A huge thank you to all that read and appreciated my first chapter, especially to bella who took the time to comment and those who added my fic to favs and follows. You guys made me so happy!
Again, always and forever, my love is for my beautiful friend, freak-outs companion and beta-reader Enrica, without whom this story wouldn't exist in the first place *hearts*
#2
Reaching the airport made their victory real, at last. Away from the battlefield, with a clear sky above their heads and the hope to get back home soon, the tension finally left their bodies and minds. Kurt, Jean and Scott swarmed out of the truck and onto the small military aircraft where they crashed alongside the walls in silence and soon fell asleep, huddled close to each other. That was how her first mission too should have ended, Raven thought bitterly; but so many things had happened that day, it could've never ended any differently. Peter hobbled up after them hanging from Moira's shoulder, mouth set in a grimace of pain, but he eyed Erik thoughtfully, as if he could implant the knowledge of their blood relation in the other's head with an intense enough look. The white-haired girl regarded Mystique with the same passion. Which left her stupidly considering the chance they might be related too – the battle had been long and hard, she decided, she was allowed a stupid thought or two.
The plane was ready to take off with Moira and Erik in the cockpit, and the shapeshifter wondered if she'd counted her chickens too soon. It wasn't going to be a relaxed ride.
Her worry was reinforced when Hank boarded the transport after all the others had taken a seat, again carrying Charles in his arms. Her brother was beginning to stir, but didn't seem aware of his surroundings. She wanted to sit beside him, to hold his hand and reassure herself he'd be alright, but someone had to take care of what was left behind. Namely a son with no father and a believer with no hero.
(X)
"That hurt?" Mystique asked softly sitting on the floor next to Peter; he'd finally rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes.
The boy shrugged. "Drugs wouldn't work anyway. And it's not like it's gonna take long for it to heal, I always heal fast." He was tired, but she knew this had to be addressed first. Her eyes swept the cabin for a moment before she said, "I thought you were gonna tell him, earlier."
He opened his eyes. There was a heaviness there that looked out of place in the usually so upbeat boy. "Me too," he answered.
"You won't have many occasions to talk to him once we reach New York."
The boy snorted.
"When I saw him on TV, ten years ago, he looked… different. More…" He visibly struggled for words. "There was so much pain in him when you mentioned his family to him, earlier. What right do I have to reopen that wound?"
It was Raven's turn to scoff.
"That wound will never close anyway. What right do you have to keep this from him?"
Peter started as if she'd slapped him in the face. Her eyes were on her brother, on the other side of the aircraft, but her attention was on the confused boy beside her.
"What if he doesn't want anything to do with me?"
"Too bad, he doesn't have a choice."
The boy pondered her words for a moment before adding, "There's not just me."
Mystique's head whirled toward him so fast she thought it would fly away from her neck – she really was tired.
"What?" she asked in much the same fashion she had after the first revelation in Stryker's prison. Did Erik make a habit of sowing kids around?
"I have a sister. A twin sister," he answered. "She didn't really agree with my decision to come look for Erik, and I didn't know if Xavier would help me find him anyway, so she stayed home – well, not home, she's away, at college."
Two kids. Twins. Mystique needed to sleep for a month to recover from that long day.
"Is she…" she started before thinking her question through.
"Yes, she's a mutant." He sounded annoyed at her insinuation, and Raven looked away, back to her brother who was stretched out on the floor of the plane with Erik's cape pillowing his head, too weak to do more than nod at Hank's soft questions.
"What's her name?" she asked.
"Wendy." He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall. The shapeshifter took note to be more careful the next time she mentioned Peter's sister.
(X)
The white-haired girl sat by herself, pride in her eyes, a trembling in her hands. If he'd been any better, Charles surely would've already formally offered her his friendship and a place in his school. He had a way of gaining other people's trust that had nothing to do with his telepathy. The sincerity and kindness in his voice made them want to follow him anywhere.
But he wasn't better – not yet, she firmly told herself – and Hank was busy taking care of him, and the other students were sleeping, so the job fell onto her.
She resignedly sat beside the girl, stubbornly keeping her blond mask before addressing her.
"There's a school in Westchester," she began, because she was sure Charles would have it rebuilt as soon as he knew, and would find some place to house his kids in the meantime – he was lucky to be rich as he was, she chuckled to herself. "For mutants," she added when the girl didn't react.
"I tried to kill them," she said.
Raven shrugged.
"And still they didn't object when you followed us."
"I don't know why I came with you."
"I do," she replied without missing a beat. "You know, Erik shot me, once," she said with a glance to the cockpit, where the man sat next to Moira, watching her every more while she piloted the aircraft across the ocean.
The girl nodded. "You were limping in Washington," she said. Mystique felt disturbed that she'd noticed and even remembered. I'm a hero. She really didn't like that.
"And he started this battle on the other side too. But in the end he fought together with us, today," she went on as if the teenager hadn't spoken. "And so have you."
The girl lifted her eyes onto her. There were a hope and a trust that Raven didn't want to disappoint, but didn't think she deserved.
"Mystique…" The girl said her name with a respect that made her self-conscious.
"Raven," she corrected, surprising even herself, and shifted back to her natural form.
The girl looked at her yellow eyes, bewildered.
"Ororo," she answered after a moment. And smiled.
He'd never particularly appreciated the woman at his side. While he recognized she wasn't that bad for a human, her genetics still made her a lesser being. An enemy. She could fight by their side, but at the end of the day she was still one of them.
He'd tried to be part of their world, he'd hidden himself, denying his true self, and for a while he'd even succeeded. He even thought he'd made some friends. But they'd turned their backs on him as soon as they'd found out what he really was. Humans were destined to fear what was different, what was better.
But not Magda.
Magda had been an exception, a rare bright spot in an ocean of darkness. He recognized Moira was another, but she'd still succumbed to her nature when she'd perceived him as a threat in Cuba. And how well that had turned out…
"If you are gonna flip out again I hope you wait for us to land," the woman said noticing his clenched fists. Her tone irked him, but he still relaxed his hands. "Have you decided what you're gonna do once we get to Westchester?" she asked.
The question surprised him. He could respect that she wasn't showing fear in that moment.
Still, she didn't have the right to demand answers from him.
As if sensing his thoughts she added, "I'm only asking so the others won't have to add you to the list of things to worry about; it's a long enough list as it is, what with Charles in that condition and the school destroyed…"
"Wait, the school destroyed?"
Had that happened after they'd left? Because sure as hell he didn't remember anything like that.
MacTaggert nodded.
"When Alex tried to hit Apocalypse and you all vanished, his powers hit the wall and… I'm not really sure, but there was an explosion. If it weren't for Peter we wouldn't have survived."
Does Charles know?
He felt an unexpected twinge of sadness for his friend – and maybe, just maybe, not just for him.
(X)
They landed on the far side of Xavier's property, covered by the darkness of the night. The kids were all asleep, but the shutting down of the engines woke them up. With no school to return to, Hank had contacted one of the other teachers to make sure everyone was safe and reported the news to his teammates: the students whose families lived close by had been returned home – for now, he stressed at the anxious look he received from the kids – while the others had been split between a hotel and a few emergency tents they had managed to erect in the school grounds for those whose mutations made them still too self-conscious or dangerous to be among humans.
"Peter is gonna need a hospital," the doctor went on. "But you can decide whether you wanna stay here for the night or join your friends at the nearest hotel."
He'd grown a lot since Cuba. He'd learnt to move with his natural appearance with a confidence and an ease he would never have been capable of, before, and that weren't present in his other form. And yet, his gentle nature was still there, in the soft gaze he directed to his young charges, to his employer and friend still too out of it to be of any real help, to the women he'd fought alongside with – not to him, though. The steel look he directed at Erik conveyed a promise of pain, if the Master of Magnetism tried anything the Beast wouldn't like.
He scoffed to himself, but didn't challenge his former student.
The teenagers decided to stay at the property to help with anything if needed, and in the meantime went off to search for the friends camping in the grounds, dragging a bewildered Storm along; Moira announced she had to return to the CIA, though she didn't elaborate on what she was gonna say, and Raven elected herself to drive Peter to the hospital. She gave Erik an odd look, but didn't say anything before leaving with the boy.
That left Erik with Hank and a blinking Charles.
"Where are we?" the professor asked noticing the plane had stopped. He tried to raise his head but gave up halfway there.
Hank bit his lip, unsure what to tell him. Magneto felt annoyed: no matter how childish his beliefs, Charles wasn't a kid, and didn't need to be coddled and hidden the truth.
"The school. Or what's left of it," he answered, gaining a murderous look from the Beast.
Their friend just frowned, puzzled. He turned the words over in his mind for a few seconds before panic settled in.
"What happened? Where…" He struggled to sit up, but was easily kept down by a gentle paw.
"There was an explosion," Erik answered vaguely. No coddling didn't necessarily mean brutal honesty; it would be just as pointless. "The building has been destroyed."
Horror blossomed on Charles' face. "The children…" he whispered.
"They're fine," Hank promptly answered throwing Erik a dirty look. "They're safe. Some of them are camping here in the grounds because of their mutations, while the others are in a hotel not far from here. The teachers took care of them."
It seemed to be enough for Charles, because he stopped trying to sit up and relaxed back onto the floor. His eyes blinked in and out of focus, but he stubbornly kept awake.
"I want to see."
Hank sighed.
"Charles, you need to rest. There'll be plenty of time to see what happened."
And to know the whole truth. Erik didn't need to be a telepath to know Beast was hiding something. For their friend's sake he hoped nobody had been hurt.
Though… He had seen Havok when he'd come fetch Charles, but he hadn't been in Cairo.
As if reading his mind – which he probably was, since Magneto had left his newly made helmet in Egypt – the telepath frowned and asked, "Where is Alex?"
Hank's wince was more than enough answer.
Charles closed his eyes and turned his head toward the wall. They pretended to not notice his tears.
(X)
The morning dawned cold and merciless on the ruins of a broken dream.
With all the dignity a grown man could muster while hanging from a blue anthropomorphic animal's neck, Professor Xavier silently regarded what was left of his childhood home, his eyes dry and expression grim. Though still pale, trembling from the effort of keeping his head up, his voice was firm when he announced he was going to call a construction company to rebuild everything as soon as possible. In the meantime, he would rent somewhere big enough for all the students to sleep, eat and study in, as if nothing had changed.
"I will help," Erik announced surprising even himself.
The look Charles gave him was so full of gratitude the Master of Magnetism felt uncomfortable. The red-haired girl intervened to offer her aid as well, and before sundown all the students had decided they would contribute to the reconstruction in their own way.
Peter insisted that he didn't want her to call his family.
"I'm an adult, I don't need anyone to sign for me," he argued. Which was true, but wasn't the reason she'd suggested it: if there was one thing Raven knew, it was that a sister should be near her brother when he was in the hospital. She hadn't, and no day had passed without her regretting it.
She didn't say anything, though, just sat down and patiently listened to him complain about slowness and boredom and how much he hated waiting – basically about anything but the pain he had to be in – for what seemed like hours. By the time the boy was brought to a room to spend the night he'd succumbed to sleep. Raven shook her head and prepared to spend the rest of his stay with him. Any time someone of the medical personnel poked in to check on the young patient, she shifted into the shape of a nurse and politely smiled conveying she had everything under control – she'd already been assured the break in the bone was a clean one and should heal with no consequences, after all. She couldn't afford to have anyone find out the drugs weren't working for as long as they were supposed to and realize he wasn't human; not when she wasn't in top condition herself and couldn't spring him out fast enough if anything went wrong with his caretakers.
Furthermore, she had no intention to leave him alone. It sounded silly, and probably childish, but she felt like she needed to stay. Some kind of atonement for not being there for her own brother.
Peter woke up every now and then, the pain of his injury and the itchiness from the cast making him too uncomfortable to sleep for long stretches of time, but went right back under every time with a few blinks and a sigh. It was… endearing.
Mystique snorted to herself. She was going soft.
She tried to imagine Erik in her place. What would he say once he found out he had two children? He'd just lost his family, a woman and a little girl he'd loved dearly, whose death had pushed him over the edge once again. He had come through in the end, but would the revelation disrupt his delicate balance? She had to confess – if only to herself – she didn't know him well enough to anticipate his reaction.
Still, she believed he had the right to know. And felt confident enough that he wouldn't break the boy's nose, at the very least. Anything more was beyond her ability to guess.
An elderly nurse came in the room and stopped short at seeing what she believed to be a colleague sitting at the patient's bedside.
"Just resting a minute," Mystique apologized sweetly. "I'm gonna resume my shift right away."
The older woman shook her head and sighed briefly before nodding.
"Don't stay long, though."
"Sure. Thank you," the mutant smiled while the other left and closed the door behind her.
Alone again, Raven resumed her musing. The night ahead was long still.
(X)
She must've nodded off, because next thing she knew Peter was urging her awake.
"We need to leave," he whispered, the words so fast her sleep-clouded mind took a long moment to process.
"Why?" she blinked, straightening in the uncomfortable plastic chair.
"If the doctor checks on me he will see something wrong with my healing – or, you know, too much right," he hurriedly explained.
Mystique slowly turned toward the closed door, as if she expected it to suddenly burst open and reveal a squad of soldiers ready to kidnap the mutants in the room. The thought sent chills up her spine. Looking back at the boy she was about to agree and help him up, but a closer scrutiny made her frown.
"You don't look right," she pointed out.
The kid was disheveled and had dark circles under his eyes, but that wasn't what made her pause – a night in a hospital bed didn't count for proper sleep, he was bound to be tired. No, what made her reconsider her decision were the deep lines at the sides of his mouth and eyes, the slightly dilated pupils, his short breaths. The kid was in pain.
"I'm righter than I'm supposed to be. Believe me, they'll notice," he insisted.
Raven briefly considered her options. If Peter was right, and the panic in his voice suggested he really knew what he was talking about – had something like this happened already? – they had to leave, and soon: while she was reasonably sure Stryker was still in Canada, he wasn't the only racist bastard out there, and if rumor of a mutant in the hospital reached the wrong ears the kid would be in danger. Her mind flashed back to Trask's files on his experimentations – Azazel – and her heart constricted. On the other hand, though, there was the fact the school was destroyed, which meant they didn't have Hank's laboratory or the infirmary: whatever they left the hospital with would be all Peter was gonna have until his leg healed, however long it would take, both in terms of drugs and doctor's words.
She was gonna have to trust his word that he really would be fine soon.
"Fine. But we do it my way," she stressed.
"As long as your way is fast," he replied without missing a beat.
(X)
Disguising herself as a nurse once again, Raven pushed the wheelchair holding a reluctant Peter toward the exit – "Standard hospital policy, kid, if we're not to attract unwanted attention you can't just limp your way out of here". She fed him a light painkiller she'd stolen, because a short-lived effect was better than none at all, and helped him stand with the support of a pair of crutches for the few steps separating the hospital entrance from their car.
Once she had started the engine and driven out of the parking lot, Peter finally deflated. He rested his head against the window, shoulders slumping in relief.
"You gonna tell me?" the woman asked after a few silent minutes. She was back to wearing the blond face she'd created at six years old to blend in in Charles' house.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he answered, and he might as well have just said he didn't want to talk. Mystique thought the kid needed to learn how to lie properly.
"So you just woke up and decided out of nowhere that mean doctors were gonna target you?" she insisted.
"I'm a mutant," was all he answered; he shut his eyes, as if that closed the conversation. But Raven had been a little sister for almost twenty years, she knew how to nag someone until capitulation.
She nodded, stopping the car at a red light. "But it's currently unconstitutional for a doctor to treat a mutant patient any different than any human one."
Peter scoffed.
"You agreed to spring me out, so don't pretend you didn't think it was a concrete danger."
Raven chuckled.
You still sound just like him, you sound just like Erik.
"But I'm a paranoid bitch. What's your excuse?"
That got a slight smile out of the boy, but he didn't elaborate any further.
"It happened before," he whispered after a while. The woman listened patiently while Peter slowly – with so many pauses they were at the school gates by the time he finished – recounted what had happened to him when he was a little boy; the momentary elation when he'd unexpectedly started running faster than all of his friends during a game of tag, the confusion when he'd found himself sprinting through the park in less than a second – he couldn't even see his mother anymore – the pain when he'd smacked his head against a tree he hadn't even noticed, so fast he was. The fear when he'd woken up in the hospital, a twelve years old boy with a concussion and a heart suddenly beating too fast.
The horror when his twin sister had seen him awake and thrown her arms around his neck, and next he knew nobody could get close to them, as if an invisible bubble surrounded the twins protecting them from everyone else.
The panic when later that day a man in a suit had come to take them away when their mom wasn't present, calling them monsters.
The breaking out of the hospital, the return home, the tears, their mother's hug, the confused crying of their baby sister.
The gates opened at the approaching car, and Raven was glad she didn't have time to reply, because she didn't know what to say.
Erik wasn't sure why he'd stayed.
He wasn't seeking forgiveness for what he'd done, as some brave students had dared to suggest – he'd sent them scrambling away with barely a glare – nor had he suddenly embraced Charles' silly way like he knew the telepath secretly hoped.
He'd just… stayed.
They'd started the reconstruction the very next day, under the still glassy but attentive look of the Professor. They'd managed to find a wheelchair so he could freely move around, but it wasn't the sleek customized model they'd left in Cairo – Erik tried not to feel guilty about that – and he was still too weak to push himself, so he ended up sitting under a tree examining the blueprints and directing the others. Hank had to physically drag him to the hotel to rest when evening came.
Their other wounded soldier limped around the construction site throwing Magneto odd looks that confused him – they'd barely interacted in Cairo, was it about ten years before or… what? – but didn't try to even approach him. He tried to pretend it didn't bother him, but the third day in a row he caught the kid staring while he was lifting a couple of metal bars to plant along the others he'd already set – Nur's effect was slowly diminishing and Erik found himself glad for that, though it slowed his work – he decided he'd had enough. He was about to – admittedly not very nicely – tell him to stop when Raven appeared at his side and put a hand on his arm, restraining him.
"What?" he sharply asked. The woman shook her head, a plea in her eyes.
Erik was more confused than ever.
(X)
The whispers hadn't stopped, though nobody had directly questioned him about his reasons. He didn't think they suddenly trusted him, it must have more to do with the fact that Charles had just allowed him to stay, paying for a room for him in their same hotel, welcoming his help, putting all their lives in his hands: if their beloved Professor trusted him – and for the life of him Erik couldn't fathom how – it was enough for them.
It was almost a week before any meaningful words were exchanged between the two – former? – friends. There was no chess set between them, no scotch in their hands, no elegant library around them; they met in the hotel hall late at night. Erik couldn't sleep and had decided to go for a walk when he'd come across Charles who was just returning from a meeting with the hotel manager.
"Everything okay?" he asked seeing the other struggling to wheel himself across the expensive carpet. It had been six days and the telepath was just regaining some of his color.
He had no idea what exactly had gone down between Xavier and Apocalypse, but its effects were lasting more than he would've expected – more than Raven and Hank liked, judging from the worried looks and mother-henning attitudes the two had been directing at Charles.
"It's been a long day," the other replied stopping in front of the elevator and reaching out to push the call button.
It was awkward; he wished he could ease the uncomfortable atmosphere between them, and knew he couldn't.
They entered the car – wasn't Erik going for a midnight walk? – and rode in silence to their floor. The whole hotel had been rented thanks to the seemingly endless funds of the Xavier family, so the students could be together and safe – hiding, always hiding – until their school, their home, would be ready to house them again.
When the elevator stopped, and Charles slowly pushed himself out, Erik found himself reaching with his powers to help him.
"Don't."
Magneto stopped. The other, a couple of paces ahead, his back to him, had his hands tightly clenched on the metal rims of the wheels to prevent the chair from moving. His back was taut, shoulders rigid, bald head straight.
Erik closed his eyes.
Again, he'd been the (not so) indirect reason his friend had been hurt. He should've known not even saint Xavier could just bounce back from that umpteenth betrayal. He remembered the moment on the plane to Paris when he'd finally witnessed the consequences of his actions; when Charles had spat into his face all the pain and the desperation of a man who'd reached rock bottom and didn't know how to get back on his feet – who couldn't get back on his feet.
He'd thought he'd left his old self behind when he'd escaped to Europe, but Nur had shown him he was still that same man. The enhanced powers hadn't been Apocalypse's only revelation: the ancient mutant had proved him that, no matter how much he ran, he was still the boy who'd indirectly killed his mother.
"I am sorry."
Erik started. Had it not been for the British accent, he would've thought he'd been the one to utter those words.
With what seemed like a monumental effort, Charles unclenched his hands and rested them on the arms of the chair, forcing his shoulders to relax and lean against the backrest.
Erik didn't speak. He lifted hands that weighted a ton and grabbed the handles of the chair to manually help his friend to his room.
(X)
Alex's funeral was held at the school. They didn't have a body to bury, but Charles had a gravestone engraved and set in a remote part of the school grounds to honor his student and friend; Erik found there was a grave for Sean as well.
From what he'd been able to reconstruct, the boy had been orphaned because of a stupid car accident while he was deployed in Vietnam, and his younger brother and only relative had been adopted by a loving family that had never liked troublemaker Alex much; they'd tried to keep them apart, too afraid of the older Summers – a mutant and a former convicted felon: he'd represented everything any decent suburban family should despise. When their beloved son had revealed a mutant as well, they'd found themselves asking for his brother's help, but the distrust toward him hadn't vanished – if anything, it had transposed to Scott as well, to the point the teenager now found himself with no family supporting him at Havok's grave. He wasn't the only one crying though: the whole school had loved the unusual part-time professor, and they all rallied around the brother who'd been left behind to show their support.
Erik held himself away from the crowd, half hidden among the trees, silently grieving the kid he'd helped recruit and train so many years before; remembering the outwardly gruff boy who'd asked to be kept in solitary confinement because he didn't want to hurt other people. He might not have known him as well as Charles and Hank, sitting in the front row next to Scott, but he felt compelled to attend the service: he was at least half responsible for his death.
After the ceremony, he watched from afar the kids hugging in turns the young Summers and then leaving him alone with the gravestone. The last to leave was Charles, who gave a last squeeze to the boy's hand before joining the others. The redhead telepath, though, detached herself from the students' crowd and turned on her heels to stop back at Scott's side. She took his hand, and together they stood before the marble slat.
Unseen, Magneto retreated in the shadows of the trees and left them alone.
