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Raven
Raven has blue skin and red hair and patterns all over her body, like a story she doesn’t know how to read yet. She’s been in and out of a dozen houses this month, stolen food and sometimes cash, when she can find it. She thinks she’s in a house like any other, a larger kitchen, perhaps. More stairs. And then she turns, and a boy looks into her mind and tells her everything is going to be different.
She shakes off his mother’s form and stands before him, naked. Blue skin, red hair. Waits for him to scream, or step away. Instead he smiles, holds out a hand. Raven blinks, and blinks again.
“I’m Charlotte,” says the boy. The image flickers and drops, and they look at each other, two girls who just happen to be different.
Charlotte has skinny wrists and doesn’t look all that different from the boy she was projecting. “Why do you bother?” asks Raven. Charlotte scowls.
“The best schools don’t accept girls,” she says. “How am I supposed to change the world with an inferior education?” She munches on a piece of toast, slides the jam across the table. Raven needs no further urging. “Besides,” Charlotte adds. “Being a boy is much more fun. You should try it.”
Raven does, sometimes. She makes herself Charlotte’s brother, instead of a sister, but she doesn’t like it -- people look at her differently, expect different things. As a girl, blonde-haired, fair-skinned, slender, it is easy for her to listen quietly, overhear and eavesdrop. So she stays a sister, waits tables, picks the occasional pocket. Watches Charlotte project the image of a young man instead of a boy: broader shoulders, smaller hips. Wrists that are slightly less delicate. Charles is a lovely man, of course. Why wouldn’t he be? Underneath the projection, Charlotte is equally lovely.
“I don’t believe you!” Raven snaps, the first time Charlotte picks up a woman at a bar. Charlotte merely smirks, licking her lips and smiling reminiscently.
“I am a gift to womankind,” she says agreeably.
It’s not far from Trinity to Harvard, and by the time Charlotte applies to Oxford, Raven is accustomed to following her. Charlotte offers, over and over, to get Raven into the same schools, the same classes -- or an equivalent, at Radcliffe, at St. Hilda’s or St. Anne’s. “Because I was so good at Latin?” Raven asks, and Charlotte looks disappointed.
“You didn’t try,” Charlotte protests, and Raven nods.
“You’re right. I didn’t.”
They make a game of it, in bars: Charles, the affable young man who points out innocuous mutations as a pick-up line, and Raven, carefully surveying the crowd, noting which men attract the most attention and adopting a mix of their features. Nine times out of ten, she can coax the women away from Charles, who takes it with a cheery grace. Raven leaves most of them with a kiss and a murmur -- it’s too hard for her to maintain the focus she needs to control her form, if it goes too far. As a woman, it’s easier, but she’s still wary. She turns the lights down when she goes home with men, just in case, or blindfolds them. Those are the best times.
Erik Lehnsherr is a shivering, sodden wreck when they pull him out of the water. “You’re not alone,” Charlotte tells Erik, and Raven waits, breathless, sure that Charlotte is about to drop the projection and let Erik see. Instead, they dry off and return to land, gather the mutants they can find, and move back to the mansion in Westchester.
“Don’t you want people to see who you really are?” Raven asks.
“Raven, just because President Kennedy is looking into the status of women, it doesn’t mean that society as a whole is prepared for equal rights. So no, I don’t want to give up the freedom and respect I receive as a man just so I can be more honest. There will be plenty of time for honesty in the future we’re creating.” Charlotte sighs, then stiffens. “Hello, Erik.”
“Preaching idealism again, are we?” Erik looks amused, and Raven can’t tell how much of the conversation he’s heard.
“I believe in a better future, my friend,” Charlotte says mildly, and Raven rolls her eyes.
“I’ll be in the lab with Hank,” she snaps. She brushes sharply past Erik, but pauses outside the doorway, listening.
“We shouldn’t have to hide who we are,” Erik says, and Raven doesn’t have to see to know the stubborn look on Charlotte’s face.
I know you’re eavesdropping, Charlotte comments, straight into Raven’s head.
And you know that I think Erik’s right! Raven thinks back as hard as she can, before stomping loudly down the hall to the stairs.
Erik
There have always been things about Erik that people knew without him choosing to share. When he was very young, even before he and his mother moved into the ghetto, they wore yellow stars pinned to their clothes. In the ghetto, hunger showed as clearly as the numbers that would later be tattooed on his forearm. Stay out of my head, he thinks at Charles, for days after they meet, until he is reasonably sure that at least some of his secrets are still his alone.
It’s not that he wants to hide. It’s just that he’s so rarely been given the opportunity to keep things to himself.
Raven is naked in his bed, but not truly naked, and he coaxes her until she drops the facade of normal. The patterns on her skin are like a story she’s too young to understand. “Perfection,” he tells her, and smiles when she stands before him, no sheet, no robe. He kisses her like a promise, and when he pulls away, she looks thoughtful.
“Do you mean it, about not hiding?” she asks.
He nods, slow and serious. “Absolutely.”
She cocks her head. “I’ve seen the way you look at Charles. Do you prefer men?”
He has to laugh at her daring. “Raven,” he says, flashing his teeth. “I prefer mutants.”
Charlotte
Charlotte Xavier wore dresses until she was six. After that, everyone conveniently forgot that the Xavier household was formerly in possession of a daughter, not a son, and Charlotte took fierce pleasure in stuffing all her old dresses into the trash.
There are few enough pictures to get rid of, and for a couple years, she lets the housekeeper put up new ones: young Charles and his mother, proof of their existence. Once she hits puberty, there can be no more pictures. A camera can’t be fooled by telepathy.
It becomes a point of contention between her and Raven. “I thought it would be you and me against the world,” Raven tells her. “But no matter how bad the world gets, you don’t want to be against it. You want to be part of it.”
Charlotte sighs. “I just think I can do more this way. Look at all that I’ve accomplished as a man. The schools, Raven! Do you honestly think I’d have gotten this far if I’d gone to Miss Porter’s, Radcliffe?”
Raven’s mouth tightens. “You told me Radcliffe was an excellent school.”
“Sure, for a woman.”
Raven lets out an outraged shriek. “You are a woman!”
“Don’t remind me,” Charlotte says, frowning.
She plays chess with Erik, and it’s the perfect way to stretch her power -- reaching out just enough to brush the edges of his mind, painting a shimmering image of herself as a man, but not letting herself see his strategy, the carefully planned placement of every pawn. She’s been training for this her whole life. For this, and for what comes later.
“I meant what I said before, about not hiding,” Erik says, sitting across from her.
“And I meant what I said, too. There will be time for honesty in the future. The world isn’t ready for us, my friend.”
“As mutants?” Erik’s fingers touch lightly on one of his knights.
“Of course,” Charlotte says. They’re evenly matched, and she eyes the places his knight could go.
“I don’t believe you’re being honest with me now, Charles.” Erik sweeps up one of her pawns, and she gazes at the board speculatively before sliding her bishop forward.
“Really?” she murmurs, and she could peek into his mind, find out what he’s thinking, but then she’d know his strategy, and she’s not ready to throw away the game just yet.
“We shouldn’t have to hide anything,” Erik says. He’s looking at her now, not the board, and she scowls.
“It’s your move,” she points out.
“Charles.” Erik reaches out, but not to move a chess piece. He takes her hand. “It’s all right if you’re homosexual.”
She’s startled into laughter, and Erik sits back abruptly, withdrawing his hand. She finds that she misses the warmth.
“Bisexual would be more accurate,” Charlotte comments, and is pleased by Erik’s surprised smile in response. He moves a castle, barely glancing at the board, and she glares at him. “You’re going to lose.”
“Am I?” Erik asks, and she studies the pieces. She takes his castle with a knight and sits back, smiling smugly.
“Anyway, you’re missing the point,” Charlotte says, while Erik stares at the board without touching anything. “Of course it’s all right to us: we’re mutants. We’re already different. But the world isn’t ready to accept homosexuals, just as it isn’t ready to accept us as mutants.”
“We could make it ready.” Erik takes her bishop, and she looks at him sharply.
“By destroying it?” She shakes her head, moving a pawn up a square. Erik narrows his eyes.
“You’re in my head?” he asks, but it’s not a question.
“What are you afraid of? Erik, there is nothing about you I don’t already know.”
It’s true. Mostly. There are details missing, memories she hasn’t seen. She hasn’t picked apart every moment of his existence. Yet. But she knows who he is, even if she doesn’t always understand why.
“And yet you won’t return the favor.”
Charlotte straightens her back, leans forward and steeples her hands under her chin. “What do you want to know?” she asks.
“Everything.”
Erik hasn’t so much as glanced at the board since she last moved, and she cocks her head at him. “It’s your move,” she reminds him, and he holds her gaze even while he nudges a pawn closer to her.
“Do you want me to kiss you?” Erik asks, just as she’s reaching for a knight. She knocks the piece over, scowling at his pleased chuckle. She takes a slow, calming breath, leisurely righting the pieces that have been knocked askew, before moving the knight up and to the left.
“I’ve never kissed a man,” she confesses, and Erik’s smile is warm when she looks up.
“I have,” he tells her. This reveals nothing, so she peeks a little farther into his head: gently, carefully. His raised eyebrow gives her permission to continue.
She sees every kiss, every touch, and there have been very few of them. Rare encounters with people deemed easier to seduce than intimidate; a woman in Israel who would have offered far more; a classmate, tentative and curious. Charlotte can feel Erik’s disappointment in each moment -- is this all? -- the distinct sense that something is missing. He didn’t know what he wanted until he heard a voice cut through the water, and a young man pulled him from the cold and told him, you are not alone.
She could return the favor, show him her own memories of women. She knows far more of sex, but even there it’s half truth and half construct: girls in bars she’s kissed and touched and opened from the inside, their bodies like her own, easy enough to please even while she slips into their heads and fills in the rest according to their expectations. It’s fun, but it always leaves her wanting.
“Check,” Erik says.
Charlotte blocks him, but her focus isn’t on the game anymore, and she knows that Erik can tell. He sounds amused when he suggests that they continue tomorrow. They walk away together, elbows jostling.
This is real: the button-down shirt, the clean lines of the jacket, the pants with pockets too large for her hands. Practical, respectable shoes, with just enough lift that she doesn’t have to project any additional height. When people look her in the eye, they are looking in the right place. It’s just the details that are different.
Kissing Erik is not unlike saving him. In the water, she’d pressed her mind to his, curling her thoughts around him like her arms. Her breasts may not be large, but they would have been noticed. Now she lays her hands on his waist and gives him the impression of lean muscle, flat chest, a bit more breadth across the shoulders. Her mouth is the same, underneath, and she gives him that in its entirety.
His response is encouraging. He breaks the kiss with a shudder, pupils wide and dark, and pulls back to stare at her. “You’re in my head,” he groans, and it’s half accusation and half arousal.
“I want to know how I make you feel,” she says, and pulls him back in.
***
They’re on the beach and Shaw is dead, American and Soviet battleships turning their way, and all Charlotte can do is wait for Erik to float closer, close enough to see. Their suits cling in such a way that there is no chance for misinterpretation. But first they have bigger issues to address.
There’s no way to talk him down, no way to stop him, and Charlotte runs at him, throws herself at him with all the desperation of the doomed men on those ships. Moira shoots, over and over, and Charlotte is scrambling for purchase in the sand even as Erik deflects the bullet into her back.
She doesn’t need to read his mind to know how sorry he is. Erik cradles her head on his lap, brushes her hair out of her face. She’s always kept it cut short -- one less illusion to maintain. Not that she’s projecting anything, now. Moira gasps, looking at her, and Charlotte can’t tell if it’s because of her injury or her suddenly visible curves.
“You lied to me,” Erik is saying, and Charlotte takes quick, harsh breaths, tries to find her voice.
“Not really,” she manages. “Just...omitted a few details.”
“Did you think it would matter to me?” Erik murmurs. “I want you by my side. All of us, together, protecting each other. We want the same thing, you and I.”
“My friend,” she says, and she’d laugh if she didn’t think the pain would kill her. “We do not.”
It hurts when he steps away from her, but everything hurts. Everything except her legs, which she can’t feel at all.