Fill: do not stand on my grave
This was in response to a request from X-Men's First Class kink meme, for Erik/Charles in response to the poem "Do not stand at my grave and weep" by Mary Elizabeth Frye, from Charles' perspective. I hope this is what you were looking for, OP!Anon ~
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I can still sense when you wake up in the morning, slow and hazy, like you always did. You would always wake slowly, blink the haze of dreary, comfortable sleep from your eyes. You never tried to turn over and go back to sleep; you would just lie on your back to open your eyes slowly to the mid-rise colours of the sun brushing in softly past your curtains, the haze of it all making the cream-coloured walls of any flat you owned turn soft oranges and yellows.
You never painted your walls, did you? No, no, that would be too unlike you. You were never entirely a man to stay in one place for as long as a year, so what would, then, be the point at all in painting the walls any other colour than they originally were?
Nonetheless, I loved the mornings when you were up as early as I, and the evenings where you would sit across from me to play chess and have a drink before bed. I think you and I built such a routine that you still follow it even now, don’t you? Before you go to sleep now, you sit at that circular table in the corner of your current flat, and stare out the window, your fingers laced together just under the brim of your nose, resting against your mouth as you stare into the city beyond the glaring window, off into the night like you’re in deep thought. You used to do the same when you were staying at the mansion with me, in your room late at night. I never pressed into your thoughts and I still will not do so, as I promised myself I wouldn’t do so, but I could always feel your presence pushing at the edge of my brain when I laid in bed at night.
I always felt you; the feel of your thoughts was always so different from everyone else’s. Perhaps it was because of your childhood, or the slow steps in between rage and serenity which I found with you, found in you.
On the outside, you never seem too worried about it, and I don’t dare press onward for the fear of invading your privacy, but sometimes I wish I could, just to see if you miss me the same as I miss you, if you miss the quiet moments of morning when you would sit next to me at breakfast, not saying a word but just having a great understanding, those competitive jogs we had always an hour and a half exactly after breakfast, or the lemonade I would make after that you always told me was much too sweet, but which you would drink anyway.
Last night when you sat at your little circular table, staring out onto the world below you, perhaps just thinking, or perhaps just staring as you were, I wondered if you ever thought of Hank, who was surprisingly fascinated by your motorbike and helped you to understand more about it, even increase your usage of gas so you wouldn’t have to pay as much. Or of Alex, who would always pester you about your time spent with Hank and the motorbike, who would always pick on Hank after, for whom you would stand up for, sometimes by giving Alex that “light tap” of yours over the back of his head. Or if you miss Sean, who would always play his music too loud, and you would always tell me that it was “only because he knows two volumes; loud and louder” when I would complain to you about it. Or if Raven ever crossed your mind, whose heart you made reach out to the world by making her accept herself first and foremost before society.
In the early morning today when you woke slowly and dawned your turtleneck and leather jacket, I wonder if we ever crossed your mind at all before you go out to walk, moving like nothing had happened, like you too were a normal, non-mutated human, just out for a walk around the streets or on their way to work or just some biker who was passing through. It’s always five minutes into your walk that you push your hands almost self-consciously into your pockets, keep your head down to avoid any passing stranger’s gaze, and maybe, I wondered, if you thought they could read your thoughts the way I could if I wanted to, or like you wouldn’t want to meet the gaze of any other possible mutant, like they would just know you were one of them the way I did.
When you pass the dark coffee shop on the corner of Tipton, you always look across the street to see your fleeting reflection in the windows. Are you watching all the other people pass by too, enter the window and then leave again, or are you just wondering why you’ve never seen a single soul inside that coffee shop before? It seems almost abandoned. Whenever you pass by though, a wave of something sad passes out from you in streams, like slow flashes of dark dust rolling into an otherwise clear wind, and I always feel them pass through from you to me. When I walk through them, they burst apart and dissolve past me to fall into shimmering nothingness like the rest of the wind. That’s how I see the world now.
It’s in times like these that I wish for something deep down, for something I don’t can't quite name to come true.
Whatever it is, it never does.
Now, you seem to have forgotten about all those small town simplicities that you’ve passed by and by, forgotten about the idea of savings and rather poignant phrasings as they pass you by now and again, forgotten about cigarettes and school yard fights that other students cheer on, which you always stop to see if you happen to pass, which you have many times before, but only just for a quick moment, because then the teacher always comes out to break it off, and you were only interested in the commotion of such a prospect as fighting.
Do all of those things make you remember, I wonder?
It’s times like those that I feel one step closer to what I’m wishing for.
I haven’t the faintest what time it is or how long exactly I’ve been following you by your side, but you stop suddenly when the cemetery is to your left. Your eyes are gazing down, perhaps just inches before your feet, and I’m a step in front, looking at you. Can you see me? Maybe just a glimmer of something there, perhaps?
Slowly, your eyes drag up to the left, looking into the length of the cemetery paths, your hands in your pockets as they have been for the longest time. Your eyes then move right, and you begin walking with a vigor, crossing the street without bothering to look both ways, some hot emotion rolling off of you in a wave. Is it anger? Are you angry?
Your motions seem to pick up, and you’re speed walking away. It’s hard to keep up.
Do you remember it?
You’re almost running now, a light jog, the same we’d do on those early mornings. Where are you going?
Do you remember us?
Where are you going, Erik? Where are you running so fast to, my friend? Just hear me, just hear me out, tell me where you’re going, and I’ll meet you there, I’ll meet you, I’ll-
You’re stopping now. This is certainly new. I don’t know where we are. Your breath is hot and heavy when you stop and look around yourself, some emotion boiling up inside you. Your eyes land on a flower shop across the street, and you continue moving, hands going back into your pockets as you catch your breath and make your way there.
Do you remember me?
When you get to the door, you stand and stare in at the roses blooming in a large vase just inside on a little circular table just like yours, all blooming into reds and whites and pinks and yellows and oranges. When the store clerk inside looks at you, you look away and move on, your movements slow, your eyes not moving back to look at your reflection in the windows.
Do you remember the way you’d bounce just slightly before you would smile, as if letting out a faint laugh?
You’re harder to read now, no emotions rolling out of you, and how quaint of you to keep yourself hidden. My hands are by your side, just like I am, and it’s times like this…
Or the way I’d add cinnamon to your tea, which would you would always sniff with a faint smile with your eyes on me before you ever took a sip?
Do you remember the way time seemed to move faster for us, faster than a ship can sail, or the way we moved further than anyone had before us, further than a bomb can fly?
You’re back into your flat, and you pause in the doorway. I don’t know when it got so late, but your flat is only dark, you having left all the lights turned off. Slowly but surely you take a step inside, and your jacket slides off your shoulders so it can be hung up slowly and carefully on the back of the chair to your little, circular table that you’re going to sit down in. As you move into the seat and sink back, you draw in a breath and then let it out slowly, your eyes gazing into the distance lights of the city.
Suddenly, you’re shuddering and emotions flow out of you in colourful waves, all blurred together until I can’t tell what all they are but dark, heavy matter that falls to the ground like sand and dust, spilling all about you at your feet and the feet of the chair. Your eyes close and your breath is slow and rough, like your throat is clenched shut tight.
You remember, don’t you?
I remember, too. I remember what this feeling is that I get. I remember it now.
That day on the beach, I remember. There were military ships in the water far beyond us, American and Russian, and no wonder you seem so much older now than you were then, more aged even though it’s been so little in terms of time. She fired a gun, Moira did. When you pushed back the bullet, deflected it, it turned about into me. It was a price I’m willing to pay, but not one I think you’re willing to take. When I was felled, you cradled me into your arms, and you remember it, too. I know you do; a single tear begins to fall down your face.
I remember this feeling I get.
This feeling I get is wanting to reach out to you, wanting to touch your shoulder and help so the tears won’t come, wanting to reassure that I do not blame you for what has happened, just like how I can’t blame you for not painting the walls of your flat, or how I can’t blame you for not wanting to remember, or how I can’t blame you for how the twilight paints you different colours. I can’t blame you, I just can’t, my friend, just like how I can’t reach out to touch your shoulder, for I have no hands to do so. I have no fingers to interlace with your own, or any chest to press against your own, or any lips to touch softly and reassuringly to your own. I have nothing but you any more.
Do you?
You have no flat, no friends, no paint on your walls, no more people to find, no more things to replace, no more family.
You have me.
Slowly, you open your eyes, and what was once dark about you becomes light. The sun is rising with you, casting you slowly into orange and pink and yellow, your eyes shining. I feel a sense of comfort pulse from you gently and I can only take it in and feel it so much.
I know that you’ll be the pain, and the star, and the road rolling below the wheels of a car, and I know you’ll be so strong as you are. You are so strong, I know.
Do you?
I know one day you will visit. You will visit the effect of that day on the beach. There is a tomorrow, and I hope you will come to me soon, but I hope you will not come with me soon at all. I know one day it will happen, but I hope it is not soon. One day, I hope you'll visit the grave you think you caused. My own. When you stand there and look at my name etched into the stone, do not weep for me. I do not want you to weep for me, Erik, for one day, which I hope is long, long after this day, you’ll join me by my side, the way I am in the singing birds, the way I am in in the green of the trees, the way I am in all the colours of the rising sun, the way I am in in the cool rain on a hot summer's day, the way I am in the blooming flowers of spring, the way I am always by your side.
Do you remember?
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I can still sense when you wake up in the morning, slow and hazy, like you always did. You would always wake slowly, blink the haze of dreary, comfortable sleep from your eyes. You never tried to turn over and go back to sleep; you would just lie on your back to open your eyes slowly to the mid-rise colours of the sun brushing in softly past your curtains, the haze of it all making the cream-coloured walls of any flat you owned turn soft oranges and yellows.
You never painted your walls, did you? No, no, that would be too unlike you. You were never entirely a man to stay in one place for as long as a year, so what would, then, be the point at all in painting the walls any other colour than they originally were?
Nonetheless, I loved the mornings when you were up as early as I, and the evenings where you would sit across from me to play chess and have a drink before bed. I think you and I built such a routine that you still follow it even now, don’t you? Before you go to sleep now, you sit at that circular table in the corner of your current flat, and stare out the window, your fingers laced together just under the brim of your nose, resting against your mouth as you stare into the city beyond the glaring window, off into the night like you’re in deep thought. You used to do the same when you were staying at the mansion with me, in your room late at night. I never pressed into your thoughts and I still will not do so, as I promised myself I wouldn’t do so, but I could always feel your presence pushing at the edge of my brain when I laid in bed at night.
I always felt you; the feel of your thoughts was always so different from everyone else’s. Perhaps it was because of your childhood, or the slow steps in between rage and serenity which I found with you, found in you.
On the outside, you never seem too worried about it, and I don’t dare press onward for the fear of invading your privacy, but sometimes I wish I could, just to see if you miss me the same as I miss you, if you miss the quiet moments of morning when you would sit next to me at breakfast, not saying a word but just having a great understanding, those competitive jogs we had always an hour and a half exactly after breakfast, or the lemonade I would make after that you always told me was much too sweet, but which you would drink anyway.
Last night when you sat at your little circular table, staring out onto the world below you, perhaps just thinking, or perhaps just staring as you were, I wondered if you ever thought of Hank, who was surprisingly fascinated by your motorbike and helped you to understand more about it, even increase your usage of gas so you wouldn’t have to pay as much. Or of Alex, who would always pester you about your time spent with Hank and the motorbike, who would always pick on Hank after, for whom you would stand up for, sometimes by giving Alex that “light tap” of yours over the back of his head. Or if you miss Sean, who would always play his music too loud, and you would always tell me that it was “only because he knows two volumes; loud and louder” when I would complain to you about it. Or if Raven ever crossed your mind, whose heart you made reach out to the world by making her accept herself first and foremost before society.
In the early morning today when you woke slowly and dawned your turtleneck and leather jacket, I wonder if we ever crossed your mind at all before you go out to walk, moving like nothing had happened, like you too were a normal, non-mutated human, just out for a walk around the streets or on their way to work or just some biker who was passing through. It’s always five minutes into your walk that you push your hands almost self-consciously into your pockets, keep your head down to avoid any passing stranger’s gaze, and maybe, I wondered, if you thought they could read your thoughts the way I could if I wanted to, or like you wouldn’t want to meet the gaze of any other possible mutant, like they would just know you were one of them the way I did.
When you pass the dark coffee shop on the corner of Tipton, you always look across the street to see your fleeting reflection in the windows. Are you watching all the other people pass by too, enter the window and then leave again, or are you just wondering why you’ve never seen a single soul inside that coffee shop before? It seems almost abandoned. Whenever you pass by though, a wave of something sad passes out from you in streams, like slow flashes of dark dust rolling into an otherwise clear wind, and I always feel them pass through from you to me. When I walk through them, they burst apart and dissolve past me to fall into shimmering nothingness like the rest of the wind. That’s how I see the world now.
It’s in times like these that I wish for something deep down, for something I don’t can't quite name to come true.
Whatever it is, it never does.
Now, you seem to have forgotten about all those small town simplicities that you’ve passed by and by, forgotten about the idea of savings and rather poignant phrasings as they pass you by now and again, forgotten about cigarettes and school yard fights that other students cheer on, which you always stop to see if you happen to pass, which you have many times before, but only just for a quick moment, because then the teacher always comes out to break it off, and you were only interested in the commotion of such a prospect as fighting.
Do all of those things make you remember, I wonder?
It’s times like those that I feel one step closer to what I’m wishing for.
I haven’t the faintest what time it is or how long exactly I’ve been following you by your side, but you stop suddenly when the cemetery is to your left. Your eyes are gazing down, perhaps just inches before your feet, and I’m a step in front, looking at you. Can you see me? Maybe just a glimmer of something there, perhaps?
Slowly, your eyes drag up to the left, looking into the length of the cemetery paths, your hands in your pockets as they have been for the longest time. Your eyes then move right, and you begin walking with a vigor, crossing the street without bothering to look both ways, some hot emotion rolling off of you in a wave. Is it anger? Are you angry?
Your motions seem to pick up, and you’re speed walking away. It’s hard to keep up.
Do you remember it?
You’re almost running now, a light jog, the same we’d do on those early mornings. Where are you going?
Do you remember us?
Where are you going, Erik? Where are you running so fast to, my friend? Just hear me, just hear me out, tell me where you’re going, and I’ll meet you there, I’ll meet you, I’ll-
You’re stopping now. This is certainly new. I don’t know where we are. Your breath is hot and heavy when you stop and look around yourself, some emotion boiling up inside you. Your eyes land on a flower shop across the street, and you continue moving, hands going back into your pockets as you catch your breath and make your way there.
Do you remember me?
When you get to the door, you stand and stare in at the roses blooming in a large vase just inside on a little circular table just like yours, all blooming into reds and whites and pinks and yellows and oranges. When the store clerk inside looks at you, you look away and move on, your movements slow, your eyes not moving back to look at your reflection in the windows.
Do you remember the way you’d bounce just slightly before you would smile, as if letting out a faint laugh?
You’re harder to read now, no emotions rolling out of you, and how quaint of you to keep yourself hidden. My hands are by your side, just like I am, and it’s times like this…
Or the way I’d add cinnamon to your tea, which would you would always sniff with a faint smile with your eyes on me before you ever took a sip?
Do you remember the way time seemed to move faster for us, faster than a ship can sail, or the way we moved further than anyone had before us, further than a bomb can fly?
You’re back into your flat, and you pause in the doorway. I don’t know when it got so late, but your flat is only dark, you having left all the lights turned off. Slowly but surely you take a step inside, and your jacket slides off your shoulders so it can be hung up slowly and carefully on the back of the chair to your little, circular table that you’re going to sit down in. As you move into the seat and sink back, you draw in a breath and then let it out slowly, your eyes gazing into the distance lights of the city.
Suddenly, you’re shuddering and emotions flow out of you in colourful waves, all blurred together until I can’t tell what all they are but dark, heavy matter that falls to the ground like sand and dust, spilling all about you at your feet and the feet of the chair. Your eyes close and your breath is slow and rough, like your throat is clenched shut tight.
You remember, don’t you?
I remember, too. I remember what this feeling is that I get. I remember it now.
That day on the beach, I remember. There were military ships in the water far beyond us, American and Russian, and no wonder you seem so much older now than you were then, more aged even though it’s been so little in terms of time. She fired a gun, Moira did. When you pushed back the bullet, deflected it, it turned about into me. It was a price I’m willing to pay, but not one I think you’re willing to take. When I was felled, you cradled me into your arms, and you remember it, too. I know you do; a single tear begins to fall down your face.
I remember this feeling I get.
This feeling I get is wanting to reach out to you, wanting to touch your shoulder and help so the tears won’t come, wanting to reassure that I do not blame you for what has happened, just like how I can’t blame you for not painting the walls of your flat, or how I can’t blame you for not wanting to remember, or how I can’t blame you for how the twilight paints you different colours. I can’t blame you, I just can’t, my friend, just like how I can’t reach out to touch your shoulder, for I have no hands to do so. I have no fingers to interlace with your own, or any chest to press against your own, or any lips to touch softly and reassuringly to your own. I have nothing but you any more.
Do you?
You have no flat, no friends, no paint on your walls, no more people to find, no more things to replace, no more family.
You have me.
Slowly, you open your eyes, and what was once dark about you becomes light. The sun is rising with you, casting you slowly into orange and pink and yellow, your eyes shining. I feel a sense of comfort pulse from you gently and I can only take it in and feel it so much.
I know that you’ll be the pain, and the star, and the road rolling below the wheels of a car, and I know you’ll be so strong as you are. You are so strong, I know.
Do you?
I know one day you will visit. You will visit the effect of that day on the beach. There is a tomorrow, and I hope you will come to me soon, but I hope you will not come with me soon at all. I know one day it will happen, but I hope it is not soon. One day, I hope you'll visit the grave you think you caused. My own. When you stand there and look at my name etched into the stone, do not weep for me. I do not want you to weep for me, Erik, for one day, which I hope is long, long after this day, you’ll join me by my side, the way I am in the singing birds, the way I am in in the green of the trees, the way I am in all the colours of the rising sun, the way I am in in the cool rain on a hot summer's day, the way I am in the blooming flowers of spring, the way I am always by your side.
Do you remember?