A Machine Without Feelings (Cherik) | ✓

ℭ𝔥𝔞𝔭𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔗𝔢𝔫

Charles kissed Jean and Ororo's cheeks in that sequence, the women both squeezing his hands for good luck. Jean murmured that they would be waiting here for good news – because, they refused to believe that things would go badly. Charles was grateful for their positivity in a time when his stomach was tying itself up in knots.

Charles left Jean and Ororo at their hotel in the town just outside of Ironfield, the same town that Charles had been walking to when he met Erik for the first time.

It was now almost a year later that Charles has returned, and the day was bright and sunny, unlike the day he ran away. Many things had changed in that time; Charles was older and wearier, even if he did not look it. His soul, a soul that was as much Erik's as it was his, was tired and withered. The string tied beneath his left ribs tugged painfully, but as the carriage had neared, he could feel it knotting itself back together.

People that loved each other would only part if one of them wished it. Charles had always been the one who, naively, thought that Heathcliff's words had been beautiful. It was funny how he was the one to have caused the pain those words warned him about.

Charles had heard nothing from Erik, not that he had tried to contact him recently. Part of Charles held a fear that Erik had moved on. Unlike Charles, Erik had been in relationships with women before, and many more than one. What if Charles was just another one? One of his mistresses that he fleetingly loved because he abhorred his mad wife?

But Charles couldn't bring himself to believe that, not when he knew Erik. Erik had withheld things from Charles, yes, but the parts of himself that he did let Charles see, they were real. Erik had shown Charles that he loved him, even when he hadn't told him everything. While Charles still loved Erik, he was sure that Erik still loved him.

'He's still calling my name, I can hear it,' Charles thought to himself, heart hammering as he hobbled out of the hotel with the aid of the walking stick Logan had made for him on his nineteenth birthday.

The dirt roads leading up to Ironfield were impossible to traverse on his wheelchair, and Charles was resolved to get there on his own. Charles limped his way to hail a carriage from the front of the hotel, which soon dropped him off at the closest stop along the road to Ironfield. Charles paid them, before beginning the trek up to the grand house.

Charles had always enjoyed this walk, and remembered how he felt when he and Erik would walk it together in the light of dusk. Erik would sometimes tug him behind a stocky tree and press him up against its trunk, sealing Charles's red lips with his own and kissing him until he couldn't breathe.

Now, the walk was laborious, a little sweat building on Charles's brow as he hobbled down the familiar road.

It was when he drew close enough to break through the veil of overlying trees that Charles stopped dead in his tracks, walking stick clattering to the ground.

Ironfield Hall, his home, was a ruin.

What had used to be battlements that stood tall and proud against the horizon were charred black and crumbled, revealing burnt exposed rafters that splintered into jagged pieces. Ironfield no longer had a roof, its walls now mere slabs of broken stone on the ground.

It looked like fire had razed Ironfield to the ground, and Charles suddenly couldn't breathe.

Charles fumbled to pick up his discarded walking stick before hopping and dragging his maimed leg forwards and forwards, numb to the pain as he stared with wide eyes at the remains of the once-grand mansion.

Crows squawked around the caved-in roof, Charles pushing his way through the non-existent door, which had been reduced to black coal.

The inside was as bad as the exterior, if not worse. It looked like no furniture had been spared from the inferno, the wooden banisters of the staircase mere twigs on the ground. Charles wobbled forwards, heart growing more and more frantic as he realised that the estate, the estate where he had fallen in love and had his heart filled and broken, was a wasteland.