Disclaimer: I don´t own any of these guys of course. This is entirely movieverse, I never read any of the comic books.

Prologue

The rain.

A constant downpour, cold and merciless, soaking into already soaked ground, turning the paths into grey muck that crept into old shoes, up dirty, tired legs, made him almost slip.

That rain, falling, falling in an endless drumming of drops making tin roofs and barbed wire sing in a dissonant kind of music, unnvering him and putting him on edge. Not even music. Just sound, rhythmic in a strange way, but erratic. Tugging on the edges of his consciousness. Water on metal. Drip. Drip. Drip. Strangely, that was and had always been one of the most haunting memories. He could never tell why.

In his memory it sometimes seemed like there had never been anything in his life before the rain, nothing before the cold, before the rough hands of the soldiers, yelling commands in German – a tongue he had acquired as a little boy from childhood friends mostly but that was forever embedded in his mind as the language of his tormenters. The language of those that has taken his father and mother. In some of the most desolate moments, not even of memory, but of dream, there had never been anything before and after and he was trapped in that endless rain. That endless cold. The fear. The neverending, taunting drip, drip drip drip of water on metal. Fear and anxiety amplifying what he had until then not even classified as a gift. Over and over.

There was rarely any coherence to what happened. It didn´t play out with any proper chronology. No before, no after, just fragments. The screams of his mother, the intense jolt that he could feel through his entire body as his powers kicked in, bending the metal of the gate, the pain of the back of the soldier´s gun knocking him out, the thud with which his body hit the muddy ground as the last thing he felt… only snippets. Never a complete memory. Fragments. As if his mind could not bear to take it all in once again.

This time it was the last time he had held his mother, the frantic clinging of her fingers, trying to curl around his, trying to grasp and hold tight. "You must not let go, do you hear me, Eric?" He could clearly remember her eyes, the way she had looked like him like someone haunted as she had clasped his shoulder. "Never let go." She must have known… "Never let go, Eric."

She had been scared, so scared, for him. She had always been worried for him. Even before. Maybe she had been the only one who had known who he was, what he was. That thought had occurred to him later, much later, but in retrospect it made a lot of sense. "Never let go Eric." There had been panic in her voice, but had it been merely the sheer panic of a mother terrified to lose her child, her entire family, a mother who had heard there were selections right at the gates,…or the panic of a mother who had heard about experiments on anyone that was classified as different? Twins, he had read and heard later. Mengele had had a liking for those. Separated, taken from their parents directly upon arrival to be experimented on, to find out about their similarities, where they originated from, unspeakable crimes. Twins and…probably others, too. Had his mother known and feared not just for his life but also been afraid for worse things than death in the gas chambers to happen to him? Something worse than the hard labour that had killed so many of the weaker ones? Had she feared for her son to become the lab rat he had later become indeed?

His mind could not dwell on it. Never could Like was usual procedure in these nightmares it focused, fixed intensely on one painful fragment of memory, replaying it as a loop. That last time he felt her fingers grasping his. Her piercing, panicking scream as the soldiers and other people started to steer them away from each other. And then the connection was broken.

"Erik! No!"

He was awake with a jolt, not entirely sure whether he had awoken with a scream, but his eyes snapped open, realizing where he was and that the drip drip drip was not the sound of rain on barbed wire on the borders of the gates of Auschwitz, but merely the drumming of a soft spring rain upon the window sill of a hotel near Washington DC. He believed to still feel his fingertips burning from the grasp so quickly and easily broken but twitching them, he could feel her shift in the dark, wordlessly conering his hand with hers as she moved under the covers beside him. He could feel the familiar sensation of her scaly skin brushing lightly against the side of his body and briefly thought she might be moving in slumber.

"Erik."

She wasn´t sleeping. "I am sorry , I didn´t mean to wake you." His voice sounded a little hoarse and he wondered whether he indeed had screamed. He felt shame rise in him. He did not like to show weakness of that kind, not even in front of her.

Again she shifted, he reckoned she was propping up her elbow and, turning his head, he could see her silhouette outlined against the dim light that spilled in through the window. "It´s okay." she replied before settling down again, her head against his chest. "I wasn´t really sleeping." He welcomed her closeness. She wouldn´t always grant him that and therefore he appreciated it all the more right now. He moved his left hand and gently let it run over her hair, flaming red he knew, but of course he couldn´t see that in the near darkness of the hotel room. The rain drops were still singing their dissonant song, but were more calming than unnerving now, an irregular, soothing rhythm, just like her breathing and the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders as she rested herself against him.

"Why not?" he asked into the darkness, his eyes directed at the ceiling. He knew why. At least he had a pretty good idea. A good enough idea to know better than asking and for a moment, as her slender form shifted he thought she might turn away from him to face the window. She didn´t. Not this time. "We all have our demons, Erik." she merely stated quizzically, leaving it up to him what to make of that, her voice calm, neutral but with a bit of an edge that told him she was struggling with her own ones, yet didn´t feel it to be the right time to drag them into the light. He decided it might be wisest not to linger on it. It wasn´t a good moment for that. But then again, it never really was. But she was here with him. Here. Now. Chasing away his nightmares. Could he admit that to himself?

"We do…" he replied, his hand still stroking her hair, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling. "We do."

When he fell asleep again it was dreamless.