fic: XMFC: all clear
Title: all clear
Fandom: XMFC
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimers: This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Marvel Entertainment, 20th Century FOX, and various subsidiaries.
A/N: AU from the end of the film. This is kind of a prequel to the first Kitchen 'verse story, but kind of not; it weaves in and out of the timeline of the other one in a way that probably only makes sense in my head. This part is mostly the Erik & Moira Start To Be Friends part of the story, even though eventually it is the Angel Gets a Birthday Cake story, so there is more to this story (with 100% more cake and an actual party!) languishing in my G-docs that I will get to before New Year's. Maybe.
"Angel's birthday is next week, you know," Moira says as she helps Erik wash up the dishes from breakfast. He's not certain how she accomplishes it, but her voice manages to be both casual and direct at the same time, hedging her bets so she can honestly say she's not giving him orders, no, of course not, it was just a suggestion, albeit a strongly encouraged suggestion. Careful, clever Moira.
"No, I didn't know that," he says, flicking a finger in the direction of the taps to turn them off. He has no idea where she's going with this, but he has learned, over the past few months, that Moira doesn't generally talk to fill the air. "Are we making small talk, now?"
"God, no," Moira says, wrinkling her nose as though the thought that they might have turned into the kind of people who make small talk over breakfast dishes is just as unappealing to her as it is to him. "I just thought, you know, it might be nice if maybe. . . you made her a cake."
Erik looks over at her, genuinely surprised. "I thought you didn't really care for Angel." He tries to modulate his tone, but he knows he's failed when Moira heaves a sigh and slumps against the kitchen counter.
"That isn't what I said, and you know it, but let's not have that argument again, Erik," Moira sighs.
Their recurring argument over Angel is really only recurring because he keeps bringing it up, needling Moira with it until Charles inevitably breaks in and reminds them that they're all on the same side here, mutant or not. Moira has repeatedly told him that it's not open for discussion any longer, that she has already voiced her concerns regarding Angel's reintegration into the group and that regardless of those problems, she's here now, and they should all work together to make things livable for everyone.
"I don't dislike her," Moira had tried to explain, months ago, back before Erik wanted anything to do with her. "And I understand why she did it, but she betrayed you once, and what's stopping her from doing it again, when the next best thing comes along? She tried to help Shaw end the world. I'm skeptical, that's all. And I don't know how the other kids are going to handle it."
"You're suggesting we leave her," Erik had said dubiously. "Strand her here on this beach. You see how they are, Charles, how easily they can discard us when it suits their purposes."
"No one is being discarded," Moira had said, irritatingly calm in the face of his anger even then, even before she knew anything about him. "I'm just pointing out that there may be trouble."
Erik had opened his mouth to make some scathing reply, but Charles had held up his hand and said, "Enough," giving Erik a look that clearly said he had no room to talk when it came to using other people for his own gain, not when he had a Mission To Accomplish. Charles has always been keenly aware that Erik, if left to his own devices, would rather see the human world end than ever again be subject to the capricious whims of men and their orders, and so Charles does his best never to give any orders, running the school like it's a strange little oligarchy and Charles and Erik and Moira are its philosopher-kings.
So, naturally, when it came to the question of Shaw's former associates, they had, of all things, taken a vote. Moira has reminded him on more than one occasion that she didn't vote no. Erik has reminded her on more than one occasion that she doesn't understand any of them and never will and should never have had a vote in the first place.
Charles, Erik knows, very privately shares some of her concerns, but then again, Charles also thinks that everyone can be rehabilitated and reformed into Charles Xavier's Model of a Modern Major Mutant, as Raven so aptly describes it, so naturally asking Angel to come back to the mansion with them, defection to Shaw's group notwithstanding, hadn't really even been a question for Charles. He had probably figured that he could just give her a Stern Talking To on the way home, then give the other children another Stern Talking To once they got back to the mansion, and then all would be forgiven and forgotten.
But Erik is the one who knows what it's like to want revenge, and though he would never, months ago, have voiced any opinion that put him in agreement with a human, he knew then that Moira was right to be concerned. But he sided with Charles, they asked Angel what she would like to do, and after a brief, tensely-worded conversation with Charles, back she came.
Erik strongly suspects that if she'd said no, Charles would have wiped her memory and sent her home. Charles Xavier is not always the fine morally upstanding person that he tries so hard to be. He wonders what Charles can do in that place between rage and serenity, and how he came to find it.
Erik had his own motives for agreeing with Charles about Angel, that day on the beach, and none of them were as altruistic as Charles might have liked. In the first place, he had felt compelled to disagree with Moira, but even more than that, Erik is constantly looking forward to a time when they will be forced to fight, and he's unwilling to count out any potential mutant allies, even if it means siding with someone who once sided with his sworn enemy.
Charles, of course, has happily carried on building his school, assuming that everything will work out for the best, completely unwilling to discuss the possibility that sometime in the all-too near future, his students will have to abandon their textbooks and put on their armor instead. This leaves Erik and Moira to sort out the trials and tribulations of daily life at the mansion, including the difficulty of moving Angel back in with a group of people she had quite recently been ordered to attack, and, if necessary, kill. They've had a few incidents, to say the least, and Charles had been ever so shocked to learn that the other children had been making things difficult for Angel. Sometimes Erik wonders what it must be like to live in the rosy world that Charles occupies. He imagines he would be unable to endure it for more than a day.
When Darwin had reappeared a few weeks ago, things finally began to get a little easier. They had taken a small team-- just Charles, Erik, Alex, and Raven-- to investigate strange readings that Charles had been getting from the hastily rebuilt Cerebro, and there he had been, waiting for the plane to land like he'd never had a doubt that it would.
"Been looking everywhere for you guys," Darwin had grinned, and then several things had happened at once: Raven wrapped Darwin in a huge hug, Charles walked over to clap him fondly on the shoulder, Erik nodded stoically from a short distance away, and Alex... well, Alex had stared at the ground, unwilling to speak, still guilty over that night in Langley and the part he feels he played in his friend's disappearance. It had taken several days and several long talks with Darwin before Alex would unbend enough to think that maybe it hadn't been his fault. Erik has no idea what Darwin said, but the two of them have been nearly inseparable ever since.
Upon their return to the mansion, Erik had cooked a seven-course meal in celebration. It had been a long time since they'd truly felt like they had something to celebrate.
After their meal, at Charles' mental request, Erik had taken Darwin aside for a moment.
"I know what it is to seek revenge on those who have wronged you," Erik had said.
"If you're talking about Angel, she didn't wrong me," Darwin had sighed.
"It would be normal for you to think so."
"No, it wouldn't. Look, I adapt to survive, right?" Darwin had reminded him. "She's a scared kid, they all are. She picked the wrong team, but she did it because she wanted to survive and they looked like her best shot. She adapted; she survived. It ended up being a mistake. Doesn't mean she has to pay for it for the rest of her life. Angel and me, we're square. That's all you need to know."
Erik had marveled at the time that anyone could feel this way, but Darwin's practical attitude seems to have spread to the others, and so far, there have been no further incidents. The children all finally seem to have reconciled with one another, though Erik remains skeptical that this peace will last. Charles is decidedly of the opposite persuasion, however, and during their meetings with Charles, Moira often meets Erik's raised eyebrows with a smirk of her own after some particularly grandiose pronouncement from their fearless leader.
Running interference with the children, in addition to putting up with Charles and his stream of memoranda, has slowly opened the door to an odd camaraderie between Erik and Moira, but almost-friendship or not, Erik remains frustrated on principle by Moira's initial reaction to Angel.
Moira may have long ago declared it to be a non-issue, but it reminds him that Moira isn't one of them, that she will never really understand.
"Look," Moira is saying, breaking into his thoughts, "she's here, and she's part of the team, and it's her birthday, and she should have a cake. Maybe it'll make her feel more welcome."
"Of course. We have to keep the mutants happy, yes? Who knows what they might do otherwise," Erik grouses.
"I don't have to be a telepath to know that you think I can't understand," Moira says, her fingers tightly gripping her coffee cup.
"You think a few short months living in a mansion of mutants makes you one of us? Allow me to enlighten you: it doesn't," Erik snaps.
"Maybe I can't move metal with my mind, Erik, but if you honestly think I don't know what it's like to feel out of place and shut out of things you've worked so hard to be a part of, well." She drains the rest of her coffee and sets the cup gently on the counter. Sometimes he hates her less for being a human and more for being so very in control of everything all the time.
"Oh yes," he bites out, slamming his hand down on the counter. Moira's coffee cup jumps in response. "Please do tell me how difficult your perfectly normal human life has been."
"You've never been the only lady in the boys' club, Erik," Moira says quietly. "You've got no idea what that feels like. Me? I'm supposed to be the one wearing the apron. Somebody I don't even know made that decision for me, the minute I was born and they said, 'It's a girl!' Nobody cared what I wanted. Nobody asked. When I joined the CIA, I told my interviewer I wanted to be an agent. He laughed at me. He actually laughed. And then he said, 'Why don't we just start with the typing pool, okay, little lady?' So don't you ever tell me how easy I've got it. It's a big, screwed up world for all of us, not just you."
"They don't want to round you up and exterminate you," he says darkly, and the flatware in the drawers starts to rattle, a clear warning to Moira to drop it, change the subject, walk away, but she doesn't. She just looks at him like she's having a very hard time deciding whether to roll her eyes or punch him in the mouth. It shouldn't shock him that there is no fear in her eyes, but it still does, every time.
"No, they don't," Moira says finally, and a few months ago if he'd heard the catch in her voice, he wouldn't have known it wasn't pity or fear or mistrust that put it there. He mentally rains curses upon Charles for making him feel things like sympathy again. "I've got an entirely different kind of fight ahead of me, and the only thing I can do is try my best to make my own choices and be my own person instead of whatever passes for a Real Woman in the minds of men this week. You, you've got other battles, but you've also got other options. I'm not saying you don't have a right to be angry. I would never do that to you. I would never invalidate your existence that way. I'd appreciate it if, every once in awhile, you'd make an effort to show me the same courtesy."
It pains him greatly to admit, even quietly to himself, that there is a softer side of Erik Lehnsherr, yet here he is, and it seems that Charles and the children seem to have uncovered it. Thanks to that relentless emotional conditioning, he doesn't really want to fight with Moira about this, not right now, and possibly not again for a very long while. He feels guilty for hurting her feelings, dammit, and he really hates that, but he's still here, he's not walking away. It's a testament to Charles' persistence that he only feels a moderate amount of regret about these feelings.
"I suppose," he murmurs finally, turning his mental attention to a stubborn stain on the cast-iron skillet, "it would be difficult to cope with that without the certainty that you could, if you wanted, kill them all with your brain."
"I don't want your pity, Erik," Moira says, shaking her head. "I want your respect."
"You have it," he says, surprised at how easily the words come to him.
"Everything all right here?"
Charles is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, hands casually tucked into the pockets of his trousers, but Erik can tell that he's concerned.
"All clear," Moira says. She gives Erik a meaningful look, and he nods, acknowledging what she hasn't said.
"Yes," he agrees, "all clear."
Fandom: XMFC
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimers: This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Marvel Entertainment, 20th Century FOX, and various subsidiaries.
A/N: AU from the end of the film. This is kind of a prequel to the first Kitchen 'verse story, but kind of not; it weaves in and out of the timeline of the other one in a way that probably only makes sense in my head. This part is mostly the Erik & Moira Start To Be Friends part of the story, even though eventually it is the Angel Gets a Birthday Cake story, so there is more to this story (with 100% more cake and an actual party!) languishing in my G-docs that I will get to before New Year's. Maybe.
"Angel's birthday is next week, you know," Moira says as she helps Erik wash up the dishes from breakfast. He's not certain how she accomplishes it, but her voice manages to be both casual and direct at the same time, hedging her bets so she can honestly say she's not giving him orders, no, of course not, it was just a suggestion, albeit a strongly encouraged suggestion. Careful, clever Moira.
"No, I didn't know that," he says, flicking a finger in the direction of the taps to turn them off. He has no idea where she's going with this, but he has learned, over the past few months, that Moira doesn't generally talk to fill the air. "Are we making small talk, now?"
"God, no," Moira says, wrinkling her nose as though the thought that they might have turned into the kind of people who make small talk over breakfast dishes is just as unappealing to her as it is to him. "I just thought, you know, it might be nice if maybe. . . you made her a cake."
Erik looks over at her, genuinely surprised. "I thought you didn't really care for Angel." He tries to modulate his tone, but he knows he's failed when Moira heaves a sigh and slumps against the kitchen counter.
"That isn't what I said, and you know it, but let's not have that argument again, Erik," Moira sighs.
Their recurring argument over Angel is really only recurring because he keeps bringing it up, needling Moira with it until Charles inevitably breaks in and reminds them that they're all on the same side here, mutant or not. Moira has repeatedly told him that it's not open for discussion any longer, that she has already voiced her concerns regarding Angel's reintegration into the group and that regardless of those problems, she's here now, and they should all work together to make things livable for everyone.
"I don't dislike her," Moira had tried to explain, months ago, back before Erik wanted anything to do with her. "And I understand why she did it, but she betrayed you once, and what's stopping her from doing it again, when the next best thing comes along? She tried to help Shaw end the world. I'm skeptical, that's all. And I don't know how the other kids are going to handle it."
"You're suggesting we leave her," Erik had said dubiously. "Strand her here on this beach. You see how they are, Charles, how easily they can discard us when it suits their purposes."
"No one is being discarded," Moira had said, irritatingly calm in the face of his anger even then, even before she knew anything about him. "I'm just pointing out that there may be trouble."
Erik had opened his mouth to make some scathing reply, but Charles had held up his hand and said, "Enough," giving Erik a look that clearly said he had no room to talk when it came to using other people for his own gain, not when he had a Mission To Accomplish. Charles has always been keenly aware that Erik, if left to his own devices, would rather see the human world end than ever again be subject to the capricious whims of men and their orders, and so Charles does his best never to give any orders, running the school like it's a strange little oligarchy and Charles and Erik and Moira are its philosopher-kings.
So, naturally, when it came to the question of Shaw's former associates, they had, of all things, taken a vote. Moira has reminded him on more than one occasion that she didn't vote no. Erik has reminded her on more than one occasion that she doesn't understand any of them and never will and should never have had a vote in the first place.
Charles, Erik knows, very privately shares some of her concerns, but then again, Charles also thinks that everyone can be rehabilitated and reformed into Charles Xavier's Model of a Modern Major Mutant, as Raven so aptly describes it, so naturally asking Angel to come back to the mansion with them, defection to Shaw's group notwithstanding, hadn't really even been a question for Charles. He had probably figured that he could just give her a Stern Talking To on the way home, then give the other children another Stern Talking To once they got back to the mansion, and then all would be forgiven and forgotten.
But Erik is the one who knows what it's like to want revenge, and though he would never, months ago, have voiced any opinion that put him in agreement with a human, he knew then that Moira was right to be concerned. But he sided with Charles, they asked Angel what she would like to do, and after a brief, tensely-worded conversation with Charles, back she came.
Erik strongly suspects that if she'd said no, Charles would have wiped her memory and sent her home. Charles Xavier is not always the fine morally upstanding person that he tries so hard to be. He wonders what Charles can do in that place between rage and serenity, and how he came to find it.
Erik had his own motives for agreeing with Charles about Angel, that day on the beach, and none of them were as altruistic as Charles might have liked. In the first place, he had felt compelled to disagree with Moira, but even more than that, Erik is constantly looking forward to a time when they will be forced to fight, and he's unwilling to count out any potential mutant allies, even if it means siding with someone who once sided with his sworn enemy.
Charles, of course, has happily carried on building his school, assuming that everything will work out for the best, completely unwilling to discuss the possibility that sometime in the all-too near future, his students will have to abandon their textbooks and put on their armor instead. This leaves Erik and Moira to sort out the trials and tribulations of daily life at the mansion, including the difficulty of moving Angel back in with a group of people she had quite recently been ordered to attack, and, if necessary, kill. They've had a few incidents, to say the least, and Charles had been ever so shocked to learn that the other children had been making things difficult for Angel. Sometimes Erik wonders what it must be like to live in the rosy world that Charles occupies. He imagines he would be unable to endure it for more than a day.
When Darwin had reappeared a few weeks ago, things finally began to get a little easier. They had taken a small team-- just Charles, Erik, Alex, and Raven-- to investigate strange readings that Charles had been getting from the hastily rebuilt Cerebro, and there he had been, waiting for the plane to land like he'd never had a doubt that it would.
"Been looking everywhere for you guys," Darwin had grinned, and then several things had happened at once: Raven wrapped Darwin in a huge hug, Charles walked over to clap him fondly on the shoulder, Erik nodded stoically from a short distance away, and Alex... well, Alex had stared at the ground, unwilling to speak, still guilty over that night in Langley and the part he feels he played in his friend's disappearance. It had taken several days and several long talks with Darwin before Alex would unbend enough to think that maybe it hadn't been his fault. Erik has no idea what Darwin said, but the two of them have been nearly inseparable ever since.
Upon their return to the mansion, Erik had cooked a seven-course meal in celebration. It had been a long time since they'd truly felt like they had something to celebrate.
After their meal, at Charles' mental request, Erik had taken Darwin aside for a moment.
"I know what it is to seek revenge on those who have wronged you," Erik had said.
"If you're talking about Angel, she didn't wrong me," Darwin had sighed.
"It would be normal for you to think so."
"No, it wouldn't. Look, I adapt to survive, right?" Darwin had reminded him. "She's a scared kid, they all are. She picked the wrong team, but she did it because she wanted to survive and they looked like her best shot. She adapted; she survived. It ended up being a mistake. Doesn't mean she has to pay for it for the rest of her life. Angel and me, we're square. That's all you need to know."
Erik had marveled at the time that anyone could feel this way, but Darwin's practical attitude seems to have spread to the others, and so far, there have been no further incidents. The children all finally seem to have reconciled with one another, though Erik remains skeptical that this peace will last. Charles is decidedly of the opposite persuasion, however, and during their meetings with Charles, Moira often meets Erik's raised eyebrows with a smirk of her own after some particularly grandiose pronouncement from their fearless leader.
Running interference with the children, in addition to putting up with Charles and his stream of memoranda, has slowly opened the door to an odd camaraderie between Erik and Moira, but almost-friendship or not, Erik remains frustrated on principle by Moira's initial reaction to Angel.
Moira may have long ago declared it to be a non-issue, but it reminds him that Moira isn't one of them, that she will never really understand.
"Look," Moira is saying, breaking into his thoughts, "she's here, and she's part of the team, and it's her birthday, and she should have a cake. Maybe it'll make her feel more welcome."
"Of course. We have to keep the mutants happy, yes? Who knows what they might do otherwise," Erik grouses.
"I don't have to be a telepath to know that you think I can't understand," Moira says, her fingers tightly gripping her coffee cup.
"You think a few short months living in a mansion of mutants makes you one of us? Allow me to enlighten you: it doesn't," Erik snaps.
"Maybe I can't move metal with my mind, Erik, but if you honestly think I don't know what it's like to feel out of place and shut out of things you've worked so hard to be a part of, well." She drains the rest of her coffee and sets the cup gently on the counter. Sometimes he hates her less for being a human and more for being so very in control of everything all the time.
"Oh yes," he bites out, slamming his hand down on the counter. Moira's coffee cup jumps in response. "Please do tell me how difficult your perfectly normal human life has been."
"You've never been the only lady in the boys' club, Erik," Moira says quietly. "You've got no idea what that feels like. Me? I'm supposed to be the one wearing the apron. Somebody I don't even know made that decision for me, the minute I was born and they said, 'It's a girl!' Nobody cared what I wanted. Nobody asked. When I joined the CIA, I told my interviewer I wanted to be an agent. He laughed at me. He actually laughed. And then he said, 'Why don't we just start with the typing pool, okay, little lady?' So don't you ever tell me how easy I've got it. It's a big, screwed up world for all of us, not just you."
"They don't want to round you up and exterminate you," he says darkly, and the flatware in the drawers starts to rattle, a clear warning to Moira to drop it, change the subject, walk away, but she doesn't. She just looks at him like she's having a very hard time deciding whether to roll her eyes or punch him in the mouth. It shouldn't shock him that there is no fear in her eyes, but it still does, every time.
"No, they don't," Moira says finally, and a few months ago if he'd heard the catch in her voice, he wouldn't have known it wasn't pity or fear or mistrust that put it there. He mentally rains curses upon Charles for making him feel things like sympathy again. "I've got an entirely different kind of fight ahead of me, and the only thing I can do is try my best to make my own choices and be my own person instead of whatever passes for a Real Woman in the minds of men this week. You, you've got other battles, but you've also got other options. I'm not saying you don't have a right to be angry. I would never do that to you. I would never invalidate your existence that way. I'd appreciate it if, every once in awhile, you'd make an effort to show me the same courtesy."
It pains him greatly to admit, even quietly to himself, that there is a softer side of Erik Lehnsherr, yet here he is, and it seems that Charles and the children seem to have uncovered it. Thanks to that relentless emotional conditioning, he doesn't really want to fight with Moira about this, not right now, and possibly not again for a very long while. He feels guilty for hurting her feelings, dammit, and he really hates that, but he's still here, he's not walking away. It's a testament to Charles' persistence that he only feels a moderate amount of regret about these feelings.
"I suppose," he murmurs finally, turning his mental attention to a stubborn stain on the cast-iron skillet, "it would be difficult to cope with that without the certainty that you could, if you wanted, kill them all with your brain."
"I don't want your pity, Erik," Moira says, shaking her head. "I want your respect."
"You have it," he says, surprised at how easily the words come to him.
"Everything all right here?"
Charles is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, hands casually tucked into the pockets of his trousers, but Erik can tell that he's concerned.
"All clear," Moira says. She gives Erik a meaningful look, and he nods, acknowledging what she hasn't said.
"Yes," he agrees, "all clear."