Someone had me live this way [Cherik]

4. To shovel the garden

The Saturday night had to be over sooner or later.

Charles asked the cab driver to stop before the turn to the unpaved road – he had, of course, slightly missed the turn in the summer twilight. Well it's the kind of a turn that's not easily remembered by every map, let alone a mere New York taxi driver.

Throughout the whole year (except for Christmas and the summer holidays) Charles and his sister were renting a cozy flat not too far away from both the university and the cafe Raven worked in. No public transport went from NY to this place, and it would take around an hour or so to get here by car, which Charles didn't have (nor did he possess a desire or a need for one). Only partly, however, this was the reason the owner visits his estate as rarely as he does.

Charles ran his hand through his hair, took a deep breath of the chilly evening air. There, through the forest clearing, so calm in the windless evening, he went towards the place that he was supposed to call his home.

While walking the kilometer of an unpaved road, Charles was only trying not to doubt the unthought-through promise he gave today. Even the heavy memories floating in the air behind the metal bars of the gate seemed to him like a safe shelter from all the annoying thoughts.

Yeah, guess it wasn't that smart to leave a whole week of free time only to spend it like this, thinking about the too-factual past and about the too-hypothetical future. Good job, Charles. Top marks.

Behind the creaking metal it was all just too quiet: nothing at all except for the wind rustling in the tall grass, getting itself caught in the foliage of the overgrown bushes, and causing a ripple on the stagnant water of the fountain.
It crossed his mind that he could put things in order in the mansion. Charles jumped right at the idea, feeling that the energy of his anxiety needs to be guided into the right direction.

The dark oak of the doors squeaked, complaining, as if not recognizing the owner of the house. The sky behind the stained wide window was just slightly brighter in shade than the pitch-black of the dusty mansion. Charles turned the lights on.
Everything in place. Same old creepy place, tangled in the red yarn. Looked better with the lights off to be honest.

He remembered Raven should have arrived yesterday. He headed for the kitchen on reflex and wasn't mistaken – she left a short note on the fridge's door saying "left for H's, be back 18/14".
Monday after next week, then. Charles frowned, a bag of fresh green apples caught his eye.
If she thought she could succeed in buying him off for a week with just a bag of apples, she was... Quite right.

It's going to be lonely, but Charles was more or less satisfied with the fact that he won't have to introduce his sister to his guest, then his guest to his sister, then spend a whole lot of time explaining to the both of them that the situation is not what they think it is and they really don't have to look sideways at each other the whole evening.

***

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday would pass quickly in all the cleaning and gardening Charles had to do – in three days he did more than he thought he would be able to out of just plain boredom.

A job of a teacher is usually considered to be rewarding, but, once again, not in Xavier's case. His discipline was rather specific, so there wasn't much of fresh blood coming into this particular science. Most of the people were satisfied by the level of knowledge on Threads that general education offered. As for the curious minority... They would usually dig the wrong way, they strive somewhere where, with all due respect to one's aspiration, it was too early to go.
Not the most rewarding king of a field to work in, tiring to say the least.

Now trimming bushes is a completely different matter, Charles chuckled to himself. The eyes pleased, the mind empty, though... relaxed.
He'd think that all these things, like looking after the mansion, going out to the city to get groceries once a week and writing his articles because there's nothing better to do – were just the way he expected to spend his retirement years.

Maybe he would move further in his research and, say, take Hank as an assistant, and they will happily ever after dig into the Threads business, study all the 'abilities', their nature and something along the lines.

In such a distant future Xavier would still die alone, leaving behind only a modest contribution to science and a promising apprentice, who will probably be the one to inherit his mansion-slash-research-facility.

Charles had the moment to think of what would could happen if his Soulmate had found him, but banished the almost forbidden thought out of his head. And if the professor hadn't been walking the Earth the way he had for thirty something years – he would feed himself with these unreal scenarios three times a day. He knew that the warmth of a Thread in his hand could turn out to be a tail of a Thread at any given moment. Who knows, maybe it already did.

Charles was scared to think of this particular outcome. Though he long gave up feeding himself false hopes, he sometimes would allow himself a hopeful glass of tart fiery liquid. Both metaphorical and for dinner – either way, it helped to cope.

By the Thursday morning Charles let himself damn Raven for leaving him all alone here, because not only the mansion had noone in it to talk to, but it was just completely empty – within two or three miles for certain, that's not counting the rare cars passing by the windows – not a single living soul.

In one of the novels Charles held dear a bastard character, sent in their youth to a monastery, in the moments of such silence would suddenly start screaming until someone came running. "Just checking. You never know, right?" – he would tell them, laughing on the inside at their faces, twisted with panic. Remembering this episode now, Charles wasn't smiling anymore.

In these moments he'd think that the only thing that saved one from the feeling of being abandoned, that comes along with the absolute silence, was the red string of yarn coming out of their hand. An almost physical reminder, that they aren't truly alone, or, at least, not alone in their loneliness. The visible proof that, whatever you're going through right now, you're following the red string to your clear objective, and that's something to live for.

And Charles didn't have that – just a fleeting, vague sense of direction. Every now and then it failed him, it would waver and shake, pulling his hand somewhere nowhere. This sensation eventually turned from a reliable, encouraging companion into a dead weight dragging him down, but Charles couldn't let go.

The Threads were coming and going across the space of the mansion, they appeared for brief seconds through the floor, the ceiling and the walls, fleeting, like the headlights of the cars passing by the windows. If it wasn't for them, Charles would swear that the time in the wooden halls flows especially slowly, like the pine resin down the spruce wood, if it doesn't stop at all, setting into a dark, dim amber.