Invictus (3/4)
Title: Invictus (3/4)
Author: monstrousreg
Word count: 3500
Warnings: non-con, not described but mentioned. Trauma; depression. Victim-blaming, indifference.
Notes: Based off this prompt. I read this and then I felt like I needed to fill it. Please be advised that there are a lot of possible triggers in this story, as it deals with a victim's state of mind. I want to make it clear that I personally do not think Erik and Raven would actually react this way to this, but have twisted their response in favor of filling the prompt. Unfortunately a lot of victims do go through something of the sort.
This story is fully written, and edited by lovely, wonderful black_betty_26. In this chapter I wanted to show a little of what an assault can do to the friends of the victim, how it tears them apart too.
Title taken from the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley.
Out of the night that covers me
black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul
There was a room in Raven’s apartment that was under lock and key, and no one ever opened.
They hadn’t touched it in years.
At the beginning she had hoped her brother would return, after a while away to get his head on straight, to clear his mind. Charles always strived to be calm and patient, to consider things carefully, to listen.
But a week became a month became a season, became a year. Winter, winter, winter again. Four years passed, and not a word from Charles. The helplessness of the absence piled over her shoulders like so many broken dreams, and played cruel tricks on her.
She heard a British accent and whirled around to find a man she’d never met. She saw blue eyes and double-checked, but they were duller, smaller, a different shade. She heard his laugh and stood from her table to look around in desperation, only to realize too late that the cadence had been different.
The worst was when she accidentally caught his cologne in the air around her, his clean masculine scent. It never came from his room, anymore, but it was a commercial product and other men used it. She could smell it, sometimes, and it felt like a snake curling viciously around her throat and chest, crushing her lungs in.
Those nights she stayed awake, and wondered where he was. Occasionally she sat in bed, holding his phone in her hand; the account had been cancelled, but it was still his phone. She charged it, from time to time, and went over the pictures in the memory card. It always felt like the Charles in her head was bigger, somehow, than the Charles in those pictures.
“It’s his mind,” Erik said quietly when she confessed to that feeling. “His mind couldn’t be caught in the picture, and it was-it is-vast. Bigger than the world.”
“He’s out there,” he said another time, another winter, staring out the window of their living room into the soft white world outside. “I know he’s out there.”
“Yes,” she replied flatly, looking down at the cup of tea in her hands. She didn’t drink it. She didn’t like tea. “Out there, away from us.”
It took two years for them to realize the vastness of the mistake they’d made. In the early half-light of an autumn dawn, Erik startled awake at the sound of his doorbell, and scrambled up and away from his bed, tangled in his sheets, almost running to his door. He’s back, he thought, and stared when he found Sean in the hall, pale and frail-looking, great blue eyes terrified.
“What-“ Erik asked, confused, moving to let Sean in. But the boy shook his head, shaking like a leaf.
“It’s Hank,” he croaked, voice breaking. “Hank is-he needs-please, he needs help.”
He also needed stitches-external and internal.
A whole new system of therapy had to be designed for him; the stress and shock had triggered his mutation, and it had evolved from curiously shaped feet to a whole-body change, similar in several respects to a leonine man. The nurses and staff at the hospital were at a loss, dismayed, scrambling to find antibiotics and painkillers that would aid in his recovery.
The policemen that took the samples-a traumatic enough event on its own, that had Hank curled in on himself like a wretched ball of fur for days, in shame-were jerky with anger and horror whenever they didn’t have to pretend for Hank’s sake.
James Logan made an incomprehensible reappearance, starting the investigation on Sebastian Shaw with a viciousness Raven and Erik had rarely witnessed in a detective. For all his gruff and hostile attitude toward them, Logan was heartbreakingly gentle with Hank, seemingly knowing precisely what he had to do to put the young man at ease. He made himself as small as possible considering his hulking body, spoke softly, moved slowly, sat well away and never moved to touch him.
Alex and Sean had taken nearly permanent residence in the chairs in Hank’s room, torn between giving him the space they thought he might need and staying as close as they could in their own need to give him their support, and reassure themselves that despite his psychological trauma, he was still their friend, and he was safe.
Alex in particular grew hostile and distrustful with the people he didn’t know when Hank was around, displaying protectiveness no one would have given him credit for before. His older brother Scott hovered, uncertain and lost, at the edges of their group, doing whatever he could to mend all of their broken hearts.
Hank seemed to sleep better if Erik was around. He knew Erik to be very powerful, and knew he would protect him. Erik started spending his nights in the room with Sean and Alex, sometimes sleeping, sometimes working, but more often staring, unblinking, at his own hands.
He remembered Charles had stared at his hands that winter morning, pale and wan and speechless.
I asked him to stop, he’d said. I’m hurt.
The room was still locked. Charles’ phone was in Raven’s bed-side table. Charles himself was gone, vanished without a trace, never again to be found.
Erik found himself on a plane to New York, and only realized once he was there that he didn’t have the slightest clue as to where to start looking. New York was immense. There hadn’t been news for two years. Charles could literally anywhere.
He surprised himself by crushing all the cars in a two-mile radius as his power flared out of control with his anger; something that hadn’t happened to him since he’d met Charles over a decade ago. Calm your mind, Erik, he’d said, and smiled that soft sweet Charles-smile.
To return to Boston he rented a car, and consciously had to keep himself from wrecking it into a ball.
Hank was hospitalized for a week; upon his release instead of going to his own apartment he moved in with Sean’s family, a huge pack of red-headed creatures of such good hearts they cleared out a room for him, changed their locks, updated their alarm system. Sean’s father, a tall gangling individual of mismatched blue and green eyes, volunteered himself to drive Hank everywhere and anywhere so he wouldn’t have to use the public transportation.
For a while, until Hank could sleep on his own again, Erik slept in the couch in their living room, half-alert at all times as though he’d been hurt himself.
Sometimes he found himself standing outside Charles’ room in Raven’s apartment, to which he had a key, and couldn’t understand how even across the distance Charles couldn’t feel his distress, his guilt. Distance meant nothing to Charles’ power, to the most powerful telepath to be recorded for decades, to the mutant for which the psi-scale had to be redesigned.
I’m sorry, he’d find himself thinking at night, staring at the wood grain of the closed door. We were wrong. Come back. Please come back.
He never got a reply. In a fit of anger once, exhausted and fatigued and hurt, he unlocked the door and stormed into the room, searching for clues, for anything that might tell him where he could look for his friend. The police had left the room in perfect order when they had left two years previous, as if they hadn’t been there at all and the last one to enter had been Charles himself. His books were on his desk, his laptop open with a pencil lying forgotten on the keyboard. His notebook was open over the bed-side table, notes covering the pages in Charles chicken-scratch scrawl, as if the ideas rained upon him too fast for him to write them down.
Once he was inside his anger left him drained and tired. Helpless, he sat at the edge of the bed and stared at the notebook, and the half-closed drawer. Noticing something inside the drawer, he frowned and pulled it open. It was a medication bottle; he recognized the brand: psi-suppressants. Telepathy-control medication.
Charles had been sick as a dog when he’d tried them half a decade ago, barely capable of getting up from his bed, half-delirious and feverish for days until Erik had put his foot down and taken the drugs away, banning further experimentation.
He took the bottle with him, and locked the room back behind himself. The bottle he kept, as a reminder, in his own beside table drawer.
The seasons followed one another, time passing uninterrupted. Hank healed, against all expectations, and began to smile and laugh again. Erik watched his progress with a hawk’s eye, noticing the small things that would never go away; the flinches, the starts, the recoils. The way he sought out his friends when he was in an unfamiliar place, how he’d rarely leave their side alone. The way Sean’s family, attentive and careful, would make sure that Hank wasn’t touched by anyone he didn’t know.
It didn’t take long for him to remember what Charles had looked like, right before he disappeared. Thin and pale and withdrawn, eyes dull, shoulders hunched as if he could make himself disappear. How could he not have noticed? How had Raven missed how traumatized he was?
Why hadn’t he listened?
It happened on a Saturday morning, four years after Charles had left. Erik was in Raven’s kitchen, preparing coffee, when suddenly she cried out for him, voice strangled. Erik scrambled out of the kitchen, alarmed and ready for a fight, only to find her standing in the middle of the living room, staring at the television.
Confused, he got to her side and directed his attention to the news-update he’d only been half-listening to. Something about the Avengers once again saving New York from Victor von Doom, and all the property damage therein incurred, as per usual, and Tony Stark explaining that SHIELD would see to it everyone was compensated and hey, at least New York was still standing. Well, portions of it.
And then he saw him.
Behind Tony Stark, to the side, not on the platform but right at its edge, dressed in a black suit, with his short brown hair neatly combed back. He was staring down at a Stark data-pad in his hands, fiddling with the touch-screen, frowning and not looking at the camera, but his face-it was impossible to mistake him. Pepper Potts was paying attention to him, thoroughly engrossed in his words and his data-pad.
Erik stared at him, speechless, watched him lift his face to look up and catch Captain America’s attention with a quiet word, watched as the Avenger turned to him immediately, solicitous, and heard Charles’ words with undivided attention. Captain America frowned as well, a little more severely than Charles, and looked at the data Charles was showing in the pad, though he seemed to struggle a little to follow the information. Finally he understood, and frowning more decisively now he turned and beckoned at someone else.
It was clear he was trying to get Thor’s attention, but the God of Thunder was otherwise engaged in staring at the overcast sky, doubtlessly knowing a storm was coming. Black Widow was forced to slap his arm to get him to look at Captain America, and even then the Cap had to make a gesture for him to move closer, and show him the pad in Charles’ hands-always careful, Erik realized abruptly, never to touch Charles himself.
Thor did his level best to pay attention, but he looked puzzled and curious until Charles put down the pad and explained earnestly and more carefully. Only then did Thor frown and nod, and with a word followed Charles out of sight-rather like a huge hulking shield, making sure Charles had passage without brushing up against anyone and keeping a protective arm around his slight frame without actually coming in contact. And then they were gone.
“Oh my God,” Raven collapsed back into the couch. Tony Stark was still talking. Captain America and Black Widow had their heads bent together, quietly speaking, and Hawkeye looked completely uninterested in everything.
“Oh my God,” Raven repeated, eyes wide. “Of course. Tony. Charles and Tony met in college years ago. I didn’t-they didn’t speak anymore when Charles… I didn’t think he’d go to him, but of course.”
Yes. Of course. Tony Stark was one of the most powerful men alive; if anyone could make Charles feel safe, it had to be Tony Stark. Especially if the Avengers were already in the equation back then, a covert operation not yet public knowledge. It was clear enough that Captain America knew how to treat Charles, as did Thor; they had to be used to it.
Charles had been gone four years. But four years ago, Tony Stark had most certainly not been the ideal person for a victim of abuse to go to; Stark had been a playboy himself, openly promiscuous and very gregarious, moving fluidly through social circles, at parties nearly every night. How could Charles have gone to someone like that for protection?
“We have to talk to him,” Raven whispered.
They tried. Of course, getting across to Tony Stark was a titanic endeavor in itself, and being denied access to him was the most natural and expectable response. But that didn’t wipe their dismay at the many roadblocks. They tried to communicate with higher ranking people in Stark Industries, even going so far as to use Lehnsherr Engineering as a cover to get inside their many shields, but they were baffled to find their offers politely but firmly declined.
Eventually they were obliged to resort to Moira once again, and through her contacts, managed to acquire the personal cell-phone number of one Pepper Potts, Tony Stark’s personal assistant and acting-CEO of Stark Industries.
Thinking he’d finally managed to get through, Erik immediately called her, only to be thoroughly disappointed once again.
“I don’t know any Charles Xavier,” Potts said, politely dismissive. “I think you’re confused, Mr. Lehnsherr. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no such employee in Stark Industries.”
Erik thought it unlikely that Potts remembered the names of every single Stark employee, enough to distinguish whether a single man worked in the vast company or not, and said so, rather forcefully.
“But you insist Mr. Xavier was with us at the press conference,” Potts said reasonably, her tone of voice calm and cool. “That I would remember.”
“He was there,” Erik ground out, gritting his teeth. “I saw him, he was talking directly to you, Ms. Potts. You know him; short, brown hair, blue eyes, British accent. You were talking to him.”
“I’m sorry you’re confused,” Potts said, sounding genuinely regretful. Oh, she was good. “I hope you find your friend. Good luck, Mr. Lehnsherr. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have duties to take care of.”
She hung up, and never picked up again.
Erik and Raven were baffled and dismayed to find all other avenues of contact blocked to them henceforth, as if they had been deliberately blacklisted-and so they suspected they indeed had.
Doggedly bent on finding Charles and talking to him, getting him back, Raven uprooted herself and moved to New York, Erik following closely behind. Once there they began to hound Stark Industries physically, knowing if Stark showed up he’d not bother denying them like Potts had; if anything, Stark would most likely mock them and have them arrested, but if he did, Charles would most definitely hear about it.
Unless they were shielding him from them, keeping him safe as much as turning them away. Erik couldn’t help but remember the protective way Thor had moved around Charles, opening a way for him with a pointed glance of his blue eyes and a motion of his huge hands; the way Captain America had looked attentively over his shoulder as Charles moved away, making sure there was no problem.
Erik knew he recognized the behavior from the way the Cassidy family acted around Hank.
But that plan didn’t prove useful either; they did come upon Tony Stark, but he was on his own, and his bodyguards kept them away, much too far away to cause any real incident and get any sort of press attention. Stark even had the gall to look at them, stare directly at them, and turn away without so much as a word, dismissive.
“We can’t break into the Avenger Tower,” Erik said one morning, staring furiously out the window of their small flat. “But Stark’s private house-we can do that. He has to have some information there; maybe Charles is even staying with him, or works there.”
The security protocols at the private Stark residence had to be nothing less than impressive, but they were running out of options and patience. Stark and the Avengers had made some other public appearances, but Charles had been nowhere in sight. Erik and Raven were certain they were keeping him behind closed doors, well out of their access. In fact, Erik was certain that in their last conference as a group, Black Widow and Hawkeye had been keeping an alert eye out in the audience, as if looking for someone in particular, for a distinctive face.
If that was how the Avengers wanted to play it-well then, that was how they would play it as well.
In the end they chose Black Widow; Raven didn’t feel confident in impersonating boy-scout Captain America, Thor or Bruce Banner, and it seemed impossible to either of them for her to try to copy the intermittent insanity of Tony Stark or Hawkeye, one completely unpredictable and the other half around the bend on madness.
So Black Widow it was. Erik would make a diversion, and Raven would slip into the house while the Avengers were preoccupied with Erik, trying to figure out why some anonymous mutant would want to mess with them. Erik had little doubt as to the fact that he’d be quickly taken down, so time was of the essence. Raven had to get in, get the info and get out. So long as Raven at least managed to contact Charles, then it would be worth it and besides, once Raven and Charles talked things out, Charles would probably talk Tony into setting Erik free.
“Sounds like a plan,” Raven said firmly, at last.
“Yes,” Erik answered grimly. “So let’s put it in motion.”
The plan was a good enough one, if overly simple. What they unfortunately didn’t count on was that the Avengers weren’t actually in the Avenger Tower at all times.
As they had imagined Erik was stopped, almost immediately, by Captain America and Hawkeye-he tried to stop the last one’s arrows, but the archer grinned at his face and said:
“Carbon fiber, dipshit.”
What they hadn’t imagined was that Raven would run up against Thor, Hulk and the real Black Widow in Tony’s house, and that she’d be caught in less than five minutes by a slightly amused but mostly irritated Russian woman.
“Tony Stark had the right of it,” Thor said, disapproving, as he eyed Raven down.
“He’s my brother!” Raven growled, struggling against the zip ties that bound her wrists. “You can’t keep me away from him!”
“Of course we can,” Black Widow said, blinking at her. “Look at how easy it was.”
“I want to see him!”
“Who is her brother?” Thor asked, bewildered.
“It doesn’t matter,” Widow said. “Clearly he doesn’t want to see her, or Tony wouldn’t have gone out of his way to avoid it.”
“But if she is their blood,” Thor said doubtfully. “Surely she has a right, does she not?”
“Yes!” Raven growled.
“No,” a voice crackled from the house’s speakers. “No she doesn’t, screw that shit. Thor, please don’t go around giving familial advice, we all know what you’re like with your brother.”
Thor had the sense to look abashed.
“What do we do with her, Iron Man?” Widow flipped a long curl of auburn hair away from her face.
“Cap’s got her minion pinned,” Stark said through the speakers. “You know what, to hell with polite indifference, not my style. Haul her over to the Tower. Raven, you wanna talk, we’ll talk.”
The speakers were silent, and Widow bent over to drag Raven up to her feet by the arm. For a moment there was a bit of silence, and then suddenly, as if he’d reconsidered, Tony came back.
“Oh hey Thor, buddy, you know how Charles has these deep trust issues and low self-esteem problems? You wanted to know the cause for that, right? You’re looking at her.”
The God of Thunder’s eyes snapped to her, startling cornflower-blue, intense and burning with sudden anger. His jaw worked, and his shoulders grew stiff and tense. He shifted his grip in the shaft of Mjolnir, knuckles growing white and bloodless.
“I see,” he said ominously.
Chapter 4
Author: monstrousreg
Word count: 3500
Warnings: non-con, not described but mentioned. Trauma; depression. Victim-blaming, indifference.
Notes: Based off this prompt. I read this and then I felt like I needed to fill it. Please be advised that there are a lot of possible triggers in this story, as it deals with a victim's state of mind. I want to make it clear that I personally do not think Erik and Raven would actually react this way to this, but have twisted their response in favor of filling the prompt. Unfortunately a lot of victims do go through something of the sort.
This story is fully written, and edited by lovely, wonderful black_betty_26. In this chapter I wanted to show a little of what an assault can do to the friends of the victim, how it tears them apart too.
Title taken from the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley.
Out of the night that covers me
black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul
There was a room in Raven’s apartment that was under lock and key, and no one ever opened.
They hadn’t touched it in years.
At the beginning she had hoped her brother would return, after a while away to get his head on straight, to clear his mind. Charles always strived to be calm and patient, to consider things carefully, to listen.
But a week became a month became a season, became a year. Winter, winter, winter again. Four years passed, and not a word from Charles. The helplessness of the absence piled over her shoulders like so many broken dreams, and played cruel tricks on her.
She heard a British accent and whirled around to find a man she’d never met. She saw blue eyes and double-checked, but they were duller, smaller, a different shade. She heard his laugh and stood from her table to look around in desperation, only to realize too late that the cadence had been different.
The worst was when she accidentally caught his cologne in the air around her, his clean masculine scent. It never came from his room, anymore, but it was a commercial product and other men used it. She could smell it, sometimes, and it felt like a snake curling viciously around her throat and chest, crushing her lungs in.
Those nights she stayed awake, and wondered where he was. Occasionally she sat in bed, holding his phone in her hand; the account had been cancelled, but it was still his phone. She charged it, from time to time, and went over the pictures in the memory card. It always felt like the Charles in her head was bigger, somehow, than the Charles in those pictures.
“It’s his mind,” Erik said quietly when she confessed to that feeling. “His mind couldn’t be caught in the picture, and it was-it is-vast. Bigger than the world.”
“He’s out there,” he said another time, another winter, staring out the window of their living room into the soft white world outside. “I know he’s out there.”
“Yes,” she replied flatly, looking down at the cup of tea in her hands. She didn’t drink it. She didn’t like tea. “Out there, away from us.”
It took two years for them to realize the vastness of the mistake they’d made. In the early half-light of an autumn dawn, Erik startled awake at the sound of his doorbell, and scrambled up and away from his bed, tangled in his sheets, almost running to his door. He’s back, he thought, and stared when he found Sean in the hall, pale and frail-looking, great blue eyes terrified.
“What-“ Erik asked, confused, moving to let Sean in. But the boy shook his head, shaking like a leaf.
“It’s Hank,” he croaked, voice breaking. “Hank is-he needs-please, he needs help.”
He also needed stitches-external and internal.
A whole new system of therapy had to be designed for him; the stress and shock had triggered his mutation, and it had evolved from curiously shaped feet to a whole-body change, similar in several respects to a leonine man. The nurses and staff at the hospital were at a loss, dismayed, scrambling to find antibiotics and painkillers that would aid in his recovery.
The policemen that took the samples-a traumatic enough event on its own, that had Hank curled in on himself like a wretched ball of fur for days, in shame-were jerky with anger and horror whenever they didn’t have to pretend for Hank’s sake.
James Logan made an incomprehensible reappearance, starting the investigation on Sebastian Shaw with a viciousness Raven and Erik had rarely witnessed in a detective. For all his gruff and hostile attitude toward them, Logan was heartbreakingly gentle with Hank, seemingly knowing precisely what he had to do to put the young man at ease. He made himself as small as possible considering his hulking body, spoke softly, moved slowly, sat well away and never moved to touch him.
Alex and Sean had taken nearly permanent residence in the chairs in Hank’s room, torn between giving him the space they thought he might need and staying as close as they could in their own need to give him their support, and reassure themselves that despite his psychological trauma, he was still their friend, and he was safe.
Alex in particular grew hostile and distrustful with the people he didn’t know when Hank was around, displaying protectiveness no one would have given him credit for before. His older brother Scott hovered, uncertain and lost, at the edges of their group, doing whatever he could to mend all of their broken hearts.
Hank seemed to sleep better if Erik was around. He knew Erik to be very powerful, and knew he would protect him. Erik started spending his nights in the room with Sean and Alex, sometimes sleeping, sometimes working, but more often staring, unblinking, at his own hands.
He remembered Charles had stared at his hands that winter morning, pale and wan and speechless.
I asked him to stop, he’d said. I’m hurt.
The room was still locked. Charles’ phone was in Raven’s bed-side table. Charles himself was gone, vanished without a trace, never again to be found.
Erik found himself on a plane to New York, and only realized once he was there that he didn’t have the slightest clue as to where to start looking. New York was immense. There hadn’t been news for two years. Charles could literally anywhere.
He surprised himself by crushing all the cars in a two-mile radius as his power flared out of control with his anger; something that hadn’t happened to him since he’d met Charles over a decade ago. Calm your mind, Erik, he’d said, and smiled that soft sweet Charles-smile.
To return to Boston he rented a car, and consciously had to keep himself from wrecking it into a ball.
Hank was hospitalized for a week; upon his release instead of going to his own apartment he moved in with Sean’s family, a huge pack of red-headed creatures of such good hearts they cleared out a room for him, changed their locks, updated their alarm system. Sean’s father, a tall gangling individual of mismatched blue and green eyes, volunteered himself to drive Hank everywhere and anywhere so he wouldn’t have to use the public transportation.
For a while, until Hank could sleep on his own again, Erik slept in the couch in their living room, half-alert at all times as though he’d been hurt himself.
Sometimes he found himself standing outside Charles’ room in Raven’s apartment, to which he had a key, and couldn’t understand how even across the distance Charles couldn’t feel his distress, his guilt. Distance meant nothing to Charles’ power, to the most powerful telepath to be recorded for decades, to the mutant for which the psi-scale had to be redesigned.
I’m sorry, he’d find himself thinking at night, staring at the wood grain of the closed door. We were wrong. Come back. Please come back.
He never got a reply. In a fit of anger once, exhausted and fatigued and hurt, he unlocked the door and stormed into the room, searching for clues, for anything that might tell him where he could look for his friend. The police had left the room in perfect order when they had left two years previous, as if they hadn’t been there at all and the last one to enter had been Charles himself. His books were on his desk, his laptop open with a pencil lying forgotten on the keyboard. His notebook was open over the bed-side table, notes covering the pages in Charles chicken-scratch scrawl, as if the ideas rained upon him too fast for him to write them down.
Once he was inside his anger left him drained and tired. Helpless, he sat at the edge of the bed and stared at the notebook, and the half-closed drawer. Noticing something inside the drawer, he frowned and pulled it open. It was a medication bottle; he recognized the brand: psi-suppressants. Telepathy-control medication.
Charles had been sick as a dog when he’d tried them half a decade ago, barely capable of getting up from his bed, half-delirious and feverish for days until Erik had put his foot down and taken the drugs away, banning further experimentation.
He took the bottle with him, and locked the room back behind himself. The bottle he kept, as a reminder, in his own beside table drawer.
The seasons followed one another, time passing uninterrupted. Hank healed, against all expectations, and began to smile and laugh again. Erik watched his progress with a hawk’s eye, noticing the small things that would never go away; the flinches, the starts, the recoils. The way he sought out his friends when he was in an unfamiliar place, how he’d rarely leave their side alone. The way Sean’s family, attentive and careful, would make sure that Hank wasn’t touched by anyone he didn’t know.
It didn’t take long for him to remember what Charles had looked like, right before he disappeared. Thin and pale and withdrawn, eyes dull, shoulders hunched as if he could make himself disappear. How could he not have noticed? How had Raven missed how traumatized he was?
Why hadn’t he listened?
It happened on a Saturday morning, four years after Charles had left. Erik was in Raven’s kitchen, preparing coffee, when suddenly she cried out for him, voice strangled. Erik scrambled out of the kitchen, alarmed and ready for a fight, only to find her standing in the middle of the living room, staring at the television.
Confused, he got to her side and directed his attention to the news-update he’d only been half-listening to. Something about the Avengers once again saving New York from Victor von Doom, and all the property damage therein incurred, as per usual, and Tony Stark explaining that SHIELD would see to it everyone was compensated and hey, at least New York was still standing. Well, portions of it.
And then he saw him.
Behind Tony Stark, to the side, not on the platform but right at its edge, dressed in a black suit, with his short brown hair neatly combed back. He was staring down at a Stark data-pad in his hands, fiddling with the touch-screen, frowning and not looking at the camera, but his face-it was impossible to mistake him. Pepper Potts was paying attention to him, thoroughly engrossed in his words and his data-pad.
Erik stared at him, speechless, watched him lift his face to look up and catch Captain America’s attention with a quiet word, watched as the Avenger turned to him immediately, solicitous, and heard Charles’ words with undivided attention. Captain America frowned as well, a little more severely than Charles, and looked at the data Charles was showing in the pad, though he seemed to struggle a little to follow the information. Finally he understood, and frowning more decisively now he turned and beckoned at someone else.
It was clear he was trying to get Thor’s attention, but the God of Thunder was otherwise engaged in staring at the overcast sky, doubtlessly knowing a storm was coming. Black Widow was forced to slap his arm to get him to look at Captain America, and even then the Cap had to make a gesture for him to move closer, and show him the pad in Charles’ hands-always careful, Erik realized abruptly, never to touch Charles himself.
Thor did his level best to pay attention, but he looked puzzled and curious until Charles put down the pad and explained earnestly and more carefully. Only then did Thor frown and nod, and with a word followed Charles out of sight-rather like a huge hulking shield, making sure Charles had passage without brushing up against anyone and keeping a protective arm around his slight frame without actually coming in contact. And then they were gone.
“Oh my God,” Raven collapsed back into the couch. Tony Stark was still talking. Captain America and Black Widow had their heads bent together, quietly speaking, and Hawkeye looked completely uninterested in everything.
“Oh my God,” Raven repeated, eyes wide. “Of course. Tony. Charles and Tony met in college years ago. I didn’t-they didn’t speak anymore when Charles… I didn’t think he’d go to him, but of course.”
Yes. Of course. Tony Stark was one of the most powerful men alive; if anyone could make Charles feel safe, it had to be Tony Stark. Especially if the Avengers were already in the equation back then, a covert operation not yet public knowledge. It was clear enough that Captain America knew how to treat Charles, as did Thor; they had to be used to it.
Charles had been gone four years. But four years ago, Tony Stark had most certainly not been the ideal person for a victim of abuse to go to; Stark had been a playboy himself, openly promiscuous and very gregarious, moving fluidly through social circles, at parties nearly every night. How could Charles have gone to someone like that for protection?
“We have to talk to him,” Raven whispered.
They tried. Of course, getting across to Tony Stark was a titanic endeavor in itself, and being denied access to him was the most natural and expectable response. But that didn’t wipe their dismay at the many roadblocks. They tried to communicate with higher ranking people in Stark Industries, even going so far as to use Lehnsherr Engineering as a cover to get inside their many shields, but they were baffled to find their offers politely but firmly declined.
Eventually they were obliged to resort to Moira once again, and through her contacts, managed to acquire the personal cell-phone number of one Pepper Potts, Tony Stark’s personal assistant and acting-CEO of Stark Industries.
Thinking he’d finally managed to get through, Erik immediately called her, only to be thoroughly disappointed once again.
“I don’t know any Charles Xavier,” Potts said, politely dismissive. “I think you’re confused, Mr. Lehnsherr. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no such employee in Stark Industries.”
Erik thought it unlikely that Potts remembered the names of every single Stark employee, enough to distinguish whether a single man worked in the vast company or not, and said so, rather forcefully.
“But you insist Mr. Xavier was with us at the press conference,” Potts said reasonably, her tone of voice calm and cool. “That I would remember.”
“He was there,” Erik ground out, gritting his teeth. “I saw him, he was talking directly to you, Ms. Potts. You know him; short, brown hair, blue eyes, British accent. You were talking to him.”
“I’m sorry you’re confused,” Potts said, sounding genuinely regretful. Oh, she was good. “I hope you find your friend. Good luck, Mr. Lehnsherr. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have duties to take care of.”
She hung up, and never picked up again.
Erik and Raven were baffled and dismayed to find all other avenues of contact blocked to them henceforth, as if they had been deliberately blacklisted-and so they suspected they indeed had.
Doggedly bent on finding Charles and talking to him, getting him back, Raven uprooted herself and moved to New York, Erik following closely behind. Once there they began to hound Stark Industries physically, knowing if Stark showed up he’d not bother denying them like Potts had; if anything, Stark would most likely mock them and have them arrested, but if he did, Charles would most definitely hear about it.
Unless they were shielding him from them, keeping him safe as much as turning them away. Erik couldn’t help but remember the protective way Thor had moved around Charles, opening a way for him with a pointed glance of his blue eyes and a motion of his huge hands; the way Captain America had looked attentively over his shoulder as Charles moved away, making sure there was no problem.
Erik knew he recognized the behavior from the way the Cassidy family acted around Hank.
But that plan didn’t prove useful either; they did come upon Tony Stark, but he was on his own, and his bodyguards kept them away, much too far away to cause any real incident and get any sort of press attention. Stark even had the gall to look at them, stare directly at them, and turn away without so much as a word, dismissive.
“We can’t break into the Avenger Tower,” Erik said one morning, staring furiously out the window of their small flat. “But Stark’s private house-we can do that. He has to have some information there; maybe Charles is even staying with him, or works there.”
The security protocols at the private Stark residence had to be nothing less than impressive, but they were running out of options and patience. Stark and the Avengers had made some other public appearances, but Charles had been nowhere in sight. Erik and Raven were certain they were keeping him behind closed doors, well out of their access. In fact, Erik was certain that in their last conference as a group, Black Widow and Hawkeye had been keeping an alert eye out in the audience, as if looking for someone in particular, for a distinctive face.
If that was how the Avengers wanted to play it-well then, that was how they would play it as well.
In the end they chose Black Widow; Raven didn’t feel confident in impersonating boy-scout Captain America, Thor or Bruce Banner, and it seemed impossible to either of them for her to try to copy the intermittent insanity of Tony Stark or Hawkeye, one completely unpredictable and the other half around the bend on madness.
So Black Widow it was. Erik would make a diversion, and Raven would slip into the house while the Avengers were preoccupied with Erik, trying to figure out why some anonymous mutant would want to mess with them. Erik had little doubt as to the fact that he’d be quickly taken down, so time was of the essence. Raven had to get in, get the info and get out. So long as Raven at least managed to contact Charles, then it would be worth it and besides, once Raven and Charles talked things out, Charles would probably talk Tony into setting Erik free.
“Sounds like a plan,” Raven said firmly, at last.
“Yes,” Erik answered grimly. “So let’s put it in motion.”
The plan was a good enough one, if overly simple. What they unfortunately didn’t count on was that the Avengers weren’t actually in the Avenger Tower at all times.
As they had imagined Erik was stopped, almost immediately, by Captain America and Hawkeye-he tried to stop the last one’s arrows, but the archer grinned at his face and said:
“Carbon fiber, dipshit.”
What they hadn’t imagined was that Raven would run up against Thor, Hulk and the real Black Widow in Tony’s house, and that she’d be caught in less than five minutes by a slightly amused but mostly irritated Russian woman.
“Tony Stark had the right of it,” Thor said, disapproving, as he eyed Raven down.
“He’s my brother!” Raven growled, struggling against the zip ties that bound her wrists. “You can’t keep me away from him!”
“Of course we can,” Black Widow said, blinking at her. “Look at how easy it was.”
“I want to see him!”
“Who is her brother?” Thor asked, bewildered.
“It doesn’t matter,” Widow said. “Clearly he doesn’t want to see her, or Tony wouldn’t have gone out of his way to avoid it.”
“But if she is their blood,” Thor said doubtfully. “Surely she has a right, does she not?”
“Yes!” Raven growled.
“No,” a voice crackled from the house’s speakers. “No she doesn’t, screw that shit. Thor, please don’t go around giving familial advice, we all know what you’re like with your brother.”
Thor had the sense to look abashed.
“What do we do with her, Iron Man?” Widow flipped a long curl of auburn hair away from her face.
“Cap’s got her minion pinned,” Stark said through the speakers. “You know what, to hell with polite indifference, not my style. Haul her over to the Tower. Raven, you wanna talk, we’ll talk.”
The speakers were silent, and Widow bent over to drag Raven up to her feet by the arm. For a moment there was a bit of silence, and then suddenly, as if he’d reconsidered, Tony came back.
“Oh hey Thor, buddy, you know how Charles has these deep trust issues and low self-esteem problems? You wanted to know the cause for that, right? You’re looking at her.”
The God of Thunder’s eyes snapped to her, startling cornflower-blue, intense and burning with sudden anger. His jaw worked, and his shoulders grew stiff and tense. He shifted his grip in the shaft of Mjolnir, knuckles growing white and bloodless.
“I see,” he said ominously.
Chapter 4