fic: this, too // x-men: first class // mystique, erik lehnsherr
c'mon, don't even pretend like you didn't know this one was coming. locked because this shit is totally self-indulgent. unlocked because idk, i'm a masochist?
this, too
mystique. (mystique/erik, erik/emma, erik/charles, raven/hank.)
spoilers for the movie.
pg; i swear a lot. 1,853 words.
Erik says, Mystique, I-- which is as close to I’m sorry about Charles that he will ever get.
She steps out of the yellow and grey. No regrets.
--
Mystique, Erik says.
She ripples out of Charles' skin, back into her own. Hi, she says. Her reflection is blue in the window-pane. She’s not Beast but she turns away from it, to him. How’s it hanging, Erik?
She cannot yet call him Magneto. Everyone else does.
If he was Charles, he'd smile.
He’s Erik. He says, training.
Just for a moment, she savours the knowledge that the line of her back-- Charles' back-- made him wince.
--
Erik squeezes her hand, just once, before they disappear into acrid smoke.
She is too busy watching Charles breathe to look at him but she knows that's where he's looking, too.
--
Azazel takes them to a house in Argentina. It’s run down and there's a huge sprawling pasture behind it, hilly and scrubby and tussocky and nothing at all like the place Charles and Raven grew up.
Erik says, Mystique, I-- which is as close to I’m sorry about Charles that he will ever get.
She steps out of the yellow and grey. No regrets.
--
She lies in bed in Hank's skin, before he was Beast, and after, and runs her hands along his hips, thighs, chest, belly, cock, lips. It is not the same: when she is wearing his body it is no foreign country; there is no discovery in it, no beauty. She misses him, god, she misses everything about him even the disdainful angry curve of his mouth, the way her stomach fell out when he spoke; she misses everything she just--
but she made this decision, this decision was hers and she--
no regrets.
She ripples back into Charles because at least she still remembers the smell of him, curls up in bed with her knees tucked up to her chest and as though there is nothing wrong she falls asleep with Charles' hair brushing her cheek.
--
The telepath, Emma, is fucking Erik. She wears barely any clothing and too much makeup and her mind is always chipping at the edge of Mystique's, and she smells like Erik's cologne and it's not that Mystique is jealous, so much as that
everything is changing--
(It was supposed to be Charles and Erik, wasn't it? Raven and Beast, Charles and Erik, Havok and Darwin.
Way to go, world)
Everything is changing and Mystique (Raven) is a little girl in the kitchen staring at a boy with a baseball bat,
only she is a grown woman (tiger, Erik says, you are a tiger) and she's in the hallway watching Erik slip out of Emma's room thinking (fuck you) trying not to think because Charles was considerate (if condescending) but Emma is not (though she is condescending too).
Erik, she almost says.
But he is wearing loose white pants and bare feet and he has sex hair and in the darkness his eyes glint, feral, like a cat's.
She wraps her arms around herself and slips back into the shadows, into her room and Charles' skin again.
She is worried that one day she will forget what he smells like.
--
Before she met Charles, Raven wandered. Hank was right; she ages slowly. She was very young for a very long time. She did a lot of things she does not remember.
The point is: like Erik, she understands what it is to be alone.
--
Angel says, "Mystique?" her eyelashes are spider-long and very dark. Mystique is still in awe of her wings.
She thinks: Darwin died and you went away with his killer and then, well I guess I’m here now too.
"Yeah," Mystique says. "We’re okay."
She lets Angel flip her, savours the thunk of her back against the mat. Breathes in, thinks of the way Havok was always careful with her even though he didn't have to be; the force of Banshee's scream against her chest slamming her into walls, and his hand pulling her back up. She remembers Erik's hands on her skin and shakes her head, throwing herself into the rhythm of the sparring match.
She will win. She is good at this.
--
She locks her door at night. It is the sensible option.
(She does not want anyone to know that part of her is still a little lost girl missing her big brother.)
--
Erik says, "Mystique."
She says, "What are you doing here?" in Charles' voice, Charles' hair in her eyes, Charles' mouth suddenly dry.
His eyes are steel-blue and the lines of his face are strong like a sculpture. He is standing in the doorway, no light behind him; he looks like a shadow. He says, "Your lock is made of metal."
There is an edge in his voice; rasping, unadulterated want.
She says, "It’s called common courtesy."
She should, she knows, go back to blue. Instead she tucks her knees up to her chest, something Charles would never have done. Compromise; that's how it works, here, which is funny because she came with Erik because she only ever wanted to be herself.
"Mystique," he says. It is almost pleading. The almost is the key.
"I don't regret this," she says. "I just miss him." Like you, she does not say.
His power is over metal, like magnetism, but he is the one drifting towards her, unbidden; he is the one taking step after step.
She does not move but when he curves his hand around Charles' cheekbone, twines his fingers in Charles' soft hair she breathes in and closes the gap.
--
She wakes up alone. Of course she wakes up alone.
She is back in her own skin. She tries not to feel like that is the reason he left.
--
She writes Hank letters, you're an asshole but I miss you, tell Charles we're okay, tell Charles I love him; are you okay? Is everyone okay? Please tell me everyone is okay, writes out neatly-addressed stamped envelopes and walks to the post office only to rip them up, throw them away. There is one sheet of paper folded up neatly at the bottom of her bed can you and Charles come get us now please we want to go home.
But Charles' home was never really Erik's. Or hers.
God, Hank, she writes, you'd love it here. There’s absolutely nothing to do but think and train and do constructive things, no one even talks here. Okay, maybe that was harsh. You wouldn't love it here. (Hank, I miss you.)
There is one that she sends:
Dear Hank (and Charles, and Banshee, and Havok, and Moira):
Everything is all right. Please don't worry.
-Mystique and Magneto.
She slips it in its long white envelope and asks Azazel to post it from Massachusetts. He blinks at her, red-eyed, but they are the two ugly ones aren't they? She trusts him based on that alone.
--
Emma says, "Mystique, isn't it?"
Mystique thinks, it's been three weeks, don't pull this shit with me. She says, "Hi, Emma." She puts down her weights and sits up. "What can I do for you?"
Emma's eyelashes flicker. Her face is beautiful, like Erik's; they would have beautiful babies, Mystique thinks, vicious, and shoves it aside. "I need to know about the other telepath."
It comes out more bitter than she means it. "Why can't you ask Erik?"
Emma's mouth twists. "Mystique. He’s been trying to find us."
Charles what the fuck, Mystique thinks, and then, god damn it but part of her is flipping out, is happy, you still love me. But that's irrelevant, because they all made a choice.
Do your fucking job, she thinks, but that isn't fair; Emma's trying, Emma's just Emma she doesn't even have Cerebro. She swallows. "I’m sorry," she says. "I can't-- I can't do anything that might hurt him."
"Not even if it's him against us?" but Emma's tone isn't angry, just resigned. "You sound just like Magneto."
Mystique shrugs. "There are worse people to sound like."
Emma closes her eyes. "I won't--" she says. "I could go into your mind, but I won't."
"Thanks for that," Mystique says wryly. She half-means it.
--
She really, genuinely, does not regret this. This is what she wants; acceptance. Truth. Freedom. Any number of epithets, platitudes that mean she just wants to be. She wishes she did not have to do this without Hank, without Charles, without Havok and Banshee and Darwin but.
It's not that she dislikes these people; Azazel is funny and sweet and his tail is basically the coolest thing ever; Riptide is, as Charles would say, incredibly fit and even though he doesn't talk they get along because he bakes, god, can that man bake; Angel's Angel, who Raven had thought would be her best friend the first time they met. It’s just that she was there when all those agents died; she has seen what they are capable of. She has seen them ignore Shaw’s body, limp on the ground, and pledge allegiance to Erik.
(She has seen what she is capable of, though. that is why she is here, with them.)
She doesn't really like Emma, but apparently that's what happens with children of broken homes and their parents' new partners.
(God, this is fucked up.)
The point is: everything hurts, but that's how you know you're alive.
--
She keeps thinking about Charles lying there, unmoving, about the way Erik had held him still to pull the bullet away.
Emma says, "He isn't going to come find us, to sweep the both of you off your feet. You know that."
It is easier to hate Emma than it is to hate Charles.
She breathes in.
Emma says, "You just need to move on."
Mystique shakes her head. "Magneto put a coin through Shaw’s head. You’re not-- hung up on that? Not even a little?"
"There’s no point," Emma says. Her fingernails are long and kind of dangerous. "Nothing would come of it."
--
Erik disappears for days at a time. She worries (he's all she has left) but she tries not to show it.
Angel says, "I wonder where he is."
She says, "Doesn’t matter, as long as he comes back."
--
She’s playing with flashcards that Azazel and Angel made for her; names of politicians, no pictures. The game is to become them in less than five seconds.
William Stryker, says the card.
She closes her eyes and remembers blind panic, Charles beside her, Moira there too. A world ago. Before Erik.
Stryker’s skin is paper-thin. His lips are chapped. She rubs them with the tip of a pale finger.
Erik leans in the doorway. "You’re getting better at this."
"It’s not like I have anything else to do," she says, back to herself again, and rolls her eyes. “Locks are there for a reason, Erik.”
He slips his arm around her shoulders. He’s warm, safe. She leans into him. "This, too, shall pass," he murmurs. "It’s going to work out."
She does not know him as well as she knows Charles; this is how she lets herself believe him; this is how she says, “Sure, Magneto.”
--
this, too
mystique. (mystique/erik, erik/emma, erik/charles, raven/hank.)
spoilers for the movie.
pg; i swear a lot. 1,853 words.
Erik says, Mystique, I-- which is as close to I’m sorry about Charles that he will ever get.
She steps out of the yellow and grey. No regrets.
--
Mystique, Erik says.
She ripples out of Charles' skin, back into her own. Hi, she says. Her reflection is blue in the window-pane. She’s not Beast but she turns away from it, to him. How’s it hanging, Erik?
She cannot yet call him Magneto. Everyone else does.
If he was Charles, he'd smile.
He’s Erik. He says, training.
Just for a moment, she savours the knowledge that the line of her back-- Charles' back-- made him wince.
--
Erik squeezes her hand, just once, before they disappear into acrid smoke.
She is too busy watching Charles breathe to look at him but she knows that's where he's looking, too.
--
Azazel takes them to a house in Argentina. It’s run down and there's a huge sprawling pasture behind it, hilly and scrubby and tussocky and nothing at all like the place Charles and Raven grew up.
Erik says, Mystique, I-- which is as close to I’m sorry about Charles that he will ever get.
She steps out of the yellow and grey. No regrets.
--
She lies in bed in Hank's skin, before he was Beast, and after, and runs her hands along his hips, thighs, chest, belly, cock, lips. It is not the same: when she is wearing his body it is no foreign country; there is no discovery in it, no beauty. She misses him, god, she misses everything about him even the disdainful angry curve of his mouth, the way her stomach fell out when he spoke; she misses everything she just--
but she made this decision, this decision was hers and she--
no regrets.
She ripples back into Charles because at least she still remembers the smell of him, curls up in bed with her knees tucked up to her chest and as though there is nothing wrong she falls asleep with Charles' hair brushing her cheek.
--
The telepath, Emma, is fucking Erik. She wears barely any clothing and too much makeup and her mind is always chipping at the edge of Mystique's, and she smells like Erik's cologne and it's not that Mystique is jealous, so much as that
everything is changing--
(It was supposed to be Charles and Erik, wasn't it? Raven and Beast, Charles and Erik, Havok and Darwin.
Way to go, world)
Everything is changing and Mystique (Raven) is a little girl in the kitchen staring at a boy with a baseball bat,
only she is a grown woman (tiger, Erik says, you are a tiger) and she's in the hallway watching Erik slip out of Emma's room thinking (fuck you) trying not to think because Charles was considerate (if condescending) but Emma is not (though she is condescending too).
Erik, she almost says.
But he is wearing loose white pants and bare feet and he has sex hair and in the darkness his eyes glint, feral, like a cat's.
She wraps her arms around herself and slips back into the shadows, into her room and Charles' skin again.
She is worried that one day she will forget what he smells like.
--
Before she met Charles, Raven wandered. Hank was right; she ages slowly. She was very young for a very long time. She did a lot of things she does not remember.
The point is: like Erik, she understands what it is to be alone.
--
Angel says, "Mystique?" her eyelashes are spider-long and very dark. Mystique is still in awe of her wings.
She thinks: Darwin died and you went away with his killer and then, well I guess I’m here now too.
"Yeah," Mystique says. "We’re okay."
She lets Angel flip her, savours the thunk of her back against the mat. Breathes in, thinks of the way Havok was always careful with her even though he didn't have to be; the force of Banshee's scream against her chest slamming her into walls, and his hand pulling her back up. She remembers Erik's hands on her skin and shakes her head, throwing herself into the rhythm of the sparring match.
She will win. She is good at this.
--
She locks her door at night. It is the sensible option.
(She does not want anyone to know that part of her is still a little lost girl missing her big brother.)
--
Erik says, "Mystique."
She says, "What are you doing here?" in Charles' voice, Charles' hair in her eyes, Charles' mouth suddenly dry.
His eyes are steel-blue and the lines of his face are strong like a sculpture. He is standing in the doorway, no light behind him; he looks like a shadow. He says, "Your lock is made of metal."
There is an edge in his voice; rasping, unadulterated want.
She says, "It’s called common courtesy."
She should, she knows, go back to blue. Instead she tucks her knees up to her chest, something Charles would never have done. Compromise; that's how it works, here, which is funny because she came with Erik because she only ever wanted to be herself.
"Mystique," he says. It is almost pleading. The almost is the key.
"I don't regret this," she says. "I just miss him." Like you, she does not say.
His power is over metal, like magnetism, but he is the one drifting towards her, unbidden; he is the one taking step after step.
She does not move but when he curves his hand around Charles' cheekbone, twines his fingers in Charles' soft hair she breathes in and closes the gap.
--
She wakes up alone. Of course she wakes up alone.
She is back in her own skin. She tries not to feel like that is the reason he left.
--
She writes Hank letters, you're an asshole but I miss you, tell Charles we're okay, tell Charles I love him; are you okay? Is everyone okay? Please tell me everyone is okay, writes out neatly-addressed stamped envelopes and walks to the post office only to rip them up, throw them away. There is one sheet of paper folded up neatly at the bottom of her bed can you and Charles come get us now please we want to go home.
But Charles' home was never really Erik's. Or hers.
God, Hank, she writes, you'd love it here. There’s absolutely nothing to do but think and train and do constructive things, no one even talks here. Okay, maybe that was harsh. You wouldn't love it here. (Hank, I miss you.)
There is one that she sends:
Dear Hank (and Charles, and Banshee, and Havok, and Moira):
Everything is all right. Please don't worry.
-Mystique and Magneto.
She slips it in its long white envelope and asks Azazel to post it from Massachusetts. He blinks at her, red-eyed, but they are the two ugly ones aren't they? She trusts him based on that alone.
--
Emma says, "Mystique, isn't it?"
Mystique thinks, it's been three weeks, don't pull this shit with me. She says, "Hi, Emma." She puts down her weights and sits up. "What can I do for you?"
Emma's eyelashes flicker. Her face is beautiful, like Erik's; they would have beautiful babies, Mystique thinks, vicious, and shoves it aside. "I need to know about the other telepath."
It comes out more bitter than she means it. "Why can't you ask Erik?"
Emma's mouth twists. "Mystique. He’s been trying to find us."
Charles what the fuck, Mystique thinks, and then, god damn it but part of her is flipping out, is happy, you still love me. But that's irrelevant, because they all made a choice.
Do your fucking job, she thinks, but that isn't fair; Emma's trying, Emma's just Emma she doesn't even have Cerebro. She swallows. "I’m sorry," she says. "I can't-- I can't do anything that might hurt him."
"Not even if it's him against us?" but Emma's tone isn't angry, just resigned. "You sound just like Magneto."
Mystique shrugs. "There are worse people to sound like."
Emma closes her eyes. "I won't--" she says. "I could go into your mind, but I won't."
"Thanks for that," Mystique says wryly. She half-means it.
--
She really, genuinely, does not regret this. This is what she wants; acceptance. Truth. Freedom. Any number of epithets, platitudes that mean she just wants to be. She wishes she did not have to do this without Hank, without Charles, without Havok and Banshee and Darwin but.
It's not that she dislikes these people; Azazel is funny and sweet and his tail is basically the coolest thing ever; Riptide is, as Charles would say, incredibly fit and even though he doesn't talk they get along because he bakes, god, can that man bake; Angel's Angel, who Raven had thought would be her best friend the first time they met. It’s just that she was there when all those agents died; she has seen what they are capable of. She has seen them ignore Shaw’s body, limp on the ground, and pledge allegiance to Erik.
(She has seen what she is capable of, though. that is why she is here, with them.)
She doesn't really like Emma, but apparently that's what happens with children of broken homes and their parents' new partners.
(God, this is fucked up.)
The point is: everything hurts, but that's how you know you're alive.
--
She keeps thinking about Charles lying there, unmoving, about the way Erik had held him still to pull the bullet away.
Emma says, "He isn't going to come find us, to sweep the both of you off your feet. You know that."
It is easier to hate Emma than it is to hate Charles.
She breathes in.
Emma says, "You just need to move on."
Mystique shakes her head. "Magneto put a coin through Shaw’s head. You’re not-- hung up on that? Not even a little?"
"There’s no point," Emma says. Her fingernails are long and kind of dangerous. "Nothing would come of it."
--
Erik disappears for days at a time. She worries (he's all she has left) but she tries not to show it.
Angel says, "I wonder where he is."
She says, "Doesn’t matter, as long as he comes back."
--
She’s playing with flashcards that Azazel and Angel made for her; names of politicians, no pictures. The game is to become them in less than five seconds.
William Stryker, says the card.
She closes her eyes and remembers blind panic, Charles beside her, Moira there too. A world ago. Before Erik.
Stryker’s skin is paper-thin. His lips are chapped. She rubs them with the tip of a pale finger.
Erik leans in the doorway. "You’re getting better at this."
"It’s not like I have anything else to do," she says, back to herself again, and rolls her eyes. “Locks are there for a reason, Erik.”
He slips his arm around her shoulders. He’s warm, safe. She leans into him. "This, too, shall pass," he murmurs. "It’s going to work out."
She does not know him as well as she knows Charles; this is how she lets herself believe him; this is how she says, “Sure, Magneto.”
--