X-men: World of Gray

Chapter 33

Chapter 33…

Charles was stable. That was the best news Dr. Napier could provide, and as Erik stood by his friend's bedside, his arms were folded tight to his chest. Charles lay on the mattress, a starched white bed sheet draping him from chest to feet. His eyes remained open. His arms rested outside the covers with tubes protruding from his skin like he was a component of a machine and nothing more.

That was, after all, what Erik had reduced him to already. At the base.

The doctors had made their conclusions. Charles had suffered a stroke; it was the easiest explanation, after all. They expected he wouldn't recover, or if he did, he'd be a vegetable, hardly better than the unconscious man lying there in at that instant.

Gingerly, Erik extended his hand. He wrapped his fingers around Charles' left wrist, just above the dark ring of purple staining his skin. Words ached in Erik's throat, but he didn't bother with any. He had been such a fool. He had allowed the other mutants to manipulate his better judgment, to make an enemy of their own kind like dogs eating each other.

Never again.

He slid his hand away.

Like his feet was attached to the floor, Erik trudged away from his friend's bedside, and then down the hall. He passed Mrs. Rainer; the hefty woman tracked him with her eyes. She was already trying to obtain records to figure out if what Erik had told her was the truth.

Erik wandered into the hospital's lobby. Near the exit was a set of stairs and he followed them to the basement. Down below, the image appeared quite different than the upper floors. The hallways were more narrow, the personnel more scarce. He marched past all of them, weaving his way through the labyrinth. Soon, even the staff were few and far between. He found the door.

The wood was old and heavy. On the front of it, someone had taped a "Call Maintenance" sign with bright yellow paper. The door knob was contorted, squished like a bug—the lock no better. Erik should know. He was the one who had busted the thing.

As he flung a glance once more down the corridor for nearby personnel, he lifted his hand. The lock did as he obeyed and the knob twisted. Prying the door open, Magneto peered down. A few feet from the entrance to the supply closet, a pile of wires were clumped together on the floor. The person that had been within them—gone.

Erik didn't react. He had dumped Azazel into the closet hours before, and holding onto him while dealing with all the drama unfolding upstairs had proved impossible. Perhaps Erik just hadn't cared at that moment. Or perhaps, he knew if Azazel had still been there when Erik opened that door again, Erik might have just decided to kill the teleporter and be done with it.

Azazel deserved to die. Just like Riptide, he had made an enemy out of his own kind and allowed his 'comrade' to strap Charles to that machine until the telepath's mind crumpled under its own power.

But was Erik any better?

Erik closed the door. He swept any thoughts about Azazel to the back of his mind. He had other concerns at the moment.

Turning from the door, he headed back upstairs. To his friend, who was stable. Erik remembered the last time that word was used to describe Charles—in his medical file at the physical therapy center. About his spinal cord injury. Erik also recalled what it really meant.

It was another way of saying permanent.

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By the time Hank, Sean and Alex were able to squirm out of the mound of metal scraps Erik had landed on top of them, all the other mutants had disappeared. Erik and Azazel had gotten into some type of quarrel; although Hank couldn't make out what was said, he still heard the fight even with a ton of metal on his back. Emma didn't seem to have been involved, but she wasn't there when Hank freed himself.