To Tear Asunder [Incomplete]
Title: To Tear Asunder
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Charles/Erik
Summary: Twenty years later, Charles and Erik talk.
Warnings: minor ableism, blatantly ignoring the rules of chess
Author's Note: Written for the prompt here for hyde_the_body. Title taken from Running Up The Hill as covered by Placebo.
It was a hand on his shoulder that broke him from his reverie.
"Xavier." It's broken and disconnected.
"Why are we here?"
Charles realizes that it was a stupid question. Felt stupid rolling of his tongue. But it's still a question neither can answer. Charles changes the focus of his vision to that of Erik's face. He's jaded and tired but hell, it was him; he didn't think he was going to see him again, at least not like this. And Charles half laughs, half chokes up at the thought. It's a violent sound that wrenches through his body, shakes him to the core. Of course he knew he'd come. By request or not. He knew that Erik would come.
At hearing Charles, Erik looks down. Sees straight into the face, into the clear blue eyes of the one thing that he was avoiding, was running from for years. And there he goes again, objectifying people again, making them unreal and negligible. Distancing himself. But Charles F. Xavier is no object, could never be one. Erik realizes this. Had known from the start, if he wasn't so full of it.
"It's been twenty years my de..." the last words falling from his lips.
And it hurts, it burns, but no. Charles cannot go down that road again. Worked to hard to get where he is now.
Erik licks his lips and says two words.
Tempus fugit.
And Charles laughs again, less choking, but his eyes tearing up at all the power strung between those words.
"But not of this has been fun. None of it has. This..." A loss for words.
"This game of cat and mouse?"
Charles closes his eyes.
"Yes." He pauses."Cat and mouse." he repeats as he turns his face back to the window opened with a slight breeze.
"I'd like you to know," Erik's demeanour taking a much cooler and serious tone. "If there was anyway on earth...Or if I was able to make a deal with...Shit." Erik quickly remembering wait, I'm no good at this...expressions of emotions and personal whatevers. I'd rather crawl under something and stay there, making friends with the spiders and the slugs, but damn it, I've got to makes Charles believe me. I have to. "If I could, I would sell my soul - anything - so as to swap places with you. So you would be in any..." He voice trails off as he closes his eyes, not perpared for any kind of reaction Charles might just throw at him. Charles thinks over it, and smiles at him, though he knows Erik isn't looking.
"Would you like to play a game of chess?"
Erik now smiling half heartedly, all kinds of seriousness quickly fading.
"Don't you think that's..." He wants to say juvenile, wants to say foolish but he can't. His vocal cords just aren't working.
Charles, picking up on this, tells Erik to meet me in the study. I assume you still remember where it is, yes? as he wheels himself away.
Erik's alone again. Has always been so, but the feelings exaggerated. Amplified. And it's this emptiness that reminds him of the submarine and the water rushing around me, threatening to collapse my lungs. Was so desperate, so isolated from everything, and completely consumed by the red in my eyes, my only vision, when I thought of Shaw. And when I was near fully consumed, and close to death, Charles came, saved me from everything, but most importantly, myself.
Charles sets the pieces for the game slowly, deliberately, and near too precise. As he was setting down the last king, he heard the door crack open and footsteps. Without looking up he tells Erik that he wished that he would take off that damned and silly helmet.
"I'm sorry. But I cannot oblige that request." Is the reply back.
Charles sighs. With those words and that feeling so poignant and continuously bouncing through his brain, he's back on that Cuban beach that started this. The moment Erik put on Shaw's helmet and the moment where, against his better judgment, against his god damned morals, he held Shaw. Still protesting all the way, begging Erik to stop but knowing it was futile because he couldn't hear him. But he still held Shaw. And then the coin comes with that low, desperate and utterly lonely and empty feeling that intensifies ten fold as it pulls slowly through his mind scraping against everything that made him who he was. And then every one is calling after him. Charles! Xavier! Professor! Anything to try and deter him but he has to concentrate. He has to hold Shaw. He's got to focus. He's got to hold Shaw. And no, I can't fucking pass out now because Erik...but God does it hurtburnsting and I don't how much longer I can last. For a moment, he felt like he was going to die; he felt it in everything that was him.
"But of course." He's swung back into reality now. He nods and thinks how foolish of me to ask. Sarcasm and all.
Erik just stands there, really having no idea on what to do. He coughs and shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
"Please." Charles points to the seat opposite to him. "Have a seat."
It could have been a few hours or a few minutes. Neither could tell, maybe neither of them wanted to know.
This would be so much more pleasant if he would take off that bloody helmet, Charles thought.
That helmet symbolized all the hate and the pain and the death. Even beyound that, the helmet represented the emptiness left in it's place.
"Your move."
He shakes his head, he completely missed Erik's turn. He examines the board, looking for possibilities. He picks up a knight and a pon. Erik was about to voice his objections because hey, that's cheating and Charles continually does that shit; reading minds and it's cheating. Plain and simple. But Charles lifts a finger to his lips, signaling for him to quiet himself and listen.
"What makes a pon so different from a knight?" A rhetoric maybe. Erik can't tell, is about to speak, to answer the question.
"I believe it to be-"
"Is it the way the knight moves?" He interrupted. "Or the way the pons fill the front line, seemingly so dispensable? Is the connotations that have tagged along with their namesakes? And what of the queen?" He sets down the pon and knight to their original spaces and picks up the queen. Holding the piece in his hands, with eyes, in Erik's opinion are definitely not sparkling whatsoever because, for fuck sake, it's just a piece of glass. "So majestic. So powerful. Yet, so many of the players ignore her until the very end. Why is that? She's not dispensable, but not important enough to use? It makes no sense. She has a potential that no one can see." He sets the piece.
Erik cocks his head to the side, about to speak and was cut off again.
"And the rook - squat but mighty. Just as important as any other piece. Just as vital. Could win a match if his powers were used just so."
He sets the rook down and on it's square, clasps his hands together, and leans forward. Erik squints his eyes and moves back some.
"I fail to see what your getting at Xavier."
Charles seems to lean in impossibly closer, and Erik is half wondering and half marveling at the fact the Charles has yet to fall from his chair because damn it, he is leaning in so close and the claustrophobia is settling and coiling in my stomach like a snake and I don't know if I can handle this. But this train of thought is derailed when Charles speaks again.
"You and I," pointing to himself and Erik, respectively. "we're not so different from the queen, or any of the other pieces." he picks up the queen and a pon for emphasis. "We walk out prescribed paths, whether they be inevitable or not, until we," A clink of chess pieces. "collide."
Erik nods.
"So, is a queen so different from a pawn after all?"
Erik ponders the question for a moment.
"Yes." finally answering, his face a strange mix of expression and emotion. "One is much more powerful...more developed than the other."
Charles sighs, rubs his hands across his face.
"We are all equal. All the same. All made of the same basic building blocks. Just DNA. Just carbon, nitrogenous bases, and phosphate groups. With all the same objectives in life."
Erik stays silent. And Charles willing him to understand. To learn. To stop what he's doing The killing and the extortion and the stealing and oh good Lord so many lives....
Charles makes the first move to start the game again when the silence becomes unbearable, moving one of his pawns a space forward. They play in silence like this for awhile. Prolonging what both feel is the inevitable, and maybe, just maybe it's that same inevitability that Charles just spoke of, Erik thinks. And it clicks then. It finally clicks. He moves his rook.
"I must admit, you have an insurmountable capacity for compassion. And you are a genius. It's absolute." He stares at Charles until he's seeing those big blue eyes, too blue and deep as pools, again. I think I could swim in them forever, Erik thinks. "I have to confess, I am but the tiniest bit jealous."
And he knows in that moment it is true. Because, how could you possibly be kind and teach when you're crippled for life and the one that shot you in the back is your bes...is your friend. Your fucking back. Dear God, how can you be so civil near me? Asking the damn friend that shot you to chess? How can you? And Erik hates Charles for it. Despises him for it. He could never dream of comprehending, no matter how smart he was.
And Charles reaction. Just slow blinking and a tired look. Erik can't help it. It just angers him but he can't do anything. He just needs to calm down Deep breaths. Onetwothree. He does this as he watches Charles move a knight forward. And Erik keeps breathing deep.
As his anger fades, he picks up one of his few remaining pawns, moved it to the space in front of the knight. This continues again, and again. Turns taken and pieces falling for an immeasurable amount of time.
Erik breaks the silence once more when he eyes Charles placing his pawn in front of, realizing that he won't be winning this round.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Charles/Erik
Summary: Twenty years later, Charles and Erik talk.
Warnings: minor ableism, blatantly ignoring the rules of chess
Author's Note: Written for the prompt here for hyde_the_body. Title taken from Running Up The Hill as covered by Placebo.
It was a hand on his shoulder that broke him from his reverie.
"Xavier." It's broken and disconnected.
"Why are we here?"
Charles realizes that it was a stupid question. Felt stupid rolling of his tongue. But it's still a question neither can answer. Charles changes the focus of his vision to that of Erik's face. He's jaded and tired but hell, it was him; he didn't think he was going to see him again, at least not like this. And Charles half laughs, half chokes up at the thought. It's a violent sound that wrenches through his body, shakes him to the core. Of course he knew he'd come. By request or not. He knew that Erik would come.
At hearing Charles, Erik looks down. Sees straight into the face, into the clear blue eyes of the one thing that he was avoiding, was running from for years. And there he goes again, objectifying people again, making them unreal and negligible. Distancing himself. But Charles F. Xavier is no object, could never be one. Erik realizes this. Had known from the start, if he wasn't so full of it.
"It's been twenty years my de..." the last words falling from his lips.
And it hurts, it burns, but no. Charles cannot go down that road again. Worked to hard to get where he is now.
Erik licks his lips and says two words.
Tempus fugit.
And Charles laughs again, less choking, but his eyes tearing up at all the power strung between those words.
"But not of this has been fun. None of it has. This..." A loss for words.
"This game of cat and mouse?"
Charles closes his eyes.
"Yes." He pauses."Cat and mouse." he repeats as he turns his face back to the window opened with a slight breeze.
"I'd like you to know," Erik's demeanour taking a much cooler and serious tone. "If there was anyway on earth...Or if I was able to make a deal with...Shit." Erik quickly remembering wait, I'm no good at this...expressions of emotions and personal whatevers. I'd rather crawl under something and stay there, making friends with the spiders and the slugs, but damn it, I've got to makes Charles believe me. I have to. "If I could, I would sell my soul - anything - so as to swap places with you. So you would be in any..." He voice trails off as he closes his eyes, not perpared for any kind of reaction Charles might just throw at him. Charles thinks over it, and smiles at him, though he knows Erik isn't looking.
"Would you like to play a game of chess?"
Erik now smiling half heartedly, all kinds of seriousness quickly fading.
"Don't you think that's..." He wants to say juvenile, wants to say foolish but he can't. His vocal cords just aren't working.
Charles, picking up on this, tells Erik to meet me in the study. I assume you still remember where it is, yes? as he wheels himself away.
Erik's alone again. Has always been so, but the feelings exaggerated. Amplified. And it's this emptiness that reminds him of the submarine and the water rushing around me, threatening to collapse my lungs. Was so desperate, so isolated from everything, and completely consumed by the red in my eyes, my only vision, when I thought of Shaw. And when I was near fully consumed, and close to death, Charles came, saved me from everything, but most importantly, myself.
Charles sets the pieces for the game slowly, deliberately, and near too precise. As he was setting down the last king, he heard the door crack open and footsteps. Without looking up he tells Erik that he wished that he would take off that damned and silly helmet.
"I'm sorry. But I cannot oblige that request." Is the reply back.
Charles sighs. With those words and that feeling so poignant and continuously bouncing through his brain, he's back on that Cuban beach that started this. The moment Erik put on Shaw's helmet and the moment where, against his better judgment, against his god damned morals, he held Shaw. Still protesting all the way, begging Erik to stop but knowing it was futile because he couldn't hear him. But he still held Shaw. And then the coin comes with that low, desperate and utterly lonely and empty feeling that intensifies ten fold as it pulls slowly through his mind scraping against everything that made him who he was. And then every one is calling after him. Charles! Xavier! Professor! Anything to try and deter him but he has to concentrate. He has to hold Shaw. He's got to focus. He's got to hold Shaw. And no, I can't fucking pass out now because Erik...but God does it hurtburnsting and I don't how much longer I can last. For a moment, he felt like he was going to die; he felt it in everything that was him.
"But of course." He's swung back into reality now. He nods and thinks how foolish of me to ask. Sarcasm and all.
Erik just stands there, really having no idea on what to do. He coughs and shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
"Please." Charles points to the seat opposite to him. "Have a seat."
It could have been a few hours or a few minutes. Neither could tell, maybe neither of them wanted to know.
This would be so much more pleasant if he would take off that bloody helmet, Charles thought.
That helmet symbolized all the hate and the pain and the death. Even beyound that, the helmet represented the emptiness left in it's place.
"Your move."
He shakes his head, he completely missed Erik's turn. He examines the board, looking for possibilities. He picks up a knight and a pon. Erik was about to voice his objections because hey, that's cheating and Charles continually does that shit; reading minds and it's cheating. Plain and simple. But Charles lifts a finger to his lips, signaling for him to quiet himself and listen.
"What makes a pon so different from a knight?" A rhetoric maybe. Erik can't tell, is about to speak, to answer the question.
"I believe it to be-"
"Is it the way the knight moves?" He interrupted. "Or the way the pons fill the front line, seemingly so dispensable? Is the connotations that have tagged along with their namesakes? And what of the queen?" He sets down the pon and knight to their original spaces and picks up the queen. Holding the piece in his hands, with eyes, in Erik's opinion are definitely not sparkling whatsoever because, for fuck sake, it's just a piece of glass. "So majestic. So powerful. Yet, so many of the players ignore her until the very end. Why is that? She's not dispensable, but not important enough to use? It makes no sense. She has a potential that no one can see." He sets the piece.
Erik cocks his head to the side, about to speak and was cut off again.
"And the rook - squat but mighty. Just as important as any other piece. Just as vital. Could win a match if his powers were used just so."
He sets the rook down and on it's square, clasps his hands together, and leans forward. Erik squints his eyes and moves back some.
"I fail to see what your getting at Xavier."
Charles seems to lean in impossibly closer, and Erik is half wondering and half marveling at the fact the Charles has yet to fall from his chair because damn it, he is leaning in so close and the claustrophobia is settling and coiling in my stomach like a snake and I don't know if I can handle this. But this train of thought is derailed when Charles speaks again.
"You and I," pointing to himself and Erik, respectively. "we're not so different from the queen, or any of the other pieces." he picks up the queen and a pon for emphasis. "We walk out prescribed paths, whether they be inevitable or not, until we," A clink of chess pieces. "collide."
Erik nods.
"So, is a queen so different from a pawn after all?"
Erik ponders the question for a moment.
"Yes." finally answering, his face a strange mix of expression and emotion. "One is much more powerful...more developed than the other."
Charles sighs, rubs his hands across his face.
"We are all equal. All the same. All made of the same basic building blocks. Just DNA. Just carbon, nitrogenous bases, and phosphate groups. With all the same objectives in life."
Erik stays silent. And Charles willing him to understand. To learn. To stop what he's doing The killing and the extortion and the stealing and oh good Lord so many lives....
Charles makes the first move to start the game again when the silence becomes unbearable, moving one of his pawns a space forward. They play in silence like this for awhile. Prolonging what both feel is the inevitable, and maybe, just maybe it's that same inevitability that Charles just spoke of, Erik thinks. And it clicks then. It finally clicks. He moves his rook.
"I must admit, you have an insurmountable capacity for compassion. And you are a genius. It's absolute." He stares at Charles until he's seeing those big blue eyes, too blue and deep as pools, again. I think I could swim in them forever, Erik thinks. "I have to confess, I am but the tiniest bit jealous."
And he knows in that moment it is true. Because, how could you possibly be kind and teach when you're crippled for life and the one that shot you in the back is your bes...is your friend. Your fucking back. Dear God, how can you be so civil near me? Asking the damn friend that shot you to chess? How can you? And Erik hates Charles for it. Despises him for it. He could never dream of comprehending, no matter how smart he was.
And Charles reaction. Just slow blinking and a tired look. Erik can't help it. It just angers him but he can't do anything. He just needs to calm down Deep breaths. Onetwothree. He does this as he watches Charles move a knight forward. And Erik keeps breathing deep.
As his anger fades, he picks up one of his few remaining pawns, moved it to the space in front of the knight. This continues again, and again. Turns taken and pieces falling for an immeasurable amount of time.
Erik breaks the silence once more when he eyes Charles placing his pawn in front of, realizing that he won't be winning this round.