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Erik has been unable to go visit Charles since he first found out about the serum. He's angry to a point that he hasn't felt in some time. There have always been outside elements toying with them and Erik is used to that, having lived on the island for long enough to know what outside forces playing with your life is like, but this is different. This is Charles taking fate into his own hands and making a decision that Erik finds to be abysmally stupid.

He's angry and the best way he has of sourcing that rage with something useful is his powers. Shaw had taught him that rage was the trigger and Charles taught him that serenity was the power, but tonight, he's veering closer towards the first. Small objects won't do -- they're too small and his control has long surpassed them - and so Erik is in the park as he works to control the magnetism of the earth, closing his eyes and sending himself into a place of inner peace in which he thinks of how much he's furious with Charles' decision to give up his powers and begins his ascent.

He doesn't go far, not yet, but he allows himself to stay suspended like this, five feet off the earth, and lets the rage bleed out into this activity for now. Perhaps later, if this isn't enough, there will be more. For now, it is enough.

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"Hiding away a part of himself," Erik replies, knowing that he will not abandon Charles' identity, but he feels utterly inclined to blast his idiotic decisions on the matter. "He bears a gift, the same as I do, but he would rather lock it away." And even though Charles has explained to him the reasons why, he cannot help but feel betrayed to his very bones. There are too few of them and Charles shows he does not want to be like them.

"Unlike you," Carla Jean adds, though it's clearly not necessary. If Erik were interested in locking anything away, she doubts he'd have been hovering five feet in the air in the middle of the goddamn park, and he wouldn't be so upset about whatever's going on with his friend. It's all still so new to her that she doesn't really know what to do with it, but she'll try anyway. "So what is it your friend can do? Can he move metal, too, or somethin' else?"

"No, Charles has his own set of abilities," Erik says, thinking of how dangerous they could be if given to the right hands. He thinks of how powerful they could be in their cause, but Charles believes that humanity wants to support them. Erik knows better. Humanity fears the outcasts and the different. Hasn't he seen it with his own eyes? "And no, I don't ever want to hide away again. Never again."

“Why’s it bother you so much that he does?” Carla Jean asks, an earnest question. As far as she can see, if someone wants to handle it differently, then that ought to be their right, but there might be something she’s missing. Erik seems pretty adamant about it, after all, and even with as new as she is to all of this, he’s a friend, and someone she would be inclined to believe. “I can’t imagine everyone would want to put on a show like that one back there.”

"Because he can be so much better than what he is and he can use his powers for our people, our kind," Erik says. "Do you know what someone like Charles can do for a cause? He's a handsome, intelligent, powerful young man. He's perfect for it." If only his values aligned better with Erik's.

"According to you," Carla Jean says. He's right, of course, about the first part; history proves just how true that is. This friend of Erik's, though, can't be perfect for anything he doesn't want to do, no matter how frustrating that might be. "I'm guessin' you've tried tellin' him why he should do it?"

"I've tried many times, but unfortunately while our friendship may be strong, we have a habit of not listening to one another's ideals," Erik notes wryly, as though he cannot help such a thing given their stubbornness. "It's something we've both learned to live with. He does things his way. I want things mine."

"So I guess either of you findin' a way to compromise is out of the question?" Carla Jean asks. She has a feeling that there'd probably be no simple, clean way to do so anyway, with a subject like this at hand, one she can still barely wrap her head around, but she's sure there would have to be some kind of solution if they'd both be a little less stubborn. "If the both of you just want things your own way, you're probably not gonna get anywhere except more frustrated."

"Yes, I think you've touched on why it's always a sore subject, our friendship," Erik admits, feeling that old burn in his mind, of frustration and his desperation to talk sense into Charles even though he knows that must be what Charles thinks of him, at the same time. "And yet, we keep trying."

“So there must be somethin’ worth tryin’ for,” Carla Jean says, shrugging. Still, that strikes her as all the more reason why they both ought to attempt to give at least a little. Falling into the same patterns over and over again isn’t going to do either of them any good, and is bound to only make things increasingly strained. “Which is somethin’.”