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Erik first meets Charles Xavier an early morning in the beginning of the year.
He’s working a double night shift that night –- one of those uneventful ones where you simply long for an awaited call room nap -– and managing the nurses’ station together with Moira. They’re both working at half-speed, tiredly leaning over their respective keyboards, trying to remember what it was they were supposed to do. The coffee has gone cold, the lights are dimmed and the halls are quiet, save for the occasional squeaking of the passing nurses’ rubber soles.
Only in their station the piercing light is on; a safe haven from all the boogeymen and dust monsters.
Moira stifles a yawn behind her hand.
Rubbing his eyes, Erik turns to lean over the intercom –- cheek resting in his hand as he watches the dust particles whirl around in the air. Tracing them with his eyes, he can feel his brain slowly shutting down, synapse by synapse. Soon, he needs to walk over and check on the pediatric ward, but after that he can finally sleep.
As long as nothing happens, of course.
“Incoming telepathic emergency! Incoming telepathic emergency!”
Erik springs to life, fumbling to get the inhibitor headband on in time, as Moira suddenly screams beside him, clutching her head in pain. He clasps his inhibitor shut; she drops to the floor, unconscious and twitching. Slamming his hand on the redirect button, he then slips the headband from Moira’s pocket around her head and rushes out.
Down the hallway, a stretcher bulldozes through and when it comes into sight, Erik suddenly feels a heavy pressure against the inhibitor band. A powerful telepath lies on that stretcher, so without a breath he joins the conscious remains of the paramedic crew. He doesn't need to look behind him to know they've left knocked out people in their wake.
“What’s the situation?” Erik asks as he jogs along. Logan, who's still wearing his neon green jacket, shrugs.
“Charles Xavier. Nineteen. Omega-level telepath with a concussion and possible cerebral hemorrhage.”
“Surgery?”
“Not yet.”
“X-ray?”
“Immediately.”
Erik fishes the beeper out of his pocket and quickly enters the code for a telepathic, nonsurgical emergency. Cerebral hemorrhage is dangerous for anyone, but extremely so for telepaths.
He shudders at the memory of the last time. These inhibitors are life-savers.
They slam through another set of doors –- Erik’s powers the only thing stopping them from actually going through them -– before Erik actually takes a look at the kid on the stretcher. He looks not a day over eighteen and is still wearing his pajamas. Most of his ash-pale face is covered by the oxygen mask, but the thin skin under his eyes is still visible, covered in freckles as it is. Sweaty strands of dark hair are plastered against his forehead.
Erik looks up and opens the last set of doors.
When they close and Hank and Kitty takes over, Erik breathes out and prays to whatever deity there is that this will be the end of it.
It isn't.
After finishing his rounds the next morning –- which includes taping eye-patches over Scott Summers’s eyes, changing Ororo Munroe’s oxygen tubes and reassuring a terrified girl who’d grown gills over the night that she wasn't going to die –- he meets a dead-eyed Moira dozing in the nurses’ station. Her hair looks like the war and she’s staring blankly at the opposite wall –- not seeing him until he opens the half door, slipping inside.
“Hi” she says, voice soft and eerily hollow.
Erik stops in his tracks. “What’s happened?”
“The telepath who came in last night, Xavier?” She rubs her forearm over her face and yawns. “He –- it wasn't cerebral hemorrhage or a swollen brain that they hoped for a while. So they did a CAT-scan,” she says, sniffing.
“What was it?” he demands, and when she doesn't answer, “Moira!”
“It’s a worst-case scenario, Erik. We have telepath with a brain tumor.”
Erik closes his eyes and slams the clipboard onto the counter with a bang.
“Don’t” Moira says sharply, scrunching her nose and rubbing her temples. Erik lowers his shoulders in apology.
She nods in appreciation. “I just called his emergency contacts, but it only went to his sister’s cellphone. He knocked her out pretty badly, so she's here as well.”
Erik leans onto his elbows, hanging his head. “Good thing she’s alive. I felt the pressure through my band last night. That is supposed to be impossible with these.”
Moira nods, retying her ponytail with practiced movements. “Even with the reinforced helmets last night, Kitty said they could feel it. He’s terribly powerful.” She sighs. “We’re keeping him under right now, because we can’t do the surgery. Hank is still looking over the scans; to see if it’s possible at all.”
Dragging his hands over his face, Erik takes in the situation. Telepaths and psionics always create a whole lot of complications when they come to the hospital -– more so than other mutant patients. The very nature of their mutations, if still immensely fascinating and beautiful, is problematic since they don't just affect themselves, but everyone else as well.
“I've sent out a message on the intercom. Inhibitors are mandatory today, should he come up before we allow it” Moira tells him, face rueful.
Erik nods. It’s far from optimal, but it’s the best option they have.
Xavier comes around a day later while Erik is changing his IV.
He’s putting the bag in place when the kid’s eyes snap open, a shade of blue Erik only thought could be achieved with photo-editing. Hands with chewed nails suddenly grip the blankets until knuckles go white; breathing gradually becoming more and more panicked until Erik has to put his hands on his shoulders and shake him back to reality.
The blue eyes shut and snap open, but they are unseeing and he starts struggling again -– both against his mandatory restraints and the hoses keeping him calm.
“Hey!” Erik tries to push him down again, preventing him from ripping the IV out.
Xavier whimpers, lets out a hitched breath before he tries to beat Erik’s hands away. “I can’t, I can’t – stop it, please! Please, it hurts!
And then, Erik realizes what he's talking about and slips his headband off. It doesn't take more than a second before Xavier relaxes back into the pillows, breathing harsh.
Erik breathes out too.
“I’m s-sorry. It just - ,” Xavier stutters, eyes hazy.
“The inhibitor and physical contact” Erik finishes for him.
Xavier looks up at him, hands still shaking, before he nods. “Yeah. How long have I been under?”
“Thirty-two hours, give or take.”
“I thought you doctors were supposed to be precise.”
Erik almost gives him the legal equivalent of a smack, when he sees the boy’s mouth curling into a smile. The kid has some spine, that's for sure. Moira and Kitty always complains that Erik scares the kids shitless with his presence alone. Ororo Munroe and Scott Summers are the only ones that aren't afraid, and the latter simply because he doesn't know what Erik looks like.
“Good thing I’m not a doctor, then. I’ll go tell Dr. McCoy you’re awake.”
He secures the needle in Xavier’s arm –- aware how the boy’s eyes follow his movements the whole time –- and then heads for the door. He’s almost out of sight, when Xavier calls.
“Wait!”
Erik sticks his head back in. “What?”
“What’s your name?”
He looks so impossibly young lying there, Erik thinks.
“Erik.”
“Hi, Erik,” the boy says, “I’m Charles. Do you have magic pills for terrible headaches?”
“You’ll get something soon enough,” Erik replies, then turns to leave.
Because he really doesn't want to be there when Hank delivers the news.
When Erik returns to Charles’ new, more permanent room, it’s late in the afternoon. The last sunshine filters in through the half open blinds, painting zebra-patterns on the bland sheets.
No parents seem to be in sight, but a blue-skinned girl –- presumably the sister –- is curled up in the armchair. She cracks an eye open when he enters.
“What are you doing?” she asks, and her voice is hoarse and torn with tears.
“Changing your brother’s IV,” he explains. She can’t be more than seventeen.
Sitting up straight, she hums. “I can be here, right? I’m his sister, Raven.”
“Are you alone?”
Raven nods, her red braids moving against her shoulders. “Yeah. Mom couldn't drive here right now, and Dad, well…” she shrugs.
Something in Erik’s stomach churns, and he puts a hand on the metal frame of the bed to keep himself from doing something stupid. Charles is fast asleep; long lashes still clumped together with water and salt, but he stirs slightly when Erik reattaches the clip leading to the EKG around his finger.
“You knew,” he whispers neutrally, opening his eyes, and Erik falters for a moment before he checks Charles’ pulse.
“Only a doctor can give you a verdict” he answers, refusing to look at Charles. The skin on the inside of Charles’ wrist is so thin and soft.
“You still knew.”
“Yes.”
Charles’ hand twitches in his and a silence settles, only interrupted by the breath of moving fabrics and beeping machines.
“I got something for the headache at least.” Charles then says, and Erik is definitely taken aback when the smile on his lips still reaches his blue eyes. “These painkillers are pretty strong”
“They are.”
For a moment, it looks like Charles might say something else –- his eyebrows draws together in thought –- but then Raven asks if it’s alright for her to go to the cafeteria and get something to eat. And as Charles gives her the go-ahead, Erik stretches the sheet over his legs and ignores the blue eyes following him as he leaves.
Due to a change of shifts, Erik doesn't see Charles for almost two weeks.
But when he’s about to enter the boy’s room that afternoon, he scantily dodges an almost perfectly folded paper plane heading straight for his face. It misses with an inch, before hitting the wall behind his head.
“Sorry,” Charles calls out from his room. Erik collects the plane and goes inside with a sigh.
Someone –- either Moira or Kitty, if he must guess –- has given Charles a table and a bunch of papers. He‘s still lying down, wrists resting on the edge of the table as he folds paper planes with careful movements. There’s a bunch of misshaped ones strewn over the floor.
But something's off about him, Erik notes. Charles’ grin is dreamier and more lopsided than before, that he can see, and after that it doesn't take long to realize he is probably quite high on awfully strong painkillers.
Plus he’s gotten thinner. Erik swallows.
“Hey, Erik. Where have you been?” Charles says, slurring just a bit. Erik drops the plane with the crashed nose in the bin.
“At home, sleeping. Where’s your sister?”
“Dunno.” Charles makes a so-so gesture before looking up at Erik. A fever flush rides high on his cheeks.
Erik chuckles. “How big of a dose have you had?”
Charles shakes his head before holding up three fingers. “Raven said three." He scrunches his nose. "And you’re… hot. A ten on that, that scale thing. Wow. Your mind is… is gleaming. Mutant-ish. And...”
Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Erik takes a quick look at Charles’ journal. He frowns. While Charles is not overly skinny yet, he's no way near tall or heavy enough to have been assigned such a high dose painkillers.
But then he sees Hank’s signature in the right hand column and storms out.
He finds him in the lab together with Kitty, looking over a few tests. Erik disregards it and slams down the clipboard on the table.
“What’s this?”
Hank looks up from the blood samples, looking confused.
Erik almost stabs him in his blue chest, and snarls, “Why hasn't Xavier gone in for surgery –- his pain is beyond humane if he needs this much. He’s what, 5’7 and weighs 140 -– this is the edge of overdosing!”
Hank sighs, slowly taking off his glasses, folding them and putting them in his pocket. “He might die if we do the surgery, and without his parents here to make the decision, I can’t.”
“He is almost twenty years old!”
“You know what Shaw’s policies are when it comes to telepathic brain surgeries-–”
“Fuck Shaw and policies!” Erik hisses, rage pulsing in his ears. “The kid is a powerful telepath in a lot of pain. You took an oath; it’s your fucking duty to relieve him!”
“Erik.” Kitty cuts in, voice stern. “You heard Hank. He might die. We've located the tumor, and it's deep into the frontal lobe, so even the best surgeon would hesitate before messing there. Especially on an omega-level telepath.”
Erik shuts his eyes, feeling his heart drop from his chest. Frontal lobe tumor; the worst fucking kind for psionics. He drags his hands through his hair.
“We can’t keep him like this. If we’re not taking it out, we must do something.”
Kitty gives him a look as if she can look straight into his soul before nodding. “We've tried cleaning with coal and more biological treatments, but he’s reacted really badly to all of them. Hence the high dose. But we’re starting up the chemo tomorrow.”
“Have you consulted with Frost?”
Hank nods. “It’s a fifty percent successful treatment. His transmitting substances may react with the chemo, according to her, but the risk is small enough so it’s worth a try.”
Erik turns around, and kicks the cabinet beside the door on the way out.
They start up the chemo treatment as said, and Erik's assigned to stay behind a bit to make sure everything goes as planned. It was supposed to be Kitty, but after a combined, judging look from her and Moira, coupled with the promise to not fan out in the call room that night, the morning has him sitting in a chair next to Xavier's bed.
And until now, Charles has not reacted well to the drip either. He hasn't complained, not once, but since Erik isn't allowed to wear his inhibitor in case he’d have to touch Charles, he can feel the worry and pain projected through the façade; the uneasiness of the cold liquid entering his bloodstream; the feeling like ants chewing on his bones, running up and down in the marrow.
Erik watches him shift under his blanket, hips wriggling around until grows tired. The fabrics go quiet and the position stays for a moment, but then he squirms again; repeating the process every few minutes.
Charles shifts, again –- rubs his wrist over his tight eyebrows -– and then Erik's had enough. Time for distractions.
“Do you play chess?” he asks.
Finally stopping the squirming, Charles fixates his eyes on Erik.
“Yes?” His voice is tentative, probably taking in Erik’s face and annoyed thoughts. “Why?”
Erik doesn't answer, simply feels out the metal in the room and then travels along the plumbing, dips onto doctor’s watches, cellphones and nurses' key chains until he reaches the common room. The dusty travel chessboard with magnets under its pieces responds easily to his tug, and after a moment, it sails into the room.
“Wow! That’s marvelous! Are you telekinetic?” Charles practically beams at him as Erik starts to set up the game.
“No. Magnetic-metal manipulation.”
“Still amazing” Charles tells him, laugh lines appearing in the corners of his eyes. Erik ignores the way the hairs on his arms rises.
“White or black?”
“White.”
In the time it takes for Charles to empty the chemo bag, Erik loses three out of four games and learns that Charles is optimistic, intelligent, daring, and hardly the kid Erik thought of him to be.
And that only makes it so much harder to look away.
February comes and goes, they do another CAT-scan, and the tumor has not shrunk.
Erik meets Raven outside of Charles’ room a few hours afterwards. At first, he doesn't recognize her, since she’s blond and peach-skinned to honor the day, but as he comes closer, he notes the peculiar way in which she’s curled up in the chair. So he reaches out and shakes her shoulder.
She startles awake, and the fake image fades.
“Did you hear?” she asks, and something in her voice makes Erik’s heart rush.
“Hear what?”
She exhales -– mouth open in exhaustion –- and then slams her head into the wall behind her. He would've flinched if he wasn't so used to the outbursts of distress.
“The fucking thing has grown metastases.”
What Erik isn't used to, however, is the helpless feeling festering in his own stomach.
“His mother is a drunk and my father's a hopeless, callous ass” Raven suddenly grits out and rubs the remaining crusts out of her eyes. “I’m the only one… the only one left.”
Watching her hands fall lifelessly to her sides, Erik sits down beside her.
“What are you doing out here, then?”
The look she shoots him is dark. “He’s projecting pain everywhere. Both physical and emotional and it’s horrible. Especially since he doesn't have control over it at all. These” -– she raps her knuckles against the psionic-resistant screens put up on the walls -– “are the only things keeping both of us from passing out.”
The weight of the headband in his pocket turns to lead. He fishes it out, dangling it from his finger.
“Take it. You can’t touch him with it on, but you can go inside.”
She simply stares at him, now yellow eyes wide and doubtful, and her hand jerks as if she wants to take it, but then changes her mind.
“I can’t. Not if I can’t touch him.” Raven shrugs, and then she unexpectedly smiles. A rueful one, but a smile nonetheless .
“Besides, he’ll be happier to see you.” Cocking her head to the side, she adds, “Well, almost at least.”
Purposely overlooking the implication, Erik clasps the headband on and goes inside.
Charles is asleep, but the heavy swirls of his distressed dreams press against the inhibitor all the same. Nothing shows on his face –- no pain, no anger or even sickness. There’s a lock of hair plastered to his forehead. Erik reaches out and brushes it back, careful not touch his skin –- his self-restraint as vital as a wounded animal scuffling towards its den to die in peace.
If the pressure against the headband diminishes slightly when he does, Erik doesn't acknowledge it.
He simply readjusts all the other equipment and leaves
It’s night and despite Moira leaving the call room early for him to have, Erik finds himself wandering the halls. The flickering fluorescent lights are off and the boogeymen and dust monsters are lurking in the shadows. But Erik’s absentminded patrolling keeps them at bay. They won’t attack anything but a hurting and homesick child, anyways.
He’s about to go to the nurses’ station for a cup of coffee, when he sees a dimmed light filtering out from under Charles' door.
He opens it.
“Aren't you supposed to be asleep?”
Charles startles and almost drops his book. He scrambles a bit –- eyes big and wide -– but the hoses keep him in place. Erik can feel the projected anxiety like a bitter aftertaste on his tongue.
“I can’t sleep.”
Walking over, Erik sits down at the foot of his bed. “That doesn't mean you get to keep the lights on. Besides, you’re not the only one.”
If he was, night shifts would be even less eventful than they are now.
Charles takes a deep breath, fiddles a bit with hem of his blanket. “I know… that’s sort of the problem.”
His eyes flickers up to the ceiling and Erik can see shadows of his lashes against his cheekbones; see the cracks in his lips, the way his tongue insistently tries to dampen them. Follows the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows; the red tint on his cheeks as he looks at Erik again; the small smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
He could almost have passed for healthy, if it wasn't for the ash-blue hue the chemo has left on his skin.
“You should really get glow-in-the-dark stars in the ceiling.”
Erik snorts. “Really?”
“Yes! Why not?”
Erik considers it for a moment. “In the pediatric ward, you mean?”
“Mainly. But everywhere, really. It would be a good distraction.”
“For insominacs?”
“Well, yes, and by extension, telepaths. Because” –- he blushes, and something about his tone makes Erik tense -- “I don’t – I mean I can’t rein it in any longer. It goes through the screens. I hear everything.”
Erik stills.
Charles studies him for a long time, before a small, tentative smile creeps onto his lips and Erik is free-falling.
“You think I’m pretty” Charles whispers, words like a roaring fire in the dry silence of the night. Then he chuckles, eyes trained on the covers. It’s a nervous, happy sound and something in Erik’s chest cracks. He wants to lie, tell Charles it’s not true, but he simply can’t. Can't be that cruel. Not here and not now.
They had said two months, tops.
He puts on a tight-lipped smile and stands up. Charles’ open expression shuts.
“Put the light out. It’s half past three, you should at least fake sleep.”
When Charles doesn't move, Erik flicks his fingers, leaving the room in darkness. But as he turns to leave, Charles suddenly looks up at him, gripping Erik’s wrist in his weak, cold hand.
And despite his scrubs, Erik can feel the tiny jolt from Charles' fingers. It travels through his bones to his brain like the spark lighting gas in a lighter-– skittering, fragile and so easily put out.
Risky, reckless and doomed.
They stay like that for a moment –- breaths audible in the quiet of the hospital night. The moonlight makes their skin look otherworldly. Then, keeping his eyes on him, Erik cautiously reaches out and with one hand he strokes Charles' hair from his face. Smooths the damp, dark curls back from his forehead, drags his fingertips over the thin bone of his temple. Charles breath hitches as he follows Erik’s touch.
Erik draws back, but a content smile lingers on Charles’ lips even as Erik closes the door behind him.
The following chemo session, they put Charles in a wheelchair and have him sit with the kids in the common room. It's all on Charles’ own request, and apart from his age, Erik can't find any reason why he shouldn't grant it. So he slips a high-level telepath-friendly inhibitor bracelet around Charles’ wrist, and that is it.
And after making his morning rounds, Erik goes to the common room to check on him. Upon his return, he’s met with a scene that will stay with him forever.
There’s Charles, with a wheezing Ororo Munroe in his lap, showing her how to fold perfect paper planes as she laughs. The other kids, who are free from the chemo needles flocks around him, eager to learn; some peeking over the armrests of his recliner in interest, while others are sitting on the floor, trying it out. And Charles himself is sitting in the middle of it all with a happy smile on his face –- a beacon in the constant reminder of death -– looking like he truly belongs.
The gill girl fist pumps when she shows a perfect little paper creation to Charles, who nods and gives it a thumbs-up. She throws it and it sails away through the room.
Erik watches them from the doorway for as long as he dares. He leaves when Charles laughs –- the subdued sound resonating in his chest for hours at end.
The pressure the tumor and its metastases causes inside his head, eventually bursts the all the capillaries in Charles’ eyes. So when Erik comes take him out to the common room one time, he’s blind.
“It's not too bad. I’m just sad that I can’t see you. You really are easy on the eyes” he says, and smiles.
Erik wants to smack him -– take that cheeky smile off of his face and throw it far away, But then again, it’s better to go fearless and with the spirit of adventure, rather than with mortification and agony.
On the bed, Charles stills for a moment. “I’m not afraid. I’ll miss you, and Raven but-”
“Stop.”
“Alright. But I do believe there’s something after this. I can prove it -– I’ll haunt you.”
Erik sighs in exasperation, but he knows Charles can hear the amusement there as well.
“Just don’t become a lame ghost.”
Charles snickers. “Never. I’ll be a seal, I think. Or a guardian angel. ”
“You could surely pass as one” Erik plays along, and Charles actually laughs at that.
“Smooth one.”
“Shut up.”
Moira corners him in the locker room when he’s about to go home and sleep. He’s halfway stuck in his scrubs when she’s suddenly all up in his face.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What?” he mutters from inside his shirt.
She huffs out an annoyed breath and helps him out. Her brown eyes are stern, arms crossed over her chest.
“With Xavier.” She shrugs. “He’s blind... and he's dying. It's terminal, and nothing works.”
Angrily, he pulls his bag out of the locker. “I know.”
“It’s very unprofessional.” Her voice is deadly.
All energy seems to leave him, and he leans against the locker. “Bit too late now.”
Erik used to praise himself for his self-preservation, but as Moira’s arms fall limp to her sides in horror, he knows it’s as dead as the self-restraint in its den.
“Oh, Erik…”
“I’m going home.”
He throws on his jacket and heads for the door before she can say anything else.
Another night and Charles looks up at him, his unseeing eyes still somehow piercing into to Erik’s skull. “I’m not a child.”
“Charles…”
“I've… I've never done anything. Nothing. No one.” He draws in a shaky breath, gaze never wavering from Erik’s face; projecting thoughts of how beautiful he is. His gentle hands, stern expressions, and soft eyes. “I don’t want to… without it. And I know that this isn't some childish infatuation. I've seen and felt the real thing through others –- I know I’m right, and I saw in your mind that-”
“Charles.” Erik steps back from the door and goes back to the bed. “I know.”
“Then why must you –”
Stroking a hand over the dark hair, Erik cups his neck; putting his thumb against a too sharp cheekbone.
“You said you weren't afraid.”
Charles sniffs, closes his eyes, his hands flying up to fist in Erik’s scrubs. “I don’t. I never did, you-”
“I know, and I don’t want you to start now.”
The hands on his chest freeze. Then they come up around his shoulders and in the warm light of the single lamp, Erik can’t deny Charles this. So he hugs him back, hard but still careful about his fragile bones. It doesn't take more than a minute before Charles’ body starts to shake, and Erik feels the warm wetness of tears against his skin.
He pushes his nose into Charles’ still thick, but thinning hair –- it smells of light sweat and weak resistance –- and tries to not think of anything further than this.
When Charles lightly presses his cracked lips against his, he doesn't resist.
“Please don’t be angry. It’s my choice.”
“I’m not angry” Erik grits out, staring out at the dark and the April shower pattering against the window.
Charles sighs. “Yes, you are. That inhibitor doesn't shield everything, you know.”
“The chemo could still work. Just give it some time.”
“I gave it almost a month. It won’t work, Erik. And it hurts; even more so than the tumor itself.”
The next breath Erik takes gets stuck in his throat, transforms into something too akin to a sob on the way through his nose. Charles sighs, and reaches out his hand –- palm facing upwards, his knuckles resting against the sheets of his hospital bed.
“Erik… please, don’t cry.”
Erik gingerly sits down at the foot of the bed, slips the headband off.
“I’m not” he whispers, voice almost breaking.
He knows that Charles can hear the conflicting emotions in his mind -– the anger, the fear and the guilt. And that he has to do something. He can’t just sit here and watch, which he’s done so many times before.
Charles just looks at him with his unseeing eyes.
“Can you lie down here for a while?”
It’s in the middle of the night, so Erik carefully kicks of his shoes and lies down on top of Charles’ blankets. A hand slides into his, and when Charles nudges his arm, he slips it in under his neck –- pillowing Charles’ head on his shoulder.
“I wish I could go outside.”
“In this weather?”
“I've grown up with British values –- I was basically indoctrinated to love the rain.”
Erik nudges him with his elbow. “Stop being cheeky.”
Charles retorts by kissing him hard.
“I think I’ll die tonight” Charles whispers to Erik, another night when he’s using Erik’s eyes to read.
“Don’t say that.” Erik knows his voice is stern, but he also knows that Charles can feel the lump in his throat.
Charles combs his fingers through Erik’s hair and smiles. “I've felt very alert today, but I pretty sure it was the last time.”
Closing the book, Erik lies down beside what’s left of Charles’ body. He doesn't say it was probably a good day in the line of many to come. They both know it’s a lie.
“Then I’ll stay the night.”
Charles Xavier passes on an early morning in May, when the first hint of summer filters through the morning mist –- lights rainbows of the tiny droplets in the air outside the window.
And he doesn't go out with a bang, but rather with his head pillowed on a sleeping Erik’s arm and a rueful smile on his face.
Erik never thought he’d actually hear the silence of his own rib-cage shattering into pieces.
He stays outside while Raven cries until lungs and heart breaks. Most people simply sheds their silent tears in the hospital and breaks down when they get home -– Raven screams out her agony for all to hear. He hugs her goodbye afterwards, and she thanks him.
She doesn't have to say more.
When they have rolled Charles away to the morgue to do the autopsy, Erik slowly walks down the hall to the nurses’ station. It takes him almost twenty minutes to get there and he doesn't remember how, but suddenly he’s just standing there, hand on the half door.
“Erik…”
He hears Moira’s voice from somewhere far away –- another star, another galaxy –- and when her arms come up around him, everything breaks. With his face pressed into her messy hair, her thin arms anchoring him to this world where he belongs, Erik cries until he can’t breathe.
Afterwards, he smokes his very first cigarette, Moira still holding onto his hand as she smokes her own; both of them leaning against the roof's railing in companionable silence.
He’s never appreciated her more.
A month later, the first glowing stars are glued to the ceiling in the pediatric ward –- possible due to a certain anonymous donation -– and Erik’s patrols thus become sparse.
But when he sometimes takes a tour, and thinks there are dust monsters or boogeymen lurking in the shadows, they disappear just as quickly as he saw them -– as if someone is there before him, chasing them away.
Moira tells him he’s going crazy; Raven says that it’s just wishful thinking.
And Erik, well, he simply takes it for what it is.