TSN x X-Men: Let The Sun Shine On A Brand New World
Title: Let The Sun Shine On A Brand New World
Fandom: The Social Network, X-Men: First Class
Pairing, Characters: Eduardo & Charles friendship, Mark, Chris, Dustin
Rating: PG
Spoilers: For both movies
Disclaimer: Any characters mentioned here belong to their respective creators; the names of any real people mentioned refer to fictionalised versions of these people. No money is made and no offense intended.
Length: 2500 words
Summary: Eduardo explains to Charles what he has left behind. Mark, Chris, and Dustin are left explaining what he left for.
Author's Note: Comment fic for casey_sms: I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS. Geez that is asking for an X-Men: First Class crossover right there with Xavier bonding with Wardo...
Written: October 2011
Let The Sun Shine On A Brand New World
Eduardo stood in front of the large, old-fashioned windows of the second-storey hallway and watched the lone man walking away from the mansion, his shoulders hunched and hands buried in the pockets of a grey hoodie that almost camouflaged him in the fog that had been hanging over Westchester the last three days. (It would dissipate the next morning, he knew, chased away by warm winds uncommon this late in the year and clear skies. He hoped Storm's mood would hold; her interferences not only confused the animals living on the grounds but also tended to leave Eduardo reeling with vertigo increasingly worse the better he became at reading his own gift.)
The floorboards creaked as a weight moved over them to stop next to Eduardo, but he didn't move his eyes from the figure outside. He had been at Xavier's long enough to recognize the sound of the wheel chair.
"How did your friend find us?" Charles' voice tried for polite interest, but Eduardo could detect the note of caution born from being responsible for a house full of people, most of them young kids, all of whom members of a persecuted minority.
"He has his ways." His own voice, he was pleased to notice, didn't betray the lump in his throat. Not that Charles needed external cues such as that to communicate, as he reminded Eduardo of with a wordless inquiry, an apologetic, careful questioning nudge against his mind.
"No, he isn't one of us. At least I don't think so. He is just… Mark."
Professor Xavier could have left it at that and leave his student to thoroughly think himself into a depression, but Charles, stubborn to the point of being insensitive despite his own abilities, might not have asked Eduardo too many questions when he first arrived at the mansion, but had patiently kept working away at the walls he'd built around himself in the aftermath of Mark, and, if Eduardo was being honest, the other man's willingness to open up to Eduardo after finding that they shared a love for chess and a similarly loveless family background entitled him to keep asking until Eduardo figured out how to answer.
"And who is just Mark?"
Eduardo had been trying to answer that question himself. "Can't you just touch your hand to your temple and look for yourself?" How could one explain Mark? How could anyone explain Mark and him?
"I could, my friend. I'd rather not."
Eduardo couldn't help but smile at that and thought a wave of pleased warmth at the man in the wheelchair, a quick thank you for the reminder that not all people only valued Eduardo for what they could take from him.
"Mark is...," he stopped. How did one explain Mark and him? An image flicked through his mind, and he frowned, unsure if this explanation would be unwelcome and overstepping boundaries. Some of that insecurity must have reached Charles, because he put his hand on Eduardo's arm and gave it a light squeeze, the warm weight anchoring and reassuring.
"Mark is the one who leaves me unable to feel my legs." The simple sentence fell from Eduardo's mouth heavy with implications and layers of meaning no one but Charles would be able to truly understand, telepathy or not, and for a moment the silence hung between them, tense with potential hurt like a vase about to topple and hit the ground in an explosion of water and shards.
Eduardo couldn't see Mark in the distance anymore, swallowed by the fog to return to the sunny coast he had come from.
"Oh." It was more sigh than word, an exhaled apology and confirmation of comprehension. Charles had shared his own story of woe during chess games in the early hours on the morning, long after everybody else had gone to bed and before the early risers started to move. Eduardo had hinted, had actually spent a long time expecting Charles to find out for himself, one way or the other (Eduardo had given his full name, and the internet was said to be written in ink - then again, he wasn't on the masthead anymore), and then enjoyed the luxury of for once being the one to set the pace and decide when he was ready to give.
"A game after dinner?"
Eduardo took another moment, then he finally tore his gaze away from the grey outside and turned to Charles to answer. The other looked at him with a tentative smile, a bit sheepish, a bit sad, and a lot of understanding in his blue eyes (so unguarded and open - that too different from what Eduardo was used to).
"And a drink." This is a story I can't tell while I'm sober. He imagined the words in stark black font on a white background, still unsure how to send a thought through the guards Charles refused to ever lower, for his own sake as much as for others', and received confirmation in the form of the other man's smile brightening in a quick flash of teeth and the hand on his arm giving him a small pat before it drew back to curl around the chair's wheel again.
"Tonight it is, my friend." With that, Charles turned his chair around and started to push himself to the elevator further down the hall, anachronistic in the Elizabethan-style building but necessary.
Eduardo watched him leave as he had Mark and then turned back to the window, staring at the hopeless grey waft of mist outside and trying to focus on that still strange knowledge deep inside of him that soon the sun was going to shine again.
*
Mark didn't notice anything until his headphones were pulled from his ears and clattered to the floor.
"Did you know?" Chris was visibly mad, mad enough for Mark to flash back to the last time a friend of his had publicly demanded his attention and he couldn't help but tighten the grip of his hands around the laptop in front of him.
"Did you know?" Mark wasn't used to Chris getting mad; he was the only one of them who managed to always stay calm and collected, no matter what, but now he was all but yelling at Mark, face red and contorted.
He was towering over Mark. Mark didn’t like being cornered.
"Did I know what. You'll have to be more -"
"Don't fuck around with me, Mark!" After that uncharacteristic interruption and use of an expletive Chris leaned down, turned Mark's chair towards him, and put his hands on the armrests, effectively locking Mark in place, and moved his face to hover inches from Mark's. "Did you know that Wardo was a mutant?" His voice was calm now (the expression 'deadly calm' came to mind) and Mark could smell onion on his breath from the salad he had for lunch.
"Wardo is what?" Dustin's squeal would have been comical if Chris hadn't refused to so much as blink, and he didn't even break eye contact with Mark when he replied.
"Dustin, read the news and be quiet. Mark, answer me!"
"…He didn't know for sure himself." He had wondered though, and worried, and, one night, told Mark. Mark had shrugged and told him there was nothing to be done about it anyway and to stop with his useless worrying at least until he did know for sure, and to stop distracting Mark from work.
Chris deflated in front of him at that. All energy seemed to leave his body, and he stood back, head bowed and arms hanging by his sides.
"So you did know."
"Fuck," Dustin mumbled in the background, more to himself than anything else. "Wardo's dad is kind of a douche."
"What else is new." Mark rolled his eyes at him, because, seriously. If there was anyone who'd jump at the chance to finally properly disinherit their son for being a freak and an abomination of nature and tell the world he'd always known there was something wrong with the child it was Wardo's father. "I didn't know, I was aware of the possibility. If you are going to ask me questions at least try to listen -"
"Shut up, Mark. Do you have any idea what this looks like, any idea what kind of message this will send? That you sacked the mutant the second Facebook started to yield a profit and turned from a college project into a real company?" Chris looked disappointed now, and that was. It wasn't.
"It wasn't about that, and you know that! I couldn’t care less about Wardo or anyone being a mutant, it was a business decision."
"But that's what it will look like. You knew, and if nothing else you were clever enough to get rid of him before being associated with him could damage Facebook's reputation." Chris smiled bitterly. "I guess it was a good business decision, cutting him out before association with a mutant could damage Facebook's reputation."
"That's not. It wasn't like that." It wasn't. It was purely business (personal), but not like that. Wardo just had not been right.
Chris tiredly rubbed his eyes.
"I know, Mark. If I honestly thought for one moment that you fired Wardo because of his being a mutant I would have kept my mouth shut and used my position as your head of PR to ruin you from the inside. Diluting Wardo's shares like that was still a horrible thing to do, and no way to treat a friend, business or not. And that and your frequent and public insistence that it was purely business is going to come back and bite you in the ass now, because you can't convince people you didn't know, and everybody will assume this is how you and Facebook do business with mutants - not at all. People will see it as you having picked your side. And it will even be the one that's better for your stock than the opposite."
"I didn't pick a side. I don't care. It's stupid to think something that had no influence on his abilities as CFO would lead me to treat Wardo differently."
"Does anyone else think this is so cool? Our very own Wardo, or, well, Eduardo who used to be our very own Wardo, a mutant. The first ever weather forecast that's always right!" Dustin seemed to try for enthusiasm and looked from Chris to Mark hopefully. He never could stand it when people fought, and had made Mark suffer through months of surprisingly unpleasant silence after Wardo found out about the dilution (the hypocrite, it wasn't as if he hadn't known for months that there had been something off about the contracts Wardo had signed and hadn't so much as said a word to Wardo or Mark). Chris would have none of it though.
"No, it's not cool, Dustin. It isn't any more cool than me being gay or you being ginger or Mark being…, " Chris waved at Mark in a way he was pretty sure he should take offense at, "Mark, and it's nothing Wardo has any control over, it's just how he is, and it doesn't make him cool or a curiosity or something to be stared at as in a 19th century freak show, it doesn't make him wrong or a terrorist or someone who deserves being shunned and cut out of society until a bunch of righteous morons decide to beat him to death."
Chris' voice broke at that, and Mark remembered that Chris had taken time off to go to the funeral of an old friend from his LGBTS days only a few months ago. He tried not to think of lynch mobs, the legislative hurdles standing between reality and laws on preventive custody and incapacitating perfectly mature, sane people because of a genetic fluke, and newspaper columns torn between redefining humanity and calling for tests and research facilities and advising people to buy a gun.
"So don't either of you tell me this is no big deal, because it's not. It shouldn't be, but it is, and we have to try and make the best of it, not only for Facebook, but for Wardo, for Wardo and for," Chris audibly choked up, "For the world. For once stop worrying how something will affect you and think about what's really important."
Mark didn't know what to say to that. He wanted to tell Chris that this didn't have anything to do with him, he couldn't tell people what to think, and Wardo and he weren't even friends anymore.
"Is he…," Dustin sounded small and scared, and careful, as if he was afraid his question would set Chris off again. "He's okay, isn't he? He's safe?"
"I don't know." Chris sagged against the edge of Mark's desk. It would have been more comfortable to walk the four steps and sit down net to Dustin on the couch, but he didn't look like he could make it that far. "As far as I can tell no one has seen him since he left his parents' house seven weeks ago. And wherever he is, I hope he's safe and he can stay for a while, because now that it's hit the news his name and face are everywhere. He's too high profile."
"He's okay." Mark focused on the hangnail on his left thumb and ignored the surprised movements of his friends at the edge of his vision. "There's a place, a school. Privately run. The government doesn't know where it is, I checked."
His nails were too short to catch the offending piece of skin.
"He's fine."
He tried to remember where he kept his nail clipper at home. Logic suggested it was somewhere in the bathroom.
"Mark?" Chris moved closer until he was a blurry pillar of pale pink dress shirt to the side of Mark's hands. "How do you know that?"
"His father's lawyer called. Off the record. He wanted to inquire how this would affect share ownership, in case of incapacitation rather than asset forfeiture. There'll need to be rules as to what proof of mutantship is required first, of course, but I could get a sworn statement from both Mr. and Mrs. Saverin that Wardo admitted to being a mutant to them."
Dustin made a pained noise somewhere to his right, something of a whimper. Mark ignored him.
"I traced the IP address Wardo used to delete his email account. I."
Maybe he should buy a new clipper on his way home. Just in case.
"I told him it didn't change anything. He said I was right. It didn't change anything. And then he asked me to leave."
Stupid hangnail.
"I made sure to cover my tracks. And his."
Chris' hip bumped against Mark's arm, and somehow Dustin's hand had come to rest on his shoulder, but he didn't look up.
"He's fine."
Fandom: The Social Network, X-Men: First Class
Pairing, Characters: Eduardo & Charles friendship, Mark, Chris, Dustin
Rating: PG
Spoilers: For both movies
Disclaimer: Any characters mentioned here belong to their respective creators; the names of any real people mentioned refer to fictionalised versions of these people. No money is made and no offense intended.
Length: 2500 words
Summary: Eduardo explains to Charles what he has left behind. Mark, Chris, and Dustin are left explaining what he left for.
Author's Note: Comment fic for casey_sms: I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS. Geez that is asking for an X-Men: First Class crossover right there with Xavier bonding with Wardo...
Written: October 2011
Let The Sun Shine On A Brand New World
Eduardo stood in front of the large, old-fashioned windows of the second-storey hallway and watched the lone man walking away from the mansion, his shoulders hunched and hands buried in the pockets of a grey hoodie that almost camouflaged him in the fog that had been hanging over Westchester the last three days. (It would dissipate the next morning, he knew, chased away by warm winds uncommon this late in the year and clear skies. He hoped Storm's mood would hold; her interferences not only confused the animals living on the grounds but also tended to leave Eduardo reeling with vertigo increasingly worse the better he became at reading his own gift.)
The floorboards creaked as a weight moved over them to stop next to Eduardo, but he didn't move his eyes from the figure outside. He had been at Xavier's long enough to recognize the sound of the wheel chair.
"How did your friend find us?" Charles' voice tried for polite interest, but Eduardo could detect the note of caution born from being responsible for a house full of people, most of them young kids, all of whom members of a persecuted minority.
"He has his ways." His own voice, he was pleased to notice, didn't betray the lump in his throat. Not that Charles needed external cues such as that to communicate, as he reminded Eduardo of with a wordless inquiry, an apologetic, careful questioning nudge against his mind.
"No, he isn't one of us. At least I don't think so. He is just… Mark."
Professor Xavier could have left it at that and leave his student to thoroughly think himself into a depression, but Charles, stubborn to the point of being insensitive despite his own abilities, might not have asked Eduardo too many questions when he first arrived at the mansion, but had patiently kept working away at the walls he'd built around himself in the aftermath of Mark, and, if Eduardo was being honest, the other man's willingness to open up to Eduardo after finding that they shared a love for chess and a similarly loveless family background entitled him to keep asking until Eduardo figured out how to answer.
"And who is just Mark?"
Eduardo had been trying to answer that question himself. "Can't you just touch your hand to your temple and look for yourself?" How could one explain Mark? How could anyone explain Mark and him?
"I could, my friend. I'd rather not."
Eduardo couldn't help but smile at that and thought a wave of pleased warmth at the man in the wheelchair, a quick thank you for the reminder that not all people only valued Eduardo for what they could take from him.
"Mark is...," he stopped. How did one explain Mark and him? An image flicked through his mind, and he frowned, unsure if this explanation would be unwelcome and overstepping boundaries. Some of that insecurity must have reached Charles, because he put his hand on Eduardo's arm and gave it a light squeeze, the warm weight anchoring and reassuring.
"Mark is the one who leaves me unable to feel my legs." The simple sentence fell from Eduardo's mouth heavy with implications and layers of meaning no one but Charles would be able to truly understand, telepathy or not, and for a moment the silence hung between them, tense with potential hurt like a vase about to topple and hit the ground in an explosion of water and shards.
Eduardo couldn't see Mark in the distance anymore, swallowed by the fog to return to the sunny coast he had come from.
"Oh." It was more sigh than word, an exhaled apology and confirmation of comprehension. Charles had shared his own story of woe during chess games in the early hours on the morning, long after everybody else had gone to bed and before the early risers started to move. Eduardo had hinted, had actually spent a long time expecting Charles to find out for himself, one way or the other (Eduardo had given his full name, and the internet was said to be written in ink - then again, he wasn't on the masthead anymore), and then enjoyed the luxury of for once being the one to set the pace and decide when he was ready to give.
"A game after dinner?"
Eduardo took another moment, then he finally tore his gaze away from the grey outside and turned to Charles to answer. The other looked at him with a tentative smile, a bit sheepish, a bit sad, and a lot of understanding in his blue eyes (so unguarded and open - that too different from what Eduardo was used to).
"And a drink." This is a story I can't tell while I'm sober. He imagined the words in stark black font on a white background, still unsure how to send a thought through the guards Charles refused to ever lower, for his own sake as much as for others', and received confirmation in the form of the other man's smile brightening in a quick flash of teeth and the hand on his arm giving him a small pat before it drew back to curl around the chair's wheel again.
"Tonight it is, my friend." With that, Charles turned his chair around and started to push himself to the elevator further down the hall, anachronistic in the Elizabethan-style building but necessary.
Eduardo watched him leave as he had Mark and then turned back to the window, staring at the hopeless grey waft of mist outside and trying to focus on that still strange knowledge deep inside of him that soon the sun was going to shine again.
*
Mark didn't notice anything until his headphones were pulled from his ears and clattered to the floor.
"Did you know?" Chris was visibly mad, mad enough for Mark to flash back to the last time a friend of his had publicly demanded his attention and he couldn't help but tighten the grip of his hands around the laptop in front of him.
"Did you know?" Mark wasn't used to Chris getting mad; he was the only one of them who managed to always stay calm and collected, no matter what, but now he was all but yelling at Mark, face red and contorted.
He was towering over Mark. Mark didn’t like being cornered.
"Did I know what. You'll have to be more -"
"Don't fuck around with me, Mark!" After that uncharacteristic interruption and use of an expletive Chris leaned down, turned Mark's chair towards him, and put his hands on the armrests, effectively locking Mark in place, and moved his face to hover inches from Mark's. "Did you know that Wardo was a mutant?" His voice was calm now (the expression 'deadly calm' came to mind) and Mark could smell onion on his breath from the salad he had for lunch.
"Wardo is what?" Dustin's squeal would have been comical if Chris hadn't refused to so much as blink, and he didn't even break eye contact with Mark when he replied.
"Dustin, read the news and be quiet. Mark, answer me!"
"…He didn't know for sure himself." He had wondered though, and worried, and, one night, told Mark. Mark had shrugged and told him there was nothing to be done about it anyway and to stop with his useless worrying at least until he did know for sure, and to stop distracting Mark from work.
Chris deflated in front of him at that. All energy seemed to leave his body, and he stood back, head bowed and arms hanging by his sides.
"So you did know."
"Fuck," Dustin mumbled in the background, more to himself than anything else. "Wardo's dad is kind of a douche."
"What else is new." Mark rolled his eyes at him, because, seriously. If there was anyone who'd jump at the chance to finally properly disinherit their son for being a freak and an abomination of nature and tell the world he'd always known there was something wrong with the child it was Wardo's father. "I didn't know, I was aware of the possibility. If you are going to ask me questions at least try to listen -"
"Shut up, Mark. Do you have any idea what this looks like, any idea what kind of message this will send? That you sacked the mutant the second Facebook started to yield a profit and turned from a college project into a real company?" Chris looked disappointed now, and that was. It wasn't.
"It wasn't about that, and you know that! I couldn’t care less about Wardo or anyone being a mutant, it was a business decision."
"But that's what it will look like. You knew, and if nothing else you were clever enough to get rid of him before being associated with him could damage Facebook's reputation." Chris smiled bitterly. "I guess it was a good business decision, cutting him out before association with a mutant could damage Facebook's reputation."
"That's not. It wasn't like that." It wasn't. It was purely business (personal), but not like that. Wardo just had not been right.
Chris tiredly rubbed his eyes.
"I know, Mark. If I honestly thought for one moment that you fired Wardo because of his being a mutant I would have kept my mouth shut and used my position as your head of PR to ruin you from the inside. Diluting Wardo's shares like that was still a horrible thing to do, and no way to treat a friend, business or not. And that and your frequent and public insistence that it was purely business is going to come back and bite you in the ass now, because you can't convince people you didn't know, and everybody will assume this is how you and Facebook do business with mutants - not at all. People will see it as you having picked your side. And it will even be the one that's better for your stock than the opposite."
"I didn't pick a side. I don't care. It's stupid to think something that had no influence on his abilities as CFO would lead me to treat Wardo differently."
"Does anyone else think this is so cool? Our very own Wardo, or, well, Eduardo who used to be our very own Wardo, a mutant. The first ever weather forecast that's always right!" Dustin seemed to try for enthusiasm and looked from Chris to Mark hopefully. He never could stand it when people fought, and had made Mark suffer through months of surprisingly unpleasant silence after Wardo found out about the dilution (the hypocrite, it wasn't as if he hadn't known for months that there had been something off about the contracts Wardo had signed and hadn't so much as said a word to Wardo or Mark). Chris would have none of it though.
"No, it's not cool, Dustin. It isn't any more cool than me being gay or you being ginger or Mark being…, " Chris waved at Mark in a way he was pretty sure he should take offense at, "Mark, and it's nothing Wardo has any control over, it's just how he is, and it doesn't make him cool or a curiosity or something to be stared at as in a 19th century freak show, it doesn't make him wrong or a terrorist or someone who deserves being shunned and cut out of society until a bunch of righteous morons decide to beat him to death."
Chris' voice broke at that, and Mark remembered that Chris had taken time off to go to the funeral of an old friend from his LGBTS days only a few months ago. He tried not to think of lynch mobs, the legislative hurdles standing between reality and laws on preventive custody and incapacitating perfectly mature, sane people because of a genetic fluke, and newspaper columns torn between redefining humanity and calling for tests and research facilities and advising people to buy a gun.
"So don't either of you tell me this is no big deal, because it's not. It shouldn't be, but it is, and we have to try and make the best of it, not only for Facebook, but for Wardo, for Wardo and for," Chris audibly choked up, "For the world. For once stop worrying how something will affect you and think about what's really important."
Mark didn't know what to say to that. He wanted to tell Chris that this didn't have anything to do with him, he couldn't tell people what to think, and Wardo and he weren't even friends anymore.
"Is he…," Dustin sounded small and scared, and careful, as if he was afraid his question would set Chris off again. "He's okay, isn't he? He's safe?"
"I don't know." Chris sagged against the edge of Mark's desk. It would have been more comfortable to walk the four steps and sit down net to Dustin on the couch, but he didn't look like he could make it that far. "As far as I can tell no one has seen him since he left his parents' house seven weeks ago. And wherever he is, I hope he's safe and he can stay for a while, because now that it's hit the news his name and face are everywhere. He's too high profile."
"He's okay." Mark focused on the hangnail on his left thumb and ignored the surprised movements of his friends at the edge of his vision. "There's a place, a school. Privately run. The government doesn't know where it is, I checked."
His nails were too short to catch the offending piece of skin.
"He's fine."
He tried to remember where he kept his nail clipper at home. Logic suggested it was somewhere in the bathroom.
"Mark?" Chris moved closer until he was a blurry pillar of pale pink dress shirt to the side of Mark's hands. "How do you know that?"
"His father's lawyer called. Off the record. He wanted to inquire how this would affect share ownership, in case of incapacitation rather than asset forfeiture. There'll need to be rules as to what proof of mutantship is required first, of course, but I could get a sworn statement from both Mr. and Mrs. Saverin that Wardo admitted to being a mutant to them."
Dustin made a pained noise somewhere to his right, something of a whimper. Mark ignored him.
"I traced the IP address Wardo used to delete his email account. I."
Maybe he should buy a new clipper on his way home. Just in case.
"I told him it didn't change anything. He said I was right. It didn't change anything. And then he asked me to leave."
Stupid hangnail.
"I made sure to cover my tracks. And his."
Chris' hip bumped against Mark's arm, and somehow Dustin's hand had come to rest on his shoulder, but he didn't look up.
"He's fine."