maskormenacelogs | little white flowers will never awaken you // closed

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little white flowers will never awaken you // closed

WHO: Erik and idk his BFF Charles
WHERE: Home
WHEN: Hella late at night
WHAT: Erik needs help like 24/7 but especially when his brain decides to remind him in the middle of the night of the shittiest things in his life
WARNINGS: I mean Erik's life has been pretty shitty

Erik has that late night, early morning feeling of being in between sleep and wakefulness, where all his worries and fears are magnified. And he's just had a cold-sweat vivid dream where he's eight again, arms outstretched like he wants to be picked up but he never did as a child.

His mama's there, in their old kitchen, bathed in warm sunlight with her back turned kneading dough. He calls to her but as she turns to him she crumbles, falls like a ragdoll as he runs to catch her in his now teenage arms. He holds her to him and weeps into her hair.

When he pulls away, her hair is silky and her skin is soft and she's Magda, frail in her oversized sweater; she's still warm enough that Erik tries frantically to wake her. He shakes her too hard and she tumbles, hand suddenly covered in dirt like the last time he saw, when he buried her in a shallow grave; next to her lies Nina, who looks so perfect, every single day of her short life that Erik knew her. Through a blur of tears it almost appears as if she's moving, and before he knows it he's kneeling on the ground trying to unearth her. He's not ready to leave her there, he'd never been more than twenty miles away for as long as she's known and he's not sure he can go even though he knows he has to get out of this town. But the more he pushes the earth away from her, the more she bleeds. His shirt is soaked through, a dark red spot.

He looks up at her face again and she's grown, eyes half-open and glassy and lifeless and she's Wanda, and she doesn't feel like a dream, she feels like a memory. He links her slender fingers with his and they're clammy and he thinks not again and her hands change, she's Billy, tendrils of magic sputtering uselessly; he's alive but barely, and Erik's wearing a heavy winter coat on a submarine with a sliver of hope, carrying his grandson home. He knows how this ends, this is a happy ending, until it's Apocalypse, casting Raven aside, discarding her at Erik's feet; he's distracted for a moment but reaches out to stop as he catches a glimpse of Peter run towards him and is struck straight in the chest and Erik hears a crack but it's not his leg this time, and he gasps for breath and tries to tell Erik something important, really important, but Erik can't hear him or he's not really speaking or he's just not listening, he's gone momentarily deaf, he--

--Hears a voice in his head, clear as day, asking for him to let go, he'll drown. He struggles, at first, and then, finally, he stops.

Then let me, he thinks.

He snaps awake and he thinks he's still underwater, he's cold and wet and trembling. He's made aware it's just a nightmare and he's too old for nightmares, so he turns to his side knowing Magda will be there and he can close his eyes and focus on the sound of her breathing and fall right back asleep and then she's. Not.

And he curls in on himself and fights the urge to scream, covers his face in his hands and feels like the world is caving in and it hasn't quite decided what it wants to do to him yet. His head pounds and inside it is a tangled roll of film and his thoughts are whip-sharp and gnawing, even moreso as he tries unsuccessfully to quiet them.

So he gets up and out of bed stumbles to his bathroom, switches on the light, and catches the sight of something strange out of the corner of his mirror.

"Charles?" he asks as he makes his way over, voice quiet and rough with sleep. He must've fallen asleep right there, he thinks, he's been working so hard, but even then, he feels something's off. And he corners around the chair, nudging his friend, and he didn't even change out of that lilac sweater and his head lolls in a grotesque manner and he falls forward and his hands feel wet and he looks down and there's blood and--

--Erik startles awake, screaming.

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Guarding the sleep of his students was a habit Charles had fallen into fairly early on in the life of the school. He tried not to invade or watch as that would be creepy, and with teenagers potentially embarrassing, but he did guard against nightmares and night terrors. Many of his students suffered both, especially early on as they adjusted to the idea that they were somewhere safe.

Charles didn’t stop the dreams, he understood their place in a healthy psyche but he liked to be aware, in case he did need to intervene. Jean, in particular, benefitted from this habit, since her nightmares held the very real risk of burning the mansion down.

This was not Erik’s first nightmare since he returned from his visit home. Charles had caught a few dreams along these lines, focused primarily on the horror that had been burying Magda and Nina but sometimes drawing in Wanda and Peter. Normally the telepath would lay in his bed, watchful over his old friend until Erik either woke on his own or his mind settled in and of itself. Erik had a lot of grief to come to terms with and Charles would have been more worried if his friend wasn’t suffering from nightmares of the tragic events in his life.

However, tonight was gearing up to go beyond the norm. As the faces continued to build, Raven, Erik’s mother, Charles pulled himself further and further towards consciousness, breaking the surface of his own sleep about the point where Erik found him and the screaming started.

Charles reacted instinctively, throwing himself towards the side of the bed, muddled by his own sleep state and forgetting an important fact. Rather than bolting to his feet, he ended up sliding off the side of the bed and thumping onto the floor.

“Bother!”

He fussed briefly even as he fell back to plan B
Plan B being Erik would experience the illusion of Charles manifesting in his doorway. Standing, wearing only the linen pajama bottoms he’d worn to bed that night and quickly striding into the room to cross towards the bed. Charles’ mouth moved and he spoke in this form, though Erik would no doubt pick up on the hint of an echo to the professor’s voice; the indicator that he was actually speaking to him telepathically.

Erik?!? Erik, wake up. You’re alright.

The illusion came to sit on the edge of the bed and reached towards Erik, settling a hand against his arm. Of course the illusion couldn’t make physical contact but within the landscape of the mind, Erik might feel the sense of calm that would come with a soothing touch.

Erik had been, at certain points in his life, a restful sleeper. And honestly, even when Nina was born and woke him in the middle of the night, it was joyous, and he never complained. He sits on rumpled sheets and with a skewed blanket, but his mind is clear. Sometimes, his thoughts linger in Polish even into the morning. Sometimes he has to swing his legs to the side and touch the ground with his feet to remember where he is, when his dreams have taken him someplace else.

Tonight, for a longer second than anticipated, he's confused as he's interrupted catching his breath. Charles.

His touch feels real, but so had the dreams. The dry, ancient smell of Egyptian sand; the lush forest of his backyard damp from a previous rain. Details he'd thought he'd forgotten rose so clearly in the forefront of his mind and threatened him with their insistence; they don't want to be his past. They want to be his now. Each of them battle over the rest and he just wants it to shut off for a moment.

Like planting his feet on the floor, Charles is an anchor, and then Erik can begin to calm, and his more immediate thoughts take the lead over the others.

I heard a thud. Are you alright?

He's out of bed then, carrying him towards the other bedroom in the house, each room and hall along the way reminding him of reality, of walls he built with his own hands, of books he'd chosen for the shelves, of whatever small goods are littered in the process of living in a house. He gets to Charles's door and lets himself in.

"Charles," he calls, making his way over.

An intrusive thought exclaims, you're alive.

His logical centers fire back, of course he's alive.

He bends down, offering to lift him back into his bed, one hand gently cradling Charles's back, the other one waiting for confirmation.

Just a minor inconvenience. Charles responded, already trying to sort out how to get himself from the floor, up to his chair at least.

He's wrestling around on the floor, trying to bring the chair into position to help use it as a leverage point, when he hears Erik starting to move across the house. He can also hear his friend's way ward thoughts and rather than express annoyance, he gently soothes.

I'm quite well, Erik. You were having a nightmare my friend. I sense no distress from the others here.

He couldn't speak to Raven and though he couldn't sense distress, Wanda and Billy both could shield against him fairly effectively. But there was no reason to go into those details right now. He was trying to be comforting.

About this time, Erik had come through the door and Charles felt the other man's hand against his back. He wanted to insist that he was perfectly capable of getting back up, either into the bed or his chair but the truth was ... he was stuck.

Blowing his hair out of his face, he looked up into Erik's face, even though the other man's features were shadowed by the low, moon light spilling in through the window.

"Perhaps my chair? If you'd like to have a cup of tea?"

He wasn't convinced that Erik would just go back to his room and to sleep and as long as they were both up, it didn't make sense for Charles to try to go back to sleep until Erik had calmed down.

His brain, still lurching into action, is being overtaken by his heart firing on all cylinders, but it knows that his family here is alright. Still, he's soothed by Charles's concentrated comforting, his attempts to quell him. After all, if anyone is aware what dangers runaway thoughts can be, it must be him.

All that is just a little cerebral. Erik picks Charles up and he is solid, growing heavier from muscle gain, arms and back slowly carving themselves out from visits to the gym. He had felt frailer in the dream, and the cotton sweater soft. He doesn't feel like that now, with his broad shoulders. Erik complies and sits Charles in his chair, motions to properly slot his feet on the footrests. The whole ordeal lasts a few seconds, at most.

"I'd like a tea," he replies, belatedly. He knows now if he tries to sleep, more intrusive thoughts will come claim him, flood into him as soon as he tries to relax. Charles knows. Erik is thankful for the offer, because he doesn't want to be alone right now. Charles knows.

He walks alongside his friend to get to the kitchen, one hand firmly guiding the back of his seat.

His throat, as if on cue, is dry. And he pours water into the kettle, sticks it on the stove. He does all of this manually though he could easily have done it from the bedroom, having reinstalled hardware for the precise reason of being able to do practically anything without moving from wherever he happened to be. But his hands are strong, and worked, and he likes the stable feeling of routine, of normalcy. Like all the natural warm woods of his house in Poland. The little statues he'd whittled himself for Nina, and she'd delighted in them, little miniatures of her friends, played with the toys when it was rainy, or they were traveling elsewhere. He'd worked with his hands unless she requested, on occasion, to see him work with his gifts.

His hands shake, now. He balls them into fists and spreads them out when they are still.

"Sorry I woke you," he says, also belatedly.

It briefly crosses Charles' mind that he should insist on a shirt; a t-shirt at least. But the night is warm and it's just the two of them so he doesn't bother. He's presentable enough, no students lurking in the hallways in the wake of this nightmare.

Mostly, he lets Erik lead. Giving the other man space to rattle around the kitchen, following the routine of making tea; that which was as soothing as the beverage itself. For his own part, Charles dug a herbal blend out of the pantry and set about getting down mugs and some local honey he'd picked up at some point.

He didn't put honey in his tea but he thought Erik might like it.

For a while, the kitchen was kept in low light and lost only to the sounds of their activities. Charles didn't try to invade Erik's mind, though he did relax his shields slightly, just in case a particularly strong spike of grief threatened to overwhelm his friend. Otherwise, he tried to let Erik work through the memories himself. It was hard, because part of Charles wanted to step in and help but as he'd learned from Raven, sometimes he just couldn't fix everything.

The only way he could have truly helped his friend would have been to be there for young Nina. To have been a part of Erik's life, at least well enough that his friend might have called for his help when Nina's powers emerged.

The 'what ifs' were haunting.

When Erik spoke, Charles startled slightly, caught up in his own thoughts and he blinked before shaking his head.

"Please, think nothing of it, Erik." He said, in a low, firm tone. "These nightmares are natural; if it is unfortunate that you must go through them. I ... want to be here to help you."

He won't remind Charles that he died in these nightmares too, that he could've just as easily died and it would have been Erik's fault. He'd brought Charles there to join them but he would have been a sacrificial lamb and Erik would've been complicit in the removal of his conscious and its replacement with Apocalypse. He knows he would've never allowed it, except for the fact that he almost did. He's had that nightmare before too, looking Charles in the eye with a funny expression on his face as he opens his mouth and says in that awful echo, we have much to do, my son.

Shaking his head to snap out of it only reminds him of the dreams he's had recently, all of them hearkening of what he'd lost. What he stands to lose still. It makes him afraid, because he is a survivor. Whatever happens, he can't seem to die. Even if he did, he wouldn't be afraid of it. But try as he might to protect those he loves and his story becomes a tragedy of his own doing. Would it be better, to do nothing? Had Peter and Wanda benefitted, that he had not raised them? Would Nina still be alive? And Magda?

The thoughts circle as if around a drain as he pours a spoonful of honey into his tea. He usually drinks it plain, but tonight he thinks he might indulge in a little sweetness. He seats himself across the table from Charles, his hair a mess, his eyes sunken and tired-looking. He stares off into nothing at all for a pause as the water heats.

"I know," he says, finally. "I appreciate it... I..." just think that he doesn't deserve this kindness, but also that there probably isn't much that could be done for him. Not in moments like these when everything seems like a cave-in, when the weight of it sits a boulder on his chest making it difficult to breathe. "Thank you," he settles on, as the kettle whistles and he goes to shut it off.

Of all the people qualified to understand the great unasked for burden of caring about Erik Lehnsherr, Charles is probably chief among them being the longest surviving. And so, Erik asks: "Were there days you hoped I wouldn't come back?"

When he was a little more calm, Erik needed to stop and think back to what came out of the encounter. The fact that Charles was anything but a sacrificial lamb; especially now. How this encounter had finally raised the sleeping lion, edged the telepath's pure pacifist outlook with a hint of reality.

Perhaps En Sabah Nur would have crushed his consciousness and taken his body but it was hard to say what the final out come might have been.

But tonight was about the here and the now. Charles wheeled his chair up to the table, relying on Erik to handle the kettle, even as he set out the mugs with their tea bags waiting. He watched his friend, listening calmly in the softness of the dark as they shared the quiet, the question ultimately getting an eyebrow lift out of him.

Charles didn't answer immediately. He didn't give a platitude. Instead, he was pensive about his response and when it came, it was direct but honest.

"Those ten years, after Cuba, I wanted nothing to do with you," he said. "And at the same time I wanted you and Raven back so badly..."

It was hard to explain, the combination of anger and grief he'd struggled with, finally succumbing to hopelessness, drugs and alcohol.

"After the White House ... you went quiet." Charles said softly. "I wanted to believe you'd found peace. I should have looked, had I looked ..." Had he looked, he would have seen Magda, Nina ... maybe seen the risk that was coming. "But I was afraid of what I'd see."

It would have crushed him to find Erik plotting a rise against humanity again. Charles looked down at his mug, if Erik had poured the water, he would lift a spoon to encourage the tea bag to give up it's nectar.

"I had the school, the children. Their safety took precedence over my personal wants and needs."

When Charles had said he'd never look upon his mind again, Erik hadn't taken him so seriously. But soon it was a year after DC, and then two, and then obviously Erik was distracted with other daily things and soon he'd left his entire life behind to be Henryk Gorsky. It was an escape, a new leaf. He's not sure what he would have done had Charles come to visit in Cerebro. He spared thoughts towards him from time to time, wondering about him. Raven, he was less worried about, having been featured in one of the newspapers he'd read on his way to settle in Poland.

And then, of course, when Nina manifested, he thought of a school he'd once heard of, run by a headmaster whose memory stuck out clear as if he'd come in Cerebro. She was young, and kind of heart, and so clever. Charles would have loved her. It was a spare thought, that lasted only a fleeting moment before he realized it could never come true, and so, it was forgotten.

Charles's confession is an odd one to Erik, because it's so clear to him what exactly he would be afraid of, because it implies sort of that he wouldn't want to have been prepared, that he wouldn't have wanted to check in and try to dissuade him from his plotting. That is a lot of trust for a man like him, a lot of trust that he'd abused in the past.

Erik stirs his tea, and then sits back like he always does, expanding to fit a larger frame than he's given.

"You would say that," he comments. Always doing what he thinks is best for everyone else, an impasse they've both disagreed and agreed on many times over. He's thoughtful for a moment, but then he asks: "You don't have the school here, or children. What do you want now?"

Charles glanced up from his tea steeping and after a moment, he blinked and looked bemused.

"I don't think I've ever thought about it," he admitted, moving to set the tea bag off to the side and picking up the mug, frowning pensively.

"It's rather like, how I don't drink anymore. That decade still haunts me. Not just the guilt, mind you but the temptation as well.

Because it was a temptation, wasn't it? To slide back into that selfish creature, hide away from the world's pain and the world's ills. He'd worked past it, because he believed in his school, his students and in making a difference. But it was the same risk as would be to take a drink. One drink might not be enough, on selfish act might not be enough and Charles had stared into that abyss for a solid ten years.

He knew well enough to be wary.

"I don't have the school here or the children, you're right. But there are needs here, imPort and native both. This world is closer to the edge than even our own and I just ... want peace."

"My friend," he says, sorrow in his eyes as he recounts the amount of time lost between them, like a knife in his side that twists every time he bothers to remember that it's still there. "So do I." He reaches out to take Charles's hand, his own palm warm from the tea, cupping over Charles's. He remembers that day on the beach, acting so hastily, when that is what he meant to say. They do want the same end result. He would never want to cause Charles grievous harm, not on purpose.

Okay, there was that time in Paris, but that was different. He was barely the Charles Erik even knew anymore, and he was angry. So angry, that he thought some distance would help them. Despite what Erik had chosen he believed Charles had decided what was right for himself to do, and it hurt to realize where they belonged was on different paths but he wouldn't begrudge the school or the good that it did. But then, God, he had been out of his mind with anger, with disappointment. Foolishly drunk on his own freedom and perception of power.

Anyway.

They'll do better, he thinks. And he can still give Wanda, and Peter, and Billy... long, fruitful lives. Peaceful lives. For too long his whole friendship with Charles was spent with Erik's mind constantly on a campsite on the eve of war anticipating a nighttime ambush from the enemy, or else preparing for a morning march to a battlefield.

The nightmares can cease. And then, the nice dreams... of long road trips up New England streets lined with fire-bright trees, of crashing drunk teenage parties, chess games in a cozy study. His tired mind settles on these memories, the good ones they have together.

For a long breath, Charles watched Erik’s face. He didn’t move his hand from within his friend’s grasp, his own fingers relaxed; always welcoming.

After a moment, his expression took on a sorrowful tone as he looked down at his tea.

“Wasn’t it you and Raven, even Hank, who were telling me that peace wasn’t an option?” He said, without accusation or judgement and a moment later his eyes came back up to Erik’s.

“To hope for the best but prepare for the worst?”

He sighed softly, still not removing his hand from Erik’s grasp but sitting back a little.

“I think I got that message,” he explained. “With what En Sabah Nur did; what he planned to do. The importance of ensuring that the strong are in a position to help defend those who cannot defend themselves.”

Charles paused and reached for his tea with his other hand.

“Perhaps we aren’t meant to know peace.”

He did say that. He was angry then, and he's just as angry now. But now he has lost so much. The more he fights, the more he loses. The more he lives, the more is granted to him to lose. He looks Charles dead in the eyes; in twenty years, they're the same eyes, that same look. They may regard the world differently, but for Erik, they are constant. And Erik never wants to let that go, the same way he never wants to miss Wanda's smile, or Billy's looks of concentration, Nina's of childlike wonder. This is how they love him, and this is what he collects: A series of gestures and expressions, from the people he loves. It broke his heart once ten years ago and it would again, to think Charles could never regard him this way again.

"Maybe," he says, "we are not." And then, his lips curve into a wire-sharp grin. "But we're no strangers to wanting what we can't have." And no strangers to fighting for the impossible. To keep moving forward, even though the path wasn't fully formed beneath their feet and with nothing to light the way. When has the need to be reasonable ever gotten in the way between these two? If they aim for peace and wind up settling for a better future, is that really a compromise?

Erik used to think so. He wouldn't settle for less than his perfect vision. But then again, neither would Charles.

In light of recent events, Charles' perfect vision had changed.

It had too, En Sabah Nur had ensured that with his attacks. How was Charles to ever convince the world that humanity and mutants could live in peace, when those who should lead them towards that peace, on both sides, kept attacking? How could he ask those who looked to him, for guidance, to put down their defenses, when it just left them vulnerable to attack?

"I didn't want my students to be soldiers," he admitted in a quiet tone. "But then I can't imagine you wanted your life turned upside down either."

He looked back at his friend, with a genuinely sorrowful expression.

"No amount of apologies will help, I know, my friend. But I am proud of you, for what you did. For opening your heart, allowing yourself to love and trying to make peace an option."

He had. Falling in love had been... swift, encompassing, with a sort of heady drunken feeling. Ten years he'd gotten to escape to a good dream, a little corner of the world he claimed and could be free. He'd had lofty goals in his youth but when Nina was born, she had become all of his goals and aspirations. It was a chapter of his life that he closed, that he might still stand to revisit. Well, maybe not that one in particular.

He looks at Charles, his expression a little torn. He doesn't want Charles's students to be soldiers either. This is not what he had planned for Peter, for Wanda. For the Nina that might have been. But that is their reality.

"I wish..." he starts, and then stops himself. "A lot of things." But they're reaching that point in their lives where the would haves and could haves will start to outnumber the will dos. And he tightens his grip, just lightly. He doesn't want to forget them, but he doesn't want to be sad, either.

He takes a brief pause, a deep breath. "And I'm proud of you too," he says, grinning. "You were phenomenal against him." His grin grows wider, still, as he thinks, so was Peter. So was Storm. So was Jean.

Accepting the gentle shift of conversation topic, Charles snorted softly and lifted his tea to his lips for a sip before he responded.

"You can blame that on him." Charles explained. "It was a tactical mistake to boost my powers after he'd already let me in. Pure arrogance."

It was odd. For almost his entire life, Charles had sought to find something good, something redeemable in people. He was the poster child for 'walk a mile in their shoes' philosophy. Yet when it came to En Sabah Nur, there was no mercy to the telepath.

The pitilessness was plain in his hard tone, the sharp glitter of anger in his blue eyes and the set of his face. If he came across Apocalypse again, there would be no quarter given from Charles; one of them wasn't walking away.

"He thought he wanted what I have. He had no idea what he'd tapped into," Charles continued in a quiet tone and in those two sentences, he had told Erik more about his own powers, than he'd ever said in the past two decades.

Erik has some sort of idea. He knows now, he was a little hard on Charles a decade ago. But a lot has changed in ten years, just like a lot had changed in the ten years' preceding. It's a burdensome power, probably like Peter's in a sense, and he thinks that's something he can offer Peter that Erik can't. Of course, he can also pass messages in the time it takes to parse a thought-- 1/6th of a second-- probably faster than anyone else can, so there's that.

All these years later and he's still sitting here, musing about his friend's powers, allowing himself to consider them and appreciate them.

"No, but I don't expect him to be in touch with most of us," he says, despite having been privy to-- a victim of-- Apocalypse's rhetoric and empty promises, his hate and fearmongering. He was too old to be so susceptible, but too vulnerable not to be. And Apocalypse had addressed only those most fundamental, most based of needs. There was no nuance to him, and in the end, he was just a greedy demagogue in search of power. He should've known better.

"You wear it well. Your power." Now he does, anyway.

Perhaps that was part of what made Charles so furious with En Sabah Nur; the way he'd taken advantage of Erik's grief, Ororo's innocence. He didn't know enough about Psylocke or Angel, though it was likely that Charles would have found mercy for them but Erik and Ororo had been vulnerable and that vulnerability had been exploited.

He'd meant what he said; the strong to do what they could to protect those who were not in position (won't say incapable of) to protect themselves. Something about that exploitation had tapped into a deep well of protective fury that Charles hadn't been completely aware he possessed. But he was aware of it now and combined with his empathy it gave him that place 'between rage and serenity'.

Though he still cleared his throat in a self deprecating manner and moved to sit back, retrieving his hand as Erik paid him a compliment.

"I expect we all continue to grow into our powers as we use them more and more," he began, trying to deflect the conversation before he sighed softly and seemed to deflate.

Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour but Charles didn't appear up to the task of maintaining his habitual masks. Instead, he fluttered his fingers and then leaned his chin against his folded knuckles.

"You say I wear it well and I thank you, for that. But the truth is, I don't feel I have much choice. My power has always been about control, it's had to be. You know how it works, if I don't shield it, it's everywhere." Erik had experienced that, by accident, during their first road trip together. "The more powerful it's become, the more I've had to control it; least it controls me."

He went quiet for a moment, brows furrowing thoughtfully before he said in a pensive voice.

"But that's me. You told me, in the end, that Jean ... she let go?"

"She did," he responds, reminiscing about it. She had been... glorious. Fire. Had he not been distracted, he would have stared in awe. For a second he thought her power was tangible, her spirit itself heavy and commanding. There was so much raw energy, so much tension.

At the end, even Apocalypse knew he was outclassed. How could he explain that to Charles?

He projects the thought, the things he was thinking. When her feet stepped onto the thin air as if there was something there. When she seemed as if she was looking past everyone, off into the eyes of something only she could see. And when she unleashed whatever it is that is inside of her, whatever it is that gives such a visceral feeling.

And yet, it is a little sad. At a time, Charles and Erik were on top of the world. In a place like this, they are just two imPorts, out of many. In a world like Tony's, he assumes, they would easily be considered inexperienced. He wonders, then, if they have a Jean Grey too.

"She's been so afraid of her powers," Charles said in a pensive tone, obviously taking a moment to sink into his own memories.

He looked back up, chuckling softly and with obvious affection for his student.

"She accused me of not knowing what it was like to be afraid of my own mind," he didn't sound upset by this, more wryly amused. "I had to explain to her that there had been a time."

Charles did not make it a habit to read Erik's mind, especially now that they lived together. The man deserved his privacy and Charles did everything he could to try to assure Erik of it. But perhaps it was the hour or the nature of the topics they discussed, whichever it was, his friend's latter thoughts drew the telepath's attention and now it was Charles turn to reach out and touch Erik's wrist.

"But isn't this what we want, back home?" He asked. "No, I mean obviously it's not perfect and there is tension but here, imPorts don't hide. True sometimes it makes us targets but sometimes we're hailed as heroes, regardless ... we don't hide."

"We don't hide," he agrees. And no, it's not perfect. "And sometimes, the others defend us," he adds, thinking about it. "But I don't trust them not to turn on us," he says. "Not to abandon us." Though, of course, he has a soft spot in his heart for American heroes in particular, whatever last stolen pieces of childhood he could find shaped by (copyright-correct equivalent of) Captain America comics after the war. He reminds himself such a thing is fiction.

Then he thinks about it a little more and says: "Sometimes I think they don't care what we do, as long as they have an image of us in their heads, celebrities they can hang on their walls." He knows Charles would rather shirk the limelight, but Erik doesn't care. If it helps their cause to be shallowly beloved by the public, he'll smile through televised interviews and post pictures of his breakfast to Instagram.

"It's not ideal, but... it's something." If anything, it makes him believe that here they could perhaps achieve what Charles had thought they could do at home - be a part of the general fabric of the community. There was never a time Erik was comfortable with it, back then. And here, well. Here he is glad to be a single voice in a chorus.

Charles nodded along with Erik's last words.

"It is something and it is something we can build on," he said. "I can't tell you it will be alright, my friend because none of us know what the future will bring. But there is hope."

He couldn't send his friend back with the sort of assurances he might give his students after a nightmare. He couldn't erase the pain of Erik's past. All he could do was try to keep supporting his friend in the future.

Erik feels that his nerves have calmed, at least, possibly enough to ground himself firmly into reality enough to attempt going back to bed for the night. And luckily, it looks like they have both run out of tea in their cups and unless Charles is looking for a refill, Erik stands up to stick their mugs in the sink for tomorrow.

"Thank you, Charles," he says, resting his hand on Charles's shoulder. There will be another nightmare... maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe not until next month. And he will wake up with frazzled hair and a disturbed expression, but if they can meet like this every so often there will be less and less, fewer and further between, and Erik can consider healing.

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