stars fading (charles/erik)

[schmerica]

Today I thought a lot about Charles and Erik, old men and young men. As is often the case, my thoughts seem to make a lot more sense in fic form. So here, have a ficlet.

stars fading
by Pearl-o

~500 words, Charles/Erik, PG-13ish.

Summary: When Erik dreams of him, Charles is always young.

*****

When Erik dreams of him, Charles is always young. All these decades, and he still sees Charles as he was when they first met, still whole and untouched and achingly bright.

The dream don't provide the same courtesy to Erik himself - he is always in his own aging body, every year marked on him, with the full set of his memories and experiences carried with him each time.

Sitting, playing chess in a room in Westchester he hasn't entered in 40 years.

Charles visiting him in captivity, and he watches as Charles slowly circles the room that makes up Erik's plastic prison, his eyes wide in curious admiration of the clever science that put it together.

In Israel, where he'd fled at nineteen, following the promises of refuge and a homeland and the possibility of being surrounded by his people, but found himself completely alone, nonetheless; he lies on his bed in his small room, and Charles lies besides him, an expression of infinite compassion on his face as he runs his hand through Erik's gray hair. "Come here," Charles says, in the dream. "Come home, my friend."

Irritatingly sentimental. Erik's subconscious is not inclined to subtlety in this, or any other regard.

(Charles told him once that his thoughts were somehow louder, clearer, than anyone else Charles had met. "You think about things so directly, with such focus," Charles had mused. "There's almost a purity to your thoughts." Erik had laughed at the time, amused at the incongruity of Charles's word choice at such a moment, when the activities they had just completed were anything but pure. In retrospect, he finds it even funnier, because there has never been a time in Erik's life since when his focus has been so strained, so divided between two poles, as it was those months, when his yearning for Charles wrestled with his need to destroy Schmidt.)

When he does see Charles, those odd rare moments scattered through time, it always takes a moment for his memory to fade and be replaced with his true appearance. Like Erik, he's older, both strengthened and wearied by the years. He's as comfortable in the wheelchair as he ever was with his body alone, though Erik will never see it as anything but a foreign, disturbing tool. The levity Erik once found so inexplicable in him is gone, replaced by the gravity bourne of his experiences. The blue of his eyes has faded, but they still hold the same depth of affection within.

Undeserved it might be, inconvenient perhaps under the paths they each have chosen, and certainly irrelevant in almost every way that matters. But Erik values it, as a gift, one without strings, and after all these years he has learned finally to accept that gift with some small amount of grace.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This is so beautiful.

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

This is a lovely meditation on both of them.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much - 'meditation' is a lovely word for it, I think. (What's odd is that when I sat down to write I really thought it was going to be random porn, which this is pretty much the opposite of.)