Prologue: Sober
It is eleven on a Friday night, and the pub is the noisiest thing Charles Xavier has ever heard. The music is loud, the people are loud, the thoughts are loud, and he doesn't hear what his fellow doctoral candidate is saying beside him. Joshua's thoughts are louder than his voice, though, so he manages to answer him regardless and gets a slightly too rough slap on the back. It seems funny to be bruised by bonhomie, but the pretty Welsh girl to the left is actually paying attention to him cataloguing her groovier mutations for a change, so it doesn't matter, and he finishes off his beer. He leads Anwen to the bar for more drinks, noticing for the first time the tilt to the wooden floor. Laughing at some joke she makes that he misses completely, he orders himself a scotch and her some white rum and thinks that his control must be shot because he can barely hear his own thoughts.
He loves me. I know it. My baby girl is the sweetest thing! He's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I can't believe I'm a father! Now if you'll just... Aha! Got it. Thank you and good night. Yes yes yes! I totally lucked out on that exam! Hm, he'll be useful. I should keep him around. Is his hand..? So the UN banned nuclear arms? S—stop it! Not a moment too soon, I say. I hope I can graduate this coming June. Oh! Please, harder, please k—
It takes the bartender slamming their drinks down on the counter in a hurry to startle him out of the sea of voices, and he has to scan Anwen to determine what she last said. Either it hasn't been too long, or present company is too drunk to care, and she laughs at his reply as they walk back to their table. A new song starts playing, people start cheering and singing along, and he downs his scotch in one go. The sweet burn chases bitter shadows into a pleasant haze, and they all rise to dance or sway to the cheery music. The words are slipping into his head, the lights are bright and dazzling, and all he can smell is eight kinds of alcohol and Anwen's perfume. He puts an arm around her as he sings along, and it spins.
The Diamond Gallery lives up to its name; dancers perform on glittering crystalline platforms lit from below with a bright white light that slowly elevate through the four floors, while patrons watch through viewing windows from private rooms surrounding the rising stages and call the service center to request private dances if desired. The woman he seeks owns this club, and her office is on the top floor, so he sticks to the shadows as he searches for the stairs in the illumination provided by the flashing coloured lights. He's in the basement now, and the performers waiting for the next platform appear not to notice him slipping past towards the emergency stairway. It is unexpectedly easy to reach the fourth floor unnoticed; the security is incredibly lax for an establishment run by a member of the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle. Several employees are milling around when he arrives, so he watches and waits from behind the door. Almost an hour passes before the area clears out, and the mahogany door isn't even locked when he tries it.
"Elemi Nightray, I presume?' he opens, checking for weapons as he bolts the door behind him.
The lady has a black pageboy and grey eyes, and she reclines on the burgundy divan as she calmly looks up and sets down the document she is perusing. At about five feet and seven inches with the hint of a tan, she perfectly matches the photograph and description of the Black Queen that he was given.
"Who are you, sir, and why have you come with such hostility in your heart?" she asks, curling long legs under her fuchsia and turquoise satin cocktail dress. She is unarmed.
"I seek Schmidt," he tells her, getting directly to the point. "Klaus Schmidt."
She furrows her brow in confusion. "I beg your pardon?"
He chokes her with her necklace. "Don't. Feign. Ignorance."
Elemi coughs and tries to say something, so he loosens the choke-hold enough to let her. "I truly have no idea who you're talking about."
This time, he draws his gun. "Maybe this will remind you."
He sees the fear in her eyes, but to her credit, she doesn't struggle, and her voice is even when she speaks. "I cannot confess what I know nothing about. The threat of a weapon will not avail you."
He pulls the hammer back, still holding her in place with her jewellery. "I know you are the Black Queen."
She blinks. "The Club? None of the Inner Circle have that name." He curls his finger on the trigger, and she quickly adds, "But only the Lord Imperial knows everyone's true identity."
"Then tell me: How do I find this Lord Imperial?"
"Unfortunately, as you might imagine, the knowledge only goes one way."
He tightens his finger on the trigger again.
"There is a bank," she says hurriedly, a slight edge of panic to her soft alto now. "He uses it for anonymous club transactions. All the Inner Circle members, as far as I know, have an account."
"Which bank?"
"There is a letter from them on my desk." She looks left to indicate it.
Still holding her in place, he walks over to the neat and well-polished desk to look at the papers scattered on it.
"To your right, in the envelope that is slit open."
He finds and unfolds it. It is in French, but the name beneath the signature is one he recognizes. Elemi is telling the truth. He folds the letter and pockets it, releasing his hold on her. He thinks to kill her, but upon closer inspection, her features are somewhat Semitic. Additionally, she has been cooperative. He heads for the door. "For your cooperation, I will spare you, but if you warn them that I am com—"
"I cannot," she interjects quietly, adjusting the black fur capelet about her shoulders. "If they find out that I led you to them, they will kill me."
Satisfied, he doesn't look back as he makes a swift exit.
It's four o'clock in the morning, and this time, Charles can't think past the throbbing. His clothes reek of alcohol, sweat and perfume, all stale, and the combination worsens his growing nausea. The room careens as he rolls gracelessly off the bed, and he manages to make it all the way to the bathroom before emptying the remains of supper into the water closet. As he slumps back against the wall to sit on the tiled floor, he notices his thighs are raw. He can't remember getting back, he can still see his mother lying cold in bed with the empty decanter, and it makes him sick all over again. The fluorescent light is too bright, but throwing up seems to have done some good. Gingerly, he rises to rinse his mouth in the sink. There's red lipstick smeared all over his ashen jaw, and his bloodshot reflection in the mirror looks too much like the one person he doesn't want to be. He washes his face and presses his forehead to the cold glass briefly. It's too obvious that Raven is back in New York. Whenever she is, he tends to forget she's not here to stop him as usual and lose track of drinks. He brushes his teeth and runs a hand through his hair before stripping himself of the foul-smelling clothes. Wrapping himself in a robe, he heads to the kitchen to grab a glass of water and stops short as he exits his room. Joshua is lying sprawled on the couch, utterly passed out and mind so blank he hadn't noticed its proximity before.
Well, that explains two things, he muses as he pads silently towards the kitchen.
As he pours water into a glass from a pitcher in the refrigerator, he finds his thoughts drifting toward Raven again. He still remembers the night he met her, rifling through his fridge for something to eat, the night he confirmed he wasn't the only one who was different. Of course, his mother didn't approve of her staying, but by evening, she forgot she never had a daughter. She had too much difficulty noticing black bruises on white skin through her whisky glass to tackle noticing an extra person anyway. Kurt didn't like Raven either, but as long as she couldn't inherit, what was one more fixture in the house? And if he ever thought it weird that said fixture was blue, well, he soon forgot that too. As for Cain, Raven had been there for a week before he noticed someone new living in the mansion, but on the rare occasion that he paid any mind to anything besides the pain and Kurt's attention, he simply forgot he'd ever noticed. In retrospect, Charles supposes he gave them a reason.
As the years passed, one by one, they all left one way or another, and then it was just him and Raven and a mansion too big and empty to be a home. But then Harvard and Oxford came along, and apartments were smaller. Cosier. New. No photographs of what had been, no could-have-beens strewn all over his mother's room, no empty clinks of glass and metal, or the ever-present hum of machinery echoing in emptier thoughts and rooms. In the hollow silence of the wee morning hours, he flops back gracelessly in bed —too hung over to work, too restless to sleep— and stares vacantly up at the ceiling. He supposes he'd known it was coming. Kurt was a bit unexpected, but with Mother, with Cain. Perhaps there was something he could have done to change it, if he'd only intervened in time, if he'd chosen to act. From behind his eyes, he glimpses flashes of dreams, whirls of psychedelic colours shod in blood and metal. A cold breeze blows a page of his dissertation draft off his desk as he winds up his old music box, and it occurs to him that he must be doing something wrong. This isn't how his story is supposed to end.
The motel room smells a little dank when he enters, but it's hardly the worst Erik has rented even in recent years. There's plenty of metal all around the room, the most important criterion in an acceptable resting place, and he sets his briefcase down on the bed. The sheets seem clean, at least. Schmidt, or whatever it is he calls himself these days (even if he'll always be Herr Doktor), has cut ties with many of his former associates, often fatally, and the few that remain have scant information. Still, there are subtle signs for the keen eye, and now, he's found the next clue in his hunt. Removing his shoes and grabbing a bottle out of the six-pack he purchased on the way in, he reclines on the bed and wills the cap off easily as he takes the letter out of his pocket. The bank's address is in Geneva. Stretching stiff muscles, he lets the coin in his pocket slip out and float over him, spinning it restlessly about his fingers as he plans out the next phase of his search. He won't give up. He must find him. He won't let it end like this.
