Fic: As Is (Charles, Hank, Alex, Sean, Erik)

[eva_roisin]

Title: As Is
Author: eva_roisin
Summary: Charles adjusts to life as a teacher.
Recipient: st_aurafina
Request used: I'd love to see Charles settling into his life as a teacher - putting aside his obvious love of adventuring, figuring out curricula, dealing with his disability. Extra bonus points if you can work the Americans with Disabilities Act into the story,

Comments

[lonelywalker]

This is absolutely heartbreaking, but it rings so true. Probably because it rings so true. Charles trying to cope in all the wrong ways, living vicariously through his students. Clearly wise, at-peace Charles of the later films is only created after a heckuva lot of struggling.

By the way, I really liked the references to the Kennedy assassination. As someone who only knows it as a fairly distant historical event, it's difficult to grasp just how shocking it must've been at the time, and you conveyed that very well.

[eva_roisin]

Thank you so much! I really love exploring characters before they became those recognizable, unflappable people that we see in the later movies, and upon seeing XMFC, I thought "Charles has a lot of growing to do."

:)

[renata_kedavra]

Oof, this is great. I love the ending. Poor Charles. It's good to see him growing.

[eva_roisin]

Thanks so much! Your beta work helped a lot :)

[selenak]

Painful in the best way. This feels so very, very real.

[eva_roisin]

Thank you!

[st_aurafina]

Oh, oh, oh, wow. Oh, the ending is perfect. I'm still reeling a little from it

[eva_roisin]

I'm so glad this worked well for you. I have to admit that I was SO EXCITED to get this prompt--it was the kind of prompt I really wanted to get when I signed up. I love writing about all the quotidian day-in-day-out stuff that we don't see much of in the movies, and this assigment provided the perfect kind of gap-filling for me.

When I originally plotted the fic, I imagined that it would go much further--decades probably. I actually really DID plan to get it all the way to the ADA. But unpacking the first year took so much in and of itself that I just had to stop and say "That's enough."

Thanks!

[lilacsigil]

Oh Charles. Oh Hank. Oh all of them. This is beautifully and quietly written, but the grief and inability to cope - and the fact that they must, for the sake of all the children they've gathered - permeates through everything. Charles in Alex's head when he runs, Charles trying to set other people free but not himself (and Hank refusing it) is amazingly, tenderly written. And now I'm crying.

[eva_roisin]

Thank you! I'm so glad the fic worked for you!