markedformore | July 30th

July 30th - Amnesia's End

The gun is in the middle of his clothes.

Erik picks it up cautiously, confusion ebbing through him as he picks up the weapon and holds it firm in his hand. He's supposed to know something about this. He's supposed to understand something about the weapon, but Erik strains to think of what it is. Hefting it up until his fingers slide over the butt of the weapon, he recalls how so many guards had brought these with them in order to enact the peace.

He takes it with him and finds a spot near the mansion he awoke in, sitting cross-legged as he stares at the weapon in his hands. Everything that he has been dreaming about, the thoughts and the feelings and the darkness edging in on the lightness he has been feeling. Staring at this weapon, he begins to remember, now.

I believe that true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity.

Carefully, cautiously, Erik lifts the gun to his forehead and presses there lightly, the weight of it familiar, heavy.

Oh, come on, you know I can deflect it.

Rage. What has Erik ever known of rage? Like a bolt, it hits him, strikes him, and he drops the gun like his hand has been burned. It has been, but not for some time. Erik stares at his forearm, the numbers making sense once more and horror begins to creep into his awareness, always underscored by rage, rage, singing through him and his happiness begins to fade away, though stubbornness holds tight and that happiness refuses to budge.

There's so much more to you than you know.

Erik gasps sharply and it all comes back. Everything. Pain, anger, but the joy and the happiness and the good memories too, buried so deep that he thought he'd lost them forever. Breathing raggedly, he fights through tears and presses a fisted hand to his chest to try and overcome the ache there.

He remembers.

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Tired does not begin to describe the exhaustion that's infected Charles since last month's end. His duties and research would have kept him occupied enough on their own, but added to this Hank's disappearance and Erik's regression to a childlike state, and he has scarcely slept in weeks out of worry and guilt that he's unable to do more. Perhaps under different circumstances Erik's state would have been amusing. Under the current circumstances, however, it's simply one more thing to worry about on a list as long as his arm.

Charles has come to regret that the mansion's so far away from the compound these past few weeks, but that regret comes to a head this afternoon when he realizes he'd forgotten the bulk of his research on the kitchen table instead of putting it in his bag, forcing him to make his usual commute much earlier than normal so he can still hope to get some work in for the day. He doesn't notice Erik until he's nearly ran over him, stopping some feet away before an actual collision occurs.

"Erik, what are you--?" His question dies on his lips, eyes lighting first on the gun and then on the expression on his friend's face, willing it to be familiar.

"--Erik?"

Erik has been parsing through the interactions he's been having over the past month -- where he had moved to, above all things -- and how much he had said and told of his childhood to people whom he otherwise would not have given the time of day. "I hope you're going to be able to come to terms with the fact that I may very well need to murder half the island, Charles," he informs the man, cool and crisp as he thinks with horror of the last month.

Charles stares for another moment, blinking owlishly as he tries to work out whether or not he heard Erik correctly or if he just imagined the response. Given the events as of late, he's not entirely comfortable ruling out a hallucinatory episode.

"Pardon?"

"The things I said. The things I did," Erik says, heavily as the memories wash over him and remind him of how horrifyingly he had behaved. "I forgot the English language," he says, but that is not the deepest point of his humiliation, not nearly close. How happy he had been, how human, and how without his hatred and his need for vengeance.

He does his best to shake the envy of his young self. "I owe you a dozen apologies."

He feels foolish, standing there with his mouth agape, but the sudden rush of relief does wonders to his ability to not care. Perhaps he ought to be concerned that his friend has regained his claws, so to speak, but Charles can't muster any reaction beyond being grateful that Erik has, at long last, escaped the Island's latest trick mostly intact. That he no longer has to spend their conversations translating every word in his head before mustering up a reply is simply an added bonus.

"That's hardly necessary," he says instinctively. Erik's innocent of this particular crime, a victim of circumstance, and he'd done little as an eight-year-old that requires apology except perhaps robbing him of a few hours sleep that first day. The reminder serves only to kick his scientific proclivities into gear.

"You remember everything?"

The gun is still in his hands, a careful and steady weight, though he has nudged the safety on with a flick of his thumb cautiously, unwilling to dare fire it without the ability to deflect the bullets as he once could. Given to remembering, now, as if coaxed by Charles' question, it all floods back. The first few days and the confusion, but now the understanding filters in and he hears the comments made so long ago. "Everything," he says, darkly. It is a stark contrast to Charles' utterance of the same word to insist that he knows Erik, inside and out.

"My things are with Ms. Beaufort-Stuart," he admits. He wrinkles his nose in faint disgust at the things he had said and how innocent he had been, gaze slipping to the numbers on his arm. "Do you know, Charles, not one person told me."

Charles doesn't ask for clarification, knowing exactly to what Erik refers simply by the direction of his friend's gaze. Without invitation, he settles beside him, not bothering to hide his relief. Losing Hank had been difficult, but to have an Erik here who didn't know him in the slightest was harder still.

"Some things are better kept from children," he murmurs, equally as guilty for having kept that truth as anyone else.

"I always thought the truth was paramount," Erik admits, folding his arm inwards, fingers curling around the hilt of the gun and he stares at it again, as if all his attention is focused on this thing before him.

They are in the middle of nowhere. No one is around them. No one will see them and they will hardly be interrupted. After so long avoiding the topic, Erik feels as if they must now broach it. "Do you ever feel as empty as I do? Without it?" he asks, gesturing temple-wards as he shoots Charles a curious look. Sitting here, with the gun in his hand, he remembers the things he could do, the things he wanted to do. He had been so angry, but effective.

This past month has proven a frustrating exercise in the limitations of life without his abilities, and Erik's question, so simply stated, cuts him to the quick. His head bowing in exhaustion, Charles nods, once, chin resting his on his chest as he contemplates his hands.

"Empty doesn't begin to describe it, truly," he says, no less quiet than before. "Useless, perhaps."

"I forgot what I could do," he states the obvious, given that Charles is well-aware that Erik's memories had slipped to a time before he had manifested his ability to manipulate and coax metal from its natural state. "And yet, I was happy. Happy and human and unimportant and useless. I don't know how to reconcile that."

"No one is unimportant," says Charles, almost reflexively. Mutant or human, a life was a life, and equally worthy of importance; despite his own sense of short-comings, Charles can't even believe that Erik had been useless in such a state, though it had left Charles feeling terribly alone for weeks. He had never been a man of many friendships, the type who amasses connections more so than companionship, and July as a whole had been rather dismal on that front.

It occurs to him, distantly, that he'll have to tell Erik about Hank's disappearance, and yet he's unsure how to broach the topic at all. He chooses to focus on what's more relevant for the moment.

"I would suggest," he starts, louder, "to remember that happiness, to keep it at the forefront of your thoughts. I told you once that you were a good man. I still believe that, Erik, despite... Everything."

Erik is aware that he ought to let sleeping dogs lie, but the stubborn aspects of him refuse to simply let a comment exist without further pursuit. "Despite what, Charles?" he demands, given that he wants a more specific answer than the perpetually broad 'everything' that Charles seems keen to place all his misgivings under.

"Your dogged pursuit for vengeance," offers Charles, too tired to avoid the question as is his usual wont. His exhaustion bleeds into his voice, the faint shrug of his shoulders. As grateful as he is for Erik's return to fouler spirits, he hasn't the patience for it, not right now.

"Is that what you want to hear, my friend?"

"I simply wanted to hear you say it," Erik admits, hardly insulted by words that he asked for. Charles isn't incorrect, either, given that Erik has spent so long with the dogged pursuit of vengeance (as he puts it) near to his heart. "I still missed my parents, you know. Regardless of how happy the situation made me, there was the longing I couldn't prevent, but it didn't hurt quite so much. Their absence was different when I was oblivious to the cause as to why."

"Then I'm not sorry I didn't tell you," Charles replies. He debated, of course, whether or not to answer that question but in the end, it had seemed an unnecessary burden to give someone who believed themselves to be a child, not when the effects of the amnesia were surely to be temporary.

"Regardless of whether you believe it or not, Erik, you do deserve some happiness."

Erik bows his head lower, wondering what words he can bring about to evoke how he feels about this. "You know, I forgot," he says, part-fact and part-question. "I forgot what it was like to be happy without the burden of grief on my back. It always lingered, there," he says. The weight of the gun in his palm is heavy, but he feels as if it can protect him.

"I'm not sure how to find happiness again."

"...do you want to?" asks Charles, curious.

It's a fair question, he thinks, given how Erik sought to live his life before they met. He wasn't searching for peace; he wasn't searching for anything other than revenge. Even Charles' influence over him had extended only so far.

It remains a heavy question that Erik poses to himself on multiple occasions. "I think, six months ago, perhaps even a year back I would have said that I wasn't looking for happiness or peace of mind. I was yet angry, but with new things. I was angry that I couldn't move metal and that so much was taken from me, but as time has passed, I begin to wonder if the reason I'm here is to make me remember the happiness of family and friends. It takes me by great surprise, you know, to think of Billy and be overwhelmed by the sheer adoration I have for the boy."

Erik's words bring a faint smile to Charles' space. Spending time with the boy has been good for Erik, without a doubt, and while Charles does sometimes question how Erik treats his friends, he can comfort himself with the notion that Erik won't do any wrong towards his grandson.

"He is a fine young man," Charles agrees. "Might I make a suggestion? Focus on what you know makes you happy -- your family, your friends -- and hope that the love you hold for them is enough to keep past pains at bay. You cannot forget what made you, Erik, but perhaps you can stop letting it define you." He looks down at the gun, then tries to meet Erik's gaze. "You are so much more than that, my friend."

"You were the only one to think so for two decades," Erik says, a secret that he is sure had not been so secret to Charles. Erik had done himself no favours, of course, as he had managed to set himself apart from sympathy with the acts he committed, but still, there had been nothing to earn him a kind word.

He had done nothing to earn it. "Happiness," he echoes, with a mild scoff. To what end, he wonders, but he assumes this is for good -- for life.

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July 30th - Amnesia's End

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