This is not the first role-reversal!AU in the fandom, this is probably not the last either. So take it in strides and please, don't think too hard over anything that goes on. I am sure there are tons of little glitches and moments that don't make sense if you think twice about them. OTL
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Twist in the Line of Fire
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Part 1.
With '62 behind you, you grow obsess and want to change the world, but this is only the Present. You know you can't go far.
When he turns in his seat and stares out the window behind him, the children running across the green no longer comes as a shock.
Rather, it is almost a comfort at this point. But he has been unhappy all his life, this change, it is almost unreal on days like this where the ground isn't made of mud and the sky isn't pouring a sadness he won't ever wash off. But when he smiles, it no longer looks forced. Just a small tilt at the corner of his lips before anyone important notices.
Only he loses all that comfort when he turns back to his desk and his eyes find the stacks of copies still waiting for the government's pending approvals. There is also the sprawl of paperwork that awaits his own read-through.
He wants to sigh and throw it all into the fire that burns small and steady in the corner of the study, but settles with running a hand through his hair in frustration instead. He is pulling at the roots with no care for the consequences of the future, because this is all for one cause (a dream, my friend) where every mutant can live in peace and no one has to die.
There is already enough blood on his own two hands for this lifetime and beyond, he needs this to make things right.
Erik Lehnsherr stands from the chair, deciding a walk on the Westchester grounds will do him some good.
Fresh air, he thinks as he cracks his back and his spine gives a pop in the fading light.
000
His old chair is tucked into the corner to make room for the new one and his desk is no longer a sprawling mess of partly graded papers and his own half-assed thesis waiting for three more months of editing and rewrites.
Instead, his desk is covered with blueprints, top secret documents with almost all of their content blacked out, and grainy photographs of government officials involved in his mutant cause.
He hasn't always been this way and his PhD in genetics isn't just for shows but he has learned (from an old friend) that hoping for peace never gets anyone anywhere.
Still, some things never change and he continues to drink tea like it actually keeps him awake. Instead of coffee rings on clean white sheets, he has teabags piling in the garbage bin by his desk. But no matter how much he wants to fall back in bed, there are still always too much to do. An endless list that requires his attention, and he prefers it this way, that way he doesn't have to think about anything else.
Not the fired missiles or the things that has changed since then.
He only tries to focus on the plans, and taking his bottom lip between his teeth, Charles Xavier submerses himself in the study of his Oxford apartment and doesn't get out of the favourite armchair he has had moved from Westchester until late in the evening.
000
No one calls him Magneto.
Except Alex when he wants to provoke him into a mock-fight where their powers go blazing and the sweat that drips can finally compare to the fire that burns in their eyes. By then, there are usually actual flames licking at their ankles and light fixtures that are bent into a tangle above their heads.
Sean says the name is too threatening, makes you sound like some menacing old man bent out on destroying the world in highly unfashionable tights. You know, like in those old comic books, no? Alright, moving on then.
Hank just reminds them these names keep their real identity safe from the government because it goes unsaid that they still complete missions even with the existence of the school. Not only so, but there are still mutant-focused projects running across the United States that receives direct funding from the government.
And Emma Frost just doesn't care for it.
He can count the students in the school with one hand and the number of people in the mansion with two. And for a start, Erik knows it isn't much of one. No, it is not even close to what he has once had with Charles but it is more than a zero and no one has had to die for this slice of peace.
000
He hasn't exactly been going for menacing when he first started out.
But by the time the public takes notice of their work, Professor X has more or less became The Professor. And even Raven has been surprised at how threatening it sounds when she poured over the newspaper reporting their 'terrorist activities.'
Charles wants to argue but they all know he doesn't care enough because a few mindwipes and Azazel's teleportation, they are literally invisible if they have wanted but they only ever want to direct the right eyes to the wrong deeds. They need to make the biggest possible splash.
However, it has actually been Raven's need to smear Xs following their missions that really makes their name known, and feared by a large percentage of the human race. She uses what is available, sometimes it is paint, other times it isn't.
Mystique calls it a much needed custom for the X-Men, and this too has been her idea.
Angel snorts but does it anyway, enjoys the artistic flair it gives them. Azazel doesn't mind, he helps out when he is required and leaves the rest to the girls. Riptide thinks it to be an unnecessary theatrics but it is overly effective and it isn't his name being smothered into the walls.
So they follow his lead.
The Professor and his X-Men.
There have been other passing mutants but compatibility is huge for Charles and most mutant extremist can't stand to know that he is a marshmallow behind the name The Professor has made out in the big bad world. Most of the time, new recruits don't make the cut when they realize he prefers Charles and tea with a spike of whiskey when he is feeling adventurous or depressed, but they don't know that.
How English, they think and he bids them a farewell in his mind.
000
He doesn't talk about him as if he is dead. In fact, he doesn't talk about him at all.
Sometimes the children will ask but mostly it is the parents who wonder.
"Mr. Lehnsherr, who is Xavier?" They look at the pamphlets, stare at the name and ask with scepticism in their eyes. And even without Emma Frost there acting as a teacher, Erik can tell they either think this is a scam or he is a pedophile. But he keeps himself in check and doesn't bend their tool shed into an unrecognizable mess.
"The school, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, is named after the family that used to live there." And that's as much of an explanation anyone will ever get out of him.
Sometimes Sean and Alex will share a look if they are present, rare but possible, still they won't say a thing because they too have pretended, too many times, this school isn't build on a dead dream of a non-existent man that went by the Xavier name. Only, they all know he has been real (and his dream was once true and genuine.)
Because he is still real, even today.
They don't point out Erik's mistakes (can they even call it that?) and they don't try to change a thing, it isn't their place. Not when the year nineteen sixty-two has changed them all.
000
He hasn't mentioned him since the end of '62.
Raven calls it bullshit but only because she is his sister and is allowed to say things like that. But give him a bit of a leeway and the name Erik will follow wistful smiles and days spent brooding in bed.
The new recruits all think it but most don't actually voice their questions out loud.
And Charles pretends he doesn't know a thing. Because what is he to say to: Professor, who is Erik and why do you sigh out his name like you are a teenager and still in love?
He is the man I betrayed. The same one I can never forget. The reason for everything I do. He replies, but the words never really make it off of his articulating tongue.
No one else in the X-Men knows the extent of Erik is to Charles.
Everyone is kept in the dark, even Angel and Azazel and Riptide and they have decided they know enough because it isn't hard to piece together broken shards for a bigger picture. But the job is hazardous, Charles knows, he has never came out of a memory unscathed.
There are usually bloody fingertips when you try to put pieces that don't match together.
However, only Raven recognizes what he means to him and that is just because she has been there since the start. She wants to laugh and cry with him on days the chess set gets pulled out of its hiding place (at the back of his dresser, hidden beneath all the cardigans he doesn't wear anymore.) She also wants to tear apart his dream of compromise because their goals have evolved so far, neither resembles the other any longer.
But she doesn't say it out loud and he pretends his telepathy still applies to everyone but her.
000
There are reasons Erik doesn't like children and the very first one is that they are not miniature adults.
They are special and require a different set of absolutely everything to deal with. Kids have ideals he has never been able to wrap his head around. Erik has tried to look to Emma Frost, as the only woman in the house and all, for any indication of a comforting figure but she only raises a perfect brow at him and turns back to her crystal nails.
He doesn't know why he keeps her around.
Beast attempts to help but Erik quickly realizes that children is second to girls on a list of things Hank McCoy has a hard time understanding. And after the third test tube crashes to the floor of the lab, Erik grabs Scott off of Hank's blue furry back and takes him to his equally destructive brother.
His best hope is Sean Cassidy but when he catches the teen wandering in from the grounds with his pupils blown wide and his shirt cuffs smelling of cigarette smoke, Erik tries not to think because it is hardly indication what Sean has been doing.
But his problems never really end, not when Ororo Monroe, the little orphan girl Emma has found, joins the school. And unfortunately (or is it fortunately? Alex is betting on little Ororo having a secret or not so secret death wish) she has taken a liking to him.
Erik narrows his eyes but the child with a head of shocking white keeps coming at him, tiny feet padding against the wooden floors.
"Mr. L," Ororo starts, voice delicate and soft because Lehnsherr has proven to be too difficult for her still even if she is almost seve and can call a storm over the house in her afternoon naps, "I can't sleep…"
She doesn't look ashamed, not the way he would be if he were ever to admit a similar weakness.
And he knows he should tell her she is always welcomed to stay in his room. But he is nearing thirty and having an eight years old child in your bed seems just a little creepy.
"C'mere." He stands up and gestures at her to follow him to the kitchen where he will warm her a cup of milk and give it a splash of honey. Because that has been what his mother has once done for him, or so Charles once reminded him.
000
It is the feeling of simply knowing.
Both a security blanket and a whispered promise from a father long dead that nothing can go wrong. But no one ever tells the truth, because things always go bad.
That's why Charles likes it back in Oxford where nothing has changed. The undergraduates are still drinking away their early evenings, downing bottles after bottles of alcohol that taste more like piss than anything really. And he would know, he has drank all that and more between the time he spent on his thesis and the times he spent fighting off alcohol poisoning in some girl's bathroom.
The sidewalks in Oxford are still made of horrible cobblestones that hurt the bottom of his feet and he still has no need to look up at the sky to know that it'll rain no matter how bright the sun is shinning right now. And he loves it.
Along side of almost-white sand beneath his feet, soft rolling waves and the hate in their heads, it is completely understandable when he says he loathes surprises now.
He rather be on his knees with the ground covered in glass.
Charles? She is out in the living room and through her eyes, he can see her blue fingers clutching at several sheets of intelligence they have gathered before parting from the United States. I know this isn't a priority but something seems off.
Charles Xavier gets up off of his seat with a soft sigh that escapes his lips. Comin' Raven.
In the past, he will be staggering through the hallways drunk or tired to the bone. In the present, he has a mission burnt out in front of him, he can't afford to play dumb, not when he does no one any good.
The papers speak of the war (from their childhood) and superindividuals who never made it back home.
"We need to know more about this, Raven, something isn't right."
Charles' stomach turns.
000
In 1962, the world becomes painfully aware of a different kind of truth.
One that has the streets running high with paranoia, crowds buzzing with a nervous energy because it is as astonishing as it is frightening. How one subspecies of people, and that word is used loosely because there is nothing exactly for it as of now, can live among another for this long without being known, (and exposed to scrutiny and hate for the rest of their lives, Charles would like to add.)
It unfolds, quietly, before the dreaded boom comes to sound.
The Brotherhood doesn't make a statement, not out loud at the world at any rate. They keep their eyes on the government and the X-Men but neither are they damage control.
To the world, as in the human population because mutants are still spread thin and scarce in cities all over the earth, there is no difference between the two of them.
The only distinction they make is that they are different.
And that only ever conjures fear to rise until a point where they raise their weapons to retaliate back. To them, the X-Men are capable of terrorist activities, of capturing government officials to make examples out of while the Brotherhood is a secret-organization they still don't quite understand.
In one circumstance, they are breaking down abandoned buildings (no one sees the mutants they take back), in another, they have their powers pointing back at the X-Men, forcing them back the way they came.
And it is the unknown aspect of the Brotherhood that places them under watchful eyes, not hate, no not yet, not when they still have the X-Men around.
To the mutants, there are sides to choose but neither group is forcing a hand on them to pick, and so they quietly wait for the moment because it will come and when it does, their feelings won't matter one bit.
And so it does.
The first time the Brotherhood clashes with the X-Men, they are all prepared. The government has their guns drawn but lowered if only to see the two biggest problems they have on their hands burn each other out.
But one can bend metal and the other is the Professor X.
Their hopes aren't high despite their want to just pull, pull, pull those triggers until everything is down on the ground.
000
"Give us three hours if we don't contact you first, same location as the archives bureau you drop us at."
The teleporter nods at him and he takes Raven's hand in his.
"On a count of three, Azazel."
One, two, three. It happens in their heads just as their physical selves disappear in the wind.
He opens his eyes to grey concrete walls and white florescent lights above his head, it reminds him of his time with the CIA and the implications shut down before he can think of anything from before. He is glad, Erik is a distraction he doesn't need in here.
The noise in his head is still the same, the subtle buzzing of the human mind. But.
Something is wrong.
He glances at Raven but she is busy scanning the halls, looking like a guard twice her size.
Raven?
She doesn't look at him.
Raven?!
Neither does she feels his urgency, she is still thinking about her cover and whether she has out done herself this time again.
"Raven!"
She snaps her head to look at him with narrowed eyes and gives a wild little gesture at her temple, like he is insane for speaking up with fear creeping along every nerve now that his only advantage is limited. He shakes his head, frantic at the rate she is walking over to him in wide strides.
"I can't," he hisses in her ear, "they've done something to the place, it's sort of telepathy-proof."
"Sort-of?"
"It doesn't let me extend too far, not the whole place anyway. I can still read their minds but I can't affect them. I was speaking to you in your head but you didn't hear a thing…" It's not quite telepath-proof but it does affect his powers and oh, are the humans learning.
They both stand stunned before Raven finally breathes out, a soft "oh god, no" that doesn't go well with the guard's menacing scowl.
"Yeah, I can't even get Azazel in here."
"Shit. We have to leave."
"No," he shakes his head, mind turning in the face of her fear, "we've come too far…You're my cover now, Mystique."
He gives her an exasperated smile and she makes the best out of it.
000
Charles hates the stark contrast between black and white because he believes the world exists in shades of grey. There is right, and there is wrong, but there are also a whole spectrum of truth and circumstances that makes the difference.
So when he is shaking on his feet, it isn't fear that has him gripped by the throat, it is a certain horror that sinks deep within the bone.
It's a little like hunting, he supposes, or fishing and also gathering on his part because the mind is a vast place and it doesn't always make sense. A primal instinct. The first few officials he encounters don't have enough clearance to go that deep into the archives. The next ones do but most of them are thinking of anything but work at the moment.
But none of them know.
He isn't surprised, it is a sealed case from too many years back. He also has to know, he can't just let it go as though he has never known.
The door opens and a hand passes a key card through the crack. He hears the be careful she calls, out loud, in her head and takes the card, his hand squeezing hers before they both let go.
Charles waits, for the perfect moment, before he skims the mind of a trainee for the password and swipes the card through the lock. The light beeps a glaring green and he enters the archives. The boxes are placed neatly in rows on top of metal shelves, and he doesn't imagine how easy it will be for Erik to bring this place down to the ground.
He shakes his head to rid the thoughts of him and starts, knowing the general direction from the intel he has gathered along the way.
His hands don't tremble, they are only shaking in hate and misbelieve at the past.
Because mutants have always existed and Charles Xavier hasn't been the first one to try to find them or use them in an attempt to protect his home.
World War II's superindividuals are mutants.
Young mutants who have enlisted in the war, volunteered their powers for their country.
Instead, their government has taken that show of power as an act of defiance, a fear of the unknown before sending the small crew into the eye of the tornado.
On paper their goal is to drive out the Axis powers in the clutter of tiny countries affected, in truth, they are thrown into the crossfire with a promise to survive and we'll take you all, as heroes, back home.
None of them do.
It is a one-sided massacre that goes out quietly in a foreign nation occupied by Nazi Germany.
(It's a win-win situation for America, the war is over and our problem is gone.)
And when World War II ends, the case is sealed.
000
He feels angry, the kind that blinds everything in sight. And he hasn't felt that since he has been inside Erik's head. And at this moment, he thinks he can finally understand, every kill Erik has made on his way to Sebastian Shaw.
All justifiable in the twisted truth.
And it doesn't matter that none of these men in the building has any idea what their government has done decades back into the past, it only matters that someone here once knew and it is still a secret now.
Somehow, he can't stand for that. (Maybe, that day back in October of 1962, Erik gave him his mind set and it was only beginning to show now.)
He doesn't have the power back then to save Erik, he isn't about to ignore this now.
Three hours passes in a blur. And when Raven pulls him away from the archives, she knows there'll be hell to pay for what Charles has seen. She can tell from the way he is looking at her, like she is the most precious thing in the world.
(It will be a mercy if you killed, Raven tells him many years later. Because you, Charles, you are not cruel or brave enough to send them on their way. They all end up screaming in their heads, wanting to die instead.
Yes, he replies with a thin smile worn through the years, having heard every echoing scream resonating back inside his head, it'll take a miracle to unscramble their brains now.
And then Erik finds her.
He still can't tell whether they have discovered a miracle or a disaster in the making.)
Azazel appears in a whirlwind of black and red on the exact tick of the clock.
"Bring Riptide back, I want this place destroyed."
000
When the Brotherhood intervenes, it is not entirely too late, but the damage can be seen.
The south end of the building has been demolished, chunks of concrete ripped out from the ground. The trees in the surroundings are broken off, branches snapping in the sudden storm. And this is a declaration of war, if not anything else.
People don't take well to destruction.
And Charles' telepathy has nothing against guns.
Erik can't see him get hurt one more time. Even if he is the one to hold him down, anger rising, disbelief burning in their eyes, there are just some things that must be done.
"What did you do?" Magneto looks at the slump in the breathing bodies, heart stunningly still in the face of one Charles Xavier.
"I did what you'd have done in my place."
The ceiling is gone from above their heads, a white-washed sky looks down at them.
Blinking slowly, Charles hands over all the proof he wants but cannot destroy, the other is hesitant but by the flash of surprise shadowed over by anger that passes in his eyes, Charles feels satisfied, like this is confirmation for all that he has done, and it is the right thing, nothing can convince him of otherwise.
"…They didn't know anything."
Erik's voice breaks but Magneto's don't, he only sounds betrayed. Again.
"Ignorance isn't a justification," Professor X says, hands red with fresh blood that isn't his, "and now they know."
But that is all just theoretical, Charles doesn't kill.
He does much worse.
000
A dying man groans, wanting to die.
"There is a war coming at the rate you are going."
Charles flinches at the steel in his voice, like he is stating a fact. And Erik prays he isn't, but the truth is shining through. They can't hide much longer.
"A war that I am going to win." He doesn't tell him not to worry but reassurance is never what they need. "We'll be safe, Erik." I'll keep you safe.
"Safety has no place in the world that you have in mind. This is all wrong, what you are doing, killing innocent men who knew nothing."
"Don't force my hand in this, my friend."
Charles steps back, sky-eyes narrowing back at him.
"No one held a gun to your head."
And it is only courtesy, a reminder of what they once had, that Erik doesn't hold him in place with the metal strewn in the ruins around them. Charles shakes his head, proves him wrong, and says.
"They did much worst than that."
And Erik chases him out into open where the dying can finally die in peace.
000
He tells himself that you don't wake up one day with the ability to hurt the ones you love. So the fighting will always be a little different when it comes to the X-Men, or really just Charles and Raven. (Because they made a difference in the past, they meant something besides danger and a primal need to get away.)
"Raven."
She levels out her gaze and manages to look indifferent. She can tell, he is impressed. And Magneto is probably still much more powerful than her but she has growth on her side, Azazel's training hasn't been for nothing, she hopes.
Her voice hardens and she is proud when she manages to pull that soft and quiet pleasecomebacktohim from falling off the tip of her tongue.
"It's Mystique, only Charles gets to call me that."
"… Fair enough."
He doesn't smile but she knows, it's close. This also doesn't mean she doesn't want to thank him, because she does.
"… I'm glad for that night, helped me out, a lot. But." She looks up at him, looks at the lack of change from the night he has given her the reassurance she needs to carry through until now, standing before him, blue and eyes a liquid gold. "Charles is my brother and I'll stand by him."
"Understandably. So it comes." Erik beckons a metal beam to his hands. "I'm against killing those weaker than me, not hurting those that wants to hurt me in return."
Raven smiles as Mystique cracks her knuckles, blue fingers flexing.
"I'm not entirely helpless either."
And then she launches herself at him.
000
He doesn't know how it comes to this but they are still fighting one on one, like this has been something fair from the start. And it isn't, hasn't been since the day they have been born with the X-gene in their DNA.
"Such a shame, isn't it?"
She continues to smile but the diamond shell is already glinting and no matter what she says, Charles can't do a thing in return, at least not in the way he wants to. And he wants her on her knees and begging for the pain to stop inside her head.
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
He stares at her but her smile only ever widens, eyes bright.
"That you aren't the telepath by his side."
For a moment, everyone but Emma Frost and Magneto fall to their knees, hands clutching at the sharp pain piercing through their heads.
Even the hidden human soldiers at the far end of the battle are pulled in, agony twisting up their features. Their guns drop and their fingernails aren't clawing into their skulls deep enough. Not enough to get him out of their heads at the very least.
"Charles!" Raven screams, eyes scrunching up as she tries to pull up her defenses, the ones Charles has personally taught her. We don't hurt our own kind like this!
Charles swallows and blinks slowly, her sister's horror echoing inside of his mind. A distinct blend of a hard-stricken fear and battling wills that are losing by a landslide against his own. He sucks in a breath and their movement stutter as they lay panting at the ground.
It isn't until they can finally pick themselves up to stand on two feet does he turn back to the other telepath. "You are wretched."
She smiles like it's a compliment and perhaps, to her, there is no difference.
000
Pointedly, Charles doesn't look to find Erik when he turns to go.
Because admittedly, he is a coward and isn't ready for the disappointment, anger, and hate staring back at him. But maybe, Erik has given up on him for everything he has already done and this is just that maraschino cherry to top off the list. Maybe, he doesn't even care.
His heart seems to restrict in his chest but he swallows the lump in his throat.
"We have what we came here for."
He doesn't look at Raven or the hurt that is still ringing loudly in her head, that angry howcouldyouIthought—
"I think it's time we go now."
XXX Kuro
There are three parts in total, the second is pretty much done minus proofreading, and the third is still under construction. Bear with me, it's been too long since I wrote something this long. :D