XMM Fic: Sirena
May. 30th, 2006 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaTitle: Sirena
Rated: R
Characters: Charles/Erik, circa 1965
Words: 3215
Notes: Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lilacsigil for going beyond the call of a beta reader, providing hand holding and help with comma-elimination.
"In the ocean there are lots of creatures that have not been discovered yet.
When they are discovered by an explorer, he will give them a name, and we will read about them in books.
When I grow up, I will be an explorer."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
Charles watched the construction workers manouevre steel girders to the top of the framework of yet another factory. Behind him, a wall of duo-printed posters proclaimed that "The Smoke of Chimneys is the Breath of the USSR."
Somewhere inside that steel skeleton, Erik was talking to one of the men, while tons of iron wheeled overhead on twisted steel cables. Charles, a figure of suspicion in his fine wool suit and polite Russian, had been relegated to the street. Leaning against a wall plastered with Soviet propaganda, he reminded himself again that Erik didn't need him, and would hate him for thinking as much. He was wasting energy worrying about having brought Erik to Europe, when Erik was clearly in his element, and Charles, traveling behind the Iron Curtain for the first time, was not.
A figure of distrust he may be, but Charles was here to investigate his own suspicions, centered on the smoke of chimneys and what the latest Seven Year Plan had poured into the gene pool of the Soviet Union. He and Erik had followed a breadcrumb trail of whispered stories and rumours telling of monster babies born in a state hospital close to a large number of factories.
It was hard not to be a little irked at Erik's ease with the people here, when much of the initial investigation depended on Charles's ability to filter information from minds. He was the one who sat for days at a time on a bench on the sterile platform of the new central Metro station, a clipboard balanced on his knee for authenticity. He had drifted gently through the minds of thousands of commuters, hunting purposefully for the memory trail of a single idea-shape: the instinctive "not-me" reaction of the human mind exposed to an alien concept (metallic, acid fear-taste, panic, horror and fascination). He had improved his accent, developed a craving for salted fish, and inadvertently learned some unpleasant things about living in the new Soviet republic. And Erik, who had not wanted to come here, had led him, migraine-blind, back to the hotel, and fed him whiskey and aspirin until he fell asleep.
Now that Charles had identified the father of one of these monster children, he had frightened the man. It had been Erik, stepping into the conversation with colloquial Russian and the right posture, who had coaxed him into talking about the baby that had died. Charles was surprised to notice that when surrounded by familiar language forms and physical gestures, Erik had easily and unknowingly slipped into the same habits: he was communicating with fewer words, instead using expressive shrugs and head movements.
Outside the factory, Charles watched Erik standing comfortably on the scaffolding, high above the ground. He wanted very much to hear what Erik was saying, but the high ferric content of the steel warped the telepathic connection. That comfortable place in Erik's consciousness that allowed him to listen in on conversations was effectively barred with iron. He had to wait.
When Erik finally emerged from the factory, he was still talking earnestly with the construction worker, his head close to the other man's. Charles watched him as he easily evaded overhanging beams and stepped over a coil of wire without looking, and wished that they could negotiate conversations as instinctively. Ilya, the man they had sought out, looked sideways at Charles, and swiftly retreated into the steel-framed building.
"Well, there's an expression set to curdle milk." Erik stood at the side of the road with his hands in his pockets. Erik's own expression was of exhilaration, the effect of all the steel spinning around his body. Charles had seen that expression before, when they had ridden a Ferris wheel for a joke. He forced his scowl away. This kind of mood came rarely to Erik, and it would be petty to spoil it with bickering.
"What did you find out? Did he tell you about the baby?"
Erik quirked his twist of a smile, and took Charles by the elbow, turned him around to face the main road.
"We need to… regroup. Now. At the hotel." said Erik, and the easy laughter in his mind made Charles catch his breath.
"There are fish in the sea, and fish in the rivers.
Fish from the sea cannot swim in the rivers, because they will sink.
Fish from the rivers cannot swim in the sea, because salt water will burn their skin."
Erik Lehnsherr, age 7.
The hotel overlooked the river delta and the mewing of gulls was ever present; Charles could hear them over the pounding of blood in his ears. Every breath was laden with salt and moisture. Erik's hands slipped against his skin, seeking purchase, finding sweat. As the air thinned, his chest ringing and heavy, Charles felt the movement of his own hands singing across the nerves in Erik's back, and wondered who needed who more.
It wasn't really a hotel, or at least, it hadn't been since the twenties. The site was abandoned, pending a state restructuring project. The walls were pitted pink marble, and the windows were either broken or nailed shut. The wiring, however, was easily reconnected, the water pipes linked to cleaner sources, and the caretaker given a little encouragement to sink further into spirit-addled sleep. The top storey was a fairytale palace, with arched doorways and marble nymphs peeping coyly from behind pillars. At night, they slept on a stolen mattress under a glass domed roof. It was stupidly, childishly fun, the stuff of blanket forts and secret clubhouses.
"It was Ilya and Nadia's first child." Erik perched on the makeshift table of planks and boxes, cutting sausage with his pocketknife while he spoke, passing alternate slices down to Charles, who sat cross-legged on the mattress. "They went to the hospital, the child was born, but didn't breathe. The nurses took the child away, and they were told later that it had died."
"Did they see the child?" Charles asked. "Was there any sign of abnormality?"
Erik shook his head.
"Nadia was sedated, and I doubt that Ilya knew what to look for. He said that from the window he could see the child was blue, but I think he meant blue with cold." He hacked another slice of bread from the hard loaf and threw it to Charles. "It shouldn't be this way. Why go to a hospital to have a baby? Babies should be born at home, with aunts and grandmothers to help care for them."
Charles had a fleeting impression of a series of female faces, all high cheekbones and pale blue eyes, before the vista closed, and Erik's face closed with it. He sighed, and leaned his head against Erik's knee.
"I don't like hospitals either." he said.
"We came from the sea.
We evolved into something new, then we came out of the sea."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
Taking a peek from Erik's point of view, Charles could see that Ilya's apartment was tiny but fastidiously clean. From the street, where he was waiting, he could see that the building was crammed full of families. There were copious bundles of washing hanging from the windows and a dozen different meals cooking inside. It was late in the afternoon, and some of the children were playing skipping games in the street. He smiled; the same songs with different words.
Erik, comfortable enough around telepathy by now to know when Charles was eavesdropping, appeared at the window of the fourth floor apartment. He stood casually, as though he were admiring the view or the abundantly lacy curtains, but made a little shooing gesture with his hands. Charles tilted his head, and formed a wordless question inside Erik's mind.
Go for a walk, Charles. They think you are the secret police. You're making the entire building nervous. Soon the real secret police will be here to find out who is impersonating them.
Like all modern cities that have grown very fast, the streets were wide and set in an easily negotiated grid pattern. As night fell, however, the streets were emptying rapidly, and people hurrying home cast worried glances at Charles as he strolled along. He had never seen people so casually burdened with fear. He stopped on a bridge that looked over the sluggish river. Fear hung over the city like fog. It was wrong to have asked Erik to come with him to this place. The gulls wheeled over the surface of the water, and Charles turned back for Ilya's apartment.
Back at the apartment building, Erik was watching for him in the doorway, his shoulders tensed and his face alight with nervous energy. He gestured with his head, and Charles stepped into the building.
"Has something happened?" He put his hand on Erik's arm. "Did the secret police arrive?" He meant it lightly, but Erik caught him by the arms, and pushed him against the wall, hard enough to make Charles breathless.
"They take the children, Charles, the government take them." Erik couldn't speak fast enough, he was flinging the words at Charles's mind.
The children are born with gills, a few in every generation. The hospitals, they take the babies, and nobody sees them again.
"They take the babies," Taking a breath, Erik slowed his speech, pronouncing the words carefully, clipping back his resurgent accent. "The hospitals take the babies, and I think they give them to the army."
Seated on a wooden chair in the toy-box apartment, Charles was introduced to Nadia's mother, Maria, a tiny bird-like woman, swathed in several black shawls. Ilya stood in the kitchen alcove, his face stony.
"When the babies are born that way, we give them to the sea," she said simply, and the mental image was strong: she had seen this happen first hand. Charles could hear the gulls in her memory, as he watched fisherman lay a sallow, squirming form at the edge of the surf. When the next wave washed up the stony beach, the infant gave a eerily coordinated twisting thrust, and vanished under the surface of the water. Charles felt that he ought to be horrified or afraid, but the resonating emotional memories that he was receiving from Maria were of joy, and relief.
"When we give the baby to the sea, the harvest from the sea is good," said Maria. "And sometimes, when the nets are brought in, we find the sea has given us a child back. My mother was one of those."
"What happens to those children?" Charles asked, "Where do they go, the ones that you give to the ocean?"
With a furious glare, Ilya pushed his way past the table, and shoving Erik out of the doorway, thundered down the stairs to the street.
"He is angry," said Maria, "He didn't know. He is not from our village." She gestured towards the closed door of the bedroom. "Nadia, she should have come home to have her baby, but she did not want Ilya to know. Now the baby is gone."
Standing behind the chair, Erik put his hands on Charles's shoulders. He bent his head, to whisper in Charles's ear.
"Don't you see, Charles? There have always been people like us, and they have always had to hide. They hide, and we know them only through myths and stories." His breath was warm against Charles's neck, rapid and fervent. "These are mermaids, Charles, a race of mermaids. Can you imagine what the Soviets could do with children who can breathe underwater?"
Charles rested his head in his hands. He wanted time to think, but the pressing minds in the room allowed him no such luxury. If there was any chance the child was alive and in the hands of the government, then there was no time to waste. When he lifted his hands away from his eyes, he took Maria's hand in his own.
"I will go to the hospital tonight, and look for Nadia's child."
"The Vikings believe that there is a mill at the bottom of the ocean.
It mills the salt that makes the ocean salty.
It will grind until the end of time."
Erik Lehnsherr, age 7.
The hospital was old and new, clean white paint and linoleum covering the stains of the previous regime. The head matron on night duty was surprised to have an inspector from the health department drop in so late at night, but accepted Charles's false papers. It took only a gentle push against her sturdy and obedient mind to convince her that all was in order. Charles endured her cursory tour, then encouraged her to return to her station. The fluorescent lights cast strobing shadows in the empty corridors, and his head began to pound. Hospitals were never pleasant places for telepaths, and Charles was already having trouble blocking the pervasive waves of pain and fear from sick patients and frightened families. His stomach churned as he gingerly thinned his mental shields to investigate the mind of the matron in charge of the maternity ward tonight.
She had been there at the birth. The memory flashed to life in Charles's head, and he stood in the delivery room. The lights were dimmer than they ought to be, and in the darkened corners of the room, Charles could see writhing shadows as the pain-filled dreams of sleeping patients intruded. The matron, gloved and masked, moved slowly around the other staff as though the scene was an underwater dance. He watched the face of the doctor blanch as the head and shoulders of the child emerged. The nurses gathered around the baby as the doctor laid it on a towel-covered table. Charles saw that the blood-smeared skin was a pale olive green, and as the tiny hands flexed and flailed, the flickering light shone through a translucent webbing. The matron's memory was beginning to blur, a self-protective mechanism was already at work to defuse the overpowering fear and revulsion that was washing against Charles's mind too. Before he was thrown from the scene, the staff all stepped back from the table, and he saw symmetrical slits on the sides of the infant's neck opening desperately a few times, then fall closed. Charles's vision cleared, and he found himself on his knees in the hospital corridor, retching onto the clean floor.
"All humans beings are made mostly of water.
We are all made of water and salt."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
He didn't remember leaving the hospital, or wandering the streets, but when Erik found him, he was under a sodium light, leaning against the concrete wall of the bridge that looked over the estuary. Erik may have spoken to him, but Charles wasn't sure. He had shielded himself so heavily from the touch of other minds that he felt anaesthetised, all sensory input dulled. He watched Erik's lips moving as he spoke, and walked slowly with him back to the pink palazzo. Then there was tea, and whiskey, and aspirin, and sleep.
It was much later in the night when sensation crept back into Charles's body. The air was cool against his skin, and the sound of the gulls was far away. Erik was lying beside him on the stolen mattress, breathing slowly. Charles stretched out his hand, and touched one finger to Erik's lips. Erik opened his eyes. They watched each other.
"The baby died." Charles's throat was dry.
"I know," said Erik, "You told me. It couldn't breathe."
"They were so afraid of it. They couldn't imagine it living. They pitied it, and they all watched it die."
"It was born in the wrong place" Erik said. "The baby would have died anyway, Charles. Better that they were afraid and ashamed to talk about it, than the story reach the ears of those who know better. Those who would follow the trail back to the village."
Charles rolled onto his back and looked at the stars through the glass roof. His throat was burning, and he didn't trust his voice to hold steady. He reached out to Erik's mind.
I don't want people to be afraid of us. I don't want to hide behind myths and stories.
Erik leaned over and kissed the corner of Charles's eye. Still touching Erik's mind, Charles could taste the salt.
"Nadia isn't the only girl moving away from her village, and hers is not the only village in the world with a secret, Charles." Erik pressed his fingers to the crease between Charles's eyes, where the ache lurked and throbbed. "The world is not very fond of its secrets now. It wants them exposed and sanitised. There is a difference between hiding and protection."
Charles closed his eyes. Ah. The old argument, familiar as toothache.
It is ethically wrong to make a safe haven for people like us to hide. Once we begin hiding who we are, we affirm that we are not like other people. When do we stop hiding? What do we tell people then? They must grow to know us, live around us, or they will never accept us.
Erik sat up, and pushed against Charles in his mind. It felt like a slap, or a shove. Charles winced. Erik's voice was dry and cruel, and dripped with self-loathing.
"Relish your open-mindedness, Charles. I'm sure it will be most comforting as the bodies pile up around you. You will still be reasoning with them as you draw your final breath, as they throw you into the…"
Charles flung himself against Erik, pressed his lips to Erik's mouth, anything to block the words that were coming.
It will not happen! It will not! I won't let it, you won't either.
Erik flailed, fell back on the mattress, tried to push Charles away. Charles knelt over him, and held Erik's head between his hands, stroking the temples with his thumbs. Erik covered Charles's hands with his own, and they were trembling.
"Give them a safe place, Charles. Let them make the decision to be brave. Give them that chance."
Charles bent his head and kissed Erik again, softly.
"We can do that together."
Coda
"When the earth was young, oceans covered the whole world.
Then the oceans rolled back and the land was ready for the animals to live on it."
Erik Lehnsherr, age 7.
Charles was nervous about the flight home, but Erik assured him that the Aeroflot plane was quite sound. As the plane lurched into the sky, Charles gripped the juddering armrest. Erik, lying back with his eyes closed, put his hand over the top.
"Everything is fine, Charles."
Charles leaned his head against the seat, and watched the harbour drop away. Were there really sea-breathing humans living under the choppy grey surface? He tentatively extended his mind towards the water, but the plane was already too high. He settled back into his seat, and drifted into sleep, dreaming of strong bodies arching through sunlit water.
Rated: R
Characters: Charles/Erik, circa 1965
Words: 3215
Notes: Thank you to
lilacsigil for going beyond the call of a beta reader, providing hand holding and help with comma-elimination. "In the ocean there are lots of creatures that have not been discovered yet.
When they are discovered by an explorer, he will give them a name, and we will read about them in books.
When I grow up, I will be an explorer."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
Charles watched the construction workers manouevre steel girders to the top of the framework of yet another factory. Behind him, a wall of duo-printed posters proclaimed that "The Smoke of Chimneys is the Breath of the USSR."
Somewhere inside that steel skeleton, Erik was talking to one of the men, while tons of iron wheeled overhead on twisted steel cables. Charles, a figure of suspicion in his fine wool suit and polite Russian, had been relegated to the street. Leaning against a wall plastered with Soviet propaganda, he reminded himself again that Erik didn't need him, and would hate him for thinking as much. He was wasting energy worrying about having brought Erik to Europe, when Erik was clearly in his element, and Charles, traveling behind the Iron Curtain for the first time, was not.
A figure of distrust he may be, but Charles was here to investigate his own suspicions, centered on the smoke of chimneys and what the latest Seven Year Plan had poured into the gene pool of the Soviet Union. He and Erik had followed a breadcrumb trail of whispered stories and rumours telling of monster babies born in a state hospital close to a large number of factories.
It was hard not to be a little irked at Erik's ease with the people here, when much of the initial investigation depended on Charles's ability to filter information from minds. He was the one who sat for days at a time on a bench on the sterile platform of the new central Metro station, a clipboard balanced on his knee for authenticity. He had drifted gently through the minds of thousands of commuters, hunting purposefully for the memory trail of a single idea-shape: the instinctive "not-me" reaction of the human mind exposed to an alien concept (metallic, acid fear-taste, panic, horror and fascination). He had improved his accent, developed a craving for salted fish, and inadvertently learned some unpleasant things about living in the new Soviet republic. And Erik, who had not wanted to come here, had led him, migraine-blind, back to the hotel, and fed him whiskey and aspirin until he fell asleep.
Now that Charles had identified the father of one of these monster children, he had frightened the man. It had been Erik, stepping into the conversation with colloquial Russian and the right posture, who had coaxed him into talking about the baby that had died. Charles was surprised to notice that when surrounded by familiar language forms and physical gestures, Erik had easily and unknowingly slipped into the same habits: he was communicating with fewer words, instead using expressive shrugs and head movements.
Outside the factory, Charles watched Erik standing comfortably on the scaffolding, high above the ground. He wanted very much to hear what Erik was saying, but the high ferric content of the steel warped the telepathic connection. That comfortable place in Erik's consciousness that allowed him to listen in on conversations was effectively barred with iron. He had to wait.
When Erik finally emerged from the factory, he was still talking earnestly with the construction worker, his head close to the other man's. Charles watched him as he easily evaded overhanging beams and stepped over a coil of wire without looking, and wished that they could negotiate conversations as instinctively. Ilya, the man they had sought out, looked sideways at Charles, and swiftly retreated into the steel-framed building.
"Well, there's an expression set to curdle milk." Erik stood at the side of the road with his hands in his pockets. Erik's own expression was of exhilaration, the effect of all the steel spinning around his body. Charles had seen that expression before, when they had ridden a Ferris wheel for a joke. He forced his scowl away. This kind of mood came rarely to Erik, and it would be petty to spoil it with bickering.
"What did you find out? Did he tell you about the baby?"
Erik quirked his twist of a smile, and took Charles by the elbow, turned him around to face the main road.
"We need to… regroup. Now. At the hotel." said Erik, and the easy laughter in his mind made Charles catch his breath.
"There are fish in the sea, and fish in the rivers.
Fish from the sea cannot swim in the rivers, because they will sink.
Fish from the rivers cannot swim in the sea, because salt water will burn their skin."
Erik Lehnsherr, age 7.
The hotel overlooked the river delta and the mewing of gulls was ever present; Charles could hear them over the pounding of blood in his ears. Every breath was laden with salt and moisture. Erik's hands slipped against his skin, seeking purchase, finding sweat. As the air thinned, his chest ringing and heavy, Charles felt the movement of his own hands singing across the nerves in Erik's back, and wondered who needed who more.
It wasn't really a hotel, or at least, it hadn't been since the twenties. The site was abandoned, pending a state restructuring project. The walls were pitted pink marble, and the windows were either broken or nailed shut. The wiring, however, was easily reconnected, the water pipes linked to cleaner sources, and the caretaker given a little encouragement to sink further into spirit-addled sleep. The top storey was a fairytale palace, with arched doorways and marble nymphs peeping coyly from behind pillars. At night, they slept on a stolen mattress under a glass domed roof. It was stupidly, childishly fun, the stuff of blanket forts and secret clubhouses.
"It was Ilya and Nadia's first child." Erik perched on the makeshift table of planks and boxes, cutting sausage with his pocketknife while he spoke, passing alternate slices down to Charles, who sat cross-legged on the mattress. "They went to the hospital, the child was born, but didn't breathe. The nurses took the child away, and they were told later that it had died."
"Did they see the child?" Charles asked. "Was there any sign of abnormality?"
Erik shook his head.
"Nadia was sedated, and I doubt that Ilya knew what to look for. He said that from the window he could see the child was blue, but I think he meant blue with cold." He hacked another slice of bread from the hard loaf and threw it to Charles. "It shouldn't be this way. Why go to a hospital to have a baby? Babies should be born at home, with aunts and grandmothers to help care for them."
Charles had a fleeting impression of a series of female faces, all high cheekbones and pale blue eyes, before the vista closed, and Erik's face closed with it. He sighed, and leaned his head against Erik's knee.
"I don't like hospitals either." he said.
"We came from the sea.
We evolved into something new, then we came out of the sea."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
Taking a peek from Erik's point of view, Charles could see that Ilya's apartment was tiny but fastidiously clean. From the street, where he was waiting, he could see that the building was crammed full of families. There were copious bundles of washing hanging from the windows and a dozen different meals cooking inside. It was late in the afternoon, and some of the children were playing skipping games in the street. He smiled; the same songs with different words.
Erik, comfortable enough around telepathy by now to know when Charles was eavesdropping, appeared at the window of the fourth floor apartment. He stood casually, as though he were admiring the view or the abundantly lacy curtains, but made a little shooing gesture with his hands. Charles tilted his head, and formed a wordless question inside Erik's mind.
Go for a walk, Charles. They think you are the secret police. You're making the entire building nervous. Soon the real secret police will be here to find out who is impersonating them.
Like all modern cities that have grown very fast, the streets were wide and set in an easily negotiated grid pattern. As night fell, however, the streets were emptying rapidly, and people hurrying home cast worried glances at Charles as he strolled along. He had never seen people so casually burdened with fear. He stopped on a bridge that looked over the sluggish river. Fear hung over the city like fog. It was wrong to have asked Erik to come with him to this place. The gulls wheeled over the surface of the water, and Charles turned back for Ilya's apartment.
Back at the apartment building, Erik was watching for him in the doorway, his shoulders tensed and his face alight with nervous energy. He gestured with his head, and Charles stepped into the building.
"Has something happened?" He put his hand on Erik's arm. "Did the secret police arrive?" He meant it lightly, but Erik caught him by the arms, and pushed him against the wall, hard enough to make Charles breathless.
"They take the children, Charles, the government take them." Erik couldn't speak fast enough, he was flinging the words at Charles's mind.
The children are born with gills, a few in every generation. The hospitals, they take the babies, and nobody sees them again.
"They take the babies," Taking a breath, Erik slowed his speech, pronouncing the words carefully, clipping back his resurgent accent. "The hospitals take the babies, and I think they give them to the army."
Seated on a wooden chair in the toy-box apartment, Charles was introduced to Nadia's mother, Maria, a tiny bird-like woman, swathed in several black shawls. Ilya stood in the kitchen alcove, his face stony.
"When the babies are born that way, we give them to the sea," she said simply, and the mental image was strong: she had seen this happen first hand. Charles could hear the gulls in her memory, as he watched fisherman lay a sallow, squirming form at the edge of the surf. When the next wave washed up the stony beach, the infant gave a eerily coordinated twisting thrust, and vanished under the surface of the water. Charles felt that he ought to be horrified or afraid, but the resonating emotional memories that he was receiving from Maria were of joy, and relief.
"When we give the baby to the sea, the harvest from the sea is good," said Maria. "And sometimes, when the nets are brought in, we find the sea has given us a child back. My mother was one of those."
"What happens to those children?" Charles asked, "Where do they go, the ones that you give to the ocean?"
With a furious glare, Ilya pushed his way past the table, and shoving Erik out of the doorway, thundered down the stairs to the street.
"He is angry," said Maria, "He didn't know. He is not from our village." She gestured towards the closed door of the bedroom. "Nadia, she should have come home to have her baby, but she did not want Ilya to know. Now the baby is gone."
Standing behind the chair, Erik put his hands on Charles's shoulders. He bent his head, to whisper in Charles's ear.
"Don't you see, Charles? There have always been people like us, and they have always had to hide. They hide, and we know them only through myths and stories." His breath was warm against Charles's neck, rapid and fervent. "These are mermaids, Charles, a race of mermaids. Can you imagine what the Soviets could do with children who can breathe underwater?"
Charles rested his head in his hands. He wanted time to think, but the pressing minds in the room allowed him no such luxury. If there was any chance the child was alive and in the hands of the government, then there was no time to waste. When he lifted his hands away from his eyes, he took Maria's hand in his own.
"I will go to the hospital tonight, and look for Nadia's child."
"The Vikings believe that there is a mill at the bottom of the ocean.
It mills the salt that makes the ocean salty.
It will grind until the end of time."
Erik Lehnsherr, age 7.
The hospital was old and new, clean white paint and linoleum covering the stains of the previous regime. The head matron on night duty was surprised to have an inspector from the health department drop in so late at night, but accepted Charles's false papers. It took only a gentle push against her sturdy and obedient mind to convince her that all was in order. Charles endured her cursory tour, then encouraged her to return to her station. The fluorescent lights cast strobing shadows in the empty corridors, and his head began to pound. Hospitals were never pleasant places for telepaths, and Charles was already having trouble blocking the pervasive waves of pain and fear from sick patients and frightened families. His stomach churned as he gingerly thinned his mental shields to investigate the mind of the matron in charge of the maternity ward tonight.
She had been there at the birth. The memory flashed to life in Charles's head, and he stood in the delivery room. The lights were dimmer than they ought to be, and in the darkened corners of the room, Charles could see writhing shadows as the pain-filled dreams of sleeping patients intruded. The matron, gloved and masked, moved slowly around the other staff as though the scene was an underwater dance. He watched the face of the doctor blanch as the head and shoulders of the child emerged. The nurses gathered around the baby as the doctor laid it on a towel-covered table. Charles saw that the blood-smeared skin was a pale olive green, and as the tiny hands flexed and flailed, the flickering light shone through a translucent webbing. The matron's memory was beginning to blur, a self-protective mechanism was already at work to defuse the overpowering fear and revulsion that was washing against Charles's mind too. Before he was thrown from the scene, the staff all stepped back from the table, and he saw symmetrical slits on the sides of the infant's neck opening desperately a few times, then fall closed. Charles's vision cleared, and he found himself on his knees in the hospital corridor, retching onto the clean floor.
"All humans beings are made mostly of water.
We are all made of water and salt."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
He didn't remember leaving the hospital, or wandering the streets, but when Erik found him, he was under a sodium light, leaning against the concrete wall of the bridge that looked over the estuary. Erik may have spoken to him, but Charles wasn't sure. He had shielded himself so heavily from the touch of other minds that he felt anaesthetised, all sensory input dulled. He watched Erik's lips moving as he spoke, and walked slowly with him back to the pink palazzo. Then there was tea, and whiskey, and aspirin, and sleep.
It was much later in the night when sensation crept back into Charles's body. The air was cool against his skin, and the sound of the gulls was far away. Erik was lying beside him on the stolen mattress, breathing slowly. Charles stretched out his hand, and touched one finger to Erik's lips. Erik opened his eyes. They watched each other.
"The baby died." Charles's throat was dry.
"I know," said Erik, "You told me. It couldn't breathe."
"They were so afraid of it. They couldn't imagine it living. They pitied it, and they all watched it die."
"It was born in the wrong place" Erik said. "The baby would have died anyway, Charles. Better that they were afraid and ashamed to talk about it, than the story reach the ears of those who know better. Those who would follow the trail back to the village."
Charles rolled onto his back and looked at the stars through the glass roof. His throat was burning, and he didn't trust his voice to hold steady. He reached out to Erik's mind.
I don't want people to be afraid of us. I don't want to hide behind myths and stories.
Erik leaned over and kissed the corner of Charles's eye. Still touching Erik's mind, Charles could taste the salt.
"Nadia isn't the only girl moving away from her village, and hers is not the only village in the world with a secret, Charles." Erik pressed his fingers to the crease between Charles's eyes, where the ache lurked and throbbed. "The world is not very fond of its secrets now. It wants them exposed and sanitised. There is a difference between hiding and protection."
Charles closed his eyes. Ah. The old argument, familiar as toothache.
It is ethically wrong to make a safe haven for people like us to hide. Once we begin hiding who we are, we affirm that we are not like other people. When do we stop hiding? What do we tell people then? They must grow to know us, live around us, or they will never accept us.
Erik sat up, and pushed against Charles in his mind. It felt like a slap, or a shove. Charles winced. Erik's voice was dry and cruel, and dripped with self-loathing.
"Relish your open-mindedness, Charles. I'm sure it will be most comforting as the bodies pile up around you. You will still be reasoning with them as you draw your final breath, as they throw you into the…"
Charles flung himself against Erik, pressed his lips to Erik's mouth, anything to block the words that were coming.
It will not happen! It will not! I won't let it, you won't either.
Erik flailed, fell back on the mattress, tried to push Charles away. Charles knelt over him, and held Erik's head between his hands, stroking the temples with his thumbs. Erik covered Charles's hands with his own, and they were trembling.
"Give them a safe place, Charles. Let them make the decision to be brave. Give them that chance."
Charles bent his head and kissed Erik again, softly.
"We can do that together."
Coda
"When the earth was young, oceans covered the whole world.
Then the oceans rolled back and the land was ready for the animals to live on it."
Erik Lehnsherr, age 7.
Charles was nervous about the flight home, but Erik assured him that the Aeroflot plane was quite sound. As the plane lurched into the sky, Charles gripped the juddering armrest. Erik, lying back with his eyes closed, put his hand over the top.
"Everything is fine, Charles."
Charles leaned his head against the seat, and watched the harbour drop away. Were there really sea-breathing humans living under the choppy grey surface? He tentatively extended his mind towards the water, but the plane was already too high. He settled back into his seat, and drifted into sleep, dreaming of strong bodies arching through sunlit water.
