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There are several things that Alex Summers never wants to experience ever again.
Seeing Scotty for the last time. Feeling his chest resonate with the same power as a blast ripped through Darwin. Being near a dying telepath.
As he sits there, cradling the Professor’s head in his lap as Hank and Moira fruitlessly try to radio for help, he thinks he will remember this beach for the rest of his life, however short or long it may be. Time is not easy to keep hold of- how long since Charles’ last shuddery breath? How long since Erik walked away, did the thing that all father figures seemed to do? Alex doesn’t know, and grips the man below him a little harder to ground himself.
There’s sand in Charles’ normally perfect hair and it makes Alex angry. His blue eyes look uncharacteristically cloudy and it makes Alex angry. He’s whimpering, and that makes Alex angry too.
Don’t die. Don’t die. Please don’t die. He finds himself pleading. It’s a litany he didn’t get to murmur for Darwin, sudden as his death was. This is a long death, and though it’s been years since he bothered praying, he’ll pray for Charles. He’ll do anything here, in this beach at the end of the world. Don’t die.
Charles’ lips twist oddly. “Oh Alex,” Shit, guess he had been projecting that. They had all been trying to pretend that it was all okay, but you didn’t need a telepath to know the truth. “I’ve already died twice today.”
He swallows, his red rimmed eyes turning their hazy gaze skywards. “When the coin went through my- Shaw’s- head. And when he left.” Another gasping inhalation under Alex’s fingers. “What’s one more death? One more time.”
Alex doesn’t know what to say, and he’s running out of anger. He doesn’t want to stop being angry because he’s learned that when the rage runs out the fear and pain is all that’s left. He has no use for either. A fly buzzes past his ear. The beach is humid, so humid that the blood still hasn’t dried yet, and the very air seems sticky with the promise of it.
Not for the first time, he finds himself wishing for the others to come back. He’d crawl across this beach on his hands and knees if it meant that Red Devil would appear and teleport Charles to a hospital. He’d get down on his knees to pray for Eric too, but he knows the man isn’t coming back.
As he thinks this, Charles memories rush over him like the unrelenting tide of the shoreline.
a girl in the kitchen beautifully blue, charles doesn’t even have a word for how blue she is/ they sit in a dusty attic and pour over paint sets. indigo, he tells her, no, sapphire! / telling her to hide that blue, his insides coiling in self hatred, but he can’t let her get hurt, can’t let her be hurt like cain and kurt hurt him/ in the studies and bedrooms of the stupid manor where kurt raises his belt and/ erik smiles in an armchair and tips over the white king/ a beautiful mind, the most beautiful mind he has ever seen, a mind so wonderful he will do anything for its owner, even stay out of it/
A wave crashes, and admist the flooding memories of amber drinks clinking together, of ‘you need to let go!’, Alex thinks he could not possibly hate Magento more, until-
erik holds charles’ chin, gazing down with a rapturous expression, before bringing his parted lips to meet charles’ red ones / the world around them flickers before a hundred different scenes, all United in this act/ a hundred different kisses/ in motel rooms/ on the airplane /in every moment they weren’t being watched
Alex thinks of the helmet glinting in the infernal light of the sun above as the man turned away, and yeah, he can hate magneto more.
One more memory
the study, where the recollection of kurt and his hands have just started to fade/ where charles and erik have had arguments and laughter and rounds and rounds of chess/ charles is nervously going over plans for the invasion tomorrow, and Erik reaches over, placing one hand over the smaller man’s thigh with a familiar squeeze, and says
I love you, schatz.
Alex is catapulted back to reality, but Charles’s mind is still projecting those last words. Ilove youilove youi loveyou i can’t feel my legs I can’t feel my legs please Erik please I can’t feel my legs
It’s almost a mercy when Charles passes out, when they can’t hear how frightfully agonised his normally posh voice has become, when the rush of i cant feel my legs stops. The beach, except for the crash of the waves and the static from the broken radio, is silent once more.