Kink Fill: Needs Must 3
Chapter: 3/?
Betaed by ima_pseudonym
Word Count: 2,132
Rating: PG-13
Warning: language
Summary: Charles meets up with old friends, and makes some new ones.
Authors Notes: The hardest chapter yet.
The early morning air was warm and muggy as Charles strolled down the boardwalk. He eyed the large yacht, Caspartina, his mind probing inside cautiously. The fingertip brush of his mind touched every other human up and down the water front lingering for thoughts and knowledge of Shaw. He felt the tingle as his probing brushed against the mind of another.
Minds of people were ridged to Charles. Memories in one area, pain centers in another, thoughts printed in strips like from a typewriter. But this one was…fluid and he would have been intrigued if it hadn’t seem to sense him and try and reach out.
Surprised he pulled back, locking himself inside his mind and blocking any thoughts from coming in. This was…unanticipated. With a staggering step back, turning away from the port and back toward the city, Charles blinked in confusion. That…hadn’t...happened before. Ever. It was an odd feeling, and if he was a little truthful, frightening. He’d never met another that could reach out like that. It was confusing and unexpected.
And Charles didn’t like unexpected.
So it did seem a strategic withdraw was in order.
Charles had to force himself away, tearing his gaze from the ship and wrench himself around. Bloody Hell, he was so close! Only meters away and he had to wait. But he couldn’t just go in there unprepared; he wasn’t some Juggernaut, indestructible. Years of torment under Shaw, while living for three years in work, concentration and then death camps forced on Charles the truth and limits of his own morality. And really there wasn’t much joy in killing the bastard if he couldn’t gloat over the cooling body.
~*~
Charles lounged in the outdoor seating of a local café, seemingly people watching and drinking watered down tea. It was rather reprehensible tea actually, more sugar than flavor, and cold to boot. Which of course only added to his increasingly annoying morning.
The café was far enough from the waterfront that he felt comfortable opening the tight shielding he’d placed on his mind. It was like stretching, and it felt glorious. His mind wasn’t meant to be cooped up behind bone, and to force himself to do so was like binding a limb.
Normal minds were supposed to be static, thoughts and wishes bound up behind walls that only he could breach. And he quite liked being the only plundering Celt. But the thought that there could be someone else out there, with a mind so unbound was, truthfully, exciting.
The idea of another, just like him a telepath, was inconceivable before touching that mind. With child-like excitement, he wanted to meet them. It didn’t matter that they were close to Shaw- wait scratch that, it did matter, but for curiosity sake he could overlook it for a moment. He’d kill
Shaw first, and then they might talk…
…unless Shaw had them brainwashed like he’d had Charles. And briefly Charles wondered if he was strong enough to force them to the side while he finished Shaw if that was the case. But really he didn’t want to divide his focus that way. This was not like the three stupid Germans of a few days ago, this was Shaw. The man who perverted his childhood sense of self until all that was left was a tool, a rage of mental torment to be released on command.
Forgetting sanity for a moment, Charles took another sip of the tea he had to hand and almost choked. No amount of lemon would make this better. He sent a mental command to the waitress to just bring him a water and take away the hummingbird food. She stopped the order she was taking at another table, mid-word, and walked to the back. And after perusing the menu in her mind he added a cornbread muffin to his order. Hopefully his definition of ‘not sweet’ and hers coincided.
After she had placed his request in front of him and returned to the other table like she’d never left; Charles had a thought, what if this unknown could block him? Shaw knew what he could do, not all of the new tricks he’d learned, but Shaw knew most of what he was capable of.
Obviously some reconnaissance was required.
Leaving the half-eaten muffin, Charles strode away from the café, heading back in the direction of the boardwalk. He ended up spending most of the morning flitting from mind to mind absorbing what he could of the knowledge the locals had on the Caspartina. Which was to say: Not Much. It was oddly settling to know that Shaw was still the elitist paranoid maniac he remembered.
He walked leisurely, his mind spiraling out from the eye of his mental storm. There was no human crew on the ship, at least none that he could feel. And right now he didn’t dare probing further. There was a fair plan brewing in his not inconsiderable mind, but it would require the full use of every unhampered asset he could use to aid him. For the second time that day Charles eased away from the target he’d been hunting for years and back towards town.
He knew nothing about the layout of that ship; that was the first bit of intelligence he needed. Then real food and rest, he would need to be at his peak to take on Shaw and some unknown. In the face of the very real possibility that Charles might achieve the dream he’d fostered for over half his life, he would take as few chances as he could foresee.
~*~
The dusk and a thin fog were settling in the bay when Charles approached the Caspartina for the third time that day. The ship was large enough that it didn’t bob in the small waves of the bay, and unlike before the deck was not deserted but lit brightly with a mixture of light below decks and a metal fire pit. Charles paused in the shadow of a building, wondering if boarding from the water would actually be the better plan. But he always looked like a drowned rat when he got wet, and really what was threatening about that? So instead he strolled up the lowered plank like he belonged there, looking as relaxed and natural as he could force excited and jumpy muscles to be. Once rightfully on board, Charles stayed as close to the wall and the shadows, allowing his charcoal clothing and the dim light to hide him without taxing his mind.
Choking on gleeful laughter Charles surveyed the well lit deck were Shaw sat in seeming ease. Next to him lounged a lean slinky doll of a woman; the perfect picture of Aryan beauty adorned head to toe in white. It made her look quite washed out really, and didn’t she know Labor Day was two weeks ago? On the Doctor’s other side was a shaggy-haired young man, also decked out in pale colors, that had the same eager violent hunger on his face that Charles himself had sported while under Shaw’s ‘gentle’ attentions.
And looking completely out of place in the picture was a tall whip wire of a man vibrating and emoting enough rage that Charles didn’t even need his rather substantial gift to know that he was just slightly more than merely pissed off. There was a confrontation brewing and Charles would give up his telepathy, after Shaw was dead of course, to know what one or two of these people were thinking right then. But he didn’t know which one of those seated beside Shaw was the telepath like him, and this close he didn’t want to give up his tenuous advantage.
“I want to see Raven.”
Startled out of his murderous contemplation Charles looked at the angry cat, though the best view he had was of the back of tight broad shoulders.
“Now Professor, you will get to see your lovely lady soon enough, after you help me with that little request.” Shaw’s voice was the oily sugar that Charles remembered and his stomach rolled.
“Do you know what this ship is made of Shaw? Do you know what I could do to this tugboat when I’m-“ and those tight shoulders tensed more, hands fisting, “-This-” the man hissed, like steam, “-Angry?”
The deck then began to shudder below him. The metal groaned a fairly high grating sound, and fine vibration trembled underneath his feet. Just as quickly as it had started, it was over and Shaw was grinning without an ounce of fear. Glancing over at the woman to his side, he nodded. Her smile was as cold as the rest of her persona.
In the next breath Charles view was blocked by a puff of smoke and a …red tail? Another man stood in front of him and he hadn’t been there a moment ago. Forcing down exhilaration, eagerness and curiosity he tried to focus on only what he was here for and not give himself away with little flares of excited giggles that were bubbling in his throat.
The thing with a tail set a body down on the deck, and as he turned Charles could see his face and hands were red too. The body he lay on the deck was slight, feminine and bright blue.
Curiosity was starting to outrun self preservation by a fairly large margin.
“Raven!”
Shaw watched the other man crouched and gathered the prone figure to him with a patronizing smile. “We’ve put her to sleep Professor, and she will stay that way until you do what we have asked of you.”
The deck began to shake under Charles’ feet again, and he was beginning to think that he’d been woolgathering too long. He finally un-tethered his mind, loving the expansion of thought and the whispers of the other minds around him. He missed how the Aryan beauty twitched as he focused on taking out the first obstacle in his way. The red-faced man dropped to the deck with a strangled Russian curse as Charles pressed on the pain center of his brain as hard as he was able, forcing his will on the other man until he passed out.
Shaw and the other two were on their feet when Charles strode casually into the light, hands in his pockets and with a little swagger, “Guten Abend, Herr Doktor.” He stepped casually enough over the fallen form and closer, ever closer to Shaw. His heart was fluttering under his ribcage, not from fear but from the intense excitement.
There was genuine surprise in Shaw’s face, and after a beat, pleasure. “Little Charles, have you come back to me my boy?”
Charles’ smile turned sour just as the blond woman said to Shaw, “He’s here to kill you.” He could feel her mind brushing up against his, and it carried the same tone as earlier this morning.
So at least Shaw didn’t have more than one telepath. She focused more, Charles could see it in her face, and she was digging through his memories, looking for the most painful the most sensitive. He could feel her in his head like someone was dragging a poker along his brain, Charles had always liked to think he was less noticeable than that. But before she could get too far Charles trapped her mind with his own. Grabbed her in his mental hand and twisted. Faced with her, another telepath like him, Charles was quickly losing his interest in a mutual discussion of their power.
She fell to her knees on the deck, while Charles did little more that press is right index finger to his temple. He kept twisting as much as he was able, and she was starting to make little whimpering noises, but she had stopped struggling against his hold and was searching for something else inside herself. Charles didn’t know what she was reaching for until her mind flicked off like a switch and her body crystallized before his eyes.
“Hmm, nice trick.” Charles was capable of giving props where they were due after all.
But as soon as she crystallized, skin sparkling in the fire light, something cracked and the shine shed from her skin in a trail of dust while she fell face first onto the deck.
Charles turned to Shaw his grin impish and evil, just waiting for a comment; because even now in his twisted way, Charles was still looking for Shaw’s approval.
But Shaw just shook his head almost sadly, and in that moment Charles realized something very important, that the shaggy hair whipping boy wasn’t beside Shaw any more.
Charles flung a bullet of killing intent at Shaw as pain exploded in the back of his head, and blackness crept over his vision.