Much Madness, the Divinest Sense 5; X-Men: First Class (2011)
Title: Much Madness, the Divinest Sense
Fandom: X-Men: First Class (2011) (c) Marvel and others.
Characters/Pairings: Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr; Hank McCoy/Raven Darkholme; Alex Summers; Cain Marko; others.
Genres: AU//Drama/Preslash
Rating: R
Summary: Charles Xavier, newly released from a mental hospital, vows never to use his powers again. He accompanies his cousin Hank McCoy to the remote island of Pala to work on his thesis. There, he meets Erik Lehnsherr, a marine biologist who has a few secrets of his own. (Partially inspired by the Madeleine L’Engle novel A Ring of Endless Light.)
Warnings: mental illness; medically-prescribed pill-popping; implied anorexia; mentions of attempted suicide; gratuitous pseudo-science.
Notes: Title is from a Dickinson poem, and this AU is a shameless excuse for me to use the line -- “Why, yes, I used to study sharks.” Also, Pala is a completely fictional island borrowed from Aldous Huxley’s aptly named Island.
ALSO. FIRST COMPLETED FIC LONGER THAN 5K! HAPPY DANCE. THANK YOU ALL!!
--
Five
The fact that even dolphins were disappointed in him made Charles Xavier seriously consider rethinking his position in life.
“You know shark guy?” Scott asked him, as Alex tied Havok securely in its rightful place, “Can I meet shark guy?”
“Actually, more like dolphin guy,” said Charles unnecessarily, but he needed something to distract Scott from wanting to meet shark guy. He didn’t like to think he was avoiding Erik Lehnsherr, although technically, he was. He hoped that dolphins weren’t nearly as interesting as the sharks.
Scott looked confused.
“He’s being boring and studying dolphins this summer,” said Alex, coming to his rescue. “Come on, Scott, don’t you want to get something to eat?”
Charles didn’t remember much about being eight, but he suddenly began to understand why his mother never liked him when he was growing up. Scott turned to him with bright, hopeful eyes, “After that, can I go see shark guy?”
“...You didn’t listen to a word I said, did you, kiddo?”
“Nope.”
Charles opened his mouth and closes it again, “Erik is very busy. I don’t think he’d want to be bothered.”
“And we wouldn’t want to be a bother, Scott,” Alex gave his brother a pointed glance. “Would we?”
“But that’s not fair. You always have cooler friends than I do.”
It’s not fair that I don’t get to be like you. It’s not it’s not it’s not fair.
There was a sharp pang in his head, and perhaps a stab of resentment. Resentment that Charles pretended not to recognize, although he did anyway. He might be the older cousin that Hank always looked up to, but Hank was the one who Charles was jealous of without question.
“Tell you what,” Charles turned back and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “The moment that Erik gets not busy, I’ll tell Alex, and then you can visit him.”
Scott’s face was still scrunched up in disappointment, but he nodded, “Do you promise?”
“Yes, Scott, I promise.” Charles tried not to feel bad. All he really had to do was say Erik was busy. Even if Charles decided not to visit him on purpose, Erik being busy was practically a given. Nothing he needed to guess at.
“Well, you know where to find me,” Alex said with a shrug. “See you around, Charles.”
--
He stopped at the cafe and had a late snack, or perhaps an early dinner. Fortunately, Erik wasn’t there. Having nowhere else to go after that, Charles made his way back to the hotel. One of the receptionists gave him a confused look and waved him over, “Mr. Xavier, a moment, please?”
Charles walked over, “Yes?” The young man’s tag read Levine. He was impeccably dressed, but only because he was poor and wanted to hide it.
“Weren’t you just up...” Levine gestured awkwardly with his hands.
“No, I’ve been out.”
In Levine’s mind, Charles saw a man wearing his face stride up to the front desk -- “I’m sorry, I seem to have misplaced my key. Do you have a spare?” The voice was his, too.
“ -- Sir?”
Charles’ head suddenly hurt, and his watch was beeping. He needed to get upstairs to his pills. He made an impressive sprint to the nearest elevator, leaving behind a very confused Levine.
--
Charles didn’t exactly know what awaited him in his room, so he was prepared for the worst. Charles entered his hotel room, and stared at himself on his bed. The binder with his thesis in it was open. Once he walked close enough to the bed, he snatched up his papers.
“Erik sent you?”
The beeping of his watch sounded louder than ever, but for whatever reason, Charles could not bring himself to shut off the alarm. If he shut off the alarm, it would mean that something changed. He didn’t want anything to change, but at the same time, he didn’t think things should stay the same, either.
“I don’t just run to wherever Erik tells me to,” Raven said. But she said it in Charles’ voice, still using his face.
“Stop that. That’s my face.”
You really don’t understand anything, do you?
Charles watched as her skin became brilliant blue, and she reached to pull his thesis from his grasp. And then she was just Raven the too-skinny blonde girl again.
And yet you understand so much. She smiled at him, and in her eyes, Charles saw a little girl in tattered clothing taking a large bowl of soup from a boy with a solemn face.
“Why are you so sad?”
“-- Because he saw his mother die,” Charles spoke without thinking.
She looked at him, “He told you that?”
“Not exactly, I saw.” Charles usually saw things when he didn’t want to. His head was starting to hurt again, but he knew with a strange sort of clarity, that this particular pain wasn’t from the plethora of pills he had to take every ten hours.
His watch had stopped beeping. Everything was too still.
Raven tapped his binder knowingly and said, “Did you see this too?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” That was a lie, and perhaps an obvious one. Of course Charles knew what she was talking about, but he needed to hear her say it.
“Your thesis is about mutations,” she used a tone of voice that reminded Charles a lot of Hank’s when he was explaining calculus to his mother. Like it was easy, he couldn’t believe that she didn’t understand. It was the same way now, but it wasn’t the same.
“It’s all theoretical,” Charles said blandly. “I prefaced that on page ii.”
She didn’t seem to be listening. Instead, Raven said, “Do you want to know what Erik told me, once?”
For some reason, Charles was so overcome that he had to swallow, “What did Erik tell you?”
Raven made a face, “That if I wanted society to accept me, I had to accept myself. He isn’t blue, you know.”
Charles kept his mouth shut, because he didn’t know quite what to say. Besides, she didn’t sound like she was finished.
There was silence. It got heavy. He attempted to lift it.
“You shouldn’t blame your brother,” Charles said. “He doesn’t know any better.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” she said, sounding bored, as if she had already had this conversation before, lots of times. Each time, the outcome was the same so there wasn’t any sense in paying attention.
“What do you want me to do about it?” That seemed to be the next most logical question, although Charles doubt that she really wanted him to do anything, or if he even could. Erik Lehnsherr seemed so content nearing the top of the world, with everything that he could ever want at the tip of his fingers.
Raven picked idly at her nails, painted bright blue (Charles noticed this for the very first time), “The fact that you can read minds made you do something bad, didn’t it?”
“I thought that was obvious,” what with Hank more or less freaking out about his pills all the time.
“Erik did too, almost,” Raven said solemnly. “But he didn’t and he’s never going to. He’s not that kind of person.” She got up from the bed and stood level with him, looking directly into his eyes. Her eyes flared gold, and Charles had to steel himself to keep from wincing.
“I want a world where I can look like this,” her skin was blue. “It must be the world you want too, Charles, otherwise, why would you make such a thing your life’s work?”
Maybe it was. Charles had never thought about it this way, but he supposed that it must be true. For him, it was just much safer to play in a proverbial pool full of academic elites, because while his work would get certain recognition, there wasn’t anyone who would take his work too seriously. Even if permanently blue skin was somehow an acceptable mutation, he doubted that telepathy would be so similarly welcomed. In academia, brilliant minds were there for the theory and the science. No one really questioned the practicality of the thing. People like Dr. Daniel Shomron were a rare find.
“It’s going to be different for both of us,” Charles said. “I am nothing like you.”
“I never said you were,” she said. Maybe she echoed his words from before, because Charles thought they sounded familiar. “And I’m glad you’re not like me.” Raven’s face scrunched up, as if it was painful, and it cost her so much to say them. “Erik doesn’t need someone like me. He needs someone like you.”
Because you know. You understand. You can rescue him if he needs rescuing again.
“ -- I.” Charles started, and then he stopped. He realized, that he really had nothing to say. Or, he had things to say, but they weren’t useful.
“By the way,” Raven decided to let him go with a small smile, “you know your watch stopped beeping, right?”
“Yeah, I noticed.” The usual desire to run to his pills was strangely absent. His head felt like it weighed fifty pounds, but there was no pain. That was the funny part.
The silence was starting to warm up, shedding its awkwardness from before like a tired, old skin. Charles opened his mouth, if only to say that he didn’t know how else to go about it -- this was the way he’d always been, and even without all of his pills, there didn’t seem to be any other way.
The doorknob suddenly clicked open, revealing Hank, who immediately saw Raven. A very, very blue Raven, and paused to stare, before he realized he was staring. Hastily, he collected himself in the Ivy-League fashion and coughed politely into his hand, “Oh, um. You’re...blue.”
Raven might have flushed red, but since she was...as Hank so eloquently put it, blue, Charles couldn’t exactly tell. After a belated pause, she said, “Yes, Hank, I’m blue.”
Hank pushed a hand against his glasses and coughed again. Charles looked over at his cousin, trying to gauge some sort of a reaction. He didn’t find much. Hank tended to screw this kind of thing up. When he had caught Charles with Cain, Hank had babbled incoherently, and then he’d fainted.
So that night, Hank had been taken to the emergency room, and Charles had been taken to central booking. As an act of true contrition the next morning, Hank had come to, then he’d written a check to get Charles out on bail.
With that reaction as precedent in mind, Charles went to fetch a towel.
“You’re...blue. Have you always been blue?” There was something that might have been awe coloring Hank’s voice. He took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. Raven was still very blue.
She nodded. Charles stopped with one foot in the bathroom door and pivoted on one heel.
“That’s...” Hank trailed off, obviously he was trying to search for the most suitable words. “Oh, that’s -- um.
Without thinking, Charles looked at Hank, It’s glorious. She’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
“ -- That’s brilliant,” said Hank. “I’ve never seen anything like you.”
Her smile brightened up, just like her eyes. Charles breathed in a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure how much of that reply was his and how much that was Hank’s, but it was a start.
--
It was important to note that Raven hadn’t changed his mind. Charles’ mind had been set for a long time. A sudden over-dump of mutations just landing in his lap out of coincidence was not going to change his mind. But something else was going to have to change, he knew that much.
That following Friday, Charles tagged along with Hank and Raven, who wanted to see the garden. They were supposed to go two weeks ago, but apparently Hank had overestimated his allotted twenty-four hours in a day, and work had piled up at the clinic, to say the very least.
The garden was still under construction, but what they could see, they enjoyed. One of their tour guides said that the garden would be ready for the public in a year and a half. There was still a lot of work to be done.
Charles hadn’t been on his medication for the past three days. He didn’t exactly know why, it just sort of happened. Hank had asked him about it only once, and the first excuse Charles had thought to give him was merely that he didn’t want to rely on his watch all the time. If the alarm broke one of these days, he wouldn’t be too surprised. The watch was sturdy, but someone at the hospital had affixed the alarm at some cheap place, and Charles was only waiting for the inevitable.
On the downside, more often than not, he heard thoughts that he didn’t want to hear, but he was getting better at keeping them to himself. On the upside, his headaches had --
“Hey.”
“Hey, Charles.”
Charles blinked, and said, “I heard you the first time.”
Hank looked incredulous. He was holding a bottle of mustard in one hand, “Yeah? And what did I say, the first time?” Must be the medication. He needs to go outside more often. Raven just looked amused and thought they’re adorable.
Charles opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He didn’t exactly need to exacerbate their opinions of him.
“I was asking you if you wanted mustard.”
“Sure.”
Hank lathered on a generous amount of mustard and handed Charles his sandwich. Even if the hotel’s security was lacking, they were generous with their catering. The food also wasn’t bad.
It was a nice day out, and Charles had lagged behind them enough to avoid hearing any of their thoughts. Only one or two had leaked out -- that Hank thought green was a very suitable color for Raven. (He’d used the world “suitable.”) Raven wanted to talk about the fact that she was blue but didn’t quite know how to approached the subject. Then again, this particular outing was Hank’s idea. She kind of hated that even boys in their twenties were confusing.
“Charles, d’you want some water?”
He nodded, and took the thermos that Raven handed to him. She hadn’t said much to him all day, but that was all right. Charles had a feeling that he was mostly here as an accessory, anyway.
It felt like things were almost back to normal. It was not until the end, when the helicopter had dropped them off, that he realized it. Neither of them had asked Charles about his medication.
--
When Charles woke up, he found a post-it tacked on the end table. On it, Hank had scribbled in an excited scrawl Come to the clinic when you wake up. Big news!
He put on khakis and a t-shirt because the weather was projected to be in the high eighties all day. Charles felt a little strange being in such informal clothing, but it was what everyone else was wearing. The people at the clinic had their lab coats, but they had an energy generator that gave them air conditioning.
He found Raven managing the front desk, “I heard Hank was looking for me?”
Since their bike ride to the gardens, Raven had looked happier. She still looked very thin, and refused to look blue in public, but she definitely looked happier, and between the two of them, Hank and Charles had managed to convince her to eat an entire sandwich. He wondered if Erik knew about that.
“He was all excited about it, yeah. I haven’t the slightest. I think he’s doing rounds now, but he’ll probably bounce out here when he’s done.” She shrugged, “I mean, I don’t know if you’d want to wait.”
“Oh,” Charles wandered over to the scattered chairs and sat down. “I guess I can wait.”
After a moment, she asked him, “Have you been by to see Erik?”
There was a strange lump in Charles’ throat that was hard to swallow, “ -- No, I haven’t. Not yet.” It was something he’d meant to do, although for what purpose he was still unsure.
She looked like she wanted to berate him about it. Charles had purposely chosen a chair far enough away from the desk, so that he didn’t have to listen to her thoughts.
About fifteen minutes after that, Hank wandered by. He brightened up immediately when he saw Charles, “Oh, there you are. What took you so long?”
“I forgot how to be productive,” Charles admitted with a tired shrug. “Did you want to show me something?” The post-it note had sounded urgent, as only a post-it note could.
“Yeah, yeah.” Hank waved him down the hallway. I bet he’ll be thrilled.
Charles followed Hank down the hallway into what looked like to be a small examination room. He wondered what he would be so excited about. The last time Charles had partaken in something like this, Hank was seventeen and wanted to give him a trial vaccination for the common cold -- or something, he couldn’t quite remember. It hadn’t ended well.
He sat down gingerly on the edge of a rolling stool.
“Charles, you haven’t been taking your medication, have you?”
Oh. Even without prying into Hank’s mind, Charles should have known it was something like that. “My headaches are getting better.”
Hank turned and gave him a distinctly ‘you should know better than this’ sort of look. “Are you still hearing voices?”
“You make me sound like a schizophrenic.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Hank said shortly, and turned from the table he’d been fiddling at. “Are you?”
“I’m trying not to let them bother me,” Charles shrugged. “Just sometimes.”
“Here,” said Hank.
Charles had to blink a couple of times until he realized that Hank was handing him a syringe. This was beginning to seem familiar, and he as starting to get a bad feeling. Charles took it, and stared at the stuff in the syringe. It was something puss yellow. It was thick, like viscous glue.
“...What’s this?”
“Okay, before you freak out on me, hear me out.” Hank took a seat in the other stool, “The only reason you can hear thoughts is because your brain is ten times more hyperactive than everyone else’s. This is also sort of explains why you’re genius.”
“Then why are you genius?” Charles said, he couldn’t quite get the bitterness out of his voice.
For God’s sake, I’m trying to help you.
“Just tell me what this thing does,” Charles tapped the syringe with a suspicious finger.
“It’ll stop you from reading other people’s minds. It’ll take out the functions of your brain that you don’t normally use,” Hank said. “I’ve been working on this ever since you started he -- I mean, reading minds.”
Which meant Hank had been working this for five years, give or take. That time when he was seventeen, maybe it wasn’t a cold vaccination, after all. Now everything made sense.
“Next, I suppose you’ll be make Raven something to keep her from looking blue.” Because Hank was a scientist and science solved everything.
Hank was giving a desperate kind of look, “You’ll go through life with people afraid of you. It’s one thing if she looks blue, but it’s another thing if you’re always invading people’s privacy. It’s their minds. The one thing that should be private. Look, if you do this, no more pills, no more headaches. You can go back to normal.” He placed an imploring hand on Charles’ shoulder.
If you’re too stubborn to do it for yourself, do it for me. I hate seeing you like this.
“Just think, Charles, you won’t be crazy. Scientists won’t want to x-ray your brain, you won’t have to fight off journalists trying to make you a quack.”
Because Hank had watched him through all that, Hank McCoy knew his pains more than anyone else.
“Hank, I’m not crazy.”
Hank said, “He knows nothing about you. Erik doesn’t know anything about where you’ve been. Don’t be stupid.”
Charles Xavier was never stupid. Just once in his life, maybe he could afford to be. He stood up from the stool and smiled at Hank.
“I think I have to go.”
--
“Erik?” Sean scrunched his nose in deep thought, “He should be with the dolphins, unless he left for lunch. But you know, he always has lunch at the same place.”
Charles made his way down the stairs to the pool enclosure. He could see a man swimming in a wetsuit next to two dolphins.
Emma noticed him first, You are not hiding. She might have sounded disappointed, Charles might have been able to read dolphin thoughts, but he still couldn’t read dolphin. Then again, that might be a good thing.
“Erik, I’m not crazy.”
Erik’s damp head emerged from underneath the water and he peered at Charles for a long time, “I never said you were,” he said evenly. It didn’t seem quite like a complete sentence, but that was where he left off.
“I tried to kill someone.” Charles continued. If he didn’t continue, he thought he might lose his nerves altogether. “I tried to kill my stepbrother by making him throw himself out of a second-story window. He cracked his spine. They don’t think he’s ever going to walk again.”
There was a quiet splash as Erik got out of the water.
I can’t say that it isn’t your fault, Charles. You know that.
Charles looked down at the ground. I know. But I don’t understand why you’d want to forgive me.
Erik should have looked ridiculous in his wetsuit, and Charles should have laughed at him, but he couldn’t. You’re such a failure of a telepath, Charles Xavier. But still, his words were oddly warm, like they shouldn’t be.
Charles prickled indignantly, just a little, “I don’t understand you. You’ve only met one, anyway. The least I can do is set a low standard.”
Erik laughed. And then he stopped laughing.
“You were on trial, weren’t you?”
If Charles closed his eyes, he could still see McCone’s impassive face. McCone was a good attorney, but he was also afraid. He’d spent the whole trial insisting that Charles had to be chained to a desk. Apparently he hadn’t the slightest idea how this mind reading thing was supposed to work. But then again, Charles hadn’t told him everything, because he needed to have his lawyer on his side. He didn’t need McCone freaking out too.
“Did Shomron tell you?” Charles had never explicitly told his professor not to tell people, but he’d thought it was kind of obvious. Unless Shomron was telling people for scientific reasons, but even that felt like a slight kick in the gut.
“He told me that you were like me, didn’t exactly say why,” said Erik. He reached for a nearby towel and was wiping his hair dry.
“We’re nothing alike,” Charles crossed his arms. “You weren’t the one that had to write your stepbrother a check so that he wouldn’t send you to jail. The charges were dropped. And then I had to be hospitalized anyway. The paper ran a story about how it was the most interesting attempted suicide in history.” The said paper was sued for six point two million.
“But you are sorry, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m sorry,” there were days when Charles wasn’t sorry; those were the days he made himself forget about, but all the days he remembered, he was sorry. It was a sore lump in the pit of his stomach that never went away.
Erik put down his towel and looked over, “You know, you’re right.”
“About what?” Charles blinked.
“You’re not like me, you’re perhaps much better than I will ever be,” Erik said. “Would you like lunch?”
--
Janos brought them drinks, Erik’s customary beer, and ice tea for Charles with extra ice. Although it wasn’t scientifically proven, Charles thought that the extra ice made him more aware, and if the ice didn’t help, the placebo effect in his head did. It’d worked before.
“Raven said you almost killed someone.”
Erik gave him a stark sort of look, as the brought the can to his lips, “Did she tell you that, or did you read it?”
Charles inhaled sharply, “ -- She told me. But does it bother you? What is it like, if I’m inside your head?”
There was a long pause, Erik shrugged. “I don’t mind. I don’t feel quite so alone. It’s nice, sometimes. Especially if you’re me.”
Really? It freaked out Hank, and it probably bothered Raven, although she was the one who gave him the ‘different people shouldn’t hide’ speech, or whatever that was. It helped, but Charles could tell that it bothered her, nonetheless.
Really. Is that so surprising?
Charles shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. I mean, for all of you, it’d be okay, right? All of you are just...” He trailed off. He knew how he wanted to finish, but it didn’t sound good in his head.
I had it all worked out in my head. How I wanted to kill him. He killed my mother and he’d drove off like it was nothing, the can in Erik’s hand was shaking. Charles’ fork was twitching. I was going to kill him before I turned eighteen, so that if they caught me, I’d still be tried as a minor.
Morbid, thought Charles, but practical. Maybe he should have thought of that, but he hadn’t started to read minds until he was entering his twenties.
Why didn’t you kill him?
Because, Erik put down his can and looked at him. Then nothing would change. I need things to change. I want things to change. For Raven, for you. For me too. There was a softer thought after that, a thought that Charles probably wasn’t supposed to hear, but heard anyway -- but I am not sorry.
But you don’t know me, Charles watched as his fork stopped quivering.
“I could,” Erik said softly. “If you’d let me. And maybe one day things will be different.”
The back of his eyes almost felt hot. Erik was not making him a promise, but Charles did not need a promise for the future. This was different. Maybe it was the beginning of change.
Erik was holding his can up in the mild gesture of a toast. Charles clinked his glass against the rim. They sat there together, sharing a quiet, clear silence.
--
End
Navigation: One || Two || Three || Four || Five
Fandom: X-Men: First Class (2011) (c) Marvel and others.
Characters/Pairings: Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr; Hank McCoy/Raven Darkholme; Alex Summers; Cain Marko; others.
Genres: AU//Drama/Preslash
Rating: R
Summary: Charles Xavier, newly released from a mental hospital, vows never to use his powers again. He accompanies his cousin Hank McCoy to the remote island of Pala to work on his thesis. There, he meets Erik Lehnsherr, a marine biologist who has a few secrets of his own. (Partially inspired by the Madeleine L’Engle novel A Ring of Endless Light.)
Warnings: mental illness; medically-prescribed pill-popping; implied anorexia; mentions of attempted suicide; gratuitous pseudo-science.
Notes: Title is from a Dickinson poem, and this AU is a shameless excuse for me to use the line -- “Why, yes, I used to study sharks.” Also, Pala is a completely fictional island borrowed from Aldous Huxley’s aptly named Island.
ALSO. FIRST COMPLETED FIC LONGER THAN 5K! HAPPY DANCE. THANK YOU ALL!!
--
Five
The fact that even dolphins were disappointed in him made Charles Xavier seriously consider rethinking his position in life.
“You know shark guy?” Scott asked him, as Alex tied Havok securely in its rightful place, “Can I meet shark guy?”
“Actually, more like dolphin guy,” said Charles unnecessarily, but he needed something to distract Scott from wanting to meet shark guy. He didn’t like to think he was avoiding Erik Lehnsherr, although technically, he was. He hoped that dolphins weren’t nearly as interesting as the sharks.
Scott looked confused.
“He’s being boring and studying dolphins this summer,” said Alex, coming to his rescue. “Come on, Scott, don’t you want to get something to eat?”
Charles didn’t remember much about being eight, but he suddenly began to understand why his mother never liked him when he was growing up. Scott turned to him with bright, hopeful eyes, “After that, can I go see shark guy?”
“...You didn’t listen to a word I said, did you, kiddo?”
“Nope.”
Charles opened his mouth and closes it again, “Erik is very busy. I don’t think he’d want to be bothered.”
“And we wouldn’t want to be a bother, Scott,” Alex gave his brother a pointed glance. “Would we?”
“But that’s not fair. You always have cooler friends than I do.”
It’s not fair that I don’t get to be like you. It’s not it’s not it’s not fair.
There was a sharp pang in his head, and perhaps a stab of resentment. Resentment that Charles pretended not to recognize, although he did anyway. He might be the older cousin that Hank always looked up to, but Hank was the one who Charles was jealous of without question.
“Tell you what,” Charles turned back and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “The moment that Erik gets not busy, I’ll tell Alex, and then you can visit him.”
Scott’s face was still scrunched up in disappointment, but he nodded, “Do you promise?”
“Yes, Scott, I promise.” Charles tried not to feel bad. All he really had to do was say Erik was busy. Even if Charles decided not to visit him on purpose, Erik being busy was practically a given. Nothing he needed to guess at.
“Well, you know where to find me,” Alex said with a shrug. “See you around, Charles.”
--
He stopped at the cafe and had a late snack, or perhaps an early dinner. Fortunately, Erik wasn’t there. Having nowhere else to go after that, Charles made his way back to the hotel. One of the receptionists gave him a confused look and waved him over, “Mr. Xavier, a moment, please?”
Charles walked over, “Yes?” The young man’s tag read Levine. He was impeccably dressed, but only because he was poor and wanted to hide it.
“Weren’t you just up...” Levine gestured awkwardly with his hands.
“No, I’ve been out.”
In Levine’s mind, Charles saw a man wearing his face stride up to the front desk -- “I’m sorry, I seem to have misplaced my key. Do you have a spare?” The voice was his, too.
“ -- Sir?”
Charles’ head suddenly hurt, and his watch was beeping. He needed to get upstairs to his pills. He made an impressive sprint to the nearest elevator, leaving behind a very confused Levine.
--
Charles didn’t exactly know what awaited him in his room, so he was prepared for the worst. Charles entered his hotel room, and stared at himself on his bed. The binder with his thesis in it was open. Once he walked close enough to the bed, he snatched up his papers.
“Erik sent you?”
The beeping of his watch sounded louder than ever, but for whatever reason, Charles could not bring himself to shut off the alarm. If he shut off the alarm, it would mean that something changed. He didn’t want anything to change, but at the same time, he didn’t think things should stay the same, either.
“I don’t just run to wherever Erik tells me to,” Raven said. But she said it in Charles’ voice, still using his face.
“Stop that. That’s my face.”
You really don’t understand anything, do you?
Charles watched as her skin became brilliant blue, and she reached to pull his thesis from his grasp. And then she was just Raven the too-skinny blonde girl again.
And yet you understand so much. She smiled at him, and in her eyes, Charles saw a little girl in tattered clothing taking a large bowl of soup from a boy with a solemn face.
“Why are you so sad?”
“-- Because he saw his mother die,” Charles spoke without thinking.
She looked at him, “He told you that?”
“Not exactly, I saw.” Charles usually saw things when he didn’t want to. His head was starting to hurt again, but he knew with a strange sort of clarity, that this particular pain wasn’t from the plethora of pills he had to take every ten hours.
His watch had stopped beeping. Everything was too still.
Raven tapped his binder knowingly and said, “Did you see this too?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” That was a lie, and perhaps an obvious one. Of course Charles knew what she was talking about, but he needed to hear her say it.
“Your thesis is about mutations,” she used a tone of voice that reminded Charles a lot of Hank’s when he was explaining calculus to his mother. Like it was easy, he couldn’t believe that she didn’t understand. It was the same way now, but it wasn’t the same.
“It’s all theoretical,” Charles said blandly. “I prefaced that on page ii.”
She didn’t seem to be listening. Instead, Raven said, “Do you want to know what Erik told me, once?”
For some reason, Charles was so overcome that he had to swallow, “What did Erik tell you?”
Raven made a face, “That if I wanted society to accept me, I had to accept myself. He isn’t blue, you know.”
Charles kept his mouth shut, because he didn’t know quite what to say. Besides, she didn’t sound like she was finished.
There was silence. It got heavy. He attempted to lift it.
“You shouldn’t blame your brother,” Charles said. “He doesn’t know any better.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” she said, sounding bored, as if she had already had this conversation before, lots of times. Each time, the outcome was the same so there wasn’t any sense in paying attention.
“What do you want me to do about it?” That seemed to be the next most logical question, although Charles doubt that she really wanted him to do anything, or if he even could. Erik Lehnsherr seemed so content nearing the top of the world, with everything that he could ever want at the tip of his fingers.
Raven picked idly at her nails, painted bright blue (Charles noticed this for the very first time), “The fact that you can read minds made you do something bad, didn’t it?”
“I thought that was obvious,” what with Hank more or less freaking out about his pills all the time.
“Erik did too, almost,” Raven said solemnly. “But he didn’t and he’s never going to. He’s not that kind of person.” She got up from the bed and stood level with him, looking directly into his eyes. Her eyes flared gold, and Charles had to steel himself to keep from wincing.
“I want a world where I can look like this,” her skin was blue. “It must be the world you want too, Charles, otherwise, why would you make such a thing your life’s work?”
Maybe it was. Charles had never thought about it this way, but he supposed that it must be true. For him, it was just much safer to play in a proverbial pool full of academic elites, because while his work would get certain recognition, there wasn’t anyone who would take his work too seriously. Even if permanently blue skin was somehow an acceptable mutation, he doubted that telepathy would be so similarly welcomed. In academia, brilliant minds were there for the theory and the science. No one really questioned the practicality of the thing. People like Dr. Daniel Shomron were a rare find.
“It’s going to be different for both of us,” Charles said. “I am nothing like you.”
“I never said you were,” she said. Maybe she echoed his words from before, because Charles thought they sounded familiar. “And I’m glad you’re not like me.” Raven’s face scrunched up, as if it was painful, and it cost her so much to say them. “Erik doesn’t need someone like me. He needs someone like you.”
Because you know. You understand. You can rescue him if he needs rescuing again.
“ -- I.” Charles started, and then he stopped. He realized, that he really had nothing to say. Or, he had things to say, but they weren’t useful.
“By the way,” Raven decided to let him go with a small smile, “you know your watch stopped beeping, right?”
“Yeah, I noticed.” The usual desire to run to his pills was strangely absent. His head felt like it weighed fifty pounds, but there was no pain. That was the funny part.
The silence was starting to warm up, shedding its awkwardness from before like a tired, old skin. Charles opened his mouth, if only to say that he didn’t know how else to go about it -- this was the way he’d always been, and even without all of his pills, there didn’t seem to be any other way.
The doorknob suddenly clicked open, revealing Hank, who immediately saw Raven. A very, very blue Raven, and paused to stare, before he realized he was staring. Hastily, he collected himself in the Ivy-League fashion and coughed politely into his hand, “Oh, um. You’re...blue.”
Raven might have flushed red, but since she was...as Hank so eloquently put it, blue, Charles couldn’t exactly tell. After a belated pause, she said, “Yes, Hank, I’m blue.”
Hank pushed a hand against his glasses and coughed again. Charles looked over at his cousin, trying to gauge some sort of a reaction. He didn’t find much. Hank tended to screw this kind of thing up. When he had caught Charles with Cain, Hank had babbled incoherently, and then he’d fainted.
So that night, Hank had been taken to the emergency room, and Charles had been taken to central booking. As an act of true contrition the next morning, Hank had come to, then he’d written a check to get Charles out on bail.
With that reaction as precedent in mind, Charles went to fetch a towel.
“You’re...blue. Have you always been blue?” There was something that might have been awe coloring Hank’s voice. He took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. Raven was still very blue.
She nodded. Charles stopped with one foot in the bathroom door and pivoted on one heel.
“That’s...” Hank trailed off, obviously he was trying to search for the most suitable words. “Oh, that’s -- um.
Without thinking, Charles looked at Hank, It’s glorious. She’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
“ -- That’s brilliant,” said Hank. “I’ve never seen anything like you.”
Her smile brightened up, just like her eyes. Charles breathed in a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure how much of that reply was his and how much that was Hank’s, but it was a start.
--
It was important to note that Raven hadn’t changed his mind. Charles’ mind had been set for a long time. A sudden over-dump of mutations just landing in his lap out of coincidence was not going to change his mind. But something else was going to have to change, he knew that much.
That following Friday, Charles tagged along with Hank and Raven, who wanted to see the garden. They were supposed to go two weeks ago, but apparently Hank had overestimated his allotted twenty-four hours in a day, and work had piled up at the clinic, to say the very least.
The garden was still under construction, but what they could see, they enjoyed. One of their tour guides said that the garden would be ready for the public in a year and a half. There was still a lot of work to be done.
Charles hadn’t been on his medication for the past three days. He didn’t exactly know why, it just sort of happened. Hank had asked him about it only once, and the first excuse Charles had thought to give him was merely that he didn’t want to rely on his watch all the time. If the alarm broke one of these days, he wouldn’t be too surprised. The watch was sturdy, but someone at the hospital had affixed the alarm at some cheap place, and Charles was only waiting for the inevitable.
On the downside, more often than not, he heard thoughts that he didn’t want to hear, but he was getting better at keeping them to himself. On the upside, his headaches had --
“Hey.”
“Hey, Charles.”
Charles blinked, and said, “I heard you the first time.”
Hank looked incredulous. He was holding a bottle of mustard in one hand, “Yeah? And what did I say, the first time?” Must be the medication. He needs to go outside more often. Raven just looked amused and thought they’re adorable.
Charles opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He didn’t exactly need to exacerbate their opinions of him.
“I was asking you if you wanted mustard.”
“Sure.”
Hank lathered on a generous amount of mustard and handed Charles his sandwich. Even if the hotel’s security was lacking, they were generous with their catering. The food also wasn’t bad.
It was a nice day out, and Charles had lagged behind them enough to avoid hearing any of their thoughts. Only one or two had leaked out -- that Hank thought green was a very suitable color for Raven. (He’d used the world “suitable.”) Raven wanted to talk about the fact that she was blue but didn’t quite know how to approached the subject. Then again, this particular outing was Hank’s idea. She kind of hated that even boys in their twenties were confusing.
“Charles, d’you want some water?”
He nodded, and took the thermos that Raven handed to him. She hadn’t said much to him all day, but that was all right. Charles had a feeling that he was mostly here as an accessory, anyway.
It felt like things were almost back to normal. It was not until the end, when the helicopter had dropped them off, that he realized it. Neither of them had asked Charles about his medication.
--
When Charles woke up, he found a post-it tacked on the end table. On it, Hank had scribbled in an excited scrawl Come to the clinic when you wake up. Big news!
He put on khakis and a t-shirt because the weather was projected to be in the high eighties all day. Charles felt a little strange being in such informal clothing, but it was what everyone else was wearing. The people at the clinic had their lab coats, but they had an energy generator that gave them air conditioning.
He found Raven managing the front desk, “I heard Hank was looking for me?”
Since their bike ride to the gardens, Raven had looked happier. She still looked very thin, and refused to look blue in public, but she definitely looked happier, and between the two of them, Hank and Charles had managed to convince her to eat an entire sandwich. He wondered if Erik knew about that.
“He was all excited about it, yeah. I haven’t the slightest. I think he’s doing rounds now, but he’ll probably bounce out here when he’s done.” She shrugged, “I mean, I don’t know if you’d want to wait.”
“Oh,” Charles wandered over to the scattered chairs and sat down. “I guess I can wait.”
After a moment, she asked him, “Have you been by to see Erik?”
There was a strange lump in Charles’ throat that was hard to swallow, “ -- No, I haven’t. Not yet.” It was something he’d meant to do, although for what purpose he was still unsure.
She looked like she wanted to berate him about it. Charles had purposely chosen a chair far enough away from the desk, so that he didn’t have to listen to her thoughts.
About fifteen minutes after that, Hank wandered by. He brightened up immediately when he saw Charles, “Oh, there you are. What took you so long?”
“I forgot how to be productive,” Charles admitted with a tired shrug. “Did you want to show me something?” The post-it note had sounded urgent, as only a post-it note could.
“Yeah, yeah.” Hank waved him down the hallway. I bet he’ll be thrilled.
Charles followed Hank down the hallway into what looked like to be a small examination room. He wondered what he would be so excited about. The last time Charles had partaken in something like this, Hank was seventeen and wanted to give him a trial vaccination for the common cold -- or something, he couldn’t quite remember. It hadn’t ended well.
He sat down gingerly on the edge of a rolling stool.
“Charles, you haven’t been taking your medication, have you?”
Oh. Even without prying into Hank’s mind, Charles should have known it was something like that. “My headaches are getting better.”
Hank turned and gave him a distinctly ‘you should know better than this’ sort of look. “Are you still hearing voices?”
“You make me sound like a schizophrenic.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Hank said shortly, and turned from the table he’d been fiddling at. “Are you?”
“I’m trying not to let them bother me,” Charles shrugged. “Just sometimes.”
“Here,” said Hank.
Charles had to blink a couple of times until he realized that Hank was handing him a syringe. This was beginning to seem familiar, and he as starting to get a bad feeling. Charles took it, and stared at the stuff in the syringe. It was something puss yellow. It was thick, like viscous glue.
“...What’s this?”
“Okay, before you freak out on me, hear me out.” Hank took a seat in the other stool, “The only reason you can hear thoughts is because your brain is ten times more hyperactive than everyone else’s. This is also sort of explains why you’re genius.”
“Then why are you genius?” Charles said, he couldn’t quite get the bitterness out of his voice.
For God’s sake, I’m trying to help you.
“Just tell me what this thing does,” Charles tapped the syringe with a suspicious finger.
“It’ll stop you from reading other people’s minds. It’ll take out the functions of your brain that you don’t normally use,” Hank said. “I’ve been working on this ever since you started he -- I mean, reading minds.”
Which meant Hank had been working this for five years, give or take. That time when he was seventeen, maybe it wasn’t a cold vaccination, after all. Now everything made sense.
“Next, I suppose you’ll be make Raven something to keep her from looking blue.” Because Hank was a scientist and science solved everything.
Hank was giving a desperate kind of look, “You’ll go through life with people afraid of you. It’s one thing if she looks blue, but it’s another thing if you’re always invading people’s privacy. It’s their minds. The one thing that should be private. Look, if you do this, no more pills, no more headaches. You can go back to normal.” He placed an imploring hand on Charles’ shoulder.
If you’re too stubborn to do it for yourself, do it for me. I hate seeing you like this.
“Just think, Charles, you won’t be crazy. Scientists won’t want to x-ray your brain, you won’t have to fight off journalists trying to make you a quack.”
Because Hank had watched him through all that, Hank McCoy knew his pains more than anyone else.
“Hank, I’m not crazy.”
Hank said, “He knows nothing about you. Erik doesn’t know anything about where you’ve been. Don’t be stupid.”
Charles Xavier was never stupid. Just once in his life, maybe he could afford to be. He stood up from the stool and smiled at Hank.
“I think I have to go.”
--
“Erik?” Sean scrunched his nose in deep thought, “He should be with the dolphins, unless he left for lunch. But you know, he always has lunch at the same place.”
Charles made his way down the stairs to the pool enclosure. He could see a man swimming in a wetsuit next to two dolphins.
Emma noticed him first, You are not hiding. She might have sounded disappointed, Charles might have been able to read dolphin thoughts, but he still couldn’t read dolphin. Then again, that might be a good thing.
“Erik, I’m not crazy.”
Erik’s damp head emerged from underneath the water and he peered at Charles for a long time, “I never said you were,” he said evenly. It didn’t seem quite like a complete sentence, but that was where he left off.
“I tried to kill someone.” Charles continued. If he didn’t continue, he thought he might lose his nerves altogether. “I tried to kill my stepbrother by making him throw himself out of a second-story window. He cracked his spine. They don’t think he’s ever going to walk again.”
There was a quiet splash as Erik got out of the water.
I can’t say that it isn’t your fault, Charles. You know that.
Charles looked down at the ground. I know. But I don’t understand why you’d want to forgive me.
Erik should have looked ridiculous in his wetsuit, and Charles should have laughed at him, but he couldn’t. You’re such a failure of a telepath, Charles Xavier. But still, his words were oddly warm, like they shouldn’t be.
Charles prickled indignantly, just a little, “I don’t understand you. You’ve only met one, anyway. The least I can do is set a low standard.”
Erik laughed. And then he stopped laughing.
“You were on trial, weren’t you?”
If Charles closed his eyes, he could still see McCone’s impassive face. McCone was a good attorney, but he was also afraid. He’d spent the whole trial insisting that Charles had to be chained to a desk. Apparently he hadn’t the slightest idea how this mind reading thing was supposed to work. But then again, Charles hadn’t told him everything, because he needed to have his lawyer on his side. He didn’t need McCone freaking out too.
“Did Shomron tell you?” Charles had never explicitly told his professor not to tell people, but he’d thought it was kind of obvious. Unless Shomron was telling people for scientific reasons, but even that felt like a slight kick in the gut.
“He told me that you were like me, didn’t exactly say why,” said Erik. He reached for a nearby towel and was wiping his hair dry.
“We’re nothing alike,” Charles crossed his arms. “You weren’t the one that had to write your stepbrother a check so that he wouldn’t send you to jail. The charges were dropped. And then I had to be hospitalized anyway. The paper ran a story about how it was the most interesting attempted suicide in history.” The said paper was sued for six point two million.
“But you are sorry, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m sorry,” there were days when Charles wasn’t sorry; those were the days he made himself forget about, but all the days he remembered, he was sorry. It was a sore lump in the pit of his stomach that never went away.
Erik put down his towel and looked over, “You know, you’re right.”
“About what?” Charles blinked.
“You’re not like me, you’re perhaps much better than I will ever be,” Erik said. “Would you like lunch?”
--
Janos brought them drinks, Erik’s customary beer, and ice tea for Charles with extra ice. Although it wasn’t scientifically proven, Charles thought that the extra ice made him more aware, and if the ice didn’t help, the placebo effect in his head did. It’d worked before.
“Raven said you almost killed someone.”
Erik gave him a stark sort of look, as the brought the can to his lips, “Did she tell you that, or did you read it?”
Charles inhaled sharply, “ -- She told me. But does it bother you? What is it like, if I’m inside your head?”
There was a long pause, Erik shrugged. “I don’t mind. I don’t feel quite so alone. It’s nice, sometimes. Especially if you’re me.”
Really? It freaked out Hank, and it probably bothered Raven, although she was the one who gave him the ‘different people shouldn’t hide’ speech, or whatever that was. It helped, but Charles could tell that it bothered her, nonetheless.
Really. Is that so surprising?
Charles shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. I mean, for all of you, it’d be okay, right? All of you are just...” He trailed off. He knew how he wanted to finish, but it didn’t sound good in his head.
I had it all worked out in my head. How I wanted to kill him. He killed my mother and he’d drove off like it was nothing, the can in Erik’s hand was shaking. Charles’ fork was twitching. I was going to kill him before I turned eighteen, so that if they caught me, I’d still be tried as a minor.
Morbid, thought Charles, but practical. Maybe he should have thought of that, but he hadn’t started to read minds until he was entering his twenties.
Why didn’t you kill him?
Because, Erik put down his can and looked at him. Then nothing would change. I need things to change. I want things to change. For Raven, for you. For me too. There was a softer thought after that, a thought that Charles probably wasn’t supposed to hear, but heard anyway -- but I am not sorry.
But you don’t know me, Charles watched as his fork stopped quivering.
“I could,” Erik said softly. “If you’d let me. And maybe one day things will be different.”
The back of his eyes almost felt hot. Erik was not making him a promise, but Charles did not need a promise for the future. This was different. Maybe it was the beginning of change.
Erik was holding his can up in the mild gesture of a toast. Charles clinked his glass against the rim. They sat there together, sharing a quiet, clear silence.
--
End
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