InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Don't dream it, be it."

Erik Lehnsherr (wealreadyare) wrote in colligo_threads,
@ 2011-07-16 03:14:00

Entry tags:

charles xavier, erik lehnsherr

WHO: Erik Lehnsherr & Charles Xavier
WHAT: A chess game between old friends to catch up on what they missed during the two weeks they weren't able to speak to each other. Nothing at all dangerously codependent or anything.
WHERE: Charles's Study, The X-Mansion
WHEN: July 16th; Around 1 AM
RATING: PG
STATUS: In Progress

It might have been the middle of the night, but with a barrier having separate all of them for weeks, that seemed like a very small thing to be concerned with. Erik hardly anticipated sleeping anytime soon as it was, so fill the hours until his body and mind were willing to succumb to the necessity of sleep with chess and conversation seemed like a better option than sitting, alone, in his room and fruitlessly reading the same handful of pages over and over again while his mind attempted to rebel against his attempt at keeping it occupied. So, placing his PDA down on his nightstand, Erik had crossed the manor from his room to Charles's study and was grateful to find that it wasn't empty like it had been since the first of the month.

"I would say you were a sight for sore eyes," Erik said as he stepped inside, grinning at Charles as he closed the door behind him. "But I worry Miss Pryde might overhear and get the wrong idea, yet again." Crossing the study to settle himself down in the chair opposite the board that Charles had already prepared, Erik wouldn't help but quirk an eyebrow at his friend with an expectant look. He could only imagine just how much Charles had been up to during this time. He wasn't the sort to just allow time to pass with him on his own, and Erik could imagine he likely had far more to tell than he, himself, did.

All Erik could do was hope that he'd actually be willing to share it rather than insisting that he spend all of the time talking about what had occupied him. Leaning forward after a moment, Erik turned the board and glanced up at Charles, "You play defense for awhile."

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bardcore
2011-07-20 04:36 am UTC (link)

As much as Charles had been unsettled by the absence of his makeshift family's presence in his mind, their sudden return was more than a little overwhelming. Whatever others might have thought about his gift, it wasn't something he could just turn on and off. There was always a cacophony of minds around his, and the effort of blocking out everything was too much and rarely worth the effort. Shielding completely made him feel empty and wrong. So he was forced to deal with the sudden influx of minds and the headache that ensued, hoping that he would quickly regain his equilibrium. Still, he wouldn't trade this for anything. The last two weeks had been awful, and he couldn't imagine going back to that. It had been painful, having those minds ripped away from him.

Looking up as he felt Erik's presence in the room, he smiled. "She's young," he said, pouring two glasses of scotch and passing one to Erik. "She'll get over such ridiculous thoughts soon enough." It wasn't that he had a problem with such things, simply that he and Erik were not like that. Erik was like a brother to him, and he couldn't imagine their relationship taking any other path. Tilting his head, he smiled for a moment before speaking. "Pity," he said. "I rather hoped you would have worn your token of Ms. Brown's affection. It suits you."

"I would hug you," he said idly, "but, for one thing, you might punch me and, for another, Katherine really would get entirely the wrong idea." He watched as Erik turned the board, nodding his head in agreement. "Very well," he said, taking a sip of scotch. "You start then." He settled into silence, not entirely used to conversing in this way any more. With Idris and Jaenelle, he'd lapsed into old habits of telepathic conversation. He'd had to make a conscious effort to remember to speak with Erik and not just send the words to his mind.

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wealreadyare
2011-07-20 05:18 am UTC (link)

"What makes you think I would punch you for that?" Erik asked, taking the glass of scotch with a grateful and amused smile. "I might thwack you for it but punching you would just be cruel." It was all really just a degree of impact that differentiated the two actions from each other, but in Erik's mind, they were completely different things. And one did not punch a friend because he missed you. Leaning over the chess board, Erik pushed one of the pawns forward two spaces and leaned back in the chair, taking a sip of his drink as he peered across at Charles, a heavy, expectant look in his eyes as he waited for Charles to say something, anything, more significant than that.

After taking another sip of his drink, though, Erik figured that this wasn't going to be that simple. "So," He started, an ever so slight smile gracing his features, "did you have fun without us?" He asked, quirk an eyebrow as his smile increased. "I imagine that you enjoyed the quiet for a change." After all, whatever Charles said about not reading their minds, he couldn't avoid when they all thought too loudly. That much Erik had realized since they'd been here. He figured not having all them knocking around in the mansion for once would have been a momentary peace for his friend.

Of course, he was also trying to force some sort of information out of Charles by bringing it up. He didn't want to spend the entire night taking about what he'd been up to, and the best way Erik figured to avoid that was make Charles go first.

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bardcore
2011-07-20 05:56 am UTC (link)

"And that, of course, is ever so much better, I'm sure," Charles said. "Is there a chart you could show me, where they give a scale measuring the degree of violence inherent in specific terms?" He was, perhaps, ever so slightly more snappish than usual, but he could hardly be blamed as far as he was concerned. He'd spent two weeks with an integral part of himself shut off in regards to the people who mattered most in his life, and now that they were back he was developing a headache as he tried to readjust.

And that, perhaps, was the reason he gave a bitter laugh at Erik's next words and downed the rest of his scotch. Somehow it hurt worse than with the others when Erik misunderstood his mutation so completely. Somehow he just expected him to instinctively get it. For all that Erik understood him on some level that others couldn't, when he fell short it was equally impressive. "Yes," he said dryly, moving his own chess piece, "I enjoyed it ever so much. As, I'm sure, you'd be thrilled to be locked in a plastic room." He paused, startled at his own words, and immediately looked down at his hands.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said after a moment, thoroughly uncomfortable at having allowed his negative feelings to show. "That was rather unkind of me."

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wealreadyare
2011-07-20 07:07 am UTC (link)

Erik was surprised by Charles's reaction. There had been times when he had been trying to be an ass, and the reaction that he had gotten from Charles had been less volatile, so to have such a benign suggestion yield a result like that was very telling. And even as the apology was meant to cover over what he'd said and get it dismissed as a nonissue, Erik frowned across the chessboard at his friend before moving his own piece. "It was," Erik said, "but sometimes we have to be unkind to get a point across," He said, shifting to his feet and plucking Charles's glass from his hand in order to go and refill it for him.

"And you, my friend, are, apparently, far too good at ignoring those urges in order to keep the peace," Erik said with a quiet thoughtfulness in his voice as he glanced back over his shoulder at Charles. "How am I supposed to know better if you don't tell me?"

Returning back to his friend's side, Erik held out the glass for Charles to take as he lingered next to him, "And I'm sure I could provide you with such a chart given time. It would, of course, only be useful for me, though, as violence is often subjective especially when you're talking about degrees."

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bardcore
2011-07-20 07:37 am UTC (link)

Charles couldn't focus on the chessboard, too uneasy in the face of how he had opened that door and showed Erik the less comfortable parts of himself. People liked him when he seemed to have it all together, not when he was spitting out sarcasm. It wasn't that he was any less screwed up than the next person, in fact he was probably more a mess than anyone, but it was just easier not to allow the messier parts out into the light of day where others might realise he was just a bloke who had no idea what he was doing. He closed his eyes as Erik refilled his drink, not wanting this to turn into another fight. Erik's words sounded too much like the rest of his rhetoric.

He wanted to shove this all back in its box and pretend it never happened, but it was past the point where that was an option. "Sometimes," he said quietly, "peace is the only thing that keeps us going." He didn't want to admit that he kept these things to himself for much more selfish reasons, that he held on so tightly to those parts of himself so that he wouldn't lose who he was in the face of all the other people in his head.

He nodded his head in thanks as Erik handed back his glass, taking a drink before speaking again. "I can't remember a time when there weren't other people in my mind," he admitted. "I was using telepathy before I could speak." He paused. That wasn't quite right. But that wasn't for now. "I've always been able to sense the people around me," he continued. "It's comfortable. So...no, I didn't enjoy it in the least. It's bad enough that the first thing anyone asks is that I keep out. To not even know if you were there or if you were all right...it felt awful and unnatural and I hated it." He took another sip of scotch. "Rather like that godawful helmet."

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wealreadyare
2011-07-20 08:07 am UTC (link)

And there it was. The crux of the issue, one that Erik had been working on digging out despite the fact that he hadn't even known it was there, and now that it was out in the open, there was no pretending that the issue didn't exist anymore. Moving from Charles's side and settling himself back on the chair across from his friend, Erik folded his hands in front of his face, his thumbs propped against his mouth as he peered at Charles. Erik knew that there were issues from what had happened. They had parted on difficult terms even if they weren't unfriendly ones, and it seemed now that there was so much to it that he hadn't even realized.

"I couldn't risk it," Erik finally said after an extended silence. "I knew what I was going to do, what I had to do, Charles, and I couldn't risk you interfering. I didn't know what lengths you were willing to go to, to try and get me to be what you think I am instead of letting me be what I know I am."

For Erik, putting on that helmet had been little more than a momentary matter of self-defense, to make sure that the problem was solved in the way that it had to be, the way that he wanted it to be, and the second thought missiles had been launched their way, he was grateful for the fact that he had kept it on. He'd been determined to end things on his terms, and the helmet had given him the ability to make sure he was able to without unnatural persuasion intervening. The helmet had simply been an option he had claimed as a matter of circumstance, one that he was certain anyone in his position would have decided to take as well, and while he could fathom that it likely hadn't been pleasant for Charles to have to watch him do what he had without the ability to stop it, Erik didn't regret putting it on.

"I had to kill him," Erik said quietly, shifting to pick up his scotch, chessboard mostly forgot in lieu of the discussion, "and I had to do so on my own terms. I wasn't willing to risk you deciding that we needed to wait for the proper authorities to arrive and detain him. I meant what I said before I put it on. In that situation, I couldn't trust you."

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bardcore
2011-07-20 08:46 am UTC (link)

Erik's words were the verbal equivalent of a slap. Charles just stared at him for a long moment, completely at a loss as to what to say. It was a sharp echo of the betrayal he had felt on the beach when Erik had shut him out. How could his friend be so accepting of other mutants, but continually act as though he were some exception? He clenched his fist, the chess pieces rattling ever so slightly on the board. It wasn't something that had happened in years, and he forced himself to calm down as much as he could. "You," he said finally, "are an utter hypocritical bastard."

Erik looked as though he might speak, but Charles silenced him with a glare. "We only make concessions because we're given no other options," he spat, throwing Erik's own words back at him, "but in order to reach our full potential, we're going to have to free ourselves from whatever keeps us in check. I must have missed the bit where that only applies to mutations that don't make you personally feel uncomfortable." He got to his feet, downing his drink and walking over to refill it as an excuse to get away from the other man. He didn't particularly want to be within punching distance of Erik right now, lest he do something he regret. "I thought you of all people would be different," he said. "I thought you...with all your talk about embracing our mutations and accepting ourselves and one another...it's all well and good until you actually have to put it into practice yourself. But I guess telepaths are the freaks, even among mutants."

"I would never violate your mind like that," he insisted, keeping his back to Erik and refilling his glass with shaking hands. "Never. Not because I couldn't, but because that's not who I am. The only time I ever really did that was convincing my mother she had a daughter so that Raven could have a family. I was ten and I hated myself for it. And if I was as willing to abuse my mutation as you seem to believe, I would have taken the opportunity to force her to give a damn about anything beyond the bottle she crawled into after my father died." He stopped. He was getting too caught up in this. "If I wanted to stop you from killing him," he said quietly, "if I wasn't willing to let him die, I would have just let him go. I would have released his mind and stopped suppressing his power."

He turned back to Erik, knowing he shouldn't continue, but too hurt and angry to hold himself back. "I helped you kill him," he said, his tone too cold and too quiet. "I held on to his mind so you could get your revenge and I felt everything. Every second you were driving that coin through his skull, every second of blinding agony...I felt it. And I did that because I trusted you."

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wealreadyare
2011-07-20 09:02 am UTC (link)

Erik wasn't sure what he was expecting in those few moments that the silence extended between them and the chessboard started to rattle. He'd been temporarily fascinated by the shaking chess pieces, having had absolutely no idea that Charles had been capable of such a thing, but the words that left his friends lips tore his attention immediately away from such trivialities. Erik had never experienced anger from Charles before. In the year that they had known each other, his friend had always poised himself as a figure of levelheaded focus, as someone who didn't allow such petty emotions to cloud his judgement, and Erik had in equal portions loved and loathed Charles because of that. Loved because Charles's calm demeanor had rooted Erik through many of his less than rational moments, and loathed because it had always left Erik feel as though he were somehow less than his friend because of his tendency to allow his emotions to dominate his thinking.

If Charles's words hadn't been so gut-wrenching directed at him, Erik would have found a great deal of relief in seeing that even the great Xavier was as human as the rest of them.

Instead, Erik was left to absorb the full forced of what was being dropped into his lap, feeling the impact of repressed bitterness in each of the words, and try to formulate some type of response as the sting of all of it settled in him. As Charles finished his tirade, Erik sat there, peering up at the other man for a long moment before reaching out and draining his glass. Standing, Erik didn't say anything until he was reached Charles's side, settling the glass down next to the decanter as he heaved a long sigh.

"You know, Charles, for someone so smart, sometimes, you are really dumb," Erik said, glancing at his friend sideways. "Maybe if you'd told me any of this, we wouldn't have ended up where we did."

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bardcore
2011-07-21 10:29 pm UTC (link)

Honestly, Charles had never been especially comfortable with anger. He'd never been comfortable with any strong emotions. Anger and hatred and grief and all those other negative feelings had always been messy and painful, too sharp and bright and forceful. They were the things that always found their way to the forefront, that were most often projected, pushing at his mind and overwhelming him. And so he didn't like to feel them, let alone express them.

Everyone had their faults, and this was his. He just didn't know how to open up or let people in. The only exception had been Raven, and he'd never had to tell her. She'd been there. She'd seen it and lived it and so he never had to let down those walls and share, because she was already inside. And yet even with her there had been things, moments from before that night he'd found her in his kitchen, that he'd never shared. He didn't want to show weakness, or let people see him as anything other than together and in control, because experience had showed him that people only stayed for as long as you lived up to their expectations.

"Would it really have changed anything?" he asked softly, bristling slightly at the insult. As if telling Erik these things, showing him what a mess he really was, would have changed a thing. "Was there really any way for things to end any differently than they did? Because I don't see it, Erik." His voice rose as he spoke, and he felt shaken by the intensity of his own emotions. "Nothing would have stopped you from killing Shaw. Nothing would have stopped you from trying to kill those men. Nothing was going to stop you from leaving and abandoning...us!" There was the slightest of pauses there at the end, because he hadn't really been talking about the group. He felt like Erik had abandoned him.

And there was the crux of it. Erik had left. Charles had trusted him more than he had anyone, and he'd walked away. And Charles had been left with three young men who were confused and hurt, trying to help them while still reeling from the loss of his sister and his friend and his legs. And there was a part of him that wanted to hate Erik for that, wanted to blame him, because those first weeks after the beach had been more than he could bear. But in the end, he had to accept that it was his own fault. That he'd failed Erik and Raven, had somehow pushed them away. Here they were back in his life and he was glad for it, because he had missed them both terribly, but he couldn't help but wonder how long it would be before they left him again.

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wealreadyare
2011-07-21 11:19 pm UTC (link)

"Possibly," Erik said as he looked over at Charles. He couldn't have made any promises, after all. Charles was right in the fact that nothing could have stopped him from killing Shaw, but the rest of it, the rest of it was mutable and wouldn't have necessarily gone the same way that it had if he had had better knowledge, more understanding, and some reason not to distrust Charles. "Some things could have changed if things had gone only slightly differently, if I had had another knowledge set to work with. We can speculate all we want about it, Charles, but what happened was merely the end results of the fact that I know absolutely nothing about you that isn't obvious from observation."

Erik hadn't pushed during the time that they had been on their own. He wasn't exactly Mister Sharing Time himself so he had understood that Charles wasn't going to likely be volunteering information about himself offhand. But the longer it went on, the more Erik had started to believe that it wasn't fair. Charles knew everything about him just by virtue of his ability, and yet Erik found himself completely in the dark about Charles. Family, history, ability, all of it was a mystery to him and in the end, it had left Erik slightly paranoid about exactly what Charles had to conceal from him in the first place. It hadn't been the best way to think about someone that you considered your best friend, but Erik's mind always put paranoia first over almost everything else. Paranoia had helped keep him alive this long so there was no reason to start to doubt it.

"You're keeping me out, Charles," Erik said with a sigh, reaching out and settling his hands on Charles's shoulders. "And that's at least partly responsible for me constantly putting my foot in it. Maybe if I had any idea that you felt like I was treating you as a second class citizen because of your mutation, I could have, you know, stopped. It wasn't as though I was doing it with the intent to hurt you."

Because if that had been his goal, he would have qualified as the worst best friend ever.

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bardcore
2011-07-26 06:17 am UTC (link)

Charles sighed. For all Erik said that things could have been different, he wasn't sure he believed him. Erik hadn't trusted him, and that hurt more than anything. "Right," he said quietly, sounding more tired and bitter than he ever had. "If things had gone differently. Maybe if I hadn't been a telepath. Maybe if you hadn't had such an obvious reason not to trust me. Whatever happened that day...you walked away the second you put on that helmet. Because you couldn't trust me, even after everything." He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. "Do you know how that feels, Erik? Do you know...it's like there's nothing. It feels so wrong and...unnatural. You shut me out. Completely. All because my mutation made it so you couldn't trust me."

He turned away, pacing as he grew more and more agitated. "If you had any idea?" he asked. "It should have been obvious, Erik! You talk about how mutations should be embraced, how we should accept one another...but the first thing anyone does when they find out what I can do is ask me to keep out. You, all of you, act like this is something I can flip on and on like a lightswitch. Like I just have to turn it on to use it and the rest of the time it's safe." He went quiet for a long moment. "It's not like that at all," he said finally. "This isn't...it's always there, Erik. It's always been there. Yes, I have to focus to look beyond the surface thoughts, but the rest of it is there all the time. I have to actively block it out."

He shook his head. "I didn't talk," he said softly. "Not for...years. And not out loud. My mother thought there was something wrong with me, but what was the point? Verbal communication seemed so...pointless. Why bother with it when it was so much simpler to speak to their minds? My father never minded it, but he encouraged me to speak because he said not everyone would understand. It still feels strange sometimes...but he was right. Because sometimes compromises are necessary to survive." He moved back over to the chess board and sat down, picking up one of the pieces. "He died and my mother tried her best to fix me. They called it schizophrenia, and they tried to...help. Or at least, that's what they said. There was medicine and...other things. And then there were the things they didn't do...but they wanted to. I was too young to know what the word 'lobotomy' meant, but I didn't need to know to understand it in the context of their minds. So I learned to hide it, to talk to people out loud and not mention the things I heard, because I knew that if I didn't...if I couldn't pretend to be normal...they'd implement a more permanent solution."

"But it didn't change the fact that I knew that my mother was afraid of me," he said. "She kept away from me. I think she would have just left if she hadn't felt obligated to stay...because my father would have wanted her to." He finally looked at Erik. "And then Raven found me. And I knew I had to keep her safe. Because she was like me. And I knew what would happen to her if I didn't protect her, because I'd seen it myself." He stopped. "I...never told anyone about that," he said, looking Erik in the eye. "Not even Raven knew about the things that happened before she came along. I never wanted her to know, because...she's my little sister. She's not supposed to worry about me. So...there. Now you know. Does it help?"

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wealreadyare
2011-07-26 03:45 pm UTC (link)

There were dozens of things that Erik wanted to say, so much that he needed to say in order to clarify his position, but none if it seemed immediately important after everything that Charles had just said. Staggered into a momentary silence, Erik nodded in response to Charles's last question before crossing over and settling his hands back on his friend's shoulders, "Yeah. Yeah, it does," Erik said, shifting a hand around to rest on the back of Charles's neck as Erik settled his forehead against Charles's. "It tells me that I've had the wrong end of the stick for a very long time, and I'm sorry. I never imagined anything like that," he said with a sigh.

He held that position in silence for several seconds before shifting, pulling Charles into a tight embrace, resting his head against his friend's before taking a deep breath, I have to ask, though. How would it be obvious when we're working on different planes of understanding? I can turn my ability on and off. You can't...really fault me for assuming yours works the same way. Especially when you never bothered to tell me any different.

It probably wasn't the best thing for Erik to say like that, but it was the thought that was at the forefront of his mind and one that would be the easiest to express when Erik really didn't know how to...direct his internal speech to anyone but himself. But he was trying. That had to be something, at least.

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bardcore
2011-07-26 04:29 pm UTC (link)

"I know you didn't," Charles said, still not ready to entirely give up being angry. "You made your assumptions perfectly clear. What was it you said...oh, yes. 'I don't know how you survived, living in such hardship'. You assumed, as many do, that because I grew up financially secure that I couldn't possibly have had a difficult life." He sighed, relaxing ever so slightly at Erik's hand on his neck. "I know that you think I'm terribly naive...that I can't possibly understand the horrible things in the world, beyond what I've seen in other people's heads, but I do. And before you say that I should have clarified this for you, that it would have made things easier, maybe you should consider why I didn't. For all you suffered, your family loved you. It seemed selfish to burden you, to burden the good parts of your past, with my comparatively minor problems."

He was started when Erik pulled him into his arms, finding himself oddly comforted by the physical contact. Normally he wasn't a terribly physical person unless he was the one who initiated it, Raven being the obvious exception to this rule, but Erik had a way of lowering his defences. He trusted him, even hurt and angry as he was, and he allowed himself to relax. Of course, then Erik had to go shouting in his head, and he winced. You don't actually have to shout, he cautioned gently. That was rather...it was quite loud actually. You don't have to think that hard for me to get it. It's a bit like someone shouting in your ear with a megaphone.

Sometimes he forgot how little Erik really understood about his own abilities, and it really was no wonder the other man misjudged his when he fundamentally misunderstood his own. But you don't turn it on and off, he explained. Very few mutations work that way. Even if you actively choose to move metal, you're always aware of it. You're always connected to it and to magnetic fields. Even when Raven's not changing her form, her mutation is still turned on. Else her normal form would look just like anyone else. When Sean's not using his voice, his vocal chords are still different, and Alex still takes in energy, even when he's not using it. I sometimes forget that it's not obvious to everyone else. Mutations are what we are. They're not casual. They're not something we decide to have or not. If it really was a lightswitch, most people would never choose to use their powers. But we can't function like that. It's not in our nature.

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