Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Charles could hear the echoes of people shouting somewhere far in the background, and calming as it might sound, it was more frustrating than anything. He was blinking frantically, trying to make out anything but the blurry figures that were dancing before his eyes, but it was as if a thick fog had fallen over the world and was blocking everything out. Every sound was accompanied by a ring that was tearing through his head and silhouettes of what he could only assume were people were moving in slow motion behind the veil that was separating him from the world.

He not as much heard, as he felt someone dropping by his side, shaking his shoulders, while he silently pleaded for it to stop, every little movement sending ripples of pain throughout his entire upper body. The hands moved from his shoulders to cradle his cheeks. Ah, Erik. He relaxed into his touch, no longer paying attention to whatever was screaming at him to keep holding on. To stay awake. It sounded suspiciously like Erik. Then again, it always had. Everything was going to be alright. Erik was there.

***

The first thing he registered when he opened his eyes was the white. It was everywhere. He immediately shut them again. Hospital he thought absentmindedly. He had woken up to enough whites and light blues for a lifetime, but that hardly meant he was ready to deal with all the worried questions and pitying looks. The second thing however, was that he could feel his legs. Which was automatically worse than being in any hospital, because at least the hospital was real.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been trapped in his dreams after an accident. He dreaded it all the same. He didn't want to go through that. Not again. Frankly, he didn't have the energy. He was turning sixty two in a month for fuck's sake. He was retired. Finally living his life as he wanted. In his house with Erik, a place that could never compare to the mansion, but home in a way that Westchester had never been. He remembered the birthday of the girl next door. It was the same as Jean's. Jamie that occupied the container above them was allergic to seafood. It was hilarious, he would always think, that the man living above them, the one who could wipe out the world on a whim, could be taken down by a crab cake. He should have known that things were going too well. The calm before the storm.

He stayed like that for as long as he could and he would’ve continued to, if he hadn’t been interrupted. Well. Interrupted isn’t exactly the word.

Someone kicked his ribs. It was definitely more of a nudge than a kick but it still fucking hurt. That hardly mattered though, because he opened his eyes to see Raven giving him her signature "get your shit together cause we've got places to be" look.

He was trying to get his act together, he really was, but it was proving harder and harder as his brain had evidently decided to make a mixtape out of his worst nightmares and insecurities. If he saw Darwin or Sean next, he was gonna loose it.

“Charles” she snapped her fingers way too close to his face for his liking “Hey! Are you here? Actually, no. Do you know where here is?”

He knew. He was in the hospital, dreaming. Or was he dreaming of a hospital? No, the hospital was dreaming… What? “I think I’m going mad.” He sighed “And you’re dead.” He turned to his side. He shouldn’t have been able to.

”So are you, asshole. Can you get up?” 

“Go away Raven, I’m not dead. You on the other hand...” He really shouldn’t be having conversations with people in his dreams, but he had found that sometimes it actually prevented the nightmares from escalating. A reality check of sorts.

”Charles… I know you’re confused, believe me, I’ve been there, but I really need you to look at me for a moment” 

This was wrong. She never spoke to him so gently. She didn’t when she was alive and she certainly never did in his dreams. Something was telling him to not follow the instructions. He ignored it and looked up.

She was in her natural blue form, staring down at him like an angel. Beautiful. One of the few things Erik was right about. 

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Fading. The world going white and then black. Like the end of a movie. “Erik” 

Honestly, what did I expect?

That… wasn’t him. Her mind. He could feel her mind. She was real. This was real. Fuck. “Oh my god I’m dead.”

“I have been trying to tell you for the past five minutes, yes.”

”Wait, so this is what? Heaven? I uh, wow, I just lost a bunch of arguments.” He shifted and vaguely wondered if he could get up. It felt wrong. He had long since come to terms with his disability. To suddenly be able to walk again felt like a bad joke. Maybe it was. He had never been religious -not for Kurt's lack of trying- but it was probably time to start, since his go-to "you just die and there's nothing else" theory was clearly not even close to being correct.

Raven's face scrunched up "Well, it's this whole 'whatever you want it to be' afterlife thing -it does take some getting used to-, and then there's the pain scale and you can get notified when, you know, someone dies... Basically it's confusing." 

Charles laughs at that one "I gathered."

"Alright, we really need to have a very long talk, but what you should do right now, is go to that desk over there" 

He followed her eyes and spotted a desk in the seemingly endless white. It was white too and the only things separating it from the background were the faded shadows it cast on the floor and the person sitting behind it. The whole thing was particularly unnerving, until he started to notice the people around him. They weren’t very close, the nearest to him being at least 20 feet away, but they all seemed to be in a similar situation. Most of them were slumped on the ground like him, looking dazed and talking to people standing or sitting in front of them. Some were hugging and kissing and most of them were crying. Some were alone. They were the ones that truly looked lost. 

"Why?" 

With every second that passed he could feel his senses sharpening, unfortunately including his mutation. He would have to get it together and put up his shields soon, or best case scenario is he will be nursing a headache for days. The worst case... He doesn't even want to think about it.

He got a smile from her. He couldn’t remember the last time he did. “It’s easier if you just go there.”

“Easier for you or me?”

“Both.”

He tries to stand up. It is… less than successful. 

He tries again, dropping his attempt to trigger muscle memory and instead employing logic. With that and a little help from his sister, he is able to stand up. It takes a few minutes to get used to the feeling and almost half an hour to get the hang of walking again, but with the experience of using the serum for the first time in 1965 as a guide, he managed to have a decent result. 

That’s how he ended up awkwardly standing in front of the girl behind the desk, who looked like she couldn’t be over twenty five. That probably wasn’t much of a tell though, seeing as he looked thirty again. She looked up to him and smiled. “Hello! I’m Ruth, I am here to introduce you to the afterlife and answer your questions, religion related or otherwise! Are you aware that you are dead sir?”

“I uh, yeah. I’m dead. I know.”

Her smile widened. It should have been unnerving, but there was something achingly familiar in that sight, a smile too wide, that stopped any other emotion from taking over. 

“Great!” Her smile suddenly faded “Not that it is great. I’m sure it was a horrible experience. No- shit.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, while she took in a deep breath. “I’m very sorry sir, it’s the end of my shift and I’m a bit out of it.” 

“No problem.” If he had to explain to dozens of people that they were dead every day, he would probably be making mistakes a lot worse than she was. For that, he was sure.

“So, welcome to the afterlife! You may also know it as Heaven, Shamayim, Jannah, Svarga or something else entirely, but all in all this is where you shall spend the rest of eternity. Is there a God? We still don’t know. I am not an angel or any other kind of celestial entity, I am a dead person just like you and I am part of an organisation that has been created to help and inform the newcomers. We have no “evil” counterpart -Hell for example-, so everyone who dies ends up here, but there is a punishment-protection system. We like to call it the pain scale. Basically the worse you’ve been while alive and the more likely you are to attempt to harm someone in the afterlife, the lower is your pain tolerance. Most people feel the amount of pain they felt while they were alive, but we’ve had some special cases. I greeted this guy in 62’, you could prick him with a needle and he would scream like you had cut his arm off.” 

That was certainly… interesting “Can the opposite happen?”

There goes that smile again “Extreme pain tolerance? Certainly rarer than the opposite, but not unheard of. Usually it’s young children, but it wears off as they mature. Then of course you’ve got some people that are just that good, but they are so few and far in between that they might as well not exist. But save the questions for the end. You may have noticed that the landscape is a bit monotonous, but worry not, this is just the entrance point. The space here is practically infinite and how it looks is really just limited by the imagination of the people living in it. As long as it can happen in the real world, it can happen in the afterlife too. Most people build their dream homes or rebuild the ones they had while they were still amongst the living. My parents for example have rebuilt their bakery and home like it was before the war.” She frowned a bit before continuing.

“You may have noticed some changes in your appearance. The current theory for that is that you appear in the body you were the happiest in, so I guess you had some sweet thirties.” She grinned and he smiled back, knowing full well that his thirties had been by far the worst years of his entire life.

The thirtieth year of his life though, the months before Cuba, training the kids and spending almost every hour of the day with an Erik that still wanted to believe in his dream, that had been the happiest time of his life.

“Finally, you take this,” she passed him a blank sheet of paper “and write the names of the people you want to know when they arrive. Write the names, burn it, and when they die, you’ll know.” She chuckled “It sounds awfully like a cult, I know, but it works, so it’s better that you don’t question it. If you need any proof of it working, I’m sure that lady who was with you before can provide it.” She nodded towards Raven who had been staring holes into his back for the whole time he was at the desk.

“You’re perceptive.”

“Not really, you’ve just been here for quite some time.” She extended her hand “Well, those are the basics, if you have any questions, do ask, and if you need any more information on a later date, we have a main building that works as an information centre. We also have a book edition that gets updated every few years if you prefer that.”

***

He ended up not asking anything, despite the million questions that were running through his mind. They exchanged their goodbyes and a handshake and then he went back to Raven.

“Imagine me explaining all that shit.” She teased

“I’m sure you would have done wonderfully”

She scoffed, a smile still plastered across her face “Lies”

He rolled his eyes “So, what do we do from here?”

“Well, for starters, we go and greet the hoard of people I had to convince to wait outside for you.”

There wouldn’t be any people. There couldn’t. No one would ever want anything to do with him after everything he had done (always excluding Erik, because two self loathing assholes where better than one). He was lucky that by some miracle Raven was talking to him! The ones who knew him in the afterlife, he had killed. Every single one of them. His sister, the kids from 62’, his family. 

He could feel the panic seeping through his walls, when Raven got his wrist under a death grip and dragged him away from the desk. He could still not understand how there was anything but the endless white. How it could end.

“Take a deep breath, this is gonna feel weird”

Unfortunately for him, she said that a moment too late, and next thing he knew, he felt like he had collided with a wall. The world went black and all the air left his body. 

It must have only been a few seconds, but it was more than enough for him to descend into panic, Raven’s grip on his arm being the only thing keeping him from shouting for help. She knew what she was doing. She must have. 

As quickly as it came, the feeling left, and he opened his eyes to see he was in the middle of an unnaturally green field. The scenery was straight out of a movie. And there, a few feet away from him Sean and Alex were standing with near identical smiles plastered on their faces, followed by a very reluctant looking Darwin.

He could not do this.

Chapter Text

Alex immediately pulled him into a hug and if that wasn’t enough to make him tear up, the man looked identical to when he had died. “We are so happy to see you again man, you have no idea.” 

Charles snaked his arms around him and held on for dear life while the other laughed on his shoulder “You will have to clear some shit up though, because there’s no way Raven didn’t make half of her story up.” 

He thought back to the Apocalypse, as the students had taken to calling the events in 83’, “To be honest, it was a crazy few days” he pulled himself out of the younger man’s arms “And I’m not saying that lightheartedly, I have dealt with a lot of crazy in my life”

“Well obviously, but it’s you that insisted on spending so much time with Erik.” Alex grinned like an idiot

Charles fought the urge to groan “You’re not funny”

Sean chose that moment to unceremoniously drape himself over Alex’s back and rest his head on his shoulder “What? This guy? He’s the definition of fun! Especially since he’s stopped being all moody and broody”

“For the last time, I don’t brood. I never have!”

Charles smiled at the opportunity to fall back into a familiar pattern. This was a thirty year old argument, after all. “I am very sorry to say that you do, my friend”

“Charles? You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“You have definitely improved, but that hardly means that you didn’t in the past.” Charles chuckled “I remember back when we first met, it was as if someone had permanently glued that frown to your face! If I hadn’t been spending so much time with Erik, I would have been concerned.” He would have to think about Erik at some point, but this was neither the time, nor the place, so he almost religiously kept any emotions related to him locked tightly in a box in the back of his head. 

…And he was supposed to be the one promoting healthy coping mechanisms.

Sean  happily rejoined the conversation “Speaking of that asshole, Raven says you two were talking again? That can’t have been healthy” Speak of the Devil and he shall appear. Or, well, get mentioned when you don’t want to think about him.

Alex laughed “That’s the worst thing you can think of regarding what she has said? He is also supposedly leading a nation!”

“Is he really that bad?” All heads turned to Darwin, who didn’t know what to do with himself. He had been there to welcome all of them, even though they had only known each other for a few months.

In a frenzy after he had died, he had written all their names in his paper. Sean, Alex and even Raven he had welcomed with relative ease, all he was really doing after all, was greet an old friend, crack a joke and suffer through a rib cracking hug. He had spent his every waking moment with these people for nearly four months. 

But their team leaders… he only saw them maybe once in two weeks, and even that was for a few hours, that meaning, he didn’t know Charles well enough to justify being here. God, what was he doing he-

“Charles?” 

He had not just gotten lost in someone else’s thoughts. 

His control was slipping and he really wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. He deserved that much, didn’t he? Dying should definitely be a valid cause of psychological trauma. Against his better judgement (aka the little Erik in his head), he played it off with a smile and a cheery tone in his voice 

“Oh he’s not half as bad as the boys make him sound. Yes, he has made some bad decisions, but has made up for them in more ways than one. I’m confident you would have enjoyed each other’s company, had you had the time to engage in some proper conversation.”

He really hoped his smile wasn’t too wide.

Thankfully, it was at that moment that Raven decided to pitch in with a groan “It’s true, you would have been his favourite.”

Darwin’s face scrunched up “You make that sound so ominous”

Sean laughed and climbed off Alex 

“No, no, no, it comes with benefits!” Alex remarked.

“Yeah! Pension, good health insurance, monthly bonuses…” added Sean.

“As lovely as this conversation is” Raven said while dragging Sean away from his best friend. “I think we should move it somewhere else.” 

“What? You don’t enjoy the beautiful and healthy countryside?” Asked Sean with the tone of a fifty year old drug addict advertising cruises.

Unamused, she flatly remarked “I’m a city person”

Darwin, ever the pacifist of the group intervened before that conversation descended into a fistfight (a very real outcome, that Sean’s pride was still recovering from) “I would eat. Preferably somewhere I can seat.” The last part accompanying by a pointed glare to Sean.

“Yeah probably… I’m in the mood for something sweet. Wanna swing by the Eis?” 

“Sean, you’re always in the mood for sugar…” Alex sighed “But yes, we should absolutely go. Give him to me.” The latter was directed at Raven, who wordlessly passed Sean’s arm to Alex, followed by a highly amused Darwin, while she fell back into step with her brother.

Charles watched the three men before him engage in an animated dialogue as they led them down the hill. He could get used to this.

“So, where exactly are we going?”

“Oh, the Eisenhardt bakery. It’s family owned and run and they do mainly German baked goods. Charles, that shit is better than Erik’s.”

“There’s no way.” Between him and Raven, it was common knowledge that no food could ever compare with the stuff Erik baked. That man was wasting his potential in domestic terrorism. “You have just gone a long time without eating anything of his.”

“The taste of his food is not an experience you can delete from your brain.” 

Believe me, it’s not only the taste of his food you can’t forget 

“Ew! Charles! Come on!”

“I did not mean for you to hear that!”

“Put your shields up!”

He was pretty sure a bull could mistake him for a target, with how flushed he looked. “So, good food you said?”

She rolled her eyes “I cannot even begin to describe it. Imagine Erik’s food, but ten times better.” She paused and furrowed her brows “Though it tastes exactly like his food…”

“You do understand that this makes no sense, yes?”

“You’ll understand when you eat it, alright?”

“Sure thing.”

“That better not have been sarcasm.”

He brought a hand over his heart “I would nev-”

She elbowed his ribs and ran to the boys, while he struggled to find his breath. 

He had not felt happier in decades.