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TO BREED AN ANIMAL THAT IS ENTITLED TO MAKE PROMISES -- IS THAT NOT PRECISELY THE PARADOXICAL TASK NATURE HAS SET ITSELF WHERE HUMAN BEINGS ARE CONCERNED? ISN'T THAT THE REAL PROBLEM OF HUMAN BEINGS?
It was a boy but it did not even look like a baby. Years of studying biology, of conception and reproduction, couldn't prepare Charles for this moment, and for all that it was his own it didn't even look like anything he could recognize. For a moment he felt the heavy, pressing fear that here he was looking at his future instead of his present. Mankind was nothing but the unorganized symphony of cells dissonant in its final birth towards a future he can hardly grasp, conceive, name of, despite all ideology and dreaming and Charles felt that this was all that he could give name to it, it, it had came out of his womb and its skinless body had been formed too short and too raw that it might as well be a piece of flesh dangling from his rib torn apart from a body too eager to know life.
That was all that it was. Charles had a name for it but he can't bear to say it now because it has a duration even in the act of saying and he wanted a grief that was long enough for him to take apart in his mind, understand. He knows the how; he doesn't know the answer to why. They were a species on the boundaries of evolution and he is grappling with his own grief and fear because what if it happens again, what if he needed to provide an answer and he couldn't say anything; there was a reason but it wasn't enough: it was not in my biology, it was not in my genetic code, it was not in my luck. his mouth is stitched up from terror and grief and a sadness that submerges his thoughts no matter how much he hides it out of shame, out of a need to compose himself so that others may be assured, will be assured, that everything is alright, when the answer was no, pure and simple. No because his mind at the moment is currently a coiled viper waiting to lash out towards a reality that is not prepared, has no means of defending themselves against his own anger and it is very exhausting, to stop himself, to look himself at the mirror and watch the contours of his bloodless lips press themselves into a thin line as he tells himself, again and again, no.
That was all that it was. Charles' hand hovers over his abdomen, freezes at the bump of the scar and his entire body shakes with a fear that remembers something that held his heart and mind in arrest, never to be seen again, but whose shadow is carved on the very fiber of his being. His body is a sharpened blade waiting for a sheathe to bury its sadnesses into. His body is a dark shell of anger containing a nothingness he cannot even hold but needs as much as air.
ii.
Erik thought that it ought to be buried, but there is a certain finality in acknowledging its burial and there is a certain courage that is needed to acknowledge this, which he feels he doesn't have. He doesn't know what Charles feels, he can sympathize but cannot understand it because Charles had been kind enough to spare him and not allow him to glimpse the satisfaction or the agony of its depths. All he could do is watch him and watch it (what else should it be?) in the stark reality of a cold pan handed back to Charles in that hospital, swimming in its own blood, lost, and Charles taking it into his hands, cradling the metal quietly (but his grip tight enough to embed the creases of the pan against his pale skin), and it's such a private moment between him and it that Erik turns his glance away, guilty, ashamed, that the first thought he'd had was, what if it were human -
And he knows that Charles knew, because he'd stopped rocking it in his arms and there's a sharp glance of cold blue eyes that turned to him like daggers. Erik turned away because he was not worthy to be there, not at that moment, but he feels that he cannot help what he is and what he will become.
They haven't told the others though they probably could guess that something had happened and even Raven is wondering what is it that's so important that Charles had to be away for so long, sick of what, Hank asking if he could help, because he most definitely could, and Erik performing the difficult task of convincing them that everything was alright and that Charles was in control of the situation when he doesn't even believe the bullshit that he says. There is so much to atone for in that short moment where he'd thought those five words and erased entire probabilities of a future entirely, the one which Charles held in his hands as proof against his callousness, his misery, his self-loathing that carried him from his presence and out of it. It was a situation in which Erik knew better than to put up a fight and he'd left as soon as Charles would allow.
Eventually he comes back to their room, Charles still with the metal pan in his arms, and Erik whispers, "we have to bury it."
Erik doesn't like tears, they make him feel so useless, like a boy again, but there is nothing that he could anchor himself to to prevent himself from crying and so they came, unwanted, hot and angry and embarrassing down his cheeks and Charles doesn't even know how to respond to that because the slightest sway of emotions inside of him can very well kill Erik with their magnitude. He caresses the edge of the curved square of the pan, the body grotesquely swimming in its own blood, until Charles finds his voice and replies, "yes, we should," although he's said it in such quietude that he's almost unsure if he ever spoke at all. Erik can only nod stiffly. He moves to take it from Charles' arms but Charles won't let him, he's not even looking at him, he's looking at him as if he sees everything about Erik and Erik is naked before his very eyes and all of his sins are revealed and Erik swallows hard, whispers, "Charles," and leans his head against his own.
--
They couldn't decide how to bury it. There's a practicality in Erik's mind that demands to dispose of it, if Charles isn't going to study it, and then there's the human in Erik he's so desperately tried to kill that wants to crucify him for the monstrosity he's become, knowing that he's turning it into one of the tallies among the dead that he's seen when he'd walked out of Auschwitz. He can't even call it his own because he can't recognize himself in it, and he doubted that Charles could either.
After a while, Charles decides to part with it, so he gently gives it to Erik sitting beside him. Not out of some profound sadness but only because his arms hurt from carrying it, although Charles thinks that that could be considered as a sad thing, too.
Charles forces a smile on his face and then points at the mass of flesh swimming in his blood, bits of his body literally torn apart from him, saying, "that's your nose, right there." And he'd said it in a voice that was so absolutely convinced of its ability to recognize himself in something that resists to mirror him or Erik that Erik laughed, because it was much easier than crying, and he said, "that's true. It'd be a tragedy if it had your face."
His face, Erik's brains, and that was another joke, that they could conceive of something in which both their dreams were distilled and this was the result, a stillborn tragedy barely even recognizable from the circumstances that created it; love, anger, forgiveness, a certain mercy perpetually extended to the other; I need you by my side. If anything else it was a warning. Here were two madmen in the present without a future laughing at it which came out of a past so volatile it consumed an entire life. It seemed to say that for all their tragedies and for all their passions only a few could survive the desperation of the future they were trying to create, and that was the biggest joke of all, and Charles laughed and laughed until he cried and he was tired and he leaned his head on Erik's shoulder and half-crying, half-laughing, he said, "I can't do this," to which Erik replied, "then we could both help each other and hopefully we survive our misery," which is the kindest thing he'd said all day, and possibly the most sincere. Erik makes the gesture of pressing his fingers over where Charles said the face was, as if pressing eyes back into their own skin because there was a future that neither one of them could bear to contemplate if this was how it was going to unravel. His jaw hurt. His chest hurt. His head hurt. His arms hurt. Everything hurts.
And because they couldn't decide, the best course of action had been to bury the body and the umbilical cord kept in a mason jar suspended in formaldehyde. The cord floated helplessly in the alcohol as Charles pushed it to the very back of the shelf and Erik took his hands later on, dirty from digging up a grave with him that night, kisses the back of it, and Charles could barely hold himself together as he nearly screams, "don't, don't you dare, don't you dare do that if at any other time you would've left anyway because of some - stupid dream - some reckless crusade - some - hatred - towards - what could've been --"
--
Eventually Charles has to make an appearance and say, "I am feeling better", to be able to field questions and re-direct them gently if need be, because some questions he felt that shouldn't be asked of him yet, and in time he hoped that maybe they would forget and the days would just allow for other memories to be created, and not to agitate a wound that is still bleeding. Erik didn't mind staying even though he knew that all he was doing was postpone an inevitability because Erik was a verb that is permanently on the edge of leaving even if Charles asks him not to. There is simply to little space to breathe in Westchester for him and for a moment Erik knows how it feels to be trapped in a jar, too, breathing alcohol and bobbing restlessly in the strict confines of a secret he felt he could not even try to pry himself out of - so tight was the lid that the two of them had created for their own lives out of decency, out of love of each other, and out of a need to create an invisible guillotine against each other too. Even in despair that, too, was part of love.
Erik noticed too, that Charles had changed, that the lines in his face were deeper and that his voice lower, a tone that secretly confides in him the agony he went through because he realizes now that their love, from now on, will be measured in hidden bodies and it will eventually spill over into a war with too many children dead or dying or stillborn for a future that both of them, though now doubly afraid of what it could be; refuse to concede because the only way to live is to look beyond a horizon that limits them to the shadows of a grave reaching quietly towards the soles of their feet, reminding them that once upon a time they have made an embodiment of their love and it was the first of the many hurts they would inflict against each other as time and the seasons walked past them, without their consent. Erik felt helpless inside as Charles smiled at Sean and Hank and Raven and whomever and for a second time, in a series of multiple scenarios where Charles reaches out to everyone else, he turns away. He was afraid that Charles wouldn't recognize him as Erik Lehnsherr anymore and assume that he is just Erik, has always been Erik, despite the fact that Erik has a goodbye that he needs to say and a coin engraved in his palm that he needs to return.
iii.
He's in Charles' bed when Erik whispers, "one day I will have to leave you."
He could barely say it in a normal tone of voice because somewhere in the dark he knows that the cord is staring at him, floating in the alcohol and listening to what he has to say, he could feel the cold rim of the jar's cover and knows it exists, its tiny volume compounding its weight in his head. He knows that just a little outside of Charles' room it was buried deep under the wet earth much like a seed whose fruits will always be regret. Underneath the covers he could feel Charles stir, Charles pressing against him and burying his head in the crook of his neck, breathing in Erik against the sharp ridge of his collarbone. Charles' hand reaches up to his bare chest, fingernails clawing against soft skin and making the hairs at the back of Erik's neck and around his forearms stand up in some form of terror. He imagines Charles reaching in for his heart with those soft hands, and Charles picks up on his fears and murmurs, "nothing quite that vulgar, but if you would give me the chance, I would definitely repay you the gesture."
Erik's glad it was dark and they were talking quietly nonetheless and not just shouting or holding back words because it was much kinder to be cruel than it is to be honest with yourself and speak out. "You can't want to love me, Charles, because I'm horrible."
But that was the problem. That was the problem and it's not as if Charles could stop himself from falling right now even though strange as it may sound he will never weigh heavier than a coin or the press of ash against a boy's tongue, listening to a promise from a man who will betray him twice over, never again, he said, and Charles realizes that he was more frightened than before. He wants to try and say its name. He whispers it across Erik's collarbone and Erik can feel the heat from his mouth like a furnace. Charles feels dizzy saying the name, and he would like to say it again, but he feels like it loses its meaning the more he says it out loud so he kisses Erik, instead; kisses him again and again as if he could engrave the name into his skin and make him heel, make them indelible like the numbers in his arm. "This is horrible, Erik," Charles whispers against his lips. "This is horrible because now we have to make a greater effort to create something good when we both know that from now on, it will never get easier, we have a date in Cuba to fulfill, you have a damned coin to exchange, and I am left poorer than I began, another beginning with which to concern myself when this would've been easier if you would just give up that dream, Erik. Give up that damned dream before it's too late."
In the dark Erik traces the contours of the cover of the jar with his mind, a cold circle that impresses itself with his powers, and realizes that one day he will return to his room and he will be old and it would have been five, six, seventeen, by then, unrecognizable beyond any word or symbol that neither one of them could name; a grey mass of skin and bone sunk to the bottom of the jar as the alcohol chokes it and consumes it in that small cage. He kisses Charles' forehead and whispers, "first, we will secure a world. then, we can make room for us, or what's left of it when this is over." That was all he answered, blindly, foolishly in the dark; and Charles hears that terrible tremor in his voice that divides it in ecstasy and despair which almost frightens him more than the horror that he should not want to weigh the price of this love and tell him, he doesn't want him, not once, not ever, no more.
It was a cross forever hanging around their necks in the dark and Charles could barely close his eyes for fear of sleep, or tears, or dreams that could speak of what could've been, might've been. "And not a soul to tell," Charles whispers, remembering his Keats, "why thou art desolate."
He wondered if there was any voice in this world that could hear him the moment Erik decides to turn and face him on the other side of the fence and say, this is it, this is all that we shall ever be, a twilight carefully descending where right-angled bruises on his pale skin stubbornly refuse to fade; and on his heart, even more slowly, by far the worst pain that lingers in them both not without love, or disdain.