Chapter 13/13 Cracked Diamonds
Title: Cracked Diamonds
Rating: M
Warnings: Graphic Sexual abuse of a minor, rape, domestic violence, implied violence, implied m/m sexual relations, and death.
Summary:
Emma Frost learned at her mother’s knee that if a woman wanted to get anywhere, she was the only person with the power to make that happen. Telepathy was quite helpful to those aims, including the manipulation of men. Cleavage or cortex, both helped her make her own way, often by changing the thoughts of others. She wanted to rule the world, but it is a man’s world. By playing with the minds of everyone, she thought she would take over the world.
Charles Xavier disagreed.
An AU-verse in which Xavier and Magneto are tempered by a diamond’s views of supremacy, and not a Mengele’s, even if they didn’t quite figure it out.
XIII.
They came to a mansion that looked abandoned. Blood smeared on the floor, there were the corpses of soldiers littering the marble floors. Most disturbed was the library. Ascending through the room, room that a crackling fire had warmed on chilly nights, a game of chess surrounded by books was devastating. The chess set was sprawled on the ground, and Erik took off his helmet, stepping into the air. Behind him, Mystique was on the lift, taking it up and up. “Grandfather Francis’ office was off the second floor. Charles took over his father’s study years ago, but Grandfather’s study has a view of the grounds, and Charles used to talk of using it when Grandfather had just died. We loved to play hide and seek up there.”
It was a room of wreckage. The furniture, built out of wrecked timber from the Civil War had been a gift from Francis’ first wife. “Charles was here.” Indeed, a copy of the Once and Future King was sprawled open on the desk. There were bullets in the floor, and he wondered for a moment how that had happened.
“I had wondered if Charles would ever master that part of his mutation.” A sharp glance at Mystique had her explaining. “Charles’ bedroom would shake when he had nightmares. Shake like the metal in your bedroom melts. I cannot count the times that I have woken him out of them.”
“Why would they have been able to follow Juggernaut here, anyway?”
“Juggernaut is our brother.” Mystique explained. “Cain’s father married Sharon, Charles’ mother. We were all raised here, so Cain would know how to get here. If he was worried about Charles’ safety, he would have come.”
“The bullets?”
“Charles’ deflected them with his mind.” Simple words that he could barely believe. “Erik, all of this blood, the dead soldiers, the damage from Alex’s beams. Where are they? The soldiers should have gotten at least one of the boys, and they wouldn’t take the corpses, would they?”
“They would have taken the corpses with them.” Erik points out. “Emma is working with a man who experiments on mutants. The dead children would have been new experiments to look at.” He was seeing it, though. There was both too much blood and too little. They hadn’t died, and they had fought back, but some of the damage looked as if it was gratuitous, the damage of a victory untouched, anger channeled into destruction. “You’re right.”
A voice whispered across his mind. Erik. His eyes were scanning the room now, and Raven was with him. “Erik, would they have left if they couldn’t find anyone?”
“Maybe.” Azazel and Riptide joined them. “I think they may have left another way, though. Could your brother compel them to leave?”
“Certainly.” In a time of panic, certainly! Charles? She asked the room, the building, tugging on the lines of her mind. Where are you?
Panic room. Hank and I were working on using a tank of saline solution to expand my powers, and we had decided to put it in the panic room, access to a solitary well, and all. I was in the sitting room with Scott and Mrs. Winters, talking about his education, and the military came. Havok got Diana to safety. Diana/empath/teacher flashed through her mind, a smiling face with a kind touch, looking down towards him. Hank got Scott, his mother, and I into the panic room. And then I convinced them to leave.
“There’s a room.” She walked behind the desk, pressing at the marble carvings, letting it slide away, opening up the door beneath. A squat to the appropriate level allowed her to spin the dial, opening the door. “They are through here.” Magneto ducked into the room behind her, barely able to stand as he walked through the passage and into the room in the middle, a room surrounded by people that seemed to soar up out of concrete.
And in the middle of the room is a marble pool, deep enough to look akin to a pool, and Magneto could hear Raven’s cry of distress. “Charles hates the water.”
I’m fine. His voice floats through their heads. William Stryker. Anonymity was our first line of defense, and Emma Frost stripped that from me. I pulled it from her head.
She wanted a war. There was a body, Banshee, stepping in front of Scott and Scott’s mother, taking a bullet in the chest. She pushed the wrong telepath.
Rating: M
Warnings: Graphic Sexual abuse of a minor, rape, domestic violence, implied violence, implied m/m sexual relations, and death.
Summary:
Emma Frost learned at her mother’s knee that if a woman wanted to get anywhere, she was the only person with the power to make that happen. Telepathy was quite helpful to those aims, including the manipulation of men. Cleavage or cortex, both helped her make her own way, often by changing the thoughts of others. She wanted to rule the world, but it is a man’s world. By playing with the minds of everyone, she thought she would take over the world.
Charles Xavier disagreed.
An AU-verse in which Xavier and Magneto are tempered by a diamond’s views of supremacy, and not a Mengele’s, even if they didn’t quite figure it out.
XIII.
They came to a mansion that looked abandoned. Blood smeared on the floor, there were the corpses of soldiers littering the marble floors. Most disturbed was the library. Ascending through the room, room that a crackling fire had warmed on chilly nights, a game of chess surrounded by books was devastating. The chess set was sprawled on the ground, and Erik took off his helmet, stepping into the air. Behind him, Mystique was on the lift, taking it up and up. “Grandfather Francis’ office was off the second floor. Charles took over his father’s study years ago, but Grandfather’s study has a view of the grounds, and Charles used to talk of using it when Grandfather had just died. We loved to play hide and seek up there.”
It was a room of wreckage. The furniture, built out of wrecked timber from the Civil War had been a gift from Francis’ first wife. “Charles was here.” Indeed, a copy of the Once and Future King was sprawled open on the desk. There were bullets in the floor, and he wondered for a moment how that had happened.
“I had wondered if Charles would ever master that part of his mutation.” A sharp glance at Mystique had her explaining. “Charles’ bedroom would shake when he had nightmares. Shake like the metal in your bedroom melts. I cannot count the times that I have woken him out of them.”
“Why would they have been able to follow Juggernaut here, anyway?”
“Juggernaut is our brother.” Mystique explained. “Cain’s father married Sharon, Charles’ mother. We were all raised here, so Cain would know how to get here. If he was worried about Charles’ safety, he would have come.”
“The bullets?”
“Charles’ deflected them with his mind.” Simple words that he could barely believe. “Erik, all of this blood, the dead soldiers, the damage from Alex’s beams. Where are they? The soldiers should have gotten at least one of the boys, and they wouldn’t take the corpses, would they?”
“They would have taken the corpses with them.” Erik points out. “Emma is working with a man who experiments on mutants. The dead children would have been new experiments to look at.” He was seeing it, though. There was both too much blood and too little. They hadn’t died, and they had fought back, but some of the damage looked as if it was gratuitous, the damage of a victory untouched, anger channeled into destruction. “You’re right.”
A voice whispered across his mind. Erik. His eyes were scanning the room now, and Raven was with him. “Erik, would they have left if they couldn’t find anyone?”
“Maybe.” Azazel and Riptide joined them. “I think they may have left another way, though. Could your brother compel them to leave?”
“Certainly.” In a time of panic, certainly! Charles? She asked the room, the building, tugging on the lines of her mind. Where are you?
Panic room. Hank and I were working on using a tank of saline solution to expand my powers, and we had decided to put it in the panic room, access to a solitary well, and all. I was in the sitting room with Scott and Mrs. Winters, talking about his education, and the military came. Havok got Diana to safety. Diana/empath/teacher flashed through her mind, a smiling face with a kind touch, looking down towards him. Hank got Scott, his mother, and I into the panic room. And then I convinced them to leave.
“There’s a room.” She walked behind the desk, pressing at the marble carvings, letting it slide away, opening up the door beneath. A squat to the appropriate level allowed her to spin the dial, opening the door. “They are through here.” Magneto ducked into the room behind her, barely able to stand as he walked through the passage and into the room in the middle, a room surrounded by people that seemed to soar up out of concrete.
And in the middle of the room is a marble pool, deep enough to look akin to a pool, and Magneto could hear Raven’s cry of distress. “Charles hates the water.”
I’m fine. His voice floats through their heads. William Stryker. Anonymity was our first line of defense, and Emma Frost stripped that from me. I pulled it from her head.
She wanted a war. There was a body, Banshee, stepping in front of Scott and Scott’s mother, taking a bullet in the chest. She pushed the wrong telepath.