at Charles a little after, but deep inside his chest, Charles feels something closer to hope than he’s felt in over a year beginning to break through months of resignation and defeat. He feels more in general than he has in twice that long - and he can’t stop the slightly demented smile that tugs persistently at his lips.
“Leave us,” Erik commands to his fellows, who have begun to gather en masse to gawk openly at Charles, some familiar faces staring the hardest, their minds a flurry of disbelief.
But Erik clearly runs a tight ship - no one listens to Charles like that unless he forces them to with his abilities - because everyone is gone from them in a matter of seconds.
Left alone with Erik, Charles can’t help but smile wider, staring into Erik’s cold, shuttered eyes and seeing only the future he is certain they will build together.
---
Erik gives him the tour. A little mockingly, certainly still hostile, but honest, too, telling Charles the truth about their operations, their numbers, their goals.
“The whole island, to start. Then the coast,” Charles summarizes, when Erik is done.
Erik nods, watching Charles expectantly.
He’s heard of Charles, too, of course. Knows that Charles’ methods, his philosophies, are diametrically opposed to his own.
Or at least they always have been.
“I think the city is a sound option, something that could be taken without much resistance. At this point it’s all but abandoned anyway. The military will go where the people do, and if we can drive them out, the war machine will follow.”
“We?” Erik repeats incredulously.
Charles grins, hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth a little on his feet.
“We.”
---
You’re where? Raven demands, sometime later, when he contacts her mentally from across town.
“With Erik, at the Hellfire Club’s headquarters, East Harlem. Would you like the exact longitude and latitude?” He doesn’t need to speak aloud to transmit his thoughts, not anymore, but he does so for Erik’s benefit, a token of his gratitude towards Erik for allowing him to contract his sister at all.
Charles, you’ve just told me you’re being held prisoner by the most feared mutant on the planet! I don’t really think now is the time for your trademark optimism, never mind your completely unsuccessful attempts at wit.
“First of all, I’m terribly funny, as you well know, and second of all, I’m not being held prisoner.”
Somewhere at the back of Erik’s mind, Charles can hear him suppress a snort of disagreement, but Charles isn’t troubled by that.
He can handle Erik.
He thinks he might be able to handle anything, now that they’re together.
---
“You’ve been using the term ‘we’ quite a lot for someone I only met a few hours ago,” Erik remarks dryly, as he and Charles finish their tour of his facility, ending in Erik’s war room, a spacious loft that had once served as the backdoor brothel above the club.
Charles nods, trying for a moment to adopt a suitably contrite, even sheepish expression, but he fails.
He’s exactly where he needs to be - maybe for the first time ever - and he’s with exactly whom he needs to be.
He can feel it, the truth of it, the certainty, singing out to him every moment they’re together, every flash of Erik’s mind that answers his.
He can see all of it - their divergent pasts and shared future - the missed chances and the appalling, untenable imbalance their lives have perpetuated up until this moment - two forces, two dreams, clashing uselessly against each other.
Until now.
Now they have finally met - have finally found each other - and from this moment on, Charles is sure that nothing will ever be the same.
---
“You want to join forces, join me.”
“Yes, exactly,” Charles agrees, nodding enthusiastically.
“Why? Why now? You’ve been gathering mutants to your little sanctuary for months, and you’ve never once given any indication you approved of my methods or those of my followers. In fact, on more than one occasion you’ve lost soldiers to me, lost battles only I was willing to do what was necessary to win.”
Charles smiles, bitter for the first time, and says, “That does accurately summarize our predicament, thank you Erik. Only, I think it’s about time I learned from my mistakes, don’t you?”
---
“Have you gone insane?” Hank asks, clinical and calm, when Charles breaks the news.
“I don’t think so, but then, if I had, I wouldn’t be in a very good place to judge, would I?”
Hank looks from Raven to Charles, and then back to Raven, but she throws up her hands, snarling a little.
“I don’t know what to do with him - he’s been like this since he met Lehnsherr yesterday! All starry-eyed and raving, like he’s on a goddamn acid trip or something! Are you sure his blood-work came up normal?”
Hank nods reluctantly, clearly wishing as strongly as she does that this wasn’t the case. Wishing that they had any explanation for Charles’ behavior other than the one he’s repeatedly given them.
“Love at first sight is nothing to build an alliance on, Charles, let alone the foundation for the kind of new era of civilization you’ve been babbling about. Are you sure you don’t remember their telepath doing something to you?”
“I haven’t been telepathically roofied, I assure you. I felt it as soon as I clamped eyes on him, as soon as my mind touched his. We’re meant to be together - to fight, to lead. And we will build a new world together, one that far out-rivals this one. But all that will come later. The only question that matters at this precise moment is quite simple - are you with me?”
She sighs, still looking mutinous, her mind humming with suspicion, but she nods, without needing to think, and says, “Always.”
---
It takes a bit longer to talk the others around. Where Raven goes, so goes Hank, but his sister’s charms only go so far, extensive though they are, and the rest of their group must be convinced the old fashioned way.
Charles has promised never to compel any of them, to never invade their minds without prior invitation, and he holds true to this promise now, even though impatience, desire to return to Erik, itches at the back of his mind, making him want to accelerate the process, to nudge them all, just a little.
He restrains himself, but barely.
He manages to secure their agreement eventually, his fellows stepping forward one by one, falling in line by his side like dominoes, prompted by Sean’s initial agreement, his trusting, rueful smile.
Alex follows Sean, and Scott follows Alex, as does Armando. Scott brings with him Jean and with her comes Logan, and after that it’s just a matter of Logan’s nod, and Rogue and Bobby and John all trail after him.
All told, the nine of them stand beside him in a row, nervous but ultimately trusting, and Charles claps his hands together, another helpless smile on his face.
“Lovely,” he says, just before Azazel pops out of the ether, grabs onto Charles - linked to the others by now firmly clasped hands - and in another instant, transports them to their new home.
---
“You came back,” Erik says incredulously, once the others have dispersed to become acclimated to their new base of operations, their new home.
“Course I did,” Charles responds brightly, wanting to sigh with the pleasure of being near Erik again, enveloped in the heat in his gaze, the intensity of his mind.
“You don’t believe in this - any of it. I’ve taken enough of your old recruits to know that much,” Erik protests, his mind all sharp edges, voice distrusting. “Everyone who’s ever met you says the same thing.”
“What’s that?” Charles inquires, still smiling.
Erik rolls his eyes, still angry, possibly growing all the more angry due to the persistence of Charles’ casual demeanor. “That you’re stubborn, hopelessly idealistic, frustratingly brilliant, and impossible to convince of anything. That you believe in peace with the humans, a shared future.”
Charles doesn’t say that he gave up on that dream long ago, long before he had the heart, the courage, to admit the truth to his friends, those who still followed him, looked up to him, for believing in something they no longer could.
Instead, he says, voice steady and sure,
“I believe in something different, now.”
“And what’s that?” Erik demands, still looking at Charles like he’s a madman.
Charles grins, wide enough to truly look the part.
“You.”
---
All told, there are 40 of them now, Charles and his companions swelling the Hellfire Club’s ranks.
In the surrounding buildings and neighborhoods, mutants are beginning to acclimate, to build networks and almost a community, hundreds strong, but within Erik’s inner circle there are only the most trusted, the most powerful, of those who have traveled from across the continent to come be apart of this new world they are building.
Living amongst this elite collection of mutants, this vanguard, Charles revels in the pleasure of being surrounded by so many minds, so many brilliant, uncanny minds, mutated in delightfully complex and contradictory ways.
They’re his people, he can feel it in all of them, the way they make him stronger, just by being near them, tuned into such collective power.
He feels a bit high from it, honestly, but that isn’t enough for him to respond to Raven’s quelling, worried looks or listen to Hank’s stuttering cautions.
And it certainly isn’t enough for Charles to concern himself with Erik’s lingering distrust, the measured, calculating gaze that follows Charles everywhere he goes, weaving in and out of the neighborhoods that are now theirs, dreaming of the city that soon will be.
Charles doesn’t mind it, truly, the suspicion, the distance - emotional at least - Erik tries to keep from him. As long as Erik is with him, is close enough to feel always at the back of his mind, he can look at Charles however he likes.
---
“You haven’t asked me yet, about that day on the beach.”
“I don’t have to,” Charles points out, watching Erik carefully. He’s tense, tenser than normal, jaw twitching slightly.
“I wasn’t there with Shaw,” he explains anyway, either ignoring Charles or not believing him.
Charles nods quickly, wanting to get this over with. “No, you were there to kill him. For what he did to your mother, for what he did to you. I told you Erik, I know. I saw it. What happened to you, what you did to Shaw in return, I saw all that and more when I first looked into your mind. So I know that you came to America looking for Shaw, after failing to find him in Argentina, I know that you followed him to Russia, and then Cuba. And I know that you killed him before he could use his powers to enhance the nuclear reaction caused by the Russian missiles, but the explosion caused by his death drew the attention of the humans to you anyway, and that’s when they turned their bombs on you, and you turned them back.”
“I killed him, but I never wanted to stop him. If I could have done one without the other, I would have.”
Charles smiles, and in that smile, he tries to offer Erik absolution. “Yes, my friend. I know that too.”
---
In the middle of the night, Charles goes out walking, and ends up standing on the roof of an admittedly structurally unsound skyscraper.
He stands out there alone, looking out onto the rapidly emptying city, hands in his pockets, humming to himself, waiting.
Erik doesn’t keep him waiting long.
In less than ten minutes, he’s there, shouting, hands in the air, the steel bars and various other metals supporting the building creaking and groaning as Erik holds them in place, all the while demanding to know what the hell Charles was - is - thinking.
“Excellent view,” Charles remarks casually, ignoring Erik’s diatribe.
Furious and fuming, Erik shakes him a little, although most of his concentration is taken holding up the building they’re both standing on.
“How on earth did you even get up here?” he demands eventually, once he’s seemed to have accepted that Charles isn’t going to respond to his growling threats and highly inventive insults.
Charles smiles, pleased with himself. “It was quite clever, if I do say so myself. The electricity for this place hasn’t worked for months, yeah, but the grid is still operating, there are still people working at the power stations further west, and all I had to do was locate one of them, give them a friendly suggestion, and voila, the power was back on and the lift was working. And now here I am. Here we both are, come to that. How did you get up here? You couldn’t have known the power was working again.”
Erik just stares.
“You did all that from here, controlled a mind from all the way across the city?”
Charles nods. “I could probably go further, if I tried. Haven’t yet.” He grins. “Would you like me to?” The radiation has made all of them more powerful, their abilities coming easier, the effects stronger, but Charles hasn’t pushed the limits of his newfound power, not yet, not nearly as far as he suspects it can go.
Still, Erik looks perplexed more than anything, now, and Charles considers it good progress beyond suspicion tinged heavily with disbelief.
“Not just now, thank you. What I’d like is for us both to get off of this thing before it collapses under us, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh certainly,” Charles says, closing his eyes for a second.
When he opens them, Azazel is on the roof with them, looking quite surprised to find himself there.
He says something to Erik in Russian - urgent and low - but Erik waves him off, and after a moment of reluctance, he comes over to both of them, and Charles tucks his arm around Erik’s, holding on tight, as Azazel grips them both and, pop, whisks them off into the night.
---
“Nice trick,” Erik says, sounding grudgingly sincere, as he follows Charles doggedly into what has become Charles’ quarters.
It’s a small room, but quiet, far enough away from the main living area for the rest of the Club that he doesn’t have to focus very hard to shut out all the voices when they become too much, as they often do, especially at night, when all those minds are left to run free in dreams.
“Thank you, Erik,” Charles says belatedly, turning to look at him.
He likes Erik in his room, in his space, surrounded by what remains of Charles’ things, bathed in shared light. But then, he likes Erik anywhere, as long as he’s with Charles.
“You never answered my question, though. I told you how I got up to the roof, and we both got down thanks to Azazel, but how did you get up there in the first place?”
Erik shrugs. On anyone else, Charles might think it modesty, but he knows Erik too well for that, no matter that Erik still considers them little more than strangers. Maybe even enemies, still.
Regardless, they’re neither of them modest men, and Charles knows now that it’s because neither of them were meant for anything but greatness. If that is to be their destiny, they might as well have egos to match.
“I pulled myself up, floor by floor. There was so much metal to draw on, it was like I was flying.”
“That’s excellent, Erik!” Charles applauds, delighted for him. “You’ll have to take me for a swing sometime.”
“You want me to take you flying?” Erik is all incredulity again, frustration joining in. Charles knows Erik keeps waiting for him to stop surprising him, but so far, Charles has managed to keep things interesting.
“Course I would, who’d pass up a a chance like that? The only fliers I’ve known so far are Angel and Banshee, but she hasn’t been particularly friendly to me and he’s something of a kept man. It wouldn’t do to go gallivanting off in the sky together, people might talk.”
Erik scoffs. “And they wouldn’t talk if it was you and I, ‘gallivanting,’ as you put it?”
“I imagine they’d talk quite a bit, actually.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Course not. This is a brave new world, my friend, our world. We’ll make it into whatever we like. The only rules will be the ones we choose.”
“And in this new world, how can you be so certain we’ll choose the same things?” It’s a trap, like so many of Erik’s questions, and Charles represses a sigh, wishing they were past this point.
“Because I’ve seen it, Erik. In your mind, in mine. I’ve seen our futures unfold a dozen different ways, a dozen different choices, all leading us in opposite directions, all leading us away from each other. But I didn’t make that choice - not one of them - and now here we are, together. If you’d only just let me in, you’d see it, too.”
“See what?” Exasperation, maybe even fear.
Charles closes his eyes, wishing he could let himself take the easy way out, to brush past all that fear, all the anger, that still clogs Erik’s pores and contaminates his mind, wishing he could sweep it all away with the flick of his finger.
He could, is the trouble, could erase all of Erik’s defenses, mental or otherwise, but he won’t.
He won’t.
Instead, he takes a step closer to Erik, trying to keep his smile somewhere at a low-level beam, rather than the blinding, endless grin he wants to wear whenever he looks at Erik, and answers as honestly as he can,
“That we were made for this, made for each other. That, together, there is nothing we can’t accomplish.”
---
“Frost and Riptide are going on a raid to the nearest military base - see if they can snatch some more weapons and rations, gather a little intel. I’m going with them.”
“Wonderful,” Charles approves blithely, smoothing the pages of his book and setting it, open-faced, down on the table beside him.
Raven stares at him, hands on her hips. “Wonderful?” she mimics, adding what Charles considers an unfair amount of tweedy-Britishness to her imitation.
“Well, we are running low on guns these days, from what Erik has told me.”
“From what you’ve snooped around in his mind to discover, you mean,” she scoffs, and he hears the silent but insistent that’s not the point, anyway she keeps inside her head.
“I like guns just fine, now,” he assures her, responding to another withheld comment, making her glare more.
“Are you ever going to snap out of this? Or are you just going to be this freaky pod-person forever, and I can say goodbye to my condescending, stiff-upper lipped and endlessly moralizing older brother? You remember him, he’s the who thinks he always has the right answer and somehow manages to always see the best in everyone?”
Charles sighs at her, “You don’t have to say good-bye to anyone. I’m right here, still quite sure I’m the smartest bastard in the room. Thank you for agreeing with me about that, by the way.”
Raven sighs too, and it occurs to Charles that she seems a bit... scared, really. Not just for him, which is more or less status quo, but for all of them.
“I really will figure it out, all of it,” he says, needing her to believe him. Believe in him. Needing someone to. Erik’s perpetual suspicion may be understandable, but Charles can’t deny that it grates a little, after awhile.
“What happened, Charles? What really happened?”
Charles shrugs. “Well, I suppose it’s just as you say - what I am, what I used to be, there’s overlap, but it’s not quite the same. I’m not. But I still think I’m right, I just, well, I’ve changed what I think I’m right about.”
“And all of it, this change in you, it’s really all because of Erik?” Voice dripping with disdain.
“I’m afraid so,” Charles says, nodding. “When I met him - saw him, felt him, I knew. In one single moment, one instant in time, it felt like I knew everything, that I was infinite, limitless, and so was he. It was just the two of us, alone in the universe, and it was right, it was good. I looked into his mind and read his soul and knew he was mine, the other half of me, standing right there, across a crowded street, chaos and blood everywhere. I met him and I knew it wouldn’t matter what I’d done, who I was or what came before, it only mattered that he was mine, and I was his, and, that, together, we could be whatever we wanted.”
Raven coughs, looking red, and Charles laughs a little at himself, realizing he’s been transmitting his feelings for Erik along with his words. “Sorry, was that too much information?”
Looking surprised with herself, she laughs too, and when she sobers, there’s still traces of a smile on her face and in her eyes.
“Trust you to be the kind of guy who takes falling in love as a reason to grow a god-complex, Charles,” is all she says, shaking her head, mind laughing, before she leans down to peck him on the cheek and then disappear out of the room.
Charles smiles ruefully, knowing she’s not wrong, and returns to his book.
---
“Raven’s gone on a mission with the others,” Erik announces, abruptly appearing in Charles’ room a few hours later. He makes his proclamation defiantly, obviously trying to pick a fight.
Charles puts his book down again.
“Have I given the impression that I’m not serious about staying here?” he inquires philosophically. “Some set of signs I’m unaware of indicating my less than full commitment to the cause, no matter the cost?”
Erik flinches, slightly, and Charles considers it a victory.
“No,” he answers, but not yet is hot on the word’s heels.
“You can keep testing me all you like, asking me questions, employing the people I love for dangerous missions, sneaking up on me at random to see what I’m doing.” Erik flinches again. Clearly he’d thought Charles’ hadn’t noticed. “It won’t matter. I’m here, here for the fight, here for you. And I’m not going anywhere, not even if you try to make me. Not even if it costs. As for Raven, she made her choice, and so did all the others I brought with me. What happens to them is going to be because of that choice, not because of me. Besides, these little covert missions and skirmishes won’t last forever. I’m working on finding a solution now should take care of our little human problem for good, and cleanly.” More cleanly than Shaw’s method, he means, but leaves Erik to fill in that blank on his own.
“You really are the most astonishingly arrogant person I’ve ever known,” Erik says, almost wonderingly, and Charles smiles.
“Do be sure to mention that to Raven when she returns - she’s been somewhat worried about the changes in my demeanor of late. I think she would find it supremely comforting to know that some things do in fact remain the same.”
Cursing outwardly and reeling a bit inwardly, Erik shakes his head and stalks out of the room.
---
In quiet moments alone, Charles begins listening in on the thoughts and conversations of those who now constitute the world’s leaders. The humans have united, much as the mutants are trying to do under Erik’s leadership, and perhaps eventually under Charles’, if he can ever convince Erik he’s serious enough.
In military strongholds and secret bunkers, the humans are regrouping, using what force they have left to try and round up the mutants, to kill and experiment on them, searching for some solution, some key within mutant DNA to save those still suffering from radiation, searching most of all for revenge.
Parents are turning on their children, neighbors are informing on each other, giving any mutants that can be identified up to the roving gangs of soldiers and private mercenaries that now travel the countryside, regardless of what nations they once were, rounding up whoever they can.
Charles searches the minds of the men and women who have set these squads on them, those giving the orders, and finds no room for mercy or reason. He could change their minds, force acceptance and tolerance, but the strain would likely kill him, and he doubts the length of time such a change would hold in so many previously hostile minds would be enough to justify his loss. It’s arrogance, again, but fact, too. Charles is the most powerful telepath on the continent, possibly the globe, the most practiced, and now, the most ruthless.
More than that, Erik needs him, needs Charles by his side, even if he hasn’t admitted it yet. One day, Erik will rule, but he can’t do it alone, and for that reason, more than any other, Charles knows he must keep himself alive.
---
Raven and the others return to the Club with as many weapons and military rations as they can carry. The weapons are whisked away by an approving Erik, and the food is divided. What they can spare - most of it - is taken out into the streets, distributed to the scores of their fellow mutants who line up eagerly to receive their share.
It’s the first of one of these such distributions that Charles attends, standing at the front of a line with Erik and Emma, watching grateful, hungry faces and accepting mumbled thanks.
“They love you,” he tells Erik, hearing it in the minds of all who come here. “They believe in you,” he continues, waiting for Erik to respond, to show that it matters to him.
Charles knows that it does.
Erik’s answering smile is grim, however, and he sighs once another package of food has been passed into clutching hands.
“They can’t live on freeze-dried food and bottled water forever, these stores will run out, and unless we find land where we can grow our own food and drink the water, somewhere uncontaminated by the radiation, their love and faith in me will not be enough to save them.”
Charles nods, knowing Erik is right, but then smiles, knowing it won’t come to that. “I’m close to a solution, I promise. Soon the human threat will be taken care of, and then we’ll be free to travel where we like, to settle where we like. The bombs didn’t fall everywhere, not even in America. We’ll find our new lands, Erik, and the cities we build there will be more beautiful than anything this world has yet seen.”
“The way you talk, some might think you were a precog, not a telepath.”
Charles smiles wider, hearing the grudging respect, even the kernel of faith, in Erik’s words.
“Well, the radiation changed all of us, enhanced us. Who knows, maybe I’m both.”
---
The city is theirs entirely now, abandoned by all but those who are willing to live and serve under Erik. Charles does his best to get to know all the names and faces of the mutants living in New York with them, but Erik draws the line at any type of census or other form of organized identification.
The military have gone, just like the rest of the humans have, and so now they must go further out into the west to steal supplies and gather information. What Charles can’t glean from his invasions of powerful minds, their teams gather through other means, kidnapping officials when they can, listening in when they can’t.
They’ve begun to travel in their own teams across the country, liberating cashes of mutants who have been locked together in pens, in bunkers. Raven starts going on these missions frequently, but Charles never does, preferring to stay with Erik, who never leaves the city limits, always looking to protect, to defend, all those who have flocked to the city looking for refuge.
“We should call it something else, now,” Charles says one day over a game of chess.
Erik made the pieces himself out of scraps of metal his abilities easily melted and reshaped. Charles loves holding them in the palm of his hand, feeling the echoes of Erik, his power, in them. If he thought Erik would allow it, he might have taken to carrying one of the pieces around with him wherever he went, but as it is, Charles settles for fondling his discarded pawns compulsively whenever they play a game.
Ignoring him until his move is over, Erik finally grunts in acknowledgement, looking over the board to regard Charles impassively.
“What would you like to call it?” he asks, tone dry and sardonic.
“I don’t know, but it’s our city - the first mutant city, and even if we don’t stay here, it will always be the place where our new world began. It should have a name to reflect that.”
“You talk as if the name will be in the history books someday.”
Charles reaches over, risking a rare touch to Erik’s hand, struggling to convey his sincerity in only a touch, a look, when he could use his mind to show so much more. “It will be, Erik. All of this will be.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Charles smiles. “The history books are written by the victors, and I assure you, Erik, I very much intend for us to win.”
---
Charles hasn’t seen a non-mutant in 83 days, but on the the 84th, he sees hundreds.
Since driving the last of the civilians out, the main losses they’ve caused to the humans have been in terms of supplies taken from the military bases, not personnel or civilian life, and so far they’ve been left alone.
Not anymore.
It’s a full-scale assault, tanks and all, and Charles can’t believe he didn’t see it coming.
Literally, that is.
“There was nothing - I’ve been monitoring all of them, the generals, the presidents and prime ministers, for all that they’re leaders of countries that don’t exist anymore! But none of them were thinking about anything like this!” He shouts into the general mayhem, but almost everyone is too busy fighting to listen.
Emma is near enough by to hear, at least, and she sends him a thought that leaves Charles cold.
They’re learning.
---
In the end, it’s not enough, whatever advances the humans have made, and they’re victorious, all of them, every mutant living in their wasteland of a city having joined up to bear arms and whatever else they had at their disposal together.
Yet in the last few chaotic moments of the battle, Charles ends up surrounded, apparently having been identified as a major threat - from what he can glean from the minds that are aiming their guns at him - and dimly recalls Erik’s voice shouting his name, frantic and desperate, just before he loses consciousness.
---
“You killed a hundred men today,” Erik greets Charles when he awakens, in one of the abandoned hospitals they’ve taken over for their own purposes.
Erik is sitting at his side, his hand clenched down painfully on Charles’ wrist.
Charles tries to sit up, but fails, feeling as if his body is on fire with pain.
“What happened?” he asks, a stupidly grateful look taking over his face when Erik ignores the comment to tip a glass of water into his parched mouth.
“Such luxuries,” Charles remarks, once he’s drunk his full. It’s been a lifetime since he’s been permitted to drink until he’s no longer thirsty.
Erik’s face is shrouded, his expression dark and distant, and Charles reaches out to his hesitantly with his mind, relieved to discover his powers are no worse for wear, even more grateful when Erik’s mind opens to him almost eagerly, any resistance he normally encounters falling by the wayside.
Erik’s thoughts are a tangle of worry and anger and most of all fear - fear that he had lost Charles.
Charles finds himself beaming at Erik quite by accident, unable to keep the joyous expression off his features.
“Erik, you scoundrel, I didn’t know you cared!”
Erik laughs, sounding more than a little unhinged, and somehow manages to tighten his grip on Charles’ wrist even more.
“Neither did I.”
---
After the attack, Charles redoubles his efforts to settle their human problem for good. He’s begun working with Hank, although Hank doesn’t know the reasons behind Charles’ questions, yet, doesn’t understand the purpose of the schematics he’s helped Charles develop.
Emma’s the one who catches on first, although rather later than Charles was expecting, given the leaps and bounds in her abilities over these past months.
She marches into his quarters one afternoon, in her diamond form, although even that isn’t always enough to keep Charles out of her mind these days.
“You’re trying to design a machine that will allow you to enhance your telepathic abilities, to reach out to all the other telepaths around the globe, locking into their power, sharing it. You think if you can access that many minds all at once, together you can destroy what’s left of humanity in one fell swoop.”
He puts his hands together, a parody of a clap, and she narrows her eyes at him, glittering dangerously.
“Well done, just so. With that many minds together - assuming I’m right about the number and disposition of telepaths we’re talking about - we can eradicate the humans without any lasting damage to ourselves, or what’s left of the planet.” That’s the theory, anyway. Charles suspects a lot of it will come down to him, whether or not he’s strong enough - not only to direct and harness the power of that many other telepathic minds, but also to find his way back. He presses on, regardless of these minor provisos, to conclude, “We do have to live somewhere, you know. Shaw may have been right about the radiation not killing us, but most of us do still have to eat and drink, troublesome though that is.”
“You really think this will work?” she asks, her anger slipping away in the face of hope.
“I do,” he says, making sure to sound as if he has no doubts, but perhaps she hears them anyway.
“Why? How can you be sure?”
Charles gets up from his chair and goes to stand beside her, hand on her shoulder, his mind touching hers, diamond and all.
She stares at him in shock, sensing him inside of her despite her protections, and he feels her growing faith when he shares the thought, Because it has to.
---
“You want to kill all of them?”
Charles thinks about his answer, about the way he could say no, it’s not that he wants to, never that, but simply that it’s what has to be done - the only thing that can be done.
But instead, he look at Erik, solemn and sure, and simply says,
“Yes.”
---
When he finally tells Raven of his plan, she looks at him like he’s a stranger.
It’s not the first time, far from the first time since they’ve been living here with Erik, but it is the first time she really seems to believe it, deep down to the depths of every thought he can chase.
“Do you disapprove?” he asks, pinching the bridge of his nose and wanting to close his eyes but not letting himself, making himself look, to unflinchingly look at her and see the lack of recognition in her eyes.
She takes a long time to answer, and her thoughts are too chaotic to parse. When she finally speaks, his sister sounds very far away.
“Not with what you’re doing, not even with your method. It’s us or them, now, the humans have made that clear these past two years. And from what Emma has told me, what Hank has told me, it should be safe to the other telepaths, safe to the planet, and aside from deciding who’s on burial duty, I think the plan is sound. But this - coming from you, knowing it’s your idea and knowing that you’ll be the one to see it through, god, Charles. Whoever you are, now, you’re not the person I grew up with. And if you do this, after you do this, there will be no way for you to ever be that person again.”
Charles shrugs, wishing there was something else for him to do, some other words or gesture, but there isn’t. There’s nothing, only this. And only he can make it happen.
“I suppose I stopped being that person sometime ago, Raven, longer even than you know. I’m sorry I hid it from you, sorry I let you believe in me, in the things I no longer believed in myself.”
“It’s not just Erik, is it?” she asks, her eyes already ringed with tears.
He shakes his head, looking away from her out onto their ruined city, and says, “No. It’s everything.”
---
Before he goes under - into the shared consciousness his and Hank’s machine will allow him to access - Charles draws Erik aside for one last discussion of strategy, one last chance to say good-bye, if it comes to that.
“It won’t,” Erik insists, as if the strength of his own tenacity and denial alone would be enough to stop Charles’ death no matter the cause.
Charles smiles at him, thinking maybe he’s right.
“In case it does, though, I just wanted to say--”
“You love me,” Erik finishes, looking a mix of exasperated and overcome, looking most of all as if he feels it too.
But Charles laughs, shaking his head. “No, not that. I feel I’ve made my feelings on that matter quite clear enough already, actually. What I wanted to say was, well - thanks.”
“Thanks?”
Charles nods earnestly. “Meeting you, saving you, it gave me something better than hope. It gave me purpose. So, thank you, for saving me, for letting me save you.”
Erik looks stunned, frozen, and Charles thinks that will be the end of it, he’s already turned to go, but Erik grabs onto his arm, reeling Charles in close and enveloping him in his arms.
Charles gives himself up to it, soaking in every inch and fibre of Erik, losing himself in this moment as completely as any dying man would, drowning in the salvation of Erik’s touch.
When they finally release, Erik takes Charles’ face in his hands and draws him up, all the way up until Charles is standing on the tips of his toes and their mouths are joined in one perfect, blinding kiss.
Before it can turn into a second, Charles forces himself to withdraw, shaking his head at Erik reproachfully.
“You have terrible timing, my friend,” he accuses, but Erik only grins.
“My timing is impeccable - now you have something to come back for, a reason to find your way out of all of those minds, all of those thoughts.”
“Oh, Erik,” Charles laughs, shaking his head and leaning up again for one more stolen kiss. “Since the moment I met you, that’s been what you are. My reason.”
And with that, Charles marches off to destroy one world and set about building a new one.
the aftermath
When Charles awakens, it’s to a silence unlike anything he has ever experienced before.
But Erik is there, at his bedside, strong fingers tangled in Charles’ hair, smoothing it obsessively away from his sweat-streaked forehead.
“Charles,” he whispers harshly, when Charles’ eyes flutter awake. There’s so much desperation and gratitude wrapped around that one word that Charles’ toes almost curl from it. Or he imagines they would, if he could feel them.
Putting that aside for the moment, he smiles up at Erik, even mustering a weak laugh. “We really must stop meeting like this.”
Erik’s grip on Charles’ hair tightens, as if he means to hold on tight enough to keep Charles there with him, grounded and secure, against all comers. “I”m game if you are.”
Charles’ chuckle turns into a cough, and he gratefully accepts another cup of ice from Erik’s outstretched hand.
“Did it work?” he asks, once he’s finished drinking, forcing himself to look into Erik’s eyes as he waits for his answer.
“Yes, Charles. It worked.”
Relief, staggering and almost painful. He waits for guilt to come next, horror, but he feels nothing but bottomless, mindless relief.
“Marvelous.”
As if he can’t stop himself any longer, Erik abruptly leans down and kisses Charles’ forehead, which Charles imagines is rather disgusting from the sweat, but is quite nice all the same.
“Next question, then. Any idea why I can’t feel my legs? Or really any other part of me, below the neck?” Even making his face move is difficult, the sensations distant, almost as though they belong to someone else.
Erik’s jaw works furiously, and Charles thinks for a minute he might be seeing the beginning of tears, but Erik draws himself back from it quickly, shaking his head.
“You were under for a long time, communicating with the other telepaths, convincing them of what needed to be done. And then there was the act itself. All told, you were hooked up to the machine for almost 72 hours. Hank’s theory is that your mind needs time to... re-acclimate. To your body, that is. So long with that many other minds, across such far distances, there’s bound to be some confusion, now that you’re trying to remind your consciousness that it belongs to a single body, a single location in space and time.”
“How long does Hank think it will take for this re-acclimation process, as you put it, to finish?”
Erik closes his eyes, only for a second, but long enough for Charles to wonder what he was trying to hide behind them.
“He isn’t sure.” Maybe never.
“Ah well,” Charles says, trying for a bracing smile and very nearly succeeding. “Can’t win them all.”
---
In the early days of his recovery, Charles spends most of his energies communicating with the other telepaths, scattered across the globe. He can speak to them mentally without the help of Cerebro now, and they become his eyes and ears, his deputies, aiding with the organization of the clean-up and relocation efforts.
Meanwhile, teams of mutants begin flying out of New York, traveling across countries and continents, searching for the most habitable remaining areas of the planet, spreading the word of what has happened to those who don’t already know, or are too young to understand.
Erik oversees these operations while Charles coordinates things with his fellow telepaths, guiding them in creation and survival as he once did in destruction.
“An army of telepaths, all under your command,” Erik remarks one afternoon, watching Charles carefully.
Charles raises his face to Erik instantly, letting his devotion, his sincerity, shine through openly.
“And me under yours.”
---
Only Erik visits him, and sometimes Hank, but these are strictly professional consultations, and he always leaves as soon as he’s able.
Not even Raven comes.
“They’re afraid of you now,” Erik tells him bluntly, when he catches Charles’ expression grow distant as he hears Alex’s mind skitter nervously past them, hurrying down the hall.
Charles takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, nodding when he’s through. “Good. That’s. That’s good.”
“It is,” Erik agrees, already in tune with Charles.
If they are to rule, they must do so with power, fear, and love. Together they have more than enough power, and Erik has already secured them love. Charles must do the rest.
---
He never meets with Emma, but like all the other telepaths, he communicates with her regularly. She becomes invaluable to him, while he’s still bed-ridden and immobile, watching out for those still nearest and dearest to him, watching out for Erik.
---
Charles slowly regains feeling in his torso, his arms, all the way to his finger tips, but not his legs.
The feeling in them remains stubbornly dormant, or perhaps simply distant, too far beyond the reach of his mind to search out and recover. He tries for weeks to bridge it, to find his way back into his body fully, but that part of himself is lost, the connection cannot be remade.
Erik has a machine made instead - not a wheelchair, but something more, something that can bend and hover at his touch or at Erik’s command, something that feels more like a throne than a cage.
---
They leave New York, and Charles laments only that they do so without first giving it a different name.
“We’ll think of something, my friend,” Erik promises him, as they fly over the city, watching it disappear into the mist.
Charles nods, trusting Erik in this as in all things, and tightens his grip on the hand holding his.
---
They don’t leave a new name, but they leave something else - a statue, a monument. Out of the metal of a dozen sculptures and broken things, Erik builds a tribute to Charles’ achievement, to the beautiful and terrible destruction he wrought with the power of his mind and the minds of so many of their kind at his disposal.
The statue sits in the center of their abandoned city, large and foreboding, a marker of what has passed and a sign of what’s to come.
---
They travel North, away from the major cities where the bombs fell, away from the ruined coastline and into the mountains, finally settling in the cradle of the Rockies.
Colonies like theirs are being set up all over the world, or what’s left of it, run by Charles’ telepaths and those members of the Hellfire Club willing to go or allowing themselves to be sent.
They take over abandoned houses and search out farm land, find wandering herds of cows and roving packs of dogs. They salvage whatever they can and obliterate what they can’t, slowly but surely removing the marks the humans have left of their new world, reshaping it to their own desires and purposes.
Erik surrounds himself with metal and Charles relishes the security of existing in spaces only Erik can control, giving himself over to the movements Erik dictates, watching their new world unfold from the iron tower Erik has built for them.
---
“I’m going out into the village,” Erik announces, interrupting Charles from his trance, his communications with a particularly strong telepath in central Brazil who is struggling to gather what remaining mutants are near her and to draw them into a less hazardous location.
He quickly expresses his apologies and severs their mental connection, turning his face and full attention towards Erik.
“Has there been unrest?” Things have been peaceful, thus far, almost idyllic, if you discount the weeks spent clearing away and burning rotting corpses, if you discount the blank, lingering shock that most of their fellow mutants still exist within.
Erik shakes his head. “No, but it’s important that I’m seen among the common people, out doing work alongside them.”
Charles nods, seeing the wisdom in that. Everywhere they are rebuilding, remaking the world, but despite all the powers at their collective disposal, the creation of a new world is long, difficult, and tiring work.
Despite Charles’ agreement, his approval, Erik lingers, and Charles restrains a sigh.
“Was there something else?”
Erik looks down at Charles reluctantly, clearly about to say something he doesn’t expect will be taken well.
Charles doubts he’s wrong.
“I’d like you to come with me.”
Worse than he’d guessed, but certainly not the worst thing Charles can imagine. Still, he flinches, turning away from Erik until Erik drags him back, moving Charles’ metal chair with practiced ease.
“I’d rather not.”
“You can’t hide up here forever, Charles.”
Something ugly unfurls inside him and Charles snaps, “Can’t I?” but he laughs at himself an instant later, shaking his head. “No, of course I can’t. But as you’ve said, the people are afraid of me now, even our people, the ones who know me, not just what I’ve done. Bringing me into the streets will only provoke fear, maybe even panic.”
“They know you would not harm them, they know you would not harm any mutant. What fear remains will be forever tinged with awe, Charles, and you must use that to your advantage.”
“To our advantage, you mean,” Charles says, needing to hear Erik’s agreement, needing to remember what all of this was for, what makes it worth it.
Instantly, Erik is at his feet, kneeling, taking Charles’ hands in his, pressing their mouths together in a frantic, claiming kiss.
“Ours,” he promises. “Always ours.”
---
He sees Raven and Hank when they are out walking - that is, when Erik walks and Charles flies, just above the ground, his skin feeling too tight, prickly, now that he’s finally out in the sun again after so many weeks. Or perhaps it has been months. Charles has a hard time keeping track anymore.
Hank stammers polite questions about Charles’ health, his progress with his abilities and with Cerebro, but Raven remains silent, watching Charles like he’s a ghost.
Maybe he is.
“You’re looking well,” he says to her eventually, looking away when she snaps from her natural blue form into her old, human self for a moment, flickering back into her blue pebbled skin by the time he has the courage to look back.
“You’re not,” she says, but underneath the honesty of her assessment is something distantly like affection, and Charles smiles, willing to take what he can get.
It is gratifying to know that even a fear as strong as the one she has of him now can still be blended with love.
---
When he and Erik make love, Charles swears he can feel it everywhere, all at once, in body and in mind, in every inch of him, every synapse. When they move together, Charles feels at one with himself again, even if only for those moments, lost to ecstasy and the combined force of their need.
---
Erik almost never leaves their compound, their village. In fact, he rarely leaves Charles’ general proximity, but occasionally his duties do require him to be elsewhere.
“It’s no small business, ruling the world,” Charles acknowledges with a generous air, watching Erik pack for one such excursion.
He’ll be traveling to the highlands of Scotland, surveying the progress their fourth colony has made there, negotiating power-sharing measures with their telepath and a dozen others who will be coming from the rest of the 13 colonies to meet with him.
“You should come with me,” Erik responds, returning to the same argument they’ve been having since the summit was first organized.
“No, thank you,” Charles replies, a genuine smile on his face. “I’ll leave the actual running of the world to you, dearest. I think I’ve rather done my part already in destroying it for you.”
“I need your help to build this world just as much as I needed your help to destroy the old one, Charles. Maybe even more so. Even if you won’t come in body, promise you will be there with me in mind. I will need your guidance, your wisdom.”
“My patience, you mean,” Charles says with a knowing laugh, imagining Erik trying to reach a consensus with 13 bickering telepaths and their legion of advisers and sycophants. Politics amongst mutants is proving no less messy of an affair than it ever did with humans.
“That too,” Erik agrees, leaning down to claim what is perpetually his for the taking, a kiss from Charles’ lips and a caress from his mind.
“In spirit if not in body, I am with you always,” Charles promises, and kisses Erik again.
---
The weight of what he’s done bears down on Charles most heavily when he’s communicating with the other telepaths - his co-conspirators, as it were. When they commune together, he can sometimes still hear the echos of the minds - the lives - they took together, the memories and hopes they absorbed before extinguishing them forever.
In those moments, Charles opens himself up to grief, to regret, but only in those brief flashes of time and borrowed emotion does he allow for such weakness. He can’t afford to look to the past. In order to be strong, for himself, for Erik, Charles must look only to the future.
---
Erik returns from the summit after being gone for a week longer than expected, and Charles is aching from missing him, the emptiness of his mind without Erik’s shared consciousness nearly driving him mad.
Madder, perhaps.
Erik bursts into their quarters with enough force to assure Charles that he hasn’t been the only one doing the missing, and the longing in Erik’s eyes when he drinks Charles in belays any lingering doubts that he is glad to be back.
Glad to be home.
“I see you haven’t decided to finish with me in favor of that blond leggy member of the post-Kurdish delegation, after all,” he says by way of greeting, referring to one of the more attractive of the many new leaders who attempted to get close to Erik, to convince him they were the one who should rightfully rule at his side.
Erik stops mid-stride on his way to crossing the room to get to Charles, and Charles can hear the spinning of his thoughts as clearly as if his neurons were really made of steel and wire.
“Was this a possibility you considered?” Erik asks blankly, still paused in the middle of the room.
Charles smiles. “I am a bit...” he searches for a word that will not harm either of them, but can find none. “Damaged.”
Erik moves, at that, getting to Charles so fast he wonders if Erik didn’t draw them together with his abilities. Wordlessly, Erik climbs onto Charles’ lap, straddling him, his hands splayed out against Charles’ collarbone, fingers reaching around his shoulders to grip him tight.
“What you are is mine, my Charles, my own. And for that - and all the reasons that make it so - you could never be anything less than perfect.”
Charles lets Erik kiss him then, long and deep, and chooses to trust Erik in this, as in all other things.