To get the full effect of this fic, you may want to read it whilst listening to Hugo Wolf's "Das verlassene Magdlein", which inspired it and is the tune mentioned.

Links (remove spaces):

Music: http: / www. youtube. com/ watch?v=hH2F-s3-DNg&feature=related

Lyrics and translation: http: / myweb. dal. ca/ waue/ Trans/ Moerike-Verlassen. html

I do not own the XMen, the music of Hugo Wolf or the poem by Eduard Mörike. The verses shown in the text and the translation shown at the end are both copied and pasted from the website above. I just think that they're beautiful. (All three - the words, the music, and the X Men!) The title of this story is a deliberate corruption of the title of the poem/song: instead of "the abandoned maiden", "the abandoned telepath".

Die verlassenen Telepath

Früh, wann die Hähne krähn,
Eh die Sternlein verschwinden,
Muß ich am Herde stehn,
Muß Feuer zünden.

Charles awoke – another morning, another day. More training to be done – the new child, Aurora, whose eyes could go a misty white and make lighting to flash around her, he had decided to focus on her today. Much more rain in the mansion would cause irreparable damage. Perhaps, he could pair her with Jean – both immensely powerful, but very different. Where Aurora was assertive, almost angry about the way the first decade of her life had gone, and under no qualms about using her powers to get her own way, Jean was hesitatant, nervous, quiet. They would work well together. And she'd probably be able to contain some of the lighter showers.

He shook his head at his own optimism – when had he developed this cynical strain? Not thinking the answer, not thinking the answer. He felt unaccountably low, today, a strain in the pit of his stomach which he refused to quite examine (no one better at ignoring thoughts than a telepath). And there was a tune going round his head, a haunting little melody which he couldn't quite place. Ohrwurm, that was the term. Attempting to put it out of his mind, Charles laboured to raise his upper torso to a seated position and began his morning exercises, an unfortunate necessity since the beach.

Schön ist der Flammen Schein,
Es springen die Funken;
Ich schau so drein,
In Leid versunken.

Later that day, and Charles had parked his chair next to Alex, watching together with pride as Scott, his newly arrived baby brother tried out his finally completed visor. Currently, the visor was about twice the size of his head, an ungainly thing covered with wires and bits of metal, but Hank assured them that it should be possible with increasing refinement over several months, to reduce its size until one day it could be as unobtrusive as a pair of sunglasses. Its current size and shape, however, seemed not to matter one whit to the brothers, who, when Scott opened his eyes for the first time in ten years, and murmured wonderingly "I can see you!" were oblivious to the rest of the world for several hours.

"His aim's way better than mine was," said Alex, voice and mind both so full of pride that Charles smiled involuntarily, despite his own less than stellar mood.

"Well, to be fair, eyes are more designed for rapid movement than stomachs," he said laughingly.

Alex appeared not to notice. Charles could feel the sheer joy, exultation in life, coming off him in waves. It was funny, usually Charles would be right there with him, sharing in every second of the joy, and he was pleased, it was just... as though all emotions today, including his own, were coming at him through a thick vale of fog – well, fog and that darned tune, which just kept going round and round. Feeling vaguely discomfited, Charles made his excuses and went to his haven, Cerebro. He spent the next few hours drowning his thoughts in the bright lights which twinkled all around him.

Plötzlich, da kommt es mir,
Treuloser Knabe,
Daß ich die Nacht von dir
Geträumet habe.

That was it!

He angrily tugged the Cerebro helmet off his head, before his loss of control killed someone. That was the damned tune! Wolf. Hugo Wolf. Had he been playing it last night as he drifted off, and somehow forgotten to disengage the record player? No, no, that wasn't it.

Wolf. German.

Now, what does Charles Xavier associate with Germany?

The telepath allowed himself to examine those thoughts which he had been carefully ignoring all day.

A year. It had been a year since that day on the beach, and still, some nights he had dreams. Erik's arms around him, his kisses staining Charles' lips red like some fine wine, his eyes, flashing so blue as he argued a point which Charles knew to be false, but somehow Erik managed to almost make him change his mind in that swirl of blue irises...

But most of all, he dreamed of that mind, sharp as flint and tinged with steel, a mind which just fit but one whose comforting presence he had not felt in over a year now, but which he could not help dreaming of over and over again. A mind which he'd never been allowed to fully explore: time and circumstances and Erik's sheer immovable will had seen to that.

Charles sighed and ran his hand through his hair, tousled from the helmet's rapid removal. Nothing to be done, he had accepted that long ago. But acceptance does not imply forgetting, and even though his conscious mind held no trace of bitterness, perhaps the subconscious was not so strong. Charles could admit this to himself in the privacy of his own head, if not to anyone else. But it could never have ended any other way.

It was just the lingering dream of last night, which forced that infernal tune into his brain. He bit down on the sudden flashback of the last time he'd heard it, them, together, curled up on the settee in his study, the night before the Beach Incident.

Without the faintest hope, he replaced the helmet on his head, feeling his hair flatten down in a strange shape. Perhaps the baldness which ran in his mother's family might have its advantages.

Closing his eyes, Charles reached out into the ether of Cerebro once more. At least, if nothing else, this melancholy mood would serve to find many new mutants. And then -

It was there. That beautiful, wonderful, marvellous mind, which he'd missed so much for so long was there. Why was the helmet off? What could have possessed him, after such long silence, to open his mind once more? But Charles did not allow himself to question, not when all he could think was joy, joy, joy, that the mind which fit his soul was there once more.

/Erik./ Charles was surprised that his mind wasn't shaking.

/Charles./ That voice, that accent, that strange, wondrous accent.

There was a pause. Funnily enough, after all this time, Charles could think of nothing to say. Everything had already been said.

/Why do I suddenly have das verlassene Mägdlein going round my head, old friend?/ The metallokinetic sounded vaguely confused.

Charles laughed bitterly, the sound echoing through his mind to Erik. That was all that he asked? Perhaps other subjects were best avoided, after all. The telepath very carefully avoided looking deeper into his old friend's mind, at anything specific in fact, and just enjoyed the comfort of their surface thoughts melding together after so long a break.

It was then he realised that the laughter he had sent across the void had carried with it a myriad of associated thoughts, and that Magneto had suddenly been treated to a view of Charles' day, painted in watercolour and snippets of emotion, and that damned tune, tinkering in the background, some kind of perverse soundtrack.

/Ah./

There was understanding there, and regret too, of a sort. Charles sighed inwardly. This was why they fit together so. Two sides of the same coin.

/A good choice of song./ Erik's voice in his head was dry. /A complex melody./

/It would appear that my subconscious has good taste./

/I dream of you, too, you know./

Another pause. Charles felt like they should be discussing it all, somehow working through those crazed feelings which both bound and repelled them. But he couldn't think of the right words, couldn't even disentangle the emotions enough to transmit, so was silent.

/So which of us, then, is the "treuloser Knabe"?/ Erik's voice had a forced lightness to it.

Another sigh. This time, Charles couldn't tell which one of them it came from.

/Neither of us, old friend./ he replied slowly, knowing that it was the truth. /Neither of us is faithless. That's the very problem./

Träne auf Träne dann
Stürzet hernieder;
So kommt der Tag heran -
O ging' er wieder!

They sat together for what felt like hours, no longer speaking, minds attached, just enjoying each others' company from a thousand miles apart. Then, as the sun began to set over the mansion, Charles opened his eyes once more.

/I think it is time, old friend./

Erik's voice sounded almost gravelly from disuse as he responded. /Yes. When the battle lines are drawn.../

He tailed off, unwilling to complete the thought.

/Yes. We will be opposite each other./ The thought gave Charles a stab of pain.

/Across a chess set once more, old friend./

/But playing for higher stakes./

Silence.

As it ever was, it is Erik who finally breaks their connection.

/Good night, my old friend./ He puts on the helmet and is gone.

/Good night, my love./

Charles knew that his response was just a whisper into the dark of the universe, but there was never any other way. There will always be a place for Erik in his heart, and he knows that if he wants it there is a place for him in Erik's too. But with just as strong a conviction, he knows that neither of them will ever take up that place.

Neither of them is the treuloser Knabe of the song. Neither faithless enough to his ideals to give them up for the other.

And that is why these stolen moments are all they will ever have.

Author's Note:

"treuloser Knabe" translates roughly as "faithless knave/lad/boy", although for the sake of rhyme, the person on the site has translated it as "lover untrue".

I've copied out the English translation of the song below, copied from the website cited at the top of this page:

Early, when roosters crow,
Ere stars expire,
I must get up and go
To light the fire.

Pretty the blazes glow,
With sparks a-flying;
My eyes are lying low,
Sunken in sighing.

Suddenly I recall,
Lover untrue,
That in the hours small
I dreamt of you.

Tear over tear will then
heavy descend;
This way my day began -
Oh let it end!