522,670 minutes and counting...
X-Men fic seems to take me a terribly long time to write - the last one dragged out for at least a year, and there's another that's been stuck for at least three. But I have finally worked my way to the end of this one, just in time for the anniversary of the UK opening of X-Men: Days of Future Past, from which it's drawn. In the meantime, there has been a film called Whiplash, about a drummer and his abusive instructor; I understand it's very good, but this has absolutely nothing to do with it.
My thanks, as always, to fengirl88 for her encouragement and advice; she has also posted an anniversary work, Seconds Out, which may serve as a coda to this one. Whiplash is dedicated to her and to ginbitch, who may one day get that three-year-old story and may not...
And one day perhaps I will work out why January 1973 is a magnet for time-travellers.
WHIPLASH
Time distorts in solitary confinement. Minutes are long, and days short.
Erik has counted them - the days, mostly, though occasionally he counts minutes to make sure. If Schmidt had had these facilities, he would have experimented with his prisoner's body clock, expanding and shrinking the intervals at which the lights are dimmed, meals are delivered, the barber visits. But these Americans lack his imagination; the daily routine sticks rigidly to 24 hours. So, counting the days, Erik is pretty sure it's January 1973, and he has been imprisoned for nine years and two months.
Why they have kept him alive so long is the big mystery; smaller ones include why they keep shaving him, sending a silent barber with ceramic razor and two armed escorts every day. Perhaps they are waiting for someone like Schmidt who will study him. Perhaps they are afraid he might hide something within a beard. Or maybe they think he's like Samson, and his powers will grow with his hair, enabling him to command metal currently beyond his reach. Erik imagines tossing his mane as he pulls down the Pentagon on his captors' heads. Could Samson have been a mutant ancestor?
He considers questions like these once a day, as part of his own routine. He exercises, he meditates. It may help him to be ready, when whatever they are waiting for occurs. Or someone comes to rescue him.
Erik has to believe he'll escape; otherwise, he would go mad. In the early days, he constantly expected to hear Emma's cool voice in his head, telling him the plan, or to see Azazel burst out of thin air, or a guard wink at him with Raven's golden eyes. But weeks turned into years, and they never came. Maybe they couldn't find him. Maybe they didn't want him. Maybe they're dead. He considers these possibilities, but won't give in to them.
One voice he does hear: Charles Xavier. Not the real Charles - he's never let himself hope for that. But his inner critic, who talks him through all the errors he's made, likes to do it in Charles's voice. Mostly, Erik won't reply, but he allows himself an argument once a week.
Once or twice a year, he listens to his mother's comforting lie: Alles ist gut. He has to be careful; he doesn't want anyone to see him cry.
Above all, he practises his skills. It's difficult with (almost) nothing to practise on, but he rehearses Schmidt's old exercises, moving, bending and reforming imaginary metals in his mind. And there's one thing they can't keep away from him - the iron in his jailers' blood. He can't do much with such small quantities, but he takes malicious pleasure in making them queasy, as well as delight in learning the precise focus that requires.
True focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity, Charles used to say. He's had plenty of time to find that focus in this white cell.
The years flick by, the minutes grow longer. And then, at last, something happens.
Usually, Erik ignores the food tray until he's seriously hungry, rather than conforming to the Americans' schedule. But there's something odd today, though he's slightly sleepy and can't immediately place it. So he glances sideways at the tray, and sees the note.
Mind the glass
For a moment he thinks there's ground glass in the meal, or they want him to think so - that would be Schmidtian, all right. But he's awake now, and... Metal! That's what he sensed before, there's solid metal nearby! He feels for it, and finds the watch on the wrist of the guard smiling down at him. He stands as the man kneels, pressing his hands against the glass ceiling, his grin now baring his teeth. Finally, Erik absorbs the warning, and bends just in time to shield himself from a shower of glass. His exercises have paid off; he reaches for a strut of the ceiling, swings himself up and stares at his rescuer - bare-headed now, his gun-metal grey hair at odds with an absurdly young face. Who's sent him? No time for questions. Erik got this far once before.
"In three seconds, those doors are going to open and twenty guards will be here to shoot us." He's surprised his voice still works.
"I know, that's what I'm waiting for." Suddenly the youth is beside him, one hand behind Erik's head.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm holding your neck so you don't get whiplash."
"What?"
"Whip laaash..."
The door slides aside; the guards yell "Don't move!"
They move.
Erik doesn't know how; he has a blurred sense of shooting through a kaleidoscope of whirling figures. He's facing another door, with a roomful of steel throbbing beyond it, but he's not ready - his mind is struggling to catch up with his body. There's a man taped to the wall, and a second later the boy reappears in a leather jacket... Probably he bends time the way Erik bends metal. He's chattering away.
"You're good. It'll pass, it happens with everyone."
If Erik were less disorientated, he'd ask Do you often spring prisoners from nine years in solitary, then? But he knows the boy's talking about the comparatively trivial shock of their superpowered-flight from his cell.
"You must have done something pretty serious. What d'you do, man? What d'you do? Why'd they have you in there?"
"For killing the President." That brings a moment's silence. Erik feels obliged to protest. "The only thing I'm guilty of is fighting for people like us."
Now the boy's jabbering about karate. He's some kind of crazy. But Erik's listening for clues.
"...they told me you control metal..."
"They?" That's what Erik needs to know, who's waiting for him? The boy's saying something about his mother, but not as if she's involved here. Who is it? Emma? Raven? His blood chills - Schmidt, somehow back from the dead?
And then the doors part, revealing the last face he expected or hoped to see.
"Charles?"
Notes: No, I've no idea what the barber was about, either, but there had to be one, as Erik emerges from the Pentagon clean-shaven and with shorter hair than just about anybody in the film except the older Charles Xavier. And I don't think he's got a mutation that stops his hair growing, because the older Magneto has had more than that.
I have assumed that Erik really is cut off from the outside world for nine years, and has no idea who is alive or dead until he's rescued; it must be the first thing he asks once they're clear of the Pentagon, so his grief for his murdered comrades is very raw when they board the plane.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
My thanks, as always, to fengirl88 for her encouragement and advice; she has also posted an anniversary work, Seconds Out, which may serve as a coda to this one. Whiplash is dedicated to her and to ginbitch, who may one day get that three-year-old story and may not...
And one day perhaps I will work out why January 1973 is a magnet for time-travellers.
WHIPLASH
Time distorts in solitary confinement. Minutes are long, and days short.
Erik has counted them - the days, mostly, though occasionally he counts minutes to make sure. If Schmidt had had these facilities, he would have experimented with his prisoner's body clock, expanding and shrinking the intervals at which the lights are dimmed, meals are delivered, the barber visits. But these Americans lack his imagination; the daily routine sticks rigidly to 24 hours. So, counting the days, Erik is pretty sure it's January 1973, and he has been imprisoned for nine years and two months.
Why they have kept him alive so long is the big mystery; smaller ones include why they keep shaving him, sending a silent barber with ceramic razor and two armed escorts every day. Perhaps they are waiting for someone like Schmidt who will study him. Perhaps they are afraid he might hide something within a beard. Or maybe they think he's like Samson, and his powers will grow with his hair, enabling him to command metal currently beyond his reach. Erik imagines tossing his mane as he pulls down the Pentagon on his captors' heads. Could Samson have been a mutant ancestor?
He considers questions like these once a day, as part of his own routine. He exercises, he meditates. It may help him to be ready, when whatever they are waiting for occurs. Or someone comes to rescue him.
Erik has to believe he'll escape; otherwise, he would go mad. In the early days, he constantly expected to hear Emma's cool voice in his head, telling him the plan, or to see Azazel burst out of thin air, or a guard wink at him with Raven's golden eyes. But weeks turned into years, and they never came. Maybe they couldn't find him. Maybe they didn't want him. Maybe they're dead. He considers these possibilities, but won't give in to them.
One voice he does hear: Charles Xavier. Not the real Charles - he's never let himself hope for that. But his inner critic, who talks him through all the errors he's made, likes to do it in Charles's voice. Mostly, Erik won't reply, but he allows himself an argument once a week.
Once or twice a year, he listens to his mother's comforting lie: Alles ist gut. He has to be careful; he doesn't want anyone to see him cry.
Above all, he practises his skills. It's difficult with (almost) nothing to practise on, but he rehearses Schmidt's old exercises, moving, bending and reforming imaginary metals in his mind. And there's one thing they can't keep away from him - the iron in his jailers' blood. He can't do much with such small quantities, but he takes malicious pleasure in making them queasy, as well as delight in learning the precise focus that requires.
True focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity, Charles used to say. He's had plenty of time to find that focus in this white cell.
The years flick by, the minutes grow longer. And then, at last, something happens.
Usually, Erik ignores the food tray until he's seriously hungry, rather than conforming to the Americans' schedule. But there's something odd today, though he's slightly sleepy and can't immediately place it. So he glances sideways at the tray, and sees the note.
Mind the glass
For a moment he thinks there's ground glass in the meal, or they want him to think so - that would be Schmidtian, all right. But he's awake now, and... Metal! That's what he sensed before, there's solid metal nearby! He feels for it, and finds the watch on the wrist of the guard smiling down at him. He stands as the man kneels, pressing his hands against the glass ceiling, his grin now baring his teeth. Finally, Erik absorbs the warning, and bends just in time to shield himself from a shower of glass. His exercises have paid off; he reaches for a strut of the ceiling, swings himself up and stares at his rescuer - bare-headed now, his gun-metal grey hair at odds with an absurdly young face. Who's sent him? No time for questions. Erik got this far once before.
"In three seconds, those doors are going to open and twenty guards will be here to shoot us." He's surprised his voice still works.
"I know, that's what I'm waiting for." Suddenly the youth is beside him, one hand behind Erik's head.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm holding your neck so you don't get whiplash."
"What?"
"Whip laaash..."
The door slides aside; the guards yell "Don't move!"
They move.
Erik doesn't know how; he has a blurred sense of shooting through a kaleidoscope of whirling figures. He's facing another door, with a roomful of steel throbbing beyond it, but he's not ready - his mind is struggling to catch up with his body. There's a man taped to the wall, and a second later the boy reappears in a leather jacket... Probably he bends time the way Erik bends metal. He's chattering away.
"You're good. It'll pass, it happens with everyone."
If Erik were less disorientated, he'd ask Do you often spring prisoners from nine years in solitary, then? But he knows the boy's talking about the comparatively trivial shock of their superpowered-flight from his cell.
"You must have done something pretty serious. What d'you do, man? What d'you do? Why'd they have you in there?"
"For killing the President." That brings a moment's silence. Erik feels obliged to protest. "The only thing I'm guilty of is fighting for people like us."
Now the boy's jabbering about karate. He's some kind of crazy. But Erik's listening for clues.
"...they told me you control metal..."
"They?" That's what Erik needs to know, who's waiting for him? The boy's saying something about his mother, but not as if she's involved here. Who is it? Emma? Raven? His blood chills - Schmidt, somehow back from the dead?
And then the doors part, revealing the last face he expected or hoped to see.
"Charles?"
Notes: No, I've no idea what the barber was about, either, but there had to be one, as Erik emerges from the Pentagon clean-shaven and with shorter hair than just about anybody in the film except the older Charles Xavier. And I don't think he's got a mutation that stops his hair growing, because the older Magneto has had more than that.
I have assumed that Erik really is cut off from the outside world for nine years, and has no idea who is alive or dead until he's rescued; it must be the first thing he asks once they're clear of the Pentagon, so his grief for his murdered comrades is very raw when they board the plane.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.