Chapter Text
I.
Charles knocked on the door to the small cottage at the edge of the Westchester property, nestled in a copse of trees with the waters of Breakstone Lake just nearby. It was beautiful weather, warm with few clouds, the smell of grass thick and full of happy memories playing on the lawn somewhere between the cottage and the mansion--usually closer to the cottage. He'd mostly outgrown that, now, but at 16 he was here knocking at this very door like he had since he was 6.
Before long a woman drew open the door, her brown hair neatly curled and pinned up off her neck as it had been every day he'd ever seen her. She smiled to see him, always generous in her affection despite their lack of relation. Likewise, his fondness for her was outshone only, perhaps, by his fondness for her son.
"Good morning, Mrs. Lehnsherr," he said, making his tone overly formal and bowing stiffly because it made her laugh. "Is the Young Master Erik in?"
"Of course he is," she said, letting the door slip open wider and calling her son downstairs. Naturally, Charles could have beckoned Erik himself, but then he would miss these exchanges at the door.
Erik appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his hair freshly slicked back in a style Charles could never pull off. He joined his mother at the door and slipped his arm around her for a hurried half-embrace.
"Not so fast," said Mrs. Lehnsherr, hooking Erik back to her as he moved to leave. "Let me wish you a Happy Birthday, Charles, before you two rush off." She leaned into the kitchen and straightened again with a foil-wrapped parcel in her hand, which she gave to him.
"Thank you, Mrs. Lehnsherr," he said, flushing with a smile and another little bow as he took it from her. "You know it's my favorite."
She winked at him. "You're not supposed to know what it is, yet."
Charles blushed further, but before he could apologize Erik had ducked from her side and was tugging Charles away. "I'll be back later!"
Erik smelled terribly good, and his arm felt warm linked in his, lean and strong and insistent. It was almost enough to make Charles forget his delivery.
"Wait!" he said, turning them around before they got far. He reached into the breast pocket of his blazer for the letter there and extended it to Erik's mother. "Ainsley asked me to deliver this." Actually, Charles had insisted--Ainsley was too old-fashioned even to think of making such a request.
She seemed to recognize the handwriting on the envelope as she took it with a Thank you. Charles began to turn away as she opened it, but Erik stubbornly (or obliviously) ignored the attempt at privacy and stood firmly waiting. "Is it from him?" he asked.
Mrs. Lehnsherr nodded slowly, a frown weighing on her mouth as she read.
"Your uncle is moving address," she said. Charles did his best not to listen, staring at the grass, but it was impossible. "He won't be writing again."
When Charles glanced to Erik, he saw some of the same frown his mother wore. Resolutely, he avoided peering into his thoughts to satisfy his curiosity.
Mrs. Lehnsherr read a few more lines silently before she finally straightened up and shooed them off with a kind smile that said children needn't be burdened with adulthood. "Go now. But back before dinner, both of you."
Charles would have preferred a more formal departure, but Erik's arm tightened around him to drag him away without room for ceremony.
* * * * *
The water was still quite cold at the end of the dock where Charles shared his layer cake. He sat with his legs under him, but a braver Erik let his feet dangle in the water--he said the chill gave him focus. There was a rowboat at the bottom of the lake, he said, and one day he was going to raise it by its rowlocks.
"I thought you didn't have any family left," said Charles, crumbling up the empty foil. His voice was gentle, but Erik had never made a secret of his circumstances. His mother was all he had of home.
Erik looked up at him, then bent to fix the cuff in one of his pant legs. "He's not really my uncle. But he's the reason we got out of Europe before the war. He told us what he thought was coming and he gave us the money to come to New York."
Erik said it so casually that Charles, at first, failed to grasp the full impact of it. But it came to him slowly, like the little waves in the deep lake beneath the dock.
"He saved your lives?"
Erik shrugged, sloshing quietly at the water. "I suppose."
Charles rolled his shoulders and sat forward, elbows on his knees. He had never really considered how lucky it was that they'd left when they had--that it could have turned out horribly, unthinkably different. "I never knew that."
"He's written to my mother a few times over the years. But we've never really known him."
"You never met him?"
"Once." Erik smiled faintly, but it was quickly gone. "I was probably two or three. All I remember is his chair, because it was metal."
Charles smiled, too, lying down with his back to the sun-baked boards, his heels on the edge of the dock. The sun felt good on his face, a breeze sifting through his floppy hair. It wasn't the fashion, but Erik liked it better that way.
Thank God the man did what he did. Thank God. "What's his name?"
"I'm not sure. He doesn't sign the letters." Erik lay down on his back at Charles' side, and Charles felt his fingers brush along his hand and settle there. "Francis, I think."
* * * * *
Charles stood on the terrace, carefully pruning the rose bushes his mother--the sad, cold woman in the mansion--loved so much. He supposed it meant something that he was the only one allowed to care for them, the only one permitted to cut the blooms and bring them inside for her.
Of course, it had been years since she'd actually asked him to do it. And his stepbrother and stepfather would never think to try. But she never stopped him from doing it. It meant something.
Mrs. Lehnsherr approached him along the wide stone balustrade that held the bushes from the terrace. "Careful of the thorns," he said, and she nodded, taking him very seriously for his benefit.
At his side she admired the unfurling buds he had collected a moment before she spoke. "Do you think I could be driven into town tomorrow afternoon?"
"Of course," said Charles, eager to be helpful. Too eager, perhaps, as he glanced toward the house and added with a shy smile: "She won't mind."
Mrs. Lehnsherr saw right through him, and she patted his hand where it rested beside the rose stems. "You're a good boy, Charles. Goodness is hard to come by."
Charles noticed the tremble in her fingertips before he saw her eyes suddenly well up with tears that stopped short of spilling over.
"What's the matter, Mrs. Lehnsherr?" he asked, focusing with all his might not to learn the reason himself. Concern and anxiety made it much harder to accomplish.
She smiled, waving away Charles' sympathy and laughing gently to leaven the subject. "Erik's uncle, he is leaving his house in town to us. I'm to sign the deed tomorrow, after he has left."
The thought of she and Erik moving to town filled him with a sharp panic, but he knew, at the same time, that university was not far off for them, and without Charles' influence the Xavier estate could become less than welcoming to her. So he held his tongue until he'd come to terms with it, and nodded gently. "That's very kind of him."
"Kindness is all I have known of him," she said, softly, studying the roses again. She looked up. "And that he is like you," she said, tapping her head, then extending her hand to Charles, her fingers cool on his temple. "Up here."
Charles lifted his brows in surprise. "Like me? Then he's--"
Inside the house a chilled void grew restless, colder, like a blizzard gathering strength. It was better to meet it before it began looking for him. "I have to go," he said, gathering up the roses carefully and kissing her cheek. He gave her one of the long stems with a bud beginning to unfurl upon it. "I'll have the car brought around for you at 2 o'clock tomorrow."
She took it from him with a nod of thanks and a warm smile, which Charles could only glimpse as he hurried inside to the unpleasant howl of his name.
* * * * *
In the evening Charles was back at the cottage. He'd taken a late supper there, as usual, and shared with the Lehnsherrs some contraband from the Xavier pantry, where it might otherwise have spoiled, forgotten and uncelebrated.
Afterward, he and Erik lay together, clothed, on Erik's tiny bed that nevertheless felt more comfortable than the lonely behemoth in Charles' room at the house. They often spent the evenings reading, as though ready to sleep, but just when sleep would be most welcome Charles would have to climb out and make the cold journey through wood and lawn to his own bed. But he chose this every time, the one shared book that they read together: Charles' voice in Erik's head, Erik's imagination illustrating each page.
When Charles felt Erik begin to doze, he set the heavy book aside and watched the even, unburdened breath in Erik's chest. His eyes drifted to the line of his jaw and lingered there.
"You may be moving away from here," said Charles, softly.
Erik opened his eyes.
"Maybe." He lifted his hand like it weighed a stone and set it on the side of Charles' neck. "You should come."
"Maybe."
He watched as Erik's eyes closed again, and for a while he allowed himself the luxury of the same.
"Your uncle is like me, she said." Behind closed lids Charles recalled the way she'd told him, touching him so close to the seat of his power. It never failed to move him: her warm acceptance--even pride--at the things Charles and her son could do. "A telepath."
Erik rolled closer to him, his hand slipping to rest between them. Charles opened his eyes.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Downstairs a clock was chiming, telling him to go home, to his own bed.
He was going. He was going. Soon. For now, Erik was warm, the bed was warm. Erik's breath was warm and his hands were warm resting between their chests in the small space.
He was going. Soon.
He forced his eyes open a final time.
"You know my middle name is Francis?"
Erik, half-asleep, only sighed.
* * * * *
Charles wasn't one for fantasies.
Suspecting no higher intelligence acting on the world's fate, he had never questioned the arrival, one day, of a boy his own age to grow up with. He had not questioned the timing of that event. And he had not wondered, even, at the serendipity that this boy would be different like Charles was different.
Tonight, that was changing. Tonight, somewhere between Erik's bed and his own--somewhere on his path through the wet lawn beneath an endless blue field of stars--Charles, this one time, ceased to believe in coincidence.
* * * * *
When the car stopped in town Charles stepped onto the pavement and looked up at the modest townhouse, so closely neighbored that the entire street was an unbroken wall of windows and doors and brick and shutters, lined by streetlights, where they were working. Above him the roof line was closer, plainer than the mansion's, cutting a neat angle across the sky still deep blue and silent.
He hadn't made it to bed that night. On the contrary he couldn't get here fast enough. He'd been informed of a cosmic deadline and he had heeded it.
Charles wasn't proud that he'd taken the man's address from Mrs. Lehnsherr's mind. Nor was he proud to have woken their driver hours before dawn. Mr. Bramley he had compensated with the generous bill he tucked into his hand; apologizing--and explaining himself--to Mrs. Lehnsherr would be much harder.
Especially when he could hardly explain it to himself.
As soon as they'd entered town he'd closed his mind up tight, in as far as he could test such a thing. So he couldn't be sure who, if anyone, was inside the townhouse with its single lamp shining in the front window. From where Charles stood its light cast a sense of familiarity like a spell. A dream-like pall was settling over him heavy and fast. And he became afraid, though curiosity remained stronger.
He stirred as the car left him as he'd requested. When he was fully alone, he took the steps quietly to the door. He turned the knob without knocking, and it gave, unlocked and unresisting as he stepped inside. Diffused light revealed rugs rolled and stowed; furniture was covered. Compared to the clutter of the mansion the space felt empty despite these things: they were already memories, already gone.
His shoes tapped lightly on the battered flooring as he moved hesitantly through the hall. A creak of metal drew him to the only room that was lit, and he felt the pressure under his skull as the man tried to be hidden from him.
"That won't work easily on me," said Charles, his voice rough and shaking faintly. He came to rest almost reverently at the threshold of the room, hazarding a glance inside. "But I think you know that."
The man lowered his fingers from his temple. Half-turned toward the door, his hands slowly folded in his lap, on top of the blanket that covered his legs.
"I wondered," he said simply, after a silence, "what might happen should this occur." His eyes wandered over Charles slowly, thoughtfully. Wearily. "I suppose nothing. You know who I am?"
The man, with his graying hair and tired face, did not immediately resemble Charles. But with the sad, patient tip of his head the mirror fell into place so sharply that Charles had to look away, stare at the wall, where a painting he would have liked already hung in the space where he would have placed it. He looked away, again, to bare space on the open floor. He nodded, words momentarily stuck dry in his throat. Possible or not, he knew.
"You helped them escape," he began, his voice sounding muffled in his ringing ears. He forced the words out to anchor his presence here, to shatter the dream, if it was one. But the room remained as it was. He shook off his repulsion enough to look up again. "Why them? Because Erik is like me?"
The man tapped his gathered fingers on the arm of his chair before he answered, familiar blue eyes catching the lamplight. "I knew Erik, too. Given the chance to spare him, I took it."
"But now, you're leaving." Charles consciously strengthened his voice. "You told Mrs. Lehnsherr you're leaving. You've never even spoken to him."
The man's brows lifted gently. "On the contrary. I grew up with him. I may make a life with him."
For a moment, Charles' face bore the same expression. He was still poised in the doorway, his heart pounding like he shared the room with a ghost. Certainly this man was the ghost of something. Certainly something had died--had been put down, kindly, with tears and compassion.
"It's too difficult," guessed Charles, humbly. Drawing up his courage, he stepped into the room, the floorboards creaking to thin the silence. "To be near him. Is that why you have to go?"
Tentatively, he reached out with his mind. He hadn't mastered his control of it yet, not when he sent it out like this, but to the best of his ability he brushed gently at the consciousness of the other, despite his fear of its existence.
He'd wanted it to be kind, an invitation to share the burden with him, let him see and perhaps relieve some of the pain. But the man's mind turned from him, not harshly, but absolutely.
Instead, the man reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew something. He paused as though weighing it, then held it out to Charles.
Charles stirred, stepping closer to accept it. Though their hands didn't touch, Charles couldn't ignore that they were the same. Charles met the man's eyes, and was momentarily overwhelmed by their sorrow, though it was neither projected nor intentional.
"That is all you will carry of mine."
He looked down at the key he'd been given, then noticed the papers on the table next to the man's chair, ready for Mrs. Lehnsherr to sign. He straightened slowly.
What becomes of a world where a man slips out, he wondered, where a man leaves a void? Does it circle around the empty space, slowly at first, then spiraling in to fill the shape of him? Or does it note the absence with the same indifference it reserves for death? Did the other Erik miss this man? Did he remember this man at all?
"Do you regret it?" he asked, quietly now. The room and the street had gone so hushed that the world seemed to have stopped existing outside the lamp beside the man's chair.
"Leaving my own time?"
The man smiled lightly, his gaze dropping as he shook his head. It was not an answer, but a disinclination to give one. "There was nothing left that could be changed. Not there."
"But here--" suggested Charles, dully, and the man nodded.
In the quiet Charles looked down at the key again, running his thumb over it, wishing he could draw something from it the way he'd read some people could. But the man surprised him by speaking again.
"There is one thing I do regret," he said, quickly, as though to outrun his better judgment.
Before Charles could do more than look up, the man had folded his hands tightly on the blanket and gone on. His voice was more measured now, slow with feeling. "Do you remember a girl who came to your home, with skin she could change at will?"
Charles nodded carefully. He'd never forgotten her fascinating ability. "She was hungry. I invited her to stay. But a few days later she had gone." He frowned, grasping at other details he couldn't recall. "Did she visit you, too?"
The man smiled, but the expression immediately crumpled, and he looked away. "And she stayed. She--Raven--was supposed to stay with you. She became a sister to me."
Charles kept silent, solemn in the wake of the man's emotion, which he was already gathering back into its box with a slow breath.
"But you were not lonely as she was," the man added. "You didn't need anyone like she did."
Charles clenched his jaw in a tight frown. So he'd failed her? She had needed him? "If I'd known--"
The man shook his head. "The hand was dealt, and I dealt it." He pressed his lips together so that they lost their color. It returned as he caught Charles' gaze. "But if you should see her again--if I should find her again and send her to you--"
"We'll welcome her," said Charles, sincerely, breathlessly. "Of course we will."
The man nodded and closed his eyes. One thought to comfort him, Charles guessed.
Charles dropped his gaze to the key again. Mrs. Lehnsherr would have a home of her own. Charles would have Erik. Perhaps one day they'd have Raven, too.
"If you find her," said Charles, "why not keep her with you? So you will not be alone."
The man unfolded his hands and lowered them to the wheels of his chair. Charles watched them tighten there and goaded himself to step back, realizing he'd perhaps been standing too closely.
"She's supposed to be with you," said the man. He hadn't moved, but his hands remained on the wheels. "There are consequences--everything I change--"
"But it's for the better! Look what you did for Erik and Mrs. Lehnsherr. You don't know--"
Erik and Mrs. Lehnsherr--but surely Erik had once had other family. What happened to them?
Charles felt the weight of his hands as they hung at his sides. His grip slowly tightened around the key. The man was watching him, and something had changed in his expression. Something had changed in Charles, too.
What about everyone else? All those other people?
"Why didn't you stop the war?"
The man said nothing, but his gaze flickered.
Charles felt his stomach dropping, tightening like his fist.
"You could have done it." His voice was heavy with the enormity of his realization, growing with every rapid-fire recollection, everything he knew about the brutalities of the world. "I know because I see what I'm capable of already, and it frightens me, but if I knew something like that was coming, I'd--"
"It's not that simple," pressed the man. "The power of hatred in the world--"
"Don't," said Charles. As much as he could see the shame and self-loathing in the man's face, he could not now lessen his own, could not stop the escalation of horror that this man--that he--could have allowed what was avoidable. "Don't say anything."
Charles was backing away when he heard the car outside. He hoped it would pass, that the driver and Erik would miss the address, but Charles didn't cast a distraction quickly enough. Neither of them did.
Instead he turned and ran to the door, pulling it open just as Erik reached the stairs outside. Erik noticed the chair lift beside them, but it didn't stall him from meeting Charles at the door.
"He's already gone," said Charles. He didn't want Erik to see him--didn't want to admit what he'd have to admit. He tried to take Erik's elbow. His driver hadn't left yet.
"Why did you come without me?" asked Erik. He'd stopped the door from closing and was stepping around Charles, curiosity driving him. He stepped smoothly out of Charles' grip and was inside the hall, out of Charles' reach in an instant.
"Erik, there's nothing--" Charles called, not knowing what excuse he would give for his behavior. He tried to draw him back with his mind but only won Erik's distracted glance behind him. "We shouldn't be here--"
But the door to the parlor wasn't very far. Erik had already reached it, his hand on the wooden frame, pausing as he cast a tall shadow behind him.
Don't recognize him, Charles pled. My God, I can't tell him.
Erik slowly slipped from the doorway and disappeared. Charles heard the creaking of his measured footsteps fading deeper inside.
When Charles crept with dread to the threshold, Erik was already at the table by the window. The deed to the house was in his hands as he examined it by the light of the lamp.
Beside him, the man sat quiet as the grave, his eyes on Erik's face. As Charles watched, his gaze, at first awed and open, weakened and grew bright with the lamp's light. The man brought his hand slowly to cover his mouth while the other gripped the arm of his chair, but his eyes never left Erik's face. Surely he knew Charles was there, but he wasted no glance in his direction.
Slowly, Charles stepped into the room. Hearing him, Erik turned and tilted the papers to show him. "The deed is here. But it looks like we've missed him."
Charles smiled as well as he could, showing him the key in return.
"I suppose it's what he wanted," he said. As Erik approached to take the key from him, Charles stole one last lingering glance at the man in the chair.
Their eyes met for a moment, and Charles couldn't help but think the man deserved all the heartbreak he saw there.
II.
The day their letters arrived at the mansion, they clamored down to the end of the dock at Breakstone Lake as a matter of ceremony. They exchanged letters, and Charles tore Erik's open nervously to read it.
Erik's whoop of celebration took the words out of Charles' mouth; the hearty clap he gave him on the shoulder knocked the breath out, too. "You're in!" Erik shouted, though he was hardly a foot away.
Charles laughed with him, letting Erik's arm draw him in tightly and breathing in his joy. "So are you. A proud new scholar of chemistry at Pembroke College, Oxford. Full scholarship."
Erik whooped again, all too close to Charles' ear, but Charles didn't mind. "You got one too," he said, adding with a pulled face, "Not that you need it."
Charles endured it easily, returning the face. "You hardly need it yourself, these days." Quickly scanning the area, he tugged Erik down to kiss him. They were breathless, and careless, but it made the moment more real to Charles for all its clumsy honesty.
When Charles stepped away, he was already thinking of packing. He'd moved into the vacated cottage months ago, so at least he'd already begun the process of rounding up the things that mattered to him. And perhaps he would never be back. The thought filled him with hope.
"Come on," he said, turning and tugging Erik along behind him, "we can call your mother from the house."
But Erik was slow to move. "Politics?"
Charles turned back. Erik looked up from Charles' letter with a quizzical expression. "I thought you wanted biology."
Charles smiled thinly, tightening his grip of Erik's hand.
"I changed my mind."
* * * * *
As far as Charles could tell, the man kept his word to Mrs. Lehnsherr. There were no further letters to her. The legal matters concerning the house had all been thoroughly settled in advance. So two years into university, when a fat envelope arrived for Charles addressed in his own handwriting, he tossed it into the bottom of the trunk in his dormitory and left it.
Erik, though, hadn't forgotten the man. From time to time he wondered aloud about the uncle who had intervened so miraculously in his young life. "Sometimes I think I remember him," he would say. "His eyes."
Erik never remarked on the resemblance, if he noticed it. Charles tried not to give him the chance.
* * * * *
The door to the dormitory slammed as Erik returned. Charles heard him flop with exhaustion onto his bed, but was too busy taking notes from his textbook to look up. "Have fun?" he asked.
"Of course not," said Erik. The bed creaked as he shifted. He sounded as though he'd sat up. "I thought you'd be there."
"I don't feel it's the best way to spend my time," murmured Charles. He crossed out the last few words he'd written and corrected them.
"You're studying politics," huffed Erik. "I would think rallies would rank pretty highly on your list of worthwhile ventures. Especially this one, Charles, we--"
Charles sat back with a sigh as he rubbed his aching eyes shut. "Did you change anything?"
There was a silence in which Charles turned in his chair to find Erik's somewhat cowed expression. "Maybe, maybe not. But that's what we're trying to do."
"Trying." Charles sighed again, taking the afternoon paper from his desk and tossing it into Erik's lap. "In the meantime, this."
Erik frowned at it, clearly upset by the headline and the brutal details of the attack. Angrily, he tossed it back. "And what are you doing instead?"
Charles pursed his lips to silence himself, turning away. Picking up his pen again, he murmured, "We don't need to beg them, Erik. When it's time to act, I will act."
Erik said nothing for a long moment. Finally, Charles heard him stand from the bed.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I think you know." Charles let his pen rest on the page, bleeding ink. "'Talking' that first-year down from the roof is the least of what I'm capable of."
"Don't even joke about that," said Erik. "It's wrong. Your ability--"
"Yes," said Charles, closing an argument he didn't wish to have. "Of course, you're right." He turned in his chair to smile. "I'll come with you to the next rally, all right? When is it?"
Erik met his gaze with doubt he didn't bother to try concealing, but he finally straightened his mouth and sat down at his own desk.
"Next Friday."
"Splendid."
* * * * *
They were already thinking about graduation when a blond-haired, grey-eyed young woman appeared at their door.
"We met once," she said to them. "Years ago."
Erik beckoned her inside. Charles made her tea, and vowed to give up his bed for her until they moved out in a few months' time. Hiding, in the meantime, would not be an issue. Her smile when she said it was automated, a fabrication in itself. Much of what she said was spoken behind a veil of learned distrust, but she was here, now, and her presence spoke openly where she yet couldn't.
Though Charles was genuinely glad to have another chance with her, her arrival brought his worst fear back into the realm of possibility. He already knew what Erik wanted to say when he followed Charles out into the hall. He knew, but he couldn't bear to stop him. He'd already promised himself that no matter what he would never compromise Erik's thoughts.
So Charles could only let it happen.
"She said he was in a wheelchair," Erik said. His voice was hushed, but bright with hope. "The man who told her where to find us."
Charles played ignorant until it was no longer reasonable to do so. "You think it was your uncle."
"We could find out. She has an address."
"It's a year old, Erik." Charles smiled gently. "She said it took her a year to decide to come here."
"It's worth a shot," Erik countered. "Will you come with me?"
Charles pursed his lips. The crestfallen expression on Erik's face made it clear what a surprise his hesitance was. Charles half-turned to the wall outside their door to escape Erik's expectations, kicking at the baseboard. "How many families did he save, Erik?"
Erik frowned, puzzled. "Mine. A handful of others."
Charles faced him again, shrugging. "No more?"
Erik scoffed. "What do you expect from him? You know he was at risk, himself. They took the handicapped, too. What more should he have done?"
Infinitely more, Charles thought, but he kept it in the pit of his stomach where he crushed such shame before it crushed him. He was capable.
Shaking his head, Charles turned, stepped away, then stopped. "I just wonder that he may not be the man you think he is. That's all."
When Erik didn't answer him, Charles looked back over his shoulder.
Erik met his eyes, his jaw strong with disappointment.
"I used to think you thought the worst of everyone because you'd seen it inside them," he said, and the coldness that darkened his eyes then was perhaps the same that Charles was afraid of all along. "I'm beginning to think it's just you."
Erik left him in the hall without sparing him another glance.
* * * * *
In the end, Erik took the train alone. As a gesture toward their dwindling friendship, he called Charles from the station in Italy to say the flat had been empty. From what Erik could understand of the landlord, it had been vacant for the past ten or eleven months. It was rundown, shabby--Erik's description, not the landlord's--and nobody wanted it.
Charles wondered if the man had pulled another trick, but unless he'd involved the landlord, it didn't seem likely.
He cleared his throat lightly, turning to lean his back into the wall by the phone in the dormitory hallway. "Did he--did the landlord say if he'd lived there with anyone?"
The other end of the line was silent. Charles worried he'd lost the connection, but Erik's voice came through.
"He'd been alone."
Charles let the words sink into him. Did they sadden him? Was he sorry?
"I'll see you back soon, then?" he said.
"At graduation," Erik answered, after another pause.
"That's weeks away," said Charles, frowning. "Where--"
"My time is up," said Erik. "I'm sorry, Charles."
The line went silent again. This time Charles knew it was permanent.
* * * * *
They saw each other sometimes once a month after they left school. It was a wonder they did it at all, Charles smoking with a whiskey at one side of the café table, Erik reading the paper with a coffee at the other, closely watching the time for when he'd have to return to the lab. Erik would offer news of Mrs. Lehnsherr, which Charles was always sincerely glad to hear; Charles would reciprocate with word of Raven, if not Raven herself, who sometimes accompanied him. After years of Erik's relentless optimism, Charles took a strange comfort in her cynicism, though he wished she hadn't suffered so to acquire it.
"Hm," said Erik. He lowered his paper enough for Charles to see his lightly furrowed brow.
"What's that?" Charles asked. He snuffed out the butt of his cigarette and took up his glass instead.
Erik looked up as though surprised Charles had taken an interest. He took a sip of his coffee, visibly gathering his answer. "It says in the spring of '32 a handful of politicians and law men in Europe separately all committed suicide. Nobody thought their deaths might be related until now." He folded the paper with the article on top and pushed it toward Charles. "I think with the scale of horrors they were apparently planning, their consciences got to them."
Charles turned the paper to find the article and scanned its contents. He'd heard only a few of the names before. Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Eichmann, Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler, Klaus Schmidt, some others.
Frowning, Charles started reading again from the top. "Things could have been much worse than they were," he said at last, reverence softening his voice.
Suddenly his eyes froze, mid-paragraph, mid-sentence. He leapt up from his seat, knocking his whiskey onto the newspaper. His hands shook as he righted the tumbler and fumbled with his wallet, laying out enough money for both their bills. Erik's look of unabashed confusion did nothing to slow him. "I have to go, I'll explain--I think I'll explain later."
He gave Erik no time for a response. He couldn't wait for a taxi, and ran through what felt like half of London to his lungs but was in reality just short of a mile. In his building he took the steps two at a time to his flat and nearly tripped into the door before he could get the key into it and stumble inside.
Raven wasn't there to see his frantic search through the trunks he'd brought from university. He kept telling himself he'd unpack them one day, but it was the first he'd opened their lids since he'd tossed the ephemera of Oxford inside.
He found the envelope. It was battered from its treatment at the bottom of the trunk and nearly fell open in his hands when he lifted it. He tore it open the rest of the way and pulled out the folded papers inside, neatly stapled at the corner.
War. A war report, released the year that Charles had received the envelope. Final counts--the final, published tally of the lives lost in the camps during the last years of the war. Twelve and a half thousand. Charles knew the number already. It was a number he hated, a number he carried inside him always. But next to it in the margin was another number, penciled in the same handwriting as the faded envelope.
Eleven million.
Charles was already sitting on the floor, his back against the bed. If he hadn't been, he would have found himself there.
It went around you, he thought. He thought of the man's stricken face, lit by a single lamp in an empty townhouse. You tried and it went around you.
But it was gutted, weakened, and he hadn't done simply nothing like Charles had condemned him so absolutely for.
My God, I've been wrong all this time--
He rolled to reach the stand by his bed, pulling down the telephone and gripping the receiver tightly. He dialed for Erik, frantically, and waited with the thudding of his own heart while it rang and rang. Was Erik still sitting with his coffee and a soiled paper? Go home, Erik, I need you--
When there was no answer, he dialed again. "Come on!" he muttered. His chest was aching with everything he'd ever held and hidden there. "Erik, please!"
"Please, what?" said Erik. He'd finally come to the line.
Charles sat up. "Erik, listen, I'm sorry about earlier, but I'll explain. You told me once you thought there might be a way to amplify my mind. Something electric--something magnetic."
Erik took his time on the other end of the line. For Charles, it was agony.
"Charles," he began, and Charles hated the sound of that doubt. He knew it well. "If this is about your political intentions, I told you I will never--"
"It isn't." Charles sighed, at himself, at his oversight. "Erik, I'm done with that. We need to find your uncle. We have to find him."
"Why?" asked Erik, and he had every right to be suspicious. "Why now?"
"Because I was wrong." Charles leaned, suddenly so weary, against the bed and pressed his palm over his eyes, thinking of the loneliness, thinking of the years, thinking of the way the man had looked at Erik with the deed to the house in his hands. "Because you should know him."