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i.
The first time it happens, he's not even sure it's real.
The new metal framing his skull feels unfamiliar, an alien presence he has to get used to. It will bend to his will, eventually, will feel like an extension of his body in a matter of days, but for now he holds back a grimace as he listens impatiently to Raven and Angel's quiet chatter at the dinner table. Every now and then, Emma joins in with her sharp comments and Azazel merely chuckles in response to either woman.
It's early still, yet Erik stands, patience run out. “Good night,” he says and he leaves the room without another word, walking from corridor to corridor, up the stairs, and then another corridor until he finds his own bedroom. It's a disfigured copy of the one room he'd called his own for months (before everything fell apart and he lost more than just a bedroom, muchmuchmore).
Sometimes he finds himself just standing there in the doorway, looking at the cheap surrogate that's build on memories of contentment, and he notices how the wooden bed is a few shades off. The rug beneath it is a tad too long, circles instead of curved lines. The fabrics are either too thick or too thin, too ragged or too smooth.
It's all wrong.
Erik sits himself down in the leather chair in front of the window, feet propped up on the low table, and he stares at a highway that shouldn't be there, but is. It used to be quiet, back home, his window looking out over a neglected part of the vast garden. Only one person ever visited the fish in the pond, and he did so every evening at eight. Erik knows this, because he made sure he was there to watch.
He slowly relaxes, vice like grip loosening their hold. One hand comes up to support his head as the memories replay themselves in his mind. They are grainy, hard edged with what has happened, and some of the feeling has lost its intensity, yet it lulls him to sleep as easily as a mother's lullaby.
You would've been proud, I think.
Barely awake, the stray thought slips through his own unnoticed until it has settled deep into his stomach. It doesn't alarm him, and it won't for a long time. Erik just closes his eyes and pushes it away. It helps, for a while, until the next one comes along.
I wish you didn't walk away.
Exhaustion strips Erik of defences, and sudden regret washes over him, pressing hard until his shoulders hurt with the weight of it. Because he did. He walked away without ever looking back. “'I know,” he mumbles, mind numbing quickly now that sleep is coming next, “'m sorry.”
That night, Erik dreams of dead fish in a room that isn't his.
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