[Fic} End In Sight
Title: End In Sight
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Pairing: Charles/Erik
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Solar wind hits the magnetosphere and fucks with Erik's powers.
Warnings: Emotional distress, past mentions of torture.
It's happened before, but this is the first time Erik's been able to give it a name. He's feared it, never knowing when it would strike; it's always been unexplainable, something out of his control.
He remembers a few weeks in '45 (or was it '46?) that he spent curled in a ball in his spartan room at Schmidt's compound, turning every piece of metal that came within striking distance into scrap. The inability to keep his powers in check had arrived suddenly one afternoon, accompanied by crippling headaches and vomiting. Unable to keep any food down, he remained starved and sobbing for nearly eight days. He nearly crushed his own wrist when he inadvertently crumpled his watch, managing to work it off just in time. He had been lucky to escape with only a few broken bones after that first attack- some of the people who had been foolish enough to try to go near him had ended up dead, their own metal possessions turned against them. Schmidt had thought it was hilarious and tried to remedy his sudden loss of control with doubled doses of electro-shock treatment.
Erik's control returned, but Schmidt liked the reaction the electricity got from him and the treatment continued.
It had happened again when Erik was in his mid-twenties, during one of his stints in France. He was tracking one of Schmidt's associates, a woman by the name of Beckmann, and had been hit by the headaches while paying a shady arms dealer for information in a bar. He had managed to keep his composure long enough to get what he needed before the agony in his skull forced him out onto the street. He stumbled around like a drunk, trying to navigate the twisting cobbled streets and accidentally wrenching storm drains from the ground. Squinting up after a gut wrenching session of dry heaves in an alleyway, he had realized that the copper streetlights were bending towards him. In his altered state it seemed like he had been dropped into a Salvador Dali painting.
He spent a week and a half naked, delirious, and shivering, locked in his cheap Paris hotel room, surrounded by the metal debris that he had ripped from the walls and floor. By the time he came back to himself Beckmann was long gone and the manager of the hotel thought that someone had bombed his building.
He's gone through the symptoms alone every time they've hit. Afterwards, surveying the damage, he always wondered at the cause of his lack of control, bursting out of the blue to make his life that much harder. He had eventually concluded that it was stress-based, some sort of flaw on his part. It was his mistake; a sign of the inherent weakness Schmidt had so often chided him for. Another part of himself to loathe and fear.
A cool cloth presses to his forehead in the darkness of the room and Erik lets out a soft groan. Fingers card through his hair, pushing the sweat-soaked strands off his forehead soothingly.
Shhh. It's alright. You're going to be fine, Erik. The voice in his mind is calm and quiet, and somehow it manages to penetrate the searing pain of his headache without making it worse. It's just solar wind hitting the magnetosphere. This will pass.
He gropes blindly upward, grabbing at a soft cotton sleeve. "It hurts." His voice is hoarse and the sound of it makes his head pound, throbbing behind his eyeballs. He hates to hear himself like this- it sounds like begging, like weakness.
You're not weak. You're strong, Erik, you can get through this. Sleep, now.
Erik's eyelids sink closed as he falls into unconsciousness, the violent screams of pain from his mind subsiding to a dull roar. Charles strokes his hair tenderly and glances around the room, checking for the hundredth time that he's remembered to remove all the metal and that the curtains are pulled shut. He holds Erik in the dark and promises silently to drive the pain away.
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Pairing: Charles/Erik
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Solar wind hits the magnetosphere and fucks with Erik's powers.
Warnings: Emotional distress, past mentions of torture.
It's happened before, but this is the first time Erik's been able to give it a name. He's feared it, never knowing when it would strike; it's always been unexplainable, something out of his control.
He remembers a few weeks in '45 (or was it '46?) that he spent curled in a ball in his spartan room at Schmidt's compound, turning every piece of metal that came within striking distance into scrap. The inability to keep his powers in check had arrived suddenly one afternoon, accompanied by crippling headaches and vomiting. Unable to keep any food down, he remained starved and sobbing for nearly eight days. He nearly crushed his own wrist when he inadvertently crumpled his watch, managing to work it off just in time. He had been lucky to escape with only a few broken bones after that first attack- some of the people who had been foolish enough to try to go near him had ended up dead, their own metal possessions turned against them. Schmidt had thought it was hilarious and tried to remedy his sudden loss of control with doubled doses of electro-shock treatment.
Erik's control returned, but Schmidt liked the reaction the electricity got from him and the treatment continued.
It had happened again when Erik was in his mid-twenties, during one of his stints in France. He was tracking one of Schmidt's associates, a woman by the name of Beckmann, and had been hit by the headaches while paying a shady arms dealer for information in a bar. He had managed to keep his composure long enough to get what he needed before the agony in his skull forced him out onto the street. He stumbled around like a drunk, trying to navigate the twisting cobbled streets and accidentally wrenching storm drains from the ground. Squinting up after a gut wrenching session of dry heaves in an alleyway, he had realized that the copper streetlights were bending towards him. In his altered state it seemed like he had been dropped into a Salvador Dali painting.
He spent a week and a half naked, delirious, and shivering, locked in his cheap Paris hotel room, surrounded by the metal debris that he had ripped from the walls and floor. By the time he came back to himself Beckmann was long gone and the manager of the hotel thought that someone had bombed his building.
He's gone through the symptoms alone every time they've hit. Afterwards, surveying the damage, he always wondered at the cause of his lack of control, bursting out of the blue to make his life that much harder. He had eventually concluded that it was stress-based, some sort of flaw on his part. It was his mistake; a sign of the inherent weakness Schmidt had so often chided him for. Another part of himself to loathe and fear.
A cool cloth presses to his forehead in the darkness of the room and Erik lets out a soft groan. Fingers card through his hair, pushing the sweat-soaked strands off his forehead soothingly.
Shhh. It's alright. You're going to be fine, Erik. The voice in his mind is calm and quiet, and somehow it manages to penetrate the searing pain of his headache without making it worse. It's just solar wind hitting the magnetosphere. This will pass.
He gropes blindly upward, grabbing at a soft cotton sleeve. "It hurts." His voice is hoarse and the sound of it makes his head pound, throbbing behind his eyeballs. He hates to hear himself like this- it sounds like begging, like weakness.
You're not weak. You're strong, Erik, you can get through this. Sleep, now.
Erik's eyelids sink closed as he falls into unconsciousness, the violent screams of pain from his mind subsiding to a dull roar. Charles strokes his hair tenderly and glances around the room, checking for the hundredth time that he's remembered to remove all the metal and that the curtains are pulled shut. He holds Erik in the dark and promises silently to drive the pain away.