Falling Far Behind || @Erik
Sitting in the control room for Cerebro, Charles attempted to ignore the ache within his chest as he searched out others just like him. Mutants, whose minds were screaming in pain and just looking for something to erase their pain.
Hope. His future self had used the word with such ease, as though it were the simplest thing to aspire to, even within the most dispiriting hours. Hope that was not to be shared, and nurtured by those he loved, as he had once assumed. Once again he had let the two people he most cared about, his sister and his closest friend, slip through his fingers.
He clenched at his chair, said fingers turning white with the strain of the force. The machine was racing through mutant after mutant, faster than Charles could think to comprehend. Faster and faster, the machine whirred. The deep blues and whites became red as he lost grip, too much pain coursing through him as he tried to regain control.
Hope. He reminded himself, even as Hank powered down the machine. Hope was the key to moving forward. People were relying on him, their futures were relying on him.
But why is it so hard to hope? He didn’t need to ask himself the question, really, he already knew. The answer lay in the abandoned chess board upstairs, the worn photographs and the clipping of obituaries of those far too young.
There was no moving forward, not while he was alone.
“Professor!” Hank called, hurrying in and rapidly going through a list of potential problems that might have caused the malfunction.
“Hank stop.” He spoke, raising a hand and swiping it in a tired gesture. “I’m going to bed, if you don’t mind.”
Wheeling from the room, ignoring any further comments, Charles returned to his quarters, looking around and avidly ignoring the tightening in his chest. Gently, he ghosted a finger over a black knight, careful not to disturb the piece too much.
“Oh Erik…” He whispered to the empty room, his already exhausted blue eyes suddenly feeling sore and tender. Charles raised a hand to rub them, hating himself all the more when the appendage came back wet. “Crying like a bloody idiot, Charles, brilliant.”
Touching at the chess pieces again, Charles let himself cry. He had no clue as to where Erik was at the moment, long since lost by the CIA’s radars, the only way Charles had of keeping an eye out for him anymore.
He fingered the black king, Erik had always favoured black when they played, and lifted it to his lips with shaking fingers. “I can’t do this without you again, Erik…”
Placing a small kiss to the piece, he set it down in its’ original spot. A thousand different scenarios ran through the brunette’s mind, possibilities for the future that lay before him; a painful, solitary path in each one, except one.
It had been a moment of weakness, the first time he had thought of it. A bout of depression, spurred on by the need to escape. A world where the pain of losing everyone –losing Erik, his mind supplied traitorously- was forgotten.
Everything, was forgotten.
And for a fleeting moment, that first time the thought had come unbidden, he had truly wanted to go through with it. He knew he had the power to do so, he had used that same power to make Moira forget about them, and if his memories started to return, he could eventually wipe them once more.
The first time he had thought it, it was an endlessly tempting idea. The only thing that had stopped him, that day, was the guilt he had felt when he thought of the promise he had made, to Logan. To find them, and recruit them, the names he was given; Jean, Scott…
He had found them, eventually. He had given their locations to Hank. Because although he had promised to find them, he had never promised Logan that he would be there to tutor them.
That first time, he was held back by a promise. Now? He had nothing else he stood to lose.
Wheeling himself to the lab, happy Hank’s distractions with Cerebro would keep Charles from being questioned, he grabbed the suitcase full of the serum that Hank always kept within the near vicinity, just in case something went wrong on a global scale, and it was needed to subdue any unstable mutants.
As swiftly as possible in his wheelchair, he relocated to his ground floor room, typing out a hurried apology to Hank for stealing the serum, and for what he was about to do.
After finishing that, and throwing clothes into his own travel case, he wheeled himself to the typewriter once more.
My dear Erik, he started typing, and after that the words flowed from him in a stream until he had finally compiled his letter, not realising the stream of steady tears flowing down his cheeks until a few droplets hit the paper as he signed his name in pen. The ink had smudged softly, the water distorting the unsettled ink, but Charles hadn’t the time to rewrite it. I love you was what he truly wished to write, but even now he was too much of a coward.
Concentrating, he stretched his mind out, reaching for anyone who would know Erik’s whereabouts. It took him a long while until his mind finally honed onto a member of the newly re-established Brotherhood, but only seconds for him to plant the thought in the mutant’s mind that in the morning of the next day, he would announce to Erik that Charles had left him a note at Westchester. That way he had plenty of time to disappear, before Erik arrived.
He set the note carefully between the pieces on the board, manipulating the nearest cab driver to come collect him and his luggage. It took an additional twenty minutes for them to arrive, to which Charles could only say he was glad Hank tended to get caught up tinkering away. The driver loaded each of the suitcases into the car, helped his passenger in and folded the chair, before driving him to a secluded motel, all the while Charles rested his head on the cool glass of the car window and tried to ignore the pain and fear gripping at his being.
Too soon, they had reached the motel and he was checked in, a ground floor room that would provide a temporary home for him until he bought one, the next day. Not that he would remember, entirely, why he was even at the motel. He would have no memories of Westchester, no Raven, nor Erik, nor the children.
Ignoring the pure agony that gripped his heart over that thought, Charles entered his own mind, locking doors he had never known even existed, and creating new memories.
Tomorrow, he would be a new person. A human person.