Prompt Post: ROUND TWO
ROUND TWO IS CLOSED
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Rules post.
Flat view.
ROUND TWO: Updates Post (WIPs only)
ROUND TWO: Fills Post (completed Fills only)
damalur's firstclasskink on Delicious.
Volunteers always welcome.
Please use the Discussion Post if you want to talk about community alterations or get my modly attention. Do not ( Read more... )
<< ROUND ONE | ALL ROUNDS | ROUND THREE >>
Rules post.
Flat view.
ROUND TWO: Updates Post (WIPs only)
ROUND TWO: Fills Post (completed Fills only)
damalur's firstclasskink on Delicious.
Volunteers always welcome.
Please use the Discussion Post if you want to talk about community alterations or get my modly attention. Do not ( Read more... )
The day Charles goes to visit a young girl named Jean Grey is the first day he sees Erik again.
Jean Grey is nine years old, but in Cerebro’s light she burns like a second sun, red like the rose and her own crimson hair, full of potential that Charles cannot even begin to imagine. She is a telepath and a telekinetic, and he knows from his own experience that it is not an easy thing to have the press of other minds all around you, without the control to filter, to understand. He has always had issues with privacy. Small children are not built to understand what is right and what is wrong without someone to guide them. He is lucky he turned out as well as he did.
For Jean, he hopes he may be such a guide. He considers the best way to approach the matter on the journey to the suburbs of New York, flicking through possibilities, arranging scenarios like shuffling cards. How will she feel, to know she is not alone? He remembers that day in his kitchen, so many years ago, then shies away from it. Thoughts of Raven are nearly as painful as those of Erik.
The cab drops him off on the pavement outside the small suburban home, after some degree of difficulty unfolding the new lightweight wheelchair that Hank has built for him. He is thankful to have it, for the mobility it gives him, the ease of travelling which he could never have in the bulky, solid thing he left back in Westchester. He could not continue the work of finding these youngsters otherwise, and none of the others are yet experienced enough, or indeed convincing enough, to take the role instead.
He is wheeling himself up to the gate in the fence painted white as fresh sheets when he notices that he is not alone.
It strikes him with all the power of a months-past bullet, and he can smell the tang of the sea, the ghost echo of pain and the scratch of sand. Erik. It is a thought broadcast like a drawn out breath, and it goes nowhere. Wearing that metal over his head like a gladiator of old, he is blank to him, a body which moves and speaks but reads cold and dark and dead as a corpse. Erik turns to look at him.
“I never took you for a man taken with theatricality.” It is the first thing that comes to his mind, but it is true; the new paint in purple-red gaudy as the circus, the small design at the brow like a beetle’s horns, the cape dark as old blood folded up and draped over one arm. His other clothes at least are more typical; black, well-fitted, a slightly military cut.
He thinks there is a slight twitch of Erik’s lips at his words, a certain degree of fondness not yet lost, but with that helmet blanketing his thoughts as surely as diamond, as mirrors, he cannot tell. His eyes are mostly hidden by shadow and distance, but he stands stiff, tense in a way Charles has rarely seen. He imagines that perhaps he too knows the touch of pain in this moment, a broken bone not yet set.
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“Were you going to wear that to visit Jean?” Charles asks him, pushing away emotions and remembered scenes tinged with the warmth of nostalgia and the bitterness of a thing lost too soon. He fancies he manages to sound casual enough despite it. “I suppose she might rather like it, but I doubt her parents would see it the same way.”
“I did not come here to speak to humans,” Erik tells him, his eyes narrowing beneath sharp shadows of metal. It should not hurt as much as it does, but he has always known of his once-friend’s hate, chained deep, too deep to be drawn out like poison from a wound at a single death. It finds a new focus.
“I take it we are both here for the same thing?” The words come out tired, and he feels it, weary already of this wall between them, hard and calcified, growing thicker with each moment apart. He wishes... he wishes, and lets it go. It is done, and thinking on ways he might have changed it is like clutching shards of glass, leaving only pain and the smear of blood like ink.
Erik does not answer this question. It is obvious enough. His hands clench into fists, but no metal crumples. Charles is thankful for this at least. He may not wish to admit it, but he needs this chair, and he does not like to think of the humiliation Erik could so easily push on him with casual fingers.
“I should have come to see you sooner,” Erik says, after long moments. There is a raw edge to his voice. “I should have... I need to apologise. For what I did; for what I’ve done to you.”
“I forgive you.” It is easier than he thought to say, and a relief besides. After a month at the hospital and three weeks since his discharge he has had time to think it over and let go of any blame he had once held. Perhaps he does this too easily, but it is and has always been his nature.
It is not Erik’s nature, and he does not take it so easily. He is still blank in mind’s sight, but Charles does not need that to see the reaction, the anger turned outwards and inwards both. “How can you? How can you brush it aside so easily? After what I’ve done to you...”
“An accident,” Charles says, interrupting him. He will not let Erik continue to blame himself for this. “A stray bullet, nothing more.”
“No.” A negative as rough and grainy as the sand back on the beach. “I could have ripped the gun from her hands, stopped the bullets instead of deflecting them... if I had only thought.”
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Erik stares at him, long, slow, a gaze that burns inscrutable. “Sometimes I wonder how we ever got along so well,” he says, quiet enough that Charles cannot be sure he meant to voice it at all. “We are such very different people.” It is resigned; Charles thinks the sorrow it summons anew may very well drown him. It is dark and heavy, and he has come to believe he has only begun to plumb its depths.
“I suppose we shall go and have a chat with Miss Grey together?” he asks finally. He thinks the pain will be worth it merely for the company, though his enjoyment of it is much diminished by that ever-present helmet.
“Of course, old friend,” Erik replies, a smile unhappy and full of sharp shark-teeth. Charles does not let even the faintest seed of hope flower. He cannot expose himself to the risk, even if reconciliation were a possibility. He cannot face such disappointment again, and yet... He cannot promise himself he will not do so. For Erik, he is ever weak, and that is the simple truth of it.
The flag of truce is one thing, but any more than that... As he said at their parting, they have never wanted the same things. He is a naive and optimistic fool, as Erik has branded him, and even he knows better than that, but knowing and feeling are too very different things.
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