[FIC] "Prologue," a gift for sparkysparky
Title: Prologue
Author: abbichicken
A Gift For: sparkysparky
Characters/Pairings: Charles, Erik
Rating: G
Length: 1,400
Summary: Alas, this is as the title says - just a prologue! I have more, but it became a bit vast and unwieldly and plottish and I ran myself out of time to finish it, so I figured I'd post the beginning, and if you'd like more, I can make more, or perhaps you'd prefer just the concept and leave the rest to the imagination! I'm afraid mine got a bit tangent-y with your prompt! I didn't forget the cabin, I just...think there's about 5k before I get to it...o.o I can only apologise, dear recipient, and offer the opening for now.
Prompt: Prompt 3: A powered or non-powered AU where Charles and Erik meet while hunting down escaped serial killer!Shaw (Erik can be the local Sherrif and Charles can be an FBI BAU agent or something), and end up stranded in a remote cabin in the middle of a blizzard with Shaw on the loose.
He's not even wearing black...
And yet, the figure in front of him may as well be invisible, for the way he walks, casually as Saturday morning, Harris tweed and polished shoes, right up to the man crouched in the bushes by the park gate, rifle clamped to his shoulder, covering the entrance to Erik's target's London home, and knocks him spark out, with no more, no less, it seems, than a touch to the head.
Must be a...a thing. Japanese, perhaps. About pressure points. Erik's heard there are ways to knock a man out that don't involve brute force. Do they, he wonders, also give the same satisfaction? Not that efficiency isn't as welcome as satisfaction, but...when it's personal, Erik likes to lay a trail as deep in screaming understanding as he can.
As the sniper falls back, the inappropriately-dressed assassin has the decency to catch his body with the ease and grace of someone who's done this...a lot. Is the sniper...dead? Dead weight, anyway. Erik shifts back into the branches, the tangled cover he's taken at the edge of the Berkeley Square gardens, and watches as the man mugs his prey for something, then uses it - a key, then - to enter the vast townhouse Erik's come to stake out right by the front door. Blasé as anything.
Of the few wandering the park's perimeter, no-one notices the sniper laid out on the ground. A woman pushing a pram walks straight past him. Londoners, Erik thinks, without a conclusion to the thought.
Erik waits. He debates, for a moment, following him in - for if Shaw has two enemies, then perhaps they'll be able to play this out together - but then, Erik doesn't ever play well with others, and he has no plans to spin this out any further than a spit, a stab and a kick. It's not worth risking what would, if only he could find the man, a quick and easy kill.
Shaw may be a serial killer, he may be foxing Europe's finest, but Erik has spent so long tracking him down, studying his behaviour, his murders, his background, he feels he's got the upper hand.
It's personal. There's a reason Erik's so devoted to the cause, but that's nobody's business but his own. And even finding Shaw seems to require that devotion, because no-one else has come even close to catching him. Erik has evidence of murders Shaw's committed in places as diverse as Las Vegas, Geneva and Nairobi, but his focus of late has been London, Paris and Berlin. He's talked of as the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, and as such has generated a nervous excitement amongst the public, as if he were a fairytale, rather than a fact. And amongst the authorities, he is thought of in much the same way. No-one expects to stop him. They half-expect, half-hope that, in some dreadful and gory way, Shaw will reveal himself, his twisted motivations to them all, as if he were a stage play with an inevitable conclusion.
They're all closer to the truth than they dare hope, and Erik suspects as much, but Erik, unlike the creeping public, has no fantasy about this situation. He knows Shaw's game. And that he mustn't ever be allowed to make his public reveal - a thing that would be infinitely more terrible than the public can possibly imagine.
So who is this, that breezes on in to what Erik has deduced, after months of travel and study, to be Shaw's London base?
Just as quick as he pushed in, so he's out again. Erik squints, looking for...what? Spots of blood on the collar? An expression of...fear? Neither are present. The man shuts the front door carefully behind him, and returns the way he came. The only difference between the before and after is that he's carrying a smart leather briefcase.
An accomplice?
The man bends to the sniper, still on the floor, and strokes his head. Pushing dark, matted hair away from a grimy face, he leans close and...speaks. Then walks away.
The sniper lies still a moment or two longer, and then rises to his feet, rubbing his eyes and clapping his hands to his gun in momentary panic. He looks as if he's been asleep for a year or more. And then he melts back into the cover he'd been in before his well-dressed assailant laid him out like so much afternoon tea.
Erik brushes leaves and dirt from his shoulders, removes a twig from his hair, and exits the bush, ostensibly buckling his belt as if he's been caught short, should he need to excuse himself to curious eyes.
He lights a cigarette, like a cover for slow, indirect walking, and sets off. Just far enough behind the tweed assassin to look as if he isn't following him.
So, when, after five minutes or so of dotting through side roads and cutting by alleyways, he loses sight of the man, Erik is shocked. He was there. Right there in front of him, on a road that, for central London at this time of night, is comparatively empty. But he's gone, in less than the blink of an eye.
No bus stops. No doorways. Locked down shopfronts and streetlamps and barely a light on. No sound of...look, no nothing. He's just gone.
Erik keeps on walking so's not to be any more conspicuous, but then he stamps out the end of the cigarette, takes another from his jacket and turns back, as if shielding himself from the wind, to light it.
"You were following me?"
Asked as a question, posed, point blank, from the man in tweed who is right there in his face. In the filthy orange glow of London-by-night, he appears simultaneously boyish and old, shadows creasing his forehead, eyes wide and reflecting the dull lamplight.
Erik says nothing.
"I know you were following me: let's not discuss that. And also, I don't think we need to discuss our common interest."
Erik's face contorts to suggest that actually, the only thing they ought to discuss is their common interest, but...no. All he receives in return is a wide smile.
"Shall we go have a quiet drink somewhere?"
And, inexplicably, Erik finds that that is exactly what he wants to do.
Across a heavy wooden table, stained with god knows how many years of beer and woebetides, Charles (introduced as if it was something Erik ought to already know) reaches out and fingers the cuff of Erik's jacket, a touch intrusively. "This is a very nice cloth," he observes, 'and a good cut on you, too."
The touch leads Erik to a flinch, and a shot of discomfort.
When Erik once more fails to answer the leading statement, Charles shakes his head, grins, and drinks a good half of his pint.
"You don't say much, do you? Never mind, there's no useful answer to that. I'll be honest with you - because I think of all people, I can be honest with you, can't I, Erik - and tell you that I don't need you to say anything at all."
So Erik doesn't.
Charles appears to be perfectly comfortable with keeping up a monologue, and, strangely, answers many of the more benign questions Erik might've asked of him all the same if he'd decide to treat this as a social, rather than investigative, situation. Charles is with "Scotland Yard. You know. That kind of thing." It's not quite an answer, but it's telling enough. "I have some skills that are rather...unique. I know you know what I mean. I'm a talented man." The way he winks is 50% salacious, 50% eerie. Erik doesn't know what he means. Charles continues. He lectures, he explains, on criminal psychology. On motivation. "At Oxford, you know." Erik has never been to Oxford, but Charles tells him how beautiful the colleges are before he can interject - which he wouldn't have.
As they talk - as Charles talks, endlessly, and Erik listens, all his usual disinclinations spread aside, and as they drink, drink, and drink some more, Erik is waiting to find the catch, to find out what this is all about, to get the overview of Charles' game, because there must be a game being played, he must be being played somewhere, but it doesn't come. The man is as up front, as clear, as engaging as any he's ever met.
Erik wants to run. He knows that, inside him, is an Erik that wants to get away and get back to his hotel room and preferably with that damn suitcase to put some more pieces of his puzzle together, but he can't...because...the rest of him wants only to stay, and listen, and...smile.
Author: abbichicken
A Gift For: sparkysparky
Characters/Pairings: Charles, Erik
Rating: G
Length: 1,400
Summary: Alas, this is as the title says - just a prologue! I have more, but it became a bit vast and unwieldly and plottish and I ran myself out of time to finish it, so I figured I'd post the beginning, and if you'd like more, I can make more, or perhaps you'd prefer just the concept and leave the rest to the imagination! I'm afraid mine got a bit tangent-y with your prompt! I didn't forget the cabin, I just...think there's about 5k before I get to it...o.o I can only apologise, dear recipient, and offer the opening for now.
Prompt: Prompt 3: A powered or non-powered AU where Charles and Erik meet while hunting down escaped serial killer!Shaw (Erik can be the local Sherrif and Charles can be an FBI BAU agent or something), and end up stranded in a remote cabin in the middle of a blizzard with Shaw on the loose.
He's not even wearing black...
And yet, the figure in front of him may as well be invisible, for the way he walks, casually as Saturday morning, Harris tweed and polished shoes, right up to the man crouched in the bushes by the park gate, rifle clamped to his shoulder, covering the entrance to Erik's target's London home, and knocks him spark out, with no more, no less, it seems, than a touch to the head.
Must be a...a thing. Japanese, perhaps. About pressure points. Erik's heard there are ways to knock a man out that don't involve brute force. Do they, he wonders, also give the same satisfaction? Not that efficiency isn't as welcome as satisfaction, but...when it's personal, Erik likes to lay a trail as deep in screaming understanding as he can.
As the sniper falls back, the inappropriately-dressed assassin has the decency to catch his body with the ease and grace of someone who's done this...a lot. Is the sniper...dead? Dead weight, anyway. Erik shifts back into the branches, the tangled cover he's taken at the edge of the Berkeley Square gardens, and watches as the man mugs his prey for something, then uses it - a key, then - to enter the vast townhouse Erik's come to stake out right by the front door. Blasé as anything.
Of the few wandering the park's perimeter, no-one notices the sniper laid out on the ground. A woman pushing a pram walks straight past him. Londoners, Erik thinks, without a conclusion to the thought.
Erik waits. He debates, for a moment, following him in - for if Shaw has two enemies, then perhaps they'll be able to play this out together - but then, Erik doesn't ever play well with others, and he has no plans to spin this out any further than a spit, a stab and a kick. It's not worth risking what would, if only he could find the man, a quick and easy kill.
Shaw may be a serial killer, he may be foxing Europe's finest, but Erik has spent so long tracking him down, studying his behaviour, his murders, his background, he feels he's got the upper hand.
It's personal. There's a reason Erik's so devoted to the cause, but that's nobody's business but his own. And even finding Shaw seems to require that devotion, because no-one else has come even close to catching him. Erik has evidence of murders Shaw's committed in places as diverse as Las Vegas, Geneva and Nairobi, but his focus of late has been London, Paris and Berlin. He's talked of as the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, and as such has generated a nervous excitement amongst the public, as if he were a fairytale, rather than a fact. And amongst the authorities, he is thought of in much the same way. No-one expects to stop him. They half-expect, half-hope that, in some dreadful and gory way, Shaw will reveal himself, his twisted motivations to them all, as if he were a stage play with an inevitable conclusion.
They're all closer to the truth than they dare hope, and Erik suspects as much, but Erik, unlike the creeping public, has no fantasy about this situation. He knows Shaw's game. And that he mustn't ever be allowed to make his public reveal - a thing that would be infinitely more terrible than the public can possibly imagine.
So who is this, that breezes on in to what Erik has deduced, after months of travel and study, to be Shaw's London base?
Just as quick as he pushed in, so he's out again. Erik squints, looking for...what? Spots of blood on the collar? An expression of...fear? Neither are present. The man shuts the front door carefully behind him, and returns the way he came. The only difference between the before and after is that he's carrying a smart leather briefcase.
An accomplice?
The man bends to the sniper, still on the floor, and strokes his head. Pushing dark, matted hair away from a grimy face, he leans close and...speaks. Then walks away.
The sniper lies still a moment or two longer, and then rises to his feet, rubbing his eyes and clapping his hands to his gun in momentary panic. He looks as if he's been asleep for a year or more. And then he melts back into the cover he'd been in before his well-dressed assailant laid him out like so much afternoon tea.
Erik brushes leaves and dirt from his shoulders, removes a twig from his hair, and exits the bush, ostensibly buckling his belt as if he's been caught short, should he need to excuse himself to curious eyes.
He lights a cigarette, like a cover for slow, indirect walking, and sets off. Just far enough behind the tweed assassin to look as if he isn't following him.
So, when, after five minutes or so of dotting through side roads and cutting by alleyways, he loses sight of the man, Erik is shocked. He was there. Right there in front of him, on a road that, for central London at this time of night, is comparatively empty. But he's gone, in less than the blink of an eye.
No bus stops. No doorways. Locked down shopfronts and streetlamps and barely a light on. No sound of...look, no nothing. He's just gone.
Erik keeps on walking so's not to be any more conspicuous, but then he stamps out the end of the cigarette, takes another from his jacket and turns back, as if shielding himself from the wind, to light it.
"You were following me?"
Asked as a question, posed, point blank, from the man in tweed who is right there in his face. In the filthy orange glow of London-by-night, he appears simultaneously boyish and old, shadows creasing his forehead, eyes wide and reflecting the dull lamplight.
Erik says nothing.
"I know you were following me: let's not discuss that. And also, I don't think we need to discuss our common interest."
Erik's face contorts to suggest that actually, the only thing they ought to discuss is their common interest, but...no. All he receives in return is a wide smile.
"Shall we go have a quiet drink somewhere?"
And, inexplicably, Erik finds that that is exactly what he wants to do.
Across a heavy wooden table, stained with god knows how many years of beer and woebetides, Charles (introduced as if it was something Erik ought to already know) reaches out and fingers the cuff of Erik's jacket, a touch intrusively. "This is a very nice cloth," he observes, 'and a good cut on you, too."
The touch leads Erik to a flinch, and a shot of discomfort.
When Erik once more fails to answer the leading statement, Charles shakes his head, grins, and drinks a good half of his pint.
"You don't say much, do you? Never mind, there's no useful answer to that. I'll be honest with you - because I think of all people, I can be honest with you, can't I, Erik - and tell you that I don't need you to say anything at all."
So Erik doesn't.
Charles appears to be perfectly comfortable with keeping up a monologue, and, strangely, answers many of the more benign questions Erik might've asked of him all the same if he'd decide to treat this as a social, rather than investigative, situation. Charles is with "Scotland Yard. You know. That kind of thing." It's not quite an answer, but it's telling enough. "I have some skills that are rather...unique. I know you know what I mean. I'm a talented man." The way he winks is 50% salacious, 50% eerie. Erik doesn't know what he means. Charles continues. He lectures, he explains, on criminal psychology. On motivation. "At Oxford, you know." Erik has never been to Oxford, but Charles tells him how beautiful the colleges are before he can interject - which he wouldn't have.
As they talk - as Charles talks, endlessly, and Erik listens, all his usual disinclinations spread aside, and as they drink, drink, and drink some more, Erik is waiting to find the catch, to find out what this is all about, to get the overview of Charles' game, because there must be a game being played, he must be being played somewhere, but it doesn't come. The man is as up front, as clear, as engaging as any he's ever met.
Erik wants to run. He knows that, inside him, is an Erik that wants to get away and get back to his hotel room and preferably with that damn suitcase to put some more pieces of his puzzle together, but he can't...because...the rest of him wants only to stay, and listen, and...smile.