X-Men First Class fic: Raven's Importance of Being (1/1)
Title: Raven's Importance of Being
Pairing: Raven/Angel, Raven/Azazel, Raven/Magneto, Raven/Emma
Rating: PG
Warnings: Light bondage, violence, adult situations.
Summary: XMen: First Class AU, post-Beach Divorce. Mystique finds her position in the new Brotherhood of Mutants to be not quite what she expected. She's not really the one Magneto wants by his side, but neither is Emma Frost. This alone would make them unlikely allies; their issues centered on the telepath most notable for his absence makes them something more.
Author's Notes: This one is for Mystique, and all the other bi girls out there.
Raven's Importance of Being
Prologue, or, How It Will End
The door is closed, but it's not locked. Raven knows this. She raps the back of her knuckles against the wood in quick double-knock, not that she's expecting a reply -- there isn't any -- but because she wants to be polite.
She is dressed in the sort of things Charles wears, actually dressed in a real pair of slacks and a button-down shirt and a navy cardigan, because Angel has told her the importance of getting the details right, and she wants this to be perfect. She takes a moment to catch her breath, to listen to the racing of her heart, to worry about whether her sweat smells like Charles' sweat would smell, because it's not enough to just look like Charles, even though the person in the room knows it can't possibly be him. They talked about this. Raven felt her pride twist and crumple when she was told that yes, she could, but only if she looked like her brother; but even so, she had always wanted to know what it would be like, always wondered how it would feel, and so her curiosity won out over her pride.
Raven lets her hand hover over the door handle as she exhales, thinking that this is it, that once she passes through this door and does what she intends to do, there will be no going back.
Then she thinks that she has been innocent long enough, and she opens the door and steps inside with Charles' cocky smile on her face and the words "Ah, I thought I might find you here," falling from her lips in his voice.
* * * * * * * * *
Angel
"He's a fag."
Angel doesn't say it like it's a bad thing, not exactly; she says it with a shrug. "We used to get a lot of guys like that at the joint I worked at. They try too hard to be womanizing assholes."
"But he's not an asshole," Raven points out, enjoying the argument but wishing, sort of, that she were arguing with her brother instead. He wasn't as condescending as Angel usually is. "And he's not a fag, either."
Angel just gives her that look -- like Angel's been around the block enough times to be cool and hip to everything, and Raven's only ever stayed inside and played with her dolls like a good little girl -- but then she takes a breath and closes her eyes before responding with a tired "And I suppose you have proof?"
Raven tries not to smirk. "Well, he kissed me, for one."
Angel remains nonplussed. "Oh?" she asks with an air of indifference. "And how was it?" While Raven stutters around trying to find words to describe it -- it was better than the kiss she'd given Hank, actually, but she'd been so nervous -- Angel continues, "Was it chaste? Did he slip you some tongue? Bite your lip, suck all the air out of you, or leave you high and dry?" She slides across the leather cushion until she is pressed up against Raven, her perfume filling Raven's nostrils with the scent of jasmine and patchouli and some sort of musk which just might be her. "Was it like this?"
And with no more warning Angel presses her mouth against Raven's, and Raven's heart is pounding. But it's over as quickly as it starts, and Raven catches herself before she follows Angel's retreat.
Her fingers drift to her lips.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "It was." There was the rush of ohmygosh just as lips touched, and then the lips parted and it was a real kiss, but just when it started to cross over from a nice kiss to a really nice kiss, it all came to an end and drifted away, leaving her behind, half-elated, half-forlorn. Whatever it was, Raven thinks, it's not enough.
"Yeah, that's because I'm not interested in women, and neither is he." Angel leans against the back of the sofa, once more ensconced in her corner, prim and proper, and too prissy for Raven's taste. "That's what a pity-kiss is like."
Icewater cascades down Raven's spine. She suddenly realizes that she never really liked or trusted Angel, and now she just wants to kill her outright. But then Magneto walks into the room with Emma Frost chilly in his wake, and the scantily-clad blonde gives Angel a glance full of daggers before turning her gaze to Raven and -- oddly -- favors her with an appraising look and a hint of an upward curl to the corner of her mouth. Maybe it's the beginning of the half-smile they've all picked up from Magneto, but more likely it's the beginning of a smirk.
They all treat Raven like she's the youngest of the lot -- which she is -- but Erik is the only one who doesn't mock her for it. He just expects her to grow up. She still replays the memory of how he told her "When you're older," as if it were a promise, not the beginning of a statement like "When you're older, I'll think about it," or "When you're older, you'll understand," but damn Angel and her stupid kiss has ruined all that.
Raven's lips still tingle, her cheeks still burn, and Emma Frost's eyes still linger on her as she glides past, her hips swaying as her curves realign with each step.
* * * * * * * * *
Azazel
When Raven showed Azazel her copy of him, he grabbed her tail and gave it a tug, then asked her how it had felt. When she told him it was just like "pulling her arm, or something," he surprised her by shaking his head. "No, no it is not right. My tail is more than my arm, it is smarter, there is only the one, and it is more flexible at the base though, yes, if you pull it, I would feel it all the way up my back, here, like this. The outside is correct, but the insides are wrong." He scowled, but by then she had come to realize that he frowned over his difficulty with finding the English words to express what it was he wanted to say, and not because he was annoyed with her stumbling attempts to improve her shapeshifting abilities. She had for so long limited herself to purely human forms, and was just now experimenting with mimicking physical mutations, animals and even, occasionally, fantastical beasts. Her attempt at a griffin had been a disaster -- her beak had lips and her lion hind legs looked suspiciously human -- but her Medusa hadn't been half-bad, and had even made taciturn Janos exclaim over the "incredibly lifelike" snake hairdo. Why was she so good at snakes, and so bad at tails?
"I will show you, perhaps that will be best. See," Azazel turned his back to her, and curled his tail into a tight coil with four, almost five, turns. "Feel it."
She brushed her hand tentatively over the tail, felt the muscle taut and trembling, the tightness underneath the smooth red skin.
He looked over his shoulder down at her, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. "Feel it with your tail. It is the same, yes?"
She stayed facing him, screwed up her face with the effort of willing her new appendage to reach out around her and stroke the tip -- lightly tufted, and, she saw with some amount of horror, completely blue -- against Azazel's coiled tail. She could feel it, like stroking her finger along him, and then his tail loosened a bit and curled around hers in an oddly intimate form of a handshake.
Of course Magneto walked in then.
"Comrade," Azazel greeted him, stiffening slightly. His tail gave hers a brief squeeze before drifting away.
Magneto did not bother to comment on the kinkiness of the situation -- wherever his attention was, it was elsewhere. "You're blue," he said to her.
"She is working on the tail," Azazel explained with a shrug, and Raven raised the tip in a half-wave, half-salute.
Magneto stopped himself from saying something, nodded, and walked away. Only when he was gone did Raven let go of her breath, and Azazel did the same.
"He hasn't been the same since The Beach," Raven whispered, intoning the name for the place with all the gravity the event that took place there deserved. The Vengeance, she could call it, The Rescue, The Short War, or -- when she thought of it in quieter, more introspective moments, The Leaving, The Goodbye.
"I would not know," Azazel said, "but many things changed that day." He gave her a small, shy smile. "Some things are better."
She smiled back, too uneasy to speak. Magneto's abrupt appearance made her think of Charles and the way he would walk by, unwilling to interrupt her when she was training, unwilling perhaps to admit he was checking up on her, but still -- no matter how wrapped up in whatever plans he was making, his expression still changed when he saw how much weight she could bench-press or how quickly she was learning hand-to-hand combat from Erik, his edges softened and the new lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled up just a little. But then he'd catch himself, and he'd scowl, or look away as though he just felt that way about everyone, and that little seed of doubt would nestle itself a tiny bit deeper, so its roots could one day twist tight around her spine.
That's what made her walk (limp) to Magneto that day on the beach -- at the time, she thought she was taking a great step forward and leaving doubt behind, but now she could see that it was the other way around. She'd rushed into a new life clinging to her doubts and fears, and a door slammed shut behind her when she left Charles lying on the beach, wounded and in pain. (But weren't they all wounded, though? Weren't they all hurt?) Now there was nothing left to do but pick herself up and try to figure out who she was in this new world.
Magneto hadn't kissed her again since that one time. In many ways she'd gone from vague wishful thinking that maybe she and Charles would somehow stop being brother and sister (but they weren't, not really) and turn into a couple, to rather more concrete wishing that she and Magneto would become a couple -- perhaps waiting until that day "when she was older" -- and then Angel went and shattered that hope with one very simple act which complicated everything.
What if she didn't actually like boys? What if she didn't actually like men? She had never thought about it.
"He must be very busy these days, if he does not have time to chide you for being blue."
"He likes me blue," Raven answered automatically, thinking of Charles and the way he stuttered aloud "blue" when his voice in her head said "naked". She glanced hurriedly at Azazel, but he did not seem to notice her gaffe. "I mean," she said, mentally ducking for cover, "that he likes seeing us being ourselves."
"Who else would be be?" Azazel mused.
Someone who wouldn't leave her brother behind Raven thought, but said nothing.
* * * * * * * * *
Magneto
"How well do you know Charles?" Magneto's voice is flat, with only the words indicating that the sentence is a question. "How well can you portray him?"
Putting on Charles' form is as easy as changing her mind; her skin doesn't even register the sensation of the transformation. One moment she's herself, the next, Charles is standing in her place.
And Magneto's expression... changes.
He stands close and grasps her upper arms, saying "Good! Good, now say something."
"What do you want me to say?" she asks, staring up into those pale blue eyes. If you were Charles, she asks herself, wouldn't you back away? Isn't he too close for comfort?
"No, you've got to get the voice right." Magneto's own voice is quiet and intense. Raven doesn't know where the urgency comes from, but it sweeps her up, makes her heart beat faster. "They'll expect him to try to talk his way out of it."
"But Charles wouldn't talk--"
"You," Magneto corrects her. One hand is still warm on her bicep, the other drifts upward, as though to caress her cheek. She is disoriented by the way he looks at her, searching, beseeching. "You wouldn't try to talk your way out of it."
"But I wouldn't talk my way out of it," she tries again, recalling her years in Oxford and that brief time when her accent was nearly spot-on British. "I'd think my way out of it."
"They don't know that." Magneto's hand has landed on her shoulder at the base of her neck, his thumb resting just below her ear, gently rubbing. It's surprisingly intimate, that little gesture.
"Who are they?" Raven asks, and the spell is broken. Charles' voice, but the wrong accent.
"Bigots," Magneto snarls and turns away from her, his cape brushing the back of her leg (which currently looks and feels like a pair of Charles' tweed slacks). "An organization which believes anyone with physical mutations should be sterilized and put on display in a traveling freak circus under the auspices of the National Institute of Health."
"Charles' mutation isn't physical, so why would they go after him?" Raven can feel that she's playing catch-up, and she doesn't like it. Why won't Magneto -- Erik -- just come out and say it, whatever it is?
"Charles opened a school for children with mutations. Hank is one of the instructors. Emma has determined that they plan to kidnap and ransom Charles to lure Hank away from the school."
"So let Hank rescue Charles," she snaps bitterly. There she is, she thinks to herself, There's the woman who betrayed her brother.
The look Magneto gives her is full of loathing, and he steps in close again, his 6 feet and change looming over her. "I'd rather he rescued you. I'll make sure--" he glances up quickly and freezes, his eyes darting to the door, while the rest of him stays perfectly still.
Raven pulls herself up to Charles' full height and turns, raising her right hand in her brother's familiar gesture, two fingers reaching for the temple.
Emma Frost's eyes go wide as she steps into the room. Raven has never before seen her afraid, and thinks she probably never will again. The ice queen recovers her poise quickly, taking in the scene of the two of them, Erik and Charles standing so close together, and she turns her head just enough to look at the bed -- because there are so many of them in the Brotherhood, and so few rooms in this safe house, Magneto holds all his official private conversations in his bedroom -- the bed which is all the way over there, and Emma tilts her head nervously toward it, but when she speaks her voice is calm.
"Well," she says. "I never thought I'd see the two of you standing together again." She licks her lips before continuing, "Since one of you can't stand anymore."
The beach.
She left him lying there.
Wounded and in pain.
Her hands are already hot when she leaps across the coffee table and is reaching for Emma's throat. There's a throbbing in her head, but in her months with the Brotherhood she has learned what to do -- as long as she shifts, however slightly, Emma can't get a hold on her thoughts, can't twist them in her mind and stab her with them. The skin of her throat is as soft as Raven imagined it would be, and then Emma's elbows are suddenly driving down into her arms, breaking her grip, and strong arms wrap around her waist and toss her aside.
She is flung onto the bed, and before she can keep her momentum and spring off the bed, Erik is on top of her, holding her down, shouting gibberish.
"It's a remarkable likeness, really," Emma's voice comes across, cold and clear. Raven is still staring at Erik, and it is just beginning to dawn on her that she has somehow managed to maintain Charles' outward form, even while the shock of Emma's words is still coursing through her. The gibberish resolves itself into German, a steady flow of nonsense words. "It even fooled me," Emma continues. "Except, of course, for the walking part. But I can't imagine someone like you wanting to fuck a cripple, even if you used to love him."
The German stops. Magneto closes his eyes, and for a moment, Raven wonders if it's truly possible for a person to die of mortification. The next moment, she wonders how she could possibly have missed it, the ease with which they worked together, the casual touches, the way they looked at each other. Was it possible that she might die of mortification, for having been so incredibly blind, and walking right into this trap, unaware as a babe in the woods?
Magneto's weight is lighter on her; he moves off the bed in a swift motion, clean and precise. Raven rolls to her side and watches as Magneto and Emma face off across the splintered remains of the coffee table. (Raven imagines Magneto charging right through it to pull her off Emma. Or perhaps he tore it apart by its nails in his hurry to get to her.)
"Mystique." Magneto says, never turning to look at her. "We'll discuss the mission later."
She gets off the bed, clumsily, still in tweed and a rumpled cardigan, still looking like Charles. Her heart hurts, and the realization makes the rest of her burn with fury. "Emma," she says, glaring at the blonde with the red marks on her throat. She doesn't have the faintest idea what to say next, but the fury says it for her. "You owe me for not ripping your throat out."
No sound comes of it when Emma mouths "Yes." Raven nods once, quick and sharp, the way Charles nods when he's sure he's made his point, and she walks out the door and down the hall.
She falls back into herself a few steps later, but manages to keep it together until she gets to her own room. Then she shifts her vocal cords too thin and short to emit sounds anything but a dog could hear, and she screams until she sobs, then cries until her pillow is soaked.
* * * * * * * * *
Emma
Emma Frost is on the bed in her crystal form, her wrists tied to the headboard and her lips pursed in a scowl that quickly turns into a pout.
"I told you before, there's nothing you can get from me when I'm like this, sugar," she says, but even though she tries to keep her tone light, there's a strong hint of desire, an invitation to try.
"And I've already been in your head, love. I was thinking of trying something different." Raven knows the cadences of her brother's speech, perhaps most especially when he's laying it on thick for the pretty birds in the bar, and she's surprised to find that it's just plain fun.
"I don't like being in debt," Emma had said, the next morning after Raven had cried herself asleep, after Magneto had gone over the mission with her while they drank coffee in his room, holding the mugs and ignoring the empty space where the table had been. Everything seemed different by light of day. Charles was in a wheelchair, but there was some hope of recovery. Charles and Erik had been lovers. Erik was a fag. Charles was… Raven didn't know what that made Charles, but she suspected that it was something they'd both always known. The outward form doesn't matter, it's the person inside that counts. Raven left him behind. And now Raven would make it up to him, secretly paying off the debt she owed him. Raven was… Raven didn't know what she was.
"I know what you are," Emma says, tilting her chest to lift her breasts up even as she releases her crystal form. It's as though the simple motion has breathed life into a statue, made it supple and soft. It's a distraction and it works; part of Raven wonders why it works, and the other part is thrilled that Emma is working so hard for her attention. Even if, in a way, it's really Charles' attention she's working so hard for. After a certain point, it doesn't matter.
"Of course you do," Raven/Charles says, reaching out to follow a long strand of pale golden hair from the crown of her head to her collar bone, to where it has curled in a soft pool in the cleft between her breasts. "You're like me, after all."
Emma had said "Magneto almost killed me once. He choked me, when I was crystalline," and her fingers brushed across her throat, where Raven's fingers had left shallow bruises. "Charles stopped him. I thought it was for me, but it wasn't. It was because Charles didn't want Erik to live with the memory of killing me. Neither of them cared." Her eyes shimmered, and Raven swallowed drily, wondering if Emma was really going to cry about it, or if this were just another act. "And last night, Magneto saved me, from you. You made him care about me. So I owe you for that."
"And you want to pay off your debt to me by sleeping with me?" Raven's mind was racing, trying to figure out the trick. "But you're not really attracted to women, so you want me to be a man, and the only man I'm really good at playing is Charles, so…" there it was, the predatory glimmer in the eye that Raven always associated with Emma. "Oh. I get to sleep with you, and you get to seduce Charles Xavier."
"You see?" Emma placed a hand on her hip and tossed her hair back. "We both get what we want. I'll teach you how to please a woman and I'll show you how to seduce a man even while tied to his bed."
Her lips are parted, asking to be kissed, so Raven/Charles leans in and kisses her, what the hell? And it's a good kiss that turns into a great kiss, and Raven/Charles gets a hard-on while leaning over the half-naked Emma Frost, and Emma moves against her/him, moaning into her/his mouth as they break the kiss. Raven shifts a little more, and thinks to herself that if this pretense can work so well for Emma, then maybe -- just maybe -- it will work for Erik. She just needs a little practice.
~ fin ~
Pairing: Raven/Angel, Raven/Azazel, Raven/Magneto, Raven/Emma
Rating: PG
Warnings: Light bondage, violence, adult situations.
Summary: XMen: First Class AU, post-Beach Divorce. Mystique finds her position in the new Brotherhood of Mutants to be not quite what she expected. She's not really the one Magneto wants by his side, but neither is Emma Frost. This alone would make them unlikely allies; their issues centered on the telepath most notable for his absence makes them something more.
Author's Notes: This one is for Mystique, and all the other bi girls out there.
Raven's Importance of Being
Prologue, or, How It Will End
The door is closed, but it's not locked. Raven knows this. She raps the back of her knuckles against the wood in quick double-knock, not that she's expecting a reply -- there isn't any -- but because she wants to be polite.
She is dressed in the sort of things Charles wears, actually dressed in a real pair of slacks and a button-down shirt and a navy cardigan, because Angel has told her the importance of getting the details right, and she wants this to be perfect. She takes a moment to catch her breath, to listen to the racing of her heart, to worry about whether her sweat smells like Charles' sweat would smell, because it's not enough to just look like Charles, even though the person in the room knows it can't possibly be him. They talked about this. Raven felt her pride twist and crumple when she was told that yes, she could, but only if she looked like her brother; but even so, she had always wanted to know what it would be like, always wondered how it would feel, and so her curiosity won out over her pride.
Raven lets her hand hover over the door handle as she exhales, thinking that this is it, that once she passes through this door and does what she intends to do, there will be no going back.
Then she thinks that she has been innocent long enough, and she opens the door and steps inside with Charles' cocky smile on her face and the words "Ah, I thought I might find you here," falling from her lips in his voice.
* * * * * * * * *
Angel
"He's a fag."
Angel doesn't say it like it's a bad thing, not exactly; she says it with a shrug. "We used to get a lot of guys like that at the joint I worked at. They try too hard to be womanizing assholes."
"But he's not an asshole," Raven points out, enjoying the argument but wishing, sort of, that she were arguing with her brother instead. He wasn't as condescending as Angel usually is. "And he's not a fag, either."
Angel just gives her that look -- like Angel's been around the block enough times to be cool and hip to everything, and Raven's only ever stayed inside and played with her dolls like a good little girl -- but then she takes a breath and closes her eyes before responding with a tired "And I suppose you have proof?"
Raven tries not to smirk. "Well, he kissed me, for one."
Angel remains nonplussed. "Oh?" she asks with an air of indifference. "And how was it?" While Raven stutters around trying to find words to describe it -- it was better than the kiss she'd given Hank, actually, but she'd been so nervous -- Angel continues, "Was it chaste? Did he slip you some tongue? Bite your lip, suck all the air out of you, or leave you high and dry?" She slides across the leather cushion until she is pressed up against Raven, her perfume filling Raven's nostrils with the scent of jasmine and patchouli and some sort of musk which just might be her. "Was it like this?"
And with no more warning Angel presses her mouth against Raven's, and Raven's heart is pounding. But it's over as quickly as it starts, and Raven catches herself before she follows Angel's retreat.
Her fingers drift to her lips.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "It was." There was the rush of ohmygosh just as lips touched, and then the lips parted and it was a real kiss, but just when it started to cross over from a nice kiss to a really nice kiss, it all came to an end and drifted away, leaving her behind, half-elated, half-forlorn. Whatever it was, Raven thinks, it's not enough.
"Yeah, that's because I'm not interested in women, and neither is he." Angel leans against the back of the sofa, once more ensconced in her corner, prim and proper, and too prissy for Raven's taste. "That's what a pity-kiss is like."
Icewater cascades down Raven's spine. She suddenly realizes that she never really liked or trusted Angel, and now she just wants to kill her outright. But then Magneto walks into the room with Emma Frost chilly in his wake, and the scantily-clad blonde gives Angel a glance full of daggers before turning her gaze to Raven and -- oddly -- favors her with an appraising look and a hint of an upward curl to the corner of her mouth. Maybe it's the beginning of the half-smile they've all picked up from Magneto, but more likely it's the beginning of a smirk.
They all treat Raven like she's the youngest of the lot -- which she is -- but Erik is the only one who doesn't mock her for it. He just expects her to grow up. She still replays the memory of how he told her "When you're older," as if it were a promise, not the beginning of a statement like "When you're older, I'll think about it," or "When you're older, you'll understand," but damn Angel and her stupid kiss has ruined all that.
Raven's lips still tingle, her cheeks still burn, and Emma Frost's eyes still linger on her as she glides past, her hips swaying as her curves realign with each step.
* * * * * * * * *
Azazel
When Raven showed Azazel her copy of him, he grabbed her tail and gave it a tug, then asked her how it had felt. When she told him it was just like "pulling her arm, or something," he surprised her by shaking his head. "No, no it is not right. My tail is more than my arm, it is smarter, there is only the one, and it is more flexible at the base though, yes, if you pull it, I would feel it all the way up my back, here, like this. The outside is correct, but the insides are wrong." He scowled, but by then she had come to realize that he frowned over his difficulty with finding the English words to express what it was he wanted to say, and not because he was annoyed with her stumbling attempts to improve her shapeshifting abilities. She had for so long limited herself to purely human forms, and was just now experimenting with mimicking physical mutations, animals and even, occasionally, fantastical beasts. Her attempt at a griffin had been a disaster -- her beak had lips and her lion hind legs looked suspiciously human -- but her Medusa hadn't been half-bad, and had even made taciturn Janos exclaim over the "incredibly lifelike" snake hairdo. Why was she so good at snakes, and so bad at tails?
"I will show you, perhaps that will be best. See," Azazel turned his back to her, and curled his tail into a tight coil with four, almost five, turns. "Feel it."
She brushed her hand tentatively over the tail, felt the muscle taut and trembling, the tightness underneath the smooth red skin.
He looked over his shoulder down at her, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. "Feel it with your tail. It is the same, yes?"
She stayed facing him, screwed up her face with the effort of willing her new appendage to reach out around her and stroke the tip -- lightly tufted, and, she saw with some amount of horror, completely blue -- against Azazel's coiled tail. She could feel it, like stroking her finger along him, and then his tail loosened a bit and curled around hers in an oddly intimate form of a handshake.
Of course Magneto walked in then.
"Comrade," Azazel greeted him, stiffening slightly. His tail gave hers a brief squeeze before drifting away.
Magneto did not bother to comment on the kinkiness of the situation -- wherever his attention was, it was elsewhere. "You're blue," he said to her.
"She is working on the tail," Azazel explained with a shrug, and Raven raised the tip in a half-wave, half-salute.
Magneto stopped himself from saying something, nodded, and walked away. Only when he was gone did Raven let go of her breath, and Azazel did the same.
"He hasn't been the same since The Beach," Raven whispered, intoning the name for the place with all the gravity the event that took place there deserved. The Vengeance, she could call it, The Rescue, The Short War, or -- when she thought of it in quieter, more introspective moments, The Leaving, The Goodbye.
"I would not know," Azazel said, "but many things changed that day." He gave her a small, shy smile. "Some things are better."
She smiled back, too uneasy to speak. Magneto's abrupt appearance made her think of Charles and the way he would walk by, unwilling to interrupt her when she was training, unwilling perhaps to admit he was checking up on her, but still -- no matter how wrapped up in whatever plans he was making, his expression still changed when he saw how much weight she could bench-press or how quickly she was learning hand-to-hand combat from Erik, his edges softened and the new lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled up just a little. But then he'd catch himself, and he'd scowl, or look away as though he just felt that way about everyone, and that little seed of doubt would nestle itself a tiny bit deeper, so its roots could one day twist tight around her spine.
That's what made her walk (limp) to Magneto that day on the beach -- at the time, she thought she was taking a great step forward and leaving doubt behind, but now she could see that it was the other way around. She'd rushed into a new life clinging to her doubts and fears, and a door slammed shut behind her when she left Charles lying on the beach, wounded and in pain. (But weren't they all wounded, though? Weren't they all hurt?) Now there was nothing left to do but pick herself up and try to figure out who she was in this new world.
Magneto hadn't kissed her again since that one time. In many ways she'd gone from vague wishful thinking that maybe she and Charles would somehow stop being brother and sister (but they weren't, not really) and turn into a couple, to rather more concrete wishing that she and Magneto would become a couple -- perhaps waiting until that day "when she was older" -- and then Angel went and shattered that hope with one very simple act which complicated everything.
What if she didn't actually like boys? What if she didn't actually like men? She had never thought about it.
"He must be very busy these days, if he does not have time to chide you for being blue."
"He likes me blue," Raven answered automatically, thinking of Charles and the way he stuttered aloud "blue" when his voice in her head said "naked". She glanced hurriedly at Azazel, but he did not seem to notice her gaffe. "I mean," she said, mentally ducking for cover, "that he likes seeing us being ourselves."
"Who else would be be?" Azazel mused.
Someone who wouldn't leave her brother behind Raven thought, but said nothing.
* * * * * * * * *
Magneto
"How well do you know Charles?" Magneto's voice is flat, with only the words indicating that the sentence is a question. "How well can you portray him?"
Putting on Charles' form is as easy as changing her mind; her skin doesn't even register the sensation of the transformation. One moment she's herself, the next, Charles is standing in her place.
And Magneto's expression... changes.
He stands close and grasps her upper arms, saying "Good! Good, now say something."
"What do you want me to say?" she asks, staring up into those pale blue eyes. If you were Charles, she asks herself, wouldn't you back away? Isn't he too close for comfort?
"No, you've got to get the voice right." Magneto's own voice is quiet and intense. Raven doesn't know where the urgency comes from, but it sweeps her up, makes her heart beat faster. "They'll expect him to try to talk his way out of it."
"But Charles wouldn't talk--"
"You," Magneto corrects her. One hand is still warm on her bicep, the other drifts upward, as though to caress her cheek. She is disoriented by the way he looks at her, searching, beseeching. "You wouldn't try to talk your way out of it."
"But I wouldn't talk my way out of it," she tries again, recalling her years in Oxford and that brief time when her accent was nearly spot-on British. "I'd think my way out of it."
"They don't know that." Magneto's hand has landed on her shoulder at the base of her neck, his thumb resting just below her ear, gently rubbing. It's surprisingly intimate, that little gesture.
"Who are they?" Raven asks, and the spell is broken. Charles' voice, but the wrong accent.
"Bigots," Magneto snarls and turns away from her, his cape brushing the back of her leg (which currently looks and feels like a pair of Charles' tweed slacks). "An organization which believes anyone with physical mutations should be sterilized and put on display in a traveling freak circus under the auspices of the National Institute of Health."
"Charles' mutation isn't physical, so why would they go after him?" Raven can feel that she's playing catch-up, and she doesn't like it. Why won't Magneto -- Erik -- just come out and say it, whatever it is?
"Charles opened a school for children with mutations. Hank is one of the instructors. Emma has determined that they plan to kidnap and ransom Charles to lure Hank away from the school."
"So let Hank rescue Charles," she snaps bitterly. There she is, she thinks to herself, There's the woman who betrayed her brother.
The look Magneto gives her is full of loathing, and he steps in close again, his 6 feet and change looming over her. "I'd rather he rescued you. I'll make sure--" he glances up quickly and freezes, his eyes darting to the door, while the rest of him stays perfectly still.
Raven pulls herself up to Charles' full height and turns, raising her right hand in her brother's familiar gesture, two fingers reaching for the temple.
Emma Frost's eyes go wide as she steps into the room. Raven has never before seen her afraid, and thinks she probably never will again. The ice queen recovers her poise quickly, taking in the scene of the two of them, Erik and Charles standing so close together, and she turns her head just enough to look at the bed -- because there are so many of them in the Brotherhood, and so few rooms in this safe house, Magneto holds all his official private conversations in his bedroom -- the bed which is all the way over there, and Emma tilts her head nervously toward it, but when she speaks her voice is calm.
"Well," she says. "I never thought I'd see the two of you standing together again." She licks her lips before continuing, "Since one of you can't stand anymore."
The beach.
She left him lying there.
Wounded and in pain.
Her hands are already hot when she leaps across the coffee table and is reaching for Emma's throat. There's a throbbing in her head, but in her months with the Brotherhood she has learned what to do -- as long as she shifts, however slightly, Emma can't get a hold on her thoughts, can't twist them in her mind and stab her with them. The skin of her throat is as soft as Raven imagined it would be, and then Emma's elbows are suddenly driving down into her arms, breaking her grip, and strong arms wrap around her waist and toss her aside.
She is flung onto the bed, and before she can keep her momentum and spring off the bed, Erik is on top of her, holding her down, shouting gibberish.
"It's a remarkable likeness, really," Emma's voice comes across, cold and clear. Raven is still staring at Erik, and it is just beginning to dawn on her that she has somehow managed to maintain Charles' outward form, even while the shock of Emma's words is still coursing through her. The gibberish resolves itself into German, a steady flow of nonsense words. "It even fooled me," Emma continues. "Except, of course, for the walking part. But I can't imagine someone like you wanting to fuck a cripple, even if you used to love him."
The German stops. Magneto closes his eyes, and for a moment, Raven wonders if it's truly possible for a person to die of mortification. The next moment, she wonders how she could possibly have missed it, the ease with which they worked together, the casual touches, the way they looked at each other. Was it possible that she might die of mortification, for having been so incredibly blind, and walking right into this trap, unaware as a babe in the woods?
Magneto's weight is lighter on her; he moves off the bed in a swift motion, clean and precise. Raven rolls to her side and watches as Magneto and Emma face off across the splintered remains of the coffee table. (Raven imagines Magneto charging right through it to pull her off Emma. Or perhaps he tore it apart by its nails in his hurry to get to her.)
"Mystique." Magneto says, never turning to look at her. "We'll discuss the mission later."
She gets off the bed, clumsily, still in tweed and a rumpled cardigan, still looking like Charles. Her heart hurts, and the realization makes the rest of her burn with fury. "Emma," she says, glaring at the blonde with the red marks on her throat. She doesn't have the faintest idea what to say next, but the fury says it for her. "You owe me for not ripping your throat out."
No sound comes of it when Emma mouths "Yes." Raven nods once, quick and sharp, the way Charles nods when he's sure he's made his point, and she walks out the door and down the hall.
She falls back into herself a few steps later, but manages to keep it together until she gets to her own room. Then she shifts her vocal cords too thin and short to emit sounds anything but a dog could hear, and she screams until she sobs, then cries until her pillow is soaked.
* * * * * * * * *
Emma
Emma Frost is on the bed in her crystal form, her wrists tied to the headboard and her lips pursed in a scowl that quickly turns into a pout.
"I told you before, there's nothing you can get from me when I'm like this, sugar," she says, but even though she tries to keep her tone light, there's a strong hint of desire, an invitation to try.
"And I've already been in your head, love. I was thinking of trying something different." Raven knows the cadences of her brother's speech, perhaps most especially when he's laying it on thick for the pretty birds in the bar, and she's surprised to find that it's just plain fun.
"I don't like being in debt," Emma had said, the next morning after Raven had cried herself asleep, after Magneto had gone over the mission with her while they drank coffee in his room, holding the mugs and ignoring the empty space where the table had been. Everything seemed different by light of day. Charles was in a wheelchair, but there was some hope of recovery. Charles and Erik had been lovers. Erik was a fag. Charles was… Raven didn't know what that made Charles, but she suspected that it was something they'd both always known. The outward form doesn't matter, it's the person inside that counts. Raven left him behind. And now Raven would make it up to him, secretly paying off the debt she owed him. Raven was… Raven didn't know what she was.
"I know what you are," Emma says, tilting her chest to lift her breasts up even as she releases her crystal form. It's as though the simple motion has breathed life into a statue, made it supple and soft. It's a distraction and it works; part of Raven wonders why it works, and the other part is thrilled that Emma is working so hard for her attention. Even if, in a way, it's really Charles' attention she's working so hard for. After a certain point, it doesn't matter.
"Of course you do," Raven/Charles says, reaching out to follow a long strand of pale golden hair from the crown of her head to her collar bone, to where it has curled in a soft pool in the cleft between her breasts. "You're like me, after all."
Emma had said "Magneto almost killed me once. He choked me, when I was crystalline," and her fingers brushed across her throat, where Raven's fingers had left shallow bruises. "Charles stopped him. I thought it was for me, but it wasn't. It was because Charles didn't want Erik to live with the memory of killing me. Neither of them cared." Her eyes shimmered, and Raven swallowed drily, wondering if Emma was really going to cry about it, or if this were just another act. "And last night, Magneto saved me, from you. You made him care about me. So I owe you for that."
"And you want to pay off your debt to me by sleeping with me?" Raven's mind was racing, trying to figure out the trick. "But you're not really attracted to women, so you want me to be a man, and the only man I'm really good at playing is Charles, so…" there it was, the predatory glimmer in the eye that Raven always associated with Emma. "Oh. I get to sleep with you, and you get to seduce Charles Xavier."
"You see?" Emma placed a hand on her hip and tossed her hair back. "We both get what we want. I'll teach you how to please a woman and I'll show you how to seduce a man even while tied to his bed."
Her lips are parted, asking to be kissed, so Raven/Charles leans in and kisses her, what the hell? And it's a good kiss that turns into a great kiss, and Raven/Charles gets a hard-on while leaning over the half-naked Emma Frost, and Emma moves against her/him, moaning into her/his mouth as they break the kiss. Raven shifts a little more, and thinks to herself that if this pretense can work so well for Emma, then maybe -- just maybe -- it will work for Erik. She just needs a little practice.
~ fin ~