Fic: Beneath the Surface - (7/?) Charles/Erik
Title: Beneath the Surface (7/?), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Fandom: X-Men: First Class, Charles/Erik
Genre: AU; Drama/Romance
Rating: R for this chapter, possibly up to NC-17 later.
Word Count: 5535
Summary: Charles is a young marine biologist and activist that, one day, makes the find of his lifetime. Inspired by this fanart
Warnings: Major angst in this chapter, mention of torture and violence.
Author's Note: Still un-beta'ed. Again thank you all so much for the lovely feedback. I'm loving all the input and questions, as well as the constructive criticism.
The water parted in soft waves in front of his hands, the movement created by his body alone as he felt the weight of the water and the small bubbles captured in it wander down to his feet. Though he was in his element it was in every way different to what he knew: the texture of the water not as dense, the acoustic waves beneath the surface caused only by the sounds he was creating, carried not as far as they could, oddly reflected by the limited space of the pool. The lack of salt in the water making it smell and taste differently, slightly bitter with something that stung in his nose and eyes a little. And the only color the water had was an illusion created by the sky blue walls and floor of the basin, completely translucent otherwise.
He should not be ungrateful and find only the disadvantages. At least the pool was big enough to swim a few strokes, to move freely within it and, if he closed his eyes and tried to shut out his senses for a moment, made him feel almost at home for a split-second.
He felt that he could control the changing of his body a lot easier in freshwater; his subconscious did not seem to recognize his surrounding as naturally and easily as ocean water, but after a few lanes there and back his muscles became restless and heavy, twitching with the unusual and unnatural effort of swimming with his legs, and he simply let go. Completely under water, the pressure in his lungs just there for a few moments, water filled them and refreshed him. His legs became boneless, all feeling in them lost for a short moment, just a soft, tingling pull from his waist down until his sensation came back and he felt it deep and strong with the first movement of his lower body. His arms only slightly extended for balance and to prevent him swim into the walls of the pool, he crossed the entire length and made a turn, sharper and tighter than he would have been able to completely transformed. A hybrid in hybrid surrounding - neither one thing nor the other. Neither unpleasant nor fully satisfying, but he needed his natural movements to assure himself that he was not losing his ability to swim, even though that was unlikely.
As he dived, floating slowly above the ground of the pool, sound echoed through the water faintly, and Erik surfaced, feeling the gills in his neck close with the change of pressure and, after one slightly scratching breath air filling his lungs again. Alert and willing his body to obey his control should he need it, he reached for the right wall of the pool, the spot farthest away from the entrance area and the eyes of anyone that came inside. But then he recognized the sounds, the faint echo off the walls, familiar, and he allowed himself to relax.
“You can come inside if you want,” he called out, his voice only as loud as needed to reach Charles' ears behind the wall towards the exit.
A faint chuckle reached his ears, and then the sound of those familiar steps before he saw the man emerge from around the corner, hands in the pockets of his pants and gaze on the floor tiles, not quite daring to look.
It had been difficult at first to allow himself to trust a land-walker - his last encounter had taught him well not to do so - but it had been gestures like these, the hesitance and the distance the man had always kept although Erik was sure, could sense it, that there was great curiosity in him. And something else as he had seen yesterday, something Erik could not quite comprehend and identify.
“I brought you a new t-shirt. Agnes was just done with the laundry,” Charles explained, his gaze twitching up and towards Erik for a fraction but not completely. “She's out to go grocery shopping with Hank now. Alex is busy outside.” Which left nobody to come in and see something they should not, Erik understood.
“Do you not like swimming?” Erik asked, although he was pretty certain he knew the answer. The truth was that he really would not mind Charles joining him if he wanted to, and he guessed the only reason that the man never had so far was his sense of consideration.
“Well, as a matter of fact I do,” he replied, confirming Erik's suspicions, “I just thought you'd prefer to be alone.”
“What makes you think that?” he challenged him a bit further, even enjoying this little game that was as new to him as many things had been to the other man.
Charles shrugged and extended one hand in a waving gesture, his lips opening but no sound leaving them.
“You don't expect me to stay away when you walk around your house, do you?” Erik asked and found an amused smile on his lips as he heard Charles chuckle.
At last, the other man looked at him, but his eyes immediately drifted from Erik's to the rest of his body, from the large dorsal fin sticking out to his long, thick tail below the water, the fins at the end of his elongated lower half touching the ground of the pool even though he was not in a fully upright position. There was a very faint gasp coming from Charles then, his lips parting barely visibly but the fascination and awe so clearly tangible that it filled Erik with an odd, mixed feeling of amusement and pride.
He had seen surprised and shocked gazes on him before, but there was none of the greedy look on Charles' face now, no superiority of a being that thought itself in power over him. Nothing that made him feel exposed and threatened. Just pure, innocent and curious admiration.
Erik was suddenly tempted to show off. The confinements of the pool did not allow for more than him diving swiftly and, with only a few swaying movements of his tail fin, reaching the other side of the pool, surfacing in front of Charles.
“You're much too decent and considerate,” he said, looking up into Charles' slightly widened eyes.
He shrugged with a shy laugh. “I hope I can take that as a compliment.”
Erik only gave him a very small, slightly teasing smile before he turned and slowly swam in a large half-ellipsis through the pool, and from below he could hear the steps that followed him with equally casual slowness. When Erik surfaced again Charles had reached the bench by the wall at the right side of the pool. Awkwardly, he sat down on it, and Erik almost rolled his eyes.
“I don't have my swim trunks here,” Charles explained who seemed to have caught Erik's look. He did take off his shoes then, though, and rolled up the legs of the pants he was wearing up to his knees.
Erik did not comment on this as he watched Charles get up and sit down on the edge of the basin, his feet dangling into the water. He was used to the land-walkers' obsession with clothing by now, had known it in his childhood too, though he did not completely understand it for a purpose other than protecting the body from cold. But there were several things he did not fully understand, and he supposed he was not alone in that.
“Is the temperature alright for you?” Charles asked as Erik had come to a halt again, hands on the edge of the pool less than an arm's length from Charles' feet.
“It is a little warmer than the waters I'm used to but not too warm,” he replied, thankful for the fact that Charles had turned down the heating of the pool upon their arrival. Land-walkers really seemed quite sensitive about temperatures. “Too cold for you?”
Charles chuckled again and shook his head, his gaze averted, though Erik could clearly see the effort it took Charles not to constantly stare. “It's alright, I suppose.”
“Then why don't you come inside?”
The smile on Charles' lips widened and lingered, though his gaze was not on Erik, somewhere on the moving surface of the water behind. Creases appeared on his brow as the smile slowly faded, and Erik could sense Charles' heartbeat change, pace up slightly, neither with fear nor with the elated, odd nervousness he had believed to sense when he had been taught how to shave.
“Erik, we need to talk.” Charles' face suddenly turned tense, but he did look back at Erik, his blue eyes as soft as they had ever been when he looked at Erik. So he nodded, despite the unpleasant feeling of foreboding in his gut as he still held on to the edge of the pool.
“You need to tell me more about Shaw,” Charles started, and his voice sounded a lot more strained than Erik was used to. “We're not making any progress, and I need to know whatever there is that would help us get something we can use. Either something about that facility of his or whatever else you.... I've not had the heart to ask you, and I wish I could spare you having to relive whatever happened back then, my friend.” Charles had leaned forward slightly; Erik could see the creases on his forehead more prominently now and that look of sympathy and regret as Charles bit his lower lip before he continued. “But we really need more information. Otherwise I'm running out of ideas what we could do.”
Erik could not say that this surprised him; he had known that, sooner or later, it might come to this, that, even though Charles was tip-toeing his way around him, as Raven had put it, sooner or later he'd want to know the whole story. Erik had just felt too comfortable living under the illusion that those memories would never have to surface more than being his constant companion, a knowledge and sadness somewhere in the back of his mind that had been pushed farther and farther away in those past few days.
“What do you need to know?” he asked, his own voice suddenly fainter, not quite able to keep his eyes focused on Charles.
“Everything,” the other man replied, urgency in his tone despite its gentleness. “Anything... whatever you can tell me.”
“Alright.” Erik nodded, but his eyes were still on the water, the light of the dimmed wall lamps softly reflected on the almost still surface. He closed his eyes, and it was almost like he could see the sunlight streaming into the depth of blue around him then. A strong current with warmer water below clearing it of particles, murky turning into clear. The ocean pulsing, living around him as far as he could see, feel and smell.
“You have to understand that our senses work differently when we're completely transformed. We... we don't think like you do, or like I do now. It's a different state of being,” he tried to explain, guessing that it was impossible to find words that would even so much as give Charles a vague idea of what it felt like. Completely in tune with the ocean and everything in it, not needing anything else but the feel of water and whatever it offered. “I suppose it's the most efficient way for us to adjust to our environment, but in a way it also makes us most vulnerable. To many sensations we react like real sharks then, and that also means we're as easily fooled. Especially when we're hungry.”
He noticed his own voice had gotten cooler, dread stirring up in him and what he was going to remember. He heard Charles breathe in a little deeper, but no words came from him, though Erik was fully aware of the slightly faster heartbeats now.
“You probably know how humans lure sharks to their boats,” Erik went on, his mind reeling around a possibility to speed this up and give only the important details. But it didn't make a difference; he was already there, in the water that day that had changed everything. “I didn't know whether my father's hunger was simply greater than his sense for caution, or whether we had all become careless over the years because your kind has shown interest and liking in ours, feeding us, climbing into small metal cages to get a few pictures. We had always tried to stay away from such boats before, but that day...”
The smell of blood in the water, intoxicating and inviting. And then the electromagnetic waves of a large chunk of prey being dropped into the water. His mother swimming past him, her snout briefly nudging him to tell him to stay away. She probably sensed the danger where Erik didn't understand. Something rattled above, an odd noise Erik had never heard before. He saw his father circle the bloody piece of flesh in the water from below, ready to make a leap. Saw his mother swim up. Felt her fear and could almost taste it in the water.
Another noise as odd as the first, and something silver gleamed up right above the surface. Then there was pressure, shock waves of a sudden halt of mass above. And more blood. So much blood, but it tasted different. Smelled strangely familiar. Rattle. Swoosh. Something shot past his mother's body, barely missing her before the strange object was slowed down in the weightlessness of water.
His father... he could hardly see him. Too much blood in the water, violent waves around his thrashing body. His mother turned around and swam toward him, straight at him, pushed him down and away from the ship. Telling him to swim away, to follow his instincts and escape, but Erik couldn't. Couldn't move anywhere but toward the rush of blood and the thrashing shock waves above.
“Shaw shot my father with a harpoon before he could have fed. I wanted to help him even though my mother tried to get me away. It was too late. He was bleeding to death already as they pulled him up, and I think they were aiming for me as well.” And they should have hit him. Should have ended his life before he could have seen and endured what followed after. But that fate had not been meant for him.
Erik could almost smell the blood and panic that had filled the waters then, and he had to swallow around the knot in his throat and stomach before he could continue, trying to block out the images but failing.
“My mother transformed then, shifted to half-human form. To save me, to get to the men that were shooting at us and make them understand.”
No! Stop! Don't kill my son!
Long, coppery-golden hair swirled around her upper body as she dove up. Erik could hardly hear her voice over the noise of his father still thrashing against his restraints. He tried to catch the ropes, bite them, tear them apart, but there was too much movement, too much blood.
Something else shot through the water then. A sound much higher in pitch. His mother screamed in pain. Two, three more of those odd, high swooshing sounds, and something shot sharply through his back, twitching through his entire body, rendering him motionless and helpless as everything faded to black. Darkness and blood.
“She succeeded. In a way,” Erik said bitterly as he pressed his eyes shut, trying to focus on nothing but the darkness in front of them. There was no blood here, no sounds of fear and death. That had been a long, long time ago. “Shaw didn't try to kill my mother and me, at least not at first. He captured us and took us onto his boat where he apparently found out what we could fully transform into, once dry. I didn't know where he took us. We stayed on the boat the entire time.”
Cold metal around him, a small cell with odd things he had never seen in his life. Erik was shivering and trembling, his naked back pressed against the wall, feet drawn up to his body, hugging his knees. His mother wasn't with him, but he knew she was still alive. Had to be. Faintly, in the distance, he heard screams of pain and terror. He didn't understand, couldn't understand what these people, the land-walkers, were doing with them.
The door opened and blinding light streamed into the darkness, cold and garish, so unlike the sun or candles or small wall lights with little flowers on the lamp shades. A man stood there, a tall figure against the bright light, but Erik could see his cool smile and the look in his eyes, and he knew immediately he did not like this man. He was afraid.
“I didn't see my mother during the first... I don't know, five, six days maybe. Shaw kept me with him, dressed me, fed me. He tried to make me believe he was being kind to me, that he was my friend, but...”
You're an extraordinary boy, Erik, but there's so much for you to learn. And for me to learn about you. You'll see we'll become good friends, you and I. You will help me in ways you can't yet fathom, son.
He patted Erik's shoulder as they looked out onto the ocean, moving around them. So close and yet unreachable. Separated by thick glass that let him see everything and taunted him. At night, he would be back in his cell, and all there was left was the soft movement of the waves below.
He could not escape. But even if there was a possibility, Erik could not leave his mother. Not while he still heard her faint cries in the distance. While she was still alive.
They came for him at night. A man Erik had seen before that spoke in an odd language he did not understand and another one that he hadn't seen before. And Erik was even more afraid than he'd been of Shaw. At least Shaw had never pulled him out by his hands and feet, laughed at his cries for help. Maybe Shaw was there somewhere, would come to help him and not allow these men to hurt him. To pull him down the corridor with hard a hard, painful grip around his wrists.
“One night they brought me into his... his laboratory. I think it was a storage room within the boat that he had converted for that purpose. There was a glass tank - he must have gotten it the night the boat had berthed somewhere. I don't know where it was. He didn't let me look outside anymore. So they threw me in the tank and waited until I'd transform. My mother must have resisted to do so. Or at least to transform completely.”
Erik, please don't disappoint me.
Shaw was there as well. Erik hadn't seen him until he stepped in front of the tank, looking up to where Erik was floating in the water, his head above the surface. Shaw smiled at him, a thin-lipped, odd kind of smile that didn't reach his eyes.
Don't be afraid, Erik. All you have to do is show me how remarkable you are.
He wanted to believe him, wanted to trust him. Do as he said and everything would be alright. And maybe he'd let them go, him and his mother, once he had seen. Erik's fingers reached for the glass wall of the tank. It was too small for him to fully transform. Barely enough space to even contain him once in full shark form. He'd panic, even more than now. He wouldn't be able to move, to turn. Forced to remain upright.
His breath went quicker as he felt the familiar pull in his lower body. His heart was racing, thundering in his chest. He looked at Shaw, shook his head.
I can't. It's not big enough. I can't.
Panic. Fear. Shaw nodded at the man with the strange language. Something tingled in his neck, crept down his spine. Then the water around him was on fire, myriads of tiny spears shot into his body and made him scream.
“He used electricity. Shocked me, and when that didn't work he injected me with needles. I don't remember everything that happened then.”
He still floated. Barely conscious, numbness in his body and a feeling like he would suffocate, drown with the weights pulling him down by his tail fin. No way for him to even try crawl out of the tank. Then there was darkness again. Fear. Pain as he awoke. Strapped to a cold metal table, needles in his arm. He couldn't stop himself from crying, shame and humiliation adding to the physical pain. The hand, gently stroking a sweaty lock of hair out of his face, should not be comforting. But it was all he got.
When they brought his mother in - the next morning, or maybe days later, he couldn't tell - Erik barely recognized her. Her face was bruised, red and blue, her cheeks sunken and eyes rimmed with dark shadows. Her coppery-golden hair hung in sweat- and dirt-soaked strands around her face and she looked so fragile that Erik thought she'd break in the middle if someone wanted her to.
“When I couldn't do what Shaw asked me to, because the tank was too small for me to shift, he threatened to kill my mother if I didn't cooperate. There was a second tank then, an even smaller one, and he put her in it. Her feet were shackled to the bottom of the tank, spread wide. There wasn't much time. I was afraid it would tear her apart if she'd change in the water, so...”
Dread ran through every fiber of his body as he saw his mother in the tank. Saw the panic in her green eyes. Erik thought he'd be sick, his gut clenching with fear and despair. But she tried to smile at him, unable to speak to him through water and glass. She smiled as if she wanted to tell him it was all going to be alright, that he shouldn't worry, shouldn't be afraid for her. Shouldn't feel like something was tearing his chest apart, shouldn't want to break down or die.
When the water surrounded him, lukewarm and stale, he simply let it happen, felt his whole body surrendering to the might of the water as he blocked out any fear of the constricted space. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his entire life.
“I did it. After that it was the same every night and every day. Shaw wanted to see something, wanted to try another experiment, and he forced either of us to play along while threatening to harm the other. I don't know for how long it went on, but I caught him talking to his men about something he was building for us. Where he could get us to show him more of our 'tricks'.”
His father had been lucky, Erik thought one morning when he heard cries and whimpers from the room next door where his mother was with Shaw. Lucky that he had died quickly and neither had to see nor endure what Erik and his mother were enduring every day. Half of the time in water, the other half out, instruments prodding at them, strange machines and devices to restrain them and do things to them he had not known were even possible. He could see his mother slowly fading away. She was fed, just like him, but not nearly enough to keep her healthy. Maybe because she was older and bigger and Shaw feared what she might do. How he wished he was full-grown already. He'd be able to defend himself, defend her. Find a way out of these horrors.
He was past longing for comfort, hoping to be treated well, after all, if he cooperated. Shaw never kept his promise, only wanted more, and Erik had learned to feel something about the man that had previously been alien to him. Hatred. Hatred so strong that, in the hours he suffered most, he imagined leaping out of the tank and simply ripping him to pieces, limp by limp. To make him fear Erik as Erik feared him. But he never could. Was never strong or brave enough to do anything but watching his mother die, slowly, day by day.
He wished it could go faster when the experiments became even more gruesome. Needles and electricity weren't enough anymore. A knife cut into his mother's tail, sliced deep through the thick skin and filled the tank she was in with blood. He could smell it even over the distance.
“One day he tried something new. He wanted to see if we still healed as quickly in human form as we did as sharks. We don't. And she nearly bleed to death before he threw her back into the tank. I couldn't do anything from where I was. And... then something happened. Someone came in, a child. From the inside, the door could only be opened with a key, but from the outside it had a normal handle. So my mother saw it as an opportunity, maybe the only we'd ever get, and she transformed completely.”
The small girl stared at the tanks in shock, big, bright eyes wide as she held on to a doll she was carrying.
Oh, no sweetheart, you can't be in here.
Before Shaw could go to her, Erik's mother had fully transformed within the tank. Blood was still gushing from the wound in her tail, but she thrashed wildly in the basin, water spilling over the edges. Something crackled, sparks flew and a light flickered. And Erik knew what she was doing, understood even before her body leaped over the rim of the glass tank. But he was so afraid, so scared to leave her, his heart clenching in his chest and his entire body shaking. His lower body didn't want to listen to him, didn't want to transform back to legs, but he had to try, had to fight. Maybe find a way to safe her too.
She came crashing down onto a table, something bursting, clanking sounds filling the room. One of the men was directly in her way as her body thrashed sideways, and he howled out in pain as her jaws sank deep into his flesh, nearly tearing him apart in the middle but not killing him yet.
Good, Erik thought. He deserved it. And suddenly, he found the strength to gain control over his body, feeling his tail grow heavy and motionless for a moment as he heaved himself over the edge of the tank.
No! Stay here!
Shaw couldn't reach him. He was trapped between the toppled over table and his mother, still moving violently with all her might, snatching at them should they try to go after her son. Another man had one of those long, sharp spears and he aimed it straight at her head.
Mom!
It had all happened so fast, just a few heartbeats long. The girl still stood in the door, and Erik could feel how frightened she was. He felt sorry for her, but he had no time to worry about it. As he crawled to his feet, naked and wet, he desperately looked around for something to defend himself with. To hurt Shaw and the other man. Kill them if he had to. No. He wanted to. But there was no time, just not enough time.
As blood and water formed a bright red puddle beneath his mother, her shape shrunk, her fins disappeared, blue-gray skin turned to pale and sickly yellowish and her golden locks were drenched in blood from where the spear stuck from her neck.
Erik. Run!
She was dying and he knew it, could hear her heartbeat slow down, become weaker and weaker with those last gargled words. But he could not bring himself to move. To just leave her. Leave her to die.
Suddenly, the small girl gasped, awoken from her shock, and for a moment Erik found her bright eyes, looked into her face, framed by pale blond waves. He didn't know how, or why, but somehow he found the strength to move then, to follow her as she started to run down the corridor. As Shaw screamed in rage behind them. He wasn't sure whether the girl was leading him out or running away from him, but it didn't matter. Up the stairs and another corridor and he could already smell the sea, could taste the salt in the air and hear the sounds of the ocean.
“I could escape because my mother sacrificed herself for me. It's impossible that she survived. They attacked her with harpoons and had no chance but to kill her. So I ran up on deck, jumped back into the ocean and I swam. Never looked back.”
Erik felt his voice break at the last words. He felt completely drained, empty, but also heavy with a weight pulling at his gut. He had not looked back then, not at the small girl that had come with him to the railing, nor at what he had left behind. For hours he had just swam out into the open ocean. And that was where he had stayed for many years.
“Oh Erik.” The softly sighed words brought him completely back into the here and now, and for the first time since he had started talking, Erik looked up to meet Charles' eyes. There was a sudden watery glow in them, slightly red, and it took Erik a moment to recognize it as tears, tears that had already left their traces on his cheeks as another drop formed around his eyelashes and fell straight down into the water.
“I'm so sorry.” And then, Charles was in the water. He just slid in, pants and t-shirt still on, and Erik was almost startled by how sudden the movement had been. Until he felt arms around his shoulders in a gentle but tight hug.
“I'm so sorry, Erik. I'm so sorry.” It was barely more than a whisper, but it seemed to cut right through Erik's midst, causing a heavy weight to swell around his heart. And yet he did not draw away, wrapped one arm around Charles' back in return. Breathed in the scent of the other man, felt the warmth of his body, a shiver - comforting and odd at the same time - running down over his back from where Charles' hands touched him.
“I can't imagine what you went through,” Charles said then, voice thick with tears as he drew back a little. Blue eyes still shining with tears though they had stopped flowing.
Erik could not speak, and he felt like he could not breathe either when Charles brought a hand to his face, thumb gently brushing over his cheek. He realized only then that he had shed tears as well, for the first time in sixteen years. He had forgotten what that felt like.
Charles still looked at him, still let his thumb brush over Erik's face, and all Erik could do was lean into the touch, draw comfort from it though he had not expected it. Hadn't expected he'd feel anything in him except for his anger, feel connected to someone else and, at some moments, even, in a way, happy. For more than half his life, Erik had simply forgotten that such feelings existed, and now he was almost drowning in them.
He felt lips on his forehead then, the movement as sudden and determined as when Charles had gotten into the water, and Erik closed his eyes for a moment. There was another kiss to his temple, warm, soft lips gently brushing his skin and then touching his cheek, a warm contrast against the coolness the tears had left. The weight around his heart seemed to lighten, the tight knot in his throat making room for a deep, slowly inhaled breath as he opened his eyes and found Charles' blue ones. Blue like the ocean, equally deep and inviting and comforting, drawing him in, inevitably sinking, weightless as Charles leaned in.
The door was being pushed open and two sets of steps made him tear away from Charles with sudden force. Swim, far into the most hidden corner of the pool. Control the shock and panic that made his heart pulse rapidly in his chest.
“Hey, um, Agnes forgot her purse, so we had to-” The words broke off as the first set of steps had reached the middle of the hall.
“I'm gonna go with them, if that's okay. I'm done with the garden and could - Oh my fucking God. What the hell...”
It was too late. Erik could not will his lower body to transform as quickly as needed. Hank and Alex had already seen him.
~ TBC ~
Chapter 8
Fandom: X-Men: First Class, Charles/Erik
Genre: AU; Drama/Romance
Rating: R for this chapter, possibly up to NC-17 later.
Word Count: 5535
Summary: Charles is a young marine biologist and activist that, one day, makes the find of his lifetime. Inspired by this fanart
Warnings: Major angst in this chapter, mention of torture and violence.
Author's Note: Still un-beta'ed. Again thank you all so much for the lovely feedback. I'm loving all the input and questions, as well as the constructive criticism.
The water parted in soft waves in front of his hands, the movement created by his body alone as he felt the weight of the water and the small bubbles captured in it wander down to his feet. Though he was in his element it was in every way different to what he knew: the texture of the water not as dense, the acoustic waves beneath the surface caused only by the sounds he was creating, carried not as far as they could, oddly reflected by the limited space of the pool. The lack of salt in the water making it smell and taste differently, slightly bitter with something that stung in his nose and eyes a little. And the only color the water had was an illusion created by the sky blue walls and floor of the basin, completely translucent otherwise.
He should not be ungrateful and find only the disadvantages. At least the pool was big enough to swim a few strokes, to move freely within it and, if he closed his eyes and tried to shut out his senses for a moment, made him feel almost at home for a split-second.
He felt that he could control the changing of his body a lot easier in freshwater; his subconscious did not seem to recognize his surrounding as naturally and easily as ocean water, but after a few lanes there and back his muscles became restless and heavy, twitching with the unusual and unnatural effort of swimming with his legs, and he simply let go. Completely under water, the pressure in his lungs just there for a few moments, water filled them and refreshed him. His legs became boneless, all feeling in them lost for a short moment, just a soft, tingling pull from his waist down until his sensation came back and he felt it deep and strong with the first movement of his lower body. His arms only slightly extended for balance and to prevent him swim into the walls of the pool, he crossed the entire length and made a turn, sharper and tighter than he would have been able to completely transformed. A hybrid in hybrid surrounding - neither one thing nor the other. Neither unpleasant nor fully satisfying, but he needed his natural movements to assure himself that he was not losing his ability to swim, even though that was unlikely.
As he dived, floating slowly above the ground of the pool, sound echoed through the water faintly, and Erik surfaced, feeling the gills in his neck close with the change of pressure and, after one slightly scratching breath air filling his lungs again. Alert and willing his body to obey his control should he need it, he reached for the right wall of the pool, the spot farthest away from the entrance area and the eyes of anyone that came inside. But then he recognized the sounds, the faint echo off the walls, familiar, and he allowed himself to relax.
“You can come inside if you want,” he called out, his voice only as loud as needed to reach Charles' ears behind the wall towards the exit.
A faint chuckle reached his ears, and then the sound of those familiar steps before he saw the man emerge from around the corner, hands in the pockets of his pants and gaze on the floor tiles, not quite daring to look.
It had been difficult at first to allow himself to trust a land-walker - his last encounter had taught him well not to do so - but it had been gestures like these, the hesitance and the distance the man had always kept although Erik was sure, could sense it, that there was great curiosity in him. And something else as he had seen yesterday, something Erik could not quite comprehend and identify.
“I brought you a new t-shirt. Agnes was just done with the laundry,” Charles explained, his gaze twitching up and towards Erik for a fraction but not completely. “She's out to go grocery shopping with Hank now. Alex is busy outside.” Which left nobody to come in and see something they should not, Erik understood.
“Do you not like swimming?” Erik asked, although he was pretty certain he knew the answer. The truth was that he really would not mind Charles joining him if he wanted to, and he guessed the only reason that the man never had so far was his sense of consideration.
“Well, as a matter of fact I do,” he replied, confirming Erik's suspicions, “I just thought you'd prefer to be alone.”
“What makes you think that?” he challenged him a bit further, even enjoying this little game that was as new to him as many things had been to the other man.
Charles shrugged and extended one hand in a waving gesture, his lips opening but no sound leaving them.
“You don't expect me to stay away when you walk around your house, do you?” Erik asked and found an amused smile on his lips as he heard Charles chuckle.
At last, the other man looked at him, but his eyes immediately drifted from Erik's to the rest of his body, from the large dorsal fin sticking out to his long, thick tail below the water, the fins at the end of his elongated lower half touching the ground of the pool even though he was not in a fully upright position. There was a very faint gasp coming from Charles then, his lips parting barely visibly but the fascination and awe so clearly tangible that it filled Erik with an odd, mixed feeling of amusement and pride.
He had seen surprised and shocked gazes on him before, but there was none of the greedy look on Charles' face now, no superiority of a being that thought itself in power over him. Nothing that made him feel exposed and threatened. Just pure, innocent and curious admiration.
Erik was suddenly tempted to show off. The confinements of the pool did not allow for more than him diving swiftly and, with only a few swaying movements of his tail fin, reaching the other side of the pool, surfacing in front of Charles.
“You're much too decent and considerate,” he said, looking up into Charles' slightly widened eyes.
He shrugged with a shy laugh. “I hope I can take that as a compliment.”
Erik only gave him a very small, slightly teasing smile before he turned and slowly swam in a large half-ellipsis through the pool, and from below he could hear the steps that followed him with equally casual slowness. When Erik surfaced again Charles had reached the bench by the wall at the right side of the pool. Awkwardly, he sat down on it, and Erik almost rolled his eyes.
“I don't have my swim trunks here,” Charles explained who seemed to have caught Erik's look. He did take off his shoes then, though, and rolled up the legs of the pants he was wearing up to his knees.
Erik did not comment on this as he watched Charles get up and sit down on the edge of the basin, his feet dangling into the water. He was used to the land-walkers' obsession with clothing by now, had known it in his childhood too, though he did not completely understand it for a purpose other than protecting the body from cold. But there were several things he did not fully understand, and he supposed he was not alone in that.
“Is the temperature alright for you?” Charles asked as Erik had come to a halt again, hands on the edge of the pool less than an arm's length from Charles' feet.
“It is a little warmer than the waters I'm used to but not too warm,” he replied, thankful for the fact that Charles had turned down the heating of the pool upon their arrival. Land-walkers really seemed quite sensitive about temperatures. “Too cold for you?”
Charles chuckled again and shook his head, his gaze averted, though Erik could clearly see the effort it took Charles not to constantly stare. “It's alright, I suppose.”
“Then why don't you come inside?”
The smile on Charles' lips widened and lingered, though his gaze was not on Erik, somewhere on the moving surface of the water behind. Creases appeared on his brow as the smile slowly faded, and Erik could sense Charles' heartbeat change, pace up slightly, neither with fear nor with the elated, odd nervousness he had believed to sense when he had been taught how to shave.
“Erik, we need to talk.” Charles' face suddenly turned tense, but he did look back at Erik, his blue eyes as soft as they had ever been when he looked at Erik. So he nodded, despite the unpleasant feeling of foreboding in his gut as he still held on to the edge of the pool.
“You need to tell me more about Shaw,” Charles started, and his voice sounded a lot more strained than Erik was used to. “We're not making any progress, and I need to know whatever there is that would help us get something we can use. Either something about that facility of his or whatever else you.... I've not had the heart to ask you, and I wish I could spare you having to relive whatever happened back then, my friend.” Charles had leaned forward slightly; Erik could see the creases on his forehead more prominently now and that look of sympathy and regret as Charles bit his lower lip before he continued. “But we really need more information. Otherwise I'm running out of ideas what we could do.”
Erik could not say that this surprised him; he had known that, sooner or later, it might come to this, that, even though Charles was tip-toeing his way around him, as Raven had put it, sooner or later he'd want to know the whole story. Erik had just felt too comfortable living under the illusion that those memories would never have to surface more than being his constant companion, a knowledge and sadness somewhere in the back of his mind that had been pushed farther and farther away in those past few days.
“What do you need to know?” he asked, his own voice suddenly fainter, not quite able to keep his eyes focused on Charles.
“Everything,” the other man replied, urgency in his tone despite its gentleness. “Anything... whatever you can tell me.”
“Alright.” Erik nodded, but his eyes were still on the water, the light of the dimmed wall lamps softly reflected on the almost still surface. He closed his eyes, and it was almost like he could see the sunlight streaming into the depth of blue around him then. A strong current with warmer water below clearing it of particles, murky turning into clear. The ocean pulsing, living around him as far as he could see, feel and smell.
“You have to understand that our senses work differently when we're completely transformed. We... we don't think like you do, or like I do now. It's a different state of being,” he tried to explain, guessing that it was impossible to find words that would even so much as give Charles a vague idea of what it felt like. Completely in tune with the ocean and everything in it, not needing anything else but the feel of water and whatever it offered. “I suppose it's the most efficient way for us to adjust to our environment, but in a way it also makes us most vulnerable. To many sensations we react like real sharks then, and that also means we're as easily fooled. Especially when we're hungry.”
He noticed his own voice had gotten cooler, dread stirring up in him and what he was going to remember. He heard Charles breathe in a little deeper, but no words came from him, though Erik was fully aware of the slightly faster heartbeats now.
“You probably know how humans lure sharks to their boats,” Erik went on, his mind reeling around a possibility to speed this up and give only the important details. But it didn't make a difference; he was already there, in the water that day that had changed everything. “I didn't know whether my father's hunger was simply greater than his sense for caution, or whether we had all become careless over the years because your kind has shown interest and liking in ours, feeding us, climbing into small metal cages to get a few pictures. We had always tried to stay away from such boats before, but that day...”
The smell of blood in the water, intoxicating and inviting. And then the electromagnetic waves of a large chunk of prey being dropped into the water. His mother swimming past him, her snout briefly nudging him to tell him to stay away. She probably sensed the danger where Erik didn't understand. Something rattled above, an odd noise Erik had never heard before. He saw his father circle the bloody piece of flesh in the water from below, ready to make a leap. Saw his mother swim up. Felt her fear and could almost taste it in the water.
Another noise as odd as the first, and something silver gleamed up right above the surface. Then there was pressure, shock waves of a sudden halt of mass above. And more blood. So much blood, but it tasted different. Smelled strangely familiar. Rattle. Swoosh. Something shot past his mother's body, barely missing her before the strange object was slowed down in the weightlessness of water.
His father... he could hardly see him. Too much blood in the water, violent waves around his thrashing body. His mother turned around and swam toward him, straight at him, pushed him down and away from the ship. Telling him to swim away, to follow his instincts and escape, but Erik couldn't. Couldn't move anywhere but toward the rush of blood and the thrashing shock waves above.
“Shaw shot my father with a harpoon before he could have fed. I wanted to help him even though my mother tried to get me away. It was too late. He was bleeding to death already as they pulled him up, and I think they were aiming for me as well.” And they should have hit him. Should have ended his life before he could have seen and endured what followed after. But that fate had not been meant for him.
Erik could almost smell the blood and panic that had filled the waters then, and he had to swallow around the knot in his throat and stomach before he could continue, trying to block out the images but failing.
“My mother transformed then, shifted to half-human form. To save me, to get to the men that were shooting at us and make them understand.”
No! Stop! Don't kill my son!
Long, coppery-golden hair swirled around her upper body as she dove up. Erik could hardly hear her voice over the noise of his father still thrashing against his restraints. He tried to catch the ropes, bite them, tear them apart, but there was too much movement, too much blood.
Something else shot through the water then. A sound much higher in pitch. His mother screamed in pain. Two, three more of those odd, high swooshing sounds, and something shot sharply through his back, twitching through his entire body, rendering him motionless and helpless as everything faded to black. Darkness and blood.
“She succeeded. In a way,” Erik said bitterly as he pressed his eyes shut, trying to focus on nothing but the darkness in front of them. There was no blood here, no sounds of fear and death. That had been a long, long time ago. “Shaw didn't try to kill my mother and me, at least not at first. He captured us and took us onto his boat where he apparently found out what we could fully transform into, once dry. I didn't know where he took us. We stayed on the boat the entire time.”
Cold metal around him, a small cell with odd things he had never seen in his life. Erik was shivering and trembling, his naked back pressed against the wall, feet drawn up to his body, hugging his knees. His mother wasn't with him, but he knew she was still alive. Had to be. Faintly, in the distance, he heard screams of pain and terror. He didn't understand, couldn't understand what these people, the land-walkers, were doing with them.
The door opened and blinding light streamed into the darkness, cold and garish, so unlike the sun or candles or small wall lights with little flowers on the lamp shades. A man stood there, a tall figure against the bright light, but Erik could see his cool smile and the look in his eyes, and he knew immediately he did not like this man. He was afraid.
“I didn't see my mother during the first... I don't know, five, six days maybe. Shaw kept me with him, dressed me, fed me. He tried to make me believe he was being kind to me, that he was my friend, but...”
You're an extraordinary boy, Erik, but there's so much for you to learn. And for me to learn about you. You'll see we'll become good friends, you and I. You will help me in ways you can't yet fathom, son.
He patted Erik's shoulder as they looked out onto the ocean, moving around them. So close and yet unreachable. Separated by thick glass that let him see everything and taunted him. At night, he would be back in his cell, and all there was left was the soft movement of the waves below.
He could not escape. But even if there was a possibility, Erik could not leave his mother. Not while he still heard her faint cries in the distance. While she was still alive.
They came for him at night. A man Erik had seen before that spoke in an odd language he did not understand and another one that he hadn't seen before. And Erik was even more afraid than he'd been of Shaw. At least Shaw had never pulled him out by his hands and feet, laughed at his cries for help. Maybe Shaw was there somewhere, would come to help him and not allow these men to hurt him. To pull him down the corridor with hard a hard, painful grip around his wrists.
“One night they brought me into his... his laboratory. I think it was a storage room within the boat that he had converted for that purpose. There was a glass tank - he must have gotten it the night the boat had berthed somewhere. I don't know where it was. He didn't let me look outside anymore. So they threw me in the tank and waited until I'd transform. My mother must have resisted to do so. Or at least to transform completely.”
Erik, please don't disappoint me.
Shaw was there as well. Erik hadn't seen him until he stepped in front of the tank, looking up to where Erik was floating in the water, his head above the surface. Shaw smiled at him, a thin-lipped, odd kind of smile that didn't reach his eyes.
Don't be afraid, Erik. All you have to do is show me how remarkable you are.
He wanted to believe him, wanted to trust him. Do as he said and everything would be alright. And maybe he'd let them go, him and his mother, once he had seen. Erik's fingers reached for the glass wall of the tank. It was too small for him to fully transform. Barely enough space to even contain him once in full shark form. He'd panic, even more than now. He wouldn't be able to move, to turn. Forced to remain upright.
His breath went quicker as he felt the familiar pull in his lower body. His heart was racing, thundering in his chest. He looked at Shaw, shook his head.
I can't. It's not big enough. I can't.
Panic. Fear. Shaw nodded at the man with the strange language. Something tingled in his neck, crept down his spine. Then the water around him was on fire, myriads of tiny spears shot into his body and made him scream.
“He used electricity. Shocked me, and when that didn't work he injected me with needles. I don't remember everything that happened then.”
He still floated. Barely conscious, numbness in his body and a feeling like he would suffocate, drown with the weights pulling him down by his tail fin. No way for him to even try crawl out of the tank. Then there was darkness again. Fear. Pain as he awoke. Strapped to a cold metal table, needles in his arm. He couldn't stop himself from crying, shame and humiliation adding to the physical pain. The hand, gently stroking a sweaty lock of hair out of his face, should not be comforting. But it was all he got.
When they brought his mother in - the next morning, or maybe days later, he couldn't tell - Erik barely recognized her. Her face was bruised, red and blue, her cheeks sunken and eyes rimmed with dark shadows. Her coppery-golden hair hung in sweat- and dirt-soaked strands around her face and she looked so fragile that Erik thought she'd break in the middle if someone wanted her to.
“When I couldn't do what Shaw asked me to, because the tank was too small for me to shift, he threatened to kill my mother if I didn't cooperate. There was a second tank then, an even smaller one, and he put her in it. Her feet were shackled to the bottom of the tank, spread wide. There wasn't much time. I was afraid it would tear her apart if she'd change in the water, so...”
Dread ran through every fiber of his body as he saw his mother in the tank. Saw the panic in her green eyes. Erik thought he'd be sick, his gut clenching with fear and despair. But she tried to smile at him, unable to speak to him through water and glass. She smiled as if she wanted to tell him it was all going to be alright, that he shouldn't worry, shouldn't be afraid for her. Shouldn't feel like something was tearing his chest apart, shouldn't want to break down or die.
When the water surrounded him, lukewarm and stale, he simply let it happen, felt his whole body surrendering to the might of the water as he blocked out any fear of the constricted space. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his entire life.
“I did it. After that it was the same every night and every day. Shaw wanted to see something, wanted to try another experiment, and he forced either of us to play along while threatening to harm the other. I don't know for how long it went on, but I caught him talking to his men about something he was building for us. Where he could get us to show him more of our 'tricks'.”
His father had been lucky, Erik thought one morning when he heard cries and whimpers from the room next door where his mother was with Shaw. Lucky that he had died quickly and neither had to see nor endure what Erik and his mother were enduring every day. Half of the time in water, the other half out, instruments prodding at them, strange machines and devices to restrain them and do things to them he had not known were even possible. He could see his mother slowly fading away. She was fed, just like him, but not nearly enough to keep her healthy. Maybe because she was older and bigger and Shaw feared what she might do. How he wished he was full-grown already. He'd be able to defend himself, defend her. Find a way out of these horrors.
He was past longing for comfort, hoping to be treated well, after all, if he cooperated. Shaw never kept his promise, only wanted more, and Erik had learned to feel something about the man that had previously been alien to him. Hatred. Hatred so strong that, in the hours he suffered most, he imagined leaping out of the tank and simply ripping him to pieces, limp by limp. To make him fear Erik as Erik feared him. But he never could. Was never strong or brave enough to do anything but watching his mother die, slowly, day by day.
He wished it could go faster when the experiments became even more gruesome. Needles and electricity weren't enough anymore. A knife cut into his mother's tail, sliced deep through the thick skin and filled the tank she was in with blood. He could smell it even over the distance.
“One day he tried something new. He wanted to see if we still healed as quickly in human form as we did as sharks. We don't. And she nearly bleed to death before he threw her back into the tank. I couldn't do anything from where I was. And... then something happened. Someone came in, a child. From the inside, the door could only be opened with a key, but from the outside it had a normal handle. So my mother saw it as an opportunity, maybe the only we'd ever get, and she transformed completely.”
The small girl stared at the tanks in shock, big, bright eyes wide as she held on to a doll she was carrying.
Oh, no sweetheart, you can't be in here.
Before Shaw could go to her, Erik's mother had fully transformed within the tank. Blood was still gushing from the wound in her tail, but she thrashed wildly in the basin, water spilling over the edges. Something crackled, sparks flew and a light flickered. And Erik knew what she was doing, understood even before her body leaped over the rim of the glass tank. But he was so afraid, so scared to leave her, his heart clenching in his chest and his entire body shaking. His lower body didn't want to listen to him, didn't want to transform back to legs, but he had to try, had to fight. Maybe find a way to safe her too.
She came crashing down onto a table, something bursting, clanking sounds filling the room. One of the men was directly in her way as her body thrashed sideways, and he howled out in pain as her jaws sank deep into his flesh, nearly tearing him apart in the middle but not killing him yet.
Good, Erik thought. He deserved it. And suddenly, he found the strength to gain control over his body, feeling his tail grow heavy and motionless for a moment as he heaved himself over the edge of the tank.
No! Stay here!
Shaw couldn't reach him. He was trapped between the toppled over table and his mother, still moving violently with all her might, snatching at them should they try to go after her son. Another man had one of those long, sharp spears and he aimed it straight at her head.
Mom!
It had all happened so fast, just a few heartbeats long. The girl still stood in the door, and Erik could feel how frightened she was. He felt sorry for her, but he had no time to worry about it. As he crawled to his feet, naked and wet, he desperately looked around for something to defend himself with. To hurt Shaw and the other man. Kill them if he had to. No. He wanted to. But there was no time, just not enough time.
As blood and water formed a bright red puddle beneath his mother, her shape shrunk, her fins disappeared, blue-gray skin turned to pale and sickly yellowish and her golden locks were drenched in blood from where the spear stuck from her neck.
Erik. Run!
She was dying and he knew it, could hear her heartbeat slow down, become weaker and weaker with those last gargled words. But he could not bring himself to move. To just leave her. Leave her to die.
Suddenly, the small girl gasped, awoken from her shock, and for a moment Erik found her bright eyes, looked into her face, framed by pale blond waves. He didn't know how, or why, but somehow he found the strength to move then, to follow her as she started to run down the corridor. As Shaw screamed in rage behind them. He wasn't sure whether the girl was leading him out or running away from him, but it didn't matter. Up the stairs and another corridor and he could already smell the sea, could taste the salt in the air and hear the sounds of the ocean.
“I could escape because my mother sacrificed herself for me. It's impossible that she survived. They attacked her with harpoons and had no chance but to kill her. So I ran up on deck, jumped back into the ocean and I swam. Never looked back.”
Erik felt his voice break at the last words. He felt completely drained, empty, but also heavy with a weight pulling at his gut. He had not looked back then, not at the small girl that had come with him to the railing, nor at what he had left behind. For hours he had just swam out into the open ocean. And that was where he had stayed for many years.
“Oh Erik.” The softly sighed words brought him completely back into the here and now, and for the first time since he had started talking, Erik looked up to meet Charles' eyes. There was a sudden watery glow in them, slightly red, and it took Erik a moment to recognize it as tears, tears that had already left their traces on his cheeks as another drop formed around his eyelashes and fell straight down into the water.
“I'm so sorry.” And then, Charles was in the water. He just slid in, pants and t-shirt still on, and Erik was almost startled by how sudden the movement had been. Until he felt arms around his shoulders in a gentle but tight hug.
“I'm so sorry, Erik. I'm so sorry.” It was barely more than a whisper, but it seemed to cut right through Erik's midst, causing a heavy weight to swell around his heart. And yet he did not draw away, wrapped one arm around Charles' back in return. Breathed in the scent of the other man, felt the warmth of his body, a shiver - comforting and odd at the same time - running down over his back from where Charles' hands touched him.
“I can't imagine what you went through,” Charles said then, voice thick with tears as he drew back a little. Blue eyes still shining with tears though they had stopped flowing.
Erik could not speak, and he felt like he could not breathe either when Charles brought a hand to his face, thumb gently brushing over his cheek. He realized only then that he had shed tears as well, for the first time in sixteen years. He had forgotten what that felt like.
Charles still looked at him, still let his thumb brush over Erik's face, and all Erik could do was lean into the touch, draw comfort from it though he had not expected it. Hadn't expected he'd feel anything in him except for his anger, feel connected to someone else and, at some moments, even, in a way, happy. For more than half his life, Erik had simply forgotten that such feelings existed, and now he was almost drowning in them.
He felt lips on his forehead then, the movement as sudden and determined as when Charles had gotten into the water, and Erik closed his eyes for a moment. There was another kiss to his temple, warm, soft lips gently brushing his skin and then touching his cheek, a warm contrast against the coolness the tears had left. The weight around his heart seemed to lighten, the tight knot in his throat making room for a deep, slowly inhaled breath as he opened his eyes and found Charles' blue ones. Blue like the ocean, equally deep and inviting and comforting, drawing him in, inevitably sinking, weightless as Charles leaned in.
The door was being pushed open and two sets of steps made him tear away from Charles with sudden force. Swim, far into the most hidden corner of the pool. Control the shock and panic that made his heart pulse rapidly in his chest.
“Hey, um, Agnes forgot her purse, so we had to-” The words broke off as the first set of steps had reached the middle of the hall.
“I'm gonna go with them, if that's okay. I'm done with the garden and could - Oh my fucking God. What the hell...”
It was too late. Erik could not will his lower body to transform as quickly as needed. Hank and Alex had already seen him.
~ TBC ~
Chapter 8