Logs:Move the Coin

Move the Coin
CNs: Violence, death, head trauma, Nazis, reference to child death, implication of childhood medical abuse and experimentation
Dramatis Personae Charles, Erik, Nathaniel Essex
In Absentia	june 27th, 1976 I am going to count to three, and then I will move the coin.
Location <OK> HYDRA Laboratory - Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
The compound had, up until the last hour or so, been the most secure in the whole state. Now it is a shambles, heavy security doors ripped from their hinges, guards lying dead at their posts. Only the personal laboratory of the facility's head researcher remains unbreached, the door of its supposedly secret rear exit warped solidly into place against its frame. Now the two men who swept through the place in a wave of destruction have fetched up against the front entrance to the lab. Charles is looking pale and queasy but resolute in a blue-white striped seersucker shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts. He presses two fingers to his temple and stares at the door. "He's in there alright." He bites his lower lip and darts a worried glance at his companion. "He's gotten better at shielding. A lot better. But I'll keep him out of your head." With a deep breath in and then out, he rolls his shoulders and turns back to the door. "Shall we?" At his side, Erik’s grip tightens on the 10 Reichspfennig coin. The light brown of his dyed hair is speckled with blood (not his), the bottoms of his boots and the hems of his black trousers soaked with more of it. But he looks -- not quite satisfied, but almost, as he stares down the last door. Charles can hear the single-mindedness of his resolve, the way that the memories of their last encounters with this man give way to anticipation of vengeance. << {There is no submarine this time to save you.} >> He’s reaching out to pull the door off its hinges, the effort of his power aching like a sore muscle, when Charles speaks and he stops short. << we? >> An image, almost a sketch, of Charles’ body riddled with bullet holes flashes before him. “I will go. You will stay out here.” << You can be here, yes? >> The thought is not quite a sentence, more a sensation describing where the second here is supposed to be -- an echo of the warmth of Charles’ telepathy, wrapped around Erik’s mind and Erik’s rage. “I have put you in enough danger already.” Charles looks back at Erik, his abrupt dismay edging on panic, strong enough to spill over before he tamps it down. He opens his mouth to object, but the words catch with his breath. At the invitation, the gentle brush of sense memory, his mind wells up around Erik's in a surge of warmth. << I'm here >> feels like Erik's own thoughts speaking in Charles's voice, calm and soothing but laced with fierce whispers of << (don't have to do this)(you'll be in danger)(won't let him hurt you) >> Behind the fear and anger and uncertainty there's a startled and startling flash of joy -- for just for an instant, before Charles puts up more shields. Erik knows as if it were self-evident that he's insulating them from one another's pain and protecting them both from Essex's stolen telepathic powers. Charles backs himself clear of the entrance, his eyes trained on Erik the entire time. << I'm with you. >> Erik resists the urge to put a blood-splattered hand on the younger man’s shoulder, though perhaps the desire to do so is comfort enough with Charles in his head. << (won’t let him hurt you) >> starts in Charles’ whisper and wraps around the desire for revenge, the need to protect and prevent Essex from hurting anyone ever again. The fire of vengeance melts it all down into a hot single blade of purpose -- Erik grips the silver dagger by the hilt before ripping out the door of the lab. Inside is a long hall, lit only with the dim emergency lights at the baseboards. There are a few rooms off of the corridor -- offices, washrooms, supply rooms. At the end there are double doors to a clean room of sort, and then beyond it -- << I know you’re here, children. >> This is the mental voice of Nathaniel Essex, followed by a clumsy, blunt application of telepathy, trying to pry both of their minds open with the wrong tools. << I am so excited to add you both to my collection. >> Even with the shields in place, Erik can still feel Charles around him, just a subtly warm presence seeing what he sees and hearing what he hears. The shields around them tighten reflexively when Essex reaches for them, but cannot block out the sense of crude eager scrabbling. << I can hold that off, but I don't know what else he can do. >> Erik stops, briefly, at the clawing feeling inside his skull, grimacing at the sensation. << We will find out shortly. >> Under that is a touch of dread, a current of doubt -- << (what if I fail) (we can’t) (we can’t) >> -- that is only soothed by leaning into Charles’ touch in his mind. The clean room’s hermetic seal is broken with a flex of Erik’s power, then the inner door is similarly crumpled. He pauses on the threshold of the operating room. << Can you trap him from here? >> For a moment Charles does not seem to be doing anything at all. And then his warmth is flowing, roiling, trying to envelop Essex. He clearly has more finesse than his opponent, but with no experience actually contending with another telepath, his efforts are not much more successful. << Took me years to learn shielding, >> he complains to Erik quietly, as though worried Essex might hear. << I can't -- see how he's doing that. >> << Perhaps you need an outside perspective. >> Erik is trying to provide that, poring over the room for Essex. He’s turning, turning, turning until he finally spots Essex looming in the back of the operating theatre, in a suit, black hair slicked back, skin still too pale and a grin on his face. His thoughts are shielded from Charles, but the Nazi’s face isn’t shielded from the knife hurtling towards it. Erik is close behind, throwing the operating tables ahead of him to pin Essex to the wall. The knife, Essex seems to expect. He catches it with his left hand, not seeming to mind that it slices his palm open in the process. The tables, though also not a ‘’surprise’’, come at such speed that Essex doesn’t have time to move before they slam into his body and knock him back against the wall with force that would crack the skull of any other man. For Essex, he’s only momentarily stunned, but for a split second his mental shielding drops. Charles does not relent. His psionic attack feels startlingly gentle, a steady brightness wrapping around and around his opponent's, searching for weaknesses in the unfamiliar shielding. However brief the lapse, the moment Essex's attention wavers Charles has him. His relief is short-lived as he realizes Essex also has him. << Oh my stars. Please keep him distracted, if you can. >> He throws up shields across his possibly ill-advised link to Essex and starts casting around frantically for something he can use to immobilize or incapacitate. Essex lashes out against the warm presence. There's nothing gentle about his attacks, all unfocused sharpness edged with rage and glee. It might be sheer luck that he realizes the link is a direct path to the other telepath's mind, but when he does he wastes no time. << Why, it's almost as if you want me in there! >> He leaves off trying to get at Erik's mind and focuses on clawing through to Charles. << Distracted. >> Erik tugs the knife back to his hand and launches himself at Essex, bending the tables around him to try and pin him to the wall. << I think I can manage that. >> The dry commentary bubbles with rage underneath, barely tempered with the memory of a sunny day in Westchester << "You could fuel this with any emotion, not just the ones that spin you out of control," >> and the desire to leave this encounter with both him and Charles alive. This restraint means nothing to Essex, though, especially when he looks out from his psionic combat to see Erik swinging for, and then, breaking, his nose. Healing factor and bone durability do nothing for the sharp pain of breaking cartilage, and Essex's attention turns fully from the internal battle to the external with a bitter, snarling << How dare you >> . "Is that the best you can do, Maxi?" Essex taunts, shoving back the metal tables with inhuman strength towards Erik. "To think I ever wanted your pathetic power. Maybe I should have kept your mother instead of you, see what else she could have produced for my projects." Now Essex lunges forward, tackling Erik to the ground and trying to turn the knife back on him. His mental barrage hasn't stopped, but with the struggle with Erik demanding part of his attention, his shielding falters again. Both Erik and Essex's memories of Edie Eisenhardt's death play over and over as background to their fistfight, to Erik tearing at his tormentor's face with his fingernails, to Essex getting the upper hand and cutting open Erik's shoulder with the silver knife. Essex's memory of the scene leads, though, to something older, a very small casket at the core of his memories, locked and barred and chained to prevent Nathaniel himself from entering. Charles cannot feel the pain of Erik's injury through his shields, but he sees it clearly through the eyes of both men. His warmth is suddenly a blaze of fury that Erik can only distantly sense, but for Essex it is like being engulfed in flames. << Enough! >> His rage burns through the mental barriers around the memory of that tiny casket. The recollections come all at once -- a rosy-cheeked infant growing sickly and thin, a cavalcade of doctors with no answers and no cure, weeks of sleepless nights and prayer, until the emaciated husk of a child, too weak to even wail his misery, starves to death in the midst of plenty. Even behind his shields, Charles quails at the weight of the tragedy, but for Essex it is, for an instant, catastrophically overwhelming. An instant is all Charles needs. He bears down on Essex -- no finesse, now, just the weight of his searing, terrifying attention. Between his grief and fear, Essex freezes – his hands around Erik's throat, about to squeeze – and Charles slams down on the motor center that just lit up. The heat of his anger is already receding, but he does not let go, and Essex does not move, though his telepathy is thrashing wildly. << I've got him! >> Charles's voice in Erik's mind sounds relieved and unaccountably breathless. << We've got him! He's still fighting me, but I can hold him. It'll just take me a moment -- >> He's kind of babbling now, his mental voice shaky and frenetic with the beginnings of an adrenaline crash. << -- to knock him out. His mind is rather (a bloody mess) counterintuitive. >> << Knock him out? >> Erik is still bleeding from his shoulder, blood soaking through his sleeve, when he raises his injured arm to pry Essex’s fingers off his neck. << Now, when we’ve got him? >> He shoves Essex’s frozen body off of him, pushing unsteadily to his feet. << What, so he can escape when he wakes up? Why? >> Erik thinks he knows Charles’ answer already and it enrages him. << There will be no justice out there. It must end here. >> << He's killed thousands. He -- >> Charles manages to sputter even in telepathic speech. << -- he should stand trial so that a fuller accounting of his wicked deeds can be brought forth. >> He sounds a little frantic now. << And he might yet give up his compatriots! Erik... >> << Stand trial? And suffer, what, three, seven years in prison before released to do this all over again? If they try him? >> There's a brief flare of anger at Charles, this foolish naive child who wasn't even alive when the last Nazis to ever face a semblance of real justice were hung in Nuremberg. Nuremberg, the home that was taken from him – the parent that was taken from him, by the hand of the man Charles defends. Erik's mind boils with cold, cold rage. Where Essex lays on the lab floor, Erik walks over, looming over him like a surgeon over a patient. He pulls the zinc coin from his pocket, floats it between their two heads as Erik stares down at Essex. “{Are you still in there, Herr Dokter? I hope you can hear me. This will be your last experiment. I am going to count to three, and then I will move the coin.}” Erik’s stomach is twisting with every moment Essex remains alive. “{This should be simple.}" To Charles, there is a small stretch of apology. << I must do this. >> "{One}." Essex redoubles his effort to wrench himself free of Charles's control, his mind sharp and prickly and fast flooding with dread. His body is frozen in place, but he projects his thoughts loudly. << I am older than you would guess, and I can show you such wondrous things! >> Desperation is creeping into his tone. << I know your mind as only another telepathic scientist can. Think what fun we could have together, Charlie! >> Above Essex's face, the coin rises up, an axe waiting to fall . "{Two.}" Charles's mind is also flooding with dread. << No. Please, Erik, no! >> Shrinking away, his hold wavers dangerously and Essex almost tears free before he slams back down in a panic. << Erik. Please -- >> << I must. >> "{Three.}" The coin snaps down with a flex of power, with more force than gravity could ever exert on it alone, to drive through one side of Essex's skull then out the other. Charles looses a scream, the psychic one laced with Essex's agony and horror, the physical one reverberating from outside the lab. Both cut short when his body crumples unceremoniously to the floor. The warmth is gone from Erik's mind, leaving silence in its place. Erik stands over the body for a moment more, watching the blood pool around his already stained bootsoles as he removes the coin, ears echoing with both screams. There's a pause, like he's expecting someone to say something, anything to break the silence. "Charles?" His breathing quickens, for one, two, three breaths, before he turns on his heel and runs for the entrance.