Fanfic - Music, When Soft Voices Die
Fandom: X-Men: First Class (movie)
Characters: Erik, Charles
Warnings: Violence, wartime situations, character death, AU (set during WWI)
Summary: The war can't last forever.
Disclaimer: Neither X-Men nor the film X-Men: First Class are my intellectual property
Expansion of a small fill I did for this prompt (the earlier fill I wrote has been incorporated into this one). All poems are taken from The Oxford Book of English Verse. They are, in the order in which they appear, Man; Music, When Soft Voices Die (from whence the title of this story came) and Invictus. Any historical or language errors are mine. Feel free to point 'em out if you see any.
---
The wind was strong tonight, blowing dirt and debris up under his helmet and into his eyes, making it even harder to navigate in the gathering dark. Erik growled and dragged his coat a little tighter around his shoulders, the movement shifting his rifle around a bit from where it rested against his back toward his arm. It was ungainly to cart around like this, but a man’s gun was his greatest asset. He wasn’t going to risk it going missing or, god forbid, getting damaged. It could mean the difference between life and death if they had another skirmish like the one that had cropped up this afternoon.
He stumbled over the uneven ground. It was a marvel that it was still as frozen as it was for this time of year, but after the winter he’d just suffered through, bundled up in these damn holes with men he could barely stand anymore (even if he would be lost without them), it really shouldn’t be so surprising. He shuddered at the memory of his fellows dying like rats in the snow, trapped deep in the ground with few supplies to be had. Things had cleared up a bit now that the snows had lessened, but Erik couldn’t wait for the war to finally be over. He never thought he’d miss something so trivial as meat so badly. Months of nothing but potatoes, biscuits and the odd dried vegetable had turned his stomach into little more than an empty, aching pit. He missed his mother’s cooking.
He squinted out over the field, over the bodies strewn across the ground. Everything was so quiet in the faint orange glow of dusk, so still. The only sound was the desperate howl of the wind as it danced about his ears. There was nothing to be found out here but the dead. Erik had no business here.
He shook his head and turned around, shifting his rifle to lie a bit more securely across his shoulders. His rations bag was calling to him. His heavy boots hit the solid ground with heavy thuds, the feel of it reverberating through his body with every step. His comrades often questioned why he did these sweeps near every night. For all he knew, they’d tell him time and again, for all he knew an enemy could be hiding out behind the line waiting for his back to turn, waiting to catch him off guard and fill him full of lead, but he insisted that they were overreacting.
He needed to do this, go out amongst the dead and dying with little more than his boots and pistol. Because no matter how much he hated these men for all that they’d done, for all they were fighting for, he couldn’t leave them to die of cold in the night. Even dogs deserved to be put down.
He was only a few meters away from his post when he heard it. That was a groan, definitely human. His hand shot to the pistol at his side, the cool metal sliding easily into his exposed fingers. Someone was out here.
He could just make out the sound of hitching breaths floating over to him on the wind, almost like sobs, coming from the small cluster of barren trees he and his fellows had so often used for cover. He hunched low to the ground and crept quietly over toward the sound; just because a man was down didn’t mean that he was unarmed. Erik couldn’t afford to be injured by a hysteric enemy soldier clinging desperately to life. The sound was growing louder now. Definitely human. He could make out the silhouette of someone sitting just inside the thicket of trees.
The man was propped up against the base of a young oak, its trunk only just beginning to fill out properly. A poor hiding place but better than lying out in the open amongst the dead. Erik steadied his grip on his pistol and swept out in front of the man, bringing the gun up to aim directly at the point between his eyes.
Now that Erik had a good view of him, he was surprised at what he found. The man before him looked young, so very, very young with wide blue eyes that were clear as day even in the gathering dark. He was breathing far too heavily and clutching at his bleeding leg like it would drift away from him if he let go. The wound was bad; whoever had shot him had certainly made a mess of things. Judging from the pallor of his skin, he had been out here a while, slowly bleeding to death where his fellows couldn’t reach him. He didn’t make a sound beyond the short gasps of his hitching breath, his eyes trained on the gun in Erik’s hand.
Erik’s eyes swept over him, taking in all the little details that made up this man. He was British, if his colors were anything to go off of, and of no distinguishing rank. His uniform wasn’t complete. The ever-present cap of the British soldier was missing, allowing his too long brown hair to sweep into his eyes, and he didn’t appear to have one of the rucksacks he’d seen on a few of the bodies. A new soldier, then, fresh from civilian life. A foolish one for sure, and judging by the resignation written all over his face, one who was more than ready to die, maybe even seeking it if Erik was reading his expression correctly. Men who were eager to keep their hold on life never looked so relieved to have a pistol pressed to their skin. He was looking to die by enemy hands, despite what the tears coursing down his cheeks might say. A deserter, perhaps. Interesting. It would certainly explain why he was so ill-fitted this far out from the British lines.
A strong gust kicked up around them, blowing the dirt and yellow grass into a frenzy. There was a heavy rumbling coming in from overhead. The clouds that had been gathering all day were now fit to burst and douse them with moisture. Snow, perhaps, if the white clouds of his breath were anything to go by. Or perhaps a freezing rain. Erik had always hated the rain. The man didn’t flinch, didn’t waver. He simply licked his dry cracked lips and whispered a single word.
“Please.”
The word gave Erik pause as it sank down into the very core of his being. This man was completely at his mercy, ready and willing to die, and Erik found that he couldn’t pull the damn trigger. He swallowed, trying to figure out what to do. It had never been so hard to kill a man before. He wasn’t sure if this man, this wounded soldier was pleading for his life or his death, and that made things all the more confusing.
His arm lowered to his side. Blood was leaking out around the man’s fingers. The small crust of snow at his feet was already dark with it. He would bleed out soon enough if his wound wasn’t tended to. An unpleasant death for sure.
Rain began to fall around their heads, dotting the fabric of their uniforms with water. Erik had always hated the rain. He should shoot this man, give him a quick honorable death rather than leave him to the elements and a hole in his leg, but he couldn’t do it. He holstered his pistol and crouched low to the ground. The man’s eyes never left him.
“Können Sie mich verstehen?”
He got no reaction. Shit. He struggled to find the words in English. It would be so much easier with French. He’d at least spoken that language in the last year or so. “Ah, are you…can you stand?” Stupid question, but it was the only thing he could come up with.
The man shook his head. The rain was plastering his hair to his forehead. Erik sighed and reached toward the man, but he flinched back violently the second Erik’s fingers brushed his shoulder, pulling his knee sharply against his chest with a hiss.
Erik growled, not trusting himself to form the right words to show his frustration. Why wouldn’t this kid let him help? He was trying to save his life. Erik glared at him, trying to figure out what was going on in his enemy’s crazed head.
The man was panting now, and his cheeks were flushed with the cold. His fingers were nearly white against his pant leg, he was gripping the fabric so hard. He searched Erik’s face until their eyes met. “Why won’t you kill me?”
Erik stilled. He couldn’t answer him. He didn’t know why he couldn’t just put a bullet between those blue, blue eyes and be done with it. He snorted and surged forward, grabbing the young man by the arm and hefting him to his feet. Erik didn’t need to explain himself. He looped the kid’s arm around his shoulders while tugging him close to his own waist, heedless of the rifle strapped to his back. The kid’s trembling fingers gripped his jacket like a lifeline.
“Walk,” he commanded the young man, and much to Erik’s surprise, he did. He remained silent as stone as they trudged through the mud, dragging his wounded leg behind him like the dead weight it was.
---
The crude tent Erik had set up for himself wasn’t really big enough for two men to fit in comfortably, but he’d make do. He pulled the wounded man under the canvas covering. It wasn’t much drier under here than it was outside, but it was something. The thin sheets of metal he’d managed to pilfer into his bag certainly helped keep the entire thing from sinking in on itself from the water now soaking through the fabric.
He propped the man up against the wooden strut keeping the trench wall from collapsing in on them and unfastened his helmet, turning his attention to his bag of rations settled safely in one of the drier corners of his makeshift shelter. Light, they needed light or else Erik would be fumbling to bandage a gunshot wound in the dark.
His fingers scraped against the tin box he kept his matches in, and he quickly found his package of lights. He rarely used them. There had been little need to stay up past nightfall, and the flimsy board holding them together was often damaged by the wet conditions, making the stupid things even harder to use. He struck a match and lit the wicks poking out of the center, carefully setting the light down on the little scrap of wood he used as a table. The small flame did its job well, lighting the tent with ease.
He turned back to his bag, easily finding the little bundle of gauze he’d buried in there. He opened up the canvas package and set it on the plank beside the light for safekeeping. He was no medic, but he’d tended enough wounds to last him a lifetime. He knew his way around them, and he could certainly handle one more shot to the leg.
He shuffled around to face the man. Those blue eyes were watching him like a hawk even as the kid swayed and tried to keep his balance. He looked very close to losing his grip on consciousness but would likely try to hang on for as long as possible out of some misplaced sense of dignity. Erik sighed and settled down beside the man’s outstretched leg. He could barely move it after their trek back to Erik’s post.
Erik began undoing the laces of the soldier’s boot. The shoe was finely made. This man, whoever he was, came from money to be able to afford anything like this. Erik wondered why someone so soft would go and thrust themselves so eagerly into battle. Boredom, perhaps. He set the boot aside.
“Wie heißen Sie?” he asked absently, hoping to strike up some form of conversation as a distraction from the messy work at hand.
The soldier stared back at him dumbly, and Erik cursed softly under his breath. Of course. The kid didn’t know German. He'd forgotten.“What’s your name?”
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
The stubborn little shit was refusing to answer. Fine. Two could play this game. He hissed as Erik pulled off his water-logged sock, exposing the bare skin of his foot to the cold air. There still seemed to be circulation there. Good.
“Because I didn’t,” Erik answered. He had to move on to the pant leg next. It looked like some of the fabric had wormed its way into the wound, and Erik had nothing extra for the man to wear. Cutting away the fabric wasn’t an option. He grit his teeth in sympathy. This was going to hurt.
“What is your name?” he repeated, trying to evade his next task for as long as possible. “I could just find your tags. I know they make you carry them.” The man still refused to talk.
Erik sighed in frustration. Fine. If he didn’t want to talk, then he didn’t have to. Erik wasn’t about to force him. He reached for the shredded pant leg but the sound of the other man’s voice stopped him. “Charles.”
He looked up to find the kid watching him. “My name,” he said softly. “It’s Charles Xavier.”
Erik nodded and gave him a tiny grin. “Erik Lehnsherr,” he replied in greeting before laying his fingers on the fabric surrounding Charles’s wound. “Close your teeth, Charles Xavier. This is going to hurt, and I don’t want you biting off your tongue.”
---
Erik had been right; Charles wasn’t much of a soldier, but he’d made for surprisingly good company over the few days Erik had been hiding him. He had grown so used to being alone out here in the holes of France that it was almost like coming home when he slipped inside the tent to find Charles sleeping or reading from that little book of poems he always kept in his breast pocket. The pages had gotten wet and the paper had warped a little, but Charles cherished the thing like it was made of gold.
“A man should always be aware of the finer things in life, Erik.”
Erik grinned as he carved off another strip of bark from the stick in his hands with his knife. He’d forgotten some time ago what exactly he was trying to do with the wood, but the activity kept his hands busy. “And your little poem book is one of those things?”
“Of course.” He thumbed through his book until he found the page he wanted.
“‘I know my soul hath power to know all things,
Yet she is blind and ignorant in all:
I know I'm one of Nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall,” he finished with a florid movement of his hands.
“Sir John Davies. Just think about that, Erik. We are one of the greatest beings on this great earth, and yet we cannot manage to evolve past the grip of our basest desires. That he could get something like this across in such lyrical verse is true art, my friend.”
Erik chuckled and continued whittling. “Whatever you say, Charles.”
Charles hailed from London, a child born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was eighteen. His stepfather had bullied him into enlisting after losing his own son to the war on the mainland.
“He’s a bastard,” Charles said with a light huff of laughter when Erik asked about him a day or two after taking him in while they chatted over a meager supper of hard bread and stale water from a shared canteen. Charles had been very quick to open up about himself. Perhaps it was the madness of a man who still thought he was going to die, or perhaps it was simply Charles. Either way, Erik found it refreshing. “But my mother loves him, and who I am to refuse her? She is the woman who birthed me after all is said and done. I owe her my life and my fortune. The least I could do in light of that is fight and die because her husband wills it so.”
Erik nodded, not really listening. He was thinking of his own mother back home, waiting for him to come bursting in through her door once more. He missed her so badly he ached, and he told Charles so. Charles only smiled at him and wrapped his warm, soft hand over Erik’s own. “You’ll make it back to her soon, my friend. The war can’t last forever.”
“Whatever you say, Charles.”
---
It had nearly been a week since Erik had dragged Charles into the trenches when things began to fall apart.
Erik untied the strips of fabric holding Charles’s bandages in place and peeled back the soiled gauze, exposing the wound to the open air. It wasn’t healing. At all. It should have stopped bleeding by now, and the skin should not be swelling like that. He pressed his fingers to the area surrounding the wound, and Charles’s breath caught in his chest with a hiss. He gripped Erik’s shoulders with the intensity of a dying man, his fingers digging deep into the fabric of Erik’s jacket as he inspected the wound. The skin of Charles’s leg was hot under Erik’s hands. Erik fought back the terrible thought pounding against his skull that wounds shouldn’t look like that, not when they’re supposed to be on the mend, but it wouldn’t cease. The wound wasn’t healing right, and all Erik wanted to do was scream.
“It’s-” Charles gasped, choking on the words, trying to fight away the minute tremors running through his frame. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
Yes, Erik wanted to say. Infection has set in, and you’re going to die. There’s nothing I can do to stop it when we’re trapped here in this hole because we're supposed to be enemies, and you shouldn't be here. You’re going to die, and I can’t do a thing about it.
“No,” he said instead, cleaning and repacking the wound as best he could. “You’re going to be fine.”
---
The temperature dropped like a stone as night fell. It was almost a relief after the brief and continuous bursts of flame and agony that had been raging in the sky all day. They had lost some good men today, and the British troops were moving ever closer. Erik wondered sometimes if they missed their little runaway. Perhaps not. Charles was a deserter after all, a traitor in many a man’s eye. And he was young and green in the ways of war, probably dead to most any who thought of him. No one would be looking for the corpse of a traitor. For some reason, that suited Erik just fine. He could spend an eternity in Charles’s company.
He settled in beside Charles for warmth, letting the calm stillness of the night wash over him, a sharp contrast to the toils of the day; the younger man was pressed up against his side, his head heavy on Erik’s shoulder as he flipped through the pages of his little book of poems as he always did, squinting to read the words in the dim light of the tiny flame in the corner of the tent. Erik was running low on the little candles for the first time in a month. He’d need to restock soon.
“I have a sister, you know.” Charles said after a while, breaking the silence. “Back home.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“She’s younger than me by a few years, but she’s terribly smart. You would like her, Erik.”
“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally, too tired to try and search his mind for the right words to say. Thinking in English was too taxing tonight. Charles was more than content to do all the talking.
“Her name is Raven. She was growing up very nicely last I saw her. I’m sure she has a dozen suitors knocking down her door as we speak,” he laughed as he thumbed through the pages of his book. A loose slip of parchment fluttered to his chest, and his face lit up in a triumphant smile. He turned and passed it to Erik with so much gusto that he nearly knocked his leg free from its resting place. Erik wanted to chide him for his carelessness, but he knew it wouldn't do him any good. Not with Charles. “That’s her,” Charles said, poking at the penciled figure on the page. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” She was, even with the disgruntled pout the artist had put to her lips. He handed it back to Charles who stared at it fondly for a moment before tucking it back in between the pages of his book.
“I had it drawn up before I left. She almost refused to sit for it, but I managed to convince her in the end. I told her that I wanted to see her face when I wasn’t coming home to it every day, and she relented.” He closed his eyes and sighed, hugging his poems to his chest. “I miss her, Erik.”
“I know.”
Charles looked up into the heavy canvas that hung above their heads, and Erik wondered if he missed the stars. “Read to me,” Erik said after a stretch. The silence had lingered too long. If Charles seemed surprised at the request, he said nothing. Charles had told Erik some time ago that he couldn't stand the quiet; it reminded him too much of the death waiting for them outside, so he liked to fill the tent with the sound of his voice. Erik didn't mind.
“What shall I read?”
“Anything.”
“All right.” Charles flipped to a page and began to read, the soft tone of his voice washing over Erik like a prayer. He thought he could hear the soft patter of rain falling outside.
“Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory…”
---
The fever took Erik entirely by surprise.
It shouldn’t have; it was only the natural course of things when dealing with wounds as bad as the hole in Charles’s leg when all he had were thin strips of gauze and prayers to a god he wasn’t sure was listening. He couldn’t let go.
Charles was slipping away like water through his fingers, and Erik found himself drowning.
---
It was raining again, hard and heavy, and as Erik moved his dripping hair out of his eyes, he couldn’t help but feel that he was running out of options.
He slowly crept back to his hiding spot, checking over his shoulder again and again to make sure he wasn’t being followed. The ground was uneven and highly unstable here; the walls of this particular trench had crumbled a few weeks before Erik had brought Charles back behind the lines, almost trapping the few men that had been stationed here. Now it was near-deserted, manned only by a select few who were brave (and stupid) enough to stay.
It was cold. It was wet. It was lonely. And it was perfect for hiding Erik’s little secret.
He stumbled a bit, gripping the muddy wall beside him to keep from spilling his provisions. The medical supplies were sure to be safe should he fall, but he wasn’t so sure about the food. He could already feel the bread softening in his arms from the rain.
He had been stupid, careless, and he had let this get to him. His comrades had noticed a change in his behavior, and it wouldn’t be long until someone came along to his end of the trenches and found out what he was hiding. Right now it was too hard to care. Charles was too sick for him to care.
He quickly found the little makeshift tent he had come to call home and ducked in under the flap, squinting against the dark. “Charles?”
“E-Erik?” Shit. He sounded even weaker than he had been this morning. He was getting worse. Erik nearly dropped the bundle in his arms in his haste to get to the other man. He crouched down low to the ground and carefully set his supplies down on the plank of wood they had been using as a table.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get back,“ he mumbled in shaky English. It still surprised him how much of the language he remembered considering it had been years since he’d spoken even a word of it. He’d been doing so much more of the talking these past few days. “I was late picking up rations, and they wanted to know why I…Charles?”
His pale fingers had wrapped themselves around Erik’s pant leg, and his eyes were wide and frightened like a child’s. “Erik? Have you seen Raven? She was just here earlier, but I think she had something wrong. Her skin. It was an awful lot like a lizard. Scales and all. And blue, I think. It was dark, so I had trouble seeing her clearly. People aren’t supposed to be blue, are they, Erik?”
“Shh.” Erik quieted him with a finger to his lips before moving his palm up to the man’s forehead. Shit. He was getting worse. Erik peeled back the shredded fabric of Charles’s pant leg. He’d bled through the bandage again, and Erik was sure that if he lifted away the stained linen he would see the telltale lines of infection branching out from the wound. The swelling was already something frightful.
“Erik?” Charles’s hand groped forward and caught in the folds of his regulation jacket, his shaking fingers twisting hard in the rough fabric. “It’s so quiet, Erik. I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”
“I’m here now. And you’re freezing.” He shuffled over to his bag and grabbed one of his remaining lights. He only had four left. If the rain kept up, he’d have to see if he could get a couple more from the higher-ups. He worried that the match wouldn’t light in the damp, but he lucked out. The dilapidated tent was suddenly filled with light, the heavy shadows fleeing into the night. Erik could see Charles’s pallor now, and when he drew the other man to his chest, he could feel him shaking. He wouldn’t last long. Not out here. Not like this.
“It’s so quiet,” Charles mumbled into his sleeve, and Erik felt something twist in his gut at the slurred English. Charles’s accent was growing heavier, and it took Erik a moment to decipher what he was saying. “I don’t like the quiet, Erik.”
Erik leaned over and dragged his canvas bag to him, afraid to loosen his grip on Charles lest he fall. The eagle had almost worn off the bag’s surface, and Erik found it strangely fitting. A German soldier and a deserter living together in the mud. It was like a bad joke, one whose punch line Erik had long forgotten.
Erik had taken away Charles’s book a few days ago when the man had been lost in the grip of a raging fever. He had muttered about England and the war and had nearly ripped the pages of his book apart, he was shaking so badly. It should have been a sign that the thing was still nestled in the confines of Erik’s bag. Charles hated not having the stupid book on him at all times. Erik pulled it out and opened up to a random page. He didn’t know these poems. Charles did. It hurt to think that he couldn’t even ask what one Charles wanted to hear; the man wouldn’t be able to answer him if he tried. He cleared his throat, trying not to choke on the knot that was inching its way up his chest.
“Out of the night that covers me,” he began, stumbling a bit over the words. Reading English after all this time was even stranger than speaking it. At least he didn’t have to think about whether or not the words made sense. Charles’s soft voice joined him after a time, hoarse and scratchy from his illness, but firm and unwavering. Charles had carved these poems into his heart.
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
---
It was still raining when Charles finally succumbed to his fever.
Erik had always hated the rain.
---
“Do you think anyone will care when I die?” Charles’s voice had gone hoarse, and his cheeks were still flushed with fever. He could hardly move his leg anymore, but perhaps that was a good thing. The dirt only seemed to make things worse.
“I will.” Erik shuffled over to the nest of blankets he’d made for Charles after the infection had truly taken hold and handed him one of the hard field biscuits from his pack. “But you’re not going to die.”
“Of course,” Charles chuckled, fingering the bread in his hands. “But just in case, you’ll send word to my sister, won’t you? She’ll want to know what happened to me.”
“You’re not going to die, Charles,” Erik repeated. Perhaps if he said the words enough times he could make them true.
Charles smiled and looked up to the canvas ceiling, his eyes growing distant. “I suppose I will die once the war is over.” The biscuit crumbled a bit in his hands. “But the war can’t last forever, my friend.”
---
German translations:
Können Sie mich verstehen? - Can you understand me?
Wie heißen Sie? - What is your name?
Characters: Erik, Charles
Warnings: Violence, wartime situations, character death, AU (set during WWI)
Summary: The war can't last forever.
Disclaimer: Neither X-Men nor the film X-Men: First Class are my intellectual property
Expansion of a small fill I did for this prompt (the earlier fill I wrote has been incorporated into this one). All poems are taken from The Oxford Book of English Verse. They are, in the order in which they appear, Man; Music, When Soft Voices Die (from whence the title of this story came) and Invictus. Any historical or language errors are mine. Feel free to point 'em out if you see any.
---
The wind was strong tonight, blowing dirt and debris up under his helmet and into his eyes, making it even harder to navigate in the gathering dark. Erik growled and dragged his coat a little tighter around his shoulders, the movement shifting his rifle around a bit from where it rested against his back toward his arm. It was ungainly to cart around like this, but a man’s gun was his greatest asset. He wasn’t going to risk it going missing or, god forbid, getting damaged. It could mean the difference between life and death if they had another skirmish like the one that had cropped up this afternoon.
He stumbled over the uneven ground. It was a marvel that it was still as frozen as it was for this time of year, but after the winter he’d just suffered through, bundled up in these damn holes with men he could barely stand anymore (even if he would be lost without them), it really shouldn’t be so surprising. He shuddered at the memory of his fellows dying like rats in the snow, trapped deep in the ground with few supplies to be had. Things had cleared up a bit now that the snows had lessened, but Erik couldn’t wait for the war to finally be over. He never thought he’d miss something so trivial as meat so badly. Months of nothing but potatoes, biscuits and the odd dried vegetable had turned his stomach into little more than an empty, aching pit. He missed his mother’s cooking.
He squinted out over the field, over the bodies strewn across the ground. Everything was so quiet in the faint orange glow of dusk, so still. The only sound was the desperate howl of the wind as it danced about his ears. There was nothing to be found out here but the dead. Erik had no business here.
He shook his head and turned around, shifting his rifle to lie a bit more securely across his shoulders. His rations bag was calling to him. His heavy boots hit the solid ground with heavy thuds, the feel of it reverberating through his body with every step. His comrades often questioned why he did these sweeps near every night. For all he knew, they’d tell him time and again, for all he knew an enemy could be hiding out behind the line waiting for his back to turn, waiting to catch him off guard and fill him full of lead, but he insisted that they were overreacting.
He needed to do this, go out amongst the dead and dying with little more than his boots and pistol. Because no matter how much he hated these men for all that they’d done, for all they were fighting for, he couldn’t leave them to die of cold in the night. Even dogs deserved to be put down.
He was only a few meters away from his post when he heard it. That was a groan, definitely human. His hand shot to the pistol at his side, the cool metal sliding easily into his exposed fingers. Someone was out here.
He could just make out the sound of hitching breaths floating over to him on the wind, almost like sobs, coming from the small cluster of barren trees he and his fellows had so often used for cover. He hunched low to the ground and crept quietly over toward the sound; just because a man was down didn’t mean that he was unarmed. Erik couldn’t afford to be injured by a hysteric enemy soldier clinging desperately to life. The sound was growing louder now. Definitely human. He could make out the silhouette of someone sitting just inside the thicket of trees.
The man was propped up against the base of a young oak, its trunk only just beginning to fill out properly. A poor hiding place but better than lying out in the open amongst the dead. Erik steadied his grip on his pistol and swept out in front of the man, bringing the gun up to aim directly at the point between his eyes.
Now that Erik had a good view of him, he was surprised at what he found. The man before him looked young, so very, very young with wide blue eyes that were clear as day even in the gathering dark. He was breathing far too heavily and clutching at his bleeding leg like it would drift away from him if he let go. The wound was bad; whoever had shot him had certainly made a mess of things. Judging from the pallor of his skin, he had been out here a while, slowly bleeding to death where his fellows couldn’t reach him. He didn’t make a sound beyond the short gasps of his hitching breath, his eyes trained on the gun in Erik’s hand.
Erik’s eyes swept over him, taking in all the little details that made up this man. He was British, if his colors were anything to go off of, and of no distinguishing rank. His uniform wasn’t complete. The ever-present cap of the British soldier was missing, allowing his too long brown hair to sweep into his eyes, and he didn’t appear to have one of the rucksacks he’d seen on a few of the bodies. A new soldier, then, fresh from civilian life. A foolish one for sure, and judging by the resignation written all over his face, one who was more than ready to die, maybe even seeking it if Erik was reading his expression correctly. Men who were eager to keep their hold on life never looked so relieved to have a pistol pressed to their skin. He was looking to die by enemy hands, despite what the tears coursing down his cheeks might say. A deserter, perhaps. Interesting. It would certainly explain why he was so ill-fitted this far out from the British lines.
A strong gust kicked up around them, blowing the dirt and yellow grass into a frenzy. There was a heavy rumbling coming in from overhead. The clouds that had been gathering all day were now fit to burst and douse them with moisture. Snow, perhaps, if the white clouds of his breath were anything to go by. Or perhaps a freezing rain. Erik had always hated the rain. The man didn’t flinch, didn’t waver. He simply licked his dry cracked lips and whispered a single word.
“Please.”
The word gave Erik pause as it sank down into the very core of his being. This man was completely at his mercy, ready and willing to die, and Erik found that he couldn’t pull the damn trigger. He swallowed, trying to figure out what to do. It had never been so hard to kill a man before. He wasn’t sure if this man, this wounded soldier was pleading for his life or his death, and that made things all the more confusing.
His arm lowered to his side. Blood was leaking out around the man’s fingers. The small crust of snow at his feet was already dark with it. He would bleed out soon enough if his wound wasn’t tended to. An unpleasant death for sure.
Rain began to fall around their heads, dotting the fabric of their uniforms with water. Erik had always hated the rain. He should shoot this man, give him a quick honorable death rather than leave him to the elements and a hole in his leg, but he couldn’t do it. He holstered his pistol and crouched low to the ground. The man’s eyes never left him.
“Können Sie mich verstehen?”
He got no reaction. Shit. He struggled to find the words in English. It would be so much easier with French. He’d at least spoken that language in the last year or so. “Ah, are you…can you stand?” Stupid question, but it was the only thing he could come up with.
The man shook his head. The rain was plastering his hair to his forehead. Erik sighed and reached toward the man, but he flinched back violently the second Erik’s fingers brushed his shoulder, pulling his knee sharply against his chest with a hiss.
Erik growled, not trusting himself to form the right words to show his frustration. Why wouldn’t this kid let him help? He was trying to save his life. Erik glared at him, trying to figure out what was going on in his enemy’s crazed head.
The man was panting now, and his cheeks were flushed with the cold. His fingers were nearly white against his pant leg, he was gripping the fabric so hard. He searched Erik’s face until their eyes met. “Why won’t you kill me?”
Erik stilled. He couldn’t answer him. He didn’t know why he couldn’t just put a bullet between those blue, blue eyes and be done with it. He snorted and surged forward, grabbing the young man by the arm and hefting him to his feet. Erik didn’t need to explain himself. He looped the kid’s arm around his shoulders while tugging him close to his own waist, heedless of the rifle strapped to his back. The kid’s trembling fingers gripped his jacket like a lifeline.
“Walk,” he commanded the young man, and much to Erik’s surprise, he did. He remained silent as stone as they trudged through the mud, dragging his wounded leg behind him like the dead weight it was.
---
The crude tent Erik had set up for himself wasn’t really big enough for two men to fit in comfortably, but he’d make do. He pulled the wounded man under the canvas covering. It wasn’t much drier under here than it was outside, but it was something. The thin sheets of metal he’d managed to pilfer into his bag certainly helped keep the entire thing from sinking in on itself from the water now soaking through the fabric.
He propped the man up against the wooden strut keeping the trench wall from collapsing in on them and unfastened his helmet, turning his attention to his bag of rations settled safely in one of the drier corners of his makeshift shelter. Light, they needed light or else Erik would be fumbling to bandage a gunshot wound in the dark.
His fingers scraped against the tin box he kept his matches in, and he quickly found his package of lights. He rarely used them. There had been little need to stay up past nightfall, and the flimsy board holding them together was often damaged by the wet conditions, making the stupid things even harder to use. He struck a match and lit the wicks poking out of the center, carefully setting the light down on the little scrap of wood he used as a table. The small flame did its job well, lighting the tent with ease.
He turned back to his bag, easily finding the little bundle of gauze he’d buried in there. He opened up the canvas package and set it on the plank beside the light for safekeeping. He was no medic, but he’d tended enough wounds to last him a lifetime. He knew his way around them, and he could certainly handle one more shot to the leg.
He shuffled around to face the man. Those blue eyes were watching him like a hawk even as the kid swayed and tried to keep his balance. He looked very close to losing his grip on consciousness but would likely try to hang on for as long as possible out of some misplaced sense of dignity. Erik sighed and settled down beside the man’s outstretched leg. He could barely move it after their trek back to Erik’s post.
Erik began undoing the laces of the soldier’s boot. The shoe was finely made. This man, whoever he was, came from money to be able to afford anything like this. Erik wondered why someone so soft would go and thrust themselves so eagerly into battle. Boredom, perhaps. He set the boot aside.
“Wie heißen Sie?” he asked absently, hoping to strike up some form of conversation as a distraction from the messy work at hand.
The soldier stared back at him dumbly, and Erik cursed softly under his breath. Of course. The kid didn’t know German. He'd forgotten.“What’s your name?”
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
The stubborn little shit was refusing to answer. Fine. Two could play this game. He hissed as Erik pulled off his water-logged sock, exposing the bare skin of his foot to the cold air. There still seemed to be circulation there. Good.
“Because I didn’t,” Erik answered. He had to move on to the pant leg next. It looked like some of the fabric had wormed its way into the wound, and Erik had nothing extra for the man to wear. Cutting away the fabric wasn’t an option. He grit his teeth in sympathy. This was going to hurt.
“What is your name?” he repeated, trying to evade his next task for as long as possible. “I could just find your tags. I know they make you carry them.” The man still refused to talk.
Erik sighed in frustration. Fine. If he didn’t want to talk, then he didn’t have to. Erik wasn’t about to force him. He reached for the shredded pant leg but the sound of the other man’s voice stopped him. “Charles.”
He looked up to find the kid watching him. “My name,” he said softly. “It’s Charles Xavier.”
Erik nodded and gave him a tiny grin. “Erik Lehnsherr,” he replied in greeting before laying his fingers on the fabric surrounding Charles’s wound. “Close your teeth, Charles Xavier. This is going to hurt, and I don’t want you biting off your tongue.”
---
Erik had been right; Charles wasn’t much of a soldier, but he’d made for surprisingly good company over the few days Erik had been hiding him. He had grown so used to being alone out here in the holes of France that it was almost like coming home when he slipped inside the tent to find Charles sleeping or reading from that little book of poems he always kept in his breast pocket. The pages had gotten wet and the paper had warped a little, but Charles cherished the thing like it was made of gold.
“A man should always be aware of the finer things in life, Erik.”
Erik grinned as he carved off another strip of bark from the stick in his hands with his knife. He’d forgotten some time ago what exactly he was trying to do with the wood, but the activity kept his hands busy. “And your little poem book is one of those things?”
“Of course.” He thumbed through his book until he found the page he wanted.
“‘I know my soul hath power to know all things,
Yet she is blind and ignorant in all:
I know I'm one of Nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall,” he finished with a florid movement of his hands.
“Sir John Davies. Just think about that, Erik. We are one of the greatest beings on this great earth, and yet we cannot manage to evolve past the grip of our basest desires. That he could get something like this across in such lyrical verse is true art, my friend.”
Erik chuckled and continued whittling. “Whatever you say, Charles.”
Charles hailed from London, a child born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was eighteen. His stepfather had bullied him into enlisting after losing his own son to the war on the mainland.
“He’s a bastard,” Charles said with a light huff of laughter when Erik asked about him a day or two after taking him in while they chatted over a meager supper of hard bread and stale water from a shared canteen. Charles had been very quick to open up about himself. Perhaps it was the madness of a man who still thought he was going to die, or perhaps it was simply Charles. Either way, Erik found it refreshing. “But my mother loves him, and who I am to refuse her? She is the woman who birthed me after all is said and done. I owe her my life and my fortune. The least I could do in light of that is fight and die because her husband wills it so.”
Erik nodded, not really listening. He was thinking of his own mother back home, waiting for him to come bursting in through her door once more. He missed her so badly he ached, and he told Charles so. Charles only smiled at him and wrapped his warm, soft hand over Erik’s own. “You’ll make it back to her soon, my friend. The war can’t last forever.”
“Whatever you say, Charles.”
---
It had nearly been a week since Erik had dragged Charles into the trenches when things began to fall apart.
Erik untied the strips of fabric holding Charles’s bandages in place and peeled back the soiled gauze, exposing the wound to the open air. It wasn’t healing. At all. It should have stopped bleeding by now, and the skin should not be swelling like that. He pressed his fingers to the area surrounding the wound, and Charles’s breath caught in his chest with a hiss. He gripped Erik’s shoulders with the intensity of a dying man, his fingers digging deep into the fabric of Erik’s jacket as he inspected the wound. The skin of Charles’s leg was hot under Erik’s hands. Erik fought back the terrible thought pounding against his skull that wounds shouldn’t look like that, not when they’re supposed to be on the mend, but it wouldn’t cease. The wound wasn’t healing right, and all Erik wanted to do was scream.
“It’s-” Charles gasped, choking on the words, trying to fight away the minute tremors running through his frame. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
Yes, Erik wanted to say. Infection has set in, and you’re going to die. There’s nothing I can do to stop it when we’re trapped here in this hole because we're supposed to be enemies, and you shouldn't be here. You’re going to die, and I can’t do a thing about it.
“No,” he said instead, cleaning and repacking the wound as best he could. “You’re going to be fine.”
---
The temperature dropped like a stone as night fell. It was almost a relief after the brief and continuous bursts of flame and agony that had been raging in the sky all day. They had lost some good men today, and the British troops were moving ever closer. Erik wondered sometimes if they missed their little runaway. Perhaps not. Charles was a deserter after all, a traitor in many a man’s eye. And he was young and green in the ways of war, probably dead to most any who thought of him. No one would be looking for the corpse of a traitor. For some reason, that suited Erik just fine. He could spend an eternity in Charles’s company.
He settled in beside Charles for warmth, letting the calm stillness of the night wash over him, a sharp contrast to the toils of the day; the younger man was pressed up against his side, his head heavy on Erik’s shoulder as he flipped through the pages of his little book of poems as he always did, squinting to read the words in the dim light of the tiny flame in the corner of the tent. Erik was running low on the little candles for the first time in a month. He’d need to restock soon.
“I have a sister, you know.” Charles said after a while, breaking the silence. “Back home.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“She’s younger than me by a few years, but she’s terribly smart. You would like her, Erik.”
“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally, too tired to try and search his mind for the right words to say. Thinking in English was too taxing tonight. Charles was more than content to do all the talking.
“Her name is Raven. She was growing up very nicely last I saw her. I’m sure she has a dozen suitors knocking down her door as we speak,” he laughed as he thumbed through the pages of his book. A loose slip of parchment fluttered to his chest, and his face lit up in a triumphant smile. He turned and passed it to Erik with so much gusto that he nearly knocked his leg free from its resting place. Erik wanted to chide him for his carelessness, but he knew it wouldn't do him any good. Not with Charles. “That’s her,” Charles said, poking at the penciled figure on the page. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” She was, even with the disgruntled pout the artist had put to her lips. He handed it back to Charles who stared at it fondly for a moment before tucking it back in between the pages of his book.
“I had it drawn up before I left. She almost refused to sit for it, but I managed to convince her in the end. I told her that I wanted to see her face when I wasn’t coming home to it every day, and she relented.” He closed his eyes and sighed, hugging his poems to his chest. “I miss her, Erik.”
“I know.”
Charles looked up into the heavy canvas that hung above their heads, and Erik wondered if he missed the stars. “Read to me,” Erik said after a stretch. The silence had lingered too long. If Charles seemed surprised at the request, he said nothing. Charles had told Erik some time ago that he couldn't stand the quiet; it reminded him too much of the death waiting for them outside, so he liked to fill the tent with the sound of his voice. Erik didn't mind.
“What shall I read?”
“Anything.”
“All right.” Charles flipped to a page and began to read, the soft tone of his voice washing over Erik like a prayer. He thought he could hear the soft patter of rain falling outside.
“Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory…”
---
The fever took Erik entirely by surprise.
It shouldn’t have; it was only the natural course of things when dealing with wounds as bad as the hole in Charles’s leg when all he had were thin strips of gauze and prayers to a god he wasn’t sure was listening. He couldn’t let go.
Charles was slipping away like water through his fingers, and Erik found himself drowning.
---
It was raining again, hard and heavy, and as Erik moved his dripping hair out of his eyes, he couldn’t help but feel that he was running out of options.
He slowly crept back to his hiding spot, checking over his shoulder again and again to make sure he wasn’t being followed. The ground was uneven and highly unstable here; the walls of this particular trench had crumbled a few weeks before Erik had brought Charles back behind the lines, almost trapping the few men that had been stationed here. Now it was near-deserted, manned only by a select few who were brave (and stupid) enough to stay.
It was cold. It was wet. It was lonely. And it was perfect for hiding Erik’s little secret.
He stumbled a bit, gripping the muddy wall beside him to keep from spilling his provisions. The medical supplies were sure to be safe should he fall, but he wasn’t so sure about the food. He could already feel the bread softening in his arms from the rain.
He had been stupid, careless, and he had let this get to him. His comrades had noticed a change in his behavior, and it wouldn’t be long until someone came along to his end of the trenches and found out what he was hiding. Right now it was too hard to care. Charles was too sick for him to care.
He quickly found the little makeshift tent he had come to call home and ducked in under the flap, squinting against the dark. “Charles?”
“E-Erik?” Shit. He sounded even weaker than he had been this morning. He was getting worse. Erik nearly dropped the bundle in his arms in his haste to get to the other man. He crouched down low to the ground and carefully set his supplies down on the plank of wood they had been using as a table.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get back,“ he mumbled in shaky English. It still surprised him how much of the language he remembered considering it had been years since he’d spoken even a word of it. He’d been doing so much more of the talking these past few days. “I was late picking up rations, and they wanted to know why I…Charles?”
His pale fingers had wrapped themselves around Erik’s pant leg, and his eyes were wide and frightened like a child’s. “Erik? Have you seen Raven? She was just here earlier, but I think she had something wrong. Her skin. It was an awful lot like a lizard. Scales and all. And blue, I think. It was dark, so I had trouble seeing her clearly. People aren’t supposed to be blue, are they, Erik?”
“Shh.” Erik quieted him with a finger to his lips before moving his palm up to the man’s forehead. Shit. He was getting worse. Erik peeled back the shredded fabric of Charles’s pant leg. He’d bled through the bandage again, and Erik was sure that if he lifted away the stained linen he would see the telltale lines of infection branching out from the wound. The swelling was already something frightful.
“Erik?” Charles’s hand groped forward and caught in the folds of his regulation jacket, his shaking fingers twisting hard in the rough fabric. “It’s so quiet, Erik. I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”
“I’m here now. And you’re freezing.” He shuffled over to his bag and grabbed one of his remaining lights. He only had four left. If the rain kept up, he’d have to see if he could get a couple more from the higher-ups. He worried that the match wouldn’t light in the damp, but he lucked out. The dilapidated tent was suddenly filled with light, the heavy shadows fleeing into the night. Erik could see Charles’s pallor now, and when he drew the other man to his chest, he could feel him shaking. He wouldn’t last long. Not out here. Not like this.
“It’s so quiet,” Charles mumbled into his sleeve, and Erik felt something twist in his gut at the slurred English. Charles’s accent was growing heavier, and it took Erik a moment to decipher what he was saying. “I don’t like the quiet, Erik.”
Erik leaned over and dragged his canvas bag to him, afraid to loosen his grip on Charles lest he fall. The eagle had almost worn off the bag’s surface, and Erik found it strangely fitting. A German soldier and a deserter living together in the mud. It was like a bad joke, one whose punch line Erik had long forgotten.
Erik had taken away Charles’s book a few days ago when the man had been lost in the grip of a raging fever. He had muttered about England and the war and had nearly ripped the pages of his book apart, he was shaking so badly. It should have been a sign that the thing was still nestled in the confines of Erik’s bag. Charles hated not having the stupid book on him at all times. Erik pulled it out and opened up to a random page. He didn’t know these poems. Charles did. It hurt to think that he couldn’t even ask what one Charles wanted to hear; the man wouldn’t be able to answer him if he tried. He cleared his throat, trying not to choke on the knot that was inching its way up his chest.
“Out of the night that covers me,” he began, stumbling a bit over the words. Reading English after all this time was even stranger than speaking it. At least he didn’t have to think about whether or not the words made sense. Charles’s soft voice joined him after a time, hoarse and scratchy from his illness, but firm and unwavering. Charles had carved these poems into his heart.
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
---
It was still raining when Charles finally succumbed to his fever.
Erik had always hated the rain.
---
“Do you think anyone will care when I die?” Charles’s voice had gone hoarse, and his cheeks were still flushed with fever. He could hardly move his leg anymore, but perhaps that was a good thing. The dirt only seemed to make things worse.
“I will.” Erik shuffled over to the nest of blankets he’d made for Charles after the infection had truly taken hold and handed him one of the hard field biscuits from his pack. “But you’re not going to die.”
“Of course,” Charles chuckled, fingering the bread in his hands. “But just in case, you’ll send word to my sister, won’t you? She’ll want to know what happened to me.”
“You’re not going to die, Charles,” Erik repeated. Perhaps if he said the words enough times he could make them true.
Charles smiled and looked up to the canvas ceiling, his eyes growing distant. “I suppose I will die once the war is over.” The biscuit crumbled a bit in his hands. “But the war can’t last forever, my friend.”
---
German translations:
Können Sie mich verstehen? - Can you understand me?
Wie heißen Sie? - What is your name?