The Bell's Toll (6/?)
Title: The Bell's Toll (6/?)
Author: monstrousreg
Word count:
Warnings: Violence, fast pacing, eventual NC-17. So, uh, the usual for me, I suppose.
Pairing: Erik/Charles.
Summary: Nikkita AU inspired by this prompt. A sort of fusion between the two series, with a healthy (or not) dose of my own imagination. Charles Xavier goes to prison, and is recruited by a spy/assassin division of the government. Dismal a beginning as this might look, it unbelievably goes downhill. Erik, the necessary stoic ex-military man, gets sidled with him. Not a single person is amused.
Notes: Well, I'm back in Argentina! I survived Panama and Peru, and while they are both absolutely beautiful, I have to say I missed home. I've been delaying this update because I wanted to have some chapters written beforehand; that way I won't take so long between updates again, you have my word. My idea is to finish this story before the end of March, because I signed up for the Reverse Big-Bang. Figured it was time I participated in a fandom-wide activity :) Though to be honest I'm a little intimidated by the other authors.
Prologue
“Erik tells me you’ve not been taking kindly to your accommodations,” Frost said politely as she sat, crossing her impressively long legs and looking like a queen. Charles, who’d met actual queens and their offspring, was not impressed.
“The room is tolerable,” he said flatly. “It’s the situation I don’t take kindly to. But I’m sure Erik has already told you that we came to an agreement.”
“Ah, yes,” Frost looked at her perfectly manicured nails. It was a poorly conceived attempt at indifference. “But I already told him that little bargain of his is not exactly acceptable.”
Charles sat back slowly on his chair, crossing his legs and lacing his fingers. This was a different kind of game than the one he played with Lehnsherr, a game requiring less honesty and more shrewdness. Charles had a face for every person, and he slid into his personas as easily as water in a glass.
The truth about who Charles Xavier was, at the core of it all, beneath hundreds of layers of deception and shields and illusions, was a mystery to everyone but Charles himself, and a few men now dead and buried. It was easier to slip into the prescribed attitudes of the stereotypes; the professor, the rich-boy, the playboy, the telepath, the Englishman.
Funnily enough, those who Charles cared for the least got to see him at his most genuine; one such example was Erik Lehnsherr. It was easy to be himself when he didn’t care what anyone thought.
“I see,” he said, polite and distant, playing ice with ice. “You object, then, to my departure.”
“Well, you understand. We invested rather a lot of time and effort into getting you here, honey. It won’t do to have it all go to waste.”
“I didn’t ask for you help in the first place,” Charles pointed out. “Which means that, regardless of the current situation, any expenditure of time, effort or, doubtlessly, great amounts of money, in getting my person out of prison are your problem and your problem alone. I don’t owe you a debt for a favor I didn’t ask.”
Frost tilted her head.
“I don’t think you quite understand, Xavier.”
“Oh, as it happens, I understand perfectly well,” Charles replied, flawlessly well-bred. “It is simply I disagree with your notions of gratitude.”
“Not only gratitude, sweetie. You’re out of prison, but you didn’t serve your sentence, remember?” Frost smiled, and Charles felt a chill. “We got you out for a purpose, and you’re going to serve that purpose for as long as we want you to. Because we own you, honey. We own you as well as if we’d bought you like the pathetic little waste of society you are. So why don’t you just give up on your little pretense of freedom, and play along, okay?”
There was a long moment of silence. Frost continued to smile. In the depths of the abyss inside, under wraps and tightly held back, Baskerville flamed black as night.
“I see,” Charles said quietly, expressionless. “So in your view it is my duty to serve out my sentence at your orders.”
“Seems only fair, doesn’t it, sugar?”
“If you would dispense with the endearments, please,” Charles requested, civil to a fault.
Frost smiled the smile of someone who’s getting what they want. “Sure, Charles. Can I call you Charles? Such a lovely name. Xavier is such a good strong last-name too, isn’t it? Too bad you sullied it by killing that little rat, Marko. But alas-good blood doesn’t always breed true.”
Charles smiled blandly, “As you say.”
The woman regarded him for a moment. “What mark were you on the psi-scale again, Charles?”
“A three,” Charles replied flatly.
Frost clicked her tongue, “I suspect you might have… curbed that a little. Did you, Charles?”
“Erik talks a lot, does he?” Charles smiled gently.
The woman laughed lightly, “Not at all. He never talks to me unless I force him. But he is obligated to keep a record of your progress, and I do have access to those.”
Ice on metal, thought Charles, staring back at her calmly. And chronic headaches.
“He doesn’t like you much, hm? He is rather contrary.”
Frost smiled, “I hope you’re not thinking you can make an asset out of Erik, dear. He’s a murderer, you know. Not to mention a soldier; he follows orders, and he follows our orders.”
“I’m not going to start a war with you over some bloke,” Charles said, completely honest. “If you want him, go ahead and keep him. But for the record, he’s quite his own man.”
“Non-telepaths are never their own,” Frost smiled, gliding elegantly to her feet.
That, thought Charles as the woman slipped out of the room. Was a singularly blithe admittance of manipulation. I wonder what would happen if I told dearest Erik what’s she’s done to his mind.
More interestingly, though, Frost had no alluded to what Charles had done to Erik’s mind. It wasn’t anything as crass and obvious as manipulation, of course; he’d just chipped the shield, allowed for a crack. Something that might allow for the unnatural ice to star draining away, gradually releasing the man’s mind.
The mind was an exceptionally resilient thing; it would always inevitably attempt to return to its original correct form. Erik’s mind was malformed; and now Charles knew precisely why. He’d been maimed, somehow. He wondered what he would find if he penetrated deep beyond the shields, into the raw energy of the man’s mind.
Not everyone merited a telepath of worth bending them out of shape, after all.
Normally, Charles would only spare Erik’s inexplicably manipulated mind a stray thought, because someone else’s mind was really just none of his business. Unfortunately, Emma Frost had seriously pissed Charles off, and a pissed off Charles Xavier was just bad news all around. She had made it quite clear he was to keep his hands off the trainer, which, of course, only made Lehnsherr that much more interesting.
In any case, if she really needed him to stay away from the man, why not simply switch his trainer? There were two answers to this question: either she didn’t think Charles had enough skill to break through the shielding in the man’s mind, or she was truly desperate to get Charles well trained in a short amount of time.
Baskerville rematerialized at his side, once more a creature of black fur instead of flames, and settled his big head against Charles’ thigh. He stroked the hound’s forehead with his fingertips, slow and soothing. He reached blindly with his other hand, found the icepack and reapplied it to his nose, rolling his head back to star at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes.
Indebted servitude, he thought uncharitably. I survived my father and stepfather to end up a psychotic’s bitch plaything? I do not think so.
All it took for him to win the game was to understand the rules-once he understood them, he could disregard them, bend them, break them.
This was how, ten minutes later, Lehnsherr found him. His eyes lingered on Charles, taking in the relaxed posture.
“Well,” he said at last, sitting opposite Charles in the chair Frost had vacated. “I wanted our expert to brief us on the advantages of picking the right playfield and using the terrain to your advantage, but he seems to have gone temporarily missing.”
“I can see that the concern is tearing you up.”
Lehnsherr shrugged, “Azazel can take care of himself. Most likely he’s on a mission and he didn’t cancel on me.”
“You can’t teach me this yourself?”
“Not as well as he can,” Lehnsherr admitted. “But well enough, I suppose. In any case, it’s time for lunch.”
“Hm.”
For a compound filled nearly to the brim, Charles had run into a surprisingly small amount of people. This was, of course, not counting the guards. Charles didn’t count them except to make brief mental notes for Baskerville to take them out whenever they needed them to be gone. Just as soon as Charles’ patience run out.
Charles had noticed, though, that what little people and guards (he put them in separate categories) he had run into seemed to respect Lehnsherr in a similar fashion to the respect one holds for a snake. You admire it, and you keep well away from it.
This time, however, the mess hall was noisy and full of-Lehnsherr had called them operatives. The variety of the mutations as was considerable as it was fascinating, and it was gloriously, unflinchingly in display.
Charles loved it.
“You’re staring,” Lehnsherr smirked as they joined the mess line. It all seemed to strangely high-school, at the moment. The tables and the groups and huddles of people and the noise and cheeriness, this didn’t feel like an undercover spying government agency. Then again-Charles noticed a lot of the operatives were actually quite young.
Young and impressionable. Hm.
“Of course I’m staring,” Charles said pensively. Then, to distract Lehnsherr, he added, loftily, “It’s my right to stare, you can’t do anything about it. You’ll never take me alive.”
It was nonsense, and he was only half-aware of what he was saying, but Lehnsherr cracked a wide smile, the first sincere one Charles had seen. It smoothed his features, made his face look less like a conglomerate of blades. Lehnsherr was unexpectedly handsome when he smiled. His blue-green eyes seemed to be made of iridescent crystals.
“You must have been a riot in your lectures,” the man said, nodding cursorily as someone murmured a polite greeting at him.
“No one ever complained.”
“And I suppose if they had, you would have dealt with it expediently?”
Charles gave him a flat look, “No. Unlike some of us, whose name I shall fail to mention, I do indeed care for free will.”
Lehnsherr looked genuinely puzzled. “I didn’t force you into anything, Xavier. You made your choice.”
Charles thought of ice on metal. Baskerville pressed close against his leg, sniffing at Lehnsherr’s left forearm. The man twitched it away, scratching at it absently. No, Charles thought, soothing Baskerville with a stroke of his mind, Frost is not looking through his eyes. I would be able to tell, if she were. She is as tactless as she is unsubtle.
“Why don’t we move onto first names?” Charles asked, blinking. “Your name is really long and cumbersome.”
Erik arched his brows, but once again, played along. Evidently this Tony guy had trained him well in the ways of the intermittently insane.
Lunch was a quiet affair, if only because most of the operatives on site seemed eager to give Erik a wide berth. It wasn’t that the man was a pariah, exactly. Pariahs are despised, treated with contempt. Erik was instead simply given space, as if standing too close to him might result in cuts, like when one passes a thumb over a too-sharp blade.
Charles did become aware, rather puzzlingly, that Erik’s demeanor was noticeably different when he was addressing Charles himself. Since it was obviously too early for Erik to have begun to like Charles, the only explanation was that Erik knew the way to get Charles to cooperate was to get Charles to like him. Spy or not, Erik had a way of seeing what he needed to do to get people to follow him.
It wasn’t natural leadership skills, though; he was a taciturn, distant man with almost everyone, and no one in their sane mind would develop loyalty for someone who didn’t spare them a second glance.
“I imagine you know this,” Charles said conversationally as they sat. “But your precious telepath paid me a visit while you were gone in search of your missing operative.”
Erik’s eyes snapped up, narrowing. No love lost at all, then.
“What did she want?”
Baskerville picked his head up, ear twitching. That couldn’t possibly be protectiveness, could it? Charles wondered, puzzled. It’s too early for him to feel that and I’ve made it clear I hardly need it.
It was probably just hostility towards Frost, then.
“Oh, the usual. Threats, condescension, she insulted me a little, and then she warned me to stay away from you as if I wanted to get you on your back. I hope I’m not getting tangled in some lover’s spat. I hate those. Very tedious.”
“I wouldn’t touch her if mankind was going extinct,” Lehnsherr said, startlingly honest. Baskerville snorted, amused.
“That’s a strong feeling,” Charles pointed out mildly. “One might say she’s quite lovely. Apart from being a heinous bitch. But then, to each its own, no?”
“She’s an unfortunate necessity,” Erik said under his breath, spearing a tomato with undeserved viciousness.
“Telepaths normally arouse those kinds of feelings of distrust on the non-psi-active. She’s the one that shielded your mind, was she not?”
“You’re not like her,” Erik replied, out of the blue. Charles blinked. Baskerville tilted his head, blinking.
“I agree. Not everyone can pull off that bra.”
Erik made an impatient gesture with his hand.
“I mean you don’t waste time hiding yourself.”
“Says who?” Charles asked skeptically. “For all you know I could be plotting your bloody demise as I sit here having lunch with you, quite civilized.”
Actually, for once, Baskerville didn’t seem interested in biting off a chunk of Erik’s mind and having it for a snack. This was interesting.
“Oh, yes,” Erik replied, flat-toned. “I can appreciate how well you’re hiding yourself from me. You’ve been nothing short of polite, charming, delightful and mild-mannered. I’m buying your game, alright.”
“That’s only because I don’t care what you think of me as a person,” the telepath admitted, eyeing Baskerville as the hound stood and padded over to Erik. He sniffed at the man’s throat, where his scent was more pronounced, and then nosed at the scarred temple. Erik reached over and scratched it.
It occurred to Charles that Erik, about as psi-active as your average rock, should not be aware of Baskerville’s quirks.
The hound recoiled.
“I gathered as much when you told me you’re mad,” Erik nodded.
“Actually I recall mentioning I’m technically mentally sane.”
“Only because they couldn’t make anything stick.”
“As a matter of fact they could,” Charles said breezily. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have had the need to bribe and manipulate them, would I?”
“Do you have no moral standards?”
Charles grinned, reckless and wanting for blood. “No. Those are developed in childhood by the grinding yoke of civilized society, and I was too busy being experimented on and abused to pay attention, you understand.”
Now, here was proof of Erik’s temper. His eyes widened, lips pressing into a thin line. But he did not pale, did not flinch, did not recoil.
“Don’t tell me,” Charles continued breezily. “It wasn’t on my file.”
“It said you’d gone through extensive trauma at an early age. But the nature of it was unknown.”
“Of course. The scientists that worked on me didn’t share their project with anyone and when they were both dead I personally made sure to burn everything down.”
“Was it Marko?” Erik asked suspiciously.
Charles exhaled.
“You’re so fixated on that-you think if I tell you what he did to me you’ll be able to figure out whether I killed him or not? It won’t bloody matter either way.”
“Well, if he went about torturing children, no wonder he got himself sliced to bits.”
Charles waved a hand. “Do you think me capable of dismembering someone, Erik?”
Erik gave him a stony look. “I have no idea what you’re capable of.”
Charles grinned. “Well,” he said cheerfully. “Now we understand each other, I believe. Scio me nihil scire or scio me nescire. I only know that I know nothing.”
Erik drew a tired hand down his face. “Plato. Wonderful. Philosophy. Just what I need at lunch.”
“Don’t let it unsettle your stomach,” Charles smiled. “Or else I will know precisely how to torture you.”
“Seems to me you need little help figuring that out. Are you done? I’d like to make sure you won’t shoot yourself in the foot if I ever give you a handgun. Or are you going to tell me you’re a state champion, but it’s not in your file?”
“I could,” Charles said, insolent and untruthful. “Only I’d have trouble proving it to you.”
“Another one of your lies, then.”
“My dear, everything is lies and nothing is true,” Charles said as he rose from the table. “The sooner you accept that, the sooner we’ll be friends.”
“You must have spent a long damned time constructing this persona of yours,” Erik pointed out, sinking his hands into his pockets as they walked companionably side by side.
“Me? Persona? I’m sure I’ve no idea what you are referring to. I am perfectly genuine at all times.”
Erik chose not to take that bait, and Charles could tell his mind hwas going back over what they had talked about before. Erik was still trying to figure out what he was dealing with when it came to Charles; unable to categorize him or put him firmly in one of his thought-lockers, the man was forced to scramble for understanding. His mind was as walled-off as ever, the edges of the tall walls sharp like scalpels, but the fractures Charles had made on the shielding were beginning to show, and he could sense something. Erik was turning something over and over in his thoughts, stubborn and fixed.
Charles sighed, “It was a long time ago, you know.” He said, almost gently. “Scars or no, there’s really nothing you can do about it now. I don’t like, or for that matter require or deserve, your pity.”
The man winced. “Not pity. It’s simply that it’s a wicked thing, to torture a child, especially for the sake of scientific advancement.”
“Hm. Well, it is not as though you can be unfamiliar with the concept; I have seen you shirtless.”
Erik shrugged. Ha glanced down at his left forearm, rubbed his shirt absently over the skin where the serial number had been inked.
It was something that utterly confounded Charles; for Erik was too young to have been a survivor of the Holocaust, and no-one with half a finger of forehead with get such a tattoo willingly.
Could it perhaps be a reminder of his family’s origins? Erik did come from a Polish family, he had said. Possibly one of his grandfathers or great-grandfathers had been in the camps. Yet it seemed to Charles that to get such a tattoo was a hideous thing, rather than a way to honor his family. In any case, Erik did not seem the type for such sentimentalities.
It was strange. It didn’t fit. Especially when that was the only tattoo the man had at all.
Erik was still thinking deeply. There was something itching at the forefront of his mind, something that made Baskerville’s ears prickle up, eyes keen, nose twitching. This something, this little tendril of thought, like the trembling nose of a newborn pup, sought out to connect with Baskerville as if the hound was its parent.
No, Charles said, turning Baskerville away and neglecting the thought. Leave it alone.
Now was not the time to begin to unravel the frankly impressive mess that was Erik Lehnsherr’s mind. It wasn’t as though Charles was currently free of trouble and flooded with free time. Understanding people was not black and white, it required time and effort and dedication, and all of those things were precisely also what Charles needed to get himself out of this pickle.
If it was down to choosing between Erik and freedom, he’d let the man burn a thousand times over, until his bones were nothing but ashy marks on the ground.
Yet-
Yet.
The indisputable fact was he can use this. Lehnsherr was the key to something, Charles didn’t know what, but something, something important. He was at the core of it. Frost was keeping him on a tight leash, sunk deep under the ocean covered in ice.
In Charles’ experience, when someone took such great pains to keep someone under control, it meant that removing the chains that person became the very embodiment of chaos.
And Charles-well, Charles delighted in chaos.
Chapter 7
Author: monstrousreg
Word count:
Warnings: Violence, fast pacing, eventual NC-17. So, uh, the usual for me, I suppose.
Pairing: Erik/Charles.
Summary: Nikkita AU inspired by this prompt. A sort of fusion between the two series, with a healthy (or not) dose of my own imagination. Charles Xavier goes to prison, and is recruited by a spy/assassin division of the government. Dismal a beginning as this might look, it unbelievably goes downhill. Erik, the necessary stoic ex-military man, gets sidled with him. Not a single person is amused.
Notes: Well, I'm back in Argentina! I survived Panama and Peru, and while they are both absolutely beautiful, I have to say I missed home. I've been delaying this update because I wanted to have some chapters written beforehand; that way I won't take so long between updates again, you have my word. My idea is to finish this story before the end of March, because I signed up for the Reverse Big-Bang. Figured it was time I participated in a fandom-wide activity :) Though to be honest I'm a little intimidated by the other authors.
Prologue
“Erik tells me you’ve not been taking kindly to your accommodations,” Frost said politely as she sat, crossing her impressively long legs and looking like a queen. Charles, who’d met actual queens and their offspring, was not impressed.
“The room is tolerable,” he said flatly. “It’s the situation I don’t take kindly to. But I’m sure Erik has already told you that we came to an agreement.”
“Ah, yes,” Frost looked at her perfectly manicured nails. It was a poorly conceived attempt at indifference. “But I already told him that little bargain of his is not exactly acceptable.”
Charles sat back slowly on his chair, crossing his legs and lacing his fingers. This was a different kind of game than the one he played with Lehnsherr, a game requiring less honesty and more shrewdness. Charles had a face for every person, and he slid into his personas as easily as water in a glass.
The truth about who Charles Xavier was, at the core of it all, beneath hundreds of layers of deception and shields and illusions, was a mystery to everyone but Charles himself, and a few men now dead and buried. It was easier to slip into the prescribed attitudes of the stereotypes; the professor, the rich-boy, the playboy, the telepath, the Englishman.
Funnily enough, those who Charles cared for the least got to see him at his most genuine; one such example was Erik Lehnsherr. It was easy to be himself when he didn’t care what anyone thought.
“I see,” he said, polite and distant, playing ice with ice. “You object, then, to my departure.”
“Well, you understand. We invested rather a lot of time and effort into getting you here, honey. It won’t do to have it all go to waste.”
“I didn’t ask for you help in the first place,” Charles pointed out. “Which means that, regardless of the current situation, any expenditure of time, effort or, doubtlessly, great amounts of money, in getting my person out of prison are your problem and your problem alone. I don’t owe you a debt for a favor I didn’t ask.”
Frost tilted her head.
“I don’t think you quite understand, Xavier.”
“Oh, as it happens, I understand perfectly well,” Charles replied, flawlessly well-bred. “It is simply I disagree with your notions of gratitude.”
“Not only gratitude, sweetie. You’re out of prison, but you didn’t serve your sentence, remember?” Frost smiled, and Charles felt a chill. “We got you out for a purpose, and you’re going to serve that purpose for as long as we want you to. Because we own you, honey. We own you as well as if we’d bought you like the pathetic little waste of society you are. So why don’t you just give up on your little pretense of freedom, and play along, okay?”
There was a long moment of silence. Frost continued to smile. In the depths of the abyss inside, under wraps and tightly held back, Baskerville flamed black as night.
“I see,” Charles said quietly, expressionless. “So in your view it is my duty to serve out my sentence at your orders.”
“Seems only fair, doesn’t it, sugar?”
“If you would dispense with the endearments, please,” Charles requested, civil to a fault.
Frost smiled the smile of someone who’s getting what they want. “Sure, Charles. Can I call you Charles? Such a lovely name. Xavier is such a good strong last-name too, isn’t it? Too bad you sullied it by killing that little rat, Marko. But alas-good blood doesn’t always breed true.”
Charles smiled blandly, “As you say.”
The woman regarded him for a moment. “What mark were you on the psi-scale again, Charles?”
“A three,” Charles replied flatly.
Frost clicked her tongue, “I suspect you might have… curbed that a little. Did you, Charles?”
“Erik talks a lot, does he?” Charles smiled gently.
The woman laughed lightly, “Not at all. He never talks to me unless I force him. But he is obligated to keep a record of your progress, and I do have access to those.”
Ice on metal, thought Charles, staring back at her calmly. And chronic headaches.
“He doesn’t like you much, hm? He is rather contrary.”
Frost smiled, “I hope you’re not thinking you can make an asset out of Erik, dear. He’s a murderer, you know. Not to mention a soldier; he follows orders, and he follows our orders.”
“I’m not going to start a war with you over some bloke,” Charles said, completely honest. “If you want him, go ahead and keep him. But for the record, he’s quite his own man.”
“Non-telepaths are never their own,” Frost smiled, gliding elegantly to her feet.
That, thought Charles as the woman slipped out of the room. Was a singularly blithe admittance of manipulation. I wonder what would happen if I told dearest Erik what’s she’s done to his mind.
More interestingly, though, Frost had no alluded to what Charles had done to Erik’s mind. It wasn’t anything as crass and obvious as manipulation, of course; he’d just chipped the shield, allowed for a crack. Something that might allow for the unnatural ice to star draining away, gradually releasing the man’s mind.
The mind was an exceptionally resilient thing; it would always inevitably attempt to return to its original correct form. Erik’s mind was malformed; and now Charles knew precisely why. He’d been maimed, somehow. He wondered what he would find if he penetrated deep beyond the shields, into the raw energy of the man’s mind.
Not everyone merited a telepath of worth bending them out of shape, after all.
Normally, Charles would only spare Erik’s inexplicably manipulated mind a stray thought, because someone else’s mind was really just none of his business. Unfortunately, Emma Frost had seriously pissed Charles off, and a pissed off Charles Xavier was just bad news all around. She had made it quite clear he was to keep his hands off the trainer, which, of course, only made Lehnsherr that much more interesting.
In any case, if she really needed him to stay away from the man, why not simply switch his trainer? There were two answers to this question: either she didn’t think Charles had enough skill to break through the shielding in the man’s mind, or she was truly desperate to get Charles well trained in a short amount of time.
Baskerville rematerialized at his side, once more a creature of black fur instead of flames, and settled his big head against Charles’ thigh. He stroked the hound’s forehead with his fingertips, slow and soothing. He reached blindly with his other hand, found the icepack and reapplied it to his nose, rolling his head back to star at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes.
Indebted servitude, he thought uncharitably. I survived my father and stepfather to end up a psychotic’s bitch plaything? I do not think so.
All it took for him to win the game was to understand the rules-once he understood them, he could disregard them, bend them, break them.
This was how, ten minutes later, Lehnsherr found him. His eyes lingered on Charles, taking in the relaxed posture.
“Well,” he said at last, sitting opposite Charles in the chair Frost had vacated. “I wanted our expert to brief us on the advantages of picking the right playfield and using the terrain to your advantage, but he seems to have gone temporarily missing.”
“I can see that the concern is tearing you up.”
Lehnsherr shrugged, “Azazel can take care of himself. Most likely he’s on a mission and he didn’t cancel on me.”
“You can’t teach me this yourself?”
“Not as well as he can,” Lehnsherr admitted. “But well enough, I suppose. In any case, it’s time for lunch.”
“Hm.”
For a compound filled nearly to the brim, Charles had run into a surprisingly small amount of people. This was, of course, not counting the guards. Charles didn’t count them except to make brief mental notes for Baskerville to take them out whenever they needed them to be gone. Just as soon as Charles’ patience run out.
Charles had noticed, though, that what little people and guards (he put them in separate categories) he had run into seemed to respect Lehnsherr in a similar fashion to the respect one holds for a snake. You admire it, and you keep well away from it.
This time, however, the mess hall was noisy and full of-Lehnsherr had called them operatives. The variety of the mutations as was considerable as it was fascinating, and it was gloriously, unflinchingly in display.
Charles loved it.
“You’re staring,” Lehnsherr smirked as they joined the mess line. It all seemed to strangely high-school, at the moment. The tables and the groups and huddles of people and the noise and cheeriness, this didn’t feel like an undercover spying government agency. Then again-Charles noticed a lot of the operatives were actually quite young.
Young and impressionable. Hm.
“Of course I’m staring,” Charles said pensively. Then, to distract Lehnsherr, he added, loftily, “It’s my right to stare, you can’t do anything about it. You’ll never take me alive.”
It was nonsense, and he was only half-aware of what he was saying, but Lehnsherr cracked a wide smile, the first sincere one Charles had seen. It smoothed his features, made his face look less like a conglomerate of blades. Lehnsherr was unexpectedly handsome when he smiled. His blue-green eyes seemed to be made of iridescent crystals.
“You must have been a riot in your lectures,” the man said, nodding cursorily as someone murmured a polite greeting at him.
“No one ever complained.”
“And I suppose if they had, you would have dealt with it expediently?”
Charles gave him a flat look, “No. Unlike some of us, whose name I shall fail to mention, I do indeed care for free will.”
Lehnsherr looked genuinely puzzled. “I didn’t force you into anything, Xavier. You made your choice.”
Charles thought of ice on metal. Baskerville pressed close against his leg, sniffing at Lehnsherr’s left forearm. The man twitched it away, scratching at it absently. No, Charles thought, soothing Baskerville with a stroke of his mind, Frost is not looking through his eyes. I would be able to tell, if she were. She is as tactless as she is unsubtle.
“Why don’t we move onto first names?” Charles asked, blinking. “Your name is really long and cumbersome.”
Erik arched his brows, but once again, played along. Evidently this Tony guy had trained him well in the ways of the intermittently insane.
Lunch was a quiet affair, if only because most of the operatives on site seemed eager to give Erik a wide berth. It wasn’t that the man was a pariah, exactly. Pariahs are despised, treated with contempt. Erik was instead simply given space, as if standing too close to him might result in cuts, like when one passes a thumb over a too-sharp blade.
Charles did become aware, rather puzzlingly, that Erik’s demeanor was noticeably different when he was addressing Charles himself. Since it was obviously too early for Erik to have begun to like Charles, the only explanation was that Erik knew the way to get Charles to cooperate was to get Charles to like him. Spy or not, Erik had a way of seeing what he needed to do to get people to follow him.
It wasn’t natural leadership skills, though; he was a taciturn, distant man with almost everyone, and no one in their sane mind would develop loyalty for someone who didn’t spare them a second glance.
“I imagine you know this,” Charles said conversationally as they sat. “But your precious telepath paid me a visit while you were gone in search of your missing operative.”
Erik’s eyes snapped up, narrowing. No love lost at all, then.
“What did she want?”
Baskerville picked his head up, ear twitching. That couldn’t possibly be protectiveness, could it? Charles wondered, puzzled. It’s too early for him to feel that and I’ve made it clear I hardly need it.
It was probably just hostility towards Frost, then.
“Oh, the usual. Threats, condescension, she insulted me a little, and then she warned me to stay away from you as if I wanted to get you on your back. I hope I’m not getting tangled in some lover’s spat. I hate those. Very tedious.”
“I wouldn’t touch her if mankind was going extinct,” Lehnsherr said, startlingly honest. Baskerville snorted, amused.
“That’s a strong feeling,” Charles pointed out mildly. “One might say she’s quite lovely. Apart from being a heinous bitch. But then, to each its own, no?”
“She’s an unfortunate necessity,” Erik said under his breath, spearing a tomato with undeserved viciousness.
“Telepaths normally arouse those kinds of feelings of distrust on the non-psi-active. She’s the one that shielded your mind, was she not?”
“You’re not like her,” Erik replied, out of the blue. Charles blinked. Baskerville tilted his head, blinking.
“I agree. Not everyone can pull off that bra.”
Erik made an impatient gesture with his hand.
“I mean you don’t waste time hiding yourself.”
“Says who?” Charles asked skeptically. “For all you know I could be plotting your bloody demise as I sit here having lunch with you, quite civilized.”
Actually, for once, Baskerville didn’t seem interested in biting off a chunk of Erik’s mind and having it for a snack. This was interesting.
“Oh, yes,” Erik replied, flat-toned. “I can appreciate how well you’re hiding yourself from me. You’ve been nothing short of polite, charming, delightful and mild-mannered. I’m buying your game, alright.”
“That’s only because I don’t care what you think of me as a person,” the telepath admitted, eyeing Baskerville as the hound stood and padded over to Erik. He sniffed at the man’s throat, where his scent was more pronounced, and then nosed at the scarred temple. Erik reached over and scratched it.
It occurred to Charles that Erik, about as psi-active as your average rock, should not be aware of Baskerville’s quirks.
The hound recoiled.
“I gathered as much when you told me you’re mad,” Erik nodded.
“Actually I recall mentioning I’m technically mentally sane.”
“Only because they couldn’t make anything stick.”
“As a matter of fact they could,” Charles said breezily. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have had the need to bribe and manipulate them, would I?”
“Do you have no moral standards?”
Charles grinned, reckless and wanting for blood. “No. Those are developed in childhood by the grinding yoke of civilized society, and I was too busy being experimented on and abused to pay attention, you understand.”
Now, here was proof of Erik’s temper. His eyes widened, lips pressing into a thin line. But he did not pale, did not flinch, did not recoil.
“Don’t tell me,” Charles continued breezily. “It wasn’t on my file.”
“It said you’d gone through extensive trauma at an early age. But the nature of it was unknown.”
“Of course. The scientists that worked on me didn’t share their project with anyone and when they were both dead I personally made sure to burn everything down.”
“Was it Marko?” Erik asked suspiciously.
Charles exhaled.
“You’re so fixated on that-you think if I tell you what he did to me you’ll be able to figure out whether I killed him or not? It won’t bloody matter either way.”
“Well, if he went about torturing children, no wonder he got himself sliced to bits.”
Charles waved a hand. “Do you think me capable of dismembering someone, Erik?”
Erik gave him a stony look. “I have no idea what you’re capable of.”
Charles grinned. “Well,” he said cheerfully. “Now we understand each other, I believe. Scio me nihil scire or scio me nescire. I only know that I know nothing.”
Erik drew a tired hand down his face. “Plato. Wonderful. Philosophy. Just what I need at lunch.”
“Don’t let it unsettle your stomach,” Charles smiled. “Or else I will know precisely how to torture you.”
“Seems to me you need little help figuring that out. Are you done? I’d like to make sure you won’t shoot yourself in the foot if I ever give you a handgun. Or are you going to tell me you’re a state champion, but it’s not in your file?”
“I could,” Charles said, insolent and untruthful. “Only I’d have trouble proving it to you.”
“Another one of your lies, then.”
“My dear, everything is lies and nothing is true,” Charles said as he rose from the table. “The sooner you accept that, the sooner we’ll be friends.”
“You must have spent a long damned time constructing this persona of yours,” Erik pointed out, sinking his hands into his pockets as they walked companionably side by side.
“Me? Persona? I’m sure I’ve no idea what you are referring to. I am perfectly genuine at all times.”
Erik chose not to take that bait, and Charles could tell his mind hwas going back over what they had talked about before. Erik was still trying to figure out what he was dealing with when it came to Charles; unable to categorize him or put him firmly in one of his thought-lockers, the man was forced to scramble for understanding. His mind was as walled-off as ever, the edges of the tall walls sharp like scalpels, but the fractures Charles had made on the shielding were beginning to show, and he could sense something. Erik was turning something over and over in his thoughts, stubborn and fixed.
Charles sighed, “It was a long time ago, you know.” He said, almost gently. “Scars or no, there’s really nothing you can do about it now. I don’t like, or for that matter require or deserve, your pity.”
The man winced. “Not pity. It’s simply that it’s a wicked thing, to torture a child, especially for the sake of scientific advancement.”
“Hm. Well, it is not as though you can be unfamiliar with the concept; I have seen you shirtless.”
Erik shrugged. Ha glanced down at his left forearm, rubbed his shirt absently over the skin where the serial number had been inked.
It was something that utterly confounded Charles; for Erik was too young to have been a survivor of the Holocaust, and no-one with half a finger of forehead with get such a tattoo willingly.
Could it perhaps be a reminder of his family’s origins? Erik did come from a Polish family, he had said. Possibly one of his grandfathers or great-grandfathers had been in the camps. Yet it seemed to Charles that to get such a tattoo was a hideous thing, rather than a way to honor his family. In any case, Erik did not seem the type for such sentimentalities.
It was strange. It didn’t fit. Especially when that was the only tattoo the man had at all.
Erik was still thinking deeply. There was something itching at the forefront of his mind, something that made Baskerville’s ears prickle up, eyes keen, nose twitching. This something, this little tendril of thought, like the trembling nose of a newborn pup, sought out to connect with Baskerville as if the hound was its parent.
No, Charles said, turning Baskerville away and neglecting the thought. Leave it alone.
Now was not the time to begin to unravel the frankly impressive mess that was Erik Lehnsherr’s mind. It wasn’t as though Charles was currently free of trouble and flooded with free time. Understanding people was not black and white, it required time and effort and dedication, and all of those things were precisely also what Charles needed to get himself out of this pickle.
If it was down to choosing between Erik and freedom, he’d let the man burn a thousand times over, until his bones were nothing but ashy marks on the ground.
Yet-
Yet.
The indisputable fact was he can use this. Lehnsherr was the key to something, Charles didn’t know what, but something, something important. He was at the core of it. Frost was keeping him on a tight leash, sunk deep under the ocean covered in ice.
In Charles’ experience, when someone took such great pains to keep someone under control, it meant that removing the chains that person became the very embodiment of chaos.
And Charles-well, Charles delighted in chaos.
Chapter 7