Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Erik was sure there was a lot that he didn’t remember from the aftermath. What he did remember came in drunk, blurry snippets.

Sand and dust rising from the rubble and wreck of the apartment, and settling in his lungs as he breathed in shakily. He was on his knees next to Charles who was shockingly bald and only conscious long enough to receive Erik’s hand when he reached for him. Erik thought he had said that he was sorry but he wasn’t sure.

Then they were in a jet. But they hadn’t left Cairo in a jet. This was the last leg of the journey home. The parts between the apartment and this memory were missing.

They’d acquired a stretcher somewhere along the way for Charles who remained unconscious. Erik remembered vomiting at least twice as his body burned through the withdrawal of En Sabah Nur’s power. The girl, Storm, was slumped against his side. She was shaking and feverish. Likely, he was too. The world was swimming but Charles’ pulse where Erik could feel it against the metal of the other man’s watch was somewhat steadying.

Mystique—no, she was Raven now. Raven held his face in her hand and mopped at his forehead. Still in the jet. When she let him go, his head rolled onto his shoulder. His eyes burned. Something was aching inside him. Raven had begun to apologise for something—“Erik, I’m sorry about your…”

He was out again before he heard the rest.

*

Finally, they were arriving at the mansion. Erik had been awake again for this part. When they landed, Hank had told him to wait in the jet until they could sort a few things out, and Erik had nodded vaguely. He had pins and needles from the children waiting outside and their collective mass of metal trinkets. Hair clips, bracelets, loose change…

Storm was awake too. Her eyes were huge and moony, and she looked exhausted and sick. Hank called her out. She didn’t have to wait with Erik because Charles’ children have never heard reports or seen televised footage of her doing anything like trying to shoot the president, or terrorising people with floating stadiums.

If Erik walked out of the jet, he didn’t remember.

**

After that, things were a little clearer.

The mansion’s grounds had turned into a campsite, much of the buildings obliterated into rubble. At first, Raven had tried to tell him “here, Erik, this is your tent. You can stay here for as long as you need”. But as soon as he had taken one step inside he immediately backtracked, shoving backwards and straight into Raven who was right behind him.

He’d asked for Charles, and Raven told him no without a second thought. So he’d asked again louder. They’d argued; Erik couldn’t remember what was said. He remembered Raven’s sigh as she surrendered and led him out to the edge of the tent-made village.

*

Erik lay next to Charles on a thin roll of hard foam in a tent that was kept dark and cool. Charles slept endlessly but Erik couldn’t sleep at all. He was tired but sleep would not come. He watched over Charles like a ghost for however long it was— the constant dimness of the tent made the days roll into each other. Until Raven knelt down next to him and told him there was work to be done.

**

Erik spent hours a day dazedly helping to reconstruct the ruined mansion. Charles’ protégé, Jean, helped too. It was hard work and, alone, would have required more concentration than Erik was capable of at the time, but he and Jean worked well together. Their powers found an easy balance and rhythm alongside one another. And when Erik got too lost in trying not to think about everything that had happened, that his mind wandered away, he felt his hands become hers. She prompted his mutation to bend and bond in time with her own without even noticing.

When Jean did realise what she was doing, she’d apologised; she was stronger than she had been before Cairo and she hadn’t gotten used to keeping it in check yet. Erik had brushed it off, watching relief pour into Jean’s expression when he wasn’t angry with the intrusion. When they continued, it happened again. He didn’t mind though. She was young, she couldn’t help it. And she surely knew Charles’ mansion better now than he did.

Through this, Storm kept the weather at bay, providing cloudy but bright days to let them work comfortably. And then when the smaller children told her the grounds were getting too dry for them to continue replanting the flower beds, Erik, Jean and the others took cover inside the finished parts of the mansion as Storm opened the heavens.

While Storm let it rain, or when he wasn’t otherwise occupied, Erik sat with Charles. Hank came to check Charles’ vitals occasionally, but from what they could gather, and from what Jean could tell them, Charles’ mind was healing. Which was why he still hadn’t woken.

When they had moved Charles out of the tent and back into a reconstructed wing of the mansion, Raven had once again tried to give Erik a separate room. She’d looked so tired that he’d accepted it, but in reality, he hadn’t slept a night there yet. The bed that had been procured for Charles was as big as his last bed in the mansion had ever been. There was plenty of room for Erik to curl up next to the telepath without disturbing his unconscious form. Erik finally began to sleep a little.

**

With the rain, the temperature seemed to plummet, and Charles was already in bad shape. One afternoon, Erik wandered down the hall in search of a linen closet for extra bedding. A lifetime ago, when Erik had lived here himself, he’d known exactly where this sort of thing was. Today, it took him a while to find a promising looking cupboard.

Opening the door to it, Erik found more than just the linens.

One of Charles littlies. A girl of about six shoved snugly in amongst the towels and bedsheets.

Erik felt woozy with the familiar way his shoulders automatically softened and his mouth picked itself up at the corners, face warming into something fond and tender.

"What are you doing in here?" He asked, listening to how his voice made his words ring with playfulness. He didn't know that would still happen after...

He swayed sickly on his feet.

"I'm hiding!" Replied the girl seriously, jabbing an accusing forefinger at Erik. "And you're giving me away, so either get in or get out!"

Erik surveyed the small cupboard. There was no way he was getting in.

"I just need a blanket and then I'll leave you be," he said softly, spying a suitable woolen throw. The girl measured him with her own long look.

“Are you the professor’s friend?" She asked in a whisper. Erik blinked, unsure how to respond. The girl watched him with big eyes from the gloom of the cupboard.

"Your professor," he told her after a deciding pause. “is my dearest friend.”

While the girl digested this, Erik let it sink in too.

It was true. He and Charles had never had enough time together, never formed any kind of ‘normal relationship’ , but even when they’d disagreed, even when they’d hated each other, Charles had always been his dearest friend.

He’d had Raven, he supposed. Raven was the person he’d spent the most time with before he’d escaped to Poland. But Erik wasn’t sure they’d ever been ‘friends’.

He and Raven’s relationship was like a business deal gone sour. They'd remained loyal as long as they served each other's purposes, but betrayed one another when they were no longer convenient as allies. Maybe it was different now though. After all, it had been Raven who had come to him and told him he still had her; still had family. But their past was even more fraught with anger and betrayal than he and Charles’.

He'd seduced her with the idea that she needn't change for anyone, and fed her validation and confidence while she’d served as his second in command. He’d built her up strong with his sweet words for his own purposes. Cruel really. Erik knew he wasn’t a good person.

Although Erik was sure Raven had known that he and Charles had been more than just ‘dear friends’, so perhaps they had been always using each other.

Raven had abandoned him to that prison, even though she’d known what he’d intended to do in Dallas. Then he'd shot her, and later she’d shot him. Most recently, he'd almost let her be strangled to death by En Sabah Nur.

It had only been when Charles had been in very real danger that Erik had come to his senses.

And it was Charles he'd thought of when Raven had come to him.  Erik expected the damage he and Raven had done to each other may be irreversible.

The girl tugged the blanket out from under her and handed it to him. He left her to her game.

**

The day that Charles finally woke was three days after Erik’s encounter at the linen closet. He’d been lying on his side reading, with one hand laid on Charles’ belly to check he kept breathing. The telepath was propped up with a number of extravagant pillows and tucked in with the woolen throw up to his chest. When Erik felt the other man’s breathing change he’d quietly laid his book down.

Lying very still, he watched Charles’ eyelids begin to flutter. Erik should have called for Hank or Raven but, with Charles’ eyelashes flickering like a tiny flame, he feared any movement might frighten it away. He couldn’t move, and couldn’t help wanting to keep Charles to himself, just for a moment.

Part of it had to do with not knowing what was about to happen. Before, and in Cairo, Charles hadn't been angry, not with Erik atleast. He was a bigger man than Erik could ever hope to be. Even as Erik chose En Sabah Nur over him, Charles hadn’t been angry. He’d been sad, but never angry. However, trying to save the world had been all tangled up in that, so who knew what Charles would say now, safe at home in his own bed. Erik didn’t have the helmet or the armour. He was bare; dressed in trousers and a soft button down, shoes neat by the door. Charles could easily do whatever he liked to him. He had every right to be furious with Erik. And Erik would let him be, but he’d prefer it not to be in front of Hank or Raven.

And if Charles wasn’t angry… Well, he’d like that to be just between them too. Just for now.

Erik lay on his side, quiet and wary like a fawn in the brush; watching Charles’ lips pop open to allow a soft groan to roll out.

Erik had watched Charles wake countless times. He was a conditioned light sleeper and a natural early riser. But Charles loved to sleep, and was never anywhere near surfacing from his dreams when Erik had woken next to him. Erik imagined it was because Charles’ mind was so busy when he was awake. When he’d know him, the telepath had slept like a child; deep and unguarded. And when he woke he had always looked so lovely and confused for a moment, eyes enormous and hair a disaster of soft, unruly curls.

Now, as he opened his eyes, Charles looked nothing like the small, soft man Erik had slept next to all those years ago. He looked hollow and gaunt. He had thinned disturbingly through this whole ordeal, and the skin around his eyes was haunted by purple bruises. His blue eyes were liquid and hopelessly disorientated as he blinked groggily. Erik sat up into Charles’ line of vision, but as he did, Charles’ telepathy lunged out like something alive. Erik jolted away as though trying to physically evade it but his vision lurched sickly as he felt Charles’ mind try to tear into him.

“Don’t, Charles! I’ll hurt you!” Erik cried aloud. He hastily conjured an enormous, pitch-black wall around his own thorny mind, shutting Charles out. When the wave of telepathy rammed against the mental barrier Erik grit his teeth, but Charles was still weak and it held. He knew Charles was trying to orientate himself, trying to cling to something familiar, but Erik’s mind wasn’t safe for him right now. They stayed still for a moment, before Erik felt Charles pull away. The telepath groaned, relaxed a touch, and then vomited violently into his lap.

“Charles!” Hank and Raven had appeared in the doorway, drawn by either Charles’ surge of telepathy or Erik’s yelling. They both ignored Erik kneeling in a defensive stance on the bedspread, and rushed to Charles’ side. Collecting himself, Erik came forward too.

“What happened?!” hissed Raven as Hank gathered up the soiled woolen blanket that had caught the worst of the damage. Raven was pulling the rest of the bedsheets off. Erik’s shaking fingers were undoing the buttons on Charles’ pajama shirt.

“He woke up and tried to grab me telepathically. It made him sick, I guess,” mumbled Erik, leaning Charles, who was still groaning, forward into his chest. He pulled the pajama shirt off of the other man as gently as he could. Erik could feel Raven seething at him, looking for a reason to be angry. She was sick with worry. Erik understood.

“I’m sorry,” said Erik. Because Raven seemed to need it. She deflated and was silent as they worked.

“He likes a bath when he’s sick,” she told Erik quietly after a minute. “It’ll probably help.”

Hank was back from disposing of the blanket.

“I’ll do it,” he said with the efficient tone of someone who had done this sort of thing for Charles before. But, against Erik’s chest, Charles moaned painfully and his fingers seized Erik’s arm with surprising strength. The three of them watched the telepath for a moment before Hank nodded silently in assent.

“I’ll start the water for you.”

*

The wing of the mansion that Charles was being housed in had quickly been restored to almost all its former glory by the collective powers of Erik and Jean, and the knowledge of the Xavier bank accounts shared by Raven and Hank. No expense had been spared for the master of the house. So when Erik carried Charles into the adjoined bathroom, he found it painfully familiar. Raven had installed the same luxurious tiling and the same free standing Victorian tub, the only new additions being the handrails for Charles.

Years ago, Erik had spent many a long evening in the almost identical bathroom with Charles, who’d asserted that a bath was almost as restful as the hours of sleep they were missing anyway. But lowering Charles through the plumes of steam and into the hot water didn’t feel restful this time. It didn’t feel fun or happy as it had in those days. There was no comforting Charles to pull shampoo through his hair with his fingers, and no indulgent amounts of bubble bath that mostly ended up on the floor. This time, Charles was small and barely there in his arms. He was very quiet, though Erik could feel his wasn’t asleep, toeing the edge of unconsciousness. He only stirred when he was fully into the bath and Erik was moving to get a washcloth.

“Erik…” Charles rasped, opening his eyes. Erik said nothing, leaning Charles back against the tub with careful hands on his shoulders, and then wiping the man’s messy mouth and chin with the washcloth. After he’d tossed it to the side and retrieved another, he replied.

“Charles.”

The telepath was watching him with his head tipped backwards to look up. His arms were braced over the sides of the bathtub. Erik watched him back, observing a spark of life sharpening Charles’ gaze as he came to his senses. His telepathy stayed firmly where it was and Erik was not unimpressed with the small display of Charles’ immense power.

“Do we need to talk?” asked Charles. Erik blinked.

“Are you upset with me, Charles?”

Best get straight to it. If Charles was angry, Erik should leave.

The other man looked at Erik for a long moment, as though deciding. Erik could feel Charles’ mind working syrupy slow at the edges of his own, where it always was when they were together. But as always, he couldn’t glean anything from it, despite knowing it was there.

“Of course not,” said Charles softly after a while. He sounded tired but there was some pink to his skin now that he was in a hot bath.

“Are you sure? I’ll leave if you say so.”

“You apologised in Cairo and I told you I wasn’t angry then but I don’t think you heard me… Or that might not have happened… I’m not entirely sure.” Charles’ brow creased confusedly, and Erik recognised that this probably wasn’t the time for this discussion.

“I don’t think there is any bubble bath,” he Erik instead, taking hold of Charles’ shoulder and dipping the new washcloth into the bath. Charles chuckled in reply.

“No, I don’t suppose there is.”

Erik slowly cleaned Charles from head to toe, starting with his neck and then down to his feet. Charles groaned perhaps not contentedly, but approvingly all the while, even when Erik knew he was past the point where Charles could feel what he was doing anymore. They didn’t talk but the silence was comfortable and understood. Erik was thorough and methodical. And it wasn’t that Charles was dirty, someone had certainly bathed him and cleaned off all the grime and blood when they’d first returned, but Erik hoped it was bringing the other man a hint of comfort nonetheless.

When Charles’ body was clean, Erik came back to the head of the tub and dabbed sweat from the man’s forehead and then back over his hairless head. ‘Like a baby’s,’ Erik thought, almost chuckling before feeling sick again. When this treatment was finished, Erik re-soaked the cloth and slowly wrung it out over Charles’ face, drizzling warm water over him. The other man closed bruised eyelids and sighed.

“Stay awhile, Erik...

“Alright, Charles.”

Chapter Text

After Charles woke Erik didn’t stay so close by. He took to sleeping in his own bed and Charles insisted on as much independence as possible, so they didn’t see much of each other. But Charles had asked him to stay and Erik had no place to go, so he did. After the bath, Charles yielded only to Hank who had taken care of him for so many years, despite an obvious dislike of being carried anywhere.

Charles had once luxuriated in being carried, delighted in Erik whipping him into his arms and depositing him into the bath, onto the kitchen counter, into the bed. Erik understood his aversion to it now though.

They had very few opportunities to speak, and they hadn’t been alone since the bath. Raven always had someone with Charles. Erik kept working on the mansion, and when he felt up to it, sometimes Charles came to watch. But mostly the professor was busy with the students. So many of them were still so young, and had been left behind; scared and misplaced, when the mansion was destroyed. They all wanted to talk to their beloved headmaster. The little ones wanted to sit in his lap and make sure he was alright. They wanted to touch his head and cuddle him and take up all his time.

Erik kept his distance and did his best with the mansion. He stopped sleeping again.

**

It was late one night when Charles and Erik finally spoke without Jean or Raven stuck to Charles’ side. Erik was in his room, reading a book from the bookcase, when there was a knock. It took him a moment to comprehend that it hadn’t happened aloud, but inside his head. And that it had been more of a sensation than a sound.

 ‘Erik?’

Charles’ voice in his mind, accompanied by a soft mental touch at his peripherals. Like a cat against his legs.

‘Charles,’ Erik thought back, allowing the telepath admission. Excluding their brief exchange before Cairo, it had been over twenty years since Erik had felt Charles there without it being a means to end whatever displeasing action Erik was taking. But now, patience and kindness, and all things Charles honeyed his mind, making him release a long, deep breath.

It was quiet for a moment before Charles pressed a curling, wondering sensation into his mind-- a wordless ‘how are you?’. Erik closed his eyes and projected the smallness of the room and bed, though neither were so inside the more than lavish mansion. Immediately, Charles’ consciousness wrapped comfortingly around him in a way that felt so old and familiar that it made Erik ache.

‘I’m sorry we haven’t spoken much, my friend. It can’t be very comfortable for you. Everyone you know seems to have so much to do…’

‘We’re both busy, Charles, and you still aren’t well. Don’t worry yourself.’

It was quiet for a while, though Charles’ mind remained curled up around Erik like a large, warm cat, the telepathy connecting them humming gently like a purr.

‘I don’t know what to say, Erik. I’m sorry. Can we have breakfast tomorrow? In my room? I’d invite you to spend some time now, but I’m a bit tired, I’m afraid.’

Erik felt unexpected relief flood through him and suddenly realised how much he’d been waiting to talk to Charles properly. As though he’d been on pause til now.

‘Alright. But get some sleep now, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Their connection broadcasted Charles’ satisfaction with a pleasant pulse.

‘Sleep tight, Erik.’

‘Goodnight.’

*                                                                                      

Early the next morning, after another night of hardly any sleep, Erik went up to Charles’ bedroom. When he slipped through the door, he found Charles awake, sitting up in bed. He already had a pot of tea on his bedside table and two cups. Erik wondered who had been up before him.

“I felt you coming,” Charles told him with a small smile as Erik approached and seated himself in the chair by the bedside. Raven’s slippers were on the floor, half tucked underneath.

They regarded each other quietly.

Charles still looked exhausted. His eyes were ringed with dark circles he couldn’t seem to shake, making them appear a little big for his face and his freckles were rather stark against his milky skin that hadn’t quite regained all its colour. But Erik imagined he too was looking pretty tired these days.

“Where shall we start?” asked Charles distantly, but Erik went on looking at the other man, the question seeming to hang around his ears but not actually enter his head. The room was warm and full of heavy morning air draped in the calming scent of Charles’ tea. And Charles—Charles was here. Even without opening a telepathic line between them, Charles presence was so immediately settling to Erik that it was as though Charles had taken him in his arms. Erik looked at Charles a moment longer before the man smiled, giving Erik a knowing nod and then reached for the book next to him. And it was like a switch had flicked. Erik laid his head down on the bed and fell asleep without a word.

If Erik had any dreams, Charles must have protected him from them because he slept until lunch time when the other man finally woke him, rubbing gentle rousing circles between his shoulders.

“Erik, Raven is bringing lunch now. You should eat something.”

They ate, talking quietly. Mostly about the mansion rebuild. Charles had two more cups of tea.

Then:

“Erik, there’s a cemetery here… For family…” Erik knew what Charles was getting at and said no before he could even formulate why. Charles tried again with, “there’s a forest. At the edge of the grounds. It’s quiet and the students are hardly ever over that side. There’s wild flowers and deer sometimes. I can show you if you’d like…” There was something about this idea that loosened a tightness inside Erik. He couldn’t speak so he just nodded. Charles nodded too and poured Erik some more tea.

*

They left the house soon after lunch, while Charles still had the strength, and Erik still had the resolve. It was a long way just to the other side of the mansion, and even further to the edge of the grounds. Erik realised he hadn’t even been out this far when he used to run here in the mornings. He’d seen the trees, but had never ventured out to them. Charles let Erik push him since it really was a very long way and Erik felt so unsteady that he did it with his hands rather than his mutation.

“We didn’t have to go today, you know,” Charles murmured from in front. Erik tightened his grip on the chair.

“No, but I want to see it.”

At the edge of the forest they eventually reached, Erik let go of the wheelchair and they proceeded side by side.

On they went until all sounds of the nearby mansion truly vanished. Erik wasn’t really looking where they were going. He liked that it was quiet though. They came to a small grassy area where they finally stopped in a patch of weak sunlight. Exhausted, Erik sat down.

Charles’ chair was click-clacking loudly as he fiddled with the arms of it; loosening one side so that it slid down to let him out.

“Help me onto the grass, I want to sit too,” he said, extending an arm toward Erik who froze.

“I don’t know how,” he confessed. Charles chuckled tightly.

“It’s not very difficult, Erik.” Erik rose to his knees and shuffled to Charles’ side, stiff with hesitation.

“But you only let Hank…” he said slowly. Charles was reaching for him, setting a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m a proud, proud fool, I’m afraid,” sighed the telepath, guiding Erik close to him. Erik slipped an arm around Charles’ back and middle, and bent to gather his legs in the other. Charles’ own arms wrapped tight around his neck. This close, Erik could smell that Charles’ safe, bookish scent had remained unchanged. “But I’m sure, in Hank’s eyes, I can become no more pitiful than I already am. He knows the worst of me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Charles,” chided Erik as he lifted the other man against his chest. Charles huffed in reply somewhere behind his ear. Moving Charles’ chair to make room, Erik leaned down to set the man on the grassy forest floor. Charles seemed to be alright to sit, so Erik settled back down next to him.

The reality of why they had come out here fell heavily around them as they lapsed into silence.

It was a beautiful spot. It reminded Erik of… of Poland.

They would have liked it. It was green and mossy and smelled like a forest should, despite being in such close proximity to the huge mansion. Here and there, there were butterflies flitting about, and birds tittered overhead. Further in there would be deer.

Erik had nothing of them to lay here except the locket pressed against his heart under his shirt, but he wouldn’t part with that. He didn’t think he’d ever take it off.

All he had was his thoughts of them.

That would have to be enough.

It was nice here. He could let them stay here. Let them find peace in the quiet. N-Ni—She probably would have liked the idea of it. Of being given not just to the ground of her wonderland, but to the forest as a whole. An image of a girl hand feeding acorns to a pair of deer swam through his vision.

“We were going to come here,” Erik said to Charles suddenly. “On a trip. I was going to bring her to you. But we were waiting til... Til…” His mouth felt dry, as though full of sand. He took a breath and swallowed. “Til she... Was older. And we could save the money... Do it properly and safely.”

Though Erik was looking out to the trees, Charles was watching him patiently. Familiar kindness warmed the air between them. Erik closed his eyes and wet his lips. Charles hadn’t asked, but it seemed right—safe, to speak of them here. He’d barely allowed himself to think of them since it happened.

“You were going to teach her to control her power. N-N-Nina--liked you. I told her about you and your school of children who were just like her. And M-Magda… She would have been jealous of you I think, but she would have loved the mansion. The city...”

Erik’s eyes were burning.

“You love them very much,” said Charles simply, filling Erik’s space.

“Yes...”

The silence fell between them again while Erik struggled to straighten out his breathing. Charles pushed himself up on his hands and wiggled about to get more comfortable, grunting in effort. Erik watched his immobile legs stretched out before them, absorbing the sight of Charles feet drifting over sideways without tension to hold them upright. The tactile memory of Charles lying in his lap in Cuba made his Erik twitch and clench his teeth. The rest of the scene promptly assaulted his mind and he suddenly felt sick sitting next to Charles, ashamed that he’d carried him in the arms that had done this.

“Erik, don’t.” Charles’ fingers reached out and wrapped tight around Erik’s bicep, nails biting hard enough to sting. Erik stared at him.

There had been no shortage ‘Erik, don’t’ from Charles in the past; it was a well-worn path between them. Perhaps Erik should have learned to be more receptive to it in his youth. Maybe then...

Charles had said it on the beach too.

Erik, don’t!

Erik, no!

“It was my fault,” Erik said hoarsely.

He had admitted this to himself some time ago. But ten years prior, Charles had been walking and Erik had never even seen him in the wheelchair until he’d appeared before Cerebro and spirited Charles away. New guilt doused him cold, making him bodily shudder.

“It was an accident, Erik,” said Charles firmly.

“But it was my fault.”

Charles didn’t look away when he told him sternly, “I don't want you to blame yourself.” And he meant it; the language on his face still so familiar. Erik knew Charles was being honest in the set of his mouth, the furrow of his brows. It made something unpleasant slice into his guts. Beyond Charles’ blue, blue eyes, the wheelchair was an unfocused grey smudge. Its metallic presence, that Erik would have otherwise found reassuring, felt distinctly wrong in amongst the lush grass and quiet trees. Erik hated it. He hated where he could feel the worn smoothness of where Charles’ shoes sat upon the foot rest day after day. He hated the rings on the wheels that went round and round in place of Charles’ legs. Nausea roared through Erik so violently that he began to tremble. He felt something dark surge up his throat before he could stop it.

“But I should blame myself, Charles!! I did it! I did all this!” Erik flung an arm out toward the forest, hysteria cracking his voice. His fingers had a heartbeat. He was going to vibrate out of his skin. “Everything is all my f--!!” Charles’ eyes flashed brightly and he dug his fingers in even harder to Erik’s arm. Erik didn’t know if it was the sharp shot of pain that kept him from continuing, or if Charles was there, in his mind for a moment.

“Don't. Don't you dare,” growled Charles before Erik found his way back to words. The telepath’s voice was low but his eyes were shining, boring deep into Erik. And all Erik could do was swallow thickly and blink back tears. Charles held him in his gaze; steady as ever. “You did not do any of this,” Charles said, tone unwavering in its resolution. “Don't you ever think that. Don’t you spoil what a wonderful life you had with your wife and your daughter. They would never want you to think of them like that.”

And he was right. Of course, Charles was right. Charles was always right.

The telepath softened next to him, his buttery, warm consciousness quelling Erik’s shaking as it settled at the edges of his mind.

“I don't blame you,” Charles reiterated. Erik covered his face with his hands, dashing his wet eyes with his palm.

“Why...?” He let his hands down and looked at the telepath. If they were in opposite places, Erik was sure hatred for Charles would have eaten him alive. It would have killed them both. Charles smiled at him grimly. He was still holding Erik’s arm.

“Because I live with this, Erik. And it would poison me-- did poison me, if I did. It's not worth it. To feel like that.”

“But how can you not hate me?” Erik could hear the pure disbelief in his words.

“I love you far too much to keep hold of grudges that do nothing but hurt us both. You never meant to hurt me. It was an accident and I know you’re sorry for it. I don't blame you. There are far bigger things for us think about now.”

Charles didn’t allow for any more argument and Erik didn’t have it in him to fight him on it. It did little to make him feel much better about the twist of guilt inside him, but he could imagine this all being many times worse if he had to add Charles’ hate to the pile.

So he arrived at guilty gratitude and reluctantly let it be.

“I apologise,” Charles said after a moment, a great sigh rolling through him. “I didn't mean to grab you... Touch you…” He released Erik’s arm and Erik found he missed it, Charles’ grounding presence made all the more powerful through the contact. His chest went tight at the notion that Charles thought he shouldn’t have touched him.

In offering, Erik reached out and laid his hand on Charles’ knee before, with a sour jolt of shock, realising Charles wouldn’t be able to feel it. Ashamed, he quickly withdrew, feeling ill again.

Charles chuckled exasperatedly and traded Erik’s gesture for his own hand coming to rest on Erik’s thigh.

“You’re alright, Erik.”

Erik didn’t know if Charles meant the touching or Erik himself. Erik didn’t feel alright, but Charles’ warm hand on his leg was like a bright spot of sunshine, so at least there was that.

“I feel so angry, Charles,” Erik found himself saying. “But so far away from it. I'm so angry but all I can do is float around in this horrible place.”

“You’re grieving Erik.”

“I feel... empty.” Charles nodded like that made sense. Erik wasn’t sure if it did. Very little seemed to at the moment.

“You’ve suffered an indescribable loss, my friend.”

Erik was silent.

He had.

Something significant and warm that had made him feel so whole had been ripped from deep inside him so quickly and so savagely, that it felt like it had torn all his organs loose and dragged them out with it.

Hollow.

Erik had lost before, of course. His mother, his father. But that was so far in the past and followed by such anger, that he more remembered the burning hate than any sense of loss.

And Charles. He’d lost Charles. But Charles had been out there, alive.

It’d been so different with Charles too.

 When they met, Charles had been a shock to his system. It had been an immensely long time since Erik had been close to anyone, but Charles had been bright and pleasant and overwhelmingly gentle with him. So Erik had allowed himself to indulge as Charles pulled at his seams with easy touches, long chess games and fine whiskey. He was difficult to say no to. With those endless blue eyes, charming soft hair, and lush, red lips, Charles had said, “take me to bed, Erik. Love me, let me in.” And Erik, with more affection than he’d ever dreamed himself capable of, had gladly toppled over the edge with him.

After, they’d basked in the sunny infancy of a relationship that could have been so much more, but was cruelly limited by their circumstances. They’d never been able to give themselves up to each other entirely because of it. Even as they’d eddied through stolen breakfast glances, cups of tea amongst plush duvets, and hot, heady nights in dingy motels, they’d both been conscious of the churning black water that lay deeper in Erik’s mind. The obsessive weight of the inevitable confrontation with Shaw.

Nevertheless, Charles had opened a warm spot inside Erik; built it safe and secure with understanding and respect. And then, he’d curled up and nested snugly inside for a time. But after Cuba they were both so bitter. So hurt. Erik pushed Charles out and had felt too angry and entitled to be sad. To feel any grief.

It hadn’t been anything like this.

What Erik had found with Magda, what they had created with Nina in their little house in the woods, was a peace that poured safety and contentedness into that space that Erik’s rage had never allowed Charles to truly fill. It had been good and pure. He’d been happy.

And now it was gone. And he felt so far away from the anger and hate that he’d come to expect from himself in the past. He wanted to step out into a crowd of rage and viciousness and lose himself to it. But instead he was just… empty…

This time Erik did cry. He just couldn’t help it anymore. He was gone, done. Tired to his bones. Hot tears spilled down his face as he began to shake so hard he thought he might rattle apart. Charles picked up Erik’s hand and crushed it in his own two, and Erik held on just as tight. It was the only thing he could do that made him feel that maybe someday the void that had opened inside him might not feel so devastatingly vast. That one day he might be made up of more than just the deaths of almost everyone he’d ever loved, the twisting guilt of having hurt Charles, and every stupid mistake he’d made in his miserable goddamn life. Erik felt almost crippled by the magnitude of the consuming desire to lie down in this forest and never get up. Let himself become part of it too.

As the thought passed between them, Erik heard Charles start to sob too.

*

It could have been hours by the time Erik resurfaced. In any case, the sun had sunk low and was swimming between the trunks of the trees in deep orange and pale red. Erik pulled in a deep breath, noting he’d stopped crying, and it was only then, once Charles felt his mind shift, that he loosened his grip on Erik’s hand some. Erik wondered vacantly if they’d have bruises. Charles’ eyes looked as swollen and red as Erik’s felt.

The bird song had quietened, but it was still warm in the forest.

“Did she read? Like you?” Charles’ voice was hoarse like he’d been waiting a long time to use it again. Erik couldn’t find his yet to answer him. “I was thinking about getting her favourites for the library once you’re done rebuilding it.” He turned his gaze back to the trees. Erik’s head felt so heavy but, trying not to let it wreck him, he thought about his daughter reading under the lamp in their small living room, letting Charles pick out his answer from Erik’s mind.

“If you don't mind,” said the telepath. “When you're ready, I should like to read to her. Or just you can. I understand, of course, if you wouldn’t want me to. A seat out here might be an idea. A job for you at some point.”

Blinking his sore eyes, Erik opened his mouth.

“At some point, you say?” He sounded like he’d swallowed sand.

“Soon. Or at some point… You can stay, you know. Ororo is staying.”

Erik snorted darkly.                                                                                                                            

“And what would I do, Professor?” He surprised himself with the humour his voice had mustered.

“Teach,” said Charles simply.

“Teach?” parroted Erik incredulously.

“Yes, languages would be most appropriate I should think. French, Polish, German, or God knows whatever else you speak. Something to consider.”

Erik didn’t say anything.

*

When he was ready, Erik summoned Charles’ chair and helped the other man into it. He took a deep breath of Charles’ scent while he was in Erik’s arms, and then another of the trees and grass.

“Thank you. Let’s go back now.”

*

As they emerged from the thick of the forest, something came back to Erik.

“You love me,” he said, halting his walk and not bothering to conceal his shock. “You can’t hate me because you…”

Charles lifted his chin, measuring Erik with a long look.

“Erik, of course.”

“I thought… after Cuba and Washington… You were so angry with me.”

Charles went a little pink but looked equally exasperated and tired as he did flustered.

“You will find,” said Charles. “That people are rarely simple, darling,”

And Erik felt as though he could have smiled.