Erik looks up and scrambles to his feet when it strikes him that his mother will be just behind the other door, lying in wait. He sniffs to hold back tears of some emotion he cannot pinpoint and brings with him a flying fury of metal as he yanks open the heavy wooden door, trapping the officer with a bayonet and a rusty pitchfork before he goes sprinting for his mother, to assure him of his reasons for doing this, to make sense of the madness in his mind -- that he's sure Charles can see straight into. "Mutter," is all he breathes out, relinquishing all memory of the man he grows into and the blood on his skin.

He will trade it all for this moment. He will do it a thousand times over.

But, as with all things, it won't last.