Roses & Cinnamon -- (2/12)
Fic Title: Roses & Cinnamon AO3
Premise: X-Men First Class powered Regency AU
Artist: celadonite ( Art Masterpost)
Written for: X-Men Reverse Bang
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 69k
Warnings: disabled character, PTSD, battle flashbacks/hallucinations, death of a child (flashback), period-appropriate homophobia
Summary: Charles Xavier lost more than his leg in the war with Napoleon, and the man he's just pulled out of the water has ghosts of his own -- especially when Charles's involuntary projected hallucinations prove catching. Raven, meanwhile, faces the choice of whether to marry respectably or run away with a carnival fortune-teller.
CHAPTER TWO
"Are you angry with me?"
Erik paused in the bedroom door. The sum of their conversation (once Charles let Erik get to his feet) had been an awkward agreement that perhaps it was time to retire, and Charles had shown him to his room in heavy silence. "No," Erik said. "I was... irrational. I would apologize, but I was bested so thoroughly that that hardly seems necessary."
Charles smiled modestly, covering his relief. "One does pick up a few tricks on the battlefield."
"You were a soldier, then?" Erik's surprise faded into enlightenment as he eyed Charles's legs. "Yet your tricks seem to have failed you."
"My Gift is little use against cannon fire." Memory tapped at the doors of his mind, flying shards of glass and wood and metal, the unholy noise of it all. He closed himself tightly away from it. Not now. Not now.
Erik still stood uncertainly in the doorway, glancing from Charles to the unfamiliar bedroom's interior. Charles could feel how shaken the man still was, how he both feared, and in a peculiar way yearned for, the apparition's reappearance. "I'm sure you have a hundred war stories to tell, veterans always do," he said.
"Indeed. I can tell you a few, if you like, while we have a nightcap?"
Only polite interest showed on Erik's face, but gratitude flowed from him in a warm wave.
Charles rolled his chair over to the fire and began pouring from the bottle he made a point of providing for the guest bedrooms. He knocked back half his glass, and topped it off again, while Erik was still occupied opening his trunk.
"Oh, dear, I'm sorry," Charles said, when he saw that Erik's clothes had not been removed to the wardrobe. "I meant to inquire if you wanted the servants mucking about with your things, told them to wait on my order before unpacking you."
"No, you did well to hold them off. I prefer to do it myself." He lifted a small pile of clothes from the trunk and moved toward the wardrobe. "Where is that war story you promised me?"
"Ah, yes." Charles flicked through a number of possible tales, shying away from anything remotely distressing, as much for his own nerves as for Erik's. Finally he launched into an appropriately amusing anecdote - The Epic Tale of Armando Versus the Fishmonger - and felt Erik beginning to calm, though he was so intent on his task that he hardly looked to be listening.
Calm, that is, until he reached the bottom of his trunk, reaching in for one final object that caused an emotional spike that should, by all rights, have been visible. Charles stopped mid-word, knocked quite off-path by the surge of vicious satisfaction, tangled with old traces of anger and pain.
"What have you there?" he called, when Erik passed several moments simply staring down at the object in his hands.
Erik woke from his reverie and finally took his seat across from Charles, pausing to sip from his glass. Charles noted ruefully that he had drained his three times since entering the room, and was beginning to feel it; he took a last swallow and set his glass aside.
"This is me," Erik said, "and Sebastian Shaw." He held out the object; Charles, taking it, saw that it was a graphite sketch in a silver frame. A boy of ten or twelve years sat rigid in a rather gaudy rococo chair. Beside him stood a man, a possessive hand on the boy's shoulder, his smile holding more sly triumph than good cheer. The artist, Charles thought, had been quite skilled, unless it was his own knowledge of Erik's childhood horrors that put such solemn despair in the child's eyes, and attached such meaning to the way his delicate fingers clutched at his own trouser legs, as if to keep himself from cringing away from the man beside him.
"My parents were Shaw's butler and cook," Erik said. "When my abnormality manifested, he made me believe they had abandoned me to his care, that I was rejected and feared. Many years later I discovered that he killed them precisely because they would not agree to leave me."
It was no more than Charles had pieced together from the chaotic tumble of Erik's memories, but the pain leaking around his words, bleeding from his mind, still tore at Charles's heart.
"I wonder, then, at your keeping this portrait." Charles passed the silver frame back into Erik's hands.
Erik's smile was sharp as a wolf's. "Shaw had kept it in my room - to remind me, he said, to whom I belonged, to whom I owed everything in my life. And remind me it has, all this time."
"Shaw is dead now," Charles said. "You can forget him. You need never think of him more."
"Yes, he's dead," Erik said, gazing on the sketch with a distant satisfaction that bore little relation to the roiling emotions Charles sensed within. He moved, so suddenly that Charles jumped - a flick of the wrist that sent the portrait, frame and all, into the hottest part of the fire. It landed with a crash of breaking glass, and together they watched the flames catch the edges of the exposed paper, and creep across it, swallowing delicate pencil marks as it went. The predatory smile, the clutching hand, gone. The rigid boy with his hopeless eyes, gone. All gone.
"Erik," Charles said cautiously, "the last thing I desire is your further distress. But if I am to unravel the conundrum set before us - this strange specter of your daughter - I believe I must uncover its origin. I must know what happened to you."
Erik swallowed. "But surely you know already."
"I know fragments. I must see the picture in its entirety."
Erik was silent for long minutes, watching flames lick the edges of glass and silver. Charles could be patient, as patient as Erik was stubborn.
Finally he spoke. "I ran away from Shaw, when I discovered the truth of my parents' deaths. I took money and papers enough - fraudulent papers, of course, Shaw had plenty of those - to establish myself as a wealthy businessman, under the name Eisenhardt. Magda..." He trailed off, a bittersweet smile ghosting across his face. "Magda was a gentleman's daughter, and should have been beyond my reach. But her father was a generous and indulgent fellow, and indeed there were few men who could have denied Magda anything."
Charles was lost, for a moment, in the wash of remembered love - the fascination of a dimple, the joy of a smile, the trembling delight of an inner fire he had never known before. Erik, Charles saw, was not a man who could enjoy lust for its own sake; he wanted only where he also loved. He had had little opportunity to love, in Shaw's house, and so desire had come on him as a welcome but overwhelming surprise, and it was maiden Magda who had been smiling and confident on their wedding night, soothing her nervous stallion-
-and there, Charles had delved quite, quite too deep into memories he had no right to. He could only hope Erik would not notice the rising color in his cheeks, or would put it down to drink.
Erik did not notice, in fact - seemed hardly to see him or the room around them at all. The flames reflected in his eyes.
"He found me," he said at last, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper, and seemed incapable of saying more.
"Might it be easier for you," Charles said gently, "if I simply... view it directly?" He tapped a finger to his temple.
Erik looked torn, something naked and vulnerable in his eyes. "Charles, I am not at all certain that my mind is a place you should wish to be. Especially on the night in question."
Charles clasped his hand. "If it will help you, then that is exactly where I wish to be."
Erik took a deep breath, his hand tightening around Charles's, then nodded consent.
Charles let his eyes fall closed, and eased his mind forward, gently, ever so gently, keeping his Gift's touch as light and warm and soft as a dove's wing. Forward into the maelstrom.
For the most part, Erik's mind was a very straight-angled place, tightly organized, terrifyingly focused. Erik had trained himself into this strict focus as the only way to control the violence of his emotions. Beneath a surface that seemed calm, even cold, lay the firestorm. Charles had known this already, and thought himself prepared.
He was wrong.
The first few moments were as dizzying as their first meeting in the sea, and Charles had to cling tightly to Erik's self-built steel girders of mind in order to orient himself. But the place he had to go - the memory of Anya's death - held little such framework. His self-control that night had been scanty at best. Determined, Charles eased toward it.
Glimpses, first, of Shaw approaching Erik at his club, all smiles and false joy at their reunion, his eyes full of spite. Expressing his expectation that Erik would abandon the unworthy specimens of humanity he had inexplicably surrounded himself with, and come home to complete his 'training.' Erik's tight refusal, believing himself safe, established in his new life, believing Shaw had no more power over him.
And learning differently, when he saw Shaw's face at the bedroom window moments before the great ripping crash that set the house aflame.
Charles, momentarily aware of his hand crushing Erik's, forced himself to draw back a step. It was too much - too much like his own experiences with fire and chaos and shrieking fear - he could not afford - only a step, one step back, and he could handle it.
There, now he was able to view and sort and evaluate without losing himself. It was still impossible to construct a full timeline of events, however - Erik's mind had been in such turmoil that great chunks of data had never been cataloged to begin with. He could remember the night only in dream-like flashes, some hardly more than impressions, others sporting a chilling crystalline clarity. His housekeeper's face, distorted with terror, dragging a wounded footman out a window. A kitchen maid sobbing in a closet, too terrified to run - Erik had wound an iron poker around her body and used it to throw her from the house. Everywhere the heat and smoke and hungry roar of fire.
The stairs collapsing behind himself and Magda as they ran for Anya's room, the iron banister bending to Erik's need. Turning the corner to see Anya's bedroom door already painted with flame.
Perhaps he only imagined hearing screams over the crackling roar. Perhaps he only imagined that he saw her, for the briefest of moments, a shadow standing in the midst of the flames, when he tore the wall open - and the fire, suddenly granted access to new air, exploded in a billowing inferno.
He had little memory of how he had survived. There had been metal involved, hot enough to burn holes in his clothes, clustering around him and Magda, casting them to the periphery of the wreckage as the house fell in. And that was all, until he woke in hospital, with only a scattering of burns while his daughter was dead, and his wife hovering at the edge of life.
Her eyes were dim with pain and opium, when he limped to her bedside. He had no recollection of how she had come to be injured so much more severely than he. Perhaps the hot metal... but surely without it, she would have died in the house. He tried to speak to her, touched her hand.
And she gasped, and drew away in unmistakable fear.
She had not known, of course, that he was Unnatural. It was only then, at her bedside, that Erik remembered her shock and terror when he began to use his ability in the burning house, realized she had tried and tried to pull away from him. While he, focused entirely on Anya, had only tightened his grip on her hand, and pulled her deeper into the fire.
He was not angry at her for fearing him, not then. He had no reserves left for so taxing an emotion. He only kissed her hand, while she cringed away, and went back to his own bed.
When he woke again, she had died.
Charles extricated himself from the memory with difficulty, dimly aware of his body gasping and shaking around him.
It was clear that Erik's mind held rage and guilt and grief enough to power any number of nightmares about his daughter. It was Charles's Gift that had added the power to manifest those nightmares in the waking mind. That was, after all, no new trick for it.
It was tempting, so terribly tempting, to lay a veil over those memories, cloud them, or cut them away entirely. Ease Erik's pain at the source. It might be the only way to keep Anya from appearing to them again.
But Erik's mind, still loosely entangled with his own, flinched violently from the idea as soon as Charles conceived it. The mental scream of MINE was enough to send Charles scrambling for the shores of his own consciousness.
He opened his eyes to find Erik staring at him in such hatred and fear that he half-expected to find a sword at his throat once more.
"You will do nothing to modify me," Erik snarled. "You will not violate my mind, you will take nothing from me-"
"Of course not," Charles said quietly, keeping his voice even and clear. "I told you already, Erik, that I cannot bear to alter the minds I truly care for." He released the hand he had been clutching hard enough to bruise, pressed it to the table as if smoothing a paper he had not meant to crumple. "I will do nothing to you without permission, Erik. You have my solemn vow."
They sat without speaking for a time, and the only sound in the room was their breath, neither of them easy yet after the mental exertion. The fire in the grate had gone down to coals, leaving the room in shadowy chill. Charles watched the faint light brush Erik's face. His eyes were miles away, and his hand remained where Charles had put it.
"You wish to go to bed, I am sure," Charles said at last. "But let me do one thing more for you. You would not have me dampen your worst memories - but perhaps I can crowd them out."
"What do you mean?"
"I know how little you remember of your life before Shaw. The memories are still there, only buried. Unearthing them all at once would be too much for both of us tonight, I think. But I could easily choose one, and leave you happier thoughts to sleep on."
He did not expect Erik to agree, after his anger only moments before. To his surprise, however, after a tense moment, the hand on the table turned over and opened, welcoming him back in.
Charles permitted himself a relieved smile, took the offered hand, and sent his Gift winging softly toward the brightest corner of Erik's memory system. It was blocked off by layers and layers of - protection, he realized. Erik's under-mind had bundled these memories away, so that they could not be poisoned by Shaw's tale of abandonment. Young Erik had believed what he was told, knowing no alternative - but still he could not bear to think ill of his parents, and so elected not to think of them at all. Even the revelation of Shaw's betrayal had not been enough, after so many years, to dislodge them from their hiding place.
Carefully, Charles took the edge of a single memory, one that radiated peace and contentment, and pulled it free.
Erik lay in bed, warm and dozy under a double helping of quilts, one small hand reaching out of the covers to rest across his mother's knee. She was a comforting weight on the edge of the bed, stroking his hair back and singing softly, the same lullabies he had heard in his infancy. When Erik's eyes finally drifted shut, she leaned down to kiss his forehead, then stood. "Gute Nacht, schatz." She bent to blow out the candle.
"Nein!" he cried sleepily. She let out a breath of gentle exasperation, then kissed him again, smiling, tucked the quilts up under his chin, and left the candle lit.
With the light of the candle, and the warmth of his mother's voice still adrift in the room, Erik was not afraid. He had fallen asleep by the time his mother closed the door behind her.
Charles opened his eyes to see Erik looking broken and lost. The dying firelight glinted on a single tear track.
"I didn't know I still had that," he said, low and shaking.
"You have many things," Charles said, "many good and beautiful things in you, Erik. Not only pain and anger." He was surprised to find he'd shed a tear to match Erik's, and raised a hand to dash it away. "Thank you for letting me see them." He took hold of his chair's wheels and began steering toward the door. "I'll send someone to see to your fire."
Erik caught his hand as he passed and, to Charles's shock, raised it briefly to his lips. "Thank you, Charles."
Charles sat frozen a moment, a tingling warmth spreading rapidly out from his fingers. At last he managed an acknowledging nod, and reluctantly reclaimed his hand. "Goodnight, Erik."
His arms shook only a little as he pushed himself out the door.
***
Erik woke to the sound of cannon fire.
He had slept soundly, for once, but the bone-shaking explosion was more than enough to put him on his feet, every bit of metal in the room quivering and ready, his mind casting out for the shape of the cannon and ball.
There was none.
He stood in utter bewilderment for a moment, while another boom rattled the walls. Erik was no soldier, but he knew a cannon when he heard it. Shaw had had him learn the metallic workings of any weapon he could lay hands upon. His Gift was insistent; there was no cannon anywhere in the vicinity.
Was he dreaming still? The cold of the floor against his feet, the trickling warmth of sunlight through the window, the unfamiliar scratch of his night-shirt - surely they were no dream. How often, after all, did one wonder if one was dreaming, and then find it to actually be so?
The cannons were getting closer. Erik, still in bafflement and alarm, threw on his dressing gown, his mind bent on investigating.
And cried out in alarm as the next boom sent the wall of his bedroom exploding inward, shards of glass and wood and stone flying at his face. An instinctive thought had the iron bedframe upended and screaming across the floor to his defense, though it could not be fast enough-
But the moment passed, the bed arrived, and he was unharmed. None of the debris had touched him. None at all.
In fact, his wall was perfectly intact.
He dropped the bed slowly, cautiously. He could still hear cannons, but they were fading away into the distance.
Charles. Charles alone could be the source of this, and for a moment Erik felt his long-familiar rage fall over his shoulders like a cloak. Surely he had endured enough of Xavier’s manipulation and intrusions into his mind. It was true, the man seemed genuine in his efforts to help him - but after all, Erik would not need his help if Charles's Abnormality were not so poorly leashed. Why was Erik in this man's house at all? Without Charles-
The anger fled, utterly hollowed. Without Charles, Erik's body would be washing up on the shores of Brighton about now.
Well, whether it made him a grateful friend or not, an investigation was direly in order. Erik opened his door.
And found Charles's ward - sister - hurrying toward him down the corridor.
"Mr. Lehnsherr, do not be alarmed! I was just on my way to you, I do apologize, it took me some minutes to recall that you would not be accustomed to such things."
"What in blazes is going on?"
Miss Darkholme sighed and adjusted the shawl she wore over her morning gown. "It is Charles, I'm afraid. He has nightmares about the war, which I think perfectly natural, and they sometimes... spill over through his Gift."
"Can you not wake him?"
"Oh, he is quite awake, that is the puzzle of it. He says the ‘echoes’ take some time to die down."
"How often you must replace entire crops of servants! I’m sure they regularly flee the house in terror.”
Miss Darkholme smiled, her eyes sparking. She was quite a beautiful girl. "Our servants are made of sterner stuff, Mr. Lehnsherr. Many of them have volatile Gifts of their own - Charles's valet has set fire to the curtains twice - and so it behooves them to be understanding." The very slightest arch to her eyebrow informed Erik that his patience was likewise expected. "In fact, my good sir, this morning's incident has been a tame and placid creature. A bit of cannon fire is nothing at all. Pray do not be alarmed if it worsens; it does sometimes, just before it dies away. I hope I do not have to expect hysterics from you. My brother is already sick with guilt, I would not have you disturb him further."
Erik was surprised, but not displeased, by the steel in the girl's voice. No wilting flower, this one, and her affection for her adopted brother was laudable.
"No hysterics, I assure you, Miss Darkholme," he said. "Is there coffee to be had?"
"There is."
"Then I bid you good morning." They exchanged bow and curtsy, and Erik went his way, running fingers through his hair and adjusting the dressing gown he had thrown on so precipitously until he felt better fit to be seen.
He heard no more cannon fire as he made his way to the kitchen. He did, however, rather start at the sight of footprints appearing in the corridor, footprints in blood that made a stumbling, laborious path, accompanied by faint sounds of pained gasping, and the occasional smeared handprint on the wall. A maid passed him with an absent curtsy, her attention locked on the invisible specter as she kept to the wall furthest from it.
Erik made the kitchen, found his coffee, and took the luxury of a splash of milk - and nearly dropped it when a dozen French soldiers charged bellowing through one wall and out the other, muskets glinting. One of the kitchen maids jumped and dropped a sack of flour, earning a knock with a wooden spoon from the cook. The man's fat face had the look of laughter more than scolding, and in fact the maid herself was chuckling ruefully at herself as she began sweeping up the flour. Erik made his retreat, brushing white powder from his clothes, and went in search of Charles.
He found him in the dining room, which at this hour was empty and dark, the curtains drawn and the grate empty. He had not bothered to move himself from his wheelchair to a dining chair, and so sat a bit low at the table. This doubtless helped along - but was not the only cause of - his vulnerable appearance. Small, pale, and tired he looked, and it pricked at Erik to see him so. He looked up at Erik with a wan smile, and took a long swallow from his mug.
"Chocolate, Charles?" Erik said, eyeing the mug's thick, frothy contents as he seated himself at Charles's side. "Though I suppose I should be getting accustomed to your self-indulgence."
"I will have my morning chocolate," Charles said, his voice firm yet bleary, "despite the sneers of lesser men. Never fear, my friend, it is a man's drink you see before you." With that, he pulled a bottle of whiskey out of the blankets across his lap, and tipped a very generous slosh of it into the chocolate. And sipped from the bottle before putting it away again.
"Fortification against the trials of the day?" Erik said dryly.
"Among other things," Charles muttered. His eyes grew more strained, suddenly, focusing on something across the room; Erik turned to see a bloody handprint forming on the wall, and heard labored breath. But Charles was speaking again already. "I owe you an abject apology, my friend. I'm sure someone has explained the... state I find myself in this morning. Usually the application of strong spirits before bed numbs it down, keeps my head..." he gestured inarticulately, "swampy enough that nothing can escape it. I put my glass aside earlier than usual last night in order to focus on our conversation. I should have had another tumbler or two afterward. I'm sorry."
Erik stared. "Do you mean to tell me you must habitually drink yourself into a stupor to prevent these projections? I cannot believe that is good for your constitution."
Charles only twitched a broken sort of smile, and took a long pull of his enhanced chocolate.
"Well, no more of that, if you please," Erik said, fighting the urge to throw the chocolate mug across the room. "All else in the house seem to have grown accustomed to this, I'm sure I can do the same." He almost wished for his earlier anger back, his determination that Charles was greatly at fault in this matter. It might have protected him from wanting so badly to alleviate the man’s misery.
"It is good of you to offer that." Charles's voice was tight, whether with emotion at the overture, or from the sight of the bloody prints working a slow circuit of the room, Erik was not sure. Charles looked away from it, made the effort to draw himself more upright, and focus his eyes. "We must apply ourselves, my friend, to the problem of... well, you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"No, no, I only mean... I mean you came here in order to rest and regain your feet after your many trials. But have you any idea what you might do, when you are rested? Will you go home, do you think?"
"Home?" Erik blinked. "I can only suppose you mean to Magda's family. No, I very much doubt they would welcome me. I left them abruptly, in the disarray of their grief, abandoning all tasks half-done - and already word was spreading of my Abnormality, which of course several of the servants witnessed during the fire. I believe some of Magda's family were already conceiving my blame for the event, if for the wrong reasons. And besides..." He swirled the last swallow of coffee in his cup. "I do not think I can be Max Eisenhardt anymore. There was little to him besides Magda's husband, Anya's father. I would not know how to go about it now."
Charles regarded him some moments in silence, expression thoughtful. Erik drained his coffee down to its bitterest dregs.
"But do you know how to go about being Erik Lehnsherr?" Charles said at last.
"If Max was Magda's, then Erik was Shaw's. And that is done, now, too." Could not some Unnaturals allegedly read the future in coffee dregs? Or was it tea? He had not the gift either way.
"Then ownership defaults to yourself," Charles said. "Congratulations. And you will stay with me while we figure out what that means to you." He touched a reassuring hand to Erik's wrist, then tipped back the remainder of his chocolate.
"Is any man truly this generous?" Erik could not help asking, vividly aware of the hand on his wrist. "What am I to you? Even an honest man does not throw his money away where there is no benefit to himself."
"Throw my money away? And what have you cost me, Erik? You take up one bedroom among dozens; you eat a third share when Oliver cooks enough for twenty. Thus far you are cheaper to keep than the three-legged cat."
The what? "I have cost you your life, very nearly."
"And if a baker very nearly charged me for a rye-loaf I should call myself a thief." He set down the mug and turned the full force of his gaze on Erik, and if he had looked sickly before there was no trace of it now. Everything about him seemed strong and certain and clean. "Erik, I know you have had little enough reason to believe this. But there are good men in the world, men - and women - who would help you simply because you needed it. I will teach you this, I swear it. I will show you the world is not so hopeless as you think it." He smiled gently, warmly, and began rolling back from the table. "Now then. Breakfast will be laid in about a quarter-hour. Raven and I always have our meals together, but feel free to have a tray brought to your rooms, if you prefer. Afterward, I intend to go riding, and I hope you will join me."
"Of course I will join you, and for breakfast as well."
"I am very happy to hear it." He cast a final bright-eyed glance at Erik over his shoulder before wheeling out of the room.
It was some minutes before Erik could follow, shaken to the core in ways he could not name.
***
Raven had only brought up the carnival that morning to distract her brother from the imaginary cannon fire that was rattling the windows. She should have known it would only make matter worse.
"Raven, you know I don't entirely approve of carnivals," he said, leaning on the counter with a drawn face while the tea brewed and Moira whipped the chocolate into a froth.
"Well, you needn't approve," Raven said cheerily. "If you choose to attend without taking any joy in the venture, that is your own fault. I enjoy carnivals immensely, and I would dearly like to go."
"So you can stare at the freaks like every other pudding-headed lout with sixpence in his pocket?"
Honestly, she would never understand the way Charles looked at the world. "No, Charles, so I can have an evening's entertainment in a place where Unnaturals use their abilities openly and earn a living for their pains!"
"Earn a living on the schadenfreude and morbid curiosity of people who wouldn't let them in out of a blizzard-"
"You quite miss the point, Charles, as you so often do-"
"Enough, Raven," Charles said - not angrily, but wearily, and for once Raven had reined in her tongue. Her brother looked so wan and unsteady. She had chosen a poor time to broach a subject that would lead to debate.
"Very well, Charles," she said softly, and leaned forward to kiss his brow. "You are feeling so poorly right now. I will not press you."
"Meaning you will press me later," Charles grumbled, but squeezed her hand as he passed, heading for the dark dining room with his chocolate.
As the lady of Graymalkin, Raven had enough to occupy her day, or so she told herself. Their hurried return from Brighton had left a good many things out of balance - some of the furniture still covered, the pantry very meagerly stocked, none of the servants certain of their schedules - on top of the usual endless cycle of meals and gardening and laundry and cleaning, to be directed and coordinated if not, thank God for Charles's money, participated in. Her parents had been milliners, when she had parents at all, and even the best moments of her early childhood had not involved an overabundance of food or warmth. In comparison, she did not at all mind the responsibilities of being a lady.
Raven had never been sure how much Charles's parents knew about her origins. They had accepted her as their ward without a quibble, and put her on social par with themselves without a thought, but it was obvious that Charles's Gift was at work there. He had been only twelve, and not nearly so refined in his efforts as he would later become; the servants had thereafter watched their employers' dreamy smiles at Raven with some disquiet, and treated both children with wariness.
Charles, of course, knew all - knew that Raven was in no way bred to be a lady, would have been happy to find herself only securely employed, and had instead taken her unhesitantly into his heart and home as his own sister. He never spoke, or seemed even to think, of how grateful she ought to be, how little right she had ever to argue with or vex him. She alone reproached herself when she had put him to abuse, and probably too seldom; but she did not forget to love him.
And she did not hesitate to let drop all the tasks she had set for herself, and turn away in the midst of a conversation with Moira about the needs of the herb garden, when she heard her brother and his guest return from their morning's ride.
She found them in the drawing room, Charles pouring drinks and watching in delight while Mr. Lehnsherr spun a coin in lazy loops through the air. Both were sun-flushed and sweat-dampened, their coats flung over a chair, and Raven paused in the doorway to appreciate the spectacle. Charles was not, after all, her brother by blood; she was allowed to merely look.
"-extremely scandalous of me, I'll well aware," Charles was laughing, "but I simply cannot abide a hat! It impairs my vision and denies me the breeze in my hair. I cannot help tearing it off the moment I feel I might get away with it!"
Mr. Lehnsherr's expression was a study in fond exasperation. "And if you could not abide trousers or breeches, what then? Would you live as a naked hermit in the forest? Some things in life are simply not optional, Charles."
"It is no use to scold him," Raven said, stepping into the room. "Charles is quite good at looking chastised and crestfallen, agreeing wholeheartedly that his behavior was wrong, and then cheerfully doing it again at the first opportunity."
Charles looked wounded. "Raven, dearest! You will give our guest quite a terrible impression of me!"
"It is nothing he cannot have observed for himself already. Perhaps you do not know, Mr. Lehnsherr, that at the very moment you met my brother, he was in the water in defiance of both my express request, and the dictates of common sense. And only look at his face! Even now he is preparing to apologize, when every word of it would be a lie. Speak truth, Charles, you are not sorry at all."
Charles lifted his chin. "Very well, I am not. How could I be, when my actions resulted in Mr. Lehnsherr's presence here? Not merely 'here in this house' but 'here on this Earth,' you understand."
Raven rolled her eyes, and crossed the room to casually put away the bottle Charles had poured from. "You see how comfortable my brother is with impropriety, Mr. Lehnsherr, and yet this very morning he balked at the idea of attending a traveling carnival that has camped nearby."
"How very stodgy of you, Charles," Mr. Lehnsherr said agreeably.
Charles scowled. "Yet surely you cannot entirely approve of the Gifted making show-ponies of themselves."
Mr. Lehnsherr rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. "Indeed, the idea of homo superior performing for the amusement of its less advanced cousins is repugnant. Yet the less-advanced cousin is at least getting appropriately fleeced, from what I hear of traveling carnivals, and it is one place where the Gifted are free to show themselves."
"You see?" Raven said, though she was somewhat uncertain if Mr. Lehnsherr was, in fact, agreeing with her or not.
Charles looked similarly uncertain. "'Homo superior,' Erik? You will parrot Sebastian Shaw even now? Surely his own actions have shown you that the Gifted hold no moral superiority to the Mundane."
"Moral? Perhaps not, but that was not my argument. I speak of power, Charles, the power any one of us holds over the Mundane, as you call them. Has it not always been the nature of the world, that those who cannot are ruled by those who can?"
Charles seemed torn between bafflement and laughter. "Can and cannot what, my friend? Argue, if you will, that the three of us have Gifts worth respecting; but I have seen many Gifts much humbler - certainly wonderful in their way, but nothing that could rightfully command reverence. We have a housemaid, for instance, who can cause the appearance of colorful lights. It is pretty, to be sure, but has yet to prove particularly useful."
"And yet even such a humble Gift cannot be duplicated by any Mundane. Man rules the beasts because he can think, and they cannot; the rich rule the poor because they have wealth, which is power, and the poor do not. We have power that the Mundanes do not have; our dominance over them is both natural and inevitable."
Raven felt a peculiar sort of singing inside herself at these words, as if some tuning fork she had never known she carried had been struck at long last. Yes, she wanted to shout. We should not be the bottom rung of society, but the top. Our Gifts should be praised and revered, not whispered of in shame.
But Charles looked distinctly uneasy. "Erik, you would only teach people to fear and hate us all the more. Our Gifts are not to be used to oppress the common people, they have quite enough of that already. If anything, we should use our Gifts to help them, to show them that Unnaturals are not freaks or monsters but people as good and honest as anyone else. One advantage of the carnivals, I would say, is that they show the Gifted in a context of harmless fun-"
"Harmless fun indeed!" Anger glinted now in Mr. Lehnsherr's eyes. "I would teach the people to respect us, while you would encourage them to look down on our Gifts as parlor tricks, and - worse! - calculate how we might be indentured to their own advantage."
"Erik, that is not at all what I meant!"
Erik raised a hand, stopping Charles's indignant words. He drew a breath, visibly calming himself. "It is terribly rude of me, of course, to argue with my host. Particularly in front of a lady." He turned to Raven with an expression schooled to pleasantness. "Your brother numbers your Gift with those that ought to command respect, Miss Darkholme. Is it too bold of me to request a demonstration?"
Raven glanced to Charles, whose cheeks were still reddened with agitation, but he opened a hand in a gesture of do as you will.
Unable to keep a smile from her face, Raven let her skin ripple into a flawless facsimile of Erik's own, even extending a thin layer of skin over her morning dress that then shaped itself to mirror the man's shirtsleeves, trousers, and brown-striped waistcoat.
She was pleased to see Mr. Lehnsherr start violently, then step toward her with a brilliant grin. "Magnificent," he breathed. "Can you do anyone, then?"
She shifted again, this time into Charles's image, and spoke in his voice. "Anyone at all. Though I must prepare my mind beforehand, memorizing what I intend to imitate. I've a very good memory for such things, but voices are sometimes difficult."
"You are perfectly magnificent. I cannot see a single flaw."
She cast her eyes down and curtsied demurely, which, executed in Charles's form, sparked both men to laughter.
"And the face you wore but moments ago," Mr. Lehnsherr asked, "is that your natural appearance, or is there a deeper layer?"
She hesitated. Had she not wished for permission to show her true face in Mr. Lehnsherr's company? Yet he was looking at her now with such admiration and joy, it stung to think of him recoiling from the chimera beneath. Instead she gave a coy smile. "How very improper of you, sir, asking to see a lady au naturel!"
"I do beg your pardon." Still smiling, Mr. Lehnsherr bowed. "Pray take my overenthusiasm as the compliment I meant it to be."
"Of course, sir." She flickered back to the blonde Miss Darkholme.
"You have a powerful Gift indeed, Miss Darkholme," Mr. Lehnsherr said. "To be anyone, at any time - you might rule the world with very little effort."
"And yet, tonight at least, I would be satisfied to only attend the carnival."
"Well, you shan't," Charles said, in his determined-not-to-be-cross tone. "Erik and I have plans for this evening and will not be available to escort you. Next time, perhaps."
Raven opened her mouth for a hot protest, only for an idea to occur - one so obvious that she felt quite stupid for having taken so long about having it. The hot protest converted into a disappointed, "Very well, Charles." She let the conversation move to other things - and was able to participate with all good cheer, knowing she would, in fact, be attending the carnival, whether Charles liked it or not.
Chapter 3
Premise: X-Men First Class powered Regency AU
Artist: celadonite ( Art Masterpost)
Written for: X-Men Reverse Bang
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 69k
Warnings: disabled character, PTSD, battle flashbacks/hallucinations, death of a child (flashback), period-appropriate homophobia
Summary: Charles Xavier lost more than his leg in the war with Napoleon, and the man he's just pulled out of the water has ghosts of his own -- especially when Charles's involuntary projected hallucinations prove catching. Raven, meanwhile, faces the choice of whether to marry respectably or run away with a carnival fortune-teller.
CHAPTER TWO
"Are you angry with me?"
Erik paused in the bedroom door. The sum of their conversation (once Charles let Erik get to his feet) had been an awkward agreement that perhaps it was time to retire, and Charles had shown him to his room in heavy silence. "No," Erik said. "I was... irrational. I would apologize, but I was bested so thoroughly that that hardly seems necessary."
Charles smiled modestly, covering his relief. "One does pick up a few tricks on the battlefield."
"You were a soldier, then?" Erik's surprise faded into enlightenment as he eyed Charles's legs. "Yet your tricks seem to have failed you."
"My Gift is little use against cannon fire." Memory tapped at the doors of his mind, flying shards of glass and wood and metal, the unholy noise of it all. He closed himself tightly away from it. Not now. Not now.
Erik still stood uncertainly in the doorway, glancing from Charles to the unfamiliar bedroom's interior. Charles could feel how shaken the man still was, how he both feared, and in a peculiar way yearned for, the apparition's reappearance. "I'm sure you have a hundred war stories to tell, veterans always do," he said.
"Indeed. I can tell you a few, if you like, while we have a nightcap?"
Only polite interest showed on Erik's face, but gratitude flowed from him in a warm wave.
Charles rolled his chair over to the fire and began pouring from the bottle he made a point of providing for the guest bedrooms. He knocked back half his glass, and topped it off again, while Erik was still occupied opening his trunk.
"Oh, dear, I'm sorry," Charles said, when he saw that Erik's clothes had not been removed to the wardrobe. "I meant to inquire if you wanted the servants mucking about with your things, told them to wait on my order before unpacking you."
"No, you did well to hold them off. I prefer to do it myself." He lifted a small pile of clothes from the trunk and moved toward the wardrobe. "Where is that war story you promised me?"
"Ah, yes." Charles flicked through a number of possible tales, shying away from anything remotely distressing, as much for his own nerves as for Erik's. Finally he launched into an appropriately amusing anecdote - The Epic Tale of Armando Versus the Fishmonger - and felt Erik beginning to calm, though he was so intent on his task that he hardly looked to be listening.
Calm, that is, until he reached the bottom of his trunk, reaching in for one final object that caused an emotional spike that should, by all rights, have been visible. Charles stopped mid-word, knocked quite off-path by the surge of vicious satisfaction, tangled with old traces of anger and pain.
"What have you there?" he called, when Erik passed several moments simply staring down at the object in his hands.
Erik woke from his reverie and finally took his seat across from Charles, pausing to sip from his glass. Charles noted ruefully that he had drained his three times since entering the room, and was beginning to feel it; he took a last swallow and set his glass aside.
"This is me," Erik said, "and Sebastian Shaw." He held out the object; Charles, taking it, saw that it was a graphite sketch in a silver frame. A boy of ten or twelve years sat rigid in a rather gaudy rococo chair. Beside him stood a man, a possessive hand on the boy's shoulder, his smile holding more sly triumph than good cheer. The artist, Charles thought, had been quite skilled, unless it was his own knowledge of Erik's childhood horrors that put such solemn despair in the child's eyes, and attached such meaning to the way his delicate fingers clutched at his own trouser legs, as if to keep himself from cringing away from the man beside him.
"My parents were Shaw's butler and cook," Erik said. "When my abnormality manifested, he made me believe they had abandoned me to his care, that I was rejected and feared. Many years later I discovered that he killed them precisely because they would not agree to leave me."
It was no more than Charles had pieced together from the chaotic tumble of Erik's memories, but the pain leaking around his words, bleeding from his mind, still tore at Charles's heart.
"I wonder, then, at your keeping this portrait." Charles passed the silver frame back into Erik's hands.
Erik's smile was sharp as a wolf's. "Shaw had kept it in my room - to remind me, he said, to whom I belonged, to whom I owed everything in my life. And remind me it has, all this time."
"Shaw is dead now," Charles said. "You can forget him. You need never think of him more."
"Yes, he's dead," Erik said, gazing on the sketch with a distant satisfaction that bore little relation to the roiling emotions Charles sensed within. He moved, so suddenly that Charles jumped - a flick of the wrist that sent the portrait, frame and all, into the hottest part of the fire. It landed with a crash of breaking glass, and together they watched the flames catch the edges of the exposed paper, and creep across it, swallowing delicate pencil marks as it went. The predatory smile, the clutching hand, gone. The rigid boy with his hopeless eyes, gone. All gone.
"Erik," Charles said cautiously, "the last thing I desire is your further distress. But if I am to unravel the conundrum set before us - this strange specter of your daughter - I believe I must uncover its origin. I must know what happened to you."
Erik swallowed. "But surely you know already."
"I know fragments. I must see the picture in its entirety."
Erik was silent for long minutes, watching flames lick the edges of glass and silver. Charles could be patient, as patient as Erik was stubborn.
Finally he spoke. "I ran away from Shaw, when I discovered the truth of my parents' deaths. I took money and papers enough - fraudulent papers, of course, Shaw had plenty of those - to establish myself as a wealthy businessman, under the name Eisenhardt. Magda..." He trailed off, a bittersweet smile ghosting across his face. "Magda was a gentleman's daughter, and should have been beyond my reach. But her father was a generous and indulgent fellow, and indeed there were few men who could have denied Magda anything."
Charles was lost, for a moment, in the wash of remembered love - the fascination of a dimple, the joy of a smile, the trembling delight of an inner fire he had never known before. Erik, Charles saw, was not a man who could enjoy lust for its own sake; he wanted only where he also loved. He had had little opportunity to love, in Shaw's house, and so desire had come on him as a welcome but overwhelming surprise, and it was maiden Magda who had been smiling and confident on their wedding night, soothing her nervous stallion-
-and there, Charles had delved quite, quite too deep into memories he had no right to. He could only hope Erik would not notice the rising color in his cheeks, or would put it down to drink.
Erik did not notice, in fact - seemed hardly to see him or the room around them at all. The flames reflected in his eyes.
"He found me," he said at last, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper, and seemed incapable of saying more.
"Might it be easier for you," Charles said gently, "if I simply... view it directly?" He tapped a finger to his temple.
Erik looked torn, something naked and vulnerable in his eyes. "Charles, I am not at all certain that my mind is a place you should wish to be. Especially on the night in question."
Charles clasped his hand. "If it will help you, then that is exactly where I wish to be."
Erik took a deep breath, his hand tightening around Charles's, then nodded consent.
Charles let his eyes fall closed, and eased his mind forward, gently, ever so gently, keeping his Gift's touch as light and warm and soft as a dove's wing. Forward into the maelstrom.
For the most part, Erik's mind was a very straight-angled place, tightly organized, terrifyingly focused. Erik had trained himself into this strict focus as the only way to control the violence of his emotions. Beneath a surface that seemed calm, even cold, lay the firestorm. Charles had known this already, and thought himself prepared.
He was wrong.
The first few moments were as dizzying as their first meeting in the sea, and Charles had to cling tightly to Erik's self-built steel girders of mind in order to orient himself. But the place he had to go - the memory of Anya's death - held little such framework. His self-control that night had been scanty at best. Determined, Charles eased toward it.
Glimpses, first, of Shaw approaching Erik at his club, all smiles and false joy at their reunion, his eyes full of spite. Expressing his expectation that Erik would abandon the unworthy specimens of humanity he had inexplicably surrounded himself with, and come home to complete his 'training.' Erik's tight refusal, believing himself safe, established in his new life, believing Shaw had no more power over him.
And learning differently, when he saw Shaw's face at the bedroom window moments before the great ripping crash that set the house aflame.
Charles, momentarily aware of his hand crushing Erik's, forced himself to draw back a step. It was too much - too much like his own experiences with fire and chaos and shrieking fear - he could not afford - only a step, one step back, and he could handle it.
There, now he was able to view and sort and evaluate without losing himself. It was still impossible to construct a full timeline of events, however - Erik's mind had been in such turmoil that great chunks of data had never been cataloged to begin with. He could remember the night only in dream-like flashes, some hardly more than impressions, others sporting a chilling crystalline clarity. His housekeeper's face, distorted with terror, dragging a wounded footman out a window. A kitchen maid sobbing in a closet, too terrified to run - Erik had wound an iron poker around her body and used it to throw her from the house. Everywhere the heat and smoke and hungry roar of fire.
The stairs collapsing behind himself and Magda as they ran for Anya's room, the iron banister bending to Erik's need. Turning the corner to see Anya's bedroom door already painted with flame.
Perhaps he only imagined hearing screams over the crackling roar. Perhaps he only imagined that he saw her, for the briefest of moments, a shadow standing in the midst of the flames, when he tore the wall open - and the fire, suddenly granted access to new air, exploded in a billowing inferno.
He had little memory of how he had survived. There had been metal involved, hot enough to burn holes in his clothes, clustering around him and Magda, casting them to the periphery of the wreckage as the house fell in. And that was all, until he woke in hospital, with only a scattering of burns while his daughter was dead, and his wife hovering at the edge of life.
Her eyes were dim with pain and opium, when he limped to her bedside. He had no recollection of how she had come to be injured so much more severely than he. Perhaps the hot metal... but surely without it, she would have died in the house. He tried to speak to her, touched her hand.
And she gasped, and drew away in unmistakable fear.
She had not known, of course, that he was Unnatural. It was only then, at her bedside, that Erik remembered her shock and terror when he began to use his ability in the burning house, realized she had tried and tried to pull away from him. While he, focused entirely on Anya, had only tightened his grip on her hand, and pulled her deeper into the fire.
He was not angry at her for fearing him, not then. He had no reserves left for so taxing an emotion. He only kissed her hand, while she cringed away, and went back to his own bed.
When he woke again, she had died.
Charles extricated himself from the memory with difficulty, dimly aware of his body gasping and shaking around him.
It was clear that Erik's mind held rage and guilt and grief enough to power any number of nightmares about his daughter. It was Charles's Gift that had added the power to manifest those nightmares in the waking mind. That was, after all, no new trick for it.
It was tempting, so terribly tempting, to lay a veil over those memories, cloud them, or cut them away entirely. Ease Erik's pain at the source. It might be the only way to keep Anya from appearing to them again.
But Erik's mind, still loosely entangled with his own, flinched violently from the idea as soon as Charles conceived it. The mental scream of MINE was enough to send Charles scrambling for the shores of his own consciousness.
He opened his eyes to find Erik staring at him in such hatred and fear that he half-expected to find a sword at his throat once more.
"You will do nothing to modify me," Erik snarled. "You will not violate my mind, you will take nothing from me-"
"Of course not," Charles said quietly, keeping his voice even and clear. "I told you already, Erik, that I cannot bear to alter the minds I truly care for." He released the hand he had been clutching hard enough to bruise, pressed it to the table as if smoothing a paper he had not meant to crumple. "I will do nothing to you without permission, Erik. You have my solemn vow."
They sat without speaking for a time, and the only sound in the room was their breath, neither of them easy yet after the mental exertion. The fire in the grate had gone down to coals, leaving the room in shadowy chill. Charles watched the faint light brush Erik's face. His eyes were miles away, and his hand remained where Charles had put it.
"You wish to go to bed, I am sure," Charles said at last. "But let me do one thing more for you. You would not have me dampen your worst memories - but perhaps I can crowd them out."
"What do you mean?"
"I know how little you remember of your life before Shaw. The memories are still there, only buried. Unearthing them all at once would be too much for both of us tonight, I think. But I could easily choose one, and leave you happier thoughts to sleep on."
He did not expect Erik to agree, after his anger only moments before. To his surprise, however, after a tense moment, the hand on the table turned over and opened, welcoming him back in.
Charles permitted himself a relieved smile, took the offered hand, and sent his Gift winging softly toward the brightest corner of Erik's memory system. It was blocked off by layers and layers of - protection, he realized. Erik's under-mind had bundled these memories away, so that they could not be poisoned by Shaw's tale of abandonment. Young Erik had believed what he was told, knowing no alternative - but still he could not bear to think ill of his parents, and so elected not to think of them at all. Even the revelation of Shaw's betrayal had not been enough, after so many years, to dislodge them from their hiding place.
Carefully, Charles took the edge of a single memory, one that radiated peace and contentment, and pulled it free.
Erik lay in bed, warm and dozy under a double helping of quilts, one small hand reaching out of the covers to rest across his mother's knee. She was a comforting weight on the edge of the bed, stroking his hair back and singing softly, the same lullabies he had heard in his infancy. When Erik's eyes finally drifted shut, she leaned down to kiss his forehead, then stood. "Gute Nacht, schatz." She bent to blow out the candle.
"Nein!" he cried sleepily. She let out a breath of gentle exasperation, then kissed him again, smiling, tucked the quilts up under his chin, and left the candle lit.
With the light of the candle, and the warmth of his mother's voice still adrift in the room, Erik was not afraid. He had fallen asleep by the time his mother closed the door behind her.
Charles opened his eyes to see Erik looking broken and lost. The dying firelight glinted on a single tear track.
"I didn't know I still had that," he said, low and shaking.
"You have many things," Charles said, "many good and beautiful things in you, Erik. Not only pain and anger." He was surprised to find he'd shed a tear to match Erik's, and raised a hand to dash it away. "Thank you for letting me see them." He took hold of his chair's wheels and began steering toward the door. "I'll send someone to see to your fire."
Erik caught his hand as he passed and, to Charles's shock, raised it briefly to his lips. "Thank you, Charles."
Charles sat frozen a moment, a tingling warmth spreading rapidly out from his fingers. At last he managed an acknowledging nod, and reluctantly reclaimed his hand. "Goodnight, Erik."
His arms shook only a little as he pushed himself out the door.
***
Erik woke to the sound of cannon fire.
He had slept soundly, for once, but the bone-shaking explosion was more than enough to put him on his feet, every bit of metal in the room quivering and ready, his mind casting out for the shape of the cannon and ball.
There was none.
He stood in utter bewilderment for a moment, while another boom rattled the walls. Erik was no soldier, but he knew a cannon when he heard it. Shaw had had him learn the metallic workings of any weapon he could lay hands upon. His Gift was insistent; there was no cannon anywhere in the vicinity.
Was he dreaming still? The cold of the floor against his feet, the trickling warmth of sunlight through the window, the unfamiliar scratch of his night-shirt - surely they were no dream. How often, after all, did one wonder if one was dreaming, and then find it to actually be so?
The cannons were getting closer. Erik, still in bafflement and alarm, threw on his dressing gown, his mind bent on investigating.
And cried out in alarm as the next boom sent the wall of his bedroom exploding inward, shards of glass and wood and stone flying at his face. An instinctive thought had the iron bedframe upended and screaming across the floor to his defense, though it could not be fast enough-
But the moment passed, the bed arrived, and he was unharmed. None of the debris had touched him. None at all.
In fact, his wall was perfectly intact.
He dropped the bed slowly, cautiously. He could still hear cannons, but they were fading away into the distance.
Charles. Charles alone could be the source of this, and for a moment Erik felt his long-familiar rage fall over his shoulders like a cloak. Surely he had endured enough of Xavier’s manipulation and intrusions into his mind. It was true, the man seemed genuine in his efforts to help him - but after all, Erik would not need his help if Charles's Abnormality were not so poorly leashed. Why was Erik in this man's house at all? Without Charles-
The anger fled, utterly hollowed. Without Charles, Erik's body would be washing up on the shores of Brighton about now.
Well, whether it made him a grateful friend or not, an investigation was direly in order. Erik opened his door.
And found Charles's ward - sister - hurrying toward him down the corridor.
"Mr. Lehnsherr, do not be alarmed! I was just on my way to you, I do apologize, it took me some minutes to recall that you would not be accustomed to such things."
"What in blazes is going on?"
Miss Darkholme sighed and adjusted the shawl she wore over her morning gown. "It is Charles, I'm afraid. He has nightmares about the war, which I think perfectly natural, and they sometimes... spill over through his Gift."
"Can you not wake him?"
"Oh, he is quite awake, that is the puzzle of it. He says the ‘echoes’ take some time to die down."
"How often you must replace entire crops of servants! I’m sure they regularly flee the house in terror.”
Miss Darkholme smiled, her eyes sparking. She was quite a beautiful girl. "Our servants are made of sterner stuff, Mr. Lehnsherr. Many of them have volatile Gifts of their own - Charles's valet has set fire to the curtains twice - and so it behooves them to be understanding." The very slightest arch to her eyebrow informed Erik that his patience was likewise expected. "In fact, my good sir, this morning's incident has been a tame and placid creature. A bit of cannon fire is nothing at all. Pray do not be alarmed if it worsens; it does sometimes, just before it dies away. I hope I do not have to expect hysterics from you. My brother is already sick with guilt, I would not have you disturb him further."
Erik was surprised, but not displeased, by the steel in the girl's voice. No wilting flower, this one, and her affection for her adopted brother was laudable.
"No hysterics, I assure you, Miss Darkholme," he said. "Is there coffee to be had?"
"There is."
"Then I bid you good morning." They exchanged bow and curtsy, and Erik went his way, running fingers through his hair and adjusting the dressing gown he had thrown on so precipitously until he felt better fit to be seen.
He heard no more cannon fire as he made his way to the kitchen. He did, however, rather start at the sight of footprints appearing in the corridor, footprints in blood that made a stumbling, laborious path, accompanied by faint sounds of pained gasping, and the occasional smeared handprint on the wall. A maid passed him with an absent curtsy, her attention locked on the invisible specter as she kept to the wall furthest from it.
Erik made the kitchen, found his coffee, and took the luxury of a splash of milk - and nearly dropped it when a dozen French soldiers charged bellowing through one wall and out the other, muskets glinting. One of the kitchen maids jumped and dropped a sack of flour, earning a knock with a wooden spoon from the cook. The man's fat face had the look of laughter more than scolding, and in fact the maid herself was chuckling ruefully at herself as she began sweeping up the flour. Erik made his retreat, brushing white powder from his clothes, and went in search of Charles.
He found him in the dining room, which at this hour was empty and dark, the curtains drawn and the grate empty. He had not bothered to move himself from his wheelchair to a dining chair, and so sat a bit low at the table. This doubtless helped along - but was not the only cause of - his vulnerable appearance. Small, pale, and tired he looked, and it pricked at Erik to see him so. He looked up at Erik with a wan smile, and took a long swallow from his mug.
"Chocolate, Charles?" Erik said, eyeing the mug's thick, frothy contents as he seated himself at Charles's side. "Though I suppose I should be getting accustomed to your self-indulgence."
"I will have my morning chocolate," Charles said, his voice firm yet bleary, "despite the sneers of lesser men. Never fear, my friend, it is a man's drink you see before you." With that, he pulled a bottle of whiskey out of the blankets across his lap, and tipped a very generous slosh of it into the chocolate. And sipped from the bottle before putting it away again.
"Fortification against the trials of the day?" Erik said dryly.
"Among other things," Charles muttered. His eyes grew more strained, suddenly, focusing on something across the room; Erik turned to see a bloody handprint forming on the wall, and heard labored breath. But Charles was speaking again already. "I owe you an abject apology, my friend. I'm sure someone has explained the... state I find myself in this morning. Usually the application of strong spirits before bed numbs it down, keeps my head..." he gestured inarticulately, "swampy enough that nothing can escape it. I put my glass aside earlier than usual last night in order to focus on our conversation. I should have had another tumbler or two afterward. I'm sorry."
Erik stared. "Do you mean to tell me you must habitually drink yourself into a stupor to prevent these projections? I cannot believe that is good for your constitution."
Charles only twitched a broken sort of smile, and took a long pull of his enhanced chocolate.
"Well, no more of that, if you please," Erik said, fighting the urge to throw the chocolate mug across the room. "All else in the house seem to have grown accustomed to this, I'm sure I can do the same." He almost wished for his earlier anger back, his determination that Charles was greatly at fault in this matter. It might have protected him from wanting so badly to alleviate the man’s misery.
"It is good of you to offer that." Charles's voice was tight, whether with emotion at the overture, or from the sight of the bloody prints working a slow circuit of the room, Erik was not sure. Charles looked away from it, made the effort to draw himself more upright, and focus his eyes. "We must apply ourselves, my friend, to the problem of... well, you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"No, no, I only mean... I mean you came here in order to rest and regain your feet after your many trials. But have you any idea what you might do, when you are rested? Will you go home, do you think?"
"Home?" Erik blinked. "I can only suppose you mean to Magda's family. No, I very much doubt they would welcome me. I left them abruptly, in the disarray of their grief, abandoning all tasks half-done - and already word was spreading of my Abnormality, which of course several of the servants witnessed during the fire. I believe some of Magda's family were already conceiving my blame for the event, if for the wrong reasons. And besides..." He swirled the last swallow of coffee in his cup. "I do not think I can be Max Eisenhardt anymore. There was little to him besides Magda's husband, Anya's father. I would not know how to go about it now."
Charles regarded him some moments in silence, expression thoughtful. Erik drained his coffee down to its bitterest dregs.
"But do you know how to go about being Erik Lehnsherr?" Charles said at last.
"If Max was Magda's, then Erik was Shaw's. And that is done, now, too." Could not some Unnaturals allegedly read the future in coffee dregs? Or was it tea? He had not the gift either way.
"Then ownership defaults to yourself," Charles said. "Congratulations. And you will stay with me while we figure out what that means to you." He touched a reassuring hand to Erik's wrist, then tipped back the remainder of his chocolate.
"Is any man truly this generous?" Erik could not help asking, vividly aware of the hand on his wrist. "What am I to you? Even an honest man does not throw his money away where there is no benefit to himself."
"Throw my money away? And what have you cost me, Erik? You take up one bedroom among dozens; you eat a third share when Oliver cooks enough for twenty. Thus far you are cheaper to keep than the three-legged cat."
The what? "I have cost you your life, very nearly."
"And if a baker very nearly charged me for a rye-loaf I should call myself a thief." He set down the mug and turned the full force of his gaze on Erik, and if he had looked sickly before there was no trace of it now. Everything about him seemed strong and certain and clean. "Erik, I know you have had little enough reason to believe this. But there are good men in the world, men - and women - who would help you simply because you needed it. I will teach you this, I swear it. I will show you the world is not so hopeless as you think it." He smiled gently, warmly, and began rolling back from the table. "Now then. Breakfast will be laid in about a quarter-hour. Raven and I always have our meals together, but feel free to have a tray brought to your rooms, if you prefer. Afterward, I intend to go riding, and I hope you will join me."
"Of course I will join you, and for breakfast as well."
"I am very happy to hear it." He cast a final bright-eyed glance at Erik over his shoulder before wheeling out of the room.
It was some minutes before Erik could follow, shaken to the core in ways he could not name.
***
Raven had only brought up the carnival that morning to distract her brother from the imaginary cannon fire that was rattling the windows. She should have known it would only make matter worse.
"Raven, you know I don't entirely approve of carnivals," he said, leaning on the counter with a drawn face while the tea brewed and Moira whipped the chocolate into a froth.
"Well, you needn't approve," Raven said cheerily. "If you choose to attend without taking any joy in the venture, that is your own fault. I enjoy carnivals immensely, and I would dearly like to go."
"So you can stare at the freaks like every other pudding-headed lout with sixpence in his pocket?"
Honestly, she would never understand the way Charles looked at the world. "No, Charles, so I can have an evening's entertainment in a place where Unnaturals use their abilities openly and earn a living for their pains!"
"Earn a living on the schadenfreude and morbid curiosity of people who wouldn't let them in out of a blizzard-"
"You quite miss the point, Charles, as you so often do-"
"Enough, Raven," Charles said - not angrily, but wearily, and for once Raven had reined in her tongue. Her brother looked so wan and unsteady. She had chosen a poor time to broach a subject that would lead to debate.
"Very well, Charles," she said softly, and leaned forward to kiss his brow. "You are feeling so poorly right now. I will not press you."
"Meaning you will press me later," Charles grumbled, but squeezed her hand as he passed, heading for the dark dining room with his chocolate.
As the lady of Graymalkin, Raven had enough to occupy her day, or so she told herself. Their hurried return from Brighton had left a good many things out of balance - some of the furniture still covered, the pantry very meagerly stocked, none of the servants certain of their schedules - on top of the usual endless cycle of meals and gardening and laundry and cleaning, to be directed and coordinated if not, thank God for Charles's money, participated in. Her parents had been milliners, when she had parents at all, and even the best moments of her early childhood had not involved an overabundance of food or warmth. In comparison, she did not at all mind the responsibilities of being a lady.
Raven had never been sure how much Charles's parents knew about her origins. They had accepted her as their ward without a quibble, and put her on social par with themselves without a thought, but it was obvious that Charles's Gift was at work there. He had been only twelve, and not nearly so refined in his efforts as he would later become; the servants had thereafter watched their employers' dreamy smiles at Raven with some disquiet, and treated both children with wariness.
Charles, of course, knew all - knew that Raven was in no way bred to be a lady, would have been happy to find herself only securely employed, and had instead taken her unhesitantly into his heart and home as his own sister. He never spoke, or seemed even to think, of how grateful she ought to be, how little right she had ever to argue with or vex him. She alone reproached herself when she had put him to abuse, and probably too seldom; but she did not forget to love him.
And she did not hesitate to let drop all the tasks she had set for herself, and turn away in the midst of a conversation with Moira about the needs of the herb garden, when she heard her brother and his guest return from their morning's ride.
She found them in the drawing room, Charles pouring drinks and watching in delight while Mr. Lehnsherr spun a coin in lazy loops through the air. Both were sun-flushed and sweat-dampened, their coats flung over a chair, and Raven paused in the doorway to appreciate the spectacle. Charles was not, after all, her brother by blood; she was allowed to merely look.
"-extremely scandalous of me, I'll well aware," Charles was laughing, "but I simply cannot abide a hat! It impairs my vision and denies me the breeze in my hair. I cannot help tearing it off the moment I feel I might get away with it!"
Mr. Lehnsherr's expression was a study in fond exasperation. "And if you could not abide trousers or breeches, what then? Would you live as a naked hermit in the forest? Some things in life are simply not optional, Charles."
"It is no use to scold him," Raven said, stepping into the room. "Charles is quite good at looking chastised and crestfallen, agreeing wholeheartedly that his behavior was wrong, and then cheerfully doing it again at the first opportunity."
Charles looked wounded. "Raven, dearest! You will give our guest quite a terrible impression of me!"
"It is nothing he cannot have observed for himself already. Perhaps you do not know, Mr. Lehnsherr, that at the very moment you met my brother, he was in the water in defiance of both my express request, and the dictates of common sense. And only look at his face! Even now he is preparing to apologize, when every word of it would be a lie. Speak truth, Charles, you are not sorry at all."
Charles lifted his chin. "Very well, I am not. How could I be, when my actions resulted in Mr. Lehnsherr's presence here? Not merely 'here in this house' but 'here on this Earth,' you understand."
Raven rolled her eyes, and crossed the room to casually put away the bottle Charles had poured from. "You see how comfortable my brother is with impropriety, Mr. Lehnsherr, and yet this very morning he balked at the idea of attending a traveling carnival that has camped nearby."
"How very stodgy of you, Charles," Mr. Lehnsherr said agreeably.
Charles scowled. "Yet surely you cannot entirely approve of the Gifted making show-ponies of themselves."
Mr. Lehnsherr rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. "Indeed, the idea of homo superior performing for the amusement of its less advanced cousins is repugnant. Yet the less-advanced cousin is at least getting appropriately fleeced, from what I hear of traveling carnivals, and it is one place where the Gifted are free to show themselves."
"You see?" Raven said, though she was somewhat uncertain if Mr. Lehnsherr was, in fact, agreeing with her or not.
Charles looked similarly uncertain. "'Homo superior,' Erik? You will parrot Sebastian Shaw even now? Surely his own actions have shown you that the Gifted hold no moral superiority to the Mundane."
"Moral? Perhaps not, but that was not my argument. I speak of power, Charles, the power any one of us holds over the Mundane, as you call them. Has it not always been the nature of the world, that those who cannot are ruled by those who can?"
Charles seemed torn between bafflement and laughter. "Can and cannot what, my friend? Argue, if you will, that the three of us have Gifts worth respecting; but I have seen many Gifts much humbler - certainly wonderful in their way, but nothing that could rightfully command reverence. We have a housemaid, for instance, who can cause the appearance of colorful lights. It is pretty, to be sure, but has yet to prove particularly useful."
"And yet even such a humble Gift cannot be duplicated by any Mundane. Man rules the beasts because he can think, and they cannot; the rich rule the poor because they have wealth, which is power, and the poor do not. We have power that the Mundanes do not have; our dominance over them is both natural and inevitable."
Raven felt a peculiar sort of singing inside herself at these words, as if some tuning fork she had never known she carried had been struck at long last. Yes, she wanted to shout. We should not be the bottom rung of society, but the top. Our Gifts should be praised and revered, not whispered of in shame.
But Charles looked distinctly uneasy. "Erik, you would only teach people to fear and hate us all the more. Our Gifts are not to be used to oppress the common people, they have quite enough of that already. If anything, we should use our Gifts to help them, to show them that Unnaturals are not freaks or monsters but people as good and honest as anyone else. One advantage of the carnivals, I would say, is that they show the Gifted in a context of harmless fun-"
"Harmless fun indeed!" Anger glinted now in Mr. Lehnsherr's eyes. "I would teach the people to respect us, while you would encourage them to look down on our Gifts as parlor tricks, and - worse! - calculate how we might be indentured to their own advantage."
"Erik, that is not at all what I meant!"
Erik raised a hand, stopping Charles's indignant words. He drew a breath, visibly calming himself. "It is terribly rude of me, of course, to argue with my host. Particularly in front of a lady." He turned to Raven with an expression schooled to pleasantness. "Your brother numbers your Gift with those that ought to command respect, Miss Darkholme. Is it too bold of me to request a demonstration?"
Raven glanced to Charles, whose cheeks were still reddened with agitation, but he opened a hand in a gesture of do as you will.
Unable to keep a smile from her face, Raven let her skin ripple into a flawless facsimile of Erik's own, even extending a thin layer of skin over her morning dress that then shaped itself to mirror the man's shirtsleeves, trousers, and brown-striped waistcoat.
She was pleased to see Mr. Lehnsherr start violently, then step toward her with a brilliant grin. "Magnificent," he breathed. "Can you do anyone, then?"
She shifted again, this time into Charles's image, and spoke in his voice. "Anyone at all. Though I must prepare my mind beforehand, memorizing what I intend to imitate. I've a very good memory for such things, but voices are sometimes difficult."
"You are perfectly magnificent. I cannot see a single flaw."
She cast her eyes down and curtsied demurely, which, executed in Charles's form, sparked both men to laughter.
"And the face you wore but moments ago," Mr. Lehnsherr asked, "is that your natural appearance, or is there a deeper layer?"
She hesitated. Had she not wished for permission to show her true face in Mr. Lehnsherr's company? Yet he was looking at her now with such admiration and joy, it stung to think of him recoiling from the chimera beneath. Instead she gave a coy smile. "How very improper of you, sir, asking to see a lady au naturel!"
"I do beg your pardon." Still smiling, Mr. Lehnsherr bowed. "Pray take my overenthusiasm as the compliment I meant it to be."
"Of course, sir." She flickered back to the blonde Miss Darkholme.
"You have a powerful Gift indeed, Miss Darkholme," Mr. Lehnsherr said. "To be anyone, at any time - you might rule the world with very little effort."
"And yet, tonight at least, I would be satisfied to only attend the carnival."
"Well, you shan't," Charles said, in his determined-not-to-be-cross tone. "Erik and I have plans for this evening and will not be available to escort you. Next time, perhaps."
Raven opened her mouth for a hot protest, only for an idea to occur - one so obvious that she felt quite stupid for having taken so long about having it. The hot protest converted into a disappointed, "Very well, Charles." She let the conversation move to other things - and was able to participate with all good cheer, knowing she would, in fact, be attending the carnival, whether Charles liked it or not.
Chapter 3