Fic: "Beguiled 3/3" ¤Tommy, Charles, Erik, XMFC ensemble ¤pg to R ¤slice of life, humor, angst
Title: Beguiled 3/3.
Author: Nemesi.
Beta-reader: gravitycomplex
Fandom: X-men first class c/o with Young Avengers
Genre: Slice-of-life. (Gen. Humor. Angst.)
Word Count:
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, all 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: The end starts with a bang.
* * * * *
xxiv.
The end, it also 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 water falling down incredible heights and wind ripping through rocky narrows.
Streaks of white bolt across the sky, spreading out from a pulsing blue core, liquid light that revolves onto itself like a planet. Then a silhouette is flung from the gleaming globe of light, tossed like a rag-doll towards the Mansion's wall.
Tommy gives a frantic shout of: “Billy!” and is climbing along the wall and catching the other boy in his arms before the rest of the mutants (Brotherhood and X-men alike) can get their bearings. The pair lands in a swirl of tattered red cape and tangled limbs. Tommy huffs loudly as he cushions the fall with his own body, but for all his muttered curses, it takes a while to disentangle him from his mirror image, they clutch each other so tightly.
(for some reason, the feelings Charles are picking are exactly the same as when he plunged into icy waters to save Erik from drowning. Worry. Pain. Rage. Bitterness. Companionship. Relief. Hope.)
xxv.
Charles is overwhelmed.
The boy - Billy? - feels incredibly powerful. That in itself would be enough to make his mind tingle as if crackling with electricity, but it's the way the twins interact that threatens to send the telepath's mind into overload. He's never before seen two people so apt as saying something and meaning the opposite.
One snaps, calls the other “idiot”, “nuisance”, “catalyst for trouble”, all the while thinking IwassoworriedIthoughtyouweregoneI'msogladyou'resafeImissedyouso.
The other feels stung, and through the widening loop of youcameformecan'tbelieveitsohappytoseeyoumissedyoulots he's been projecting, he snaps back, defensive and a touch petulant.
“I never asked you to come”, in his mouth, means I've been waiting, but I didn't think you'd care. “And speaking of idiots, who's the idiot who pulled a Billy and sneaked off to the past without telling anyone?” is the direct translation of you shouldn't take these risks for me!
And so on and so forth, saying words and meaning others, thinking things and saying the opposite, hands holding tight and tongues lashing, over and over, raising up a storm inside Charles's brain, thunderbolts and all.
It's overwhelming.
Even more so because the boys read like something nebulous, brothers and not-brothers at once, similar and diametrically opposite. Their thoughts, whirling and confusing already on their own, are all the more unbalancing for a telepath, because they seem to spring from the same well, the same soul, as if the boys were one, or used to be, entwined, somewhere deep, like two sides of a coin.
(and it's a sad thought, because even if the coin is one single entity, its two faces, they can ever meet, never touch; never find a common ground and be with each other or even just see one another's face)
xxvi.
They don't go.
Not straight away. Billy - Wiccan, his codename's Wiccan - needs time to rest, time to gather his strength. Hours, days at most. He's given a wide berth by the other mutants, something subtle that still manages to translate into a delicate frown across Wiccan's forehead.
Beast wants to have an interview with him about the future, but won't allow himself. Emma quite possibly wants to kidnap and brainwash him into a toy-soldier for the Brotherhood, if her vicious glances are anything to go by. Either that, or she wants to claw his eyes off and kidnap Tommy, instead. Her simmering intent is cool and burning like the core of a blue star, and it's hard to decipher its direction.
Raven scoffs at Emma's fierce silence, but she's teetering on an edge herself. Half the time, she wants nothing more than to push Tommy into Billy's arms and get rid of the trouble; the other half, she's ready to fight nails and claws to keep the two of them forever apart.
Alex resents him from wanting to steal the newest member of the family away, and his brain is lambent with memories of siblings loved and long lost. Sean, he's just happy he's got someone to fly with, even if Wiccan never indulges that particular whim when asked.
Wiccan doesn't seem particularly perturbed by the distance. He's apologetic for intruding, yes, and curious and excited about this time period, this time's mutants. He's polite and lovely, endearingly stubborn, and so very quiet. With his dark hair and complexion, he should be the twin who resembles Erik more, but this is hardly the case.
There's a softness about him, in the deep and soulful eyes and soft-spoken tones, that sets him apart from Erik and Thomas. He misses that steel edge born of pain and despair; the stray lines on his cheeks are all laughter and no betrayal and distrust. There is no wall of closeted fury and overbearing confidence to shield the bruised child held within.
There simply is no bruised child within. He is what he is, wears his heart and his hurts on his sleeve, colourful like pins.
It's hard to watch him and not to wonder - is this the sort of person Erik had the potential to be, before the camp, the torture, the pain? He seems kind and idealistic, a bit like Charles, but there's steel somewhere underneath the softness, something powerful and brimming, of that much Charles is sure. He can feel a taste of it, a tang like electricity on the back of his mouth, brewing out of the Pandora's box holding it all in.
(the measure of a soul is how it reacts to pain, Charles thinks. In that respect, the souls of the Lehnsherr boys - all three of them - are larger than life)
xxvii.
“We wouldn't object to keeping him here,” Charles offers, lacing his fingers in his lap.
His face is open, pleasant. His posture is one of serene quietude. The aura he's projecting is soft and warm like a blanket, a secure refuge that smells comfortingly of days long past.
Despite that, Wiccan starts and swirls around, eyes much-too-wide in his face. Something frantic peaks inside him, crashes like a wave, and even with Charles's subtle help, it's a strain to slow down his erratic heartbeat.
“You did mention it might be risky to magick the both of you back home?” Charles prompts, earnest worry in his voice. Wiccan pushes his hair out of his eyes, revealing the worried furrow between his eyebrows.
“That - it's not - I'd never inflict Tommy on you, anyways.”
It's meant as a jest, with no real spite behind the words. The same as when little kids push their siblings so that their knees scrap bloody on the hard concrete, calling them dumb and other hateful names.
It's meant as a jest, but it chafes against Charles all the same.
“I would appreciate if you didn't speak of Tommy as if he were a burden. To us, he's not.”
Wiccan looks properly chastised. A shadow of pink settles across his cheekbones as he looks away.
“He's... difficult,” he manages in his defence.
“A trifle,” Charles admits. But we wouldn't love him as much, if he weren't.
It is a lance of thought, and when Wiccan's eyes flicker back up, they are narrowed. He looks like he's about to say something - something low and clipped and Lehnsherr-like, when a voice comes from deeper within the room, there where the shadows thicken into shrouds.
“Difficult.” The desk lamp clicks on as if after its own volition. Light ricochets off Erik's helmet in tones of red and gold. Turns his eyes into disks of silver. “Torture does that to a boy his age.” He pauses. “I would know.”
Just like that, the surge of protectiveness boils over and vanishes. It leaves Wiccan's eyes wide, his jaw slack. He takes a look at his Grandfather and flinches. Perhaps at the words spoken, perhaps at those that haven't been.
A small gesture commands Charles's chair over to Erik's side, and the telepath wordlessly allows it. He tucks his hands in his lap and looks over at Wiccan. The touch of Erik's helmet in his mind is cool, not soothing but devastating, like a void. On contrast, Wiccan feels like a maelstrom, but the landscape of human emotions is a familiar to him as his own home's gardens, a mayhem he finds comforting.
“Grandfather...”
“But as Charles was saying, mein enkel,” Erik interrupts smoothly. “We would be interested in keeping the boy with us.”
“It - it might change the past,” Wiccan stutters.
“You don't really believe that,” Charles chides, with a sort of amused awe in his voice. “Actually, you have reason to trust time will reassert itself, even if Tommy were to stay here.”
That is true, but: “He doesn't belong here,” Wiccan answers, a mulish lilt to his voice.
Magneto laughs. And it is Magneto, not Erik. One can tell by the cold, gravelly quality of the sound.
“But he belongs with you?” Charles hadn't noticed, but Erik has been playing with a flat disk of molten metal. He's letting it dance around and across his splayed fingers, like he used to do with the coin that ultimately killed Shawn. But this is something else, some other sorrow or sin he's toying idly with. “You don't believe it any more than I do.”
“He's--”
“Your brüder?” Magneto stares over the glinting speck of metal at his grandson. “Yes. But in nothing but name, I take it?”
The disk of metal turns and turns, round and round. Light glances off of it in sparks and flashes, a flash for each question, and for each flash, a shard of thought, a seed of memory, that flings itself from Charles's brain to Wiccan's, embedding there, like shards and seeds are wont to do, sinking deep into the tender matter and drawing up pain.
“Tell me, Wiccan. Have you ever called him brother and meant it in anything more than jest?”
Billy, c'mon, please, let me -- if you would just listen to me for once--
What, to the team's sociopath? I'd rather not, Speed.
“Have you ever come to his aid when he needed?”
Does it ever start making sense? Missing someone you know doesn't care about you?
“Relived his memories with him?”
needles pushing in his legs and arms, electricity bursting from the pins in his flesh, muscles pushing and pushing with no control, and when he opens his eyes, he hates he can see blood on his torturers' gloves, see it smeared along his knees
“Offered to erase his nightmares, forgive his sins, or punish his torturers?”
light glinting off a slim bottle, the reek of alcohol in the air, a child drowning his sobs in a pillow, a door slamming, and then, as if in a blur, the same boy, older now, crawling across a dirty cell's floor, wrists raw with burn marks, anger and agony trickling liquid down his face
“Tell me, have you ever...” the disk of metal blurs between his fingers. It moves so fast it looks liquid, hot. Charles glances at it and his mind goes back so abruptly, he can almost smell the Cuban beach, see the white sand aflame with too-hot light, a sky like a dull mirror and sunshine glinting off a bloody bullet. “...made amends for hurting him?”
and it's not like Billy would ever believe if anyone told him that Tommy cared, anyway.
Wiccan draws a deep breath.
“You don't know anything about us,” he says softly, a shaky mixture of anger and hurt. “He's... he's my twin,” he says, hands splayed, as if that world alone could explain everything, conjure up a world's worth of meaning he can't quite express. “We... we were apart, but we found each other. We were meant to be. We...”
“Charles is my brüder,” Erik interrupts in a low murmur, Magneto's voice and Magneto's eyes, sharp and clipped like arrowheads. “We found each other. We chose each other. For we were meant to be. If he were ever taken by my side, I would do anything in my power to get him back. Tommy is your brüder, you say. Then why,” the coin-not-coin lashes through the air, comes to a standstill an hairsbreadth from Wiccan's forehead, carrying along shards of thoughts, of longing and anger and loneliness and pain, “why did you leave him here to pine for you for a whole year, William?”
Magneto might as well have pushed the coin through, for the stricken look that appears on Wiccan's face. He staggers back, eyes wide. Between a breath and the next, he's gone. But he's just rushing down the hall, like any distraught boy, no magic and no mutant powers at work as he dashes down the corridor, pounds on a door and flings himself inside as soon as it opens, and then it's all a discordant refrain of Ididn'tknowoneyearIdidn'tknowTommyIswearyou'vebeengonehalfadayIdidn'tknowIdidn'tknow and wha-Bil-DamnitdudeyouknowIdon'tdotearsohdamnhushnowc'monlil'broc'monBillyBillyplease...
Charles retreats after that.
(there is not a single mean bone inside Charles's body. You could ask Raven - it is the main reason they went separate ways - this endless capability he has to forgive even the unforgivable. He didn't enjoy needling thoughts and memories and pain inside Wiccan's brain, but that does meant he didn't want to.
He can sense a rift between those two young lads that simply shouldn't be there. It's wrong and unfair that people meant to be together fail to come to an understanding over something as human as pain - as trust and self-worth and family and rage. It's something that Charles can't help but want to correct, regretful as he might be to cause anyone pain)
xxviii.
The room is in the left wing.
Its windows are those that dawn touches first in the morning (to rise with the sun, it is a soldier's instinct). They are high and narrow, clear of wisteria (nothing to use to climb inside), and face the entrance gate (like a sentry post, easy to defend, easy to escape from).
It is - was - used to be - forever belong to - Erik's room.
Now, it is like a mausoleum of sorts.
There is an empty glass sitting on the mantelpiece, the rim sticky with the remains of long-dried brandy. On the table lays an open newspaper, its pages yellowing and coated with dust. A pencil lays at an angle beside it, its dark tip sharpened to a point. A black turtleneck rests at the bottom of the bed, folded neatly, along with matching trouser and a coiled leather belt, its intricate silver buckle glinting weakly in the dust-filled sunlight.
Charles navigates inside on his wheelchair, privately grateful that the thick carpet had been removed (it would have dampened the sound of an intruder's footsteeps).
Eleven months since the arrival of Tommy, and the trees around the mansion are shedding again.
From the window in Erik's abandoned bedroom, Charles can see the hills carpeted in red and gold. The foliage glints wetly in the morning sun, the pale light clinging onto the drops of dew. Mist curls up from the shrubbery, like the breath of a sleeping giant, and the air smells thickly of moss and of wet, dark things.
Tommy is skulking along the gardens, thoughts moving around him like a school of fish, glinting underwater. Charles would like to pin them, each single one, and put them on display like butterflies; but like butterflies, they shy away as he reaches out.
Tommy wants to go. Wants to stay. Wants to push Wiccan back home where he belongs, wants to keep Billy by his side. He wants to sit at Magneto's feet as his grandfather pours over a chessboard, and then finally makes a move Tommy will go relay with quicksilver speed back at Westchester. He wants to go back and hold Kate's hand, play tag with Molly as Chase scowls and Eli pretends he's not bothered. He wants to be there for his mother when she will go mad with grief in a few decades, her child still, but older than her. He wants to rush back to the cruel mistress that is the city he lives in, and fight for those who don't have the strength to.
He wants. He wants. He wants everything, which means, in the end, wanting nothing at all.
He's adrift in the currents, pulled at once towards both banks of the river.
As Charles watches, Tommy breaks into a jog, speeds uphill through the wet grass, silver hair glinting in the green shade. A beat, two, and Billy is emerging from the shade himself, hands pushed shyly in his pockets, his face a study of uncertainty.
He calls, and Tommy grinds to an halt, eyes like a deer's in the headlight. He looks away, shrinks back from the hands reaching towards him. They share a few words, perhaps; it's hard to tell. Then Tommy is faking a laugh and gesturing wide. He claps Billy's shoulder, then bumps against it as he moves higher up the sloping grounds. Billy wavers, then steels himself. Clenches his fists tight and gives chase, disappearing into a cluster of trees.
Up inside the mausoleum, Charles takes a long breath, and his exhale disturbs the dust motes swimming in the sunlight. His hand is splayed on the glass, leaving an imprint. His eyes are reflected clearly back at him, but as clean a picture as they make, they are hard to read.
“I wonder, sometimes,” he tells to the air. “If things could have been done differently, on that beach. If we hadn't strained to do what we thought was right - where would we be, now?”
No answer comes, and he draws another breath.
“I wish you could have stayed,” he elaborates.
“I wish you could have come with me.” Erik's voice floats at him from the darkness, as cool and slithering as a wraith.
Charles's mouth curls at the edge, rueful.
“You would not have me renounce my dream any more than I would want you to deny yourself.”
“Are we so selfless?” Erik muses, as his reflection blurs into view beside Charles's own on the glass.
“So stubborn, I'd say.”
Erik's reflection nods once, very slowly.
“We each made our choice. We will see it through.”
“With no regrets?”
“Only one,” Erik admits. His hand hovers lightly an inch from Charles's neck, warm and big, then settles on the back of the chair. “But that will be my own burden to bear.”
“Our burden, my friend.”
Charles reaches up for Erik's hand, holds it up in the dusty stream of sunlight from the window, and interlaces their fingers. It's hard to imagine them as nemesis. And when their eyes meet through the intermediation of the glass, it's hard to imagine them as anything but lovers.
They kiss with their eyes open, linked through the glass. When they part, Erik curls his fingers tighter around Charles's, puts his cheek against Charles's own, breath fanning hot and wet against Charles's skin, and when he whispers: “Ich liebe dich,” it feels like permission.
Charles takes it as such.
(they might never agree on anything; but this. This can never be taken from them)
xxix.
Tommy throws himself down on the slope, spreads and stretches himself as if he were trying to leave an angel-shaped imprint in the grass, the way children do with fresh snow. He isn't aware of his twin following until he hears him rustle up to the hill's crest.
Billy lowers himself down with considerable less floundering, sitting with his legs tucked at his side. He's chewing on his bottom lip, and if Tommy knows anything about his twin (brüder), he knows that is a sure sign he's thinking about something painful.
He turns on his side, facing away from his twin, and starts plucking at the wet grass.
“You should go,” he flings, not bothering to look up.
Billy doesn't answer. He looks at the mutants peppering the school's grounds, clumping together with conversation and then parting with laughter or a quiet demonstration of power. He swallows with a visible effort before looking back at his double. His eyes are huge, liquid, earnest with emotion.
“I could stay.”
Tommy makes a face of disgust.
“Yeah, and die of heartbreak on me? I don't think so,” the jibe, if that is what it was, falls short and heavy between them.
Tommy heaves himself up to his elbows. His eyes flicker across the school's grounds, the woods, the low sky filled with jetstreams of colour, but never settle on the boy sitting beside him.
“Billy, it's okay. You said you're not sure you can bring the both of us back. So just leave me, okay? It's cool here. And it's not like I'll be missed back home, anyways.”
No matter what he says though, what he thinks is: I'll never forget you, so please, don't forget about me.
Billy glances back at Tommy, smiles just a crack and no further.
“Oh, not missed at all, you rascal. I'd say this is a good riddance for the team, if anything,” it's what he says, even as what he thinks is: pleasepleasecomebackhomeTommyyou'remybrotherIdon'twanttoloseyousosoonpleaseI'msorrypleaseloveyouplease, but Charles is the only telepath in the area, so all that Tommy hears is what is spoken aloud. Something aching and tender breaks below his ribs, and emptiness gushes through his chest.
“Just go away,” he mumbles stubbornly, settling back down onto the grass. And if his voice doesn't crack, it's only just because he trained it this way, with years of practice.
But Billy grasps onto his hand, surprising him. He lays behind his brother, chest to back, not quite touching, the warmth of their bodies seeping together. He props himself up on an elbow, cranes his neck. When his eyes meet Tommy's own over his shoulder, they're opened just a crack and no further.
“Not without you.” He squeezes Tommy's hand. “In time, I can learn the right spell.”
Tommy looks dubiously up at him, at the face so like and unlike his own, and then at their entwined hands, the only point of contact between them, one pale and one dark, one soft and one callous, one clean and the other dirtied with things unseen. Something settles in his chest, and in that moment, he knows. Not what he wants to do, but what he has to.
He takes a deep breath, and prepares himself to tell his decision.
And the world stops.
(he makes things explode, Thomas Shepherd. He travels at the speed of light and tears through the fabric of time and space. By his powers, Thomas Shepherd Lehnsherr can make ice melt and people grow insanely annoyed. He can get Emma to take him window-shopping and Beast to get out of the lab and walk among his fellow mutants. He can get Azazel to laugh at his jibes and Alex to forget his phobia of hurting his friends. He can get Angel to titter as if she were still an innocent thing and Sean to chat up girls in that bistro on the corner and Riptide to teach him about piano and music and Raven to chase him across the ground over something as stupid as a stolen toothbrush.
In a word, Thomas Shepherd Lehnsherr Xavier is theirs)
xxx.
Erik's hand is warm inside Charles own; the touch of his mind is familiar and exhilarating at once.
They breathe as one, think as one, as the world around them freezes to a stop. Needles of power stream from the point of contact, ease into Tommy's brain and Billy's brain and the brain of everyone on the school's grounds.
They rip the fabric of those minds, these needles. Cut it into little slips and then littler ones, grinding the unneeded ones into something as fine as sand. They sew the remaining pieces tightly back together, then; edges overlapping, forming a different pattern than before, something new and old and borrowed and blue and coin-shaped and bullet-fast, and it's like a pearl-sized Onslaught inside everyone's mind.
(their decision is taken)
(Erik and he, they have to make sure their child is safe)