(Untitled)

[markedformore]

When the world falls back to some approximation of normalcy, Erik takes stock in his surroundings. He knows his bearings well because he is back in Schmidt’s office, facing down his creator as he begins to run through a destructive script aimed to try and coax Erik’s powers into being. There is the familiar chocolate bar that will be uselessly used

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[thebettermen]

Charles could have frozen the entirety of the building, Erik included, but he senses before he even enters the office that it is too late. His head throbs with a phantom pain from just moments ago, when they lived these events last, and though some part of him knows that he could summon up the strength to delve once more into so many minds, he can't bother as he all but flies through the door.

The sight that greets him makes his blood run cold. He's seen this before, of course, has experienced this death in a way so intimate as to defy words, and it is no easier to bear, now, knowing that he was equally as helpless to prevent this murder a second time as he was the first. He stops in his tracks a few feet in front of the desk, feet seemingly glued to the floor as he stares, slack-jawed at Erik's efforts. After a long moment, he asks, in a voice breathless with anger, the simplest and most obvious question, despite the fact that he already knows the answer.

"What have you done?"

[halfscarlet]

Billy doesn't expect the sudden change, and the return to where they started makes his stomach turn. The halls are the same, the clothes are the same, the dread he feels is the same -- but when he rushes through the door after Charles, nothing is the same.

Erik had begged them to let him do this, to murder a man for what he'd done, and Billy had done what he could to stop him. Maybe it's Erik's right to do what he wants to a man who would ruin his life, but Billy can't stomach the idea of killing a man for it -- just wishing to kill someone had been more than enough for him once upon a time, and he'd never been able to think that much ill of someone ever since.

He still doesn't understand how others can do it in cold blood, even for good reason.

"You killed him," he says, eyes fixed on the tiny flow of blood coming from such a neat wound. So small and simple, but enough to snuff out a life in a matter of moments.

[markedformore]

Erik peers up from his position on the floor and weighs the coin in his hand, as if debating whether this is the equivalent of the weight of a human soul. Surely Schmidt's is not this heavy. Surely, a man with such evil in him is not worth this much. "I did," Erik agrees. There it is, again, that sound of such a high and innocent voice in complete dissonance with his words. "I feel better," he goes on, as if surprised by such a thing.

And he also feels worse, but he needn't say that aloud.

[thebettermen]

"No, you don't," says Charles, prying into his friend's mind without invitation. (Is he still a friend, even after this? Yes, of course, but that they don't see eye to eye on so important a matter will surely drive them apart rather than bring them together. Neither of them got to see the aftermath of the events on the beach, though only Charles knows the details between the two of them -- or some, at any rate.)

He steps forward, his feet moving like lead across the floor.

"Erik."