DVD style commentary: Sirena
Aug. 21st, 2006 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaI've been enjoying everyone's commentaries so far, and learned a lot about how people put their stories together. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ion_bond and sionnain both said I should do commentary on Sirena.
Read the original story here: Sirena
XMM Fic: Sirena
Title: Sirena
Rated: R
Characters: Charles/Erik, circa 1965
Words: 3215
Notes: Thank you tolilacsigil 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.
These little introductions were put in when I'd written about half of the story. I have a lot of difficulty knowing where to put breaks in the narrative; and putting in a piece like this helps me ramble less, and get to the point more.lilacsigil says that I like to use a strong structure, which is true.
I wanted to think about the essential parts of Charles and Erik's personalities, the parts that aren't shaped by environment or their mutant powers. I chose seven years old because that's a good age for starting to form opinions about the world around you, without being influenced so much by others. Here, Charles is fascinated by all the things that people don't know. Because he's Charles, he's not scared of the unknown. Later on, he's going to give his X-Men their code-names, and I know he would have put a lot of thought into that. (This is movieverse, so we're spared the mystery of "Marvel Girl".)
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."
This is an actual poster. Using the word chimney in Charles/Erik story is nerve-wracking, because of the concentration camp imagery.
This story was originally going to be set in the Ukraine, because it had to be inside the USSR, with cities that hadn't consumed all the fishing villages with urban sprawl, somewhere that was relatively untouched by the war, and far enough away from Germany that I could justify Erik's stability throughout the story. There wasn't a lot of information specific to the Ukraine, so I've gone with an anonymous coastal country that is having its own identity erased by the Soviets.
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.
Charles has either learned Russian the traditional way, or filched Russian out of someone's head with his power, but you don't speak a language well just by learning perfect grammar or "downloading" a good vocabulary.
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.
Most of the past-fics I read were set in the US, Charles's home, and we see a lot of Erik being the fish out of water. I wanted to see Charles navigating an alien culture and finding it difficult to fit in.
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.
This is the early sixties, and there's soon going to be a rapid increase in the number of mutants. (Also in the number of cancers and one-of-a-kind genetic disorders.) It's not just the radiation, it's the dioxins and the mercury and all the other rubbish we pour into the ocean and the sky.
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.
Charles was prepared to take care of Erik. This turn-around has pointed out that he likes looking after Erik, more than he ought. It makes him uncomfortable, and thus he is snippy.
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).
I like the idea of Charles filtering information like a baleen whale.
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.
There has to be repercussions to using your power like this; you can't be a mighty telepath and not get a mighty headache when you use your abilities.
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.
I'm thinking of large social gatherings at my Italian grandparents' social club, watching my dad's body language change. Russian is the unifying language here, and Erik wouldn't speak Ilya's native dialect, but there's a way of indicating that you belong. Erik can do it here. Charles can't.
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.
lilacsigil beta-read this for me, and she assumed that Erik was up on the scaffolding. I hadn't, but it was such a perfect image that I had to put it in; Erik standing up there, unafraid, with great beams of steel flying around him.
I thought that steel might interfere with telepathy, something that Erik will later refine when he builds his helmet.
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.
I used "expression" three times in one paragraph. That sucks.
Steel is a turn on, moving steel even better. I just know that Erik stopped that ferris wheel while they were on the top.
"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.
Erik, age seven, is all about classification, and where people fit into the world. He already had the kind of mind that likes to categorise, so after the war, it's not much of a stretch to see the world as an us-or-them kind of place.
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.
Last summer we were visited by a flock of corellas, a native bird that sounds a lot like a gull, even though it's a parrot. They flew around the town from sunrise to sunset, in shifts, hundreds and hundreds of birds all screaming at the same time. It gives a certain nerve-twanging atmosphere after a few days.
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.
Erik's in charge here. I'm not sure if that's how it goes all the time.
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.
I don't think there have been a lot of blanket forts in Charles's childhood, he is very taken with the idea.
"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.
At the time, I couldn't make it work, but Erik is feeding the slices to Charles off the blade of his knife. Erik knows what kind of food to buy, and where, and how best to eat it while in one's secret clubhouse.
"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."
The first time I wrote this scene, Ilya was in the room with his wife while she gave birth – but this is the early sixties, he'd have been waiting outside the room.
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."
This becomes an important theme – the way that family units are changing after the war. The extended family is an endangered species, but nobody knows it right now.
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.
There's not much that Charles can say here. Erik hasn't just lost his family, he's lost a way of living too. It's not really about hospitals.
"We came from the sea.
We evolved into something new, then we came out of the sea."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
Charles Xavier: Change is a good thing. Embrace it.
Erik Lehnsherr: Change is very, very bad. Make your decision and stick to it for ever.
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.
This is my memory of Rome, the washing, the apartment buildings and the incredibly clean households, even though the city itself was quite grimy.
I like to show how companionable the telepathic connection between Charles and Erik is, because it makes the helmet such a cruel statement in the movies.
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.
They make such a good pair of spies – they know each other so well.
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.
See Australia's proud capital city: Canberra. Well-planned, easily negotiated, no personality. Cities need to sprawl.
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.
I think Charles is sensing Erik's panic, though he hasn't processed the information in a conscious way. He knows that he wants to see Erik and make sure he's okay.
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."
Erik naturally jumps to the worst possible outcome – he's over-reacting. He doesn't actually know what's happening to the babies, or even if there is more than one baby.
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.
My father's family was ruled by Nonna and Bis-Nonna. There's an inverse square rule that governs tiny European grandmothers: the smaller the Nonna, the harder the whacking. Also, the more shawls. There's a power struggle going on between Maria and Ilya, Nadia's city-born husband.
"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.
The implication is that the baby is alive and strong, and able to survive in the correct environment. I was thinking of all those weird fertility rituals that survive in rural communities everywhere around the world, like in Greenwitch from The Dark is Rising Cycle. People are still throwing things into the ocean or tying things to stakes in the grain fields, trying to ensure a good harvest. We're a superstitious lot, no matter what our scientists are able to do.
"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."
I wanted to imply that it was a timeless cycle, that the sea people and the land people had it all worked out. I liked that these children that the sea gave up were treasured and welcomed into the community.
"What happens to those children?" Charles asked, "Where do they go, the ones that you give to the ocean?"
When I moved to the country, it was a real culture shock to be living in a community of primary producing farms. There's an incredible amount of insularity here – I've been here seven years, and I'm still meeting people for the first time, because they might not have come into town in all that time. That's the kind of world that Nadia and Maria come from. Every village will have its secrets and its oddities, and they would accept that as normal, because there's very little interaction between them and the rest of the world.
Never underestimate the practicality of country people – the baby has gills? Can't breathe air? Put it in the water, see if that is better. It's a good low-tech solution for the problem, and it works better than anything the flash city doctors come up with. *Loves my country folk and beats the city folk who think they are yokels*
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.
This perfectly balanced system is disrupted when industry beckons. The young people move to the city and abandon tradition. Nadia thought she was a very modern girl.
"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?"
I know that canonically, Charles and Erik are some of the first mutants, but then there's all those myths and stories, like selkies and mermaids and seven league boots.
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."
He's a knight in a fine woollen suit. I love Charles and how he wants to save everyone. He thinks that if he can save the baby, he can make things better for Erik, somehow.
"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.
"Hi! I'm Erik. My natural reaction to something bad is to build a giant machine." He's taken with the idea of something giant that grinds implacably until the end of time.
The hospital was old and new, clean white paint and linoleum covering the stains of the previous regime.
When I started working in this pharmacy, the place had been given a lick of paint to spruce it up some time ago. The thick white enamel paint had started to peel away, and in places you could see that the wood underneath was rotten and powdery. You can't cover up the rot with paint.
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.
People here are already starting to use bureaucracy as a shield. If your papers are correct, then everything is fine.
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.
I HATE fluorescent lights. They hum and they strobe, and they distort colours and throw strange shadows. You don't see them much in the movies, except down in the infirmary. Charles likes natural light.
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.
Another time where I have the use of powers having a physical cost. They have to, just as much as an athlete would feel the effects of running a race.
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.
I'm trying to create the dreamlike atmosphere that we see in the movies where Charles's telepathic avatar is able to walk around and investigate. I imagine this scene to be soundless, with the feeling of one's head being muffled. I think there's only so much sensory information that Charles can process at once. Looking back now, I've realised that in the ficlet that I wrote forsionnain's Too Hot For Plot challenge, I said that Charles was not good at reproducing sound in the vision he shared with Erik. I guess I'm putting together, for myself, a coherent idea of how Charles works his powers, and what the limitations are.
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.
This happens. We change our memories to suit our psychological needs. We might enhance a pleasant memory, just as we might modify an unpleasant one. The more the memory gets altered and buried, the harder Charles has to work to figure out what really went on. Hence he claims he can't help Logan recover his memories.
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.
This is meant to be organic and terrifying, like those scenes in Alien where they draped stuff in shellfish and caul-fat and called it extra-terrestrial. I made myself nauseous for a few days while this scene was written. There was going to be a scene where the nurse shows Charles a room where they keep all the deformed babies pickled in jars, but this turned out to be scarier, and more true to the story. Babies in jars seemed like a bit of a cheap shot.
"All humans beings are made mostly of water.
We are all made of water and salt."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
Charles at seven years old already has the mindset that can embrace diversity, and still understand that we're all the same, under the skin.
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.
I think that I must have been thinking of Venice when I made the pink hotel, hence palazzo which is a big house that backs (or fronts) onto the water . I've been to Europe exactly once, when I was twelve – I'm surprised at how much I took in and the funny details I call up when I need to.
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."
This is the crime, for Charles, that they couldn't extend their minds beyond the physical appearance of the child, to find a way for it to live.
"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."
Erik is always thinking of the safety of the many versus the few.
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 really love that he is ashamed to sound like he is crying, but he can share the feelings with Erik. Telepathy is so intimate.
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.
I've used that shared experience thing a lot in this fic, I think that I'm trying to show that Charles and Erik have communication problems, and that telepathy is one way that they can better understand how the other person is feeling. I wonder how well they would have gotten along if Charles's power had been something like telekinesis or freezing stuff, rather than one that enhanced communication.
"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."
This last section was rewritten and rewritten and rewritten, because I had to sort out how Erik could be advocating hiding away from humans.
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.
Charles wants everyone to get along, because we're all made of salt and water. He's right in one way, that mutants can't just pop up one day and say "Hey world! We've been here all along, living with you, and YOU didn't know a thing about it. But we're really nice, once you get to know 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."
It's been hard for Erik to be close to his home, surrounded by paranoid and frightened people, dealing with the baby that died. What he really wants to say is "There should have been someone who could protect me. If I could have hidden, I would." He want the kids of the future to decide if they want to fight, or be open about their mutation, and not to have it forced on them.
Charles bent his head and kissed Erik again, softly.
"We can do that together."
I really wish they could have done it. They balance up each other's flaws so well. I wish it could have worked out.
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.
Erik would like this, a new world, washed clean by oceans, ready to be populated by good people.
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."
Everything is fine because I'm encased in thousands of tonnes of vibrating steel! It's a happy ending for Charles because they're going home, they're going to build a school, and they're going to live happily ever after. Yep.
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.
So, I wrote Charles and Erik. I was very surprised at my audacity. (It was the third fic longer than 100 words that I'd ever written.)sionnain went first – she wrote a Charles/Erik drabble, the first time that she had written the pairing, and I followed suit. I'm really happy with the way that Sirena turned out; part fairy-tale, part gothic horror, part failing romance. I'm glad that I dove in.
ion_bond and sionnain both said I should do commentary on Sirena.Read the original story here: Sirena
XMM Fic: Sirena
Title: Sirena
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.
These little introductions were put in when I'd written about half of the story. I have a lot of difficulty knowing where to put breaks in the narrative; and putting in a piece like this helps me ramble less, and get to the point more.
lilacsigil says that I like to use a strong structure, which is true. I wanted to think about the essential parts of Charles and Erik's personalities, the parts that aren't shaped by environment or their mutant powers. I chose seven years old because that's a good age for starting to form opinions about the world around you, without being influenced so much by others. Here, Charles is fascinated by all the things that people don't know. Because he's Charles, he's not scared of the unknown. Later on, he's going to give his X-Men their code-names, and I know he would have put a lot of thought into that. (This is movieverse, so we're spared the mystery of "Marvel Girl".)
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."
This is an actual poster. Using the word chimney in Charles/Erik story is nerve-wracking, because of the concentration camp imagery.
This story was originally going to be set in the Ukraine, because it had to be inside the USSR, with cities that hadn't consumed all the fishing villages with urban sprawl, somewhere that was relatively untouched by the war, and far enough away from Germany that I could justify Erik's stability throughout the story. There wasn't a lot of information specific to the Ukraine, so I've gone with an anonymous coastal country that is having its own identity erased by the Soviets.
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.
Charles has either learned Russian the traditional way, or filched Russian out of someone's head with his power, but you don't speak a language well just by learning perfect grammar or "downloading" a good vocabulary.
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.
Most of the past-fics I read were set in the US, Charles's home, and we see a lot of Erik being the fish out of water. I wanted to see Charles navigating an alien culture and finding it difficult to fit in.
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.
This is the early sixties, and there's soon going to be a rapid increase in the number of mutants. (Also in the number of cancers and one-of-a-kind genetic disorders.) It's not just the radiation, it's the dioxins and the mercury and all the other rubbish we pour into the ocean and the sky.
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.
Charles was prepared to take care of Erik. This turn-around has pointed out that he likes looking after Erik, more than he ought. It makes him uncomfortable, and thus he is snippy.
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).
I like the idea of Charles filtering information like a baleen whale.
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.
There has to be repercussions to using your power like this; you can't be a mighty telepath and not get a mighty headache when you use your abilities.
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.
I'm thinking of large social gatherings at my Italian grandparents' social club, watching my dad's body language change. Russian is the unifying language here, and Erik wouldn't speak Ilya's native dialect, but there's a way of indicating that you belong. Erik can do it here. Charles can't.
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.
lilacsigil beta-read this for me, and she assumed that Erik was up on the scaffolding. I hadn't, but it was such a perfect image that I had to put it in; Erik standing up there, unafraid, with great beams of steel flying around him. I thought that steel might interfere with telepathy, something that Erik will later refine when he builds his helmet.
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.
I used "expression" three times in one paragraph. That sucks.
Steel is a turn on, moving steel even better. I just know that Erik stopped that ferris wheel while they were on the top.
"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.
Erik, age seven, is all about classification, and where people fit into the world. He already had the kind of mind that likes to categorise, so after the war, it's not much of a stretch to see the world as an us-or-them kind of place.
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.
Last summer we were visited by a flock of corellas, a native bird that sounds a lot like a gull, even though it's a parrot. They flew around the town from sunrise to sunset, in shifts, hundreds and hundreds of birds all screaming at the same time. It gives a certain nerve-twanging atmosphere after a few days.
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.
Erik's in charge here. I'm not sure if that's how it goes all the time.
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.
I don't think there have been a lot of blanket forts in Charles's childhood, he is very taken with the idea.
"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.
At the time, I couldn't make it work, but Erik is feeding the slices to Charles off the blade of his knife. Erik knows what kind of food to buy, and where, and how best to eat it while in one's secret clubhouse.
"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."
The first time I wrote this scene, Ilya was in the room with his wife while she gave birth – but this is the early sixties, he'd have been waiting outside the room.
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."
This becomes an important theme – the way that family units are changing after the war. The extended family is an endangered species, but nobody knows it right now.
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.
There's not much that Charles can say here. Erik hasn't just lost his family, he's lost a way of living too. It's not really about hospitals.
"We came from the sea.
We evolved into something new, then we came out of the sea."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
Charles Xavier: Change is a good thing. Embrace it.
Erik Lehnsherr: Change is very, very bad. Make your decision and stick to it for ever.
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.
This is my memory of Rome, the washing, the apartment buildings and the incredibly clean households, even though the city itself was quite grimy.
I like to show how companionable the telepathic connection between Charles and Erik is, because it makes the helmet such a cruel statement in the movies.
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.
They make such a good pair of spies – they know each other so well.
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.
See Australia's proud capital city: Canberra. Well-planned, easily negotiated, no personality. Cities need to sprawl.
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.
I think Charles is sensing Erik's panic, though he hasn't processed the information in a conscious way. He knows that he wants to see Erik and make sure he's okay.
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."
Erik naturally jumps to the worst possible outcome – he's over-reacting. He doesn't actually know what's happening to the babies, or even if there is more than one baby.
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.
My father's family was ruled by Nonna and Bis-Nonna. There's an inverse square rule that governs tiny European grandmothers: the smaller the Nonna, the harder the whacking. Also, the more shawls. There's a power struggle going on between Maria and Ilya, Nadia's city-born husband.
"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.
The implication is that the baby is alive and strong, and able to survive in the correct environment. I was thinking of all those weird fertility rituals that survive in rural communities everywhere around the world, like in Greenwitch from The Dark is Rising Cycle. People are still throwing things into the ocean or tying things to stakes in the grain fields, trying to ensure a good harvest. We're a superstitious lot, no matter what our scientists are able to do.
"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."
I wanted to imply that it was a timeless cycle, that the sea people and the land people had it all worked out. I liked that these children that the sea gave up were treasured and welcomed into the community.
"What happens to those children?" Charles asked, "Where do they go, the ones that you give to the ocean?"
When I moved to the country, it was a real culture shock to be living in a community of primary producing farms. There's an incredible amount of insularity here – I've been here seven years, and I'm still meeting people for the first time, because they might not have come into town in all that time. That's the kind of world that Nadia and Maria come from. Every village will have its secrets and its oddities, and they would accept that as normal, because there's very little interaction between them and the rest of the world.
Never underestimate the practicality of country people – the baby has gills? Can't breathe air? Put it in the water, see if that is better. It's a good low-tech solution for the problem, and it works better than anything the flash city doctors come up with. *Loves my country folk and beats the city folk who think they are yokels*
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.
This perfectly balanced system is disrupted when industry beckons. The young people move to the city and abandon tradition. Nadia thought she was a very modern girl.
"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?"
I know that canonically, Charles and Erik are some of the first mutants, but then there's all those myths and stories, like selkies and mermaids and seven league boots.
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."
He's a knight in a fine woollen suit. I love Charles and how he wants to save everyone. He thinks that if he can save the baby, he can make things better for Erik, somehow.
"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.
"Hi! I'm Erik. My natural reaction to something bad is to build a giant machine." He's taken with the idea of something giant that grinds implacably until the end of time.
The hospital was old and new, clean white paint and linoleum covering the stains of the previous regime.
When I started working in this pharmacy, the place had been given a lick of paint to spruce it up some time ago. The thick white enamel paint had started to peel away, and in places you could see that the wood underneath was rotten and powdery. You can't cover up the rot with paint.
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.
People here are already starting to use bureaucracy as a shield. If your papers are correct, then everything is fine.
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.
I HATE fluorescent lights. They hum and they strobe, and they distort colours and throw strange shadows. You don't see them much in the movies, except down in the infirmary. Charles likes natural light.
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.
Another time where I have the use of powers having a physical cost. They have to, just as much as an athlete would feel the effects of running a race.
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.
I'm trying to create the dreamlike atmosphere that we see in the movies where Charles's telepathic avatar is able to walk around and investigate. I imagine this scene to be soundless, with the feeling of one's head being muffled. I think there's only so much sensory information that Charles can process at once. Looking back now, I've realised that in the ficlet that I wrote for
sionnain's Too Hot For Plot challenge, I said that Charles was not good at reproducing sound in the vision he shared with Erik. I guess I'm putting together, for myself, a coherent idea of how Charles works his powers, and what the limitations are. 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.
This happens. We change our memories to suit our psychological needs. We might enhance a pleasant memory, just as we might modify an unpleasant one. The more the memory gets altered and buried, the harder Charles has to work to figure out what really went on. Hence he claims he can't help Logan recover his memories.
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.
This is meant to be organic and terrifying, like those scenes in Alien where they draped stuff in shellfish and caul-fat and called it extra-terrestrial. I made myself nauseous for a few days while this scene was written. There was going to be a scene where the nurse shows Charles a room where they keep all the deformed babies pickled in jars, but this turned out to be scarier, and more true to the story. Babies in jars seemed like a bit of a cheap shot.
"All humans beings are made mostly of water.
We are all made of water and salt."
Charles Xavier, age 7.
Charles at seven years old already has the mindset that can embrace diversity, and still understand that we're all the same, under the skin.
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.
I think that I must have been thinking of Venice when I made the pink hotel, hence palazzo which is a big house that backs (or fronts) onto the water . I've been to Europe exactly once, when I was twelve – I'm surprised at how much I took in and the funny details I call up when I need to.
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."
This is the crime, for Charles, that they couldn't extend their minds beyond the physical appearance of the child, to find a way for it to live.
"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."
Erik is always thinking of the safety of the many versus the few.
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 really love that he is ashamed to sound like he is crying, but he can share the feelings with Erik. Telepathy is so intimate.
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.
I've used that shared experience thing a lot in this fic, I think that I'm trying to show that Charles and Erik have communication problems, and that telepathy is one way that they can better understand how the other person is feeling. I wonder how well they would have gotten along if Charles's power had been something like telekinesis or freezing stuff, rather than one that enhanced communication.
"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."
This last section was rewritten and rewritten and rewritten, because I had to sort out how Erik could be advocating hiding away from humans.
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.
Charles wants everyone to get along, because we're all made of salt and water. He's right in one way, that mutants can't just pop up one day and say "Hey world! We've been here all along, living with you, and YOU didn't know a thing about it. But we're really nice, once you get to know 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."
It's been hard for Erik to be close to his home, surrounded by paranoid and frightened people, dealing with the baby that died. What he really wants to say is "There should have been someone who could protect me. If I could have hidden, I would." He want the kids of the future to decide if they want to fight, or be open about their mutation, and not to have it forced on them.
Charles bent his head and kissed Erik again, softly.
"We can do that together."
I really wish they could have done it. They balance up each other's flaws so well. I wish it could have worked out.
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.
Erik would like this, a new world, washed clean by oceans, ready to be populated by good people.
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."
Everything is fine because I'm encased in thousands of tonnes of vibrating steel! It's a happy ending for Charles because they're going home, they're going to build a school, and they're going to live happily ever after. Yep.
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.
So, I wrote Charles and Erik. I was very surprised at my audacity. (It was the third fic longer than 100 words that I'd ever written.)
sionnain went first – she wrote a Charles/Erik drabble, the first time that she had written the pairing, and I followed suit. I'm really happy with the way that Sirena turned out; part fairy-tale, part gothic horror, part failing romance. I'm glad that I dove in. 
