mount weather flashback log; mystique & magneto WHO: Mystique + Magneto WHEN: Flashback! This log takes place immediately after the beach scene in X-Men: First Class. WHERE: A safehouse in New Orleans WHAT: After leaving Charles, the proto-Brotherhood holes up in one of Shaw’s safehouses in Louisianna. Raven and Erik talk about what happened, and then talk about that time they did that thing when they were naked. WARNING(S): Not much, I don’t think?
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Maybe it was the rotten egg smell from Azazel's teleportation, but Mystique felt like she was going to throw up.
He'd taken them to one of Shaw's bases, some villa in New Orleans that he had probably stolen from somebody else, making them appear on the front lawn. Traveling with Azazel wasn't easy, and it turned out that it made her a little nauseous, so the first thing Mystique did after so boldly stating that she was mutant and proud and leaving her only family was to stumble toward a particularly leafy bush in front of the fancy house and lose her lunch behind it.
She could have imagined a more dignified scenario.
After that, it turned out that nobody was all that broken up that Shaw was dead, so long as Erik wasn't going to ask them to suddenly start playing nice with humans. They'd been working for him, not with him, and at some point Riptide admitted that the only one who'd really cared about Shaw was Emma, who was probably sitting in her prison cell and quietly planning a demise she didn't know he had already paid. He and Azazel were happy to let Erik step into his shoes, showing the new people around and encouraging them to go through the kitchen or the bathrooms if they wanted to.
They weren't that bad. Working for Shaw, Riptide and Azazel had been grunts at best, if dangerous, but now that they weren't at each other's throats, they were almost pleasant. Riptide had a sharp sense of humor and a thick Spanish accent, and though Azazel was quieter, Mystique got the impression that he was friendlier in Russian from the way he would start in a conversational tone without realizing he wasn't speaking English. Even Angel was less tense once the reality of things sank in, realizing that she didn't have to deal with Charles or Shaw.
Mystique was quiet, following the others around in a haze. She couldn't think about much more than Charles, laying on the ground and watching her leave.
At some point there was food (Azazel, it turned out, could cook), before people started wandering off to go to sleep. The sun was barely down, but after this kind of day, it was a miracle that any of them were still on their feet. There weren't enough rooms for everyone, so Mystique volunteered to take the couch when it came down to her or Angel getting the last bed. It went without saying that Erik was getting Shaw's.
Left alone in the living room, she finally started taking off her clothes, uncomfortable being so vulnerable around people. The thick, protective fabric of the uniform felt unbearably heavy.
Erik didn't eat with the rest of them. He ate a bit of food from the kitchen but left without taking a plate. In fact, he'd barely said a word except to declare that this place was safe for the time being and they could settle here before deciding on a course of action. He let the others talk amongst themselves while he removed himself.
What he did after that, no one knew.
He didn't resurface until Raven — Mystique — was alone.
He spoke from the doorway. "You didn't have to leave," he said.
Mystique paused before shrugging off the rest of her jacket, keeping her back to him. She wasn't sure she was ready to turn her back on anybody but Erik just yet. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I did."
"He might be alive," Erik said gently. "He had the others with him. They would have gotten him to safety."
He didn't know. Really, he didn't. Maybe Charles bled out on the beach, for all he really knew. He couldn't afford to think about it, but it was permanently seared in his mind.
"He has Hank with him and there were doctors on the army boats." Raven's trying to sound more confident than she is. "He's stubborn. He'll make it." She peeled her sweaty undershirt away from her skin. Those uniforms looked nice enough, but they didn't breathe. At all.
Erik watched her, but he didn't move. Leaving Charles had been hard for him, but it had to be harder on Raven. He wasn't an idiot.
"You made the right choice." He wanted to convince her. "We both made the right choice. Charles can't see it. He's never going to see it."
"It's…" Raven made a frustrated noise and shoved her way out of her pants. Erik had seen her naked before, and she barely looked it thanks to her scales. She just couldn't stand to be stifled anymore. "It's easier for Charles to be optimistic. I know that."
"Charles is…" A fool. Erik didn't finish his sentence. As angry as he was about everything, he knew that Charles was hurt, possibly dead, and it was through his own carelessness. He'd never meant for things to go the way they did, but he'd been backed into a corner and Charles wasn't going to do anything about it.
"Well. It doesn't matter. We're choosing our own path."
He wandered into the room, just to look around. This had been Shaw's place, this had been a room in which he'd walked countless times, not giving a single thought to the boy he'd tortured in Auschwitz. Now he was dead. Erik was meant to feel some sort of satisfaction about it, but it didn't feel finished.
"I just have to keep telling myself that." Kicking aside her boots and leaving her uniform over the arm of a chair, Mystique finally sank down onto the couch, relaxing for the first time in days. The furniture was absurdly expensive, almost too comfortable to be comfortable.
Fuck Shaw.
Erik glanced at her. He'd been avoiding eye contact for some time, keeping his distance from the others. He had a lot of feelings that he didn't know how to process yet, including his feelings about the woman in front of him now.
"Please tell me you didn't do this for me."
He'd slept with her. He'd validated her. He gave her what she needed, and he knew that. He didn't think Mystique was so naive as to let that be the only reason for her leaving, but he still felt like he needed to make it clear that whatever they had together, it wasn't a romantic relationship. She needed to believe in this fledgling cause, or else she could just go back to Charles. He'd drawn a line in the sand and the road ahead was a bleak, violent one.
Mystique's expression scrunched, incredulous. "What? No. You're good, but you're not leave my brother bleeding on a beach good. Don't flatter yourself."
Erik raised an eyebrow, clearly not in the mood to react any more than that. "Good. So we're clear."
But Mystique wasn't done, sitting up now so she could stare up at him with a little more leverage. "Is that what you think of me? You need to make sure I didn't join you because I have a crush or my brain is clouded by sex?"
Erik shifted slightly, tightening the way his arms were folded over his chest. He looked distinctly uncomfortable in a way that Mystique had probably never seen before.
He hadn't meant to insult her. He genuinely didn't know. He'd never had a person make a decision quite like that before. She'd abandoned her brother for him.
Mystique cocked her head, her yellow eyes sharp. "It's a yes or no question."
"You chose me. I don't know what that means."
"It means I'm sick of playing nice with people who'd rather see me dead. I'm done pretending does anything but make humans feel better. The good guys and the bad guys just launched nukes at us when we were trying to help, I don't—" She made a frustrated noise and pushed herself off the couch so she could pace.
"You… I'm an idiot. I know that. I've been trying to get Charles' approval my entire life by looking normal, and fitting, and playing by someone else's rules, and he was never totally happy unless I twisted myself around. You showed up and you liked me without asking for any of that. You're not complacent or overly privileged or delusional enough to think that if we're good and useful and submissive, they won't turn on us the second we're inconvenient." Raven worried her hands, half-turning toward him but not looking over. "I don't know. Maybe I didn't pick you. Maybe I picked myself."
Erik nodded. "I respect that," he said quietly.
It was reassuring, to know where they stood. He'd been with other people before, and he'd been in brief relationships, but Erik didn't quite know how Raven felt. They'd slept together, Erik was fascinated by her and drawn to her, but he wasn't about to say that they were together. If she was looking out for herself instead of following him, then they were safer in the long run.
"We've made enemies," he said, clearing his throat. "And if we're going to continue helping our brothers and sisters, we're going to make more. I need you to understand that even though you left in order to protect yourself, you can't be selfish." He was still trying out his rhetoric, still working through the logistics of where he was going to go with this. The idea of liberating mutants and saving them from those who wanted them dead was a major shift in his life's motives. He didn't yet have a plan, but he was formulating one.
"I'm in this with you, Erik," she said firmly. "I know what you're up to. I could be alone if I wanted to be alone."
"You're not alone," said Erik. "And you never have to be. Not anymore."
"So…" Trailing off into an awkward quiet, Raven finally turned back to look at him, moving just close enough to sit on the arm of a nearby chair. "Should we talk about the sex?"
Erik was startled into a chuckle and he glanced away. "We don't have to talk about the sex."
"Oh." Raven fidgeted. "All right. Sure."
Erik raised an eyebrow. "Unless you want to talk about it. You seemed to make it clear that you didn't."
"No, I just don't want you to think I'm only here because of it. And we were busy, before." She shrugged, trying to look like she didn't care. "But if you don't want to, we won't."
"You want to talk about it," Erik said impatiently. "I'm not dancing around it." They'd had sex. Erik had feelings about her. He could keep going without doing anything about those feelings, if he had to. That was probably easier for everyone.
"I'm not saying I'm in love with you," Raven said sharply, more bark than bite. "But I'd do it again if you wanted to. It was good, for me. —I'm sure it was nothing special for you, but I've never been with anyone looking like myself before, I've never felt safe enough to relax enough to actually enjoy it."
Erik frowned. "You thought it was nothing special for me?" he asked, his tone softening.
Raven opened her mouth to reply, couldn't think of anything, and shrugged again, suddenly looking very young. She'd never had much luck around people she liked.
Erik finally moved to her. He cradled her face in his hand, tipping her chin up so he could lightly kiss the corner of her mouth. "It was special," he said quietly. "It doesn't have to be anything, but I want you to know that it was special. And you are extraordinary."
She gently pushed herself away from where she was sitting, closing a little distance between them without forcing him to step back. "I am… not really sure what I'm doing," Raven murmured, idly smoothing his shirt down over his chest. "But this mattered to me, and I wouldn't mind if it became a habit."
"We don't have to call it anything," said Erik. He didn't touch her, but he allowed her to touch him, and that was intimate enough on its own.
Raven brushed her fingers over his jaw before resting on his chin, tipping his head down so she could lean in and softly kiss his mouth. She hadn't left for this, not at all, but she was sick of feeling as if no one would take her seriously or see her as attractive without an illusion. It was hard not to want to be closer to Erik even after what they had done together earlier in the day.
Erik clasped his hands behind his back when he leaned down to return the kiss. He was gentle about it, but he was reluctant to end it and pull away. She had his approval. She'd chosen him over Charles. She was still here. That mattered to him more than anything.
The kiss ended for a fraction of a second before Raven was leaning back in, reaching up with her free hand to cradle Erik's face. Her touch was light, even tender. "You can touch me if you want to," she said, words pressed to his mouth.
Erik hesitated, but once he was given permission his hands traced over her sides and wrapped around her waist. He kissed her again, slowly, and for the first time he admitted any kind of vulnerability since the crisis happened:
"I'm tired."
Tired. It didn't even begin to scratch the surface of how he felt. He didn't know if Charles was alive. He'd killed the man who'd killed his mother, and he barely felt closure. He was exhausted down to the bone, he felt like he was barely holding himself up anymore, but he'd put himself in a place of leadership for other people for the first time in his life. He'd never been anything but alone.
In response, Raven wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face to his neck and leaving herself open for him to lean on. "You did the right thing today," she said, rubbing a slow circle against the back of his shoulder.
"Did I?" Erik asked. It was the first time he'd openly questioned any of it.
"What other choices could you have made? Reasonably?"
"I could have rolled over and done it his way."
"I did say reasonably." Raven leaned back enough to look him in the face, raising her eyebrows. "I've been living with him most of my life. My tolerance had been used up. You wouldn't have stayed long after that."
Erik shook his head. "I see where this is going. Charles doesn't. Charles can't understand. He doesn't see the patterns beginning to form."
"He's an academic. They all think studying something is the same as knowing how it works. He'll either get over that or he won't." Idly, she scratched the back of his neck, dragging her fingers against the edges of his hairline.
"But I do see it. And I have to do something about it," Erik said quietly. "I can't …"
He inhaled sharply to clear his head, waving a dismissive hand as he pulled back. "We've done the right thing, all of us. We're safe enough to rest for now, and we'll start plans in the next couple of days."
“You need sleep.” Raven ran her hand down his shoulder and gave him a nudge. “We’ll deal with what this means tomorrow.”
Erik sighed, pressing a distracted kiss to Raven's hair. "Yes," he said softly. "Yes, we will. Whether we like it or not."