This was a really big deal to write - it's all been leading up to this point, and I could see it getting closer, in that anticipating-but-scared way where you both want and don't want to get there. This is the pivot point on which everything else hangs. This one event shapes everything.
Erik's reaction here is really a mirrored version of his reaction in the original beach scene, and I wanted to use this to connect the two universes and show how they're both the same and different from one another, how the characters are the same underneath. In the film Erik reacts in just the same way - his initial reaction is to apologise, but then he blames Moira and cannot accept when Charles tells him it's his fault. He lashes out, unable to deal with what has happened, and reverts back to his most deeply ingrained response - the one Shaw trained into him - violence. It's his default setting, under all of his careful self-control and self-image. And it always gets him in deeper.
I'm really glad the grief section worked for you, because writing it put me into a two-day funk, so it needed to work! I'd like to pretend it's because I'm some kind of virtuoso, but the truth is that I've just lived in that place myself, and it still affects me even seven years on. My mother died very suddenly and unexpectedly in my late teens, and Erik's reaction - the emotional side of it - is pretty much what mine was. I'm drawing off experience here instead of creating it wholesale.
The next part will now pick up where Part One left off - we've completed the circle, so Part Five will follow on from that.
Re: FILL: Everyday Love in Stockholm 170/? TW: CHARACTER DEATH
Erik's reaction here is really a mirrored version of his reaction in the original beach scene, and I wanted to use this to connect the two universes and show how they're both the same and different from one another, how the characters are the same underneath. In the film Erik reacts in just the same way - his initial reaction is to apologise, but then he blames Moira and cannot accept when Charles tells him it's his fault. He lashes out, unable to deal with what has happened, and reverts back to his most deeply ingrained response - the one Shaw trained into him - violence. It's his default setting, under all of his careful self-control and self-image. And it always gets him in deeper.
I'm really glad the grief section worked for you, because writing it put me into a two-day funk, so it needed to work! I'd like to pretend it's because I'm some kind of virtuoso, but the truth is that I've just lived in that place myself, and it still affects me even seven years on. My mother died very suddenly and unexpectedly in my late teens, and Erik's reaction - the emotional side of it - is pretty much what mine was. I'm drawing off experience here instead of creating it wholesale.
The next part will now pick up where Part One left off - we've completed the circle, so Part Five will follow on from that.