Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed.
I got one question about whether there will be any romance in this fic. There won't be. I don't normally write any kind of romance fics; this is strictly a mentor fic.
"It was like a billion feet high!" Sean declared yet again, and Alex once again nodded sympathetically. There wasn't much else that he could do given that Erik really had shoved Sean off a satellite yesterday. Of course, Sean had ended the day knowing how to fly, which from Alex's perspective seemed pretty worth it, but then again, he wasn't the one who'd been shoved. And he didn't see anything that he said calming Sean down anyway—sleep obviously hadn't—so he kept his mouth shut and stuck to nodding at what seemed like the appropriate times.
"Plus, do you know what's even worse?" Sean barely paused to take a breath, never mind long enough to let Alex hazard a guess. "Did you see the way that Hank was eyeing me while we were running earlier? Who knows what they have planned for me next? I bet th—"
"Sean, Alex, breakfast is on that table," Raven called from the landing below them, neatly interrupting Sean's tirade. "Hurry or Erik and Hank will eat everything."
'Everything' was an exaggeration, but it wasn't as much of one as it should have been given the amount of food that Hank could put away and the fact that Erik would simply eat whatever was put in front of him. Alex turned towards the stairs.
"Bet they throw me off the table before we get to eat anything," Sean muttered, following behind.
They didn't of course, in fact the conversation revolved mostly around political stuff that Alex didn't really care much about. Well, okay, Erik threw out a couple of dire scenarios in response to what Alex had thought were pretty non-threatening comments from Moira that drew even his attention, ideas that sounded more like they belonged in horror flicks than real life, but he was pretty sure that that was just Erik being Erik.
Erik and Moira were still sniping at each other when the meal ended, and Alex escaped for Raven's weight set as soon as he finished rinsing his dishes. He felt a little disloyal doing it, debating for a moment sticking around and trying and distract Hank from whatever else he might be planning for Sean, but realistically, Alex's odds of distracting the geek from whatever his new idea was were pretty much nil. He could irritate Hank, sure, but it wasn't like he had any kind of scientific know-how to propose an alternate theory or plan or whatever. Especially not when the professor was involved as well. Besides, he had an unhappy suspicion that he was still on their radar too, and as he'd discovered when he'd gone to bed last night, the bump on his head was still pretty sore and the last thing he wanted was it impacting any more floors. Or walls. Or anything else, for that matter.
His sore head prompted him to grab an extra towel to put it down on the end of weight bench before he lay down, but after he found a comfortable position, it was easy to lose himself in the rhythm of the lifts. Until the weights were pulled up out of his hands, anyway.
"Hey," he greeted as he turned to the side. At least this time it wasn't a surprise to see Erik in the doorway, although why the man couldn't just say 'hello' or make some noise he had no idea. "Sparring?" he asked when Erik didn't immediately say anything.
Erik dipped his head slightly in agreement. "After you and I have both finished here."
"You want to use the weights?"
Another marginal nod.
"Just give me a second and I'll be done, then."
"Finish what you had planned."
Alex nodded in agreement—it wasn't like he had much left anyway—and when Erik gestured at the weights floating above his head, Alex shifted back onto his back and reached for the bar.
When he finished, he helped Erik swap out the weights for the higher setting that he preferred and debated going back up to his room. It wasn't like he had anything to do there but wait for Erik to come hunting him again, though, and since Erik didn't seem to object to his presence, Alex took a seat against the wall beside the door, resting his forearms on his knees.
"Did you really mean it, earlier?" he asked as Erik finished his first set and rested the weights for a moment, taking several deep breaths. "All that stuff that you were saying about what could happen to mutants?" He wasn't going to add the 'Or were you just trying to annoy Moira?' part of the question, even if he was pretty sure that it was a valid possibility.
Erik's expression didn't change as he reached for the bar again, lowering the weights to his chest and then straightening his arms. "I meant it. And it isn't what could happen. It's what will happen."
Alex opened his mouth and then shut it again. Granted that from what little he knew of Erik's history, it was pretty understandable that Erik would think of worst-case scenarios first, but…. "The professor didn't seem very worried," he pointed out.
That got a snort. "Charles lives in a bubble." Silence fell for several minutes, and then, "It won't look like anything at the start. Just a bunch of paperwork, probably, like those files Charles generated using that machine. A list of names, nothing so terribly awful."
"How many other mutants did you find?" Alex asked. It didn't directly relate to their current topic of conversation, maybe, but he'd never actually seen Cerebro in action, and he was curious. "I mean, there's just a few of us here now."
"There were coordinates for a great deal many more mutants than Charles and I would ever have been able to speak to…hundreds, I would say. At least. Some were in locations that we couldn't easily reach in the time we had, some he was able to determine just through the use of the machine were too old or too young for our purposes, and some have abilities that don't lend themselves to our specific needs. For example, the ability to grow fingernails quickly has relatively few applications in battle. And many of the ones we did talk to simply refused outright."
"Why?" Okay, granted, he'd been sitting in a jail cell without much in the way of other options when Charles and Erik had showed up, but even if he'd still be on the outside, he couldn't imagine not being at least curious about other people like him.
"Because they had their own lives. Because they wanted to be human."
Apparently his 'why' had dropped them right back into their previous topic of conversation—or at least one that ran along similar lines—because Erik had practically spit the word 'human,' and even in profile Alex could see the disgust on his face as he continued.
"Mark my words, they're just as blind to the situation as Charles is. All of them. They can claim that all they want is peace, that they just want to be allowed to live 'normal' lives, as much as they want. Now that the government knows that they exist, they aren't going to be left alone. Not for very long, anyway. Pretty soon someone will want more than names. They'll want tests and labels and identification. 'For the good of the nation' they'll call it. But it won't be for anyone's good, it will be because they're afraid of us. And then they'll hate us. And someday it will come down to a fight between mutants and humans where the prize will be survival."
That was totally a setup for a horror film, not to mention more words than Alex thought he'd ever heard out of Erik's mouth at once, and Alex was once again at a loss for what to say in return for a several minutes. "We're trying to help, though," he finally offered. "We're trying to stop Shaw. Doesn't that…matter?"
"It won't." The weight spun upwards, out of Erik's hands, and he pushed himself into a sitting position to look at Alex. "So naïve. All of you."
Alex felt himself flush.
Erik's expression didn't waver. "I've been listed before. Marked. Jüdisch and numbered. I won't let it happen again." He shook his head, flicking his fingers to lower the bar back to the stand and sitting up. "I'm finished here. Let's go."
Oh, great, the guy was now more than a little worked up, and his plan to relax was to go outside and beat on Alex. Because he couldn't do that well enough when he was calm. Why had Alex thought talking would be a good idea again?
Erik frowned, making an impatient gesture, and Alex stood as well. "We have to put it back the weights back how they were, or Raven will have a fit," he said before Erik could step past him out the door. Having Erik beating him up was bad enough, he didn't really want to go a second round with Raven when they got back afterwards.
Erik's fingers twitched, but he didn't actually object to Alex's words, and the two of them wiped down the bench and returned the weights to their initial setting in silence before leaving the mansion out one of the multitude of side doors. Alex didn't recognize the path that Erik followed, but it wasn't like that was unusual, and most of his mind was concentrated on a plan to survive anyway. If he were lucky, maybe irritation would make Erik's sparring turn clumsy or something. Yeah. Right. Right after a flock of pigs passed overhead, wings outstretched.
Erik finally brought them to a halt in a greenbelt running between two of the wooded areas, and whether he was still thinking about their conversation earlier or not, he did toss his knife aside without requiring a request from Alex. That had to be a good thing, Or at least Alex hoped so, anyway. Since it seemed that they were going to start with sparring rather than directed teaching today, Alex checked his footing, brought his fists up, and didn't wait for the question. "Ready."
And then they were circling. Alex knew that Erik's misstep two minutes in had to be a feint—Erik had shown him a trick the other day that started with a similar setup—but there was no way that he could let it pass without at least trying to get inside. If he could just set Erik off balance a little—
"Oomph." And he was on his stomach on the ground. Well, no surprise there. Alex sighed and rolled onto his back, accepting the hand Erik offered to pull him to his feet. And then sucked in his breath when Erik slapped him lightly on the back of the head. It hadn't actually been a very hard hit, certainly not as hard as the one Erik had given him when he'd been trying not to land blows, and any other day he'd have taken it for the warning that it was and not given it a second thought. Unfortunately, after the disaster with Hank's dinnerware yesterday….
"Alex?" Erik asked with a frown.
"I'm fine."
Erik shook his head and reached out again. "Be still."
Alex winced as Erik's fingers found the lump on the back of his skull quickly, and without thinking, he pushed Erik's arm away. Which didn't do much for Erik's frown.
"Where did that come from?" Erik demanded. "Did that happen when we were doing throws the other day?"
"What? No." As he'd noticed the first time that they'd sparred, Erik was actually very good about not leaving more than minor bruises. "I tried out the harness that Hank built for me yesterday morning, and his calculations were a little off. Blast went that way," he gestured forward, "I went that way," he jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, "and my head sort of landed first."
"Look at me." Erik held up a hand in front of Alex's face. "Follow my finger."
"What? I don't have a concussion," Alex said. "I've had them before. I'd know." Especially after a day. Erik's response to that was a disbelieving look—which, considering how naïve he'd already stated that he found the rest of them probably shouldn't have come as a surprise—and with scowl, Alex gave in and traced the path of Erik's finger with his eyes.
"All right," Erik finally acknowledged. "You probably don't have a concussion. But I'm not going to toss you around until that's further healed, either."
"So weights again?" He didn't usually do double sets, but….
"Running, I think. You should be doing another three or four miles every day anyway."
"Ah, man, now you're just looking for an excuse to kill me off." Erik, Charles, and to a lesser extent Hank—when he wasn't being stupid about his feet, anyway—all seemed to enjoy running, but Alex had agreed with Sean's assessment since the beginning. If no one was chasing him, he didn't see the point. A couple miles every morning was one thing, as long as he was already awake it was an easy way to loosen up before breakfast, but more than that? No thanks.
Erik smirked and then turned and took off across the field at a lope, and Alex glared at his back for a few moments before hurrying to catch up. Life was just not fair sometimes.
They'd just topped the ridge and were headed down into another wooded area when a bark caught Alex's attention, and he grinned and clapped his hands.
The collie veered abruptly towards them, tail flying high, and Alex was slowing down to greet it when a hand caught him by the collar and yanked him abruptly backwards.
"Wh—"
Erik snapped something at him—clearly an order, but it wasn't in English so Alex had no idea what the order was—even as he grabbed for the knife in his leg sheath.
Except that it wasn't there because he always put it aside when they sparred, and he hadn't picked it back up when today's sparring match had turned into a run. Erik seemed to realize that in the same instant that Alex did, and Alex checked himself for metal quickly. Unfortunately, he was wearing a sweat suit and tennis shoes that didn't even have metal eyes; there was nothing there that Erik could use.
Erik swore, or at least Alex assumed that that was what the string of vicious syllables was, and Alex's head snapped back up as he tried to figure out where the threat was coming from. He didn't see anything, but he trusted Erik's instincts. Whatever it was, if it came close enough and Erik got out of the way, he could probably handle it, but not if he couldn't find it.