X-Men: First Class Fanfiction: stray the other way why don't you
stray the other way why don’t you
Summary: The bullet doesn’t hit Charles. But it does hit Raven. GEN. One shot.
A/N: I realised why I had so much trouble entering this fandom with a story. It’s because I normally start new fandoms with an angst/death!fic. >:D MWAHAHA. I regret nothing. (I tried to make it a bit of a character study in Charles as well, how he’d react to the death of a loved one.) Enjoy! Man, I’m morbid.
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There was the shock, the sudden blazing pain of a thousand fires running up and down his spine. Every nerve ending in his body was screaming. Everything was numb for a split second and then the agony came back three-fold, overlapping and overlapping and echoing across his entire being as he felt as though his heart was being ripped to shreds.
Then he blinked down at his hands, clutching at his chest, and there was nothing. No blood, no wound, nothing breaking the skin of his suit. Except, that meant...
All that pain wasn’t his. It was someone else’s; and they were fading fast, thoughts only touching the furthermost edges of his mind like dusty cobwebs in the attic. Charles tried to stand, look around to see what had happened. Sand made his knees sink and he slipped; the pain from Shaw’s execution and now this agony too much for him to bear and the world around him spun almost drunkenly.
What happened?
(Except he knew what happened, the fresh memories from the vantage points of over half a dozen eyes are thrown back at him, echoing with panic and fear and worry and regret. Though the sound of the gunshot stopped long ago, everyone was repeating it, so it echoed over and over, seemingly on a never-ending loop.)
A low noise, an animalistic sound of pain rebounded across the beach. Charles has never heard such a sound in his life but he recognised the voice immediately. If he were being honest, he probably knew the second that bullet hit, the very sharp spike in pain forcing her mental thoughts screaming towards him.
Raven was a crumpled heap in the sand, a smear of blue and red-bloody, crimson red-against the pure white-gold of the sand. Her frame was shuddering, shaking as her form started morphing uncontrollably. Her gasps were quiet sobs, intermittently broken by groans, bloodied hands digging weakly into the sand around her, finding no friend or purchase there.
Everyone was still for a moment in utter shock, watching Raven change into Charles, into Erik, into Sean, into Shaw, into Moira, into Hank, into Raven’s human form-always changing, so unstable, as if changing forms could mean running away from the pain. The bullet wound was there with every transformation, the ugly hole in her uniform soaked a poisonous scarlet.
Something shifted as she shook and Raven screamed, the sound gurgling from her mouth and-Charles, he was yelling, clutching at his head as his sister was dying in front of him. He could feel every inch of that bullet as intimately as Raven could.
Moira tried to step forward, the gun falling from her grasp. Her thoughts were oddly detached, split into several parts of panic and fear and remorse, all organised and immediately compartmentalised into something that nearly resembled composure. She was certainly calmer than most, doubtlessly an attribute that allowed her to work for the CIA all these years.
“Raven, I’m sor-”
Everything splintered and cracked within a split second. Erik dropped the missiles and then flung Moira so far back that she slammed against the carnage of the plane. She was unconscious, a trickle of blood sliding down her forehead. Then Erik ran to Raven, cradling her in his arms. If Charles had blinked, he might have missed something.
“This might hurt,” Erik said, the only warning Raven received before he pulled out the bullet.
Charles was breaking, cracking at the edges. He had no time to fix his shields from when the coin when through his-Shaw’s-head, slicing though the brain matter like butter. Part of him was Raven, lying in the sand trying to breathe around the blood in her throat. Part of him was Hank staring at them in shock, Moira lost in the darkness of unconsciousness, Sean distracted from his own pain, Alex just thinking I can’t be losing someone else-
He was them, they were him, and somehow he had melded them all together. The only exception was Erik, who was wearing the helmet, who was staring at Charles directly, and he was saying something, the words seeming to come out very slowly...
Sound came back with a sudden click, as if he had been locked in a vacuum before, and so did the realisation that Charles was concentrating on everyone too much, and it was killing them. When he let go, Raven started breathing again, though they were shallow, desperate breaths of the dying.
The sand, once so brilliantly pure, was staining a wider circle of reddish scarlet. The air tasted of ash and rust and the salt from the sea. A feeling of vertigo hit him and he retched, nothing coming out from his empty stomach.
“See, Charles?” Erik was saying, a mix of triumph and belief and maybe even a little tragedy saturating his voice. “This is what the humans will do to us. They will fear us and hunt us down.”
“You-” deflected the bullet, Charles thought, unable to finish the sentence aloud. The burning in his-Raven’s-stomach was increasing, though he-she-was losing feeling in her fingertips and toes.
(Could he hear her fluttering heartbeat, or was that just the anxious ba-dums of his own heart?)
“Did I really, Charles?” Erik purposely looked at Moira, still lying on the beach, eyes shut and pale like a corpse. “I didn’t pull the trigger.” The hand not cradling Raven’s head pointed outwards, towards the ships burning in great towers of flame and smoke. “I didn’t send missiles hurtling towards us, either.”
His helmet shone in the sunlight, reflecting that light as easily as Charles’ attempts to pierce through the metal and read his friend’s thoughts.
“Don’t you see, my friend?” Erik said; his eyes were burning bright and he seemed exhilarated over succeeding with revenge. “Humans and mutants cannot co-exist. It’s us against them.”
In the background, Charles could hear the deaths of a thousand humans, from those ships that had been hit by the bombs that Erik carelessly threw aside. Each death was a light extinguishing in his mind. Those men had wives, lovers, children, families, and friends; and yet their deaths were nothing, absolutely nothing at all when Raven was dying before him and oh God why didn’t I protect her?
‘Charles,’ Raven barely projected before she succumbed to another wave of pain. ‘It hurts.’
Finally, finally, Charles got himself beside his sister, her eyes flickering yellow-gold-blue-green-brown-red, endlessly changing as she lost more and more control over herself. Through the other’s eyes, he knew they were being held back by Erik controlling the metal on their belts, and through Hank’s senses especially, Charles could almost taste how the air was saturated with the coppery-rust of blood and the fumes of petrol and smoke.
“I’m here,” Charles said, grabbing Raven’s hands and holding them tightly, not letting go even when they grew and shrank and changed colours, scales and skin undulating constantly like the tides of the sea behind them. “We’ll get you somewhere safe, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine-”
Erik, with a reverent kind of gentleness, moved Raven so that she was in Charles’ arms before moving back and allowing them room. Vaguely, distantly, Charles could hear him barking at-what was his name?-Azazel, ordering him to get ready to transport Raven to a hospital, the metal in the what’s left of the plane and the submarine starting to shake and rumble with the strength of his convictions.
(He could still hear all those soldiers dying. Hear them praying and saying their last goodbyes in English and in a language he could barely grasp at and he if he weren’t so shell-shocked he would be surprised at how little he cared about them.)
“Charles,” Raven gasped, a trickle of blood rolling from her lips. She tried to smile, but it gave the illusion of smeared lipstick twisting her grin lopsidedly. Her teeth were stained a pinkish-red.
“You’ll be fine,” Charles repeated, only to realise he had never quite stopped saying that, repeating it over and over again like some mantra, as if the force of his convictions could keep her alive. He twisted his head and yelled over his shoulder, “Get her to the hospital!”
Raven squeezed at his hands and he looked, seeing that she finally stabilised in her natural form. She was ocean blue with scales and fiery red hair and yellow-gold eyes and he felt he had to say, “You’re beautiful, Raven. I’m so, so sorry-”
“It’s okay,” she mumbled, smiling at him like the pain wasn’t eating her away, as though Charles couldn’t hear her screaming inside. “I’m happy with who I am. That, beyond anything else, has made this all worth it. Mutant and proud.”
“No!” Charles yelled, panicked by how weak Raven’s voice was getting. “No, no, no...” He kissed her forehead, trying to ignore how cold her skin was, how her grasp on his hands were slackening.
“You’ll be all right,” he promised. “You’ll be all right.” He could see how she saw him, and there was a frenzied look in his eye. Her smile never quite left her face, even as more blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
‘Low possibility of human blood transfusion,’ was a stray thought Charles picked up from Hank. There were images-flashes of broken, disjointed memories-of his research on her blood, how the changing platelets were utterly unique and would probably react harshly with any outside influence.
He turned and snarled, “Don’t you dare think that, none of you dare think that!” Everyone flinched back from the outburst, except Raven who seemed too tired to move any more.
“You’re crying, Charles,” Raven mused, voice light and breathy. Her gaze was unfocussed, hazy. “Don’t cry. We stopped World War III. That’s something to be proud of.”
“Not if it means losing you.”
“I would have died eventually.”
“But not now!” Charles argued, his own growing faint now. The tears were falling on Raven’s face and he gently brushed them away. “You’re my only family. The only family that counts and I love you, don’t go, don’t leave, stay, please just stay.”
Charles focussed on flooding her mind with thoughts of love and warmth, impressions of happiness in fleeting memories of their childhood, every smile and laugh they shared, proving he remembered it all, showing her how happy she made him. For a moment, the pain coming from Raven stuttered, temporarily shut off as her mind was overwhelmed with feelings of joy and peace. Charles kept the stream running, tried to make Raven as comfortable as possible.
(He definitely heard her heartbeat now and it was slow and sluggish in an agonising way. Charles thought of his degree in genetics and how utterly, utterly worthless it was. Once, when he was very young, he had wanted to become a doctor to help people. It had been a long time since he remembered that old dream and a distant part of his soul wished he had followed it, if only so he wasn’t so helpless right now.)
“Keep finding mutants,” Raven said with a wan smile. “Help guide them like you helped me.” She blinked once, slow and purposefully. Her pupils were blown wide, the golden iris darkening.
“Love you, Charles. Everything will be fine.”
And just like that, Charles felt the light that was Raven-her innermost voice, the snark, the dry humour, the humming buzzing presence that was her, just her-disappear. A split second later, Raven’s body went slack in his arms, a dead weight in the most literal sense.
Part of him wanted to shake her, tell her that it wasn’t funny, stop playing dead-but he knew, being a telepath allowed him to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was gone and she wasn’t coming back. He closed her eyelids and wiped away the trickle of blood. It almost looked as though she was sleeping.
Charles was so far gone that he jumped when a firm hand clasped his shoulder. Erik was looking down at him, cheeks wet with his own tears.
“She died as herself, mutant and proud,” he said, as if it were any real consolation. There was a very long moment where Charles felt like pushing the hand away, but he couldn’t find it in himself to start any more conflict. There had been enough fighting.
Belatedly, Charles noted that Erik was still wearing that stupid helmet, but he couldn’t quite care enough to mention it, instead feeling a gaping hollowness eat him up as he instinctively kept reaching, probing the minds around him for his sister.
And wasn’t it strange? Turn the clock back several months; no, actually, just a couple of months and it would be a time when Charles sincerely thought that he and Raven were the only ones in the whole world. Well, not the only ones-he knew there were probably others, but probably was never as good as a confirmation. They were a team; a pair that constantly looked out for one another.
Now? Charles was so not alone anymore, there were thousands, if not millions of other mutants out there, he knew it as fact, and yet-
He was sitting on some godforsaken beach surrounded by wreckage, holding his dead sister in his arms. (No more soldiers were screaming in the shadows of his mind. All of them were dead, too.) There were no words to describe how he felt.
“Charles,” Erik said in a carefully neutral voice. “What do you want to do about the human?”
“Moira, you mean,” Charles corrected in a monotone. Erik never had trouble referring to her by her name before. He wasn’t going to encourage such degrading behaviour. If you knew a person’s name, you used it. “We’ll discuss her in a minute. She’s still unconscious and there are more pressing matters.”
Gently, he placed Raven’s head on the sand, rearranging her limbs into a more comfortable position. It was hard to stand, to leave her, but there were things that needed prioritising.
“Azazel, correct?” Charles addressed the members of Shaw’s group of mutants; the Hellfire Club. “As I understand it, you’re called Janos. Of course, I know you, Angel.”
Each of them nodded warily at the mention of their name. Charles brushed off the sand from his legs before standing tall. His legs shook with a fatigue he would need to deal with eventually, but first he had to make his proposition.
“You have every right to leave and find your peace elsewhere. Your departure is completely optional and we will not stop you, but if you try to attack us again, now, you should know I am not in a very stable place right now. The mind is such a fragile thing.” He smiled, one of those grins that made him look naive and young, even though he felt he had aged several decades within the space of a moment.
Some of the children, Alex being the most vocal, protested this, but were soon silenced with a quick look from Charles, who added quietly, “Everyone deserves the right to choose their path.”
“Are you making an offer?” Angel asked, sounding brave even as her mind resolved not to look at the others, tried not to remember how she walked away from them, how she was attacking them only minutes before with the intent to kill.
“Yes,” Charles said, and Erik shot him a questioning look. He ignored it in favour of saying, “You may leave us, fight us or join us.”
“Us?” Erik asked. “Has your philosophies suddenly aligned with mine?”
Those words brought back memories of chess games and long drives where the comfortable, companionable silence was broken with discussion of mutant rights and human involvement and the fine strings of fate, luck and politics that were crucial in drawing the future. Once, he was so sure that humans could come to accept mutants peacefully, but he thought of the racism and sexism still so rampant in their culture, the divide of religion against religion, and finally the rain of weapons that nearly crashed and collided with them with the power to kill them all.
Acceptance was not humanity’s strong point.
However, he was still set on preventing annihilation from becoming mutantkind’s strong point.
“My philosophies are in need of further examination, but that is beside the point,” Charles finally said, unwilling to commit until he has had time to think over his goals and how he wanted to achieve them. “Right now, we need to work together. I can wipe Moira’s memory, but I don’t know how to hide entire fleets of wreckage, nor the dozens of people who ordered the bombs to fall. I am only one man.”
Already the ships were drawing attention with the great billowing clouds of dark smoke rising from them. It wouldn’t be too long before people came, bringing with them questions and police.
“We need to work together to ensure that what happened today-” several of them glance to Raven’s cooling body and he doesn’t turn to look, seeing her again in their minds more than enough, “-never ever happens again.”
Without waiting for any of them to speak, he walked over to Moira. Her thoughts were starting to surface, slowly and steadily. Behind him, he could hear the chatter of all but Erik. It would be so easy to make them agree, to twist them so that they bent like stalks of grass against a strong wind, but Charles, despite everything, still believed in free will.
He crouched next to Moira’s body and gently touched her temple with his fingers. Part of him knew that she was probably doing what she thought best, trying to save all those people on the ships. It wasn’t her fault-or Erik’s either-that the bullet strayed where it did. Wiping her memory was a necessary precaution for the safety of all those mutants under his care.
(Because it was clear that despite what she may think, when pressed she will side with other humans. Her heart was pure, but all people are flawed. That included Charles himself, who knew himself too well to deny that part of this act-a very small, quiet part-was because of what happened to Raven.
Consequences, consequences, like apples on trees. Soon they’ll fall; one, two, three.)
With gentle snips he cut away the essences of memories, the emotion tied in with the sensory inputs-sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. He removed all of them that could cause any mutant harm.
Once again, Moira’s thoughts were muted, but she was now sleeping. Her mind would probably be very confused for the next few days as it tried to repair all the missing pieces. His intrusion was delicate though, so the damage, if any came from this, would be minimal. The work came so instinctively, it was a little unnerving, but he ignored the feeling for the most part.
‘Are you sure about this?’
Once he was sure the task was done, Charles stood and turned, looking Erik straight in the eye. His helmet was finally off, tucked under his arm whilst a grim expression adorned his face. Without the blockage, Charles could hear the curiosity, the sorrow, the wonder and the interest all lacing Erik’s mind.
‘Sure about what?’ Charles projected back. ‘If you want to argue method-as if genocide could possibly ever be justified-please wait until we’re back at the mansion. There’s too much to deal with right now.’
A pause, then, ‘Are you all right?’ Again, there was another memory of Raven being shot, in slow motion from Erik’s vantage point. Charles could feel the metal singing to him, resonating with every nerve ending in his body, but too late does he follow the trajectory of that one, stray bullet-
‘Another thing you will need to wait before asking, my friend,’ Charles replied before turning away, trying to rub warmth back into his arms.
Quickly skimming the rogue trio of mutants, he found most of them agreeing to join him, if only until the carnage is swept away. His students were standing around Raven’s body, Erik a little to the side allowing them space as he allowed Charles his space. All their minds resonated with shock and loss, so Charles sent them a wave of condolences, of the small amount of peace he could find in his heart and tried to soothe their pain.
(He could take away their memories, just like he did with Moira, stop the reason for their grieving entirely, but that wouldn’t help. It would be killing the only existing part of Raven left, the imprints of her soul in the memories of her. It’s why Charles never dimmed the memories of Alex’s family, even whilst the boy was still agonising so intensely over it. They lived on through the pain.)
Hank was on his knees, tears running down his face, his hand bringing up Raven’s to his face and kissing it softly. Charles looked away to the sea, seeing nothing except from the corner of his eye where Erik was still looking at him intently.
Raven and Hank were rather attached to one another, a connection founded on a kinship running deeper than just powers but that sense of needing a hidden identity, a fear of who you were and what you looked like. For one insane moment, Charles entertained the idea that if they had children, the babies would be undoubtedly blue with gold-coloured eyes-
The fact that Raven was dead swept over him again, the pain in his stomach so severe and real it caused him to collapse. She’s gone, never there again to laugh or talk or brighten up a room. The idea was devastating as it was crushing. In an instant, Erik was beside him, holding him up as best he could, Charles half slumped against him.
Around him there was a flurry of thoughts-worry over Charles-but Erik waved them away, telling them to start cleaning up. “Riptide, sink the ships-”
Waiting until Erik had finished his orders, Charles tried to collect himself, organise his thoughts. At the very least, he wanted his breathing more firmly under his control.
“I thought I understood,” Charles admitted softly, the whisper barely reaching Erik’s ears. ‘I thought I understood how it felt have someone you love taken away from you.’
“Through my memories?” Erik asked, his mind showcasing the face of his long-dead mother, pale shadows of faded recollections. There was a tinge of disbelief, as if no one could ever understand the pain and loss and sheer agony, let alone have the gall to think they did.
‘Yes, through yours and others,’ Charles projected back. ‘I’d lost my father, too, but it’s not the same. Losing is not the same as someone being taken from you.’
Erik propped him up more firmly, arm around his shoulders in the semblance of some awkward half-hug. Jets of spiralling water erupted miles away, a rather impressive spectacle to see from the beach as the ships were all consumed by the raging torrents of sea water.
“What now?” Erik asked aloud. There were many things that question referred to-Raven, the X-Men, the school and other mutants, the possibilities of further war despite all of this (possibly in spite of all of this), and even something a little deeper than that, Erik now finished his lifelong goal of revenge and wondering how exactly he’s going to achieve a better world for mutantkind.
Thoughts of supremacy and fighting and war and terrible suffering overlapped and shuddered in Charles mind, washed away with hopes for talks and civil discussions of equality and harmony. Too soon, too dangerous for extremes of either ideal to take the world by force. They needed patience and had to let the world mature a little before they made their great debut.
Charles didn’t look up at Erik, nor did he have to. Tendrils of his mind were touching Erik’s mind, so he knew the exact moment when Charles decided, ‘We’ll just have to wait and see, my friend.’
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A/N: I’ve been writing an OF in present tense so going back to writing FF in past tense was a pain. At least my writer’s block is cured. I do love angst. Character death is probably my calling card.
Actually, I’m looking for more X-Men fans to fill up my f-list (which is more Sherlock based at the moment) so please friend if you want! ^^