Forgive Us Our Transgressions 12/16

Nov 29, 2011 09:35



It was convenient, not having to worry about travel. They didn’t need a twenty-year-old super genius to build them a supersonic jet (which was for the best, since those were hard to come by). There were also no road trips, long days on the highway, moving from town to town, the sound of the radio uninterrupted by the gentle press of another’s thoughts against his own. There were no little motels, no cramped rooms with only one bed to share. There was no need for the whirr of the engine, the warmth of the sun through the windshield, and the companionship of that shared, small space.

There was also almost no way to stall, when all it took to get to their mark was a grip on Azazel’s red skin.

Erik stood in a line with the rest of his Brotherhood, trying to remember where he’d left his rage, his sense of right and wrong.

As in, he was right, and the humans were wrong.

Every time.

He glanced down the line, taking in Mystique’s determined expression, Emma’s persistent apathy, Angel’s nerves, and Riptide’s quiet intensity. They were all geared up, and ready to fight.

He sighed, reaching out for Azazel on his left and Mystique on his right. “Alright, everyone,” he said. “Our priority is to extract the mutants.”

Mystique gave him a hard look. “It always is.”

“Then let’s go.”

In a poof of sour-smelling sulphur they arrived, appearing a hall of the medical building. A startled young man dropped his clipboard.

“Where are the mutants?” Erik snarled without preamble.

“What?” the man stammered.

“The mutants. The powered people,” he said, the words coming to his lips unbidden. They had been his words-in the school with Charles.

“The-“ the man gasped as Erik loomed over him, his mouth set in a hard line.

“Just kill him,” Emma rolled her eyes. “I can find our people.”

Erik frowned.

Is that what he would have done, before? Just snuffed out this man’s life without a thought?

The memories that pressed at the back of his mind told him it was.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man gasped, eyes wide with fear.

He shot a glance at Emma. “Really?” she asked, incredulous. At his hard look, she sighed. “Fine.” her eyes narrowed in on the young man. “He’s telling the truth,” she finally admitted.

Erik would deny he breathed a sigh of relief, if asked.

“You said there were mutants here,” he said instead.

“There are,” Emma insisted, affronted.

“Fine. Lead us to them.” He turned from the cowering man.

“You’re just going to leave him?” Mystique asked. “He’ll sound the alarm.”

Erik looked at his followers. Although he knew them, knew them well, he was shocked at what he found in their eyes.

They would all kill the man without hesitation, merely for having the bad luck to be in this hallway when they arrived.

“Put him to sleep,” he snapped at Emma, striding off down the hall before she could argue. He heard the heavy thump of a body hitting the floor behind him.

Emma was back at his side in a matter of moments, glaring at him with all she had.

Erik ignored it. “Which way?” he demanded.

She sighed, closing her eyes. “The basement.”

And wasn’t that always the way? Small, dark, windowless rooms, cold and sterile.

He set his jaw, increasing the speed of his steps.

Despite the memories pressing in on him-of cold, dank rooms with dirty floors-the basement was just like the rest of the facility: white and sterile, with fluorescent lights shining overhead.

The brightness did nothing to assuage the feeling that something here was very wrong.

Emma pointed to an unmarked door with a significant look, and Erik steeled himself.

He had been doing this for years-since he was a child, really, first under Schmidt’s orders, and then going back and taking out every man that Schmidt had so much as said hello to.

He didn’t remember each and every one, but he knew they were there to be remembered, and that should be enough.

He reached out with his power and pulled the door right off its hinges.

His people surged in ahead of him, Mystique first, her yellow eyes alert to threats.

“They’re here!” she called, and Erik again heard the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor.

This time, he suspected they weren’t just asleep.

He strode into the room, eyes sharp, power thrumming in his veins. He was just looking for metal to twist, to bend, to hurt, to maim.

Azazel stood over a scientist, his formerly white lab coat blossoming scarlet.

Another man cowered in the corner with Riptide looming over him.

Still alive, and reeking of piss. Erik curled his lip. Pathetic.

He could feel the old derision and superiority coursing over him. Snivelling humans, not even fit to breathe the same air as the mutants.

They’re not all like this, a voice whispered in his mind. A voice with a crisp, British accent.

He shook his head, his gaze seeking out the girls, each working at the lock of a person-or mutant-sized cage.

He rolled his eyes. “Stand back,” he barked.

The girls jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed by the cage doors, wrenching from their hinges and flying across the room.

A startled cry issued from one of the cages, and Erik strode forward, peering inside.

A girl, barely in her teens, stared back at him, eyes wide. “I didn’t see that coming,” she whispered, earning a sharp snort from the enclosure next to her.

Erik ducked his head, finding the defiant eyes of a teenage boy, angry and insolent.

He’s the first guy I’ve ever heard of who preferred solitary, the guard shrugged.

Alex looked up as the door swung open, his muscles tight, guarded, ready to run. He stared them down with hard blue eyes, but underneath it all, Erik thought he had the look of a little boy. A scared kid, locked away in a cage.

Like Erik had been.

“Hey, kid,” he said, knowing better than to coddle. “What’s your name?”

The boy sneered as he clambered out into the open. Despite the expression, he looked fragile and too young for all this. He was lean and wiry, and probably wasn’t more than eighteen. Erjk thought of Scott, of Bobby. Of their easy smiles, their laughter.

This kid deserved that too.

“Pyro,” the kid said, daring Erik to question it.

“Well, that sounds like you have a hell of a trick up your sleeve,” Erik replied, with a cock of an eyebrow.

“Don’t get him started,” a wry voice floated out of the third cage.

The boy, Pyro, frowned. “Are you getting us out of here, or what? I can’t wait to get away from her.” He jerked his thumb at the third cage. A girl, dark and exotic, peered out, her wary eyes roving over each person in the room.

Erik scanned the three of them, relieved to see they appeared at least well fed, their young skin free from bruises or other signs of physical harm. Still, their eyes were wary, haunted.

“Yeah, we’re getting out of here,” Erik agreed, gesturing the three forward, out of their metal prisons. He rounded on the scientist left alive, still cornered by Riptide.

“Are these the only mutants here?” he demanded. Emma made a protesting noise beside him, but quieted at a look. It was best to be sure.

“Y-yes,” the man answered shakily.

“And what were you doing with them?”

“Please, don’t hurt me,” he whimpered, pulling in further on himself, pressing back into the walls behind him.

Erik sneered. “That wasn’t an answer to my question. What did you want with the mutants?”

“They’re dangerous!” the man said desperately. “They shouldn’t be on the streets.”

Erik growled, striding forward, pushing Riptide aside. “That’s not up to you to decide,” he snapped, grabbing the man and hauling him to his feet. He heard a young ,feminine gasp behind him. “Tell me what you were doing with them.”

The man shook his head frantically, scrabbling to get away from Erik.

“Take every document here,” Erik called over his shoulder. He could hear the rustle of his people springing into action, combing the room.

“What were you looking for with these three?” he demanded, even as the man protested the looting of his lab, his eyes fixed over Erik’s shoulder, on the movements of the rest of his team. Erik shook him in his grasp.

“It was just the girls,” the man said frantically, eyes snapping back to Erik’s face. “The boy was a mistake.”

“Why did you keep him, then?”

A snort rang out from behind Erik. “Lab rat,” Pyro said, coming up to his side. “They tried every drug on me first, to make sure it wouldn’t kill the girls. Since they were more important.”

Rage welled up in Erik, taking over everything that he was. For a moment, it was like he was back in the camps again, seeing the labs, the dozens and dozens of Jews herded in, and carried out in garbage bags. Being experimented on by Nazi doctors, because they were expendable. Because they were nothing more than livestock to their Aryan overlords.

“You make me sick,” Erik told the scientist. He reached out, feeling for any metal on the man’s body.

“Wait.” A hand landed on his arm. “Let me,” Pyro’s voice was dark.

Erik smiled, seeing the fear light in the man’s eyes. “Be my guest.” He dropped him, letting him hit the floor like a sack of potatoes.

Pyro stepped forward, a grin on his face.

“Shit,” one of the girls whispered behind them, and then the man went up in flames.

Someone gasped behind them as an impossibly hot fire spread over the man, burning skin like it was paper. He screamed, the kind of scream that only came from someone who was dying, someone who was suffering the worst pain they had ever experienced.

He screamed, even as his eyeballs melted out of his head, and his skin curled up away from flesh and sinew.

It was the kind of scream Erik heard in the camps, over and over again. The kind of scream he had learned how to elicit.

He clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, pulling him away from the mess that once was a man. “Let’s go,” he said firmly.

His brotherhood stood behind him, five grim faces, with the two rescued girls. The one he had spoken to first had tears in her wide, alarmed eyes, but the other looked…blank.

He wondered what could have happened to a girl her age to let her face such carnage with indifference.

It was a trait that he had tried to foster in his followers, a trait that he had praised. Now, though, he shifted uncomfortably under her gaze.

“Names?” he asked, sharper than he meant to be.

“Irene,” the first girl whispered.

The other, older and darker, cocked an eyebrow. “You can call me Blindspot,” she offered wryly.

Erik knew a challenge to authority when he saw one, but now wasn’t the time. He gripped Pyro’s arm and dragged the boy forward, from where he was still standing, staring at the charred remains of his captor.

“We need to find the main office of this place,” he said. “The majority of their data will be there.”

His team nodded, sharp and focused. The young girl, Irene, looked like she might resist, but Angel laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“We’ve got you now,” she told her.

“Everyone behind me. Kill anyone we meet,” Erik ordered. He thought of the glee with which Pyro had destroyed the scientist, but shoved the image aside. This was necessary killing. Necessary to getting the kids out of there, to keeping them safe.

________________________________________________________

Chapter Thirteen

forgive us our transgressions, charles/erik, fiction: x-men

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