fic: the ember starts a fire
Title: the ember starts a fire
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,562
Disclaimers: characters belong to Marvel; only doing this for fun! Title from the Foo Fighters’ “I Am A River.”
Summary: In which Charles owns a magical Wandering Shop full of magical artifacts, and Erik comes back one day, many years later, to return a helmet.
“I wouldn’t’ve expected to find you here,” Erik said. “In the last place I thought to look.”
“By definition,” Charles retorted, “that is the last place you think to look. Where you find whatever you’re looking for.” And he uncrossed his arms, and leaned back, comfortably, on the carpet.
“When did you get a flying carpet?”
“A very earnest boy in Agrabah needed a lamp.” They both glanced around the shop for a moment, not looking at each other: recalling, perhaps, other years, other earnest boys. Not so earnest any longer, Charles thought, and let his gaze wander round the shop’s jumbled interior. Gold, of course; a shield off in one corner, a great-mouthed bronze cauldron yawning at a shelf of books. A conch shell, a guitar, a cloak of invisibility, several standard seven-league boots in various sizes. A few of the latter’d tipped over drunkenly onto, respectively, a long sleek spear and a glittering jet box of computer-innards from several centuries ahead.
Erik murmured, “This place doesn’t change,” and went over to straighten the boots.
“It does,” Charles said. “You wouldn’t know.”
Erik stopped with one hand hovering over brown enchanted leather. “I suppose I deserved that.” He was wearing armor, again, maroon and heavy; he was wearing armor in nearly all Charles’s memories of him. Not every memory. But most. “Where’ve you been lately?”
“Where heroes need me.” Charles shrugged-not as easy as it looked while sitting poker-backed on a flying carpet with wobbly weave, but he’d be damned if he’d show Erik the Barbarian any weakness-and added, “Don’t touch that, an alternate version of young Steven Rogers wandered in from the year sixteen-hundred and two and got magical tobacco on it. You’ll never get it off your hands.”
Erik looked at his thumb.
“Er. There might be some extra-potent alcohol from Asgard in the back. You could try dissolving it.”
“Charles,” Erik said, “why are you doing this?”
He knew what Erik was asking. Hell, the boots and the books and the tobacco and the low-lying roof all knew what Erik was asking. Erik Lehnsherr, who’d once been a leather-clad spear-forging hero made of incandescent fury and metal spikes and quests for vengeance, had never in any lifetime been good at subtle.
Charles, knowing all this, said, “Why do I run the shop? Why do I turn up wherever I’m needed? Honestly, Erik, I think that question answers itself.”
“You equip them all,” Erik said, straightening up, walking back over. “You train them. The heroes. You take this place wherever and whenever your thoughts tell you that you need to be. Why here? And why is there still tobacco on my thumb?”
“I did try to warn you. Magical.”
“These were new gloves. And you’re not answering my question.”
For the sake of what had once lain between them, for those memories of Erik’s bare skin and unguarded hearts and the flicker of firelight, Charles admitted, “I was listening to the universe, this morning. And I heard us here. Like a ripple. Not a very clear ripple, granted-it never is when it’s about me, you know that, too much static-but I thought I should come.”
“To stop me if I try to end the world?” Erik’s eyes were very slightly rueful, or sad, or something else altogether. “I’ve tried that before. To bring an end to pain, persecution, injustice…”
“You have to let people choose that for themselves,” Charles said, and their eyes met. The carpet, unhelpfully, bobbled.
“You chose to be here,” Erik observed. “Despite the static.”
Here, yes. On a tropical beach, under sunshine like a cruel scar in the sky. The reason behind the flying carpet and various other means of conveyance not reliant on legs; the moment that’d stationed sentries with relentless swords around both their hearts.
No point in arguing; Charles nodded. He did not say I chose to try to stop whatever you’re planning, or I still have hope that you’ll be a good man again, or I don’t want to have hope because it’s too bright and it’s too painful and I’m used to being alone these days and I can’t try again or I wanted to see you. None of those unuttered replies was precisely entirely true, and none of them was untrue, either.
“I always meant to ask you,” Erik said slowly, eyes not leaving his, “even back then, when we first met, when you gave me the tools I needed for my quest-don’t say you regret it, I know you do-”
“I don’t regret that the Warlord Shaw is dead,” Charles said evenly. He meant exactly that.
“-I wondered where you got all of this.” Erik’s gesture swept the whole store into a question: animate teacups, mechanical men, an apparently benign eyepatch, a shimmering obelisk. “So much power.”
“Is that what you want,” Charles said. “Power? -And they turn up in a few different ways. Some people sell them. Sometimes they trade. Sometimes they come back if the wielder dies. Sometimes I make them. Whatever the hero needs or wants to give in return. It’s always a bargain, power and sacrifice. There’s nothing here for you.”
“Because you won’t sell any artifacts of power to me?”
“Because you’d never give anything in return.”
And Erik looked away, at that. Looked at the narrow ordinary door with its brass knob, neat and tidy and ready to open on a cobbled Westchester street or a fantastical bazaar or a burning beach.
“You can go if you like.”
“I don’t. Like.” Erik took a parcel out from under his arm. “You recall the helm Warlord Shaw wore. The one blocking your sense of location and divination.”
“I recall that you’ve worn it longer than he ever did.”
“I’m not wearing it now.”
“You’re not. Should I be impressed?”
“I wondered how you got your artifacts,” Erik said, “I wondered whether anyone ever simply gave them to you,” and held out the parcel, clumsily wrapped, brown paper and string falling away.
Charles stared at the cool metal gleam.
Erik, awkward in a way Erik the warrior had never before been awkward, shuffled his feet, and set the helmet on the shop’s counter next to a snarl of jeweled kaleidoscopes. They winked in astounded sapphire and garnet and pearl.
“What changed?” Charles said, because he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t let it be real.
“I…went on a vision quest. I thought I was looking for a gem-that doesn’t matter. I saw you. And us. Myself in prison without you. You-I can’t let that happen.”
“What? Do I end up bald? Turned into a mouse?”
“You end up dead,” Erik said, voice catching as if on the edges of an open wound. “You take drugs, I don’t know what, and you stop caring, and you end up dead inside, and then you take too much and you end up dead-”
“And you wanted to gloat?”
“I couldn’t let it happen,” Erik whispered.
Charles opened his mouth. Looked at Erik’s face. Stopped.
One of the kaleidoscopes rolled cheerfully to the edge of the counter, wobbling, friendly as an invitation.
“I don’t know what I want,” Erik said. “I’ll tell you that if it’ll make you happy, Charles, I’ve never not known before. I thought I knew. But I don’t want you to die, and I’ll throw away every quest I never completed and stand guard over you for the rest of my life if I have to.”
Charles contemplated this offer and the weight of desperate sincerity and the unhealed throb of arrow-sharp love inside his chest, and said, “You do know what you want, then.”
“You.”
“It’s always a bargain,” Charles murmured, and they both glanced at the helmet, “power, and sacrifice…you’d give me this.”
“I’d give you the world. I’d change the world. For you.”
“This shop goes where it’s needed,” Charles said, thinking out loud, “for heroes…”
“Please,” Erik pleaded. “And I never say please, Charles, you know I mean it.”
“What if I asked you to save the world? Not to fight it to the death.”
“I’d argue with you,” Erik said promptly, “about justified ends and means. But I’d listen to you.”
Charles eyed the kaleidoscope. So many artifacts; so much support for others’ quests; so many nights he’d closed the shop door and buried his face in his hands and not ventured outside after all, not even in a mist-wreathed scientific-exposition-hosting tall-spired city.
Erik, here and present. Erik talking about a future that might never come to pass; Erik imagining a future at his side. His side, traitorously, craved Erik’s warmth. Lying stretched out, lean and lazy, in bed beside him; moving a chess-piece across squares; debating the efficacy of feudalism and the fight for heroes’ rights. He ran a hand through his hair, ran both hands over his face, absently.
“I can try to fix your flying carpet,” Erik said. “Some of those threads are metallic, aren’t they?”
“They are,” Charles said, and Erik took a step closer, and when Charles looked up their gazes caught, entwined like the first rush of breathlessness at a sunrise, at signal-fires catching flame on a mountain summit, at the dizzying crystalline shock of yes both in memory and anew, time- and pain-tempered but perhaps even more glorious for that, the second time around.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,562
Disclaimers: characters belong to Marvel; only doing this for fun! Title from the Foo Fighters’ “I Am A River.”
Summary: In which Charles owns a magical Wandering Shop full of magical artifacts, and Erik comes back one day, many years later, to return a helmet.
“I wouldn’t’ve expected to find you here,” Erik said. “In the last place I thought to look.”
“By definition,” Charles retorted, “that is the last place you think to look. Where you find whatever you’re looking for.” And he uncrossed his arms, and leaned back, comfortably, on the carpet.
“When did you get a flying carpet?”
“A very earnest boy in Agrabah needed a lamp.” They both glanced around the shop for a moment, not looking at each other: recalling, perhaps, other years, other earnest boys. Not so earnest any longer, Charles thought, and let his gaze wander round the shop’s jumbled interior. Gold, of course; a shield off in one corner, a great-mouthed bronze cauldron yawning at a shelf of books. A conch shell, a guitar, a cloak of invisibility, several standard seven-league boots in various sizes. A few of the latter’d tipped over drunkenly onto, respectively, a long sleek spear and a glittering jet box of computer-innards from several centuries ahead.
Erik murmured, “This place doesn’t change,” and went over to straighten the boots.
“It does,” Charles said. “You wouldn’t know.”
Erik stopped with one hand hovering over brown enchanted leather. “I suppose I deserved that.” He was wearing armor, again, maroon and heavy; he was wearing armor in nearly all Charles’s memories of him. Not every memory. But most. “Where’ve you been lately?”
“Where heroes need me.” Charles shrugged-not as easy as it looked while sitting poker-backed on a flying carpet with wobbly weave, but he’d be damned if he’d show Erik the Barbarian any weakness-and added, “Don’t touch that, an alternate version of young Steven Rogers wandered in from the year sixteen-hundred and two and got magical tobacco on it. You’ll never get it off your hands.”
Erik looked at his thumb.
“Er. There might be some extra-potent alcohol from Asgard in the back. You could try dissolving it.”
“Charles,” Erik said, “why are you doing this?”
He knew what Erik was asking. Hell, the boots and the books and the tobacco and the low-lying roof all knew what Erik was asking. Erik Lehnsherr, who’d once been a leather-clad spear-forging hero made of incandescent fury and metal spikes and quests for vengeance, had never in any lifetime been good at subtle.
Charles, knowing all this, said, “Why do I run the shop? Why do I turn up wherever I’m needed? Honestly, Erik, I think that question answers itself.”
“You equip them all,” Erik said, straightening up, walking back over. “You train them. The heroes. You take this place wherever and whenever your thoughts tell you that you need to be. Why here? And why is there still tobacco on my thumb?”
“I did try to warn you. Magical.”
“These were new gloves. And you’re not answering my question.”
For the sake of what had once lain between them, for those memories of Erik’s bare skin and unguarded hearts and the flicker of firelight, Charles admitted, “I was listening to the universe, this morning. And I heard us here. Like a ripple. Not a very clear ripple, granted-it never is when it’s about me, you know that, too much static-but I thought I should come.”
“To stop me if I try to end the world?” Erik’s eyes were very slightly rueful, or sad, or something else altogether. “I’ve tried that before. To bring an end to pain, persecution, injustice…”
“You have to let people choose that for themselves,” Charles said, and their eyes met. The carpet, unhelpfully, bobbled.
“You chose to be here,” Erik observed. “Despite the static.”
Here, yes. On a tropical beach, under sunshine like a cruel scar in the sky. The reason behind the flying carpet and various other means of conveyance not reliant on legs; the moment that’d stationed sentries with relentless swords around both their hearts.
No point in arguing; Charles nodded. He did not say I chose to try to stop whatever you’re planning, or I still have hope that you’ll be a good man again, or I don’t want to have hope because it’s too bright and it’s too painful and I’m used to being alone these days and I can’t try again or I wanted to see you. None of those unuttered replies was precisely entirely true, and none of them was untrue, either.
“I always meant to ask you,” Erik said slowly, eyes not leaving his, “even back then, when we first met, when you gave me the tools I needed for my quest-don’t say you regret it, I know you do-”
“I don’t regret that the Warlord Shaw is dead,” Charles said evenly. He meant exactly that.
“-I wondered where you got all of this.” Erik’s gesture swept the whole store into a question: animate teacups, mechanical men, an apparently benign eyepatch, a shimmering obelisk. “So much power.”
“Is that what you want,” Charles said. “Power? -And they turn up in a few different ways. Some people sell them. Sometimes they trade. Sometimes they come back if the wielder dies. Sometimes I make them. Whatever the hero needs or wants to give in return. It’s always a bargain, power and sacrifice. There’s nothing here for you.”
“Because you won’t sell any artifacts of power to me?”
“Because you’d never give anything in return.”
And Erik looked away, at that. Looked at the narrow ordinary door with its brass knob, neat and tidy and ready to open on a cobbled Westchester street or a fantastical bazaar or a burning beach.
“You can go if you like.”
“I don’t. Like.” Erik took a parcel out from under his arm. “You recall the helm Warlord Shaw wore. The one blocking your sense of location and divination.”
“I recall that you’ve worn it longer than he ever did.”
“I’m not wearing it now.”
“You’re not. Should I be impressed?”
“I wondered how you got your artifacts,” Erik said, “I wondered whether anyone ever simply gave them to you,” and held out the parcel, clumsily wrapped, brown paper and string falling away.
Charles stared at the cool metal gleam.
Erik, awkward in a way Erik the warrior had never before been awkward, shuffled his feet, and set the helmet on the shop’s counter next to a snarl of jeweled kaleidoscopes. They winked in astounded sapphire and garnet and pearl.
“What changed?” Charles said, because he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t let it be real.
“I…went on a vision quest. I thought I was looking for a gem-that doesn’t matter. I saw you. And us. Myself in prison without you. You-I can’t let that happen.”
“What? Do I end up bald? Turned into a mouse?”
“You end up dead,” Erik said, voice catching as if on the edges of an open wound. “You take drugs, I don’t know what, and you stop caring, and you end up dead inside, and then you take too much and you end up dead-”
“And you wanted to gloat?”
“I couldn’t let it happen,” Erik whispered.
Charles opened his mouth. Looked at Erik’s face. Stopped.
One of the kaleidoscopes rolled cheerfully to the edge of the counter, wobbling, friendly as an invitation.
“I don’t know what I want,” Erik said. “I’ll tell you that if it’ll make you happy, Charles, I’ve never not known before. I thought I knew. But I don’t want you to die, and I’ll throw away every quest I never completed and stand guard over you for the rest of my life if I have to.”
Charles contemplated this offer and the weight of desperate sincerity and the unhealed throb of arrow-sharp love inside his chest, and said, “You do know what you want, then.”
“You.”
“It’s always a bargain,” Charles murmured, and they both glanced at the helmet, “power, and sacrifice…you’d give me this.”
“I’d give you the world. I’d change the world. For you.”
“This shop goes where it’s needed,” Charles said, thinking out loud, “for heroes…”
“Please,” Erik pleaded. “And I never say please, Charles, you know I mean it.”
“What if I asked you to save the world? Not to fight it to the death.”
“I’d argue with you,” Erik said promptly, “about justified ends and means. But I’d listen to you.”
Charles eyed the kaleidoscope. So many artifacts; so much support for others’ quests; so many nights he’d closed the shop door and buried his face in his hands and not ventured outside after all, not even in a mist-wreathed scientific-exposition-hosting tall-spired city.
Erik, here and present. Erik talking about a future that might never come to pass; Erik imagining a future at his side. His side, traitorously, craved Erik’s warmth. Lying stretched out, lean and lazy, in bed beside him; moving a chess-piece across squares; debating the efficacy of feudalism and the fight for heroes’ rights. He ran a hand through his hair, ran both hands over his face, absently.
“I can try to fix your flying carpet,” Erik said. “Some of those threads are metallic, aren’t they?”
“They are,” Charles said, and Erik took a step closer, and when Charles looked up their gazes caught, entwined like the first rush of breathlessness at a sunrise, at signal-fires catching flame on a mountain summit, at the dizzying crystalline shock of yes both in memory and anew, time- and pain-tempered but perhaps even more glorious for that, the second time around.