Erik's Moving Castle: Part 1/3
Title: Erik's Moving Castle
Author: sunryder
Artist: amoralambiguity
Verse: First Class AU
Word Count 16,810
Rating T
Characters/Pairings: Erik/Raven, Erik/Charles
Warnings AU
Summary: Charles Xavier had accepted that he was doomed to be ordinary while Raven and Hank got to be extraordinary. Of course, that was all true right up until Charles flirted with the handsomest fellow he'd ever seen and got cursed into a crippled old man for his trouble. Now Charles is hiding out in a moving castle with a fire demon named Logan who has a cigar problem, a magical apprentice and accidental firestarter named Alex, and the same handsome man who got Charles into this mess in the first place. A man who just happens to be the great and terrible Wizard Erik.
Link to art master post: HERE
Links to chapters: 1 | 2 | 3
A/N This fic was done for the xmenbigbang, which once again was run like well-oiled machine. The mods are awesome! All of my love and devotion goes out to amoralambiguity who has been so amazingly supportive through this process despite the fact that I re-wrote the story half a dozen times. Her masterpost is HERE, and I tell you that you have have to go and make a fuss, it's so amazing!
There had been a time in his existence when Charles Xavier stayed up late because he couldn't stand to put aside his research. He would sit at one end of the stout kitchen table with his father at the other, and together they would spread out enough books to overwhelm the surface, spilling manuscripts over the side into mountains of their own. Angel would just smile and make them both tea, poured into enchanted mugs that would keep the brew warm no matter how long they both forgot to drink. Then she would drop a gentle kiss to each of their temples and leave her husband and stepson to bask in their experiments. Those were good nights, with Charles taking in the steady silence of his father, secure in the knowledge that within a few minutes Hank would creep out of bed to join them at their books and, loathe to be left out, Raven would sneak down as well, despite the fact she would fall asleep out of sheer boredom within the next twenty minutes.
These were beautiful nights, and a beautiful life… up until the moment Brian Xavier laid his head down on that kitchen table and didn't get up the next morning.
Now Charles was up late going over the bills rather than his books. (Still in his chair at the other end of the table. Not his father's spot. Never his father's.)
Brian Xavier had always been a talented apothecary, the undisputed best in their town of Westchester. But for all man’s skills with the inherent passive magic that came with potion making, he never had been particularly productive. Now his death had left his family in a terrible position. Without Brian, all manner of creditors were finding their way out of the woodwork to demand their sums out of Charles. Since it had been Charles’s intention to never leave his father's apothecary shop, quietly plodding away at potions for the rest of his days, he wasn’t too perturbed that this is what was expected of him. But the thought of his vibrant siblings condemned to the same made him ill. Raven and Hank each had their own vision for the future, and Charles was awake in the dead of night trying to make those come true.
Charles's stepmother, Angel, had done the best she could by her two younger children, finding them apprenticeships that she thought they would enjoy, and weren't too terribly far away from home. But like her husband before her, Angel had the best of intentions and the worst of outcomes.
Raven had been secured a place at the front counter of Westchester's most reputable bakery, Cerebro. Angel's thinking was that since her own position as a shop girl at the apothecary had led straight to her marriage with Brian Xavier, it was exactly the sort of thing that Raven would want as well. It was a wonderful idea, were it not for the fact that Raven resented people who paid attention to her svelte curves and curly blonde hair rather than her mind, and the men at the front counter of the bakery were not likely to ignore Raven's more prominent… attributes. (Really, it was an easy mistake for Angel to make, considering that when a man didn’t pay a sufficient amount of attention to those attributes then Raven was likely to make him cry.)
Like Raven, Hank had been acquired an apprenticeship that supposedly fit him perfectly. Angel had sent him to Oxford, the next town over, and to the Wizard Armando. Her thinking was that Hank's fondness for helping Brian with his experiments meant that, like their father, Hank harbored a secret longing to become a wizard. Once again, Angel had done the best with the information in front of her and come out wrong. The trouble was that Hank helped with the experiments because he loved the process, not the magic (and doing it for him was the only way to get Brian to keep proper records). At heart Hank was a scientist, and he preferred when his experiments followed the predicable rules of order and logic, something that could never be guaranteed with magical reactions.
With both of his siblings so unhappy, Charles had barely slept in the last week, diligently going over the finances to find a way to cut back even further so that perhaps his siblings could at least switch apprenticeships. Armando, of course, would be willing to take in the whole family if they wanted, wonderful friend of their father that he was. But the baker at Cerebro was more than irritated by the whole mess and would only exchange one Xavier sibling for another if Charles managed to find more money than they would ever have on hand. And so Charles worked, and he pushed himself, and he spent far longer hours at the apothecary shop than he should, trying to make more potions than they ever had before so he might save his siblings.
He went over the accounts every few days in the hope that perhaps some new source of income would magically appear, which is precisely what he was doing on this particular night. He’d been up since before dawn churning out batch after batch of anti-nausea potions (and Charles felt guilty about being so grateful that the flu was going around). The exhaustion of the long day settled into his bones beside the unending struggle of trying to find a way out, and between one breath and the next, dropped his head to the table and fell asleep.
In the months since his father’s death Charles had grown accustomed to being plagued by nightmares about losing their home, being stripped of the shop, having no money to give his younger siblings a chance in the world (even if they weren't particularly pleased with the apprenticeships they had been given), and seeing Angel's bright smiling eyes turn leaden because he couldn't fend for his family in the way that his father had.
But on this night, Charles slept soundly. Despite being lost deep in his dreams he thought he could feel strong fingers combing through his hair and a soft voice whispering strange words of comfort in his ear. Charles woke the next morning to the warm light of sunrise and he couldn’t help but smile. He was refreshed, filled with hope, and for a few long moments he believed that perhaps everything would turn out fine. The financial documents still scattered on the table dampened his mood somewhat, but it couldn't undermine his newfound good mood.
Apparently a positive attitude was all Charles needed, because as the day went on every last potion turned out well, each quite a bit more potent than he'd expected, and customers who Charles hadn't seen in years suddenly felt the need to return to Xavier's Apothecary rather than the more prominent shops at the town's center. Within a few days Raven dropped by for a moment, proclaiming that she'd been moved to the back of the store as a junior baker rather than salesgirl and she was loving every moment. Then there was a letter from Hank rambling about all the new things he'd learned with Armando. With one night of good sleep it seemed that suddenly everything had turned around.
Things at the shop quickly grew frantic, an endless stream of people coming in for potions to bless their gardens, lotions to increase their beauty before the May Day celebrations, and cures for summer colds. Charles knew that their shop had always been the best of the Westchester apothecaries, and he assumed that this sudden boom in business was due to the same high quality products as always, only now coupled with Charles's sense of reliability that Brian had lacked.
Of course, it didn't hurt things that people seemed so genuinely fond of Charles. The little old women who came in once a week for their joint tonic liked to sit down with him to tea, and they all swore that no potion made them feel better than a few minutes conversation with young Master Xavier. (Charles would just blush at the assertion and stumble into the back of the shop to have a sturdy wall between him and the giggling women.)
The shop began to do so well that Charles sent Hank a tentatively worded letter to ask if perhaps, Hank wanted to come home. It wouldn't be the same as being a wizard, but he wouldn't be homesick anymore, nor would he have to endure the fickleness of magic. Hank's letter took longer to return then Charles had anticipated, and when it finally came, the note simply told Charles to go and see Raven at the bakery on May Day. Confused at his instructions (particularly considering that Hank hadn't even answered his question), Charles waited the few days until May Day, closing the shop with a note on the door that declared he was taking a particularly long lunch and would be back later in the afternoon.
The day was bright and pleasant, with a festive air that colored the whole town. Streamers of leafy green and sunshine yellow framed shop windows while thick garlands hung from the street lamps, and the young people of Westchester all but danced down the streets with flowers in their hair.
Charles, of course, was unadorned.
He ducked through the side alleys to avoid the river of joyous people, wanting to make his way quickly to the bakery without the burden of exchanging pleasantries. (Apparently the trouble with being a successful businessman was that people wanted to speak with you.) For the most part his walk across town was uneventful, catching only glimpses of the festival that had consumed the rest of the city, and hearing echoes of the music calling them all to dance. It was, he admitted to himself, a tad bit lonely to make the trek alone, knowing that when they were done he would leave his sister in a circle of adoring acquaintances while he made his way back to his quiet little shop, only to work late until he didn't ache quite so much at being left behind.
Charles was so thoroughly engrossed in his melancholy that he didn't notice the man standing in his path. Instead, Charles walked headlong into a broad chest that felt roughly akin to smacking into a brick wall. He tilted back his head to apologize and scamper on his way before the situation got anymore awkward. However, the man standing in front of him was… stunning, and seemed to have stripped Charles of his ability to form a cogent sentence.
The man was all sharp, unyielding angles, and the long lines of his black tailcoat accentuated the broad planes of his chest. Charles failed to bite back a gulp at his almost visceral reaction to the man's handsomeness, but judging by his smirk, Charles's response did not go unnoticed. For all his beauty though, the man’s eyes were strange. They glinted with a steel blue, but they seemed hollow somehow, like there was wall up between the man’s soul and the rest of the outside world. His grin slowly turned fierce, and as if the situation wasn't mortifying enough the man had now caught Charles staring. He blushed scarlet before he muttered out an apology and tried to scamper down a side alley where he could be alone to combust in mortification in peace.
Charles successfully made it two steps away before the man in question snatched Charles by the arm and twisted him around, tugging Charles tight to his chest. Charles stood there for a moment, absolutely frozen and unable to breathe before the man smiled at him again, less teasing this time and far more pleased. "Where are you off to?"
This was exactly the sort of situation that Charles had warned Raven about, being trapped in an alleyway with a strange man, but Charles couldn't find it in himself to be nervous, simply flustered at the man's unyielding attention. "Uh, I'm going to Cerebro’s."
The man took a shuffle of a half step, slipping even further into Charles's space and asked, "Why?"
The question was ridiculous enough that Charles was able to regain a fragment of himself and reply, "I should think that was fairly obvious. It is a bakery after all."
If Charles had expected the man to draw back, upset with Charles's mouthiness, he was disappointed. Instead the man grinned even more, like Charles was providing him with some good sport. He trailed the hand he had on Charles's upper arm down the front of the muscle to somehow find the way to Charles's waist. Charles’s breath caught at the motion, and he became painfully aware that the only touches he’d received since his siblings were sent away had been brushes of fingers as he handed over products and the occasional pat to his cheek when a client told him ‘you’re such a good boy, Master Xavier’. The touch of this man’s fingers to the thin fabric over Charles’s side was positively obscene in comparison. "And yet,” the man teased, “you don't strike me as the sort of fellow who'd put off purchasing his May Day pastries until halfway through the festival."
"What makes you so certain of that?" Charles retorted, despite the fact that it really was quite an accurate assessment of him.
The handsome man ran his free hand through Charles's combed back hair, mussing it, with his hand now slipping from Charles's waist to rest at the small of his back so Charles couldn't properly pull away. (Not that Charles was trying too desperately hard to get away from the man. Despite the motion of the man's hands, all his attention seemed to be on Charles's face, and Charles couldn't quite bring himself to break that.) "I'm sure because there are no flowers in your hair. You don't even have one pinned to your lapel like the old men do when they think they're too dignified for blossoms."
"I've been in my shop all day," Charles challenged.
The man tugged him a little tighter; hand pressed low to Charles's back and slowly began to sway to the rhythm of the music playing in the public square at the far end of the alley. "And yet you came out into this chaos, to go to the most popular bakery in the city, while everyone who isn't quite so orderly as you is buying pastries."
"I was going to see my sister. She works there." Charles blushed.
"Ah, your sister." The handsome man took Charles's free hand in his own and shifted into a waltz. Charles automatically rested his unheld hand on the man's shoulder, easily keeping time while the man led them both through the small space of the alley and towards the large square filled with revelers.
Charles stumbled in the man's grip, not wanting to go out in the humming chaos of all those people when he could avoid it. The handsome man grinned again, like Charles was something to be teased and cajoled into coming along. The man tugged Charles tighter to his chest and pulled him back on rhythm, and out into the square.
Together they waltzed across the space, twisting in between other spinning couples while they made their way through the music and towards the bakery on the far side. The moment was ethereal. Flower petals drifted on the breeze, the air was thick with the scent of spices, and for the first time in his life, Charles was wanted. Raven was the beautiful one while Hank was the clever one, and for his whole life Charles had simply been there. He was reliable, and dependable, and 'oh, such a sweet boy'. But just this once someone had deemed him worth paying attention to. This man was beautiful, with his sharp features and crystalline eyes, and of all people it was plain, steady Charles that he was dancing with. Charles felt like all that good fortune that had so blessed the shop had finally settled on him as well.
With the last few notes of the song the man spun Charles out of his grip and dropped into a deep bow, with his teasing smirk entirely intact. When the man didn't pull Charles back into his embrace, Charles realized that they'd crossed the wide expanse of the town square and brought Charles safely to bakery's front door. Charles was man enough to admit to himself that he didn't want to go in. For the first time in his life he felt like he could engage in the dancing and revels that so consumed the others on May Day, like he could be happy spending the day being ridiculous with this man.
But Charles Francis Xavier was nothing if not reliable, and so instead he gave the man his most besotted smile and turned to slip into the bakery. But once again, the man stretched out his hand and took Charles by the upper arm, slowly twisting him back around. Charles looked up at him, almost tempted to believe that this was going to be one of those fairy tale moments that Angel so liked to talk about. That the man might lean down to kiss him and suddenly everything about Charles's life would change.
Of course, that's not the way Charles's story was meant to go. So instead, the man plucked a simple red daisy off the bouquet on the hat of an old woman passing by and tucked it over Charles's ear. The man brushed his fingers over the petals with a grin, and then winked at Charles before he disappeared back into the crowd. Charles just stood there for a moment, utterly baffled by the whole chain of events that had led to this moment, wanting to chase after that man and see what would happen. Instead he straightened his spine, steeled himself for the chaos of people, and turned to walk into the bakery. [FN: red daisy means that the person being given the flower has beauty that they know not of.]
Compared to the quiet solidity of the man's presence, the anarchy inside the shop almost gave Charles a headache. But he had a flower in his hair from the handsomest man he'd ever seen, and that was enough to guide him safely through the thumping throng of people demanding their baked goods and to the door that led to the back of the massive bakery. Charles slipped past the various work tables and mixing counters, finding his way to a nook at the very back of the shop where Raven spent her days devising new recipes.
Charles immediately slipped off his jacket because Raven's little corner of the kitchen was quiet and homey, warm like summer thanks to constantly working ovens. He let his sister hum to herself over the intricacies of a spice mixture for a new variety of apple pie while he waited for her to look up and pay him attention.
Though, now that he thought about it, there was something wrong with that image.
Raven was never one for diligent testing methods, and based on the pages and pages of meticulous notes that were scattered around her station, Raven was applying the scientific method to the development of these recipes. Behavior that was not at all like Raven, but entirely like Hank.
For just one moment that thought was enough to change the image of the sibling before him. Suddenly Raven's blonde curls melted away into the scruff of Hank's always mangled short brown hair. Her perfect profile became Hank's sweet face, complete with slightly too large glasses. The image quickly flickered away, back to precisely what Charles would've expected Raven to look like in this situation, but now he knew the truth.
Charles sunk back on the stool that was kept in the nook for all those left to wait for 'Raven' to pay attention and sighed, "Oh Hank, what have you done?"
Hank looked up from his notebook with a jump, obviously surprised that Charles had seen through whatever magic the boy had concealing his identity, but Charles could see the relief in his brother's eyes that he wouldn't have to find a way to break the ice. He gingerly set aside his notebook and stumbled out, "Well, Raven and were both… less than thrilled with our apprenticeships."
Charles fixed him with a stern look. "You were both miserable and brokenhearted, Hank. I remember."
"Yes!" Hank all but shouted, "And you were trying so hard to fix everything for us, to change things so that we could have someplace where we'd be happy, but Raven and I decided that it wasn't fair for us to just sit there and wait for you to save us. We had to take matters into our own hands."
Charles knew his siblings well enough to know that explanation meant that Raven had dashed headfirst into something ridiculous and Hank had been pulled along for the ride. Noble though either of their intentions may have been (and Charles doubted that nobility was really anyone's chief purpose here), he slouched into the stool and sighed, "Hank…"
Hank bit his bottom lip and burst out, "We went to the Wizard Erik."
Charles paused, drawing in a painfully slow breath through his nose and then out through his mouth, stopping himself before he snapped back exactly what he thought of that plan.
The Wizard Erik was powerful but reckless, having gotten fed up with the rules and regulations that normally confined Witches and Wizards in polite society. Instead he had taken up residence in an enchanted castle that roamed through the Wilds that made up the borderlands between the Kingdom of Genosha and the Waste. Given Westchester’s position on the edge of the Wilds of Genosha, most of the town’s citizens had caught a glimpse of the castle slipping through the mist. There were whispers about him, that he could perform magic so great that he could accomplish any spell you asked of him, but he would charge you your soul. Charles didn't believe rumors so ridiculous (there would have been an official statement from the Council of Wizards if Erik was practicing an art so dark as that), but all the whispers about the Wizard still gave him pause. Especially considering that Raven and Hank must've roamed out into the wild hills outside Westchester and gone looking for Erik's moving castle.
Hank could read the expression on Charles's face and frantically began explaining, "He really was very nice!" Charles quirked an eyebrow and Hank amended, "Alright, not exactly nice, but not terrible either. After all those stories I've heard about him I was expecting candles and chanting, and to have to swear an oath over a bowl of blood, but he wasn't so terrible as all that. The main room of his castle was filthy, to be sure, but he was perfectly polite, and respectful."
"Tell me Hank, what did he ask for in payment?"
"He, um, didn't." Hank blushed, well aware from the few lessons on business that Charles had been able to force into his head that that was a terrible idea. Hank rushed on before Charles could scold him and storm out of the bakery to hunt down the wizard in question, "Raven explained our situation and talked him into a spell that made her look like me and me look like her, and we offered to pay him, but he said that we wouldn't be coming to him if we had the kind of money that the spell would require, so he'd think about what he wanted from us and come to perform the spell and explain his payment in three days time."
"He came to the house?" Charles demanded, offended that a rogue wizard had violated the sanctity of his home.
Hank darted around his worktable and held up his hands to calm Charles down. "Yes, but he didn't do anything! At least, I don't think he did anything. We went downstairs to meet in him the shop so you'd never see him since you were still up at the kitchen table, but by the time we made it downstairs he was already there, sitting." Hank paused then rushed out, "sitting at the table drinking tea."
"Where was I!" Charles sputtered.
"You were asleep. We didn't now if you'd just fallen asleep looking at all the finances again or if he'd put a spell on you." Hank hesitated, "Neither one of us thought it would be a good idea to ask." Before Charles could snap out anything else Hank pressed on, "Seeing you there, working so hard to give us what we wanted, it changed his mind. Whatever he'd been meaning to ask for in payment he said it didn't matter anymore. And he gave us a more powerful spell than what we'd bargained for." Hank extended his hand to Charles, showing off a thin, braided strap of leather wrapped around his wrist. "It's a powerful enchantment, designed so that when people look at us they'll see what we want them to see."
Charles huffed out a calming breath and examined the knot work in the braid, the apothecary in him unwillingly impressed by the obvious quality of the enchantment. "So your employer looks at you and sees Raven."
"Yes. Though Raven says that after she'd impressed Wizard Armando for the first time she confessed to him that we'd switched."
Charles paused, "The spell on this was so powerful that Armando couldn't see through it?"
"No. Erik said it would be impenetrable until we chose to make it otherwise." Hank gave him a hesitant grin, "I guess Erik didn't plan on you."
Charles snorted, calming down enough to see how nervous Hank was to tell him all this, obviously more than a little terrified that Charles would stay furious with him, or even force them both to go back to their original places. Charles sighed and swept his younger, but taller, brother into his embrace and whispered, "I'm happy you're happy, Hank. I just wish you would've told me. I would've helped you any way I could."
Hank buried his face in the crook of Charles's neck and heaved a desperately thankful sigh, mumbling, "I wanted to. We both wanted to. But we felt like it was something we had to do on our own."
Charles snorted, "Well that's ridiculous and you should never think such a horrid thing again. I'm your brother, I will always be there for you, not matter how ludicrous your plans might be."
Hank giggled, and Charles knew that all would be well. He prodded his brother down onto the other spare stool and demanded that the boy tell him everything about his time at the bakery, everything he would've told Charles if they'd been talking like they should. With bright eyes Hank rambled to Charles all about his newfound infatuation with baked goods. Hank was still too skinny to get much enjoyment out of eating them, but the process of taking a merely adequate recipe and experimenting until it was perfect had given Hank the kind of stability he never would have gotten as a Wizard.
When Hank finally wound down, Charles gently took Hank's hands in both of his and asked, "Are you happy here, Hank? Because if you want to, you can come back to the apothecary. We're making enough that you don't have to stay here."
Hank smiled back, "I am happy here, Charles." Hank reached out with one of his long arms and grabbed a stack of papers off one of the nearby shelved and tentatively handed them to Charles. "I've been thinking, if you know how to properly make the medicines, to do all the things that an apothecary shop is supposed to do, and I know how to make them taste good, then perhaps we could become and entirely new kind of shop." The papers on top were Hank's experiments to take a potion for the cold - one of the few recipes that Hank had always felt comfortable with - and put it in a cookie.
Charles quirked an eyebrow, "A chocolate chip cure for the common cold?"
"Actually," Hank pushed his glasses up his nose and pointed to a chart of results on page three, "there's something about the cocoa in the chocolate chips that the ingredients for the potion doesn't combine well with. Chocolate chip cookies, fudge brownies, anything chocolaty can't be used for the cold potion. However, I'm currently having great success with any cookies that involve molasses." Charles let Hank explain to him some more of the experiments, offering up suggestions that all but proved Hank's point that together they could pull off his plan.
Eventually Charles asked about Raven, wanting to know the things about her that he would've been told if he'd been let in on the plan in the first place. Apparently Raven was doing splendidly under Armando's tutelage. It seemed she had a gift for transforming things into new shapes, or just changing their appearances, and Armando had said that within the year he believed that Raven would be able to create and sell concealment spells all on her own. "Although," Hank blushed, "I'm not sure how much of that is Raven's own skill, and how much is Erik's advice."
Charles sighed, and scolded himself for thinking that things would have settled so nicely as he thought. "Let me guess, the Wizard Erik has been dropping by Armando's house to 'check up' on Raven."
"Got it in one. Raven says he drops by at least once a week, and based off the way he was staring at her when he went to his castle, I wouldn't be surprised if Mother's plan comes true anyway."
"I have a feeling that marrying Raven is probably not foremost in his mind, Hank."
"You didn't see the way he looked at her Charles. Though, I supposed it might be the way he looks at anything he thinks is interesting. It's intense, and unabashed. It might just be his strange eyes though."
Charles paused, a pain of certainty ripping through his chest at Hank's offhand comment. Charles asked, "Oh, and what's wrong with his eyes?" trying to stay nonchalant all while silently repeating to himself, 'Not blue, not blue, not blue,' only to be interrupted by Hank's description, "They're this funny sort of light blue. The color isn't all the strange, but it's almost like there's a wall up on the other side of them. Like the light won't reflect properly and they're just made of glass. It's slightly unnerving." And with that, Charles's lovely day came crashing down.
The handsome man.
The man who'd just danced across the town square with Charles nestled in his arms was none other than the Wizard Erik, trying to cozy up to Charles to get in good with his little sister.
Charles stumbled off his stool, hastily grabbing his jacket from the coat rack while he fumbled out, "I just realized how late it is. I promised a few customers I'd be back to the shop to give them their purchases before they headed out for the fireworks tonight."
"Oh," Hank's face fell, like he thought that perhaps Charles was done for the day and they could spend the rest of the night nestled in Hank's corner of the bakery discussing his notes.
Charles put a gentle hand on Hank's shoulder, but still shrugged on his coat. "I really am sorry about this Hank. Perhaps you can drop by in a few days and we can have lunch, catch up some more." Hank put on a brave face, and under normal circumstances Charles would have been thrilled to spend the night discussing science with his brother, but tonight he was mortified, sick to his stomach at the humiliation that he'd been making cow eyes at a man who fancied Raven. Charles pressed a warm kiss to Hank's temple, promising to see him soon, and then made for the door like his life depended on it.
"Charles!" Hank called before he could slip away, "I thought you hated flowers?"
The question was innocuous enough, just curious Hank wanting to understand something before he forgot about the question, but Charles remembered the daisy in his hair with a stab of pain. He went to pluck it out, replying, "Someone stuck it in my hair while I was…" and trailed off at the crown of immaculate, multi-layered, ruby-red daisies that came off in his hand. Erik had tucked the flower behind his ear and then with a brush of his fingers transformed it into a halo. Before Hank could ask what had him so pale Charles lurched out the back door of the bakery and into the alleyway that he'd meant to come in through before Erik had found him and made him a fool.
Charles didn't remember stumbling back through all those dark and isolated alleys to make his way home to the empty shop. There were no customers waiting there for him to make him feel useful, and none came for the rest of the day. The whole of the town was out there celebrating May Day while Charles sat in the dark corners of his storeroom. He'd meant to work on a new potion, but his hands were shaking too terribly to get anything done, so he'd sat down on his step stool, head in his hands, and couldn't bring himself to move for hours.
To Part 2
Author: sunryder
Artist: amoralambiguity
Verse: First Class AU
Word Count 16,810
Rating T
Characters/Pairings: Erik/Raven, Erik/Charles
Warnings AU
Summary: Charles Xavier had accepted that he was doomed to be ordinary while Raven and Hank got to be extraordinary. Of course, that was all true right up until Charles flirted with the handsomest fellow he'd ever seen and got cursed into a crippled old man for his trouble. Now Charles is hiding out in a moving castle with a fire demon named Logan who has a cigar problem, a magical apprentice and accidental firestarter named Alex, and the same handsome man who got Charles into this mess in the first place. A man who just happens to be the great and terrible Wizard Erik.
Link to art master post: HERE
Links to chapters: 1 | 2 | 3
A/N This fic was done for the xmenbigbang, which once again was run like well-oiled machine. The mods are awesome! All of my love and devotion goes out to amoralambiguity who has been so amazingly supportive through this process despite the fact that I re-wrote the story half a dozen times. Her masterpost is HERE, and I tell you that you have have to go and make a fuss, it's so amazing!
There had been a time in his existence when Charles Xavier stayed up late because he couldn't stand to put aside his research. He would sit at one end of the stout kitchen table with his father at the other, and together they would spread out enough books to overwhelm the surface, spilling manuscripts over the side into mountains of their own. Angel would just smile and make them both tea, poured into enchanted mugs that would keep the brew warm no matter how long they both forgot to drink. Then she would drop a gentle kiss to each of their temples and leave her husband and stepson to bask in their experiments. Those were good nights, with Charles taking in the steady silence of his father, secure in the knowledge that within a few minutes Hank would creep out of bed to join them at their books and, loathe to be left out, Raven would sneak down as well, despite the fact she would fall asleep out of sheer boredom within the next twenty minutes.
These were beautiful nights, and a beautiful life… up until the moment Brian Xavier laid his head down on that kitchen table and didn't get up the next morning.
Now Charles was up late going over the bills rather than his books. (Still in his chair at the other end of the table. Not his father's spot. Never his father's.)
Brian Xavier had always been a talented apothecary, the undisputed best in their town of Westchester. But for all man’s skills with the inherent passive magic that came with potion making, he never had been particularly productive. Now his death had left his family in a terrible position. Without Brian, all manner of creditors were finding their way out of the woodwork to demand their sums out of Charles. Since it had been Charles’s intention to never leave his father's apothecary shop, quietly plodding away at potions for the rest of his days, he wasn’t too perturbed that this is what was expected of him. But the thought of his vibrant siblings condemned to the same made him ill. Raven and Hank each had their own vision for the future, and Charles was awake in the dead of night trying to make those come true.
Charles's stepmother, Angel, had done the best she could by her two younger children, finding them apprenticeships that she thought they would enjoy, and weren't too terribly far away from home. But like her husband before her, Angel had the best of intentions and the worst of outcomes.
Raven had been secured a place at the front counter of Westchester's most reputable bakery, Cerebro. Angel's thinking was that since her own position as a shop girl at the apothecary had led straight to her marriage with Brian Xavier, it was exactly the sort of thing that Raven would want as well. It was a wonderful idea, were it not for the fact that Raven resented people who paid attention to her svelte curves and curly blonde hair rather than her mind, and the men at the front counter of the bakery were not likely to ignore Raven's more prominent… attributes. (Really, it was an easy mistake for Angel to make, considering that when a man didn’t pay a sufficient amount of attention to those attributes then Raven was likely to make him cry.)
Like Raven, Hank had been acquired an apprenticeship that supposedly fit him perfectly. Angel had sent him to Oxford, the next town over, and to the Wizard Armando. Her thinking was that Hank's fondness for helping Brian with his experiments meant that, like their father, Hank harbored a secret longing to become a wizard. Once again, Angel had done the best with the information in front of her and come out wrong. The trouble was that Hank helped with the experiments because he loved the process, not the magic (and doing it for him was the only way to get Brian to keep proper records). At heart Hank was a scientist, and he preferred when his experiments followed the predicable rules of order and logic, something that could never be guaranteed with magical reactions.
With both of his siblings so unhappy, Charles had barely slept in the last week, diligently going over the finances to find a way to cut back even further so that perhaps his siblings could at least switch apprenticeships. Armando, of course, would be willing to take in the whole family if they wanted, wonderful friend of their father that he was. But the baker at Cerebro was more than irritated by the whole mess and would only exchange one Xavier sibling for another if Charles managed to find more money than they would ever have on hand. And so Charles worked, and he pushed himself, and he spent far longer hours at the apothecary shop than he should, trying to make more potions than they ever had before so he might save his siblings.
He went over the accounts every few days in the hope that perhaps some new source of income would magically appear, which is precisely what he was doing on this particular night. He’d been up since before dawn churning out batch after batch of anti-nausea potions (and Charles felt guilty about being so grateful that the flu was going around). The exhaustion of the long day settled into his bones beside the unending struggle of trying to find a way out, and between one breath and the next, dropped his head to the table and fell asleep.
In the months since his father’s death Charles had grown accustomed to being plagued by nightmares about losing their home, being stripped of the shop, having no money to give his younger siblings a chance in the world (even if they weren't particularly pleased with the apprenticeships they had been given), and seeing Angel's bright smiling eyes turn leaden because he couldn't fend for his family in the way that his father had.
But on this night, Charles slept soundly. Despite being lost deep in his dreams he thought he could feel strong fingers combing through his hair and a soft voice whispering strange words of comfort in his ear. Charles woke the next morning to the warm light of sunrise and he couldn’t help but smile. He was refreshed, filled with hope, and for a few long moments he believed that perhaps everything would turn out fine. The financial documents still scattered on the table dampened his mood somewhat, but it couldn't undermine his newfound good mood.
Apparently a positive attitude was all Charles needed, because as the day went on every last potion turned out well, each quite a bit more potent than he'd expected, and customers who Charles hadn't seen in years suddenly felt the need to return to Xavier's Apothecary rather than the more prominent shops at the town's center. Within a few days Raven dropped by for a moment, proclaiming that she'd been moved to the back of the store as a junior baker rather than salesgirl and she was loving every moment. Then there was a letter from Hank rambling about all the new things he'd learned with Armando. With one night of good sleep it seemed that suddenly everything had turned around.
Things at the shop quickly grew frantic, an endless stream of people coming in for potions to bless their gardens, lotions to increase their beauty before the May Day celebrations, and cures for summer colds. Charles knew that their shop had always been the best of the Westchester apothecaries, and he assumed that this sudden boom in business was due to the same high quality products as always, only now coupled with Charles's sense of reliability that Brian had lacked.
Of course, it didn't hurt things that people seemed so genuinely fond of Charles. The little old women who came in once a week for their joint tonic liked to sit down with him to tea, and they all swore that no potion made them feel better than a few minutes conversation with young Master Xavier. (Charles would just blush at the assertion and stumble into the back of the shop to have a sturdy wall between him and the giggling women.)
The shop began to do so well that Charles sent Hank a tentatively worded letter to ask if perhaps, Hank wanted to come home. It wouldn't be the same as being a wizard, but he wouldn't be homesick anymore, nor would he have to endure the fickleness of magic. Hank's letter took longer to return then Charles had anticipated, and when it finally came, the note simply told Charles to go and see Raven at the bakery on May Day. Confused at his instructions (particularly considering that Hank hadn't even answered his question), Charles waited the few days until May Day, closing the shop with a note on the door that declared he was taking a particularly long lunch and would be back later in the afternoon.
The day was bright and pleasant, with a festive air that colored the whole town. Streamers of leafy green and sunshine yellow framed shop windows while thick garlands hung from the street lamps, and the young people of Westchester all but danced down the streets with flowers in their hair.
Charles, of course, was unadorned.
He ducked through the side alleys to avoid the river of joyous people, wanting to make his way quickly to the bakery without the burden of exchanging pleasantries. (Apparently the trouble with being a successful businessman was that people wanted to speak with you.) For the most part his walk across town was uneventful, catching only glimpses of the festival that had consumed the rest of the city, and hearing echoes of the music calling them all to dance. It was, he admitted to himself, a tad bit lonely to make the trek alone, knowing that when they were done he would leave his sister in a circle of adoring acquaintances while he made his way back to his quiet little shop, only to work late until he didn't ache quite so much at being left behind.
Charles was so thoroughly engrossed in his melancholy that he didn't notice the man standing in his path. Instead, Charles walked headlong into a broad chest that felt roughly akin to smacking into a brick wall. He tilted back his head to apologize and scamper on his way before the situation got anymore awkward. However, the man standing in front of him was… stunning, and seemed to have stripped Charles of his ability to form a cogent sentence.
The man was all sharp, unyielding angles, and the long lines of his black tailcoat accentuated the broad planes of his chest. Charles failed to bite back a gulp at his almost visceral reaction to the man's handsomeness, but judging by his smirk, Charles's response did not go unnoticed. For all his beauty though, the man’s eyes were strange. They glinted with a steel blue, but they seemed hollow somehow, like there was wall up between the man’s soul and the rest of the outside world. His grin slowly turned fierce, and as if the situation wasn't mortifying enough the man had now caught Charles staring. He blushed scarlet before he muttered out an apology and tried to scamper down a side alley where he could be alone to combust in mortification in peace.
Charles successfully made it two steps away before the man in question snatched Charles by the arm and twisted him around, tugging Charles tight to his chest. Charles stood there for a moment, absolutely frozen and unable to breathe before the man smiled at him again, less teasing this time and far more pleased. "Where are you off to?"
This was exactly the sort of situation that Charles had warned Raven about, being trapped in an alleyway with a strange man, but Charles couldn't find it in himself to be nervous, simply flustered at the man's unyielding attention. "Uh, I'm going to Cerebro’s."
The man took a shuffle of a half step, slipping even further into Charles's space and asked, "Why?"
The question was ridiculous enough that Charles was able to regain a fragment of himself and reply, "I should think that was fairly obvious. It is a bakery after all."
If Charles had expected the man to draw back, upset with Charles's mouthiness, he was disappointed. Instead the man grinned even more, like Charles was providing him with some good sport. He trailed the hand he had on Charles's upper arm down the front of the muscle to somehow find the way to Charles's waist. Charles’s breath caught at the motion, and he became painfully aware that the only touches he’d received since his siblings were sent away had been brushes of fingers as he handed over products and the occasional pat to his cheek when a client told him ‘you’re such a good boy, Master Xavier’. The touch of this man’s fingers to the thin fabric over Charles’s side was positively obscene in comparison. "And yet,” the man teased, “you don't strike me as the sort of fellow who'd put off purchasing his May Day pastries until halfway through the festival."
"What makes you so certain of that?" Charles retorted, despite the fact that it really was quite an accurate assessment of him.
The handsome man ran his free hand through Charles's combed back hair, mussing it, with his hand now slipping from Charles's waist to rest at the small of his back so Charles couldn't properly pull away. (Not that Charles was trying too desperately hard to get away from the man. Despite the motion of the man's hands, all his attention seemed to be on Charles's face, and Charles couldn't quite bring himself to break that.) "I'm sure because there are no flowers in your hair. You don't even have one pinned to your lapel like the old men do when they think they're too dignified for blossoms."
"I've been in my shop all day," Charles challenged.
The man tugged him a little tighter; hand pressed low to Charles's back and slowly began to sway to the rhythm of the music playing in the public square at the far end of the alley. "And yet you came out into this chaos, to go to the most popular bakery in the city, while everyone who isn't quite so orderly as you is buying pastries."
"I was going to see my sister. She works there." Charles blushed.
"Ah, your sister." The handsome man took Charles's free hand in his own and shifted into a waltz. Charles automatically rested his unheld hand on the man's shoulder, easily keeping time while the man led them both through the small space of the alley and towards the large square filled with revelers.
Charles stumbled in the man's grip, not wanting to go out in the humming chaos of all those people when he could avoid it. The handsome man grinned again, like Charles was something to be teased and cajoled into coming along. The man tugged Charles tighter to his chest and pulled him back on rhythm, and out into the square.
Together they waltzed across the space, twisting in between other spinning couples while they made their way through the music and towards the bakery on the far side. The moment was ethereal. Flower petals drifted on the breeze, the air was thick with the scent of spices, and for the first time in his life, Charles was wanted. Raven was the beautiful one while Hank was the clever one, and for his whole life Charles had simply been there. He was reliable, and dependable, and 'oh, such a sweet boy'. But just this once someone had deemed him worth paying attention to. This man was beautiful, with his sharp features and crystalline eyes, and of all people it was plain, steady Charles that he was dancing with. Charles felt like all that good fortune that had so blessed the shop had finally settled on him as well.
With the last few notes of the song the man spun Charles out of his grip and dropped into a deep bow, with his teasing smirk entirely intact. When the man didn't pull Charles back into his embrace, Charles realized that they'd crossed the wide expanse of the town square and brought Charles safely to bakery's front door. Charles was man enough to admit to himself that he didn't want to go in. For the first time in his life he felt like he could engage in the dancing and revels that so consumed the others on May Day, like he could be happy spending the day being ridiculous with this man.
But Charles Francis Xavier was nothing if not reliable, and so instead he gave the man his most besotted smile and turned to slip into the bakery. But once again, the man stretched out his hand and took Charles by the upper arm, slowly twisting him back around. Charles looked up at him, almost tempted to believe that this was going to be one of those fairy tale moments that Angel so liked to talk about. That the man might lean down to kiss him and suddenly everything about Charles's life would change.
Of course, that's not the way Charles's story was meant to go. So instead, the man plucked a simple red daisy off the bouquet on the hat of an old woman passing by and tucked it over Charles's ear. The man brushed his fingers over the petals with a grin, and then winked at Charles before he disappeared back into the crowd. Charles just stood there for a moment, utterly baffled by the whole chain of events that had led to this moment, wanting to chase after that man and see what would happen. Instead he straightened his spine, steeled himself for the chaos of people, and turned to walk into the bakery. [FN: red daisy means that the person being given the flower has beauty that they know not of.]
Compared to the quiet solidity of the man's presence, the anarchy inside the shop almost gave Charles a headache. But he had a flower in his hair from the handsomest man he'd ever seen, and that was enough to guide him safely through the thumping throng of people demanding their baked goods and to the door that led to the back of the massive bakery. Charles slipped past the various work tables and mixing counters, finding his way to a nook at the very back of the shop where Raven spent her days devising new recipes.
Charles immediately slipped off his jacket because Raven's little corner of the kitchen was quiet and homey, warm like summer thanks to constantly working ovens. He let his sister hum to herself over the intricacies of a spice mixture for a new variety of apple pie while he waited for her to look up and pay him attention.
Though, now that he thought about it, there was something wrong with that image.
Raven was never one for diligent testing methods, and based on the pages and pages of meticulous notes that were scattered around her station, Raven was applying the scientific method to the development of these recipes. Behavior that was not at all like Raven, but entirely like Hank.
For just one moment that thought was enough to change the image of the sibling before him. Suddenly Raven's blonde curls melted away into the scruff of Hank's always mangled short brown hair. Her perfect profile became Hank's sweet face, complete with slightly too large glasses. The image quickly flickered away, back to precisely what Charles would've expected Raven to look like in this situation, but now he knew the truth.
Charles sunk back on the stool that was kept in the nook for all those left to wait for 'Raven' to pay attention and sighed, "Oh Hank, what have you done?"
Hank looked up from his notebook with a jump, obviously surprised that Charles had seen through whatever magic the boy had concealing his identity, but Charles could see the relief in his brother's eyes that he wouldn't have to find a way to break the ice. He gingerly set aside his notebook and stumbled out, "Well, Raven and were both… less than thrilled with our apprenticeships."
Charles fixed him with a stern look. "You were both miserable and brokenhearted, Hank. I remember."
"Yes!" Hank all but shouted, "And you were trying so hard to fix everything for us, to change things so that we could have someplace where we'd be happy, but Raven and I decided that it wasn't fair for us to just sit there and wait for you to save us. We had to take matters into our own hands."
Charles knew his siblings well enough to know that explanation meant that Raven had dashed headfirst into something ridiculous and Hank had been pulled along for the ride. Noble though either of their intentions may have been (and Charles doubted that nobility was really anyone's chief purpose here), he slouched into the stool and sighed, "Hank…"
Hank bit his bottom lip and burst out, "We went to the Wizard Erik."
Charles paused, drawing in a painfully slow breath through his nose and then out through his mouth, stopping himself before he snapped back exactly what he thought of that plan.
The Wizard Erik was powerful but reckless, having gotten fed up with the rules and regulations that normally confined Witches and Wizards in polite society. Instead he had taken up residence in an enchanted castle that roamed through the Wilds that made up the borderlands between the Kingdom of Genosha and the Waste. Given Westchester’s position on the edge of the Wilds of Genosha, most of the town’s citizens had caught a glimpse of the castle slipping through the mist. There were whispers about him, that he could perform magic so great that he could accomplish any spell you asked of him, but he would charge you your soul. Charles didn't believe rumors so ridiculous (there would have been an official statement from the Council of Wizards if Erik was practicing an art so dark as that), but all the whispers about the Wizard still gave him pause. Especially considering that Raven and Hank must've roamed out into the wild hills outside Westchester and gone looking for Erik's moving castle.
Hank could read the expression on Charles's face and frantically began explaining, "He really was very nice!" Charles quirked an eyebrow and Hank amended, "Alright, not exactly nice, but not terrible either. After all those stories I've heard about him I was expecting candles and chanting, and to have to swear an oath over a bowl of blood, but he wasn't so terrible as all that. The main room of his castle was filthy, to be sure, but he was perfectly polite, and respectful."
"Tell me Hank, what did he ask for in payment?"
"He, um, didn't." Hank blushed, well aware from the few lessons on business that Charles had been able to force into his head that that was a terrible idea. Hank rushed on before Charles could scold him and storm out of the bakery to hunt down the wizard in question, "Raven explained our situation and talked him into a spell that made her look like me and me look like her, and we offered to pay him, but he said that we wouldn't be coming to him if we had the kind of money that the spell would require, so he'd think about what he wanted from us and come to perform the spell and explain his payment in three days time."
"He came to the house?" Charles demanded, offended that a rogue wizard had violated the sanctity of his home.
Hank darted around his worktable and held up his hands to calm Charles down. "Yes, but he didn't do anything! At least, I don't think he did anything. We went downstairs to meet in him the shop so you'd never see him since you were still up at the kitchen table, but by the time we made it downstairs he was already there, sitting." Hank paused then rushed out, "sitting at the table drinking tea."
"Where was I!" Charles sputtered.
"You were asleep. We didn't now if you'd just fallen asleep looking at all the finances again or if he'd put a spell on you." Hank hesitated, "Neither one of us thought it would be a good idea to ask." Before Charles could snap out anything else Hank pressed on, "Seeing you there, working so hard to give us what we wanted, it changed his mind. Whatever he'd been meaning to ask for in payment he said it didn't matter anymore. And he gave us a more powerful spell than what we'd bargained for." Hank extended his hand to Charles, showing off a thin, braided strap of leather wrapped around his wrist. "It's a powerful enchantment, designed so that when people look at us they'll see what we want them to see."
Charles huffed out a calming breath and examined the knot work in the braid, the apothecary in him unwillingly impressed by the obvious quality of the enchantment. "So your employer looks at you and sees Raven."
"Yes. Though Raven says that after she'd impressed Wizard Armando for the first time she confessed to him that we'd switched."
Charles paused, "The spell on this was so powerful that Armando couldn't see through it?"
"No. Erik said it would be impenetrable until we chose to make it otherwise." Hank gave him a hesitant grin, "I guess Erik didn't plan on you."
Charles snorted, calming down enough to see how nervous Hank was to tell him all this, obviously more than a little terrified that Charles would stay furious with him, or even force them both to go back to their original places. Charles sighed and swept his younger, but taller, brother into his embrace and whispered, "I'm happy you're happy, Hank. I just wish you would've told me. I would've helped you any way I could."
Hank buried his face in the crook of Charles's neck and heaved a desperately thankful sigh, mumbling, "I wanted to. We both wanted to. But we felt like it was something we had to do on our own."
Charles snorted, "Well that's ridiculous and you should never think such a horrid thing again. I'm your brother, I will always be there for you, not matter how ludicrous your plans might be."
Hank giggled, and Charles knew that all would be well. He prodded his brother down onto the other spare stool and demanded that the boy tell him everything about his time at the bakery, everything he would've told Charles if they'd been talking like they should. With bright eyes Hank rambled to Charles all about his newfound infatuation with baked goods. Hank was still too skinny to get much enjoyment out of eating them, but the process of taking a merely adequate recipe and experimenting until it was perfect had given Hank the kind of stability he never would have gotten as a Wizard.
When Hank finally wound down, Charles gently took Hank's hands in both of his and asked, "Are you happy here, Hank? Because if you want to, you can come back to the apothecary. We're making enough that you don't have to stay here."
Hank smiled back, "I am happy here, Charles." Hank reached out with one of his long arms and grabbed a stack of papers off one of the nearby shelved and tentatively handed them to Charles. "I've been thinking, if you know how to properly make the medicines, to do all the things that an apothecary shop is supposed to do, and I know how to make them taste good, then perhaps we could become and entirely new kind of shop." The papers on top were Hank's experiments to take a potion for the cold - one of the few recipes that Hank had always felt comfortable with - and put it in a cookie.
Charles quirked an eyebrow, "A chocolate chip cure for the common cold?"
"Actually," Hank pushed his glasses up his nose and pointed to a chart of results on page three, "there's something about the cocoa in the chocolate chips that the ingredients for the potion doesn't combine well with. Chocolate chip cookies, fudge brownies, anything chocolaty can't be used for the cold potion. However, I'm currently having great success with any cookies that involve molasses." Charles let Hank explain to him some more of the experiments, offering up suggestions that all but proved Hank's point that together they could pull off his plan.
Eventually Charles asked about Raven, wanting to know the things about her that he would've been told if he'd been let in on the plan in the first place. Apparently Raven was doing splendidly under Armando's tutelage. It seemed she had a gift for transforming things into new shapes, or just changing their appearances, and Armando had said that within the year he believed that Raven would be able to create and sell concealment spells all on her own. "Although," Hank blushed, "I'm not sure how much of that is Raven's own skill, and how much is Erik's advice."
Charles sighed, and scolded himself for thinking that things would have settled so nicely as he thought. "Let me guess, the Wizard Erik has been dropping by Armando's house to 'check up' on Raven."
"Got it in one. Raven says he drops by at least once a week, and based off the way he was staring at her when he went to his castle, I wouldn't be surprised if Mother's plan comes true anyway."
"I have a feeling that marrying Raven is probably not foremost in his mind, Hank."
"You didn't see the way he looked at her Charles. Though, I supposed it might be the way he looks at anything he thinks is interesting. It's intense, and unabashed. It might just be his strange eyes though."
Charles paused, a pain of certainty ripping through his chest at Hank's offhand comment. Charles asked, "Oh, and what's wrong with his eyes?" trying to stay nonchalant all while silently repeating to himself, 'Not blue, not blue, not blue,' only to be interrupted by Hank's description, "They're this funny sort of light blue. The color isn't all the strange, but it's almost like there's a wall up on the other side of them. Like the light won't reflect properly and they're just made of glass. It's slightly unnerving." And with that, Charles's lovely day came crashing down.
The handsome man.
The man who'd just danced across the town square with Charles nestled in his arms was none other than the Wizard Erik, trying to cozy up to Charles to get in good with his little sister.
Charles stumbled off his stool, hastily grabbing his jacket from the coat rack while he fumbled out, "I just realized how late it is. I promised a few customers I'd be back to the shop to give them their purchases before they headed out for the fireworks tonight."
"Oh," Hank's face fell, like he thought that perhaps Charles was done for the day and they could spend the rest of the night nestled in Hank's corner of the bakery discussing his notes.
Charles put a gentle hand on Hank's shoulder, but still shrugged on his coat. "I really am sorry about this Hank. Perhaps you can drop by in a few days and we can have lunch, catch up some more." Hank put on a brave face, and under normal circumstances Charles would have been thrilled to spend the night discussing science with his brother, but tonight he was mortified, sick to his stomach at the humiliation that he'd been making cow eyes at a man who fancied Raven. Charles pressed a warm kiss to Hank's temple, promising to see him soon, and then made for the door like his life depended on it.
"Charles!" Hank called before he could slip away, "I thought you hated flowers?"
The question was innocuous enough, just curious Hank wanting to understand something before he forgot about the question, but Charles remembered the daisy in his hair with a stab of pain. He went to pluck it out, replying, "Someone stuck it in my hair while I was…" and trailed off at the crown of immaculate, multi-layered, ruby-red daisies that came off in his hand. Erik had tucked the flower behind his ear and then with a brush of his fingers transformed it into a halo. Before Hank could ask what had him so pale Charles lurched out the back door of the bakery and into the alleyway that he'd meant to come in through before Erik had found him and made him a fool.
Charles didn't remember stumbling back through all those dark and isolated alleys to make his way home to the empty shop. There were no customers waiting there for him to make him feel useful, and none came for the rest of the day. The whole of the town was out there celebrating May Day while Charles sat in the dark corners of his storeroom. He'd meant to work on a new potion, but his hands were shaking too terribly to get anything done, so he'd sat down on his step stool, head in his hands, and couldn't bring himself to move for hours.
To Part 2