Archive of Our Own ^beta

Erik has to give the boy credit: he almost gets away. Almost. If it had been anyone else on his tail, if it had been someone without the unerring ability to track moving pieces of metal, no matter how small, the boy would have vanished across the mountains with no one the wiser.

But whatever luck the boy has had so far—and he has to have some, to be able to escape the Keep, flee across the salt flats, and make it to the mountains without dying of starvation or at the hands of one of the marauding cut-up gangs—today it’s run out. Erik approaches the boy’s shelter slowly, his gun drawn and held casually at his side. He ran out of bullets long ago, but the boy doesn’t need to know that. Of course, he doesn’t need bullets, but the boy doesn’t need to know that either.

The shelter is less of a man-made thing and more of a scraped-out hovel dug into the side of a foothill. Some other traveler must have made it a while ago, or an animal. This late in the year, the dirt’s far too cold and hard to shovel into. From what Erik’s heard, the boy isn’t much of an athlete. He won’t pose a challenge, Nur had said. Not if you corner him.

Erik’s cornered him now. He can feel the boy in the shelter, made distinct by the worn-out eyelets in his boots, the zipper teeth of his jacket, and that battered, broken watch that Erik’s been tracking for three weeks. There’s nowhere to run: the only way out from this narrow valley is back the way they’d come or further up into the mountains. Either way, Erik is confident he can match the boy in a race, if that’s what it comes down to. He’s not the one who’s been surviving off of berries stripped from tree branches and handfuls of snow, after all.

He can feel the instant the boy senses him: there’s a sudden stillness to the metal he wears. If Erik focuses more closely, he can just sense the rapid, frantic pulse of iron rushing through the boy’s veins as his heart thunders.

Stopping about ten feet from the covered entrance of the shelter, Erik calls out, “Come out slowly, with your hands up. I’m not here to hurt you.”

There’s a long, shivering silence. Not a single creature stirs in the woods surrounding them—this patch of territory is even more desolate than the rest of the foothills leading up into the mountains. A brushfire tore through here not long ago; most of the trees are blackened and scarred, the vegetation on the ground scorched away. Anyone with any sense wouldn’t have crossed through here, would have walked further south to find a better trail up through the mountains, one with at least some chance of scavenging and hunting. Erik’s reminded all over again how little experience this boy has with the world. It’s mystifying that he’s managed to survive this far. 

“He sent you, didn’t he?” a hoarse voice calls out from inside the shelter. Erik’s surprised to hear a crisp British accent; somehow, that isn’t what he’d imagined the boy would sound like.

“Yes,” Erik answers after a moment. No point in subterfuge. Perhaps the boy will respond to directness. “He wants you to come home.”

“Of course he does.”

“He’s worried about you.”

That draws out a bitter laugh. “Did he tell you that?”

He had. Granted, he hadn’t been entirely convincing, but Erik hadn’t pressed. Nur had made the offer, and Erik had grudgingly taken it. He doesn’t particularly like playing bounty hunter, but he hadn’t had much of a choice.   

“You can’t stay here,” Erik says. “You’ll freeze to death.”

“I’d rather be dead than go back,” the boy replies icily, “so you can kill me if you’d like. You aren’t taking me back there. Not alive.”

Erik grits his teeth. He hadn’t expected this to be easy, but he can already tell that this is going to be more difficult than he’d have liked. “It’ll be full winter soon. You’ll freeze or starve, or both. That’s not a kind way to go.”

“Kinder than anything waiting for me back there.”

Erik’s seen how Nur keeps his little pets in utter luxury, with all the trappings of wealth of a world long gone. They eat better than most people do, roasted meats and spices and fresh fruits and vegetables. They sleep in feather beds, wash in golden bathtubs, and spend their days being waited on hand and foot. No one in their right minds would run away from a life like that. Not unless they had a damn good reason for it.

“Did he treat you poorly?” Erik asks.

After a pause, the boy mutters, “I’m not telling you that.”

“Unless you give me a good reason,” Erik says calmly, “I’m taking you back to the Keep. Alive.”

The brush covering the hovel’s opening shifts and rustles. A moment later, a pale, thin face appears, framed by dark, tousled hair long enough to curl around his ears and over his forehead. Erik studies those bright blue eyes, that stubbornly set mouth, that nose that’s slightly too big for his features. He’s younger than Erik had expected, for all that Nur had called him boy. He must be in his early twenties.

He also has a knife in his hand.

“You can try,” the boy says, straightening as he pushes his way out of the shelter. He jerks his chin up belligerently, grip around the knife tightening.

“You’d try to fight me?” Erik says, unsure if he’s amused, impressed, or exasperated. The boy doesn’t look like he’d pose much of a physical challenge, and he must be weak from cold and hunger. Even without his powers, Erik could probably overpower him.

“No,” the boy says, “I’m not that stupid.” He lifts the knife to his own throat, blade pressing hard against his skin. “But I’m pretty sure I can do this.”

Erik, who had been easing forward slightly, freezes in place. The knife isn’t dull; Erik can sense the lethality of it, the keenness of the blade. If nothing else, he has to admire the boy’s resolve. His hand is shaking, but there’s a hardness in his eyes that keeps Erik pinned to where he stands.

“You’d go that far?” Erik says.

The boy glares down the slope at him. “I’m not going back.”

There’s so much cold satisfaction in his voice, confidence in his pyrrhic victory, that Erik almost feels bad about melting the knife’s blade into a stream of liquid steel. The boy loses his composure, staring in wide-eyed shock as the steel streams over to coalesce into a ball in Erik’s palm. Erik closes his hand around the scrap and slides it into his pocket. “I’m taking you back.”

The boy just stares at him for a long minute, speechless, chest heaving for breath. Then he slowly lowers the empty hilt in his hand.

Then he bolts.

For all the boy’s defiance, Erik hadn’t actually expected him to run. With a muted curse, he gives chase.

The boy cuts across the slope away from Erik, then starts angling downward. He’s running so fast that Erik doesn’t want to seize the metal on his body to trip him up, too wary of the boy falling headlong down the hill and breaking his neck. Instead, Erik just follows his trail, waiting for the boy to tire, or falter.

After a few minutes, the boy starts to scramble up a slope. Foolish of him—trying to climb only slows him down. Erik pauses at the bottom of the hill and scans it, trying to figure out where the boy is trying to go. Even if he gains height, there’s not much brush or cover in this area. The boy has no hope of hiding or getting away, only of keeping out of Erik’s reach for a little while longer.  

Setting down his pack to lighten his load, Erik starts to climb up after him. The incline isn’t too steep, but it’s rugged terrain, rocks skittering down the hill as Erik hikes up. A couple of hundred feet ahead, the boy disappears over the top of the rise. Erik feels him stagger a few feet and then stop—catching his breath, or too exhausted to go on.  

As Erik crests the hill, he sees the boy bent over, panting. The other side of the hill slopes more steeply downward and ends in the glassy, frosted surface of a small pond. Where was he looking to go? Erik wonders. There’s nowhere else to run to from here.

“Come on,” Erik says gruffly, moving over to take the boy’s arm.

The boy straightens, and when Erik sees the fierce look in his eye, he realizes his mistake. Before Erik can react, the boy shoves him.

Erik’s heel catches on a stone, and the world becomes a kaleidoscope of color and fear and pain as Erik spills down the slope, end over end. He tries to grab at something to anchor himself, to slow his descent, but there’s no metal around him, only cold, hard stone and dirt. He grabs for his gun, starts to fumble it into the shape of a stake so he can slam it into the ground and arrest his fall, but then he slams hard into the surface of the pond and—hears it crack.

He has the chance to take a half a strangled breath before the ice gives way beneath him, and he plummets into black, frozen waters.

Shock steals away all the air in his lungs. Fighting down panic, Erik kicks toward the surface. He can see the brightness above him where the ice is broken, but it feels further away than it should be. He can’t have sunk this far this fast. But his limbs are heavy and slow, and dark spots eat away at his vision. He doesn’t have enough air. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.

Then he feels something—someone—seize the back of his jacket. Erik thrashes, gasping for breath, swallowing water—

Calm down or you’re going to drown us both!

Erik goes utterly still. That’s the boy’s voice in his head. Why is the boy’s voice in his head?

Can you swim at all? the boy demands. A little help would be nice.

Instinctively, Erik kicks. It must be enough because the boy doesn’t say anything more, just hauls Erik steadily, steadily…

At some point, Erik must lose consciousness, because the next thing he knows, he’s coughing violently, shaking, and the boy’s saying, “That’s it, spit it all up. Breathe.” Erik lays on his side, shuddering, his chest aching. He can barely feel any part of his body. He’s numb all over, and a distant, rational thought says, You’re going to freeze to death. If you don’t get warm right now, you’re going to die.

“Shit,” the boy says softly. He puts a hand on Erik’s cheek, then sighs. “All right. Come on.”

*

Later, Erik will wonder how the hell the boy dragged him up the slope and back down the other side. He’ll wonder how the boy found the strength to haul Erik all the way back to his shelter, lay him down inside, and go back out for Erik’s pack. But as he lies there, trembling and in pain, he can’t think of anything except taking one breath, then another, then another, in and out, again and again even though every breath hurts. He has to keep breathing. The only thought in his head is, Keep breathing.

Then the boy returns. He has Erik’s box of matches in his hand and he says, “Keep breathing, just breathe,” as he shakily takes out a match. It lights and splutters out. The boy curses and lights another, but it fizzles out once he touches it to the twigs he’s gathered. Erik’s eyes slide shut.  

When he comes to again, there’s a weak fire spluttering, shaking nearly as hard as he is. The boy has half of Erik’s jacket off, and he’s reaching for the buttons on Erik’s shirt. When Erik makes an inarticulate noise, the boy says, “We have to get you out of these wet clothes. Come on, help me.”

Erik tries, but his whole body is clumsy with cold and pain. He doesn’t know how much help he is, but eventually, somehow, they wrestle him out of his clothes. The boy drapes something—a blanket or a cloak—over him, but the thin layer won’t do him much good—he’ll freeze to death just as surely on the cave’s frigid dirt floor.

Then he feels the boy shift in under the blanket behind him, feels the boy’s bare chest against his back. When he wraps his arms around Erik, Erik flinches.

“Don’t think this is anything other than saving your life,” the boy grumbles, “and mine.” He presses his cold face against Erik’s shoulder. Erik can feel him trembling, with cold or with fear, or both.

For a long while, Erik drifts in and out of consciousness. He’s aware of nothing more than the endless cold wracking through his body, inescapable and agonizing. At one point, he feels the boy pull away from him, but eventually he returns, tucking his warm body against Erik’s again.

When he finally opens his eyes, groggy but lucid, the boy is hovering in front of him, a small bowl in his hands. “Here,” he says. “You should drink something.”

Erik eyes him warily, balefully. The boy glares back at him and says, “If I wanted to kill you, I would have let you drown. Drink.”

His touch is much gentler than his tone: he carefully levers Erik’s head up and tilts the bowl to his lips. Cold water trickles in, painful against Erik’s teeth, and he swallows slowly, hesitantly. By the time he finishes the bowl, his thoughts feel slightly clearer.

“Why didn’t you?” Erik rasps as the boy moves away again. “Let me drown?”

For a couple of minutes, the boy doesn’t reply, busying himself with feeding twigs and brush into the fire. Erik’s clothes are drying on a raised ledge nearby; the boy’s dressed again, though his jeans still look damp.

“I couldn’t let you die,” he says finally.

Erik laughs hoarsely. “You pushed me.”

The boy glowers at him. “I’m not a killer.”

Before Erik can reply, the boy pushes his way through the curtain of brush and out of the cave. After it’s clear that he’s not immediately coming back, Erik pushes himself gingerly up onto his elbows, then sits up fully with a groan.

His body is covered in cuts and bruises from falling down the slope, but thankfully it doesn’t seem like he’s broken anything. Well, anything but his ribs, maybe—they feel bruised at least, if not cracked, and each breath sends sharp agony down his left side. But his injuries are miraculously minor, given how far he’d tumbled. He can tell that every inch of his body’s going to throb for days, but he hasn’t suffered anything fatal.

The boy had tried to kill him. That much is obvious. He must have known that Erik could easily have died, falling that far. But the boy had also saved Erik’s life, risking his own life to do so.

Why had he done that?

Slowly, Erik pushes off the blanket and reaches for his clothes. They’re mostly dry now, so he stiffly tugs on the long underwear, then his pants, then his undershirt. As he’s buttoning up his flannel shirt, the branches shift again, and the boy reappears.

He seems briefly startled to see Erik up and moving. After a second of hesitation, he comes over and pours a handful of berries and leaves on the ground. “Dinner.”

Erik eyes him. “I have food in my pack.”

The boy flushes. “I know,” he growls, drawing back. “Then you can eat that.”

He’d gone out and scavenged no more than a few mouthfuls of food, and still he’d been willing to share it with Erik, his enemy. Erik feels a sudden, strange rush of confused worry for him. How the hell has he survived this long, like this?

“Like what?” the boy asks, eyes narrowing.

Erik freezes. How…?

“Your psi-blocker,” the boy says stonily. “It fell off when you—in the water.”

Erik’s hand flies up to his ear and sure enough, the device Nur gave him is gone. His mind is unprotected, putting him squarely at the boy’s mercy.

“Not so nice when all the cards are in my hand, is it?” the boy says with a humorless smile. He scoops the berries back up into his hand and sits down on the other side of the cave. It’s not big enough for him to put much distance between them, but the fire’s in the way if Erik tried to lunge.

Erik resumes buttoning up his shirt, then pulls on his coat. It’s not quite dry yet, but it doesn’t matter: he’s chilled down to the bone, and every layer helps. After a long minute, he asks, “What are you going to do?”

The boy regards him suspiciously. “Why should I tell you?”

No doubt he’s afraid that Erik will track him down again, though in his current state, Erik doubts he’d be able to catch up before the boy escaped across the mountains. Still, he understands the boy’s recalcitrance. He may be young, but he’s not stupid.

“What are you going to do with me?” Erik clarifies.

“You?” The boy glances him over, his eyes like chips of ice. Then he sighs, shoulders dropping slightly. “I’m going over the mountains. I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t follow me.”

Erik raises an eyebrow. “You’d let me go?”

“Yes.”

“I could try to follow you.”

“I suppose you could.”

“I could try to kill you. You did just try to kill me.”

“You could try,” the boy says coolly, “but I could make you forget me entirely. I could erase every memory in your head if I wanted to.  You wouldn’t be able to follow me then.”

Erik’s pulse quickens at the thought. Keeping a tight grip on his fear, he says evenly, “Then why don’t you?”

The boy looks away. Ah, Erik thinks. He’s softer than he pretends to be.

“Anyway,” the boy says eventually, brusquely, “you’re all right, aren’t you? You’ll live?”

“Probably.” Erik feels like shit, but he’s pretty sure he’ll be all right. Barring any internal bleeding that he’s not aware of yet, he’ll heal with time.

“Then I’ll be going.” The boy pushes Erik’s pack toward him and, after a moment of hesitation, points to the blanket. “Keep it. You look like you need it more than I do.”

Erik highly doubts that. He might have nearly drowned, but now that he’s warmed up, he’s mostly out of danger. The boy, on the other hand, plans to venture further into the peaks, up where snow has already been blanketing the ground for weeks. He doesn’t have much by way of gear on him, only a small pack, an elegant but impractical coat, and boots that look worn through already. He’s not going to get far, even if the weather holds.

“Do you really think you’ll make it?” Erik asks.  

“Maybe.” The boy shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Then, as if he’s afraid that was too vulnerable an answer, he glares at Erik. “What do you care? What did he promise you?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

Erik calculates his response for a moment, then decides on the truth. “The man who killed my mother.”

The boy flinches. “Oh.” His mouth thins into an unhappy line. “That makes this harder.”

“It’s not too late,” Erik says lowly, sensing the boy’s hesitation. “He told me to tell you that he won’t punish you for running away. He’ll take you back, no questions asked.”

The softness in the boy’s expression twists into anger. “He said that, did he? He’s a liar.” There’s enough venom in his voice to kill. It’s not directed at Erik though; Erik can feel that it’s a distant fury, aimed at Nur alone. “There’s nothing you can say to convince me, so you’d better give it up. Turn back before the weather gets worse.”   

Then, before Erik can think to say anything else, the boy swings his pack up onto his shoulders, pushes the brush cover aside, and disappears.

For a few minutes, Erik tracks him with his powers as he makes his slow, painstaking way up into the mountains. This far up, there’s little more than an animal track that leads up to the peaks, and the terrain’s bound to grow more difficult on the ascent. Stupid boy, Erik thinks, closing his eyes. He’ll be dead in a matter of days.

After a while, Erik withdraws his powers, too tired to keep following the boy’s progress. The fall he’d taken has left him battered and exhausted, and he’ll need all his strength to make it back down through the foothills to warmer, safer ground. He’ll rest here for another hour or so, he decides. Then he’s going after that fool of a boy and dragging him back down the mountain.

Erik wraps himself in the blanket and feeds the fire what little fuel he has left, small twigs and scraps of brush. The warmth returns some life to his bones, and eventually, hunger drives him to dig some rations out of his pack and heat them over the fire. Chewing the hard, tasteless bread and near-frozen jerky makes his jaw ache, but the food settles solidly in his stomach, leaving him steadier than before.

No psi-blocker. He touches his ear irritably, annoyed at having lost his greatest advantage. The boy will sense him coming now. Had he been telling the truth earlier, when he’d claimed to be able to erase Erik’s memories? Or had that been a blustering threat, an attempt to intimidate Erik into leaving him alone?

The wise thing to do would be to abandon the hunt. There are other ways of tracking Shaw down that don’t involve Nur’s assistance. Yes, it’ll take longer. Yes, he may lose Shaw’s trail again and be forced to start from scratch. But pursuing this boy could end badly, very badly. It won’t do you any good to have Shaw’s location if you’re dead, Erik reasons to himself.

And yet, when he considers letting the boy slip away, his stomach twists. This is the closest he has ever gotten to Shaw. Twelve years and thousands of miles of crisscrossing across countries and continents, and now, at last, he can sense Shaw’s presence, tantalizingly near. He can’t let that go. He can’t.

So he stamps out the fire and shrugs on his pack. Ignoring the scream of his bruised and aching muscles, he ducks out of the shelter, gazes up the way the boy had gone, and forces himself to start the climb.

Fifteen minutes into the hike, he starts to notice a darkness gathering in the back of his mind. His skin prickles the way it always does when his powers catch on an approaching storm, and when he turns, a spike of alarm runs through him at the sight of gray storm clouds blotting out the horizon. Ahead, the peak rises against a bright blue sky, clear and endless. But it won’t be long before the storm arrives; Erik can sense it approaching, barreling toward them with all the power and inevitability of a train.

There’s a tiny cabin about two miles directly south. Erik had passed it on his way up, had given it a brief glance. The building’s not much to look at, only four sagging walls, a patchy roof, and no creature comforts to speak of, but it’s better than nothing. In a blizzard, it just might be enough to save his life.

Instinct tells him to make for the cabin immediately. If he hurries, he’ll be able to reach it before the storm  hits, before visibility becomes shit. If he gets caught in a snowstorm at this altitude with no shelter, he’ll be damn lucky to survive through the night.

But the boy. The stupid, stubborn, idiot boy.

With a growl, Erik pushes himself onward. When he casts his powers out ahead of him, he can feel the boy about a mile and a half ahead, moving slowly. Has he spotted the storm yet? Does he have any idea how much danger he’s in?  

Don’t be stupid, Erik thinks furiously in the boy’s direction. You’re not going to outrun this storm. You’re going to get both of us killed at this rate.

He’s not sure what the boy’s range is, but given Nur’s cryptic warnings, his telepathy is nothing to scoff at. But the boy gives no indication that he’s heard, neither replying nor slowing his pace at all. A mile would be a stretch for most psionics, Erik supposes. As the first flurries start to drift down into view, he pushes himself faster.

By the time he’s halved the distance between himself and the boy, snow has started driving down in earnest. He can see no more than ten feet in front of him; the rest of the of the world has faded into dark obscurity. If not for his powers, he would have been dead, and the boy with him. As it is, he’s able to guide himself forward by tracking the boy’s zippers, following their movement on and on until they slowly, slowly grind to a halt.

He nearly stumbles over the boy ten minutes later, a huddled, shivering lump sat at the base of a scraggly thin pine tree. Ignoring the powerful desire to sink down next to him, to just sit and catch his breath for a minute, Erik remains standing. He knows if he sits down, neither of them are getting up again.

“Come on!” he shouts, holding out his hand. When the boy doesn’t respond, Erik thinks at him: Get up!

The boy lifts his head very slightly. Good. He’s still alive at least. I told you not to follow me.

If I hadn’t followed you, you’d be dead, Erik retorts. Come on, let’s go.

Go where?

There’s a cabin near the base of the mountain. We’ll stay there until the storm’s broken.

There’s no way we’re getting down the mountain. Not in this.

If we stay here, we’ll die.

I can’t see a thing! Can you?

I don’t need to see. If Erik strains his powers, he can just sense the cabin at the periphery of his range, like a dim spark against an ocean of black. It’s not much, but it’ll be enough to guide them down.  

The boy’s silent for a long moment. Then he says, If I go with you, you’ll only take me back to him.

Erik resists the urge to grab the boy by his scruff and shake him. Whatever good you think you’re doing by dying here, he wants to say, you’re wrong. If you think death is the answer, you haven’t thought hard enough.

Instead, he says calmly, If you want to sit here and die, then you’re going to have to watch me do the same.

That makes the boy jerk his head up in surprise, hazy blue eyes meeting Erik’s. What?

I’m not leaving without you, Erik says firmly. If you die, I die. You said you weren’t a killer. Prove it.  

The boy stares at him, several emotions flashing across his face in quick succession: disbelief, anger, irritation—then, finally, resignation. Bastard, he thinks, then sluggishly reaches up to take Erik’s hand.

Slowly, agonizingly, they make their way down the mountain. Erik keeps his hand on the boy’s arm, partly to guide him, partly to make sure he doesn’t falter, even for a second. The storm’s worsening by the minute, the howling wind buffeting them with ice. They’re both nearly frozen stiff. Erik hauls the boy along as fast as he dares on the steep slope, painfully conscious of how little time they have left. If they stumble or fall, he’s not sure either of them have the strength left to go on.

Finally, after an eternity and a half, Erik feels the cabin loom up in front of them, barely a hundred feet away. The boy’s leaning heavily on Erik now, only half-conscious, shaking violently. Erik grabs him around the waist and forces him to walk. One step, then another, then another, again and again even as the boy sags in his arms, threatening to slip out of his grasp entirely.

And then, somehow, they’re staggering up two steps to the porch, and then collapsing through the half-open door.

For an indeterminate amount of time, Erik lays where he’s fallen, just listening to his own harsh, gasping breaths, his heart thundering in his chest. Every molecule in his body is utterly numb, and he’s both frightened and relieved by that: frightened because he can’t readily tell how badly he might be injured (where he’s been frostbitten, what he might lose, if anything), and relieved because he knows he’d be in agony right now if he had any sensation left. First the fall into the pond and now that desperate sprint through the storm—if he survives this, his body is going to be unimaginably sore.

Gradually, Erik becomes aware of the boy beside him, still shivering with so much force that Erik can feel the vibration through the floorboards. Get up, Erik thinks to himself. Get up and get him warm or else you’ll have done all this for nothing.

Digging his fingernails into the wood of the floorboards, he pulls himself up onto his elbows, then to his knees. There’s a poker in the empty fireplace, rusted over and long forgotten. Erik pulls it from the grate with a squeal of metal on metal, sends it to shove the door shut, and then summons it to his hand. Using it to take some of his weight, he manages to get up onto his feet and, after a perilous moment of lightheaded swaying, starts toward the fireplace.

To his relief, he finds a stack of old, unused firewood in the corner of the room by the hearth. There’s not much of it and some of it is damp and moldy, but it’ll have to do. Yanking his pack over to him by the metal bands he’d wrapped around the straps, he fishes out the box of matches, strips off his gloves, and grabs the firewood.

Between his numb fingers and the damp wood, it takes nearly fifteen minutes to get a decent blaze going. As the heat finally starts to seep into his face, into his hands, Erik leans into it, shuddering in relief. It would be so easy to just hunch here forever, eyes closed, and let the fire breathe life back into his bones.

Instead, he forces his aching knees to unbend, forces himself to go grab the boy under his arms and drag him inch by painstaking inch over to the hearth. The boy seems only half-aware, but he’s shivering still, which is a good sign. As the fire’s heat washes over his face, he moans softly squeezes his eyes shut. Erik sways above him for a moment, debating whether or not to try to wrestle the boy out of his snow-soaked clothes. But in the end, fatigue overcomes him, and he collapses down in front of the fireplace next to the boy, his head spinning.

There’s no telling how long this storm will last, but at least they’ve gotten out of the wind and snow. Later, Erik will assess the situation more clearly. Later, he’ll take stock of their supplies, look through the cabin for any resources, try to gauge the strength of the storm with his powers. But for now…for now he’s going to close his eyes.

Just for a moment. 

*

Charles wakes slowly, in fits and starts. As consciousness starts to return, the first thing he’s aware of is the cold: inexhaustible, inescapable cold. His nose is numb, and his lips. His fingers are stiff even in his gloves. When he exhales, his breath snakes out between his teeth in a stream of white. All that’s left of the fire are a few weak sparks that glow intermittently, far too weak to give off any sort of heat.

The next thing he becomes aware of is all the places he isn’t cold. His back. His neck. His chest. When he tries to turn his head, he realizes with a jolt of shock that he’s being cuddled. The man from before, Erik, is pressed up against his back, cuddling him.

The idea is so bizarre, so unexpected, that all Charles can do for several seconds is simply lie there, struggling to process the situation. Thankfully, it isn’t long before rational thought begins to filter in, dispelling his blank astonishment. Body heat. Of course. Charles had done the same thing back there in the cave, after fishing the man out of the pond. Erik’s ensuring his own survival as much as Charles’s.

So they’re alive. They made it to the cabin—and Charles has to admit that without Erik’s help, he probably would have frozen to death out there, or walked himself blindly off a cliff—and they’ve gotten relatively warm, and they’re safe from the storm. Now what?

Charles allows his telepathy to rest over Erik’s mind, not pressing in, merely…thinking. He could alter Erik’s perception of him. He could make Erik consider him a friend. He could twist Erik’s instincts so that Erik would safeguard Charles’s well-being above all else, even at the cost of his own life. It would be easy, after what Apocalypse had done. As simple and inconsequential as lifting a finger.

But Charles doesn’t. The mere thought of doing any of that sends a shudder of revulsion through him. Instead, he sits up, pulling away from Erik’s arm around his chest, and gathers the blanket around his shoulders as he stands.

When he returns, Erik’s awake. He kneels beside the fire, feeding a fresh log in through the grate and stirring the embers with a poker. After a moment, he asks, “What were you doing?”

The suspicion in his tone makes Charles bristle, though it’s entirely warranted—they are virtual strangers, after all, with no reason to trust each other. “Relieving myself,” he replies, clutching the blanket a little more tightly around his shoulders. “Or is that not allowed?”

Erik gives him a brief, cool glance. “I imagine there isn’t any running water.”

“No. There’s a bucket though. Someone’s clearly lived here before.”

“Mm.”

When Erik doesn’t say anything more, Charles drifts over to the window by the door. The glass is cracked and murky with dust and age, but even through it, he can see the wall of white outside, and hear the unceasing roar of the wind. Occasionally, a particularly violent gust rips over the cabin, making the roof and walls clatter and tremble. The storm doesn’t seem to have abated; if anything, it’s grown stronger.

At least he won’t be able to drag me anywhere in this, Charles thinks grimly. Not that he intends to let Erik drag him anywhere at all, storm or no.

Pulling himself away from the window, he walks a slow circuit of the cabin, examining what little furniture it has, poking through the cabinets in the tiny kitchen area. Most of the cabin is just the one room, save for the cramped bathroom in the back corner that’s walled off into its own room and secured with a creaky, lopsided door. A small, empty bookshelf with crooked shelves sits against one wall, and a chair missing one of its legs lies overturned by the hearth. Other than that, the cabin is conspicuously bare; there’s not even a crumb left in any of the kitchen cabinets. Either the cabin’s owners cleared everything out long ago, or scavengers have picked this place clean. Perhaps a combination of the two.

Eventually, Charles is lured back over to the other side of the room by the heat of the rekindled fire. Erik sits with his open pack in his lap, removing its contents one by one. After eyeing him for a moment, Charles sits down beside him, knees drawn up to his chest.

“Now what?” he asks. 

“This storm isn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” Erik says. “We have a limited supply of firewood, and the food I have won’t stretch more than a few days for the two of us.”

“So what do we do?”

“For now, we should rest. There’s not much we can do, with the storm like this. With any luck, it’ll die down enough for me to gather more wood at some point. As for food…” Erik frowns down at the bags he’d taken from his pack, a paltry few packets. Charles can’t imagine that lasting them more than a few hours. “I’ll have to figure that out as we go.”

Charles rests his chin on his knees and gazes into the fire. The heat feels so good against his face, a stark contrast to the cold at his back. “I bet you wish you hadn’t come after me,” he murmurs, watching the flames work their way through a crack in the log.

“I had no choice,” Erik says stonily.

Charles turns his head to study his new companion. He’s older than Charles but not by too much: the lines around his eyes age him more than they should, and his thick, red beard gives him a gruff, rugged look. He has a strong nose and a sharp jaw—he’s all lines, really, lean and angular and intense. Not a force to be reckoned with, Charles imagines. He remembers the fear that had trembled through him at the sight of the man standing casually down the slope from Charles’s meager shelter, gun held idly at his side as he stood there with all the quiet confidence of a wolf, knowing its prey was cornered. If Erik hadn’t lost that damned psi-blocker in the pond, Charles would be utterly at his mercy. He has no illusions about that: he wouldn’t last very long in a fight against Erik at all, not physically.

But the psi-blocker had been lost, and Erik had come after Charles in the storm anyway, even knowing that he had no protection against Charles’s telepathy, even knowing that he could die himself in that storm, weakened and injured as he was. Whatever Apocalypse knows, Erik’s desperate for it.

“I’m sorry,” Charles says after a while. “About your mother.”

Erik shoots him a narrow-eyed look, clearly unsure how he should take that, or respond to it. Finally, he shakes his head and mutters, “It was a long time ago.”

“But you’re still looking for the man who killed her.”

Erik presses his thumb against one of the bands on the straps of his pack. Charles is fascinated to see the metal bend and warp under his touch, like liquid. It’s no wonder Charles’s knife had stood no chance against him. Erik must have found it laughable when Charles had pulled it out, so sure he’d forced a stalemate.

“I won’t stop until he’s dead,” Erik growls. “I promised her that.”

There’s no lie in his words—his pain and grief, still so sharp for being so old, rake over Charles like claws, making him draw his telepathy back with a wince. “I’m sorry,” he says again, his heart aching in shared sorrow. When Erik glances at him, Charles says softly, “I can feel your pain.”  

Erik recoils visibly. “Don’t read my mind.”

Even after all this time, it still stings to be rejected out of hand, even at the mildest of mental touches. But Charles has long since grown used to stifling that pang of disappointment and embarrassment. He just says calmly, “I’m not. It’s just hard to ignore what’s on the surface. It’s like asking me not to listen when you’re speaking directly at me.”

Erik glares mistrustfully at him for a long moment, then shakes his head in irritation. “Just keep your telepathy to yourself.” He could see anything in my head that he wanted. He could take anything. The boy’s dangerous; don’t let down your guard.

No matter what, people really are the same everywhere, aren’t they? Charles thinks with bitter humor. Humans and mutants alike, none of them ever look on psionics with any kindness.

“I’m not boy,” he says coldly. “I’m Charles. No need to introduce yourself—I already know your name is Erik. But don’t worry, that’s the only thing I’ve taken. I only looked in your mind long enough to know that you don’t mean to kill me in my sleep. From now on, I’ll stay out.”

Erik eyes him warily. “I don’t trust you.”

“I know you don’t. But I won’t look. Believe me, it’s not at all pleasant to be in the mind of someone who hates what you are.”

Now Erik blinks. “I didn’t say I hated what you are. I said I don’t trust you.”

“I’ve heard that before. Funnily enough, I’ve found it usually means the same thing.”

Angry now and no longer in the mood to talk, Charles lays down in front of the fire, his back to Erik, the blanket pulled up to his ears. After a while, Erik starts to rearrange his supplies in silence, packages and fabric rustling.

Outside, the storm continues to rage on, unrelenting.

*

For the next day and a half, they stay in the cabin, watching the blizzard blur the world white. Erik feeds the fire slowly, carefully, doing his best to stretch out the wood they have. He’s broken down the chair, and if things grow desperate, he can take apart the cabinets as well. That won’t last them forever, but it’ll stave off the cold for now. 

More dire is the food situation: the boy—Charles—has an appetite on him, and though they split the rations evenly, Erik has heard Charles’s stomach growling often enough to know that he’s constantly hungry. He never asks for more than his portion though. In fact, he hardly speaks at all, seemingly content to pace broodingly around the cabin, largely ignoring Erik’s presence.

Now that he has nothing to occupy his mind with, Erik finds himself wondering what Nur wants the boy for. Erik hasn’t traveled this far north in years, so he doesn’t know much about Nur and his Keep beyond what rumors have made their way into common knowledge. He knows Nur has a coterie of favored mutants that he keeps as his inner circle. He knows that the Keep is exclusive to mutants and bars entrance to all but a few baselines who meet Nur’s approval. That was part of what had drawn Erik this far north, knowing that Shaw would have been welcomed at the Keep, would have been given shelter if he’d turned up. And he had turned up after all, mere weeks before Erik had. He had left at the end of the month; Erik had missed him by a matter of days.

Whoever Charles is, whatever he represents, he’s important to Nur somehow. Nur had known how badly Erik wanted Shaw; Erik hadn’t bothered to hide that. For some reason, Nur considers the safe retrieval of this boy a suitable price. Why? Simply for his power? Or for more personal reasons? Erik hadn’t missed the harsh anger in Nur’s voice as he’d described how Charles had run away. The anger of a thwarted lover, perhaps? Erik’s heard enough about Nur’s proclivities to guess that he’d find Charles attractive.

A troubling thought, given Charles’s steadfast insistence that he’d rather die than go back. Erik’s observed the boy for long enough now to see that his defiance isn’t the rash impetuousness of a spoiled lover, or an upset child. There’s real fear and anger behind his refusal to return to the Keep. What did Nur do to him? What does Nur want him back for?

He considers asking Charles outright, but judging by the icy looks he’s received over the last couple of days, the boy’s in no mood to answer any questions. He’s still angry at Erik for telling him to stay out of his head, Erik guesses. A perfectly reasonable request, but it’s clearly upset Charles beyond reason. Why Charles would believe Erik would automatically trust him in his head, Erik has no idea. They’re strangers to each other. Worse, they’re at cross purposes. Of course Erik doesn’t want a potential enemy in his mind, ferreting out his secrets, his deepest thoughts.

But evidently Charles doesn’t feel the same way. He does a damn good job of pretending Erik doesn’t exist, except around mealtimes when Erik doles out the rations. At night, he curls up with his back to Erik, shoulders hunched unwelcomingly. Fine, Erik thinks, annoyed. If he wants to act like a child, then Erik will let him.

But on the evening of the second night, Charles moves away from his usual spot by the window and comes to sit down beside Erik as he stirs the fire back to life. When Erik glances at him, Charles draws his knees up to his chest, lays his chin on them, and says, “How much longer do you think we’ll be here?”

“No longer ignoring me?” Erik asks dryly.

Charles gives him a spiteful look. “Only because I’m bored. I can’t stand the silence.”

“Are you always like this toward people who tell you not to invade their privacy?”  

“I’ve realized that people who tell me to stay out of their heads have no concept of what it’s like to have to shield hard enough to keep everything out. Why should I be pleased about having to make myself uncomfortable to put other people at ease?”

“I’ve met a telepath before. She never mentioned any trouble with shielding.”

“Shockingly, not all telepaths are carbon copies of each other,” Charles says scornfully. “Do I really have to explain that to you?”  

Erik flushes in annoyance and faint embarrassment. Instead of replying to that, he says brusquely, “It hurts you then, to shield around other people? How did you function at all at the Keep? Surely not everyone there liked having you in their heads.”

Charles’s answering smile is as sharp as a knife’s edge and utterly humorless. “No, most people did not. But that’s what Apocalypse wanted.”

Apocalypse. It takes Erik a moment to recall that that’s what Nur’s followers call him, and what Nur calls himself when he deals with forces outside the Keep. Frowning, Erik says, “You were…what? His eyes and ears?”

“His personal surveillance system. His spy.” Charles covers his head with both hands, face buried against his knees. “Whatever he wanted to know, I gave to him. Whatever he wanted me to do…” He shudders hard.

No wonder Nur wants him back. Charles must have been the cornerstone to his power at the Keep. Without a telepath there to keep everyone in line, to keep everyone afraid, Nur’s hold on his people isn’t quite so secure.

Erik studies Charles closely. Strange to think that so much power could reside in such an unassuming form. “Why did you obey him?” he asks after a moment. “You’re powerful. You could have refused. Or fought.”

“I’m as powerful as he made me,” Charles says. He lifts his head and looks down at his hands, as if searching for Nur’s influence there. “I was always…my telepathy was always strong, but he amplified it a hundred times over. I didn’t mind it at the beginning. At first, I thought we were building something good. I thought I was helping him create a haven for mutants, some place we could be safe. But he started asking me to do more and more, and when I started to refuse…” Charles inhales slowly, shakily. “He threatened my friends. My family. I couldn’t say no.”

“So why run away now?”

For a long moment, Charles doesn’t reply. He simply gazes into the fire, his eyes glassy and distant. Then he says quietly, “What do you know about his mutation?”

“I know he can amplify powers. I know he ages slowly, or not at all. He’s been alive for centuries.”

“He ages just like we do. But he’s capable of transferring his consciousness from one body to another. It’s true, he’s been alive for centuries, but only because he selects new bodies to take as his own.” Charles’s shoulders hunch further, defensively. When he speaks again, his voice is barely audible. “You can guess who he’s decided on for his next host.”

Erik’s eyes widen. “You?”

“He envies my powers,” Charles says. “He’s absorbed a lot of abilities over the years, but he doesn’t have telepathy. Not yet.”

“He could bend anyone to his will in an instant if he had your powers.”

“He’d have the whole world at his feet. It’s what he’s always wanted.” Charles’s voice hardens. “I’ll never let him have it. For everyone else’s sake as well as mine. I meant what I said: I’d rather die than go back. He’s used my telepathy for years, but I always had ultimate control of it. It terrifies me to think of what he’d do if he could use my telepathy without me in the way.”

Erik’s mind floods over with possibilities. If Charles’s telepathy is strong enough to maintain control of an entire city, if he can erase and manipulate memories and desires at will, then Nur could shape everything and everyone around him to his liking. He’d instantly become the most powerful warlord in the north—hell, in the whole country. The lesser warlords would have to bend knee, or be made to.

“I’m surprised he only sent me after you,” Erik says.

“He knows I’d sense a group coming from miles away,” Charles says. “He must have figured that one man would stand a better chance of sneaking up on me than twenty.” He sighs ruefully. “And he was right, wasn’t he.”

If Erik hadn’t lost his psi-blocker, there would have been nothing to stop him from seizing Charles by the scruff and dragging him back to the Keep. It was only sheer, dumb luck that had saved Charles in the end.

No, that’s not quite true. Charles had gotten the drop on Erik after all. If he hadn’t gone after Erik in that pond, he would be free and clear now. Or, more likely, he’d be lying dead in a snowdrift somewhere. So in truth, they both owe each other their lives. That makes this situation…slightly more complicated.  

“Do you still want to take me back there?” Charles asks, peering over at Erik. He doesn’t seem angry or belligerent now, only curious. “Knowing that?”

“What if I said yes?”

“Then I’d think you were stupid.”

“How Nur runs his Keep is no concern of mine,” Erik says, just to see how Charles will respond. “If I brought you back to him, I’d have his favor, wouldn’t I? I’ve heard a lot of things about Nur, many of them different, but one thing remains the same: he always keeps his promises. Knowing that, what would I have to fear?”

Charles stares at him. “You’d trade the lives of everyone at the Keep—and more, probably—for your revenge? For the hope of revenge?” 

Erik gazes steadily back at him. “What if I said yes?”

Charles meets his eyes for a long moment. Then he shakes his head. “You wouldn’t do that. You say that, but you wouldn’t.”  

“How do you know?”

“Because…” Charles hesitates. “Because I felt it when I was in your mind. Your goodness.”

That startles a sharp laugh out of Erik. “My goodness?”

“You think you don’t have any left,” Charles says solemnly, “but…you do. It’s buried deep, but it’s there.” He returns his gaze to the fire, his mouth twisting unhappily. “I wish I hadn’t seen it. It would be easier if I could convince myself you were evil. But,” he smiles halfheartedly, “no one’s ever really evil.”

“You’re a fool if you believe that.”

“No, merely realistic.” When Erik scoffs, Charles says, “I couldn’t count how many minds I’ve seen in my life. How many people I’ve known, just by brushing their thoughts for a moment. I’ve never met a single person so hopeless that they had no chance for redemption.”

It’s been over two days since they met, and Erik still hasn’t quite decided how he feels about the boy. Right then though, he feels nothing but contempt. “Does it please you to be so willfully blind?”

“Does it please you to be cynical?” Charles shoots back.

“I’ve seen evil,” Erik says harshly. “I’ve met it. Is it cynical to say that?”  

“Everyone has a little good in them. If I had the chance to look, I bet I could even find some in the man you’re looking for, Shaw—”

Before Erik’s fully aware of what he’s doing, he’s closed the distance between them and seized fistfuls of Charles’s shirt, lifting him partly off the ground. With a gasp, Charles grabs at his wrists, eyes wide and innocent, as if he hadn’t seen this coming at all. As if he doesn’t know what he might have said to provoke such a reaction.

Erik’s vision pulses red with rage. For a moment, he nearly gives into the urge to shake Charles, shake him until he cries out for mercy.

“Don’t ever speak about him,” Erik snarls lowly. “Don’t ever say anything like that again.”

Shoving the boy away from him, he stands and stalks off to the other side of the cabin. Violence simmers just under his skin, searing and painful. He wants to break something. He wants to walk out into the storm and scream. Instead, he pulls out all of the metal in his pockets: scraps and pieces he’s collected over time, the ball that had once been Charles’s knife. With a clench of his hand, he smashes the collection together and flattens it, making it thin, as thin as he can possibly manage. Then he rolls the sheet of metal back up into a perfect sphere and flattens it again with a vindictive crunch.

By the time he’s repeated the cycle a dozen times over, the rage boiling inside him has eased enough for him to breathe again. The urge to throw Charles out the window isn’t quite so overwhelming anymore, and now that his head isn’t pulsing with so much fury, Erik can bring himself to admit that Charles hadn’t mentioned Shaw out of malice. He’d just been naïve to the point of willful stupidity, which is aggravating but not deserving of anything worse than a sharp reprimand and a glare. At least Charles had had the good sense to shut up.  

Abruptly, Erik feels more tired than anything. He’s still aching and exhausted from the events of the last couple of days, and what he wants more than anything is a real bed to sleep on. When he’d been a guest at the Keep, Nur had given him a room of his own with a bed so comfortable that Erik had practically melted into it. It had been years since he’d slept so deeply and well. That memory feels so distant now. The cabin’s grimy, unyielding floor is a stark reminder that he’s far removed now from any of the comforts of proper civilization.  

When his fingers start going numb with cold, Erik reluctantly returns to the fireplace. Charles is hunched to one side, giving Erik a wide berth. So the boy hasn’t got a death wish after all. Ignoring him, Erik beds down on the other side of the fire, tucking his pack underneath his head as a pillow.

For a while, the cabin is silent save for the crackling of burning wood and the distant howl of the gale outside. Just as Erik starts to doze off, Charles says very softly, “I’m sorry.”

Erik opens his eyes. Half a dozen replies flit through his mind, none of them kind. Eventually, he just closes his eyes again and mutters, “Go to sleep.”  

*

When Charles wakes up, the silence is deafening and disorienting. It takes him a moment to realize what’s different: the wind is no longer ripping at the cabin like it’s trying to claw it out of the earth. Wrapping his blanket around his shoulders, Charles rises, pads over to the window by the door, and peers out.

Bright sunlight glances off thick snowdrifts that bury what once was a rocky, defined landscape. Here and there, the green tips of evergreen branches and trees poke up out of the snow, but for the most part, the world outside is a glistening expanse of unbroken white. The sky above is blinding blue, and though the sun shines down strongly, Charles can feel the cold seeping in through the closed door, like ghostly fingers reaching for him. At least there’s no more wind—everything is almost eerily still. 

The storm is over. Which means this little détente between him and Erik has come to an end.

Shivering, Charles turns—and finds Erik sitting up on his bedroll, looking across the room at him.

For a moment, Charles considers running. He could yank open the door and be down the slope in seconds. If he remembers correctly, there’s a spot further down the hill where the path splits into two, one continuing straight and easy, the other angling to the left sharply, up into craggy, difficult terrain. If he could make it up that incline, he might be able to lose Erik in the dense trees, or…

But no, that’s foolish thinking. For one thing, his pack is across the room beside the fireplace with Erik; he’d be bolting off without any supplies whatsoever. For another, even in Erik’s weakened state, Charles is pretty sure Erik would be able to track him through the snow. He’d leave conspicuous tracks, for one, and Erik’s got his powers on his side, for another. Charles could stun him, tell him to sleep, or ignore Charles, or forget him entirely. But really, where would he go? Trying to summit the mountain and escape down the other side would be suicide with his limited amount of supplies, poor winter gear, and no real food to speak of, and no way to get any. But going back the way he’d come means possibly running into other hunters Apocalypse might have sent after him, and not all of them will be as…well, patient as Erik’s been.

“You’re stuck,” Erik says calmly.

“So are you,” Charles retorts. “You can’t go back emptyhanded, but I’m not going to let you drag me back there and there’s no way you can force me. So.”

Erik meets his gaze steadily. “So.”  

Charles hesitates for a long minute. This is a stupid idea. Just a really stupid idea. But what has he got to lose?

“I was thinking last night,” he says slowly. “I want to help you.”

Erik’s expression turns wary. “How?”

“I’ll help you track down Shaw. Just swear that you’ll help me get away from Apoc—from Nur. If you don’t come back, he’ll send other people after me. Hell, he probably already has. They’ll have those psi-blockers, too, and I can’t do anything against those. But you can.”

Erik’s already shaking his head. “I’ve been tracking Shaw for twelve years, and I’ve gotten almost nowhere. He’s a master of disappearing and reappearing at will, wherever and whenever he likes. What makes you so sure you’ll be able to find him?”

“I told you that Nur amplified my powers. My general range is fifty or sixty miles if I concentrate. More than that if I really stretch myself. Wherever we go, I could scan for him. Plus if we meet anyone who might know something, we wouldn’t have to negotiate for the information. I could just…” Charles taps his temple.

Erik scoffs. “You plan to scan every single mind in a fifty mile radius wherever we go? Does that sound at all efficient to you?”

“Well, no, not really, but it’s an idea, isn’t it?”  

“It’s a longshot, that’s what it is.”

“And what have you got now?”

“Better leads than that,” Erik growls.

“You can’t seriously think that having a telepath on your side would be a bad thing.”

“It is if that telepath is you,” Erik replies curtly. “I don’t trust you. If you’re so willing to fuck around in other people’s heads, how do I know you won’t do it to mine? You could make me do anything you wanted, and I wouldn’t know any better, would I?”

It always comes down to this. Trust. Charles hates that word.

He goes back over to the fireplace, kneels down by his pack, and digs around in it for a minute. When his fingers close around what he’s searching for, he pulls it out and flings it at Erik, who catches it reflexively and then looks up at Charles with wide eyes when he realizes what it is.

“There,” Charles spits. “Trust that if you can’t trust me.”

“You said it fell off in the water,” Erik says.  

“Well.” Charles’s mouth twists humorlessly. “I lied.”

Deliberately, his eyes pinned on Charles the whole time, Erik raises the psi-blocker and slots it neatly into place around the curve of his ear. His mind, once a bright glow on the periphery of Charles’s awareness, blinks out.

“I could take you back to Nur now,” Erik says slowly. “You wouldn’t be able to stop me.”

“No,” Charles says. His heart starts to race. He’s not sure if he just sealed his fate in a moment of angry, impulsive stupidity. “I wouldn’t.”

Erik stares at him for a long minute, his expression inscrutable. Then he shakes his head. “You’re a fool.”

“Maybe.” Somehow Charles’s voice comes out steady and unaffected, even as his heart struggles to beat out of his chest.

Pushing back his blanket, Erik rises. Charles suppresses a flinch.  

“Fine,” Erik says. “If you think you can help me find Shaw, then I’ll let you try. But if you fail…”

Charles lifts his chin. “I won’t.”  

“Good.” After holding his gaze for another moment, Erik kneels and starts to fold up his blanket and bedroll. “Get your things then. We should leave as soon as possible.”

Ten minutes later, they’re setting off down the mountain toward the hill country that surrounds the peaks. It’s slow going, forging through the snow piled up nearly to their knees, and with Erik still recovering from the injuries sustained from his fall (from the push, Charles thinks with a small pang of guilt). As Erik leads the way, Charles keeps a close eye on him in case he stumbles or needs a rest. It’d be rather counterproductive, he figures, if his newly appointed guardian collapses face-first into the snow.

They travel in silence for the most part, which suits Charles fine for the first few hours. But eventually, the silence begins to chafe, and as they pause for a late lunch (doling out the last of Erik’s packed rations), Charles asks, “Do you have any idea where Shaw is now?” When Erik glares at him, Charles glares back. “What? I’m going to need more information if I’m going to narrow down his location.”

Still scowling, Erik unscrews the cap of his water bottle and takes a long swallow. As he tucks the bottle back into his pack, he says, “He travels a lot. He never stays in one place for longer than a few weeks at a time. He has a base of some sort down south, but I haven’t been able to find it. Wherever it is, it’s well hidden.”

“How does he travel? By car?” Charles can’t imagine Shaw would get very far very fast on foot.

“Sometimes. Other times, he just…disappears from one place and appears in another. I’ve tracked his movements for years, and there are times when he somehow gets across the country in a matter of minutes. At first, I chalked it up to false sightings, but that’s happened often enough that I’m starting to think he has some alternate means of transportation.”

“A teleporter perhaps?”

Erik nods. “I considered as much. None of his known associates are teleporters, but he may be keeping them a secret.”

“So he could be anywhere,” Charles says with a frown. “That makes this complicated.”

The corner of Erik’s mouth twitches into a sardonic half-grin. “If it was easy, I wouldn’t need your help.”

Charles huffs. “Fair enough. Then where do we start?”

“One of his associates lives at Roseden. Since he came this way, I imagine he went to see her. I would have gone to interrogate her myself but she usually has me at a disadvantage.” He gestures to the psi-blocker.

Charles’s eyes widen. “She’s a telepath?”

“A powerful one. She knows me and she’d pick me out of a crowd before I could get anywhere near her. That’s why I went to Nur instead of going straight for Roseden.”

“But now you’ve got the psi-blocker.”   

“The psi-blocker will keep her out, but it won’t force her to talk to me. But…” Erik raises an eyebrow at him. “You could.” 

At the thought of wrestling another telepath into submission, a sick feeling wells up in Charles’s gut, but he tries to quell the nausea. He’s only willing to do this because it’s necessary. He’ll take no pleasure in it, and he’ll do his best not to hurt her.

Don’t be too cocky, says the voice of reason in his head. You can’t assume you’ll automatically be able to subdue her. It’s hard to imagine a telepath as powerful—or more powerful—than he is after Nur’s amplification, but…well, it could happen. It won’t do to be arrogant about this.

“I could,” he says slowly. “Only as a last resort though. If we can convince her to help us—”

Erik scoffs. “How? She’s been loyal to Shaw for as long as I’ve known her. Why, I have no fucking idea, but she’s not going to roll on him because we ask nicely.”

“I didn’t say we should ask nicely,” Charles retorts. “We just have to find out what she wants. If we can find a way to give it to her, she might cooperate.”

Erik gives him a flatly condescending look. “You don’t know Frost like I do.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Charles shoots back heatedly. “Maybe you need a fresh perspective to figure out a better way to do this. You’ve been hunting Shaw for twelve years without any success after all. And don’t patronize me.”

Erik stares at him for a moment, eyebrows ticking upward. Then, just when Charles is sure he’s about to receive another withering glower, Erik actually barks a laugh. “Are you always this contrary?”  

“Are you always this cranky?” Charles replies.

That makes Erik laugh again. The smile eases the severe lines of his face, softening him so much that Charles is momentarily struck by how different he looks. He’s—well, sort of handsome, Charles has to admit.

He immediately tries to scrub that idea from his brain. This is how you know you’ve been in the wilderness for way too long. You start thinking every human being you come across is halfway attractive.

But Erik’s not halfway attractive. If Charles were being honest, he’d characterize Erik as objectively hot. No, objectively scorching, even with his days-old red scruff that needs a trim. Especially with his days-old red scruff that needs a trim.

No. No, he’s not going to follow that train of thought any further. He’s going to deconstruct the rails and the boxcars and crush them neatly in a mental trash compactor until their existence has been utterly banished from his mind. He hates telepaths, remember? He doesn’t trust you solely because of something you can’t control, remember?

That significantly cools his brief burst of attraction.  

“Yes,” Erik says, “I’m always this cranky.”

“Well I’m always this contrary,” Charles says, “so you’ll just have to get used to it.”

Erik huffs. “I suppose I will.”

Once they finish their lunch, Erik takes the lead again as they trek down into the foothills. Here, the weather is noticeably warmer than up in the mountains. They work up enough of a sweat walking that Charles has to tug open the collar of his coat and pull off his gloves. The terrain is easier, too; not as much snow has settled down here, so they don’t have to slog along. Still, they don’t make it much further before the sun starts its descent toward the horizon.

“We should make camp before it gets dark,” Erik says before long.

Charles tries not to let his relief show; his feet have been killing him for the last hour or two. “All right.”

Camp isn’t much: they find a relatively dry patch of ground that’s sheltered from the wind by the tall stretch of a hill and lay out their bedrolls and blankets. “No fire,” Erik says. “That’d just be a beacon for trouble.”

“It’s cold,” Charles says, as if it isn’t obvious by the way his breath fogs on the air. With the sun disappearing, the temperature’s dropping even further.

Erik moves his bedroll over closer to Charles’s spread of blankets. “Sharing body heat will have to be enough.”

It takes Charles a moment to realize that Erik means for them to…snuggle. They’ve done as much before, back in Charles’s temporary cave shelter and at the cabin, but this feels different somehow. It’s more deliberate—both times before, one of them had been only half-conscious at best. Now, they’re both making the decision to bed down together. It shouldn’t feel as awkward as it does.

Hoping Erik can’t sense his discomfort, Charles sits down on his little pile of blankets and lays his pack down as a pillow. As Erik lays down beside him, Charles’s stomach grumbles audibly. Erik raises an eyebrow. Charles flushes.

“We’ll find something tomorrow,” Erik says.

“I’m fine.”

“We’ll find something.”

After a moment, Charles sighs and lays down. Once he does, Erik shifts closer so that their backs press together. It’s not quite snuggling, Charles thinks, but at least there’s a bit of warmth at his back. Still, it’s going to be a cold night.

“Goodnight, Erik,” he says softly.

There’s a long pause. Just when Charles is starting to doze off, he hears Erik’s voice, quieter than he’s ever heard it before: “Goodnight, Charles.”

*

Roseden is a five-day hike from the foothills. Thankfully, as they put more and more distance between themselves and the snow-laden mountains, game becomes more plentiful again. Charles isn’t any good at hunting himself, but Erik’s powers make it almost too easy: his metal blades are impossible for prey to evade, and he’s able to bring back braces of rabbits and quail when most other hunters probably wouldn’t be able to flush out any game in the cold.

Charles never accompanies Erik on his hunts, preferring to scavenge for edible berries and plants, though they’re scarcer now in deep winter than they had been weeks ago. He doesn’t like the blood, he tells Erik, but really he doesn’t think he’s brave enough to kill anything, even a rabbit, even for the sake of survival.

Erik’s amused by his squeamishness. The first time he sits Charles down to teach him how to skin a rabbit, he laughs when Charles simply stares down at the poor creature, pale-faced.

“You know you’ve eaten this before,” he says.

“Yes, but it didn’t look like a rabbit then.” Charles looks mournfully at the bunny’s fluffy tail.

“You do understand where meat comes from?”

“Of course. It’s just…” Charles gestures vaguely with the knife Erik had handed him. “It’s cute. I feel sorry for it.”

“It’s dead,” Erik replies dryly. “Your pity’s not going to do it any good.”

“I know.”

“So start at the base of the neck.”

“Why do I have to do this?” Charles demands. “You can do this twice as fast, and with much less fuss.”

“Because I’ve prepared all the meals for the last three days, and I’m starting to feel used. Besides, this is a valuable skill to have. You should be glad I’m willing to teach you.” Arms folded, Erik leans forward. “Start at the neck.”

“I’m so very grateful,” Charles mutters, gripping the knife apprehensively. “If I throw up, I’m not going to make any effort to miss you.”

Somehow, he manages not to vomit, and later, once they’re sitting down to eat, he has to admit that it’s rather satisfying to see the fruits of his labor on a plate. Erik even tells him (rather grudgingly, Charles thinks) that he’s done well for his first time. Charles beams at Erik in response and is a little puzzled when Erik scowls and looks away, his mouth pinching.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, Roseden appears in the distance at last as they crest one of the last great slopes of the hill country. Hugging the river that snakes through the plain, Roseden is a sprawling settlement, one of the largest and most sophisticated this far north. It’s well-protected from raiders and opportunistic marauders by stone walls and a heavy guard that vigilantly patrols the city’s perimeter. Even from the distance, Charles can feel the ebb and flow of hundreds of minds within the city walls, busy with the day’s work.

“Have you ever been here before?” Charles asks as they make their way toward the main road leading up to the city’s front gates. 

“No, I’ve only heard of it. They make good weapons here, so I’ve been told.”

“Yes.” From what Charles has gleaned from the few times he’s been allowed to sit in on Nur’s business meetings, Roseden is the hub of weapons manufacturing in the north. Every so often, shipments from Roseden arrive at the Keep and are whisked away to Nur’s safe rooms in the cellars of the main castle. Guns, Charles has always assumed. That and other supplies for Nur’s recruits.

“You’ve been here?” Erik asks.

“Only once,” Charles says. “Nur commissioned something from one of the city’s crafters and he wanted to come inspect it. He brought me along for the trip.”

“What do you know about weapons?”

“Nothing,” Charles says, frowning. Then, realizing why Erik had asked, he smiles wryly and says, “He didn’t bring me along for my opinion. He brought me along as a reward for good behavior. He likes to do that, you know. He calls it taking us on vacation.”

Erik glances over at him. “How long did you live at the Keep?”

Charles’s smile fades. “Six years.”

“And before that?”

“My sister and I lived in New Delaware.”

Understanding dawns in Erik’s expression. “After Nur incorporated the city into his territory, he had you join his circle.”

“I couldn’t hide. He could feel my power. So he took me back to the Keep with him.”

“And your sister?”

“I only agreed to go quietly if he left her alone. She stayed in New Delaware with her family for a while, but she’s long gone by now.”

“Long gone?”

“I made her leave.” At Erik’s sharp look, Charles shakes his head. “Not like that. I convinced her to leave. After the first time Nur threatened them to get me to cooperate, I knew they weren’t safe. I had a friend help them pack up secretly and lead them out of the city. They didn’t tell me where they were headed, and I didn’t ask.”  

Charles isn’t sure if that’s a flash of approval in Erik’s eyes or if he’s simply seeing things. After a moment, Erik says, “Maybe you’re not as naïve as you seem.”

Charles snorts. “That’s high praise, coming from you.”

As they approach the city, they join several other bands of travelers going up the main road as well. Winter hasn’t quite sunk its harsh claws into this region yet, but judging by the chill in the air, it isn’t far off. Nomads and journeyers will be seeking shelter until spring, or at least until the worst of the winter storms have passed. As a robust, well-stocked city, Roseden will no doubt see its fair share of winter lodgers.

“Keep your head down,” Erik mutters, sharp gaze sweeping over the other groups around them. “We’re here to find Frost, get what information we need, and get out. The fewer people who take notice of us, the better.”

“Agreed,” Charles murmurs. This city is too close to the Keep for comfort; it’s not implausible that someone here—one of Nur’s associates, perhaps—might recognize him. He’s glad for the cold now: no one will regard him with suspicion if he has his scarf covering half his face.

Two guards are posted at the gate to inspect the travelers and subject them to a brief interrogation. As the group in front of them opens their wagons to be searched, Charles says lowly, “Let me do the talking.” When Erik gives him a skeptical look, Charles says, “I’ll have us through in a minute.”

Erik doesn’t reply, but when the guards summon them forward and ask them their business, he glances at Charles. Plastering on his most charming smile, Charles says, “We’re here to visit a friend.”

“Who?” the guard on the left asks, her dark eyes sliding over both of them in a perfunctory assessment. She’s more bored than anything; she’s counting down the minutes until her shift ends and she can go home, pour herself a drink, and put up her feet.

Her companion, on the other hand, is an older, gruff-looking woman whose gaze is sharp and no-nonsense. She glances them over, and Charles can see curiosity and interest forming in her mind. They don’t look like the usual travelers the city gets on a daily basis. In fact, that boy looks vaguely familiar. It’s the eyes—she’s seen a picture, she thinks, circulated through the city by order of the Keep…

“Lower your scarf,” she says to Charles, eyes narrowed.

Erik’s hand jumps to the knife at his belt. Charles steps forward and grabs his wrist with one hand, the other flying to his temple.

No need to question us further, he instructs. We’re quite harmless and boring—so boring, in fact, that you’ll forget you ever saw us as soon as you wave us through.

The older woman’s eyes glaze over, interest fading. “Move along then,” she says, her attention already drifting on to the next group of travelers. “You’d better get in the city before dark if you’re hoping to find lodging for the night.”

Neither guard gives them a second look as they pass. As soon as they’re out of earshot, Erik shoots Charles an inscrutable look. “That was impressive.”

Without the currents of Erik’s mind to color the words, Charles can’t tell if he means that sarcastically or distrustfully or sincerely. After a moment, he just shrugs and says, “Where to now?”

“Would you be able to pick out Frost’s mind in the city?”

Charles frowns. There has to be close to ten thousand people here, and that’s a low estimate. He’s never scanned such a large crowd before, not without Nur’s hand on his shoulder to boost his powers further, but he’s fairly confident he can do it. “It’ll take some time.”

“What do you need?”

After a moment of consideration, Charles says, “A quiet place to sit while my mind works. And something to eat that’s not a rabbit that I had to skin myself.”

The corners of Erik’s mouth twitch upward for a second. Charles considers that a small victory.

“All right,” Erik says. “Come on.”

Thirty minutes later, they’re settled in a cramped room in a relatively nice hotel on the south side of the city. While Charles had spent a few minutes convincing the proprietor that they’d paid, Erik had slipped out across the street and collected dinner for the both of them. Now they’re sitting cross-legged on the floor between the beds, a small feast of potato curry, rice, and bread spread out between them.

“How long will this take?” Erik asks.

Charles shrugs. “I’m not sure. I could get lucky and find her in the first place I look. Or I could get unlucky.”

Erik makes an impatient noise. “Hours? Days?”

“Not days,” Charles says with a soft laugh. “Hours at most.”

“Oh. All right.”

Charles polishes off his dinner before Erik’s even halfway through with his. He tries not to eye Erik’s bread rolls for too long, but he must be less subtle about it than he thinks because after a minute, Erik heaves a sigh and pushes one of his rolls over to Charles. When Charles smiles gratefully at him, Erik scowls and glances away again. Now who’s being contrary? Charles thinks at him.

Once his belly’s finally satisfied, Charles climbs up into one of the two beds and lies down over the covers, hands folded over his stomach. Watching him from the floor, Erik asks, “What can I do?”

“Nothing really. I’d ask you to keep your thoughts quiet so you wouldn’t be distracting but you’re already…” Charles gestures at his own ear with a slight, sardonic smile.

Erik touches the psi-blocker. His expression shifts, but it remains unreadable; Charles has never been adept at reading body language, not when he normally relies on his telepathy for social and emotional cues. After a moment, Erik says, “I’ll keep watch then,” and moves to sit down on the other bed.

Taking a deep breath, Charles closes his eyes and untethers his mind from his body.

As always, relief and secret delight rush through him as his mind rises up and flows out over the city. When his body falls away, he’s light, free from any physical constraints, capable of racing out and out and out—away from his anxieties, his fears, his anger and grief. He hadn’t been precisely truthful with Erik when he’d told him his range was fifty or sixty miles. He could go much farther than that if he really wanted. He’s not sure there is a limit to his telepathy now, after what Nur did to him. But if he pushed out too far, if he kept flying and flying and flying—he’s not sure he’d know how to come back.

He’s not sure he’d want to come back. And that scares him.

So he keeps a tendril of his power tied securely to his body and starts out cautiously. Scanning the immediate area reveals no clues: none of the minds shine with that particular iridescence that suggests psionic, and no one in the vicinity happens to be thinking of Emma Frost. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. After a couple of minutes, Charles allows his mind to wander farther, deeper into the dense city.

This late in the evening, most people are heading home or there already. Their minds are largely quiet as they prepare dinner, tend to pets and children, relax after a long day’s work, and wind down for bed. There are pockets of activity and agitation here and there—at taverns, in the streets, in more contentious households—but other than that, the city is quieting. The lack of commotion makes Charles’s search a little easier: not so much extraneous noise to sift through.

He passes through the south district of the city without picking up anything significant and turns his attention to the eastern sector. The population here isn’t packed as closely together as in the south, and in general, they seem more well-off. Their minds are preoccupied less with food and warmth and more with businesses, upcoming social engagements, poetry readings and the like. Charles lingers here for a few more minutes than necessary, a terrible nostalgia filling his heart. Though he doesn’t remember much about his mother, about life before, scenes like these echo with unmistakable familiarity. He can almost, almost feel his mother’s cool presence, never quite aware of him or even caring to be aware of him, but still comfortingly there.

Just as he’s reluctantly rousing himself to move on, his attention snags on a sudden, alluring brightness. A psionic, he recognizes, his pulse quickening. More than that: it’s a psionic currently preoccupied with using her powers against some unwitting companion, her mind flashing and flexing like the silver scales of a fish cutting through water. For a moment, Charles hovers just at the edge of her mind, not wanting to alert her to his presence. Then, after a moment of deliberation, he slips into the thoughts of one of the men in the room with her.

The man’s mind is rather simple and straightforward, without much inherent guile or suspicion. Charles doesn’t have any trouble finding his name, or nudging him into obedience. Look over at her, Tom.

Through Tom’s eyes, Charles sees the telepath clearly. She sits in a tall-backed armchair, slender form clad in a white, slim dress, blond hair neatly coiffed, long legs elegantly crossed. One of her hands cradles a glass of what looks like red wine; her other hand rests lightly on the forearm of her nearest companion, a portly man settled in the chair beside her, obviously hanging onto her every word. Her expression is coolly amused, and as she speaks, the man leans in ever closer, his mind a riot of lust and adoration.

Charles doesn’t have to dip far into Tom’s mind to find her name: he’s been thinking about her all night long, silently envious of the man who’s dominated her attention since dinner. This is Emma Frost, socialite, lady, one of the most beautiful and charming women in what passes for Roseden’s elite. Most of the men—and some of the women—in the room desire her in one way or another, as a friend, confidante, ally, or lover. The rest quietly loathe her, out of spite and jealousy.

A polarizing figure, aren’t you, Miss Frost? Charles thinks. He hovers over her mind, wondering if he should introduce himself, wondering how she’d react if he did. In the end though, he pulls back.

Returning to his body is never a pleasant experience. He comes awake with a soft gasp and has to lie still and breathe for several moments, his limbs weak and heavy, his thoughts foggy. His mind is never as clear in his body as it is when it’s soaring untethered.

After a moment, he becomes aware of Erik hovering over him. “Are you all right? Did you find her?”

Charles’s tongue is thick in his mouth. He can’t tell how long he’s been out, but his throat is utterly dry and all the light in the room has faded. Erik’s face is illuminated only by the thin slivers of moonlight that slip in through the window shutters.

“I found her,” Charles croaks.

Grim determination hardens Erik’s expression. “Where?”

“To the east. She’s hosting a…cocktail party, I suppose. Or something like it.”

“We’ll wait until everyone’s left. If we can corner her and take her by surprise—” Erik goes still. “He…Shaw wasn’t there, was he?”

“No. I didn’t see him.”

Erik frowns. “How would you even know him?”

“I…” Charles bites his lip. “I saw his face in your memories.”

“Oh.” Erik stares down at him for a long moment, then shakes his head. “Right. Well. Is the party ending anytime soon?”

“It didn’t look like it.” Wincing, Charles pushes himself up to his elbows, then sits up all the way. Pressing his fingers to his temples, he says, a bit plaintively, “Could I get some water?”

Erik slides off the bed, fetches him his water flask, and comes to sit by Charles again. Murmuring his thanks, Charles guzzles nearly the whole thing.

“Rest for a bit,” Erik says, taking the flask from him once it’s empty. “Then we’re going to see Frost.”

As he rises from the bed, he pats Charles’s knee. Startled, Charles stares after him in bewilderment as he walks to his own bed. What was that? Praise for a job well done? Thanks for finding Frost? Simply an idle, thoughtless gesture? But Erik doesn’t seem to be given to idle, thoughtless gestures. Nor does he seem to be given to handing out praise, or thanks.

Charles’s knee tingles where Erik had touched it. He can’t deny the thrill that had run through him at the contact, confusing and brief as it was.

After a moment, he lies back down and curls up on his side, his back to Erik. He refuses to think about what that thrill means.

*

It’s nearly four in the morning when Charles stirs and whispers, “That last man—he’s gone.”

Erik sits up immediately. He’s been restlessly waiting all night, too keyed up to sleep. Every muscle in his body is tense with anticipation. The answers he seeks are so close his skin nearly itches with the need to move somewhere, to do something. Frost will know where Shaw’s gone. She’s going to tell them everything she knows or Erik will forcibly pry it from her. And then, at long last, Erik is going to have Shaw in his sights.

“She’s alone?” Erik asks lowly.

Covers rustle as Charles sits up, too. He’s a dim shadow in the darkness of the room, shifting as he pulls on his shoes. “Yes.”

“Then let’s go.”

This late at night—or early in the morning, really—the streets are empty. Erik can feel a few people here and there shifting around in their homes, but for the most part, the city is asleep. Just the way Erik prefers it.

As they make their way toward the eastern side of the city, Erik asks, “When we get there, can you overpower her?”

Charles frowns. “I…I think I could, but I’d rather avoid that if we can.”

“She won’t hesitate to overpower you if she gets the chance,” Erik warns.

“I’ll have my shields up,” Charles replies, “and you have…” He glances at the device on Erik’s ear. “Anyway, she’s not getting through that, so even if she does manage to overpower me, which I don’t think is very likely, she won’t be able to get past the both of us.”

“You do realize she’s not going to tell us anything willingly? You may not be comfortable with coercion but—”

“It won’t come to that,” Charles says firmly. After a moment, he amends, “I mean, I may have to just read her mind to find out what we want to know, but we don’t have to hurt her.”

That may be true, but some part of Erik still wants to hurt her. It revels at the thought of paying her back in kind for every mental barb she’d ever flung at him, for every time she’d stood impassively by and simply watched. Not once had she lifted a finger on his behalf. Some nights he dreams of her death more vividly than of Shaw’s.

“Here,” Charles says, gesturing to the left. “Down this block and then we cross a bridge, and her house is the last one on the right.”

As soon as they cross the bridge, the houses are instantly grander, wider, and taller, each of them guarded by spiked iron gates that march imposingly around the perimeter of each plot of land. At eight or so feet tall, the gates would probably impede any common thief or troublemaker, but all Erik has to do is flex his hand for the metal to bend toward him, begging to be uprooted. As they approach the last house on the right, Erik runs his powers over the fence, searching out where it’s weak.

“She’s inside,” Charles says lowly, finger pressed to his temple. “Getting ready for bed, I think. She’s in the back of the house on the second floor.” He wraps his hand around one of the thick bars of the fence and frowns. “I’m not sure—”

Erik wrenches several of the bars open with a wave of his hand, leaving a gap wide enough for the two of them to squeeze through. Charles turns and gives him an appraising look. “Impressive.”   

Erik shrugs, though he can’t deny that he’s a little pleased at the praise. “Come on.”

It’s almost laughably easy to break into Frost’s house. No doubt she’s always relied on her telepathy to alert her to intruders, so she hasn’t bothered to upgrade her security, or even use it properly: one of the windows looking into a downstairs parlor is unlatched. Erik slides it open carefully and holds it up for Charles to climb through. When he runs his powers through the house, he feels a single occupant moving upstairs, but the rest of the rooms are still. Good.

Once they’re both inside, Charles gestures to a side door. Opening it reveals a short hallway that leads to a flight of stairs.

“Stay behind me,” Erik whispers. When Charles nods, Erik starts cautiously up the stairs.

Frost is wearing a thin silver necklace that flares dimly in response to Erik’s powers. He can’t quite influence silver like he can iron but he can sense it at least, and it guides him down the corridor, around the corner to the left, and to a closed red door. When he glances over his shoulder questioningly, Charles nods at him, his mouth pressed into a thin line of determination.

Erik throws open the door.

Emma Frost whips around from where she’s standing on the far side of the room. The mug in her hand slips from her grip and shatters against the wood floor in a spray of ceramic and water. Between one blink and the next, she’s gone diamond—hard, glittering, impenetrable. The sight of her like that is violently jarring. For a second, Erik’s fourteen again, staring up at her in dull hatred as she glares contemptuously down at where he’s crumpled to the floor, in too much pain to move. For a second, it’s impossible to breathe.

“Well.” Frost shifts her weight from one leg to the other, eyeing the two of them in the doorway. The only hints of her unease are her fists, balled up at her sides. “This is a surprise.”

Her cool, indifferent voice grates on Erik’s nerves as unbearably as ever. He seizes the metal rods of her bedframe and sends them flying over to wrap around her ankles, her wrists. When he yanks her legs out from underneath her, she hits the ground with an immensely satisfying crack.

A hand grabs his wrist. Erik jerks his elbow backward, then checks the blow when he realizes it’s only Charles. When he scowls, Charles says firmly, “We agreed you wouldn’t hurt her.”

“No, we didn’t,” Erik growls. At a gesture, another metal rod snakes around Frost’s neck, pulling her head back.

“We certainly didn’t agree to this,” Charles snaps.

Erik’s gaze doesn’t budge from Frost. He hadn’t anticipated how good it would feel to see her on her knees, at his mercy. Tightening the rods incrementally, he watches in strange fascination as she twitches. She seems…smaller somehow, now that her greatest power is useless against him. Hardly the terrifying boogeyman of his past.

If you’d known I’d have you here eventually, cornered and helpless, would you have been kinder or crueler? he wonders. Do you even have any capacity to be kind?

“Erik,” Charles says sharply, “if you hurt her, I swear I will no longer help you.”

“Fine,” Erik hears himself say. Still he can’t tear his eyes from Frost’s expression, which is as cold and unreadable and rigid as always. But is that a flash of fear in her eyes? Is that the slightest tremble of terror in her shoulders?

“Erik—”

“I have what I need,” Erik says, stepping forward. “You’ve done enough.”

Charles’s hold on him tightens. “Erik, don’t do this. You don’t have to hurt her. You’re not that kind of man.”

That, at last, makes Erik look at him. “What kind of man?” he says, more amused than anything. That Charles presumes to know what kind of man Erik is is…laughable.

“The kind of man who takes pleasure in another’s pain,” Charles says quietly, fiercely.

Erik grins. “Believe me, I will take great pleasure in this.”

“You’re lying.”

“You know nothing about me.”

When Erik tries to move past him again, Charles steps into his way, his eyes boring hard into Erik’s. “I’ve seen your mind. I know who you really are underneath all that pain and anger. There’s good in you, too, I know it.”

Erik laughs harshly. “This again.”

“You saved my life.”

“Only because Nur wanted you back alive.”

“You could have dragged me back there afterwards, but you gave me a chance.”

“Only because I stood a better chance of finding Shaw through you than through Nur. And,” his gaze flicked over Charles’s shoulder to Frost, “I was right to think that.” 

Before he can move to sidestep, Charles steps in close and puts both his hands on Erik’s chest, which startles Erik enough to look down. Charles’s brows are furrowed; he looks almost pained, though from what, Erik can’t even begin to guess at. After a moment, he says softly, “Don’t be like him. Don’t be what he made you.”

Erik goes still. He can’t tell if the sudden roaring in his ears is rage or something else entirely.

“What?” he manages through a suddenly-tight throat. Instead of cold like he intends, the word comes out almost tremulous, and he hates it. But he can’t stop himself from asking, “What did he make me?”

“He tried to make you into a weapon. He tried to break you. But he didn’t succeed, did he?”

Erik closes his eyes. “Maybe he did.”

“I don’t believe that.” Charles’s fingers find his and squeeze gently. “You don’t either.”

The wild, burning fury under Erik’s breastbone abates slightly. When he opens his eyes, he feels steadier all of a sudden, though he wasn’t conscious of being unsteady before.

“Fine,” he says. “You have five minutes.”

Charles’s smile is a small, tentative thing that hooks into Erik’s chest and pulls up. He has no idea what to make of that.

“Five minutes,” Charles agrees, and turns to face Frost.

She gives them both a droll, bored glance. “Are you done yet?”

“I know you and Erik have already met,” Charles says. “I’m Charles.”

“Charmed,” Frost says dryly. “Are you going to let me up so we can talk properly, or will you insist on being…” She directs a distasteful look down at the metal bars constricting her. “…uncivilized?”

When Charles turns and raises an eyebrow, Erik folds his arms and shakes his head sharply. “No. She stays where she is.”

Frost’s shimmering lips tilt up. “I see time hasn’t taught you any manners.”

“Nor has it taught you any humility,” Erik replies, closing his hand in a fist. The bar around her neck constricts until he hears her gasp for her next breath.

“Erik,” Charles says warningly.

Reluctantly, he opens his fist. Bent over, Frost shudders for a moment, then raises her head to glare daggers at him. That almost startles him back a step—it’s the most emotion he’s ever provoked from her. Good, he thinks grimly. He’s getting to her.

Walking over, Charles kneels down by her side and helps her upright with a hand on her shoulder. “As you can see,” he says gently, “Erik’s not at all hesitant to take a more…forceful approach. As for me, I’d prefer it if we could talk things out instead. Civilized, as you’d say.” 

“Oh sugar,” Frost says, “you should have listened to him.”

She throws her head forward before Erik can react. Her forehead strikes Charles’s face with a sickening crack, knocking him back with a yelp of pain and surprise. Leaping forward, Erik slams Frost flat onto her back, the wood panels splintering underneath her at the forcefulness of his shove. He destroys the rest of the bedframe in a screech of twisting metal and sends all of it over to encase Frost from her shoulders to her feet, so securely wrapped around her that she won’t be able to so much as twitch a finger.  

“Ow,” Charles says, sitting up.

Erik’s by his side in an instant. “Let me see.”

When he probes at Charles’s nose, Charles lets out a tiny whimper and flinches. He’s bleeding pretty impressively, but aside from that, he seems all right. Erik uses one of the metal clips on Frost’s desk in the corner of the room to fetch the scarf hanging on the back of the reading chair. “Here. Put pressure on it.”

“That’s pashmina,” Frost says icily.

Pointedly ignoring her, Erik wads it up and hands it to Charles. “Rethinking your strategy?” he says lowly.

“No,” Charles replies, mulish as always. Grimacing, he gently nudges Erik aside with his elbow so he can meet Frost’s eye. “We want Shaw. You know where he is. What can we trade you for that information?”

Frost laughs, high and cold and biting. “You can do whatever you want to me, sugar, but I’m not telling you a thing.”

“There must be something you want that we can give you,” Charles persists. “Money? Information? I lived at the Keep, I could—”

“If Sebastian ever finds out I said anything,” Frost drawls, “he would shatter me into dust. I doubt you have the power to do that, so of the two of you, I’m rather more afraid of him. Sorry, boys, but I won’t be risking my life for your petty little revenge quest.”

Charles leans forward. “You’re afraid of him.”

“It’s called self-preservation, sweetheart.”

“Then you’d like it if he went away, wouldn’t you? If you never had to be afraid of him again?”

Frost’s eyes go flinty. The light, cynical humor in her expression vanishes, replaced by hard certainty. “Nothing in this world is capable of making him go away.”

“Erik’s been hunting him for years,” Charles says. “He probably knows him better than anyone.”

“Then he should know better than anyone that nothing can kill Shaw,” Frost says, an edge of bitterness creeping into her voice. “Better to side with him than be destroyed by him.”

“Don’t act as if you didn’t enjoy being his lieutenant,” Erik snarls.

Frost’s chilly gaze swings over to him. “I did what I had to do to survive. Just as you did.”

Vision pulsing with rage, Erik clenches his fists. The metal bars creak as they press in against Frost, twisting tighter and tighter around her chest, her legs, her neck.

“Erik,” Charles says, softly.

For a second, Erik considers ignoring him. Then, disgusted, he relaxes his hands.

“So,” Frost rasps out after she’s caught her breath again, “you’re still the same after all this time: obedient to your master.”  

Charles catches Erik’s arm before he can surge forward. “I’ll give you one last chance to cooperate,” he says to Frost, in a voice more frigid than Erik has ever heard from him before. “We’re going to find Shaw one way or another, and we’re going to stop him. You can either help us willingly or unwillingly. It doesn’t matter to us.”

Something about his tone actually gives Frost pause. Brows furrowed, she studies Charles’s face. “If you truly believe you stand a chance against him, you’re even more naïve than you look.” 

“Let me show you.” Charles taps his forehead.

“You must be kidding.”

“I’m not.”

Frost glares suspiciously at him for a long, tense moment. Then, unexpectedly, she relaxes, and her diamond form melts away.

Both of them close their eyes and fall silent. Erik watches them with a frown, trying to parse out what might be happening in their heads. It’s strange, seeing two people communicate without an audible word spoken between the two of them. Charles’s mouth twitches once or twice in reaction. Frost’s eyes roll beneath her closed eyelids, as if dreaming.

One minute passes. Another.

They both exhale softly, shoulders loosening. Frost opens her eyes and says quietly, “All right. Let me up, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Erik stares at Charles in utter disbelief. What the hell had he said to her? How the fuck had he convinced Emma Frost, one of Shaw’s staunchest supporters from the very beginning, to roll on him?

Charles shakes his head minutely, which Erik takes to mean later. Fine, Erik thinks, shrugging off the shock. He’ll question Frost first, Charles later.

Lifting his hand, he pulls Frost upright by the bands of metal around her chest. “Where’s Shaw?”

“I don’t know.”

“I swear to God I’ll—”

“I don’t know.” Frost glares at him. “He did come by here, but he didn’t tell me exactly where he was going. He said he was heading west when he left. That’s all he told me.”

Erik resists the urge to shake her violently. All of this for nothing. The frustration’s nearly enough to make him scream. “Then you’re useless to us.”

“I said that’s all he told me. I didn’t say that’s all I know.” Frost arches a slim eyebrow at him. “I know he told En Sabah Nur his plans. Nur lent him supplies for the journey. If anyone knows where Shaw’s going, it’s him.”

Erik grits his teeth. So it all circles back to Nur. But that would mean handing Charles over to him, and Erik finds the idea abruptly…distasteful.

“That’s not all,” Frost continues. Her gaze slides over to Charles. “I’ve heard rumors that one of Nur’s prized pets is on the run. A telepath, they said. A boy telepath. That wouldn’t happen to be you, would it?”

Erik can see the fear and wariness in Charles’s stiff, hunched shoulders, but Charles’s voice remains even and calm. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll feel no relief at hearing that the search is off. Nur’s given up on looking.”

Charles’s mask of disinterest cracks. “What?” he exclaims, eyes wide. “Why would he do that?”

“He’s found a replacement,” Frost says, clearly smug at having caught him off-guard. “Another telepath of your caliber, or stronger. He doesn’t need you anymore.”

“A new telepath?” Charles demands. “What telepath?”  

“I haven’t a clue. That’s all I’ve heard.” Frost pauses. “Oh yes…and there was a name.”

Charles leans forward impatiently. “What was it?”

“Jean.”

*

They have to go back. There’s nothing else for it—they have to go back and try to stop Nur.

“If he has a new telepath who’s even stronger than I am, there’s no telling how soon he’ll wait before he decides to transfer into her body,” Charles says, pacing the length of their hotel room. “He obviously made a mistake with me, waiting as long as he did. Who’s to say she won’t try to run away on him, too?” He shakes his head furiously. “No, he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. He’s going to transfer hosts as soon as possible.” 

Erik’s sitting on the edge of one of the beds, watching him. He’s been watching and listening silently for the last fifteen minutes as Charles paced and swore and nearly tore his hair out in fear and frustration. Part of Charles wants to shake him and demand why he’s not more panicked about this. Part of him wonders bitterly if Erik even cares at all, so long as he gets his hands on Shaw in the end.

“Sit down,” Erik says finally. “Let me look at your nose again.”

Charles’s mind has been so feverishly occupied with the news about this new telepath that he’d barely had any mental capacity leftover to worry about his broken nose. Now that Erik’s drawn his attention back to it though, he realizes his face is throbbing unpleasantly.

When Charles sits down on his bed, Erik brings a small tub of soapy water over—so that was what he’d been fetching when he’d disappeared downstairs earlier, Charles realizes belatedly—and dips a hand towel into it. When he starts to scrub at the blood around Charles’s nose, Charles whimpers.

“It’s not too bad a break,” Erik says lowly. “It’ll heal cleanly. I won’t have to set it for you.”

“Thank God,” Charles says, and whimpers again when the towel passes over a particularly sensitive patch of skin.

“You shouldn’t have let her get so close.”

“How was I to know she was going to try anything? You had her pinned down!”

“Haven’t you ever seen an animal lash out when it’s cornered?”

“I don’t—” Charles winces when Erik presses too hard. “—corner a lot of animals, believe it or not.”

Erik’s expression is a strange mix of annoyance and something softer—something almost…fondly exasperated? No, Charles can’t be reading that correctly.

“Next time you’re interrogating an enemy,” Erik says, “keep your distance. Never get within arm’s reach, even if they’re restrained.”

“Lesson learned,” Charles mutters. “Though I don’t anticipate I’ll be interrogating many enemies in the future.”

Erik’s silent for a moment as he dips the towel—now pink-hued—back into the tub. How much blood is there on him? Charles wonders. He’s never broken his nose before, never seen one on anyone else. Judging by how much soap and water Erik has at his disposal, this is going to take a while.  

As he resumes wiping at Charles’s face, Erik says, “You did well today.”

Charles raises an eyebrow. “Actual praise? Did you perhaps hit your head somewhere on the way back here?”

Erik huffs. “Don’t get used to it.” He scratches at flecks of dried blood on Charles’s cheek; he can feel them flaking off. “How did you convince her to help us?”

Charles closes his eyes, trying not to flinch every time the towel rasps across his bruised skin. “Oh, that wasn’t too difficult. I just showed her my power. I showed her what I can do. She really doesn’t believe you could ever kill Shaw, not on your own. But with me on your side…she thought we might have a chance. Given how well she knows him, I’m inclined to believe her.”

“She told you that?” Erik says skeptically.

“Not in words, but it’s hard to ignore how people really feel when you’re in their mind. For the first time in a long time, she felt…hopeful, almost.” Charles smiles, then winces as a twinge of pain shoots through his nose. “She wants to be rid of him as much as we do, believe it or not.”

He half-expects Erik to scoff at that, but instead, he falls silent. Not for the first time, Charles wishes that damned psi-blocker weren’t in the way so he could brush across Erik’s mind to gauge his response. It’s unnerving to have his words met by unrevealing, unknowable silence.

“We?” Erik says finally, unexpectedly.

“We what?” Charles asks, puzzled.

“You said we. She wants to be rid of him as much as we do.”

Charles opens his eyes, frowning. “Well…yes? I promised I’d help you, didn’t I?”

“That doesn’t mean you feel as strongly about ridding the world of him as I do.”

“Probably not,” Charles admits. “I’ve never even met the man, after all. But I saw enough in your mind to know that he shouldn’t be permitted to walk freely among innocent people. He kills people when it suits him. He abuses them. And…he hurt you.” Charles’s chest tightens at the memories of the glimpses he’d caught in Erik’s mind: gleaming knives, hot blood, the high, thin scream of a young boy begging for mercy. “I hate him for that, I think.”

Erik’s gaze jumps up to meet his, clearly startled. “You hate him?”

Charles shrugs helplessly. “It’s hard not to when I felt your pain. That anyone could do that to a child…it’s despicable.”

“So…” Erik clenches his teeth. “When you said that even Shaw had to have some goodness in him…”

Charles hesitates, not wanting to incur Erik’s wrath over this again. But Erik wouldn’t have asked him directly if he hadn’t wanted an answer, right? So, tentatively, he says, “I still believe that. I still believe that no one can be purely good or bad. But Shaw’s spent so long burying any shred of decency left in him that I’m not sure he would recognize it in himself anymore. Certainly he would never act on it. It’s possible there’s nothing but cruelty left in him.”

“Possible?”

“You know him better than I do,” Charles says softly. “I wouldn’t presume to speculate any further.”

“You’re learning.”

“Learning?”

“How to shut up.”

Charles laughs. To his surprise, Erik smiles, too. 

Once Charles’s face is clean, Erik takes another look at his nose, deems it to be acceptably aligned, and goes to empty the tub out into the sink. Charles is half-disappointed, half-glad there’s no mirror in the room for him to take a look at; his nose feels grotesquely swollen, and he’s sure he’s not at all a pretty sight.

Should have kept my distance, he thinks glumly. How long do broken noses take to heal?

“Get some rest,” Erik says as he drops the now-dry tub by the door.

“We need to head for the Keep,” Charles argues. “The sooner we figure out what Nur’s planning, the better. And,” he adds, conscious that Erik’s probably not swayed by Charles’s concerns, “if you bring me back to him, you’ll get the information on Shaw that you want.”

Erik gives him a sharp look. “Who says I’ll bring you back to him?”  

“I mean—” Charles pauses, momentarily confused. “Frost said Nur knows where Shaw is going. You don’t have any other leads right now, so your next logical step would be to backtrack to the Keep, right? Stick to your original plan?”

“You want me to hand you over?”

“It would be the easiest way to get back into the Keep,” Charles reasons. “Security there is impossible to get through otherwise. You’ve been there; you’ve seen it. There’s no way to break in.”

“So I turn you in and…what? Collect my reward and go?”

Charles’s puzzlement deepens. He’d expected acceptance or disagreement, but consternation? That’s odd. “Yes?”

“And what’s your plan then?”  

“I…don’t know yet. But I’ll figure it out.”

Erik’s frown deepens. “What if he decides to transfer into you like he’d been planning to?”

“He won’t,” Charles says, more confidently than he feels. “Not if he’s found someone stronger than I am. He wouldn’t want to settle.”

“So what if he kills you?” Erik says flatly. “If he’s found someone else, you’re disposable. He’s not exactly known for his mercy.”  

The thought had crossed Charles’s mind, but he’d done his best to bury it. Nur wouldn’t kill him on the spot, he thought. The man had some cold, paternalistic affection for his collection of mutants, and that would hopefully stay his hand long enough for Charles to figure out his next step. Nur had always had a soft spot for Charles, after all.

“It’s three days from here to the Keep,” Charles says eventually. “I’ll think about it.”

Erik closes the blinds on the single window with a flick of his hand, cutting off the dawn’s light starting to creep into the room. Pulling back the covers, he sits down on the edge of his bed and bends down to unlace his boots. Charles finds himself watching Erik’s long, elegant fingers at work, tugging the knots out.

“I’ll help you,” Erik says finally. “I’m not just going to hand you over to Nur and hope for the best. That’s a shitty plan.”

Charles bristles a little. “Well if you have a better one—”

“I’ll turn you in. After Nur tells me where Shaw is, I’ll help you escape, and we’ll find this telepath and take down Nur together.”

“Take—take down Nur?” Charles splutters.

“Isn’t that what you want to do?” Erik asks calmly.

“Well I—I suppose.” Truthfully, Charles had only had a vague notion to find this telepath and get her away somehow, but Erik’s right—it would never end there. Nur would send people after them just like he’d sent people after Charles, and this time, he wouldn’t hold back.

But how are they going to kill Nur? The most powerful mutant Charles has ever known?

“Why?” Charles asks, brows furrowed. “Taking on Nur is practically…frankly, it’s a suicide mission. You must know that. Why would you help me?”

“Because I need you,” Erik says matter-of-factly.

A strange thrill races down Charles’s spine. Before he can even identify the feeling though, Erik adds, “You heard Frost. I can’t take on Shaw alone.”

Of course. That’s what Erik means.

“Right. But…” Charles hesitates. “Not that I don’t want your help—God knows I probably need it—but like I said, trying to fight Nur is going to be a suicide mission. Even trying to find this other telepath might be a suicide mission if Nur figures out what we’re doing. Dying isn’t going to get you any closer to Shaw.”

Erik glares at him. “Watching you get yourself killed isn’t going to get me any closer to Shaw either,” he snaps. “At least one of us has to care about your life if you won’t.”

Charles stares at him, stunned by the sudden vehemence in his voice. As Erik’s words start to filter through his mind, start to make sense, he says disbelievingly, “You…care about me?”

Erik looks shocked by the question. “No,” he says defensively, as if that had been an accusation.

But it’s too late to lie. “You care about me!”

“You’ve been useful so far,” Erik says gruffly. “It would be a shame to lose that.”

“That’s not what you meant.”

“You have no idea what I meant.”

Charles starts to laugh, bright and delighted. He’s not sure why this revelation fills him with so much warmth, but it does, and he savors it like a wonderful, rare chocolate.  

With an irritated grunt, Erik lays down on his bed, his back to Charles. “Go to sleep. We’re leaving in a few hours.”

Still grinning like an idiot, Charles lays down, too, and pulls the covers up to his chin. His eyes trace the broad width of Erik’s shoulders, then the sloping line of his side that tapers down into a narrow waist. A frankly ridiculously narrow waist, now that Charles is really looking at it.

I care about you, too, Charles thinks, and is a little surprised to realize that it’s true. Not just half-true, or becoming true, but as true now and irrevocable as his own name.

The realization should frighten him. They may be temporary allies, but not so long ago, Erik had been his enemy. Erik could still be hiding his real intentions behind that blasted psi-blocker. Erik still doesn’t trust Charles in his head, and probably never will.

And yet, Charles continues to savor that warm, buoyant feeling as he drifts off. And he sleeps deeply and soundly, without dreaming.

*

The weather is pleasant and cooperative on their three-day journey to the Keep. The days are still bitingly cold, and the nights even more so, but the sky remains cloudless and the sun, unimpeded, chases away the worst of the chill for at least a few hours a day. Erik doesn’t sense a single storm on the horizon.

He almost wishes he did.

Each day as they draw closer to their destination, Erik finds himself more and more reluctant to go on. It makes no sense. Nur knows where Shaw is. The sooner they arrive, the sooner Erik will know, too. For the last twelve years, the only thing that has driven Erik forward is the thought of watching the life drain from Shaw’s eyes, and knowing he’d caused it. He’s dreamed of the moment a hundred times over, so vividly that sometimes he’s woken up smiling, tears in his eyes.   

But the thought of the Keep and Nur fills him with cold, unfamiliar dread. Not for himself though. For Charles.

As soon as Charles enters the city, he’ll be at Nur’s mercy. Nur controls the Keep with an iron fist; everyone within its walls obeys him without question, and anyone who dares to cross him is crushed. Charles hasn’t just crossed him, he’s openly defied him. Charles may be sure that Nur won’t kill him as soon as he lays eyes on Charles again, but Erik isn’t convinced. And if by some miracle Charles survives his initial encounter with Nur, the chances of finding this new telepath, rescuing her, and killing Nur are so laughably slim that Erik knows he ought to be hightailing it in the exact opposite direction. Every survival instinct in him screams at him to turn back, to cut his losses here, to regroup and rethink and find another way to get to Shaw.

But he can’t. Charles, fool that he is, has set his heart on this asinine, reckless plan, and God help him, Erik isn’t going to let him attempt it alone.

On their third evening on the road, they make camp on a small, flat patch of ground that’s hidden from the main road by a copse of crooked, half-bare trees. It’s not great cover but it’s better than nothing, and they haven’t met anyone out here since they set out from Roseden anyway. Everyone smart has already found a place to shelter for the long winter.

Charles gathers the firewood, and as he brings it over to be arranged, Erik notes with approval that Charles has finally learned to identify fuel that will burn well. When he says as much aloud, Charles beams at him in a way that makes Erik’s heart flutter strangely in his chest. Scowling, Erik turns his attention to selecting a tin of corn from his pack.  

They’d picked up extra supplies before leaving Roseden, so there’s been no need to hunt or scavenge. Erik had only purchased enough to last them the three days to the Keep, plus a bit of surplus in case the weather turned and they were forced to hunker down for an extra day or two. He’d figured that they’d reach the Keep and either resupply there or…well, they won’t need new rations and fire starters if they’re dead.

“You’re moody tonight,” Charles says cheerfully as he watches Erik heat up the corn in a small pot over the fire. He’s been irritatingly cheerful ever since they left Roseden. Erik hasn’t had a moment’s peace in the last two days; Charles has filled every waking moment with happy chatter about the weather, the types of trees they’re passing, the rotation of the earth, the evolution of this bird and that worm, and the importance of romantic literature as a movement, and did you know it’s almost Christmas? I counted the days. Erik’s curt, “I’m Jewish,” had shut Charles up for a couple of minutes, but only a couple.

Erik’s less disgruntled about the constant chatter than he is about the fact that he doesn’t mind it as much as he pretends to.

“You’re scowling again,” Charles says.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you aaare,” Charles singsongs.

Erik glowers at him. “Don’t be childish.”

“I can’t help it,” Charles says with a laugh. “It’s too fun to rile you up.”

“Then you can make your own corn,” Erik grumbles, which only earns him another sweet laugh.

After dinner, they lay out their bedrolls. Erik had bought a new one for Charles in Roseden, given the fact that Charles’s old one had consisted only of the worn, tattered blankets that he’d managed to steal when he’d fled the Keep. When Erik had thrust the new bedroll into his arms, Charles had stared at him with wide, grateful eyes. Discomfited, Erik had said flatly, “You’ll be no good to anyone if you freeze to death on the road,” and left it at that.

Last night they’d slept back to back, sharing what little warmth they could. Tonight, just as Erik’s slipping into a doze, he feels Charles shift at his back. When he realizes Charles is now facing him, his breath tickling the back of Erik’s neck, Erik stiffens.

“Sorry,” Charles mumbles. “My face is cold.”

Forcing himself to relax, Erik says, “It’s fine.” After a moment, he finds himself turning over onto his back and reaching out to tug Charles closer, tucking him against his chest.    

Charles stills. As soon as Erik realizes what he’s done, he stills, too.

For a long, frozen moment, neither of them speaks. Erik can feel Charles’s blood rushing through his veins, his heart pumping frantically against his ribs. He can feel his own heart racing to catch up.

Erik’s not sure what on earth possesses him to lean forward and press his lips against Charles’s, but he does. The instant their mouths meet, Charles whimpers softly and grabs Erik by the lapels of his coat, dragging him closer, and Erik’s utterly lost.

Charles’s scent, the heat of his mouth, the feeling of his gloved fingers digging insistently into Erik’s coat, then into Erik’s hair—everything about him is overwhelming, rushing over Erik like a tidal wave. Erik’s drowning, but he doesn’t care. He just clutches Charles closer and drinks him in. Charles kisses clumsily, teeth clashing against Erik’s, desperately gasping against Erik’s mouth like he doesn’t know when to take a breath, and it’s perfect. It’s stupidly, indescribably perfect.

He has no idea how long they lay there tangled up together, but when Charles finally pulls back, they’re both panting and breathless and trembling. Erik’s sweating in his coat, feverishly hot, but he keeps Charles pressed close to him, the heat of his body delicious against Erik’s own.

“That was…” Charles stares at him, eyes wide and wondering.

Erik stares back at him, equally lost for words. He can’t explain what that was. All he knows is that he doesn’t regret a single second of it, even though he should.

“Are you…” Charles trails off again, looking about as dazed as Erik feels. After a moment, he sits up fully, still staring down at Erik like he’s never laid eyes on him before. “What was that?”  

“That’s called a kiss,” Erik says hoarsely, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “Haven’t you ever heard of one before?”

“Of course I have, you arse,” Charles says shakily. “I’ve just—I’ve never—”

Erik’s stunned all over again. “Never?”

Charles’s eyes narrow. “If you even think about patronizing me—”

Erik laughs and pulls Charles down again, pinning him against his chest. “I wouldn’t dare,” he murmurs against Charles’s mouth, which makes Charles flush bright red.

“Good,” Charles says, and leans in to kiss him again.

*

Later, when Erik gets up to stir the fire back to life, Charles watches him from their nest of blankets, drowsy and content. So this is what it feels like to be wanted, he thinks. Wanted and cared for, not in the way Nur had cared for him, as an aloof master watching over his flock, but in the way of equals. It’s…a surprisingly heady feeling.

When Erik returns, Charles lifts up the blankets and feels a thrill of pleasure when Erik slips in close to him without comment, wrapping his arms around Charles. He’s so warm and solid and lovely. He feels…safe, somehow. It’s been ages since Charles has felt safe.

“We’ll reach the Keep tomorrow,” Charles says softly.

“By noon, most likely.”

A spark of panic seizes Charles’s chest. It’s too soon. They’ve only just discovered…whatever this is. He needs time to figure it out. He wants more, so much more. Is this really all he gets? A handful of kisses, a hasty fumble beneath blankets?

He doesn’t realize how tightly he’s squeezing Erik until Erik makes a soothing noise and runs his hand slowly down Charles’s back. And suddenly it’s too much. It’s too much to be this close, this intimate, without knowing.

“Can I…” Charles reaches up, fingers hovering over the psi-blocker at Erik’s ear. His heart trembles in his chest. “Just for tonight. Please.”

Erik’s eyes widen. Charles starts to stammer, “You don’t have to—” when Erik reaches up, too, and slides the blocker off.

It’s like waking abruptly from a dim dream into vivid reality, or stepping out of darkness into the full, blinding light of the sun. Charles’s telepathy instantly swarms greedily toward Erik’s mind, desperate to touch and caress and explore and hold, but he reins it in with an effort, hovering just out of reach of those swirling, tantalizing thoughts.

“Are you sure?” he asks, searching Erik’s gaze.

“I should have taken that off days ago,” Erik replies.

That’s permission enough: Charles lets himself slip into Erik’s mind, and it’s like sliding into a warmth bath. It’s like coming home.

I think I might be in love with you, Charles says, because it’s impossible to lie or hide with their minds intertwined so thoroughly.

Erik’s mind pulses with shock, then apprehension, then—something softer, and braver. But when he speaks, it’s to say, We met days ago. You don’t know me.

Charles smiles. I’ve been in your mind before. I know everything about you.

Everything? The word is tinged with fear, but not fear of Charles. No, it’s fear that Charles might have seen something unsavory, some dark part of Erik that he’ll shy away from.

Everything important, Charles says softly. Everything I needed to know that you’re a good man. At Erik’s wave of skepticism, he insists, You are. You just won’t admit it yet.

You’re ridiculous, Erik grumbles. You do know that, right?

Charles laughs and buries his face against Erik’s shoulder. Then he laughs again because he feels Erik’s quiet amusement, a twinge of golden humor so subtle that only a telepath could have seen it. And it feels special in a way nothing else ever has, this intimacy, this trust. It shakes Charles to his core, leaves him feeling breathless and vulnerable and wonderful.

That’s you? Erik says, wonderingly. I can feel that. All of it.

Yes. Then, self-conscious, he adds, I could shield a little if you’d prefer? If it’s too overwhelming.

No, I like it.

He means it, too. If Charles weren’t already lying down, he might have collapsed on Erik in a fit of happy affection and fierce gratitude.

Get some rest, Erik says, stroking Charles’s back again. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.

Right.  

And, Charles?

Mm?

For what it’s worth…I think I might be in love with you, too.

Charles falls asleep smiling.

*

They reach the Keep just before noon, as Erik had predicted. For a few minutes, they stop on the hill about a mile from the gates, eating the last of their rations cold and drinking the last of their water. For Erik, he’s fairly certain he’ll be received as a guest, perhaps even a guest of honor, depending on how pleased Nur will be to see Charles returned to him. But for Charles, this may be the last meal he’ll have in some time; Erik doubts Nur treats his prisoners to regular meals.

When the last of the bread is gone and their water flasks are empty, Erik says, “Ready?”

Charles brushes crumbs off his coat as he stands. The only reason Erik catches the slight tremor in his hands is because he’s watching him so closely, partly to monitor how he’s doing, partly because he’s conscious of how little time they have left together. Once they’re separated in the Keep…Erik can’t shake the thought that it might be for the last time.

Taking a deep breath, Charles nods. “As ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go.”

The guards at the gates nearly fall over in shock when they see who Erik’s marching in front of him. Charles must be well-known by everyone in the city because they recognize him instantly, and shouts fly up the streets as the gates crank open. No doubt word will reach Nur within minutes. Erik’s hand tightens around Charles’s shoulder at the thought.

It’s all right, Charles says. No matter what happens, you have to stay calm.

I know, Erik says testily, resisting the urge to reach up to check the psi-blocker on his ear. He’d spent the morning as they’d walked hollowing it out so that it’s nothing more than a plastic shell now. The metallic core responsible for blocking psionic signals is a crumpled ball in Erik’s pocket.

They’re escorted down the street to a truck, where Erik is instructed to come ride in the front while the guards toss Charles in the back. When Erik starts to refuse, Charles says, Do as they say. I’ll be fine. So, reluctantly, he climbs into the cab with the guards, though he keeps a tendril of his powers wrapped around the metal cuffs around Charles’s wrists the whole ride.

The truck speeds down the main road, flashing past people on bicycles and on foot. Like in other cities, cars here seem to be reserved only for the elite, for Nur’s favorites. With the preciously limited gas options, they’re too expensive and impractical to maintain for the common person. As they head deeper into the city, Erik runs his powers over the truck, tracing its engine, its tires, all its intricate moving parts. He’s always loved how cars feel to his senses. This one is a good one, strong and sturdy despite its age. It’ll be a good one to steal on their way out of here.

Good idea, Charles says. If things go south, we’re going to need a quick escape.

If things go south, they won’t get the chance to run. Neither of them says it, but Erik can tell they’re both thinking it.

The truck bumps over rough stone as it turns up the winding road leading to the palace on the hill. The gates are already open, and in the courtyard within, a group clad in the black uniforms of Nur’s personal guard stands ready to receive them. As soon as they pull to a stop, the guards stream toward the back of the truck. Suppressing the instinct to snap at them to get their hands off Charles, Erik slides out of the cab and watches as they drag Charles out of the back. It’s only when one of them pulls out a silver collar that Erik steps forward involuntarily.

It’s fine, Charles says, though Erik can hear—no, feel—his fear. It’s just a security measure. I’ll be fine.

The collar snaps into place around Charles’s neck and activates with a hum. Instantly, the warm presence at the back of Erik’s mind vanishes, leaving him feeling cold and hollow.

“This way,” says one of the guards, her tone clipped. At her command, two of the other guards bracket Charles, seize him by the elbows, and march him forward.

Erik recognizes her from the last time he’d been here: Psylocke, one of Nur’s other telepaths, and one of his fiercest warriors. Belatedly, he realizes that she’ll be able to tell that the psi-blocker’s not doing shit. Casually, he reaches up, slides it off his ear, and pockets it. When one of the guards nearby eyes him, he says, “What? He’s contained, isn’t he?”

Thankfully, there’s no more opportunity for conversation as they enter the palace. The guards lead them down one hall, then another. They’re not headed to the throne room where Nur had received Erik the first time. Instead, as they walk, the halls grow smaller and quieter, not as ostentatious and gilded as the public sections of the palace. This must be some kind of residential wing, Erik thinks, gazing at the soft-lit walls. It’s cozier than he’d expected.

At last, they stop in front of a dark oaken door lined with gold trimming. A knocker in the form of a lion’s head on a ring dangles from the center of the door. Psylocke knocks once, sharply. Then, at some signal Erik doesn’t hear or see, she pushes the door open.

To Erik’s surprise, the door leads into a living suite. They’re led into a spacious living room that’s obviously lived in: the coffee table is piled high with papers and mugs and knickknacks, and several unfinished crossword puzzles sit in a stack on one of the couch cushions. Behind closed doors to the left and right, Erik can feel out a bedroom and a…study, he supposes, judging by the number of bookcases and pens in there. Why were they brought here?

He only has a second to wonder—in the next moment, the door to the study opens, and from it emerges En Sabah Nur.

Nur hadn’t frightened Erik the first time they’d met. Erik had had no reason to be afraid of him, though he’s certainly objectively intimidating: seven feet tall and hulking, more of an undifferentiated block of muscle than a man, with piercing, unnatural amber eyes that seem to see too much, even in those with nothing to hide. When they’d first met, Erik had greeted him coolly, without hesitation. Now he finds any semblance of a greeting shriveling up in his throat when the guards bring Charles forward and kick him to his knees.

“The prodigal son,” Nur says. His voice is strangely soft for a man of his size, almost gentle. Still, it sends a shiver down Erik’s spine. “Home at last.”  

Charles says nothing, only glares up at Nur with venom. Erik’s reminded of their early days together, when those poisonous looks had been aimed at him.

“I was beginning to think you were lost forever, little lamb.”

As Nur comes closer, Erik ruthlessly curbs the desire to throw himself between Nur and Charles, to shatter that steel collar from Charles’s throat and shout, Run! He has to stay calm. No matter what happens, you have to stay calm.

Nur reaches down and touches Charles’s chin, tilting it upward. After a moment, he clicks his tongue disapprovingly and says, “I thought I told you I wanted him back unharmed.”

It takes Erik a second to realize he’s being addressed. Forcing his tone to remain cold and uninterested, he says, “You said alive. A broken nose isn’t going to kill him.”

“No.” Nur’s huge thumb traces the bruising around Charles’s nose, making Charles flinch. “I suppose not. And you did deliver, which is more than I can say for the others I sent after him.”

“So,” Erik says pointedly, “my reward?”

Nur straightens and smiles. “Patience, mercenary. There is something I want Charles to see first.” Raising his voice slightly, he calls out, “Jean? Come in here, my child.”  

Erik tenses, his heart racing. Jean. The other telepath. She’s here. As much as he wants to, he doesn’t dare look in Charles’s direction, too wary that even a glance might give them away.

Erik feels a bracelet and shoe buckles move in the study toward the doorway, and then a girl appears, stopping uncertainly on the threshold. A girl, small, freckled, red-haired, and probably no more than twelve or thirteen years old. She’s a kid.  

“Unfortunately,” Nur says, “you’ve missed your chance, Charles. Your foolishness has cost you the greatest honor a mutant could ever have. But fate righted your wrong. It brought me Jean.” When he holds out his hand, the little girl comes forward shyly and takes it. “Perhaps,” Nur murmurs, gazing down at her, “I should be thanking you. For so long, I thought you were the answer, but you weren’t. She is, and if I hadn’t been forced to wait, I wouldn’t have found her. The perfect—” His hand runs down her hair gently, paternally. “—host.”

“She’s a child!” Charles bursts out, horrified.

“She’s the same age this body was,” Nur replies, tapping his chest, “when I took him. When he sacrificed himself for the something greater than himself. As you long to do, isn’t that right, Jean?”

“Yes, my lord,” she whispers, staring at the floor.

Nur smiles. “I wasn’t ready to transfer yet when I met you, Charles. This body still had life then. But I can feel it running dry, day by day. It will no longer serve me well. But Jean, dear, you will.”

“It—it is my honor to serve,” Jean says haltingly.   

“You’re sick,” Charles hisses. “She’s just a child. She’s—”

In a flash, one of Psylocke’s glowing blades rests just under his chin, lethally close to his jugular. Erik crosses his arms to keep his hands from clenching into fists, though he can’t stop all the metal in the room from bending toward him ever-so-slightly, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

“It’s all right, Psylocke,” Nur says indulgently. “He’s frustrated. That’s understandable. It’s galling to realize what an opportunity you’ve thrown away, isn’t it, Charles?”

“Leaving was the only good decision I’ve made since I came here,” Charles spits.

Nur gives him a disappointed look. “Did you not have a good life here? Did you not have a comfortable bed to sleep in, new clothes to wear as you grew, as many meals a day as you wished? Did I not give you these very rooms to have as your own? But you threw that away, and for what? A few days of freedom? But did you think of what you would lose?”

“Nothing I couldn’t live without,” Charles says coldly.

Nur draws Jean forward, pressing her against his side. “You discarded what most would not take for granted. But even a child knows the value of what I offer. I showed Jean these rooms, her new home, and what did she say to me? Jean?”

“Thank you, my lord,” Jean murmurs.

“And how long will she be allowed to enjoy it?” Charles demands.

“That does not concern you,” Nur says. “In fact, nothing much will concern you anymore once I have finished with you, little lamb.” To Psylocke, he says, “Take him to the chamber. No one is to enter but me, do you understand?”  

“Yes, my lord.”

As the guards pick Charles up and body him toward the door, Erik can’t help but glance at him. He’s paler than Erik has ever seen him, his shoulders drawn up tensely, his eyes shuttered. If only he didn’t have that collar, Erik could send him some reassurance, some silent encouragement. The collar’s steel, easy enough to break, but with Psylocke so near, the risk is too great. Erik watches them leave, tracing the collar over and over until it disappears into an elevator down the hall.  

“Go on, Jean,” Nur says. “You are dismissed.”

“Can I…can I look at the books in there?” Jean asks tentatively.

Nur smiles and pats her head. “As I told you before, everything in these rooms are yours now, little one. Now go on. I have other business to attend to.”

She scampers back to the study, quick as a rabbit darting into underbrush. Once she’s gone, Nur turns to Erik and gestures toward the door. “Come, my friend. I believe I owe you some information—and a drink.”

*

The isolation chamber is as agonizing as Charles remembers it.

He hasn’t been here in years. Nur had locked him in here several times at the beginning, intending to break his will, and for the most part, it had worked. Later, all Nur would have to do was mention the chamber once, and Charles would crumble. Anything to avoid that room, that silence.

He presses himself against the back wall of the room, fingers tracing the stones in the walls. It’s pitch black in here, so dark that he can’t even see his hands in front of his face. The longer he sits here, the harder it is to remember what’s real. If he’s real. But the stones—those are tangible. Those can be felt, and examined, and remembered.

This was how Charles had survived in here all those times before without going mad. This is how he’ll survive now, until whatever comes next.

Erik will come for you, he tells himself. Erik’s going to find you and break you out and then you’re going to find Jean and get her out of here.

That mission feels more imperative than ever now that they know Nur’s new target is only a child. A grown adult joining Nur’s cause is one thing; a vulnerable child with limited ability to detect manipulation, and no ability to consent at all, is entirely different. And entirely more urgent, in Charles’s opinion. The poor girl had looked terrified, cowering under Nur’s hand. Charles would rather die than see Nur hurt her.

These thoughts spin round and round in his head a dozen times over, a hundred times, but even they aren’t enough to keep the silence at bay for long. Eventually, Charles starts to notice it again, the utter lack of sound around him, the absence of people, of life. Even with the suppression collar, he’s able to vaguely sense minds around him. But in here, there’s no shape to the world. Reality is nothing more than a terrifying, blank void.

He brings his knees to his chest and buries his face against them. Remember Erik? Erik exists. Erik exists outside of this. This is nothing more than a room, and outside the room is a real world. This is only temporary.  

He conjures up the memory of Erik’s mouth on his. And oh—that’s enough to fill him with a burst of warmth. He thinks of Erik’s scowl, and his sharp laugh, and his scruffy beard, and the way his hands traced Charles’s back last night in slow, soothing arcs, up and down, up and down…

But darkness creeps in at the corners of those memories. They start to blur a little, like a camera lens knocked out of focus. Charles grips Erik tightly, holding onto his scent, his touch, the memory of his mind, but the harder he holds on, the quicker Erik slips away from him. “No,” he says hoarsely. “No, no, no, no, no—”

And then he’s falling into the black nothingness of the world. He’s falling and falling and falling and he knows there’s no bottom. He’s going to fall forever until the void succeeds in tearing his mind to pieces, until everything he has, everything he is, is gone. He’d scream but there’s no breath in his lungs. There’s only the silence. The silence.

And then—there’s light. And a voice. A voice he knows, saying, “Charles, it’s me. Can you hear me? It’s Erik.”

Erik.

“What’s wrong with him?” Erik demands, his voice strained with fear.

“Telepaths don’t do well in isolation chambers,” says another voice. “Especially telepaths as strong as he is. And he was in here for two days nonstop—that’s longer than most would survive without a break.”

Two days.

“Charles, look at me, please. Charles.”

He can’t look. The light’s too bright and the world is too muffled, and everything—everything hurts. His head hurts.

There’s conversation above him that he can’t process, and then he feels arms around him, lifting him up, cradling him close. The light grows painfully brighter, and Charles flinches from it with a moan. Then—

“Look,” Erik says. “Look.”

Charles’s telepathy unfolds involuntarily and reaches out, grasping for the nearest real thing—and then he’s falling again, hard and fast.

It’s me. It’s me. It’s just me.

Erik. ErikErikErikErikErik

It’s all right, I’ve got you. You’re safe. You’re all right.

Are you real?

I’m real.

Are you sure?

A sharp lance of amusement. I’m pretty sure. Then: soft worry and glowing, impossibly warm love, and oh, this can’t be a mere figment of his imagination because he could never dream this up, not in a million years…

He opens his eyes and finds himself sobbing in Erik’s arms.

“Hey,” Erik says, pushing Charles’s hair back off his forehead. “Hey, you’re safe, I’m here. You’re all right.”

“Erik,” he gasps out. “Erik.”

“I’m here.” Erik pulls him closer, cradling him with such infinite tenderness that Charles feels his whole soul tremble.

“As sweet as this is,” says that other voice, low and impatient, “we need to get going.”

Charles looks up—and freezes when he sees Psylocke standing there, her psychic swords in hand.

“It’s okay,” Erik says when he feels Charles tense. “She’s on our side.”

“What?”

“I’m not stupid,” Psylocke says dryly. “I noticed that trick with the psi-blocker as soon as you showed up. I got curious and dug around a little. Your plan was stupid, by the way. If I hadn’t been here to help Lehnsherr get down here, how the fuck were you planning on breaking out?”

“I would have found a way,” Erik mutters.

“Bullshit.”

We can’t trust her, Charles says, pushing himself up and out of Erik’s lap. He still feels too shaky to stand, but he doesn’t like the thought of Psylocke watching, seeing their vulnerability to each other. She’d find a way to use it somehow, and Charles doesn’t want to give her any ideas.

To his surprise, Erik says, I think we can. At the very least, we don’t have a choice right now.

“Why—” Charles hiccups, embarrassingly. Flushing, he scrubs his face with his sleeve and glares at Psylocke, who only gazes coolly back at him. “Why are you helping us?”

“Believe it or not, watching Apocalypse kill that kid doesn’t sit well with me either,” she says, eyes narrowed. “Now come on. We haven’t got much time.”

After two days curled up into a ball in the back of the cell, Charles is wobbly on his feet, so he has to lean on Erik as they hurry out of the basement and up to the first level. Once there, Psylocke slows them down with a sharp gesture, and Erik touches Charles’s hand. “Sorry,” he whispers as metal snakes out from his sleeves and wraps around Charles’s wrists, cuffing them together.

Every time they pass anyone who gives them a curious look, Psylocke snaps, “Mind your business,” which is enough to divert most of the attention from them. For the people who are naturally more suspicious, Charles smooths away any hint of prickly mistrust and sends them on their way. His head is still throbbing fiercely from so long in isolation, but he pushes through it. He’ll rest later, once this is all over.

“She’s in here,” Psylocke says as they approach Charles’s old rooms. After glancing up and down the hall, she knocks softly on the door. “Jean.”

The door swings open instantly. The little girl inside stares up at them, eyes wide. “Come inside. Quick.”

They’re bustled inside, and Erik pushes the door shut behind them. Then, to Charles’s surprise, Jean throws herself into Psylocke’s legs. “You’re here!”

“I told you I’d come,” Psylocke says, patting her back. “And I said I’d bring help, didn’t I? You’ve already met Erik. This is Charles.”

Jean gazes up at him with pale, knowing eyes—a telepath’s eyes, which see more than most. “Charles,” she says slowly. “You’re hurting.”

He blinks. He hadn’t even felt her brush against his mind. “I…It’s nice to meet you, Jean,” he manages, since he doesn’t know what else to say. “I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Betsy told me you were going to help us get out of here,” Jean informs him solemnly.

“Betsy?”

“Me,” Psylocke says, sounding annoyed.

Charles blinks. “Your real name is Betsy?” It seems so…benign.

“And I’ll thank you to forget it,” she says coldly. “Now come on. I parked one of the trucks out in the back for you, and Lehnsherr promised me he knows how to drive.”

“Wait, wait.” Charles catches her arm. “What’s the plan? We can’t just run. Nur’s going to send people after us in a second if we do. There’s no way he won’t notice we’re gone.”

“You’re going to run,” Psylocke says. “You and Erik take the girl and go. Those two wouldn’t make it alone, but with you to shield them and convince the guards to turn a blind eye, you should be able to get out of the city.”

“And what are you going to do?”

She spins one of her swords, its pink glow flashing dangerously. “Provide a distraction.”

“Alone? He’ll crush you!”

“I have some tricks up my sleeve. I can hold him off for long enough.”  

“We’ll stay and fight with you,” Charles says, shaking his head. “There’s no point in running. He’ll find us if we don’t stop him.”

“There’s no point in trying to stop him,” Psylocke snaps. “Do you really think you’re capable of killing him? He’s unkillable. He’s a god. The most we could ever do is slow him down, and even that won’t buy us much time. So stop being stupid and just go.”

She’s right, Erik says. She explained it to me yesterday, and I have to admit that this sounds like the best chance we’re going to get.

We can’t just leave her to fight Nur all on her own, Charles protests.

No one’s forcing her to. We all want the same thing: to get Jean out of the city. This is the only way.

It makes a sickening kind of sense. They’ll never be able to defeat Nur. Charles has always known that, though he’d tried to bury it so far down that he wouldn’t be able to feel the fear. But if Psylocke is willing to occupy him for a little while, long enough to give them the chance to get away…it’s the only chance they’ll have. Charles has no doubt that Nur will still send his mercenaries after them, but at least they’ll stand some small chance out there, on the run. If they stay, they’ll die.

“Fine,” he says heavily. “We’ll go.”

Jean hugs onto Psylocke’s waist tighter. “Come with us.”  

“I can’t.” Psylocke gently unwinds her arms from around her middle. “Go with these two, all right? They’ll keep you safe.”  

“You should come, too,” Jean says stubbornly. “I can hold him off so we can get away. I can.”

“Go,” Psylocke says firmly.

Jean stares at her for another long moment, her eyes welling up with tears. But then she dashes them away and walks over to Erik, reaching up to take his hand, her mouth pressed into a thin, unhappy line.

“There’s not much time,” Psylocke says. “Go, out the back. Take the side roads. Charles, you know the way.”

They part ways at the elevator. Charles can feel Psylocke reach out to Jean for just a moment. As she turns to go, he says softly, Thank you.

Psylocke doesn’t turn back, but as she reaches the end of the hall, she says, Take care of her. Then she disappears around the corner.

As they make their way out to the back entrance of the palace, Charles blurs the minds of anyone who so much as glances their way. They slip out into the lower courtyard without incident, and the truck is exactly where Psylocke had left it, keys in the ignition.

As Erik climbs into the driver’s seat, Charles boosts Jean up into the passenger side. There’s a narrow middle seat where she fits perfectly, and Charles makes sure to buckle her seatbelt as Erik adjusts the mirrors.

“Ready?” Erik asks, hands on the wheel.

Charles takes a deep breath. “Ready.”

Getting out of the palace is easy. After taking a moment to imprint the directions out of the city into Erik’s mind, Charles turns away the guards’ attention, makes them pay no mind to the truck racing its way out the gates. But as they hit the city roads, it grows harder to pass undetected. There are so many minds in the city, so many to grasp onto and smudge away memories. Charles squeezes his eyes shut in concentration, ignoring the excruciating pounding in his temples. Five minds flashing past, then another five, then a cluster of ten, then two more, and—

“Charles!”

His eyes snap open. Erik’s staring at him in horror, and it’s only then that he realizes there’s something warm and wet trickling down his lip. Blood, he realizes, tasting it.

“You’re hurting,” Jean says quietly. “Let me help.”

He feels her stretch out her telepathy and—oh. Her range, her power—it’s breathtaking. He can tell by the feel of her mind that Nur hasn’t amplified her, but already her power far surpasses anything Charles has ever known. She’s twelve and she could move the world.  

She flattens out memories like child’s play, pinching them out like candle flames. But Charles sees immediately that she has no control—the minds she touches quail away in pain and fear, and as soon as she lets them go, they collapse in a daze. If she goes too far, nudges a little too hard, they’d be gone. Their minds, their souls, wiped out.

Like this, Charles says quickly, sliding his telepathy forward to join hers. And he shows her how to do it kindly, how to coast in and out of minds without their owners realizing. Be gentle.  

Oh, she says in surprise, as if she hadn’t realized it was possible to be gentle.

Together, they slip in and out of the minds of everyone they pass, brushing away alarm, turning away suspicion. You don’t see anything. Go about your day. There’s no need to look out the window. You see nothing out of the ordinary.  

They’re nearly to the front gates, Charles realizes with some exhilaration. They’re going to make it. They’re actually going to make it.

“Once we’re a few miles out, I’ll cut off the main road,” Erik says. “The side roads will be safer, at least for a while. We’re going to have to ditch the car eventually though. The sooner the better.”

“Right,” Charles agrees. He doesn’t relish the idea of tramping through the wilderness on foot, but the truck is too visible. Maybe once they reach another city though, they’ll be able to rent horses. Horses are good, reliable transportation.

The front gates loom into view just down the road. Erik presses down harder on the gas pedal, sending them hurtling forward.

Charles goes deaf and blind all at once. He has no time to feel fear, only surprise, and then the world is spinning, the seatbelt cutting painfully into his chest, and they’re turning and turning, and very dimly, he can hear Erik yelling and—

When Charles comes to, he’s hanging upside down, pinned in place by his seatbelt—and by a sheet of metal wrapped around his torso, he realizes. Stunned, he simply dangles there for a moment, trying to piece together what the hell happened. Then he remembers: Erik. Jean.

When he looks down frantically, both of the seats beside him are empty. There’s no crumpled bodies, thank God, but where did they go? Who could have taken them? Where—

Erik’s face appears in the space where the windshield used to be. He has blood trickling down from somewhere in his hairline, but he looks otherwise unharmed. “Come on,” he rasps, holding out his hand. The metal sheet unwraps itself from around Charles at his command.

“Jean?” Charles gasps, fumbling with his seatbelt.

“I got her out first. Come on, he’s coming.”

His seatbelt unclicks, and he hits the top of the cab painfully. Ignoring the scratch of glass against his palms, he crawls out through the windshield and staggers to his feet.

The truck is on fire. Nur must have hit it with an explosion, Charles thinks, dazed. The whole back of it is scorched all to hell, flames licking up its sides. Which means…which means Psylocke hadn’t been able to distract him for long. Which means they’re as good as dead.

“Charles!”

Jean comes flying at him and hugs him tight around the waist. “I thought—when the truck flipped—but Erik saved us!”

“He did,” Charles croaks. He pats her back and feels a hard, grim determination take shape in his chest. They might be dead soon, but they aren’t dead yet. If there’s any chance of getting Jean out of here, then they have to try.

“Come on, darling,” he says. “We have to run.”  

They make it half a block before Jean tires and Erik scoops her up into his arms. They can’t go out the gate, Charles thinks, his mind racing for alternatives. They’d be too exposed out there, so their only hope is to hide. If they can evade Nur until nightfall, they might be able to slip out of the city under cover of darkness. Or if they can—

“There you are.”

The soft, low voice fills Charles’s stomach with lead. When he turns, Nur is dropping down from the sky, hands outstretched for balance. He lands lightly in the street behind them, his expression utterly devoid of emotion. His eyes are chips of stone.

“You disappoint me, Charles,” he says. “You disappoint me greatly.”

He flicks a hand. A mailbox nearby rips itself from its foundation and slams into Charles’s side, knocking him clean off his feet. He hits the ground hard on his shoulder, wheezing as the mailbox molds itself around his chest, pinning him to the road.

“Charles!” Erik shouts.

Go, Charles thinks desperately. Take Jean and run, I’ll hold him off, I’ll—

Like hell you will!

The lampposts, the cars in the street, the bikes, the doors, dumpsters—everything metal careens toward Nur in a sharp, glittering, deadly storm. But it’s useless: the projectiles get within five feet of Nur and crumple against an invisible barrier, falling in pieces to the ground. The mailbox on top of Charles rips away, speeding for Nur’s heart, but it, too, smashes against the shield in a squeal of sparks.

“It’s no use,” Nur says calmly. “You knew that when you decided to defy me. Foolish children. I’ve been too merciful, haven’t I? You’ve forgotten what it means to obey.”

He thrusts out his hand, and Charles watches in horror as Erik is thrown twenty feet down the road, where he smashes through the glass of a storefront. Erik! he screams, grabbing for Erik’s mind. He’s—he’s hurt but he’s alive, he’s conscious, thank God. Erik—

Run if you can, Erik thinks, struggling to get up. And Jean—

Jean. Charles pushes himself up onto his elbows, anxiously scanning the area for her.  

She’s standing in the middle of the torn up road. She’s standing there glaring at Nur, and she says, “Don’t hurt them.”

Nur’s expression softens very slightly. “They defied me, little one. For that, they must pay. But you needn’t watch. Come here, child.”

He holds out a hand. Jean stares at him for a moment, then holds out her own.

Charles feels power surge through her, power so intense that he’s never seen—never imagined—its like. And fire bursts from her chest, from her arms, so blinding that Charles has to roll over, shielding his eyes with a cry.

He can feel Nur’s fury and disbelief—and underneath that, his pain. It’s working. She’s hurting him. Impossible—and yet, the force exploding from Jean is so extreme that Charles can’t imagine anything standing against it. Not even Apocalypse himself.

“No!” Nur roars. Flinging out his arms, he digs in his heels and leans into the inferno. “NO!”

Jean falters, afraid, exhausted. She’s too small for so much power, her body and mind flayed open by the effort. The flames dancing around her dwindle and retreat, scattering like scolded dogs. She falls to her knees with a gasp.

Charles wraps her mind in his own, soothing the deepest wounds, blocking out her pain. The source of her power pulses in the back of her mind, like the blazing, brilliant core of a star. It’s not exhausted, not even close. It can’t be exhausted, this alien force, this creature of immense, unknowable power. But Jean is exhausted. Jean has no more strength in her to channel it.

Come here, Charles coaxes, reaching out to it. Let me help her.  

The flames flicker curiously. Then they surge toward him with greedy speed.

The pain is like nothing else he’s ever known. It feels like his bones are being seared from the inside out, a blistering heat that consumes everything inside him, his heart, his mind, his very soul. But in that agony, there’s Jean. She reaches for him, or he reaches for her, and their minds meet and connect and Jean says, Don’t hurt him, and it’s like a bubble expands around them. Outside, the inferno rages on, but inside, they’re safe.

I can’t control it, Jean says, shuddering. I’m not strong enough.

Not yet, Charles tells her. Not alone. But let’s try, together.

He feels the press of her hand against his own, whether in real life or in their linked minds, he can’t tell. But he squeezes her fingers reassuringly and turns his attention outward.

Nur is almost upon them. He reaches down and grabs Jean—or Charles—it’s difficult to tell with their minds so melded—he picks them up by their necks and they wheeze for breath and scrabble at the iron grip of his hands, and Jean is screaming, panicking, and Charles says, Let go, Jean. LET GO.

The inferno bursts out of their joined minds and into the world, engulfing Nur in an instant. With a cry of alarm, he recoils, dropping them, and as they gasp for air, he stumbles back, writhing with pain. The fire is too much, it’s scorching him faster than his reparative mutation can keep up with, and for the first time in centuries, he feels fear. Real, cold terror.

Together, they focus harder on him, pouring everything they have into the fire to fuel it: all their pain and fear and rage and grief and love. It’s over, Charles thinks furiously. You will never, ever hurt anyone ever again.

He feels the moment it ends. Nur’s body, overwhelmed by the firestorm, shudders, jerks, and collapses. A second later, his mind struggles through its death throes, thrashing against the impending darkness—and winks out.

We did it, Jean says shakily. We…we killed him.

You’re safe now, Charles tells her.

That’s the last thing he remembers before the world goes black.

*

“Erik! Erik!”

Jean barrels toward him, catching him around his thighs. Erik staggers a bit but manages to keep his footing, carefully maneuvering the crutch out of the way so she can hug him more properly.

“Careful!” Braddock admonishes. She comes up to him more slowly, limping. Surprisingly, out of all of them, she’d been the least injured. Nur had been so furious he hadn’t bothered with her for long, leaving her only with a few broken ribs and a badly sprained ankle. Now she’s appointed herself as Jean’s guardian, shadowing her with all the fierce protectiveness of a mother hawk.

“Sorry,” Jean says, radiating apology. “Is your leg okay?”

“It will be,” Erik replies. It hadn’t been a bad break. The physicians here were able to cast it without trouble and he’ll be on crutches for a while, but that’s it. He knows he’s lucky to have come away from that battle with his life. A broken leg, a fractured clavicle, and a smattering of cuts all over his body from broken glass seem like a small trade in comparison.

“Good,” she says approvingly.

“It’s good to see you out and about,” Braddock says as she reaches them.

“I needed the fresh air,” Erik says gruffly. It’s the first day he’s felt strong enough to walk more than a few times up and down the hall of the hospital. Even just this, climbing to the roof garden, has him more exhausted than it should.

“Yeah.” Braddock walks beside him as he makes his way slowly down the garden’s stone path. Jean walks on his other side, sometimes skipping forward to peer at the flowers, sometimes lagging behind.  

“How is he?” she asks finally.

Erik shrugs as best as he can with the crutch. “The same. No worse.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“Have the doctors given any updates?”

“Not recently.” Charles is in critical condition. He’s been in critical condition since they dragged him out of the rubble, pale, soot-streaked, hardly breathing. Erik’s heart has been seized in a vise ever since. He feels like he hasn’t taken a full breath in six days.

“He’s strong,” Braddock says. “He’ll pull through.”

“I know.”

They meander down the path, stopping every once in a while to watch Jean marvel at a flower, or a butterfly. It’s a beautiful garden, full of blooms even in the dead of winter. One of the nurses had explained to Erik that the garden is maintained by a mutant who has a perfect, green thumb. Everything he touches grows and thrives, even when it shouldn’t.

“What now?” Braddock asks eventually. “What about Shaw?”

Erik clenches his jaw. “He’s still out there. And now, thanks to Nur, I know where he is.”

“When will you leave?”

“Not anytime soon. I need to heal first. And…”

Braddock is silent for a moment. Then she says, more gentle than she usually is, “He’s not going to like it when you say goodbye.”

Erik shakes his head. “I’m not leaving here without him.”

One of her dark eyebrows lifts. “And if he doesn’t want to leave? If he doesn’t want to put his life on the line again after nearly dying once?”

Erik’s thought of it. He’s spent days thinking about it, and still, he hasn’t come up with an answer. If Charles no longer wants to help him with Shaw, then of course Erik won’t force him. But that would mean leaving the Keep and journeying on alone, and every part of Erik recoils at the idea.  

He can’t let Shaw slip away from him, but he can’t leave Charles. For the first time in his life, he wonders what it would be like to let go of Shaw, let go of everything. Holding onto Charles is going to take two hands. Charles deserves that much.

“I don’t know,” Erik says at last.

Braddock eyes him for a moment, then shakes her head. “You should figure it out soon. That information Nur gave you isn’t going to be accurate forever.”

Erik sighs. “I know. But—”

A few steps in front of them, Jean freezes, abruptly enough that it draws both of their attention. “He’s awake,” she whispers.

Erik’s heart leaps into his throat. “What?”

“He’s awake,” she says, louder. Then she’s pushing past them, tearing for the stairs. “He’s awake!”

Erik bolts after her, heedless of his leg. He clatters down the stairwell in a rush, taking the steps far too quickly. The railing is metal though, and he glues his hand to it, half-running, half-sliding down three flights of stairs to the 3rd floor. Flinging the door open, he bursts through it, nearly colliding with a nurse coming the other way. 

“Hey!” she shouts. “Hey, no running!” 

Her voice fades as he turns the corner and hobbles toward the last room on the left. It’s a corner room, bigger than the others, with a beautiful view of the city. Erik’s spent hours staring at that view and describing it to Charles, pushing the words and images at him when speaking aloud doesn’t feel like enough. The doctors have said Charles might be able to hear him. They said it wouldn’t hurt. 

For the last six days, the room has always been eerily silent when Erik steps into it. The only sound that pierces the silence is the quiet, persistent beeping of the monitor. But this morning as Erik skids in through the doorway, he hears soft laughter and the low murmur of voices. When he sees Charles with his eyes open—still deathly pale, still looking terribly weak, but with his eyes open—his heart swells with such relief and joy that he can hardly breathe for a moment. 

“Erik!” Jean says, turning to wave at him. She’s on the bed, practically on top of Charles. “Hurry, come in! He wants to see you.” 

“I didn’t say that,” Charles croaks. He sounds terrible, scratchy and feeble, and Erik doesn’t think he’s ever heard anything more welcome. 

“I can leave,” Erik says dryly, still hovering in the doorway. 

“No, you can’t,” Charles says immediately, almost petulantly. 

Smothering a smile, Erik limps over to Charles’s bed and, after a moment of hesitation, places his hand on the rail instead of reaching for Charles like he’d wanted. But Charles lifts his hand, eyebrow raised, and Erik clasps it tightly. 

“Hi,” he says. 

“Hi,” Charles echoes. He smiles. “Jean was just catching me up on what I missed. You look terrible, by the way.” 

“You haven’t seen a mirror yet, have you?” 

“No, and I’m in no hurry to either. I’m sure I look like a right mess.” 

“You do.” 

“He’s thinking you look beautiful anyway,” Jean says, grinning. 

Erik scowls. Charles laughs, which makes him wince and press his free hand to his ribs. After a moment, he says, “You shouldn’t read other people’s minds without permission, dear.” 

“I know.” Jean heaves a sigh. “He’s just thinking so loudly.” 

“He does, doesn’t he?” The smile Charles aims at Erik is full of warmth and affection. “But even when people think loudly, it’s best not to comment on their thoughts out loud. They tend to get annoyed when you do.” 

“Oh yeah,” Jean says, nodding sagely. After a pause, she darts a quick look at Erik and mutters, “Sorry.” 

Erik feels like he should probably be more irritated at the mental intrusion, but at the moment, he can’t focus on anything but Charles. He runs his gaze over Charles over and over again, noting the bandages on his arms, the sutured cut over his eyebrow, the bruises and abrasions scattered across his face and down his neck. Erik knows the bruises extend further down as well, across his chest and back, but those are superficial, the doctors had assured him, and would heal with time. The worst of the injuries aren’t physical—it was wielding Jean’s power that had inflicted the most damage in the end. When he’d first been brought to the hospital, Braddock had taken a brief look, shaken her head, and said, “With that amount of psychic damage, I’m surprised he’s not dead, honestly. But the fact that he survived is as good a sign as any, I suppose.” 

Charles squeezes his hand. “Jean, would you mind excusing us for a moment?” 

“But…” She trails off without finishing, eyes going distant in a way Erik is starting to recognize as a sign of some silent, telepathic conversation taking place. Abruptly, her expression screws up, and she says, “Gross.” 

Erik watches her slide off the bed and scamper out the door. As it drifts shut behind her, he turns and raises an eyebrow at Charles. “What did you say to her?” 

“I told her you were so worried about me that you probably wouldn’t be able to resist kissing me, and it would be sappy and dramatic and disgusting,” Charles says, grinning.

Erik laughs. “I can do that.”

“Please do,” Charles murmurs, so Erik leans over the bed rail and presses a light, lingering kiss to his mouth. When he pulls back, Charles says with tangible disappointment, “That’s it?”

“You were hurt pretty badly,” Erik huffs. “I don’t want to cause any further injury.”

“I doubt a kiss is going to injure me in any sort of way.”

“Still.” Erik strokes his thumb over Charles’s knuckles slowly, feeling out the steady pulse of blood rushing through Charles’s arteries, the stable pumping of his heart, as regular and dependable as a ticking clock. He’s alive. They both are, which is…surreal. Neither of them should have survived a fight with Nur, and yet here they are. It feels like a second chance, almost. Or the first one they never quite had.

“I was, you know,” Erik says softly. “Worried about you.”

Charles grins. “So you do care about me.”

Erik resists the urge to roll his eyes, knowing that will only make Charles laugh. “Yes, you ridiculous boy, I care. I would have thought that would be obvious by now.”

“It is,” Charles agrees, “but I don’t think I’ll ever tire of hearing it anyway.”

“I thought…” Erik exhales shakily and leans over the bed rail, his stomach quivering at the memory. “When we pulled you out of the rubble, I thought you were dead. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been breathing.”

“CPR, I would hope.”

Erik glares at him. “Don’t be cheeky with me. Not about this.”

Charles’s smile fades. “Of course not, darling,” he says, serious now. “I’m sorry.”

Darling. The word seems to slide into Erik’s chest like a knife gliding painlessly through his ribs and remains there, flickering like a candle flame, golden and warm. “It’s fine,” he says gruffly, sinking into the chair beside the bed. With a wave of his hand, he lowers the railing so he can still see Charles, so he can continue to grip his hand. “I just—worried.”

“I know. I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“You couldn’t have helped it. You saved…” Erik shakes his head. “My life. Jean’s. And by stopping Nur from getting his hands on Jean’s power, you probably saved countless others as well. You shouldn’t apologize for that.”

“Still.” Charles smiles weakly. “Your hair’s going to go all white from worrying about me, at the rate you’re going.”

“I’m just glad you’re all right,” Erik says softly. He brings Charles’s knuckles up to his mouth and presses a gentle kiss there, then another. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Charles says with a groan, “that’s the last time I will ever attempt to do battle with a near-immortal mutant who thinks he’s a god. No, I think bed rest is in order for me. Lots and lots of bed rest. And,” he adds, winking, “kisses.”

Erik huffs fondly. “Of course.”

For a while, they simply sit there in silence, soaking in each other’s presence, reveling in being alive together. After some time, Charles stirs and frees his hand from Erik’s to reach up and brush the hair away from Erik’s forehead. When his fingers brush Erik’s temple, some energy sparks there, like a jolt of electricity.

“Is it all right if I…?” Charles asks quietly.

“Of course.” Erik catches Charles’s hand again and presses his fingers to his temple invitingly. Please.

Warmth blossoms in the back of Erik’s mind, quiet and achingly gentle and already as familiar to Erik as his own heartbeat. It feels like a piece of his heart is slotting back into place, as neatly and seamlessly as if it had never been missing at all.  

It’s like coming home.