A/N: Okay, you'll probably all hate me for this chapter, but this plays very much into the last one. Sooo, don't kill me YET. I've been debating recently on whether or not to continue with the canon idea I had, or to deviate and write an AU story, but I think I've decided to keep to my original idea…with the promise that this will not be my last Charles/Erik fic. So, once again, major thanks to all my new and returning readers/reviewers. Here's the second to last installment in this story. I blame work for my tardiness. Please don't forget to review!
Of duty…
He knows instantly that this is the nightmare he cannot wake himself from. For the first few months he experienced it nightly. Then it tapered off, flaring up whenever he thought of how things could have, and should have, happened differently.
He is lying on sand. On a beach. The waves crash at his feet, rushing to meet his toes, his ankles, knees, even his chest after some time. And he can feel. He can smell. He can see. He can even taste the salt in the air. But he cannot move. Not even to lift his head and see the waves his mind conjures.
He stares at the clear blue sky. Nearly cloudless. The wind blows, ruffles, and rearranges his hair. A skittish sand crab crawls over his foot and disappears. He tries to call out, to speak, to make any sound at all…and he fails. He fails over and over and over. Countless times. An eternity passes. And nothing changes, no matter how hard he tries. Nothing changes except the new wetness on his face. He wonders if he will drown here…then realizes he already has and is.
He is a prisoner inside his own body.
Charles wakes with a loud gasp, and shoots up from the mattress out of instinct. He fights the urge to cry out, to move and reassure himself that it was a dream-that he is still only paralyzed from the waist down. Clenching his fists and falling back on his breathing exercises for comfort are the only things that can calm him down. Sometimes it passes within a few seconds, other times it doesn't pass til morning-after he's kept himself awake for the rest of the night. Tonight, he's unsure if it ever will.
The pain and sheer terror of the reality of the dream, of the possibility, is just too much. Charles falls back onto the pillow and tries not to cry, even grabs at his hair-causing himself the smallest amount of pain to prevent it. But the sobs have already found a home, rooted themselves deep to ensure that his grief does surface. And it starts with one, choked and quiet. The rest follow, fall into place like a broken symphony that's never finished.
He hates Erik for only one reason. And that reason is his absence, that his friend is not here to comfort him, challenge him, mock him in these moments of weakness that he won't allow others to see. That, surely, would put an end to this irrational madness. Just his presence. Not even here. Elsewhere. To just feel his existence, the familiar walls of his mind, would be enough.
…wouldn't it?
He scrubs his face dry with his hand before pulling himself up and onto the wheelchair by the side of his bed. And he ignores the phantom aches and pains in his back and legs-tells his mind to stop torturing him with truths that he's known since that day. The lights are kept off. Another damp washcloth rests in his hand, now used and useless. But it's still cool against the hot skin, lying prone and limp-much like how he feels at the moment, while he remembers.
Again.
"Charles," Erik calls across the hangar. "A word?"
"One moment, Hank," he says, turning from the steps and following his friend around the tail end where no one can watch or overhear them.
Erik turns his back and crosses his arms, creating an impressive shadow against the light of day outside. Outwardly he looks like the impending statue of a god, stiff and tall, but Charles knows better, knows his friend better.
"What is it?" he asks, because he is truly curious as to why Erik isn't leaping onto the craft and demanding its immediate takeoff.
His friend whispers his response. "Can't you tell?"
Charles takes that for the invitation it is and gently probes around the surface of the metal user's mind. Among all the emotions he feels, there's one thats louder than the rest, one that shocks the telepath for a split-second, before he has time to understand it's source. Fear. And when he thinks on it, a memory comes up. It is a memory of water, coldness, and desperation. Instantly, the insecurity becomes a little clearer.
"Remember what we talked about last night?"
Erik smirked, turning his head to eye the telepath. "I don't recall much talking."
Charles smiled, but kept his voice low. "Nevertheless, what I said was true. This will end. Today."
Erik sighed and closed his eyes. "You know how long I've waited for this."
"Yes."
"It doesn't seem real. I've hunted him for years and somehow he has always managed to get away."
Charles takes a step forward and lays a hand on his friend's shoulder. It earns him direct eye contact, which he doesn't break. "You're not alone this time, my friend." Then he leans in closer with a smoldering resolve that Erik needs to hear. "No longer."
The corners of Erik's lips twitched up, and he decidedly moved forward, turning and intending to close every distance between them, one final time before the coming battle. And though it may not have been the right place for it, Charles allowed it because he wanted this too, because in the back of his mind lay some doubts. But they were interrupted.
"Hey," Alex shouted, poking his head out of the doorway. "We gonna catch this asshole or not?"
Charles turned aside, his back to Alex and the ship, while Erik took a step back-both out of instinct. "Of course we are," Charles said, forcing the disappointment down. Once it was safely locked away, he turned around. "Tell the others to get strapped in. We leave now."
Erik followed, closely behind, making Charles think he was going to finish what they started, but when they reached the door, stepped up, in, and strapped themselves down with the others, the telepath accepted that they wouldn't. The ride was a long one, and the more time that passed the more regret built in his body, almost making his fingers twitch in want. So, he did the next best thing, and sent an innocent little thought along. Erik's head whipped around and Charles couldn't help but smile. Then Hank made the announcement from the cockpit. This time, they were interrupted by a looming war.
Agony. If there were ever one word to describe, to encompass, that entire day, it would have been agony. Nothing hurt worse than the initial impact, not Erik shutting him out of his mind, not the pain of being made to feel another man's death, not even the punches thrown in desperation. Until this point it hadn't hit Charles how much he lost in so little time. And in that one second, that split second it took to take away the feeling in half his body, he understood it all.
He is face down in the sand. He is shaking from the pain, from the ache of loss and the shock. Things are happening around him but all he can hear is the rush of the ocean, of the waves that he wants to swallow him whole for the things he can't help but feel. Pain. Anger. Sadness. Want. And all of this he needs to direct somewhere else, away from himself so he can regain control, before he loses his grip on it for good. And his subconscious makes the choice for him, tells him that he should and does blame his friend for all of this.
He weeps inside, clawing for a different truth in himself, but he doesn't have the strength to, not for this, and not right now. Instead he grasps for what little power he has left and hides it. Charles hides as much of it as he can, even when he gets the one thing he wants most-when he gets Erik, when his friend picks him up, holds him, and doesn't let go. And it is a relief that he doesn't have to worry about his thoughts, about Erik picking up on the torrent in his head. But, in some sick and twisted way, he does want his friend to hear what he's thinking, to feel what he's feeling. He wants the man to know how much he's hurting and that damned helmet is like a repulsive second skin to the man now, a security blanket for something he never needed to be afraid of in the first place.
He doesn't deserve this, Charles thinks to himself. He doesn't deserve me. Look at what I've done, silenced one monster only to create another.
"You did this," Erik snarled, reaching out to strangle Moira with her own necklace.
Charles is invisible again. And at first it doesn't feel as bad as it should. But he doesn't stay silent when he knows he can do something, when he knows where the rightful blame must be placed. Although it burns him on the inside to admit it, to speak it aloud, he does because it's cold hard truth that he has never had a good relationship with. It has never left him alone, and now, there's no hope it ever will.
"No Erik," Charles gasps. "You did."
He had been hopeful, that what he said might inspire some small turnaround, if anything. But Erik's words push his furiously beating heart further down, down into the depths of a no returning realization. And then Charles hears the worst thing he thinks he will ever hear in his lifetime. "We want the same thing."
He doesn't have the strength anymore. He has nothing. Erik proved that to him with five words that day. Five words that would, no doubt, haunt him for the rest of his life, because they already were. He had failed in many ways before, but never like he had with him. Everything had unraveled before his eyes, made the things they shared and the time they spent seem cheapened or false. It made him feel incredibly naïve for thinking that he could actually help Erik, save him in a week's time after years of rooted hungering need for revenge.
He had been made and broken in such a short amount of time with him, but Charles couldn't bring himself to regret any of it.
The washcloth dropped to the bathroom floor and is abandoned. Charles returns to bed, hauls himself under the covers and closes his exhausted eyes. He wants to sleep it away this time. He would rather have the nightmares than this reality to wake up to. Facing his colleagues, his friends on a daily basis as if nothing's wrong, as if everything's perfectly fine is wearing him thin. He feels it. And he knows they see it. But they don't know what to do. The truth is that Charles doesn't quite know the answer either. He simply waits and hopes that one day this pain will pass, that he will forget about what he could have had. But he doesn't.
Because he dreams about it every night.
He is on the beach again. But this time he is lying face down, head turned to face someone beside him. His body aches in a good way, as if he just got done running for miles. And it feels good. Lying here feels good. It feels good because he's not alone. Because Erik is lying beside him, sleeping.
Charles doesn't have the heart to wake him. Just being here, seeing him is enough. The sky darkens, but he pays it no heed. Memories pass through him like sights on a train, all silent, all of times he wishes he had the power to go back to, to relive, to do over. Erik eventually wakes and turns to face Charles.
"Why are you lying there," Erik asks, as if it's the most normal thing to ask in the world, as easy as asking about the weather.
"I can't move," he says, honestly. "Not without you."
Erik turns his body towards him. "You can move-and without my help."
Charles allows himself a small smile. "Not the way I want to."
"Charles. This is a dream. Your dream. This isn't what you really want."
Damn his subconscious. "For now, it's all I need."
"It's not the same."
"Close enough."
"I'm not going to make this easy."
Charles laughs, just a little. "I know."
"Your problems won't go hiding at the sight of me."
"I know." He reaches forward with a heavy hand and lays it on Erik's cheek. "Just…give me this one bit of peace, this little lapse where nothing else matters."
"Relive a memory."
"Not right now. Right now all I want is you. Even if you're not real."
Erik wraps his arms around Charles and pulls him onto his chest. Finally, he thinks, settling into familiar warmth. But, was knowing its falseness worth the feeling? In essence he was comforting himself with a mix of memory and imagination. Did that make him weak? Mad? Beyond hope that he would regain some sense of normalcy in his life?
"Not so easy," Erik whispers in his ear. "Is it?"
Charles says nothing, but grips tighter at the shade that's holding him. It's not a person, not matter how much he wants it to be. Charles has always been a logical person, someone who puts faith and hope in facts, in truth, in reality. And here he is, clinging to a false truth, just like Erik had done the day his fears found firm ground about humanity.
"You didn't listen to me," Charles hears himself say.
It's Erik's turn to stay silent, because Charles doesn't know what he wants to hear, if anything at all in return. All he wants is to stop feeling the guilt and horrible things that cripple him each and every day, while he's doing the most normal of things too. Here is the only place he can give voice to the selfish things he's thinking and feeling. It's the only place where he won't be punished or criticized for being human, for erring, for not being the perfect man he wants to be.
"Why?" Erik asks. It's a simple request, but one that surprises him, jerks him awake from the self-deprecation and loathsome trail of thoughts that always led to the places he doesn't want to go.
"Because I need you and you're not here. Now, quiet." Quiet is what he wants. It's all he's wanted since that day. And even in his own mind, he won't allow himself to have that.
"I could be. I could be here, if you wanted me to."
"No," he says, loud and clear. That he will never do, never allow. Never again. "This is enough."
"I'm a facsimile-"
"All the better," Charles whispers with a grimace. "I can't hurt you this way."
"You mean I can't hurt you."
Charles sighs and relents. "Maybe it's a little of both."
"You know it is. And yet…you still want me here. With you."
Is it possible to shed tears in a dream? Feel the anguish you normally feel when you're awake? Charles knows the answer. And the answer is, unfortunately, yes. For him, at least. "I will always want that, Erik."