XMFC Fic!
Title: An Alternate Theory of Evolution
Author: Tzzzz
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: dubcon, potentially noncon depending on your opinion
Parings: Charles/Erik, Charles/Moira, past mention of Charles/others
Beta: lies_d
Summary: Answered my own Charles is a reproductive abuser prompt on the kinkmeme. Charles believes in making love, not war (literally).
An Alternate Theory of Evolution
The large but quaint house at the end of a country lane isn’t what Erik had been expecting when Azazel deposits him at the end of the driveway.
Erik had never particularly cared for Moira McTaggert, but he had admired her pragmatism and her resolve to make it as a woman in a man’s world. While she would never be one of them, Erik knew that Moira at least had enough experience with discrimination to empathize. He doesn’t want to make any pronouncements about the kind of “style” he expects the stereotypical feminist to have, but he did expect a modern but functional apartment in the city, not a house that screams suburban domesticity.
Erik’s curiosity is piqued, but he’s certainly not a poor enough leader to question Azazel’s fact-finding skills. If the teleporter says McTaggert is here, then she must be here. Erik nods to his companion. They will rendezvous in an hour in a clearing in the distant woods. There are humans around who would probably react poorly to a red devil on their front stoop and even though Erik wishes that Azazel would be able to walk freely in this world without worrying about how people will see them, he is also pragmatic enough to admit that for this particular mission, discretion is the better part of valor - which is also why he has forgone the usual costume in favor of a suit and a sleek black trench coat to guard against the cold of this early winter night.
When Erik sounds the large brass knocker he is surprised to find that it isn’t Moira who opens the door.
It is a plump older woman with hair that is more grey than brown already tied up in curlers. “What can I do for you, dear?” she asks in hearty voice that reminds Erik of his time in the British Isles. He remembers Moira mentioning that her family was Scottish when she detected the slight Irish influence in Erik’s English.
“I’m here to see Agent McTaggert,” Erik says cautiously.
“Not Agent anymore,” a voice calls from down the hall.
Erik wonders how much use she’ll be if that is the case, but then again, Moira had a stubbornness about her that would mean that she’d keep herself as much in the loop as possible even if the Agency did show her the door.
“Please, please, come in,” the other woman says. “Excuse the curlers. Though, it is quite late, you know,” she chides gently. Erik hardly thinks eight o’clock qualifies as late, but then again, this is farm country.
When Erik rounds the corner into the kitchen, he notes two things almost immediately: that it takes McTaggert less than five seconds to have a gun drawn on him and that she is pregnant, hugely so.
“Get back, Ma!” McTaggert yells, widening her stance, for all it looks ridiculous in her current condition.
Erik puts his hands up. He doesn’t blame her instincts - is rather impressed, actually - but does this woman never learn? “You remember exactly how well pulling a gun on me went last time,” Erik growls.
What he isn’t expecting is the blank look on McTaggert’s face, followed by a slowly dawning realization.
She lowers her weapon. “I suppose it is foolish of me to draw a metal gun with metal bullets on a man who can manipulate metal.”
Erik feels the door nob turning - the older woman means to escape and call for help. Erik welds the doors and all the window latches shut with a thought. He also cuts the telephone line.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I acknowledge that I am a monster, but not the kind of monster that would deliberately hurt a pregnant woman,” Erik replies. “Tell your mother to wait for us upstairs and this business with the gun was just a misunderstanding.”
Moira does as she’s told, rubbing soothing circles on her huge belly. Erik supposes that all the sudden motion and adrenaline might make the baby restless. Erik stares after her in disbelief. Though Erik never found women to be particularly attractive, he had also seen Moira and her almost painful thinness as somehow unwomanly. To be honest, he is surprised that her twig-like frame can support the weight of her pregnancy at all.
“Can I get you a cup of tea or anything?” Moira asks when she returns. Erik gives her credit - only the vibration he feels in the locket around her neck shows that she is trembling.
“No, thank you,” Erik replies, though he does remember always enjoying Moira’s cooking when they all lived together at the mansion.
“Well, I believe I’m in need of something soothing. I’m making myself hot chocolate, if you’d like some.”
Erik allows her the delay tactic - knowing that she’s only putting off the inevitable. He even finds himself accepting a hot chocolate - if only his minions could see him now. Azazel would never let him hear the end of it - the fearless leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants sipping hot chocolate in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania.
When Moira has finally settled, propped up awkwardly by an army of pillows on the couch, she asks. “So what can I do for you, Erik?”
“I go by Magneto, now, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
Moira doesn’t look surprised at that, meaning she still receives word from the CIA. “What do you want, Erik?” she continues, exasperated and defiant.
He allows her this small resistance as well. He doesn’t know if it’s the pregnancy that causes the weakness or the fact that she was once an ally, for all he wants to rip her apart for what her careless actions did to Charles. “I know the CIA is exchanging information with the Soviets - information about mutants that they have gathered through means that I do not believe are accepted even by the worst in your government. But you are not virtuous enough to turn this information away. You turn a blind eye to it.”
“I don’t work for the Agency anymore, Erik.”
“Surely once your child is born . . .” Erik protests. He can’t imagine that Moira would allow the child’s father to keep her homebound after the birth.
“They fired me, so, no, I don’t think I’ll be returning.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Erik mummers under his breath. Moira had been very good at her job. The CIA were idiots if they let her go out of something so trivial as her being a woman. “Maybe you can still help me. All I need is the name of the CIA’s Russian contact.”
“Erik, I don’t . . .”
“They are experimenting!” Erik bellows. “Goddamnit, they are doing what Schmidt did in the camps. They are doing it to children!”
Moira flinches, her hand going instinctively to cup her belly. “If what you say is true, then you know I would like to stop that as much as you do.”
Erik nods, conceding that in spite of her humanity, Moira is a good person - a better person than Erik, most likely.
“But I don’t work there anymore. I’m not even allowed on the premises and the CIA has probably rotated all its security measures multiple times since then. The best I can do is tell you who knows all our Soviet drop points. I know you broke Emma Frost out of confinement - with her experience in USSR dealings, you can probably lay a trap for the Soviet contact.”
Erik smiles. He’d been hoping for more, but that’s good enough.
“But if I do this for you,” Moira says. “You have to do two things for me.”
“You’re hardly in a position to negotiate,” Erik replies. “I didn’t bring Frost with me tonight because I thought that once you knew what they were doing, you’d be willing to help, but I could have her get the information from you against your will. I assure you, her telepathy is not as pleasant as Charles.”
Moira blanches, looking stricken. Erik hadn’t expected that his threat would so obviously affect her. “Give me the courtesy of at least hearing me out.”
“Fair enough,” Erik nods. He has nothing to lose by listening, he supposes.
“First of all, you can’t go in like a sledgehammer the way you did our first time in Russia. The CIA’s network there has a lot of other important business that has nothing to do with mutants. I know you’re not worried about the loss of human life, but the USSR still has the missile capacity to start World War III if our activities there get blown open. I’m not like Charles - I know enough about the dealings of governments to not object to whatever you want to do with the Soviet contact or the bastards heading those facilities, but you need to leave the CIA infrastructure in the Soviet Theater intact.”
Pragmatism. It’s a curse, but one that Erik concedes must be dealt with. “A reasonable request. I’ll trust it to Ms. Frost’s delicate hand. What else is it that you want?”
“I need to talk to Charles.”
That shocks Erik. He’d left Moira with Charles on the beach. He’d defended her and blamed Erik for what happened. Surely, Moira is in a better position to talk to Charles than Erik himself is.
“I understand why he might be too ashamed to show his face here with you today, but surely you can sympathize with my predicament.” She gestures at the huge pregnant belly Erik has mostly been trying to ignore.
“Moira,” a thrill of atavistic panic shoots down Erik’s spine, scaring him so much that he forgets that he doesn’t intend to be on a first name basis with Moira McTaggert ever again. “You were there on the beach with us. You know that Charles and I . . .” he trails off. That lost look is back in her eyes, tinged with a raw anger that Erik understands all too well.
“No, Erik, I don’t know!” she shouts. “I don’t know because he took it from me! I know that Sebastian Shaw is dead and that you are now at the top of the public enemies list and that Charles is likely pulling his telepathic strings from the shadows somewhere, but I’m missing huge chunks of my life and it terrifies me!”
Erik is panicked, pacing like a caged tiger. What Moira is describing is his greatest fear come to life - the fear that he’d felt ever since meeting Charles. It was like a cloud over everything, even when they were wrapped together in Charles’s bed, hope and promises on their tongues. It was why Erik grabbed the helmet that day and why he wears it still, but he never though Charles would actually do it - not to anybody, certainly not to someone who he cares about. The arrogance of it is even beyond the worst of what Erik accused him of.
“He didn’t,” Erik mutters. “He couldn’t.”
“Well he did!” Moira shouts. She’s struggling up, tears in her fierce eyes. Erik doesn’t know whether to hug her or run. “I remember pulling you out of the water and I remember everything up until the attack on HQ. I know I met Charles in a bar. He was celebrating something. Raven was there too, but I don’t remember where I was and according to the secretaries at the CIA - I never filed any expense reports. I requested access to all the files on mutants and I apparently destroyed them, but I don’t remember any of it! I don’t even remember Charles’s last name.”
Erik hurts for her and how she must live his nightmare come to life, but he keeps his mouth shut. If Charles hid that information, he did it for a reason - probably to keep himself and the boys safe.
“He wouldn’t even let me keep whatever led up to this,” she gestures to baby that’s growing within her.
Erik supposes he could’ve done the math, based on the stages he’d observed of Magda’s pregnancy - that the child would have been conceived around eight months ago - when they were all at the mansion together.
“I don’t even,” her voice breaks for the first time in her whole tirade. “I don’t even know who the father is.” Her eyes turn to steel and her voice to ice, “Though I have my suspicions.”
Erik doesn’t want to hear them, but Moira plows on regardless.
“I might have doubted before - but you looked genuinely shocked when you saw my condition and you certainly aren’t acting guilty now. They boys were just that to me - boys. And if anything bad or unwanted had happened to me, you would know about it, which you clearly don’t. So unless we met with some mysterious man in the missing months that I have no recollection of whatsoever, that only leaves one person.”
“It’s not possible,” Erik repeats. Charles had spent nearly every night in Erik’s bed. He’d even told Erik he loved him, though Erik never had the courage to say it back - at least out loud.
“He tried to hit on me the first night we met,” she continues. “He was drunk. And later, he tried to seduce me at HQ. Somehow he thought using his mental tricks to pop into my room uninvited would entice rather than frighten me. I admit, Charles was an attractive man and kind. I might have given in eventually.”
Erik hadn’t know that Charles had been wooing Moira. Something uncomfortable settles at the pit of his stomach. It could be rage or it could be grief.
“Whatever he did to me - whether the child is his or he just wiped my memory - it lost me the trust of my employer and it’s left me stuck with the consequences of a decision I don’t remember making.”
Erik finally gives in to her, pulling her into an uncomfortable hug. The uncomfortable feeling is definitely rage, and it’s growing.
“I don’t want to think it, but what if it’s because of the baby that he took my memories?” she asks into Erik’s chest.
“Why would he do that?” Erik asks. “He’s certainly capable of taking financial responsibility.”
“I don’t know,” Moira whispers. “Maybe I wanted more? Maybe he didn’t want me working for the CIA anymore and I disobeyed him?”
“Then he’d modify your mind to make you stay with him, not forget,” Erik points out, though he knows a damn good reason Charles might send Moira off to keep his secret. If the letters he someone still manages to send to even the most secret or Erik’s bases are any indication, Charles still thinks that Erik can be turned and he’s not going to risk the betrayal Erik now feels by doing right by a woman he impregnated.
“Maybe he wanted to protect you,” Erik offers. “Maybe he was afraid of what the CIA might do to you to get to him if you did know.”
“What you said before,” Moira gulps, her tears having calmed, “on the beach, you and Charles . . .”
“We had a falling out,” Erik replies. “You can tell your government that Charles isn’t with my Brotherhood. He, Hank, Alex, and Shawn are pursuing peace.”
“Oh,” Moira sighs, clearly defeated. “So you don’t know where he is?”
Erik knows he must tread lightly. He won’t risk exposing Charles to the government if he’s gone to so much trouble to hide himself, but the injustice of what’s been done to Moira deserves a confrontation at the very least.
“I do know where he is. And I promise you, I will find you answers.”
“Thank you,” Moira says, giving Erik a final squeeze before detaching herself from the embrace. “I . . . I can understand that it might be best if I didn’t know his whereabouts. But I want to talk to him. I think I deserve that much.”
Erik nods. “I don’t know if I have any influence over Charles at this point, but I promise I will ask him.”
Moira gives Erik the information on the Soviets with little fuss and after assuring her mother that Erik is both not an enemy and not the baby’s father, Erik stalks off down the lane. He opens his hands and flies through the cold, still country night to rendezvous with a devil in a darkened wood, leaving no tracks in their wake.
***
Erik is well aware that his rage is felt throughout the base as he slams through the rooms of the old Caribbean plantation house that makes up their current headquarters. He’s also aware that he must often return angry because Angel barely looks up from the magazine she’s reading and and Emma only pauses her conversation with Janos long enough to smirk at him.
Of his new family of mutants, only Mystique is bold enough to knock on the door to his office while he paces. He supposes that as the only one of his mutants who knows McTaggert well, she must be the most curious. “I can’t believe Moira wouldn’t want to help us. Maybe I should have gone, impersonating Charles.” Erik is glad they at least avoided the giant disaster that would have caused.
Erik grinds his teeth until he is certain that Mystique must hear it. “She helped us as much as she could.”
“Then why are you so angry?” She stares at him expectantly, deliberately not blinking, as is possible as a result of her mutation. Erik would never have imagined that in only a few months Mystique could grow from an insecure, uncertain girl into this beautiful strong woman who never lets Erik get away with anything.
“Moira McTaggert is eight months pregnant.”
Mystique rolls her eyes. “Let me guess: the baby is Charles’s.”
Erik whips around so fast from where he’s pacing that Mystique takes a step back. She covers the show of fear by stalking over to one of the antique chaise lounges that Shaw’s decorators had placed along the wall of this office and collapsing lazily onto it in a way that makes Erik wonder if bonelessness is another corollary of her mutation. “How did you know that?” he accuses her.
Mystique shrugs. “This wouldn’t be the first time.”
Wait, Charles had children? He’d never said anything. He’d even refrained when he’d taken Erik up to the roof of the mansion and gestured to the vast grounds below and tried to convince Erik that it would be the perfect place for a children - a school of mutants learning to use their powers.
“How many times is it?”
“Let’s see,” Raven replied. “There was Amanda Hartfield in ninth grade - her parents ‘took care’ of that one. And then Ronda Markham his senior year. Two or three during his undergraduate studies. Oh, and at least five while we were in Oxford. I stopped asking about it after high school, so I only know the ones who actually had the kids. Our solicitor sends me a notice whenever Charles uses the estate to set up a new trust fund.”
Erik is horrified. He remembers the long months that he spent by Magda’s side while she was pregnant with Anya. He can’t imagine going through that himself - let alone abandoning someone to it. It seems so very out of character for Charles, who seems to ooze a soft, almost maternal compassion most of the time.
“You don’t find that a little . . .” Erik can’t finish the sentence - distasteful? Disgusting? Horrific? Unusual?
“Look, nobody’s perfect,” Mystique growls. “As much as Charles tries to be the goddamned ‘better man’ most of the time, he has his weaknesses. To be honest, I’d wonder if he were even human without it. I have my insecurities, you have your rage, and Charles is a womanizer. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that I was in love with him!” Erik shouts, before he can stop himself. Erik didn’t realize how little Mystique was paying attention before until she glints her golden eyes at him now.
“You mean you were sleeping with him,” Mystique corrects.
“No, I was in love with him and he told me he loved me.”
Mystique prowls over to him. Her blue skin is cold against his neck when she puts a sympathetic arm around his shoulders. “Oh Erik, Charles doesn’t mean those things. He just says them to get people into bed. It starts by complimenting someone’s lovely mutation, showing how smart he is. Then he uses little telepathic tricks to make himself stand out. Then he fucks them. Some last longer than others, but none of them really lasts. It’s all sport to him.”
Erik thinks about it. Charles had called his mutation groovy, that night on the boat when Charles had asked about Erik’s fine control and he’d welded the coins in Charles’s pocket into a knife. He’d shown Erik a few tricks of his own - making himself invisible, getting one of the boat hands to bring them some steaming hot soup, taking control of Erik’s power and changing the knife into a poorly sculpted, but still recognizable dove. Erik had turned it back into a knife and used it to cut Charles’s clothes off and they’d had sex for the first time the very night they met. For Erik, that had been a watershed moment, but maybe for Charles it was saying the same lines of a tired script.
Erik clenches his fist and doorknob crumples.
Mystique gives it only the briefest nonchalant glance. “Don’t waste any more time thinking about Charles,” she advises.
“But . . .” Erik starts, but something cold and fierce flashes in her eyes. She never looked more like the tigress Erik proclaimed her to be.
“Look, Erik,” the use of his name is deliberate and cutting, enough to snap him to rigid attention, “if Charles really loved you, he wouldn’t have told us to leave him. If he loved you then he would be by your side. I’ve seen this before. You need to forget about him for your own good.”
“Get out!” Erik growls. He’d been right the first time - when he’d called her a child. With her wild eyes and her blue skin, she seems ageless, but she’s so young and Charles has hurt her too. Why should he take advice from a child when he has always kept his own counsel and he knows, deep in his gut, that there is something much more troubling going on here? It is a sickness he felt in Herr Doktor. He felt it in the camps and he felt it in a few of the CIA men and he’s felt it in every corrupt politician or illicit banker or Nazi sympathizer he’s ever killed. The thing is . . . he never expected to feel it in Charles.
***
Erik hadn’t planned on returning to Weschester - at least he hadn’t planned on doing it any time soon. But here he is, striding up the almost endless green lawn towards the castle of a house. Erik had extracted a promise from Azazel not to tell Mystique where he’d gone, but he doubts that Azazel will be able to avoid her if she finds out Erik isn’t there.
The mansion is just as Erik remembers it - down to Sean flying loop-de-loops above his head and landing/half-crashing in front of Erik.
What’s not familiar is the sullen, “What are you doing here?” that comes out of his mouth. Erik counts it as cordial that Sean didn’t try to incapacitate him with a screech first.
“I need to see Charles.”
“What if he doesn’t want to see you!” Alex shouts from where he is running over towards them.
Sean goes glassy-eye for a second before turning to Alex. “The Professor says we should let him in.”
Erik can almost see the red energy blasts building in Alex, from the daggers in his eyes to the determined jut of his jaw, but he nods, probably more to whatever Charles is saying in his head than to Sean or Erik. They walk in silence to the massive front doors rather than the usual back garden entrance that Erik had always preferred.
The room the boys lead him to is one that Erik visited many times, but only because he visited them all many times - late nights driven by nightmares to search the empty rooms for some disturbance, or the rare monster that wasn’t just a haunting of memory. It had once been some kind of large parlour, but it has been converted to a rather modernist bedroom - completely out of character compared to the Old World opulence of the rest of the house.
Charles is propped up in a bed that is elevated like a hospital bed, but is far too wide to be such a thing. He has a wooden tray with the remains of what appears to be a healthy breakfast lying beside him and has donned a pair of glasses for reading a science journal of some sort.
He smiles when he sees Erik, removing the glasses, but not moving from the bed. Erik eyes the wheelchair next to it warily.
“Charles.”
“Erik, old friend,” Charles greets him. Before, the endearment had seemed clumsily sweet - something that matched Charles’s tweed jackets and sweater vests - but now it feels bitter and cloying. ‘Friends’ doesn’t describe what they are to each other now, and it was a poor analogy for what they had once been.
Charles interrupts the uncomfortable silence by chuckling at Alex and Sean, who hover anxiously in the doorway. “Really, Alex? Such a thing is certainly beneath Erik’s dignity and he has never shown any desire to deliberately harm me. I’ll be perfectly fine.”
The boys leave reluctantly, but Erik is glad they are gone. He may be vengeful and occasionally sadistic, but Erik is not cruel enough to let these kids who look up to Charles hear what he is about to say.
Instead of confrontation, however, he can’t help but keep staring at the wheelchair. “I wouldn’t hurt you deliberately,” he murmers. Whatever monster Charles may be, he deserves to know that Erik had no intention of leaving him in his current condition.
“I know you believe that,” Charles says, gazing pointedly at the helmet.
Erik might’ve taken it off if not for his conversation with Moira, but now that he knows that Charles will bend his own morals with the right justification, he wouldn’t dare remove it. He feels the anger rising in him, but Charles has taught him peace - even peace in the face of a betrayal by the man who taught him that peace. He shelves his anger momentarily.
“I have some things I need to discuss with you,” Erik manages. “But before then, I need to tell you something.”
Charles nods.
“I cannot express how sorry I am for what I did to you. I didn’t intend to hurt you, but my anger caused carelessness that should not have happened. I will carry that knowledge with me to the day I die.”
“Erik . . .” Charles begins.
“Do not absolve me, Charles. It should not have happened and I am deeply sorry.”
“Erik, what happened was an accident. I know I said that you were the one that did this and while factually it is true, I don’t want you to blame yourself.” This time Charles reaches out, but Erik can’t help but flinch back slightly, Raven’s words echoing in his head.
There are so many things on the tip of Erik’s tongue. A part of him wants to argue that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness in any form but another wants to scream - rage against Charles for taking away his ability to blame himself. But it’s the third part, the part that feels nothing but visceral disgust, that rises to the fore. “I will try, Charles. But I came to discuss something else.”
Charles nods, looking eager. Perhaps Charles is actually deluded enough to think that Erik might have changed his mind.
“I visited Agent McTaggert,” Erik begins.
Charles’s brow furrows, but not out of guilt. “Moira doesn’t know anything, Erik. I hope you didn’t do anything rash.”
“No, she doesn’t. Because you wiped her memory!” Erik snaps. He’s not as hysterical as Moira had been, but he’s angry enough that Charles seems surprised by it.
“I don’t understand. You’ve killed people to keep them from talking.” Erik feels dirty, now, for letting Charles see those memories - for letting him in at all. “My method is less extreme, but no less necessary. Moira’s knowledge made her a danger to us, but it also made her a target for those who wanted that knowledge. Erasing it was the humane choice.”
“She’s pregnant.” Erik has only the patience for that simple statement. He can’t articulate the nebulous cloud of his rage. He realizes that part of it is jealousy, but that is dwarfed by the feeling of righteousness. Maybe Charles can make the argument that Erik wasn’t owed more - especially in light of subsequent events - but how can he reconcile what he did to Moira with his high-minded morality?
“That’s excellent news.” Charles actually seems genuinely pleased.
“Charles, she’s eight months pregnant. You erased all knowledge of the child’s parentage, though Moira suspects that the memory wipe is a convenient erasure for you in particular.”
Charles frowns. “It’s certainly not convenient for me. Moira was a valuable ally and a remarkable woman. I was sad to see her go.”
“You bastard. You’re actually going to make me say it.”
Charles stares at him expectantly, all innocence and arrogance.
“Are you the father?” Erik spits out.
Charles is grinning again. “Of course I am.”
Erik doesn’t know if he should find Charles’s guilelessness creepy or if he needs to start worrying about Charles’s sanity more than anything else. “And you and me?”
“Moira’s baby has nothing to do with you and me.”
“Charles, I don’t know if maybe you think the rules are different between men, but generally when you tell someone you love them you don’t go around impregnating other people behind their back.”
Charles seems to honestly consider that for a moment, before acknowledging, “You are absolutely right, Erik. I realize now that this misunderstanding may be painful for you and it could have been avoided if I had told you, but you must realize that procreation and love are not one in the same. Moira has a lovely expression of the MCR1 gene, of which I know I may also carry recessive alleles. She also happens to be very intelligent and wise. She’s certainly healthy and of an appropriate age. I admit that I was a bit concerned about her weight, but I am happy to have her bear my child. She is a lovely specimen of humanity.”
Erik is backing away now. Apparently Charles can be both creepy and begging for a visit to the asylum.
“You’re talking about her as though she’s a cow or a sheep you want to breed, not a person.”
“Once again, Erik, I wonder about your hypocrisy. You want to exterminate humans and yet you object to my noticing Moira’s obvious genetic uses.”
To be honest, Erik isn’t sure he’s more upset by the memory wipe or the way Charles seems to think of women as walking vessels for his seed - the way Hitler used to talk about breeding. “You can’t think it’s ethical to leave her a single mother with no memory of how the condition came about.”
“If you are implying that it was not consensual, then I must admit that I find it hurtful that you would think that of me. Moira was perfectly willing to be seduced and she was well aware of the risks of a pregnancy from any sexual intercourse.”
“Except the risks seem much greater with you, Charles.”
Charles finally looks the slightest bit guilty. “I suppose she may have seen a condom when one was not in fact there, but it’s for the best, really. I mean you were right on the beach, Erik. We do want the same things.” How sweet those words should have sounded, but they thud dully around him, like the subsonic boom of a bomb dropping. Erik had never felt like enough compared to Charles. Even for all that he felt Charles had been naive and Erik correct, if cynical, he’d always wished he could be Charles’s ‘better man.’ Perhaps he’d hoped that one day he could be, but if Charles doesn’t have the answers - if he is not someone worthy of Erik’s faith, than how can he be better? How can any of them?
Charles is smiling. He doesn’t seem to see Erik’s blind horror. But maybe Charles never learned to read a person without the crutch of his telepathy. “We both want mutants to take our place as the dominant for of life on the planet,” Charles elaborates. “But you want to gain the advantage through war and I believe more in the slow process of evolution. Reproductive strategies are the key to all of life, my friend. They are the key to this battle we are fighting. One of us has many children now and those children have many children and those children have many children and eventually all human beings on this planet will have a mutant relative. Eventually, there will be only mutants. It’s evolution. No bombs, no acts of terrorism. It’s lovely, instinctual, recreational, and all we need is time.”
Erik feels paralyzed. He’s teetering on the brink of something terrible. It’s an epiphany that feels like nausea, a realization that reeks of disgust. He thinks about Magda - her baby-soft skin and her wide doll-like eyes and they horrors she shielded with a smile. She was a human. She was a strong woman. And she’d cried when she’d realized her pregnancy - they’d thought she had been too sick to bear a child and if not for Erik’s use of his gift, they would not have been able to support that child. She had cried not because of the pain her body ultimately went through, carrying both a baby and all her scars, but because it was yet another thing that fate had set upon her that she had not consented to. Erik does not pay much attention to the growing movement of women fighting out of the kitchen and into the domain of men. He’s sure that even the word ‘feminist’ would be a new twist of syllables upon his tongue, but he understands feeling powerless and he understands not wanting to be vulnerable. He understands cursing your own weakness and he knows what it is to have your will violated, if not your body.
“Charles,” Erik says carefully - only the thunderous shaking of all the metal in the room betrays the anger beneath his deadly calm. “What you did is rape.”
“Hardly,” Charles replies. “I’m well aware that with my gifts, rape would be easy, but I swear to you that Moira was seduced willingly. It was a shame I had to erase her memories afterwards - but that was an unrelated matter. If you take off your helmet, I’ll show you how willing she was.”
That is the last thing Erik needs to see. Already he feels jealousy mixing with horror and this feeling of wrongness. As much as Charles’s betrayal stings - this thing is growing in him like a small, delicate flower in an urban wasteland. Erik had made peace there on the beach with the fact that there is not anything he would not do for his people. Except Charles is showing him one thing he could not do - a line he would not cross. Feeling that “goodness” is like feeling the walls crumbling around him.
Erik can’t help it. He collapses down, barely making it into the wheelchair that conveniently rolls in behind him.
“You’re right,” Charles says, looking abashed, but still not comprehending. “I can’t imagine you want to see that. But you trusted me not to use my powers on you once. You can trust me in this.”
“You just don’t get it!” Erik shouts. “There was a chance that Moira could have become pregnant - yes, she signed up for that. But you had no right to turn that chance into a near certainty. That was not your choice to make.”
“And the men aboard those ships?” Charles asks. “They signed up for a probability of death, but you were going to kill them. By your logic, you are as guilty of murder as I am of rape.”
“Shall we debate which is the lesser crime?”
Erik wants to argue that of course what Charles did is worse - it involved a betrayal of trust and a willful deception. But Erik also understands, viscerally, how it feels to experience the death of a loved one. Intellectually, he understands that all those humans had mothers or children or siblings or lovers. He understands that he is inflicting the pain he felt at losing his family onto them and deep down he knows he rationalizes it by telling himself that they are a lesser species and a dangerous one.
But he also knows that some men are evil and some are guilty and others complicit, but there are innocents too and they will be hurt in his war. He understands that Moira was innocent when Charles did this to her and he wants the hatred he once felt for her. He wants to cold cloak of sociopath that was once his dear comfort. But his heart is tender, aching with sympathy that he can’t reconcile.
“It’s immaterial anyhow,” Charles blathers. “Now that I’m aware, I will set up a fund for the child and for Moira. I cannot return her memories in full, but I will return the seduction. And this will not happen again. The bullet saw to that.” He motions towards his unmoving legs with a disdainful smirk on his face.
Erik is caught between the stab of guilt at finding out the true extent of Charles’s injuries and righteous indignation - if a bullet is what it takes to make Charles stop, then maybe he deserves it. But that’s not true, because nobody deserves the look of utter self-hatred and defeat on Charles’s face now.
“I’m so sorry, Charles,” Erik repeats. He doesn’t think he can apologize enough for how his rage and carelessness got the better of him and caused Charles the injury. Erik has trained long and hard with his gift and with finding the place between rage and serenity that Charles talked about. Next time, he’ll stop the bullets, melt them in mid air, push them together and make a statue to the idiocy of whoever dared fire metal bullets at a man who can command metal. “But if you don’t see anything wrong with what you’re doing, than I must admit that I am relieved that it ends here.”
Charles forgave the bullet, but now he looks betrayed. “You can’t be happy that I’m a cripple!”
Erik wants to explain this fierce disappointment clawing at his chest. He wants, more than ever, to break through Charles’s cloak of moral self-righteousness and make him see, but he knows it is impossible. When they write the story of Magneto and Professor X in the history books, they will paint Erik as the uncompromising figure - the man that turned his back on hope and peace, but Erik knows the truth - he would have compromised. He wouldn’t have walked away if he didn’t see how immovable Charles would always be.
Erik has to ask. “And if I were a woman, Charles? What would you have done to me?”
Charles’s smile is dazed and almost radiant. Erik is suddenly aware that he had not thought to ask the others if Charles is being medicated for pain. “If you were a woman, Erik, we would have created the most beautiful children. And what great people we would have raised them to be.”
Erik can’t imagine himself as woman, let alone a cuckholded wife or some kind of brood-mare for Charles’s offspring, but sadly, he can imagine the children they would have - how magnificent they would be. He can even imagine the kind of father Charles would make and how well it would meld with Erik’s own parenting style - out of practice, but still there. But with the corpses of so many dreams dead around him, Erik cannot bring himself to mourn such a ridiculous ‘what if?’
Erik forces himself to stand. There is nothing left for him here. He and Azazel will go to Russia in the morning. Then, he supposes he will visit Moira again. Perhaps there is more that he can learn from her.
The End
Author: Tzzzz
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: dubcon, potentially noncon depending on your opinion
Parings: Charles/Erik, Charles/Moira, past mention of Charles/others
Beta: lies_d
Summary: Answered my own Charles is a reproductive abuser prompt on the kinkmeme. Charles believes in making love, not war (literally).
An Alternate Theory of Evolution
The large but quaint house at the end of a country lane isn’t what Erik had been expecting when Azazel deposits him at the end of the driveway.
Erik had never particularly cared for Moira McTaggert, but he had admired her pragmatism and her resolve to make it as a woman in a man’s world. While she would never be one of them, Erik knew that Moira at least had enough experience with discrimination to empathize. He doesn’t want to make any pronouncements about the kind of “style” he expects the stereotypical feminist to have, but he did expect a modern but functional apartment in the city, not a house that screams suburban domesticity.
Erik’s curiosity is piqued, but he’s certainly not a poor enough leader to question Azazel’s fact-finding skills. If the teleporter says McTaggert is here, then she must be here. Erik nods to his companion. They will rendezvous in an hour in a clearing in the distant woods. There are humans around who would probably react poorly to a red devil on their front stoop and even though Erik wishes that Azazel would be able to walk freely in this world without worrying about how people will see them, he is also pragmatic enough to admit that for this particular mission, discretion is the better part of valor - which is also why he has forgone the usual costume in favor of a suit and a sleek black trench coat to guard against the cold of this early winter night.
When Erik sounds the large brass knocker he is surprised to find that it isn’t Moira who opens the door.
It is a plump older woman with hair that is more grey than brown already tied up in curlers. “What can I do for you, dear?” she asks in hearty voice that reminds Erik of his time in the British Isles. He remembers Moira mentioning that her family was Scottish when she detected the slight Irish influence in Erik’s English.
“I’m here to see Agent McTaggert,” Erik says cautiously.
“Not Agent anymore,” a voice calls from down the hall.
Erik wonders how much use she’ll be if that is the case, but then again, Moira had a stubbornness about her that would mean that she’d keep herself as much in the loop as possible even if the Agency did show her the door.
“Please, please, come in,” the other woman says. “Excuse the curlers. Though, it is quite late, you know,” she chides gently. Erik hardly thinks eight o’clock qualifies as late, but then again, this is farm country.
When Erik rounds the corner into the kitchen, he notes two things almost immediately: that it takes McTaggert less than five seconds to have a gun drawn on him and that she is pregnant, hugely so.
“Get back, Ma!” McTaggert yells, widening her stance, for all it looks ridiculous in her current condition.
Erik puts his hands up. He doesn’t blame her instincts - is rather impressed, actually - but does this woman never learn? “You remember exactly how well pulling a gun on me went last time,” Erik growls.
What he isn’t expecting is the blank look on McTaggert’s face, followed by a slowly dawning realization.
She lowers her weapon. “I suppose it is foolish of me to draw a metal gun with metal bullets on a man who can manipulate metal.”
Erik feels the door nob turning - the older woman means to escape and call for help. Erik welds the doors and all the window latches shut with a thought. He also cuts the telephone line.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I acknowledge that I am a monster, but not the kind of monster that would deliberately hurt a pregnant woman,” Erik replies. “Tell your mother to wait for us upstairs and this business with the gun was just a misunderstanding.”
Moira does as she’s told, rubbing soothing circles on her huge belly. Erik supposes that all the sudden motion and adrenaline might make the baby restless. Erik stares after her in disbelief. Though Erik never found women to be particularly attractive, he had also seen Moira and her almost painful thinness as somehow unwomanly. To be honest, he is surprised that her twig-like frame can support the weight of her pregnancy at all.
“Can I get you a cup of tea or anything?” Moira asks when she returns. Erik gives her credit - only the vibration he feels in the locket around her neck shows that she is trembling.
“No, thank you,” Erik replies, though he does remember always enjoying Moira’s cooking when they all lived together at the mansion.
“Well, I believe I’m in need of something soothing. I’m making myself hot chocolate, if you’d like some.”
Erik allows her the delay tactic - knowing that she’s only putting off the inevitable. He even finds himself accepting a hot chocolate - if only his minions could see him now. Azazel would never let him hear the end of it - the fearless leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants sipping hot chocolate in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania.
When Moira has finally settled, propped up awkwardly by an army of pillows on the couch, she asks. “So what can I do for you, Erik?”
“I go by Magneto, now, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
Moira doesn’t look surprised at that, meaning she still receives word from the CIA. “What do you want, Erik?” she continues, exasperated and defiant.
He allows her this small resistance as well. He doesn’t know if it’s the pregnancy that causes the weakness or the fact that she was once an ally, for all he wants to rip her apart for what her careless actions did to Charles. “I know the CIA is exchanging information with the Soviets - information about mutants that they have gathered through means that I do not believe are accepted even by the worst in your government. But you are not virtuous enough to turn this information away. You turn a blind eye to it.”
“I don’t work for the Agency anymore, Erik.”
“Surely once your child is born . . .” Erik protests. He can’t imagine that Moira would allow the child’s father to keep her homebound after the birth.
“They fired me, so, no, I don’t think I’ll be returning.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Erik mummers under his breath. Moira had been very good at her job. The CIA were idiots if they let her go out of something so trivial as her being a woman. “Maybe you can still help me. All I need is the name of the CIA’s Russian contact.”
“Erik, I don’t . . .”
“They are experimenting!” Erik bellows. “Goddamnit, they are doing what Schmidt did in the camps. They are doing it to children!”
Moira flinches, her hand going instinctively to cup her belly. “If what you say is true, then you know I would like to stop that as much as you do.”
Erik nods, conceding that in spite of her humanity, Moira is a good person - a better person than Erik, most likely.
“But I don’t work there anymore. I’m not even allowed on the premises and the CIA has probably rotated all its security measures multiple times since then. The best I can do is tell you who knows all our Soviet drop points. I know you broke Emma Frost out of confinement - with her experience in USSR dealings, you can probably lay a trap for the Soviet contact.”
Erik smiles. He’d been hoping for more, but that’s good enough.
“But if I do this for you,” Moira says. “You have to do two things for me.”
“You’re hardly in a position to negotiate,” Erik replies. “I didn’t bring Frost with me tonight because I thought that once you knew what they were doing, you’d be willing to help, but I could have her get the information from you against your will. I assure you, her telepathy is not as pleasant as Charles.”
Moira blanches, looking stricken. Erik hadn’t expected that his threat would so obviously affect her. “Give me the courtesy of at least hearing me out.”
“Fair enough,” Erik nods. He has nothing to lose by listening, he supposes.
“First of all, you can’t go in like a sledgehammer the way you did our first time in Russia. The CIA’s network there has a lot of other important business that has nothing to do with mutants. I know you’re not worried about the loss of human life, but the USSR still has the missile capacity to start World War III if our activities there get blown open. I’m not like Charles - I know enough about the dealings of governments to not object to whatever you want to do with the Soviet contact or the bastards heading those facilities, but you need to leave the CIA infrastructure in the Soviet Theater intact.”
Pragmatism. It’s a curse, but one that Erik concedes must be dealt with. “A reasonable request. I’ll trust it to Ms. Frost’s delicate hand. What else is it that you want?”
“I need to talk to Charles.”
That shocks Erik. He’d left Moira with Charles on the beach. He’d defended her and blamed Erik for what happened. Surely, Moira is in a better position to talk to Charles than Erik himself is.
“I understand why he might be too ashamed to show his face here with you today, but surely you can sympathize with my predicament.” She gestures at the huge pregnant belly Erik has mostly been trying to ignore.
“Moira,” a thrill of atavistic panic shoots down Erik’s spine, scaring him so much that he forgets that he doesn’t intend to be on a first name basis with Moira McTaggert ever again. “You were there on the beach with us. You know that Charles and I . . .” he trails off. That lost look is back in her eyes, tinged with a raw anger that Erik understands all too well.
“No, Erik, I don’t know!” she shouts. “I don’t know because he took it from me! I know that Sebastian Shaw is dead and that you are now at the top of the public enemies list and that Charles is likely pulling his telepathic strings from the shadows somewhere, but I’m missing huge chunks of my life and it terrifies me!”
Erik is panicked, pacing like a caged tiger. What Moira is describing is his greatest fear come to life - the fear that he’d felt ever since meeting Charles. It was like a cloud over everything, even when they were wrapped together in Charles’s bed, hope and promises on their tongues. It was why Erik grabbed the helmet that day and why he wears it still, but he never though Charles would actually do it - not to anybody, certainly not to someone who he cares about. The arrogance of it is even beyond the worst of what Erik accused him of.
“He didn’t,” Erik mutters. “He couldn’t.”
“Well he did!” Moira shouts. She’s struggling up, tears in her fierce eyes. Erik doesn’t know whether to hug her or run. “I remember pulling you out of the water and I remember everything up until the attack on HQ. I know I met Charles in a bar. He was celebrating something. Raven was there too, but I don’t remember where I was and according to the secretaries at the CIA - I never filed any expense reports. I requested access to all the files on mutants and I apparently destroyed them, but I don’t remember any of it! I don’t even remember Charles’s last name.”
Erik hurts for her and how she must live his nightmare come to life, but he keeps his mouth shut. If Charles hid that information, he did it for a reason - probably to keep himself and the boys safe.
“He wouldn’t even let me keep whatever led up to this,” she gestures to baby that’s growing within her.
Erik supposes he could’ve done the math, based on the stages he’d observed of Magda’s pregnancy - that the child would have been conceived around eight months ago - when they were all at the mansion together.
“I don’t even,” her voice breaks for the first time in her whole tirade. “I don’t even know who the father is.” Her eyes turn to steel and her voice to ice, “Though I have my suspicions.”
Erik doesn’t want to hear them, but Moira plows on regardless.
“I might have doubted before - but you looked genuinely shocked when you saw my condition and you certainly aren’t acting guilty now. They boys were just that to me - boys. And if anything bad or unwanted had happened to me, you would know about it, which you clearly don’t. So unless we met with some mysterious man in the missing months that I have no recollection of whatsoever, that only leaves one person.”
“It’s not possible,” Erik repeats. Charles had spent nearly every night in Erik’s bed. He’d even told Erik he loved him, though Erik never had the courage to say it back - at least out loud.
“He tried to hit on me the first night we met,” she continues. “He was drunk. And later, he tried to seduce me at HQ. Somehow he thought using his mental tricks to pop into my room uninvited would entice rather than frighten me. I admit, Charles was an attractive man and kind. I might have given in eventually.”
Erik hadn’t know that Charles had been wooing Moira. Something uncomfortable settles at the pit of his stomach. It could be rage or it could be grief.
“Whatever he did to me - whether the child is his or he just wiped my memory - it lost me the trust of my employer and it’s left me stuck with the consequences of a decision I don’t remember making.”
Erik finally gives in to her, pulling her into an uncomfortable hug. The uncomfortable feeling is definitely rage, and it’s growing.
“I don’t want to think it, but what if it’s because of the baby that he took my memories?” she asks into Erik’s chest.
“Why would he do that?” Erik asks. “He’s certainly capable of taking financial responsibility.”
“I don’t know,” Moira whispers. “Maybe I wanted more? Maybe he didn’t want me working for the CIA anymore and I disobeyed him?”
“Then he’d modify your mind to make you stay with him, not forget,” Erik points out, though he knows a damn good reason Charles might send Moira off to keep his secret. If the letters he someone still manages to send to even the most secret or Erik’s bases are any indication, Charles still thinks that Erik can be turned and he’s not going to risk the betrayal Erik now feels by doing right by a woman he impregnated.
“Maybe he wanted to protect you,” Erik offers. “Maybe he was afraid of what the CIA might do to you to get to him if you did know.”
“What you said before,” Moira gulps, her tears having calmed, “on the beach, you and Charles . . .”
“We had a falling out,” Erik replies. “You can tell your government that Charles isn’t with my Brotherhood. He, Hank, Alex, and Shawn are pursuing peace.”
“Oh,” Moira sighs, clearly defeated. “So you don’t know where he is?”
Erik knows he must tread lightly. He won’t risk exposing Charles to the government if he’s gone to so much trouble to hide himself, but the injustice of what’s been done to Moira deserves a confrontation at the very least.
“I do know where he is. And I promise you, I will find you answers.”
“Thank you,” Moira says, giving Erik a final squeeze before detaching herself from the embrace. “I . . . I can understand that it might be best if I didn’t know his whereabouts. But I want to talk to him. I think I deserve that much.”
Erik nods. “I don’t know if I have any influence over Charles at this point, but I promise I will ask him.”
Moira gives Erik the information on the Soviets with little fuss and after assuring her mother that Erik is both not an enemy and not the baby’s father, Erik stalks off down the lane. He opens his hands and flies through the cold, still country night to rendezvous with a devil in a darkened wood, leaving no tracks in their wake.
***
Erik is well aware that his rage is felt throughout the base as he slams through the rooms of the old Caribbean plantation house that makes up their current headquarters. He’s also aware that he must often return angry because Angel barely looks up from the magazine she’s reading and and Emma only pauses her conversation with Janos long enough to smirk at him.
Of his new family of mutants, only Mystique is bold enough to knock on the door to his office while he paces. He supposes that as the only one of his mutants who knows McTaggert well, she must be the most curious. “I can’t believe Moira wouldn’t want to help us. Maybe I should have gone, impersonating Charles.” Erik is glad they at least avoided the giant disaster that would have caused.
Erik grinds his teeth until he is certain that Mystique must hear it. “She helped us as much as she could.”
“Then why are you so angry?” She stares at him expectantly, deliberately not blinking, as is possible as a result of her mutation. Erik would never have imagined that in only a few months Mystique could grow from an insecure, uncertain girl into this beautiful strong woman who never lets Erik get away with anything.
“Moira McTaggert is eight months pregnant.”
Mystique rolls her eyes. “Let me guess: the baby is Charles’s.”
Erik whips around so fast from where he’s pacing that Mystique takes a step back. She covers the show of fear by stalking over to one of the antique chaise lounges that Shaw’s decorators had placed along the wall of this office and collapsing lazily onto it in a way that makes Erik wonder if bonelessness is another corollary of her mutation. “How did you know that?” he accuses her.
Mystique shrugs. “This wouldn’t be the first time.”
Wait, Charles had children? He’d never said anything. He’d even refrained when he’d taken Erik up to the roof of the mansion and gestured to the vast grounds below and tried to convince Erik that it would be the perfect place for a children - a school of mutants learning to use their powers.
“How many times is it?”
“Let’s see,” Raven replied. “There was Amanda Hartfield in ninth grade - her parents ‘took care’ of that one. And then Ronda Markham his senior year. Two or three during his undergraduate studies. Oh, and at least five while we were in Oxford. I stopped asking about it after high school, so I only know the ones who actually had the kids. Our solicitor sends me a notice whenever Charles uses the estate to set up a new trust fund.”
Erik is horrified. He remembers the long months that he spent by Magda’s side while she was pregnant with Anya. He can’t imagine going through that himself - let alone abandoning someone to it. It seems so very out of character for Charles, who seems to ooze a soft, almost maternal compassion most of the time.
“You don’t find that a little . . .” Erik can’t finish the sentence - distasteful? Disgusting? Horrific? Unusual?
“Look, nobody’s perfect,” Mystique growls. “As much as Charles tries to be the goddamned ‘better man’ most of the time, he has his weaknesses. To be honest, I’d wonder if he were even human without it. I have my insecurities, you have your rage, and Charles is a womanizer. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that I was in love with him!” Erik shouts, before he can stop himself. Erik didn’t realize how little Mystique was paying attention before until she glints her golden eyes at him now.
“You mean you were sleeping with him,” Mystique corrects.
“No, I was in love with him and he told me he loved me.”
Mystique prowls over to him. Her blue skin is cold against his neck when she puts a sympathetic arm around his shoulders. “Oh Erik, Charles doesn’t mean those things. He just says them to get people into bed. It starts by complimenting someone’s lovely mutation, showing how smart he is. Then he uses little telepathic tricks to make himself stand out. Then he fucks them. Some last longer than others, but none of them really lasts. It’s all sport to him.”
Erik thinks about it. Charles had called his mutation groovy, that night on the boat when Charles had asked about Erik’s fine control and he’d welded the coins in Charles’s pocket into a knife. He’d shown Erik a few tricks of his own - making himself invisible, getting one of the boat hands to bring them some steaming hot soup, taking control of Erik’s power and changing the knife into a poorly sculpted, but still recognizable dove. Erik had turned it back into a knife and used it to cut Charles’s clothes off and they’d had sex for the first time the very night they met. For Erik, that had been a watershed moment, but maybe for Charles it was saying the same lines of a tired script.
Erik clenches his fist and doorknob crumples.
Mystique gives it only the briefest nonchalant glance. “Don’t waste any more time thinking about Charles,” she advises.
“But . . .” Erik starts, but something cold and fierce flashes in her eyes. She never looked more like the tigress Erik proclaimed her to be.
“Look, Erik,” the use of his name is deliberate and cutting, enough to snap him to rigid attention, “if Charles really loved you, he wouldn’t have told us to leave him. If he loved you then he would be by your side. I’ve seen this before. You need to forget about him for your own good.”
“Get out!” Erik growls. He’d been right the first time - when he’d called her a child. With her wild eyes and her blue skin, she seems ageless, but she’s so young and Charles has hurt her too. Why should he take advice from a child when he has always kept his own counsel and he knows, deep in his gut, that there is something much more troubling going on here? It is a sickness he felt in Herr Doktor. He felt it in the camps and he felt it in a few of the CIA men and he’s felt it in every corrupt politician or illicit banker or Nazi sympathizer he’s ever killed. The thing is . . . he never expected to feel it in Charles.
***
Erik hadn’t planned on returning to Weschester - at least he hadn’t planned on doing it any time soon. But here he is, striding up the almost endless green lawn towards the castle of a house. Erik had extracted a promise from Azazel not to tell Mystique where he’d gone, but he doubts that Azazel will be able to avoid her if she finds out Erik isn’t there.
The mansion is just as Erik remembers it - down to Sean flying loop-de-loops above his head and landing/half-crashing in front of Erik.
What’s not familiar is the sullen, “What are you doing here?” that comes out of his mouth. Erik counts it as cordial that Sean didn’t try to incapacitate him with a screech first.
“I need to see Charles.”
“What if he doesn’t want to see you!” Alex shouts from where he is running over towards them.
Sean goes glassy-eye for a second before turning to Alex. “The Professor says we should let him in.”
Erik can almost see the red energy blasts building in Alex, from the daggers in his eyes to the determined jut of his jaw, but he nods, probably more to whatever Charles is saying in his head than to Sean or Erik. They walk in silence to the massive front doors rather than the usual back garden entrance that Erik had always preferred.
The room the boys lead him to is one that Erik visited many times, but only because he visited them all many times - late nights driven by nightmares to search the empty rooms for some disturbance, or the rare monster that wasn’t just a haunting of memory. It had once been some kind of large parlour, but it has been converted to a rather modernist bedroom - completely out of character compared to the Old World opulence of the rest of the house.
Charles is propped up in a bed that is elevated like a hospital bed, but is far too wide to be such a thing. He has a wooden tray with the remains of what appears to be a healthy breakfast lying beside him and has donned a pair of glasses for reading a science journal of some sort.
He smiles when he sees Erik, removing the glasses, but not moving from the bed. Erik eyes the wheelchair next to it warily.
“Charles.”
“Erik, old friend,” Charles greets him. Before, the endearment had seemed clumsily sweet - something that matched Charles’s tweed jackets and sweater vests - but now it feels bitter and cloying. ‘Friends’ doesn’t describe what they are to each other now, and it was a poor analogy for what they had once been.
Charles interrupts the uncomfortable silence by chuckling at Alex and Sean, who hover anxiously in the doorway. “Really, Alex? Such a thing is certainly beneath Erik’s dignity and he has never shown any desire to deliberately harm me. I’ll be perfectly fine.”
The boys leave reluctantly, but Erik is glad they are gone. He may be vengeful and occasionally sadistic, but Erik is not cruel enough to let these kids who look up to Charles hear what he is about to say.
Instead of confrontation, however, he can’t help but keep staring at the wheelchair. “I wouldn’t hurt you deliberately,” he murmers. Whatever monster Charles may be, he deserves to know that Erik had no intention of leaving him in his current condition.
“I know you believe that,” Charles says, gazing pointedly at the helmet.
Erik might’ve taken it off if not for his conversation with Moira, but now that he knows that Charles will bend his own morals with the right justification, he wouldn’t dare remove it. He feels the anger rising in him, but Charles has taught him peace - even peace in the face of a betrayal by the man who taught him that peace. He shelves his anger momentarily.
“I have some things I need to discuss with you,” Erik manages. “But before then, I need to tell you something.”
Charles nods.
“I cannot express how sorry I am for what I did to you. I didn’t intend to hurt you, but my anger caused carelessness that should not have happened. I will carry that knowledge with me to the day I die.”
“Erik . . .” Charles begins.
“Do not absolve me, Charles. It should not have happened and I am deeply sorry.”
“Erik, what happened was an accident. I know I said that you were the one that did this and while factually it is true, I don’t want you to blame yourself.” This time Charles reaches out, but Erik can’t help but flinch back slightly, Raven’s words echoing in his head.
There are so many things on the tip of Erik’s tongue. A part of him wants to argue that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness in any form but another wants to scream - rage against Charles for taking away his ability to blame himself. But it’s the third part, the part that feels nothing but visceral disgust, that rises to the fore. “I will try, Charles. But I came to discuss something else.”
Charles nods, looking eager. Perhaps Charles is actually deluded enough to think that Erik might have changed his mind.
“I visited Agent McTaggert,” Erik begins.
Charles’s brow furrows, but not out of guilt. “Moira doesn’t know anything, Erik. I hope you didn’t do anything rash.”
“No, she doesn’t. Because you wiped her memory!” Erik snaps. He’s not as hysterical as Moira had been, but he’s angry enough that Charles seems surprised by it.
“I don’t understand. You’ve killed people to keep them from talking.” Erik feels dirty, now, for letting Charles see those memories - for letting him in at all. “My method is less extreme, but no less necessary. Moira’s knowledge made her a danger to us, but it also made her a target for those who wanted that knowledge. Erasing it was the humane choice.”
“She’s pregnant.” Erik has only the patience for that simple statement. He can’t articulate the nebulous cloud of his rage. He realizes that part of it is jealousy, but that is dwarfed by the feeling of righteousness. Maybe Charles can make the argument that Erik wasn’t owed more - especially in light of subsequent events - but how can he reconcile what he did to Moira with his high-minded morality?
“That’s excellent news.” Charles actually seems genuinely pleased.
“Charles, she’s eight months pregnant. You erased all knowledge of the child’s parentage, though Moira suspects that the memory wipe is a convenient erasure for you in particular.”
Charles frowns. “It’s certainly not convenient for me. Moira was a valuable ally and a remarkable woman. I was sad to see her go.”
“You bastard. You’re actually going to make me say it.”
Charles stares at him expectantly, all innocence and arrogance.
“Are you the father?” Erik spits out.
Charles is grinning again. “Of course I am.”
Erik doesn’t know if he should find Charles’s guilelessness creepy or if he needs to start worrying about Charles’s sanity more than anything else. “And you and me?”
“Moira’s baby has nothing to do with you and me.”
“Charles, I don’t know if maybe you think the rules are different between men, but generally when you tell someone you love them you don’t go around impregnating other people behind their back.”
Charles seems to honestly consider that for a moment, before acknowledging, “You are absolutely right, Erik. I realize now that this misunderstanding may be painful for you and it could have been avoided if I had told you, but you must realize that procreation and love are not one in the same. Moira has a lovely expression of the MCR1 gene, of which I know I may also carry recessive alleles. She also happens to be very intelligent and wise. She’s certainly healthy and of an appropriate age. I admit that I was a bit concerned about her weight, but I am happy to have her bear my child. She is a lovely specimen of humanity.”
Erik is backing away now. Apparently Charles can be both creepy and begging for a visit to the asylum.
“You’re talking about her as though she’s a cow or a sheep you want to breed, not a person.”
“Once again, Erik, I wonder about your hypocrisy. You want to exterminate humans and yet you object to my noticing Moira’s obvious genetic uses.”
To be honest, Erik isn’t sure he’s more upset by the memory wipe or the way Charles seems to think of women as walking vessels for his seed - the way Hitler used to talk about breeding. “You can’t think it’s ethical to leave her a single mother with no memory of how the condition came about.”
“If you are implying that it was not consensual, then I must admit that I find it hurtful that you would think that of me. Moira was perfectly willing to be seduced and she was well aware of the risks of a pregnancy from any sexual intercourse.”
“Except the risks seem much greater with you, Charles.”
Charles finally looks the slightest bit guilty. “I suppose she may have seen a condom when one was not in fact there, but it’s for the best, really. I mean you were right on the beach, Erik. We do want the same things.” How sweet those words should have sounded, but they thud dully around him, like the subsonic boom of a bomb dropping. Erik had never felt like enough compared to Charles. Even for all that he felt Charles had been naive and Erik correct, if cynical, he’d always wished he could be Charles’s ‘better man.’ Perhaps he’d hoped that one day he could be, but if Charles doesn’t have the answers - if he is not someone worthy of Erik’s faith, than how can he be better? How can any of them?
Charles is smiling. He doesn’t seem to see Erik’s blind horror. But maybe Charles never learned to read a person without the crutch of his telepathy. “We both want mutants to take our place as the dominant for of life on the planet,” Charles elaborates. “But you want to gain the advantage through war and I believe more in the slow process of evolution. Reproductive strategies are the key to all of life, my friend. They are the key to this battle we are fighting. One of us has many children now and those children have many children and those children have many children and eventually all human beings on this planet will have a mutant relative. Eventually, there will be only mutants. It’s evolution. No bombs, no acts of terrorism. It’s lovely, instinctual, recreational, and all we need is time.”
Erik feels paralyzed. He’s teetering on the brink of something terrible. It’s an epiphany that feels like nausea, a realization that reeks of disgust. He thinks about Magda - her baby-soft skin and her wide doll-like eyes and they horrors she shielded with a smile. She was a human. She was a strong woman. And she’d cried when she’d realized her pregnancy - they’d thought she had been too sick to bear a child and if not for Erik’s use of his gift, they would not have been able to support that child. She had cried not because of the pain her body ultimately went through, carrying both a baby and all her scars, but because it was yet another thing that fate had set upon her that she had not consented to. Erik does not pay much attention to the growing movement of women fighting out of the kitchen and into the domain of men. He’s sure that even the word ‘feminist’ would be a new twist of syllables upon his tongue, but he understands feeling powerless and he understands not wanting to be vulnerable. He understands cursing your own weakness and he knows what it is to have your will violated, if not your body.
“Charles,” Erik says carefully - only the thunderous shaking of all the metal in the room betrays the anger beneath his deadly calm. “What you did is rape.”
“Hardly,” Charles replies. “I’m well aware that with my gifts, rape would be easy, but I swear to you that Moira was seduced willingly. It was a shame I had to erase her memories afterwards - but that was an unrelated matter. If you take off your helmet, I’ll show you how willing she was.”
That is the last thing Erik needs to see. Already he feels jealousy mixing with horror and this feeling of wrongness. As much as Charles’s betrayal stings - this thing is growing in him like a small, delicate flower in an urban wasteland. Erik had made peace there on the beach with the fact that there is not anything he would not do for his people. Except Charles is showing him one thing he could not do - a line he would not cross. Feeling that “goodness” is like feeling the walls crumbling around him.
Erik can’t help it. He collapses down, barely making it into the wheelchair that conveniently rolls in behind him.
“You’re right,” Charles says, looking abashed, but still not comprehending. “I can’t imagine you want to see that. But you trusted me not to use my powers on you once. You can trust me in this.”
“You just don’t get it!” Erik shouts. “There was a chance that Moira could have become pregnant - yes, she signed up for that. But you had no right to turn that chance into a near certainty. That was not your choice to make.”
“And the men aboard those ships?” Charles asks. “They signed up for a probability of death, but you were going to kill them. By your logic, you are as guilty of murder as I am of rape.”
“Shall we debate which is the lesser crime?”
Erik wants to argue that of course what Charles did is worse - it involved a betrayal of trust and a willful deception. But Erik also understands, viscerally, how it feels to experience the death of a loved one. Intellectually, he understands that all those humans had mothers or children or siblings or lovers. He understands that he is inflicting the pain he felt at losing his family onto them and deep down he knows he rationalizes it by telling himself that they are a lesser species and a dangerous one.
But he also knows that some men are evil and some are guilty and others complicit, but there are innocents too and they will be hurt in his war. He understands that Moira was innocent when Charles did this to her and he wants the hatred he once felt for her. He wants to cold cloak of sociopath that was once his dear comfort. But his heart is tender, aching with sympathy that he can’t reconcile.
“It’s immaterial anyhow,” Charles blathers. “Now that I’m aware, I will set up a fund for the child and for Moira. I cannot return her memories in full, but I will return the seduction. And this will not happen again. The bullet saw to that.” He motions towards his unmoving legs with a disdainful smirk on his face.
Erik is caught between the stab of guilt at finding out the true extent of Charles’s injuries and righteous indignation - if a bullet is what it takes to make Charles stop, then maybe he deserves it. But that’s not true, because nobody deserves the look of utter self-hatred and defeat on Charles’s face now.
“I’m so sorry, Charles,” Erik repeats. He doesn’t think he can apologize enough for how his rage and carelessness got the better of him and caused Charles the injury. Erik has trained long and hard with his gift and with finding the place between rage and serenity that Charles talked about. Next time, he’ll stop the bullets, melt them in mid air, push them together and make a statue to the idiocy of whoever dared fire metal bullets at a man who can command metal. “But if you don’t see anything wrong with what you’re doing, than I must admit that I am relieved that it ends here.”
Charles forgave the bullet, but now he looks betrayed. “You can’t be happy that I’m a cripple!”
Erik wants to explain this fierce disappointment clawing at his chest. He wants, more than ever, to break through Charles’s cloak of moral self-righteousness and make him see, but he knows it is impossible. When they write the story of Magneto and Professor X in the history books, they will paint Erik as the uncompromising figure - the man that turned his back on hope and peace, but Erik knows the truth - he would have compromised. He wouldn’t have walked away if he didn’t see how immovable Charles would always be.
Erik has to ask. “And if I were a woman, Charles? What would you have done to me?”
Charles’s smile is dazed and almost radiant. Erik is suddenly aware that he had not thought to ask the others if Charles is being medicated for pain. “If you were a woman, Erik, we would have created the most beautiful children. And what great people we would have raised them to be.”
Erik can’t imagine himself as woman, let alone a cuckholded wife or some kind of brood-mare for Charles’s offspring, but sadly, he can imagine the children they would have - how magnificent they would be. He can even imagine the kind of father Charles would make and how well it would meld with Erik’s own parenting style - out of practice, but still there. But with the corpses of so many dreams dead around him, Erik cannot bring himself to mourn such a ridiculous ‘what if?’
Erik forces himself to stand. There is nothing left for him here. He and Azazel will go to Russia in the morning. Then, he supposes he will visit Moira again. Perhaps there is more that he can learn from her.
The End