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XXVI
Charles loves to sing. It's one of the things Erik always misses, when he's away, across the ocean or the country, it doesn't matter; there is a distinct absence of humming, of half-remembered words and the lovely timbre of Charles' voice as he potters around the apartment, sleeves rolled messily to his elbows, a pen tucked behind one ear where he's forgotten it and feet bare and padding across the floorboards.
Erik doesn't sing. Sometimes he wonders if Charles would turn and smile at him if he joined in, but he never quite does; instead he listens, makes it part of the background of home, a word he is starting to use more frequently now that it seems he is going to be staying in one place for a while.
XXVII
He spends the next month working solidly on consolidating infrastructure and government, sometimes from his office, sometimes in board rooms and sometimes out in the world, Azazel accompanying him from city to city and town to town for meetings and tours and demonstrations. He gives three speeches, none of them especially memorable save the last, which gathers a crowd of protesters outside with plackets demanding he step down and hold an election for a replacement, one he assumes is intended to be human. When he tries to speak to them the protesters shout louder and louder until he cannot be heard by anyone, and he deflects a few half-serious missiles, expression growing darker with each until eventually he is forced to accept that he cannot force them to listen and gives up, for now. The fact that since his takeover there has been more food, better healthcare for those sick of radiation, and that mutants with applicable gifts are actively working to reclaim some of the land their human politicians had destroyed, seems to have gone over their heads entirely. Magneto is a despot, and nothing more.
He wonders who they would prefer to have in his place, had they the choice - most of the human leaders had been killed when Washington DC had been bombed, and those that hadn’t had gone underground, most of them too sick or weak without their bases of power to do anything practical or conducive to the survival of the general population. It’s all so frustrating, being slandered for being a mutant who took control of a collapsing system and rescued it when what he is mostly doing is a good job.
Magneto also spends time in South America with Magma, working on their own needs and helping to reassure their supporters that they are in control and doing what is necessary. Magma is extremely competent and has things well in hand, but there is something about Magneto and the long shadow his name casts these days that settles the mutants, reassures them that things will be looked after.
Erik wonders, sometimes, when Magneto became this giant figure, this colossus, a rock for mutants to build on and a hammer for humans to fear. When he is home he is grateful that Charles does not see him that way, and that he is very happy to take him down a peg or two if Charles sees it necessary, a few pointed comments enough to rein in any ego he might otherwise have cultivated. Raven, too, teases him whenever she has the chance, something she had not done before Charles, though she had been the closest he had to a confidante; something has changed to make her feel she can mock him now, and have it be accepted in good humour, most of the time. Where once he was iron through and through, cold and unchangeable, solid as that rock, some days Erik feels more like mercury, now, on the inside, shifting and malleable, like a hidden reservoir, or a lake deep underground, slowly trickling through aeons of rock to reach the surface, a bubbling spring bringing things out into the open air where they can breathe.
FILL: Everyday Love in Stockholm 132/?
Charles loves to sing. It's one of the things Erik always misses, when he's away, across the ocean or the country, it doesn't matter; there is a distinct absence of humming, of half-remembered words and the lovely timbre of Charles' voice as he potters around the apartment, sleeves rolled messily to his elbows, a pen tucked behind one ear where he's forgotten it and feet bare and padding across the floorboards.
Erik doesn't sing. Sometimes he wonders if Charles would turn and smile at him if he joined in, but he never quite does; instead he listens, makes it part of the background of home, a word he is starting to use more frequently now that it seems he is going to be staying in one place for a while.
He spends the next month working solidly on consolidating infrastructure and government, sometimes from his office, sometimes in board rooms and sometimes out in the world, Azazel accompanying him from city to city and town to town for meetings and tours and demonstrations. He gives three speeches, none of them especially memorable save the last, which gathers a crowd of protesters outside with plackets demanding he step down and hold an election for a replacement, one he assumes is intended to be human. When he tries to speak to them the protesters shout louder and louder until he cannot be heard by anyone, and he deflects a few half-serious missiles, expression growing darker with each until eventually he is forced to accept that he cannot force them to listen and gives up, for now. The fact that since his takeover there has been more food, better healthcare for those sick of radiation, and that mutants with applicable gifts are actively working to reclaim some of the land their human politicians had destroyed, seems to have gone over their heads entirely. Magneto is a despot, and nothing more.
He wonders who they would prefer to have in his place, had they the choice - most of the human leaders had been killed when Washington DC had been bombed, and those that hadn’t had gone underground, most of them too sick or weak without their bases of power to do anything practical or conducive to the survival of the general population. It’s all so frustrating, being slandered for being a mutant who took control of a collapsing system and rescued it when what he is mostly doing is a good job.
Magneto also spends time in South America with Magma, working on their own needs and helping to reassure their supporters that they are in control and doing what is necessary. Magma is extremely competent and has things well in hand, but there is something about Magneto and the long shadow his name casts these days that settles the mutants, reassures them that things will be looked after.
Erik wonders, sometimes, when Magneto became this giant figure, this colossus, a rock for mutants to build on and a hammer for humans to fear. When he is home he is grateful that Charles does not see him that way, and that he is very happy to take him down a peg or two if Charles sees it necessary, a few pointed comments enough to rein in any ego he might otherwise have cultivated. Raven, too, teases him whenever she has the chance, something she had not done before Charles, though she had been the closest he had to a confidante; something has changed to make her feel she can mock him now, and have it be accepted in good humour, most of the time. Where once he was iron through and through, cold and unchangeable, solid as that rock, some days Erik feels more like mercury, now, on the inside, shifting and malleable, like a hidden reservoir, or a lake deep underground, slowly trickling through aeons of rock to reach the surface, a bubbling spring bringing things out into the open air where they can breathe.