For my boo Charlie, since we shout at each other on an extremely regular basis about fic ideas and generally act as bad influences. I mean enablers. Or something.
XMFC/Bleach fusion. As a warning this fic is probably a little rough on the emotions at first but I promise that it will get better! Stick with me, this one has a happy ending. For real. Charles/Erik is endgame, I promise.
Blanket disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter title casually lifted from chapter 24 of Tite Kubo's Bleach.
Chapter I.
One-Sided Sympathy
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"Do not seek beauty in battle," Charles says as he opens the door of the lecture hall, pitching his voice loud enough to carry through the whole room. An immediate hush falls across the murmuring students, their attention settling on him. "Do not seek virtue in death. Do not make the mistake of considering only your own life."
It's dead quiet in the room now, the soft tak tak tak of his sandals on the hardwood floor the only audible sound. He crosses the front of the room slowly, arms folded neatly behind his back, gaze drifting over the students. Young and eager. Young and eager and desperate to prove themselves.
"If you wish to protect that which you must protect…" Charles comes to a stop in the center of the front of the hall, letting the silence hang heavily in the air. His own words hang heavily in his heart. "Slice the enemy you must defeat from behind."
The students shift in their seats, murmurs rippling through the crowd as the last echoes of his voice fade. Charles gives them a faint smile, turning on his heels to face them fully.
"These are the commandments that will be drilled into you during your training here," he continues calmly, the words coming automatically now after so many long years. "But I am here to tell you that if you apply yourselves to your studies, and work hard in your training, there will be no need for that last one. You'll be able to fight your enemy head-on, and achieve honorable victory."
That draws a few smiles and a couple short laughs, as it always does, and which Charles encourages with another faint smile. It's not a particularly funny joke, but it's one he likes to make every year regardless. He can only hope that by the time they graduate, some of them will still remember it.
"My name is Charles Xavier, Captain of the Fifth Division of the Gotei 13. Welcome to the Academy." He sweeps his gaze out across the room again, making eye contact here and there. This seems like a solid bunch. They'll do well. "Before I turn you back over to your teacher, I want to remind you all that the work and effort you put in here will most certainly set the groundwork for your future as a Shinigami. Death god. Soul reaper. We have many names. But we all serve one purpose.
"Some of you will join the Gotei 13, and be assigned to one of our thirteen divisions. One or two of you may achieve the rank of Vice-Captain or even Captain. Still others will join the Kido Corps or the Onmitsukido—the Stealth Force, for those of you unfamiliar with its traditional name," he adds wryly, drawing a few sheepish chuckles from the ranks. "And some of you will drop out."
Smiles fade. Everyone sits up a little straighter. Charles would be able to hear a pin hit the floor, were he so inclined to drop one. The room is an interesting mix of spirit pressures. Some of them he can feel, pressed against his skin like a blanket, ramped up with tension and the lack of control that they will all learn soon enough. It's a bit like standing in a fluctuating pressurechamber, the different spirit powers grating on his senses.
Charles takes a breath. He hates this part. "The most important thing I can tell you today, however, is to form bonds. Strengthen them. Treasure them. Everyone in this room is your brothers and sisters in arms. You will fight side-by-side together for the rest of your lives. Bonds are important. They're something that we should all fight to protect."
The silence is thoughtful now. They don't quite understand him fully yet, but Charles knows that in time, they will. He hadn't understood the exact same words when they'd been spoken to him, well over three centuries ago. He hadn't understood them at all until it'd been far too late.
Steady, he thinks to himself when his hands threaten to tremble. Fortunately they're still behind his back so none of the students see when he clenches his fists tightly.
When he's sure that his voice is no longer in danger of being anything other than steady, he continues. "Work hard. Do your best. I look forward to seeing you all again in six years upon your graduation." He offers them one last faint smile. "Good luck."
He uses flash step to reach the door of the lecture hall, opening the door and slipping out of the room before any of them think to look back. It always serves as a dramatic exit—he hears a brief upwelling of noise as the door shuts behind him, mostly small exclamations of surprise.
"Well spoken as always, Captain Xavier." Captain Jean Grey of the Ninth Division stands a little ways down the hall, surveying him with her piercing eyes. Her red hair is bright against her white Captain's overcoat. She's always reminded him of a tiger coiled and waiting, ready to attack at a moment's notice and turn pent up energy into a maelstrom of unbridled violence.
"Hello Jean," he greets her, giving her a polite nod. They're not particularly close friends, as the Ninth and Fifth don't mix very often, but he respects her as a colleague and they get along well enough.
"Charles." Jean falls into step beside him, fluid and graceful. Her spirit pressure is carefully tucked away like his own but it still prickles on the edges of his senses, deep and powerful.
Or maybe it only prickles because of him. He's probably the prickly one, hackles raised in defense, mostly because he knows what she's thinking. What she's trying to work out to say, how to pick her words so that she doesn't sound pitying. Charles resists the urge to close his eyes as they walk. He really wishes that she just wouldn't.
"You always know what to say," Jean says, taking him by surprise. She sounds thoughtful. The prickly itch of her spirit pressure lessens somewhat. "You're very good at it, Charles. You know how to motivate the first years, the sixth years, the Gotei 13—everyone."
Charles' mouth twists. "I have a lot of experience." He means for the words to come out neutrally but instead he just sounds tired, even to his own ears. He's carried weariness in his bones for a long time now and it drags on him, filling up the spaces between his ligaments and tendons and leaking in past his cartilage and replacing marrow as it weighs him down. There is no escaping the constant reminder.
"I know," she says quietly, her voice even.
"Doesn't everyone?" Charles shoots her a warning look as they step out the front doors of the main building of the Academy, into the wide courtyard flanked on either side by different wings of the school.
Jean chooses to ignore him. "The Captain Commander wouldn't ask you to stay on if he didn't feel you were still capable, Charles."
The prickly feeling is smoldering in his gut now, hot and sharp. He feels uncomfortable in his own skin and Jean picks up on the spark in his spirit pressure, glancing over at him. Charles tamps down on his power, smoothing his expression into a blank look.
"If you wouldn't mind," he says tonelessly, "I'd rather not do this, Captain Grey."
She's startled into blinking, her serene façade slipping for a moment. "Of course. I didn't mean to—"
"I have a few matters of business to attend to," Charles says, and at least he can still make his tone polite. He gives her a nod. "Good day."
He takes off before she can answer, flash stepping to slip out of sight. He bounds up onto the roof of the nearest building, his footfalls light against the tiles as he crosses the Seireitei, headed back towards the Fifth Division barracks. Fortunately Jean doesn't try to give chase.
That's the problem, Charles thinks as he leaps from rooftop to rooftop, fists still tightly clenched, when you're the local example of tragedy. He doesn't want to be handled like glass everywhere he goes but it's inevitable, even after 200 years.
Even though, privately, he still feels as if he's made of glass, liable to shatter in an instant.
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The afternoon sun is warm on his skin where it dapples down through the branches and while the breeze is light, it's just cool enough to feel soothing as it ruffles his hair, making the leaves overhead whisper frantically for a moment before dying down. Charles turns a page of his book, shifting where he leans back against the wide tree trunk. It's quiet here on the outskirts of the Seireitei, one of his favorite places to come to.
"There you are." A disturbance in the air, a dip in the resonance of the spirit particles that make up the world around him, and suddenly Charles is no longer alone. "Studying on our day off, Charles? I don't know why I'm surprised."
Charles marks his place with one finger, a small grin quirking at the corners of his lips. "Maybe if you followed my example," he says teasingly as he tilts his head back, blinking for a moment in the face of the sun through the branches, "you'd do better on your exams."
A snort. "I can outscore you in Zanjutsu any day."
"Certainly your skill with a sword is to be feared," Charles acknowledges with a smile, "but how is your Kido, again, Erik?"
Erik makes a face, muttering something under his breath as he steps further into the shade of the tree. Charles has to tilt his head back a little further to compensate, grinning up at him even as Erik scowls back.
"Don't make that face, my friend," he says with a laugh, "it's our day off! Come sit with me." He pats the ground invitingly.
"Move over," Erik commands, picking his way over a thick, exposed root. Charles obliges, scooting over so that there's room enough for Erik to sink down beside him, their shoulders pressed together as Erik leans back against the trunk as well. "You call this comfortable?"
"Very," Charles assures him, giving him a nudge as they settle into place. He opens his book again as another breeze rifles through the leaves overhead.
Erik makes a small, unconvinced sound but his eyes are closed, body slowly relaxing next to Charles'. Charles smiles to himself and leaves Erik be, reabsorbed bit by bit back into his book as the clouds drift by overhead. The Academy doesn't give very many days off, so this is—
"This is nice," Erik mumbles as he stretches, his spine a long, graceful curve beneath his white uniform kosode, before he drops one arm down behind Charles' shoulders lazily.
"It is," Charles agrees, and means it. Like a cat stretched in a patch of sunlight, full on cream, he is the definition of content. He's in his favorite place with his favorite person and an admittedly good book. The sun is shining. It's the sort of feeling that anyone could idly wish for it to last forever, he thinks, and he can't deny that he feels the same.
"I can sense you having feelings about this from here," Erik says, dry as dust.
"Well you are close," Charles points out, but he's smiling again.
Erik makes a sound that is usually accompanied by the roll of his eyes. "Read to me. And then later we'll practice Kido."
Charles chuckles. "You're in luck, this is an incantation book."
"Ah," Erik answers with the same level of enthusiasm Charles usually reserves for sparring, "poetry."
"Listen," Charles chides, elbowing him, and then begins to read aloud, his voice flowing with the words on the breeze and Erik settles further against him, much like an overgrown cat himself, and later Charles will despair as the details of the day slowly fade from memory with the long passage of time.
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"I thought about you today," Charles murmurs idly as he unfolds himself from his knelt position behind his low desk, rising up off the cushions fluidly despite the stiffness he feels from sitting far too long. Sean must have come through earlier—Charles thinks he can faintly remember distantly registering his Vice-Captain's spirit pressure at some point—because the candles are lit, their flickering light softly illuminating the empty office.
Charles crosses the room slowly, putting them out one by one. He's done enough paperwork for today. He has a habit of getting into the zone, lost to the world as his focus narrows down. It helps keep his mind off of other things, at least for awhile. It's inevitable where his thoughts always end up.
"I suppose that isn't news," he muses, extinguishing the last candle and pitching his office into darkness. He stands still patiently, waiting for his eyes to adjust. "I'm always thinking of you."
Moonlight falls in slanted beams across the floor, becoming brighter when Charles slides the screen door all the way open. The night sky is clear and cloudless, the moon full and round. The Fifth Division barracks are quiet tonight, and he can't sense anyone else about other than the usual two sets of sentries on night watch. Summer is slowly fading into fall so while the days are still hot the night air is beginning to grow crisp, and Charles shivers lightly as he steps out onto the elevated walkway of the barracks, sliding the door to his office shut.
"The new batch of first years all look promising," Charles says, barely above a whisper as he walks. His pace is slow and sedate; he's not in a hurry. No one is waiting for him. "You'd disagree. You'd say that that the Academy's standards have dropped since we were students." He can't stop the smile that flickers across his face, there and gone. "And meanwhile you'd already be picking out your favorites for your division."
His personal quarters are on the other end of the barracks in the east wing but he doesn't feel like retiring quite yet. He's gotten better at sleeping, over the years, but he still finds that it's just not something he needs very much of anymore. There's a garden on the western side of the sprawling complex so Charles heads there instead, stepping lightly and gliding like a shadow between patches of moonlight.
"I was angry, earlier," he admits softly. "I should apologize to Jean. She's been of support more often than not. It grates after awhile, though. I'm sure you'd understand. You knew all my moods."
The garden is a small affair, tucked neatly between two buildings in a small sort of alcove. There's plenty of greenery, lush even at night, and a small fountain bubbles quietly over smooth stones. Charles steps off the path onto the grass, soft underfoot. He brushes past a gnarly bush, ducking beneath a large fern. There's a tree in the center of the garden, small but sturdy, its twiggy branches standing out in stark contrast to the moon overhead.
Charles stops and stands still for a moment, breathing. He keeps his spirit pressure tightly compact these days, packed deep down inside himself but now he lets it unfurl, stretching out tentatively. His edges are still loose and frayed, old scars that will never fade. Anna Marie has offered more times than Charles can count to take a look at him, to see if any repair can be made to his damaged spirit pressure, but he refuses every time. It'll heal on its own or not at all.
"Would you call me stubborn?" Charles asks. He carefully withdraws his power back into himself, folding it down to where the instability won't register in anyone's awareness. There are plenty of rumors afloat about him within the Gotei 13, but he's long since learned to shrug them off like water. The list of people who know the truth of the matter is very, very short. "Or would you be just as maudlin as me, old friend?"
Charles sinks down at the base of the tree, leaning back against the trunk. His white overcoat will probably get stained, but that hardly matters. He tips his head back against the rough bark, closing his eyes—not to sleep, but to remember.
"I miss you," he breathes, the soft confession more of a weary sigh, and it's just as well that there is no one there to hear him.
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"And that," Armando says cheerfully as he sends another first year flying, "is why you must always think on your feet. Read the situation. Adapt to the scenario. Hollows are predictable at best but unpredictable at worst. They can take even seasoned veterans by surprise."
"How is this supposed to help us?" one of them snaps, glaring at him with the frustration that can only be brought from being six months into one's first year at the Academy with little progress to show. The first year is always the most brutal—it has a certain way of bringing to light all of one's shortcomings all at once. It's supposed to. If you can survive your first year at the Academy, Armando thinks, you can nearly survive anything. "You're the Eleventh Division Captain. You're known for being invincible. You're just beating us up."
Armando smiles wryly. It's refreshing, being addressed so bluntly by someone other than his Vice-Captain. "For one, it doesn't hurt to teach all you hotheads a little humility. You're not in the Gotei 13 yet." There are a few downwards glances at that, and lots of shuffling feet. He tries not to laugh. "For another, all of your enemies are going to seem invincible at first—until you figure out their weakness. Everyone's got them."
"Even you?" asks the first year he'd thrown. She's a spry little thing, wiping her mouth with one arm as she rises.
"Even me." He grins. "Though mine is a bit harder to reach than most, I will admit. That's why I volunteer to come in and give you guys something to hit besides practice stakes and each other. What's a Hollow's biggest weakness?"
"Its mask," she answers at once. "Everyone knows that."
Armando nods. "That includes the Hollow. It isn't going to let you get so close very easily. That's why you've got to learn to get creative."
That's when he sees it, a tiny flicker of black in the corner of his eye over the heads of the rest of the students gathered. He straightens from his ready stance, letting the wooden practice sword in his hand dip down as he lifts his free arm. The Hell Butterfly flutters over to land delicately on one of his fingers, wings opening and closing in time as it relays its message. It's serious if they've sent a butterfly rather than a messenger.
"It looks like we're going to have to cut this short for the day," he announces absently, flicking his fingers once so that the Hell Butterfly flutters off, his thoughts already removed entirely from the lesson.
A mandatory Captain's meeting, all Captains required to be present. He can barely remember the last time the Commander demanded all of them to be there—usually everyone is too spread out to bother. He breaks into flash step, dropping the practice sword and leaving the practice yard behind in the blink of an eye as he runs too fast for the average eye to follow, bounding up onto the rooftops so he can cross the Seireitei more easily. Something must be up.
"Alex."
There's a dip in spirit pressure and then his Vice-Captain runs alongside him, only a step or two behind. "What the fuck, 'Mando."
Armando huffs out a brief laugh. "I take it this isn't about the butterfly."
"Well—what the fuck about that too," Alex says, "but seriously. You shouldn't have let that brat talk to you like that. You're a Captain, he's a flea."
"He'll learn his place in the hierarchy of things," Armando answers. "I don't volunteer at the Academy to impress my rank upon them. I'd rather that they actually learned something."
Alex snorts. "Then hit them harder. You're a Captain, they should know—"
"They've called a meeting," Armando interrupts him, "that's what the butterfly was for."
Alex is silent for three steps, the amount of which takes them clear across the Seventh Division's district. "Not good," he says eventually. Armando still feels his spirit pressure spike, though whether it's in anxiety or anticipation is hard to tell.
"Might not be bad, either," Armando says calmly. "Either way, be ready."
Alex snorts. "You don't have to tell me."
"I prefer to," Armando says lightly, reaching back without looking to briefly brush his fingers against Alex's wrist. "See you soon."
"Sir," Alex agrees, but the word is charged, crackling between them and holding more meaning than a mere honorific. Armando's lips curl in a smile and then Alex is gone, changing direction abruptly as he heads back towards the Eleventh Division district. No one ever put much faith in Alex as a member of the Gotei 13, back when he was still young and his vast spirit pressure was a loose cannon, wild and uncontrollable. When Armando had selected him as his Vice-Captain no one had been more surprised than Alex himself. He's come a long way. Armando would have no one else, for more reasons than one.
Captain's meetings take place at the First Division's headquarters, where the Captain Commander holds office. The building is more towards the center of the winding, circular layout of the Seireitei so it doesn't take Armando long to reach his destination, coming to a stop directly in front of the long pathway leading up to the building. Unlike the other division's headquarters, which more closely resemble barracks, the First Division's is wide and towering, as befits the head of the chain of command. Armando finds that he isn't the only one currently looking up at the building.
"Captain Xavier." Armando greets his fellow, moving up as to where he's more in the other Captain's line of sight rather than lurking behind him. While it's standard for Captains to rarely cross paths given their duties as well as the enormity of the Seireitei, Armando can still only count on one hand the number of times he's met Xavier.
Xavier blinks once, drawn out of thought. "Captain Muñoz," he says with a slight nod, polite enough but certainly not welcoming.
"Have any idea what this is about?" Armando asks, casually undeterred. Alex likes to say that he could hold a pleasant conversation with a Hollow, which may be a slight exaggeration, but it's within Armando's nature to be friendly. He's heard that Xavier used to be the same way before—well. Armando had still been in the Academy at the time, so he's not overly familiar with the details.
"Not the faintest," Xavier responds. In unspoken agreement they fall into step with each other as they start towards headquarters, though they keep about five feet of distance between them. Xavier moves like a shadow, just there on the edge of Armando's periphery, fluid and poised but not all there.
"Been quiet, lately," Armando says lightly as they approach the building. "Maybe the Commander just wants a check-in."
"He'd call us individually if that were the case," Xavier says tonelessly.
Armando shrugs, smiling despite himself. "Maybe he's gotten lazy."
Xavier comes back a little at that, glancing at him sharply, a flash of blue that is there and gone. His eyes are cloudy at first look, distant and aloof, but beyond that they are piercing, terrible with directness. Armando's spirit pressure is nothing to laugh at and he is comfortably confident in his abilities but Xavier flays him with that single look, unintentionally or not.
The worst part, Armando thinks as he gives himself a mental shake, rolling his shoulders once, is that he isn't sure what that look actually means. Xavier is a wolf, injured and wary for it, prowling on just this side of tame. Armando might not be overly familiar with the details of what happened two centuries ago, but he knows enough.
"Pity they're not holding the meeting outdoors," he says when it's clear Xavier isn't going to say anything in response, "it is lovely out today."
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Xavier let out a silent sigh, the previously tense lines of his body loosening somewhat. "The Commander has never been one for simple pleasures," he says lightly, and Armando has to stop himself from smiling. It's the small victories in life. "He's more of a get-down-to-business type."
"Too true," Armando agrees easily. "I suppose work has to get done somehow."
The corners of Xavier's lips quirk up for the briefest of moments as they enter headquarters. It's fitting—a ghost of a smile to match the ghost of the past he carries around with him. If Armando looks closely he can see the cracks. "Indeed it does. I hope the council doesn't last long for the sake of my own work that needs to get done."
"It would be nice to get back to throwing first-year Academy students around."
Xavier glances at him again, so swiftly that Armando nearly misses it, but this time there's a different kind of spark there. "I hear they're quite lively this year."
"There are a few upstarts," Armando answers with a wry smile, "but every year has them. I was one myself, if I'm honest." He lets out a short laugh. "I was probably the biggest of my year."
"I as well," Xavier says quietly, startling him, but Armando has enough presence of mind to keep his gaze casually forward. The entrance hall of the First Division's headquarters is long, with thick columns lining the walls and a high, vaulted ceiling. "Though not the biggest."
"We certainly mellowed out just fine," Armando says even though he can tell he's lost Xavier completely, the other man's thoughts a million leagues away now. This is probably the point where people mistakenly start to push, and pry further than they should, which would account for why Xavier stays so guarded. It's hard for deep wounds to heal when they're constantly reopened by people who only want to look as far as the surface.
Xavier doesn't answer, not that Armando was expecting one. They've reached the end of the hall, standing in front of tall double doors that lead into the central council chamber. Xavier is tense again as he resurfaces from thought, his body a spring trap ready to snap shut. Armando can practically see the wolf's hackles rising; lips curling back to reveal sharp, white fangs.
He could offer words of consolidation. He's practiced enough with Alex, he knows how and what to say. But the fact of the matter remains that it simply is not his place. It's none of his business. He can respect that much.
"Let's see what this is about, shall we?" Armando says instead, reaching forward to push the doors open. They swing forward noiselessly on well-oiled hinges and Armando inclines his head once. Xavier is technically his senior after all, having been a Captain for far longer. "After you, Captain."
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"This is bullshit!" Charles exclaims even as he slashes diagonally across one Hollow's face, stopping the monster in its tracks as it bursts into nothing. He whirls around just in time to catch another, vanquishing it before it can even open its jaws.
"Never thought I'd hear you say that," Erik admits with a laugh, leaping past him to deal two ending blows at once in a deadly whirl of flashing metal. He comes to a stop, twirling his sword, and in the face of his grin Charles can't even scowl. "Damn, they just keep coming, don't they?"
Charles pants, looking past him at the hoards of Hollows materializing all across the sky with a chorus of unearthly howls. Below them the human city goes about its business, unaware of the multitude of spirits overhead. Humans have never been very good at seeing. "There's too many! There's no way they meant for this to happen during our training exercise!"
"Come on, Charles," Erik says, still wearing his brash grin, "these are just little guys. We can take them. It'll be fine."
"The last time you told me that it'd be fine we wound up hungover for a full 48 hours," Charles retorts, even as he shifts his grip on his sword. Erik's right, all of the Hollows so far are small, but that's beside the point. There are only two of them verses at least thirty.
"That and this are two completely unrelated events," Erik laughs again, eyes glinting from the glow of the city below. His profile is stark against the dark sky, his sword an extension of his strong, limber arm; the rest of his body all long, hard lines that taper into elegance at his trim waist, hidden for now beneath the Academy uniform's resolutely baggy waistline though Charles knows better. He's spent a great deal of time tracing those lines, committing them to memory.
Just looking at him has Charles' heart crawling right up into his throat to beat there wildly, trapped like a fluttering bird in a cage, and if it weren't for the fact that they're currently vastly outnumbered in the middle of a fight Charles would be floored with the sudden, overwhelming love he has for this single cocky, frustrating, wonderful man, who looks back at him with what has to be an expression that mirrors Charles' own.
"I'll race you," Erik offers, lifting an eyebrow in just the way he knows to drive Charles mad, "whoever gets the highest count wins."
"And what will I win?" Charles asks with an impish grin, crossing the distance of sky between them and turning to put Erik at his back so that they face off against the Hollows together. Erik's right. They can take the Hollows out easily. They'll probably even get the highest score in their class on the exercise, keeping them at the forefront of the pack. It's what Erik wants, it's what Charles wants, and someone has to protect all the human souls down below.
It doesn't mean that they can't have a little fun in the process, he supposes.
"I will win," Erik replies over his shoulder and Charles can feel his smirk, set into his words, "and the winner determines the prize."
Charles has just enough time to snort and then the first of the Hollows are on them and the rest becomes a blur of steel and teeth, a deadly dance of Soul Reaper and Hollow that has no doubt been played out many times before. Their victory is assured and comes swiftly, both of them exchanging smiles as sharp as their blades in bits and snatches of the fray, when time seems to slow down during a mere shared look.
Charles is never certain who actually wins that day because later after the dust settles and all the Hollows have been purified, after they've returned back home to Soul Society and the Seireitei and have turned in their report to their expectant instructors, Erik spreads him out across his simple mattress and takes him apart particle by particle, opening him up with fingers and tongue and then fucks him so slowly that Charles thinks his heart might beat right out of his chest by the time he comes apart. Their spirit pressures resonate to the same frequency as they pant into each other's mouths, a rising crescendo in a symphony that is all of Chares and all of Erik that they have poured into one another, keeping each other whole.