A/N: God, I just love torturing Charles.
Warnings: angst, mentions of suicide/addiction/child abuse. Set when Charles and Raven are pre-teens.
Disclaimer: I'm nothing but a fangirl, folks.
I thought that I heard you laughing,
I thought that I heard you sing,
I think I thought I saw you try.
But that was just a dream, that was just a dream.
Try, cry, why try.
That was just a dream.
'Losing My Religion', R.E.M.
It is a cold, sunny winter morning when they bury his mother, and Charles Xavier does not weep.
All around him is weeping; his mother's hysterical friends wail under their veils and hats. His grandmother shakes and sobs (his balding grandfather just watches bleakly as they prepare to put his eldest child in the ground). Raven sits beside him, tears sliding one by one down her cheeks. But he does not cry – the only child of Sharon Xavier (Marko, his mind whispers cruelly) cannot cry for her.
He is sick, deeply, deeply sick. And not just emotionally – he is physically ill, delirious with a fever that after several days still refuses to break. His skin is ashen and white as the snow on the frigid ground (how on earth did they dig the hole? he wonders dimly. The ground is frozen. I'm frozen. Everything is frozen), and he is both sweating and shivering under his thick black coat and suit. If he hadn't fallen ill, his mother would not be dead.
Not that he contaminated her – his mother did not succumb to any physical illness. Her illness was the product of pain pills, alcohol, and despair. Depressed, a psychologist would say. Suicidal. Alcoholic. Unstable.
Broken, beautiful, gone, Mama, Charles would reply, were he approached by said psychologist.
Beside him, Cain Marko is staring at the ground. His thoughts are dark and swirling like piranhas in a murky river, and Charles is both oddly fascinated and completely, utterly repulsed.
On Cain's other side is Kurt Marko, and for a moment Charles feels such thick hatred for him that he knows Kurt must feel it, because his dark eyes meet Charles's baby blue ones.
Kurt is terrified of Charles – not terrified physically, because the man is well aware that one punch to Charles's pale, smooth face would leave a big, purple bruise, like a brand screaming my stepfather is evil, please take me away from him. But on a purely mental level, Charles is the biggest threat Kurt Marko could imagine. Charles could be his stepfather's worst nightmare, if he were so inclined.
He remembers it so clearly – Kurt had been the one to find Sharon and Charles, lying together on Sharon's bed, a sick child shaking over the limp form of his mother. He had screamed at Charles, and Charles had reached out with his mind and squeezed – he hadn't even thought about it, but inside his head had been a rush of my mother is dead and you killed her – even though she killed herself, you did it, you did it, Kurt –
Kurt had run, run like the scared child he was so desperately afraid of.
Charles had stayed with the corpse of his beautiful, blonde, thirty-five-year-old mother until they came to take her away. He had been unconscious when she'd taken the pills – he had fallen asleep from a healthy dose of bitter syrup, and she had died from a deadly dose of white pills. When he had awoken and realized she was not okay, he had gone stumbling up the stairs to her room, and found her there, on the bed. His first thought had been Mum, you're bleeding, but it had only been red wine, spilt across the white satin duvet and perfectly matching the plum colored dress his mother had died in.
The minister drones on and on, but his mind is no more on the service than Charles's is. He is thinking about how bloody freezing it is out here, and Charles finds himself agreeing.
The last respects are paid, and they begin to lower the dark mahogany coffin into the rectangular pit. Charles cannot watch – he slips away and vomits in the bushes, and Raven follows to pat his back and whisper soothingly, "It's alright, Charles –,"
He does cry then – it is like a sudden storm, tears dropping off his face and freezing on the ground like raindrops. And just like that, he is done, and when he looks up, the box that holds Sharon Xavier is gone from his sight.
He looks at Raven – her eyes are wide and full of pity and sadness, and her skin keeps rippling blue, but no one will notice – he will make sure of it. He has never felt this awful before, and yet he has also never been more conscious of his power. He flexes his mind with ease, and the mourners who had previously been looking over at the two children standing in the bushes turn away in unison as though pushed. (And really, it is a mental push, but Charles does not feel at all guilty.)
Well, yes, he feels guilty. He feels guilty because he did not save his mother; he feels angry because she did not love him enough to live; he feels heavy and broken, deeply and truly broken by the loss of the one woman who was supposed to take care of him. He is just shy of twelve years old, and already he can feel the weight of the world – the world and all the suicides and thoughts and white pills – on his small shoulders.
A/N: -cuddles with little!Charles- I just had to write the token Charles's-mom's-suicide!fic. Reviews are so appreciated, guys!