Can you believe that I originally meant for this story to be drabble-length? But somehow, it snowballed into +2K! I tried to write it so that it could fit with either the timeline of the original trilogy, or the new timeline established in DoFP.
Disclaimer: Some of the dreams in this story are borrowed from The Dogs of Babel, by Carolyn Parkhurst. Others are dreams that real-life friends had.
(For my own reference: 77th fanfiction, 4th story for X-Men.)
The worst part of his day is waking up. Every morning, for a few brief, bleary moments, he forgets that he's here, in this plastic prison, and so every morning, he automatically reaches out for the metal around him. For a second, he's confused and alarmed when he doesn't find any, and he feels like a flailing, drowning man who was so sure that he was within arm's reach of something solid. But then, it all comes back to him, sinking into him like a heavy brick, and he remembers where he is and opens his eyes to another day of shiny plastic and harsh fluorescent lighting.
In an effort to break the habit, and out of boredom, he begins writing down his dreams as soon as he wakes up. His captors have given him a bright-yellow legal pad and some cheap plastic pens. Sometimes, he can only remember a few details of his dream, but he writes it down anyway.
I look in a mirror and see that my eyes have lost their pupils.
I'm walking through the ruins of a city. Only charred beams are left standing.
Mystique and I buy a huge mansion in the countryside. But it's too big, and we both get lost in it and wander from room to room, calling each other's names. I'm never able find her.
He doesn't waste time wondering why his dreams are so rarely ever pleasant, but as his imprisonment drags by, he can't help noticing a few things. He's always dreamed in different languages. In recent years, his dreams have mostly been in English, but he still dreams in German often, and occassionally in one of his other languages. Sometimes, he can't even be sure what language his dreams are in.
Mystique and I are walking through a strange city, where the street signs are all in a language that I can't even identify. I point to one and ask her, "What language is this?" She says, "You know what it is, Erik. It's Mutant. You speak fluent Mutant." I feel mystified.
Charles and I are playing chess in a park. It's a beautiful day, and we're both drinking tea. I don't remember what we're talking about, but at some point, I realize that we're speaking French. I ask him, "Charles, when did you learn French?" He looks at me as if I'm insane and says, "Erik, what are talking about? We're speaking English."
He never dreams in Yiddish, even though it was his first language. He hasn't spoken or dreamed in Yiddish for decades. He's not even sure if he still remembers the language. He hasn't had an occasion to speak it since his parents were killed.
Charles and Mystique are the two main players in his dreams, but sometimes, he's surprised by the other people who appear. One night, he has a dream about Darwin, the young mutant that he knew briefly before Schmidt killed him at the CIA headquarters so long ago.
Darwin morphs so that his body is made entirely out of plastic. He smirks at me and says, "Look, now you can't control me." I tell him that I never wanted to control him, and that I killed Schmidt, the man who killed him. I think he would like to know this, but he doesn't seem to care.
Darwin is dead, so it's safe to write down the dream about him. But a few nights later, when almost every mutant that he's ever known all appear in one dream, Erik doesn't write down their specific identities. Some of them are dead too, but some are still alive, and Stryker and the guards could read this journal anytime. Indeed, Stryker did pick it up and read it once, but then tossed it aside.
Recurring dream: I'm in a small house in the country, filled with mutants, all of them asleep. Charles and Mystique are asleep in the living room - him in an armchair, and her stretched out on the sofa. Cyclops and Jean Grey are asleep on a double bed in one bedroom, and Storm and Toad, of all people, split a bunk bed in another. Angel, Azazel, and Banshee are slumped at the kitchen table, snoozing. On the front porch, he finds Sabertooth in a hammock, and Quicksilver sprawled in a rocking chair, his gangly legs hanging over one arm. And there are still more; the rooms are practically packed with mutants - lying on the floor, leaning against the walls. Erik can barely get out of the house without stepping on them.
I go outside onto the porch. It's early morning, and the fields around the house are full of a thick fog. I can't see through it, but from one direction, I hear voices. I step off the porch and begin walking towards them. As I get closer, I can see a light through the fog. Just as I'm about to reach the voices, I wake up.
The dream is always the same; every time, he wakes up just before he gets there. Even though it's just a dream, it frustrates him that he's never able to reach them, those voices lurking outside the house full of sleeping mutants.
Still, every morning, he forgets where he is and instinctively reaches out for metal as he wakes up. Still, every morning, he gets that terrible, suffocating tightness in his chest when he can't find any metal. Writing down his dreams distracts him a bit, but it doesn't break the habit. He supposes that nothing ever will.
Mystique and I are in a kitchen, and she's standing at the stove, cooking something. I can't see what it is, but it smells delicious. She hands me an onion and asks me to chop it up for her. I try to, but it makes my eyes burn. This makes me angry. She's blue, and I yell at her that she shouldn't be standing at a hot stove without any clothes, or she'll scorch herself. She shouts back that if I'd chopped the onion standing across the room from it, using the metal in the knife blade, then I wouldn't be crying now.
He doesn't have nightmares nearly as often now as he used to, but they still haunt his sleep sometimes. He almost can't bring himself to write them down. He stares at the page for a long time before he finally writes, I'm back with Schmidt. He doesn't go into details about where they are or what Schmidt is doing. He can't.
Sometimes I'm twelve-years-old again and the dream is in German, and sometimes I'm my current age and speaking English. Sometimes Charles is there, sitting in his wheelchair, watching. I yell at him to help me, to freeze Schmidt's mind, but he just shakes his head.
The nightmares about Schmidt lessened after Erik finally killed the man, but they never stopped completely. The very worst were the ones where Charles was there, watching. Erik couldn't decide which part he hated the most: when he started begging in the dream, pleading with Schmidt to stop or with Charles to help him, or when he woke up and wished that Charles was there. "It's all right, Erik. Calm your mind," he always used to say softly, putting one hand on Erik's shoulder or his cheek, after he woke up screaming and shaking. "Just take some deep breaths and calm your mind, all right?" Charles was always completely unruffled, never fazed in the slightest by seeing him like that, and somehow, it was easy for Erik to calm down when Charles told him to.
Recurring dream: Whenever I look at my arm, the number starts shaking, and the digits change. It makes my eyes hurt.
One night, he has a disturbing dream about Rogue, the young mutant girl from Liberty Island that nearly killed - that he would have killed, had the X-Men not stopped him just in time. She's strapped to his machine in the torch of the Statue of Liberty, crying and yelling for help, just like she was in reality, except that in the dream, she isn't alone. Erik sees with a shock that his mother, his own long-dead mother, is there with the girl, trying to comfort her. "Everything is all right," she keeps repeating in German. "Everything is all right," just like she did at Auschwitz, right before Schmidt shot her. She looks exactly as Erik remembers her. It's strange for him to think that he's now far older than either of his parents ever were.
He wakes up from the dream is a cold sweat, his heart pounding, and as he lies in bed, the worst sense of sense-loathing washes over him. He writes down the dream, and then he flips to an empty page of his legal pad and begins writing a long, rambling letter of apology to the girl. He writes that he never wanted to kill her - he never wanted to kill any mutant - but he felt that he had to, for the protection of mutantkind. He writes that he understands if she hates him, but he hopes she'll believe that he truly is sorry.
Charles still visits him regularly - Erik looks forward to his visits, and even though he's never admitted that, he suspects that Charles knows - and he considers giving his old friend the letter during his next visit, and asking him to pass it along to the girl. But he doesn't do it. He doesn't want to risk complicating the girl's hatred of him. But he doesn't throw the letter away, either. He keeps it, and that makes him wonder whether he wrote it for girl's benefit, or his own.
He thinks that he understands the meaning of the dream that he has after the first time that Stryker comes into his cell with a syringe of truth-serum and uses it to interrogate him about Charles and his school.
Charles and I are outside the mansion, where the grounds lead into woods. I can see smoke rising over the trees. "There's a fire," I tell him, pointing. "It's coming this way." But Charles doesn't answer, and I realize that he can't see or smell the smoke. I don't know how to warn him.
He notices that many of his dreams, especially those with Charles, involve some break in communication. The two of them can't hear each other, or can't understand each other, or just don't care about what the other one is saying. He wakes up feeling so frustrated, and he wonders if this is how Charles felt when he started wearing the helmet. There'll be no going b- his voice had said inside Erik's mind, before he put Schmidt's helmet on for the first time and cut him off.
He soon has the dream again, and this time, it's more intense.
Charles and I are in the same spot, outside the mansion. The smoke over the trees is thicker and closer, and I feel panicky.
Me: There's a fire coming this way, Charles. I've been trying to tell you that for years.
Charles: But it isn't a fire, Erik. It's only a burning bush.
Me: What are you talking about?
Charles: You should know. It was your Torah reading when you were bar mitzvahed.
Me: You know I was never bar mitzvahed! Now get inside and pull the damn fire alarm!
I grab the metal of his wheelchair, turn him around, and push him back towards the mansion.
The morning before he kills Laurio and makes his escape, Erik writes down the last dream of his imprisonment. He wakes up from it with a strange, bittersweet mix of despair and relief.
I'm at my own funeral. It's a Jewish funeral, which surprises me. I see my dead body lying in a pine box, but I'm also still alive and walking around. A rabbi is there, saying the Kaddish for me. (I remember every word of it, which is also surprising.) Charles is there, crying. I walk over to him and want to comfort him, but I don't know what to say. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at me. "I'm crying," he says, "because it's such a relief."
Erik wakes up with a start, to find tears in his own eyes, the words of the Kaddish echoing in his ears, and Charles's weeping face still painfully fresh in his mind. Even though it's just a dream, it's some time before he's able to shake off the terrible, lingering suspicion that Charles really would be relieved if he died.
FIN