not again

Charles: "I’ve had nightmares of him catching you, Erik. Of you brought to the Hellfire Club as a prisoner and Shaw giving me the choice of turning you into an obedient servant of the Inner Circle or letting Emma do it. I don’t know if I have the skill for such a delicate task, one to be tried for the first time upon a mind as formidable as yours.

"I don’t know that I could do it well, but I do know that Emma couldn’t do it at all. And then I wake up screaming because my choice is to rip out your soul or let her destroy you entirely and irreparably.

"Please stay where you are, wherever it is that you are, and don’t force that choice upon me."

Erik: "If it should ever come down to that choice, Charles, I ask that you kill me instead."

Charles: "This is you telling me you won’t stay away, isn’t it."

Erik: "No, this is me telling you that it doesn’t matter what I do. There are a hundred ways your nightmare comes to pass. I’d like you to be prepared for all of them."

The outline's at ten thousand words and I'm possibly past the halfway point, but maybe not. The story itself... oh my goodness. And it's entirely seperis's fault. (Not really, I do this to myself, but she's egged me on.)