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fae_boleynFandom: X-Men, First Class era
Summary: Raven, Erik, and Charles, the night before Cuba.
Rating: PG, I think
Pairings: References to Raven/Hank and aborted Raven/Erik, implied Erik/Charles
A/N: Technically canon-compliant, but in my head this is a mini-prologue to my in-progress X-Men Big Bang fic, 'These Twists and Turns of Fate', which is definitely AU. Another, more obviously AU prologue focusing on Emma Frost will hopefully be forthcoming.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Marvel or Fox, I have no claim to these characters and this is just for fun.
Lines on my face
Lines on my hands
Lead a to future I don't understand
Some things don't go as they're planned
Where are we going from here?
Treason, betrayals, through the mirrors of time
Spinning in circles with riddles and rhyme
We lose our way
Trying to find
Searching to find our way home
Trying to find my way home... – Where Are We Going From Here? by Blackmore's Night
Raven sits on the window seat in her room, legs curled beneath her as she looks out at the moonlit grounds. It's hardly the first time she's sat here – the first was the very night she came here, the night being caught stealing was the best break she could have ever caught – but tonight she doesn't even see the admittedly wonderful view.
She feels like everyone keeps rejecting her, and she doesn't know why, unless it really is that her blue skin is repulsive. She's beautiful when she's blonde, Hank told her, and Charles stuttered when she confronted him, pleading ignorance and being embarrassed by her nudity rather than giving her a straight answer.
And Erik? The one who keeps telling her she shouldn't hide, who said just tonight that he prefers the “real Raven”? He kissed her, and then he told her to leave. “It's not me you want, Raven, and I'm not the one who can give you self-affirmation either. That, you have to find for yourself.”
It had been a long shot anyway, Raven can admit that to herself. But she'd hoped, because... Erik is the only one who seems to accept her without her disguises. But really, she's seen the way the metalbender and her brother look at each other, even if they haven't figured it out yet.
Maybe if something happened to break that bond, Raven would have a chance, but as it is, she does not. And she's not sure if she really wants Erik at all, or if she just wants the kind of acceptance he's shown her, from someone she can love who will love her back. Someone who will tell her she's beautiful no matter what shape she wears.
No one's ever done that. She can't remember her parents, not really, only that she was abandoned the second they thought she could fend for herself. She can't remember them, but she hates them. She was their child, didn't they love her at all? And Charles, does he love her, or did he just want another mutant to have around, to help so he could feel better about himself? Deep down she knows that's not entirely fair, but tonight she can't help but think it. Not when the boy she was half in love with tells her that her true self is ugly, her brother can't see that he's hurt her, and the only person who doesn't seem to be repulsed by her reality doesn't want her either. Why can't she be accepted as herself, no matter what she looks like?
Maybe that's what she really wants, to be free to be blue or blonde, or to have... neon green stripes if she decides to. To be able to do that, and have someone tell her that how she looks doesn't matter, that if she wants to look like that it's fine, that she is accepted and loved no matter what. She craves that, needs that, and she doesn't know if there's anyone in her life who will give it to her. And that hurts more than anything, makes her feel once again like the desperate little girl who crept into what seemed to be a castle all those years ago, to steal some food and flee into the shadows.
~ ~ ~
Nightmares breed sleepless nights, this is a simple fact with which Erik is intimately familiar. Lately, the dreams have been getting worse, the reality of what was interspersed with terrifying images of what he fears now. Of seeing his mother die again and again, then replaced with one of this strange, dysfunctional team he's found himself drawn into.
It's been all of them, but most often, it's Charles.
Erik has a feeling he knows what that means, but he doesn't allow himself to dwell on it. It's an unfamiliar feeling, but he's no fool. He knows what it is, though he will not name it to himself. And it's not relevant just now, because he needs to focus.
Tomorrow he will face Shaw. They will all be fighting tomorrow, but only he will be bringing a personal crusade to an end, one way or another. Either Shaw will die or Erik will die trying to kill him – or, he supposes, the fight could claim both of their lives. He's always accepted it would come to this, and the question of his own survival has never worried him.
Recent events have changed that.
Erik doesn't want to die, though he's finally starting to realize that he's been seeking just that for years, to kill Shaw and then follow his creator into oblivion. He doesn't want to lose this life he's only just beginning to find, but even if he survives, he just might. Because he's not sure Charles can accept that killing Shaw is something that Erik needs to do.
Shaw can't be left alive anyway. How would the CIA hold him? He's asked Agent MacTaggert, just out of curiosity, if she knows how the CIA plans to keep Shaw imprisoned if he's captured alive, and she doesn't know either, she said flat-out that his fate would likely end up being a bullet to the head. Killing him is the only practical solution, regardless of anything else.
It's the only way the people Erik is starting to care about, in spite of himself, can ever be safe, and it's the only way he can ever be free. In the face of that, high morals like Charles' don't even come into play. It's that simple.
“There has to be another way.”
Erik turns to meet Charles' intense blue gaze, and shrugs. “Well, I don't see it. And I thought you weren't going to read my mind without permission.”
“You're projecting loud enough that it's almost like you're shouting. I can't help but hear when you're thinking like that.”
Erik shrugs. “You still haven't answered the question.”
Charles glares at him, mouth tightening with frustration. “I apologize for failing to see why murder is the best option here,” he says sarcastically.
“No one's said a thing about the best option; killing Shaw is the only option. Even your CIA agent agrees with that; or didn't you pick that up?”
“But it doesn't need to be you. No one else has a personal stake in this. Can't you see that killing him... It will destroy something in you, something that should not be destroyed.”
Erik shakes his head. “I don't need to be saved, Charles. And if freedom from my past destroys something inside me, I consider it a price worth paying.”
~ ~ ~
Charles would call insomnia a common plague of telepaths, if he knew any besides himself and Emma Frost. And he's hardly going to ask her if she suffers from it as well. The trouble is, that when people dream their minds are as uncontrolled as they are ever going to be, and even people who don't usually project their thoughts tend to do so.
Admittedly, tonight he doesn't need the flashes of other people's dreams – Alex looks into a cradle, protectiveness he's never before felt welling up inside as he looks at his baby brother, Sean sits on his porch and watches his father drive away, not crying because boys don't – to keep him awake. He has too many thoughts and fears and ghosts of his own.
Erik is going to kill Shaw. Charles no longer thinks he can stop it – if he ever really did, deep down – and all he can do is hope he's wrong about the effect revenge will have on his friend. He can only hope that the damage doesn't tear apart the team – the family, he barely dares to hope – they're starting to build.
A family is all that Charles ever wanted.
Raven doesn't know that he took her in for himself more than her. Not to keep as his pet, as she so hurtfully accused him of earlier, but because... Because... He wanted to love someone who would actually want that love, unlike his distant mother, a functioning alcoholic by the time Charles was seven. Someone not like his sneering stepfather or his bullying stepbrother, who wouldn't have inspired love even if they'd wanted it. Someone like his father, the man who smelled of pipe smoke and something spicy, lost before Charles could even form concrete memories of him.
This house was, for all its grandeur, lonely as the tomb for him before the night he found a blue-skinned girl in his kitchen, and the sounds of training in the day and laughter in the night over this past week have made it even less cold and empty. He doesn't want to lose that, and even if everyone stays but Erik, he will, because there won't be anyone to sit across from him at the chessboard in the study, or to share amused glances with at the latest teen antics.
And Raven. Dear God, Raven. What has he done to deserve all that bitterness from her? She wouldn't tell him, and the only way he can find out is to break the promise he's made to never read her mind. Surface thoughts, those he gets from her, and he's explained he can't control that so she doesn't fight him on it anymore. But whatever this is, it's deeper. He loves her, however she looks, and he only prefers the blonde mask because he doesn't have to worry about her being in danger then – though he'd be even less worried if she chose a form that didn't make half the young men they know come sniffing around. But it's not about wanting her to be something she's not; he wants her to be happy and safe, blonde or blue. He just doesn't know how to say that so that this new, angry Raven will believe him.
Charles can't help but feel like he's losing them both, and without them, no matter how full this sprawling place gets, it will always be empty.
He can't let that happen. So he had better start thinking, trying to find some way to keep them together. Because he'll be damned if he loses this, not when he finally has everything he's wanted – needed, even when he told himself otherwise – right here, so close he can feel it.
