Sweep the Ashes
Mystique puts the helicopter down in the woods near a highway. She walks toward the truck stop they passed as they set down; they wait.
"What now?" John asks finally.
"We find a place to lie low for the night."
"It doesn't seem like you need to do much hiding."
"Don't worry. You'll get your chance to fight for mutant rights." Erik leans back against the side of the helicopter and wraps his cloak around his knees. "But I would like to find some enemies worth fighting, and not have an apocalyptic battle with traffic policemen."
"Are you all right?" John says.
"I'm cold," Erik says shortly. Leaving the helicopter's computer system intact would have been a gift to his enemies whenever they finally picked up the trail, but he lost the heating system as collateral damage. Sophisticated electronics are so fragile.
"I could-"
Erik catches the young man's arm.
"Not now," he says.
The lighter is burning between them. John scowls.
"Now you sound like the professor," he says.
"Well, we can't have that." He shrugs. "Very well. Impress me."
John flicks the lighter on and sets it down on a fallen branch that protrudes from the snow. His lips tighten, and the flame flares; his fingers are moving like he's kneading dough for bread. A rough sphere of flame forms, a little smaller than the cradle of his hands. The snow around their feet is melting. Erik holds out his hands over the fire and feels them ache as warmth returns.
He's pleased, and not just at having a means to ward off frostbite. The young man judged correctly that he'd be less impressed by raw power than by control.
He busies himself with thawing out until there's movement in the woods. John snatches up the lighter and backs away from the sound; Erik gets to his feet smoothly and folds his arms.
"Be still," he says. "They can't shoot us."
"Right," John says, and comes to his side. The rustling resolves itself into a short-haired blond woman in a flannel shirt and jeans.
"I found a car," the woman calls. Her eyes flash yellow.
"Come along," Erik says. "Time to get on the road."
John takes the back seat, pulling his knees up to his chest and leaning against the door. He's asleep almost at once. Erik shakes his head.
"Only the young," he murmurs. Instead he stares out the window as Mystique drives until the silence becomes oppressive.
"Radio?" he says. Mystique turns on NPR. There's talk for a while, which he tunes out, drumming his fingers on the armrest. Then the chatter stops and is replaced with Tchaikovsky. The car has an excellent sound system, Erik notes, and decides to test it. The volume of the fevered piano music quadruples.
There's a scrambling noise from the back seat, as of someone being wakened from a sound sleep by the Manfred symphony blasting from a speaker six inches from his ears.
"What the hell is that?" John yells.
"Culture," Erik says. "Time to wake up, anyway. We're almost there."
"Where?"
Erik squints out the window at a road sign, and then shrugs. "Wherever."
There's a motor lodge; as they get out of the car a clouded amber streetlight comes on in the gathering dusk. Erik and John wait outside. Through the streaked front window he can see Mystique handing over her double's credit card. The desk clerk smiles at her.
She emerges cheerfully and tosses him the keys. He hands one to John.
"Get a good night's sleep," he says. "We've got farther to go tomorrow."
"What about dinner?"
Mystique shrugs and nods toward a row of vending machines.
Erik waves a hand at the machines, and there's the rattle of falling packets. John scoops out armloads of virulently-colored plastic bags. Mystique snags several pastries for herself, looking amused. Erik would have to be considerably closer to starvation to find any of it edible, although he stops at a machine that promises hot tea.
Just as he expects, it's horrible. He drinks it on the way to the rooms, letting the warmth seep through his palms. John heads for his room, his hands full of crackling bags, a soda bottle jammed in the crook of his arm. He follows Mystique into the room next door, shuts the door, and locks it; the chain writhes like a snake as it fastens.
Mystique flings herself onto the bed with more than human grace, and lies face down like a dead woman. Erik snaps on the television.
"Must we?" Mystique says, her voice muffled by comforter.
"I want to see if any of this made the news."
The cable doesn't work. There are three local stations, all blurred by snow. None of them is running the news. Erik thumps the television set. It trembles and begins to levitate.
"Erik," Mystique says. He stills the television and rubs his temples. He can feel a headache starting.
"Very well. The news can wait until morning," he says, switching the television off. "I want a shower."
The tile in the shower is crumbling and the soap is powdery, but the water is hot and as he scrubs he thinks he's actually getting the smell of plastic off his skin. He breathes the hot steam and closes his eyes. He'll have to come up with a plan. The X-Men will be looking for him. Assuming they're alive.
He dries off with rough, miniscule towels and puts his pants and shirt back on, because it's cold. Mystique is sitting up in bed when he comes in, her chin on her knees. She's still blond, and naked as far as he can see.
"Come here," she says.
He doesn't. He prowls around the room, picks up the ashtray, puts it down, rearranges the curtains, turns the heater up. Finally he lies down on the other bed and stares at the ceiling.
The bed creaks as Mystique joins him.
"You need something to take your mind off things," she says. He leans over and kisses her, cupping a hand over one small breast. He thumbs the nipple idly.
"Erik," she murmurs. He kisses her collarbone, and then shakes his head.
"I'm tired," he says.
"You'll sleep better," she says. He doesn't say that he thinks she's being wildly optimistic. He runs his hands down over her hips, and spreads her thighs.
"Not wasting any time," she says, and then her breath catches as he strokes her firmly, the way she likes. He brushes the blond hair away from her cheek.
She's straddling him, but he doesn't want her on top. He stops what he's doing with his hands and guides her firmly onto her back. She shrugs and spreads her knees. There are freckles on the insides of her thighs.
He bends, tastes, makes slow circles with his tongue. Her thighs tense and she lets out a breath in what's almost a sigh. He knows what danger does to her, and as he expects it doesn't take long for her to shudder and arch her hips and then lie back, breathing hard.
He caresses her knee.
"Better?" he says.
"You're in a rotten mood," she says, rolling over and pulling the sheet up.
And there's no reason he should be, is there? He starts to say as much, and then stops and makes himself stand up, walk across the room, and take an few deep breaths. If he snaps at her she'll have made him talk.
He doesn't want to talk. He's tired, and his head throbs. It's been a long time since he's wrestled with insomnia, and not being able to sleep now makes him nervous.
No. That's a euphemism. He's sixty-eight, old enough to admit to himself that the word for what's driving him into constant restless motion is fear. It's no stranger, more like an old friend who long ago wore out his patience. He'll put it back in its plastic box soon enough.
"If your thoughts are straying elsewhere . . ." Mystique says. He glances up. She's shifting as she speaks, and she finishes the sentence in John's voice. Erik raises an eyebrow. The boy has the sheet tangled around his legs, his hair mussed.
He smiles slowly, and glances deliberately toward the wall between their room and John's.
"If they were, why would I settle for an imitation?"
Mystique flashes an answering smile that's alien to John's face.
"I have fewer strings attached," she says.
He slips into bed beside her, and explores the young man's body with curious hands. His heart's still not in it.
"He's not as pretty as you," he murmurs in her ear, and she laughs. He feels her skin ripple as she turns blue and slick under his hands. He buries his face in her hair.
"Erik?" she asks quietly.
"I'm just tired," he says.
He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close, pressing her warm body up against him like a hot-water bottle. He's just aroused enough for it to be irritating. He pushes her down onto her stomach and fumbles with the waist of his pants.
She tilts her head so he can see her smile and then buries her head in the pillow, her neck arched. A bit more fumbling and he's in her from behind, letting his tension drive the rhythm of his body. One hand moves blindly across the slick skin of her back, tracing patterns there.
He's not sure he'll be able to finish, and pushes himself hard until he's sure that he will. It helps when she arches under him, her whole body shaking. He shudders on the edge and then it's over, less pleasure than relief.
He lets her draw him down next to her. Her hands are soft. He holds her, feeling her breathing. They stay that way for a long time, saying nothing. There's nothing he needs her to say.
At two a.m. she's sleeping, curled up under the sheet like a child. He's sitting in the chair by the window, looking out at the parking lot drowned in amber light.
He stayed in a motel like this with Charles, once. He certainly doesn't want to remember that, but smells are so evocative. The smell is the same, cheap fabric and disinfectant and cigarette smoke.
It had been a bad night; they'd come on then without warning or reason. After he'd woken up sweating and raving in Polish for the third time, Charles had given up on solicitude and just said very mildly that it wasn't as if he was getting any sleep this way either.
He'd finally agreed to let Charles banish the nightmares, flinching at the cool familiar hand on his forehead. It felt like having his head held under water. He fought, but Charles was ridiculously stronger, pushing him gently and relentlessly down into dreamless sleep.
Sometimes he thinks the real war is against the past.
In the morning Mystique fetches coffee and dubious pastries from the motel lobby. Erik eats without pleasure. She's brought the newspaper as well, and he reads the article about the President's speech and taps his fingers on the paper.
"Charles, what did you do?" he murmurs.
Mystique shrugs. She's blond again.
"I suppose Senator Kelley will find out," she says. He frowns a warning.
"I don't know how much longer that will last."
"You think Xavier will tell them?"
Erik smiles humorlessly.
"I'm not sure he's convinced of the purity of our motives anymore."
John strolls in, eating cereal out of a tiny cardboard box.
"Morning," he says. "What's the plan?"
Erik tosses him the remote for the television set.
"We wait," he says. "While Mystique makes a phone call."
She's back within the hour. John's gone back to his own room, where the cable works. Erik can hear the tinny voices through the wall. He's working his way through the Times crossword puzzle when she raps on the door.
"They're not back in the mansion yet," she says without preliminaries when he opens the door. "Jean Grey's dead. The rest of them survived."
Erik shrugs.
"All right," he says. "Our rendezvous?"
"It's all arranged," Mystique says. "Toad's there."
"Oh, good. I feel much better knowing that," Erik says. He's frankly not sure if that's sarcasm or not. He thumps the wall. "We're leaving!" he calls.
John's at the car when he opens the door.
"What took you so long?" he asks Mystique, grinning. She smiles back, a dangerous expression.
"I had to do my hair," she says.
They pile into the car.
"We'll have to stay off the main roads," Mystique says. "We should have kept the helicopter."
Erik shakes his head.
"Don't you think landing it in the city would be a little conspicuous?"
"Not as much so as what you'll do if we're stopped by the highway patrol."
They hit a roadblock at the Maryland border. Erik stops and leans back in his seat.
"I think we're about to be conspicuous," he says.
"What are you going to do?" John says from the back seat. Erik looks back at him.
"Get all this out of our way," he says.
"Couldn't you just-" John pantomimes lifting something. "Go over them?"
"Still conspicuous," he points out. "But, if you prefer-"
They swoop up and over the cars, with John laughing hysterically in the back seat.
"See if you can catch the Hogwarts Express!" he calls. Mystique laughs. He's not sure what he's missing. Pop culture. He turns to look into the back seat (it's not as if there's much at this altitude for them to hit).
John is starting to catch his breath, still grinning. He leans out the window, flicks the lighter open, and shapes the flame into a fiery bird. He holds it on his wrist, and then tosses it up with a falconer's flourish to soar above the car for a long moment before it dissolves into a shower of sparks.
"Pretty," Erik says. John shrugs.
"Yeah."
They land in an abandoned parking lot to switch cars. Erik takes the driver's seat and starts the car with a touch. It's snowing. John takes the back seat again. Erik watches him in the rear-view mirror. There's snow clinging to his shoulders and melting on his hands. He lifts his knuckle to his mouth and tastes the melting snow.
Judging from his expression, the taste is bittersweet.
The car is hard to handle in the snow, and Erik keeps his attention on the road. Mystique goes to sleep in the passenger seat, his cloak wrapped around her so that the blue tint of her skin won't show. Eventually they drive out of the snowstorm and into a bleak Grey winter's day.
"I can drive," John says after a while.
"How nice for you," Erik says. There's a pause. "All right," he says, and pulls over.
"Cool," John says, sounding like he's trying to cover his surprise. Erik gets out and watches the young man slide behind the wheel. He spreads out his hands on the steering wheel reverently. Erik folds himself into the back seat and thinks about the attraction of all kinds of power to the very young.
Mystique lets them out outside the lab; she'll dispose of the car. It's an abandoned warehouse from the outside, grey and grimy. Everything worth seeing is under the surface.
"What if it's a trap?" John says.
"I promise not to hurt you," Erik says, amused.
"I mean-" John stops as Erik waves the locked door open and crashes it shut behind them. "What about the X-Men?"
"Charles will be able to track you eventually, but he'll have to get Cerebro working first, and I imagine that's not his first priority at the moment."
John shakes his head.
"I'm not his first priority," he says. Erik thinks that needs no reply. John flips the top of the lighter open and closed. "Did you really help the Professor build it?" he asks after a minute.
"He helped me build it."
"Why did you?"
Erik stops, and takes the young man's chin in one hand.
"To find people like you," he says.
Two stories down and thirteen doors later they come out of damp and darkness into light so bright it makes his eyes tear. Toad is lounging in a metal chair, his feet up on a table. He smiles, a sharp, bright expression.
"Welcome home," he says.
Erik straightens his back and runs a hand through his hair. He's starting to feel himself again.
"When did you get here?" he asks.
"Week ago. Mystique said wait for you here."
"The rendezvous was three months ago. What kept you?" Erik strides toward the inner door.
"Well, you weren't here," Toad points out, bouncing out from behind the desk and following him. He raises an eyebrow at John but says nothing about him.
"Entirely irrelevant," he says.
"And I got struck by lightning."
"Excuses," Erik says. "Always excuses."
Toad shrugs, his hands turned up, and then bounds ahead to open the inner door. The mechanism creaks open, and Erik motions John through.
"Welcome home," he says.
Erik settles into a familiar chair with a cup of tea and flips the computer on, while John prowls around touching things as if he's expecting any minute to be told to stop. He reads the news. Mystique arrives after a while, from a different door. There are tunnels that come out in a dozen different streets.
They eat dinner. The kitchen is woefully unstocked with staples, but she manages pasta. John eats like he's starving. Erik reminds himself to remember the appetites of teenage boys.
Later he comes into John's room. It's late. The room smells of freshly-laundered sheets. John's not asleep. Erik sits down in the chair by the bed.
"I have something to tell you," he says. "Dr. Grey is dead."
John nods. He says nothing, but his hand reaches out and fumbles across the sheets until he finds the lighter. He flips it open and lights the room with a trembling ball of flame. It makes his eyes very dark.
"They should have come with me," he says after a silence. "They shouldn't have let me go out there alone."
"Good night," Erik says, and leaves him.
He stops Mystique on her way to the young man's room.
"It's too soon," he says. "He needs time to grieve."
"He does, or you do?"
"Don't psychoanalyze me."
"Xavier hated you already," she says. "He left you in that cell alone."
"It would have ended it," Erik says. "The war. The killing. The persecution. It would have ended it all in an instant. What would I be if I'd let that chance go by?"
"Loyal," Mystique says.
"I am," he snaps. "To mutants, and those who are willing to protect them."
"Does that mean us?" John says. He's standing in the door to his room, half in shadow. He's not wearing a shirt. He rolls the lighter around in his hand without lighting it.
"I thought you were in bed."
"Did you and the professor . . ." John says, sounding like he's almost but not entirely sure.
"Don't trouble yourself with ancient history," Erik says. "We've been enemies since before you were born."
"You did what you had to do," John says. "It was the right thing."
Erik can hear John granting himself absolution for whatever he does the next time he meets his friends. "I have no regrets," he says.
John looks at Mystique, a challenge. "You sleep with him?"
"Yes," she says, looking amused.
"And anybody else?"
Mystique reaches out to brush the boy's cheek with her hand.
"And anybody I want," she says.
She holds out her other hand to Erik, and he scowls, because this isn't part of the plan. But he can see she has no intention of leaving either of them alone tonight, and he can tell by the glint in her eyes there's no point in arguing. He takes her hand.
John looks up at him, and Erik thinks that jealousy is a very complicated thing. He puts an arm over the boy's shoulders. John leans in, and lets Mystique take his arm, and they go back to their room like that.
Mystique pushes John down to sit on the edge of the bed, and steps back. She seems to think Erik should take over from there. He's not sure whether it's because John wants it or for some other, less fathomable reason. Sometimes he doesn't understand Mystique at all.
He kneels by the bed and puts a hand on John's hip. The young man shudders and looks at Mystique. She stays out of reach. He hooks his thumb around the elastic waist of the boy's pants and pulls down. John makes a noise of protest, but doesn't move. His hands tighten on the bed.
The boy's skin is hot, and the cotton is warm against his hand. Mystique rarely wears real clothes. He's missed taking them off. He's close enough that John can probably feel his breath on his thigh.
Whatever the boy's done in school, he hasn't let anyone see him like this. He retreats to the center of the bed when Erik's pulled the pajama bottoms off him, and wraps himself in the sheet. He's trying hard not to be scared.
"John," Mystique says, and her voice is like honey. Erik isn't surprised to see her with white-streaked brown hair, in a girl's nightgown and white gloves.
"Oh, my God," John says. He doesn't move as Mystique slides into the bed, but he takes her gloved hands when she holds them out. She bites her lip like Rogue would, and lets John push her down.
John fucks her with the gracelessness of youth and lies panting on top of her when he finishes, holding her arms as if she were struggling. When he lets her go and raises himself up on one elbow to look at her, her eyes go blue.
"What are you going to do to me?" Bobby Drake asks, pinned under John's weight. Mystique always thinks salt is best for wounds.
Erik's lying beside them in the bed, watching without speaking. He expects shock, or at least hesitation. Instead John smiles, and it's an attractive smile but not a nice one. He leans down to kiss Drake, his mouth working hungrily, and then his face changes and he pulls away.
"It's not the same," he says.
"No," Erik says. "It's not." It only takes a hand on the young man's shoulder to bring him into the shelter of Erik's arms. He's shaking, crying silently the way you learn to when there are people you don't want to wake. He'll sleep when he's done.
It might be a character flaw that he's still thinking, as he smoothes the young man's hair and feels his breathing quiet, this was not the plan.
When he gets up, a few hours later, they're sleeping. Mystique has gone back to blue skin and copper hair. John has one hand resting on the curve of her hip. His hair sticks to his face where his tears have dried.
Mystique opens her eyes as he watches, and looks up at him without surprise. Red hair spills across the pillow. She looks up at him with Jean Grey's face and holds out a white hand.
"What would be the point?" Erik says. "He's already lost her."
He finds a chair in the library, and stares at the books and papers without interest. He takes down a scientific study of genetics, thumbs through it, sets it down. The notes in the margins are faded, but he can still recognize the handwriting. He takes the boy's lighter out of his pocket and flicks it open and closed a few times.
"I need that back," John says. Erik looks at the young man. He's partially dressed again, standing in the doorway of the library. Erik holds the lighter in his cupped hand and floats it to John. John takes it and holds it like a talisman. He comes closer, his bare feet making no noise.
He flicks the lighter on, and the flame builds brighter and brighter, until the boy's hand seems ablaze. Erik can feel the heat on his face.
"You're dangerous," Erik says. "I know that. So are we all."
The lighter snaps shut.
"We didn't finish things," John said. He fidgets but looks him in the eye. "I want to."
Erik nods slowly, and when John goes down on his knees in front of the chair he smiles.
"Very well," he murmurs. "Impress me."