dust
part two: dust
***
“What have you done to me?” Jaguar roared, and his voice shook the trees. His beautiful night-black fur had been turned white by Man’s stardust, and one by one the sun and the stars in his fur died, leaving only the moon and black scars.
Man smiled, for he was cruel and triumphant. “Now you can’t hide from me,” Man said, and raised his spear to kill the Jaguar.
***
I.
“Stand here,” the scientist ordered, gesturing at the scale. His daemon blinked her beady eyes and Raven fought the urge to lash out, pressing her hand into Sirion’s snowy head instead of the side of the scientist’s face.
The scientist looked up from his charts, blinking, and something sour crept into his expression. His lips thinned and his daemon, a blue speckled lizard, blinked slowly.
The scientist made an impatient sound. “Stand on the scale,” he repeated. “Or I’ll have Mr. Peters here make you.”
Behind the scientist, one of her two suited guards stared at her impassively. His daemon was a wolf and she showed Raven her sharp teeth.
Sirion growled back, fearless, and Raven felt him quiver against her leg.
In the hours since he’d woken up, they’d been dragged through the facility nearly a dozen times for various “tests;” blood tests, measurements, X-Rays, and all sorts of other loud, clanking things that left the taste of metal in her mouth and her head spinning.
They hadn’t ask her to show them her power yet, but Raven couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t far off. They had to know what she could do—she’d used her abilities, after all, taking out as many of them as she could—and she couldn’t figure out why they weren’t testing that yet.
To make us afraid, Sirion murmured in her head.
She stroked his back briefly, a fleeting comfort, and gave the scientist a filthy look as she stepped carefully up onto the scale.
At once it began to click and whir, ticker tape spitting out of a slot near her head. She saw numbers—her weight, and then something else—before it was snatched away by the eager scientist and studied.
Sirion snarled thinly. Since he had come, he hadn’t changed his shape and the effect was fucking scary. He was in his preferred jaguar form, magnificent and spotted, but instead of black-brown fur with colors shifting inside he was blindingly, brilliantly white.
He looked bigger because of it, Raven thought. Much, much bigger.
The scientist ignored her daemon’s low snarling but the two guards didn’t; the wolf daemon bristled and snarled back and the lynx glared warningly, flattening her ears to her head. The guards themselves were impassive.
Raven was just a little mutant girl to them—not even particularly dangerous, either, really, because Angel could fly and spit globules of fire and Janos summoned tornadoes from his hands. She, in comparison, was just a shapeshifter, and they were big, strong men with guns and tranquilizers.
Raven hated them.
She knew this facility. It was almost an exact copy of the lab the Brotherhood raided in Anchorage, down the equipment. This place was, without a doubt, a place for intercision, and the thought sent terror-hate coiling in her gut.
She stepped off the scale, daring the suits to comment, and felt Siri press up against the back of her legs. His brilliant white fur rippled for a moment, and spots speckling him shifting, and he stared the wolf down with bright, fierce eyes.
Don’t be afraid, he whispered. We can’t be afraid.
I know.
“Good,” the scientist said. “Very good.” He tilted his head, pining Raven down with a lizard-like stare. “What’s your name, girl?”
“Mystique,” she told him, because she sure as hell wasn’t giving him her original name.
The scientist arched an eyebrow. “Mystique? No, I don’t mean the ridiculous name you call yourself, I mean your name.”
She stared him down, defiant. “My name is Mystique.”
The lizard blinked, clearly unimpressed.
“Don’t toy with me, girl,” the scientist snapped. “Tell me your name. Don’t make this harder for yourself.”
Sirion bared his teeth.
“My name is Mystique.”
The scientist hissed a breath. “Mr. Peters,” he said. “Persuade the girl otherwise.”
The suited man, Peters, nodded, stepped forward, and his wolf peeled her lips back from her teeth. He reached for Raven with a huge hand, and she knew that he wasn’t going to be kind or gentle about it, not at all.
“Sirion!” she screamed, and lunged forward suddenly, slamming into Peters with all the force she could muster. The man staggered back, startled—weren’t expecting that, where you, Raven thought viciously—and lashed out with his fist, trying to bowl her over with sheer force alone.
Sirion roared and leaped, claws extended, crashing into the snarling wolf and ripping at her with terrible, frenzied energy; the wolf’s angry growls turned to snarling, wounded yelps and snaps, and the two daemons rolled over and over in a blur of vivid white and drab gray fur and flashing teeth.
Peters yelled, swinging at her face, and Raven pushed his hand aside so that the blow only glanced down her shoulder. She kicked, putting as much mutant strength into it as she could, and she was rewarded with the crack of ribs and Peters’s howl of pain.
“Help him!” the scientist snapped, as his lizard dove beneath his lab coat for cover. The other guard joined in swinging, catching Raven in the chest, and she staggered back with a gasp.
Sirion faltered, but only for a moment, and he hit the wolf with his great paws so hard she staggered, stunned, and sagged to the ground.
Peters tripped, shaking his head frantically, and Raven took the opening, springing forward to ruthlessly drive her foot in his throat.
He choked and dropped to the ground, fighting to breathe, and Raven rounded on the other guard fearlessly, adrenaline pumping and wiping away all other thoughts but fight.
This guard was a better fighter, controlling every motion of his body, and from the way the lynx circled Sirion, Raven could tell that they weren’t being underestimated. She curled her hands into fists.
She hadn’t bothered to shapeshift since waking—there wasn’t a point, really, they knew what she really looked like, and what she could do—but now she began to flick through forms, most of them young and harmless-looking, trying to see what could confuse the guard.
He wasn’t impressed.
The scientist was shouting out the door now, screaming for reinforcements.
We can’t win, Sirion said anxiously. He snarled and swiped at the lynx, but the smaller, faster wildcat danced aside and leaped fearlessly for his face with needle-sharp claws. Raven, we can’t—
Raven ducked a punch, aiming for the guard’s stomach, but she wasn’t nearly fast enough to avoid the follow-through, and she reeled back with a split lip and stars dancing in front of her eyes.
Her mouth tasted like copper and her ears rang. She staggered.
Sirion couldn’t recover fast enough. The lynx was on him in a heartbeat, biting and clawing and digging deep into his fur, refusing to let him escape.
He and Raven cried out, and his fur rippled and roiled as he flickered rat-cat-bird-dog-snake, writhing, trying desperately to escape.
The guard tackled Raven and she kicked, hitting something—she heard a satisfying snap—but the man’s momentum carried him forward into her, and they went down hard.
Her head cracked on the linoleum and she jerked, stunned. Sirion tumbled back into the white jaguar’s shape and lay limp, and Raven felt blood trickle around the back of her head.
The room swam and the guard’s weight hurt—she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t change, and her heart hammered in her ears.
The scientist, deciding that it was safe, came closer, peering down at the captured mutant. He smiled coldly and his blue lizard returned to his shoulder, blinking her glistening eyes.
“Now,” he said. Other guards were rushing into the room, pulling the man she had downed out. Their daemons rushed to the lynx’s aid, holding Sirion still, and hate burned in the back of Raven’s throat.
“What’s your name?”
Raven smiled at him, showing bloody teeth. “Mystique,” she said proudly, and then the world went dark.
***
“Tyger, tyger,” whispered Man, through his torn and gurgling throat. “Why?”
The Tiger smiled, showing his bloody fangs. “Because,” said he. “Someone had to remind you just how small you are.”
***
II.
Aliyah was so tense the air around her tasted like hot metal.
Her fur was jagged down her spine and rough to his fingers, but he tried his best too soothe out the crags anyway, listening to her growl low and continuously next to his ear.
“Aliyah,” Erik murmured.
Her muscles slipped and shifted under his fingers as she moved, prowled around him in a predator’s tight circle. If he hadn’t been his daemon, he might have been afraid of her.
“Hold it in,” he told her. “Save it. We can use it when we go and get Raven.”
She growled and circled, eyes gleaming, and her claws tore wounds into the earth, but she didn’t let the anger out.
“You’re an idiot,” she spat at him, tail lashing. “It’s been three years, you can’t even take off the damn helmet for him—”
“Aliyah,” Erik said sharply. “Now is not the time. We have other matters—”
“If not now, when?” She bared her teeth at him and fury surged underneath her fur, tingling through his stomach. The air felt hot, oppressive, and every scrap of metal with in two miles sang to them, vibrated just underneath their skin. “Three more years? Ten? Never?”
“It’s not your concern,” Erik said through gritted teeth. Aliyah’s anger echoed and fed his own and a hundred conflicting thoughts—no and yes and i can’t and i should, i want to—rattled inside the helmet, trapped, unable to tear free.
He bit down on them, held them in to feed his strength, and Aliyah snarled.
“Idiot,” she snapped. “Are all humans this stupid, or is it just mine?”
Erik bristled. “The choices I’ve made,” he growled, “were for the good of our people. What I want doesn’t matter.”
She snorted, face wrinkled in a scowl. “Martyr.”
“If I must.”
The sound his daemon made was outraged and sad and understanding all at once, and he wanted to wrap his arms around his neck but he wouldn’t. Charles and his children were watching, no doubt; he could not show them weakness, or pain, or anything soft at all.
He had to be hard and painless today.
“And me?” Aliyah whispered, more to herself than to Erik but of course he heard it anyway. “What about me, Erik? What if I don’t want to be a martyr?”
Her eyes were fierce and amber, tinged with sorrow and old wounds, and Erik offered her his hand. “No one does,” he said.
“But you will,” she said, and it was bitter. “You’ll fight and kill and die, if you have to.”
Erik dipped his head. The helmet—Shaw’s helmet still, even after three years—was heavy. “Yes. If I must, I will.”
She roared softly, harshly, and leaped at him, pressing her beautiful face into his stomach. “I don’t want you to,” she said. The anger had left her now—her fur was spiked for a different reason. “I want—I want—”
“I know.” Erik let steel creep into his tone and strength flood down his fingers into Aliyah’s fur. “But we can’t.”
“No,” she said dully. “I suppose not.”
When she pulled back, Erik saw glimmers of indefinable things swirling in her eyes, and he looked away.
“Come,” he said. “We have work to do.”
The leader of the Brotherhood and his tiger prowled through the woods of their one-time home, heading back for Azazel and Emma.
They didn’t speak to each other on the way—they didn’t want to, or need to. After a separation (it didn’t hurt anymore, the separating, even though it should if they were normal. Practice, Erik supposed, with a flash of old anger, made perfect) they didn’t speak. They touched, watched each other, and relearned how to move as one whole instead of two halves.
It was a process.
“So,” Emma said, as Erik entered the clearing where they’d set up camp. “What next, fearless leader?”
Erik let his face twist into a displeased frown. “We wait.”
Azazel shook his head and stood up, pacing back and forth, back and forth with his daemon at his side. “Waiting is not good,” he said anxiously. “We should be hunting our comrades down now, before they are cut apart.”
Emma shook her head and her owl hooted softly, blinking at Azazel’s Elvira gently. “No,” she said. “They won’t be severed for a few weeks at least.”
The teleporter continued pacing. “You do not know for sure.”
Emma’s smile was knowing and a little bitter. “I do,” she said.
“How?”
Erik snorted and looked away, curling his hands into fists. Fury rose, white-hot, and he shoved it back down, bottling it up.
“You weren’t with Shaw then,” Emma said carefully. “It was before you and Janos, but in the ‘50s, Sebastian and I…”
“Experimented,” Erik spat, before he could stop himself. “On our own kind.”
Azazel started and stared at Emma, and Elvira bared her teeth.
Emma looked away. “You don’t get to judge me, Lehnsherr,” she warned. “I know about the camps.”
This time it was Erik who looked away suddenly, muscles bunching in his neck. Memories—
(“this is what happens if you don’t obey, erik,” shaw whispered, and he pulled the lever down.
the man strapped to the table began to scream and scream, and his daemon howled—)
Azazel looked between the leader and the telepath, his face unreadable.
Aliyah growled at Emma’s owl softly, pressing against Erik. “We were forced,” she snarled. “You followed Shaw of your own free will.”
Mortimer the owl suddenly turned to diamond, and the moonlight streamed silver onto his hard, shimmering feathers, throwing rainbow-patches of light over the snarling tiger, the silent wolf.
“You intercised,” Azazel said, and there was a touch of violence in his voice, the kind that made the hairs on the back of Erik’s neck go rigid in anticipation.
“No,” said Emma. Her face betrayed nothing. “It never got that far. Shaw had neither time nor the money to create a functioning Silver Guillotine, though he tried, and he refused to do it by other means.”
“Tell him what you did do,” Erik snapped. Shudders rippled up and down his spine, through his fingers. The helmet rattled and shook softly on his head.
Emma shrugged uncomfortably. “Experiments. Shaw tested how much pain a daemon could stand, how much a human could stand, how mutations affected the daemon and vice versa. He created people who could go miles and miles without their daemons, like the you,” she paused to nod at Erik and Aliyah, “to see how far he could pull before the shock killed them.”
Azazel’s white wolf leaned against her human, licking his fingers, and Aliyah growled.
As far as Erik knew, Azazel had been born with the ability to separate from his Elvira. It was an aspect of his mutation, a mechanism to help him survive the shock of flashing all over the world without dying.
As for himself and Aliyah… Well. They adapted.
But the thought of Shaw making others made Erik feel sick, and his tattoo throbbed with his heartbeat.
Azazel looked at Emma like he could never see her in the same light again. Erik frowned. That wasn’t good.
“You convinced Shaw to stop,” he said to Emma, loudly. “You talked him out of experimenting on mutants.”
Emma nodded. “Yes. We were being tracked. Someone—and I never found out whom—knew who we were and what we were doing, and after our base was raided, I convinced him to stop.”
Erik nodded. “And you hid his findings.”
“Yes.”
Erik paced, trying to think through all the thoughts—guilt pain my fault, Charles Charles Charles—bouncing around inside his skull.
Metal sang to him, familiar and comforting, and he was sorely tempted to take out the old bullet and roll it between his fingers, ground himself, but he didn’t. He didn’t know who was watching.
“Where?”
“Argentina, actually.”
Erik nodded. That made sense. He’d tracked Shaw to Argentina, after all; the man had clearly spent some time there.
Azazel said something to his daemon in Russian, still shooting Emma inscrutable looks. He’d known that Shaw was not a good man, of course, but it was probably just sinking in just how vile the man truly had been.
Good, Erik thought. It’s about time.
Aliyah didn’t pace with him, instead remaining crouched in the center of the clearing, her eyes two golden slits in the moonlight.
Something like fear began to pool in Erik’s gut. “I didn’t take Shaw’s file,” he murmured, mostly to himself, but Emma caught it and frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“From the CIA, before Cuba.” Erik shook his head furiously. “I had it—I was going to take it and leave—but Charles convinced me to stay and return it. When the base was destroyed, I left it there.”
“I do not understand,” Azazel rumbled. “The Americans have a file on Sebastian Shaw?”
“Yes,” Erik snarled, and rage roared up, sudden and familiar, though this time it was towards himself. “And it has my fucking testimony, I told them I tracked Shaw to the villa in Argentina—”
“Villa Gesell,” Emma supplied, suddenly understanding.
Erik didn’t answer, but Aliyah’s rumbling growl told Emma all she needed to know.
“They went there,” Emma said, and Erik couldn’t be sure but he thought that, under her diamond skin, her face was pale. Mortimer leaped from her shoulder and soared in a wide loop around the clearing, the wind whistling through his crystallized feathers, and it was then that he realized Emma Frost was scared.
“Shit,” Erik swore, and he paced. Aliyah crouched low and let a growl build in her throat. “The Americans found it. They found his research, that’s the only explanation.”
Emma didn’t say anything, but her looping, twisting daemon gave her away. She was terrified.
“Erik, that book—”
“It was a book?”
“Yes, he kept it all in the book, not the point. That book had all of our information in it, not just the experiments. It had a record of every mutant Sebastian ever encountered, their power, and their daemon’s form.”
“I have to tell Charles,” Erik said. “How many mutants did you meet?”
“Dozens. Most were settled, too—that is, their powers were fully manifested.”
“Wait,” Azazel interrupted. “Powers and daemons—”
“Are connected, of course,” Emma said impatiently. She was watching Erik, not Azazel. “That’s not important right now.”
“The American government,” Erik said slowly, and anger and fear were at war in his chest. “Has Sebastian Shaw’s book of mutants and experiments.”
“Yes.”
“And he kept intercision notes in that book.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Erik said, and he sounded much fucking calmer than he felt. “We can’t waste anymore time, then.”
“No.”
He nodded decisively and stretched out a hand, calling Aliyah to him. He could panic later, in private. Now was not the time—he had a Brotherhood to lead and comrades to rescue.
“Azazel, go back to the facility in Alaska. See if you can find any information on other bases. Emma, Azazel will drop you off in Langley. Can you disguise yourself?”
She sniffed. “Of course.” Her daemon returned to her shoulder, calmer, sharp with focus.
“Excellent. Go through their minds, pull out any information you can. I’d prefer if you were subtle, but use whatever means necessary, understand?”
She nodded.
“Good. How long do Raven and the others have before they can be intercised?”
“Accurate measurements take about two weeks, so if the scientists don't want them to die of separation shock, at least that long” Emma said. At Erik and Azazel’s confused looks, she shook her head. “I’ll explain later, it’s a process. I’ll get the information.”
“As will we,” Azazel said, and Elvira bared her teeth. “Meet here?”
“In two days,” Erik ordered. “I will coordinate with Ch—Xavier’s people. Good luck. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Don’t go for revenge, not yet. That will come later.”
Both mutants nodded and reached for each other—Azazel hesitated before touching Emma, but he did—and then, with the rush of wind and the smell of cinnamon, they were gone.
Aliyah straightened and looked Erik in the eye. “Erik,” she said. “We need them to trust us.”
“I know.”
“We need them to save Raven.”
“I know.”
Her face was gentle and as soft as a tiger’s face could be. “You know what you have to do.”
His mouth tightened and worry—guilt, shame, fear—twisted inside his chest. “Yes.”
His tigress snorted softly. “Then do it,” she said. “Right now, Erik.”
He bowed his head—the helmet was so heavy—and closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “Alright,” he told her. “Alright.”
Carefully, with more hesitation than he’d ever had before, Erik hooked his fingers under the helmet and slowly, carefully, lifted it free.
For a moment, nothing happened.
And then—
Erik? Charles’s voice was soft and familiar and painful all at once. Erik felt him, hovering on the edges of his mind, unsure, afraid.
Erik breathed again, and Aliyah licked his hand to give him strength. “It will be alright,” she murmured.
Hello, Charles.
***
“Do you dream of seeing?” The Sparrow asked the Eagle. “Do you remember what it was like?”
The Eagle remained facing the sun with his blind, useless eyes, and Sparrow saw that he was weeping.
“Yes,” said the Eagle. “I dream of it all the time.”
***
III.
After three years without touching Erik’s mind, having him there suddenly floored Charles like a punch to the gut.
Erik? He whispered, nervously, because this wasn’t true, this wasn’t what Erik did—it was a mistake of some kind, a fluke. Charles needed it to be a fluke.
Hello, Charles, and suddenly it was—it was—
Charles couldn’t stop himself. He threw his mind out, diving deep and fast into Erik’s thoughts, wrapping himself in it, and he heard
Charles
and
so sorry
and
Shaw, Emma and Azazel are gone
and
I need you to trust me
and
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
Noise thundered, welled up, burst from Charles into Erik like an atom splitting in two, all heat and light and sound. Erik accepted it, let it wash over him, and responded in kind, and the sheer magnitude of it was a drug.
Charles couldn’t breathe. He didn’t think Erik could either, but breathing didn’t matter—he was beyond breath, beyond his body, beyond the occasional phantom pains he had, where his legs used to be. He was above it, and tangled into Erik, and a river of thought and feeling flowed uninterrupted between them.
Threads—a hundred of them, a thousand, a million—wound through them, and Charles felt them like he felt Iskierka, like he felt his own limbs.
Somewhere in the torrent of noise, he heard a similar reunion between Iskierka and Aliyah, an eagle’s joyous cry mingling with a tiger’s triumphant roar in light and color, scattering the dust of their long-dormant connection into the sun.
Erik, thought Charles, and he couldn’t think, didn’t want to think, he only wanted to feel—
Charles, hummed Erik.
He was dimly aware of Iskierka taking flight, shoving off the back of his chair and diving away, but he didn’t feel any pain as she tore from him.
For several seconds—or hours, or long, glittering days—neither spoke, or tried to speak. They didn’t have to. Charles examined Erik’s flickering thoughts, catching them and pulling them in, and Erik let him, though trepidation—and maybe more, but when Charles tried to chase it Erik hid it away—pulsed strongly.
You’re afraid.
Erik mentally snorted. Charles heard the odd, tinny sound of Aliyah speaking to Erik in his mind—that was one thing he couldn’t do, read a daemon’s mind—and the sound made his mental ears pop.
Iskierka said something, but it was lost in the howl of their bond.
The initial glow of connection dimed a little and Charles pulled back a bit, dragging his mind from the grooves of Erik’s.
He felt Iskierka’s sorrow, and he tried to soothe her even as he heard Aliyah whine at the loss.
Erik, he said, and Charles was himself again, in his own mind. Erik was only at the periphery, a swirling mass of wild emotion—pain, anger, guilt, worry—throbbing like an open wound.
Charles, Erik said. He hesitated—Charles felt it—and then sighed mentally. The weight of his thoughts sagged against the telepath, and however much he wanted to lift that weight, Charles wouldn’t, not this time.
I must speak with you, he said. Immediately.
Charles frowned. What’s wrong? Urgency roared at Charles’s mind, an ocean, and he closed his eyes.
Very well. I’m in the study.
Erik sent a mental affirmation and withdrew, dancing on the very edge of Charles’s tightly-controlled mind.
He didn’t put the helmet back on, though, and Charles supposed that he’d have to consider that a minor victory, or a peace offering.
Iskierka flew back in from the window and landed on the back of the couch, away from Charles, and her shoulders were trembling, each feather standing on end.
Iskierka, Charles said, and she clacked her beak at him.
Don’t.
Charles stared at her for a moment. The shadows in his study had turned her feathers dark, almost black, and her eyes shone fiercely in the gloom. She was angry. He could understand that.
There was a knock on the study door, heavy but with just a fraction of hesitation, and Erik’s mind was so close the urge to reach out and touch it was like physical pain.
“Come in,” said Charles, and he leaned back in his chair. Iskierka…?
Wordlessly his daemon fluttered back to his shoulder, squeezing tight with her talons. Her weight was reassuring, even if her silence wasn’t.
The door creaked open and Erik came in, the helmet dangling loosely from his fingertips.
Aliyah left his side at once, choosing instead to prowl restlessly around the room, circling the corners, and the lights rattled in her wake.
Charles smiled blandly, and looked Erik in the eye. “What is so urgent you must speak with me at three in the morning, old friend?”
At the endearment, Erik’s face shuttered off.
“Charles,” he said stiffly. “We—the Brotherhood—have come across some information that you need to know.”
The telepath arched an eyebrow, trying to appear as cool and collected—in control, I’m in control—as possible. “Such as…?”
“The American government, or whoever is running the intercisions, found Sebastian Shaw’s book.”
At the mention of Shaw, Charles’s heart sank.
Three years later and the bastard’s still fucking things up.
Iskierka hissed through her beak, mantling her wings. Aliyah snarled agreeably.
“And what is in this book?”
Erik’s mind flared, memory and thought mingling. Charles saw gray steel, knives, someone screaming—
“Details on each and every experiment Shaw has performed on a mutant,” the Brotherhood’s leader said lowly. The lights flickered, and the planes of his face—still so familiar—dropped temporarily into shadow. “As well as records on every mutant he encountered.”
Charles’s heart plummeted. “When you say experiments,” he began, and Erik shrugged jerkily.
“Everything he did to people. Intercision, in the camps, distance experiments, pain control, mutation testing. Detailed records of how to inflict pain on a person and their daemon and keep them alive while doing it.”
Charles licked his lips. He’d seen some of these experiments, from Erik’s memories, and while he didn’t know what they were at the time he knew now, and the sudden rush of bloody images, mangled lumps that had once been whole men and women, made Charles feel suddenly, violently ill.
Raven, he thought, and once again the worry gnawed in his chest. What if she was tortured like that—stripped of her strength and power and beloved Sirion? What if anyone, human or mutant, was tortured like that? It was—
Unthinkable, Iskierka said, breaking her silence. We have to stop it, Charles.
Yes, he agreed.
Erik ran a hand through his hair (longer than it had been, Charles noted, almost against his will) and hissed in frustrated anger.
“I led them to it,” he spat. “I told them I had been to Argentina, of course they followed me there and found Shaw’s old hideout—”
“This book was in Argentina?” Charles cut in sharply.
“Villa Gesell, Emma said.”
“And you led someone there?”
“The CIA, Charles, the CIA. They have Shaw’s file, my testimony’s in it, of course they followed me—”
Iskierka lofted from Charles’s shoulder and landed on top of the couch again, staring down at the still pacing Aliyah.
The tigress stopped, her eyes lidded and golden, and something quiet passed between the two daemons that Iskierka wasn’t going to share.
Erik seemed to calm, somewhat, and he got the anger swelling in his veins under control.
“It’s my fault the cutters have the book,” Erik said. “My fault they know how to—”
“Stop it,” Charles snapped. Iskierka cuffed Aliyah on the head gently. “You can’t blame yourself for all the evil in the world. You don’t even know if the cutters have Shaw’s book.”
“Of course they do,” Erik shot back. “It all comes back to Shaw, doesn’t it, the hatred against mutants, the intercisions, the beach, what I—”
Erik bit down on whatever he was going to say so hard his teeth clicked. Aliyah jerked back from Iskierka, padding to her human’s side and nuzzling his hand, and the lamp next to Charles’s elbow bent backwards.
The Master of Magnetism blinked and turned away, glaring avidly at the wall.
There was something soft and painful in Charles’s gut, just below his ribs, and he did his best to ignore it because now was not the time.
“We don’t know if the cutters have the book,” Charles said evenly. “And I maintain that any branch of the American government is not nearly cruel enough—or stupid enough—to sanction intercision.”
They’d cover it up, Erik projected, and the telepath forced down a glare.
So ready to believe the evil of men, he said quietly.
So ready to let man’s evil slide by.
Charles smiled lopsidedly. “The old argument,” he said, and he felt ancient all of a sudden, far older than he was.
He looked all over the room, turning his thoughts (and Erik’s) over in his mind. He couldn’t look out the window because it was dark, he couldn’t look at Erik because of the knot growing in his stomach, and he couldn’t look at his daemon because she wasn’t looking at him.
Iskierka was watching Aliyah, who watched right back, and Charles couldn’t look at the two daemons because one’s daemon is one’s heart, one’s soul; one’s daemon is the truth, and from the way his own was looking at Erik’s, someone, somewhere down the line, was going to hurt.
Badly.
I thought we got over this, he told Iskierka, and she made a sound halfway between a laugh and a keening wail.
We’ll never get over this, she said, and you know it.
“Where are your friends?” he asked, finally, unable to say anything else.
“I sent Azazel back to Alaska,” Erik said. From the color of his thoughts, he appreciated the change of subject back into business. “And Emma to Langley, to see if we can hunt down other facilities.”
Other facilities, Charles thought, and ice shuddered down his spine. “How many do you think there are?”
“Obviously more than one. With any luck, other facilities don’t have a Silver Guillotine—they’re incredibly hard to make, so actual intercision won’t happen.”
Charles felt worry and fear on the tip of his tongue, and apparently Erik did too because Aliyah licked Iskierka roughly, a quick, aborted gesture that left the eagle shivering and Charles digging his hands into the armrests of his chair.
“Emma says we have two weeks before they can intercise Raven correctly,” Erik said, and for the first time his tone was almost gentle. “I do not understand the mechanics of it, but tests have to be taken, things weighed. Emma will know more—she’ll explain when she returns.”
Two weeks, Charles thought. We’ve got two weeks. “That’s,” he said. “Good, I suppose. Better than I thought.”
Erik inclined his head. “We have time to plan, at least. We don’t have to dash in without one.”
Charles raised an eyebrow. “Would you? Dash in without a plan, I mean. You’re methodical.”
The other man looked Charles dead in the eye. “This time,” he said. “I would.”
And Charles knew why, too; finding the severed daemons and their half-people, stripped of their powers and souls, had triggered something in Erik, deep and primal and furious, a remnant of his time in the camps.
It frightened Charles, just a little, because now he didn’t have any sway over Erik, any voice with which to whisper the balance between rage and serenity.
Iskierka fluttered back to his shoulder, carding through his hair.
It’s alright, she assured him. It will be alright, Charles. We’ll get Raven back, whole and safe.
Yes, he said. But we’ll never get her back.
He was projecting again, because Erik—tenderly, hesitantly, like he was learning how to walk again—rubbed minds, sending a spark of sorrycomfortokay skittering through the astral plane.
Aliyah rumbled, and it sounded more like a purr than a growl.
Charles closed his eyes, and kept them that way.
“So the cutters probably have Shaw’s book of experiments,” he said.
“And mutants. Where they live, what they can do, their daemons’ shapes.” Anger crept back into Erik’s mind and he withdrew, taking the comforting spark with him. And it’s my fault, Charles heard him think. If I had just taken the file with me—
Don’t, Charles thought. That doesn’t help.
Erik’s mouth twisted, and he rested a hand on Aliyah’s great, striped head. “No,” he said aloud. “I suppose not.” He sighed heavily. “Tell me, Charles, will you do whatever you need to do to retrieve your sister, safe and uncut?”
“Yes,” Charles said instantly, because he would. “My resources are yours. I, and the children, will do what we need to do to put an end to this intercision business.”
Erik nodded. “Good,” he said slowly, and Aliyah bared her long, sharp teeth. “Because I have a plan.”
***
“I am afraid of nothing,” the Lion roared, so great and loud that the mountains shook.
“Oh, really?” Said the Buzzard, flying lower and lower in the sky. “Not even of death?”
“Not even of death,” said the Lion.
“Pity,” said the Buzzard. “Oh well. You will be.”
***
IV.
Arinna snarled low in her throat, the sunlight streaming under her fur, and with a tremendous roar she let it out. Red light flared up and down the Danger Room and fire tore at the walls.
Alex felt the echoes of her anger and he latched on to it, letting build in his own veins, until light crackled underneath his skin and he burned—
The release left him shaking, and the Danger Room on fire.
“Jesus,” Hank muttered, slipping in with two fire extinguishers clutched in his big hands. “I just replated the walls, Alex, couldn’t you have at least made an effort to keep it together?”
His daemon Hesione swung off his furry shoulder to land on Arinna’s head, chattering a scolding in the lioness’s ear.
Arinna half-growled, shaking her head vigorously, and Hesione leaped to the ground and scrambled back up Hank’s shoulder.
“Woah,” Sean said, following Beast in. “Dude, you’ve got some anger issues.”
Alex glared.
Einín, a blue-tailed wren, circled Sean’s head in her usual swirl of energy and Arinna bared her teeth, leaking frustration.
Alex understood how she felt.
“How the fuck are you guys so cheerful,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his short hair. “Do you not realize who’s here?”
Hank and Sean shifted.
“Of course we do,” Sean started.
“Magneto,” Alex spat. “Mag-fucking-neto is here, and he’s going to fuck us all over again, I know it.”
Arinna growled, her claws splayed against the stone, and the sound echoed in the bunker, unnaturally loud.
“We won’t let him,” Hank said, baring his own teeth. Hesione did the same, and it was always kind of a shock to see a tiny little lemur bare fucking fangs.
“We already are,” Alex snapped. “You don’t get it, do you? Prof’s got this thing for Magneto. He wants to fix him, or save him, or prove that he’s a good fucking person or something. He’s got a huge soft spot, and he’ll get hurt again. Remember last time?”
Sean winced. Clearly, he did.
“Exactly,” Alex muttered. “We can’t let that happen again.”
“What can we do, though?” Hank—fuck him for always being the reasonable one, who the hell had to be like that anyway—said. “Magneto’s got a valid reason to be here. If someone’s—if someone’s cutting daemons away, they’ve got to be stopped.”
“Of course they do,” Alex said. “That’s not what I’m saying. We can take out a couple of government whack jobs on our own; we’ve done it before. We can fight. But we don’t have to fight with them.”
Hank shrugged, and Hesione stopped baring her teeth. “If he can get Raven out of there okay,” he said lowly, “then I’ve got no problem with him being here.”
Alex’s temper flared. “How can you say that?” he hissed. “After what happened last time? It took months for things to get back to normal around here again.”
Arinna snarled, echoing his feelings, and Hank just shrugged again.
“Professor X is a tough guy,” Sean said diplomatically. “He can take care of himself. ‘sides, it’s not like Er—I mean, Magneto, is gonna take the helmet off anyway.”
Arinna pinned her ears back. “They don’t understand,” she muttered to Alex, and he glared at them, irrationally angry and seething inside.
“When you open your eyes and realize what’s going on, I’ll be on the roof,” he said coolly. “C’mon, ‘rinna.”
His lioness muttered one last growl before following him out the door, tension rolling in her shoulders.
“They don’t see it,” Alex said, and sunlight bubbled in his blood. “They don’t get it.”
“No,” Arinna agreed. “Probably not.”
Alex and his daemon stalked through the hallways, climbing up stairs and across landings, going higher and higher until they broke out onto the rooftop and sucked in cool, clear air.
The Professor’s mansion was far enough away from the city that the sky was open and thick with stars. Alex hadn’t really seen anything like it, before, and it was nice to just sit on the rooftop and look at them, a hundred thousand constellations scattered like dust over the night sky.
Arinna lay flat and her claws skritched the roofing, grating on Alex’s ears.
“Not gonna pull those in, are you?”
She gave him a flat glare. “Not until he leaves, no.”
“Didn’t think so.”
She snorted, her tail twitching madly. “Like you’re going to relax,” she said.
“True.”
Sullen anger coursed through his veins and Alex wrestled with it. He was so angry, and it scared him. He was angry at Hank and Sean for not seeing, not understanding what Alex was trying to do. He was pissed at whoever took Raven, because now Charles was worried sick and Lehnsherr was in their house again. He was fucking furious with Magneto, for fucking things up in the first place and then having the balls to come back after everything.
All of it rattled around inside him, mixing with the sunlight, and he felt like he was going to explode or something (which was a distinct possibility, by the way), which only made him mad at himself for not having enough control at all.
“I’m fucked up,” he told Arinna, and she laughed a growl.
“No shit,” she said. “We all are.”
“Us more than the others, though.”
She gave him a lion-shrug. “Well. It could be worse.”
Alex felt like his bones were being seared from the inside out and he laughed. “Yeah?” he said. “How?”
She bared her teeth. “We could be Erik and Aliyah.”
For some reason Alex found that really fucking hilarious, and he laughed and laughed and it sounded like he was choking. “’rinna,” he said, between wheezes. “We are.”
She didn’t laugh. “Yeah,” she rumbled. “I know.”
Alex sobered up, staring out at the stars and the forest and the hulking shape of the satellite dish. “What are we gonna do, ‘rinna?”
His daemon rested her head on her great paws. “I don’t know,” she said. “Survive it, I guess, like we always do.”
He snorted. “Good plan.”
They fell silent, sitting beside each other, and Alex tried to breathe and let go of his anger.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “I miss Darwin.”
Arinna rested her head in his lap, and her eyes were luminous and sad. “Me too. I miss Myra.”
“They’d know what to do, wouldn’t they? They always—” Alex stopped, remembered Darwin standing in the courtyard with red sunlight cracking his bones. “They always knew what to do.”
Arinna didn’t answer and he felt her anger, and her pain. “What happened to us?”
He laughed short and sharp. “We killed a guy, remember? And got our asses thrown in fucking jail.”
“Oh,” she almost laughed. “I forgot about that part.”
Alex stroked her ears, tugging the tattered one fondly. “You’d never taken a lion’s shape before that day, remember? You were always a fox, or a magpie, or that little terrier.”
Arinna nodded, closing her eyes. “I remember. I liked those shapes. They fit nicely, I guess. I could’ve been any one of them.”
“Why’d you choose to be a lion?”
His daemon opened her eyes and looked up at him, and the dusty stars were reflected in her eyes. “The same reason Charles’s Iskierka chose to be an eagle, or Einín a wren, or Aliyah a tiger, or Myra whatever she pleased.”
“And that is…?”
She nosed him gently. “You,” she said. “I’m a lion because of you.”
“Me?”
She nodded and licked his arm. “You.” She settled her head back on her paws and closed her eyes again. She’d look almost peaceful if it wasn’t for her lashing tail or her splayed, sharpened claws.
“That’s it? You’re not going to explain anymore?”
“Nope,” Arinna said. “You probably wouldn’t understand anyway; it’s a daemon thing.”
“A daemon thing.”
“Mmhmm.”
Alex said, dragged a hand through his hair. “What am I going to do, ‘rinna? I feel like I’m alone in wanting Magneto out.”
“Snapping at the others probably didn’t help,” she said, a little guiltily. “We got too angry.”
Alex laughed. “Jesus, we are Lehnsherr and Aliyah. All I need is a motherfucking cape.”
His lioness swatted him. “Don’t think like that,” she said. “We won’t end up like them. We’ll learn from their mistakes.”
“Good,” Alex muttered. Behind him, the door to the roof creaked open, and he could make out Hank’s tall, fuzzy form standing uncertainly in the shadows. “Starting with not being dicks.”
“Got it,” Arinna said. “If we’re going to do this thing, we have to be united, don’t we?”
“Yeah,” he told her, and turned to face Hank. “Hey,” he called. “You gonna come over here or what?”
And Hank came, his daemon darting ahead, and Alex pasted on a smile. He was going to fix this.
***
“Try it,” the Jaguar challenged the Man. “Try and kill me, little god.”
“You’re too weak to win,” boasted Man. “I have taken the sun and the stars from your fur.”
Jaguar bared his teeth. “I have the moon,” he said, “and that is more than enough to kill you.”
***
V.
“Raven,” someone was saying, just above her left ear. “Mystique. Hey, Mystique, you gotta get up now, okay?”
“Charles,” she said thickly, except it came out as “Chls.” Her head hurt—no, scratch that, killed—and her mouth felt like it was stuffed full of something dry and not very pleasant. What were they called? Cottonballs? “Fvem’remints.”
“Mystique.” Someone was shaking her shoulder now, hard, and she twitched. “Mystique!”
Raven bolted straight up and regretted it immediately. Somewhere against her side Sirion howled in pain, and she felt like echoing him.
“Shit,” she swore. “My head, Jesus, where am I, what’s going on?”
“We don’t know where we are,” Angel was saying. “But we’ve been captured by the CIA and we’re in a cell somewhere. We’ve been here for about two days. What the fuck happened to your face?”
Raven opened her eyes to glare at the bleary smudge hovering above her head. Sirion hissed and burrowed deeper against her side, and when she touched his head he flinched.
“Um,” she said. She tried to remember but it hurt—she’d been called out yet again for tests, poked and prodded and weighed, and the scientist had asked for her name—
“Oh,” she thought, and probably said it out loud because the Angel-blur seemed concerned. “Um, I got into a fight with the guards.”
“What?” The pitch of Angel’s voice struck a nerve—Sirion whimpered, flicking into dog shape, and put his paws over his head.
“I—” Raven started, but she didn’t get to finish because the door swung open and sharp, splintering light stabbed her in the eyes and she groaned.
Three more guards—different ones—came in and manhandled Angel to her feet. Raven saw Quetz loop around her friend’s arm, hissing, and murmur something in Angel’s ear, and then she was gone, and Raven was alone in the bright light with the scientist.
(Where was Riptide? Was he being tested too?)
His daemon blinked and flicked her tongue, and Sirion, somewhat recovered, shifted back into his striking white jaguar shape, teeth bared.
The scientist smiled coldly. “Interesting,” he said. “I’ve studied dozens of your kind, girl, and I’ve never met one with an unsettled daemon. It… intrigued me, you see, because mutation manifests itself at puberty, when the daemon settles.”
“What,” Raven said, because she hated the man and she was a little too woozy to be talking to him on equal footing, right now.
The scientist shook his head. “Mutation,” he explained, like he was talking to a little kid, “comes from daemons.”
This time Raven understood, and she blinked. “What,” she repeated, “the fuck are you smoking? Daemons cause mutation? That’s completely wrong, it’s evolutionary genetics.”
The scientist arched an eyebrow. “Oh?” He said mockingly. “According to whom?”
Raven was almost—almost—addled enough to say her brother, but Sirion bit down on her arm just in time and she choked back Charles’s name.
The scientist’s daemon blinked.
“It’s difficult for little girls like you to understand, I’m sure,” he continued. “But it has been proven, conclusively, that daemons carry the mutation in them, and pass them on to their humans.” He tapped a thick, worn leather book in his hands. “It says so right here.”
Sirion snarled, deep and low and violent.
The scientist ignored him. “Your daemon, for instance, isn’t settled; he’s mutated and cannot settle, therefore you have the ability to shapeshift.”
“It’s not his fault,” Raven snapped. “It’s no one’s fault. I was born this way. My mutation didn’t manifest at puberty.”
“Ah,” said the scientist. “That’s what makes you so different. Most mutations do manifest at the moment the daemon settles. But you, you, you’re special. You’ve always been a mutant. When we weighed you, your Dust was off the charts—unprecedented.”
Raven blinked, lost again. The man was talking about dust now?
Not dust, Sirion whispered. I think he means Dust.
What the hell is Dust?
No idea.
“You’re confused, of course,” the scientist continued. “Understandable. Dust is very newly known to us, after all, and I highly doubt that a mutant like yourself has heard of it, for all it clings to your kind.”
Raven bristled at the slur against her people. “The smartest people I know are mutants,” she snapped.
The scientist, once again, ignored her.
“Later, perhaps,” he was explaining. “I will tell you what Dust is. For now, all you have to know is that it is the source of your daemon’s mutations, and therefore your own.”
Sirion growled and pressed close to his human.
“Tell me, girl,” the scientist said. “If you could choose a form for your daemon to settle in, what would it be?”
Raven started, speechless at the man’s deeply personal question. Nobody just asked that—it was kind of taboo, like touching someone else’s daemon. A daemon’s shape was for its human, and for no one else.
“This current form is rather magnificent,” the scientist continued. “A white jaguar, if I’m not mistaken.” His lizard blinked. “Is this your favorite?”
Raven didn’t answer; she glared defiantly, daring him to force her.
The scientist signed. “Yes,” he said, as if she wasn’t even there. “This is a very nice form. Would you like him to settle in this shape? I can arrange it, of course.”
Raven stared at him, letting all of her anger surge and coil in her eyes. “Intercise, you mean. Cut us apart, you mean.”
The scientist smiled. “Later,” he said. “But now I want tests. Stand up.”
Two new guards entered the room, armed to the teeth. Their daemons snarled and snapped at Sirion. Raven reluctantly stood—she’d rather not get punched in the face again, thanks. She felt like she had to be on her guard around the scientist.
He smiled and his daemon blinked. Fear formed a ball of ice in Raven’s stomach and she swallowed, reaching automatically for Sirion. He came into her touch and growled comfortingly, though she could tell he was just as scared—cut away, taken away, my fault we can’t settle, my fault?—as she was.
“It’ll be okay,” she told him quietly. “Magneto’s coming for us. Don’t worry.”
“Worried?” Sirion muttered, and flashed her a cracking glance. “Who’s worried?”
***
“Why did you accept the Chief’s request, if it makes you so sad?” Sparrow wanted to know.
Eagle smiled. “Because,” he said. “All things must help one another. I helped the Chief when he feared his enemies, and he will help me now.”
“Oh,” said the Sparrow. He thought for a moment. “It doesn’t seem like a fair trade.”
The Eagle stopped smiling. “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
***
VI.
Emma Frost and Azazel returned in the evening, out of breath and a little bloody, but triumphant. And as little as Charles cared for them, he figured that that kind of triumph was a good thing, considering the situation.
Azazel was the worse for the wear; blood darkened his pants and his Elvira limped, her face peeled back into a pained grimace.
“Just a bullet wound,” the teleporter said. “I got it out.”
“I’ll stitch it up later,” Erik said, eyeing the wound critically. Charles watched him, curious to see how he interacted with his teammates. “You’re not going to bleed to death?”
“Nyet.”
“Good.”
Aliyah gave the white wolf a gentle nudge with her nose and the wolf nudged back, clearly able to function. Emma delicately cleared her throat and her owl hooted softly, drawing the attention off the bleeding teleporter and onto herself.
The mutants sat at the dining room table, Charles and his children at one end, Erik and his people on the other.
On the table between them lay a dozen sheets of paper—manifestos, maps, battle plans, handwritten and typed-up notes.
Emma Frost had been very successful.
“Well, Ms. Frost,” Charles said stiffly. He still didn’t like her, much, but he had to admit that she had value at whatever she did. “What do you have for us?”
Frost smiled, and her owl preened. “The location of the facility,” she said. She stood and tapped a map of Canada. “It’s here, about ninety miles west of Vancouver, in the Rocky Mountains.”
Charles studied it. “It will be hard to reach,” he said. “But not impossible.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not impossible.”
“What’s the security like?” Alex watched Frost and the Brotherhood with blatant dislike written on his face, but he was talking to them instead of fighting.
“Good,” Azazel admitted ruefully, rubbing his wounded leg. “Prepared against mutants. They learned from the other base.”
Alex nodded, his face grim.
“How advanced is their intercision project?”
“They call it the Bolvangar Project,” Erik cut in. He was bent over the table, his helmet firmly in place—appearances, he’d said to Charles—studying Frost’s findings intently. “It’s rather far advanced—they know what they are doing, and how to do it. There is no Silver Guillotine at the Rocky Mountains facility yet, but one is expected within the next few weeks.”
Charles’s stomach twisted and Iskierka stroked his back. “We’ll have to hurry, then.”
“Indeed.”
Charles reached for the papers, pulling them to him and studying them with a scientist’s eye. He left the maps alone—Erik could read them better, probably—and focused.
Iskierka fluttered down the table, gathering up all the notes and “findings,” bringing them back to her person and reading over his shoulder.
Subject: Male, twenty-three years old, Charles read. Mutation: Flight. Daemon: Female, red-tailed hawk. Onset of mutation: age thirteen, two days after daemon settled. Dust: positive. Intercised: died from shock.
Subject: Female, nineteen years old. Mutation: Speaks with animals. Daemon: Male, terrier dog. Onset of mutation: age fourteen, three days after settling. Dust: positive. Intercision: died from shock.
Subject: Male, twenty-six. Mutation: Telekinesis. Daemon: Female, lioness. Onset of mutation: Age twelve, day of settling. Dust: positive. Intercision: survived a week, died from shock.
Charles read on and on, and he felt ill—who could do this, could methodically and unfeelingly write down lives and deaths and intercisions like they were nothing?
He pushed the papers away. “What,” he said, his voice hoarse, “the hell are they trying to do? What’s this nonsense about Dust and daemon settling and the onset of powers?”
Erik shrugged, looking to Frost.
She shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “Shaw fancied himself a scientist,” she began. Her daemon was perfectly still on her shoulder, his narrowed into vivid, unblinking slits. “He liked to experiment, to push things to see what could happen. He knew a good deal about mutation, probably more than anyone else, then or now, and he had theories.”
Frost paused, tilted her head, and seemed to consider something, turning her thoughts over and over in her mind. She wasn’t blocked off, and Charles could’ve read her mind, easily, but he held back.
He needed to get Raven out safe.
“Shaw thought that mutation came from daemons.”
Charles raised his eyebrows. “Mutation comes from daemons?” He brushed Iskierka’s wings automatically.
Emma nodded. “He thought that the daemon was the source of mutation, and when the daemon settled, the mutation would manifest.”
“That’s not possible,” Charles said, shaking his head, even as Alex, Sean, and Erik shifted, their hands going to their daemons. “I was a telepath years before Iskierka settled.”
The teleporter nodded, agreeing with Charles, and his daemon whispered something to him in Russian.
“Same for me,” Hank said. He was studying the records and notes Emma had stolen with interest—not malicious interest, but scientific—stroking his Hesione absentmindedly.
“It’s a flawed theory, sugar,” Emma said with a shrug. “My telepathy was active before Mortimer settled, but my diamond form didn’t come until after. There’s a correlation between daemons and mutations, but I don’t necessarily think that the daemon causes the mutation.”
“What is Dust?” Erik murmured. He too was reading, his face inscrutable and his eyes shadowed by the helmet. Only Aliyah’s eyes, a glowing, hot gold, betrayed his current emotional state—barely suppressed rage. “It’s mentioned in every single record.”
Emma’s face twisted into a frown. “Sebastian’s greatest discovery,” she said. “He found records from the Magisterium, before their fall, and pictures. It appears that early mutants were held by the General Oblation Board—what the people now running the Bolvangar Project call themselves, by the way—for crude testing. One of those tests was a sort of photograph. Here.”
The other telepath pulled several grainy, ancient-looking pictures from under the mess of notes and records. Each picture had two people and their daemons in it, standing side by side. One was clearly human, and the other a mutant with clawed hands and a feral snarl on his face. One person was only a dark, smudged blur, but the other—the mutant—was radiant with light. Thousands of tiny particles flowed from him and his daemom in bright, streaming rivers, winding through them and around them in heaving, intricate patterns.
It was beautiful.
“These particles,” Charles said, awed, “are they Dust?”
Emma dipped her head. “Yes. Ruskanov Particles, technically, but ‘Dust’ is the more common term. The blur there,” she tapped the ancient photo, “is a normal, non-mutated human. The one with all the Dust is a mutant, and his daemon is settled. Dust is only attracted to those who are whole. The severed have no Dust at all.”
She showed them another picture, and this time is was clear; there were two men, and only one daemon. The daemonless man—the mutant—had no daemon, and his claws and snarl were gone. There were no streaming golden particles this time.
Everyone at the table looked away.
Charles shook his head. “This Dust is thought to be the source of mutation, then?”
Frost nodded again. “That’s what the Magisterium thought, and what Sebastian thought later. He theorized that Dust caused mutation, and since the daemonless have no Dust, that daemons must be the source of it, and therefore mutation.”
“Mutation is evolution, though,” Charles argued. “The natural progression of species.”
Emma shrugged. “I don’t particularly care either way,” she said. “Dust or evolution, it doesn’t really matter, does it? They’re cutting us apart anyway.”
Charles frowned, turning this new information over in his head. His inner scientist leaped, jumping at the chance to study this “Dust,” learn about it, test it, and see if it was related to mutation after all.
Iskierka batted him lightly. Not our concern right now, she warned.
Charles nodded. Yes, yes, of course.
“We have more time than we thought originally,” he said, changing the subject. “Is that correct?”
The three Brotherhood mutants exchanged a glance, and Erik nodded. “I’d prefer not to wait longer than necessary,” he said. “The longer we wait, the greater chance we have of loosing them, and of more being intercised or tortured.”
The telepath nodded, staring down at the pictures, of the ones lit with rivers of light and the ones dead, blank, ruined.
“A week,” he said. “That’s adequate time to prepare, yes?”
Erik nodded, and steel crept into his eyes. Aliyah sat straight up at his side, her teeth bared momentarily in a glimmering snarl. “A week,” he said. “We’ll make preparations. I’ll return all of yours to you, I promise—”
“Wait a moment,” Charles snapped. “I’m not staying here.”
Erik blinked. “Of course you are,” he said.
Everyone else—including his students, Charles noted, and anger stirred in his chest. Iskierka mantled her wings, and she was suddenly very, very large—turned to stare at the professor, bemused.
“You’ve never wanted to go on a mission before,” Alex said softly. “You’ve always just let us go.”
Hank and Sean nodded. Charles could see that they, at least, were driven by worry for his wellbeing. Iskierka hissed at them anyway.
Azazel’s thoughts were politely condescending, and Emma’s face was impassive but he saw the annoyance in the way her daemon flicked his head.
Erik’s face was in shadow, and Aliyah’s face was as soft and painful as a tiger’s could be, her head bowed.
Charles bit back his anger. “I’m going,” he said flatly. “That’s my sister in there, and my people. I won’t leave them, not like this.”
“What can you do?” said Emma Frost.
He glared. “More than you, telepathy-wise. I don’t have to go in, that’s not what I’m suggesting. But I want to be close, very close, so I can monitor what’s going on and take out threats as you go.”
The children subsided, exchanging tired, anxious glances. Azazel seemed to accept Charles’s plan, and Emma nodded. Erik, though, was gritting his teeth, his hands curled tightly, and the lights flickered and rattled. Charles couldn’t hear him, through the helmet, but he didn’t need to.
“I’ll be fine,” Charles said quietly. “I’ll stay out of your way, and I can help clear doors for you, to minimize casualties.”
Erik met his eyes. “Casualties,” he said hollowly. “Fine. Come, if you must.” He stood abruptly, muscles bunching in his neck, flexing his fingers.
Charles nodded, satisfied, for now. “A week,” he said.
Erik had turned, looking out the window, his hands scattering up dust that billowed around him, fire-gold in the sunlight.
“A week,” he said, and Aliyah snarled something softly in German. The line of Erik’s—no, Iskierka whispered, Magneto’s—shoulders was tense and hard.
A memory hit Charles so hard he couldn’t breathe—
(erik, standing out the window, coiled so tight his muscles jumped, and president kennedy’s address was ringing in their ears.
“come to bed,” charles whispered, and he scratched aliyah’s ears. she purred at him, but her eyes were fixed on her human, her tail twitching furiously. “erik, come on, you need your rest.”
“in a minute,” erik said, and waved charles away.
he never came to bed.)
His insides knotted and sank, hard and heavy.
Iskierka, he whispered, and she carded through his hair.