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The first sunbeams of the day fell through the French doors and bathed Charles’ bedroom in soft purplish light. Clothes, worn and unused, lay scattered across the floor and the air was heavy with the smell of alcohol and carbon dioxide.
He didn’t remember the last time he aired this room, probably when he overdosed a month ago or so and Hank cleaned up as much as he could before Charles woke up and wreaked havoc again.
With a grunt, Charles got out of bed and staggered to the windows to pull the heavy curtains. He didn’t want to see anything. If he could, he’d down the whiskey and the entire bottle of pills but he couldn’t do that to Hank. So, curtains it was.
On his way back to the bed, he grabbed another bottle of alcohol so he would have something to drink when he had to wake up again. An irritating condition of staying alive in Charles’ humble opinion. Waking up was the worst part of his day even now that he could sleep.
Hank’s serum was enough to shut up the world for good but to Charles’ dismay, his own thoughts had still been very much audible. As if his telepathy had been locked into his brain, past, present and future collided in it and he had struggled to not drown in the stormy sea his own thoughts were. Narcotics and alcohol were his desperate attempt to numb every single neuron, in the hopes of having any silence at all. It worked so well and while Hank argued that this was just another mess to drown in, Charles would rather drown in this one. He had never known peace like this.
Yes, I did, but Charles pushed the thought away. He had never known independent peace like this. He didn’t need anyone for the thoughts to quiet down, they were just gone.
As a kid, he had clung to Raven. Her mind was not stable or devoid of pain but it was colourful and felt like home. Charles had let himself be lulled into her warmth and gradually the other voices had begun to fade out. He didn’t need to invade her mind for that nor read her thoughts and emotions, he just had to stay in telepathic proximity to her.
With her departure from his life, a ground pillar of his sanity was torn down. A dry laugh escaped Charles. Erik really had taken it all from him. Bit by bit he had lined everything Charles had valued with metal and then ripped it all out once he decided to leave. Hank and a mansion that had always felt too empty but even more so after all students were gone, was left. Charles wanted to hate Erik for it. Maybe he did a little bit at least. However, deep down he knew he could never get himself to hate Erik.
His best friend turned nemesis was heaven to a tortured mind. Charles had relished in his presence, almost maniacal euphoria cursing through his veins when he was close to Erik’s mind. It was like walking through a cool forest after spending the day cooped up inside a hot room. Erik’s determination and unrelenting conviction had steeled his mind, making it ridiculously easy to hold onto. In his presence Charles didn’t need to wait for the voices to fade out, they ceased to be the instant he clung onto Erik.
Erik’s abandonment was a brutal withdrawal for Charles. His mind craved Erik’s presence. It made everything so much harder. Charles’ heart ached every time he thought of the moments they had shared but a broken heart was not fatal. His heart didn’t need Erik but his mind did so very much to be at ease.
Perhaps, he could’ve had that forever if he had gone with Erik but no matter how desperately Charles wanted him, his conscience would never let him. Erik, along with all the others, had been so terribly wrong when they called Charles too gentle. They failed to understand that he had to be gentle or else his telepathy would cause so much destruction. Strong morals and skyscraping ethical barriers were a necessity first and choice second.
Minds were fragile. Memories, feelings, thoughts and hopes shaped an intricate landscape that was in motion all the time, changing with the person. Charles’ telepathic abilities were akin to a deity in that world. He would know.
When he started uni, amphetamine had been popular with certain groups of students and Charles had quickly understood why albeit for different reasons. A single line and a couple of drinks turned his heartbeat into a thunderous drum, loud enough to drown out all the voices in his head. He had loved it too much.
One night, a student had come up to him, clad in inconspicuous clothes and an even more inconspicuous face. His thoughts and emotions however hadn’t been inconspicuous at all. The pain, sadness and grief lacing his every breath had crashed into Charles with so much force that he stumbled.
In a sober state, he would’ve either brought physical distance between them or tried to ease some of the pain but Charles had been severely inebriated and desperate for a retreat from all the agony. Instead, he had reached out and tightened his grip to silence the pain. For how long he had been doing that, Charles couldn’t recall. He had only stopped when the stranger’s voice had diminished to nothing but a quiet buzz.
People around them had stopped dancing and had pointed at the student who was rocking forth and back on the floor while yelling. Too late, Charles had realised what he had done and when he had tried to push through the haze of amphetamine and alcohol, the stranger’s mind was no longer tangible. Emotions, memories and wishes had been smashed into a pulp without a single coherent thought in them.
Terrified, Charles had stumbled back and turned around, feverishly searching for the exit of the club. He was long gone when he heard the sirens echoing in the distance but kept running like a madman through the streets of London. Whether from the consequences of his actions or himself, he hadn’t been sure.
Charles didn’t allow himself to contemplate violence. Not a single form of it because even now, years after the incident Charles couldn’t bear to look in the mirror and see.
He knew what death was. He experienced dying against his will, trapped in minds decaying into nothing but atoms. Losing against cancer without having a single malignant cell in his body and bleeding out without a drop of his own blood flowing.
Watching minds falter and eventually extinguish was terrifying yet it couldn’t hold a candle to what he went through in Cuba. He hadn’t been an observer or mere bystander. He was Shaw, their minds and bodies interwoven by telepathy.
Erik ran that bullet through Shaw’s head regardless and Charles held onto the man despite the pain.
Charles downed another glass of whiskey and blankly stared at the wooden ceiling. That was his tragedy, he supposed, rather enduring all the pain Erik caused him than living in a world without him. He’d take a hundred bullets because Erik’s absence would hurt more than anything.
When his father died, Charles wondered if grief could kill. If the leaden lump his heart had turned into would simply stop beating and his soul turn into another glittering star, right next to where his father was.
Grief didn’t kill him but it killed his mother. She had never been very affectionate but after Brian passed, she stopped being there at all. They used to turn up the radio when her favourite songs came on and she danced through her bedroom, unbothered by the things Charles sent tumbling down when he mimicked her.
Afterwards, she only lay in bed and put her headphones in. To Charles, they looked like a pair of giant metal beetles that ate a little of Sharon’s brain every time she wore them. The beetles and the alcohol on her nightstand and eventually Kurt had killed his mother right in front of his eyes.
Perhaps the same thing was happening to Charles now. He turned his head, looking at his nightstand. There was a picture of Raven and one of the kids in front of the mansion and in between them were empty bottles, pill blisters and syringes. Like mother, like son, he supposed.
Charles felt so angry and so terribly alone, that it made him nauseous. He had experienced both sides of what chaos and agony telepathy could cause. It went both ways with his power and no one, not even Erik or Raven, ever understood that.
As a child, he didn’t understand what was happening to him and didn’t know where the complex thoughts came from. They felt foreign, debris of lives that weren’t his own but he couldn’t shut them out. They terrorised his days and nights alike, bestowing him with a pounding headache and rapidly dwindling mental state. He was so scared, afraid that insanity had taken hold of him.
In retrospect, Charles felt like he lived a thousand childhoods all at once until he realised how to shield himself. What was his and what was theirs had been and still was indistinguishable at times. Whenever Kurt had raised his hands, Charles let his shields fall again, too worried about protecting his body to protect his mind.
Erik and Raven loved to play the best allies, feigning interest and benevolence for every mutation. Until the mutation bothered them. Then they were not very different from the humans they despised so much.
It never occurred to them that it wasn’t Charles who was invasive but them who invaded his head. Charles never asked to bear the full scope of human life a thousand times in a single day. He didn’t want everyone else’s pain. Sadness in all its forms was loud, louder than rage or euphoria could ever be. It was like the body desperately wanted to lessen the burden so it called out for someone to share it with. It was all-consuming and how could Charles not help to ease the pain, when he was the only one who could hear it.
Charles sighed and let himself fall back into the pillows. He blindly reached for another syringe and pushed it into his arm, not bothering to be precise. It was a routine by now and his neurons were turned off by all the chemicals circulating in his system. He was tired of existing, it was time to force himself back to sleep.