Chapter Text
Erik left Shaw's crumpled body inside the submarine. He climbed through the inner corridor to the opening torn into the side of the vessel. He jumped. It was a strange, soft feeling: letting the earth's magnetic fields catch him, as he gently came down. He looked out to the ocean, sensing the ships, sensing the movement of metal.
--
"There are thousands of innocent men out there," Charles shouted at him. "Think Erik, Goddamn you--just think that any number of them might be the brother or a father to a mutant, and whether they know it or not--do you honestly believe any child would join you, knowing you had murdered someone they loved?"
When Erik did not move or look away from the sea, Charles pressed, "Please. Think of Shaw! Maybe you believe that you share his dream, of being the greater men--but you would have never done it by his side, and you know why."
Charle's chest was heaving with the effort of shouting. The sun was high above them, glinting off the shells of metal suspended in the air. Erik's body felt hot, like it was cracking open where the skin was exposed to sky. The helmet was heavy against his head, sweat trickling past his temples. His mind felt strangely empty, strangely hollow. He would have liked to kill every man out there on the ocean that day. He could have smiled with the feeling, and the smile was not from happiness.
"Some men deserve to die," he said.
Charles looked as though some great and terrible weight were pushing down on him, making it difficult for him to speak, or even to breathe the humid air. "Please, Erik."
Erik looked out at the suspended missiles that were now pointed towards the ships. He released them towards their targets. Distantly, he heard Charles give a shout of rage and horror, saw him running across the sand, closing the distance between them.
It was easy to overpower Charles once they hit the sand, to knock the other man a winding blow to the jaw when he kept thrashing and trying to shift their weights so that it was Erik who was pinned down underneath him instead.
Everything felt strange and stiffling and empty. Erik thought of that day, so many years ago, in Shaw's lab, all that metal crumpling and twisting, broken.
He thought of the blood on Shaw's coin.
There was blood trickling from the corner of Charles mouth. Erik looked down at it, looked at blue eyes that were dazed, disoriented from a second blow. Erik wouldn't allow Charles to physically overpower him on the beach. Not for a minute.
But far off over the ocean, the missiles were allowed to crash into the sea.