Title:Smother the Soul
Author:cathat77
Rating:PG-13
Word Count:1554
Characters:preslash Charles/Erik, everyone else
Summary:Charles/Erik, Charles doesn't know who's real anymore.
Warnings:nothing, Charles dislikes pity
Disclaimer:In no way, shape, or form does X-Men First Class belong to this author. X-Men First Class is the property of Marvel, and this author is merely borrowing from the Marvel Universe.
The quote is:
But you learn to smother the living breathing soul, go deaf to it, and this violence to the self is what is commonly called sanity in the places where I have lived. –Philip Ó Ceallaigh, "Walking to the Danube"
i.
They say the voices aren't real. Just figments of my imagination. They thought it was nice when I was little to have imaginary friends.
When I got older and my friends persisted, they gave each other those looks that grown-ups give each other, the really stupid ones that think you're stupid. I'm not stupid; I'm the smartest boy that's ever lived.
They say I have to stop talking to the voices. I pretend. It's easier to agree than tell the truth. That way I don't have to take the medicine anymore. The gigantic nasty pills that stick when they grudgingly slide down the back of my throat. Sometimes, the pills make me really tired and foggy; it's hard to move.
They plunge me into hot and cold baths, saying it will treat me. But, nothing's wrong. The voices are nice enough, even if some of them have nightmares. They shock me sometimes too, but I leave my body then and watch as it shakes uncontrollably beneath me. They never believe me when I tell them that.
Liar, they call me, and then, they pull at my ears.
They offered to make me calm. Mother said no, that's too scandalous, too shameful. I'm still grateful nonetheless.
My name is Charles Xavier. I am eight, and I am ready to die.
ii.
They release Charles two years later. They say that he is cured. They think that he is cursed.
He isn't either. He's just gotten better at lying.
He learns to smile. He learns to play nice with the other children and not blurt out their parents' torrid affairs.
Sometimes, he still has dreams that They are chasing him to drill holes in his head. He's glad They didn't.
Cain stays away from him. He likes it. Cain's mind hurts, feels black and blue all over. Sometimes, his skin is that way too.
Kurt Marko is an awful man.
iii.
Charles is twelve when he encounters a blue girl in the kitchen. He's alone in this house, not in his mind, and she needs him.
No one has ever needed Charles before. The feeling rushes within him.
Her eyes are pretty and yellow.
He begs her to stay blue all the time, and only to change if people are over. He likes her blue more than the pinky peach color she wears. He confides that when he gets older, he'd like to be green like a plant and photosynthesize all of his food.
She thinks he's crazy.
She's not the only one she finds out.
They run under the blue sky on green grass. No one ever bothers them. Raven's red hair can't flutter behind her, so on occasion, she makes it long and blonde to feel the wind in her hair.
iv.
Charles receives his professorship on a blustery day in Oxford and attempts to drink his body weight in beer. He cheers with the bar, and a woman walks in.
She will change his life forever.
v.
There is a man in the water who feels just like Charles. The same pain. The same exhaustion within his bones.
Erik Lensherr.
He is a man bent on revenge. He is a determined man bent on revenge. Charles is glad their overall goal coincides. His life is different somehow with Erik there.
Erik is willing to hurt others, innocent others, in order to kill Shaw. Charles doesn't like that. He thinks that it is wrong. Erik calls him a pacifist.
Charles has been called worse things.
Erik's childhood before the war was beautiful. It brings tears to Charles's eyes.
He takes the memory, and, at night, he pretends it is his own. But, the only emotions his mother has directed toward him are: 1) relief (he's at the asylum, and her freak child won't ruin her social life anymore.) and 2) exasperation (the idiot boy's cured, and they don't want him there either. She has to take him back.).
Charles thinks Erik is lucky, but he doesn't mention it. Erik already thinks he's soft enough, living in a cushy mansion like this. He doesn't need to add to it.
vi.
When Raven strides into the kitchen, Charles knows everything has changed.
She is naked. And blue. But naked overall is the only thing that Charles notices.
Charles doesn't understand her accusations. He has never cared what she looked like before. He just wants her to not wave her breasts at everyone she meets. He's too embarrassed to tell her that though.
Raven gives Charles the Look. He's in trouble. He doesn't know why. He promised he wouldn't look years ago.
He won't start now.
vii.
Hank is blue and furry. He looks vaguely like the blue gorilla that Charles had won at a carnival.
Hank is still smart though. He makes them all groovy suits. He even… scarily enough somehow manages to make a plane.
When they're inside, Charles has to resist the urge to ask if he can hold someone's hand while they're flying. He's never liked the feeling, and this experience won't make it better.
They fight on a beach.
Charles holds Shaw down, and Erik does the real fighting.
viii.
Erik doesn't like Charles anymore.
His mind is blocked off from Charles's.
Charles doesn't know what to say. Charles is scared.
Scared people sometimes do stupid things.
And, now, Raven's gone too.
He doesn't want stupid Moira to touch him anymore. He wants to blame her. But, it's not her fault if she idiotically shot bullets at someone who controls metal. Just like it's not Erik's fault if he idiotically deflected bullets without checking for other people.
The hospital brings back bad memories.
ix.
He goes home. Moira insists that he go to see a psychiatrist. The boys are nice to think he's too nice and normal to need a shrink.
He doesn't explain that he spent four years with one already.
x.
Erik isn't real. They tell him that over and over.
They've told him the voices aren't real, but They're wrong. In fact, They're the imaginary ones, walking around pretending to be sane.
Erik is an idealized fictional personality that he's created to be a foil of himself: perfect where he is not and flawed where Charles feels he is not. Why else would Charles insist they had an instant connection? Charles constructed Erik from the ruins of his mind.
He still suffered from his mother's death, They said, and his recent accident didn't help matters. A bullet to the back creates wounds in the soul not just the body.
Charles can't prove Erik existed. No photographs. No letters. Nothing. He has tears from the lighting of a menorah, but now he wonders if it ever happened.
The boys don't visit.
Neither does Moira.
Maybe they don't exist too.
xi.
Charles has lost weight. He doesn't find eating too worthwhile anymore. It's pointless and repetitive. It is his only measure of control.
They add eating disorder to his list of problems. He knows they think he's a flawed being in a pretty package. He has nothing left to lose, except his weight.
They've taken everything else: his sanity, his dignity, his Erik.
Charles stares at his feet. It takes all of his effort to breathe sometimes. His neck feels like it will collapse any day.
The IVs make sure he's at least hydrated every day. They sedated him the last time he ripped them out.
The blood was pretty against his skin.
But that was a bad thing to do. And, Charles has to take more medication than before to control his violent urges.
He wishes Erik was there to play chess with him.
Pawn to E4.
xii.
He says he realizes that Erik is not real. They smile and believe him. They say he's getting better. Charles wonders if he'll ever go home.
Charles notices that there are no other patients.
He is the only one there. He tells Them this theory, and They laugh at him. Of course, there are other patients. But, it's safer for everyone if he's kept in solitary confinement.
Their hands feel gross on his paper-thin skin. He finds they feel the opposite is true.
He is surprised to realize that they know he has a history of "hearing voices." He thought he hid that long ago.
Maybe he never left. And, They just got new people. He is inventive. He does like to make worlds inside his head. Or so They say.
xiii.
He gets more and more tired every day. They have forced him more and more medication, and things startle him more easily every day.
Sometimes, he sees Erik in front of him, but he looks wrong: too short, wrong hair color, wrong eye color, wrong accent, wrong everything. Maybe, Erik doesn't exist physically.
But, the Erik in his head is strong. He is relentless. Even if Erik doesn't exist, he makes Charles want for something more.
His hair is short and fuzzy. He thinks Raven would laugh at it.
xiv.
One morning he wakes to find Raven sobbing over him.
Erik is wearing a cape and that helmet. The helmet has prongs on it, and Charles laughs at it.
He's wheezing more than laughing.
Erik picks him up and sets him in a wheelchair.
They leave this place behind.
A/N: I will try to write a sequel to this fic with some actual Charles/Erik to it. I hinted to it here...
Prompt:
Inspired by various other prompts. Supposing the divorce never happened...
When Charles was young, he spent a few months in a mental asylum.
Now the government or some other organization kidnap him and make him belief that he is in an asylum again because Erik is actually just a character he made up... Charles, probably under the influence of meds, starts to believe that they are right. A man as perfect as Erik can not be real...