closed

[exothermia]

Who: Erik, Kitty, and Kurt
Broadcast: none
Action: the Iskaulit
When: September 3rd

[There was an impulse, however fleeting, to delay this conversation. It came and went like a flicker of lightning. No, Erik knew there was no delaying this, and it would be better for all concerned if it was taken care of immediately. He had felt little trepidation when he sent the messages to Kurt and Kitty last night: I need to speak with you tomorrow. The Iskaulit. The responses had come back with differing times, and maybe that was for the best. It could be easier. (It would not be easier.)

A slight measure of foreboding sets in when Erik arrives in the library, enough to keep him on his feet instead of waiting for them in a chair. He knows what will happen; what needs to happen. Everything that happens after is a mystery that he'll accept as it comes.]

Comments

[exothermia]

[His expression flickers slightly, pain and acknowledgement both.

There was a reason Erik came into this conversation believing he'd lose his ties to Kitty. What he had done was unforgivable enough on its own. When held up against the Magneto of her world, the sheer horrors he must have faced and stood tall against even then, he's nothing but a sick and twisted shadow. He wants to apologise for ever seeming like he could hold a candle to that. Because he couldn't.

His reasons aren't enough. He can't claim he never wanted it - he remembers wanting everything to burn, to be destroyed, taken from others the way it had been taken from him. It had only grown once En Sabah Nur touched him, sending lighting through his soul and scorching out everything that wasn't pain and rage. After that his memory falls apart, turns murky, and even the things he does remember seemed far away. It had taken Raven's plea and En Sabah Nur moving on Charles to finally break through to him, let him come back up for air. To know he had betrayed them, and himself.

He touches his thumb to the gold ring, to the silver. He returns his focus to seeing this through. It's the least he can do. His gaze doesn't waver.]

I know. It was wrong. [Maybe, if he'd been able to remember her warnings, he wouldn't have faltered. He'll never know.] I regret it. It changes nothing, but I regret it.

[passingthrough]

Good! [She shouts it back. And takes another step away.

Some part of her wants to forgive him. Comfort him even. The part of her that doesn't want to—can't—lose more people. And he is, or maybe was, one of her people. She'd been worried about him since he went into that coma. She didn't want to think about him going away. There was more to say and know and do. He wasn't her Magneto, but he was becoming her Erik. It made her feel better that he was here with her. With her and Kurt. Maybe he hadn't always done everything right, but who had? She could relate to that better. And he wasn't a bad guy. He wasn't the enemy of the X-Men or humanity. She believed it. She wanted to believe it.

And if she could just bridge this gap now she could have him back. She wouldn't have to be alone with her righteous indignation.

But she isn't ready for that. She has a storm of feelings inside her. Maybe later when the storm expends its energy. When it's nothing left but rain and clouds she'll be able to accept this. Accept the flawed man who was in pain—who had his own storm—and reached out for something, anything that would feel different. Accept that he saw that it was wrong and he came back from it. Maybe he even helped kill Apocalypse. And now he regrets it and he came to her to be honest and open even knowing how badly she would likely take it. He did it anyway. There's something to respect in that. Maybe not a leader, but a friend. He never asked to be more to her. Not this man.]

You're the one who shouldn't be able to sleep at night! [And given the look of him maybe he can't. The comment probably won't even make sense to him. She doesn't mean herself. She means Winn. He's been struggling ever since Sascha was changed by the Atroma for a time and attacked him. She's been trying to soothe that, but nothing ever gets healed, does it? Just more wounded and broken.]

Survival of the fittest is such a joke. Nothing survives. [She turns. She has nothing left to say right now.]

[exothermia]

[He finally steps back himself. There's nothing else he can say. He doesn't want to soothe her, tell her that it's different now, because that's cheap and self-serving. Everything she's saying is true.

"Everything they've built will fall. And from the ashes of their world we shall build a better one!" It had been the siren song, something he understood. He had failed at everything else he tried to do: save Kennedy, get mutants to their rightful place in the world, lead a revolution. Protect his family. All he had ever been good at was killing people. It had been easy to turn back to that, when someone said he could do it. "Reach down into the earth," he had said, and Erik had done so.

He'd once told Shaw he was Erik's creator as a weapon. En Sabah Nur had been the one to wield him.

Erik doesn't move to stop Kitty from leaving, or try to say anything else. He still has one more attempt at this to go.]