"Flashover"

The moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounding the static emotional charge you've built up through decades of friction with the world.

Hand-to-hand combat training went exactly as Marianne thought it might, though with fewer injuries, which she was grateful for. Moira had been the teacher, and more than one person had ended up thrown to the floor by her by the time the sun had set and they decided to call it a day.

Moira had decided that Darwin would not need any defence training, for obvious reasons, but would focus more on offence. She then let him attack her and knocked him off his feet every time. They would have to work on it.

Sean had managed to hold his own through - those schoolyard scraps had come in handy, it turned out - but Moira had slammed him more often than not (and Marianne almost clutched her chest in panic each time). She commended him on his quick-thinking and scrappy fighting but made sure to tell him that he needed the skill to balance out instinct. She had given Alex pretty much the same advice after Alex came at her with several hard punches and had nearly managed to knock her over, but he lost after she kneed him in the stomach.

"You learned in prison, I'm guessing?" Moira had asked him as she helped him off the floor. Alex, nearly doubled over as he stood up, nodded and groaned. "It's a good start, but you've got a lot to learn."

"Most of my time, I was in isolation," Alex said as he got off the fighting mats Moira had set up in the gym. Darwin helped him stand up straight, laughing as Alex groaned some more. "If I'd spent more time outside, I would have beaten you."

"Maybe," Moira said, rolling her eyes. She caught Marianne's eye and they shared a smirk, although a twinge of worry shot through Marianne as Alex mentioned his time in prison. Isolation? He was a teen. He should have been anywhere else.

Hank had been knocked down with little to no effort on Moira's part; Charles had suffered the same fate. Erik had matched Moira's skill but needed to rely less on his powers ("That's the point of this exercise, Erik!" Moira reminded him). Raven had managed to get a few hits in. Marianne herself put up more of a fight, mostly through dodging or blocking hits, though never landing one herself even when she could have.

"You have some technique down," Moira said, "which I feel you didn't get only from a book."

"I grew up in a mediocre neighbourhood," Marianne replied, and that was all she said as she stepped off the mat.

At the end of it all, they headed for the showers, and Charles advised them all to go to bed. It had been a long day, and they hadn't gotten any sleep the night before.

Marianne took a shower and headed for the kitchen.

It took a few wrong turns before she was able to find it, trying to remember the path of Raven's tour. When she found it, she was surprised - it was a normal little kitchen. It took up a whole room instead of taking up part of a larger room like in her own home, but it was still normal enough. For a mansion this size, she had been expecting something much bigger, much more elaborate.

But, no, although it was larger than she was used to, it was simple enough. There was even a small dining table and a few chairs set up.

Marianne started opening cabinets. She found a kettle and a box of tea, picked out a bag of black tea, filled the kettle with water, and set it on the stove.

She stared at the kettle, waiting for it to boil. She tapped her fingers against the counter. She should have gotten her locket back from her room, but she had been too focused on finding the kitchen.

This was the first time she had been alone since before Shaw's attack.

She took a deep breath. It was alright. She had wanted to be alone.

Maybe there was time to run back to her room and get her locket before the water boiled?

She tapped her fingers against the counter and stared at the kettle. She wished she could control heat.

She sighed and looked up at the clock on the wall. It was late. She would have her tea and then go to bed. Tomorrow-

(Tomorrow? She wanted to laugh. There almost hadn't been a today. There hadn't been a today for all of the people caught up in Shaw's attack.)

Tomorrow, things would be alright. Training would officially start. She had seen a phone in the library and one of the study's, so she could call the Cassidy's, talk to Henry, just assure him that things would be alright.

She noticed photographs framed and placed on the wall. Many of them were of a young boy, dressed in nice clothing no matter the setting of the picture.

Charles, she realized. They were pictures of Charles as a boy. She could see the familiar shapes of his face and nose, and his hair still curled in a certain way. He must have been about ten or eleven in most of the pictures, or at least not much older than Henry was now.

One picture had him a little older, perhaps mid-teen years, standing next to a blond girl who looked the same age - Raven. They were both smiling, but to Marianne, it seemed rather forced, nothing like the smiles she had seen on the two of them today and the days since she had met them.

Her eyes strayed towards another picture, this one of a younger Charles, once again closer to ten years old. He stood next to a woman who must have been his mother, though Marianne could only guess that was who she was. There was about a foot of space between Charles and the woman.

Marianne studied the photographs for a while longer, up until the kettle started whistling and she poured the water into her mug. She didn't add anything to her tea, since it was late and sugar would only keep her awake. She glanced back up at the photograph of Charles and the woman.

If the woman was his mother, she thought, eying the space between the two and the tight, uncomfortable smile on Charles's face, it would certainly confirm some of her suspicions.

She could have brought the tea back to her room, but instead, she sat at the table and set the mug in front of her, pulling on the string and watching the water grow darker as the tea steeped. After a few minutes, she brought the mug to her lips and took a sip. It was nothing out of the ordinary, she was just having some tea before she went to bed, just like she sometimes did at home.

Except she wasn't at home, she was in some mansion in Westchester, miles away from her home and her boy, expected to help save the world from a maniac, and she had just watched dozens of men be slaughtered right in front of her and she had nearly just died the night before-

She inhaled sharply and set her mug down hard enough some of the tea sloshed over the side and onto her hand. She shook it off without thinking about it.

She had nearly died - there had been so many who had died.

It was by chance she, that any of her new team had survived, that she had been able to push back the explosion and shield them. Just a chance. What if she hadn't been able to?

She remembered the charred corpses they had found in the wreckage of the facility, the unseeing eyes and gaunt skin of the ones who hadn't been caught in the explosion but killed by Shaw's men, the blood that had stained their uniforms and trickled from the corners of their mouths, the bodies hidden beneath white sheets-

The image of her family, burning and falling apart, forced itself into her mind. She felt a burn behind her eyes and in her throat. She drank some more tea. It was tasteless and burned her tongue. She didn't feel it.

Her breath hitched; her eyes burned; she was alone, out of sight, and she was tired, if there was ever a perfect time-

She heard footsteps coming towards the kitchen.

She quickly wiped her eyes, evened out her breathing, and did her best to go back to normal.

Just in time - whoever it was came into the kitchen. She heard the footsteps stop, and she looked over her shoulder to see Erik standing in the doorway.

She gave him a pleasant smile. "Good evening."

He didn't move. "I didn't think anyone would be in here."

"Do not let me stop you." She gestured to the room. "I'm just here for tea and then I will be gone."

Erik approached the kettle, still full of hot water, poured his own mug of tea, and to her surprise, he sat down across the table from her.

"I thought you would get an actual drink," she said. "I'm sure there is something stronger in this kitchen."

"I don't drink much," Erik said, surprising her again. "I need to keep a clear head." As if to show her, he took a long drink from his mug.

"I thought you would have gone to bed already," he said. "You looked tired before." He looked at her in a certain way, and she hoped she had wiped away the traces of her near-breakdown.

"That is not very polite of you to say," she said, raising her cup to her lips. Erik didn't look too bothered by his rudeness. "What about you? You went to Russia and back in a day, and I hear you took on several soldiers."

"I'm fine. I'm used to travelling, and taking on those soldiers was nothing." He leaned back and settled in his chair.

"Who was it you found again?" she asked. "Not Shaw, but one of his lackeys?"

"Emma Frost." Erik inspected his tea. "A telepath, like Charles, but she can turn her body into a diamond and her mind becomes impenetrable. But she wasn't a problem."

There was something that sounded like a threat in his tone, but Marianne ignored it. "And she's been taken to the CIA, right? She is in prison?" Erik nodded. "Well, that is good. That is one less person on Shaw's side."

"It's still not good enough," Erik said tersely. "Shaw still has too many allies, even ones who aren't mutants. He has government officials on his side. Besides, he lost Emma but now he has Angel. We may as well have just done an exchange."

"True." Marianne sighed. She placed her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm. She ran her hand through her hair. "But perhaps losing Emma threw him off guard, or at least enough for us to catch up with him."

"Not likely. Shaw always has a plan, no matter what. Losing Emma wouldn't matter to him in the least."

"You seem to know him well," Marianne commented.

"Very well," Erik said, ice creeping into his voice.

Marianne examined the tea in her mug. She itched to ask how Erik knew Shaw, why he hated him so much and why it didn't seem like just the animosity of opposite sides of a war. But she had to resist, at least for now. They had only just started talking.

"May I ask, if you do not mind," she began, looking back up at him to see his face harden, "why are you sitting with me, instead of just heading to bed?"

He stared at her. She took a sip from her cup and waited for him to respond.

"Is there a reason I shouldn't?" He asked matter-of-factly. She shrugged. "Well, to answer your question, then, I didn't feel like going to bed and having a conversation with you seemed like a better way to pass the time."

Marianne smiled. "Flatterer. You're no better than Charles."

"Charles flatters. I don't," Erik said flatly.

"Oh, yes, I see now. Charles flatters, and you stand by and look intimidating."

"Charles told me he apologized for frightening you when we met you."

The change in the subject came so suddenly Marianne did not know what to say in response.

"It wasn't our intention. I'm sorry," Erik said. "We should have known how it would look."

"You should have," she agreed. "And thank you for your apology." She smiled and raised her mug. He gave her a curious look but copied her anyway. They clinked glasses.

"Santé," she said before they both took a long drink. When Erik set his mug down, she asked, "What is your favourite tea?"

Erik blinked at her. "What?"

She shrugged. "You said you don't drink alcohol much, and you travel a lot. A traveller who doesn't drink should know lots of different teas, I think, from wherever it is you travel to."

"I go all over," he said. "Is that what you would do if you travelled? Study tea?"

"No, I would hunt down the best book shops and spend a day in each one," she said. "Tea would be secondary to it. Perhaps third. Anyway, your answer?"

Erik looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, but to his credit, he did appear to think about his answer. He said, "Peppermint. Best with some honey and cinnamon."

"That sounds nice," Marianne said with a smile. She glanced down and thought for a moment. "I prefer rosehip or orange. Orange tea is better with cinnamon, though, I can't drink it without."

"I used to take it that way as a child," Erik said. "I can never get it to taste right now, though."

"I wish I could taste things the way I did as a child," Marianne said, a little wistfully. "Nothing tastes the same. Granted, we were in the Depression, and there were a lot of us, so there was never much for us to have, but even so."

"It's more about who was making it for me," Erik said, "but I understand." He paused. "Do you have siblings?"

Marianne shrugged, looking into her cup. "A few."

"How many?" He asked, sounding almost curious.

She wished she had not said anything. "Five."

"Five?" He repeated, incredulous. He even leaned forward, staring at her in shock.

"Catholic family," she said as an answer. She studied her cup further. "I was the eldest. Do you have any siblings, Erik?"

The stunned look vanished; Erik retreated, pulling his cup closer, schooling his features back into an unbothered, calm expression. "No."

"Where is it you are from?" She asked, finally looking up. "Lehnsherr - not an English name, is it?"

"German," he said in a clipped voice.

Marianne nodded, studying him. His whole body was taught, like an elastic band ready to snap. She kept her voice light as she said, "Really? My husband had relatives in Germany. His family came from, oh, I think Poland, but they were originally German."

Erik made a "hmm" sound but said nothing.

"My father fought the Germans in the Great War," she continued, still sounding unbothered. "He would be having a fit, or rolling in his grave if he knew I was friends with one now." She gave him a warm smile before bringing her mug to her lips.

Erik's whole body went relaxed in his seat. Marianne tried not to sigh in relief.

"Friends?" Erik said, though it seemed like he was speaking to himself.

"I do not like the term 'allies'," she said. "It is too cold. Impersonal. For soldiers, armies, not a small group like this." She gestured to the room but meant the house and the people living within the house.

Erik tilted his head, considering her. After a moment he smiled. "I suppose I can't go wrong, befriending the one person to beat Shaw in a fight."

"No, you can not," she agreed. "Although, I could have done worse. And it was not that hard."

"I don't know anyone else who could make Shaw look like a fool the way you did," Erik said, a sharp, mirthful grin spreading across his face. "I only wish I could have seen it myself. And it is hard, beating Shaw in a fight. Even catching him off guard is hard. Believe me."

"You have fought Shaw?" Marianne asked, although she was not really surprised. She had guessed there was a deeper connection between the two than anyone would say. Erik fighting Shaw was the last thing that would surprise her.

Erik took a long moment.

"You do not have to say anything," Marianne said. "I was just curious." She stretched her fingers out, resisting the urge to touch the space on her chest where her locket should have been. "I have noticed you seem to know Shaw, more than the rest of us." She didn't say anything more and waited for Erik to respond.

Finally, Erik said, "I do know him." He was silent for a moment. Marianne waited. "That's how Charles and I met. I was trying to kill Shaw, but he got away, and Charles showed up and held me back from pursuing him."

Marianne did not know how to respond to such a blunt statement; she drank her tea. It was growing warm.

"Why did Charles hold you back?" She asked the only thing she could think of.

"Because Shaw was escaping in a submarine, and I was trying to hold it back."

"Were you in the water when this was happening?" She asked, trying to picture it. She ended up frowning.

"Yes." He didn't seem to see the problem with this, or if he did, he was just being blasé with his responses.

"Underwater?"

"Yes."

"You were underwater, trying to hold back a submarine, so you could kill Shaw?" She said, just to make sure she understood everything he was telling her. He inclined his head and she took this as a yes.

"I had been tracking him down for years," Erik said. "I couldn't let him get away." His voice was sharp, cutting.

"May I ask why?" She asked, only a little hesitant. She and Henry had joked about Erik looking like a member of the mafia, and she had no issue with Erik wanting to fight Shaw, but his apparent dedication to not just fighting him but killing him… it concerned her. Just what had Shaw done to Erik? What was so personal that it deserved such dedication in hunting him down to kill him?

Erik set his mug down. He placed his elbows on the table, linked his fingers together, and placed his chin on his hands, fixing her with a look she couldn't decipher.

"He killed my mother," Erik said.

Marianne's mouth fell open, just slightly. She caught herself and quickly closed it.

"Oh. I see." She swallowed. "I think I can understand, then."

Erik watched her. "Can you?" He asked her, questioning her - testing her, maybe.

"Yes, I think so." She took a moment to think. "I have never been in that position. But if someone killed my loved one, I doubt I would be willing to let them go unpunished." She didn't know if she would have taken the law into her own hands, hunting them down and killing them herself. She knew she would not have let them go free. If it were Lawrence - if it were Henry-

She nearly choked at the thought, a chill rushing through her body and settling in her bones.

"Yes, I can understand," she said firmly. She forced herself to raise her cup to her lips and take a sip and look calm.

Erik looked satisfied with her answer. "I thought you might. Charles doesn't. And no one else knows."

"Then why tell me?" She frowned at him.

Erik shrugged and relaxed his posture once more, placing his hands and arms on the table. "So I could have someone on my side if Charles gets on my case."

Marianne tried to stop herself from smiling and failed. Her smile fell quickly after, and she tightened her hold on her mug. "May I ask… you do not have to answer, but why would Shaw kill your mother?"

She could not imagine it as an accident. Shaw did not seem like the kind of man who had accidents, not when it came to people's lives. The images of Azazel and Riptide ruthlessly murdering the soldiers in the facility under his orders, Azazel cutting down the last man standing as soon as Shaw said his name, were still fresh in her mind. (Had it only been a day?)

Everything Shaw did was… calculated. Controlled. He would not kill someone simply by accident. She could not picture it.

And Erik did not seem like someone who would act without reason.

Erik was quiet.

"You do not-"

He looked up at her and she stopped.

Erik flipped his left arm over. Marianne looked down.

A series of numbers, tattooed onto his forearm in black ink, stared up at her.

She stared back.

She knew what they were. She had seen the pictures, heard the stories, read the newspapers when the war had ended.

She knew what they meant.

What they meant for Erik.

"I was Shaw's lab rat," Erik said. "He saw me use my mutation for the first time, and he wanted to study it. When I couldn't do it on command, he used my mother to motivate me. When I still couldn't do it, he shot her in the head."

She had guessed the world had not been kind to him, and she had been right. She had been far too right.

Her lips parted as she tried to inhale. Her lungs weren't working.

She stared at the numbers, seeing them but not reading them. Reading them, she knew, would imprint them in her memory, and having those string of numbers in her mind, remembering how they were imprinted on Erik's skin, would feel like a violation.

When Charles had said he had seen worse memories, Erik must have been who he had been thinking of.

She looked up at him, unable to keep the wide-eyed, horror-stricken, sorrowful look from her face. She ached to take his hand, to hold it - it was right there, his arm was still outstretched on the table.

Erik pulled his hand back before she could.

She finally found her voice. "So," she had to swallow, "Shaw was- is a Nazi?"

"He went by Klaus Schmidt back then, but yes."

Shaw appeared in her mind, telling her and the young mutants they were the superior species, that they were meant to rise and rule. She felt sick.

"Now I wish I had done more to hurt him," she said, nearly surprising herself with the venom in her voice.

Erik smirked a little. "With any luck, by the end of this mission, he won't be a problem anymore."

"Good." She had to remind herself to loosen her grip. A thin crack had formed on her mug's surface. She fixed it with little effort.

"So, I've told my story," Erik said, leaning back in his chair. "What's yours?"

Marianne froze. She tried to disguise it by studying her cup again. "When I was younger, I moved to America with my husband, started my store, had my son, then lived there for the next twelve years. There is not much more to tell."

"Of course." Marianne hid a grimace at the sarcasm in his voice. His voice softened when he asked, "How did he die? When?"

Marianne wanted to bite her tongue and leave. But Erik had told her his story, and it had been far worse than her own. It was only fair she answered his questions. And he only seemed curious, not malicious. There wouldn't be any harm in answering.

"He was in a car accident when Henry was seven. Just five years ago," she said. "Nothing as bad as what happened to you. They said he died instantly, he wouldn't have felt anything." Knowing that should have been comforting, that he hadn't suffered, but sometimes it wasn't. One moment he had been driving home from work, the next he had been gone. He had always been there, for her, for Henry, and he had been taken from them in an instant. No warning.

Just a pair of policemen in her store giving her the news that she no longer had a husband, that her child no longer had a father.

Erik nodded slowly. "And the other driver?"

"He was in a coma for two weeks before dying." Not having anyone to really blame for her loss was something else that had been taken from her - what was the purpose of hating a man she could never speak to?

"I see. That must have been very hard for you."

Marianne said nothing.

"Did he - your husband, what was his name?"

"Lawrence," she said quietly.

"Did he know about your powers?"

"He did, yes. I told him myself." She had to stop herself from laughing at the memory of Lawrence's completely astonished expression when she had raised and then dropped two parked cars without lifting a finger. Then she had proven herself again by jumping off the fire escape of her apartment building and floating delicately to the ground before him. He had protested her jumping the whole time, despite her assurances that she would be perfectly fine, and had pulled her into a tight hug the moment her feet hit the ground, his whole body shaking.

"Oh?" Erik sounded surprised. "You trusted him that much?"

"We had been friends for years, and a couple for a year at that point," she said with a shrug. "We were both very sure we wanted to be together, so I didn't think there was any harm."

"For years?" Erik repeated. "Childhood friends? Lucky you." He grinned at her and she let herself laugh this time, although there was a slight sting she ignored.

"Lucky me," she agreed, shaking her head. "We lived in neighbouring buildings and attended school together and liked to spend time together, whenever we could. We started dating, I suppose is the word, when we were about seventeen years old, although hardly anything changed between us besides kissing and being more affectionate, when we could be." She had not talked about Lawrence so much in a very long time. Henry asked questions about Lawrence as he got older, though he was not quite at the age when he would ask about the affectionate side of his parents' relationship. It hurt to talk about him now.

"And I assume other things as well since Henry exists," Erik said. Marianne barely had time to be scandalized or offended when he grinned at her again. She blushed and glared at him, though slightly thankful for the shift in tone.

"Just teasing," he said simply, raising his hands in defence. "No offence intended."

She huffed in response.

"But you were never afraid to tell him about your powers," Erik said, bringing them back to their original topic. "And he wasn't afraid of you? Didn't fear them?"

She shook her head. "No. Never."

"What about your parents?" Erik frowned. "Your family?"

Marianne grimaced before she could stop it. Bringing up Lawrence and her parents so closely together brought out old reflexes. "They had no idea what to do but did their best. They did not throw me out for my powers."

"Well, good for you. Most people aren't as lucky to have a support system like that."

She pursed her lips and did her best not to scoff at the idea of her parents being supportive.

"I've seen lots of families in my travels," Erik continued, "who aren't capable of that. Not just for mutants, either, although most of this team seems to share that lack of support. And I'm not surprised, either." He looked darkly at her.

"You did not seem to agree with Charles's belief that you would be helping mutants by finding them," Marianne said, recalling the sour look on Erik's face and eager to stop talking about herself. "Why is that?"

When Erik opened his mouth to answer, he was cut off by the sound of footsteps and conversation coming down the hall towards the kitchen. Marianne turned and watched Charles and Moira appear in the doorway, their chatter stopping when they realized the kitchen wasn't empty.

"Evening," Erik said, taking a long drink from his previously abandoned cup.

"I am surprised to see you both up so late," Marianne said. "Is anyone in this building asleep?"

"Well, the boys have mostly gone to bed, though it seems Hank and Raven are chatting," Charles said, tilting his head. "Sean's deep in sleep, if that's what you're worried about."

Marianne smiled. She had been thinking about him a bit more than the others, though she did not respond to Charles' comment.

"I followed Charles to get some water," Moira said. "I'm heading right back to bed, and the rest of you should, too. It's been a long day for everyone." She shot Erik a certain look. Marianne looked back at Erik in time to catch him rolling his eyes.

"I was just finishing my tea," Marianne said, rising from her chair. While she wanted to hear Erik's answer, she suspected she was not getting it now, and their conversation had drained her of whatever energy she had when she had entered the kitchen. Not enough was left to cry, even when she was alone again in her room.

"I'll come with you," Erik said, standing up and joining her in putting his empty mug in the sink. "Finish our conversation."

She thanked him and bid Moira and Charles goodnight as they stepped out of the kitchen. In the dark of the night, the Xavier mansion wasn't quite the fairy tale castle it had been during the day. The deep blue carpet looked black. The large windows let in shadows that crept along the walls in deformed shapes and figures. The expanse of land they could see through the windows suddenly seemed endless. A chill would have run up her spine if she hadn't already been freezing.

For a mansion that was so full of… things, it was such an empty home. Now, at night, walking the halls with Erik, she couldn't imagine how empty it would be for a child who, from her assumptions, did not have much parental affection.

"You asked me why I don't agree with Charles," Erik said. "I don't think we should ever involve the government in finding mutants."

"Why not?"

"Because they cannot be trusted. Humans will see us as a threat - a threat to them, their lives, and since we're the next step in evolution, we're a threat to their very humanity, and their fear will turn them against us if they were on our side, to begin with. And if we use the government to find mutants, they'll use everything we've done against us."

Marianne didn't question how he knew it. He had lived it.

"Then why work with them?" She questioned instead. "If you do not agree?"

"It's easier, working together with a group to take Shaw down, and that's what matters right now. And since Cerebro was destroyed, there's no chance of the government using it to find more mutants in the future."

"Is that all?"

Erik paused. "No." He tilted his head. "Someone told me I had the chance to be part of something bigger than myself."

Marianne thought she could guess who that 'someone' had been, and he was back in the kitchen with Moira. She said as much.

"Charles knows people," Erik admitted. "Not as well as he thinks, but he knows people."

They walked in silence most of the way back, Marianne not having the energy to keep up the conversation any longer. She left Erik in his room with a soft 'goodnight' and continued on her way to her room.

The bed felt even larger than it looked. She had more than enough space to stretch out, and even then she couldn't quite touch the edges.

At home, her bed had been much smaller than this, but it had been hers. It had the memories of curling up with Lawrence at her side, of him holding onto her as he slept every night, memories that had stayed even long after he was gone.

This bed had not been slept in for a very long time, she could tell.

She pulled the sheets over her head. She was from Montreal. She could handle the cold.

She had spoken more about her childhood with Erik than she had with anybody in years. And she could see herself speaking about it just as much with Moira and Charles.

She was not sure how she felt about that.

Marianne pulled one of the many pillows down, rolled onto her side, and held the pillow tightly in her arms. She did not go out of her way to talk about her early life, but she did do her best to avoid the subject as much as possible or give out as little information as she could. There was too much there she did not want to deal with. Most of the time, people didn't think to ask.

But Erik had shared something far worse with her. She could hardly deny him her own life story, no matter how much she wanted to on instinct alone.

God, the Holocaust. Her mouth tasted like bile just thinking about it, thinking about the stories she had heard, Erik and what he had told her, what he had gone through - and he had just told her. It still pained him, she could tell, but he had still talked about it.

She thought of Charles, closing himself off the further into the tour of the mansion they had got. She thought someone might understand her.

A thought occurred to her: Erik was only a year older than her. She had been in her early teens during the war, growing from nine to fourteen years old over the five years of the war. Erik would have been somewhere between ten to fifteen years old.

He had been a child, a goddamned child when Shaw got to him, killed his mother, had made Erik his lab rat for his mutation.

Shaw appeared in her mind again, his smug smile, his too-easy confidence that spoke of years of privilege and no consequences, standing next to her imagination's picture of Erik as a child, scared and frightened and small.

God, she was tired.

Marianne's mind drifted to earlier, her attempt at a scheduled break down in the kitchen. Kitchen's were never a good place to cry, even in a mansion like this - too many people.

Now would be the best time, but she couldn't summon the will. Her eyelids were getting heavy despite the swirling of her thoughts. It was late, and she was tired in every sense of the word.

New rule: I'm not allowed to promise when the next update will happen.

I feel that Erik, like Angel, wouldn't avoid talking about his past. It's a huge part of who he is, what made him into who he is, and it's important to him that people know that. (See the "I have been marked once" scene from The Last Stand.) He rides the line between "heavily repressing trauma" and "this is what happened to me, this is who I am because of that" pretty well.

Adding on to that, I rewatched First Class the other day, and just gotta say that Fassbender does an incredible job of portraying Erik and showing his pain (and how much Erik shoves that pain down deep inside him).

Related to the above, something I noticed with the X-Men fics I've read is that often, the OC doesn't ever find out about Erik's past, and if they do, it's understated, no reaction. This happens even in fics where Erik and the OC are in a relationship! I can understand not wanting to write about Erik's trauma, it is a lot to handle (the Holocaust always is), but it's just such a big part of who Erik is that I can't imagine not even mentioning it or not having a reaction to it. The ones where there's no reaction gets me the most, more than it just not coming up, because how do you not react to something like that? It happened only twenty years ago, that's not a lot of time, and even the younger OCs in their 20s would have grown up in the aftermath, would have grown up hearing about it and learning about it, how can there be no reaction?

Anyway, in this chapter, we're starting to see more of Marianne's issues.

Also, I feel I should mention that I've seen Dark Phoenix (I think I commented on my profile when I did), and to be honest, I was not impressed. I was happy that they didn't do anything I was planning on doing in this fic series. Related to that, I don't think Dark Phoenix is something that will fit into what I have planned for this series, so I'm most likely going to keep it a trilogy.

(Marianne simply would not let what happened in Dark Phoenix happen.)

Hope you liked this chapter! Don't be shy, leave a review, please. Let me know what you thought - if you liked it, why you liked it, whether or not you thought characters were In Character (That's important, so let me know your thoughts on that), your thoughts on what may come in the future? Anything. I appreciate all and any comments left on my stories.