fic; "These are the scars that words have carved on me", X-Men: First Class, Raven & Charles, PG-13
Title: These are the scars that words have carved on me
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2660
Copyright: Title from Vienna Teng's "Gravity".
Summary: Five times Charles failed Raven, and one time he didn't.
Author's Notes: Betaed by the lovely littledust . Thanks for being so supportive, generally awesome and for helping me get over my abusive relationship with commas.
--
As though it were easy for you to lead me
I could be passive gracefully
- Metric
i.
If Raven had to spend the rest of her life in just one place, it would be here. Under the oak tree in the garden, the grass is tickling her bare feet. The leaves above her head frame the sky in a green cocoon. There are spots of light breaking through the branches, flickering over her legs, a dance of fireflies.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asks Charles, who sits beside her, legs crossed.
He shrugs. There is a bowl of cherries between them, the taste of cherries on her tongue sticky-sweet like the best parts of summer. Raven watches his profile, the way his lips are pressed into a neat line. He thinks too much, turning the words over and over in his head until he forgets what he wanted to say.
"I don't really know," Charles admits, before spitting out the cherry pit.
Raven scrunches up her nose. "I can totally do better than that."
Charles looks all thoughtful now, like he does sometimes when he locks himself in the library and she's not allowed to come in, not even to play tag. (They don't play tag that often anymore. Most of the time he rather wants to sit in the big chair and read really boring books. Raven actually kind of likes playing it, especially the running part, and how they sometimes tackle each other to the ground, laughing until they have to gasp for air.)
"I think I want to do something with books," he finally says. "Maybe I can be a librarian. Or--" his eyes light up at the idea--"a teacher."
Raven spits, but the pit doesn't quite go far enough.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" he asks her.
"I want to go places," Raven says, without having to think about it. "Like, the cities on the map in the study? I want to see all of them." She thinks that she must sound very grown-up. The next pit flies better, almost far enough.
"That's not a job, you know," Charles says.
"Then I'll get a job where I travel a lot," Raven decides. "Like... like an actress. Actresses travel a lot, don't they?"
She leans against his side, her head resting against his shoulder.
"Do you think I'll be famous, Charles?" she asks, her skin changing like the turning of a page.
She wonders if she would be on posters and in magazines, her face looming in the darkness over hundreds of heads in the movie theatre.
"You'll have to look like... your other self, though," he says, eyes avoiding hers.
"Why?" she asks. She has never seen a girl in a movie that looks like her. Don't people want to see new things? She tries to make herself imagine a place she would love to travel as an actress, but whenever she thinks of something, she also sees the boy next to her, Charles and his brilliant mind that is way too big for him, like a grown man's shoes. Raven tries not to think about how all he wants is to be in a room full of dusty books, like they will talk to him if he listens closely.
--
ii.
The air is stale, like it has been kept in a glass jar for too long. Raven sits at the edge of the pool, her feet dangling into the water. She wears her new bikini, a shock of yellow that glows against the blue of her skin. Charles is sitting at the other end of the pool. He doesn't move, but that never means anything. His mind is a runner, an athlete, always catching up with the voices and sounds around him, like he would lose balance and trip if he stopped listening. She bets Charles hasn't even noticed her new bikini; at least, he hasn't said a word about it.
Raven pushes herself up from where she's sitting, body gliding into the water, cold and smooth like the Egyptian cotton sheets in the bedrooms. She swims laps until she gets bored with it and climbs out, flopping down onto the towel next to Charles. The water dripping from her hair startles him and he scrambles back a little.
"You know, that's what towels were invented for," he says, but there's a small tug at the corner of his mouth, his almost-smile.
"Spoilsport," she says. She's sitting up so she can stretch out and show off her bikini when Charles suddenly grabs a towel next to him and throws it around her, his voice insistent in her head:
Change back. Change back.
The blue scales diappear, replaced by the face and body she has come to see as her scarf and gloves: something you put on when you leave home. Under the towel, she can see the strap of her bikini looking pale and boring against her pale skin. She wants to say: You always say "change back" like this is how I really look underneath.
"What is wrong?" she asks, because Charles actually looks alarmed, like he's seen a ghost.
"You'll get it when you're older," Charles says, very quietly.
She turns. A few feet away, the gardener raises his hand in greeting.
iii.
"He likes me."
There's a crumpled plastic bag under her right shoe. Raven pulls the sleeves of her blouse over the back of her hands, shivering in the cold. They are standing in the street in front of the pub, and she just really wants to go back in, where Jamie smiles at her and laughs about the things she says.
"Raven--"
"I'm not a child anymore. I don't need your permission to live."
Charles looks annoyed, hands thrown up in exasperation. Do we need to have the exact same conversation every time again? his voice asks in her head.
Something in her chests shifts, sharp and dangerous like a blade. He always makes it sound like it's her fault, like she just doesn't learn.
"I don't want to pretend all the time," she says.
Charles makes a step forward, his hand hovering in the air between them. Raven wishes he would reach out to touch her because he feels that she craves it, not because he logically deducted that the situation demands physical contact.
I don't want you to get hurt, he thinks, and she's not sure if he wants her to hear it or if he just forgot to disconnect.
Maybe he would understand, she thinks back. Maybe if I show him the real me, maybe he will still want me.
Those are a lot of maybes. Charles gives her a sad smile. You can't go around and split yourself wide open to people, Raven. Don't grant them that kind of power.
"You always say that humans are capable of compassion. Of tolerance," she spits. "But you never give them a chance to prove it."
"I'm sure that they are," Charles answers. "It's just that sometimes it's difficult to accept something that is so incredibly different from what you've known, and you have to give people time to get used to it. One day, mutations will be an everyday part of society, but until then--"
"Until then we just hide in a corner somewhere and try not to draw attention."
She thinks it might rain again: the air smells like it. She doesn't remember how the first rain of spring feels on her skin (her skin, not the costume she wears every day). She wants to tell him how terrible it feels to forget the rhythm of your own body, but she has never been good with words, not like he is, bending and molding them to his will.
Charles looks handsome, hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers, crisp white shirt and dark blue blazer. He can just go back in there and use one of his ridiculous pick-up lines and be like everyone else. It's easy enough for you to say. Nobody will look at you and think you're a freak.
They don't go back to the pub. Instead, they end up on the couch in the apartment, sharing a bowl of ice cream. Raven has her legs spread over his lap while he pages through a scientific paper, forehead wrinkled in concentration. It's almost impossible to interrupt him when he is like this, the whole word narrowing down to the secrets he is trying to uncover.
"I wish I could remember the day you stopped feeling like home to me," she whispers.
Charles flips a page without looking up.
iv.
It's 2 A.M. and Raven is waiting for snow. Sitting on the cold metal of the fire escape just outside the window, she turns a pack of cigarettes around in her hand. Inside, she can see Charles moving around, bowtie hanging loose around his collar and humming a tune to himself. He has been at the winter ball with Helen, a law student who drinks red wine and laughs too loudly at his jokes.
This is the constant ghost of disappointment tugging at Raven's heart: the new dress hanging in her closet, bought for a winter ball Charles never invited her to.
The lighter is a cheap plastic thing but the flame is warm and bright in her hand. Raven knows Charles would freak if he knew she even thought about smoking. Maybe tonight is the the night to break the rules.
--
She waits until she is sure that he has gone to bed. Raven quietly closes the door to the apartment behind her, waits a moment, and then rasps her knuckles against it, once, twice. It takes a moment, before the door opens to Charles' surprised expression. He looks at her, really looks at her.
"Helen, I thought you--"
"I changed my mind," she says, in a voice that is not her own, throaty and daring.
Charles beams, his eyes locked to hers. This, she thinks, is how it feels to be wanted. Giddy with the feeling that rises in her stomach, she steps forward into his space. He closes the door behind her and she leans back against it, needing something to keep her balance. His body is now mere inches from hers. His palms are warm on the skin of her back where the dress dips down in a graceful curve beneath her shoulder blades.
"That is the best thing I have heard all night," he says, voice amused and a little breathless. He cups her chin with his hand and leans down to kiss her. She barely feels the brush of his lips against her own before there is a different kind of touch, a movement in her thoughts like the world is tilting sideways, and suddenly he jerks away, breaking contact.
"Raven!" His voice sounds hoarse. "What do you think you're doing?"
"You shouldn't read their minds all the time, Charles. It's impolite," she says, changing back to Raven, boring, lonely, blue Raven, looking everywhere but at him, cheeks burning.
"You can't--you can't just..."
She swallows. He must be furious, she thinks, if words fail him now, eloquent, well-spoken Charles.
His mind is a mess of emotions, surprise and anger and disappointment and humiliation all blended together.
"You can't toy with people like that," he finally manages.
"But reading their minds and using it to your advantage is fair game?" she snaps, determined to hurt him as much as he hurt her.
She nearly gasps when she feels his mind pull back from her entirely. She is so used to his presence that lacking it feels like he's taking a part of herself with her, something that had been buried so deep in her bones she almost forgot about it.
I wanted you to be my first kiss, she thinks, but her thoughts roll off his barriers like water dripping from leaves in a summer storm, all her stupid feelings spilling uselessly to the ground.
v.
Erik kisses with the same sense of determination that he applies to every task. It's so different from the sloppy, half-drunk kisses and enthusiastic fumbling she has endured after that stolen moment with Charles. Erik doesn't linger, he doesn't hold her head like he expects her to bail. Maybe he knows that she has nowhere else she could run.
"You should go to bed now," he says, not unkindly.
"Or I could stay the night," she suggests, as casually as possible. Erik doesn't laugh at her, which is a relief, but she can see no glimpse of desire in his eyes.
"With you in my bed I wouldn't get a wink of sleep," he tells her. She can feel a blush spreading on her face at that thought, but his voice is perfectly calm, like they are having a conversation at the dinner table. "And I could really use a good night's rest," he adds.
He gives her an option to leave without losing face, and she gladly takes it.
Walking down the hallway, she feels lightheaded, replaying that moment over and over in her head.
You're thinking rather loudly, Charles says. She looks around. He must be in his own bedroom. The thought of him spying on her shoots a jolt of anger trough her body. There is a moment of silence, then:
You shouldn't involve Erik in this.
Maybe I'm just glad that somebody is interested in me the way I really am, she thinks back without missing a beat. Somebody who believes that I shouldn't have to hide.
Why do want to make yourself an outcast so badly? he asks, and she can feel that his sadness is real, like he honestly doesn't know.
Why are you so scared of who you are?
The slamming of her door in the silent hallway is like the first shot in a war: this is where she stood when the world started to unravel around her.
vi.
There is a moment of perfect silence, his body caught in the momentum between flying and falling. Charles feels the white-hot stab of pain in his back before his body hits the ground, a pulsing ache shooting through his nerves.
In the first moment of sheer panic he reaches out to Raven by default, clinging to her thoughts like holding onto a lifeline: It hurts, oh god it hurts so much, I can't move my legs, I can't feel them--
His world narrows down to a sharp focus of pain in the center of his spine, and then there is Erik, cradling him like a child, a huge void breaking open between them like a wound.
Somewhere in the distance, he can hear that Raven's thoughts have become quiet, focused. She has always been the braver one. He doesn't need to close his eyes to see her life flashing before him,
an origami crane unfolding into something ordinary, a blank white page. He will not leave her to live a life that is built of guilt and pity.
She doesn't feel it when he takes his thoughts from her mind, uttered in a moment of weakness.
Raven chooses her side like he expects her to, and there is no bitterness inside him, just the quiet pull of mourning, and when he reaches out for her--his heart a traitorous thing that can't tell the difference between a clean break and a frayed edge--he finds that she has already dissolved into thin air, a hollow echo in the back of his mind.
-- fin