Title: Photographic Evidence
Fandom: X-Men First Class
Length: 515 words
Rating: PG
Content notes: no warnings apply
Author notes: part of the Patterns of Light series. Heartfelt thanks to kalypso for invaluable suggestions about the direction of the story.
Summary: The photograph lies there on MacTaggert’s desk, bearing false witness against him.



The photograph lies there on MacTaggert’s desk, bearing false witness against him. Charles wants to say It’s not what it looks like, but what would be the point? There he is, a flirtatious smile frozen on his face, and there is Sebastian Shaw, apparently murmuring sweet nothings in his ear.

“I told you, I turned him down,” he says, though he knows MacTaggert doesn’t believe him. She wouldn’t be using the photograph like that if she did.

From the furious, closed look on Erik’s face it’s clear he doesn’t believe Charles either, though his The hell you did remains unspoken.

For a crazy moment Charles wonders if MacTaggert knows about the two of them, if she’s using this to break the bond between them so that he’ll agree to what she wants. There’s no trace of it when he scans her mind: whatever she’s doing to him and Erik, she’s not even aware of it. The urge to hit back at her with his powers, to hurt her as she’s hurting him, is so strong he can almost taste it.

“Look,” she says wearily, “we know now that Shaw’s got a telepath in his gang, a woman. Moss told us that much before –”

Charles gets a flash of what’s in her mind: a hospital room with a dying man swathed head to foot in bandages. Ray Fletcher Moss, Erik’s friend and shift partner, the latest in a line of agents killed trying to bring Shaw to justice. The only one so far to survive long enough to tell them anything.

MacTaggert clears her throat. “You could block her, couldn’t you? Shaw’s telepath.”

Probably. “Possibly,” Charles says. The net is closing around him.

“And you have an in with Shaw,” MacTaggert persists. “You’re the best chance we’ve got.”

He looks at Erik, but Erik’s still staring at the photograph with that same expression on his face.

Tell me not to do it, Charles wants to yell at him. Tell me not to go. Tell me you won’t stand for it.

He’d wipe MacTaggert’s memory the next minute without a qualm if only Erik would look at him.

“The best chance we’ve got,” Erik echoes, flat and hard.

His self-disgust is so strong that Charles can hardly breathe. If Charles had said yes to MacTaggert the first time she asked, Moss might still be alive. If things had gone differently that night in the Bohemian Caverns, he and Charles would never have become lovers, might never have met except as witness and protection officer. Here he is with Charles’s marks still on him under his clothes, and there is that damned photograph on the desk, Shaw with his hands all over Charles, the way they will be again soon if Charles says yes this time. And he must. Nothing else will do. Erik hates him for it, hates himself more for having wanted this man, not knowing the cost, not knowing what he was…

There’s nothing left to salvage here. Charles swallows the bitterness that fills his mouth.

“OK,” he says to MacTaggert. “I’ll do it.”