Fic: floating in sunbeams, X-Men: First Class
Title: floating in sunbeams
Summary: “Raven,” Siri whispers, and the moonlight streams silver onto his scales. He’s a chameleon, a rabbit, a fluttering bird, landing on her shoulder and digging with tiny claws. “Raven, someone’s coming.” Or, X-Men: First Class with daemons.
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble, Charles/Erik, Alex/Darwin
Word Count: 6,215
Notes: Inspired by the multitude of daemon prompts on both memes. Basically I wanted to see Charles with something other than a lion and Erik with something other than a wolf and.... this happened.
For a brief vid explaining daemons better than I can, see here.
Thanks to Cassie for the beta! All remaining mistakes are my own. List of names, meanings, and symbolism can be found at the end. Also, because LJ is a bitch, the spaces are rather large and I'm, um, not entierly sure how to deal with that.
“Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight..."
-Lyra Silvertongue, The Amber Spyglass
floating in sunbeams
1. “Raven,” Siri whispers, and the moonlight streams silver onto his scales. He’s a chameleon, a rabbit, a fluttering bird, landing on her shoulder and digging with tiny claws. “Raven, someone’s coming.”
Raven turns her head towards the door, fear flooding her mouth. She can hear soft feet on the floor, coming close, closer.
Not again, she thinks, and Siri shifts into a mouse and cowers on her shoulder.
“What are you going to do?”
She looks around desperately and sees a picture on the wall-a woman in a dress, her daemon a sleek, bright-eyed tabby cat-and without thinking she copies it, forcing her skin to ripple and grow and stretch-
The footsteps come closer-
“Mother,” says a kid maybe a few years older than her, round-faced and sleepy-eyed. His daemon sheds her lion form and becomes a bird, fluttering to his shoulder. He lowers the baseball bat and Raven can’t help but watch it, fear it. “What are you doing? I thought you were a burglar.”
Raven smiles the frozen smile of the woman in the picture, Siri padding between her legs. “Go on back to bed, dear,” she says.
The boy glares and suddenly there’s noise, and Siri lets go of the cat’s shape and writhes and Raven shrinks into herself, terrified, what is this, where’s it coming from-
And then the boy is talking inside her head, and she sheds his mother’s skin, standing naked and blue and wide-eyed (you’re a freak, a monster, a demon, look at you) in front of him.
The boy smiles and his daemon flutters her pretty wings, singing a birdsong. “I knew I couldn’t be the only one,” he breathes, and Raven stares at him, confused, and Siri cowers at her heels.
He’s like us, they realize, like a bolt of lightning, and when the boy offers them his home Raven wants to cry.
“I’m Charles Xavier,” says the boy, and he offers her his hand. She takes it timidly.
“Raven.”
The bird changes into a cat and politely touches noses with Siri, and sudden, wild happiness, relief, floods Raven’s thoughts.
“You never have to steal again,” says Charles Xavier, his hand and his mind warm around her, and his words echo through the huge dark kitchen like a promise.
2. They’re drowning. Water floods their lungs and they claw at the submarine, at Herr Doktor, and Aliyah he’s getting away-
They can’t breathe.
The submarine pulls, too large, too strong for little Erik Lehnsherr, and Aliyah roars and chokes on water.
We will not lose them, Aliyah snarls, not again.
Never again, Erik agrees, because he remembers the room and the coin, Schmidt laughing, and his Mama, and a gunshot and a flare of golden dust and agony, tearing the room apart while Aliyah became a tigress and howled and howled.
They will stop Schmidt or they will die.
And then, quite suddenly, there are arms around Erik’s throat and claws tugging at Aliyah’s soaked fur, and someone’s there, inside their heads, talking, soothing.
Erik, you have to let go. You’ll drown.
No, he snarls, trying to throw the person out, off, he has to kill Schmidt-
Calm your mind. Calm your mind.
Erik fights, reaches for the sub but it’s gone-
Then there’s air again, he can breathe, and he’s coughing and spluttering and shoving away from whoever took him from Schmidt-
Erik, Aliyah whispers, and she’s looking into the eyes of a magnificent golden eagle. They’re like us.
In the water across from him is a man with dark hair and blue-eyes, and he’s shivering, and he’s inside Erik’s head.
“You are not alone,” he says to Erik, and electricity crackles down his spine. “Erik, you are not alone.”
And, just like that, he isn’t.
3. Travelling with Erik is nerve-wracking, to say the least. Charles has shared a room with many people (chief among them Raven and Siri, who are loud, destructive, and generally all over the place) but this, this is different.
It’s not that he doesn’t like Erik, it’s that he does, very much, with an intensity that scares him. He’s not like that. He’s-
“Loose,” Iskierka says, laughing, carding through his hair gently.
He rolls his eyes at her. “Pragmatic.”
“Call it what you will.”
He shakes his head at her, shooing her from his shoulder gently. She lofts easily into the air, settling down again on the lamp above Erik’s bed, and she looks down at him with soft eyes.
“I don’t see what you’re so worried about,” she says quietly.
Metal rattles softly around the room (such a beautiful power) and Erik is having a nightmare and it shoves at the edges of Charles’s mind, violent, insistent.
“That,” he whispers. They’ve been travelling together, alone, for almost a week now, guided by Cerebro. They’ve met and recruited a mutant already, Angel Salvatore, and tomorrow they meet another. And the entire time Charles has been hyperaware of his new companion-his hands, his voice, his daemon’s sharp, glittering eyes.
Erik is there and Charles can’t look away, and it frightens him.
Iskierka chirrups softly, flaring her wings. “He won’t hurt you,” she says. “He stayed for you, Charles, because you asked him to.”
“He’s a hunter,” Charles says. “A tiger. Look at his daemon; she isn’t made to live in hotel rooms following an idealist around.” He’ll never stay, he doesn’t say. Even if I want him to.
Iskierka stares at him. “For a genius, Charles, you’re not particularly bright, are you?” She hops down onto the bed in a flutter of feathers, landing next to Aliyah’s massive head. “He’ll stay for you,” she murmurs, brushing the twitching tiger with her wingtips. Aliyah sighs deeply and settles, her tail ceasing to twitch. Erik’s nightmares cool.
“You see?” She says. “They need us.”
Charles looks at her, then at Erik, and he wants to smooth the hair out of his eyes, press his fingers to his chest, feel his heart beat, his lungs move.
“Do they?” He whispers, and closes his eyes.
4. Alex has been in solitary for a long time. He kind of likes it now, actually. It’s cool, quiet, and he can’t kill anyone in here. Arinna doesn’t complain either, though he knows she wants to stretch her legs, to run and leap and be wild again, like before.
But they’re in fucking prison; they can’t be themselves here. They want to-the sunlight itches under their skin, they have to let it out-but they can’t.
“Soon,” Arinna says, resting her golden head on her paws. The feeble sunlight streams soft and yellow onto her fur and her tail twitches. “Soon.”
Alex doesn’t know if she’s referring to their release or their escape, but she’s right, soon this whole prison thing won’t matter. They won’t be cooped up for much longer.
(If only he could just stop seeing the man he killed, stop seeing the awful red light and the man’s wild, startled eyes, his daemon bursting into dust.)
Arinna growls softly, warningly. “Don’t think about it,” she says quietly, and he misses how playful she used to be. “We did what we had to do.”
Alex looks away. “Yeah,” he says, and it sounds hollow.
Outside there’s sudden noise and Arinna’s ears flick forward. Muffled voices, the scrape of a lock, the door opening-
“Summers,” snaps the prison guard, and there are two men with him.
One is soft-looking, kind, with dark floppy hair and a golden eagle perched on his shoulder. He smiles at Alex and Alex ignores him entirely-too nice, too good, they’re not going to get along.
The other is taller, harder, with prison-tempered steel in his face and a huge tiger, bigger than Arinna, crouched at his heels.
Alex doesn’t like him, but he knows that this guy, whoever he is, is cut from the same fucked-up cloth he himself is.
Arinna recognizes it and hums to the tigeress, tail twitching nervously. They feel the sun burning in their veins.
“I’m Charles Xavier,” says the soft-looking one.
“Erik Lehnsherr,” says the harder one, and his tigress hums lowly.
“We have a proposition for you.”
Alex looks between them and Arinna stirs at his feet, her tail twitching. He meets her eyes and sees their power burning there, whispering soon. “We’re listening.”
5. Sean can’t get a date. He thinks it might be ‘cause of the way he always looks baked (and he’s not, really, he’s tried pot once okay), and Einín thinks its hysterical, but he’s really kind of depressed about it now.
Just one date before he dies an old ginger virgin would be nice.
Einín laughs, flitting above his head, and the tiny sonic screeches from her voice seem to be killing the poor fish.
“Fucking fish,” Sean mutters, glaring at them.
“You’re just bitter,” his obnoxious bird daemon says, still giggling. “You’ll find the right person one day.”
He’s too busy groaning and she laughing to notice the two guys coming to stand beside them, and Einín drops back to his shoulder, startled.
One of them, a friendly, open-looking guy with an eagle on his shoulder, offers Sean a smile. “I’m Charles Xavier,” he says. “Would you like to show me what you just did?”
“Do it,” Einín says suddenly, her blue feathers rigid, alert. “Show him what we can do.”
“Okay,” Sean says, because you’re supposed to listen to your daemon, right? He draws back, aims at the stupid, date-ruining fish, and lets go.
6. Having other people like him around makes Hank nervous. He’s always known there had to be others out there (in a world of 3.205 billion humans, there had to be other mutants) but there is a difference between knowing others existed and having them around all the time.
He doesn’t mind, persay. Some of them are quite nice, Mr. Xavier and Raven, for example.
At the thought of Raven Hank flushes pink and Hesione’s tail curls.
“You like her,” she teases, balanced on his shoulder.
He smiles despite himself. “Of course I like her,” he says. “She’s like me.”
Hesione giggles, her thick tail winding around his neck. “I know,” she tells him. “I was there too, you know.”
He blushes again, remembering Raven and Mr. Lehnsherr walking by, his fierce-eyed tiger eying them with cold amusement.
“She could be the answer,” he says, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Her genes, her DNA, they’re the key to it all, I know it. Her power is extraordinary-”
“I wonder why Sirion can’t change?” Hesione leaps from his shoulder to go over the data they’ve drawn up. “Is that a factor, perhaps? I know Mr. Lehnsherr’s daemon can do what he can, and so can Mr. Xavier’s, but that’s not a physical mutation-”
“Right,” Hank agrees, looking at the data with her. “We need more samples-maybe Darwin?”
Hesione wraps her tail around his wrist and they stay in the labs for hours, going over and over their data, and, to Hank’s surprise, when Darwin wanders in with questions, he’s not that nervous after all.
7. Erik is pretty sure he’s in love with Charles Xavier. Aliyah thinks it’s amusing.
“It’s not,” he tells her shortly, looking away because Charles is in the bathroom and Erik wants, and he shouldn’t.
Aliyah twitches her whiskers. “It is,” she informs him. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
He drags a hand through his hair, frustrated, and tries not to imagine joining Charles in the shower, pushing aside the curtain and-
Aliyah sighs. “I don’t understand why you make these things harder for yourself,” she says, padding over to him. “Go in there. He wants you too.”
“How are you so sure?”
She sniffs disdainfully. “I am a daemon,” she says. “I know these things. You do not. You make it as difficult and painful for yourself as possible, and it is idiotic. Go.” She noses him rather hard in the direction of the bathroom door. Erik resists but she’s a tiger.
“He’s an idealist,” Erik says, trying to reason with her. “He’s naïve, ridiculously optimistic, and one day I will have to leave him.”
Aliyah looks up at him with her fierce, glittering eyes. “Yes,” she rumbles. “But today is not the day. Go. Be happy, if only for a little while.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“When we leave him, we already will.”
Erik looks at her and Aliyah looks at him.
“Go,” she says, and the expression on her fierce, gorgeous face is almost a physical pain.
He opens the bathroom door.
8. Angel’s many things (whore freak mutant), but she’s not stupid. She knows what she has to do to survive, and she does it. She’s no Darwin, obviously; her mutation is limited to the wings on her back, she can’t change to adapt.
But she can survive-she knows how. Quetz knows how too, and when Shaw and his people come, rip the base apart, she knows what she has to do to survive.
Shaw looks at her and his daemon blinks her lazy, beady eyes, and he offers her his hand.
“Take it,” Quetz murmurs in her ear, his tiny tongue flickering. He squeezes her shoulders once, comforting, his scales dry and smooth. “Take his hand.”
“What if he’s wrong? What if we get killed?”
“Look around,” Quetz says, and she does. There are dead men everywhere, their daemons dust. Shaw’s people tore them apart.
No one will ever look at her like she’s a whore, a freak, a mutant, again, and really, what can they do against Shaw’s trained killers?
“Nothing,” hisses Quetz, and he winds down her arm to curl at her wrist. His green scales glitter like emeralds. “We can’t fight them. We’re just children.”
“Come with me,” Shaw says. “You’re either with us or against us.”
Angel knows how to survive. She reaches out and takes Shaw’s hand, and he smiles at her and Quetz curls tightly around her wrist, a promise.
When Shaw forces Darwin to swallow Alex’s energy and he glows, and they all look at her with startled, betrayed eyes, Angel closes her own and holds on to Quetz so tight it almost hurts.
Sorry, she thinks, and then they’re gone.
9. Darwin regrets nothing. All his life he’s tried to live it without regret, and here, now, with the heat swelling unbearable in his bones, he has none.
(He wonders, briefly, if that’s part of his ability, shutting out regret, fear, pain, anything that could hurt him. He wonders, and then it slips away.)
He doesn’t regret leaving home when he was fourteen, the night Myra told him she would never settle.
He doesn’t regret all the fights they got into, all the times they beat street thugs into bloody pulps with hands and paws that were stone, steel, stone again.
He doesn’t regret saying yes to Xavier and Lehnsherr in that cab, when Myra took one look at their daemons and said “yes” so forcefully even the tiger looked surpised.
He doesn’t regret Alex, wild, damaged, fearless Alex, hot and needing underneath him, their fingers entangled, foreheads pressed together. That night Myra had been a lioness too, sprawled against Arinna, and she whispered into her ear and Darwin had felt it in his bones.
Darwin doesn’t regret touching Alex, telling him what to do, and throwing himself in front of Angel. Myra doesn’t either, and as they glow and melt (stone, steel, stone again) she looks up at him with her understanding eyes, and she changes into her favorite shape, a clean, sleek cat, so he can crush her to his chest and look at Alex without crying.
“Goodbye,” Darwin mouths, and the heat, the heat-
The last thing he hears is Arinna roaring and Myra purring softly, desperately, against his chest.
10. Iskierka leaps from his shoulder the second the mansion comes into sight, flying in wide, joyous circles over their childhood home. Siri bounds in the air to join her and they roll over and over in the air, laughing.
Charles can’t help but smile at the sight.
It’s nice to be in Westchester again, and he thinks the kids will like it. They need a place of their own, somewhere safe, somewhere quiet after what happened with Shaw.
On a reflex he glances at Alex and scans the surface of his thoughts. He’s still dark, still sullen, still angry about Darwin’s death. Arinna is stiff-legged and snarling at his side, her fur spiked, don’t touch us throbbing inside them like sunlight.
He hopes that, here, they can heal.
The rest of the group files out of the cars, following Charles up to the huge mansion.
Erik and Aliyah are at his side (as they always seem to be, these days) and Aliyah rumbles an amused purr.
“You lived here,” Erik says, and there’s no judgment in him, just an exasperated tickle that Charles is rapidly coming to associate with affection.
Charles grins and Raven’s leading the other children away, Siri narrating at the top of his voice (he’s a parrot at the moment, how appropriate) showing them their home, and Charles if already half-gone making plans, thinking this can be a training area, Alex will like the bunker, maybe I can set up a lab for Hank-
“Charles,” Iskierka says softly, half-annoyed, half-amused, landing on his shoulder.
“Mmm?”
She flicks her head in Erik’s direction and the sunlight turns her feathers red-gold; she looks like a phoenix, a thing of fire.
Erik’s watching the children and he’s got this expression on his face that Charles can’t name, but it looks calm, and Aliyah’s fur is flat on her spine and her rather large fangs are hidden, and she’s beautiful and almost looks tame.
He catches Charles looking and offers a crooked half-grin, and Charles grins back widely, stupidly as Iskierka dive-bombs Aliyah’s head.
Yes, Charles thinks, watching Aliyah yowl and leap, swatting playfully at Iskierka. He threads his fingers through Erik’s carefully and the rush of warmth nearly knocks him over. This could be home.
11. Sean and Alex stumble down the dark hallway and try to muffle their laughter, leaning heavy on each other for support.
Moonlight pours in from the wide, high windows, turning Arinna’s tawny fur silver and making Einín’s feathers sparkle. Alex and Sean dodge the patches of silver light, hiding in the shadows with their precious cargo of shaving cream, warm water, and catnip.
(Hank is so fucked when he wakes up in the morning.)
“Dude,” Sean giggles, sneaking around a patch of moonlight and tripping over the heavy curtains instead.
“Shut up,” Alex hisses but he’s not having much luck controlling his giggles either, and Arinna staggers from side to side like she’s drunk.
They’ve been in the mansion for three weeks now and what happened before is starting to fade-they like it here, they feel safe here, and it’s time to cause some chaos, damn it.
They don’t see Aliyah until they’re almost on top of her-Arinna stumbles to a stop, tripping over her paws, and lands in a heap at the tigress’s feet.
Aliyah growls softly and her eyes glow in the darkness.
Alex and Sean stop dead and Einín flutters to Sean’s shoulder nervously, and they wait for Erik to prowl from the darkness and scold them for being up so late.
They wait for several seconds, and Erik doesn’t show up.
A cold shudder ripples down Alex’s spine.
Aliyah is alone.
Arinna scrambles back, presses up against Alex’s legs. Erik’s room is in another wing entirely-Aliyah is too far away, and the thought of separation like that sends phantom pain deep in his gut.
Wrong, he thinks, that’s so wrong, there’s something wrong with them, daemons don’t go that far.
Aliyah’s tail twitches from side to side. “Go to bed, children,” she says and her voice is low and soft.
Wordlessly, Alex and Sean turn and all but run away from her, the maimed daemon, clutching their own close to them.
“Dude,” Sean whispers, his voice rough. “Do you think Shaw-”
“Don’t want to think about it,” Alex says, and slams his door, burying his face in Arinna’s fur as she twines close around him, against him.
Neither of them sleep that night, because Aliyah prowls the corridors alone, without Erik, and the thought is enough to give them both nightmares.
12. Moira likes the mutants. She knows the rest of the CIA hates them, is terrified of them, but they’re not bad, not even Lehnsherr, who makes Zev bare his teeth whenever he walks past.
Moira loves the mutants. They’re so interesting, and for all their superhuman powers they are human, fragile and flawed and wonderful.
She wishes she was a mutant, sometimes. Zev won’t admit it but he does too-they feel out of place here, in this house of people who can read minds or move metal or change skins easily, effortlessly.
“I miss pack,” Zev says, trotting quietly at her heels. He looks less like a wolf and more like a dog, all soft fur and gentle brown eyes (one of the reasons they were hired, actually; he looks enough like a dog that people think they’ll mindlessly follow orders), but the wolf is there, in the shape of his muzzle, his long, loping stride.
Moira shrugs. “I know.” Here they are not pack. They’re outsiders, guests, tolerated, spoken to, but never truly part of things. Charles tries, of course. He makes them feel as welcome as he can, but it doesn’t matter because Moira knows that one day the CIA will call her back and she’ll have to go.
Zev whines unhappily, clawing the earth underneath his paws. “I don’t want to,” he says. His eyes are soft but fierce, determined. “I like it here. We could be pack, you know, one day.”
Moira smiles a little sadly because they both know it’s not true. “Yeah,” she says with a little laugh. “If Lehnsherr leaves first.”
“We’ll protect them,” Zev growls, and the wolf is visible now, proud, strong, fearless. “When the CIA comes for them, we’ll protect them.”
She looks at Zev and isn’t really surprised to find that it’s true. “Always,” she tells him, and tangles her hands into his soft fur. “We’ll always protect them.”
13. Alex misses Darwin. He misses the feel of him, the steadiness, the way their bodies curved together at night, Myra changing to match Arinna.
He thinks maybe he was a little bit in love with Darwin, which is weird because he’s not sure how that’s supposed to feel. Good, he thought, better than this.
Arinna whines in her throat and cuddles closer, soft against his face. “I miss them too,” she says, and their pain is sharp, aborted stabs.
Now I-” He chokes on it, can’t make the words leave his throat.
“I know,” Arinna whispers, licking his face. “But next time, we can protect our friends.”
“Next time,” Alex agrees bitterly, and stares up at the ceiling.
Next time, he won’t give anyone the option of leaving him.
14. “Um,” Sean says, staring at the ground that’s way down there. “I don’t know about this, guys.” Einín flutters around his head in bright blue circles and she’s awfully quiet, for once. Sean doesn’t know what to make of that.
“We won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,” Prof says, warm and reassuring. “We’ll come back another day, if you want.”
“Yeah.” Sean lets out a breath. “Yeah, that sounds-”
In hindsight, he realizes that Einín saw it coming. She was watching Mr. Lehnsherr the whole time, him and his crazy tiger (Sean still hasn’t gotten over that, seeing them so far apart, it’s wrong). She saw the whole thing.
Sean's talking one second and then the next, he's dropping.
Very fast, towards a fuck ton of metal.
Oh. Shit.
“Scream, Sean, scream!” Einín shrieks, little sonic waves rippling from her beak. “Scream!”
Well, Sean thinks, now or never, and he screams harder than he’s ever screamed before, oh shit he’s going to die-
Einín shrieks delightedly and he opens his eyes. He’s flying, honest-to-God flying, and Einín is moving so fast around him she’s a blur.
“You did it,” she keeps saying, and happiness bubbles wild and hot between them. “You fucking did it, Sean, you can fly with me now.”
They don’t touch down for hours.
15. Raven watches them from the window and Sirion flutters from shape to shape so quickly, mouse-cat-bird-dog, that it hurts to watch him.
She doesn’t tell him to settle, though, isn’t sure of telling him to settle, because Hank told them to settle and it hurt them, wounded them, and they don’t want to settle.
They want to be themselves.
“Siri,” Raven whispers, and she watches Charles and Erik, Iskierka and Aliyah. “Siri, I’m scared. What if Hank’s right?”
Siri looks up at her with his fierce amber eyes, his fur changing, always changing. “He’s not,” he whispered. “He can’t be, Raven. We were born this way. There’s nothing wrong with us. We’re beautiful.”
Raven blinks rapidly and Siri nuzzles her hand. Below them, Erik turns the satellite dish and Aliyah roars, triumphant, and for a second Erik’s fingers stroke Iskiekra’s feathers, Charles caresses Iskierka’s fur.
They touch and it’s so intimate Raven has to look away. She could never do that with Hesione.
“Mutant and proud,” Siri says, and he’s watching Erik and Charles down below. “Mutant and proud.”
16. “This is it,” Hank tells Hesione, and she picks up the serum in her delicate, agile paws.
“We’ll be normal,” she says. Her eyes are luminous in the dim light and her striped tail twitches nervously, anxiously.
Hank nods. “Still smart,” he tells her. “Still fast. Just… normal-looking.”
Hesione looks up at him and for the first time in his life he can’t tell what she’s thinking, and it scares him, a little, because she’s his daemon, he’s supposed to know what she’s thinking.
“What if Raven’s right?” She asks softly.
“She can’t be,” Hank says fiercely and Hesione ducks her head. “Humans will never accept people who look like us.” He holds his hand out for the serum and his Hesione looks at him, at it, and then passes it to him gently, delicately.
“I hope you’re right,” she says. “I hope you’re right, Hank, because if you’re not…”
“I’m right,” Hank growls, and he flicks the vial. The green liquid swirls, mesmerizing.
Hesione closes her eyes.
“I have to be right.”
And he plunges the needle into his skin.
17. “Erik,” Charles whispers, and the moonlight spills through the bay window across their bed, tangling in Iskierka’s feathers and Aliyah’s stripped fur.
Erik looks up from the book he’s reading, The Once and Future King, and Charles can’t really see his eyes but he can feel the razor-sharp slide of his mind, hear Aliyah’s deep rumbling purr. The memory of earlier today-the satellite dish, the pain, the triumph, Charles’ hand ghosting over Aliyah’s fur and Erik’s fingertips trailing over Iskierka’s feathers-floods between them and Charles smiles, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Iskierka flutters to his shoulder, squeezing it affectionately and grooming through his hair with her beak.
Don’t be nervous, she says, to him and only him. It’ll be fine.
You sound very sure.
She laughs, leaping off his shoulder and settling, wings spread for balance, next to Erik. Aliyah stretches her long body, shifting closer to Charles, and anticipation and anxiety make his head spin.
What if it’s wrong? He asks Iskierka. What if it hurts?
She looks at him with her bright eyes. “You’ll see,” she says, and shoves her head under Erik’s hands.
At once it’s everything, heatlightwarmthloveneedyouCharlesneedyousofuckingmuch and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t even breath through the pleasure of it all. Erik’s mind is suddenly there, all of it, and Aliyah’s fur is soft and silky under his fingers, and Erik’s making soft sounds, Iskierka’s cooing, Aliyah’s rumbling and purring deep in her chest.
Someone’s gasping, and Charles realizes that it’s him. He opens his eyes and Aliyah’s fur tingles underneath his hands. He can feel Erik through her, and it’s everything.
“You see,” Iskierka says, and Erik’s fingers are tight in her feathers. “We’re perfect, Charles.”
18. I’m dying, Alex thinks, and he rolls in the sand and tries to spit the fear out of his mouth, reaching out for Sean with one hand and Arinna with the other but she’s far away. He can hear her roaring, howling, feel her bounding towards him. The terrible ache in his chest, the sickness, the loneliness of her too far away leaves him shaking in the bright sand as he squints against the sunlight streaming hot and white onto her fur.
Alex, she cries, eating up the beach with huge strides, faster, faster, anything to loosen the jagged pain in their hearts. She hits him hard in the chest where Hank’s targeting device was, whining, growling, purring, and her fur is sleek and smooth under his shaking fingers.
“You were too far away,” she whispers.
“I know,” says Alex, and he closes his eyes and wants to cradle her, hold her so close they’re one body, but he can’t. He staggers to his feet and she whines, craving contact, but he can’t-won’t-give it to her, not here, not now.
(We’re becoming Erik and Aliyah, he thinks, and bitterness swells to mingle with the fear in his mouth.)
Behind them Raven and Hank burst from the trees, panting, victory flush on their faces. Hesione clings to Hank’s blue fur and Sirion is a jaguar at Raven’s side, his eyes bright yellow, his tail lashing.
From the plane there’s a sound, a scream-Charles reels and cries out and collapses onto his knees in the sand, clutching his head. Iskierka shrieks and plummets and rises, plummets and rises, her feathers shining golden in the sun.
They all rush to Charles, their own hurts forgotten (though Arinna stays so close Alex can feel her against his leg) and above them the wall of the submarine groans and punches open.
Sebastian Shaw’s body drops to the ground with a crunch, a neat little hole in his forehead, and Erik and Aliyah come out, floating, their eyes sharp and bright with triumph, power, and in a second Alex knows what Erik did and Arinna snarls.
Erik’s talking, his feet and her paws touching down on the burning sand, and he’s coaxing, trying to take them, to lead them, and Charles is on his feet and his face is bone-white and painful.
No, Alex whispers to Arinna as the two leaders talk of missiles and death and Moira runs to the plane.
Missiles punch the air and Arinna roars mournfully, fearlessly, and Alex tangles his fingers tight into her fur.
“We’ll make it,” he tells her raggedly, because they’ve got a man who can control metal on their side, and on cue Erik stops the missiles and his Aliyah hums a death-growl.
Charles screams something, anything, and jumps, and Erik and Charles and Aliyah and Iskierka roll over and over in the sand, the sunlight bouncing off them like bullets.
When Moira and Zev emerge from the plane, gun drawn, teeth peeled in a snarl, Alex knows it’s over.
He closes his eyes when Charles goes down, when Iskierka plummets from the sky with the missiles, shrieking, keening.
“Charles,” Erik says, kneeling in the sand, and he has the balls to look sad even though it’s all his fault, and Alex shouts and leaps forward to protect Charles, Arinna a tawny-gold demon at his side even though Aliyah is bigger, stronger, and wild with startled agony.
They’re thrown back by a hand and a tiger’s roar, and Arinna snarls and lashes her tail.
Aliyah is roaring, howling, leaping at Erik and Charles and Erik again and Iskierka lies limp and still in the sand.
“My dear friend,” says Charles, and what he says to Erik is drowned out by Aliyah’s keening, anguished roar. (don’t leave me)
Erik reels to his feet and Alex gets closer now, watching him, and Aliyah roars and tears at the sand with her claws, spitting at Erik in German.
He holds out his hand and Raven and Sirion go to him, looking back at Alex and the rest with their fierce yellow eyes, and then, with Aliyah’s roars echoing across the beach, they’re gone. (don’t-)
Alex kneels in the sand beside the Professor and the Professor’s eyes are wide, wounded, and blue. “I can’t feel my legs,” he says, tears beading in his eyes, and Iskierka makes a ragged sound in her throat. “I can’t feel my legs.”
Arinna curls to his side and Alex tangles his fingers into her fur tightly, so tightly. (don’t leave me) “We’ll protect you,” he says to Charles. The soldiers are coming. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
Arinna roars in pain, in anger, in love, and it echoes like a promise.
19. "Raven," Siri says quietly, and the sunlight streams golden onto his fur. He's taken to wearing a jaguar's shape around the base, his fur dark and alive with colors that shift constantly, slowly, subtly. Only his eyes stay the same fierce yellow and his tail twitches slightly, stirring up old dust.
The base is quiet. Magneto moved them all here after the beach (after Cuba and screaming and Aliyah roaring, howling, leaping at Erik and Charles and Erik again) and it's all rust and dust and old, creaking metal, and she thinks that it'll do, for now.
"Raven," Siri says again, his voice deep and growling.
"Mystique," she corrects him gently, firmly, and she looks down at him and the sunlight streaming onto him, the dust swirling around him, the colors shifting constantly in his fur. "I'm Mystique."
He looks up at her with his sharp yellow eyes and grumbles low in his throat, a growl, a purr. He twitches his paws in the dust, letting claws grow, sharpen, and retreat again.
"Are you sure?" He asks, and she knows what he's thinking, what he means. She closes her eyes and sees Charles, twelve years old and beaming, Iskierka fluttering on his shoulder. She sees Hank, awkward shy brilliant Hank, ashamed of his too-big feet and the way Hesione clung to his shoulder, refusing to leave. Moira, steady and white-faced advancing on Erik, a gun in her hand and Zev snarling, stiff-legged, at her heels. Alex and Sean laughing, flushed with success at their progress, Arinna and Einín tumbling over and over in the grass, shouting for Siri to join them.
Are you sure? Siri asks again, this time inside her mind, her soul, his eyes fierce and sad.
She opens her eyes and looks around, at the base, her new team. Azazel and his wolf, Riptide and his hawk, Angel and Quetz, Emma Frost and that damned sharp-beaked owl. Magneto and Aliyah, fierce and hot-eyed and taut, both of them, tense for a battle that hasn't come (or maybe has, whispers Siri, because they saw Erik and Charles together, hands outstretched and tangled in fur and feathers, saw them fight a war on the beach that ended with Iskierka plummeting from the sky and Aliyah roaring, howling, keening, springing away from Erik as soon as Azazel brought them here) yet.
They look back at her, these people, these mutants, and their biazarre, strange daemons.
Are you sure? Siri's eyes are yellow and the colors in his fur shift, red-orange-blue-yellow-white.
"Yes," says Mystique, straightening her shoulders, her skin blue and scaled, her daemon a jaguar (for now), and walks forward to join the group. I'm scared, Siri.
Her daemon looks at her and twitches his tail, a roar building in his throat. Sirion, he says. I'm Sirion now.
Alright, Mystique says, and Magneto stretches out a hand, his face stone and still and hurt in the way only she can see.
"Mystique," he says tiredly.
"Magneto."
Aliyah nudges Sirion with her nose, talking to him in the language of daemons.
His hand hangs between them, a question. She took it at the beach but she could still go back, to Hank and Alex and Sean and Moira and Charles and home.
Sirion looks up at her, fierce, beautiful, always changing, never settling.
We can't, he says.
We won't, Mystique agrees, and she takes Magneto's hand. Never again.
Sirion throws back his head and roars, and Aliyah joins in, and the sound shakes Mystique all the way to her soul. She meets Magneto’s eyes, and she sees that he understands.
“Never again.”
“Yes,” he says, and his voice is rough and cracked. “Never again.”
Summary: “Raven,” Siri whispers, and the moonlight streams silver onto his scales. He’s a chameleon, a rabbit, a fluttering bird, landing on her shoulder and digging with tiny claws. “Raven, someone’s coming.” Or, X-Men: First Class with daemons.
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble, Charles/Erik, Alex/Darwin
Word Count: 6,215
Notes: Inspired by the multitude of daemon prompts on both memes. Basically I wanted to see Charles with something other than a lion and Erik with something other than a wolf and.... this happened.
For a brief vid explaining daemons better than I can, see here.
Thanks to Cassie for the beta! All remaining mistakes are my own. List of names, meanings, and symbolism can be found at the end. Also, because LJ is a bitch, the spaces are rather large and I'm, um, not entierly sure how to deal with that.
“Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight..."
-Lyra Silvertongue, The Amber Spyglass
floating in sunbeams
1. “Raven,” Siri whispers, and the moonlight streams silver onto his scales. He’s a chameleon, a rabbit, a fluttering bird, landing on her shoulder and digging with tiny claws. “Raven, someone’s coming.”
Raven turns her head towards the door, fear flooding her mouth. She can hear soft feet on the floor, coming close, closer.
Not again, she thinks, and Siri shifts into a mouse and cowers on her shoulder.
“What are you going to do?”
She looks around desperately and sees a picture on the wall-a woman in a dress, her daemon a sleek, bright-eyed tabby cat-and without thinking she copies it, forcing her skin to ripple and grow and stretch-
The footsteps come closer-
“Mother,” says a kid maybe a few years older than her, round-faced and sleepy-eyed. His daemon sheds her lion form and becomes a bird, fluttering to his shoulder. He lowers the baseball bat and Raven can’t help but watch it, fear it. “What are you doing? I thought you were a burglar.”
Raven smiles the frozen smile of the woman in the picture, Siri padding between her legs. “Go on back to bed, dear,” she says.
The boy glares and suddenly there’s noise, and Siri lets go of the cat’s shape and writhes and Raven shrinks into herself, terrified, what is this, where’s it coming from-
And then the boy is talking inside her head, and she sheds his mother’s skin, standing naked and blue and wide-eyed (you’re a freak, a monster, a demon, look at you) in front of him.
The boy smiles and his daemon flutters her pretty wings, singing a birdsong. “I knew I couldn’t be the only one,” he breathes, and Raven stares at him, confused, and Siri cowers at her heels.
He’s like us, they realize, like a bolt of lightning, and when the boy offers them his home Raven wants to cry.
“I’m Charles Xavier,” says the boy, and he offers her his hand. She takes it timidly.
“Raven.”
The bird changes into a cat and politely touches noses with Siri, and sudden, wild happiness, relief, floods Raven’s thoughts.
“You never have to steal again,” says Charles Xavier, his hand and his mind warm around her, and his words echo through the huge dark kitchen like a promise.
2. They’re drowning. Water floods their lungs and they claw at the submarine, at Herr Doktor, and Aliyah he’s getting away-
They can’t breathe.
The submarine pulls, too large, too strong for little Erik Lehnsherr, and Aliyah roars and chokes on water.
We will not lose them, Aliyah snarls, not again.
Never again, Erik agrees, because he remembers the room and the coin, Schmidt laughing, and his Mama, and a gunshot and a flare of golden dust and agony, tearing the room apart while Aliyah became a tigress and howled and howled.
They will stop Schmidt or they will die.
And then, quite suddenly, there are arms around Erik’s throat and claws tugging at Aliyah’s soaked fur, and someone’s there, inside their heads, talking, soothing.
Erik, you have to let go. You’ll drown.
No, he snarls, trying to throw the person out, off, he has to kill Schmidt-
Calm your mind. Calm your mind.
Erik fights, reaches for the sub but it’s gone-
Then there’s air again, he can breathe, and he’s coughing and spluttering and shoving away from whoever took him from Schmidt-
Erik, Aliyah whispers, and she’s looking into the eyes of a magnificent golden eagle. They’re like us.
In the water across from him is a man with dark hair and blue-eyes, and he’s shivering, and he’s inside Erik’s head.
“You are not alone,” he says to Erik, and electricity crackles down his spine. “Erik, you are not alone.”
And, just like that, he isn’t.
3. Travelling with Erik is nerve-wracking, to say the least. Charles has shared a room with many people (chief among them Raven and Siri, who are loud, destructive, and generally all over the place) but this, this is different.
It’s not that he doesn’t like Erik, it’s that he does, very much, with an intensity that scares him. He’s not like that. He’s-
“Loose,” Iskierka says, laughing, carding through his hair gently.
He rolls his eyes at her. “Pragmatic.”
“Call it what you will.”
He shakes his head at her, shooing her from his shoulder gently. She lofts easily into the air, settling down again on the lamp above Erik’s bed, and she looks down at him with soft eyes.
“I don’t see what you’re so worried about,” she says quietly.
Metal rattles softly around the room (such a beautiful power) and Erik is having a nightmare and it shoves at the edges of Charles’s mind, violent, insistent.
“That,” he whispers. They’ve been travelling together, alone, for almost a week now, guided by Cerebro. They’ve met and recruited a mutant already, Angel Salvatore, and tomorrow they meet another. And the entire time Charles has been hyperaware of his new companion-his hands, his voice, his daemon’s sharp, glittering eyes.
Erik is there and Charles can’t look away, and it frightens him.
Iskierka chirrups softly, flaring her wings. “He won’t hurt you,” she says. “He stayed for you, Charles, because you asked him to.”
“He’s a hunter,” Charles says. “A tiger. Look at his daemon; she isn’t made to live in hotel rooms following an idealist around.” He’ll never stay, he doesn’t say. Even if I want him to.
Iskierka stares at him. “For a genius, Charles, you’re not particularly bright, are you?” She hops down onto the bed in a flutter of feathers, landing next to Aliyah’s massive head. “He’ll stay for you,” she murmurs, brushing the twitching tiger with her wingtips. Aliyah sighs deeply and settles, her tail ceasing to twitch. Erik’s nightmares cool.
“You see?” She says. “They need us.”
Charles looks at her, then at Erik, and he wants to smooth the hair out of his eyes, press his fingers to his chest, feel his heart beat, his lungs move.
“Do they?” He whispers, and closes his eyes.
4. Alex has been in solitary for a long time. He kind of likes it now, actually. It’s cool, quiet, and he can’t kill anyone in here. Arinna doesn’t complain either, though he knows she wants to stretch her legs, to run and leap and be wild again, like before.
But they’re in fucking prison; they can’t be themselves here. They want to-the sunlight itches under their skin, they have to let it out-but they can’t.
“Soon,” Arinna says, resting her golden head on her paws. The feeble sunlight streams soft and yellow onto her fur and her tail twitches. “Soon.”
Alex doesn’t know if she’s referring to their release or their escape, but she’s right, soon this whole prison thing won’t matter. They won’t be cooped up for much longer.
(If only he could just stop seeing the man he killed, stop seeing the awful red light and the man’s wild, startled eyes, his daemon bursting into dust.)
Arinna growls softly, warningly. “Don’t think about it,” she says quietly, and he misses how playful she used to be. “We did what we had to do.”
Alex looks away. “Yeah,” he says, and it sounds hollow.
Outside there’s sudden noise and Arinna’s ears flick forward. Muffled voices, the scrape of a lock, the door opening-
“Summers,” snaps the prison guard, and there are two men with him.
One is soft-looking, kind, with dark floppy hair and a golden eagle perched on his shoulder. He smiles at Alex and Alex ignores him entirely-too nice, too good, they’re not going to get along.
The other is taller, harder, with prison-tempered steel in his face and a huge tiger, bigger than Arinna, crouched at his heels.
Alex doesn’t like him, but he knows that this guy, whoever he is, is cut from the same fucked-up cloth he himself is.
Arinna recognizes it and hums to the tigeress, tail twitching nervously. They feel the sun burning in their veins.
“I’m Charles Xavier,” says the soft-looking one.
“Erik Lehnsherr,” says the harder one, and his tigress hums lowly.
“We have a proposition for you.”
Alex looks between them and Arinna stirs at his feet, her tail twitching. He meets her eyes and sees their power burning there, whispering soon. “We’re listening.”
5. Sean can’t get a date. He thinks it might be ‘cause of the way he always looks baked (and he’s not, really, he’s tried pot once okay), and Einín thinks its hysterical, but he’s really kind of depressed about it now.
Just one date before he dies an old ginger virgin would be nice.
Einín laughs, flitting above his head, and the tiny sonic screeches from her voice seem to be killing the poor fish.
“Fucking fish,” Sean mutters, glaring at them.
“You’re just bitter,” his obnoxious bird daemon says, still giggling. “You’ll find the right person one day.”
He’s too busy groaning and she laughing to notice the two guys coming to stand beside them, and Einín drops back to his shoulder, startled.
One of them, a friendly, open-looking guy with an eagle on his shoulder, offers Sean a smile. “I’m Charles Xavier,” he says. “Would you like to show me what you just did?”
“Do it,” Einín says suddenly, her blue feathers rigid, alert. “Show him what we can do.”
“Okay,” Sean says, because you’re supposed to listen to your daemon, right? He draws back, aims at the stupid, date-ruining fish, and lets go.
6. Having other people like him around makes Hank nervous. He’s always known there had to be others out there (in a world of 3.205 billion humans, there had to be other mutants) but there is a difference between knowing others existed and having them around all the time.
He doesn’t mind, persay. Some of them are quite nice, Mr. Xavier and Raven, for example.
At the thought of Raven Hank flushes pink and Hesione’s tail curls.
“You like her,” she teases, balanced on his shoulder.
He smiles despite himself. “Of course I like her,” he says. “She’s like me.”
Hesione giggles, her thick tail winding around his neck. “I know,” she tells him. “I was there too, you know.”
He blushes again, remembering Raven and Mr. Lehnsherr walking by, his fierce-eyed tiger eying them with cold amusement.
“She could be the answer,” he says, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Her genes, her DNA, they’re the key to it all, I know it. Her power is extraordinary-”
“I wonder why Sirion can’t change?” Hesione leaps from his shoulder to go over the data they’ve drawn up. “Is that a factor, perhaps? I know Mr. Lehnsherr’s daemon can do what he can, and so can Mr. Xavier’s, but that’s not a physical mutation-”
“Right,” Hank agrees, looking at the data with her. “We need more samples-maybe Darwin?”
Hesione wraps her tail around his wrist and they stay in the labs for hours, going over and over their data, and, to Hank’s surprise, when Darwin wanders in with questions, he’s not that nervous after all.
7. Erik is pretty sure he’s in love with Charles Xavier. Aliyah thinks it’s amusing.
“It’s not,” he tells her shortly, looking away because Charles is in the bathroom and Erik wants, and he shouldn’t.
Aliyah twitches her whiskers. “It is,” she informs him. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
He drags a hand through his hair, frustrated, and tries not to imagine joining Charles in the shower, pushing aside the curtain and-
Aliyah sighs. “I don’t understand why you make these things harder for yourself,” she says, padding over to him. “Go in there. He wants you too.”
“How are you so sure?”
She sniffs disdainfully. “I am a daemon,” she says. “I know these things. You do not. You make it as difficult and painful for yourself as possible, and it is idiotic. Go.” She noses him rather hard in the direction of the bathroom door. Erik resists but she’s a tiger.
“He’s an idealist,” Erik says, trying to reason with her. “He’s naïve, ridiculously optimistic, and one day I will have to leave him.”
Aliyah looks up at him with her fierce, glittering eyes. “Yes,” she rumbles. “But today is not the day. Go. Be happy, if only for a little while.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“When we leave him, we already will.”
Erik looks at her and Aliyah looks at him.
“Go,” she says, and the expression on her fierce, gorgeous face is almost a physical pain.
He opens the bathroom door.
8. Angel’s many things (whore freak mutant), but she’s not stupid. She knows what she has to do to survive, and she does it. She’s no Darwin, obviously; her mutation is limited to the wings on her back, she can’t change to adapt.
But she can survive-she knows how. Quetz knows how too, and when Shaw and his people come, rip the base apart, she knows what she has to do to survive.
Shaw looks at her and his daemon blinks her lazy, beady eyes, and he offers her his hand.
“Take it,” Quetz murmurs in her ear, his tiny tongue flickering. He squeezes her shoulders once, comforting, his scales dry and smooth. “Take his hand.”
“What if he’s wrong? What if we get killed?”
“Look around,” Quetz says, and she does. There are dead men everywhere, their daemons dust. Shaw’s people tore them apart.
No one will ever look at her like she’s a whore, a freak, a mutant, again, and really, what can they do against Shaw’s trained killers?
“Nothing,” hisses Quetz, and he winds down her arm to curl at her wrist. His green scales glitter like emeralds. “We can’t fight them. We’re just children.”
“Come with me,” Shaw says. “You’re either with us or against us.”
Angel knows how to survive. She reaches out and takes Shaw’s hand, and he smiles at her and Quetz curls tightly around her wrist, a promise.
When Shaw forces Darwin to swallow Alex’s energy and he glows, and they all look at her with startled, betrayed eyes, Angel closes her own and holds on to Quetz so tight it almost hurts.
Sorry, she thinks, and then they’re gone.
9. Darwin regrets nothing. All his life he’s tried to live it without regret, and here, now, with the heat swelling unbearable in his bones, he has none.
(He wonders, briefly, if that’s part of his ability, shutting out regret, fear, pain, anything that could hurt him. He wonders, and then it slips away.)
He doesn’t regret leaving home when he was fourteen, the night Myra told him she would never settle.
He doesn’t regret all the fights they got into, all the times they beat street thugs into bloody pulps with hands and paws that were stone, steel, stone again.
He doesn’t regret saying yes to Xavier and Lehnsherr in that cab, when Myra took one look at their daemons and said “yes” so forcefully even the tiger looked surpised.
He doesn’t regret Alex, wild, damaged, fearless Alex, hot and needing underneath him, their fingers entangled, foreheads pressed together. That night Myra had been a lioness too, sprawled against Arinna, and she whispered into her ear and Darwin had felt it in his bones.
Darwin doesn’t regret touching Alex, telling him what to do, and throwing himself in front of Angel. Myra doesn’t either, and as they glow and melt (stone, steel, stone again) she looks up at him with her understanding eyes, and she changes into her favorite shape, a clean, sleek cat, so he can crush her to his chest and look at Alex without crying.
“Goodbye,” Darwin mouths, and the heat, the heat-
The last thing he hears is Arinna roaring and Myra purring softly, desperately, against his chest.
10. Iskierka leaps from his shoulder the second the mansion comes into sight, flying in wide, joyous circles over their childhood home. Siri bounds in the air to join her and they roll over and over in the air, laughing.
Charles can’t help but smile at the sight.
It’s nice to be in Westchester again, and he thinks the kids will like it. They need a place of their own, somewhere safe, somewhere quiet after what happened with Shaw.
On a reflex he glances at Alex and scans the surface of his thoughts. He’s still dark, still sullen, still angry about Darwin’s death. Arinna is stiff-legged and snarling at his side, her fur spiked, don’t touch us throbbing inside them like sunlight.
He hopes that, here, they can heal.
The rest of the group files out of the cars, following Charles up to the huge mansion.
Erik and Aliyah are at his side (as they always seem to be, these days) and Aliyah rumbles an amused purr.
“You lived here,” Erik says, and there’s no judgment in him, just an exasperated tickle that Charles is rapidly coming to associate with affection.
Charles grins and Raven’s leading the other children away, Siri narrating at the top of his voice (he’s a parrot at the moment, how appropriate) showing them their home, and Charles if already half-gone making plans, thinking this can be a training area, Alex will like the bunker, maybe I can set up a lab for Hank-
“Charles,” Iskierka says softly, half-annoyed, half-amused, landing on his shoulder.
“Mmm?”
She flicks her head in Erik’s direction and the sunlight turns her feathers red-gold; she looks like a phoenix, a thing of fire.
Erik’s watching the children and he’s got this expression on his face that Charles can’t name, but it looks calm, and Aliyah’s fur is flat on her spine and her rather large fangs are hidden, and she’s beautiful and almost looks tame.
He catches Charles looking and offers a crooked half-grin, and Charles grins back widely, stupidly as Iskierka dive-bombs Aliyah’s head.
Yes, Charles thinks, watching Aliyah yowl and leap, swatting playfully at Iskierka. He threads his fingers through Erik’s carefully and the rush of warmth nearly knocks him over. This could be home.
11. Sean and Alex stumble down the dark hallway and try to muffle their laughter, leaning heavy on each other for support.
Moonlight pours in from the wide, high windows, turning Arinna’s tawny fur silver and making Einín’s feathers sparkle. Alex and Sean dodge the patches of silver light, hiding in the shadows with their precious cargo of shaving cream, warm water, and catnip.
(Hank is so fucked when he wakes up in the morning.)
“Dude,” Sean giggles, sneaking around a patch of moonlight and tripping over the heavy curtains instead.
“Shut up,” Alex hisses but he’s not having much luck controlling his giggles either, and Arinna staggers from side to side like she’s drunk.
They’ve been in the mansion for three weeks now and what happened before is starting to fade-they like it here, they feel safe here, and it’s time to cause some chaos, damn it.
They don’t see Aliyah until they’re almost on top of her-Arinna stumbles to a stop, tripping over her paws, and lands in a heap at the tigress’s feet.
Aliyah growls softly and her eyes glow in the darkness.
Alex and Sean stop dead and Einín flutters to Sean’s shoulder nervously, and they wait for Erik to prowl from the darkness and scold them for being up so late.
They wait for several seconds, and Erik doesn’t show up.
A cold shudder ripples down Alex’s spine.
Aliyah is alone.
Arinna scrambles back, presses up against Alex’s legs. Erik’s room is in another wing entirely-Aliyah is too far away, and the thought of separation like that sends phantom pain deep in his gut.
Wrong, he thinks, that’s so wrong, there’s something wrong with them, daemons don’t go that far.
Aliyah’s tail twitches from side to side. “Go to bed, children,” she says and her voice is low and soft.
Wordlessly, Alex and Sean turn and all but run away from her, the maimed daemon, clutching their own close to them.
“Dude,” Sean whispers, his voice rough. “Do you think Shaw-”
“Don’t want to think about it,” Alex says, and slams his door, burying his face in Arinna’s fur as she twines close around him, against him.
Neither of them sleep that night, because Aliyah prowls the corridors alone, without Erik, and the thought is enough to give them both nightmares.
12. Moira likes the mutants. She knows the rest of the CIA hates them, is terrified of them, but they’re not bad, not even Lehnsherr, who makes Zev bare his teeth whenever he walks past.
Moira loves the mutants. They’re so interesting, and for all their superhuman powers they are human, fragile and flawed and wonderful.
She wishes she was a mutant, sometimes. Zev won’t admit it but he does too-they feel out of place here, in this house of people who can read minds or move metal or change skins easily, effortlessly.
“I miss pack,” Zev says, trotting quietly at her heels. He looks less like a wolf and more like a dog, all soft fur and gentle brown eyes (one of the reasons they were hired, actually; he looks enough like a dog that people think they’ll mindlessly follow orders), but the wolf is there, in the shape of his muzzle, his long, loping stride.
Moira shrugs. “I know.” Here they are not pack. They’re outsiders, guests, tolerated, spoken to, but never truly part of things. Charles tries, of course. He makes them feel as welcome as he can, but it doesn’t matter because Moira knows that one day the CIA will call her back and she’ll have to go.
Zev whines unhappily, clawing the earth underneath his paws. “I don’t want to,” he says. His eyes are soft but fierce, determined. “I like it here. We could be pack, you know, one day.”
Moira smiles a little sadly because they both know it’s not true. “Yeah,” she says with a little laugh. “If Lehnsherr leaves first.”
“We’ll protect them,” Zev growls, and the wolf is visible now, proud, strong, fearless. “When the CIA comes for them, we’ll protect them.”
She looks at Zev and isn’t really surprised to find that it’s true. “Always,” she tells him, and tangles her hands into his soft fur. “We’ll always protect them.”
13. Alex misses Darwin. He misses the feel of him, the steadiness, the way their bodies curved together at night, Myra changing to match Arinna.
He thinks maybe he was a little bit in love with Darwin, which is weird because he’s not sure how that’s supposed to feel. Good, he thought, better than this.
Arinna whines in her throat and cuddles closer, soft against his face. “I miss them too,” she says, and their pain is sharp, aborted stabs.
Now I-” He chokes on it, can’t make the words leave his throat.
“I know,” Arinna whispers, licking his face. “But next time, we can protect our friends.”
“Next time,” Alex agrees bitterly, and stares up at the ceiling.
Next time, he won’t give anyone the option of leaving him.
14. “Um,” Sean says, staring at the ground that’s way down there. “I don’t know about this, guys.” Einín flutters around his head in bright blue circles and she’s awfully quiet, for once. Sean doesn’t know what to make of that.
“We won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,” Prof says, warm and reassuring. “We’ll come back another day, if you want.”
“Yeah.” Sean lets out a breath. “Yeah, that sounds-”
In hindsight, he realizes that Einín saw it coming. She was watching Mr. Lehnsherr the whole time, him and his crazy tiger (Sean still hasn’t gotten over that, seeing them so far apart, it’s wrong). She saw the whole thing.
Sean's talking one second and then the next, he's dropping.
Very fast, towards a fuck ton of metal.
Oh. Shit.
“Scream, Sean, scream!” Einín shrieks, little sonic waves rippling from her beak. “Scream!”
Well, Sean thinks, now or never, and he screams harder than he’s ever screamed before, oh shit he’s going to die-
Einín shrieks delightedly and he opens his eyes. He’s flying, honest-to-God flying, and Einín is moving so fast around him she’s a blur.
“You did it,” she keeps saying, and happiness bubbles wild and hot between them. “You fucking did it, Sean, you can fly with me now.”
They don’t touch down for hours.
15. Raven watches them from the window and Sirion flutters from shape to shape so quickly, mouse-cat-bird-dog, that it hurts to watch him.
She doesn’t tell him to settle, though, isn’t sure of telling him to settle, because Hank told them to settle and it hurt them, wounded them, and they don’t want to settle.
They want to be themselves.
“Siri,” Raven whispers, and she watches Charles and Erik, Iskierka and Aliyah. “Siri, I’m scared. What if Hank’s right?”
Siri looks up at her with his fierce amber eyes, his fur changing, always changing. “He’s not,” he whispered. “He can’t be, Raven. We were born this way. There’s nothing wrong with us. We’re beautiful.”
Raven blinks rapidly and Siri nuzzles her hand. Below them, Erik turns the satellite dish and Aliyah roars, triumphant, and for a second Erik’s fingers stroke Iskiekra’s feathers, Charles caresses Iskierka’s fur.
They touch and it’s so intimate Raven has to look away. She could never do that with Hesione.
“Mutant and proud,” Siri says, and he’s watching Erik and Charles down below. “Mutant and proud.”
16. “This is it,” Hank tells Hesione, and she picks up the serum in her delicate, agile paws.
“We’ll be normal,” she says. Her eyes are luminous in the dim light and her striped tail twitches nervously, anxiously.
Hank nods. “Still smart,” he tells her. “Still fast. Just… normal-looking.”
Hesione looks up at him and for the first time in his life he can’t tell what she’s thinking, and it scares him, a little, because she’s his daemon, he’s supposed to know what she’s thinking.
“What if Raven’s right?” She asks softly.
“She can’t be,” Hank says fiercely and Hesione ducks her head. “Humans will never accept people who look like us.” He holds his hand out for the serum and his Hesione looks at him, at it, and then passes it to him gently, delicately.
“I hope you’re right,” she says. “I hope you’re right, Hank, because if you’re not…”
“I’m right,” Hank growls, and he flicks the vial. The green liquid swirls, mesmerizing.
Hesione closes her eyes.
“I have to be right.”
And he plunges the needle into his skin.
17. “Erik,” Charles whispers, and the moonlight spills through the bay window across their bed, tangling in Iskierka’s feathers and Aliyah’s stripped fur.
Erik looks up from the book he’s reading, The Once and Future King, and Charles can’t really see his eyes but he can feel the razor-sharp slide of his mind, hear Aliyah’s deep rumbling purr. The memory of earlier today-the satellite dish, the pain, the triumph, Charles’ hand ghosting over Aliyah’s fur and Erik’s fingertips trailing over Iskierka’s feathers-floods between them and Charles smiles, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Iskierka flutters to his shoulder, squeezing it affectionately and grooming through his hair with her beak.
Don’t be nervous, she says, to him and only him. It’ll be fine.
You sound very sure.
She laughs, leaping off his shoulder and settling, wings spread for balance, next to Erik. Aliyah stretches her long body, shifting closer to Charles, and anticipation and anxiety make his head spin.
What if it’s wrong? He asks Iskierka. What if it hurts?
She looks at him with her bright eyes. “You’ll see,” she says, and shoves her head under Erik’s hands.
At once it’s everything, heatlightwarmthloveneedyouCharlesneedyousofuckingmuch and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t even breath through the pleasure of it all. Erik’s mind is suddenly there, all of it, and Aliyah’s fur is soft and silky under his fingers, and Erik’s making soft sounds, Iskierka’s cooing, Aliyah’s rumbling and purring deep in her chest.
Someone’s gasping, and Charles realizes that it’s him. He opens his eyes and Aliyah’s fur tingles underneath his hands. He can feel Erik through her, and it’s everything.
“You see,” Iskierka says, and Erik’s fingers are tight in her feathers. “We’re perfect, Charles.”
18. I’m dying, Alex thinks, and he rolls in the sand and tries to spit the fear out of his mouth, reaching out for Sean with one hand and Arinna with the other but she’s far away. He can hear her roaring, howling, feel her bounding towards him. The terrible ache in his chest, the sickness, the loneliness of her too far away leaves him shaking in the bright sand as he squints against the sunlight streaming hot and white onto her fur.
Alex, she cries, eating up the beach with huge strides, faster, faster, anything to loosen the jagged pain in their hearts. She hits him hard in the chest where Hank’s targeting device was, whining, growling, purring, and her fur is sleek and smooth under his shaking fingers.
“You were too far away,” she whispers.
“I know,” says Alex, and he closes his eyes and wants to cradle her, hold her so close they’re one body, but he can’t. He staggers to his feet and she whines, craving contact, but he can’t-won’t-give it to her, not here, not now.
(We’re becoming Erik and Aliyah, he thinks, and bitterness swells to mingle with the fear in his mouth.)
Behind them Raven and Hank burst from the trees, panting, victory flush on their faces. Hesione clings to Hank’s blue fur and Sirion is a jaguar at Raven’s side, his eyes bright yellow, his tail lashing.
From the plane there’s a sound, a scream-Charles reels and cries out and collapses onto his knees in the sand, clutching his head. Iskierka shrieks and plummets and rises, plummets and rises, her feathers shining golden in the sun.
They all rush to Charles, their own hurts forgotten (though Arinna stays so close Alex can feel her against his leg) and above them the wall of the submarine groans and punches open.
Sebastian Shaw’s body drops to the ground with a crunch, a neat little hole in his forehead, and Erik and Aliyah come out, floating, their eyes sharp and bright with triumph, power, and in a second Alex knows what Erik did and Arinna snarls.
Erik’s talking, his feet and her paws touching down on the burning sand, and he’s coaxing, trying to take them, to lead them, and Charles is on his feet and his face is bone-white and painful.
No, Alex whispers to Arinna as the two leaders talk of missiles and death and Moira runs to the plane.
Missiles punch the air and Arinna roars mournfully, fearlessly, and Alex tangles his fingers tight into her fur.
“We’ll make it,” he tells her raggedly, because they’ve got a man who can control metal on their side, and on cue Erik stops the missiles and his Aliyah hums a death-growl.
Charles screams something, anything, and jumps, and Erik and Charles and Aliyah and Iskierka roll over and over in the sand, the sunlight bouncing off them like bullets.
When Moira and Zev emerge from the plane, gun drawn, teeth peeled in a snarl, Alex knows it’s over.
He closes his eyes when Charles goes down, when Iskierka plummets from the sky with the missiles, shrieking, keening.
“Charles,” Erik says, kneeling in the sand, and he has the balls to look sad even though it’s all his fault, and Alex shouts and leaps forward to protect Charles, Arinna a tawny-gold demon at his side even though Aliyah is bigger, stronger, and wild with startled agony.
They’re thrown back by a hand and a tiger’s roar, and Arinna snarls and lashes her tail.
Aliyah is roaring, howling, leaping at Erik and Charles and Erik again and Iskierka lies limp and still in the sand.
“My dear friend,” says Charles, and what he says to Erik is drowned out by Aliyah’s keening, anguished roar. (don’t leave me)
Erik reels to his feet and Alex gets closer now, watching him, and Aliyah roars and tears at the sand with her claws, spitting at Erik in German.
He holds out his hand and Raven and Sirion go to him, looking back at Alex and the rest with their fierce yellow eyes, and then, with Aliyah’s roars echoing across the beach, they’re gone. (don’t-)
Alex kneels in the sand beside the Professor and the Professor’s eyes are wide, wounded, and blue. “I can’t feel my legs,” he says, tears beading in his eyes, and Iskierka makes a ragged sound in her throat. “I can’t feel my legs.”
Arinna curls to his side and Alex tangles his fingers into her fur tightly, so tightly. (don’t leave me) “We’ll protect you,” he says to Charles. The soldiers are coming. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
Arinna roars in pain, in anger, in love, and it echoes like a promise.
19. "Raven," Siri says quietly, and the sunlight streams golden onto his fur. He's taken to wearing a jaguar's shape around the base, his fur dark and alive with colors that shift constantly, slowly, subtly. Only his eyes stay the same fierce yellow and his tail twitches slightly, stirring up old dust.
The base is quiet. Magneto moved them all here after the beach (after Cuba and screaming and Aliyah roaring, howling, leaping at Erik and Charles and Erik again) and it's all rust and dust and old, creaking metal, and she thinks that it'll do, for now.
"Raven," Siri says again, his voice deep and growling.
"Mystique," she corrects him gently, firmly, and she looks down at him and the sunlight streaming onto him, the dust swirling around him, the colors shifting constantly in his fur. "I'm Mystique."
He looks up at her with his sharp yellow eyes and grumbles low in his throat, a growl, a purr. He twitches his paws in the dust, letting claws grow, sharpen, and retreat again.
"Are you sure?" He asks, and she knows what he's thinking, what he means. She closes her eyes and sees Charles, twelve years old and beaming, Iskierka fluttering on his shoulder. She sees Hank, awkward shy brilliant Hank, ashamed of his too-big feet and the way Hesione clung to his shoulder, refusing to leave. Moira, steady and white-faced advancing on Erik, a gun in her hand and Zev snarling, stiff-legged, at her heels. Alex and Sean laughing, flushed with success at their progress, Arinna and Einín tumbling over and over in the grass, shouting for Siri to join them.
Are you sure? Siri asks again, this time inside her mind, her soul, his eyes fierce and sad.
She opens her eyes and looks around, at the base, her new team. Azazel and his wolf, Riptide and his hawk, Angel and Quetz, Emma Frost and that damned sharp-beaked owl. Magneto and Aliyah, fierce and hot-eyed and taut, both of them, tense for a battle that hasn't come (or maybe has, whispers Siri, because they saw Erik and Charles together, hands outstretched and tangled in fur and feathers, saw them fight a war on the beach that ended with Iskierka plummeting from the sky and Aliyah roaring, howling, keening, springing away from Erik as soon as Azazel brought them here) yet.
They look back at her, these people, these mutants, and their biazarre, strange daemons.
Are you sure? Siri's eyes are yellow and the colors in his fur shift, red-orange-blue-yellow-white.
"Yes," says Mystique, straightening her shoulders, her skin blue and scaled, her daemon a jaguar (for now), and walks forward to join the group. I'm scared, Siri.
Her daemon looks at her and twitches his tail, a roar building in his throat. Sirion, he says. I'm Sirion now.
Alright, Mystique says, and Magneto stretches out a hand, his face stone and still and hurt in the way only she can see.
"Mystique," he says tiredly.
"Magneto."
Aliyah nudges Sirion with her nose, talking to him in the language of daemons.
His hand hangs between them, a question. She took it at the beach but she could still go back, to Hank and Alex and Sean and Moira and Charles and home.
Sirion looks up at her, fierce, beautiful, always changing, never settling.
We can't, he says.
We won't, Mystique agrees, and she takes Magneto's hand. Never again.
Sirion throws back his head and roars, and Aliyah joins in, and the sound shakes Mystique all the way to her soul. She meets Magneto’s eyes, and she sees that he understands.
“Never again.”
“Yes,” he says, and his voice is rough and cracked. “Never again.”