left and right
part one: left and right
Langley, Virginia, 1967
***
“Jaguar,” the Lizard called. “Brother Jaguar!”
The Jaguar, whose fur was sunlight and moonlight and starlight all at once, opened his lazy eyes. “What?
The Lizard stopped before him, out of breath and afraid. “Brother Jaguar,” he said. “The humans are coming to kill you.”
***
I.
“Raven,” Sirion whispered, and she felt his whiskers brush the back of her knee. “Hurry up. I don’t like this.”
“Coward,” Raven muttered, but she listened anyway, her fingers deftly flicking through file after file. Sirion growled low in this throat, pacing, and the shadows deepened in his fur.
“Hurry,” he hissed. She could feel his anxiety echo in her own chest and she covered his muzzle with a hand.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” she said. “We can’t afford to miss anything.”
Her daemon flicked his tail and kneaded the floor with his claws. “Where’s Frost? And Angel? It’d go faster if they were here.”
Raven shrugged. “It’d go faster if you’d help me, you know.”
Sirion snorted and shed his jaguar shape, hoping up onto the filing cabinet as a monkey. “Better?”
“Much.”
They worked quickly for several minutes, combing through dozens of files, occasionally dragging one out and tossing it on the floor. The room was dark, shadowed, and heavy with dust—some of these cabinets hadn’t been touched in years. Raven’s flashlight cast a watery beam, just enough to read the file names and make the swirling dust glow, alive, in Sirion’s fur.
Had they been anywhere else, it would’ve been almost peaceful, to work in silence and watch the dust play across each other.
And then they remembered why they were here, and what they had to do, and anger burned in the pit of Raven’s belly.
“How many more?”
“Just another drawer full,” Raven said, her eyes flickering to the door.
“Why can’t we just burn them all?” Sirion muttered. “It’d be a damn sight faster than doing it like this.” His monkey fingers brushed hers quickly and his fur was spiked with tension.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. “Frost’s keeping watch for us, we’ll be fine.”
The daemon made a deep, disgusted sound. “I feel so much better.”
A shrill hoot made Sirion start and he toppled off the cabinet, flicking into his jaguar shape to glare.
Emma Frost’s daemon swooped by, a blur of white, his feathers diamond-sharp and glittering, taking a swipe at Sirion as he passed.
The owl hooted softly, scolding, and settled back onto Emma’s shoulder with his feathers sliding and clicking against each other.
“We heard that,” Emma said mildly, and her daemon rustled his wings and flicked his head disdainfully.
Sirion bared his teeth.
Angel slipped in from behind Emma, clutching a thick file in her hands. She looked between Raven and Emma, who were staring at each other much like their daemons were (viciously), and rolled her eyes.
“If you two are done,” she said, “I’m ready to go.” She waved her file. “You have the ones you need, Mystique?”
“Yeah,” Raven said, breaking eye contact with Frost. Sirion growled softly and she nudged him warningly, bending down to pick up the files. “Behave,” she hissed. “We can’t screw this up. Remember who we’re doing it for.”
Sirion quieted, pressing against her legs briefly, and she felt him remember and shiver with it.
“Ready,” Raven said, cradling the files close to her chest. Emma nodded and led the way out, her daemon flying ahead to peer down corridors and into closed rooms. Riptide was waiting for them, silent as ever, and he nodded to Raven as she passed.
Langley was absurdly quiet at three in the morning—Raven expected, well, more out of the CIA. Twenty-four hour teams, constant surveillance, armed guards with snarling wolf daemons, more than what the CIA had offered them so far.
It had been almost pathetically easy to break into the base, even without Erik. All had only taken Raven copying a guard and a few well-placed globes of fire from Angel and the four mutants had been in.
Sirion flattened his ears against his head and showed Raven his snowy teeth, his fur bristling anxiously. “This isn’t right,” he whispered. “I don’t—I don’t like it, Raven.”
“Relax,” she whispered back. The fluorescent lights flickered, bringing out the subtle colors in Siri’s dark fur, revealing his spots. Out of all he forms he took, this one was Raven’s favorite. Sleek, strong, beautiful, if only he would stay and never change—
Raven caught the thought before it could reach Sirion (or Emma) and stamped it out ruthlessly. She didn’t care that Sirion hadn’t settled. She didn’t. She loved him anyway.
She focused on Emma and Angel, running ahead, so she didn’t have to think about anything else. She wasn’t important right now. The mission was. They had to get these files out of the CIA, so that what happened in the north—
Raven’s stomach turned and her current form flickered, wavering blue for a heartbeat.
Sirion rumbled a reassurance but she felt the sickness and fear churn through him too, and his fur stood jagged on end.
“Almost there,” she soothed. She wished her hands were free so she could reach down and grab a handful of his fur.
“Yeah,” he said, but his eyes were far away.
“Shit.”
Emma turned around so fast Angel nearly crashed into her.
“What’s wrong?”
“We have to go,” Emma said tightly. Her daemon spun in the air, shooting past Raven and down the corridor, Emma hot on his heels. “They know we’re here. Twenty of them are waiting for us the way we came in and they’re calling in locals for reinforcements. We have to move.”
Angel swore violently, tearing after the telepath, and Raven hastily followed. Sirion flickered into a hawk’s form, diving through the air, and brushed his human with the tips of his wings.
Riptide paused briefly to throw a whirlwind down the hall, tearing open doors and light fixtures and overturning chairs. His daemon spun above him in circles, creating another tornado, and they left the hallway behind them a shattered battlefield.
“Shit!”
Emma stopped completely at a junction between to hallways, her skin hardening and crystallizing in a second. “We’re trapped,” she said.
“Trapped?” Raven hissed, and though she would never admit it fear slid into her veins. “You’re a telepath, how the fuck did we get trapped?”
“I don’t know,” said Emma, and her daemon flew in loops around her head, betraying her calm, collected diamond face. “This has never happened before.”
“There’s got to be a way out,” Angel argued. Her daemon, Quetz, loosed himself from her neck and whispered in her ear; Angel grew steadily paler.
Emma’s owl hooted suddenly, gesturing with his wings towards another hallway.
“He can’t feel any daemons that way,” Emma said, and followed her daemon immediately.
“Raven,” Sirion growled, dropping into the jaguar’s shape again. “I don’t like this, this feels wrong—”
“We don’t have another choice, Siri,” she said. “We’ve got to get these files out of here.”
He whined unhappily in his throat, his eyes wide, but she felt him steel himself, growing taller and unsheathing his claws.
“Okay,” he said, and they began to run, charging after Emma.
All stealth and subtly was abandoned now; the group tore down the hallways after the snowy owl, their feet slapping on the tile. Riptide paused occasionally to hurl tornadoes, wrecking the hallways and creating a trail of debris that might, somehow, hopefully, slow up their pursuers.
And behind them, growing louder and louder, was the roar of men’s voices, and the howl of hunting daemons.
We might get our wolf daemons after all, Raven thought, and abandoned her current form for her true one, using the sudden boost of energy to run—
Sirion roared, the sound magnifying and bouncing down the hallways, and Raven hoped it would be enough to make the agents afraid.
Up ahead, Emma’s her gleaming skin threw wild, dancing light on the walls, and Angel unfurled her wings. The sound of buzzing filled the hallway.
The snowy owl turned violently, his wings straining, and Raven had a split-second to notice that his eyes were wide and frightened.
“Mortimer!” Emma cried, and then the hallway boiled white.
A thunderous crack dropped Raven to her knees and Sirion twisted on the ground, howling, as light and sound splintered around them.
It took Raven a few seconds before she could stagger up and let go of her ears (she noted dimly that her hands were bloody), and by then, it was too late.
The hallway was suddenly swarming with men in SWAT jackets and strange helmets on their heads—like Magneto’s, she thought—and the four stunned mutants didn’t really stand a chance.
They fought anyway.
Angel spat fire and Riptide conjured devastation and Emma glittered, all razored edges, and Raven dove through shape after shape, big and small, anything and everything to throw them off.
Sirion roared, swatting aside wolves, dogs, and birds, his fangs flashing. A few wolves tried to pin him down but he changed, snake-bird-lion-horse so fast it hurt to watch, and the wolves were no match for a daemon who could be anything he wanted to be.
Raven fought, just like Azazel taught her, and she felt bones snap and recoil under her feet. Her head swam and the world doubled, and she could only hold on to a shape for a few seconds, but none of it mattered, she had to fight—
She lashed out and caught an agent in the face; his head snapped back, his eyes shock-wide, and he fell. His daemon howled, burst into dust, and then was gone. The man was dead before he hit the ground, and Raven felt sick—
No, she thought. I can’t. Not now. Have to fight.
Sirion fell back into his jaguar shape and slashed and bit, and daemons burst into dust underneath his ferocious paws, their men falling, dead. He wasn’t nearly as guilty as Raven—his fear, his need to live, to protect her, overcame it.
Out of the corner of her bleary eyes, Raven saw Quetz lash out from Angel’s arms, spitting flame or biting with his needle-sharp fangs. Riptide’s osprey daemon dove with tornadoes following her wings to gouge at eyes and throats. Emma was devastating those around her, her skin too hard to pierce with bullets or fists or clubs. Her owl, his feathers diamond-edged, flew as high as he could above the seething mass, diving down to claw, shred, and batter his enemies.
Another man came at Raven with the butt of a rifle and she ducked, kicking his legs out from under him and trying to crush his windpipe. Other hands grabbed at her and she changed, scales flickering, and they drew their hands away in fear.
She broke a nose, and then a wrist, and then some ribs, leaping and twisting through flailing limbs and claws.
Sirion howled her name, leaping over a dog and a lynx, struggling to be with her.
“Emma!” Raven screamed. “Angel! Riptide!”
No one answered, and she could barely see her teammates through the mob. Men pressed in on all sides, driving her back into a corner no matter how many she kicked down.
Emma’s owl tore a helmet from an agent’s head, and suddenly gunfire splattered through legs and arms and necks. Men screamed and the tang of blood mixed with stench smoldering skin.
Orders were frantically shouted, and Raven found herself backed against the wall. She swore and Sirion pressed close, his face twisted into an awful, terrible snarl.
Fear buzzed through him and Raven caught a thought—they’ll do it to us too—before he hid it from her with a tremendous, shattering roar.
Through the mob she saw Angel in a similar position, cuddling her Quetz close and spitting globes of fire at anyone who came near.
Riptide was cornered too and he couldn’t throw his tornadoes if he didn’t have room—
Emma was only visible in brief, glittering flashes, her hands like claws shredding faces, flaying back skin.
“Take them down!” someone bawled, and Raven screamed, launching herself at the nearest man, determined to go down fighting, damn it—
She toppled to the ground with a needle buried in her shoulder and the strength pouring from her fingers. Her vision doubled, tripled, and Raven had time to see Angel go down too, fire still pooling in her mouth—
Emma whistled, shrill and desperate, and there was the familiar rush of Azazel bursting in—
The last thing Raven thought before passing out was we’re next, and the last thing she saw was her Sirion roar and lunge, his fur turning suddenly, violently white—
***
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright,” whispered Man to the fearsome beast. “What immortal hand or eye doth frame thy fearful symmetry?”
The tiger grinned, showing Man his gleaming teeth. “Not yours,” he said, and ripped out Man’s throat.
***
II.
Westchester, New York, 1967
Aliyah prowled through the woods and paused, ears pricked, to taste the air.
The forest was still and quiet. She smelled only wild animals, wet earth, and the faint, week-old traces of the children.
Satisfied that she was alone and safe, she continued to move soundlessly through the Westchester countryside.
Patches of moonlight dappled the air, revealing the glint of a fang, the curve of a claw, the fur cragged in angry, bristling lines down her shoulders, the pale, limp ermine dangling in her jaws.
Aliyah was furious. Rage filled her mouth and echoed deep in her soul, her own anger and Erik’s joining at the center to flood out and hum down her fur like lightning.
She couldn’t talk to Erik—he was too far away, separated by hundreds of miles and a steady old ache—but she felt his fury roll like a growl low and constant in her chest, and it was comforting and familiar.
The pitiful creature in her jaws made a keening sound and twitched, her pale body exploding for a second with color, with need, and she reached out for someone who wasn’t there. Aliyah squeezed the ermine gently, wincing at the tremors of alonetoo far so far oh so far away that shuddered through her. The ermine twitched and Aliyah let the anger grow, burn out the sadness and sympathy and the pain of being away.
Her jaws tightened.
The children’s scents grew stronger, nearer. They were close. They had to go a little farther and then Aliyah could go back to Erik, have his hands soothe the crags out of her fur and the ache from her chest.
The ermine keened again, twitching feebly, and the anger flared white-hot behind Aliyah’s eyes, mingling with empathy and pity.
At least she had a human to return to.
“Hush, little one,” she said around her mouthful. She squeezed the poor thing lightly, trying to offer comfort. The ermine quieted, too tired to cry out again, and Aliyah continued walking, her vision narrowing into furious, white-lined tunnels.
Rage tasted like iron on her tongue.
How could someone—anyone—do what had been done? She didn’t understand. All she knew was the rage, singing like metal in her ears, whispering for blood and violence and golden dust.
Her paws sank into the soft earth, scattering leaves, and she dug her claws briefly into the dirt with each step.
She was close. The children probably knew she was coming—she was protected against Iskierka but the ermine was not—but Aliyah wasn’t concerned. She wasn’t here to fight with them.
She was here to deliver a message.
Familiar shapes pushed at the edges of her mind, tasting like metal and memory. The satellite dish loomed to the side, the plumbing snaked under her paws, and the wiring inside the mansion hummed and sang. She mapped out her old home in her mind and walked, her paws sinking deep into the earth to mix with a lion’s tracks and a lemur’s handprints and a little bird’s clawed marks.
It was strange, how well she knew the mansion now.
A sudden, sharp rage-pulse flared in her chest, tearing loose a growl, and fur bristled down her spine. She felt the pipes below her moan, pulled towards her, and the ermine whimpered.
Her eyes flashed, and she ran, bounding the last few hundred meters until she burst, claws outstretched and gleaming, from the forest onto the lawn of Charles’s home.
The mansion’s lights were on, but the children were all outside. She couldn’t see them yet but she smelled them, and their presence shivered down her spine. The metal all around her howled, vibrating, and she reflexively bared her teeth. She hoped the children didn’t want a fight, because today they would lose.
She dropped the ermine and it shivered on the grass, too weak to move, and Aliyah threw back her head and roared.
“Children!” she thundered. “Show yourselves.”
Two eyes opened not far away. A lioness crouched in the darkness, her teeth bared in a snarl, and Alex stood with his hand on her shoulders.
Another growl rippled and Hank—Beast, Aliyah thought—stepped forward, tall and ferocious in the moonlight. His daemon, a lemur, clung to his shoulder, her eyes wide and bright.
A shadow flitted over the moon and Sean dove, wings outstretched, his daemon a blue-silver whirl around his head.
“Why are you here?” Alex said roughly, and she could the discomfort in his eyes, the tightly controlled anger. “Where’s Er—Magneto?”
Aliyah growled at him lowly, warningly. “Peace,” she said. “I’m not here for you.”
There was a shift in him—straightening shoulders, curling fists, a violent, sudden tension in his lioness’s face—and light seemed to splinter from his fingertips.
“Why are you here?”
Aliyah tilted her great head, sinking low into a hunter’s crouch. The fury and the metal crashed inside of her, welled up through her paws and fangs and eyes, and she bared her teeth in a bloody, vicious tiger-grin.
“Intercision,” she said, and waited for Alex to understand.
***
The Lion was great and mighty, and he feared no one.
This, as it turned out, was a mistake.
***
III.
Alex stared at the tigress in front of him and felt fear spike down his back. Arinna crouched at his side, teeth bared, sunlight flaring in her belly, and he tangled his fingers into her fur.
Aliyah stood and glared, her fur cragging down her shoulders in bristling spines. Erik wasn’t with her, and the squirming, aching feeling of wrong, so wrong twisted in Alex’s chest. He never got used to seeing the tiger without her human. It was just—just—wrong, even if the Professor tried to soothe the discomfort out of him, tried to tell him that it was alright, Erik and Aliyah were like the witches and shamans of kid’s stories. They could separate and feel no pain.
Alex fought the urge to press Arinna against him until the shaking stopped. He couldn’t show weakness, not now.
He steeled himself.
“Why are you here?”
“Intercision,” Aliyah snarled, low and deep, and for the first time Alex tore his eyes off her and looked at the shadowy creature at her feet.
An ermine so pale it was almost translucent lay in the shivering grass, and its tiny chest heaved. Its eyes were closed and it made an awful sound, pitiful, lonely, and suddenly Alex was very, very cold.
Hank staggered back, retching, and Alex saw Hesione, his daemon, bury her face into his blue fur. Sean hadn’t realized yet—he and Einín flew in their tight, controlled loops, watching the tigress. They didn’t understand.
Arinna choked on a growl, going so tight and tense at Alex’s side that she shook with it, and the light trembled inside them both.
“That’s—” she said, and the words caught in her throat. Her tail thrashed and a snarl, wild and wounded, ripped free and echoed in Alex’s bones.
He looked down at his hands and realized they were shaking.
Professor…
“Is that,” he managed, asking the great tiger harshly. “Is that what I think it is?”
Arinna pressed against his leg and sickness and fear toppled through them.
When Charles told him that someone was prowling in the forest, Alex had expected Aliyah to come with lies and sweet words on her tongue, or rage in her eyes, and either try to recruit them one last time or to kill them all.
But this, this—
Alex, Charles said, and his mind-voice was tight. Be strong, Alex. It’s alright. It’s alright.
Sorry, Prof, he thought, and Aliyah’s golden eyes sparked. It’s really, really not.
“Yes,” said the tigress. Her voice was oddly gentle even though she was wound for a fight. Alex remembered, suddenly, unwillingly, that she had once been one of his teachers.
“That’s a—” Alex was dimly aware that he was holding on to Arinna so tightly he could feel it at the back of his neck.
“Severed daemon,” Aliyah finished, and now Alex saw the hot, terrible rage boiling in her eyes, just below her skin. He remembered that she was now his enemy, and his grip on his own daemon tightened.
“Severed—” he choked, and now Sean understood because he abruptly forgot to scream and dropped several feet. “You’re cutting them apart?”
Fury tasted like sunlight on his tongue.
“You’re sick—”
Aliyah roared, the kind of roar that ripped into Alex’s body and flattened Arinna’s ears and sent birds fleeing into the air, that shuddered across the ground and made pipes punch out of the ground.
Before he knew exactly what was happening he was flat on his back, gasping for breath, and pipes and wires bit against his skin.
Arinna roared, startled, and twisted against her new restraints.
Prof!
Hold still, Alex, I’m coming—
No, stay—
I’m coming, Alex, just stay still. She won’t hurt you.
Aliyah growled softly, suddenly right next to Alex’s ear, and he jerked, trying to get away from her so he could let the light out.
“We,” she said, her fangs flashing near his face. He was painfully aware that, with a snap, she could bite his head off. “Did not do this.”
Arinna snarled and Alex felt her heat up, energy surging under fur, and the tigress looked away briefly to pin the daemon down tighter.
“The humans did this,” Aliyah snarled. “A government agency, operating in the north. They took a mutant, hardly more than a child, and they cut his daemon away from him.”
Alex’s stomach rolled.
Intercision.
Aliyah leaned in, very, very close. “We told you,” she said. “We warned you this would happen. When they come for you, you know why.”
She smelled like hot metal, this close, all blood and fire and iron. Arinna growled, fearless, and twisted against Alex. She itched for a fight, for revenge, and the sunlight skittered through her, through them, and he concentrated.
“Aliayh!” Charles’s voice was sharp and sudden, and it was enough to drag the tigress’s attention away from Alex. He watched her stiffen, all the way down to her claws, and he remembered the beach and how they had howled—
The light swelled in Alex’s veins and he focused, narrowing his concentration to the bands of metal wrapped around him. He felt Arinna do the same.
“Charles,” Aliyah said, and to Alex it almost sounded tender.
And then the roar of sunlight drowned everything else out and he let it go, tearing hot and bright up and up through the metal wrapped around him, blowing it into nothing.
Arinna burst up and pounced, slamming into Aliyah with all her force, howling and clawing like a mad thing. The tiger roared, lashing out, and Arinna was brave but Aliyah was bigger, was stronger, was half-mad with wild fury. Alex felt claws rake across his daemon’s face, and paws pummel her head, and he gritted his teeth against the onslaught.
“Arinna!” he shouted. A blow to her chest sent him staggering, gasping for air, and he saw Hank’s lemur leap into the fray, suddenly displaying her wicked teeth and long, sharp claws, and Einín dove from the sky—
Aliyah roared and roared, the ground around her churning, and she knocked the little bird aside hard enough to make Sean drop.
Arinna thundered back, teeth bared, sunlight gleaming down her claws—
“Enough!” Charles shouted, and everything stopped. Sean landed hard and scooped up Einín, cradling her to his chest. Hesione the lemur hissed at the tiger but returned to Hank, perching watchfully on his shoulder. Only Arinna stayed facing her opponent, her teeth bared in fury. Aliyah herself stood very still, every muscle in her body visibly trembling, with one paw raised and the claws hooked and wicked.
Her eyes flared, molten, and her tail lashed. All around them Alex heard the creaking and groaning, and he waited for her to strike.
But it never came, because Charles’s daemon Iskierka was on the ground between Aliyah and Arinna, her wings outstretched and her eyes bright and fierce.
Alex had forgotten how big Iskierka actually was.
Aliyah stared at the golden eagle for a long time, her body shuddering, and then she finally lowered her paw.
Charles breathed.
“Aliyah,” he said. Iskierka folded her wings but remained on the ground, watching the tigress silently.
“Charles,” Aliyah replied.
“You will not hurt my students.” Charles Xavier sat at the edges of the patio, framed by the light, and his eyes were hard and uncompromising. Alex felt a rush of pride for his Professor and the sunlight faded out of him. He didn’t need it anymore. Charles would take care of everything.
“I did not come here too,” the tigress retorted. “I came to deliver a message.” She swept a paw at the pale ermine that struggled in the grass.
Waves of pity and sickness washed over Alex and he grabbed his stupid, brave daemon’s fur briefly. She was warm and shaking under his fingers.
“You’re an idiot,” he murmured.
She didn’t answer.
“Your message has been received.” Charles’s voice was clipped, tight, betraying nothing. “You may go.”
For a moment, Alex thought Aliyah would refuse. She stood still, ears pinned flat to her head, claws dug deeply into the earth, and then she turned back towards the forest.
“You may keep the severed daemon,” she said. “You will do him more good than we—”
There was no warning. She was talking one second, facing the forest, and then she was reared back onto her hind legs, clawing madly at the air, and she roared—
Alex had never heard anything like it. He slammed his hands over his hears and the roar shredded through him, shook him down to the iron in his blood. Everything made of metal within three hundred feet blasted out, screeching, and Aliyah roared, leaped into the air, roared and roared and roared—
She landed with a thump, crouching into the grass, snarling deeply in her throat.
Everyone stared at her, shaken, and Alex felt weak, like he didn’t have enough blood in his body anymore.
Her eyes glittered and Alex froze, and he felt fear knot in his belly. Arinna snarled.
Aliyah was beyond furious. The smell of heated metal grew, sharp and vivid, and all around them there was a low, constant groan.
Iskierka remained on the ground, staring at the tigress, and Charles smoothed his hair back into place. He looked as cool and calm as ever but this time Alex noticed (and pretended that he didn’t) that Charles’s hand was shaking.
“What,” said the telepath, and he was steady, “the hell was that?”
The tigress straightened and the look in her eyes made Alex’s blood go cold. Even Arinna, stupid, fearless Arinna, paused.
“Charles,” Aliyah said hoarsely. “Charles, they have Raven.”
***
“Great Eagle,” said the Chief. “My eyes are weak; I cannot look into the sun to watch for enemies. Will you help me?”
“Of course,” said the Eagle. “I will keep watch for your enemies.” And the Eagle flew to the top of the tallest tree he could find, and stared into the sun until he went blind.
***
IV.
Charles stared down at the pale, half-daemon lying on the table and felt like he was going to be sick. Iskierka brushed her wings against the back of his neck comfortingly but she was just as sickened as he was. She could read this miserable creature’s mind, after all, and it was—
Pain, she whispered to him. Unbearable, unending pain.
What’s her name?
His daemon looked at him with her bright, sad eyes. Esca.
And her human’s name?
Sam.
Was he a mutant?
Iskierka paused. Yes.
Charles closed his eyes. This is wrong, he told her. This is beyond cruelty.
Of course it is. He felt her tense on the back of his chair, pull her wings in tighter. They cut someone apart.
Who is “they?” Why are they intercising?
Iskierka hissed through her beak. Her wings flared, brushing against his hair, and she beat them, stirring up dust with each stroke.
There is no “why,” she said. There is no reason to intercise. There is no reason to cut. It’s just evil.
Charles dragged a hand down his face, trying not to listen to the ermine’s pitiful whimpering. He was glad, for perhaps the first time, that he couldn’t read the minds of daemons. That was Iskierka’s power, and he didn’t envy her for it.
Aliyah thinks—
No, Charles said. She’s wrong. The government would never condone intercision. It’s wrong. It goes against everything this country stands for. The people would never tolerate it. Look what happened to the Magisterium last century. They were destroyed because of their experiments. The American government would not be so foolish—or so evil—as to follow in their footsteps.
Iskierka shifted from foot to foot and pain rippled through them, phantom twinges where Charles had once felt his legs. For Iskierka it was more intense, coming in sharp stabs that rocked her off her left leg. They hissed in shared pain, and then Charles breathed and forced it away.
Iskierka could walk—well, hop—and she could fly, even though these tired her and she preferred just to sit on the back of his chair.
The pain was only an illusion, an echo, a memory, and Charles would do best to just ignore it.
His daemon ruffled her wings and looked down at the severed ermine sadly.
She will never be whole again, Charles.
No, Charles thought. Can you put her to sleep, for a while?
Iskierka closed her brilliant eyes and the ermine went limp, her tiny, heaving chest stilling so fast that for a moment Charles thought she had died.
Maybe that’d be kinder, he thought, and he forced it down, feeling sick. He wasn’t a killer, even if it was a mercy, in this case.
The severed do not live long, Iskierka whispered, and it wasn’t much of a comfort.
Let’s go see Aliyah, Charles said, instead of answering her. He maneuvered himself out of the lab, leaving the unconscious severed creature behind. Hank waited just outside, his face pale underneath the vibrant fur. His Hesione clung tightly to his shoulder, her eyes luminous, and she looked immediately to Iskierka for reassurance.
“Is it—” Hank tried to ask, and he couldn’t make himself say the word intercised.
Charles’s eyes were soft and gentle. “She,” he corrected. “And yes.”
The lemur daemon shrank against the side of Hank’s neck and Hank recoiled, blinking furiously. Fear rolled off him in waves and Charles understood it.
To think that someone was cutting away daemons, leaving them half—
Iskierka pecked his head, a warning. Don’t, she chided. Not now.
“Hank,” Charles said gently. “Iskierka put her to sleep. Can you and Hesione check her physical condition, please? I’m no scientist, unfortunately.”
Discomfort squirmed through Hank’s mind and his lips pulled up a bit, almost subconsciously. “Yes,” he finally said, because Hank trusted Charles enough, respected him enough, to do this with a severed daemon.
Charles smiled. “Thank you very much, Hank,” he said. “Do you know where Aliyah is?”
Hesione bared her surprisingly large, sharp teeth in a snarl.
“No,” Hank said, the tension rippling through his shoulders. “But she’s here. We can feel her.”
Yes, Charles thought. I know what you mean. “Thank you. We’ll find her, I suppose.”
Shouldn’t be too hard, his daemon murmured, and Charles knew what she meant. Aliyah’s presence in the mansion throbbed in the air, shuddered down their spines. They felt her circling around the edges, shifting in and out of their space, always in and out of their space.
After three years without her and Erik it was—
Disconcerting, Iskierka murmured. Charles twisted his head to look up at her, and the lights made her feathers shine a burnished bronze.
She was beautiful, he thought, and she carded through his hair fondly.
You’re worried about Raven, she said. At once all his clever constructions and compartmentalizing came crashing down, and his mouth was dry with fear.
“You aren’t?” he said out loud, because he didn’t think he could take the silence around them anymore.
She chirped softly, clacking her beak. Of course I’m scared, she said.
“What if,” Charles started, and he couldn’t tell her how much the thought of Raven, his little sister, intercised terrified him.
I know, she whispered, her weight warm on his shoulders. She squeezed with her talons, ignoring the pain the movement caused, and Charles reached up to stroke down her back. He swallowed, forcing down his worry, his guilt, and steeled himself.
“Let’s find Aliyah.”
Iskierka leaped from his shoulders to fly ahead, weaving through the hallways of their mansion. Aliyah wouldn’t be in the center area, with the children and the signs of a life her Erik had left behind. No, she was angry—furious, in fact, if her earlier display was anything to go by—and hurt, and when a wild animal was hurt, it would withdraw somewhere still and quiet.
The North Wing?
“Your guess is as good as mine, my dear.”
With his daemon leading the way, Charles moved quickly through the hallways, leaving the warmth and light of his children’s presence behind to wade through the thick, dusty shadows of the lesser-used wings.
The light in the North Wing came in wavering, unsteady beams that grew and grew as the sun rose. Iskierka dove through them, her feathers shining gold, red, and dark as the shifting beams criss-crossed through her body. The carpets were thick with dust, making it harder to roll through, but Charles saw deep tiger-paws imprinted through the layers and pushed on.
“I’ll have to have this wing renovated,” he muttered. “It’s absolutely filthy.”
Iskierka snorted. Only you, Charles, she said.
Thinking about renovations, turning his dusty, worn-down home into a school, did little to take Charles’s mind off the fear that had somehow seeped into the mansion. He could taste it in the back of this throat—his fear, the children’s fear, even Aliyah’s fear—and it tasted like the sea.
Something indefinable squirmed in his chest.
She can’t be much farther, Iskierka soothed. She followed the tiger tracks through the dust, and here and there their path was marked by a set of claw marks gouged deep into the walls or shredded old chairs or bent, twisted lamps.
Aliyah was furious.
And if Aliyah was furious then Erik, wherever he was, was furious too, the kind of deep, violent fury that shook Charles to his bones and sent missiles hurtling towards three thousand confused, frightened men.
Angrier, Iskierka whispered. They’re angrier than that, even.
Charles swallowed. I know.
They stopped in front of a closed door. If Charles remembered correctly, this had been a drawing room, once, back when people still visited Xavier Mansion. It hadn’t been used in a decade, at least. And Aliyah was inside.
Charles could hear her just inside the door, growling softly in the language of tigers. Iskierka couldn’t read her mind—Erik was wearing his damnable helmet, then, of course—but she could feel the tigress like a black hole, pulsing raggedly at the edge of her sight.
“Are you ready, my dear?”
Iskierka lighted down onto the back of his chair. Are you?
Charles pushed open the door.
The drawing room was a battlefield. The furniture was overturned, the lamps unrecognizable, the wiring pulled clean from the walls. Fiery dawn light spilled into the room from gashes in the curtains and dust spun wildly, heavy and golden, between splintered wood and shredded chairs.
Through it all Aliyah prowled, her eyes fierce and glittering, jaws twisted into a terrible snarl. The metal rattled whenever she was near and she was half-shadow, half-fire, striped by the ragged light. Dust swirled at her paws and settled on her shoulders, and she made a deep, vicious sound in her throat.
“Aliyah,” Charles said. “Aliyah, it’s me.”
The tigress stalked forward, eyes glowing faintly. Her power shuddered behind her, making the room tremble.
Charles swallowed and told himself that he wasn’t afraid.
She won’t hurt you, Iskierka whispered.
I wish I could believe that.
“Charles,” Aliyah said. She stopped far enough away that he wasn’t too threatened but he saw that her fur spiked aggressively and her sharp fangs gleamed. She looked wild.
“Do you feel better now that you’ve destroyed part of my home?” Charles couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice, not really, not even if he wanted to. He hadn’t seen her, or Erik, in three years, and everything pent up inside surged uncomfortably close to the surface.
Iskierka brushed his neck gently, a reminder. Normally she would talk to another daemon—conventions of society, and all that—but since she couldn’t touch Aliyah’s mind, and she didn’t speak anymore, it was up to Charles.
Aliyah’s tail twitched, a quick, nervous motion. Charles frowned. She wasn’t really a nervous creature, when he had known her. Perhaps three years of guerrilla warfare had changed that.
Or maybe she misses Erik, Iskierka said. She’s alone, Charles. He isn’t with her. She’s probably worried that he was captured too.
I didn’t think of that, Charles admitted grudgingly.
Iskierka ruffled her feathers. Of course not. You’re only human, after all.
The telepath studied the tigress, this time trying to look past the obvious anger. Aliyah was thinner than she had been before Cuba, her fur perhaps a little duller. She was still strong, still built like a predator, but there were clear signs of exhaustion now, of age.
I wonder what Erik looks like now, he thought to himself. Iskierka nudged his shoulders gently, a warning.
“Are you alright?” Charles asked Aliyah, and the tigress pinned her ears to her head.
“Fine,” she snapped. Behind her the wiring clattered against the walls.
Charles arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
She growled at him, more irritated than genuinely angry, and turned, continuing to pace through the wreckage.
Iskierka shifted and Charles felt her want.
Go, he said, and she did. His eagle immediately leaped into the air, wings churning, and she flapped through the heavy dust to land in front of Aliyah with her huge wings outstretched.
Aliyah stared down at her, and the dust, turned red-gold by the dawn, floated in the sunbeams between them.
For several long, taut seconds, the two daemons stared each other down, talking in a language Charles couldn’t understand with their eyes and their faces and their bodies.
Iskierka looked away first.
“Why don’t you speak?” rumbled Aliyah. Her voice was low and Charles got the distinct impression that he wasn’t meant to hear. “I can’t hear you in my head, not when Erik has the helmet on.”
Iskierka looked at the tiger with her bright eyes mutely and beat her wings again, sailing back to Charles’s lap.
Aliyah followed the movement and turned to face Charles again and this time he saw more than her anger.
“Why doesn’t she speak?”
Charles ran his thumb down his daemon’s head. “She hasn’t spoken out loud for quite some time,” he said. He almost said since Cuba, but Iskierka nipped his thumb sharply.
Not now, Charles.
When, then?
The eagle didn’t respond.
Aliyah padded closer and the lines of anger softened. Her fur lay flat on her shoulders and the metal fixtures in the room stopped quaking. Her face relaxed from a snarl into something more contemplative.
“Charles,” she said, and it was tender.
Iskierka chirruped, brushing against her human’s chest, and they both watched the tiger pad close, closer, until she was right next to Charles looking into his eyes with her own deep, wild ones.
She was too close.
Charles wanted to be angry. He wanted to be furious with Aliyah and her human—he probably would be, if Erik deigned to show up—wanted to yell, to vent three years of frustration on them.
But he couldn’t, because Charles remembered the weight of Aliyah’s head on his stomach, the feel of her whiskers against his cheek, her coarse fur underneath his fingers. He remembered talking to her, and to Erik, and the feeling of Erik’s hand on Iskierka’s back all the way through his soul.
He remembered breaking the taboo, and feeling the completion, and he didn’t want to remember.
He wanted to forget.
Aliyah stepped closer and her breath tickled his throat. She was massive, he realized, truly massive, big enough to protect a traumatized boy from the horrors of his tormentor.
Iskierka made a sound in her throat, harsh, ragged. Charles sat frozen.
Aliyah was too close.
“No,” he said and his voice wasn’t steady, not anymore. “Aliyah, don’t. We can’t. The taboo—”
She scoffed and he saw Erik in her now, with eyes the color of old ice and a wry grin on his face.
“The taboo,” she murmured disdainfully. “I am a tiger, Charles. What do I care for the laws of mice?”
He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look into hers and see what was there, what had stayed through the years.
Electricity, the kind that came from touching a live wire, shuddered up his hand and he burned—
Aliyah made a sound like a sigh, tired, and Charles felt her turn, her paws thudding softly in the thick carpet.
“Erik will be here shortly,” she said. “Knowing him, he has Azazel teleporting all over the country looking for Raven. When they don’t find her, they’ll come here.”
Fear trickled into Charles’s gut, replacing the electric tingle of Aliyah’s touch. “Raven,” he whispered, opening his eyes.
The tigress was a few feet away now, solemn, regal. “You’re frightened.”
No, Charles wanted to say. Of course not. But this was Aliyah, and he couldn’t lie to her. “Yes.”
She dipped her head. “We’re sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what happened yet, but we never meant for her to get hurt. We’ve tried to protect her.”
Charles’s temper, frayed thin by stress and fear and three years of balled-up anger, flared and the feathers on Iskierka’s neck stood up.
“Then why did you let her get captured?” He snapped. “You know she’s impulsive—”
“She wasn’t alone,” the tiger cut in. “I told you, I don’t know the details. When Erik arrives, we will explain. Until then—”
“What? What can I do?” It came out harsher than he meant it, and Aliyah drew back a bit, ears flat. The sun was like fire in her fur.
“Gather your children,” she said flatly. “Talk to them. We might need reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements? You’re talking about going to war?”
Her eyes were cool. “Of course,” she said. “They’re intercising our people, Charles. We won’t let it happen again, even if we have to kill them all.” And she turned and stalked out.
Iskierka made a soft sound and buried her head in the crook of Charles’s neck and he grabbed her, held onto her so tight he felt it echo back. Fear and anger swirled behind his eyes and his hand still tingled where Aliyah had licked him.
Again?
***
“Brother Jaguar,” cried the Man, and he held a fistful of starlight. “Brother Jaguar, I have a gift for you.”
“I do not want your gifts, little Man,” said the Jaguar, who had the sun and moon and stars in his fur.
Man shook his head. “Too bad,” he said, and threw the starlight onto Jaguar’s fur.
***
V.
Raven came to in stages, in little flashes of fragmented time:
Light, bright and harsh, and the feeling of bumping down a dirt road:
A hand thrown across her stomach, familiar and limp:
Fur pressed against her face:
Pain flaring in spurts down her legs, her ribs, her face:
Someone whispering, then someone shouting:
Movement, hands tugging, a wounded, angry roar:
And then, quite suddenly, she was fully conscious and she sat up so hard her injured ribs screamed in protest.
“Sirion,” she choked, reaching blindly for her daemon. She didn’t know where she was, only that she hurt and Sirion wasn’t there—
For a second panic threatened to drown her and she started to shout, calling for her daemon, and then a cold, rough hand clamped down on her wrist and she stilled.
In the gloom of the room—a cell, probably—Raven could only make out a few blurry shapes and gapped light filtering in high on the wall.
“Quiet,” someone whispered.
Raven’s eyes struggled to adjust and she saw Riptide raised a finger to his lips, warning her to be quiet. He let go of her arm, closing his eyes. There was a sudden creak and light flooded the cell—Raven screwed her eyes shut more as a reflex than anything, but it turned out to be a good move.
“Nah, they’re all still asleep,” a man’s voice rumbled. Raven kept her eyes shut, hardly daring to breathe. “You must be hearing things.”
“Huh,” another man said. Raven cracked her eyelids and saw two sets of feet and two daemons, a big, mean-looking dog and a lynx, standing against the bright light. Her captors, then.
The door slid shut on the two men and Raven slowly opened her eyes, swallowing nervously.
“Talk quietly,” Janos whispered, holding a finger to his lips. “So they don’t hear.”
“Where’s Sirion? “ Concern for her daemon overwhelmed everything else—he was close, she could feel him, but she couldn’t see him.
“Behind you.”
Raven turned fast, ignoring her howling ribs, and immediately found her daemon in the darkness. Sirion was curled in the corner away from her and a heavy color tied him to the wall. He was in his favorite jaguar shape but his fur, instead of black, was vibrantly, glowingly white.
Raven stared. She’d never seen him take that color before.
“Siri,” she whispered. She wanted to crawl over to him and bury her face in his fur but she couldn’t; her legs wouldn’t move.
“Mystique,” Janos said, drawing her attention. He held his hands out in front of him and asked, in fluid sign language, can you sign?
Erik had made them learn, a few years ago, so they could communicate if Emma wasn’t around. Raven carefully signed yes, and then drugged?
Yes. His hands whirled, too fast for Raven to follow. She frowned and said slowly, please.
Ambush, Riptide spelled. CIA was waiting for us.
How many?
You, Janos said. Angel, and me. Azazel got Emma. No time to come back for us.
Raven shook her head, trying to clear out some of the drug-induced haze. Where are we?
Don’t know. Tried escape—here Janos had to slow down again and spell out his words—but they grabbed my daemon.
“They grabbed your daemon?” Raven’s stomach rolled. Touching another’s daemon—and violently—was wrong.
They cut daemons, Riptide signed. Taboo isn’t going to stop them.
Fear began to pool in Raven’s gut as the drug faded and she began to piece together what was going to happen. They’d been captured by the people who had intercised at least twenty mutants. They were mutants.
It suddenly wasn’t looking too good for the Brotherhood.
Raven swallowed, her mouth painfully dry. I won’t show fear, she thought to herself. I’m stronger than that. I’ve grown up.
If Riptide knew what she was thinking, he didn’t say anything.
Raven’s eyes adjusted to the gloom slowly and she sat up carefully this time, checking her surroundings with an escapist’s eye. They were in a fairly large cell made of steel and concrete. Weak light spilled under the doorway and from cracks near the ceiling. There was a toilet in one corner and a sink in the other. Angel was chained to the sink and her wings tumbled over her back; she was still unconscious, and probably had been since they were captured.
Angel’s daemon, Quetz, lay coiled in her lap. The men, whoever they were (Raven would bet money on CIA), hadn’t made an effort to cage him or trap him like they had with Sirion. Apparently they decided chaining a snake was pointless.
Riptide was cuffed to the wall not far from Angel and his daemon was nestled in his lap. Her feathers were bent on one wing and she was almost unnaturally still. It hurt Raven to look at her.
Raven wasn’t chained but Sirion was (they didn’t know he could change shape, then, or they hadn’t really thought about it), and she longed to cuddle him (just in case) but she didn’t.
Are you afraid? she asked Riptide.
“They won’t cut us yet,” he said, and there was something knowing in his dark eyes. “It takes time to prepare.”
Raven frowned. “And you know this how?”
Her teammate didn’t answer. We have a few weeks, at least, he signed. More if they don’t have Silver Guillotine.
Raven hugged her knees to her chest, trying desperately not to think of the machine they’d found in the first facility, far to the north. It had been a sleek thing, two mesh cages and a thin silver blade hanging between them and at first she thought it harmless, but Erik had exploded and crumpled it to nothing.
And if Erik was scared, she should be fucking terrified.
It was later, walking through the base, that Raven learned what the machine was for. She’d been the one to find the daemon cages, the first to see the severed ones, pale, shaking, crying out for their humans.
She’d called for Erik then, and watched him gently open the cages one by one while Aliyah carried the pitiful, served things to their humans’ laps.
Even then the severed hadn’t been whole—as Azazel explained it, in harsh whispers, clutching his Elvira to close to him, they would never be together again. Intercision was permanent.
Erik—Magneto, at that moment—had carefully filled nineteen syringes with morphine, left one for each severed pair, and then quietly closed the door behind him.
Only one daemon had been taken, sent to Charles for proof. The rest had died, and Raven thought it must’ve been a relief, really, to just stop and force it to end.
She swallowed painfully, trying to work some moisture back into her throat. She didn’t want to end up like that, a shadow, a half. And Sirion, pale and lifeless, crying out for someone who wasn’t there anymore—
“Para,” Riptide whispered, and his tone wasn’t unkind. Raven noticed that his fingers were buried in his osprey’s feathers. He was scared too. “Don’t. They want you afraid.”
“They’re going to cut Sirion away from me,” she snapped, struggling to keep her voice low and even. “I’m allowed to freak out a little, okay?”
Janos shook his head firmly. “No,” he said. “You’re not.”
Sirion stirred, his paws twitching, and Raven broke eye contact with Riptide to watch him, worried.
“Mystique.”
Raven looked back at her teammate coldly, anger and fear and confusion spinning wild in her thoughts.
“Don’t panic,” he said. “Don’t show that you are afraid. They win, when they see you are afraid.”
She didn’t look at him, choosing instead to watch her twitching daemon. I don’t want to be, she almost told him. I wish I wasn’t. But…
“Okay,” she whispered instead. “I won’t be afraid.” This time she did reach out to Sirion when he stirred, resting a hand on his face and stroking away some of the tension curled around his mouth.
Janos’s eyes were dark and unreadable, and if she had been looking, Raven would have noticed the way his hands trembled in his daemon’s feathers.
“Bien,” he whispered.
And then the door swung open, light pummeling into the gloom, and Raven threw up a hand to shield her eyes.
Three men, two in suits and one in a lab coat, stood in the doorway and their daemons stared at her. The doctor’s daemon was a lizard, vibrant blue, and she frightened Raven, just a little.
Don’t show fear, she thought, and schooled her face into blankness, fisting Sirion’s soft white fur.
The doctor smiled, and it was cold. “Hello,” he said. “Welcome to the Bolvangar Project.”
***
“Do you miss it?” The Sparrow asked the Eagle. “Your sight, I mean.”
The Eagle rustled his wings and remained facing the sun, even though he couldn’t see the Chief’s enemies coming anymore.
“No,” he said. “I don’t miss it at all.”
***
VI.
Erik arrived just before dusk, on the front lawn, and the entire mansion shook with his sudden presence.
Charles leaned back in his chair, watching Erik from the window, and waited. He’d been waiting all day, really, ever since Aliyah told him that Erik would come. He’d turned the matter over and over in his mind, trying to decide what to do, and Iskierka had flown endless, exhaustive circles above him even though it hurt her now.
On one hand, having a militant, battle-tested leader would double the chances of Raven’s safe return, especially since it was Erik. Charles knew his counterpart cared for Raven, as much as he was able, and that’d he do whatever necessary to bring her back whole and unsevered.
But on the other hand, Erik was furious, and his fury was dangerous. Aliyah was evidence; the entire day she paced through the mansion, rattling doorknobs and lamps, growling softly of blood and vengeance.
Charles had never seen her like that—even the night before Cuba she hadn’t been angry, only determined, focused.
The lawn was still a wreck from Aliyah’s arrival. She had mended all the pipes and wiring but the lawn itself was a mess of churned earth and gaping holes. Charles watched Erik and what was left of his team—Emma Frost and the teleporter—pick their way through the minefield, their heads bent together.
Frost was in her diamond form, her mind closed to him. The teleported thought in Russian, which Charles barely spoke, so he was useless information-wise. And Erik’s helmet gleamed dully in the fading light, a shimmering blood-dipped red. He was a black hole, and it hurt to reach for him only to be met with the helmet’s smooth barrier.
Aliyah tore out of the house—through a window, if the sound of breaking glass was anything to go by—and bounded to her human with a roar, rearing up and resting her great paws on his shoulders.
Erik instantly tangled his fingers in her fur and leaned his head against hers. Charles imagined that she was purring, growling, whispering to him, and she leaned on him heavily.
Children, Charles called. At once Alex responded, all tightly-coiled determination and anger. Sean and Hank were slower to touch back; Hank’s mind was the color of fear and Sean’s the color of confusion.
Yeah, Prof? Alex asked.
Invite our guests inside, if you will. I’ll meet them in the dining room.
Alex was silent for a second, his thoughts a swarm of anger and understanding. Okay, he said finally.
Thank you.
From his spot by the window, Charles watched his students—dear god, how young they were, really, when it came down to it, barely settled—advance across the lawn warily, spearheaded by Alex and his Arinna.
His three students stopped several feet away from the three Brotherhood members, and for several long heartbeats no one moved.
Charles slipped into Alex’s mind easily, peering through his eyes. He felt Iskierka do the same, and together they watched Aliyah drop back to all fours and take her place at Erik’s side.
“Charles,” Erik said, and oh, he was just like Charles remembered, and he had to fight not to dive out of Alex’s head. “You can hear me, I assume?”
“He’s here,” Alex said. “He can hear you.”
From Alex’s left, Hank let out a low, rumbling growl, baring his teeth at the teleporter. Charles felt an irrational swell of pride. His students were brave, and unyielding, and good.
Erik canted his head to the side, his eyes shadowed under the helmet. Through Alex’s eyes Charles saw the vague smudges of his features and wished, suddenly, that he could see Erik with his own.
He crushed that feeling. Now was not the time.
Aliyah’s tail twitched, and Charles realized that Erik was nervous.
“Raven’s been taken,” Erik said softly.
Hank’s growled louder, ferociously. “You were supposed to protect her,” he snarled. “That was your job.”
“She is not a child,” Erik—or Magneto now, Charles wasn’t sure—snapped. “She wanted to go. I won’t hold her back.”
“Come inside,” Charles said, working Alex’s jaws. “We have much to discuss, I think.””
Erik dipped his head and he and his people took a step forward.
“Not Frost and the teleporter.” This was Alex, reasserting himself, and Arinna bared her teeth in warning. “Just you, Magneto.”
If Erik was irritated by Alex’s disrespect and scathing tone, he didn’t show it. The teleporter, on the other hand, took a step forward, murmuring in some foreign language—German, it sounded like—urgently.
His daemon was great white wolf, bigger than Moira’s Zev, and her teeth were half-bared. Arinna snarled at her openly, daring her to attack, and the wolf didn’t.
Erik shook his head at the teleporter, answering back in German, and gave Emma Frost a long, sideways look.
She seemed to understand and nodded, touching the teleporter’s arm and striding back towards the woods. Her owl hooted once, an insult, most likely, and landed on the wolf’s head.
The teleporter watched Magneto for a long, heavy second, and then he too turned and followed Frost into the woods.
Charles felt like he’d just been offered a sort of truce.
“He’s in the dining room,” Alex said.
Magneto nodded and proceeded to ignore the children completely, striding past them like a tiger on the hunt.
Charles watched him go and saw Hank lash out, all coiled, beastly strength—
And then he snapped violently back into his own body, shaking his head with the force of it.
Alex…?
Sorry, Prof, Alex said grimly, and Charles got the impression that he wasn’t really all that sorry. Didn’t mean to toss you out there.
What happened?
Nothing. We’ll see you in the dining room in a minute.
The telepath shook his head, clearing out the shock, and he bit down on a sigh. With some effort, he managed to school his face into practiced passivity and Iskierka carded through his hair, neatening it.
Are you ready? She asked.
It might have just been Charles’s imagination, but he felt a sort of pressure building in his lower back.
No.
He arranged himself at the head of the dining room table, folding his hands in his lap. Iskierka lofted from her usual position to settled on the table, her feathers a shimmering gold. He grasped her feathers once, briefly, drawing strength, and she brushed a wing over his hand as he settled it back into his lap.
They waited.
The door creaked open and in strode Magneto, tall and imposing and wound so tight Charles saw the tension ripple across his skin. Aliyah prowled ahead, settling down beside the chair at the opposite end of the table. She turned to look Erik and something silent passed between them, and Magneto tore his eyes from Charles and sat down stiffly.
Alex and the children stood in the doorway, their faces and minds half-way between determined and unsure.
“Go,” Charles said to them kindly. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
“But—” Sean started, casting Erik a mistrustful look. His daemon Einín hung on his shoulder, twittering shrilly in his ear.
“It’s quite alright, Sean,” he said. “Wait just outside, if you want. Erik’s not going to hurt me.”
Charles felt their lingering misgivings as they backed out of the room, glaring at Erik, but Erik didn’t seem to notice or care. He was watching Charles, and the shadow of the helmet hid his eyes.
“You’re not going to take that damned thing off, are you?”
Erik tilted his head, considering. “I’d rather not.”
Charles smiled bitterly. “I didn’t think so.”
They lapsed into silence, neither sure, exactly, of just what to say. The easy conversation over chess or scotch of three years ago was long gone, and it hurt, sort of, a dull, throbbing pain somewhere below his heart.
He wanted—
Iskierka cooed and brushed her wings down his arms gently, and her eyes were bright and sad.
Charles, she said. We can’t, not right now. Raven’s more important than what we want.
You’re right, as always, he told her, trying to smile. His face felt slack, frozen. He lifted his eyes to look deep into Erik’s shadows, trying to find the glimmers of blue he knew were there.
“What happened to Raven,” he said, and, if possible, his old friend tensed further. Aliyah growled, low and furious in her throat, and the lights rattled.
“She was captured,” Erik began, and the violence in his voice bloomed and grew until Charles could feel it knife-sharp against his skin.“Last night, with Angel and Riptide.”
Charles fought down the anger—you let my sister be captured—and breathed. He was calm. He was in control. “Where was she? What was she doing?”
Erik made a sound, inarticulate, and Charles shook his head.
“No,” he said as patiently as he could manage. “Tell me, from the beginning. I can’t help you unless I know.”
The leader of the Brotherhood leaned back in his chair, and the helmet cast deeper shadows. “Fine,” he growled. “Three days ago, we were Alaska. An informant told me there was a mutant testing facility there, two hundred miles north of Anchorage. We all went to shut it down.”
And by shut it down, he means destroy, Charles thought.
“We found the usual experiments,” Erik continued, and the violence around them grew. “And then Raven found the severed ones.”
“Raven found—”
“The severed daemons,” Magneto said. “Twenty of them. Severed daemons, Charles, I haven’t seen anything like that since—”
Aliyah snarled softly, abortively, and one of Erik’s hands dropped out of sight, presumably to tangle in her fur. Everything metal rattled hard, cracking against the walls, the floors. Even Charles’s chair quaked, fine, delicate vibrations shuddering his bones.
“The scientists kept records,” Erik said quietly. “The mutant ‘problem,’ they said, could be fixed with intercision. They’d been doing research, for years, it looks like. Hundreds of our people, pulled and cut and torn apart.”
Charles felt sick. The thought of mutants—of anyone—being cut apart for science was, was—
Oh, don’t, Iskierka cried, burying her head against his neck. Charles folded his hands over her back and held her, his great eagle, and he felt her shake against him.
“We destroyed the base,” Erik continued. The knife-sharp feeling of bloodlust seemed to slide over Charles’s skin, alien and powerful. “And gave the severed the option of ending it. I sent Mystique—”
Raven, her name is Raven, she’s my sister, not your soldier.
“Riptide, Angel, and Emma to Langley, to collect and destroy all the information they had on mutants.”
“You sent them to the CIA?” Charles said, disbelieving. “Surely you’re not that stupid, Erik, that’s suicide.”
Erik shrugged.
“You sent them to Langley?” For the first time, Charles allowed a touch of his anger, bottled up for so long, to seep into his words.
“I had no other choice,” Erik snapped. “What was I supposed to do, Charles, let them continue cutting my people apart? For being ourselves?”
“The CIA cannot possibly be involved in intercision,” Charles said flatly. “The government would never condone it.”
Erik laughed, and it was harsh and wall-shaking. “Three years,” he said. “You’ve tried to run this school of yours for three years, Charles. You’ve watched the news, read the papers. The humans hate us. They beat and rape and kill us; most would jump at the chance to watch an intercision if it meant the cure to their problem.”
Charles shook his head. “You’re wrong. Intercision is— it sickens people. It’s so wrong, the people wouldn’t stand for it, no matter on whom or why it’s being performed.”
“You’re too trusting,” Erik spat. “Open your eyes, Charles! The world around you wants to kill you and you’re content to hide here and let them.”
“I’m not—” Charles began, and all of his elegant words, the arguments he’d rehearsed over and over when he couldn’t sleep, imaging this meeting, deserted him. Blind, he wanted to say. I’m not stupid, I’m not naïve, I’m not soft—
Charles, Iskierka whispered. Focus.
Right.
“You’re wrong,” he said, as evenly as he could. Erik grinned, and it looked more like a tiger baring its teeth. Aliyah rumbled underneath him, violent, gorgeous, and Charles heard the unmistakable sound of claws sliding across the wooden floors.
“So the daemon I sent you isn’t severed,” he said. “It never happened. No one would ever use intercision.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Charles said, through gritted teeth. “Someone cut that poor creature from her human, I do not deny that. There are evil, cruel people out there, but I’m saying the American government is not cruel. They would never stand for it. If anything, they’ll have learned from the Magisterum’s errors.”
Erik snorted, subsiding, and the anger swirling around him cooled a bit, dove back under his skin. “The CIA,” he began, “keeps records on every mutant they’ve ever encountered. And they’ve encountered quite a few, these last three years. Not as many as they could have, I suppose, since Cerebro is gone, but a good few.”
“Records?”
“Names. Addresses. Daemon forms.” Erik looked away, and this time he didn’t even try to smile. “Identification numbers.”
Aliyah growled, and she was the only indication that Erik was seething.
Something twisted violently inside Charles, and he wanted to reach out, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, not here. Not now. Not ever again.
Iskierka comforted him briefly, and then she hopped back onto the table, spreading her huge wings for balance.
“I sent my people in to get that information out, to delay the intercision program for a few weeks at least.”
“What happened to them?”
Erik shrugged and tension rippled down his visible hand. “An ambush, Emma thinks. The CIA was somehow tipped off that we were coming, and they hid themselves from her. The hallways were blocked off. They tried to fight, but then Angel went down, and then Mystique. Emma called Azazel but he couldn’t risk getting through the mass of agents to get to our people.”
“You left them?”
Erik’s face was unreadable, half in shadow. “Sacrifices had to be made at the time,” he said. “We’re at war. I intend to tear the country apart to find them, Charles. I won’t leave them, leave her, to be torn in half.”
Charles looked away. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. With the seven of us, we can find your sister faster.”
Charles closed his eyes. Of course he was going to agree. It was Raven, and she was still his sister for all he hadn’t seen her in three years. He’d agree anyway, because someone was cutting people and their daemons apart and that was wrong.
“Are you with me?” Erik asked, softly, gently. Aliyah rumbled and it was a question, an invitation. Charles opened his eyes and watched the sunlight stream into the dining room, turn Erik’s helmet deep, dark red.
Charles wished he could see his eyes.
Iskierka flapped to the edge of the table, stopping just in front of Erik, her eyes bright and solemn. She didn’t speak, because she couldn’t, not anymore.
Erik offered her his hand.
“Are you with me, Charles? This time, at least?”
Later there would be time to fight—to argue, to scream, to give Erik everything that had been building for three fucking years—but now was not the time. Now Charles’s children needed him; Raven needed him; the mutants needed him.
He couldn’t be angry, or hurt, or wild. That was Erik’s territory, and Erik’s alone.
He had to be Charles the leader, the calm, the collected, who had carefully built up a reputation in Congress as a fair, temperate advocate for mutant rights.
Iskierka.
His daemon looked at him, and then at Erik and his outstretched hand, and then at Charles again.
Iskierka, don’t.
The golden eagle sighed heavily, the sound escaping from her beak, and very tenderly, very quickly, she nuzzled her head against Erik’s hand before flying back to Charles’s shoulder.
Electricity—souls—rubbed and tingled down his skin and he swallowed, forced himself to breathe.
Don’t do that again.
She didn’t respond.
“Yes,” Charles said out loud. “Yes, I am with you. We’ll help you find Raven.”
“The facility will be destroyed,” Erik warned. “And everyone in it.”
More bloodshed, Charles thought blearily. So much bloodshed. “I know.”
Erik nodded. “Good,” he said, and he stood, walking slowly, carefully over to Charles. He loomed above him and finally, finally Charles saw his eyes, and they were vivid gray-blue and cracked open.
He suddenly forgot to breathe.
Erik studied him and the light slipped away, and he made a sound in the back of his throat half-way between a laugh and a growl.
“It’s good to see you, Charles,” he said softly, and then he turned and walked out, Aliyah padding at his heels.
Charles watched them go, his hand fisted tight into Iskierka’s feathers, and something welled in his throat. He bit down on it, choked it back, and his daemon keened softly, raggedly.
“It’s good to see you too,” he said to empty air, and no one answered.