Author's note: Hiii. I'm sorry if anyone was actually waiting for me to update, I know it took a while. But I'm on winter break so I took the time to at least finish this chapter. I hope it's not so bad, life has been a mess lately and I'm not exactly happy with anything I write. But I hope you like it.
Zoey
It wasn't exactly a surprise that I wasn't one of those teenagers that went out every weekend. In fact, I barely went out at all. I always thought that staying home reading or watching tv shows or movies was way more fun. Of course some people thought that it was weird and that I wasn't fun to be around, but while it was a little bothersome, I didn't really listen to them.
So that's why today I was doing the same thing I did every Saturday night. Stay at home watching movies. I was glad that I had at least one friend to do this things with. She was always up for sleepovers and talking about books and watching shows together. I could fangirl about anything all the time I wanted and she always understood, and I loved her for it.
"I can't believe you haven't seen The Avengers, Zoey!" she had told me two days ago.
"It looks great, but you know I haven't seen anything Marvel related yet"
"You could start with The Avengers. You HAVE to watch it"
"Well, I was planing to... but don't worry, I'm sure you're going to make me watch it when you come over" I said.
"You can be sure of it"
And she had been right. When she arrived it was the first thing she reminded me of. So we went to my room and I turned on the computer.
"Mel, are we watching it now, or do you want to go to Tumblr for a while first?" I asked.
"No, no Tumblr right now. But there is something I wanted to show you before we start the movie" Mel said.
"What?"
"You remember Charles and Erik?" she asked.
"Of course, you never let me forget" I answered.
"Hey, I'm not that bad!" she said, frowning.
I laughed. "You are. You talk about those two all the time. What's so special about them anyway?"
"How can you ask me that?!" She seemed offended. Bad move, Zoey. "I don't know how you don't see how amazing they are... I told you their story"
"Yeah, you didn't even warn me about the spoilers. Thanks for that, by the way"
"Don't be a baby. I didn't think you would care. I didn't give you that many details anyway. But you know what I mean"
"Yes, I know. And I told you I think it's a great story, really. A very interesting love story, by the looks of it. But Erik seems like a dick, and Charles is... I don't know" I said, shruging.
"Maybe it would help if you watched the movie..."
"Maybe"
"Anyway.." Mel went on. "I found a totally breath-taking fan video about them on youtube and I really need you to see it. I feel like my heart has just been ripped out a thousand times over"
"Uff, talk about drama queens. Okay, show me" I said, not knowing what I was about to see.
She went to youtube and searched for the video. When she clicked on it I didn't really know what to expect, but the tune of an Adele song started and I concentrated on the images.
I was seeing Charles and Erik for the first time ever and by the time it was finished I was speachless. I was overwhelmed by feelings I didn't really think I would get. All I could think about was that I could understand Mel now, and I could see why the video had broke her heart.
"It seems you were right" I said softly.
"About what?"
"I feel like someone punched me in the chest"
"I told you" she said smiling.
"Would it bother you if we changed the plans a little?" I asked.
"You want to watch X-Men: First Class, don't you?"
"Yeah, we can watch The Avengers after that"
"Of course, I was going to make you watch X-Men someday no matter what" she said, and her smile turned into a smirk. "I'm so proud of myself right now"
"Don't be. I have a feeling I'm going to hate you for this"
"Oh, you will. I'm going to ignore the fact that the X-Men movies are Fox propiety and just say... Welcome to the Marvel world. This is going to hurt" Mel told me, giving me a pat on the back. I just laughed. But oh how right she had been. Nothing was the same after that.
Zoey liked to think she was, more or less, pretty good in all things involving mischief. She knew nearly three dozen ways to make anyone embarass themselves, prided herself on her ability to make her friends laugh when she wanted to, had perfected the art of thinking fast when it comes to needing a witty retort, and didn't need a joke shop to supply her with prank ideas. She loved playing pranks on peope. Thus, she thought, it should be painfully simple to solve the annoying problem that is Charles and Erik's seemingly unrequited feelings.
It turned out to not be so simple at all, but she did get the painful part right.
The first thing she tried was the classic Lock Them In A Small Space Plan.
She found Erik outside his bedroom, about to open the door, and walked towards him, with a look of innocence on her face.
"Erik?" she asked to get his attention.
"Hmm?" he said, distracted.
"There's a spider inside my closet. Can you kill it? It's really big"
"It's just a spider, Zoe. Can't you kill it?"
"Please, Erik" she said.
He just sighed and nodded. She started making her way to her room, knowing he would follow.
She did feel a little bad about it. And she knew she wasn't supposed to be doing this kind of thing, but she needed to do something. To help them to be happy. To make her staying here worth it. Maybe they would thank her later. Or at least she hoped so.
When they reached her room, she opened the door and they went to the closet, and Erik opened it, going inside.
"Where is it? I don't see it" she heard him say.
"It's there! Just keep looking" Zoe answered just before she took off running until she got to the living-room. She was just glad that it wasn't very far away. Charles was sitting on the couch, with a book on his hands. His eyes went up and he smiled.
"Zoey, did you need something?"
"Um, no. Not me. But Erik's calling for you. He's in my room and he needs your help. There's a really, really big bug in my closet and he can't kill it" she said, nervously.
"Oh. I don't see why he couldn't kill it, but okay" he said simply.
When they entered the room, Erik thankfully still hadn't gotten out of the closet, and Charles went directly there. When he was inside, Zoey closed the door with the key and waited. There where a few sounds of movement and then, talking. The talking soon became screaming.
"Zoey! What are you doing?" that was Charles.
"Get us out or you will regret it, girl!" and, yeah, that was Erik.
"I'm sorry guys! I can't open, it's stuck!" she said with a perfectly faked worried voice.
It ended with Charles breaking the closet door and Erik grabbing Zoey by the collar of her dress to whisper death threats at her. Zoe just smirks because, despite it being a failed plan, it was still funny.
Next, she tries the old Umbrella Plan. This one goes marginally better but still fails to produce the correct results. She waits for a rainy day (which wasn't really that hard to find) to enact it.
"Can you tell me how's the day outside?" Charles asks as he sweeps towards the front door.
"Sunny!" Zoey calls after him. She waits a good twenty seconds after Charles leaves before dashing across the hall with an umbrella in hand. "Charles forgot his umbrella," she explains as she shoves the thing into Erik's arms, "Give this to him for me, will you? I have things to do, bye," and she's gone again.
From the window of Charles' study she watches the moment when Erik catches up to Charles with the umbrella already open. There's a brief conversation before they start walking down the street together, shoulder to shoulder under the umbrella to stay out of the rain, and Zoey barely refrains from doing a victory fist pump.
"Erik walked with you to your lunch with those agent guys today?" she asks slyly when Charles returns.
"Yes. He brought me my umbrella," Charles says absently as he starts shifting the pile of papers on the kitchen counter around.
"And?" Zoe pries.
"And what?"
She does not refrain from letting out a frustrated groan.
The third time she tries a more blatant approach.
"Tell Erik you're in love with him," Zoey says to Charles when she hands him his third cup of tea one afternoon. Charles proceeds to drop said cup of tea all down his front.
"Jesus Christ!" Charles shrieks, grabbing a wad of paper towels and patting his middle with them. "Why would you do that? You don't just say things like that out of the blue, Zoe!" He tosses the now soaked paper towels at Zoey's head, misses, and scowls.
"I don't see why not," she deadpans. "If you tell him your feelings he'll probably reciprocate."
Charles narrows his eyes, "It's past April Fools," he says and stalks out of the room. Zoey sighs.
The blatant approach having failed, she tries a slightly lesser, but still blatant, idea.
She trips Erik into Charles' lap on the last day of that month.
It's a pretty spectacular fall, if she says so herself. One second Erik's walking away from the coffee shop's counter where he'd gone to grab a few packets of sugar and the next he has his forehead against Charles' shoulder, one arm braced against the back of the couch and the other on Charles' arm. "Lovely," he mutters before struggling to straighten himself.
"Are you alright?" Charles asks, concerned. Zoe holds her breath, sure that this time her plans have not gone to waste.
"Just tripped," Erik mutters and stands, his furious gaze falling on Zoey.
"What," he grits out to her when they're out of Charles earshot, "do you think you're doing exactly?"
Zoe shrugs, "Same thing I do every day, trying to take over the world."
Erik gapes at her for a moment before snorting and going to get more sugar packets.
She's quickly running out of ideas.
"Charles thinks you're the best thing that's ever happened to him in a long time," Zoey says to Erik one cloudy day. Fuck subtlety.
"I'm sure," Erik replies snidely. He shrugs out of his coat and moves across the room until he's standing over where Zoe's sitting in one of the armchairs. "You need to stop," he says darkly, "It's not funny."
Zoe would disagree (because in her opinion this is the height of hilarity), but that's hardly the point. "I'm trying to help," she argues.
"Well, stop it," Erik frowns. "It's not helping at all, it's just . . ." He draws off, searching for a word before deciding, " . . . Awkward."
She raises a disbelieving eyebrow, "Is it really?"
"The tripping me into Charles part, definitely. The constant bombardment of lies about him, though, is hurtful," Erik states. Zoey's faint smile falls.
"That's not the point of this, you know," she tries to clarify. "I'm just-"
"-Not helping," Erik finishes for her and goes to his room without another word.
She stops for a while after that. Not because she doesn't want to keep going with the plan, but because she thought about what Erik said, and she realized that it would be the best for everyone. She never wanted to hurt any of them. So the next thing she needed to do was making sure that her frienship with both of them was still intact.
The two of them were on the kitchen making breakfast when she decided it was a good time for a talk.
"Hey guys.." she said, slowly.
"Hello Zoey" Charles answered, charming as usual. Erik just mumbled something that sounded like 'hi' and kept looking at her.
"I just... I just wanted to apologise. I never meant to make you uncomfortable or to make things awkward. So, I'm sorry. I know I go out of control with my pranks sometimes" she said, and Charles smiled at her. Erik didn't smile, but he seemed to relax a little, and he wasn't frowning, so that must be good.
"It's okay. I'm not mad about that anymore, well, I never really was. But you should control yourself a little. Some of them were quite funny, actually, though" Charles said. And she laughed softly.
"Yeah. I am sorry, though. Some of them were out of line. So, are we okay?" she asked.
"Of course we are, Zoe" Charles aswered. They both looked at Erik. He was silent for a while, but at the end he rolled his eyes.
"We're good, kid" he said, and smiled, finally.
"I'm not a kid!" Zoey exclamed.
"You certainly act like one" Erik said, still smirking. She just stuck her tongue out at him and everything was okay. Charles was watching with an amused expression. "Where did you get the ideas, anyway?" Erik continued.
"Oh, fanfiction. FrostIron is the best for prank ideas" she replied easily.
"What's a fanfiction?" Charles asked.
"What's a FrostIron?" Erik asked, instead.
Zoey wanted to burst out laughing, but she didn't. "You don't want to know, guys, really. Just wait until you meet Tony Stark"
And of course they didn't want to know. They didn't push.
Watching Charles and Erik play chess didn't turn out to be as fun as she tought it would be. They looked at each other too much, and it was filled with uncomfortable silences (Zoey was sure that they only were uncomfortable to her) and meaningful little smiles. No matter how cute she tought they were and how it made her heart jump at the start, there was only so much she could handle. She wasn't going to step in again, not yet, so she just gave them a soft goodbye and got out of the room to find someone to hang out with.
She found Alex and Sean in the living room and went to join them. When she asked where Hank was, they told her he was with Raven, and that they had seen them talking and smiling. She got very happy because of that. And a little proud. Sweet little Hank deserved happiness, too, after all.
She stayed with them for a long time, even when everyone else kept showing up and they moved to Alex's room, planning future pranks like hiding all of Raven's left shoes, ("Yes, only the left ones" had said Sean exitedly, "that way she will get even more confused" and Zoe had told him it was good idea, and that she tought she had heard it somewhere before) and putting pink paint on Erik's shampoo.
"I wish we could have found more people like you" Sean said suddenly, looking at Zoey.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I don't know. You're just... different. You're not a mutant, but you're nice, and funny"
"We like having you here" Alex added.
"Thanks. I'm sure not all of you like having me here, though" she said, smiling a little.
"No, we do. Even Erik. And he doesn't like anyone except Charles. But he likes you, we can tell" Sean said.
"I'm not so sure, but okay. You're still going to be happy when I'm not here anymore, which is great"
"No. I mean, well.. we're going to miss you, if you go. You've only been here for, like, 5 weeks but that's still like 35 days or something that we've been together all the time, and you've done some big things" Sean reasoned.
"Yeah, who knows what would have happened if you hadn't showed up" Alex said.
"You help us all the time. And you're helping Charles and Erik, that's got to be hard" Sean told her.
She hadn't told anyone about her plans to bring them together, until she realised that maybe telling Alex and Sean wasn't such a bad idea. They could help her and it would be easier. "They're a little stubborn, but they'll get there. Maybe even withouth me having to get involved. Who knows" she said in the end.
It was a little weird, feeling so accepted. It warmed her heart to know that they appretiated her. Not even in her wildest dream would she have thought it possible, to be called a friend by people she admire so much, and had helped her go on in difficult times, even if from far away. People she never thought she would meet, because it wasn't possible. But she had been here for more than a month and the posibilities of it being a dream were less and less every minute that passed.
She decided she would go to her room for a while, to be alone, to think. So she said goodbye, and left.
A part of her didn't want to. Thinking was the only thing she could do when she was alone nowadays, apart from reading. She missed music, and she missed the stupid tv shows and movies she watched all the time. She missed her room, her bed, all the walls filled with pieces of paper with quotes written on them. She missed her parents, and her sisters and her brother. And her friends. Hell, sometimes she even missed going to school, even if it was just because it was part of her normal life.
She wasn't really complaining. She loved being here. She was happy here, with everyone. They were like a family. But a different kind of family. Charles and Erik were definetly not her parents, and even if Raven, Alex and Sean were closer to her age, they were just too diferent from her silbings. Zoe knew she would be much more calm if she could just talk to them, know what they were doing, hear their voices and know if they even noticed her missing.
Zoey hadn't had so much fun in a very, very long time, and it felt great in a way she didn't know it could. Everything was so peaceful, almost perfect. And she knew she would cry herself to sleep for a while after she came back, because she knew there was no way she could come back here when she returned home. But that was the thing... she didn't know why she wasn't home yet. And it was a little scary. Maybe there was something she needed to do, maybe there was a reason for her being here after all. She wasn't sure.
She had been so deep in thought that she almost didn't notice Charles' voice.
"Zoey?" she heard, but it was on her mind. He sounded worried.
"Charles? What's wrong?" she directed the thought towards him. It wasn't the first time they talked this way, but something about the way he said it made her sick to the stomach.
"I wanted to know if you were okay. Something's happening" he said. She got out of the bed in a rush.
"What? What's happening?"
"They're coming"
And, of course things couldn't have been perfect for a while longer.
"Stryker?" she asked. She was so angry.
"From what I got from his mind, yes, him" Charles answered, Erik by his side. Everyone was there, in the living room.
"But this wasn't supposed to happen yet..." Zoe said quietly.
"What do you mean?" Erik asked her.
"In the original movies, Stryker comes to the mansion, too. He was planning to use Charles and Cerebro to kill all mutants. But that wasn't supposed to happen until much later. I don't know why he's here, or how, since he didn't have Erik's help this time" she said, thoughtful. "And I don't even know how old Jason must be now"
"Jason?" Raven asked.
"He's William Stryker's son" Charles answered. "You're right, I saw it in your mind that first day-" he paused. "They're getting close"
"What do we do?" Zoey asked him.
"We're going to fight, of course" Erik said. Everyone looked at him, but then Charles nodded.
"Erik's right. We need to be prepared when they come" he said.
In the end that didn't really leave much time to do anything apart from waiting for them to come, good thing they hadn't decided to run. No more than five minutes later they were there. 'They' being a lot of them. And they were about to get into the mansion.
Zoey did not look around at first, she just moved to get in cover. It was something Erik had told her many times while training, she needed to think about defence first and offence only after that, since she was the weakest one of them all. So she ran and plastered herself to the wall behind one of the giant furniture parts in the room. She usually thought that they were very silly, because why would you use such big furniture as decoration, but now she was more than happy about it. Everyone else ran in different direction, some of them standing on front (like Erik and Alex), obviously planning on attacking. Charles went to the left and stood on the side of the windows.
Then smoke started filling up the room and Zoe had no time to warn Charles when the glass exploded. He fell and landed on the floor with an unpleasant smack. She wanted to run to him, and she thought he heart Erik screaming his name, but that's when they noticed the intruders. So many of them. Jumping inside through the window, until someone broke the front door and more came in. They were all wearing black clothes, mask, helmets, they all looked the same, even their guns. Erik was tearing most of them apart, and hitting them with any piece of metal he could find. Sean was screaming, Alex was sending power blast, and Raven and Hank were kicking ass. But they were bastly outnumered.
Zoey jumped from behind her hiding spot as soon as some of the men were close enough. She had to be fast, she had to move constantly, and never give them an opening. The first man she reached was the easiest to take down, a kick to the lower ribs, then on the knees, and he was down, a shout of pain coming from him. The second guy was the smallest, already turned towars her. Zoey elbowed him in the throat, then grabbed him around the neck and tossed him over her shoulder.
She didn't dare think about her chances and how they were obviously trying to shoot at her now that she lost the element of surprise. She moved between them, trying to put at least one of them in the way of the other so that they couldn't shoot her, at least until Erik took their guns from them. The things seemed to be getting better. Their chances were getting higher.
She grabbed the arm of another one, twisting the gun out of his hand sharply, then kicking him in the back of his knees and hitting him on the head with the gun. Then she noticed that Charles was still down. She started to move towards him, but then she saw the needle in his arm, and the liquid coming out of it. She wondered if it had been there all the time and that's why he didn't wake up. She was still far when she saw the other figure outside the window. It was Styker. And he was fast, because by the time she realised what was happening he had grabbed Charles and gotten him out of the house.
"NOO!" she said with her heart going up to her throat. How could she have let this happen? All she could do was scream to get Erik to see, since he was too concentrated on the last few men still fighting. Then she felt power running out of her and the rest of the windows broke, trees seemed to want to get in, their branches growing larger and larger and grabbing all the standing man in black by the waist, stopping them. The glass was everywhere.
They all looked at her in surprised, not knowing how she had done it. Then Erik seemed to realise what was wrong.
"Where's Charles?" he asked.
"He's gone" she said, on the edge of tears.
Yeah, so that's it. I actually didn't know if it was a good idea to give Zoey powers. It was kind of a hard decision but well.. now you see. I'm sure most of you know where I got the idea from, but if you don't, in case you haven't watched Sky High, I just wanted to say it's a great movie, or at least it's fun.
If anyone's interested, the video Mel shows Zoey is this one: www. youtube watch?v=3vUkm3S32LI
And the fanfic Zoey talked about, the one she got her ideas from, is So No One Told You by Kari_Kurofai. And even if it's not completed and I don't think the author is planning on keep writting it, if you like The Avengers you should probably read it because it's the best!
Thank you to everyone who's read, favourited, alerted or left reviews. You're all great.
