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Erik knew.
He knew with every fibre of his being. He knew with a stony, crushing, dreadful certainty. He felt the horrible, irreversible truth.
Charles Xavier was dead.
Erik had been alone, quietly tending his garden. He kept to himself a lot these days, spending his time in solitude. His back and his knees protested his labor, but he carried on regardless, his bare, gnarled hands digging through the dirt. Erik had come to love gardening, finding it stood in stark relief to what he had spent his life doing. He liked to pretend that his hands found cultivating familiar – that destruction was a stranger, rather than a life-long companion. The grit under his nails felt reliable, stable and honest.
He'd never been that.
He’d never been reliable, stable or honest, but no matter how grey he got, he kept pretending. He spent wistful moments imagining he could have been an honest man – a better man. He assumed this was the occupation of all old men – dancing on unstable legs with the what-ifs and the might-have-beens; shuffling about, flinching at shadows and grappling with memories. He looked back on each decision – every minute stupidity – that brought him to be crouching here now. If he’d made different choices, been smarter, he might have been someone else. Maybe he’d have been happy.
He shook his head at the thought and reached for the small plant to his left. It was green and healthy. The bright rounded leaves quivered as he flipped the plant upside down and removed the pot. Unthinkingly, Erik made quiet, reassuring noises at the plant. Charles had always said that plants could understand them. Once, three quarters of the way into a bottle of very fine whiskey, Charles had claimed to have had a three-hour conversation with a ficus in Denver. Erik chuckled at the memory.
Perhaps he had been a little quick to describe his life as solitary. Ever since that moment, a lifetime ago in Westchester when Charles had split his darkened mind open and had found light hidden in his tar-like rage, there had been a small warm feeling in the back of his mind. It was the mental equivalent of a warm hand on the shoulder. If he felt inclined, he could reach out to that part and find it would respond. Sometimes, if he pushed the connection enough, Charles would be there waiting for him. A comforting presence.
But as he crouched in the dirt, as the sun sunk in the sky behind him, there was a sudden and final break in the connection. The feeling that had been with him was gone, and Erik knew, just knew, that the man on the other end of it was gone too.
“Charles?” he whispered with shaking breath.
There was nothing. No feeling. No warmth and the small place that Charles had inhabited for so many decades seemed more like a chasm, a gash in his mind, open and evil and sinister.
“Oh, please… Charles.” Erik reached out once again, increasingly frantic. But he knew already that it was for nought. His mind kept running aground on the jagged edges of nothing; there was no one to call him back, no quiet assurances from his oldest friend. He looked down at his hand. The plant had been crushed, unnoticed, in his fist and the hole, freshly dug suddenly sent a shiver through him. It was open and silent, like the grave.
His heart fluttered in his chest, beating quickly, the feeling turning into a rumbling in his ears as the blood coursed through him, reminding him that he was still alive. Reminding him that now, finally, he was alone. He stood, ignoring his creaking knees, throwing the plant into the hole, uncaring now that the leaves were crumpled and the stem snapped, and staggered away.
Truly alone for the first time in decades.
He had found it.
Following reports of the strange goings on from the Mexico border to North Dakota, he had found the place.
He had found him.
Erik walked past a broken-down truck, left to the elements. He felt the singing of the metal, but since the moment Charles had disappeared, his own power – his own special connection with the magnetic fields of the earth – had seemed subdued and less fulfilling. He reached out more than ever, as though Charles could be replaced.
In a clearing by a lake he found the disturbed dirt.
He found the scar in the ground that marked the final resting place of Charles Xavier.
He looked over the water of the lake, watched the breeze send ripples across the water, and he wondered if Charles had somehow known he would end up here. Charles seemed to know more than he let on, and not for the first time, Erik wondered if there was not more to Charles’ power than anyone imagined.
“We are the future, Charles, not them.”
He’d said it sometime in the past, striding through life, his voice strong, commanding and confident. He’d ignored Charles’ small, sad smile. Erik had seen many of Charles’ smiles. He’d catalogued most of them, but not this one – despite seeing it the most. It was only now, too late, that he recognised that the smile meant he was wrong. But Charles had never come out and said it plainly. He’d never outright told him he was wrong.
Perhaps he knew it wouldn’t make a difference.
He’d called Erik impulsive, misguided and blind. But never wrong. Erik had always hated the concept of destiny. If anyone had suggested something was pre-ordained, Erik would start chewing the inside of his cheek, his brow furrowed as he started to plan a way to avoid the situation. Every step Erik had ever taken was partly to avoid the ‘inevitable’. If Charles had been clairvoyant, he would know that every step Erik took, thinking he was breaking away, would just set him more and more firmly on the path he avoided.
Perhaps he knew it couldn’t have made a difference.
Charles had lived with the weary knowledge that their story was already written.
He knew that they’d been ghosts from the beginning – fleeting, unbelievable and unnatural.
They weren’t the future, or the past. They were a trick of the light, a shadow of humanity.
Mutants weren’t the best of mankind. And now, the best man and mutant Erik had ever met was gone.
Erik didn’t know what to do. He looked down at the dirt, and his battered shoes. This wasn’t such a bad spot, he supposed. His straw hat was unneeded – the dappled light filtering through the trees wasn’t a bother.
“I couldn’t live with you, Charles. I don’t know if I want to live without you. Not now you’re really gone.” He said quietly. He had an odd thought about the dirt in Charles’ ears muffling the sound of his words and chuckled. The chuckle turned into a strained sob as he remembered with searing, intense clarity that Charles couldn’t hear him. Dirt or not, Charles was dead. His eyes burned and he clenched his teeth together, but it was no use. An animal growl escaped him, and he began to cry.
His hot tears rolled down his cheeks.
They landed on rich soil.
Erik had the familiar desire to destroy. He could sow this ground with the salt of his grief so nothing could ever grow again, but the rage didn’t stay with him, it disappeared, folding into the churning of his gut.
He sank to his knees, and began pawing at the ground, an insincere attempt at digging. He muttered and cried and he felt he was finally going insane. He had a mad urge to dig Charles up, lay beside him and pull the dirt back around them both. He didn’t know if he could fight it. He didn’t know if he wanted to.
As the sun travelled overhead, he made his decision.