markedformore | (no subject)

It happens, again.

One moment, Erik feels himself safe in the embrace of his mother -- Schmidt dead behind him and the nightmare gone -- and the next, he finds he is back at the beginning and watching in horror as Schmidt requests -- asks, demands, insists -- that he move the coin. His anguish must be palpable and easy to hear from continents away and if Charles is nearby, it will be the first thing he hears. His fingers tremble and so he presses the blunt edge of filthy nails into his palm to stop them.

-- all that this does is cause his muscles to flex and the numbers etched on his arm stand out in stark contrast.

He cannot do this. He cannot live with this one more time. The hope bleeds out of him. The rage ebbs away. He is left a broken boy standing before his creator with no knowledge of what he is meant to do next. If they escape, he is brought here. If Erik stops Shaw, they are brought back here. In the distant recesses of Erik's mind, he is aware there is another option, but he cannot bring himself to think on it.

His shoulders lose the firm line of defiance and he wonders what is left to do but surrender to inevitability, if nothing else will work.

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Billy is slowly catching up to what they're talking about, and when he realizes who the her in question must be, he understands why Erik is so hell bent on stopping the event from happening. He almost wants to interrupt again, try to do something to save her, but Charles is right. They've done it both ways and nothing has happened.

It's hard to picture the thin, devastated boy as the man he'll become, especially when all Billy wants to do is take him in his arms and make false promises that everything will be okay.

Edited 2011-12-02 06:24 (UTC)

Erik's fingers twitch with frustration and the edge of despair as Charles' words sink in and a terrifying acknowledgement of logic begins to take grip of his heart and his mind. Erik begins to understand what is going to happen -- what he is going to witness and what he must not do. He must not change the course of the future for if he does, then everything his life has led towards will be for naught.

He will never have met likeminded people.

He will never have met Charles.

Panic grips him in the midst of despair and anger. He looks to Charles and mouths a simple I'm sorry because of what's happened. He's done a terrible thing and he's sorry that Charles and Billy have been here to witness it, not that he's done it. He knows, now, what is going to happen and he doesn't want to be observed like a laboratory rat for the remainder of this torture.

Please. Go.

No matter his age, Charles is not someone who can abide being helpless. He's always had his way, has always managed to wheedle out a solution where others might simply give up, all the while maintaining some sense of good morals. But they've found themselves in an impossible situation. Act, and they will simply start the loop anew. Fail to act, and they will have to witness not only another death, but the creation of the man Erik has become, one bitter and fueled by revenge.

Charles doesn't want to leave, would rather find some novel solution to fix all of this, and yet their hands are seemingly tied. He touches Billy's arm, fingers wrapping around the boy's wrist. Erik's fate might be sealed by the vault of history, but he can protect Billy from the brutality of what's to follow.

Come with me.

If it weren't for Erik asking them to, Billy would have stayed and watched, just so he didn't have to go through it again on his own. He wants to tug his hand out of Charles's grasp, tell him he's seen things no child is supposed to and this won't be any different.

But he gently shakes his wrist free and heads to the door without another look back, knowing if he sees Erik again, he'll try to stop this, do something else. And he doesn't want to be responsible for him living through it once more.

When they are gone, it's almost as if Erik's life now speeds up like film at its highest speed rushing before his eyes. He knows these events so intimately that they are burned into his brain and he need not watch them to remind himself what will happen -- he has never forgotten. Erik can see that Schmidt is disappointed in Erik and so he will bring out his lesson, his cautionary tale. Soon, he will take the brightest light from Erik's young life and snuff it out as carelessly as one might a candle.

Erik thinks, briefly, that he must stop the bullet. He thinks of their aborted and failed attempts and knows that stopping the events will not do them any good.

He thinks, then, that he must save his mother. He also knows that this will do him no good. It will bring him back here and acting as her saviour will only prolong this emotional torture. At the last minute, with Schmidt's finger on the trigger, Erik knows better. Shoot me, he remembers, I can stop it. But, now, heart heavy with grief and tired of this day, he's unsure that he wants to. It's why at the sound of the chamber releasing its lethal weapon, it takes little more than a moment's thought and curl of his fingers to divert the bullet's path.

He does not repurpose it towards Schmidt. It does not become forever lodged in a wall, rendering it harmless.

He directs the bullet on the swiftest path to his own heart, whispering soundless apology as he does to whatever deity might be listening to him. He could not have stopped this. The past is key to the present and to creating the future he wishes to see. He cannot change this. He cannot prevent it or avenge a death.

It must happen.

This is the last thought Erik holds to himself before the life begins to drift away from him and everything goes suddenly dark. Perhaps he cannot stop the events of this day, but he will not give Schmidt the satisfaction of having created something terrible. Charles will continue their work. Raven will keep him in check. Perhaps all that Erik Lehnsherr was meant to do was live and then die as soon as he learned his lesson.

He draws his last breath and thinks (and wishes) that there was a happier ending for any of them.