Fic: "Beguiled 1/3" ¤Tommy, Charles, Erik, XMFC ensemble ¤pg to R ¤slice of life, humor, angst
To indra_pavamana , my fellow Speed-lover, Maximoff Family Acolyte, Marvel-Slash Enthusiast (not necessarily in that order. ♥)
Title: Beguiled 1/3
Author: Nemesi.
Beta-reader: gravitycomplex (THANKS, love, for helòping me bring this monster-child to the world. ♥)
Fandom: X-men first class c/o with Young Avengers
Genre: Slice-of-life. (Gen. Humor. Angst.)
Word Count: 3200 circa (this part)
Characters: Thomas Shepherd (Speed), Charles Xavier (Professor X), Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto), William Kaplan (Wiccan). XMFC whole ensemble and a few Marvel comics characters are mentioned.
Pairings: Erik/Charles (pretty much established), Tommy/Kate (mentioned), Tommy/Lisa (mentioned), Billy/Teddy (implied). Cap/Bucky mentioned in passing, courtesy of Tommy's hyperactive imagination.
Rating: mostly PG-13, R in parts.
Disclaimer: Marvel owns my soul - no, I mean, knows these characters and themes.
Warnings: Blatant Tommy-love on the author's part. Disturbing imagery, such as torture and experiments on people is scattered through the text. Much Tommy-Billy interaction; though their bond IS meant to be brotherly and utterly platonic, readers can take it any way they please.
Spoilers: Only the most basic notion from YA have been used here. Same with X-men: First Class.
Summary: Charles is more than willing to convince himself that Thomas Shepherd has no family relation to Erik Lehnsherr (if only for the sanity of his own mind).
* * * * *
i.
It starts with a bang.
Which is perhaps a little inaccurate description, but the racket is the first thing they are aware of. A booming noise, like thunder striking and missiles exploding and air ripping along the seams, like torn fabric. Tongues of fire lap at the sky, spreading out from a pulsing red core, liquid light that swirls and twists, streaked through like marble. Then a silhouette is flung from the shifting radiance, tossed like a rag-doll against the Mansion's wall, at the foot of which it slumps, groaning softly like a wounded beast.
Charles approaches warily, gazing at the figure through plumes of dust. When he wheels close enough for the silhouette to resolve itself into the shape of a boy - silver air, a suit of green and silver stretched across his lean body, the colours swirling like molten metal - he calls for help (mentally, as if not trusting his voice), and nudges the boy onto his back.
It's hard to tell with the - glasses? goggles? Is that what the odd contraption is? - it's hard to tell with the goggles in the way, casting half of the boy's face in an orange glow, but the resemblance is enough to make Charles's heart skip a beat or several.
(...Erik?)
ii.
The boy calls himself Thomas.
Shepherd is his family name, and the German (Polish) ring of it is enough evidence for Charles to believe the resemblance with Erik is a mere fluke, a chancy combination of DNA strands, if not a figment of his own imagination.
The latter doesn't quite explain why the resemblance is apparent to others than himself. The former fails to lend an explanation to the brief rush of pride the boy can't immediately hide when Alex remarks upon the resemblance himself.
But Charles is more than willing to let the matter rest, and quietly convinces himself that Thomas Shepherd has no family relation to Erik Lehnsherr.
(if only for the sanity of his own mind)
iii.
Thomas is a mutant.
A speedster, aptly named “Speed” by someone in his past he won't allow himself to talk about, however briefly. Charles catches a glimpse of long raven hair and the edge of a painted mouth curled in a sardonic grin, but Thomas is quick to mask the projection with a smokescreen, a curtain of swirling, much-too-quick-to-make-sense thoughts.
Charles thinks he managed to pluck the words “time” and “family” and “Billy” and “Avengers” and “Young” and “past” and “grandpa” and “Magneto” and “Professor X” and several refrains of “shit” and “fuck” and “damn”.
He refuses to inquire about the stray thoughts he's caught, but he does lecture the boy about the usage of swearing words. The glare he gets for his efforts is much too Erik not to sting.
(it also ensures that lecturing the boy becomes a daily occurrence from then on)
iv.
It is like an indoor hurricane.
Not six second after he's been assigned a room, Thomas Shepherd is zig-zagging across its (impressive) width, moving furniture, adding knick-knacks and removing them, pulling posters up the walls and blankets off the bed, moving the radio's handle so quickly, it never stays tuned on any station for more than half a second, and all that issues from it is a stream of white noise.
Charles is lounging in his study, reading the news. For every 'thud' that comes from the newcomer's room, he twitches, groans; not a heartbeat later his newspapers is tugged low, and he's met with a burst of excited:
“...abedroomabedroomI'vegotawholebedroom” or “woah,youknowthoseclothesyougotmetheyactuallyfit” or “IthinkIaccidentallybrokeavasebutIwenttoChinaandgotyouanewone”
“I know,” Charles answers every time, trying to smooth out his newspaper into something at least marginally readable.
(it startles him to realize he's reminded vividly of Raven's first foray into the Manor; small, blue-skinned Raven, naked and sleek like a thing of the wild, her eyes blown with childish wonder, her delighted bird-cries over every commodity she was shown, common wonders such as a bed of her own, a brush and a blanket, a pale camisole that had once belonged to Charles's mother, purple blooms sewn into the delicate fabric)
v.
Apparently, moving at the speed of light is only one of Thomas's many talents.
Resemblance with Erik and infuriating wit notwithstanding, his secondary mutation is that he can control the speed of all things in creation. Namely, he can vibrate atoms fast enough to make things (people too, though Thomas would never go down that lane, would he?) - he can vibrate atoms fast enough to cause things to explode.
Charles and the others get their first taste of this ability the second morning Havok takes Speed out for training.
The kitchen goes ka-boom! approximately three minutes into the session.
It takes half of the left wing down with it.
In the shocked silence that follows, Thomas's echoing admission of: “My fault!” does nothing to mend the state of Charles's coronaries as he surveys the damage.
The only consolation, is that it takes Thomas no longer than the blink of an eye to rebuild and repaint the wreck.
(and furnish it with a few, wheelchair-friendly optionals. The boy is not without charm, it seems)
vi.
Oddly enough, in the mantra Thomas uses to lull himself to sleep the first few weeks, the thought “Grandpa” rings loud and clear, bellowed out from Thomas's mind like the sound of a clarion bell, repeated over and over and over, a wheel turning, a 8-shaped serpent biting its own tail, wrapping like a garland around the picture of an elderly man wearing Erik's helmet.
(and perchance his face, too)
vii.
This is what is going to happen, Charles explains. You will make the atoms of this block of ice vibrate until it's melted back into water.
Thomas looks dubious.
“That's... not how it works.”
Really.
“Really.”
You just never tried it before. Don't tell me you are afraid of pushing your limits? Charles's voice sounds challenging and teasing at the same time. The glare it earns him is familiar and golden and lacking any particular heath.
“Listen, you Yoda,” Thomas stresses the foreign name, and Charles captures from his brain the image of an odd creature, small and wrinkled and with leaf-shaped ears that twitch like a dog's as he administers his wisdom. Charles makes a note to ask about this one mutant's peculiar abilities, because even at a glimpse, they do seem great. “I run. I make things explode. I can move through walls if I really have to,” thought it gives me cramps and nausea for hours afterwards. “But melting ice?” he sounds scornful. “What's the use?”
Charles sends over not a clear image, but rather an impression. Someone Thomas holds dear trapped under ice, layers upon layers of it, their lungs constricting, blue lips open around mouthfuls of dirty snow, blue-tipped fingers clawing at the walls of their prison.
Thomas fills the gaps, adds the details. A young angular face, dark skin and wide dark eyes full of disappointment, accusing, and Thomas's own heart squeezed by the sheer weight of guilt and loneliness.
The vision isn't even over, yet the massive ice statue is already a puddle of muddled water at their feet.
(the face in the ice, though. It looked like Thomas's own, but with darker colouring. Charles can't make head or tails of this detail, so he wisely lets it go)
viii.
It soon becomes apparent that Tommy has a love for heights.
It's something Charles can't either condemn or condone. He just sighs wistfully whenever the boy climbs up the satellite dish, and frets quietly when he curls on the roof of the highest tower in the Mansion, balanced precariously on a ledge that looks much too old to sustain his weight.
He sits there brooding, occasionally throwing pebbles across the distance, watching them sink in the churning fog below. His thoughts, during those times, are usually filled with youthful faces - a blond girl, a mutant with scaly wings, another with a metal face, a bald black boy with a blood-coloured mask, a raven-haired beauty carrying a bow, and always, always a boy who could be Tommy's twin, if not for the darker colouring, the clover-honey skin, the liquid brown eyes glinting with intelligence under a mop of wild dark hair, his image distant, but wrapped in a warm blanket of hope-brimming, tremulous emotion.
“Does it ever start making sense?” Thomas mutters through grinding teeth, throwing a pebble and letting it explode mid-air, booming red in the dusk like a miniature sun, the sound sharp like a gunshot. “Missing someone you know doesn't care about you?”
Charles swallows down a sudden bitter taste. He's been wondering the same himself, and has yet to find an answer.
(Erik haunts his dreams even now)
ix.
Every once in a while, there is reported activity from the Brotherhood.
Sometimes it comes from the radio, sometimes from the TV, sometimes from one of the X-men, or a stray Mutant they save from the streets.
Whatever the source, Tommy is always thirsty for whatever scraps of news he can get on Magneto. He listens to the retelling of Erik's latest stunt with his mouth slack and his eyes child-like wide, unparalleled even by Charles in his need to knowknowknow.
A public stand, a speech, the rescue of fellow mutants, infiltrating a military base, stealing confidential intel. Tommy absorbs the information like a sponge, drop after drop. Swallows it down, grasps tight onto it, like a dragon with gold, Gollum with the One Ring. And just like the characters from those tales, he gathers every speck of information he can and carries it to his brooding place. For hours on end he lingers there, his mind a-buzzing, like a beehive frenzied with activity.
When he comes down, sometimes he says: “I want to stop him before he starts a war, but,” and trails off. Charles believes the missing portion of the phrase is “but I don't know how”, or, when he feels particularly like projecting: “but I admire him, I love him, and I can't bring myself to harm him”.
And yet, someplace deep, someplace in his mind that it's dark and echoing and humid like a grotto, the phrase echoes around, whole as it was meant to be whole, a length of rope that twists around his throat and chokes him slowly.
(“I want to stop him before he starts a war, but this war has to happen.”)
x.
Charles finds himself counting the days until Speed will leave the X-men for the Brotherhood.
The notion burns, like acid and like fire, it spreads from the frayed wound at the small of his back and claws its way up his spine, all the way across his nerves to his brain, for in a striking small spawn of time, Tommy has carved himself a place in Charles's life; his larger-than-life presence filling up the empty spots left behind by not one, but two dearest loves of his; ensconcing himself so deeply in the Manor's daily routine, it feels preposterous to think him gone, nightmarish to imagine these halls empty of his voice, his laugh, the sound of his running feet.
Yet, Charles knows he will let him go, like he let Raven go.
(everyone has their own prophet to follow, their crosses to bear. Mine own is solitude.)
Next →