It is a dark and stormy night —
Why were they all dark and stormy? It had started to rain; the wind, to blow, less than a minute after Charles had saved him. Couldn’t Erik have a bad day while the sun was shining down and birds were excitedly chirping?
(He’d had bad days of all sorts. Any place, any time, any weather: sunshine and birds to not necessarily a good day make.)
— and the waters are choppy. Erik is not the best swimmer, but he also doesn’t have to be: he treads water gently, holding himself up using his power, holding to the increased iron in his blood. He tries to, wants to do the same for Charles, but he can’t. The iron in the blood of an average man — human or not — is too sparse for Erik to get a solid hold on.
A little speed-boat with an erratically-flashing emergency-light cuts its way towards them. Erik speeds it up a little, careful to not hurt its engine.
(He doesn’t know why he does this, the careful consideration for the integrity of the boat. If he knows one thing about himself, it is that he is destructive; and he lives to destroy. Perhaps, he muses in the back of his mind, the exception proves the rule.)
They are brought aboard (Erik doing most of the work simply by floating himself up in a discreet manner so as to climb the ladder easily; Charles having to be more-or-less dragged right out of the water) and are shortly being sat down roughly in a small medical bay aboard the hulking ship. Charles is shaking like a leaf from the cold while a doctor attends to him. Erik catches those ridiculously blue eyes and is offered a kind smile. No words are shoved into his mind.
Another doctor approaches Erik and asks if he is alright. Erik is curt but honest. He only flinches once while the man checks his vitals. A bright blanket is wrapped around his shoulders to mirror the one wrapped around Charles.
“Xavier!” a new man half-chides. He is followed by two women: one, American, utilitarian clothes meant to say bland woman, reserved stance — a government agent; the other, also American, fanciful but comfortable clothes, worried stance…something about her screamed “façade” — a civilian, and a mutant at that.
The man himself is difficult to read at first glance. Official, albehim meek. The superior of the trio — the agent, the woman mutant, and Charles — but only in title. He wears a patch on his sleeve — CIA. How comforting.
Charles rises on unsteady feet to hug “Raven” with blanket-covered arms. The other two turned to Erik.
“You’re the man who moved the anchor?” the woman asks.
Erik contemplates his options. No. Yes. Fuck off. Kein Englisch; sprechen-sie deutsch?
Erik is wary (at best) of any form of government. But Charles trusts them. And Erik trusts Charles. He knows better than to do that.
“Who’s asking?” he carefully replies. He keeps his accent — one which he himself knows is hard to gauge the origin of — monotone, cutting the first and last syllables short in a half-assed imitation of American speech-patterns. He knows full well that the American government is much more wont to trust Americans than…Erik.
(Erik is many things. To lay out a list thereof would be a monumental task — and, in the end, a pointless one.)
A tense moment passes. Charles peels himself away from Raven — quite literally.
“He is,” Charles confirms. Erik trusts that this openness is for the better. He does not see how it is.
“You’re going after Shaw?” the government man asks.
Erik nods once. He does not say that he knew the man as Schmidt. He does not snidely remark about how “Sebastian Shaw” is just one of many names the man in question goes by. He does not let the tangled mess of emotion around the man’s name show on his face.
Charles looks deliberately at the government pair, obviously conversing with them psychically. They nod simultaneously, then, after a moment —
“Moira MacTaggert.” A hand is extended. Erik shakes it once, aware of how cold his own hand is. He warms the blood in his extremities with his power. It will give him a fever if he does it for too long. He stops shortly: he can deal — and has before dealt — with being merely cold.
“Mike Raymond.” No hand this time.
Another tenuous moment passes. Erik feels a deep discomfort being the only one sitting. It is a discomfort known well to him. Then Charles sits down next to him on the bench — close enough to be considered “next to”, but not so close as to be improper or the like — and the discomfort melts away. Raven sits down on Charles’ other side, leaning softly against him.
Erik can feel Charles at the edge of his mind, feel his faint touches like long grass swaying in the wind, feel the waves of sense coming off of him like the sound of waves breaking shore in the not-too-far-off distance.
(Erik has only been to such a beach once, on the Northumberland coast. It was a nice day then, not too long after he broke away from the Russian army trying to do something like care for him. There was no Schmidt at the beach: only the horrible scratch of sand under his nails.)
Tell them about the mutants on Shaw’s ship, Charles breathes in his mind. He can’t hear it, as it were, but he knows that the words in his mind are being spoken to him as well as he knows anything. If the woman on the yacht’s telepathy had been like shards of glass or ice, Charles’ was like warm, wet cake, sweet and dewy between his lips.
“There were two other mutants on the ship,” Erik says. He catches Charles’ gaze in the corner of his eye and is spurred on. He no longer takes care to hide his accent in careful tone changes: something in the way Charles looks at him lets him thus relax. “One was a woman, a telepath”— he nods to Charles —”who could turn to diamond. She’s a good fighter.”
Charles nods almost enthusiastically. “She must be the one whom I felt. The barrier — yes, come to think of it, diamond is the right word to describe it. Fractal, almost.”
After a moment and a small psychic tap, Erik goes on: “The other was a man. He’s the one who blew those little ships of yours to shit. A weather-bender, or perhaps just wind.”
Raymond nods. “That checks out.”
Moira drags over two folding chairs for Raymond and herself. Sitting down, she asks, “So what’s your power? Telekinesis?”
“I control magnetic fields,” Erik replies matter-of-factly. He is still very much so on-edge, but someone — Charles, he is sure: who else? — is projecting safety in this environment. Erik again finds himself trusting that judgement.
Charles’ furrowed brow captures the attention of the government folks. “What’s wrong?” Raymond asks.
Charles pauses for a moment, then turns to Erik: “Shaw is a mutant, too?”
(The handprints — imprints of pure energy, burns from Schmidt’s hands — on Erik’s hips and upper arms flare. They do not actually flare, he reminds himself, as they are inert scars. He has practice shoving his thoughts to the decrepit corner of his mind where those kinds of memories go; and that is exactly what he does.)
“He can absorb energy, store it as potential, then re-emit it as one of many forms.”
(Usually, around that aforementioned corner, small sparks or perhaps embers waltz, ready to catch the pile on fire at the slightest breeze. The heat of it is scratchy, like looking into an open roaring oven, the smell of burning hair and charred flesh pressing in the air. A presence now becoming all too familiar pours, it seems, a cool rain over the heat: not icy nor like pounding rain, but like a spring afternoon. Erik basks in it, but only for a moment. Charles — like everyone else, himself included — needs to stay away from those memories. And Erik needs to focus. Of this, he harshly reminds Charles, insofar as he can.)
Raymond and MacTaggert, with raised eyebrows, exchange hasty, whispered words.
“This is certainly…a development,” Raymond drawls, obviously distressed. “Go get some dry clothes on. We’ll talk in the morning. I have some phone-calls to make.”
The two leave, already discussing basic energetics and how this changes things.
Another long moment passes. Erik closes his eyes and feels out the ship, not for the first time identifying key structures, key locations, key weaknesses.
Another-another man walks over, holding two small heaps of clothing. He hands one to Charles; the other, to Erik. The jumper has a few United States Of America Coast Guard patches on the shoulder. The undershirt is plain, and so are the pants. The underwear is standard-issue.
There is a washroom off to the side, and Charles stands, shock-blanket falling from his shoulders. He’s still shaking like a leaf; his lips, blue. Not as his eyes, though. His blue, blue eyes. Lighter than sapphire, darker than the summer sky. The colour of forget-me-nots.
“I’m going to change first, if that’s amicable to you,” Charles says-more-than-requests before hobbling off to change.
(Erik examines the issued clothing some more. They are heavy, scratchy, almost warm to the touch. He does not like standard-issue clothing. He does not like a lot of things.)
Raven clicks her tongue, examining Erik in a way that shows she’s trying to hide doing so. Out of the corner of her eye, that is. Erik smiles at her. He doesn’t know if his meaning got across.
“I’m Raven,” she says, her tone open but guarded all the same.
“I know. Erik.”
Raven nods. They do not shake hands.
“What’s your power?”
Raven opens her mouth to answer, closes it, opens it again. She glances around, then (finding the small bay empty) transforms. Her scaly skin seems to fold over itself as if in a waterfall.
Erik finds himself staring back at him.
(Boring grey eyes — boring as holes, a faux-soft voice admires, not as dull. Scars that stand out. He can almost feel the press of the knives and ropes and chains and chemicals and hands and—. And he pushes his thoughts to their corner.)
He wonders if Raven only transforms into what she sees, or if she knows everything about him. He contemplates — although just for a moment — asking her to roll up her sleeve. Either one would work: there are specific scars (and/or markings) to give him answer enough, given but an inch of skin. But he does not.
“That is truly amazing,” he compliments. And he is genuine. His distaste for his own appearance notwithstanding, Raven is truly a remarkable individual. An outstanding mutation, to be sure.
Raven transforms back, and Erik is almost thankful. He hates mirrors.
“Thank you,” Raven replies, her voice small but confident.
A long moment passes.
“Where are you from?” Raven asks. “I can’t place your accent.”
Erik clenches his jaw. Unclenches it. Drums his fingers on the jumper. “I’m from Germany. My accent is a complicated affair — one that takes a long time to explain.”
(German-born. First language was Yiddish; second, German. Learned Polish when he was thirteen very quickly, via many people and dozens of different accents. English, French, and Russian under Schmidt’s teaching as well as his fellow prisoner’s — again, dozens of accents. Not a few more tongues thereafter, albe some of them not nearly as fluent as he’d wished. Each had changed his accent slightly — not even taking into account how he changed his accent for each situation he was in, beit consciously or not. He usually tried to stick to a southern middle-upper-class British when with English-speaking people. But it slipped not unoften.)
Raven nods again.
The silence stretches out.
Charles returns, holding a dripping mass of clothes and without shoes. He plunks them down on the bench away from them, then flops back down on Raven’s opposite side, his previous seat still rather damp.
Erik gets up, flashes them both a respectful look, then enters the restroom from which Charles had emerged.
(It is small but amenable. Erik is just grateful to be able to change not in front of others. He knows that is something Charles and Raven and MacTaggert and Raymond all probably take for granted.)
He changes quickly, his movements utilitarian. Changing slowly has only brought him grief in the past, and he’s learned to do it quickly. He’d learned to do it quickly.
He takes a moment to steal a glance at the tattoo on his inner arm. He often finds he feels differently about it every time he looks at it. Now, he is not ashamed, but he still doesn’t want anyone to see: he is not in the mood for pity; he is not in the mood for stares.
This morning, he’d woken up ready for a suicide mission. This — the situation he now found himself in — was not the plan.
Something warm like caramel drips through his thoughts. It leaves a sticky sweetness behind it — a sense of comfort.
Schmidt never liked Erik to use simile or metaphor to describe something. Waxing poetic, Erik was not to be: simple words could and would always suffice. Schmidt was allowed to use them, though.
Have you ever had sticky toffee pudding? Charles asks. Erik almost jumps.
NO! Erik thinks hard, hoping he gets his meaning across.
Erik can feel Charles’ smile. You’re good at that — projecting. Words or feelings will do, I should tell you, but my German is lacking. I can only squeeze out so much meaning from the emotional connotation of a sentence alone. Please stick to English, French, or Russian, when it comes to words.
Erik projects a cautious thankfulness, much quieter this time around.
You’re more than welcome. And you’re more than welcome here, with us.
And with this, a rich feeling flows through his thoughts. It reminds him of gravy, thick and heavy and oh so savoury it almost makes you melt.
Food simile, Charles observes with quiet contentment. You’re making me hungry. Hmm.
Milk chocolate — the taste of it thick and powerful and horrible — fills both his mind and his mouth, and Erik wants to puke, to tear his brain and tongue out, that he might get the feeling out.
Charles retreats instantly, the taste absconding as quickly as it came. I’m sorry, he whispers. Wisps of tall grass through Erik’s mind again — fresh barley in the air.
There is yet still chocolate on his breath like coppery blood. He remembers being able to taste his blood on his breath for hours. He knows being able to taste his blood on his breath for hours: it is not a sensation at all foreign to him.
He exits the restroom and places his wet-suit next to Charles’ pile of clothes. He wears no shoes either. Charles stands, a small apologetic smile on his face. His eyes unfocus for a moment, then refocused on Erik with a firm but not unkind intensity. He moves for the door, beckoning for the others to follow him; they do.
First, to both: “We’ll be heading back to New York State in the morning. They’ll probably want to conduct a proper interview with the both of you respectively, just to make sure, y’know, you’re not secretely Soviet spies or something.”
“No promises,” Erik chimes. It was a risk, that joke, but at Raven’s and (foremostly) Charles’ light chuckles, his anxiety is dismissed.
Then, to Erik: “There’s an empty bunk ready for you in the same hall as Raven and I. We can stop and get you some clothes on the way tomorrow.” He smirks. “It’ll be on the CIA’s dime, too.”
Going after Schmidt with fellow mutants…it didn’t seem like a suicide mission anymore. At least, Erik didn’t further hope for it to be as such.
It is a strange sensation blooming in his chest — hope.