Dichotomy

-2-

He said he trusted me and yet when I subdued Emma Frost for him he thought that I was going to kill her. Couldn't he see that she wasn't going to give us any information unless we hurt her? She was too firmly in Shaw's grasp to give up anything easily. She met my gaze and we exchanged a look that said we both understood what the dynamic was. In fact, she probably would have done the same to me had the roles been reversed.

Charles didn't see it that way. After they had carted her away he wouldn't look at me and only spoke to Moira. I didn't understand what the problem was. Why did things always have to be done his way? Surely trust could go both ways. And yet he was insistent that his way was the correct one.

They sat in front of me on the flight back and had whispered conversations about what Emma had said. Moira kept on looking back at me so I knew that they were talking about me. I tried to pretend that it didn't bother me but there was little else to distract me. The view out the airplane's windows was only clouds and endless blue sky. I wasn't even close enough to it to look out if I had wanted to. For some reason I had been seated with two of the soldiers who had gone with us to the Soviet retreat. Had I not known better I would have thought that they were there to make sure I didn't do anything else to jeopardize the mission, such as it was. They were as bored as I was and the sound of the plane's engines made conversation almost impossible.

The coin found its way into my hand. I let it float through my fingers, swirling faster and faster. My eyes closed. This required almost as much concentration as moving a larger object. I still had problems with using my powers in other ways, but this coin had become the thing I was the most comfortable moving, much as it hurt that it was true.

I sat like that for a while letting the coin spin its was to oblivion. My mind went blank as I concentrated on breathing in and out, letting my lungs fill with air and then the sweet release of exhaling. I thought that it would help me become more grounded, less excitable.

Then I felt a soft touch on my arm, startling me. The coin wobbled in midair. I had to regain control quickly before it went flying off into the plane, possibly piercing the hull. It took a moment to pull the coin back into my hand. I slipped it back into my pocket. When I opened my eyes Charles was looking at me. "Are you okay?" he mouthed. I touched my cheek and was surprised to find a tear. I couldn't let him know that he'd affected me like this, if it even related to that at all.

I wiped it away and smiled at him. If he asked later I would say that the air had been dry, or I had allergies, anything to avoid admitting that something might have been wrong.

He knew it wasn't true as much as I did. But he said nothing and the moment passed. Moira turned in her sleep and her head rested on his shoulder. He turned around and faced the front of the plane.

I started to pull out the coin again but the scared looks of the soldiers near me made me stop. The one sitting next to me leaned as far as he could away from me and I'm sure if he had any kind of weapon he would have pointed it at me. They would never understand, I could tell. I didn't even need to read their minds.

~~~~~~~~

After the destruction of the CIA facility Charles revealed the he had his own estate and was independently wealthy. He offered the grounds as our new training facility. On the long car ride to Westchester I had plenty of time to consider how I could have acted differently. If I hadn't come back when Charles asked me to stay would Darwin still be alive? His life would have been boring, to be sure, but it wouldn't have been cut short. Charles and I were responsible. We had been giddy about gathering other mutants around us, unity was our strength. And it was also a weakness. This was why I never traveled with anyone else. There was always the fear that I would grow attached and something bad would happen. Now it was too late.

Each of the recruits had a determined look on their faces. They wanted to avenge their fallen comrade. Charles wanted to send them all away, he feared the things that a desire for revenge might make them do. I wanted them to stay, I knew what revenge made people do. The only question was whether or not they would be able to actually do it.

The mansion was an impressive construct of stone interlaced with hundreds of windows. As the car pulled up the drive it seemed to grow larger and larger until it took over the sky. The gardens were massive, flowers of every hue grew up and down the well-maintained paths before they dissolved off into the forest. While Charles had shown that he was wealthy and accustomed to comfort, I had never thought that his childhood home would have been as large as this.

At the first opportunity he had Charles walked off with Moira, leaving Raven to guide us. She pointed out landmarks on the tour as she doled out the room assignments. She was especially proud of her room with its plaid wallpaper and huge fireplace. After a while all of the hallways and rooms seemed to blend together. Priceless works of art lined every free space that wasn't taken up with expensive furniture. I had never been confronted with such excess before. Finally Raven lead me to my room.

My room was simply white. There was no splash of color anywhere except for patches of lightly stained wood. The walls were decorated with landscapes and portraits of people and places long gone. It felt like I was completely removed from the outside world. That was oddly calming. They left me there to get settled as the tour continued on. I put my suitcase on the bed and started to unpack my meager possessions. As they filled up the space on the windowsill I started to feel odd, it was almost like I was putting down roots. For the first time in a long while I felt safe enough to put the coin down and leave it behind.

I took a shower and laid down on top of the bed. All of the pent up anger and frustration almost melted away, though some remained. My hands clenched and then released. I could feel all of the metal in the room now. Its presence kept me grounded. It let me know that I still had weapons, even if they took everything else away from me.

I was dying for a drink. Today had been hell with the long flight and drive, the disagreement with Charles, everything weighed on my chest. I didn't know why I cared what he thought. My life since Shaw had been mostly concerned with revenge, not feelings. It had been concerned with killing him and getting rid of the weight of the memories that seemed were constantly bearing down on me. Now it seemed I was adding new memories and regrets to join the rest.

I must have drifted off because when I woke next the sky was slowly turning dark outside the window shades. There was a knock at the door and I pulled my robe tightly around myself before I answered it.

Charles stood there looking awkward. He met my eyes for a moment before they settled at a point just over my shoulder. "I just wanted to know if you'd like something to eat or drink. You slept through dinner, not that it was anything fancy."

I had visions of Raven and the others cooking something messy and having a food fight. But what could you expect when you gathered a bunch of teenagers together with others that had powers just like them? Somehow I couldn't see Charles joining in, though he often gave the air of someone who liked to play practical jokes and have fun on his own terms.

"Sure, just let me get dressed." I said. He nodded and walked off down the hallway.

After I shut the door the doubts started to overwhelm me again. This was the first time he'd spoken to me directly since we'd arrived. Was he going to lecture me about what had happened in Russia? I hoped that when the time came he would be willing to let me take the needed step with Shaw.

When I finally arrived in the kitchen after a few wrong turns in the confusing hallways he was busy popping the cork on a bottle of wine. A mountain of unwashed dishes sat in the sink. Charles frowned at it slightly before discarding the cork. "I'm afraid there isn't really anything much, just the things for making sandwiches. The others kind of ate most of what the housekeeper left stocked."

"That's fine, I'm not that hungry." He handed me a glass and I accepted it gratefully. Alcohol tended to make difficult conversations easier. I assembled a sandwich and sat down at the table. The kitchen was surprisingly homey despite being attached to an elegant manor house. The only new item in the whole room was the refrigerator. The stove and sink were relics of an earlier time that existed before the sleek and modern. Even though it didn't look the same, I was reminded of the kitchen in the apartment where I had grown up. If I closed my eyes I could almost take myself back there, smell bread baking, see the sunlight drifting in through the faded white lace curtains above the sink. I let myself drift for a moment before rejoining Charles.

"Are you alright? You seem . . . distant."

"I'm fine. I just was remembering something."

He shook his head and smiled wistfully. "I met Raven in here. She was stealing food out of the refrigerator. I said I'd make it so she'd never have to steal again. I wanted to protect her."

I swirled the wine in the glass. "You're not related then?" That was surprising, they acted like they had been together almost since birth.

"No. I think of her as my sister though." He took a sip of his drink. "She's been acting oddly though. She keeps on asking me if I find her attractive, if I'd date her." Our eyes met and his were troubled. "I don't see her that way. I don't think I ever could. She's my oldest friend and doing anything like that with her . . . I think I'd lose her. And then there's her natural form."

I sighed. "You think she's hideous." The signs were there. He always seemed to pull away or flinch when she revealed herself. She noticed his reaction and would always switch back to her other form as quickly as she could.

The table became a lot more interesting for both of us. "Is that so wrong? Don't we all have certain kinds of people that we're attracted to? Is it so horrible that I can't find her blue skin attractive? I don't think there's many people who would."

I looked out the kitchen window. The sun was almost done setting, leaving the treetops ablaze with color as it disappeared. "I think she's beautiful." He almost looked enraged. "You're not wrong, blue skin isn't my ideal of beauty either. But when she's who she really is, when she has the confidence to be in her own skin, that's beautiful." I slowly picked my sandwich to pieces. "You don't have to be embarrassed about your powers, no one can see them. She does."

He almost looked like he was going to punch me. The moment dragged out between us. Then he slumped over and nodded. "I guess I never really thought of it that way. I just wanted the best for her."

I refrained from making any further comment. Who was I to say that he was wrong for protecting her from the cruelty of the outside world? Even if it had made it harder for her to eventually emerge from her protective skin when she was older; it had allowed her to have a somewhat happy childhood.

We had both finished eating but neither of us left the table. I almost thought I could feel him rooting around in my mind but he wasn't touching his fingers to his forehead. "We need to talk about what happened in Russia," he said.

I laughed. "You think I went too far." I refilled the glasses. I normally wasn't much for wine but I needed to do something with my hands. "What would you have done differently?"

"I wouldn't have almost decapitated her." He glared at me. "I would have let the CIA take her. That's what we would have done had it been Shaw, right?"

Actually I would have killed Shaw but he already knew that. "And what exactly do you think the CIA would have done? They wouldn't have been able to get the information because she would still have been in her diamond form."

"That may be true but I don't want to do things that way. I suppose that's just the idealist in me. Can you please not do anything like that again when we're working together?"

A flicker of anger passed through me but I suppressed it. Yet again things had to be done his way, with no discussion. "I can't promise that. If I see Shaw again I'm going to kill him." That was so obvious to me. I don't know why he couldn't see it. His eyes slowly closed and he shook his head.

"Yes, I know. I wish that wasn't the case, but I know." Suddenly it seemed extremely important that he understand why I had to kill Shaw. My mind started racing through all of the reasons that the world would be better off without him. I had to convince him.

But that was not to be. Moira came into the kitchen. "Charles? I was looking for you. I wanted to talk to you about some intelligence I just received." She acted as if I wasn't in the room.

Charles looked at her like she was a welcome rescue from the conversation. He leapt to his feet. "Ah! Well, let's go the study. I'll see you tomorrow Erik." He placed his hand on the small of her back and they headed off into the mansion. I could hear their laughter echoing down the hall.

I put the dishes in the sink. Somehow I didn't find out until the next day that I had bent a knife into a circle with my powers without realizing it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next few days were a haze of training and pushing my powers to the limit of what I was capable of. There had never been any need to move anything larger than a knife or a gun before so I had never really tried. Small objects had gotten easier to manipulate and groups of them were only slightly harder to move. But moving a larger construct was almost impossible. I would feel it and sometimes it would seem like it was about to move, but I could never make the step between visualizing moving the object and actually moving it.

Every night I went back to my room exhausted only to find myself unable to sleep. I would meet Charles in the library and we'd talk until early in the morning about nothing. We didn't talk about the night in the kitchen. For a time it seemed like it had been when we had been on the road trying to recruit mutants to our cause. Finally I would sleep a few hours before the cycle started again. I should have been tired beyond recovery but I had never felt more alive. It almost seemed like I was accomplishing something.

Charles was in his element. As I tried to work on refining my powers I could see how he was able to coax everyone to develop their powers to limits they had never thought possible. He dispensed advice that was always met with a smile as the recipient realized how helpful it was.

I tried to help as best I could, but my efforts were not as well received. It shouldn't have been that surprising I suppose. In retrospect pushing Banshee off the top of the satellite dish wasn't the greatest idea, but it had helped him make the breakthrough to using his powers to fly. Even though what I did usually worked the others moved away from me when I walked by. On some level it hurt because it would have been nice for my efforts to have been recognized, but instead I decided to delight in the fact that I intimidated people. It would have hurt too much otherwise.

Moira helped with the training to some degree. Sometimes she would help Charles set up training equipment but her role tended to be as an observer. I would see her following along behind Charles as he arranged practice sessions for each of the recruits. It seemed like she was paying careful attention, possibly to report back to the CIA. Later in the day she would pull Charles aside to have hushed conversations in his study. These could take a few minutes or a few hours behind closed doors. Whatever they talked about tended to involve a lot of laughing. I couldn't really be jealous as he spent more time with me at night.

Still it hurt to walk past the study and hear her tittering. Mealtimes were excruciating as well. They sat opposite each other at either end of the table. I sat somewhere in between Hank and Raven, who tended to spend their meal talking to each other around me. That combined with Sean's insistence on seeing how much he could annoy Alex before Alex would retaliate made it easy to eat my meals quickly and then excuse myself.

One night Charles and I stayed up later than we usually tended to. It had been a day full of accomplishments and I think Charles wanted to celebrate. He had become more emotionally invested in the recruits than I thought was perhaps wise. They could all die like Darwin had and then he'd be left with nothing but guilt. I didn't tell him that. Of course I wasn't innocent either. I had become extremely attached to him and that was kind of frightening.

Since the incident with my mother I had never felt this way about anyone before, man or woman. There had never been any need to care about what someone thought of me. Or if I did care they certainly didn't return the feeling. He was so unlike anyone I'd ever met. And his personality, his whole demeanor, was enticing. I normally tried to keep a barrier between myself and the outside world to keep people from getting close and distracting me from my revenge. He had broken it.

He was busy pouring champagne. "What are we celebrating?" I asked.

"Well, there's a few things to choose from. Alex was able to destroy the right training dummy, Hank finally took his shoes off to run, and Sean flew a little longer today." There was a huge smile on his face. It was infectious.

"That's impressive. Maybe they'll even be ready for Shaw when the time comes." That brought down the mood somewhat and I regretted it. "I didn't mean that," I rubbed at my eyes, "I'm just tired."

He nodded as if he understood. "I am too, but I feel like I need to be as encouraging as I can so they don't think about how serious the mission may be."

"I suppose that's one tack to take. You do seem to have a talent for making people want to push themselves." I took a sip of the champagne. "So when do you relax then? It must be stressful keeping it all inside."

He sighed and shrugged. For a brief moment he looked completely exhausted and drained but it passed quickly. "Frankly the one time I can be myself is when I'm with you. I look forward to these evenings together."

I wasn't quite sure what to say to that. I felt the same, but actually saying it to him seemed too much. Ordinarily by now we would have started playing chess. The board was set up and the pieces were in their appropriate places but neither of us moved towards them. Somehow tonight was different. I sat down on the sofa and he sat next to me. The awkward pause seemed to stretch out.

I decided to take a chance, hoping that he wouldn't use it against me. "Charles, I feel the same way," I said, staring firmly ahead. The glass in my hand seemed like it was about to shatter I was holding it so tightly. I put it down on the table. He seemed impossibly close. I closed my eyes. I could feel his body moving nearer. And then he kissed me.

I lost myself in his kiss. He had me pinned to the sofa, his hands holding me down so that I couldn't touch him unless he wanted me to. His lips were soft and parted soon after I touched them with my tongue. As we kissed it seemed like the room got impossibly hotter. Any resistance I wanted to put up faded away in the haze of tongue on tongue, flesh on flesh.

He nuzzled at the collar of my turtleneck. I gasped as his tongue lapped at my pulse. It made me twist in his hold and our chests touched. He laid down completely on top of me. That was an almost divine feeling. I moaned into his mouth.

"Erik, I wish we'd done this sooner," he whispered, then descended onto my neck. My hands clenched and tried to break free. I wanted to touch him so badly.

"I thought you and Moira..," I began but he soon covered my lips with his.

"You thought Moira and I were together? Hardly. She doesn't laugh at my jokes." He looked put out at the concept.

"Well they're awful," I said, laughing in spite of myself. He pouted. Finally I managed to push myself up a little so I could kiss his cheek.

"Besides she doesn't really think of me that way. She just wants me for my powers." He ground his hips down onto mine. My cock, which until now had only been mildly aroused, sprung to attention. I could feel his do the same. Ungodly sounds were coming from my throat, moans that I thought must have been loud enough for others in the mansion to hear. And still he held me down.

I could have used any number of metal objects in the room to make him let go, but this felt so good. "I'm no better, I just want you for your body," I joked.

At that he stopped. Everything. He pushed himself up so I couldn't reach him and held me down. "That's what this has been? I thought we were friends!"

I tried to reach him but I couldn't. "Charles, I was joking!" I protested. He smiled and tapped his temple. Surely he couldn't torture me like this.

"I know," he whispered and descended again. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out, his touch was exactly what I needed. I wanted to touch him back but he still held my arms down. He had my legs pinned as well. I didn't want to beg to touch him, that seemed almost demeaning. And yet he wouldn't let me up. I was slowly being driven insane by his frantic kisses along my neck.

"Please, I want to touch you," I finally whispered as he pulled away again. He slowly let go of my hands. I grabbed onto his back and pulled him down so I could kiss him on my own terms. It was his turn to moan and squirm as I kissed along his jaw line. I moved one of my hands to the gap between his pants and his shirt. It took a moment to pull his shirt out from where he'd tucked it into his pants, but once it was free I was able to touch his skin.

He gasped into my mouth. I traced the small of his back slowly with my fingertips. Goose bumps followed in their wake. He had worked one of his hands underneath my turtleneck and it had made its way up to one of my nipples. I couldn't help tightening my grip on his back. My fingernails must have dug in too much.

"Ow." He winced.

"Sorry." We resumed kissing, our hands roaming all over each others' bodies. It felt like I was losing all control over myself. Ordinarily I would have tried to keep myself from getting overwhelmed and tried to keep some control, but this was stimulation that overcame even that. This was a pleasant distraction from the larger issues at hand.

He pushed my legs apart and settled in between them. Our groins rubbed against each other. The pleasure that already seemed too high to bear threatened to spill over. It seemed hard to breathe. Our kisses devolved into panting into each other's mouths. One of his hands stayed caressing a nipple while the other slowly skimmed down my chest until it met my waistband. It seemed like it took ages for him to unbuckle my belt and slip his hand down inside my boxers. I had to bite my hand to quiet my moans as he slowly encircled my cock with his hand.

The metal in the room started to jangle and shift. I hoped that it was confined to this room. Otherwise there would be no way to keep this from the others. It had never really happened like that before, I could usually keep control of my powers while having sex. This was different.

He had stopped moving for a moment. "Fascinating. I didn't think you could do that. Are you doing it on purpose?" he said, sitting upright.

"No. It just happened." I tried to pull him back down but settling for undoing his belt.

"Are you always able to move all of the metal in a room?" He started to get up but I held him down. I moved my hand down to his boxers and slipped inside. His cock was so hot and hard. It jumped when I touched it.

"We can talk about this later," I hissed. I pulled him down into a savage kiss.

We both groaned as we stroked each others' cocks. Our foreheads touched and then we kissed. I suddenly saw images, disembodied visions of myself from Charles' perspective, a touch on my cock that suddenly multiplied. The metal started to shake. I couldn't breathe. We exhaled and inhaled as one. The pressure and pleasure kept building to impossible heights.

And then it was too much. I buried my head in his shoulder as I came. He came soon after. We kissed each other for a minute or so longer and then pulled apart.

"That was amazing," I panted. "I could see myself through your eyes, like I was you." He pulled away and tried to clean himself up as best he could. "Did you do that on purpose?"

He fastened his pants then bent over to pick up something that had fallen from his desk. "Not really. But I've never been with a mutant before. Maybe it's different."

The room was growing cold. I cleaned myself up as best I could in a vain attempt to look somewhat regular again. This was where things tended to get awkward. "Well, good night then."

Charles looked pained for a moment, like he wanted to talk about it, but that soon passed. "Good night."

I snuck through the hallways and corridors as stealthily as I could to avoid meeting anyone.