Charles Francis Xavier has never really known how to live. He's lived, but it hasn't been living. It's been one day to the next, not dying, never dying, but not living. The days move so slowly, and his brain moves so quickly. Lightning-fast, hurtling breakneck towards a cliff he hasn't fallen over since he was nineteen. He's eleven years out from his only suicide attempt. He supposes he should be proud.
Charles is twenty-eight years old. Twenty-eight years into a life that he so desperately wants to end, but he can't bring himself to do it himself. Or do it at all. He owns a gun. He could so easily end the constant rushing of thoughts, down, down, down, down…
He doesn't shoot himself. He has a sister to live for. He acts like any other handsome young man would. Goes out. Brings home girls. Smirks as Raven so obviously disapproves. He is, from the outside, normal. Except for one thing.
He works. Harder than he should. The voice in his head won't let him stop. He knows it's bad, but it's the only thing that keeps him from breaking more than he has already. Raven doesn't tell him to stop. He knows she hates how hard he drives himself, but he also knows that, despite how much he loves her, he wouldn't stop if she told him to.
And so life goes for two years. He works. He survives. He doesn't break, or maybe he's already broken. But 1962 comes in, and he finishes his thesis, and then he's a professor. Professor Charles Xavier. He likes the sound of that. It doesn't sound like him, but like who he could be. That's why he likes it, he thinks. The cliff seems farther. The thunder in his ears is quieter. He's surviving. He will survive. He will not live, he doesn't know how to, but he won't die.
And then he meets Moira. And his not-life either goes to hell or has a purpose. Or both. Either way, he has even more work to do. To keep him away from the cliff. To save the world as those who live know it.
Charles' world is screams and pain and torment and emptiness. Loss and grief and mourning for what could have been is not a part of it. He either feels empty, tired, or in so much pain. His world is his mother's voice nagging at him to do more, be more, however hard he tries he'll never be enough. His world is hands on him where they shouldn't be, pain and he supposes guilt. If he had done this. If he had said that. Maybe his world would have turned out normal.
But he must save the world, for all those who are living, and for those others who are only surviving. So he throws himself headlong into yet more work. The daily task of appearing like a human being and not the corpse he is truly inside. The thunder grows louder as the cliff grows nearer.
And then it happens. He saves Erik Lehnsherr, out of what is left of his heart. He's wet and cold through his bones, but he knows the cliff is farther. Erik's cliff is farther. Charles knows he is one of those who are surviving, not living. And so if he can pull him away from the cliff, then he is doing good. He doesn't care about himself so much as helping others now. First Erik. Then Hank. Angel. Darwin. Alex. Cassidy. Molly. They become, in a way, a wall between him and the cliff. If he can save the world for them, for they are living, then he himself will survive. And he knows the wall will never fall.
Molly is, in a way, the oddest part of the wall. The most like him, for both bad and good reasons. Younger than all the others. Barely surviving. She's never lived. He wants nothing more than for her to be happy, to live, to see a light in her eyes that he knows will never be in his own for real. She trusts nobody, but if there's someone she distrusts less, it's Erik. And Charles resolves to protect them both.
So he builds a wall for the wall, a safeguard for his own safeguard. And then that wall breaks, and Darwin is dead, and Angel is gone with Shaw. He doesn't think badly of her. She's had a worse life than him, and she was promised much. But the walls are broken now. They never really could have stood for long.
They all need somewhere to live, somewhere to train. So he breaks down another wall, and they come to his prison, where he spent his childhood living, then existing, then surviving. Existing was the worst. But he survived, and is surviving. And so he trusts himself to not break.
He doesn't break. He thinks Erik will leave, but he stays. There's plenty of space, but somehow Charles stupidly invites Erik into his room. His room that was his parent's room, silk sheets and all. Erik accepts, after a while of silence. Charles realizes Erik isn't even surviving, he's existing. And so he offers to help him survive, in as many words. Erik looks at him oddly, and accepts that as well.
Helping Erik survive becomes another thing keeping Charles away from the cliff. The nights are hard. They've always been hard. But it's harder when he shares a bed with the man he's beginning to realize is more than just the person he's helping survive. He knows it's wrong, but it's delicious, the warmth. They don't do anything, but Charles knows Erik knows how broken Charles is in that regard, and respects that. They lie in the same bed and they talk, and sing little quiet songs, and hold each other gently when the world comes crashing down.
Charles Xavier has never known a loving touch. All he's felt are blows of one kind or another. Maybe they come from some form of love, but he doubts that. But now he feels love, and he knows what it is. It might not be love. But he knows that when Erik becomes arms to hold him through the night, a wall between him and the cliff, he loves Erik. And he thinks Erik might love him. Charles hadn't known he was capable of love.
The days are harder, pretending the nights mean nothing. They both train the others, and help each other control their powers as well. Charles gets in Erik's head one day. He thinks it might help, something about Erik being more than what he shows, or something. Erik is understandably almost angry. But he realizes Charles didn't mean him harm. And that whole thing helps them both.
Their routine comes to an end, as it must. There is a world to save, after all. And saving the world has no routine, Charles learns. He and Erik are breaking apart. As it would be. They are fundamentally different. But they continue to work together, because they must. He is losing Raven as well, if he ever really had her.
They go to Cuba, to save the world, or something like that. It goes completely wrong. They succeed, but he fails. He loses Erik when he kills Shaw. He supposes that Shaw deserves it, for what he did to Erik. But all the same, Charles doesn't really understand. Why Erik did it. Or why Erik puts on the helmet. Or why Erik doesn't leave.
Because Erik is fighting, and by accident a bullet strikes Charles, and he knows he should feel pain, but he doesn't, and he can't feel his legs, but Erik is cradling him so gently. And that doesn't stop. Neither does Erik staying by his side. He doesn't leave Charles for a second, grey-blue eyes steadily holding him in the land of the living. Away from the cliff. They return to the prison that was becoming a home, and all the way there, the cliff is far, far away.
It's not until he's resting in the bed that was his parents', feeling every bone and muscle that he can feel ache, that the cliff starts to come nearer. There's a gun still in the drawer of the nightstand. But Erik is somewhere, talking to Raven. And Molly's sitting on the bed next to him, reading Biggles. So what family he ever will have is with him, and so he mustn't fall over the edge, not while they need or want him. It stays close, but it doesn't come any closer.
AN: shitty mental health boissss
i really love these men btw, i fuck them up bc i do
had to give an overview of Charles' mental issues, and what better way than to give the whole background by means of first class