Title: Señorita with a Necklace of Tears
Summary: No one was there for Mystique, but she can be there for Wanda.
Fandom: X-Men: First Class, general Marvel 616
Word Count: 1082
Rating/Contents: PG-13, incest, department of backstory, future fic, very non-graphic underage inappropriate touching, lots of sad ~feeeeeeeeliiiiings~ (extra vowels for emphasis)
Pairing: Erik/Raven, Pietro/Wanda, Raven/Charles
Policies: Read my archiving, feedback, and warnings policies
here.
A/N: IDK, sometimes I write really sad things for no apparent reason. I suspect tumblr had something to do with this, because a picture of Pietro and Wanda in a typical questionable pose came too close to a bunch of XMFC foolishness, and suddenly it was like all my pairings (there are too many of them to be OTPs anymore, fuck yeah multishipping) converged into a huge mass of X-Men goodness.
It would have been so much easier if Mystique were alone when she caught them. They could have talked about it, she could have explained, everything would have been fine; but no, Erik is with her, and he starts yelling immediately, yanking Pietro out of the bed by his arm. He's never hit either of them, never would, but Mystique has never seen him get so close before, so livid.
She should maybe leave now, let Erik handle it, but she can't. Even though Mystique never liked Magda, claiming the twins seems like an insult, an affront to her memory; but right now they seem more like Mystique's children than anyone else's.
The way Erik is yelling, any thought of talking this through, explaining, is remote at best; they've moved on into castigation very quickly. Pietro's easy; he idolizes his father, and it's nothing for Erik to put the fear of God in him. More importantly, he'll bounce back, be just fine as soon as he's back in Erik's good graces. Wanda's not; she's the one who fights back, stands up to him when challenged, but what Mystique knows- and Erik doesn't- is that she's also terrified of him. If he comes after her, she's not only going to do what she's told not to twice as much; she's also going to be traumatized.
While Erik is still bawling Pietro out, Mystique takes Wanda aside, leading her to her room. Erik gives her a look as she goes, but she shrugs it off; it's hard to predict how far he'll let her go sometimes, the point where he'll snap something about how she's interfering with his children, but this is about what Wanda needs right now, not what Erik wants.
She sits Wanda down on her bed, pulling the chair from her desk over and sitting down in front of her. "Do you understand why what you did was wrong?"
"No," Wanda says, tears starting to roll down her cheeks. "I love him, Mystique."
"I know," she says gently. "I know, honey. But you can't."
"Why not?" Wanda asks, and she's shaking. "It's supposed to be okay if you love each other."
There are things she's supposed to say, about how it's unnatural and wrong, about how they're too young. They're factual, even though they'd feel like lies coming out of her mouth; it's just that the truth is something different from the facts. The facts don't encompass what she needs to hear, what Mystique needs to tell her.
"Because you can't ever trust a man, Wanda," she says, laying it all open. "Not your father, not even your brother. They'll leave you one day, or even worse, you'll have to leave them. They'll make you do things that you don't want to do, and they'll change you, Wanda. You won't know until it's already happened." She brushes the tears away from Wanda's face with her thumb, looking her in the eye. "The best thing you can do for yourself is try not to love them."
"Don't you love Papa?" she asks, giving her a searching look.
Mystique sits back. "That's a hard question to answer, baby."
"Then you can't know what it's like," Wanda says firmly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Trust me," Mystique tells her, smiling sadly. "I know exactly."
"How?"
"I can't tell you," she says. "It's been a secret for so long that no one would even believe me. But I made a mistake. I fell in love with someone I shouldn't have. I was closer to him than anyone, and I gave him everything." She sighs. "And then we couldn't be together anymore." She reaches out, tucking Wanda's hair back behind her ear. "I wish someone had warned me when I was your age. I don't know if I could have stopped myself, but at least I'd have known what I was getting into."
"Why couldn't you stay together?" Wanda asks, curious but hesitant.
"It was him or your Papa," Mystique says, "and I chose your Papa."
"If that happened, I'd choose Pietro," Wanda insists.
"I hope you never have to choose," she says fiercely. "I hope it goes better for you. But worry about this," she tells her, laying a hand on her chest. "Don't give it away. If you do that too many times, you won't have anything left."
Wanda nods, sniffling, and Mystique reaches over and plucks a tissue from the box on the nightstand, handing it to her. "Is Papa going to yell at me?" Wanda asks tentatively.
"Probably," Mystique tells her. "Just cry a lot and say you'll never do it again. He always falls for that." Wanda still looks devastated, so Mystique leans forward, wrapping her up in her arms and holding her tight. "It's going to be okay. Just be careful."
After a long moment, Mystique lets her go, getting up and leaving her. There's too much in her head right now, too many memories welling back up. She thinks about how he was before, so serious and so playful by turns, the light in his eyes; she thinks about him now, dignified and graceful, the sadness in his smile when he sees her. Mostly she thinks about how time is moving on without her; the children are coming of age, Erik and Charles will be old men all too soon, and she still feels, looks the same way as she did in her twenties, when everything changed.
She leans against the wall outside the door to Wanda's room, letting her head tilt back to rest against it; almost as soon as she's done it Erik is coming towards her, still looking furious. "Mystique-"
"I'm not trying to raise your kids, Erik," she says, pushing off from the wall. "But Wanda and I needed to have a talk."
"About what?" he demands.
She shakes her head. "You wouldn't understand." He gives her a hard look, clearly not buying it. "Go easy on her, okay? You scare her." She reaches up, stroking his graying hair. "I'm going to bed. Don't stay up all night being pissed off."
Erik has that same grumpy, suspicious look that he always gets when she does something to moderate a perfectly good rage. "Fine."
"Night," she says, kissing him on the cheek before she walks away. She doesn't want to hear what he has to say to Wanda; she doesn't need to know what he'd say if he knew about her.
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