Chapter Text
Chapter one
The first memory Erik has is, he thinks, of the view from their first flat in London. His mind's eye looks through the grimy window to the bombed-out shell of another block of flats across the street, then four shrapnel-scarred buildings, and then a gap, a hole leading down to foundations and torn pipes. Mama, it's missing a tooth, he remembers saying as he pointed, and then his mother's soft hand turning him away and her softer voice asking him to come away.
It's hazy at the edges, unreal enough that sometimes he thinks it's from a dream, or something he'd created to fill the empty space between being born and the first true memory he has, the one he knows is real.
"I was five," he tells Charles, "and I had this tricycle – don't laugh," he growls, which doesn't stop Charles from muffling a soft, snorting breath in the crook of his arm, " – and this little bastard of an eight-year-old knocked me off it when I was out riding one day."
"And you got angry," Charles says. Erik's not looking, but he can hear the eye-roll. His fingers trace absently across Erik's chest, the slightest scratching of a nail enough to make Erik shiver.
"Oh, I was pissed. I even remember the little shit's name." Bobby Donovan, even more of a sadist than most eight-year-old boys could be. Erik can still see him, looming and truculent and gripping Erik's tricycle by the handle, his grimy shirt stained with Erik imagines was the blood of other unfortunates. Feckin' Jerry, he'd snarled at Erik with a reflexive, confused hostility, as though he'd latched on to Erik's accent and identified it as belonging to the enemy but still sensed the insult was not entirely accurate.
He half-expects Charles to butt in with the obvious conclusion to the story, but Charles keeps silent and settles for watching Erik closely, blue eyes clear in the yellowing light of Erik's bedroom. It's been a month since Washington, and he still doesn't know how much of him is included in the everything Charles says he knows about him. On the occasions when Charles presses him to talk, their conversations end up being half Erik telling and his memories filling in the blank spaces between words, spilling out like blood.
"So, I told him to give it back, and he didn't, and when he didn't…" He shrugs, shoulder riding the fine curve of Charles's jaw where it rests against his collar bone. "I felt this force inside me. I can't describe it." He never could, and he doesn't think he'll ever be able to. It had been sudden and visceral as his anger, a caged thing stirring to life and flinging itself against the bars; that's as close as he can come. "Next thing I knew, I was pulling the trike toward me, and Bobby was hanging on to the back wheel, only I wasn't… I wasn't touching anything."
"Abilities usually manifest in response to stress," Charles says. He reaches across Erik, takes a drag from his cigarette and grinds it out in the ashtray.
"Thank you, Professor." He can't quite make the sarcasm genuine. Charles's arm, his chest against Erik's, is warm and distracting.
Charles huffs and nips his collar bone in irritation anyway. "And you scared the living daylights out of Bobby Donovan, I'm sure."
"It got worse after that," Erik tells him, "until we moved."
Moved again. Erik has evidence of having lived in nine different places by the time he and his mother moved to New York: Warsaw (where he was born), Danzig (two months), Karlskrona (three months), three different flats in London, then on to Manchester, Bristol, and finally Killarney, where he'd spent most of his growing-up. Of the nine, he remembers two places in London, the little house in Bristol, and Killarney, where his mother had taken up a teaching position at a small academy.
He has evidence of almost as many schools, and his mother's exasperated reminiscences about his performance at each of them. You are a smart boy, Erik, so why is it you must act so foolishly? At the time he'd never had an answer.
"You have problems with authority," Charles says indulgently before rolling on top of Erik and silently ordering Erik to keep still. Not all authority, Erik thinks at him, craning his head up for a kiss, Just the authority that's wrong, and Charles responds only with a soft hum and telepathic laughter.
"We have to be up early tomorrow," he says against the soft pressure of Charles's mouth. He can taste Charles's amusement in the way his lips curve, the warm flicker of it brushing across his cortex. "And do you want to traumatize your sister and Moira when they get here?"
July has melted into August; they're not much more than sweat and spit and lazy limbs tangled together, sheets on the floor.
"It might be fun," Charles says, laughing for real now. Then his laughter alchemizes into more kisses as he licks his way into Erik's mouth, heart picking up its pace as the two of them press together, and Charles does this like he does everything he loves, without reserve.
Jakob Eisenhardt had traded on his father's reputation as a war hero, and his own as a respected businessman, to secure his family's safe passage across the Austrian frontier into Switzerland. Or, rather, he had hoped to trade on it. "There was the Kristallnacht in Austria," Edie Lehnsherr said, "and in Poland, where we fled, his name meant very little."
Lehnsherr was the name of cousins from his mother's side of the family, London relations who had emigrated thirty years before the end of the world. His mother had taken the name and, having taken it, had never set it aside. Erik tried to imagine himself as Erik Eisenhardt and could not quite manage it.
"He had always hoped for cooler heads to prevail," his mother continued, the one time she told Erik about it. "And when the fires ignited around us, and his sacrifices for our country meant nothing anymore, we ran. But it was too late."
She had a small book of photographs, smuggled from country to country in a pocket sewn into the inside of her skirt. When examining them, she rarely spoke, hoarding her thoughts as she flipped slowly through the pages. Sometimes she would remove a photo from its setting, or a dried flower – from her bridal veil, she explained – or the card announcing the bar mitzvah of a now-dead best friend's son, a fragment of a Torah from the neighborhood temple in Dusseldorf; she would remove these things and touch them with her scarred fingers, then replace them carefully.
One time he had come across the book on her nightstand and, without intending it, curled up on her bed to look through it. His mother's script danced across the page, much of it unintelligible to him – he had been six or so, still learning – but he knew enough to patch together something of a story. His mother had had a sister and brother, both gone; she had married at twenty-two, to a tall, square-jawed man in a military uniform (mein Mann, mein Liebling, mein Schatz). There were vacation pictures, grainy and faded, of a sturdy teenaged girl in a bathing costume, dipping her toe in a glacier lake, and mountains in the distance. Two older people, his grandparents Erik supposed, gazing stiffly at the camera.
The last one was of a family gathering, black curtains in the windows – it was so the neighbors would not suspect – and a feast on the table.
"Rosh Hashanah," his mother said, coming quietly into the room. Erik jumped, and would have gotten up, but she smiled her usual, forgiving smile. "I don't remember the names of many of the people there; they were people from the neighborhood. It was the last time I saw them; that night, Jakob and I fled east, to Warsaw, before the borders closed. There was nowhere else to go."
Erik studied the photographs. He sensed, in the dim way a seven-year-old sensed such things, that they were important, that they represented people who should be known to him – but were not. They had been taken, was all he could come up with, as though a monster had snatched them away. He thought of his mother, with her small hands and the grief lines in the corner of her eyes, and it occurred to him that if so much had been taken, from his father to his grandparents to cousins, she might be taken, too.
"Oh thank god you have clothes on," is Raven's greeting when she sweeps in the door. She and Charles exchange sibling-ish kisses. "And please stop projecting at me; there's only so much I want to know about my dork of an older brother."
"That's not very liberated of you," Charles says. He sounds disapproving, but he's spilling pleasure all over the place, not even bothering to mask it. Usually Charles's relentless good cheer and enthusiasm would drive Erik up the wall, but today it's a glow to bask in as he watches Charles inspect his little sister to make sure she's in one piece, then pull her back into a hug again. "I missed you so much," Charles tells her, voice soft and fierce in the curve of her neck.
"I'm not back from the wars or anything." Raven's trying for teasing, but Erik can hear the catch in her voice.
"Are you sure? I've heard stories about what goes on out there." Raven rolls her yellow eyes at him; Charles has, Erik knows, stepped on the edges of an old argument. Instead of pursuing it, Charles holds his hands up in surrender, finally dissolving into laughter at the look on his sister's face.
For his part, Erik hangs out on the periphery of the reunion, half-wanting to retreat to his bedroom; he at least has the excuse of packing, which Charles has left to the last minute, and he can hear Moira coming up the stairs, which means the kitchen will officially be overcrowded once she gets here. At the same second thoughts of escape come to him, though, he feels Charles's mind catch against his, and the not-unpleasant sensation of Charles's attention focusing on him like a laser.
"Raven," Charles says, tugging her closer, "Raven, this is Erik. I told you about him?"
"Erik." Despite the cool blue of her skin, Raven's voice is warm, deeper than he'd expect from a young woman. She thrusts a hand at him, and he accepts it automatically, intrigued by the scales in the soft curve of her palm, smooth-rough against his own skin. "It's very good to meet you," Raven continues as she eyes him up and down, "Charles won't shut up about you."
Erik grunts absently; talking to people, even (or especially) the sister of his boyfriend, isn't his strong suit, especially when talking involves polite emptiness. Raven has all Charles's forthrightness and more besides. Having Charles's attention riveted on him is disconcerting enough sometimes; two Xaviers is exponentially worse.
Fortunately, Moira makes her entrance, grumbling about the narrow stairway and lack of parking – "I'm double-parked, Lehnsherr; I hope your landlord isn't planning on going anywhere" – and drawing Charles over to her. They exchange quick hugs, and Moira demands to know if Charles is ever going to show up at their place again.
"I like it here," Charles says, looking around Erik's flat as though surveying something ten times larger and five times nicer than what's basically a pair of overgrown closets. He spares a quick, private smile for Erik, who allows himself to return it.
"Please God, take me now." Raven sighs. "Speaking of, can we book? Hank's train gets in in like a half-hour, and I want to be there to pick him up."
"Who's Hank?" Charles asks suspiciously. "You've never told me about him."
Moira whistles softly.
"It's too late to defend my honor, if that's what you're asking," Raven informs him. Erik takes this opportunity to vanish into his bedroom and get their duffels, not that he can't hear Charles's cranky spluttering when Raven says maybe she would have told Charles, if Charles had shut up for one second about Erik, but if Charles has to know, Hank is her boyfriend – her brilliant boyfriend, studying aeronautics and going to UCLA next year for his doctorate.
"You'll like him," she assures Charles. "He's a major-league nerd like you. He's cool."
"Should you really use 'Charles' and 'cool' in the same sentence?" Erik asks as he edges his way out of his bedroom; the tiny hall connecting bedroom and living room-kitchen is taken up mostly by the bathroom. Charles's duffle bounces off the doorframe.
"Har har," Charles says sarcastically. "I'll have you know I am very cool. Hip, even. Groovy."
"Keep telling yourself that." Erik pushes at Charles with his duffel; Charles stares at it blankly. "Here, I'm not your fucking servant."
"Oh, you are very clever," Charles grumbles, but he's smiling a bit – reluctantly, mouth curled at the edges – and, despite his protestations, takes the bag.
"Are we all set?" Raven's bouncing on her toes. It's possible, Erik thinks, being in the presence of this much Xavier enthusiasm will drive him insane before the weekend's over.
"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," Charles sighs. "This isn't exactly my scene."
"What, other than a library, isn't your scene? Unclench, Charles. It'll be fun," Raven says cheerfully. She twines one arm through his and, gesturing for Moira to lead, shepherds Charles out the door. "Besides, you always whine about how boring and pointless MIT's Society is; well, here's your chance to meet some people who are actually trying to change things."
"It's a music festival," Charles says, "not a political action committee."
"Oh, you'll meet some of my friends from the MLA." Raven looks over her shoulder at Erik, who's checking to make sure the door is double-locked. Not that he has much, but his notes and dissertation are in there, and the few things he does have are things he'd rather keep.
"The Mutant Liberation Army? Are you serious? Raven…"
"I'm not in it," Raven snaps, "I just know people who are. Calm down."
Charles is vibrating, on the edge of something pacifist and sanctimonious. Before it can escalate – and he's pretty sure it will – Erik slides in neatly with, "Far be it from me to shut down political discussion, but MacTaggert's going to kill us if she ends up being ticketed."
"Right," Charles says, "of course," and thank god for etiquette lessons, or what Erik strongly suspects is Charles's innate politeness. Raven seems content to let the matter slide for the moment, frustration ebbing under her smooth and changeable cheeks. He remembers the pictures of her in Charles's flat, where she's always blonde-haired and blue-eyed, the sort of effortless beauty that draws attention because it's so ordinary, so expected.
She always felt like she was lying, Charles had said one night, when they'd been drunk – just on the edge of too drunk, still lucid enough for confession – and he'd caught Erik staring vacantly at a framed picture of him and Raven at Charles's graduation. I just wanted to make sure she stayed safe, just because there wasn't a Mutant Registrar – Regis – you know, thing, didn't mean there couldn't ever be.
He was eleven when the Mutant Registration Act passed the United States Senate.
Even in Killarney, news from the States seemed curiously proximate, as though no ocean separated them, and distant, both at once. The reporter himself wrote as though puzzled by this contradiction, speaking matter-of-factly about the Senate at one moment, and then taking pains to explain how the Senate differed from the House, and how the "present legislation is seen by members of both House and Senate as a satisfactory compromise that would benefit all Americans."
When asked for her opinion on the new law, and whether the Republic should ever adopt similar measures, TD Crowley said, 'I feel I can speak for the entire Dáil when I say we have no plans to take up such legislation in the near future. As the Republic seems quite content not to meddle in the biology of human beings – and as we are unaware of comic book villains bombarding Dublin – I see no need for it.'
"Mama," he said, "it says here the President will sign it 'in light of grave concerns posed to national security and peace.' Why?"
"People who are afraid want safety," his mother answered, "and they will do dangerous things to have it, I suppose." She didn't look up from her grading, essays written in clumsy schoolgirl German.
"Why?" He asked the question again when it seemed as though she hadn't heard him.
"Because that is how people are," was the stiff reply. "Please, schatzi, let me concentrate."
Obediently, Erik turned back to the paper spread across his lap. Despite TD Crowley's assurances, danger prickled up his back, the sense of being watched by something unseen that knew what he was. He imagined himself and others like him – not that he had met another mutant, but they must exist – and police, angry crowds gathered close around him, the nightmare visions he conjured up from hearing the adults talking at shul. How would they find him? He tried to reassure himself with this question; he looked like everyone else, and his mother would never consent to any kind of test on him, but the reassurance fell flat. They would find out somehow, and that would be the end.
He read about the Friends of Humanity, the "concerned citizens" who had called for the law, and the response by the Defenders of Mutant Civil Liberties, which promised "immediate action in the courts that would establish the clear unconstitutionality of the MRA."
"The Supreme Court has routinely upheld the rights of the government to obtain relevant information and suspend habeas corpus on individuals or groups who pose a threat to public safety in wartime," the Friends of Humanity spokesman said. "The registration of mutants should be seen as no different than the same oversight applied to Communists, radicals, or anyone else who threatens our nation's stability and the safety of its citizens."
Registration, he thought. That's how it starts.
Hank McCoy is, as advertised, a complete nerd, a fact undisguised by his jeans, plaid shirt, and hemp jewelry. Raven seems taken with him, though, flying out of Moira's van and almost tackling him when he stumbles out from the darkness of South Station. To Erik they're both impossibly young.
Charles gives Hank a quick look – and, Erik knows, a telepathic once-over – and quick as that, his uncertainty melts into enthusiasm. Hank steps back a bit, glancing uncertainly at Raven, who reassures him that Charles is always like this, and within ten seconds is pulling off his shoes to display hairy, prehensile toes. The parade of people coming in and out of the station – normals, Erik thinks spitefully – pauses in consternation as a few of them catch a glimpse of Hank's feet. He doesn't miss the discomfort on Hank's face, or the speed with which he starts to slide his shoes back on.
"There's no need," Charles begins impulsively, and Hank freezes, glancing between Charles and his feet, and Erik says, "We'll be in the car anyway, there's no point in putting those back on."
"Well, it's the Levine Machine," Moira says doubtfully. "You probably can't be too careful."
"Where is Levine, anyway?" Charles asks, like anyone actually cares. Erik thinks this at him, and Charles stifles a grin and shoots a mock-reproving glare at him.
"Finding enlightenment in Amsterdam." Moira hauls the van's side door open. "Hank, if you want to stash your stuff up there and climb in, we can get this show on the road."
Nervously, Hank collects his shoes, although he does calm at Raven's quiet See, I told you they're cool. Charles, well-bred as ever, gives Hank some space, and the unease melts into a flurry of making sure everything's stowed on the roof luggage rack (probably illegal, but Erik's checked the frame; it's sturdy) and there's room for Hank to stretch out on the remaining back seat. Raven commandeers the front seat – "I get carsick, man" – and that leaves the mattress and tie-dyed blankets to Charles and Erik.
The V-Dub, despite being only two years old, looks much older, its rear badly re-painted in dark blue with a virulently yellow and off-center X across it. "It was supposed to be the Swedish flag," Moira explains, "but I have no idea why." Inside it's ragged at the edges and smells like old weed and old beer and old mattresses, eye-wrenching blankets spread everywhere, a couple from Charles and Moira's apartment. Erik has to maneuver around crates of beer and Levine's bong collection before he can find a place to stretch out. It ends up, of course, being crammed between the back seat and Charles.
"Your legs really are criminally long," Charles tells him, and pokes a thigh where the denim has started to thin.
"I've never heard you complain about them before," Erik says complacently. "Especially not last night."
"That's true, I haven't. Especially not last night." The van is overwarm, and Charles's body radiates its own heat; sometimes Erik half-wonders if some of that heat is whatever energy it is that Charles's brain runs on, if it's his metabolism or weird psychic projection waves. "Some things," Charles the eavesdropper says, "are better left a mystery."
"New York or bust!" Moira crows. The V-Dub rumbles to life and, with a telepathic assist from Charles, lurches out into the traffic that's politely stopped for it. They settle in for the tedium of getting out of Boston, Charles with a book – Chandler, Erik had confiscated anything having to do with genetics while they were packing – and Erik with plans for watching Charles read and maybe, eventually, fall asleep.
This close, he can pick out the subtle freckles across Charles's nose and cheeks, the impossible blue of his eyes – layered, almost, translucent on top but leading down and down, hypnotic almost. There are hints of red in his hair, where the light picks them out. Raven had forced him into t-shirt and jeans for the trip, but the rest of the time he's in full professor kit, cardigans and practical trousers, and most people looking at him would see a slight and eccentric young man, and not look much deeper, down to the sturdy, practical muscle and bone of him, or the power that throbs underneath them. Everything about Charles is almost calculatedly boyish and innocent and harmless, enough to make you believe he's both these things, and Erik's pretty sure that Charles has bought into the lie himself. For a man whose self-confidence exceeds even Erik's own, he has his boundaries, his fears – not of himself, but other people. For other people, like Raven – Raven and even Erik.
"You going to be cool with this weekend?" Erik pitches his voice low.
"I'll be fine." Charles's lovely mouth goes thin with annoyance; they've had this conversation before, and he doesn't deign to put down his book. "Really, Erik."
"Those hippies threw you for a loop." They've had this out, in the sort of argument that involves more kissing than logic – and, eventually, Erik giving Charles an apology blowjob. "We're talking about thousands of extremely blitzed people here."
"I've been working on shielding," Charles says. He smirks, and one of those blue eyes slants sideways at him. "Anyway, I should be worried about you; peace and love isn't really your scene, is it?"
It's very touching, Erik says dryly. Pacifism? Togetherness?
It's mutant acceptance, too, Charles tells him, his mental voice bordering on irritation. Honestly, Erik. Just because it's not completely in line with your ideology doesn't mean it's completely wrong. Or stupid. He adds that last before Erik can think it at him.
Mutant politics is one of those things they've told themselves they won't talk about, but argue over anyway. Sometimes it's fun, and the prelude to mind-bendingly transcendent sex, their minds running together for some infinite space before Erik comes back to himself and Charles is laughing down at him and kissing him. Other times Charles goes brittle and silent, and Erik ends up in his bed, alone and fucking furious, wanting to break something and settling for sabotaging his douchebag neighbor's plumbing.
Let's not fight this weekend, please? Charles gives him the full benefit of his most limpid, pleading expression.
"Jesus Christ," Erik mutters, but presses a sloppy kiss to the crown of Charles's head and tries not to be too happy at the soft pulse of satisfaction that washes over him.
The Jewish community in Killarney consisted of them, a small handful of refugees (all middle- to upper-class), and thirty other men, women, and children who had been there from before the war. Of the refugees, many were professedly Catholic, converted as the price for saving their lives; they came to shul anyway, and sundown on Friday night saw none of them on the streets.
Erik had no notion of how the holidays or prayers had been observed in Germany; his mother only said "Things are different, and that is necessity," when he asked her about how life now and life then compared. It was only when the high holidays came and she despaired of finding anything truly kosher, or when she would laugh as they feasted on apples and honey and she cleaned Erik's sticky fingers, would he try to imagine what these things would have been like at home, in the places from the photographs.
Still, he spent most of the services meditating on how strange it was to sit in the small, bare room with its simple platform, when empty populated only by folding chairs, and see the richly decorated mantel lifted from the Torah, the glitter of the ornaments. When the remonim, the little bells, chimed, his mother would hold her breath and almost forget the words to the responses. The Hebrew, chanted in Rabbi Rosenwein's rough murmur, didn't fit under the bare yellow lightbulbs.
After services on Shabbos, he would eat his mother's challah (the best in town) and watch the Sabbath candles, and listen to his mother tell stories, some from her school or about her week, some from her girlhood in Dusseldorf. They were all small stories, of a family cat that had gone missing and turned up a week later with a dead bird for a present, a cousin who got the better of a cheating boyfriend, her trip to France. She would sing, and her voice (Erik thought) was beautiful.
You are such a serious boy, she would say sometimes. And Erik struggled to tell her how he felt, the sense of being in some anxious place between there and here, uncertain even as he held onto her for all he was worth, because what both of them were – what he was – could have them taken from each other in an instant.
They pick up a hitchhiker somewhere in the emptiness of western Massachusetts. Charles catches wind of him, popping up with a startled cry from where he'd been half-asleep on Erik's shoulder, and then a demand for Moira to stop the van now.
The new guy introduces himself as Darwin, and he's more than happy to take a ride. "You're going where I'm going," he says as he and Erik stow his backpack on the roof. The outsized guitar case stays with him, wedged into the space between the side door and the seat, on top of the beer. His shirt is done in a stomach-churning pattern of purple, pink, and green, and his jeans look like they might be cutting off circulation. Darwin might be okay, though, Erik thinks; his ability is instantaneous adaptation, hyperaccelerated evolution, Charles says, going starry-eyed and academic. Darwin edges away from him a little.
"Dude's okay, right?" he asks Raven.
"That's a matter of opinion."
"No dissertation this weekend," Erik reminds Charles, who subsides with a pout and retreats back into his novel, picking up where he'd left off and whispering the words into Erik's head.
He ends up lost on the long trail of words, not really following the narration. The unseen road blurs, miles into tens of miles, punctuated only by Raven announcing they’ve crossed into New York and Moira occasionally stopping to fuel up. Erik can't remember whose idea it was to break into the beer, but they have, and he and Charles split one. In front of them, Darwin's guitar replaces the radio, and he's not half bad, New Orleans blues and acoustic versions of Hendrix and The Band, the notes blending in with the perpetual growl of the van.
Time goes melty and strange, and it's not just whatever's left of Levine's smoking up in the back of the Machine; it's Charles, fallen into a half-doze and taking Erik down with him. Not much distinct filters through, mostly knowledge of how warm Charles is, vague questions as to where they are and what time it is, the welcome pressure of Erik's shoulder against his. For a moment Erik doubts again the wisdom of all this, but keeps his doubts about Charles to himself. They can handle it, if anything happens.
Doubts for himself, on the other hand – he has plenty of those. Amusement wafts off Charles; he's caught the trailing edges of Erik's thoughts. Thousands of people are going to be there, and Erik can barely tolerate a crowded room. The entire premise of the thing is the celebration of peace, and Erik has never been a particularly peaceful. (That's an understatement, Charles interjects drowsily.) There's music, though, and Charles, and other mutants who have found their way into one of the few human movements that accept them.
I still can't believe I'm going to something called an 'Aquarian Exhibition,' he says silently to Charles, who snickers quietly and drops down into another layer of sleep, and stays there until Raven says they're a couple miles out of Bethel and are going to have to walk the rest of the way.