Fic: In Accord, Part Eight - Stand by me (X-Men: First Class, R, WIP)
title: In Accord, Part Eight - Stand by me
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 2575 in this installment
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Armando Munoz, Raven Darkholme, Emma Frost, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Sean Cassidy
rating: R [may go up in later chapters]
notes: Continuing from this, and this. Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven. These are not the Charles and Erik you think you know.
Work in Progress. Please heed the rating.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
Armando arrives on the second day. He doesn't seem surprised to find Charles in the infirmary; he doesn't seem surprised that both Charles and Raven have had to do something about the extent of the injuries in the initial hours; and he certainly doesn't seem surprised to find Erik watching over Charles.
Nothing seems to faze Armando, and Erik feels a sort of relief and a sort of hope as he watches Armando go about the work of changing the dressings on Charles's arm.
After, he's all praise for Raven: "Are you sure you don't want to learn my craft? You've a natural aptitude for it."
"I also have a natural aptitude for these," she says, and now that she can smile again, she flips one of her knives out from her belt, rolls it between the fingers of her right hand, and begins a complicated series of flourishes. "My knives are more fun."
"Don't be too sure about that," Armando teases - and his smile becomes a quiet laugh when Raven sticks her tongue out at him.
"Please don't badger him, Raven," Charles says, weakly. "He's still going to have to take care of me, you know. I've no wish to get on his bad side, not even unintentionally."
Raven immediately becomes more somber, and Erik watches her kneel by Charles's pallet. "You'll be all right now, won't you? Armando says I did everything right, you're not going to lose the use of your arm...."
"I think everything will be all right, and that includes my arm. Thank you. All of you. And I'll do my best to get back on my feet as soon as I can."
Erik looks away.
This is one thing that he knows: Charles is in no condition to make a promise like that, not when they'd had a tense, quiet conversation on the first night. Not when they'd spent hours going back and forth on whether the village could even be defended. And it must be defended, some way, some how. She'll be coming for them, and Erik has to be ready. It's no longer a matter of if - it's a matter of when.
It will have to be Erik because he's not going to ask anyone here to fight by his side. He couldn't ask it of anyone - not here. Not even if there might be someone foolhardy enough to say yes.
It will have to be Erik because he made a mistake, because he's been making that mistake over and over again, and it's his responsibility to correct it, once to make up for all.
It will have to be Erik because he doesn't even know if Charles can manage to string his bow, much less draw it, given his injuries.
///
Erik finds himself wide awake during the nights now, and he spends the hours wandering restlessly around the village and its borders. With every step, his mind churns. He makes plans, he considers strategies, he tries to remember what he can of his enemies' tactics. He comes up with ideas and just as quickly discards them, and then he begins the process all over again.
A faraway crescent moon hangs in a sky full of tattered clouds, and on this night the village is bathed in a strange silver brightness.
He can see the whole bowl of the valley from his vantage point - and with a start, Erik looks down, and realizes he's standing on a familiar path. At a familiar fork in the path. Turn right, and he will start walking back toward the little cluster of houses, back toward the silhouettes moving in the windows. Turn left, and he will start climbing out of the valley, will be heading in the direction of the forest and its shifting shadows.
He's been here before, Erik thinks. Right now he knows where his duty lies, and he knows which path he'll take, at least for one more day.
But he doesn't know what will happen if he's forced to choose his path for a third time.
When he blinks, he finds himself looking at the infirmary, at the smoke from its chimney, curling up into the still night.
It's been five days since Charles came back to the village with his left arm a bloody mess.
Having fought through the endless skirmishes of the Great Northern War, Erik has seen men lose their legs and get back up to continue the fight. He has seen women shrug off gaping wounds to shoulder and knee and rally their comrades for another charge.
So he can't say he's surprised that Charles is now managing to feed and dress himself, that now he's sitting upright easily, and that the lines of pain and blood are gradually, imperceptibly smoothing away around the old scars and the new.
Erik turns back on the path, begins to quarter the boundaries of the village again. He watches as in house after house the lights go out, and the soft murmurings of voices from within fall away, fall into a gentle silence.
He passes by Emma's window. A brief glimpse of her face by the moonlight that falls on her in wide bars. She sleeps peacefully, covers pulled up to her chin.
Erik hopes she dreams good dreams, and pushes on.
He patiently threads his way over the valley's many slopes and broken pathways. Difficult terrain to walk on. He hopes that he can turn it to his advantage, if he should be forced to fight on it - but he has yet to know all the steps, and now he doesn't have much time to learn.
The night breezes blow colder, coming in from the quiescent sea, and Erik halts beneath a tree. He climbs up into it. The branches creak and sway with his movements and with the ebb and flow of the wind.
A sip of water from the flask hanging at his belt. A bite of sweet bun - he remembers Raven pressing a part of her dinner on him, worry clouding her golden eyes.
He hears a noise, sharp above the sweet near-silence of the valley, and silently he gets to his feet, standing carefully atop his swaying perch. Sword in one hand, a quiet scrape lost in the rustling of the leaves, and knife in the other, ready for the throw.
Clouds scudding through the sky, shadow and light rippling across Erik's eyes, alternately hiding and revealing the shadow moving towards his tree.
He tenses. He's ready to fight on the instant.
The wind sweeps through the night, the moon sets the valley alight with cold fire, and Erik sees that Charles is standing at the foot of the tree. Blue eyes aglow. A smile like sympathy and encouragement.
"What are you doing out of bed? Why are you here?" Erik whispers. He slides his sword back into its scabbard. He spins his knife once, a quick flourish, and then slides it back into the sheath strapped to his arm.
"I couldn't sleep any more," Charles says, just as softly. "I think I've had enough of sleeping, these past few days."
Erik snorts and begins to climb down; once he's on the ground, he shakes the leaves and twigs from his cloak, and says, "An old saying from a woman I served with. Only a fool turns down a chance to eat, a chance to drink, or a chance to sleep...."
"...And fools die early, I know. On the battlefield and off it. I wonder if I ever met that woman. She seems sensible."
Erik sighs heavily. "I have little hope that she's still alive."
The ghost of a smile flits across Charles's face. "Yes, it would seem that way."
Erik watches Charles sit down on one of the tree's gnarled, knotted roots, watches him fold his gloved hands in his lap. Is it just his imagination, or is Charles still favoring his left arm? Are those the edges of bandages, quickly revealed and hidden again between sleeve and gage? "What are you doing out here," he whispers, instead, again.
This time, when Charles smiles, he does seem more amused. "Armando gave me the all-clear, as long as I keep the bandages on for a few more days," he says. "Though Raven extracted a solemn promise from me before she turned in for the night. She says I'm allowed to resume training in the morning, but I can shoot only twenty-five arrows for now, and I should forgo the speed drill."
"And are you going to keep these promises?"
"I think I will," Charles says. "I know what her temper is like. And I can run, and I can shoot arrows, but I can't outrun her when she's in a rage, because the angrier she gets the better she throws."
Erik almost laughs - but he believes every word.
"Let me tell you a story, Erik," Charles says, after a while.
As Erik watches, the village goes dark once again - clouds flying past the moon, sweeping swift shadows over the sleeping valley. "I'm listening."
Charles sounds distant, and his voice is very nearly lost in the soughing of the branches overhead, in the faraway crash of the surf. "I think that my father must have been the first to realize that there was something...unusual about me. And he found out about it because I loved to run - I still do, but back then I ran everywhere I could. The world was so much larger, and there was so much more of it to see."
Erik's earliest memories are of sword and fist, mist and mountain. A dream of a meadow covered in tiny white flowers.
When he looks back at Charles, the healer is tugging off one of his gloves - he seems to be able to move his left hand easily - and is holding out his right hand to Erik, palm up. "Look at this scar," Charles says. "The one at the base of my thumb."
The scar is a thin dark line cutting down through the fleshy part of the base of the hand, fading away over the veins in Charles's wrist.
Erik wants to reach out for that hand, wants to turn it over and examine it minutely, to know every line and delicate bone in it.
Instead he contents himself with asking, "What about it?"
"It is a scar that I have carried since I was that child running after my father - I slipped and fell as we were following a river, and I cut my hand open on a rock."
Erik can feel his own eyebrows rising towards his hairline. "And you still have it until now? How deep a cut was it, to leave you scarred for so long?"
"It was a shallow wound that healed within a day or two."
"I don't understand."
"It took me a while to figure it out, too. At first I thought I healed so quickly because I was so young; and then I thought it might have been because of my father's medicines. That was what made him such a good healer, you know. He was always searching for new medicines, new ingredients, new and better ways to heal injuries. I carry on his work, now. Some of the potions I use are my own - but I still use many of his. I can't come up with anything better. I'm happy to be permanently indebted to him.
"But none of that accounts for how I could still have that scar, even after so many years."
"So what explanation do you have now?"
The silence stretches out for so long that Erik looks over at Charles - Charles who looks over the valley with unseeing blue eyes. In the thin strands of moonlight illuminating them and the valley, he looks like he's fading into shadow.
He's moving again. Erik watches him run a fingertip over the lowest of the three parallel scars on his left cheek.
"I heal quickly, more quickly than most. In return, I carry the scars for many, many years."
It...makes sense. And it makes Erik think back to that first morning on the seashore. "Some of your scars have faded from your skin, you said."
"Some. But not all. And these, I will be carrying for the rest of my life."
The hand tracing the scars on the face falls, and Erik watches that familiar motion once again: Charles touching a finger to his throat, pressing into the scarf always knotted around his neck.
Erik looks away, and mutters, "You shouldn't be carrying any more scars."
"You cannot protect me, Erik. No one can. That burden falls to me alone, insofar as I can have a choice in the matter."
Erik blinks - because suddenly Charles is there, leaning into his personal space. Because suddenly Charles's hand is on Erik's shoulder - his left hand, small and warm. "I think I know what you're thinking."
Erik looks away.
That hand moves from his shoulder to his chin.
Erik closes his eyes.
In response, there's a low chuckle and warmth spreading over his skin - Erik startles, his eyes fly open, and Charles is even closer still. Their foreheads are touching, and Charles is...not quite smiling, though he looks both determined and gentle at the same time. "You're going to need someone to watch your back, Erik."
Erik steps back, but the hand on his chin stays in place. "You are in this condition because of me, because of a mistake I made."
"Because you let those killers live? Because I did?" Charles does smile now. "Then it's a mistake we both made, because we knew what would happen, or thought we knew, and we both thought wrongly. So it's up to us to set things right. It's up to you and me."
"There is no point in you endangering yourself - "
"There is no point in going willingly to your death."
"For a good cause."
"Mine is a good cause, too." Charles laughs, briefly, darkly.
Erik blinks. "Your cause being?"
Charles is suddenly looking him right in the eyes. "Didn't I tell you? You've barely begun your task, here. And I intend to make sure you live to see it through."
///
The next morning, Erik wakes up in his bed, and there is a familiar shadow standing by the door.
The boy's hair is a bright beacon.
He is smiling.
Erik takes up his sword and his knife, and looks the gray-eyed boy right in the eyes. "Have you come for me at last?"
I don't know. The answer depends on what you do today.
Erik laughs, quietly and softly and bitterly. "So it's today, then? So you anticipate a harvest?"
I am here reluctantly. But I was asked to give you a warning. I could not say no to the child.
"Emma?"
Yes.
"I will go and thank her then. As for you - "
As for me, I will perform the task that has been given to me.
"Please yourself," Erik says.
He looks to the path that leads out of the valley, looks to the walls sheltering the houses and the men and women and children living here. The trees are somehow older and darker and stranger, and he almost expects ropes tied into nooses to be dangling from their branches.
Erik wants, wishes, and braces himself.
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 2575 in this installment
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Armando Munoz, Raven Darkholme, Emma Frost, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Sean Cassidy
rating: R [may go up in later chapters]
notes: Continuing from this, and this. Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven. These are not the Charles and Erik you think you know.
Work in Progress. Please heed the rating.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
Armando arrives on the second day. He doesn't seem surprised to find Charles in the infirmary; he doesn't seem surprised that both Charles and Raven have had to do something about the extent of the injuries in the initial hours; and he certainly doesn't seem surprised to find Erik watching over Charles.
Nothing seems to faze Armando, and Erik feels a sort of relief and a sort of hope as he watches Armando go about the work of changing the dressings on Charles's arm.
After, he's all praise for Raven: "Are you sure you don't want to learn my craft? You've a natural aptitude for it."
"I also have a natural aptitude for these," she says, and now that she can smile again, she flips one of her knives out from her belt, rolls it between the fingers of her right hand, and begins a complicated series of flourishes. "My knives are more fun."
"Don't be too sure about that," Armando teases - and his smile becomes a quiet laugh when Raven sticks her tongue out at him.
"Please don't badger him, Raven," Charles says, weakly. "He's still going to have to take care of me, you know. I've no wish to get on his bad side, not even unintentionally."
Raven immediately becomes more somber, and Erik watches her kneel by Charles's pallet. "You'll be all right now, won't you? Armando says I did everything right, you're not going to lose the use of your arm...."
"I think everything will be all right, and that includes my arm. Thank you. All of you. And I'll do my best to get back on my feet as soon as I can."
Erik looks away.
This is one thing that he knows: Charles is in no condition to make a promise like that, not when they'd had a tense, quiet conversation on the first night. Not when they'd spent hours going back and forth on whether the village could even be defended. And it must be defended, some way, some how. She'll be coming for them, and Erik has to be ready. It's no longer a matter of if - it's a matter of when.
It will have to be Erik because he's not going to ask anyone here to fight by his side. He couldn't ask it of anyone - not here. Not even if there might be someone foolhardy enough to say yes.
It will have to be Erik because he made a mistake, because he's been making that mistake over and over again, and it's his responsibility to correct it, once to make up for all.
It will have to be Erik because he doesn't even know if Charles can manage to string his bow, much less draw it, given his injuries.
///
Erik finds himself wide awake during the nights now, and he spends the hours wandering restlessly around the village and its borders. With every step, his mind churns. He makes plans, he considers strategies, he tries to remember what he can of his enemies' tactics. He comes up with ideas and just as quickly discards them, and then he begins the process all over again.
A faraway crescent moon hangs in a sky full of tattered clouds, and on this night the village is bathed in a strange silver brightness.
He can see the whole bowl of the valley from his vantage point - and with a start, Erik looks down, and realizes he's standing on a familiar path. At a familiar fork in the path. Turn right, and he will start walking back toward the little cluster of houses, back toward the silhouettes moving in the windows. Turn left, and he will start climbing out of the valley, will be heading in the direction of the forest and its shifting shadows.
He's been here before, Erik thinks. Right now he knows where his duty lies, and he knows which path he'll take, at least for one more day.
But he doesn't know what will happen if he's forced to choose his path for a third time.
When he blinks, he finds himself looking at the infirmary, at the smoke from its chimney, curling up into the still night.
It's been five days since Charles came back to the village with his left arm a bloody mess.
Having fought through the endless skirmishes of the Great Northern War, Erik has seen men lose their legs and get back up to continue the fight. He has seen women shrug off gaping wounds to shoulder and knee and rally their comrades for another charge.
So he can't say he's surprised that Charles is now managing to feed and dress himself, that now he's sitting upright easily, and that the lines of pain and blood are gradually, imperceptibly smoothing away around the old scars and the new.
Erik turns back on the path, begins to quarter the boundaries of the village again. He watches as in house after house the lights go out, and the soft murmurings of voices from within fall away, fall into a gentle silence.
He passes by Emma's window. A brief glimpse of her face by the moonlight that falls on her in wide bars. She sleeps peacefully, covers pulled up to her chin.
Erik hopes she dreams good dreams, and pushes on.
He patiently threads his way over the valley's many slopes and broken pathways. Difficult terrain to walk on. He hopes that he can turn it to his advantage, if he should be forced to fight on it - but he has yet to know all the steps, and now he doesn't have much time to learn.
The night breezes blow colder, coming in from the quiescent sea, and Erik halts beneath a tree. He climbs up into it. The branches creak and sway with his movements and with the ebb and flow of the wind.
A sip of water from the flask hanging at his belt. A bite of sweet bun - he remembers Raven pressing a part of her dinner on him, worry clouding her golden eyes.
He hears a noise, sharp above the sweet near-silence of the valley, and silently he gets to his feet, standing carefully atop his swaying perch. Sword in one hand, a quiet scrape lost in the rustling of the leaves, and knife in the other, ready for the throw.
Clouds scudding through the sky, shadow and light rippling across Erik's eyes, alternately hiding and revealing the shadow moving towards his tree.
He tenses. He's ready to fight on the instant.
The wind sweeps through the night, the moon sets the valley alight with cold fire, and Erik sees that Charles is standing at the foot of the tree. Blue eyes aglow. A smile like sympathy and encouragement.
"What are you doing out of bed? Why are you here?" Erik whispers. He slides his sword back into its scabbard. He spins his knife once, a quick flourish, and then slides it back into the sheath strapped to his arm.
"I couldn't sleep any more," Charles says, just as softly. "I think I've had enough of sleeping, these past few days."
Erik snorts and begins to climb down; once he's on the ground, he shakes the leaves and twigs from his cloak, and says, "An old saying from a woman I served with. Only a fool turns down a chance to eat, a chance to drink, or a chance to sleep...."
"...And fools die early, I know. On the battlefield and off it. I wonder if I ever met that woman. She seems sensible."
Erik sighs heavily. "I have little hope that she's still alive."
The ghost of a smile flits across Charles's face. "Yes, it would seem that way."
Erik watches Charles sit down on one of the tree's gnarled, knotted roots, watches him fold his gloved hands in his lap. Is it just his imagination, or is Charles still favoring his left arm? Are those the edges of bandages, quickly revealed and hidden again between sleeve and gage? "What are you doing out here," he whispers, instead, again.
This time, when Charles smiles, he does seem more amused. "Armando gave me the all-clear, as long as I keep the bandages on for a few more days," he says. "Though Raven extracted a solemn promise from me before she turned in for the night. She says I'm allowed to resume training in the morning, but I can shoot only twenty-five arrows for now, and I should forgo the speed drill."
"And are you going to keep these promises?"
"I think I will," Charles says. "I know what her temper is like. And I can run, and I can shoot arrows, but I can't outrun her when she's in a rage, because the angrier she gets the better she throws."
Erik almost laughs - but he believes every word.
"Let me tell you a story, Erik," Charles says, after a while.
As Erik watches, the village goes dark once again - clouds flying past the moon, sweeping swift shadows over the sleeping valley. "I'm listening."
Charles sounds distant, and his voice is very nearly lost in the soughing of the branches overhead, in the faraway crash of the surf. "I think that my father must have been the first to realize that there was something...unusual about me. And he found out about it because I loved to run - I still do, but back then I ran everywhere I could. The world was so much larger, and there was so much more of it to see."
Erik's earliest memories are of sword and fist, mist and mountain. A dream of a meadow covered in tiny white flowers.
When he looks back at Charles, the healer is tugging off one of his gloves - he seems to be able to move his left hand easily - and is holding out his right hand to Erik, palm up. "Look at this scar," Charles says. "The one at the base of my thumb."
The scar is a thin dark line cutting down through the fleshy part of the base of the hand, fading away over the veins in Charles's wrist.
Erik wants to reach out for that hand, wants to turn it over and examine it minutely, to know every line and delicate bone in it.
Instead he contents himself with asking, "What about it?"
"It is a scar that I have carried since I was that child running after my father - I slipped and fell as we were following a river, and I cut my hand open on a rock."
Erik can feel his own eyebrows rising towards his hairline. "And you still have it until now? How deep a cut was it, to leave you scarred for so long?"
"It was a shallow wound that healed within a day or two."
"I don't understand."
"It took me a while to figure it out, too. At first I thought I healed so quickly because I was so young; and then I thought it might have been because of my father's medicines. That was what made him such a good healer, you know. He was always searching for new medicines, new ingredients, new and better ways to heal injuries. I carry on his work, now. Some of the potions I use are my own - but I still use many of his. I can't come up with anything better. I'm happy to be permanently indebted to him.
"But none of that accounts for how I could still have that scar, even after so many years."
"So what explanation do you have now?"
The silence stretches out for so long that Erik looks over at Charles - Charles who looks over the valley with unseeing blue eyes. In the thin strands of moonlight illuminating them and the valley, he looks like he's fading into shadow.
He's moving again. Erik watches him run a fingertip over the lowest of the three parallel scars on his left cheek.
"I heal quickly, more quickly than most. In return, I carry the scars for many, many years."
It...makes sense. And it makes Erik think back to that first morning on the seashore. "Some of your scars have faded from your skin, you said."
"Some. But not all. And these, I will be carrying for the rest of my life."
The hand tracing the scars on the face falls, and Erik watches that familiar motion once again: Charles touching a finger to his throat, pressing into the scarf always knotted around his neck.
Erik looks away, and mutters, "You shouldn't be carrying any more scars."
"You cannot protect me, Erik. No one can. That burden falls to me alone, insofar as I can have a choice in the matter."
Erik blinks - because suddenly Charles is there, leaning into his personal space. Because suddenly Charles's hand is on Erik's shoulder - his left hand, small and warm. "I think I know what you're thinking."
Erik looks away.
That hand moves from his shoulder to his chin.
Erik closes his eyes.
In response, there's a low chuckle and warmth spreading over his skin - Erik startles, his eyes fly open, and Charles is even closer still. Their foreheads are touching, and Charles is...not quite smiling, though he looks both determined and gentle at the same time. "You're going to need someone to watch your back, Erik."
Erik steps back, but the hand on his chin stays in place. "You are in this condition because of me, because of a mistake I made."
"Because you let those killers live? Because I did?" Charles does smile now. "Then it's a mistake we both made, because we knew what would happen, or thought we knew, and we both thought wrongly. So it's up to us to set things right. It's up to you and me."
"There is no point in you endangering yourself - "
"There is no point in going willingly to your death."
"For a good cause."
"Mine is a good cause, too." Charles laughs, briefly, darkly.
Erik blinks. "Your cause being?"
Charles is suddenly looking him right in the eyes. "Didn't I tell you? You've barely begun your task, here. And I intend to make sure you live to see it through."
///
The next morning, Erik wakes up in his bed, and there is a familiar shadow standing by the door.
The boy's hair is a bright beacon.
He is smiling.
Erik takes up his sword and his knife, and looks the gray-eyed boy right in the eyes. "Have you come for me at last?"
I don't know. The answer depends on what you do today.
Erik laughs, quietly and softly and bitterly. "So it's today, then? So you anticipate a harvest?"
I am here reluctantly. But I was asked to give you a warning. I could not say no to the child.
"Emma?"
Yes.
"I will go and thank her then. As for you - "
As for me, I will perform the task that has been given to me.
"Please yourself," Erik says.
He looks to the path that leads out of the valley, looks to the walls sheltering the houses and the men and women and children living here. The trees are somehow older and darker and stranger, and he almost expects ropes tied into nooses to be dangling from their branches.
Erik wants, wishes, and braces himself.