Forgive Us Our Transgressions 13/16
They moved into the hall carefully, tensed for battle. Erik could see the bloodlust in Mystique’s yellow eyes, the regret that she hadn’t gotten to dispatch one of the scientists herself. He knew she was angry, enraged at the idea that anyone would put a child in a cage.
Erik had long ceased to be surprised at humanity’s depravity, but that didn’t mean it didn’t infuriate him, fill him with the urge to destroy anything and anyone in his path.
Erik had been in enough military/medical facilities to have an idea of the layout-the offices were normally on the tops floors, big rooms with big windows reserved for the suits that ran the show. Cushy places they could sit back and gloat over all the wrong they were doing.
There would be a couple small, windowless rooms full of filing cabinets, policed by nothing more than a secretary in a pencil skirt, if they were lucky.
He led his troops upwards, bursting out onto the top floor in a swirl of his cape. “Spread out, find what we need,” he barked. “Angel, you’re with the girls. Pyro, with me.”
The boy visibly perked at the sign of favor, hurrying to Erik’s side with a grin. “What are we looking for?”
“Any documentation about what the fuck they’re doing here,” Erik said, already moving. “Anything that says ‘mutant’ on it, we want it.”
“And anything that doesn’t?”
“Torch it,” Erik said, giving the kid his best toothy grin.
Erik threw open the first door he came to, startling an overweight man in an expensive suit who sat behind a massive mahogany desk. “What the hell--?” the man grunted. With a wave of Erik’s hand, he was held fast, in the grip of his cushy, expensive chair. “Let me go!” he struggled. Erik laughed.
He could hear the uproar begin behind him, people surging out of their offices at the man’s cries.
He snorted, knowing the mayhem that was about to begin.
“Where are the mutant files?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man snarled, twisting in the metal grasp of his chair.
“I’m afraid I don’t believe you,” Erik told him, tightening his bonds.
“Magneto!” Erik wheeled around as the growl rang out behind him. Who?
Beast lunged forward, his blue fur standing on end, his lips pulled back to reveal sharp fangs. At his side, Pyro screamed.
“Hank,” he said, confusion colouring his voice. This was his doctor, his friend, bearing down on him, a snarl on his face.
“Tell your people to stop,” Beast demanded.
Erik could hear the screams all around him, as the humans tried to protect their secrets from the prying hands of the Brotherhood. A man in the corner sank to his knees, clutching his head. Another lay unconscious as Mystique stepped over his form and into a small room.
He could smell the acid of Angel’s spit, sharp and tangy on the air.
“No,” he said. They had children in cages, he reminded himself.
A plasma beam shot out across the crowded room, signalling the arrival of the rest of the X-Men.
Dimly, he heard the ding of the elevator arriving at their floor.
“Erik!” Charles’ voice called out frantically across the room.
Erik swung around, seeking out the source even as he frantically told himself that Charles’ couldn’t be here.
“Who’s the cripple?” Pyro snorted as Charles wheeled into view, steering himself around overturned office furniture and other detritus of the fight.
“Shut up,” Erik snapped, pushing the kid back even as he moved forward.
In the corner, Mystique stopped, unsure.
She always did have problems facing off against her brother. Erik and the Brotherhood were lucky that Charles never came into the open conflict, choosing instead to direct his troops from a distance.
She had no problem being angry when she faced Hank in battle.
“Charles, get out of here. The Brotherhood is handling this,” Erik said firmly.
He told himself that the disappointment on Charles’ face didn’t sting.
“If you call killing everyone in sight ‘handling it’,” Alex growled, appearing at Charles’ side.
At least now he understood why the man had been so hostile to him at the mansion.
The humans cowered back, hiding themselves as the two groups of mutants squared off against each other. Sean, Alex and Hank stood at Charles’ side, defying anyone to so much as step in his direction. Slowly, his own people stopped what they were doing and appeared behind him, attempting a show of solidarity to match the X-Men’s.
“They had children in cages, Charles,” Erik snarled.
“I know,” Charles said, turning sad eyes on the three young faces who stood uncertainly by Erik’s side.
“And yet you’re going to tell me I’m wrong?”
“You’re not wrong to be angry, Erik,” Charles said, and Erik winced. After weeks of being only ‘Magneto’, the sound of his name in Charles’ mouth almost hurt. “You’re not wrong to come for the children, to save them.”
“But?” Erik prompted, trying to retain his fire. Trying to remember that he was angry with Charles, that he hated the man.
“But you know that this-“ Charles gestured to the debris, the frightened humans, and the fallen bodies. “Is wrong.”
“Do I?” he challenged.
“Of course you do,” Charles’ voice was so confident, despite the helmet Erik wore. He felt something in him give.
“What else am I supposed to do?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as helpless as he felt. His people shifted uncomfortably behind him, the first stirrings of discontent.
He could see a young woman-a secretary in the office, by the looks of it-crawling across the floor out of the corner of his eye, dragging herself on her belly to try and escape their notice. It should have been pathetic, the kind of thing he would laugh over with Mystique after they had killed her.
Instead, something clenched within him, pity welling up in his throat. She was young, maybe no more than twenty-two, and was here to file papers, nothing more.
Had she known what went on in the basement?
Did she deserve to die just because she had the bad luck of working in this building?
Erik frowned. If he hadn’t been able to feel the weight of his helmet, pressing into him, hadn’t been able to see it surrounding his face, shielding his mind, he would have sworn those thoughts were Charles’, not his own.
Since when did he have sympathy for the people caught up in the crossfire?
Men following orders, Charles had said, but Erik still turned the missiles around. Every man on that ship, even the ones just there to clean the decks, had seemed like a justifiable death.
Where had that certainty gone?
“Be a different man, Erik,” Charles said, rolling closer despite a warning hiss from Hank. “Be better than who you were.”
“I don’t know how to stop being who I am.”
“Yes, you do,” Charles insisted. “You did it for weeks, at the school.”
Erik shook his head, heavy with the weight of the helmet, with the weight of his guilt. “I didn’t know who I was, then.”
“You did,” Charles denied. “You knew that you love being a mutant. You knew that every mutant is wonderful and amazing. But you also knew that fear wasn’t the way to show the humans that.” Charles rolled closer, and Erik shifted as he felt his people take a step back, away from those earnest, insistent blue eyes. “What you forgot was the rage you’ve carried with you since you were a child. The pain. The suffering. You forgot what it was to hate, unconditionally.”
“I forgot my mother,” Erik countered and Charles stopped, stricken.
“You forgot the best parts of her long ago,” he said quietly. “You forgot the love she taught you. The peace. The only thing you clung to was the moment of her death.”
“Magneto,” Emma said sharply behind him, but Erik silenced her with a raised hand.
He knew what Magneto would do. He would yell, he would snarl, he would tell Charles that he knew nothing about Magneto or his mother. He would turn away from those imploring eyes and never look back.
But Erik wasn’t Magneto, not entirely, not anymore.
“The humans have to pay for what happened here,” he said, knowing everyone could hear the compromise in his voice.
“They will. The authorities will prosecute them. Kidnapping and illegal imprisonment.”
“We need to find out what they were doing.”
“Already done. I know the location of all the files and documents pertaining to the mutants.”
Of course he did, Erik thought with a sigh. Charles had inevitably plucked the information out of the relevant head the moment he set foot in the building.
He wished Emma could be that efficient.
Erik looked around the room slowly, noting the eerie stillness. Every human was frozen, the young secretary still on her belly on the floor, men and women crouched behind overturned desks and chairs.
“You’ll erase their memory?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Magneto!” Mystique snapped, surging forward. “You can’t be agreeing to this! They tortured mutant children.”
Erik merely looked at Charles. “That woman,” he said, pointing to the secretary. “Did she know? Did she know about the experiments? Did she even know there were mutants in the building?”
Charles looked at the girl, his face creasing in pity. “No. She’s only ever heard of mutants on the radio and television. Her job is to file tax reports and take dictations. She’s been here four months, but thinks she’ll be leaving soon, because she’s fairly certain her boyfriend is going to propose. They’ve been dating since high school.”
Erik nodded. She was a pretty young thing. Of course there was someone who loved her.
“Raven,” Charles said, his tone hesitant for the first time since he wheeled out of the elevator. The girl flinched back at the sound of the name. “The people who did this will be punished. I run a school now. I care about mutant children as much as you do. Please, trust that I won’t let anyone get away with these crimes.” At the look on her face he hurried on. “Or don’t trust me. Help me to make sure it happens. Work with me to see them behind bars.”
“All the files come with us,” Mystique said, as much of an agreement as she was willing to vocalize.
Charles nodded. “The lawyers will need to know what’s in them. I’ll put them in touch with you directly?”
Alex stepped forward, ready to object, but Charles held up a hand, stilling him.
Mystique narrowed her eyes, but gave a stiff nod.
“Everyone not involved will be wiped of their memories of today,” Charles said, addressing the Brotherhood as a whole. “Everyone who was involved will be extracted and held.”
“By you?” Azazel asked, in his rough accent.
“For now.”
“You don’t trust us, sugar?” Emma sounded amused.
Charles tilted his head, meeting her eyes alone. “Not entirely.”
Erik told himself it didn’t hurt. How could it? He didn’t trust Charles, either. Not entirely.
“Well, then,” he said, feeling hesitant, unsure. It was not the normal way he concluded a mission. The Brotherhood normally went out in a blaze of fire-sometimes literally-only destruction left in their wake.
“Would you mind lending a hand to the clean up?” Charles indicated the fallen furniture.
Clean up, Erik thought with a shake of his head. Christ. And yet, it did not occur to him to argue.
The furniture righted itself in a flurry, pulling up by the screws that held it together.
“I suppose we’ll be going, then.” He said as the dust settled.
“You think we’re going to let you keep them?” Alex asked, looking up from where he had stooped to gather fallen papers.
“No one’s keeping anyone. Everyone is a free man or woman, here. We’re here to take them out of their cages.”
“And convert them to your fucked up cause?” Alex sneered.
“And you’d do any better?”
“We run a school,” Alex reminded him, earning a snort from Hank.
“Why don’t we ask the children what they’d like?” Charles interrupted, the stillness of the room seeming to reflect the calm in his crisp, upper-class voice.
The voice of compromise, Erik thought. As always.
He had learned long ago that compromise was for the weak, for those who wanted to end up dead.
Wasn’t it?
The day’s death toll currently stood at two, far less that the dozens he had planned for.
Because of Charles.
“I’m not a child,” the girl who called herself ‘Blindspot’ spat. “And I’m not much into school or pacifism for that matter. So, thanks but no thanks.”
“I’m sticking with you,” Pyro said, directing his words to Erik alone, stepping closer by his side. Erik could see hero-worship flickering in his eyes, despite the doubts his cease-fire had surely raised. He nodded to the boy, anyway.
“I think I’d like to go with you.”
Erik looked around, having almost forgotten about the young girl clinging to Angel’s side. She shot Angel an apologetic look as she stepped away, towards the sunny smile Charles offered her. “I like school,” she clarified with a quick look at Blindspot. “And I can see that I’ll be happy there.”
The word choice was odd, but Charles merely smiled. “We’ll be happy to have you, Irene.” he held out a hand to her, and just like that she broke away from the Brotherhood’s ranks, never looking back.
Erik’s heart clenched-not at the loss of the girl, but because a part of him wanted to follow her.
“She was too young to be of any use, anyway,” Mystique said under her breath, although she looked after the girl with sad eyes.
“Till next time, then,” Erik said stiffly, reaching for Azazel.
“I hope not,” Charles replied, just as they disappeared from the room.
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Chapter Fourteen