A/N: theonionistheonewhocries keeps giving me prompts on Tumblr! It's beautiful! So here's another one. The prompt was: "Charles was at the zoo agian, at the shark exhibit, it was his favorite. The sharks reminded him of his Erik. "You look just like Erik." He said to one of the great whites in front of him. God he missed Erik so much."
"Are you sure you don't want one of us to come with you?" Sean asks, frowning slightly as he and Alex play catch out in the front yard, since they couldn't get Hank to play actual baseball with them (one batter, one in the field, one to pitch and cover bases, trading off in a constant circle to see who can get the most home runs).
"Yeah, Prof X, are you sure? Sean and I would totally go with you to the aquarium. 'S been a while since we've been out," Alex adds, catch the ball and pounding it into his mitt for a second before looking away from the wheelchair-bound man to toss it back at Sean.
"Heck, you found me at the aquarium. I love that place," Sean muses, smiling as he hurls the ball back at Alex and it goes over the blond's head.
"No, no; it's fine, honestly. But thank you both for offering. I can manage just fine, thank you." Because getting in and out of his car with his wheelchair is something he's been practicing, and if he needs help, he can always control some stander-by's mind for a moment and then wipe it so they don't realize they even helped a handicapped man for no reason.
So Sean and Alex wave goodbye as Charles drives his modified vehicle down the driveway, the gas and brakes up by his hands since his feet can only stretch out uselessly beneath the wheel. He glances at the metal chair and sighs.
At the aquarium, there is a fantastic exhibit where one can pet and feed small fish to a dozen stingrays, tiny ones as big as table place-mats. He visits that one for a while, laughing as a little girl shows him how to pinch the tail of a small dead fish between his pointer and middle fingers, palm flat and parallel to the floor of the shallow tank, for the stingrays to come by and suck the fish into their nearly toothless mouths.
They feel sandy and slimy on their backs, and definitively like a fish, made of firm, spongy cartilage and little bone.
They remind him to go see the sharks next.
But along the way, Charles does stop to admire the jellyfish; they are like sea angles, colorful and flowing and genderless and sightless, blind pieces of hope, but also capable of harm and defense via poisonous singers and barbs in their lovely tentacles. He appreciates the large tanks of them, some of them almost glowing, and then he moves on.
Finally, he's at the shark exhibit. Tank after tank of various types of sharks, ones of blues and greys and blacks and browns and sandy beiges and even rusty reds. They come in all shapes and sizes, some looking non-threatening and some looking as vicious as people make sharks out to be.
But Charles stops in front of a particular Great White in a tank of three of them. It's staring at him with one dark eye, but its gaze isn't as crazed or mindless as the other two's. Instead, this particular Great White is lean and slim and young, and its eyes are bright and its gaze intense.
It's as though this shark can see into Charles and it isn't afraid like the panicked other two, swimming in a rush around the tank. This one is slowly pacing the glass, back and forth, back and forth, locking eyes with the only person observing it on this side of the giant tank.
And it seems to be smiling.
Charles rolls up to the glass and presses his hand to it, and the shark bumps its nose against Charles' hand, and Charles can feel the vibrations through the glass. The shark moves away, then, only to circle back around and swim with its face as close to the glass as possible, and its eye follows Charles as it passes by this time.
A shiver runs down Charles' spine, stopping dead at the base of it where a bullet once lodged it self over two years ago.
"You look just like Erik. You even have his attitude," Charles chuckles sadly, and he presses his forehead to the glass. Quietly, to the fishy creature, he says, "God, I miss him so much. Whenever he smiled, truly smiled, he showed all his teeth, just like you. And he always watched me, too, just like you. And he had a thin torso like yours, and long legs like your long tail."
The shark shakes its head in the water, as if disapprovingly at Charles' lament.
Charles raises his head from the glass and frowns at the animal. "What? It's true. He was a very cunning, bloodthirsty man, always after revenge, and always reliant on his anger. You are no different, my friend."
The shark turns away then, as if in disagreement, and doesn't return.
Charles sighs and places his hand one last time on the tank before wheeling backward, turning, and moving on to the next exhibit.
But the shark tanks are his favorite, and he will always come back to see them like he has once a month for the past five. And he always talks to that particular shark, reminding him how much he is like Erik, and always getting no response.
The keepers of the aquarium once told Charles that the shark's name is Steel. Charles had laughed, and they didn't understand why. But he had laughed because of the metal name reminding him even more of Erik, because why wouldn't it? Erik bent metals like steel as easy as if it were rubber. So that, oddly enough, only made Charles grow fonder of that shark.
This time, on the way out, Charles takes out his wallet and goes into the gift shop. He purchases a small stuffed animal of a shark, one no longer than his forearm, and no wider even at the head than the center of his hand. It's soft and it has little felt teeth and shiny, blue-black beaded eyes and Charles can slip his fingertips into the gills. The tail has a wire in it so that it is posable.
That night, Charles sneaks his gift to himself out of its bag and brings it to bed with him. No one knows about it. It smells like the aquarium mixed with cotton and plush. But it's a shark and it's smiling and it's the closest thing to having Erik in his bed as Charles will ever get.