fic: Say Goodbye to All You Knew (X-Men: First Class)
Title: Say Goodbye to All You Knew
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Rating: all ages
Characters: Mystique, Beast (allusions to past Raven/Hank)
Summary: Mystique returns to the mansion one last time. 975 words.
Hank - Beast, rather - meets her by the junipers at the end of the long paved driveway that leads to the mansion. It’s late October, and the boughs of the junipers, heavy with cones, shiver in the slight breeze.
Beast is dressed in a perfectly ordinary V-neck sweater and corduroy pants, with his white lab coat slung across his broad shoulders, and his glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. At least his feet are bare.
Mystique is completely naked.
“Um,” Beast says. The darkness and the thick blue fur mostly obscure his facial features, but it’s clear from his tone and from the way that he scratches at the back of his neck, that she’s caught him off guard.
Well, good. His reaction only strengthens her conviction that she was right to leave with Magneto. This is who she is.
She looks past Beast, toward the dark, hulking shape of the mansion. She can’t see it exactly, but she knows where it is by the absence of stars. If she squints, she can make out a few lighted windows.
“Charles is asleep?” she says, still not looking at Beast.
“Yes.” His low growl curls like smoke around the word. Mystique tells herself that she doesn’t miss his awkward stammer.
“Good.” She hesitates for a moment, then says with what she hopes comes across as cool detachment, “He’s doing all right?”
“He’s doing … better,” Beast says, and she catches his hesitation.
Mystique’s stomach muscles twist. “Tell me,” she says, though in her heart she already knows. Charles’s words as she, Magneto, Angel, and the rest walked away from him on the beach - I can’t feel my legs, I can’t feel my legs - have echoed in her mind these past two weeks.
“He won’t walk again,” Beast says plainly. “When I said he’s getting better, I mean that he’s adjusting. He’s seeing a physical therapist and I’m working on making the mansion more accessible. I’ve drawn up plans for a wheelchair, one that’ll give him a lot more mobility than the one he got from the FBI.” He ducks his head slightly and scratches behind one tufted ear. “Alex and Sean think I should attach a rocket pack. The professor said no, but … I think he was tempted. I mean, it wouldn’t be that hard, and…”
When he talks in that breathy manner, he reminds her of the young man she knew and almost fell for just a few short months ago. If his body weren’t covered with blue fur, he would be blushing right now.
Mystique reminds herself that the blonde girl he found so attractive was just an illusion, that both he and Charles actually preferred the illusion, and the wistfulness dies inside her. “My things,” she says brusquely, cutting him off. “Did you find any of them?”
Beast takes a moment to collect himself. Then he reaches into the deep pocket of his lab coat and pulls out a crumpled paper bag. “I found most of them,” he says, passing the bag to her. She snatches it and holds it in her fist, not bothering to open it and peek inside; she believes him, and, anyway, it’s too dark.
That’s what she tells herself. The reality is, if she looks into the bag and sees some of the little things that Charles bought or made for her over the eighteen years that they lived together as brother and sister, she doesn’t know what her reaction will be.
They’re mostly stupid things: seashells they collected on trips to the coast, a charm bracelet she’ll never wear again, a tiny glass unicorn that lost the tip of its horn a long time ago. She’ll probably dispose of them on her way back to Magneto’s headquarters, bury them somewhere, or burn them. If, someday, she ends up regretting her actions, she can live with that. She will not have any choice, she thinks wryly.
As she starts to turn, she hopes that Beast won’t tell her she can come back. He’s silent, however, except for his low, rough breathing, so she starts to walk away.
When she’s gone a few yards, he does call out to her. “You’re beautiful,” he says.
The words come out bluntly, more like a parting shot than a declaration. Mystique pauses.
She can feel the night with every inch of her skin, from the bare soles of her feet to her scalp. The breeze tingles along her flanks, under the curve of her breasts, and across her shoulders. She feels wild in her true skin, free, and - yes - beautiful. Beast’s words mean nothing to her.
Still, she smiles. Not for him - her back is still to the mansion.
“I know,” she says.
Then she runs, plunging through the autumn night like a dolphin through a wave. The air in her lungs is sweet and sharp, the grass cool beneath her feet. It’s wonderful, exhilarating. But the illusion of pursuit, of something following doggedly at her heels stays with her for miles. By the time she outruns it, the thrill of mobility has vanished; her lungs and calves feel like they’re on fire and her heart shivers in her chest like a bird in a cage. There’s a terrible cramp in her side.
For a second she panics because she thinks she’s dropped the bag full of Charles’s gifts, but no, it’s still mashed in her hand; in the softening light she can see the spots where her sweat soaked through the paper.
Well, she thinks. Here is as good a place as any to drop it. But she keeps her fingers curled tightly around it, and after another moment she gathers air into her lungs, tasting the world as it comes awake, and starts to run again.
This time she doesn’t stop until she’s home.
8/03/2011
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Rating: all ages
Characters: Mystique, Beast (allusions to past Raven/Hank)
Summary: Mystique returns to the mansion one last time. 975 words.
Hank - Beast, rather - meets her by the junipers at the end of the long paved driveway that leads to the mansion. It’s late October, and the boughs of the junipers, heavy with cones, shiver in the slight breeze.
Beast is dressed in a perfectly ordinary V-neck sweater and corduroy pants, with his white lab coat slung across his broad shoulders, and his glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. At least his feet are bare.
Mystique is completely naked.
“Um,” Beast says. The darkness and the thick blue fur mostly obscure his facial features, but it’s clear from his tone and from the way that he scratches at the back of his neck, that she’s caught him off guard.
Well, good. His reaction only strengthens her conviction that she was right to leave with Magneto. This is who she is.
She looks past Beast, toward the dark, hulking shape of the mansion. She can’t see it exactly, but she knows where it is by the absence of stars. If she squints, she can make out a few lighted windows.
“Charles is asleep?” she says, still not looking at Beast.
“Yes.” His low growl curls like smoke around the word. Mystique tells herself that she doesn’t miss his awkward stammer.
“Good.” She hesitates for a moment, then says with what she hopes comes across as cool detachment, “He’s doing all right?”
“He’s doing … better,” Beast says, and she catches his hesitation.
Mystique’s stomach muscles twist. “Tell me,” she says, though in her heart she already knows. Charles’s words as she, Magneto, Angel, and the rest walked away from him on the beach - I can’t feel my legs, I can’t feel my legs - have echoed in her mind these past two weeks.
“He won’t walk again,” Beast says plainly. “When I said he’s getting better, I mean that he’s adjusting. He’s seeing a physical therapist and I’m working on making the mansion more accessible. I’ve drawn up plans for a wheelchair, one that’ll give him a lot more mobility than the one he got from the FBI.” He ducks his head slightly and scratches behind one tufted ear. “Alex and Sean think I should attach a rocket pack. The professor said no, but … I think he was tempted. I mean, it wouldn’t be that hard, and…”
When he talks in that breathy manner, he reminds her of the young man she knew and almost fell for just a few short months ago. If his body weren’t covered with blue fur, he would be blushing right now.
Mystique reminds herself that the blonde girl he found so attractive was just an illusion, that both he and Charles actually preferred the illusion, and the wistfulness dies inside her. “My things,” she says brusquely, cutting him off. “Did you find any of them?”
Beast takes a moment to collect himself. Then he reaches into the deep pocket of his lab coat and pulls out a crumpled paper bag. “I found most of them,” he says, passing the bag to her. She snatches it and holds it in her fist, not bothering to open it and peek inside; she believes him, and, anyway, it’s too dark.
That’s what she tells herself. The reality is, if she looks into the bag and sees some of the little things that Charles bought or made for her over the eighteen years that they lived together as brother and sister, she doesn’t know what her reaction will be.
They’re mostly stupid things: seashells they collected on trips to the coast, a charm bracelet she’ll never wear again, a tiny glass unicorn that lost the tip of its horn a long time ago. She’ll probably dispose of them on her way back to Magneto’s headquarters, bury them somewhere, or burn them. If, someday, she ends up regretting her actions, she can live with that. She will not have any choice, she thinks wryly.
As she starts to turn, she hopes that Beast won’t tell her she can come back. He’s silent, however, except for his low, rough breathing, so she starts to walk away.
When she’s gone a few yards, he does call out to her. “You’re beautiful,” he says.
The words come out bluntly, more like a parting shot than a declaration. Mystique pauses.
She can feel the night with every inch of her skin, from the bare soles of her feet to her scalp. The breeze tingles along her flanks, under the curve of her breasts, and across her shoulders. She feels wild in her true skin, free, and - yes - beautiful. Beast’s words mean nothing to her.
Still, she smiles. Not for him - her back is still to the mansion.
“I know,” she says.
Then she runs, plunging through the autumn night like a dolphin through a wave. The air in her lungs is sweet and sharp, the grass cool beneath her feet. It’s wonderful, exhilarating. But the illusion of pursuit, of something following doggedly at her heels stays with her for miles. By the time she outruns it, the thrill of mobility has vanished; her lungs and calves feel like they’re on fire and her heart shivers in her chest like a bird in a cage. There’s a terrible cramp in her side.
For a second she panics because she thinks she’s dropped the bag full of Charles’s gifts, but no, it’s still mashed in her hand; in the softening light she can see the spots where her sweat soaked through the paper.
Well, she thinks. Here is as good a place as any to drop it. But she keeps her fingers curled tightly around it, and after another moment she gathers air into her lungs, tasting the world as it comes awake, and starts to run again.
This time she doesn’t stop until she’s home.
8/03/2011