Title: Bare Bones

Author: W.W. Allerdyce
Pairing: Mystique/Magneto, Erik/Charles
Summary: I love you. But you're a selfish, selfish bastard. Heartbreak, and yellow suns on blue skies. And reflections, and focusing on reasons for living. Short fic. Solo, Cherik and onesided Mystique/Magneto.
Rating: K

I love you. I don't know why. I don't know how. God knows you don't deserve it. You don't deserve me. I'm still fresh and young and longing for love, and you're harsh and bitter and jaded and used and so very selfish.

And for some reason, I love you. You use me, you take the love and comfort and support I offer and you give me nothing in return, leaving me standing in the dark with words and words and words and nothing more.

You've suffered so much. I still love you. You're so beautiful to me. But you don't love me. You take what I give and only return empty heartbroken promises.

I don't know why I love you. You don't deserve me. I try to pretend that I don't love you either, but for some reason I do, and it chills me to the bone.

There's a love in your eyes, a warmth, like a bubbling spring, two yellow suns in two blue skies.

It chills me, numbs me, deadens me inside, like frostbite blackening a young plant, the hollow tears of a concrete angel.

You frighten me.

Like the dreadful realisation when an avalanche comes tumbling and roaring and rolling towards you, like the look in the doctor's eyes when he tells you the bad news, like knowing that it's coming and you'll never be able to escape.

For all my life, I have only ever had one focus. In my childhood years, it had been my mother. My liebe mami, who had loved me more than her own life, and had striven to protect me with all she had. Then it was myself, my desperation to care for myself, for the Herr Doktor was a harsh, cruel man, and he only ever wanted results, not improvements. If I had not protected myself, focused on myself... Then he would have killed me. Like he killed my mami.

Then, when I was nineteen, the Amerikaner came, and the Engländer came, and the Herr Doktor fled, leaving me alone and bleeding on a plastic table, helpless until the Allies found me. After I was freed, and healed, they let me leave the hospital and I was still alone, still searching in vain for something that would help me defeat the Herr Doktor. My focus was still entirely on me, but perhaps it had widened a little to make way for a newer passion, something stronger than a desire to live - revenge.

For years after that, I roamed everywhere, from Brussels to the Ukraine to China, even dipping briefly into Africa, bypassing all boundaries, whether they were land or water or soldiers with red hammers and sickles and stars. I was more than a man, I was ageless, never changing, stronger and faster, and able to bend the most durable of metals to my will. How could mere humans have stopped me in my search? Eventually, my hunt took me to Argentina of all places, where I found two of the men who had served under the Herr Doktor - two guards, the pigfarmer and the tailor. They died, for their boasting. For daring to take pride in their crimes. And in Argentina, I found the Herr Doktor. He had flourished, since he had left me for dead in a cold plastic cell. He had a yacht, a yacht that was berthed in Miami.

And in Miami, I found something else.

I found others. Like me. You, for one, but back then you were boring and scared and so very mortal. And him, with bright blue eyes and an intellect that was off the charts, and a compassion that easily rivalled his intellect. It was easy to focus on him. To stay for him, and to fight by him, to teach by him. He was a god among men. To love him.

But it was also easy to betray him. It is easy to turn on a god - it is easy to blame a god for all your faults and your problems. It was easy to love him and it was easy to betray him, and it still is easy to love him, and it is now easy to regret.

Although you yourself are hardly pure. You have your own taints. You yourself betrayed, only this time it was yourself, you spurned your own ideals and morals, all for my love. Your own brother...

I think Charles was the only one who never lost faith in his ideals. Perhaps it was because he was a genius and a god, and omniscient...

You love me, the traitor, the Judas, the one who fell and the one who left. You love me, the one who loves his god, the one who betrayed him.

The strength of your love is enough for you to renounce everything- your home, your friends, your brother, and your morals- and never look back. It's enough to instill a sense of dread and fear in me, enough to cause me to flinch and turn away. I'll never understand your love. I'll never love the way you love.

I'll never love you the way you love me.

I'm the betrayer, Raven. I loved him and I betrayed him and I lost him. You are the constant. You loved me and you betrayed him and you still don't have me.

I'm not...

I am Erik Lehnsherr. I am Magneto. I was once best friend and lover to Charles Xavier, one of the greatest to ever exist.

I may be your reason for being here, and I may be the cause for your betrayal.

But my reason, my focus, is me. Not anyone else. It never really has been.

A/N: I'm back. Admittedly, I'm back in very short doses, but I've returned to the world. I hope for a long time this time, but you never know. Unfortunately, insecurities about my work and perfectionism to the point of obsessiveness makes it quite difficult for me to actually post things up and not delete it as soon as I re-read it- which I always do. I also have a very short attention span and I don't like posting short fics up. I like long, 10,000+ ones. Yeah, that one never happens either. :P All credit goes to the lovely, somewhat indomitable AngelisIgnisRelucent, who is entirely responsible for my return. This is dedicated to her. :)

Oh, and sorry if the German is wrong. I don't actually know much- I've never taken it as a lesson, it's just a little conversational German that I've managed to pick up over the years of (my very short) life. :P

Also, does anyone else agree with me when I say that it's obvious that Charles and Erik belong together? The fact that their names alone mesh so perfectly... Far better than Mystique/Magneto, at any rate.