FIC: When It Rains
Title: When It Rains
Author: emilys_knickers
Pairing: Charles/Erik (implied)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Slight abuse of comic!canon, slight crossover, little crack!fic, but fun
Summary: Recruiting, wherein Erik and Charles meet a pair of sisters.
Author's Notes: Okay. Had this idea, and just had to run with it. Forewarning: somewhat horrible abuse of the X-men canon as far as comics go. Another warning is that there is a slight crossover, but I can't say what it is yet because it's too much fun to me XD
Uhm…the Erik/Charles is more implied than anything else, but it's there. A little cracky, in a way? I had a lot of fun with this though, and the idea wouldn't go away.
Enjoy!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
It was after they had left the Grey household that Charles realized just how much that little girl could take out of someone. He felt like his very molecules would disintegrate at their most basic bonds until he was nothing but dust in the wind.
A ghost of a chill ran down his back, and Erik looked at him with a raised eyebrow before lifting his eyes to the sunny weather.
"Powerful, wasn't she," Charles finally offered up weakly, though he turned vaguely back to the house in thought as the dusty sidewalks created whirlwinds of scattered leaves. He shook the chill off as he and Erik slipped back into the car.
"More powerful to us if she had said yes."
Charles shrugged one shoulder and rested his head against the glass. The girl's hatred and rage and all-encompassing need for power was still pulsing through him; she could make people do things; she never had to be a freak again, she could have any friend she wanted, her parents had even stayed together-
When he raised his head again, the sun was setting and the pliant weather had shifted a bit chillier. Erik was looking at him with the barest hint of concern on his face, though it would've been undetectable to anyone else.
"Would you like this one to wait?" Erik finally asked after a moment, turning his eyes to the run-down apartment complex. The neighborhood itself didn't seem to lend itself to nicely dressed men, one with a german accent and the other british.
Especially the german accent. Erik grimaced, though he knew his ways out if needed.
"There's hardly any need for that," Charles muttered. "Could we perhaps not risk life and limb on this one?"
Erik snorted. "Miss Grey was hardly my fault," he pointed out. "Perhaps if these children would be allowed to recognize their powers as early as Miss Grey or even Raven, then-"
Charles's sharp look and sudden pulsation of disapproval caught Erik more by surprise than anything. Charles looked ashamed mere moments later when he realized Erik had gagged on his own words.
"Tomorrow for this one," Charles finally muttered, pressing his forehead to the glass again, feeling his facial oils smear it and bring him down. It was cooling off outside, and he could feel Erik's rage and shock and anger and everything else.
"Dare I even ask what would make the great Charles Xavier use his power for something other than the greater good?" Erik retorted with sarcasm and mocking. He didn't turn the car on.
Charles turned toward him, a wary look on his face and the exhaustion in his eyes. "Not tonight, my friend," he finally said quietly.
Erik swallowed against the unexpected lump in his throat. "You know it's impossible to argue with a kicked puppy. I hope you realize this."
Charles gave a weak smile. "Perhaps that's my best defense-what'd you call it; the kicked puppy?"
Erik reached forward, and rubbed an absent thumb over the hollow of Charles's face. "Come on, Schatz. This last one, and we can be back at the mansion tomorrow."
No sooner had they exited the car did the front door of the apartment complex slam open hard enough that Erik wondered briefly if the building would collapse. He could feel the weakness of the infrastructure, knew its lack of shelter without even eyeing it for more than a moment.
The door didn't close, and a young girl, no older than seven, poked her head out and looked both ways before gesturing behind her. Another girl, perhaps about twelve, was coming up behind her, hauling a duffle bag and two backpacks. Both girls possessed the same, dark caramel-colored skin, though the older one possessed a rather shocking bundle of white hair. Her younger companion, however they shared features, did not share the same unique hair.
Charles glanced at Erik conspicuously, rubbing his temple lightly and nodding. "Both."
Erik frowned. "You said there was one? And quite a bit older, I'd have thought."
"I thought so on both counts." Charles glanced at the girls, who were babbling quietly to each other in a musical, foreign language that Charles thought he recognized as being vaguely Middle-eastern, but he couldn't be certain.
He didn't have much longer to guess; the younger girl was tugging at her sister's jacket and pointing at them. The older girl turned, her eyes suddenly white in the dim streetlamps.
We mean you no harm! Charles felt the wind knock him off his feet before he could stop it, though Erik was there to keep him upright.
The girl's eyes faded almost instantly back to brown, as if she couldn't maintain the gust indefinitely. Given her age, Charles was pretty sure that was correct. It didn't make the hairs on his neck stand down any less, and he felt more than saw lightning crackle in the distance.
Her younger companion was crying now, and the first spatterings of raindrops had begun to fall.
"We don't need any help," the older girl said haughtily, her voice heavily accented. "We certainly don't require two strange men for any reasons. I suggest you leave right the way you came."
Her voice was undeniably educated.
"Ororo," her younger companion cried.
"Zartha, shush!" Ororo snapped at her, and glared at them. "Do you require an invitation to your vehicle?"
Erik felt his hair stand up this time, and held up a hand. Ororo shrieked a little as the bag in her hand went flying by its metal handles to Erik's.
"We're not here to hurt you," Erik said lowly. "So please. Enough with your tantrum."
Ororo still held the same haughty look, and Charles was sure he recognized her vaguely, though he couldn't recall from where. The older girl kneeled down as the rain began coming harder, and she put an arm around her.
"Zartha, stop!" Ororo pleaded. "You're going to flood the whole house."
Charles stepped forward calmly. "May I, Miss Ororo?" he asked, trying for that kicked puppy look Erik had seemed so fond of before.
"It won't help, whatever you're going to do," Ororo retorted peevishly. "She just needs to stop crying. It rains when she cries."
Charles tipped Zartha's tear-streaked face up. "Perhaps she's crying because it's raining, not the other way 'round."
Zartha sniffled as drops of tears splashed and slowed on her face. "You're lying," she replied miserably.
Charles shifted beside of her, Erik raising a hand when Ororo looked mutinous. "Lots of people cry when it rains, you know. The sky's just doing it with you because you're sad."
Zartha sniffed again. "It thunders when Ororo's mad."
"See? It's just the sky trying to be your friend," Charles smiled warmly at her, tipping his fingers against his temple to project warmth and calm.
Erik would've rolled his eyes if he hadn't been slightly fearful that his natural magnetism would also operate as a fantastic conductor, and Ororo didn't look like she trusted anyone, let alone herself.
It was another ten minutes before Zartha stopped crying, and another fifteen to realize that while Ororo seemed interested, she refused to leave her sister, who was far too young for any sort of CIA duty, and especially too young to be training in any sort of government facility. However, Charles left them his card with a handwritten number on the back that would direct them should they require assistance.
It was another five miles before the hair finally relaxed on their skin. It would be four years until Charles saw Ororo again, would be able to recall her from his time in Cairo against the Shadow King. She showed up at the mansion, as it were, a mere month before Jean's parents had dropped her off to Charles with blank looks.
Ororo looked just as haughty as Charles remembered, and she was without her sister. Charles had learned well enough in the last four years not to go prying. In any case, Ororo didn't ask about his wheelchair, so he didn't ask about Zartha.
By the same token, Charles understood why Ororo didn't show up for training when it was raining, and Ororo knew better than to ask where the German man had gone.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Her new mommy and daddy told her Zartha was too weird a name, and decided they'd call her Laura instead. They were nice parents anyway, who always thought it was funny that she'd get so sad when it rained. But they hadn't wanted two daughters, especially when one of them had a shock of white hair and eyes that turned gray when they approached and made them feel like their insides would turn to ice.
So she became Laura. And then those parents were gone too by the time she turned eighteen, and she had no idea how to find Ororo. It had been so many years ago when the two men had found them on their first try of running away, had been too long ago that she couldn't remember their names, and Ororo had taken the card with her when she left.
Laura fingered her necklace, and looked outside at the rainy weather. She was glad she wasn't delivering pizza anymore, that was for sure. And Ben had been so good to her since her parents died, even letting her live in the apartment above his pizza place, Famous Ben's Pizza. He was a little bit of a chauvinist, but he paid her decently, and didn't grab her ass.
What more could she ask for?
"Laura! Employee of the month time!"
Laura turned away from the window, dropping the cool necklace against her chest as he rain pattered harder against the windows. She smiled wide, though it didn't reach her eyes, and made her way back towards Ben.
Lots of people got sad because it rained.
It wouldn't be until a few weeks later that she wanted to punch J in his pretentious face and point that out, over and over. Being a mutant, like she'd seen on TV with Professor X (where'd all his hair go; she'd sworn he'd had hair), she was sure she could deal with.
But aliens?
Get real.
But even now, as she stared the grizzled old man in front of her (K, wasn't it?) he looked at her like he knew her, like that other man had back when she had been so little.
"Ever notice how it rains when you're sad?" he asked her, and fired casual, nonchalant shots to the wrestling alien behind them.
Her eyes were wide, she couldn't help it, wanted to run fast and find Ororo, find that man who'd talked in her head and said he knew her secret.
"Lots of people get sad when it rains!" she yelled desperately, and screamed in her head for Ororo, for that man who was bald now, even the one who'd made Ororo's bag float with his hand.
The middle-aged, dark-haired man only looked at her sadly, knowingly. She wondered if he was a mutant, hysterical laughter burbling in her head from nowhere. What would be real next? Bigfoot?
"It rains because you're sad," K pointed out to her, and patters of raindrops were falling all around her before she had a chance to do anything else but look on in shock and anguish as he all but pushed her into the tiny ship that would take her away from everything she knew.
The rain grew harder, and she banged on the glass before she realized even if she did break it, she wouldn't survive the fall. As it dragged her away from Earth, into space, she wondered if she wanted to, being that where she was going, everything she knew would never be the same.
Fondly, tiredly, she recalled the man and his face, his warm comforting presence, the way his arm felt like it was curled around her as a child, even though he hadn't been touching her. She fell asleep, exhausted and worn, and with the condensation of her power making puffs of fog in the glass.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Ororo looked up at the darkened sky, at the rain that poured and poured and threatened to never stop till they were all gone in a deluge. She jumped when she heard the wheels of Charles's chair roll in, and she turned to look at him.
Charles said nothing at first, still rolling towards her. He didn't use the mechanical knob that Hank had put on it, preferring when he could to get around under his own power. One of the first things she'd noticed of him when she first arrived at the mansion was that so much of what she remembered of him wasn't in his eyes anymore.
He didn't ask, so she didn't tell, and this time was beginning to look no different. She remembered her first week, the redhead, Jean, had tried to ask her and then read her thoughts on the matter.
That was how Jean began to learn the hard way that reading someone's thoughts without their permission sometimes ended up in that person threatening to blow you off a second-story balcony with the wind, and by god, it'd look like an accident.
Ororo had calmed much since then, preferring now to temper herself with power and peace, with control and tranquility. Anger and rage wouldn't bring Zartha back, after all, and she couldn't live her life on hate alone.
Ororo hadn't asked where the other man was when she'd shown up. She figured it'd go over as well as Charles asking her where Zartha was.
"She got adopted, a long time ago," Ororo suddenly said without realizing that she was going to tell him.
Charles raised an eyebrow at her, but thankfully, said nothing.
"They only wanted one daughter though," Ororo said quietly, easing her hip onto the desk in the study. "And they thought I looked too strange to pass off for normal. Too old too, the orphanage told me."
Charles made a sound to indicate he was listening.
"We were too young to understand what was going on. We just knew we had to stick together, and then we couldn't. I couldn't make her give up a chance for a normal life. The only thing she ever did was make it rain when she was sad," Ororo said quietly, and crossed her arms. "Least I know when it rains, she's still out there."
Charles didn't point out the obvious that sometimes, weather patterns were just weather patterns. He also didn't offer up his own story of the wheelchair, of Erik, of wounds that felt like there was still saltwater and sand lodged into them.
What feeling there was in his back gave a twinge, and he tried to tell himself that his heart didn't hurt anymore when he thought of Erik, but it did.
"You think she's happy?" Ororo asked, her voice smallish and completely unlike any tone Charles had ever really heard her use.
Charles tipped his fingers to his temple, though the gesture was rarely needed anymore. He sensed Zartha; he never looked for her on purpose out of respect for Ororo's wishes. But he could feel her, draw her out faintly, as if she were miles upon miles away.
At that distance, he couldn't tell what she was feeling anymore than he could tell what Erik thought when he had that blasted helmet on.
But sometimes, lies were better for a person than the truth, something he knew to be truer than ever when he'd helped Jean lock away that hateful sprite inside of her called Phoenix.
"I'm sure she is, Ororo," Charles finally replied affably. "She had you for a sister."
Ororo laughed weakly, looking down as the rain began to slow. She looked at Charles, tilting her head in an unasked question.
"Perhaps one day," Charles said, the amicable tone still to his voice. "Enjoy your sister today, Ororo."
Ororo looked distantly out the window and into the bleak, dark clouds. Despite having always known that rain made Zartha sad-well, she smiled at the clouds and hoped that the sun would come out again soon.
xxxxFINxxxxx
Author's Notes: Yeah. I know. Not sure how it really came out; guess we'll see, ja? Schatz, by the way, is a german endearment that usually means like…favorite or treasure, if I recall correctly. Hope you enjoyed!