A/N: I know, I know. I should be working on Pedagogy right now. But I was thinking about said WIP and Erik/Charles things and this song, Hymn for the Missing by RED came up on my iPod, and I decided to do sort of a speed writing thing with it. Just sit down without much of a plan and write this out while I listened to the song on repeat. I did go back and correct grammatical/spelling errors, but this is what poured out when I sat down. Hope you like it! *crosses fingers*

Oh, and I realize that this is not the original intention of the lyrics of this song, and I appreciate the piece of music for what it is. But it inspired me for this piece (among many other things), so I humbly ask for a little wiggle room. I also highly recommend listening to it before, during or after reading this story.

Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men or any of the characters therein. I'm just borrowing them.

Warnings: Character death. Charles and Erik romance. And drama. Drama drama.

You took it with you when you left

These scars are just a trace

Now it wanders lost and wounded

This heart that I misplaced

RED: Hymn for the Missing

There's a pocket watch on the night stand, glinting in a halo of light cast by a cheap, brushed steel lamp. Its face is cracked and stained. The gold finish is wearing away to naught. And as of that morning, the gears no longer turn, the hands stand frozen at three-oh-five and twenty-seven seconds.

Erik wonders if there's some sort of connection he should be making here, some sort of bitter analogy hanging from the rusted chain, waiting to be snatched up and turned and tortured and re-worked until it's just as useless as the object from whence it was born. If there is, if he allows there to be, he realizes that he will be forced to admit that he's no longer the man he thought he was. The idea disturbs him, has him reaching compulsively to scratch at the back of his head.

But the tips of his fingers are met with the cool metal of his helmet. He sighs, lets his hand drift down the slope above his cheek and along the pointed edge curling around his jaw. It's of a peculiar make, and Erik knows that he should have it examined, should attempt to reproduce it, if only to understand the mechanism behind it. But then he would have to remove it, would have to bear the cold, unrelenting burden of dread and grief and an anguish he hasn't felt in ages. And all he would be able to think is Charles, Charles, don't let me go even though it was his hand whose grip had loosened first.

It hadn't always been this way. Had been bearable, even, each night when he would lay the helmet beside his bed and a presence, nearly indistinguishable from his own mind, would whisper a faint goodnight into the tattered folds of his subconscious.

But then it had disappeared. And for two months he had waited for it to return.

Then it did, and Erik thinks it would have been better if Moira had aimed her gun a bit lower (not that he hadn't thought that before).

Why? he thinks. What's happened?

But he's lost the right to ask that question. So when Emma Frost – now more or less perpetually in diamond form when they're this close to New York – comes to fetch him so that they can have a 'chat' with Senator McCleary, he pushes it forcefully from his mind. And he follows her out the room, but not before he allows his hand to reach for the watch, to slip it in his back pocket.

No matter whether or not he believes he has the right, he gets the answer anyhow.

Hank McCoy stands at the door, rain pouring down his back and his face, matting his blue fur, now almost startlingly dark, flat to his skin.

"Please," he says.

For all that's happened, for all that he wishes he could dredge up a reason to say no, Erik doesn't hesitate at all, doesn't even realize he hasn't told anyone he's gone until he's staring up at the mansion that had been his home all those months ago.

"I don't know what went wrong."

They're standing outside a door on the first floor, what apparently is Charles' door, and Erik can tell that Hank is nervous about letting him in. He doesn't blame him at all, just lets him chatter as he waits. Questions of every make and color are racing through his mind – how is he, will he live, where are the others, when did you plant the silver maple, what happened to the satellite dish – but he stays his tongue.

"I…it…" Hank wrings his hands. "I think it has something to do with Cerebro. But none of the data suggests that anything is out of place. Alex was even…" He swallows, his voice tapering out to little more than a whisper. "Alex made certain he took breaks."

Hank hadn't looked him in the eye since they had gotten out of the car. But he looks at him then, the yellow bright and strained. "He hasn't spoken in weeks. His movements are becoming sluggish. He eats, but not regularly."

Hank hesitates then, before reaching out to place a hand against the door. "He projects nightmares like…like you've never seen before."

Erik thinks he probably has seen something like them before.

He was wrong.

Hank asks about Raven before he finally opens the door, maybe to stall even more, maybe because he's genuinely concerned, maybe both. Erik tells him the truth – that she misses them, but that she's…adjusting. Not quite happy, maybe someday, but adjusting. Hank nods and motions for him to enter.

Then he's standing just inside the doorway, Hank just behind him, literally breathing down his neck. He takes another step. And another.

He's about to take yet another when he stops. Eyes, as bright and as blue as the day he first saw them, turn on him. They flicker up to regard the helmet that still rests on his head, then down to his lips, then directly into Erik's own eyes. He wishes they were accusatory, sad, happy, angry, anything. But they're blank, wide as if he's seeing everything for the first time.

He can't stand it, just can't take it. So he tears off the helmet, tosses it aside as if it had burnt him.

He figures that this ought to be it, that he ought to be the miracle cure, that his familiar mind will reach out to Charles' and that Charles', starved from the loss and aching to come back to himself, will reach right back.

It doesn't happen that way. For a while, Erik thinks it's not going to happen at all.

Three days later and they're by a fountain in the garden. Erik sits perched on its edge, one hand drawing lazy patterns on the surface of the water. Charles sits nearby, in his wheelchair.

His goddamn wheelchair, Erik thinks.

He had known. Emma had told him, and he had promptly torn all the pipes in the wall and retreated back to his motel room. He had cradled his head in his hands, mouth open in a silent scream.

Now, though, now he doesn't know what to say or to do or what he should think. So he doesn't say anything at all, hasn't said anything since he walked into Charles' room. He just follows him, and he watches him, helps him when it looks like he needs it, but allows him to struggle when he seems to prefer it.

This morning, Charles, after drinking a bit of tea, had pointed out the window, towards the garden and then looked up at Erik, his expression still largely blank, though a note of pleading had crept into the set of his brow. Erik had dropped his mug into the sink and conceded, pushing him out the back despite Hank's protests about the chilly weather and Charles' compromised immune system.

So here they are. There's a blanket over Charles' lap, fingerless gloves pulled over his hands and a jacket zipped up to his collarbone. His gaze is flickering from the water, to Erik, where it lingers, and then to a young poplar tree nearby, then back around again. Erik doesn't look him in the eye, can't look him in the eye. At least not for a while.

No change, he thinks. Three days and no change. In fact, Charles seems to be having trouble gripping spoons and cups and things. Hank has him tested. And tested.

And tested.

Nothing.

So Erik nearly falls into the fountain when he hears his own name – Erik Lehnsherr – clearly, loudly in his own head, in Charles' soft British accent. He turns – pivots, more like – to look at Charles, whose face is suddenly twisted in agony. His eyes are far more brilliant than he ever remembers, such a clear, clear blue, as they fill with moisture.

"Charles?" Erik says, and his voice is hoarse from disuse. A tear trips down Charles' cheek, over his lips, and falls into his lap.

Then the agony that was on Charles' face is in Erik's mind, in both their minds, and the scream he couldn't seem to give all those weeks ago is torn from his throat. He watches as a coin (his coin, he realizes, the one that had carried his vengeance for so many years) approaches and then buries itself in his skull. And he wants to die, needs to die, but he can't, because it's not his life that's being stolen.

A lifetime comes. A lifetime goes. And then Erik knows what's wrong, knows what's happening, understands that he's bearing witness to a flame as it is slowly extinguished.

He doesn't tell Hank. Couldn't if he wanted to. Charles sees to that.

You can hear me.

Now they're on the roof. Another day has passed. Charles had simply projected the image of the rooftop into Erik's mind, who had immediately understood. Hank, again, had protested. Vehemently, this time, because more tests needed to be done. Before he can check himself (and probably against his will, though it's difficult to tell anymore), Erik says that he thinks Charles is improving.

He lets himself believe it.

"You can speak to me," Erik says.

Only…here. He sounds exhausted. Looks exhausted too. He lifts a hand and gestures weakly towards his head. The hand falls back down with a faint thud.

"What do you want from me, Charles?" He means for the question to sound indifferent. It's anything but, laced with distress. He stands before Charles and then falls to his knees. "What can I do?"

Charles smiles. Erik burns the sight into his memory.

Erik, he replies. You're already doing it.

As much that's changed. As irreversibly dissimilar as these days are to ones that have passed, Charles' lips still taste the same, like mint and sugar, with a hint of something. Something that can only be described as Charles Xavier.

And though he's too weak – so weak – to reciprocate beyond a hand taking a brief hold in Erik's hair, Erik can see the sentiment behind it, can feel it, more than he's ever felt anything else.

"I love you," Erik says.

I know, Charles thinks.

That's mine.

Erik is lying on Charles' bed. Charles is lying on Erik. For the sake of comfort, Erik had emptied the contents of his pockets – the pocket watch, the keys to the house, a small spoon (how did that get in there, he wondered) – on a wooden chest by the window.

Was my father's, Charles elaborates. Mine now.

"I beg to differ," Erik replies. Charles is right, though. It had been his. But Erik, gripped by a strange sense of attachment, and a sadly unfamiliar wish for nostalgia, had taken the watch from Charles' desk not long before the missile crisis, figuring it wouldn't stray that far from Charles anyhow, figuring he wouldn't stray that far. Figuring wrong.

"You'll have to fight me for it," Erik adds solemnly, but facetiously.

And Charles smiles again, though it's barely a twitch at the corners of his lips.

It's been six days now.

Erik tries not to wonder how many are left.

At Charles' request – at Charles' demand – Hank had left the day before, thoroughly convinced that Charles is on the road to recovery. Now they are free to roam, or free to speak, or free to look at one another for hours on end, not a word or thought between them as the sun falls or as it climbs. Just them. Being together. Being, period. As if they had forgotten.

We have, Charles thinks.

"We have," Erik agrees.

Now nine. Nine days. He can barely move. His body is slack. Erik tries to keep him lying down – in the bed, on a blanket spread out on the grass, in the hammock near a little woodsy area near the back gate – because he can't stomach watching him struggling to sit up straight on a couch or a bench or his wheelchair.

Charles thinks in little more than images now. Images and sounds and sensations, sometimes so muddled that Erik feels as if he's been drinking heavily for days on end. The only thought, the only word that seems to come through is why.

Why?

"Why what, Charles?" Erik says. Probably for the hundredth time. Then he sees himself, but from Charles' perspective, leaning over him on that beach. Then he sees himself leaning over Charles on the bed. Then he sees Raven. And Hank. Sean and Alex. Then himself again, smiling, laughing even.

Why?

Ten.

And there's a sudden moment of clarity.

They're outside, leaning against a low, ancient stone wall that had been there however many decades or centuries. Moss and weeds are growing in and out of the cracks. It's certainly no cushion, but Charles is between his legs, his back up against Erik's front, and that's good enough. Erik feels a little light headed, holding his breath every thirty seconds or so to make certain the Charles' is still breathing, that blood still courses through his veins.

"Erik," Charles says out loud, and he cranes his neck around – cranes his neck around, Erik thinks – to look up into Erik's eyes. He reaches up, his fingers ghosting over Erik's forehead, down his nose, over his lips, across his chin, up his jaw, then around behind his neck. "Please."

Please. Erik sees a flash of the first time their lips had sought each other out – for they had hardly known what was happening until teeth and tongue and hot breath and don't stop, don't ever stop.

So he presses his mouth to Charles', and feels a sudden hope.

One that fades away with Charles' heartbeat.

Erik sees the irony. He sees it, and curses it.

Ten seconds for Sebastian Shaw, one when the dully serrated edge of the coin had made acquaintance with the front of his head, ten when it had left the back.

Ten days for Charles Xavier, one when Erik had slipped through his bedroom door, ten when he closed it for the last time, when he lit a match, several matches.

When his mammoth home, their mammoth home, became Charles' funeral pyre.

When Erik's mother had died, he had shouted and screamed and killed and angerpainrevenge had become his life.

Until he met Charles.

When Erik's lover died, he had known enough to allow himself to grieve. He had clutched Charles' body to his chest, rocking back and forth, as if he could shake the world of its axis, turn it back to the way that things had been before.

Then a revolt. Then a war. Then a violent, bloody takeover, the kind that Charles had merely glossed over in his thesis all those years ago.

And by the time Erik has gained enough hindsight to wish that he had died too, that Charles' end had swallowed him up as well, he realizes that he already is and that it already has.

There's a pocket watch on his desk, shimmering in the early morning light that's streaming through the broken window. Erik remembers that it used to have a finish. He remembers that it used to say three-oh-five and twenty-seven seconds, but the face is broken and the hands are missing.

His heart is missing.

Reviews are much appreciated. Happy reading and writing.