Muir Island - Visitations
It would have been impossible for him to say how he had come here. He vaguely remembered something about a boat ride and the burns he had along his body. They were gone now and he only rememebered the most minor things. For example, he remembered that he knew how to play the violin. Moira had gone right out and gotten him one so that he could play for her. There had been a faint memory of playing Fur Elise for a woman with pale blonde hair. From the faint stirring of emotions, he believed that perhaps that woman had been his mother. There had been an admiration for her beauty and a pride that was completely unreleated to anything sexual. It was more a warmth and depth of feeling that a child felt for a parent.
There were similarties he had seen when he studied his reflection in the mirror. The face had seemed completely unfamiliar when he had gazed into the looking glass. He could see her in him though, his eyes, his lips, the hair of course. The only difference was his was paler, his was truly white while hers was simply pale blonde. He had held to that image fiercely, trying to gleen more from it but he had been unable to, it had slipped away in the end.
The nightmares that wracked his sleep told him more than he ever really wanted to know though. They told him more than the face in the mirror ever could. He remembered the sound of boots crunching in the snow, the sound of gunfire, the sound of women screaming to not be torn from their children, the tears of men and women utterly broken, even worse, the blank empty stares of people who lived in hell. It was a look that said that every cruelty that could be committed upon the human body and spirit had been committed and that it had been commonplace. It was a look that said that they would die.
It was those images that chilled him. Had he lived through the things that he had seen? If they were his own memories, he wasn't sure he wanted to remember. There were other dreams too, dreams that made him want to remember. He remembered a child, she had white hair like his own, bright blue eyes and was so full of life. Was she his child? He had asked Moira directly and she had claimed to not know and then had changed the subject rather quickly for his liking. It had occurred to him then that perhaps the child was tied to those horrific nightmares, he had stopped asking then.
A woman haunted his dreams like a ghost, she was always there. Her hair was black as a raven's wing, shimmering with blue highlights. Her eyes were a deep and warm brown and there was always a hint of mischief lingering in their depths when she looked at him. He saw her again and again, he held her in his arms, tasted the sweetness of her lips, made love to her, laughed with her, danced with her. In his dreams she was everything he had ever wanted. Sometimes in his dreams he would see the light of madness take her and she would rail and him and kill him. Other times it would be his own hand that took her life and she would return as a vengeful spirit to destroy him utterly when it had been her loss that had already taken his heart. In his dreams he always felt he was lost without her.
When he awakened from these dreams, his heart always ached as if he had lost what was most precious in his life and he knew that he would never have it again. His pillow was often wet with tears but he couldn't remember the name that he would whisper as he passed through the thin veil of sleep and wakefulness.
Moira did all she could to help him remember, she would work with him, she did medical examinations on him to see if he had been injured but there was never anything she could find for his loss of memory. He found that he had a knowledge with science and that his mind was quick. There were solutions to problems that Dr. MacTaggert said she had been looking for the last 5 years that he came up with as easily as a child's math problem. With this gift, he aided her in the lab during the days and spent the rest of his time wandering over the island. The landscape was harsh and offered kind of a cruel beauty.
It was mostly bare rock, a few patches of wildly overgrown forest and of course his favorite places, the cliffs overlooking the tumultuous gray sea. The sea washed in and crashed itself against the rocks before rolling away to build up momentum and rush forward again. The grass was green and fragrant, intermingled with the rich purple of the heather. He would lay on his back at the edge of the cliff and stare up at the sky, the thick clouds would gather and then summon up all their energy to break and let the sunlight slip through. It was hard to believe that they didn't do it just for him, just to let him see a peek of the beauty that the world held.
It had been while he had been laying there that he had his first visit from the man who called himself Charles Xavier. Charles said that the man's name was Erik and that for all of their lives they had been the very best of friends. Charles would come and go, sometimes staying for hours on end, sometimes he would only stay a few minutes. They played chess and would talk. It was easy for Erik to believe that they had been friends for so long. There was something familiar and comforting about not only Charles' voice but his smile and just the presence of him.
It seemed like it had been almost a year when Charles came to visit him the last time. It seemed like he was having problems being there, once, he faded out before Erik's eyes. "Erik, I don't have much time. If I cannot be brought back to this world soon, I will have no more strength to visit you. There are a few things that I have not told you and they will now have to wait. I do not want to do things this way but I have no choice. I do hope that you will forgive me."
Then, there was a feeling like a plug being pulled and there was a rush in his mind. The ground rushed up to meet him and he blacked out. When he came to, there was a rudimentary knowledge his time with Charles when they had been in medical school in Israel but more importantly, there was a place called The Xavier Institute for the Gifted in a place called North Salem, New York. His memory was still broken and fragmented but he knew what had happened to Charles and furthermore, Charles was there, in his mind with him.
"Can you hear me Erik. I do wish there had been another way, I was being attacked from the ... Oh, nevermind for now. You can hear me right?"
Erik lifted his head from the grass, there was a knot on the back of his head from where he had fallen. At the moment, he was sure he had not only lost his memory but completely lost his mind as well. Trying to keep from answering the voice in his mind, he quickly returned to the facility on Muir Island. The conversation with Moira might have been amusing to someone standing by but to them it was rather frustrating, Erik trying to explain the voice in his head, Charles using Erik's mind to converse with Moira and Moira periodically taking off in Gaelic offering a lesson in curses to the both of them.
In the end, it was decided the Erik wasn't insane. Charles had indeed merged himself with Erik temporarily. He could use Erik's own latent telepathic abilities to communicate on his own to others. His powers were nothing as to when he was in his own body but it allowed him a little access to his telepathy. Erik found he hated it when Charles access his telepathic abilities as he was the one who ended up with the headache. Through a long night of conversation and arguing, it was decided that Erik would go to Westchester to try to help Charles, under one condition. "Charles? Will you promise me one thing?"
The voice sounded in his head, unnerving as it could possibly be, "What is it Erik?"
"No mucking about with anything while you are in there alright? I wouldn't want to think I am a Portuguese fisherman when all this is done alright?"
Silent laughter echoed in Erik's head, "I promise, no Portuguese fishermen."
"No, don't just promise no Portuguese fishermen but nothing that is unnatural to me, alright?" Erik ran a hand through his hair and was planning to head out the next day as the new confusion of the situation was taking it's toll on him.
"I promise Erik. I won't do anything unnatural to you. I just want my body back. There are certain things that you can do with a body that I miss doi...."
Feeling that it was due, "That's enough. I don't want to know what you miss."
"Just go Erik." With that, Erik went to bed.
In the morning, he packed the few small items that Moira had purchased for him while he was still in bed. He flipped the pages of his ... British passport? Moira told him it was all she could get on such short notice and that he would have to live with it. A man named, Roddy, flew them from the island to Heathrow and from their an extremely long flight to JFK.
Erik watched the scenery flicker past the window, searching for something, anything familiar. Charles had been quiet in his mind for awhile. Charles broke the mental silence, "I couldn't give you back who you are."
It took a moment before he formulated the response to the statement. "Why couldn't you?"
"I couldn't because I don't have all of my powers. I won't because I think it might be bad for your entire mental structure if I give it back to you all at once. Do you understand?"
Leaning his head back on the headrest, Erik closed his eyes and just let his mind wander. He wasn't sure he wanted it back. So much of it seemed so painful, "Yes. I understand."
"I am sorry Erik. I am sorry I couldn't help you when you needed me. I am sorry I haven't been there for you enough since the accident. I shouldn't have tried to keep you hidden on Muir Island. I am sorry I have to use you like this now." There was genuine regret and sympathy in the voice in his mind.
Erik just nodded and looked back out the window. Letters lit up on the sign overhead, announcing that would be arriving in New York soon. He wondered what he would find there.
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