Fic: In Accord, Part Four - Haunted and hunted (X-Men: First Class, R, WIP)
title: In Accord, Part Four - Haunted and hunted
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 2650 in this installment
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr
rating: R [may go up in later chapters]
notes: Continuing from this, and this. Part One, Part Two, Part Three. These are not the Charles and Erik you think you know.
Work in Progress. Please heed the rating.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
The boy with hair as brightly red as flames. Eyes like the final flash of dusk. Standing on this beach.
Not here. Not now.
A swift, shocked moment as Erik takes him in: dark cloak, its hood pushed back. Clothes much like Erik's own: ragged around the edges yet somehow still pristine - a boy of a soldier. It is an image he knows only too well, a memory at once familiar and frightening and painful.
A memory of a beginning in steel, and an ending in blood.
At this moment, on the sand, with Charles a curiously warm presence just beyond him - a melancholy kind of pain lances through Erik, slashing fire and bitterness into his mind. What little he's learned, what little he knows: knowledge that he bears in his bones, knowledge that is carved deeply into his flesh. Hard-won knowledge, coming from terrible experience and the spark and clash of battle.
Like the striplings, like the young unblooded boys and girls whose appearance this apparition now wears, Erik, too, knows nothing but his sword, and the handful of weapons he's had to master over the years. He knows how to lead his comrades into a fight. He knows how to kill a man with his bare hands. He knows how to improvise a weapon from nothing more than a handful of fist-sized stones, a torn sleeve, and a leather cord.
He knows the hypnotic, fatal beat of the drums of war, and even now, looking at the boy in the cloak, Erik hears them like a premonition woven into the erratic, terrified thump of his heart - he hears the drums over the waves.
And now, for the first time, he hears the boy's voice. A broken-down whisper, as though his words are being dragged over the rocky shore beyond him. Running around with this healer? I know him well. He is an acquaintance of mine.
"Don't you dare," Erik whispers, and before he can think about his own movements he's already half-shielding Charles with his own body. Both sword and knife are out. He drops into a defensive stance.
The apparition ignores his movements. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It is not for you to know. He raises one hand - a greeting, a warning, some other message - and then, suddenly, he's gone, leaving nothing but the afterimage of his incongruous hair.
Erik blinks, and when he does, tears are tracking down his face, but he denies them. He shakes his head, sheathes his weapons, swipes roughly at his cheeks with his gloved hands.
He's sinking to his knees on the sand, and Charles is kneeling next to him. Rough, callused fingers on Erik's wrist.
"When you say you're a healer," Erik says, thoroughly unmanned, "do you deal only with wounds to the body, or do you deal with wounds to the mind also?"
"I have learned how to deal with both. We live in unsettled times, and we healers must live and work among broken bodies and shattered minds." The words come out in a strange voice - flat, but kind; and the expression on Charles's face somehow manages to match the voice. He looks like he's barely holding back both anger and tears. "If I made a list of the types of people who could be vulnerable to delusion, I would place you on it. Perhaps even near the top. Soldiers and mercenaries - and I know you have been both."
Hunter. Soldier. Mercenary. Assassin. Erik wants to scream out those words, wants to scream out his anguish and his regret and the mad wish for atonement, but who will hear him? Who will give him what he wants?
Who will release him?
Instead he says, tightly controlled, "More than both," and then he nods and pulls away. He gets to his feet and walks down to the frothing surf. He looks out at the waves, at the sea at the sky, and sees nothing of the blue and of the white and of the strange shift in color and light. Instead he sees battlefields; he smells a different bitter tang, like steel and screaming pain.
For a long moment he wonders why he can still hear the soughing wind, the crashing surf - and then he winces, and slants a look over at Charles. "Have you ever been in a battle? You must have a reason for imposing that rule on yourself, and - on me."
A shadow passes over Charles's face. Now this expression is more than just a complicated grimace: fear, hatred, compassion, and loathing battle within it. The expression is like lines snarled together into a terrible knot - eyebrows, scars, mouth.
But all Charles says is "Yes." He hangs his head. His hands at his sides clench into fists, hard enough for the knuckles to show bone-white through the skin.
///
On the short walk back to the infirmary, Erik says, "You're not going to ask me what I saw, or why I reacted the way I did."
He's not sure what he's expecting Charles to say or do in response. When Charles sighs, he's not surprised.
However, when Charles turns toward him for the express purpose of rolling his eyes, he's taken aback; and the feeling doubles when Charles shakes his head and says, "Oh, Erik. Didn't we just speak of this? Let me say it again: You will tell me what you can. When you can. I keep secrets that have been entrusted to me, but I do not seek to add to them, nor do I pry." The half-smile on those features is strangely like his grimace from earlier on the beach. "You are under my care as we are under your protection; therefore we each extend the other a certain kind of grace. Your wellbeing is a concern of mine. Our lives are a concern of yours."
And Erik can almost believe that here before him is a man who carries lives in his hands.
Suddenly, Charles smiles, and throws part of that smile in Erik's direction, before he's turning around and Raven is running toward him, laughing and yawning in equal measure. "I'm late again," she says, clinging with both hands to Charles, to the hand holding the unstrung longbow. "Does that mean you won't have time to teach me today?"
"No, I don't. But I'm glad to see you all the same. Actually, I was about to ask you for a very big favor."
"What kind of favor?" Raven asks. "It's not my day to look after Alex - it's yours."
Charles takes her hands in both of his and nods solemnly. "Not that kind of favor, and I am on my way to him now. I'll take him on rounds with me. It's something else. Do you remember my rules about you and knives?"
Her face falls. "Yes," she says, sadly. "Not where the others can find them and play with them."
Charles smiles.
Not for the first time, Erik is torn between looking at that smile and looking away. Charles has so many smiles. He seems genuinely happy with this one, though.
"No more rules starting right now," he says. "I take them all back."
Erik watches Raven's mouth fall open, watches her suddenly smile, changing from disbelief to fierce joy. "A-are you sure, Charles?"
"I'm sure of it, Raven. And I'll tell you why I changed my mind."
"Why?" Instantly Raven frowns, and Erik half-turns away and almost wants to smile at the way she scrunches up her nose, suspicion warring with anticipation in every line of her.
So Erik, too, is surprised when Charles leads Raven over to him. "Give her your hand, Erik," he says, and nods when Erik does so. "Your student, Raven. Erik threw a knife at me earlier. He's good, and you can make him better."
Erik raises an eyebrow when Raven rounds on him - and he's pleasantly surprised when she lets go of Charles's hands to examine his. "Hmm," she says, gently.
Looking down at that shock of red hair, at those small hands - Erik is looking at his past and at his present at the same time, and it leaves him breathless and speechless - up until the moment Raven finishes inspecting his hands, until she looks back up into his face and asks, "How long have you fought with knives?"
"Not for very long," he says. "I have always relied more on this," and he taps the hilt of the sword strapped in its scabbard at his side.
"No good in an enclosed space," Raven says.
"Neither is a knife," Erik counters, "if all you're going to do is throw it."
That gets him a laugh - and Raven laughs with all her heart, laughs as brightly as the sun in the blue sky. "You are very different from Charles, and that is a good thing, and I like you. When do you want to start?"
///
Erik looks over his shoulder at Raven as she bends over the piece of driftwood in her lap. The knife in her hands has had its tip broken off square. The short blade throws off splinters of light as she moves it against the grain, shaving away the bark in long, splintering pieces.
The knife in his hand is - familiar, is the first thing he can say. He's wielded something like it before, though this knife is not his. It's one of the four that Raven wears on her belt everywhere. Dark metal, made all in one seamless piece. He is holding it by the grip - the dull end, a little too long to fit in the palm of his hand. The grip is made so that its end tapers into a sort of gently curving tail.
The other half of the knife, shaped like a long and narrow leaf, is sharpened to a high, soft sheen; the dark metal gleams greenish in the sunlight.
Erik looks from the girl to the target she's set up for him several feet away. There is a blade already dead center of the roughly circular piece of wood. Myriad pocks and gouges scar the wood, and he thinks Raven seems to have embraced some of Charles's ideas about practice.
Now Erik squares his shoulders and faces the target - his fingers slip a little along the curve of the grip end, seeking purchase, seeking a better sense of balance. He breathes in the strange scents of mingled forest and sea. He and Raven are in another part of the southern cove, in the opposite direction from where he saw the apparition of the red-haired boy, and here the forest that had been interrupted by the edges of the valley marches nearly down to the sandy shore.
He breathes. He fixes his eyes on the other knife.
He throws. A sharp forward flick of arm and wrist and fingers.
The blade spins in a wavelike circle, rapid flickering movement.
The knife strikes the outer edges of the circle in the center of the target.
"Again," Raven commands, a hint of approval in her voice.
This time he feels her eyes on him as he retrieves the knife, and sets up for the next throw.
This time, inexplicably, he wants the throw to count, to be perfect in her eyes - in his teacher's eyes.
///
Raven leads him back into the village and he can barely keep up with her rapidfire chatter, which alternates between high praise and incisive advice. Erik knows he has a long way to go, he has many more things to learn - but he has an enthusiastic and knowledgeable teacher, and he's already looking forward to applying her suggestions.
They snatch a hurried midday meal from the communal kitchen - the young man in charge, Jono, slips an extra sweet bun into the bundle for Raven; Erik rolls his eyes, but as soon as they're back outside he hands his own piece of bread over.
Raven laughs, and frees one hand to catch Erik around the wrist - and she doesn't let go even when they literally run into Charles and Alex as they emerge from one of the other houses.
"Hello," Charles says. "You will excuse me if I cannot give you my hands right now, Raven. This little boy has just managed to fall asleep and I dare not disturb him." To Erik: "I trust you are all right?"
He's still rattled by that morning's encounter, but the hours of practice with the throwing knives have restored some of his equilibrium, and Erik manages a thin sliver of a smile. "Perhaps."
"That's a start," Charles says, quietly.
He sits down with them in a corner of the village green for lunch; Erik listens with half an ear as Raven tells Charles about her morning, and then pays a little more attention as Charles talks about his patients.
He puts the pieces together as he eats: the beds in the infirmary are for emergency cases, and when Charles murmurs something grateful about having something he doesn't need instead of needing something he doesn't have, he can't help but nod in thoughtful understanding.
There are a few patients, however, who are in need of long-term care, and who had come to the village specifically because they had need of a healer who understood their ailments. These are the patients Charles visits every other day or so. "Some of them came here with their families," Charles explains, gently rocking Alex in his arms, "and those without families are cared for by all of us here.
"When you are finished eating, perhaps you can come with me," he says. "Both of you. I'm going to see Emma."
That makes Raven grin and get to her feet. "I can bring her some fresh flowers."
"Don't go far," Charles says, and she nods and wanders off.
"Why me?" Erik says. "I would have thought one such as I might frighten your patients."
"The children here don't seem to mind you very much, do they?" Charles asks. "They like you; I've heard a lot of chatter about you today. They seem interested in you."
"They'll change their minds soon enough. Or move on to something or someone else. I doubt my idea of interesting coincides with theirs."
That gets him a brief glance of sharp exasperation.
Erik ignores the flare of something in his chest; he cannot call it hope because that's something he's not known for a long time. He finishes his meal and follows Charles and Raven over to one of the smallest houses.
He stays at the door, and watches the other two as they go in. Inside the house there is only one room, and inside the room there is a small bed, and in the bed is a girl with pale golden hair. Her arms are swathed in bandages from wrist to shoulder. She looks out the window with listless eyes, and when she sees Charles and Raven and the flowers, she tries to smile - but even that is wan and strained.
Erik, for his part, stands rooted to the spot. Horror and grief and fear, like thorns piercing him, like blades slashing at him.
He's seen this child before.
And when he flinches, the movement catches the girl's attention - Erik cringes and tries to turn around, tries to hide - but it's too late. Her blue-gray eyes find him and - she pales, and she attempts to rise from the bed but Raven drops her flowers and catches her, hands on Emma's shoulders to hold her down, and Charles is saying, "Emma, Emma, please tell me what's wrong!"
"It's him. You're him," Emma says, eyes fixed on Erik.
He can't look away.
He has to go.
"You murdered my family," Emma says.
Erik runs.
Part Five - Challenge to the past
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 2650 in this installment
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr
rating: R [may go up in later chapters]
notes: Continuing from this, and this. Part One, Part Two, Part Three. These are not the Charles and Erik you think you know.
Work in Progress. Please heed the rating.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
The boy with hair as brightly red as flames. Eyes like the final flash of dusk. Standing on this beach.
Not here. Not now.
A swift, shocked moment as Erik takes him in: dark cloak, its hood pushed back. Clothes much like Erik's own: ragged around the edges yet somehow still pristine - a boy of a soldier. It is an image he knows only too well, a memory at once familiar and frightening and painful.
A memory of a beginning in steel, and an ending in blood.
At this moment, on the sand, with Charles a curiously warm presence just beyond him - a melancholy kind of pain lances through Erik, slashing fire and bitterness into his mind. What little he's learned, what little he knows: knowledge that he bears in his bones, knowledge that is carved deeply into his flesh. Hard-won knowledge, coming from terrible experience and the spark and clash of battle.
Like the striplings, like the young unblooded boys and girls whose appearance this apparition now wears, Erik, too, knows nothing but his sword, and the handful of weapons he's had to master over the years. He knows how to lead his comrades into a fight. He knows how to kill a man with his bare hands. He knows how to improvise a weapon from nothing more than a handful of fist-sized stones, a torn sleeve, and a leather cord.
He knows the hypnotic, fatal beat of the drums of war, and even now, looking at the boy in the cloak, Erik hears them like a premonition woven into the erratic, terrified thump of his heart - he hears the drums over the waves.
And now, for the first time, he hears the boy's voice. A broken-down whisper, as though his words are being dragged over the rocky shore beyond him. Running around with this healer? I know him well. He is an acquaintance of mine.
"Don't you dare," Erik whispers, and before he can think about his own movements he's already half-shielding Charles with his own body. Both sword and knife are out. He drops into a defensive stance.
The apparition ignores his movements. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It is not for you to know. He raises one hand - a greeting, a warning, some other message - and then, suddenly, he's gone, leaving nothing but the afterimage of his incongruous hair.
Erik blinks, and when he does, tears are tracking down his face, but he denies them. He shakes his head, sheathes his weapons, swipes roughly at his cheeks with his gloved hands.
He's sinking to his knees on the sand, and Charles is kneeling next to him. Rough, callused fingers on Erik's wrist.
"When you say you're a healer," Erik says, thoroughly unmanned, "do you deal only with wounds to the body, or do you deal with wounds to the mind also?"
"I have learned how to deal with both. We live in unsettled times, and we healers must live and work among broken bodies and shattered minds." The words come out in a strange voice - flat, but kind; and the expression on Charles's face somehow manages to match the voice. He looks like he's barely holding back both anger and tears. "If I made a list of the types of people who could be vulnerable to delusion, I would place you on it. Perhaps even near the top. Soldiers and mercenaries - and I know you have been both."
Hunter. Soldier. Mercenary. Assassin. Erik wants to scream out those words, wants to scream out his anguish and his regret and the mad wish for atonement, but who will hear him? Who will give him what he wants?
Who will release him?
Instead he says, tightly controlled, "More than both," and then he nods and pulls away. He gets to his feet and walks down to the frothing surf. He looks out at the waves, at the sea at the sky, and sees nothing of the blue and of the white and of the strange shift in color and light. Instead he sees battlefields; he smells a different bitter tang, like steel and screaming pain.
For a long moment he wonders why he can still hear the soughing wind, the crashing surf - and then he winces, and slants a look over at Charles. "Have you ever been in a battle? You must have a reason for imposing that rule on yourself, and - on me."
A shadow passes over Charles's face. Now this expression is more than just a complicated grimace: fear, hatred, compassion, and loathing battle within it. The expression is like lines snarled together into a terrible knot - eyebrows, scars, mouth.
But all Charles says is "Yes." He hangs his head. His hands at his sides clench into fists, hard enough for the knuckles to show bone-white through the skin.
///
On the short walk back to the infirmary, Erik says, "You're not going to ask me what I saw, or why I reacted the way I did."
He's not sure what he's expecting Charles to say or do in response. When Charles sighs, he's not surprised.
However, when Charles turns toward him for the express purpose of rolling his eyes, he's taken aback; and the feeling doubles when Charles shakes his head and says, "Oh, Erik. Didn't we just speak of this? Let me say it again: You will tell me what you can. When you can. I keep secrets that have been entrusted to me, but I do not seek to add to them, nor do I pry." The half-smile on those features is strangely like his grimace from earlier on the beach. "You are under my care as we are under your protection; therefore we each extend the other a certain kind of grace. Your wellbeing is a concern of mine. Our lives are a concern of yours."
And Erik can almost believe that here before him is a man who carries lives in his hands.
Suddenly, Charles smiles, and throws part of that smile in Erik's direction, before he's turning around and Raven is running toward him, laughing and yawning in equal measure. "I'm late again," she says, clinging with both hands to Charles, to the hand holding the unstrung longbow. "Does that mean you won't have time to teach me today?"
"No, I don't. But I'm glad to see you all the same. Actually, I was about to ask you for a very big favor."
"What kind of favor?" Raven asks. "It's not my day to look after Alex - it's yours."
Charles takes her hands in both of his and nods solemnly. "Not that kind of favor, and I am on my way to him now. I'll take him on rounds with me. It's something else. Do you remember my rules about you and knives?"
Her face falls. "Yes," she says, sadly. "Not where the others can find them and play with them."
Charles smiles.
Not for the first time, Erik is torn between looking at that smile and looking away. Charles has so many smiles. He seems genuinely happy with this one, though.
"No more rules starting right now," he says. "I take them all back."
Erik watches Raven's mouth fall open, watches her suddenly smile, changing from disbelief to fierce joy. "A-are you sure, Charles?"
"I'm sure of it, Raven. And I'll tell you why I changed my mind."
"Why?" Instantly Raven frowns, and Erik half-turns away and almost wants to smile at the way she scrunches up her nose, suspicion warring with anticipation in every line of her.
So Erik, too, is surprised when Charles leads Raven over to him. "Give her your hand, Erik," he says, and nods when Erik does so. "Your student, Raven. Erik threw a knife at me earlier. He's good, and you can make him better."
Erik raises an eyebrow when Raven rounds on him - and he's pleasantly surprised when she lets go of Charles's hands to examine his. "Hmm," she says, gently.
Looking down at that shock of red hair, at those small hands - Erik is looking at his past and at his present at the same time, and it leaves him breathless and speechless - up until the moment Raven finishes inspecting his hands, until she looks back up into his face and asks, "How long have you fought with knives?"
"Not for very long," he says. "I have always relied more on this," and he taps the hilt of the sword strapped in its scabbard at his side.
"No good in an enclosed space," Raven says.
"Neither is a knife," Erik counters, "if all you're going to do is throw it."
That gets him a laugh - and Raven laughs with all her heart, laughs as brightly as the sun in the blue sky. "You are very different from Charles, and that is a good thing, and I like you. When do you want to start?"
///
Erik looks over his shoulder at Raven as she bends over the piece of driftwood in her lap. The knife in her hands has had its tip broken off square. The short blade throws off splinters of light as she moves it against the grain, shaving away the bark in long, splintering pieces.
The knife in his hand is - familiar, is the first thing he can say. He's wielded something like it before, though this knife is not his. It's one of the four that Raven wears on her belt everywhere. Dark metal, made all in one seamless piece. He is holding it by the grip - the dull end, a little too long to fit in the palm of his hand. The grip is made so that its end tapers into a sort of gently curving tail.
The other half of the knife, shaped like a long and narrow leaf, is sharpened to a high, soft sheen; the dark metal gleams greenish in the sunlight.
Erik looks from the girl to the target she's set up for him several feet away. There is a blade already dead center of the roughly circular piece of wood. Myriad pocks and gouges scar the wood, and he thinks Raven seems to have embraced some of Charles's ideas about practice.
Now Erik squares his shoulders and faces the target - his fingers slip a little along the curve of the grip end, seeking purchase, seeking a better sense of balance. He breathes in the strange scents of mingled forest and sea. He and Raven are in another part of the southern cove, in the opposite direction from where he saw the apparition of the red-haired boy, and here the forest that had been interrupted by the edges of the valley marches nearly down to the sandy shore.
He breathes. He fixes his eyes on the other knife.
He throws. A sharp forward flick of arm and wrist and fingers.
The blade spins in a wavelike circle, rapid flickering movement.
The knife strikes the outer edges of the circle in the center of the target.
"Again," Raven commands, a hint of approval in her voice.
This time he feels her eyes on him as he retrieves the knife, and sets up for the next throw.
This time, inexplicably, he wants the throw to count, to be perfect in her eyes - in his teacher's eyes.
///
Raven leads him back into the village and he can barely keep up with her rapidfire chatter, which alternates between high praise and incisive advice. Erik knows he has a long way to go, he has many more things to learn - but he has an enthusiastic and knowledgeable teacher, and he's already looking forward to applying her suggestions.
They snatch a hurried midday meal from the communal kitchen - the young man in charge, Jono, slips an extra sweet bun into the bundle for Raven; Erik rolls his eyes, but as soon as they're back outside he hands his own piece of bread over.
Raven laughs, and frees one hand to catch Erik around the wrist - and she doesn't let go even when they literally run into Charles and Alex as they emerge from one of the other houses.
"Hello," Charles says. "You will excuse me if I cannot give you my hands right now, Raven. This little boy has just managed to fall asleep and I dare not disturb him." To Erik: "I trust you are all right?"
He's still rattled by that morning's encounter, but the hours of practice with the throwing knives have restored some of his equilibrium, and Erik manages a thin sliver of a smile. "Perhaps."
"That's a start," Charles says, quietly.
He sits down with them in a corner of the village green for lunch; Erik listens with half an ear as Raven tells Charles about her morning, and then pays a little more attention as Charles talks about his patients.
He puts the pieces together as he eats: the beds in the infirmary are for emergency cases, and when Charles murmurs something grateful about having something he doesn't need instead of needing something he doesn't have, he can't help but nod in thoughtful understanding.
There are a few patients, however, who are in need of long-term care, and who had come to the village specifically because they had need of a healer who understood their ailments. These are the patients Charles visits every other day or so. "Some of them came here with their families," Charles explains, gently rocking Alex in his arms, "and those without families are cared for by all of us here.
"When you are finished eating, perhaps you can come with me," he says. "Both of you. I'm going to see Emma."
That makes Raven grin and get to her feet. "I can bring her some fresh flowers."
"Don't go far," Charles says, and she nods and wanders off.
"Why me?" Erik says. "I would have thought one such as I might frighten your patients."
"The children here don't seem to mind you very much, do they?" Charles asks. "They like you; I've heard a lot of chatter about you today. They seem interested in you."
"They'll change their minds soon enough. Or move on to something or someone else. I doubt my idea of interesting coincides with theirs."
That gets him a brief glance of sharp exasperation.
Erik ignores the flare of something in his chest; he cannot call it hope because that's something he's not known for a long time. He finishes his meal and follows Charles and Raven over to one of the smallest houses.
He stays at the door, and watches the other two as they go in. Inside the house there is only one room, and inside the room there is a small bed, and in the bed is a girl with pale golden hair. Her arms are swathed in bandages from wrist to shoulder. She looks out the window with listless eyes, and when she sees Charles and Raven and the flowers, she tries to smile - but even that is wan and strained.
Erik, for his part, stands rooted to the spot. Horror and grief and fear, like thorns piercing him, like blades slashing at him.
He's seen this child before.
And when he flinches, the movement catches the girl's attention - Erik cringes and tries to turn around, tries to hide - but it's too late. Her blue-gray eyes find him and - she pales, and she attempts to rise from the bed but Raven drops her flowers and catches her, hands on Emma's shoulders to hold her down, and Charles is saying, "Emma, Emma, please tell me what's wrong!"
"It's him. You're him," Emma says, eyes fixed on Erik.
He can't look away.
He has to go.
"You murdered my family," Emma says.
Erik runs.
Part Five - Challenge to the past