Xover: History - R - xmen/hp
“History”
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros, et all. X-Men, Evolution, First Class, etc belongs to Marvel, Disney perhaps but not me. I make no money from this and I own nothing, don’t sue.
Summary: [Charles/Erik] The problem when Charles Xavier loved was that he loved forever even if it were for the man who had inadvertently put him in a wheelchair and caused his miscarriage. The problem with children is that they inherited from the parent, and that adults never learn. So history often repeats itself.
Warnings: Slash. First Class. Violence. Mpreg. AU. Language. Spoilers.
Rating: R.
A/N: I loved X-Men: First Class, and the whole Charles/Erik subtext was amazing and blew my mind, but I couldn’t find a crossover with HP with the pairing I wanted, so I have tried my hand at my own. I’m taking liberties with the timeline. I don’t know much about X-Men, so if I’m wrong, please correct or ignore. Thank you.
XXX
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience - George Bernard Shaw
Words: 7,355
Chapter 1
1962. Unknown location.
It was quiet inside the CIA base. Normally, this sort of unnatural silence would be a cause for worry, usually it would mean that some terrorist cell or another were attacking, invading, killing, while the central intelligence agency of America did nothing, or was unable to do anything, to defend themselves. But that wasn’t the case this night.
A man of average height walked calmly through the corridor. At his feet, sprawled several bodies of the agents that had been assigned to ‘protect’ them, all of them sleeping. In fact, every non-Mutant throughout the compound had been put to sleep, and Charles smiled to himself as he lowers his hand down from his temple. He knocked at the door he stopped in front of and waited until it opened before sliding gracefully inside.
“Damn,” Hank murmured, eyes wide behind his large glasses. “That is one neat trick, Charles.”
“Why, thank you, my friend. Though, I really shouldn’t use it so carelessly, but well this is an exceptional circumstance is it not?” The dark haired man offered a wide smile that Hank easily returned. “Do you think it will be ready in time?” Charles asked, nodding his head towards the assembled scientific tools and accessories that were spread out across Hank’s laboratory desk.
“Oh certainly! I just need some of Raven’s blood, so I can match the cure directly to her DNA. But I have completed the version you requested, using your DNA, Charles. Here,” he said, handing over a small vial filled with green liquid.
Charles took it, fingers trembling. This liquid, this cure, would remove all traces of the X-gene from his person, but that wasn’t the reason Charles wanted it. If they were going to give his sister her own version of this cure, Charles wanted to be sure that it would work, that it wouldn’t harm Raven in anyway. Slowly, he pulled up the plunger and held his arm out.
“You have the anti-cure?” He asked, sounding calm and composed even as his fingers trembled around the syringe.
Hank turned and reached out for another vial, this one filled with a blue substance. He had used the X-gene along with Charles’ DNA to make a liquid virus of sorts; just a millilitre of this blue serum straight into a person’s bloodstream would gift them with Charles’ magnificent gifts, returning them all after the cure had taken them. But it turned out to be unneeded. The cure didn’t work. Nothing happened to Charles’ powers, he could still read your mind, still influence your thoughts, and he put Hank to sleep and woke him up again with only a thought, just like he had done to the CIA agents’ minutes ago.
“Well, that was disappointing.” Hank frowned down at the empty syringe, rolling it between his fingers with a sigh. He had been planning to make a version to use on himself. One for Raven and one for him and they could be together and be normal, but he supposed he needed to research a little longer.
“Indeed,” Charles agreed, though there was a soft smile on his face. He could feel it, running through his system, making changes inside of him, but what those changes were Charles couldn’t tell. He could sense that they weren’t malignant, but nonetheless he would need to take the time (once he had some free time, that is) to figure out what exactly the supposed cure did to a Mutant.
XXX
Two months later. Westchester, NY.
Charles Francis Xavier had inherited a mansion from his parents when they passed away. He missed them, in the sense that when something changes you miss the way things used to be, but he didn’t miss them as people. He had hardly known them, and so living in his childhood home wasn’t as hard as he thought it might have been. There were no ghosts, no memories except for the ones he and Raven had made, and now he had his friends with him: his real family.
After Sebastian Shaw had his mutants attack the CIA compound, Charles had moved his friends into his mansion. They each had their own room, with Charles and Raven taking the bedrooms that had been theirs as children. There was a large, fully stocked kitchen, a bomb shelter that could be used for them to train in, extensive grounds for more training usage or for them to simply walk in and enjoy, and the best thing in Charles’ opinion was that Erik had chosen the room directly beside his own.
The door pushed inwards, and a taller, darker haired man stepped inside. “Good evening, Charles,” Erik drawled.
Erik Lehnsherr was Charles’ best friend. They hadn’t known each other as long as he had known Raven, but Charles cherished him above all others. Erik was, he believed, the strongest, bravest, smartest man Charles had ever met, disregarding the fact that Charles himself was a genius. Charles knew Erik had his faults, his furious desire for revenge upon Shaw being one of the things they argued constantly about, but when you loved someone you loved all of them, faults as well as strengths. And with that belief in mind, Charles was almost certain that Erik loved him enough to be the better man.
“You wanted to speak to me about something, my dear?” Erik stalked inside and sat himself in one of the empty chairs surrounding the small coffee table at the end of Charles’ bed.
Charles slid off the bed and into the spare chair. “How about a game first, hmm?” He looked up with bright blue eyes and a wide smile, and sighed in relief as Erik nodded. He did have something to tell Erik, something he had been putting off for over two weeks now, but in all honestly Charles was afraid. He had finally figured out what Hank’s cure had done to him and he wasn’t sure how his lover or his friends would take the news. But, he knew, he couldn’t hide it from Erik any longer. They were heading to Cuba in the morning, to fight Shaw and possibly the Russian and American navies, and their own kind. There was no telling what could happen. Not even Charles, who was the most powerful physic alive, could predict if one of them, any of them, would die tomorrow, and he couldn’t take the risk that he or Erik might die without having told about their baby.
They played the game in silence, until Charles was just about to take Erik’s queen. “I’d say we can both guess how this game will end, my friend, so how about we just stop where we are and save me the indignity?” Charles let out a soft laugh at Erik’s words, but agreed, pushing himself out of his chair with ease. Erik stood too, making his way around the coffee table to pull the shorter man into his arms. They kissed softly, lightly, just a brush of lips upon lips and hands on each other’s faces.
“I need to tell you something.”
“It can wait,” Erik assured the younger man, “we have time, Charles, I promise you. We’ll have forever.” Charles believed him, believed that Erik would stay with him forever just as he knew he would love Erik forever. And so he pushed the thoughts of the conversation he knew they needed to have out of his mind and allowed himself to be pushed back onto the bed even as Erik removed his shirt and trousers.
With his shirt unbuttoned, but his trousers on, Charles watched as his fully naked lover walked closer to him, climbing up the length of the bed with his cock hard and his chest heaving. As hands moved to unzip his trousers, Charles whispered, “I love you,” and lost himself completely beneath Erik’s kiss.
XXX
The next day. Cuba.
Everything was a blur.
Days later, Charles would look back on it all and still never fully be able to piece it all together. Everything had just happened too fast. They were friends one moment, great friends and great lovers, teaming up to save the world. And then they weren’t.
There was pain, unbearable, unexplainable pain, rushing throughout Charles’ very being but he continued to keep himself in Shaw’s mind, continued to bind Shaw to his will because he refused to set him free and risk him killing Erik. He wouldn’t be responsible for Erik’s death; his damnation was in his own hands however.
They argued, shouting back and forth at each other, wrestling and crippling in the sand and rolling along the Cuban beach, as Erik tried to blow up the humans who had shot at them and as Charles tried to save Erik from himself. It was never about the humans, not really. Charles didn’t think they needed to die, he believed that one day, after a long wait and some desperate self-defence that they would have the freedom they all dreamed of. But he couldn’t bear to let Erik fall into the dark chasm that waited within him. Charles couldn’t lose Erik, because Erik had promised him forever, and Charles wouldn’t be whole without him.
“Please stop!” He shouted, wincing as Erik punched him in the face. He crawled forward, grabbing Erik’s leg and dragging him back into the sand. “Please listen!” Charles opened his mouth, ignoring the shouting from his friends and from Shaw’s. He leant close to Erik’s face, pinning the man above him through his thoughts alone and tried to tell him about their baby. If his love of Charles wouldn’t save him, perhaps their child could?
There was never the chance. A gun was firing. Someone was firing a gun at Erik and Charles screamed at Moira to stop, pleaded with Erik to listen as he scrambled to his feet. There were tears on his face. A scream left his lips. Erik paused, lowering his hand and stopped deflecting the bullets away from himself. Moira stopped firing, her gun falling from limp hands as she watched Charles fall. It was like slow motion, Charles would later think, everything slowed down and paused for a few seconds as everyone’s brains caught up with their eyes. He lay in the sand, blood spreading out around him, more blood than was normal for a wound with no severed arteries or veins, no punctured organs; just a severed spine. And the death of his child.
Erik cradled him, Charles’ head in his lap. Rough hands stroked Charles’ cheeks, tears fell from brown eyes. He removed the bullet, eyeing the wound that bled sluggishly but didn’t explain the pool of red he was kneeling in. “I was trying to protect you.”
“And I was trying to save you,” Charles responded, wheezing through the pain. But Erik would never see that, not for many, many years, and so he turned towards Moira with a snarl.
“You did this!” He screamed, reached out for the dogtag that hung around her neck. He used his ability to manipulate metal to tighten the chain around her neck, until she was on her knees gasping for breath and wheezing the way Charles was.
“No Erik, no,” Charles whispered, as he slid one hand down to rest over his stomach. “You did this.” Brown eyes gazed down mournfully, ignoring Moira as she stood and scrambled out of the way. Charles looked up with sad blue eyes, tears on his cheeks still and his lips trembling from the pain and the grief and the terror. Erik was lost to him now, they were both lost to him… and he couldn’t feel his legs.
XXX
Three weeks later. Westchester, NY.
The wheelchair turned unexpectedly. Charles reached out to grip the arm rests, heart hammering in his chest as the motion stopped and he was left sitting, vulnerable, directly facing Magneto.
Erik watched him from the doorway, his hands by his side and that ridiculous helmet upon his head. “Hello, old friend. I would have thought you’d be clever enough to know not to find a chair made of metal, no?”
“We are not friends,” Charles whispered, hands moving to clasp over his stomach. He ignored the second part of the sentence, because Hank was already in the process of making him a chair out of plastic, and as such felt no need to rise to the occasion as it were. “Your actions have told me as much, Erik. What are you doing here?”
Erik answered his question with one of his own. “Is it so wrong of me to want to see how you were? We were great friends once, you know.”
“We were a great many things. But you broke your promise Erik, not I. I did not leave you.” Using his mind, Charles steered his chair away, turning so that he could look out of the window and not at his-no, ‘biggest regret’ wasn’t the word he was searching for. He didn’t regret Erik; he could never regret what they had together. But he had failed the other man, for not seeing what kind of darkness was buried within him, for not helping him be the better man. And, so, Charles turned away from his greatest failure.
“I found your medical records, my dear. Why didn’t you tell me?” There was something in Erik’s voice, something weak and vulnerable, which forced Charles to turn back to him. His face was calm, but his emotions whirled dangerously behind his eyes, and Charles found himself lost in that gaze, remembering the first time they had stared at each other in such a way, a time that ended in their first kiss. The first of many. The beginning of the end.
“Take off the helmet, Erik.”
Surprisingly, Erik did as he was asked. Charles could only surmise that he had been right. The idea of having a child, of having family, would have been enough to tie Erik to him, to his side. Their deceased baby would have been the thing to save Erik’s soul and the humans from Erik’s genius. The moment the helmet was gone, Charles could sense Erik’s tremulous thoughts, all of his fears and regrets. A part of Erik thought it was all a lie, something Hank forged to further guilt him should he ever find out, because god knows Erik didn’t feel enough guilt for what he had done to Charles as it was. There would never be enough guilt. Nothing he could feel would ever make up for the wrongs he committed against Charles, his only friend, his one true love, his everything. The only one to ever believe in him, to trust him and love him, the one who wanted to help him, the one who saved him, and how did Erik repay him? He crippled him and killed their child…
And if it were true. If he really had killed their child, would Charles still love him? Would Charles ever regret meeting him, knowing him? Would Erik be able to live with himself knowing what he had done, the things he had caused and destroyed, what he could have had had it not been for his beliefs and fears and anger.
“Find the place between serenity and anger, my friend,” Charles whispered. The chair wheeled closer, and Charles reached up to pull Erik’s face down until they were eye to eye and then Charles opened his mind and pulled Erik inside.
When they separated, there were tears on Erik’s cheeks and his bottom lip trembled. He pulled the helmet back on in silence. Just as the door was about to close behind him, Erik whispered, “I’m so sorry, love,” and Charles waited until Erik was out of the room before he let his own tears fall.
It was the first of many similar visits. Erik would often appear without warning and without setting off the alarms or alerting the other X-Men. He never gave Charles a reason to notify the others, or to call for help, or defend himself. Erik always took off his helmet when they were alone in the room, and they spoke or played chess or reminisced. Occasionally, Erik would ask Charles to pull forward memories long forgotten about Erik’s mother, or those memories’ of Charles’ when he thought about their baby, and the two would sit in silence with tears on their cheeks and sad, soft smiles they only offered to one another. Erik had even helped him rebuild Cerebro. It was far more advanced, a completely updated version, of course, but Charles wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. They kissed on occasion; soft brushes of lips upon lips, hands on cheeks or waists and low, plaintive moans in the back of their throats.
But only once did it ever go further than that, only once did Erik’s secret visits have consequences.
XXX
1979. Westchester, NY.
The years had been kind to Erik. While he had passed the forty-five year mark the man still stood tall and proud with a full head of dark hair. His eyebrows were a little bushier than Charles remembered them being when they first met, but he was otherwise the same. Erik kept in shape, trained his mutant ability and his body well, and was in all ways the same cocky, angry man Charles had first fallen in love with.
Charles on the other hand was only thirty-eight and he was already completely bald. The lack of brown hair made his blue eyes and eyebrows that much more prominent, but sometimes Charles would still reach up to tuck a lock behind his ears before remembering he didn’t have any hair left. It was the same way with his legs. He had, as Hank promised, learnt to take care of himself after a while. All he had needed was practise and will power, because after all there was nothing one couldn’t do if they put their mind to it, but some mornings he still woke up and tried to stand, panicking when he couldn’t feel his legs, before calm acceptance swept over him and he remembered, sadly, calmly, that he couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t stand, or walk, or run, or jog; he couldn’t use his legs at all. And all because Erik had accidentally deflected a bullet into the base of his spine.
But, despite his lack of mobility, and his lack of hair, and the slight bulge his had developed on his stomach from lack of movement, Erik thought Charles was just as lovely as he had the day they first met.
“So,” Erik began, moving a rook forward across the chessboard.
“So?” Charles questioned, countering the move with slightly more difficulty than usual. He wasn’t really paying attention to the game; he was more focused on Erik’s thoughts and perceptions, trying desperately to hide something very important from the man without arousing his suspicions. His chess focus, as a result, suffered.
They were both thinking back on the last meeting, four and a half months ago; where for the first time since before Charles’ accident and Shaw’s death they had made love. It had started off with a brush of Erik’s mouth across his forehead, then his cheek and then his lips. But Erik hadn’t stopped there, instead trailing his mouth down Charles’ neck and collarbone, pulling the shirt off of him without a protest. It had been awkward, with Charles unable to move his legs, to spread them or to kneel, and so Erik had held them up, pushed against Charles’ chest and over Erik’s shoulders as he took the younger man. And when it ended, Erik had kissed him again, softer than before, but slightly more desperate and whispered, “I love you.”
“You know you always have a home here.” Charles had told him, ignoring the vulnerability he felt as Erik rearranged his legs and moved off of the bed.
“I’m in too deep, Charles. I love you, but I need to do this. I can’t stop now, not when I’m so close. Join me, join me and we can be together.”
“You know I can’t do that, Erik.” And Erik had sneered at him, accused him of loving the humans more than him, more than his own kind, and left him there naked and sticky and hurting and had avoided him until this moment.
“So,” Erik said again, shifting awkwardly in his chair.
“So, did you change your mind?” Charles asked suddenly. Erik startled, dropping his knight and glancing up at Charles.
“I haven’t. Have you?”
“No,” Charles whispered. His free hand went to his stomach, pressing against the hard bulge that Erik couldn’t see because Charles had told him he couldn’t. “But I thought you might say that. I think it’s time to leave now, my friend. As much as I love you, you can’t be here, not for another five months at least. Please keep the helmet off until you are outside, my dear, dear friend. Goodbye, Erik.”
“Goodbye, Charles. I’m a little busy at the moment so it might be sometime before I come to see you again. I thought I should tell you, in case you worried. You always were a worrier, my friend.”
“And with good reason,” Charles said with a smile, cleaning the chessboard up as Erik made his way to the door still carrying his helmet. “I am sorry,” he added but Erik didn’t hear him. He glanced down at the baby growing within him, the swollen mound that was his stomach and child all at once, thinking back to the ‘cure’ that had accidentally given him this ability. “I am sorry, Erik, but it’s for the best.”
XXX
August 1980. Unknown location.
Magneto lowered the newspaper, his fingers clenching around the edges as he gripped it in anger. It was just a small section, placed somewhere in the personal ads, but it was a congratulations for Professor Charles Xavier, renowned geneticist and teacher, Headmaster of Xavier’s Institute for Higher Learning, on the birth of his child. The mother’s name had remained unmentioned, but the child had arrived on July 31st through home delivery at the mansion with the help of Dr Hank McCoy and friends of the proud father.
It wasn’t Moira MacTaggart’s child, Erik knew. She had been stationed at a laboratory at Muir Island for the last year and hadn’t left since and Charles hadn’t visited either. It wasn’t Raven’s because Mystique had been with him since the altercation on that Cuban beach. And aside from those two and himself, there was no one else that Charles would have trusted enough to be so vulnerable with, to open himself up so completely and helplessly.
Magneto snorted, before he folded the paper in half and laid it down. Of course the newspaper hadn’t mentioned a mother, he thought adding up the dates in his head. Charles was the ‘mother’, and it wouldn’t do to mention something like that in the current less than Mutant friendly environment. However, that wasn’t something that Erik particularly cared about, because one day he would win and then the homo sapiens would no longer matter, their opinions would no longer count, and the homo superiors would no longer have to hide who they were.
What did matter, what did cause Erik to frown at his coffee with furrowed eyebrows, was the knowledge that if Charles had birthed the child, then he, himself, must be the father. And Charles had never told him.
XXX
Next day. Westchester, NY.
Erik managed to make his way into the newly created nursery without attracting anyone’s attention. He could see various X-Men through the window, along with a handful of students playing on the basketball court. He could hear someone talking through the wall in the next room, Charles and someone whose voice he didn’t recognize. But his attention remained on the cooing bundle in the centre of the crib.
It was a lovely crib, made from mahogany wood and it looked to be hand made with small flowers carved into all four legs. There was mesh and lace along its top, acting as a shade for the baby that had wiggled its way down to the bottom end of the cot, its pale blue blankets tangled at its feet. Blue eyes, like Charles’, stared up at him, curious and unafraid of the tall helmeted man that watched him. Magneto reached out, carefully and slowly to slide his arms in under the baby’s body. The child gave a soft gurgle, its eyelids fluttering as he was moved, and in the next room Charles saw Erik through Harry’s eyes and stopped mid-sentence.
The chair appeared in the doorway to Harry’s nursery, and behind him was the baby’s wetnurse (but since they bottle fed, she was really only a nurse or a glorified babysitter, but ‘wetnurse’ had been on her resume and Charles had been asked to address her as such).
When Harry had thought of Erik, Charles had been momentarily petrified. He worried frantically as they made their way into the room next door about what Erik might to do his baby, whether he would hurt Harry or take him away or hate him, and there was nothing Charles might have been able to do to prevent any of those actions. But Erik only held him gently, glancing down at him reverently, awestruck and silent, and then those brown eyes looked up and caught Charles’ gaze and the younger man was forced to look away. There was gratitude in that gaze. While Charles knew Erik was angry, he could see it even if he couldn’t sense it, the man was beyond grateful that Charles had kept this child, even though it was Erik’s actions that had lost them their last child.
“What’s his name?” Erik whispered. The child lay calmly in his arms, fingers brushing over the red cloak he wore around his shoulders.
“Harrison Erik Xavier.” The baby let out a yawn at the sound of his name, before turning his face at the sound of the voice he recognized already.
“You hid him from me.”
Harry yawned again, and the woman who was cowering behind Charles suddenly stepped forward. “It’s time for the young man’s nap,” she told them, glancing between them both. “Perhaps you’d like to have this talk in the other room, Sir?” She seemed to ask, but Charles knew her thoughts well enough to know that it was more of an order.
“Come, my friend,” Charles said to Erik, waving his hand towards the door. “Let Marlena do her job.”
He rolled the chair back into the hallway, and glanced back over his shoulder. He watched Erik, who looked unwilling and hesitant as he handed the baby to Marlena, his fingers clenching as the child yawned and snuggled against the woman’s chest instead of his own. “Let’s make this quick, Charles.”
The door closed behind them, and the couple made their way into Charles’ bedroom where he set up the chessboard; it had become something of a tradition between them over the years, and despite the new addition to their family nothing had really changed between them.
Erik moved first, speaking at the same time. “Why did you hide him from me?”
Charles tried to explain, about how dangerous Magneto had become, how scared he had been for Erik’s sake, his worry that their child could have been hurt even inadvertently, the fear that Erik might take the baby away, to ignore the choice that their future grown-up son should be able to make on his own. But before Erik could respond, Charles was shouting, calling out codenames that Erik didn’t recognize and rolling his chair towards the door.
Erik followed. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but from the look of panic on Charles’ face, Erik knew it was bad. In the hallway, three people met them. There was a man with long sideburns and a cigar hanging out of his mouth, a woman with snow white hair and dark skin, and Hank McCoy himself, big and blue and exactly how Erik remembered him.
“What is it, Professor?” The one who answered to Storm asked.
Charles slumped back in his seat, no longer looking as desperate as he did defeated, and Erik knew in that moment what exactly was wrong. “HARRY!” He shouted, pushing past the X-Men and rushing into the room beside Charles’ bedroom.
The room was just as they had left it, except Marlena was sprawled across the floor unmoving with her eyes wide open. She wasn’t even breathing, but Charles could hear her thought rushing like a tsunami through her terrified mind. He focused on her thoughts, pulling what he could from them, sifting through them until he was able to deal with the situation without losing control. Erik, unable to find the child that he had been holding less than fifteen minutes ago, the boy he had fallen in love with at first glance, had lost himself to his anger and grief. The three X-Men backed out of the room, as Magneto threw things at the walls, kicked and punched the bed, and bent any and all metal with his mind until the perfect nursery looked more like a bombsite. At the centre of it all was Charles, sitting in his chair and glancing down at the woman who was just about to come out of whatever trance she had been placed in.
“Charles,” Erik breathed, and it was a desperate plea for help, for something, anything, to bring them back their son.
“She saw a man, older than us, with a long white beard. He told her something about a prophecy and pointed a stick at her face. When she fell, she could only see his feet, but he took Harry and vanished before her eyes.”
“A mutant? A mutant took our son?” Erik asked, slumping to the floor as shock began to set in.
“I don’t know,” Charles whispered, but he couldn’t help but think they had and for the same reason that he had tried to keep the child from Erik in the first place.
XXX
July 1991. Surrey, England.
The letters were still coming. No matter how many they burnt or binned or tore up, the letters just kept coming.
They were from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and each of them was address to ‘Harry Potter, the Master Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive, Surrey’. Why, Petunia didn’t know. The boy wasn’t even a Potter, though Harry might have been his real name. Petunia Evan’s sister was supposedly this boy’s mother, but Lily had told her in confidence mind you that they had adopted the boy after his family died. He was supposedly from New York, and Albas had found him abandoned while visiting the American government. The boy was odd, different, but not in the same way Lily and James Potter had been. They had been magical, a witch and a wizard, and Harry was supposed to be just like them. But he wasn’t. He was something else, something other, and he terrified Petunia and her family.
The boy in question was sitting at the head of the kitchen table, his hands folded beside his plate and his back straight and eyes downcast. Vernon, her husband, and Dudley, their son, sat at the very other end of the table, avoiding looking at Harry whenever possible.
When the letter had first started to arrive, Harry had demanded they tell them who the letters were from. With his voice inside of their heads, with his will controlling their own, they had had no choice but to answer him. Upon learning that the Headmaster of Hogwarts was the same man who had left him with the Dursley family Harry had decided he didn’t particularly want to go to Hogwarts. But he would like to leave the Dursleys. As well as he had them trained by this point, they were still only human, less than him inferior, hating and fearing him for his gifts, ignorant of what he was, what he could be. He was a god. And they should have been worshipping him, but they didn’t, and that made Harry hate them more than their neglect of him did. He deserved much better, his parents would have treated him better-his real ones, not the foolish ones who adopted him at Dumbledore’s bequest, who died for the cause of a silly old man and abandoned him to human filth.
His real parents had lived in New York.
“Boy,” Vernon said gruffly, beady eyes refusing to meet Harry’s gaze. “I found mention of a school for freaks in New York. We’ve already contacted the Headmaster.”
“In New York?” Harry questioned his voice soft and sibilant. He reached up to rub the lightning bolt shaped scar upon his forehead, thinking of his uncle’s use of the word freak, and wondering if he meant his real parents, who had gifted him with his powers over the mind, or of his adoptive parents’ kind… of the Dark Lord Voldemort who had left a part of his soul behind on the night he tried to kill Harry, and of the magic that action had given him. Harry was more than human, more than Muggle. But he was also more than a Wizard. He was something else entirely, though what he wasn’t sure, but he knew he was better than everyone else he had ever met and there was little anyone could do to disprove that.
“Yes, I think I would like that. What is the name of the school?”
“It’s called the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning,” Petunia answered him, wringing a tea cloth between her hands. Harry peeked into her mind, catching the tail end of a telephone conversation with who Harry assumed was the headmaster and the vicious thought of soon, soon he’ll be gone.
“Feeling the love, aunt,” Harry murmured under his breath, glancing up at worried blue eyes which closed in relief as Harry chose not to punish her for her less than pleasant thoughts. Soon he’ll be gone, and Harry couldn’t wait.
XXX
September 1991. Westchester, NY.
The name of the school on the pamphlet Charles Xavier had given him read ‘the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters’. Harry glanced between the pamphlet and his harried looking aunt and the kindly looking man in the wheelchair and snarled angrily. He threw the sheet of paper down and whirled around to face the Muggle.
“An institution? You thought you could leave me at an institution and not face any consequences?” Harry snarled. He reached out with his mind, tearing through her thoughts. He ignored that she had honestly thought this was a school, because it couldn’t be. The headmaster was a doctor, the strange looking man with his face covered was introduced as a doctor too, and no one named a place of learning ‘gifted’ unless they meant ‘touched in the head’. “How dare you, filthy human! You thought you could trick me!”
“It is a school!” Petunia screamed. She was on her knees before the eleven year old boy, her hands gripping at the sides of her head as he tore around her mind, pulling thoughts and emotions to the forefront, causing her pain for the sake of pain, grinning down at her maliciously.
That is enough, a voice echoed through Harry’s mind. In his shock, because that was the first time anyone had ever been inside of his head, Harry stopped what he was doing and looked away from his aunt. My name is Professor Charles Francis Xavier. And yes, while I am a doctor, it is not of the sort that you are thinking of. You are perfectly safe here, Harry. We are not here to hurt you.
There was something very familiar about the child’s mind, something that made Charles smile softly and think back on the month he had been able to glance at his own child’s thoughts, how similar they seemed, though one had been a baby and the other almost a teenager. He didn’t read the other students’ minds, at least not without permission, and he couldn’t compare any of them to Harrison. But this boy, this Harry, he was like mental déjà vu and as the boy heaved in front of him, angry and sullen, Charles couldn’t help but think back on to the memory of another angry boy he had known. He saw Erik, in Erik’s own mind, as his mother died, panting with anger and exertion, glaring up through his fringe just as Harry was doing.
The boy would have been about the right age, Charles couldn’t stop himself from thinking. And he had the same name. And though his eyes were now green, with the tiniest hint of red ringing the pupil, Charles’ brain immediately acknowledged the fact that baby’s eye colours changed as they grew. He hadn’t seen Harrison grow enough to know what colour eyes the boy would have had.
“I am your son?” The boy asked. Unknown to Charles, the boy had been taking a trip with him down memory lane. Every memory that Charles had re-experienced, Harry was with him, scrutinizing and analysing and eventually coming to the same conclusion as the bald man before him.
From the trees that surrounded the estate, Erik Lehnsherr watched in suspense. He had heard that Charles would be receiving a new student, one who was supposedly as powerful a mind-reader as Charles himself was, and that was something that Erik needed to see for himself to believe. Mystique waited beside him, blue in body with long red hair, as naked as the day she was born, and they glanced at each other and then back to the child who was staring down at Charles in curiosity.
“You can come out, you know,” the boy called over his shoulder. “You think too loudly, so how did you expect to hide from me?” Mystique stepped out of the trees. She held her hands up placatingly as everyone turned towards her. “Both of you,” Harry amended.
Magneto stepped forward, face slack with confusion and awe, but his eyes were bright and wide. He felt a thrill run through him. This was their child, they had found their child and how powerful he seemed. “You can hear my thoughts?” Erik asked, as he made his way to stand directly in front of the child.
“Yes,” he said, turning to Charles, “can’t you?”
“No, my boy, I’m afraid that helmet of your father’s prevents me from reading his thoughts.” Charles watched Harry’s face avidly for some reaction to Erik’s identity, but the boy merely smiled softly.
“He thinks I’m his son as well, so professor, you didn’t manage to take me by surprise. No one had managed as such yet, but I still have plenty of life to live so you never know.” He brushed a lock of dark hair behind his ear, and Charles copied the motion, but without touching any hair for he had none. He had performed that same motion for the majority of his life, and even at times now when he forgot about the changed his body had gone through he still attempted to brush his hair behind his ears.
“How can you read me?” Erik questioned, looking astounded as Harry’s voice echoed through his head and Charles’ at the same time.
I have always believed that there is nothing you cannot do if you put your mind to it, the boy whispered in their heads. I do not believe in limits.
“Professor?” Hank asked, sounding worried. Charles could sense he was uncomfortable, hiding behind the thick black scarf, and signalled for him to remove it. Harry didn’t bat an eyelash at the sight of the blue, furred face that was bared to him, and Charles realized with a chuckled that Harry had probably pulled the picture already from his mind.
“It is fine, Hank. This is Harrison,” he told his old friend, “you remember Harrison.”
“He’s nothing like I thought he’d be.” Hank whispered.
“Everyone had a limit,” Charles said after a moment, choosing to ignore Hank’s statement.
“I don’t. I can do whatever I want, daddy, because I want it to happen. Shall I prove it?” He didn’t wait for a response. Some might have likened him to a young Tom Riddle, dark hair, pale skin, dressed in plain clothing and thin as a rake, so angry and spiteful, so much better than everyone else, but when Erik looked at the boy he saw himself in Auswitchz. There was little of Charles in the boy, except his power. “I want you to stand up.”
“I can’t,” Charles whispered softly, looking suddenly sad. Erik, remembering why Charles couldn’t stand, flinched.
“I want you to stand, so stand up!” And the voice was suddenly in his head. Against his better judgement, Charles ignored the rational thought that he would only fall, and pulled his legs off of the chair’s foot holders and onto the floor. Stand up, stand up, stand up, the mantra continued within his mind, and Charles Xavier stood up. “Now walk towards me,” Harry ordered. And the man did.
Charles collapsed as Harry relinquished control over his mind, but Erik was there to catch him. He gathered his old lover carefully into his arms and brought him back to his chair, placing him down gently. Charles looked astounded, and there was a wide smile on his face. “That was amazing!” He exclaimed. He wheeled towards the boy, “how did you do that?”
“I believed. There are no limits to what I can do when I put my mind to it. I’m better than others, stronger, more powerful. I,” he glanced at the still cowering Petunia, “am a god among insects.”
“Sounds familiar?” Hank muttered worriedly, glancing at Erik, at Magneto who wanted to bring about the end of human kind and replace them with a society of Mutants.
“I believe I’ll attend your school. Human, leave now. If you tell Dumbledore where I am, I’ll know about it, and then you will be sorry.” Petunia nodded, she handed over a bundle of notes that Vernon had ‘offered’ Harry to purchase school supplies, and then she took off running across the grounds towards the gate they had entered through. Just as she neared the road Harry whispered, “Trip,” and Petunia did, falling directly into the path of a speeding car. She hit the ground hard and bloody, as Harry smiled to himself, and she didn’t get up.
Erik glanced at the boy, a twitch of his mouth the only reaction to Harry’s action. Charles and Hank both looked horrified, Hank looking more disgusted, while Charles looked afraid and resigned. Erik’s hand fell onto Harry’s shoulder and he squeezed, knowing why the boy had done what he had, to protect himself, to protect their kind from the humans, and he approved.
Once upon a time, Charles had thought that their baby would be enough to save Erik from himself, from the darkness. And perhaps that could have been possible if someone hadn’t kidnapped that child from them, stealing him away as Erik believed to fight against Mutants on the humans’ behalf. Now, Harrison was back before them, older and stronger, and wiser to the ways of the world in the same manner Erik was, in the ways that survivors were. Charles could never relate to that; he had been ignored as a child, but he had friends and nannies and aunts and uncles and his Raven. Harry and Erik had had no one through their suffering, and they had come out angrier, stronger people for it. Charles loved them both, but he feared them as well.
Erik led Harry towards the school, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder.
Charles watched them go. He thought about how he had tried to save Erik, and how he had failed. And he knew without a doubt that history would repeat itself, because Harrison was too much his father’s son.
The End
* * *
Well, that’s that done. I didn’t particularly like it, except the end part, but that’s mainly because I think I messed up the X-Men part. I’m seeing the film again tomorrow, but didn’t think I’d have time to write this then (really must do thesis stuff fml), so here it is now. I tried to do a Logan/Harry one years ago and never got past the second paragraph, so this is progress for me… even if it sucks! Let me know what you thought!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros, et all. X-Men, Evolution, First Class, etc belongs to Marvel, Disney perhaps but not me. I make no money from this and I own nothing, don’t sue.
Summary: [Charles/Erik] The problem when Charles Xavier loved was that he loved forever even if it were for the man who had inadvertently put him in a wheelchair and caused his miscarriage. The problem with children is that they inherited from the parent, and that adults never learn. So history often repeats itself.
Warnings: Slash. First Class. Violence. Mpreg. AU. Language. Spoilers.
Rating: R.
A/N: I loved X-Men: First Class, and the whole Charles/Erik subtext was amazing and blew my mind, but I couldn’t find a crossover with HP with the pairing I wanted, so I have tried my hand at my own. I’m taking liberties with the timeline. I don’t know much about X-Men, so if I’m wrong, please correct or ignore. Thank you.
XXX
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience - George Bernard Shaw
Words: 7,355
Chapter 1
1962. Unknown location.
It was quiet inside the CIA base. Normally, this sort of unnatural silence would be a cause for worry, usually it would mean that some terrorist cell or another were attacking, invading, killing, while the central intelligence agency of America did nothing, or was unable to do anything, to defend themselves. But that wasn’t the case this night.
A man of average height walked calmly through the corridor. At his feet, sprawled several bodies of the agents that had been assigned to ‘protect’ them, all of them sleeping. In fact, every non-Mutant throughout the compound had been put to sleep, and Charles smiled to himself as he lowers his hand down from his temple. He knocked at the door he stopped in front of and waited until it opened before sliding gracefully inside.
“Damn,” Hank murmured, eyes wide behind his large glasses. “That is one neat trick, Charles.”
“Why, thank you, my friend. Though, I really shouldn’t use it so carelessly, but well this is an exceptional circumstance is it not?” The dark haired man offered a wide smile that Hank easily returned. “Do you think it will be ready in time?” Charles asked, nodding his head towards the assembled scientific tools and accessories that were spread out across Hank’s laboratory desk.
“Oh certainly! I just need some of Raven’s blood, so I can match the cure directly to her DNA. But I have completed the version you requested, using your DNA, Charles. Here,” he said, handing over a small vial filled with green liquid.
Charles took it, fingers trembling. This liquid, this cure, would remove all traces of the X-gene from his person, but that wasn’t the reason Charles wanted it. If they were going to give his sister her own version of this cure, Charles wanted to be sure that it would work, that it wouldn’t harm Raven in anyway. Slowly, he pulled up the plunger and held his arm out.
“You have the anti-cure?” He asked, sounding calm and composed even as his fingers trembled around the syringe.
Hank turned and reached out for another vial, this one filled with a blue substance. He had used the X-gene along with Charles’ DNA to make a liquid virus of sorts; just a millilitre of this blue serum straight into a person’s bloodstream would gift them with Charles’ magnificent gifts, returning them all after the cure had taken them. But it turned out to be unneeded. The cure didn’t work. Nothing happened to Charles’ powers, he could still read your mind, still influence your thoughts, and he put Hank to sleep and woke him up again with only a thought, just like he had done to the CIA agents’ minutes ago.
“Well, that was disappointing.” Hank frowned down at the empty syringe, rolling it between his fingers with a sigh. He had been planning to make a version to use on himself. One for Raven and one for him and they could be together and be normal, but he supposed he needed to research a little longer.
“Indeed,” Charles agreed, though there was a soft smile on his face. He could feel it, running through his system, making changes inside of him, but what those changes were Charles couldn’t tell. He could sense that they weren’t malignant, but nonetheless he would need to take the time (once he had some free time, that is) to figure out what exactly the supposed cure did to a Mutant.
XXX
Two months later. Westchester, NY.
Charles Francis Xavier had inherited a mansion from his parents when they passed away. He missed them, in the sense that when something changes you miss the way things used to be, but he didn’t miss them as people. He had hardly known them, and so living in his childhood home wasn’t as hard as he thought it might have been. There were no ghosts, no memories except for the ones he and Raven had made, and now he had his friends with him: his real family.
After Sebastian Shaw had his mutants attack the CIA compound, Charles had moved his friends into his mansion. They each had their own room, with Charles and Raven taking the bedrooms that had been theirs as children. There was a large, fully stocked kitchen, a bomb shelter that could be used for them to train in, extensive grounds for more training usage or for them to simply walk in and enjoy, and the best thing in Charles’ opinion was that Erik had chosen the room directly beside his own.
The door pushed inwards, and a taller, darker haired man stepped inside. “Good evening, Charles,” Erik drawled.
Erik Lehnsherr was Charles’ best friend. They hadn’t known each other as long as he had known Raven, but Charles cherished him above all others. Erik was, he believed, the strongest, bravest, smartest man Charles had ever met, disregarding the fact that Charles himself was a genius. Charles knew Erik had his faults, his furious desire for revenge upon Shaw being one of the things they argued constantly about, but when you loved someone you loved all of them, faults as well as strengths. And with that belief in mind, Charles was almost certain that Erik loved him enough to be the better man.
“You wanted to speak to me about something, my dear?” Erik stalked inside and sat himself in one of the empty chairs surrounding the small coffee table at the end of Charles’ bed.
Charles slid off the bed and into the spare chair. “How about a game first, hmm?” He looked up with bright blue eyes and a wide smile, and sighed in relief as Erik nodded. He did have something to tell Erik, something he had been putting off for over two weeks now, but in all honestly Charles was afraid. He had finally figured out what Hank’s cure had done to him and he wasn’t sure how his lover or his friends would take the news. But, he knew, he couldn’t hide it from Erik any longer. They were heading to Cuba in the morning, to fight Shaw and possibly the Russian and American navies, and their own kind. There was no telling what could happen. Not even Charles, who was the most powerful physic alive, could predict if one of them, any of them, would die tomorrow, and he couldn’t take the risk that he or Erik might die without having told about their baby.
They played the game in silence, until Charles was just about to take Erik’s queen. “I’d say we can both guess how this game will end, my friend, so how about we just stop where we are and save me the indignity?” Charles let out a soft laugh at Erik’s words, but agreed, pushing himself out of his chair with ease. Erik stood too, making his way around the coffee table to pull the shorter man into his arms. They kissed softly, lightly, just a brush of lips upon lips and hands on each other’s faces.
“I need to tell you something.”
“It can wait,” Erik assured the younger man, “we have time, Charles, I promise you. We’ll have forever.” Charles believed him, believed that Erik would stay with him forever just as he knew he would love Erik forever. And so he pushed the thoughts of the conversation he knew they needed to have out of his mind and allowed himself to be pushed back onto the bed even as Erik removed his shirt and trousers.
With his shirt unbuttoned, but his trousers on, Charles watched as his fully naked lover walked closer to him, climbing up the length of the bed with his cock hard and his chest heaving. As hands moved to unzip his trousers, Charles whispered, “I love you,” and lost himself completely beneath Erik’s kiss.
XXX
The next day. Cuba.
Everything was a blur.
Days later, Charles would look back on it all and still never fully be able to piece it all together. Everything had just happened too fast. They were friends one moment, great friends and great lovers, teaming up to save the world. And then they weren’t.
There was pain, unbearable, unexplainable pain, rushing throughout Charles’ very being but he continued to keep himself in Shaw’s mind, continued to bind Shaw to his will because he refused to set him free and risk him killing Erik. He wouldn’t be responsible for Erik’s death; his damnation was in his own hands however.
They argued, shouting back and forth at each other, wrestling and crippling in the sand and rolling along the Cuban beach, as Erik tried to blow up the humans who had shot at them and as Charles tried to save Erik from himself. It was never about the humans, not really. Charles didn’t think they needed to die, he believed that one day, after a long wait and some desperate self-defence that they would have the freedom they all dreamed of. But he couldn’t bear to let Erik fall into the dark chasm that waited within him. Charles couldn’t lose Erik, because Erik had promised him forever, and Charles wouldn’t be whole without him.
“Please stop!” He shouted, wincing as Erik punched him in the face. He crawled forward, grabbing Erik’s leg and dragging him back into the sand. “Please listen!” Charles opened his mouth, ignoring the shouting from his friends and from Shaw’s. He leant close to Erik’s face, pinning the man above him through his thoughts alone and tried to tell him about their baby. If his love of Charles wouldn’t save him, perhaps their child could?
There was never the chance. A gun was firing. Someone was firing a gun at Erik and Charles screamed at Moira to stop, pleaded with Erik to listen as he scrambled to his feet. There were tears on his face. A scream left his lips. Erik paused, lowering his hand and stopped deflecting the bullets away from himself. Moira stopped firing, her gun falling from limp hands as she watched Charles fall. It was like slow motion, Charles would later think, everything slowed down and paused for a few seconds as everyone’s brains caught up with their eyes. He lay in the sand, blood spreading out around him, more blood than was normal for a wound with no severed arteries or veins, no punctured organs; just a severed spine. And the death of his child.
Erik cradled him, Charles’ head in his lap. Rough hands stroked Charles’ cheeks, tears fell from brown eyes. He removed the bullet, eyeing the wound that bled sluggishly but didn’t explain the pool of red he was kneeling in. “I was trying to protect you.”
“And I was trying to save you,” Charles responded, wheezing through the pain. But Erik would never see that, not for many, many years, and so he turned towards Moira with a snarl.
“You did this!” He screamed, reached out for the dogtag that hung around her neck. He used his ability to manipulate metal to tighten the chain around her neck, until she was on her knees gasping for breath and wheezing the way Charles was.
“No Erik, no,” Charles whispered, as he slid one hand down to rest over his stomach. “You did this.” Brown eyes gazed down mournfully, ignoring Moira as she stood and scrambled out of the way. Charles looked up with sad blue eyes, tears on his cheeks still and his lips trembling from the pain and the grief and the terror. Erik was lost to him now, they were both lost to him… and he couldn’t feel his legs.
XXX
Three weeks later. Westchester, NY.
The wheelchair turned unexpectedly. Charles reached out to grip the arm rests, heart hammering in his chest as the motion stopped and he was left sitting, vulnerable, directly facing Magneto.
Erik watched him from the doorway, his hands by his side and that ridiculous helmet upon his head. “Hello, old friend. I would have thought you’d be clever enough to know not to find a chair made of metal, no?”
“We are not friends,” Charles whispered, hands moving to clasp over his stomach. He ignored the second part of the sentence, because Hank was already in the process of making him a chair out of plastic, and as such felt no need to rise to the occasion as it were. “Your actions have told me as much, Erik. What are you doing here?”
Erik answered his question with one of his own. “Is it so wrong of me to want to see how you were? We were great friends once, you know.”
“We were a great many things. But you broke your promise Erik, not I. I did not leave you.” Using his mind, Charles steered his chair away, turning so that he could look out of the window and not at his-no, ‘biggest regret’ wasn’t the word he was searching for. He didn’t regret Erik; he could never regret what they had together. But he had failed the other man, for not seeing what kind of darkness was buried within him, for not helping him be the better man. And, so, Charles turned away from his greatest failure.
“I found your medical records, my dear. Why didn’t you tell me?” There was something in Erik’s voice, something weak and vulnerable, which forced Charles to turn back to him. His face was calm, but his emotions whirled dangerously behind his eyes, and Charles found himself lost in that gaze, remembering the first time they had stared at each other in such a way, a time that ended in their first kiss. The first of many. The beginning of the end.
“Take off the helmet, Erik.”
Surprisingly, Erik did as he was asked. Charles could only surmise that he had been right. The idea of having a child, of having family, would have been enough to tie Erik to him, to his side. Their deceased baby would have been the thing to save Erik’s soul and the humans from Erik’s genius. The moment the helmet was gone, Charles could sense Erik’s tremulous thoughts, all of his fears and regrets. A part of Erik thought it was all a lie, something Hank forged to further guilt him should he ever find out, because god knows Erik didn’t feel enough guilt for what he had done to Charles as it was. There would never be enough guilt. Nothing he could feel would ever make up for the wrongs he committed against Charles, his only friend, his one true love, his everything. The only one to ever believe in him, to trust him and love him, the one who wanted to help him, the one who saved him, and how did Erik repay him? He crippled him and killed their child…
And if it were true. If he really had killed their child, would Charles still love him? Would Charles ever regret meeting him, knowing him? Would Erik be able to live with himself knowing what he had done, the things he had caused and destroyed, what he could have had had it not been for his beliefs and fears and anger.
“Find the place between serenity and anger, my friend,” Charles whispered. The chair wheeled closer, and Charles reached up to pull Erik’s face down until they were eye to eye and then Charles opened his mind and pulled Erik inside.
When they separated, there were tears on Erik’s cheeks and his bottom lip trembled. He pulled the helmet back on in silence. Just as the door was about to close behind him, Erik whispered, “I’m so sorry, love,” and Charles waited until Erik was out of the room before he let his own tears fall.
It was the first of many similar visits. Erik would often appear without warning and without setting off the alarms or alerting the other X-Men. He never gave Charles a reason to notify the others, or to call for help, or defend himself. Erik always took off his helmet when they were alone in the room, and they spoke or played chess or reminisced. Occasionally, Erik would ask Charles to pull forward memories long forgotten about Erik’s mother, or those memories’ of Charles’ when he thought about their baby, and the two would sit in silence with tears on their cheeks and sad, soft smiles they only offered to one another. Erik had even helped him rebuild Cerebro. It was far more advanced, a completely updated version, of course, but Charles wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. They kissed on occasion; soft brushes of lips upon lips, hands on cheeks or waists and low, plaintive moans in the back of their throats.
But only once did it ever go further than that, only once did Erik’s secret visits have consequences.
XXX
1979. Westchester, NY.
The years had been kind to Erik. While he had passed the forty-five year mark the man still stood tall and proud with a full head of dark hair. His eyebrows were a little bushier than Charles remembered them being when they first met, but he was otherwise the same. Erik kept in shape, trained his mutant ability and his body well, and was in all ways the same cocky, angry man Charles had first fallen in love with.
Charles on the other hand was only thirty-eight and he was already completely bald. The lack of brown hair made his blue eyes and eyebrows that much more prominent, but sometimes Charles would still reach up to tuck a lock behind his ears before remembering he didn’t have any hair left. It was the same way with his legs. He had, as Hank promised, learnt to take care of himself after a while. All he had needed was practise and will power, because after all there was nothing one couldn’t do if they put their mind to it, but some mornings he still woke up and tried to stand, panicking when he couldn’t feel his legs, before calm acceptance swept over him and he remembered, sadly, calmly, that he couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t stand, or walk, or run, or jog; he couldn’t use his legs at all. And all because Erik had accidentally deflected a bullet into the base of his spine.
But, despite his lack of mobility, and his lack of hair, and the slight bulge his had developed on his stomach from lack of movement, Erik thought Charles was just as lovely as he had the day they first met.
“So,” Erik began, moving a rook forward across the chessboard.
“So?” Charles questioned, countering the move with slightly more difficulty than usual. He wasn’t really paying attention to the game; he was more focused on Erik’s thoughts and perceptions, trying desperately to hide something very important from the man without arousing his suspicions. His chess focus, as a result, suffered.
They were both thinking back on the last meeting, four and a half months ago; where for the first time since before Charles’ accident and Shaw’s death they had made love. It had started off with a brush of Erik’s mouth across his forehead, then his cheek and then his lips. But Erik hadn’t stopped there, instead trailing his mouth down Charles’ neck and collarbone, pulling the shirt off of him without a protest. It had been awkward, with Charles unable to move his legs, to spread them or to kneel, and so Erik had held them up, pushed against Charles’ chest and over Erik’s shoulders as he took the younger man. And when it ended, Erik had kissed him again, softer than before, but slightly more desperate and whispered, “I love you.”
“You know you always have a home here.” Charles had told him, ignoring the vulnerability he felt as Erik rearranged his legs and moved off of the bed.
“I’m in too deep, Charles. I love you, but I need to do this. I can’t stop now, not when I’m so close. Join me, join me and we can be together.”
“You know I can’t do that, Erik.” And Erik had sneered at him, accused him of loving the humans more than him, more than his own kind, and left him there naked and sticky and hurting and had avoided him until this moment.
“So,” Erik said again, shifting awkwardly in his chair.
“So, did you change your mind?” Charles asked suddenly. Erik startled, dropping his knight and glancing up at Charles.
“I haven’t. Have you?”
“No,” Charles whispered. His free hand went to his stomach, pressing against the hard bulge that Erik couldn’t see because Charles had told him he couldn’t. “But I thought you might say that. I think it’s time to leave now, my friend. As much as I love you, you can’t be here, not for another five months at least. Please keep the helmet off until you are outside, my dear, dear friend. Goodbye, Erik.”
“Goodbye, Charles. I’m a little busy at the moment so it might be sometime before I come to see you again. I thought I should tell you, in case you worried. You always were a worrier, my friend.”
“And with good reason,” Charles said with a smile, cleaning the chessboard up as Erik made his way to the door still carrying his helmet. “I am sorry,” he added but Erik didn’t hear him. He glanced down at the baby growing within him, the swollen mound that was his stomach and child all at once, thinking back to the ‘cure’ that had accidentally given him this ability. “I am sorry, Erik, but it’s for the best.”
XXX
August 1980. Unknown location.
Magneto lowered the newspaper, his fingers clenching around the edges as he gripped it in anger. It was just a small section, placed somewhere in the personal ads, but it was a congratulations for Professor Charles Xavier, renowned geneticist and teacher, Headmaster of Xavier’s Institute for Higher Learning, on the birth of his child. The mother’s name had remained unmentioned, but the child had arrived on July 31st through home delivery at the mansion with the help of Dr Hank McCoy and friends of the proud father.
It wasn’t Moira MacTaggart’s child, Erik knew. She had been stationed at a laboratory at Muir Island for the last year and hadn’t left since and Charles hadn’t visited either. It wasn’t Raven’s because Mystique had been with him since the altercation on that Cuban beach. And aside from those two and himself, there was no one else that Charles would have trusted enough to be so vulnerable with, to open himself up so completely and helplessly.
Magneto snorted, before he folded the paper in half and laid it down. Of course the newspaper hadn’t mentioned a mother, he thought adding up the dates in his head. Charles was the ‘mother’, and it wouldn’t do to mention something like that in the current less than Mutant friendly environment. However, that wasn’t something that Erik particularly cared about, because one day he would win and then the homo sapiens would no longer matter, their opinions would no longer count, and the homo superiors would no longer have to hide who they were.
What did matter, what did cause Erik to frown at his coffee with furrowed eyebrows, was the knowledge that if Charles had birthed the child, then he, himself, must be the father. And Charles had never told him.
XXX
Next day. Westchester, NY.
Erik managed to make his way into the newly created nursery without attracting anyone’s attention. He could see various X-Men through the window, along with a handful of students playing on the basketball court. He could hear someone talking through the wall in the next room, Charles and someone whose voice he didn’t recognize. But his attention remained on the cooing bundle in the centre of the crib.
It was a lovely crib, made from mahogany wood and it looked to be hand made with small flowers carved into all four legs. There was mesh and lace along its top, acting as a shade for the baby that had wiggled its way down to the bottom end of the cot, its pale blue blankets tangled at its feet. Blue eyes, like Charles’, stared up at him, curious and unafraid of the tall helmeted man that watched him. Magneto reached out, carefully and slowly to slide his arms in under the baby’s body. The child gave a soft gurgle, its eyelids fluttering as he was moved, and in the next room Charles saw Erik through Harry’s eyes and stopped mid-sentence.
The chair appeared in the doorway to Harry’s nursery, and behind him was the baby’s wetnurse (but since they bottle fed, she was really only a nurse or a glorified babysitter, but ‘wetnurse’ had been on her resume and Charles had been asked to address her as such).
When Harry had thought of Erik, Charles had been momentarily petrified. He worried frantically as they made their way into the room next door about what Erik might to do his baby, whether he would hurt Harry or take him away or hate him, and there was nothing Charles might have been able to do to prevent any of those actions. But Erik only held him gently, glancing down at him reverently, awestruck and silent, and then those brown eyes looked up and caught Charles’ gaze and the younger man was forced to look away. There was gratitude in that gaze. While Charles knew Erik was angry, he could see it even if he couldn’t sense it, the man was beyond grateful that Charles had kept this child, even though it was Erik’s actions that had lost them their last child.
“What’s his name?” Erik whispered. The child lay calmly in his arms, fingers brushing over the red cloak he wore around his shoulders.
“Harrison Erik Xavier.” The baby let out a yawn at the sound of his name, before turning his face at the sound of the voice he recognized already.
“You hid him from me.”
Harry yawned again, and the woman who was cowering behind Charles suddenly stepped forward. “It’s time for the young man’s nap,” she told them, glancing between them both. “Perhaps you’d like to have this talk in the other room, Sir?” She seemed to ask, but Charles knew her thoughts well enough to know that it was more of an order.
“Come, my friend,” Charles said to Erik, waving his hand towards the door. “Let Marlena do her job.”
He rolled the chair back into the hallway, and glanced back over his shoulder. He watched Erik, who looked unwilling and hesitant as he handed the baby to Marlena, his fingers clenching as the child yawned and snuggled against the woman’s chest instead of his own. “Let’s make this quick, Charles.”
The door closed behind them, and the couple made their way into Charles’ bedroom where he set up the chessboard; it had become something of a tradition between them over the years, and despite the new addition to their family nothing had really changed between them.
Erik moved first, speaking at the same time. “Why did you hide him from me?”
Charles tried to explain, about how dangerous Magneto had become, how scared he had been for Erik’s sake, his worry that their child could have been hurt even inadvertently, the fear that Erik might take the baby away, to ignore the choice that their future grown-up son should be able to make on his own. But before Erik could respond, Charles was shouting, calling out codenames that Erik didn’t recognize and rolling his chair towards the door.
Erik followed. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but from the look of panic on Charles’ face, Erik knew it was bad. In the hallway, three people met them. There was a man with long sideburns and a cigar hanging out of his mouth, a woman with snow white hair and dark skin, and Hank McCoy himself, big and blue and exactly how Erik remembered him.
“What is it, Professor?” The one who answered to Storm asked.
Charles slumped back in his seat, no longer looking as desperate as he did defeated, and Erik knew in that moment what exactly was wrong. “HARRY!” He shouted, pushing past the X-Men and rushing into the room beside Charles’ bedroom.
The room was just as they had left it, except Marlena was sprawled across the floor unmoving with her eyes wide open. She wasn’t even breathing, but Charles could hear her thought rushing like a tsunami through her terrified mind. He focused on her thoughts, pulling what he could from them, sifting through them until he was able to deal with the situation without losing control. Erik, unable to find the child that he had been holding less than fifteen minutes ago, the boy he had fallen in love with at first glance, had lost himself to his anger and grief. The three X-Men backed out of the room, as Magneto threw things at the walls, kicked and punched the bed, and bent any and all metal with his mind until the perfect nursery looked more like a bombsite. At the centre of it all was Charles, sitting in his chair and glancing down at the woman who was just about to come out of whatever trance she had been placed in.
“Charles,” Erik breathed, and it was a desperate plea for help, for something, anything, to bring them back their son.
“She saw a man, older than us, with a long white beard. He told her something about a prophecy and pointed a stick at her face. When she fell, she could only see his feet, but he took Harry and vanished before her eyes.”
“A mutant? A mutant took our son?” Erik asked, slumping to the floor as shock began to set in.
“I don’t know,” Charles whispered, but he couldn’t help but think they had and for the same reason that he had tried to keep the child from Erik in the first place.
XXX
July 1991. Surrey, England.
The letters were still coming. No matter how many they burnt or binned or tore up, the letters just kept coming.
They were from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and each of them was address to ‘Harry Potter, the Master Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive, Surrey’. Why, Petunia didn’t know. The boy wasn’t even a Potter, though Harry might have been his real name. Petunia Evan’s sister was supposedly this boy’s mother, but Lily had told her in confidence mind you that they had adopted the boy after his family died. He was supposedly from New York, and Albas had found him abandoned while visiting the American government. The boy was odd, different, but not in the same way Lily and James Potter had been. They had been magical, a witch and a wizard, and Harry was supposed to be just like them. But he wasn’t. He was something else, something other, and he terrified Petunia and her family.
The boy in question was sitting at the head of the kitchen table, his hands folded beside his plate and his back straight and eyes downcast. Vernon, her husband, and Dudley, their son, sat at the very other end of the table, avoiding looking at Harry whenever possible.
When the letter had first started to arrive, Harry had demanded they tell them who the letters were from. With his voice inside of their heads, with his will controlling their own, they had had no choice but to answer him. Upon learning that the Headmaster of Hogwarts was the same man who had left him with the Dursley family Harry had decided he didn’t particularly want to go to Hogwarts. But he would like to leave the Dursleys. As well as he had them trained by this point, they were still only human, less than him inferior, hating and fearing him for his gifts, ignorant of what he was, what he could be. He was a god. And they should have been worshipping him, but they didn’t, and that made Harry hate them more than their neglect of him did. He deserved much better, his parents would have treated him better-his real ones, not the foolish ones who adopted him at Dumbledore’s bequest, who died for the cause of a silly old man and abandoned him to human filth.
His real parents had lived in New York.
“Boy,” Vernon said gruffly, beady eyes refusing to meet Harry’s gaze. “I found mention of a school for freaks in New York. We’ve already contacted the Headmaster.”
“In New York?” Harry questioned his voice soft and sibilant. He reached up to rub the lightning bolt shaped scar upon his forehead, thinking of his uncle’s use of the word freak, and wondering if he meant his real parents, who had gifted him with his powers over the mind, or of his adoptive parents’ kind… of the Dark Lord Voldemort who had left a part of his soul behind on the night he tried to kill Harry, and of the magic that action had given him. Harry was more than human, more than Muggle. But he was also more than a Wizard. He was something else entirely, though what he wasn’t sure, but he knew he was better than everyone else he had ever met and there was little anyone could do to disprove that.
“Yes, I think I would like that. What is the name of the school?”
“It’s called the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning,” Petunia answered him, wringing a tea cloth between her hands. Harry peeked into her mind, catching the tail end of a telephone conversation with who Harry assumed was the headmaster and the vicious thought of soon, soon he’ll be gone.
“Feeling the love, aunt,” Harry murmured under his breath, glancing up at worried blue eyes which closed in relief as Harry chose not to punish her for her less than pleasant thoughts. Soon he’ll be gone, and Harry couldn’t wait.
XXX
September 1991. Westchester, NY.
The name of the school on the pamphlet Charles Xavier had given him read ‘the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters’. Harry glanced between the pamphlet and his harried looking aunt and the kindly looking man in the wheelchair and snarled angrily. He threw the sheet of paper down and whirled around to face the Muggle.
“An institution? You thought you could leave me at an institution and not face any consequences?” Harry snarled. He reached out with his mind, tearing through her thoughts. He ignored that she had honestly thought this was a school, because it couldn’t be. The headmaster was a doctor, the strange looking man with his face covered was introduced as a doctor too, and no one named a place of learning ‘gifted’ unless they meant ‘touched in the head’. “How dare you, filthy human! You thought you could trick me!”
“It is a school!” Petunia screamed. She was on her knees before the eleven year old boy, her hands gripping at the sides of her head as he tore around her mind, pulling thoughts and emotions to the forefront, causing her pain for the sake of pain, grinning down at her maliciously.
That is enough, a voice echoed through Harry’s mind. In his shock, because that was the first time anyone had ever been inside of his head, Harry stopped what he was doing and looked away from his aunt. My name is Professor Charles Francis Xavier. And yes, while I am a doctor, it is not of the sort that you are thinking of. You are perfectly safe here, Harry. We are not here to hurt you.
There was something very familiar about the child’s mind, something that made Charles smile softly and think back on the month he had been able to glance at his own child’s thoughts, how similar they seemed, though one had been a baby and the other almost a teenager. He didn’t read the other students’ minds, at least not without permission, and he couldn’t compare any of them to Harrison. But this boy, this Harry, he was like mental déjà vu and as the boy heaved in front of him, angry and sullen, Charles couldn’t help but think back on to the memory of another angry boy he had known. He saw Erik, in Erik’s own mind, as his mother died, panting with anger and exertion, glaring up through his fringe just as Harry was doing.
The boy would have been about the right age, Charles couldn’t stop himself from thinking. And he had the same name. And though his eyes were now green, with the tiniest hint of red ringing the pupil, Charles’ brain immediately acknowledged the fact that baby’s eye colours changed as they grew. He hadn’t seen Harrison grow enough to know what colour eyes the boy would have had.
“I am your son?” The boy asked. Unknown to Charles, the boy had been taking a trip with him down memory lane. Every memory that Charles had re-experienced, Harry was with him, scrutinizing and analysing and eventually coming to the same conclusion as the bald man before him.
From the trees that surrounded the estate, Erik Lehnsherr watched in suspense. He had heard that Charles would be receiving a new student, one who was supposedly as powerful a mind-reader as Charles himself was, and that was something that Erik needed to see for himself to believe. Mystique waited beside him, blue in body with long red hair, as naked as the day she was born, and they glanced at each other and then back to the child who was staring down at Charles in curiosity.
“You can come out, you know,” the boy called over his shoulder. “You think too loudly, so how did you expect to hide from me?” Mystique stepped out of the trees. She held her hands up placatingly as everyone turned towards her. “Both of you,” Harry amended.
Magneto stepped forward, face slack with confusion and awe, but his eyes were bright and wide. He felt a thrill run through him. This was their child, they had found their child and how powerful he seemed. “You can hear my thoughts?” Erik asked, as he made his way to stand directly in front of the child.
“Yes,” he said, turning to Charles, “can’t you?”
“No, my boy, I’m afraid that helmet of your father’s prevents me from reading his thoughts.” Charles watched Harry’s face avidly for some reaction to Erik’s identity, but the boy merely smiled softly.
“He thinks I’m his son as well, so professor, you didn’t manage to take me by surprise. No one had managed as such yet, but I still have plenty of life to live so you never know.” He brushed a lock of dark hair behind his ear, and Charles copied the motion, but without touching any hair for he had none. He had performed that same motion for the majority of his life, and even at times now when he forgot about the changed his body had gone through he still attempted to brush his hair behind his ears.
“How can you read me?” Erik questioned, looking astounded as Harry’s voice echoed through his head and Charles’ at the same time.
I have always believed that there is nothing you cannot do if you put your mind to it, the boy whispered in their heads. I do not believe in limits.
“Professor?” Hank asked, sounding worried. Charles could sense he was uncomfortable, hiding behind the thick black scarf, and signalled for him to remove it. Harry didn’t bat an eyelash at the sight of the blue, furred face that was bared to him, and Charles realized with a chuckled that Harry had probably pulled the picture already from his mind.
“It is fine, Hank. This is Harrison,” he told his old friend, “you remember Harrison.”
“He’s nothing like I thought he’d be.” Hank whispered.
“Everyone had a limit,” Charles said after a moment, choosing to ignore Hank’s statement.
“I don’t. I can do whatever I want, daddy, because I want it to happen. Shall I prove it?” He didn’t wait for a response. Some might have likened him to a young Tom Riddle, dark hair, pale skin, dressed in plain clothing and thin as a rake, so angry and spiteful, so much better than everyone else, but when Erik looked at the boy he saw himself in Auswitchz. There was little of Charles in the boy, except his power. “I want you to stand up.”
“I can’t,” Charles whispered softly, looking suddenly sad. Erik, remembering why Charles couldn’t stand, flinched.
“I want you to stand, so stand up!” And the voice was suddenly in his head. Against his better judgement, Charles ignored the rational thought that he would only fall, and pulled his legs off of the chair’s foot holders and onto the floor. Stand up, stand up, stand up, the mantra continued within his mind, and Charles Xavier stood up. “Now walk towards me,” Harry ordered. And the man did.
Charles collapsed as Harry relinquished control over his mind, but Erik was there to catch him. He gathered his old lover carefully into his arms and brought him back to his chair, placing him down gently. Charles looked astounded, and there was a wide smile on his face. “That was amazing!” He exclaimed. He wheeled towards the boy, “how did you do that?”
“I believed. There are no limits to what I can do when I put my mind to it. I’m better than others, stronger, more powerful. I,” he glanced at the still cowering Petunia, “am a god among insects.”
“Sounds familiar?” Hank muttered worriedly, glancing at Erik, at Magneto who wanted to bring about the end of human kind and replace them with a society of Mutants.
“I believe I’ll attend your school. Human, leave now. If you tell Dumbledore where I am, I’ll know about it, and then you will be sorry.” Petunia nodded, she handed over a bundle of notes that Vernon had ‘offered’ Harry to purchase school supplies, and then she took off running across the grounds towards the gate they had entered through. Just as she neared the road Harry whispered, “Trip,” and Petunia did, falling directly into the path of a speeding car. She hit the ground hard and bloody, as Harry smiled to himself, and she didn’t get up.
Erik glanced at the boy, a twitch of his mouth the only reaction to Harry’s action. Charles and Hank both looked horrified, Hank looking more disgusted, while Charles looked afraid and resigned. Erik’s hand fell onto Harry’s shoulder and he squeezed, knowing why the boy had done what he had, to protect himself, to protect their kind from the humans, and he approved.
Once upon a time, Charles had thought that their baby would be enough to save Erik from himself, from the darkness. And perhaps that could have been possible if someone hadn’t kidnapped that child from them, stealing him away as Erik believed to fight against Mutants on the humans’ behalf. Now, Harrison was back before them, older and stronger, and wiser to the ways of the world in the same manner Erik was, in the ways that survivors were. Charles could never relate to that; he had been ignored as a child, but he had friends and nannies and aunts and uncles and his Raven. Harry and Erik had had no one through their suffering, and they had come out angrier, stronger people for it. Charles loved them both, but he feared them as well.
Erik led Harry towards the school, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder.
Charles watched them go. He thought about how he had tried to save Erik, and how he had failed. And he knew without a doubt that history would repeat itself, because Harrison was too much his father’s son.
The End
* * *
Well, that’s that done. I didn’t particularly like it, except the end part, but that’s mainly because I think I messed up the X-Men part. I’m seeing the film again tomorrow, but didn’t think I’d have time to write this then (really must do thesis stuff fml), so here it is now. I tried to do a Logan/Harry one years ago and never got past the second paragraph, so this is progress for me… even if it sucks! Let me know what you thought!