FIC: Chicago (2/?) X-Men First Class/Wanted crossover
Title: Chicago
Summary: Older Erik (post X-men 3) meets Wesley Gibson (post Wanted), which freaks him out rather due to Wesley's resemblence to a young Charles. He ends up taking Wesley under his wing and angst/guilt/chaos ensues.
Rating/Warnings: G in this part
Word Count: 1,559
Fandom/Pairing: X-Men Movie-Verse (including First Class) and Wanted, Erik/Charles, Erik/Wesley
Previously on: Part 1
There is a perfect circle, a bright dot of scarlet, stark against the white sheets.
Wesley’s eyelids flicker, groaning as the world comes into focus. The circle of red is not perfect, he can see. The edges seep into the threads, creeping outward like a corona. He reaches for his nose, fingers brushing his nostrils and pulling away, speckled with blood. A nosebleed, then. He heaves himself upright, body twisting, finding his balance as he gets out of bed.
At least when Fox trained him, he’d had the luxury of the wax baths to look forward to. Now he has to live with the ache in his ribs and a broken nose. Looking down at the bedding, Wesley looks for a pattern in the spatter of red dots against his pillow and wonders if, in another reality, somebody would cut carefully around the edges, read too much into it, translate it as an instruction to kill.
What in the hell is he still doing here?
This man, this Erik Lensherr, has taken him under his wing. This man, who speaks to him like he’s still a child and can deflect bullets as easily as Wesley can bend them, has stepped in and taken him out of his life. And it’s stupid, because how can anybody fall for the same crap twice? Lensherr is just another old man, another Sloan, with crazy, twisted ideas and a silver tongue. He’s just another old man fighting a crusade that has absolutely nothing to do with Wesley.
Except that somehow, Erik has convinced him that it does.
#~-
Two weeks earlier…
It’s Erik’s instincts that save him from a slow death from a bullet to the belly and he sucks in a lungful of chill, bitter air as both bullets ricochet into the walls on either side of him, spraying chunks of plaster into the alleyway like snow.
Charles’s ghost keeps firing, striding towards him with his arm outstretched, a murderous look in his eye. Erik knows that look - he’s seen in the mirror these last seventy years - but it seems incongruous on the face of his long-dead friend. Charles, who in all these years still managed to show him gentleness, kindness and who was the most forgiving soul he knew, Charles would never have given himself over to such pure, sharp, deathly intent. And yet his ghoul who wears his likeness, he seems to revel in it.
He seems born to it.
Erik is experienced enough to think that this must be a mutant, perhaps a shapeshifter like Raven. Or maybe this apparition is also a telepath and has simply plucked the image of Charles from Erik’s mind?
Whatever the case, this is by far the most interesting that has happened to Erik Lensherr in many months.
He deflects the bullets with an ease that surprises him.
“What the hell?” His would-be killer stutters, his confidence obviously dented. “Okay asshole,” he hisses, “Why in the hell are you following me?” When the boy moves, it is fast, like he’s slicing through time and moving from here to there in a heartbeat. Is it even possible that he could also be a teleporter? The boy has the grace of a professional killer. Erik should know. Ex-Army, then?
But there is something more. Erik feels it - a thrill in the soles of his shoes, a vibration in the base of his skull. His senses call across the space between himself and his would-be assassin.
He also realises that the boy’s accent is American and this disappoints him a way that he doesn’t really understand.
“Who are you?” Erik asks simply, keeping his face impassive as more bullets drop from the air around him. There’s a quiet zing of a knife being drawn and Erik finds his lips twitching into a smirk as his senses feel for the edge of the blade, dulling it in an instant. “Really my boy, that’s not the way to get rid of me.”
The lad scrapes his left hand through his mop of chestnut hair and watches Erik warily. “I’ve never seen anybody do what you just did,” he blurts. “I thought you were all dead… the Fraternity.”
Erik frowns. He searches his memory for that term - Fraternity, so like Brotherhood, but the word chills him somehow. Yes, he remembers, whispered conversations and vague hints, of a secret society of mutant hunters - no, mutant exterminators - that goes back maybe hundreds of years.
Erik’s blood runs cold. “You’re part of the Fraternity?” He asks.
“No. Not any more. They were completely insane.” He raises the knife, threateningly. “Who are you?” The lad repeats.
“My name is Erik Lensherr,” Erik says, his voice soft. “And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Wesley,” the boy replies curtly. “Now, tell me what you want?”
Erik spreads both his hands out in front of him. “I think I can help you. I think I can help you hone your talents.”
Wesley snorts, and something jolts inside Erik, some memory stirs. Good God, this boy is so like him - his mannerisms, the way he smiles without humour - he’s so ridiculously, so painfully like Charles.
“Yeah,” the boy shifts into fighting stance. “And maybe I’ve had enough of listening to old men who think the sun shines out of their ass.”
Erik raises an eyebrow. “Oh, you can be assured that I definitely don’t think that.”
The lad laughs at this. “Then why should I trust you?”
Erik merely sighs. “My young friend, there are so few of us left. Who else is there to trust?”
#~-
Their first job together, unsurprisingly, is a bank heist.
Wesley’s been staying in the Palmer hotel for the best part of two weeks, and he guesses that you don’t get to continue to live the high life without funds to pay for it. He’s not really surprised that Erik’s makes his living from such nefarious means, despite his lofty ideals. It’s almost funny. The guy looks like such a stiff, like some throwback from the fifties, straight out of a black and white movie.
And yet there’s a steel in Erik that Wesley knows only too well.
If somebody had told him a week ago that he could control metal with his mind, Wesley would have laughed. But really, what’s the different between shooting at a target half way across a city, and lifting the lid of a trash can only a few feet away?
Theoretically at least. In practice, it gives him nosebleeds.
But Erik merely smiles in a way that gives Wesley the creeps. Erik knows how to move the trash can, even if he can’t always do it himself. Erik understands things, instinctive things that have no words to describe them. Wesley is shown the secrets of his ability, things that he suspects even the Fraternity fully understood.
Wesley is shown that he has an affinity for metal.
He knows how to train, how to repeat an instruction again and again until he succeeds, until he gets it right. And he knows how to put his new skills into practice, into a combat situation. He’s not afraid when Erik suggests they go for the diamonds. He’s had the fear beaten out of him.
But that doesn’t mean he’s not weary, he is, he is tired of running and hiding and feeling like there’s always some new challenge he’s got to live up to.
“Screw this,” he curses under his breath as a swat team surrounds them and their car is two blocks away and he saddled with an crazy man who has this vibe like he’d push Wesley off the top of a tall building as soon as look at him.
“Calm yourself, my boy,” Lensherr says. Wesley shoots him a murderous look.
“Right. Yeah. We’re going to die and you’re, what? Martyring us for the mutant cause, right on the six o’clock news?”
“You’re not going to die,” Erik says, “Not today at least.”
Wesley’s laugh is short and abrupt, like the crack of a pistol shot. “Yeah, but what about you?”
“Everybody dies,” The old man replies, and there’s something in his eyes that makes Wesley’s fingers tighten around the grip of his gun.
#~-
“There’s a place,” Erik tells him, and they’ve been together a month now because, despite everything, Wesley knows he’s actually learning something. “There’s a place where you can be safe.” The old man’s eyes soften, like his words are a kindness, but Wesley doesn’t really get it at all.
“Safe?” He answers, incredulously. Because he’s never felt safe, not even when he worked in his dead end job with his bitch of a girlfriend and his rows of little white pills.
Erik takes a piece of paper, scrawls down an address in New York that makes no sense.
“Yes, safe. When you’re ready, go there,” Erik says, holding it out so that Wesley is forced get up to fetch it. He looks down at the elegant, old-fashioned writing and memorises the address. Then he blinks and shrugs.
“Whatever,” Wesley says off-handedly, knowing that it irritates the old man. “What’s so special about it?”
Erik’s smile is full of teeth, shark-like. “Oh the tales I could tell,” he says whimsically. But he doesn’t elaborate.
A week later, Erik Lensherr is dead, and Wesley is, once more, alone.
Continued in Part 3...
Summary: Older Erik (post X-men 3) meets Wesley Gibson (post Wanted), which freaks him out rather due to Wesley's resemblence to a young Charles. He ends up taking Wesley under his wing and angst/guilt/chaos ensues.
Rating/Warnings: G in this part
Word Count: 1,559
Fandom/Pairing: X-Men Movie-Verse (including First Class) and Wanted, Erik/Charles, Erik/Wesley
Previously on: Part 1
There is a perfect circle, a bright dot of scarlet, stark against the white sheets.
Wesley’s eyelids flicker, groaning as the world comes into focus. The circle of red is not perfect, he can see. The edges seep into the threads, creeping outward like a corona. He reaches for his nose, fingers brushing his nostrils and pulling away, speckled with blood. A nosebleed, then. He heaves himself upright, body twisting, finding his balance as he gets out of bed.
At least when Fox trained him, he’d had the luxury of the wax baths to look forward to. Now he has to live with the ache in his ribs and a broken nose. Looking down at the bedding, Wesley looks for a pattern in the spatter of red dots against his pillow and wonders if, in another reality, somebody would cut carefully around the edges, read too much into it, translate it as an instruction to kill.
What in the hell is he still doing here?
This man, this Erik Lensherr, has taken him under his wing. This man, who speaks to him like he’s still a child and can deflect bullets as easily as Wesley can bend them, has stepped in and taken him out of his life. And it’s stupid, because how can anybody fall for the same crap twice? Lensherr is just another old man, another Sloan, with crazy, twisted ideas and a silver tongue. He’s just another old man fighting a crusade that has absolutely nothing to do with Wesley.
Except that somehow, Erik has convinced him that it does.
#~-
Two weeks earlier…
It’s Erik’s instincts that save him from a slow death from a bullet to the belly and he sucks in a lungful of chill, bitter air as both bullets ricochet into the walls on either side of him, spraying chunks of plaster into the alleyway like snow.
Charles’s ghost keeps firing, striding towards him with his arm outstretched, a murderous look in his eye. Erik knows that look - he’s seen in the mirror these last seventy years - but it seems incongruous on the face of his long-dead friend. Charles, who in all these years still managed to show him gentleness, kindness and who was the most forgiving soul he knew, Charles would never have given himself over to such pure, sharp, deathly intent. And yet his ghoul who wears his likeness, he seems to revel in it.
He seems born to it.
Erik is experienced enough to think that this must be a mutant, perhaps a shapeshifter like Raven. Or maybe this apparition is also a telepath and has simply plucked the image of Charles from Erik’s mind?
Whatever the case, this is by far the most interesting that has happened to Erik Lensherr in many months.
He deflects the bullets with an ease that surprises him.
“What the hell?” His would-be killer stutters, his confidence obviously dented. “Okay asshole,” he hisses, “Why in the hell are you following me?” When the boy moves, it is fast, like he’s slicing through time and moving from here to there in a heartbeat. Is it even possible that he could also be a teleporter? The boy has the grace of a professional killer. Erik should know. Ex-Army, then?
But there is something more. Erik feels it - a thrill in the soles of his shoes, a vibration in the base of his skull. His senses call across the space between himself and his would-be assassin.
He also realises that the boy’s accent is American and this disappoints him a way that he doesn’t really understand.
“Who are you?” Erik asks simply, keeping his face impassive as more bullets drop from the air around him. There’s a quiet zing of a knife being drawn and Erik finds his lips twitching into a smirk as his senses feel for the edge of the blade, dulling it in an instant. “Really my boy, that’s not the way to get rid of me.”
The lad scrapes his left hand through his mop of chestnut hair and watches Erik warily. “I’ve never seen anybody do what you just did,” he blurts. “I thought you were all dead… the Fraternity.”
Erik frowns. He searches his memory for that term - Fraternity, so like Brotherhood, but the word chills him somehow. Yes, he remembers, whispered conversations and vague hints, of a secret society of mutant hunters - no, mutant exterminators - that goes back maybe hundreds of years.
Erik’s blood runs cold. “You’re part of the Fraternity?” He asks.
“No. Not any more. They were completely insane.” He raises the knife, threateningly. “Who are you?” The lad repeats.
“My name is Erik Lensherr,” Erik says, his voice soft. “And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Wesley,” the boy replies curtly. “Now, tell me what you want?”
Erik spreads both his hands out in front of him. “I think I can help you. I think I can help you hone your talents.”
Wesley snorts, and something jolts inside Erik, some memory stirs. Good God, this boy is so like him - his mannerisms, the way he smiles without humour - he’s so ridiculously, so painfully like Charles.
“Yeah,” the boy shifts into fighting stance. “And maybe I’ve had enough of listening to old men who think the sun shines out of their ass.”
Erik raises an eyebrow. “Oh, you can be assured that I definitely don’t think that.”
The lad laughs at this. “Then why should I trust you?”
Erik merely sighs. “My young friend, there are so few of us left. Who else is there to trust?”
#~-
Their first job together, unsurprisingly, is a bank heist.
Wesley’s been staying in the Palmer hotel for the best part of two weeks, and he guesses that you don’t get to continue to live the high life without funds to pay for it. He’s not really surprised that Erik’s makes his living from such nefarious means, despite his lofty ideals. It’s almost funny. The guy looks like such a stiff, like some throwback from the fifties, straight out of a black and white movie.
And yet there’s a steel in Erik that Wesley knows only too well.
If somebody had told him a week ago that he could control metal with his mind, Wesley would have laughed. But really, what’s the different between shooting at a target half way across a city, and lifting the lid of a trash can only a few feet away?
Theoretically at least. In practice, it gives him nosebleeds.
But Erik merely smiles in a way that gives Wesley the creeps. Erik knows how to move the trash can, even if he can’t always do it himself. Erik understands things, instinctive things that have no words to describe them. Wesley is shown the secrets of his ability, things that he suspects even the Fraternity fully understood.
Wesley is shown that he has an affinity for metal.
He knows how to train, how to repeat an instruction again and again until he succeeds, until he gets it right. And he knows how to put his new skills into practice, into a combat situation. He’s not afraid when Erik suggests they go for the diamonds. He’s had the fear beaten out of him.
But that doesn’t mean he’s not weary, he is, he is tired of running and hiding and feeling like there’s always some new challenge he’s got to live up to.
“Screw this,” he curses under his breath as a swat team surrounds them and their car is two blocks away and he saddled with an crazy man who has this vibe like he’d push Wesley off the top of a tall building as soon as look at him.
“Calm yourself, my boy,” Lensherr says. Wesley shoots him a murderous look.
“Right. Yeah. We’re going to die and you’re, what? Martyring us for the mutant cause, right on the six o’clock news?”
“You’re not going to die,” Erik says, “Not today at least.”
Wesley’s laugh is short and abrupt, like the crack of a pistol shot. “Yeah, but what about you?”
“Everybody dies,” The old man replies, and there’s something in his eyes that makes Wesley’s fingers tighten around the grip of his gun.
#~-
“There’s a place,” Erik tells him, and they’ve been together a month now because, despite everything, Wesley knows he’s actually learning something. “There’s a place where you can be safe.” The old man’s eyes soften, like his words are a kindness, but Wesley doesn’t really get it at all.
“Safe?” He answers, incredulously. Because he’s never felt safe, not even when he worked in his dead end job with his bitch of a girlfriend and his rows of little white pills.
Erik takes a piece of paper, scrawls down an address in New York that makes no sense.
“Yes, safe. When you’re ready, go there,” Erik says, holding it out so that Wesley is forced get up to fetch it. He looks down at the elegant, old-fashioned writing and memorises the address. Then he blinks and shrugs.
“Whatever,” Wesley says off-handedly, knowing that it irritates the old man. “What’s so special about it?”
Erik’s smile is full of teeth, shark-like. “Oh the tales I could tell,” he says whimsically. But he doesn’t elaborate.
A week later, Erik Lensherr is dead, and Wesley is, once more, alone.
Continued in Part 3...