Dark Paradise
"So much for being a survivor."
Having gotten rid of the annoying time-traveller Erik finally manages to concentrate on the task at hand once again.
He has no idea where Beast and Charles are – but they will not be able to stop him, not this time, not now that he has to set an example!
Tearing the metal safe room out of the building he aligns their guns, makes the world watch.
"… a new tomorrow that starts today!"
The president steps forward; then – a shot with a plastic bullet – Mystique coming at him-
Nothing.
X
Erik suddenly jolts awake.
He has one short moment of clarity, followed by-
Panic.
Panic, and pain – excruciating, agonizing pain, his chest feels as if it is being torn apart, and breathing burns like liquid fire in his lungs, and gets harder every second, and he cannot let Erik do this, he has to stop him, he has to stop Raven!, and never before has he felt such a terrible pain, not even when Erik left him, and this is feeling pretty terminal, and did Hank make it?, and he has not seen Logan for some time, and he bets that getting him killed was not part of his future self's ingenious plan, and it burns, and he wishes he could fill his promise and make this school reality, and he just wants to stop breathing, it hurts so much, and Erik-
…
Nothing
X
It feels like waking, once again.
This time, however, he does not wake from unconsciousness, but from-
…
Was that Charles, projecting?
It certainly felt like the younger one's mind, a sensation he remembers despite all the time that has passed, and-
…
Wait a moment.
Is Charles-
…
Dying?
X
Erik lifts the stadium so fast he almost loses control, and races towards where Hank is already kneeling, shaking as he is gripping Charles' wrist.
The telepath is pale, there is blood on his face and his shirt is dark, and his blank eyes are looking at the sky, unfocused.
A short, momentary shock of NO! flashes through him, then the denial sets in.
He almost forgets the people around them, the guns pointed towards him, the cameras still filming, Hank at Charles' side-
All he can do is run there, and fall to his knees, and grab the telepath's other hand, and stare at Hank who is still kneeling there, sobbing, and does not even make a move to attack Erik.
And he knows what that must mean.
An anguished scream tears from his lips, breaks his lungs apart as much as the sight of Charles breaks his heart.
The fingers he is clinging to are still warm.
X
When the humans wake from their shock, their stupor, and race forward to retrieve their weapons, to threaten them, Erik does not even react.
What does it matter anymore?
Despite their differences, despite Erik having chosen to once again leave Charles' path, despite the fact that he has not had the younger one for a very long time-
…
Despite everything, Erik just lost the single person his heart ever found possible to love after his mother's death.
Despite everything, Erik just lost everything.
Everything he had had left to fight for-
Everything.
X
Hank is the one to react first.
"Get him out of here."
His voice is hoarse, and his eyes are glazed with tears.
"The plane is in an airport down South. Wait there for me, and we go back to Westchester. I will deal with this."
Erik's brain is working overtime, trying to deal with the sheer impossibility of what has just happened, and it takes him forever to even understand what was said to him.
Not that it makes sense.
"Westchester?"
"He…" Hank gulps. "He would have wanted to be… you know."
He does not.
"…to be buried there."
X
Erik picks up the limp body, even more terror racing through his veins as Charles' head lolls according to gravity, no muscle answer being left to hold it-
He flies out of the stadium ignoring the bullets being fired after them, even the one that comes dangerously close to his own head, and makes for the plane.
It takes him almost an eternity to find it.
It takes him even longer to put Charles down, his own muscles refusing to let go of the limp ones.
Blood is staining his clothes.
Charles' body is still warm.
X
Hank manages to fly them back to Westchester, and tell Erik what to do with the body, and cry at the same time without crashing the plane.
Erik would admire him, really, if there were any capacity of his mind left not trying and reaching out for Charles' because it has to be there, he just needs to find it, out there he cannot be gone, Erik has to find him-
X
It is raining when they arrive at Westchester, and way past midnight, and Hank and Erik spend the rest of the night digging a hole underneath Charles' favourite tree at the far end of the property, where they used to have picnics all the time.
X
When they are done it is already dawning, and they are soaking wet and dirty and shivering with cold.
It makes the pain a little more bearable, Erik thinks, and goes to help Hank carpenter a coffin from wood stored in the mansion after they have both taken a shower, and neither of them cares that bodies should not be buried on one's property.
They do not even discuss whether they should invite anyone, send out obituaries, organize a proper funeral.
This pain is theirs and theirs alone.
X
The burial is nice.
If a burial can be nice, that is.
It is raining, but Charles is dry in his coffin.
Hank and Erik lower him into the hole, and fill it up, and then keep vigil for the rest of the day, before going separate ways after the sun has set.
Come morning, Erik has crafted a beautiful stone, and Hank has planted a rash of tulips on the grave.
They used to be Charles' favourites.
X
After three days the denial sets in.
Erik wakes in the morning thinking it was only a bad dream, and he expects Charles to step into the room every second moment.
This cannot be true, right?
Charles cannot be dead.
X
Charles, of course, does not step into the room.
It breaks Erik's heart every time he realizes that it is true.
X
Raven comes by after a week has passed.
She is still limping, and screams at them for not having told her, before breaking down, crying.
Hank takes her to the grave, and Erik goes to turn the satellite dish round and round and round-
They receive no TV signal that night, and Erik distantly thinks about being between rage and serenity.
He wonders whether he will ever get there again.
X
Raven stays.
X
Hank, of course, is blaming Erik for having killed Charles.
Erik knows that, and it is entirely understandable.
It was his power, his recklessness, his urge to be the stronger one that has buried that pointed piece of the stadium's scaffolding in Charles' chest.
He knows that Hank is blaming him, and he understands it, because he is blaming himself as well.
Hank, however, never speaks of it, and he never looks at Erik with accusation in his eyes.
Erik wonders whether it was Charles who taught Hank to be that kind.
X
Erik so terribly, terribly regrets having left Charles – at the beach, in the first place, ever.
X
"He promised Logan to rebuild the school."
Hank raises that topic at breakfast.
Neither Erik nor Raven answers.
"Logan told him to remember some names – told him who to find."
Silence.
"He cannot do it, obviously."
Raven gulps down a sob.
"So?" Erik asks.
It comes out more aggressively than he was planning on, his tongue heavy with guilt.
Hank, he can see, understands.
"So, we have to do it instead."
X
Erik does not think he could handle building a school here.
Everything reminds him of Charles already. How is he supposed to cope with seeing students, other mutants, kids, people like them- … how is he supposed to cope with seeing them, and thinking all the time that, whatever he does, Charles would have done better?
How is he supposed to cope with thinking that he will have ruined those kids' future?
X
Also, he does not want the mansion to change. While it hurts being reminded of Charles at every turn, he cannot imagine giving those reminders up.
X
Erik takes a long walk – a very long walk that leads him through three different states – and returns with an eight-year-old able to make himself invisible he barely managed to save from the boy's disgustingly religious father's wrath.
Hank and Raven do not even question his decision to bring the kid to the mansion.
Raven reaches out and cares for him, her mother instinct apparently flaring, and Hank is brooding over possible timetables appropriate for an eight-year-old mutant who has never even learned how to count to ten, and is convinced that some god hates him.
Maybe, Erik thinks, the school is not such a bad idea.
If he can save any of all those other mutant children out there from similar fates-
…
He owes them this.
X
He also might owe it Charles – to make the telepath's vision come true.
X
Hank makes Erik headmaster.
What an incredibly stupid idea.
X
The first students arrive in December.
It is freezing, and only three days before Christmas – which is also why they took the three children they found on the street, begging, without even stopping at a police station to clear the legal details.
Distrustful is too small a word to describe the kids, but they are warm, have enough to eat, and are not alone any more.
Erik himself makes sure to get each of them a very personal gift for Christmas.
X
He wishes Charles could have shared their joy with him.
X
Building a school with a criminal on the run as the headmaster, and another one as a teacher, and staying off the government's radar is not all that easy.
Neither is teaching four children younger than ten to handle abilities they received far too soon, their mutations having been set free by perilous situations.
Deadly terror, Erik knows, can do that to one.
X
Hank is good with the legal stuff.
He knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who has very useful abilities when it comes to dealing with authorities, and that woman actually manages to convince the whole world that Erik has done nothing wrong, and is exactly where he ought to be, as the headmaster of a private school for gifted youngsters.
The young woman also makes a splendid teacher.
X
When young Pietro's sister manages to set her family's house on fire Pietro comes to them for help. Their mother, it seems, was wounded badly and can no longer care for them.
Erik leaves and talks to her, promises to look after her children, and returns with them in tow.
Charles liked the kid, he remembers.
He would have loved seeing him here, in his school.
X
It is late March when Alex is standing in front of the door, together with the three young men he apparently served with in Vietnam.
Having to tell him of Charles' death is pure agony, but not even Havoc accuses him of having murdered the telepath. He simply spends a day sitting at the grave and mourning, and the next morning he asks what classes they can teach.
X
A few weeks later his young brother Scott arrives.
Hank stares at the kid, and apparently remembers the name from that conversation between Charles and Logan he overheard.
Erik thinks that, maybe, he finally found it – his way to find redemption. His chance to atone for what he has done, if only a little.
And that one choice changes everything.
X
Hank and Raven are a little concerned, when he suddenly pours all his energy, all his obsession which they remember from when they were hunting Shaw into the school; into making this dream reality.
Charles' dream.
X
Erik regrets never having contacted Charles after he left. He had always waited for the younger one to come to him, confined by his own pride; but it would have been his turn to take the first step.
X
He wakes up one morning, three years after they finally managed to establish regular lessons and timetables, and there is something in his mind.
At first he thinks that it is Charles, and that all the pain was no more than a nightmare.
Reality is as cruel as always, and then some.
X
It takes him weeks to realize that it actually is Charles.
X
Senna turns up at the school when the riots between humans and mutants in Taiwan begin.
By now word of this safe haven for mutants has spread, and the woman is the oldest one to ever have sought them out. At seventy-three she certainly has the most life experiments, and knows herself and her power in ways they can only dream of.
She makes a splendid teacher.
She is also a telepath.
X
It is autumn when Senna explains that this tiny bit of Charles in Erik's mind was left behind when the younger one clawed his way in all those years ago in DC, delirious with pain and so close to death he had no control left.
X
It makes dreaming easier.
Dreaming that Charles is still alive, dreaming that Charles is here beside him-
…
Hank and Raven worry, he knows.
They fear he might be going mad.
They might actually be right – not that he cares.
Having found something of Charles after so many years is clearly nothing he is planning to give up on.
X
Erik regrets many things when it comes to Charles.
Most of all he regrets that he has never given in and simply kissed the younger one.
It might have changed everything.
X
Slowly, they days stop blurring together.
He is no longer making it through only for Charles' sake, because someone needs to make the telepath's dreams reality.
Erik is now living those dreams.
This also includes fighting for mutants and humans to live together. It is not easy, and many doubt him, doubt that he has really changed his mind, but what else could he have done?
Charles was right.
Charles must have been right.
If someone as deeply and inertly good as Charles was ready to give up his little sanctuary of being able to walk and not hearing other people's thoughts for the sake of this world, it must be worth a lot.
X
Raven, in the end, is the one to convince the world.
Whoever knew she was this good with politics?
X
Sometimes it feels almost as if he belongs, as if everything is finally falling into place.
X
At other times it is only that tiny bit of Charles in his mind that keeps him going.
X
While before it was only making it from day to day, then from year to year, he is now thinking in decades.
Time has gone on, and Erik has grown old.
And while he still wishes that Charles were here, that Charles would have grown old with him, he is finally able to see all the good he has done.
X
This world, Erik likes to think, this world where humans and mutants live together, this world he helped make possible – this world Charles would have enjoyed living him.
Whether that brings him more pain or peace he could not say.
What he does know, however, is that there are many things he does not regret now.
Many things he can be proud of.
Many things Charles would have been proud of.
X
He has done so much good, and even if he has done it only for Charles' sake – it was him who helped all those children, who taught all those mutants, who showed all those humans that living together peacefully was possible.
And he knows, he can finally step before Charles holding his head high, in whatever kind of afterlife might be awaiting them.
X
Hank will be a great headmaster – and he will keep their kind safe for some more years, possibly even decades.
X
Erik is finally convinced that he did everything he could in his attempt to atone for his biggest mistake ever. Maybe – maybe Charles will even be able to forgive him.
Whether that happens, however, is no longer up to him.
After years upon years upon decades of pain and doubt Erik is finally ready.
It is time to go.
XX
FIN