Another long update! First of all, I love you guys. Seriously. Without you, this wouldn't be all that fun to write, and I've never reached 100 reviews before!
Soooo um, that said, this is pretty much allll story. And science. And quite a lot of plot. There will be sex in this eventually, I swear. Next chapter or the one after, maybe. Also, it is going somewhere! For now, well, this world seems to be a strange fusion of the various canons from the different movies and the comics, because I needed more characters than just in First Class and apparently Jean and Scott were some of the original X-Men.
Oooh, and I did research for this chapter. Yep. All of the science contained within is based on research! Although very much ahead of its time obviously.
.
.
.
.
.
xxiv.
Charles' relationship with Erik never ceased to confuse him. It had been his understanding that they would bargain for his small freedoms with favors and cooperation, but it did not seem to be as simple as Charles had thought. Certainly, Erik was at best an inconvenient guest to his personal space, and at worst an intruder Charles couldn't fight against.
Included in the latter category was the first time Erik tried to pick Charles up and move him onto the couch. He'd barely slipped a hand beneath Charles' knees before the telepath had frozen, seizing Erik's arms in a bruising grip, heart startled into racing. Charles had been stricken by the terrifying certainty that, once he was set down again, he wouldn't be able to move; that Erik would push the chair away, or it would roll on its own, or that he'd accidentally shove it and be forced to crawl along the floor toward it.
Erik had immediately abandoned his attempt, had wrapped his arms around Charles and muttered into his hair, promising that he would never abandon Charles somewhere he couldn't escape from. This did not stop Erik from trying again the next night, but he did succeed that and every following time. True to his word, the chair was never so far away that Charles couldn't reach it.
Erik's desire to have Charles next to him was not surprising; he could understand that the chair got in the way and was awkward, because in part he had been relying on that. Sitting next to Erik allowed for—and, at the thought, Charles found himself blushing a little—easy access, but Erik… Didn't seem to be inclined to take advantage of Charles, beyond the kissing. In fact, he seemed reluctant to make any further demands of the telepath.
This was best characterized by another instance, when Charles found himself half-leaning on Erik, unendingly aware of the hand around his waist and the way Erik's breath stirred his hair. Erik had been silent for a long while and, more importantly, still seemed unwilling to allow Charles anything more to do during the day; so, taking a deep, preparatory lungful of air, he had turned a little and reached for Erik's belt buckle.
Charles felt Erik turn his head, and was surprised when the man's fingers closed around his wrist before he even made contact. "Mm. None of that, Charles," Erik had murmured near his ear, quiet and tired, carefully placing the telepath's hand back into the lap of its owner.
This left Charles feeling almost more embarrassed than if he had undone Erik's belt and done, well, anything that came after that. He was being used, but to what end? Certainly there was a sexual component—Erik didn't always take advantage of his mouth, but when he did, it was pretty obvious that he enjoyed it. Charles could understand if Erik didn't want to view himself as someone who simply took what he wanted, but then why refuse a direct proposition?
He tried not to be distracted by the scent of pine needles—of the outside world—on Erik's clothing, to wonder where he'd been, but if he closed his eyes he could imagine, to a point, that he was in that place: surrounded by trees on a warm day. It was astonishingly comforting thought despite its infeasibility, and Charles was surprised, upon opening his eyes again, to find that they still sitting in quiet, and that it was almost… Companionable.
Could it really be as simple as Erik needing human contact?
Of course not. Nothing was ever that simple.
Wasn't it?
.
.
.
xxv.
It took another week after Charles' first visit with Raven before he finally received permission to visit the labs. He'd imagined them as being some nebulous set of rooms located somewhere within the mansion—like the one he'd had, or maybe there'd be two—but they turned out to occupy roughly an entire wing. Past a thick set of steel doors, the floor was all close-fitted gray tile and water-proof trim, the whitewashed walls had been re-done in a sturdier material, and extra lighting had been installed at regular intervals—very regular, and stretching on for a very long ways.
The atmosphere was noticeably different from the rest of the house; bright and sterile compared to the old, yellowed glow of Charles' rooms. While this might have made the wing seem unwelcoming to another person, Charles felt instantly at ease; he understood the practical use of the place, appreciated the hygienic convenience of smooth tile.
Even just sitting in the hallway, Charles could feel himself responding to the environment, becoming someone else: someone who might have an experiment that needed attention right now and yes, three-hour-intervals did mean staying into early morning.
It was something of a relief.
The sound of air vents in the ceiling formed a constant hum of background noise as Charles coasted along the hallway, looking for the door he had seen in the mind of the lab tech who had been sent to invite him. Lab nineteen. He raised his fist and knocked, hard, unsure whether those inside would be able to hear through the thick door.
Charles waited, fidgeting a little with his hands, until finally the door swung inward and a young woman with tangled black hair and a white lab coat peered out at him as if she suspected he might be selling something.
"Can I help you?" she inquired, with a dainty sniff. When Charles continued to stare blankly at her, she shifted uncomfortably. "Um… Hello?"
Jumping back into motion, Charles beamed up at her. "Hello! Yes, I'm Professor Xavier, and I was wondering, is…" He faltered for a moment, unsure whether to ask, before continuing, "Is Hank around?"
Hannah—her name was Hannah—frowned at him doubtfully and took a couple steps back. "I'll check," she offered, clearly reluctant, and started to walk away.
Charles felt his hopes sink; he couldn't imagine that anyone could not notice Hank, even in as large a lab as this. Still, he kept his smile firmly in place and called after the lab assistant, "Can I come in?"
Her eyes darted down to his hands and clothing. "You're not sterile," Hannah declared, but didn't protest when he moved the chair to a spot just inside the door. "Don't touch anything," she warned instead, and made her escape.
As soon as she had gone, the smile dropped off of Charles' face and he pressed a hand to his temple, eyes falling shut; the opening of the lab door had triggered an instant cacophony in his head, as none of the scientists working inside were wearing helmets. With some amount of shame, Charles found that he wasn't as good at blocking it out as he used to be, and the result was an instant headache.
Still, while it was uncomfortable, Charles took solace in the familiarity of what he heard; the gentle buzz of scientists at work, writing notes while their samples centrifuged and calculating concentrations for solutions, had not changed in the years since his own time in the lab. Slowly, although the pain behind his eyes didn't go away, it became manageable, and Charles felt the tension in his back ease.
With a jolt of pleasant surprise, Charles noticed a familiar pattern of thoughts churning within the chaos. He sent a flicker of his joy out and saw it echo there, a fleck of not-color immediately washed over by the recipient's own thoughts. Within moments Charles glimpsed an impression of himself through the other's eyes, and he felt a slow, involuntary smile tug at his own face.
"Hank," Charles greeted, looking up at the man. "You know, it seems as though you've gotten taller."
"Or your chair's lower," Hank replied, his thin black lips twitching upward. "Nobody calls me that anymore, by the way; you almost got stuck listening to the life story of the Hank who works in geomorphology."
"Oh. Oh, of course." Charles rubbed his legs absently; of late, they'd been overcompensating for their previous numbness by broadcasting a constant prickly awareness of the exact way his every single leg hair interacted with his trousers. "I should have known that."
Hank's—Beast's—furry head tilted, worry visible in the lines of his face, altered though they may be. "You're not used to this many minds at once anymore, are you?"
Warmly, Charles remarked, "You're just as perceptive as you used to be." He saw Beast's anger in the tightening of his pupils, the flaring of his nostrils, and added, "It's all right, I've got it under control."
"We manufacture the meta-materials used to cancel out telepathy," Beast explained, voice flat. "It's not all right."
Charles waved his hand. "Enough of that. What are you doing here? The last time I saw you, Alex and Sean were barely holding you back from ripping off Erik's head and killing us all."
Flexing his fingers as if he still very much wanted to rip off some heads, Beast growled low in his throat and responded, "Yes, and it would have been worth it. Still," his fur smoothed and Beast straightened, businesslike, "the best way I can help the world now is through science, and this is the only real lab left that doesn't just make weapons."
Steepling his eyebrows, Charles asked, "Just like that?"
"Well, no," Beast grumbled. "There was some intervening time, but what I said holds true, despite my… Disagreements with Magneto's ideology. Science doesn't take sides, Professor; you know that."
Charles frowned, but didn't protest. Beast had always been fiercely pragmatic, even when he'd been Hank. "And the others?"
"Sean was injured, and can't use his power any more for the time being; at the moment, he's being kept at his cousin's estate in Ireland. Last I knew, Alex was roaming the countryside with—oh, here's something you'll like: Darwin's alive," Beast told him, shifting out of the way of a lab technician carrying a stack of Petri dishes.
"What, really?"
"Yes, as far as we can tell, his body converted into light. He only re-coalesced a few years ago; apparently photons don't experience time. I'd like to find out more but nobody really wants to do that again and anyway it seems Darwin's teamed up with Alex and they're God-knows-where." Beast reached up onto a shelf and took down a box, from which he pulled a pair of thick plastic gloves labeled with black-lined tape; presumably, he used them because his claws broke through conventional gloves.
Beast sheathed his hands in the plastic and continued, "Several of the younger students are here, with me. Scott's a little too direct for biology, but he's becoming an excellent geographer. Jean's around, and so far she's refused every request to join the Brotherhood's army. Don't know where Bobby went."
"Nobody's dead, that you know of?" Charles inquired, setting his thumbs on the handrims of his chair.
"Thankfully, no," Beast replied, but added, tone darkening, "I tried to keep track of Moira, but I couldn't find her after the riots."
Charles nodded, unsurprised. When he'd erased her memories after Cuba, he'd tried to leave enough information to let her save herself if necessary. Still…"She's resourceful. I'm sure she's escaped somewhere. By the way, isn't it a bit of a risk to be talking about this sort of thing openly?"
His nose crinkling with amusement, Beast teased, "What, you ask me that after the incriminating questions? But no, really—Magneto knows where I stand, and there are a lot of other anti-extinctionists around here. We're just not a threat at the moment."
"Because of Ms. Frost," Charles mused. "Only the people he trusts get the helmets."
Beast scoffed. "I've never met anyone he trusted. Only the people who can't hurt Magneto get helmets. Speaking of which, you came by yourself, didn't you? I hope you knocked over some priceless artifacts along the way. How'd you convince him to let you come down, anyway?"
Despite his efforts, a smile crept onto Charles' face. "No, Beast, I didn't knock anything over." He didn't answer the last question, because he didn't know; he still wasn't certain what Erik wanted from him, but he had the idea that this visit was to make a point—to show Charles what he could have.
Regardless, Charles wouldn't allow the impending threat of the unknown spoil his visit, so he showed none of these doubts when Beast grinned and beckoned him forward.
"Come," he said. "Let me show you my labs."
.
.
.
xxvi.
"I suppose you've figured out by now that Magneto isn't the person you should thank for curing you?" Beast inquired, the tufts of his eyebrows raised in smug nonchalance.
"There weren't any names on the papers he sent me, but I assumed he probably didn't do anything more than frighten anyone who took an overly long lunch," Charles acknowledged. "I take it you were behind most of the research?"
"Oh, no." Beast waved his gloved hand, although he was very careful not to touch anything with it. "I come up with the brilliant ideas, I write preliminary experiments, then I move on to some other thing and read the results later. Most of what we study is new, so there aren't really any prior publications to consult, and there are plenty of more industrious people to take care of things like streaking plates and coordinating the centrifuge schedule. I do those things sometimes too of course, but there are so many things going on at once…"
"Your confidence has certainly improved," Charles remarked.
"I'm being entirely factual," the scientist protested, stopping in front of a rack of lab coats. "This lab would grind to a halt if I left. How are your legs, by the way? Sore?"
"Yes, actually," Charles admitted, glancing down to find that he'd started rubbing them again almost as soon as his hands were free. "They're not about to fall off, are they?"
"No, it's a good sign. Our data so far is limited, but a peak in sensitivity following recovery doesn't seem to be uncommon. Don't look at me like that—all of my subjects are volunteers." Charles didn't miss the slight emphasis on my. "Now, I assume you won't be walking for a while, so you'll have to put this coat on backwards." Beast held out one of the lab coats, and waited for Charles to shrug it on so that it covered his chest and legs. He himself already looked astoundingly refined in his long white jacket, the blue mane of his neck brushing over the collar.
Once Charles was appropriately attired, he followed Beast into a smaller room adjacent to the main. It was filled either with refrigerators or incubators, and judging from the ambient temperature, most likely the latter. Additionally, as soon as the door closed, the roar at the edge of Charles' mind retreated to the manageable babble of Beast's thoughts. For once, he didn't have to rely on seeing the quick glance the furred mutant gave him to know Beast had meant to restore his quiet, but Charles was surprised to find that he now looked to the man's face before he looked into his head.
"This is your cell culture room," Charles observed before Beast could say it, just because he could. Two biosafety hoods sat dormant along one wall, sealing in their sterile air. "You can still tell me; I'd like to hear it."
"Right," Beast agreed cautiously. "As you said, this is our cell culture room. We have a couple different temperatures in here for different projects, but I wanted to show you this one." He picked up a box of latex gloves and held them out. "But first, gloves."
Charles plucked out a pair and worked his hands into them without touching their outside surface with his hands, then waggled his fingers at Beast to show that they were in place.
Beast surveyed Charles' hands critically before judging that he had done an acceptable job of something the geneticist already had years of practice with, and opened one of the incubators. The red numbers at the top of the machine began to fall as the heat escaped, but before they could dip too low Beast emerged with a little glass tray pinched between his covered claws.
"These are your cells. Well, not your cells, of course, but their genetic clones are living in your spine," Beast told him, handing the six-welled tray to Charles, who was careful not to disturb the liquid within. "The research leading to the identification of stem cells came out of Toronto, but actually just growing them was the hardest part. Once you get them started, though, they just keep dividing."
Charles peered into the tray; the middle two wells were filled with water to prevent the other four from drying out, and condensation beaded up along the lid. Still, he could see that the four end wells were partially filled with a reddish-pink liquid that reminded him of watery blood. Beast's mind informed Charles that the color was actually only phenol red dye added to monitor pH, and anyway the cells themselves only grew along the surface of the glass and the liquid was only nutrient broth, but the comparison stuck.
He frowned faintly; on the one hand, he was holding half of a miracle of biotechnology, years or perhaps decades ahead of its time; on the other, the murky fluid didn't seem like the natural subject for awe. "When I was in school, we couldn't get mammal cells to divide for more than a couple generations. What did you do?"
"Nothing," Beast admitted. "Stem cells are different. Although, did I mention it can take years just to get the damn things to grow properly? We started growing human cells even before the mice had any kind of success, just because it took so long. Not to mention that, once they do start growing, they'll spontaneously differentiate into some other kind of cell if you don't keep moving them to new plates."
"I suppose this is when I should thank you for your tireless work in bossing your lab techs around?" Charles asked with a sly curl to his mouth.
"No, bossing lab techs is its own reward, especially after all that time spent being one. Still, a little gratitude wouldn't be unwarranted. I did develop the nanotubule scaffold myself, you know."
Charles held the tray out for Beast to take back. "You say 'all that time' as if you were a tech for more than a couple years. That said… Thank you. Even if I don't walk again."
Beast took the tray with a delicacy unpredicted by his appearance. "You will," he assured. "Some experiments take time. You know that."
"Indeed," Charles agreed, trying to ignore the words potential sensory ataxia as they passed through Beast's thoughts; he might walk again, but there seemed to be a possibility that his brain may not be able to sense the position of his legs even if he did, requiring Charles to watch them at all times.
There was a beat of uncomfortable silence, which Beast broke with a hesitant "Charles…" before falling silent again.
"Ask," the telepath requested, stripping off his gloves in a way ensuring no part of his skin could be contaminated. With a flick of his wrist, he sent the used latex flying into one of the ever-present orange biohazard boxes.
"You're a hero to the anti-extinction movement," the leonine scientist told Charles. "Even when we didn't know where you were, we knew you were alive, and that simple fact has kept thousands of humans and mutants fighting; resisting. Most of them believe that you're the only one who can stop Magneto."
Charles' smile was faltering; he wanted to be grateful, but there was a dreadful flaw with that belief. "That's great, but I only have one weapon, and Erik's seen to it that I can't use my telepathy against him."
Beast's expression was insistent. "That's not your only weapon," he corrected. "He trusts you more than almost anyone else." Charles began to shake his head, but Beast cut in before he could object. "Still not entirely, true, but enough."
"Only because he knows I can't do anything to him," Charles said.
"Exactly," Beast confirmed. "You can't do anything to him now. If you had help, however; if you could attack him from some angle he doesn't expect… He won't see it coming."
"Except that Ms. Frost will read your mind and know that… Oh, no. I'm not doing that, it's very risky at this juncture and I'll have you know that, as of last month, it'd been years since I even touched another mind, let alone manipulated one," Charles warned.
Beast did not appear to be appropriately frightened by this. "I have confidence in you. We've still never observed another telepath as powerful as you are. I'm not asking you to erase my memories, just—block them, for a little while. Frost doesn't have enough patience to go digging through all of our minds; if I'm not thinking about it when I walk by her, she won't find out."
"It's not that simple," Charles protested, attempting to explain the gravity of the situation with a broad hand gesture. "It's not like I have settings or something. I can't just flip a switch from 'erase' to 'repress.'"
Charles was dismayed to identify the look Beast gave him as being pity. "You haven't forgotten how," Beast asserted. "You're Professor Charles Xavier, and as far as anyone knows, you're the most powerful telepath on the planet. I trust you."
Very slowly, Charles dragged his hands through his hair, exhaling through his mouth. Clearly, he was being ridiculous; he'd had his powers since he was a child, and wasn't about to forget how to use them within the span of a few years. "Okay. Well, I suppose we have no choice at this point anyway, do we?"
"No," the other scientist confirmed. He shifted uneasily, and Charles glanced down to see that Beast seemed to be wearing another set of gloves on his feet, ridged along the bottom for traction. The telepath was surprised to find that they didn't look all that bad, for being purely pragmatic concessions to the need for covered feet in the lab.
Beast cleared his throat. "So, um. What should I do? Should I do anything?"
Charles paused, moistened his lips, and settled his head against the fingers of his left hand. "Just… Don't move." He met Beast's eyes—feral and golden, making the nervousness there look absurdly out of place—and pushed, like pressing a fingernail into a grape and potentially as destructive; after a brief shock of resistance, Beast's mind welled up around him, a deluge of sensory information and memory and feeling and, arising from the mix of those things, self. It was chaotic, overwhelming, and disordered; this, however, was not a flood Charles could be swept away by.
Changing a memory wasn't straightforward; people did not store their memories in one place, or all at once, and then there were all the little things that tied into memory—scent, sound, and other experiences related to a recollection, built up on top of each other and woven together with more intricacy than any spider's web. Thankfully his conversation with Beast lay right at the edge, still mostly unrelated to everything else comprising Beast's mind, and it wasn't too hard to—not erase it, but tuck it away, and redirect the scientist's thoughts seamlessly around the incriminating memory; to excise even the desire to have that conversation.
Pulling back, Charles became aware, again, of the hum of the incubators, the weight of his body in the chair, the almost electric touch of his fingers against his temple; and finally, the damnable itching of his legs. He blinked, and put his hand down. "Beast?" Charles inquired.
Beast, who had previously been looking through Charles, shook himself a little and refocused on the telepath. "Professor. We also have some interesting work on cloning going on in the next room over; would you like to see?"
"Of course," Charles replied, a shiver of relief running through him. Blocking the memory hadn't been easy; certainly, it hadn't been as difficult as removing Moira's experiences of their brief time spent as the CIA's mutant division, but then she'd also built large swaths of her identity on that information during those few short weeks. Still, he'd been worried…
Without ever showing the slightest awareness that they might have talked about anything other than stem cells, Beast took him around the lab, introducing Charles to several of the techs and assistants and explaining their work to him. They spoke the language of science—an enthusiastic mix of abbreviations and jargon and fond nicknames incomprehensible to the casual observer—and for a while Charles felt at home.
That night, engulfed once more in rooms he increasingly viewed as being gloomy and oppressive, Charles sat across the chessboard from Erik, staring down at the pieces without really seeing them.
"What do I have to do to go back?" Charles asked, breaking the expectant silence. It was the first time either of them had said anything openly acknowledging their relationship.
Erik's little smile was crooked, and without looking up, he gestured down at the board for Charles to continue playing.
.
.
.
.
.