abandoned fic
I started this fic nearly a year ago and abandoned it completely within a few days. There are no pairings. No romance. Just Erik being a dick and Moira trying to remember what happened.
Tentative concept: At the beach, Erik is overcome by a combination of injuries sustained from his altercation with Shaw (especially), Charles, and finally Moira. In the aftermath, Shaw’s remaining mutants escape via Azazel. With Charles and Moira’s efforts the X-men go free, but Moira (rightly fearing Erik) does nothing to hinder his capture (she scapegoats him to protect Charles and his students). Charles’ decision to wipe Moira’s mind leaves Erik stranded at the CIA.
But is Erik really stranded? Has Charles been shot? It is likely he wasn’t, though it feels a little like a cop-out if he isn’t.
With age and exposure to the sun, the ink had faded and bled, yet the hand-scribed numbers were still starkly legible under his skin; an indelible homage to madness and mass atrocity. Joining the tattoo were other scars of various types that gave evidence to multiple perforations of his skin over the years. Though they varied in degrees of seriousness, many of their locations suggested either cruelly-informed sadism or double-jointed masochism.
Such observations did not move the hearts of the prison camp guards, even when they were freshly stitched and still bleeding. Similarly, the numbers and scars did not move the hearts of his current captors. If anything the fresh bandages, heavy around his right forearm and his left ankle, inspired disgust, disdain, and even fear.
The man sat quietly on the concrete floor. He leaned back idly with his shoulders and head tilted against the wall. His wrists rested on his knees, his hands hung down idly over his shins above bare feet. By all outward indications, the man was at rest, unconcerned with his incarceration. In fact, though known to be violently dangerous and belligerent, the man had made no effort to leave the facility.
Not that there hadn’t been violence on his part. There had been much of that.
Several attempts at interrogation failed. That was when he showed his rebelliousness and bitter ire in a flurry of cold rage. That was also when they learned he was easier to subdue with dogs and nightsticks than with guns. They amended outright brutality with tactics aimed at disorientation and sleep-deprivation.
When he has nothing to say despite their best attempts, and he always has nothing to say, Agent Moira MacTaggart would find herself consulted. Moira hated dealing with the predicament, because she hated being reminded of a bloody great gap in her memory. The man was devastatingly familiar, but she couldn’t remember anything about him and she never found any written reports to fall back on.
Moira’s mouth was a hard line. The man’s name was the only thing she had. “Don’t you have any demands, Mr. Lensherr? Are there still no calls you’d like to make to inform somebody, an embassy perhaps, that you are enjoying the CIA’s generous hospitality?”
Her statement brought one corner of his mouth up in an answering sarcastic smirk. He exhaled a breath of derision through his nose. “Funny you should mention that, Agent MacTaggart,” he said, looking past a swollen eye and black stitches. “I’m just waiting for a call, actually.”
She raised an eyebrow in turn; this was new. He wasn’t a talker and he hadn’t responded to other offers in the past. She looked past the guards behind her to her superior who nodded his interest. Erik Lensherr was always more reactive, though not always verbally, with Moira than anyone else. When he’d first seen her he’d attacked in a seething rage.
“Who are you waiting to call, Erik?” She reverted to his given name, trying to gain what familiarity with him she could.
His smile turned humorless, “Nobody you know, I’d say.”
Moire sensed the subtext. Nobody she knew that she remembered, she guessed. He knew something about her memory loss. He knew her from somewhere. Following her gut feeling, she continued on, tapping a manila file against her open palm. “Somebody I do, in fact, know. I know more than I let on Erik. You should remember that.”
His head cocked minutely to the side and assessed her with dark eyes. “If you remember then there’s no need to bother me. You know as much as I do. You know everyone I know. Or you don’t, in which case the bluff was amateur.”
She frowned and tried again. “Who do you want to call?”
He turned his head back against the wall and said nothing, dismissing her as if he had the authority and the disdain of her superiors. It pissed Moira off, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of letting on.
“That’s okay Erik,” she said lightly, opening the manila folder she’d been holding, “maybe I have something more interesting to talk about.”
She sifted through the many classified photos of the beach in Cuba and the autopsy photos of the corpse recovered there. She wasn’t sure which corpse photo to show him. The one taken out in the field or the one with the face sanitized and cleaned of all blood. Death always had the best chance of getting a reaction from a prisoner.
“I have a photo of a friend of yours,” she stated flatly.
Erik was a very controlled prisoner when he wanted to be and she was sure that, right now, he was terribly invested in being in control. So the slow jutting of his chin, the inhalation of breath, and the narrowing of his unswollen eye spoke to her of tension. She had his undivided attention whether he was looking at her or not.
She decided on the clean photo taken on the autopsy table and pulled it from amongst the sheaf of photos. Daring far more than any agent that didn’t want to pit themselves against the prisoner, she held the photo within arm’s reach, just over his head. “Don’t you want to see?”
He swiveled his head again to look her in the eye. “I don’t have any friends.”
“I’d definitely say that this guy is not your friend anymore.” Her comment was wry, but she was unprepared for the response. His hand whipped up from his knee and snatched the photo from her fingers with sudden ferocity. He pulled it down to his face, his fingers twisting the paper into harsh valleys in his haste.
Dark lashes fluttered in consternation as Erik stared at the photo. Then his whole body relaxed into a smile. “He cleaned up nicely, didn’t he?”
“What’s his name?” Moira asked quickly, trying to get another telling reaction from a less guarded Erik. Her efforts were rewarded for once.
“Schmidt to me,” he breathed, admiring the hole in the man’s head, “Shaw to you.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he continued in German, “Off to Hell with you, Herr Doktor. Off to Hell.”
The German was rudimentary enough for Moira to understand. A German connection was unexpected, despite the man’s name. Unless, perhaps, he was an East German operative loyal to the Russians. Young and hardened, he could even be vaguely connected to the Baader-Meinhoff terrorists in West Germany. The number on his arm, however, made a Baader-Meinhoff connection unlikely. Her superiors had already mailed a photo of him to Israel to see if the young government there might know of him from one of the hard-line militias.
“So Schmidt was his real name, but we know him as Shaw?” Moira certainly hoped the tapes were running for this session; it was the first to reveal anything.
“Schmidt,” he smiled, and the swollen eye and stitched eyebrow did nothing to disguise a distinctly mad tilt to the man’s show of teeth. “Herr Doktor. The only good thing that happened that day.”
“What weapon killed that man?”
Erik looked up at Moira again rather than the superior officer that still stood behind the guards at the door. “Is it because you are a woman?”
Moira scowled at her superior’s interruption, but Erik’s question threw her off. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Do your colleagues hate you because you are a woman? Isn’t that the history of mankind? Always subjugating their betters or those they don’t understand. In the case of women, trying to control the production of the human race?”
Moira was at a loss for a moment before scolding herself for actually thinking about the strange man’s abstract dialogue. “Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
Tentative concept: At the beach, Erik is overcome by a combination of injuries sustained from his altercation with Shaw (especially), Charles, and finally Moira. In the aftermath, Shaw’s remaining mutants escape via Azazel. With Charles and Moira’s efforts the X-men go free, but Moira (rightly fearing Erik) does nothing to hinder his capture (she scapegoats him to protect Charles and his students). Charles’ decision to wipe Moira’s mind leaves Erik stranded at the CIA.
But is Erik really stranded? Has Charles been shot? It is likely he wasn’t, though it feels a little like a cop-out if he isn’t.
With age and exposure to the sun, the ink had faded and bled, yet the hand-scribed numbers were still starkly legible under his skin; an indelible homage to madness and mass atrocity. Joining the tattoo were other scars of various types that gave evidence to multiple perforations of his skin over the years. Though they varied in degrees of seriousness, many of their locations suggested either cruelly-informed sadism or double-jointed masochism.
Such observations did not move the hearts of the prison camp guards, even when they were freshly stitched and still bleeding. Similarly, the numbers and scars did not move the hearts of his current captors. If anything the fresh bandages, heavy around his right forearm and his left ankle, inspired disgust, disdain, and even fear.
The man sat quietly on the concrete floor. He leaned back idly with his shoulders and head tilted against the wall. His wrists rested on his knees, his hands hung down idly over his shins above bare feet. By all outward indications, the man was at rest, unconcerned with his incarceration. In fact, though known to be violently dangerous and belligerent, the man had made no effort to leave the facility.
Not that there hadn’t been violence on his part. There had been much of that.
Several attempts at interrogation failed. That was when he showed his rebelliousness and bitter ire in a flurry of cold rage. That was also when they learned he was easier to subdue with dogs and nightsticks than with guns. They amended outright brutality with tactics aimed at disorientation and sleep-deprivation.
When he has nothing to say despite their best attempts, and he always has nothing to say, Agent Moira MacTaggart would find herself consulted. Moira hated dealing with the predicament, because she hated being reminded of a bloody great gap in her memory. The man was devastatingly familiar, but she couldn’t remember anything about him and she never found any written reports to fall back on.
Moira’s mouth was a hard line. The man’s name was the only thing she had. “Don’t you have any demands, Mr. Lensherr? Are there still no calls you’d like to make to inform somebody, an embassy perhaps, that you are enjoying the CIA’s generous hospitality?”
Her statement brought one corner of his mouth up in an answering sarcastic smirk. He exhaled a breath of derision through his nose. “Funny you should mention that, Agent MacTaggart,” he said, looking past a swollen eye and black stitches. “I’m just waiting for a call, actually.”
She raised an eyebrow in turn; this was new. He wasn’t a talker and he hadn’t responded to other offers in the past. She looked past the guards behind her to her superior who nodded his interest. Erik Lensherr was always more reactive, though not always verbally, with Moira than anyone else. When he’d first seen her he’d attacked in a seething rage.
“Who are you waiting to call, Erik?” She reverted to his given name, trying to gain what familiarity with him she could.
His smile turned humorless, “Nobody you know, I’d say.”
Moire sensed the subtext. Nobody she knew that she remembered, she guessed. He knew something about her memory loss. He knew her from somewhere. Following her gut feeling, she continued on, tapping a manila file against her open palm. “Somebody I do, in fact, know. I know more than I let on Erik. You should remember that.”
His head cocked minutely to the side and assessed her with dark eyes. “If you remember then there’s no need to bother me. You know as much as I do. You know everyone I know. Or you don’t, in which case the bluff was amateur.”
She frowned and tried again. “Who do you want to call?”
He turned his head back against the wall and said nothing, dismissing her as if he had the authority and the disdain of her superiors. It pissed Moira off, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of letting on.
“That’s okay Erik,” she said lightly, opening the manila folder she’d been holding, “maybe I have something more interesting to talk about.”
She sifted through the many classified photos of the beach in Cuba and the autopsy photos of the corpse recovered there. She wasn’t sure which corpse photo to show him. The one taken out in the field or the one with the face sanitized and cleaned of all blood. Death always had the best chance of getting a reaction from a prisoner.
“I have a photo of a friend of yours,” she stated flatly.
Erik was a very controlled prisoner when he wanted to be and she was sure that, right now, he was terribly invested in being in control. So the slow jutting of his chin, the inhalation of breath, and the narrowing of his unswollen eye spoke to her of tension. She had his undivided attention whether he was looking at her or not.
She decided on the clean photo taken on the autopsy table and pulled it from amongst the sheaf of photos. Daring far more than any agent that didn’t want to pit themselves against the prisoner, she held the photo within arm’s reach, just over his head. “Don’t you want to see?”
He swiveled his head again to look her in the eye. “I don’t have any friends.”
“I’d definitely say that this guy is not your friend anymore.” Her comment was wry, but she was unprepared for the response. His hand whipped up from his knee and snatched the photo from her fingers with sudden ferocity. He pulled it down to his face, his fingers twisting the paper into harsh valleys in his haste.
Dark lashes fluttered in consternation as Erik stared at the photo. Then his whole body relaxed into a smile. “He cleaned up nicely, didn’t he?”
“What’s his name?” Moira asked quickly, trying to get another telling reaction from a less guarded Erik. Her efforts were rewarded for once.
“Schmidt to me,” he breathed, admiring the hole in the man’s head, “Shaw to you.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he continued in German, “Off to Hell with you, Herr Doktor. Off to Hell.”
The German was rudimentary enough for Moira to understand. A German connection was unexpected, despite the man’s name. Unless, perhaps, he was an East German operative loyal to the Russians. Young and hardened, he could even be vaguely connected to the Baader-Meinhoff terrorists in West Germany. The number on his arm, however, made a Baader-Meinhoff connection unlikely. Her superiors had already mailed a photo of him to Israel to see if the young government there might know of him from one of the hard-line militias.
“So Schmidt was his real name, but we know him as Shaw?” Moira certainly hoped the tapes were running for this session; it was the first to reveal anything.
“Schmidt,” he smiled, and the swollen eye and stitched eyebrow did nothing to disguise a distinctly mad tilt to the man’s show of teeth. “Herr Doktor. The only good thing that happened that day.”
“What weapon killed that man?”
Erik looked up at Moira again rather than the superior officer that still stood behind the guards at the door. “Is it because you are a woman?”
Moira scowled at her superior’s interruption, but Erik’s question threw her off. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Do your colleagues hate you because you are a woman? Isn’t that the history of mankind? Always subjugating their betters or those they don’t understand. In the case of women, trying to control the production of the human race?”
Moira was at a loss for a moment before scolding herself for actually thinking about the strange man’s abstract dialogue. “Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”