DEVIL - Chapter Six
"People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." - Karl Marx
Chapter Six
In the coming months and years, as she began to learn more about Azazel, Mystique would find that he had... a very unique conception of property. He took things, and was unapologetic and unselfconscious about it. Nonetheless, 'thief' never seemed to be precisely the right word for what he was. 'Thief' seemed to denote both a sort of desperation and a base greediness that did not apply to Azazel's actions.
He took things that pleased him, or that he found interesting or puzzling. He did not take things because they were valuable - though they often were - or because he stood to benefit financially by possessing them, but simply for the sake of experiencing - exploring, studying, contemplating - these things personally. This was a fine distinction but one which Mystique felt was both real and important.
She could also say that she'd never known him to take something from someone who couldn't afford to lose it, and that she knew for a certainty that he'd never stolen from the Brotherhood. Sneak thieves would pass through their doors many times over the course of the years - Mutants so badly scarred by their time spent in the human would that they could not control their impulse to take whatever they could grab, even when they understood that they were among friends. These individuals were dealt with - harshly, if kinder means were not effective - but Azazel had little in common with such transparently damaged people. There would also be times when the Brotherhood found it necessary to stage robberies, most often against armored cars, which were easy game for Erik. These actions, which came to be jokingly referred to as "requisitioning funds," were justifiable in that they were necessary for the Brotherhood's survival, but again they had very little to do with Azazel's way of taking.
Sometimes he only took little things - food, for example, both for himself and others. If a member of the Brotherhood expressed hunger in Azazel's hearing, he would often transport himself away, returning shortly thereafter with something that he knew for suspected his comrade would enjoy. Often time these offerings consisted of obvious delicacies that he appeared to have traveled vast distances to obtain. There was no question that he had not paid for these gifts.
Once, when things were going particularly badly for the Brotherhood and Erik had been visibly strained to the breaking point by the frustration of it all, Azazel had presented him with a cellophane-wrapped cake made of twisted dough which had been laced with an immoderate amount of chocolate. It had smelled so wonderful that Mystique had been able to tell just by the scent that it was still warm. "Babka," Azazel had said, pressing it into Erik's hands, and a war had broken out across Erik's face; for a moment Mystique hadn't been sure if he would weep or strike Azazel, nor had she known which potentiality horrified her more. But he had mastered himself quickly, thanking Azazel with the stiff but sincere courtesy with which those two often treated each other.
She wondered if the thoughtless ease with which Azazel took the day-to-day things of life such as food - taking them as though the idea that he was not both welcomed and entitled to them had never crossed his mind - said something about the way in which he had spent his childhood, but she did not ask. Within the Brotherhood, to ask too many questions about someone else's past life was to invite trouble. And she was painfully aware of the relative privilege of her own childhood, how poorly equipped that left her to really understand so many of the trials and struggles the others had gone through, almost to a number.
Many of the other things he took were nearly as basic as food; small trinkets and books, on the main. These he claimed to return when he was finished with them, and indeed his stacks of books rotated with astonishing regularity, though some volumes seemed to remain on his shelves indefinitely. She would not begrudge him for taking these books - or anything else. His social possibilities were so very limited, she felt that any means he used to occupy his mind, if only with the company of books, was justified.
However, sometimes he borrowed rare treasures of invaluable worth - historical artifacts or great works of art. There would be times when she would enter his room to see Faberge eggs lined up across his desk like regiments of toy soldiers, standing at attention on their gilded little legs, or when she'd find him caressing the flat of a clearly ancient sword. These sorts of things would always be returned from wherever he had gotten them in short order, but there would be times when works of art by masters so famous that even she recognized them would hang on his walls for weeks on end.
But this was all a long time in coming, and today he still had the capacity to astonish her with his audacity.
He had said, "I want to show you something," and as she turned toward his voice he stepped toward his bed, a luxurious nest of red and black silks, and flicked on one of the bedside lamps. Some of the shadowy magic went out of the room. He turned back to the bed and lifted a long, flat object from among the pillows. The package was rectangular, almost as long as Mystique was tall, and wrapped loosely in linen cloth. When he began to unwind the length of cloth from around the painting's frame, she gasped.
"Where did you get that?"
He sat the length of cloth to the side, pooling it near the foot of his bed, and leaned the painting upright against the headboard. He did all this with perfect caution, treating the framed canvas like the incalculably valuable work of art that it so obviously was, but at the same time he handled it as though he did things like this all the time. He glanced back at her before finally answering her question. "Venice," he said, as though that explaining anything, "at Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo."
He stole a painting from a church, she thought, with a sort dull wonderment.
Azazel stepped back to admire the painting. He seemed immeasurably pleased. "Look," he said, waving her forward, "It has something to do with us, I think. What do you see?"
She moved closer to the painting to study it. The theme of the painting was religious, and epic battle between two winged figures in the air high above a city, and the fact that great age had caused the colors to fade did little to rob the composition of life. She thought she understood at once what it was Azazel wanted her to see, but she looked more closely at the painting, meaning to miss no detail.
The first of the two battling figures was angelic. He hoovered above the second figure on slate gray wings, a sword held in his upraised arm and a bloody metal hook held in his other hand. His feet were bare but his trunk was girded in steel plate; beneath the armor he wore a flowing robe. His hair was tangled and his face flushed, eyes hooded as he seemed to contemplate how best to deliver a killing blow against his enemy.
The second figure was nude and hairless. A short tail, shaped something like a greyhound's, sprouted from the base of his spine. As with the angel, wings grew between his shoulder blades, but they were stubby, tragic things; they looked almost as though they had been plucked. It did not seem to her that those wings would be able to hold his weight airborne, and in fact the figure seemed to cling to the hem of the angel's robe as though to keep from failing as he brought a hand which clutched a small and crude-looking blade toward the angel. His skin was a deep shade of red, and Mystique wondered if it had been crimson back when the painting's colors were still bright and vibrant.
"'Saint Michael Vanquishing the Devil,'" Azazel said from behind her. She had almost forgotten he was there; the idea that had stuck her while she was studying that painting was so exciting, so revolutionary - she turned to ask him how old the painting was, and as though he understood what she was thinking he answered before she could speak. "From the sixteenth century. Is that not interesting?" She felt him step closer, reaching around her shoulder to motion at the devil, the tips of his fingers hoovering just above the delicate canvas. "He looks something like me... Well, I am somewhat handsomer, I hope." He was standing so close now that she could feel his breath on the back of her neck as he spoke, and she could think of no safe answer to that statement.
Instead she said, "They could be Mutants." It was an astonishing thought; she could literally feel things shifting around her brain, reframing her conception of herself and where she had come from.
"Perhaps," he said, and there was something in his voice that made her think that her answer had delighted him. "Shaw said that we were 'the children of the Atom' but I do not think he believed it. He and I - even the young ones like yourself - were born years and years before the atom was freed. And so, I think that we have existed for a very long time. We've been here all along, but they called us differently before. Monsters and witches, saints and angels and demons. Devils." She glanced back at him and saw that he was smiling in a self-satisfied way; for as long as she would know him, she would never see him express anything but pleasure with who and what he was.
"Yes," she agreed. "Yes, and -" but then she found her attempts to give voice to what this revelation meant to her stimied. "And it explains so much..." she trailed off lamely, but then tried again, "But I think there are more of us now than there have every been before, don't you?"
"More," he agreed, "and more and more every day."
"He's spitting fire here, isn't he?" Mystique said, circling the devil's head with a motion of her finger.
"Hard to see, but I think - yes," Azazel agreed. "Like our own Angel."
The events of the day seemed very far away right then, with him so close. She felt his fingers on the back of her neck, brushing through her hair. "You are very beautiful," he said in a low voice, his lips so close that she could feel the roughness of his beard against her ear.
But then he had drawn suddenly away. She turned, a tentative smile playing on the edges of her lips, and saw that he had moved - so quickly, so silently - to the other side of the room. The shadows were darker, and he seemed to melt into them as he watched her with hooded eyes, his head turned at three-quarters profile. The hanging icons dangled around his head, swaying slightly. Her smile faded; it was chilling, how quickly he had become dangerous. She had nearly forgotten how dangerous he could be.
"Azazel..." she started, but did not know how to finish. He turned slightly to face her, but now his head was swaying slowly back and forth as he watched her, the shadows of the icons playing bizarrely against his skin, and those penetrating ice-blue eyes would not break contact with her own, would not even blink. It was all she could do not to break eye contact with him; if she had not been too frightened to look away from him, she did not believe she could have held his gaze. I'm among wolves here, she thought. This is a house of wolves. And for the first time she entertained the idea that Emma was right; she wasn't cut out to be here, she should just go home. It was safe back at home, Charles would take care of her and -
And Azazel was speaking. It was an odd thing; when he was angry, his accent disappeared almost completely, but his syntax broke down, and words which she knew he had deserted him. "It is not good that you have been making fights with Emma. You are comrades," he said, his voice hissing with the power he put in that word; it was the first - perhaps only - time that she had heard him use the word in anyway other than ironically, the first time he had meant it with complete and with deadly seriousness. "Understand this - we are not playing game -"
"I know that," she cut in; if she hadn't already knew that, she'd sure as hell figured it out this morning. "I know this isn't a game." Why did they all think she didn't know that?
She might not have spoken for all the attention he gave her words. "There will be days - very soon there will be many days - that you will live only because she was there and fighting with you. You will need to know how to protect each other; we will all have to stand together or we will die, and maybe we will die together anyway. If you truly understood this you would not act as you have."
She had listened to all this with a growing sense of outrage, and here was another odd thing; when she was this angry, she found that she completely forgot to be scared - that was something she would remember; it was something she could use for later. This is bullshit, Mystique wanted to say. She started it - she's picking fights with me. But she recognized that if she said this - true as it was - she would only sound childish. Instead she said, "I don't understand where this is coming from. You weren't even here to hear what we said to each other."
And then the answer came to her. It was so obvious that she didn't understand why she hadn't seen it from the beginning. "She was in your head just now," Mystique said, and it wasn't wasn't a question. "Tell me what she said about me," and that wasn't a requested.
"Peezdets!" he spat, and she didn't need to speak Russian to understand that he'd reached the same conclusion as she had.
"She's telling you lies about me," Mystique said flatly. "Why?"
"I have made fool's mistake," he told her, and as he stepped out of the shadows and toward Mystique it was not at all lost on her that he had dodged her questions. "I will take care of this," he promised. "And please - you will forgive me?"
She showed him the same courtesy he had shown her, and ignored the question. "Is she jealous?"
"Nyet," he said emphatically. Then he tried to laugh the question away, but Mystique could see that he had not even been able to convince himself that she was wrong. "We have been as family for so many, many years, Emma and I - even long before she met Shaw. She is like small sister to me. It is nothing like jealous."
Oh god, Mystique thought. This type of screwed up hit entirely too close to home for her own comfort.
"I will take care of this," Azazel said again, and now his hand was on the doorknob. "I am responsible for her," he said, as he held the door open for her to pass through, and she thought again, Oh god. Her hand went up to rub at her right temple - she was getting a headache, she could just feel it coming on.
He left then to go find Emma, and Mystique took herself back to her own rooms.