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sirona_ficsTitle: I'll see your heart (and I'll raise you mine)
Pairing/characters: Charles/Erik, Erik/Alex BFFS, hints of Logan/Scott, Raven/Emma, Alex/Darwin, Janos/Azazel, ensemble cast.
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~43,600 (posted in five parts, 9,380 this part)
Warnings: modern AU with powers, allusions to torture, mentions of war, graphic depictions of violence, playing fast and loose with canon, no more than vague knowledge of how US immigration and German policing works (all of it gained from the internet), angst, pining, Erik being Erik, men being stupid about their ~feeeelings, fluff.
Summary: For Kriminalhauptkommissar Erik Lehnsherr, this case will change everything.
Author's Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raven_lore, who won me for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_japan all the way back in April. I can't even articulate how grateful I am for her patience and her unfailing support. I hope you enjoy it, darling! ♥ Also enormous thanks to my SuperBeta zolac_no_miko, who put so much of her time and patience into this. Without her help this fic would not exist, and that's the truth. Huge thanks also to luninosity and jewishnotamish7, who volunteered to read this over and outlined some much-needed changes to smooth over remaining plotholes. I would invite you to suspend disbelief as you entered here, although god knows I have done everything in my power for it to read as authentic as possible. Title from Bell X1's song of the same name -- which is more or less the theme song for this fic.
I’ll see your heart (and I’ll raise you mine)
"I've a strange one for you, Lehnsherr," Lukas says, yanking a thumb back at the cordoned scene. Red-and-white tape flutters in the wind as Erik looks past it at the small figure covered by heavy-duty tarp.
"Oh? How so?"
"You'll see," Lukas says ominously.
Erik follows him as he leads the way to the victim, sweeping the scene with an eagle eye, cataloguing the position of everything that could have played a role in the murder. The alleyway is wider than most; the red brick buildings on either side cast blurry shadows on the uneven ground. There's hardly any sun that manages to find its way past -- the day is overcast, and even though it's still noon there's a gloomy air about the place, and not just because of the person lying dead on the cracked asphalt. Erik draws the flaps of his heavy black overcoat closer to his body.
There are some dumpsters not far away, but they look undisturbed -- she hadn't used them for cover, then. Strange, when one is running for one’s life, and Erik would know. When they come up to the body and Lukas draws the tarp away, the first thing Erik sees is the bright red hair, flaming around the woman's head like a rising sun. Even in death it's a vibrant thing, clinging to life for as long as it can. The body itself is crumpled, obviously lying where it fell. Two small red holes decorate the front of her white blouse, right over the heart, contained like she hadn't bled to death, alone in the dark. In contrast the fabric over her stomach is sodden with blood, which Erik supposes that when removed will reveal something done shortly pre-mortem, considering the way the shot wounds have not had time to bleed more than a little. At least one of the shots must have been straight through the heart.
Lukas leans down and flips the bottom of the stiff blouse up and over her breasts, and Erik only just manages to stifle his shocked inhale. It shouldn't take him by surprise like that, not after all the missions and cases he's been through, but it does -- her belly is criss-crossed with cuts, some minor, some much deeper that cause the folds of her skin to gape open a little, like a sick kind of mouth.
"What the hell?" Erik says unthinkingly. Lukas doesn't comment, but nods in agreement.
Erik's first thought is ritual murder, but there are no hallmarks of anything of the sort -- no writing on the walls, no body positioning, no effort made to redress her or rearrange her to face a certain way. Nothing even vaguely resembling any kind of altar.
"Not ritualistic," Erik mutters to himself.
"No," Lukas agrees. "Told you it was a strange one."
Erik stares down at the marks. After a moment, out of the mess a picture starts to appear. He crouches over her, holding his breath a little, and uses the ruined fabric to wipe at the congealed blood. Three of the cuts align to make a curved schematic of-- something.
"We need to get all this blood cleaned up. Call up the ambulance, let's get the body to the morgue. Have Dr Hirsch call me when she's done the preliminary autopsy. I'll take a look around here."
"Right you are," Lukas nods and signals the waiting EMTs to come over.
Erik turns his back on the body, facing the way she had when the bullets had caught up with her. She’s lying sprawled out on her back and side, like the shot had come from ahead and stopped her in her tracks, thrown her back a little with the force of impact. He faces off into the distance, hearing the faint whooshes of cars rushing down the boulevard on the far end of the alley.
Running footsteps approach from behind him and he tenses, making to turn before he recognises the distinctive wheezing accompanying them.
"I'm here," Alex pants, coming to a stop behind Erik and planting his hands on his knees, heaving deep breaths into his lungs. "Sorry, Erik."
Erik does turn then, raising an eyebrow. Alex huffs, put-upon. Erik tries not to smirk and mostly fails.
"Sorry, Kriminalhauptkommissar Lehnsherr," Alex says exaggeratedly, straightening and scowling. "Honestly, Erik."
"What was it this time?" Erik asks, half-wondering whether he actually wants to know at all.
Alex mumbles something; Erik's pretty sure it contains 'got pulled over' and 'speeding' and 'idiot didn't believe me when I told him I was Kriminalkommissar'. He sighs. What with Alex's American accent, it was pretty hard to believe that his mother was as German as they come, and he grew up around here, same as Erik -- until his parents died in a car crash and he and his brother were sent to live with their Aunt in the States. Erik wishes there was something he could do about it, but really, at this stage he's out of ideas short of hiring Alex an acting coach.
He elects not to say anything, letting his irritated sigh speak for his mood. Alex bristles a little, but quickly settles when Erik focuses on their surroundings again.
"Now that you've finally decided to join us, take the far end of the alley. Our victim was shot twice through the chest, bullets coming from ahead of her. I want you to see if you can find anything back there, though."
"The CSIs haven't been?"
"They're on their way, but just check for me, won't you? Look for bullet holes in the road, maybe in the walls."
Alex watches him shrewdly. It's one reason why Erik insisted on Alex being assigned as his underling -- boy has a startling instinct for finding trouble, on both sides of the fence.
"What are you thinking?" Alex asks now. Erik allows a small frown to climb over his forehead.
"Something not quite right about this one," he muses. "Doesn't make sense. Shot from ahead of her -- so she would have been running towards her pursuers? No one does that. Makes me wonder whether she wasn't herded into this alley."
Alex spares the body another look as the EMTs load her into the ambulance. "Small thing like her? Who'd wanna kill her so bad they went for her like this?"
"That's what we're going to find out."
They split -- Alex walks to the opposite mouth of the alley and starts sweeping every available surface with his eyes. Patience isn't Erik's strongest suit, but he knows when to stop rushing ahead and focus on the moment. It's not until he's almost back at where the body had lain that his perseverance is rewarded -- not a metre ahead there's a bullet hole in the asphalt, like she's managed to dodge the first shot somehow. Explains why she hadn’t fallen flat on her face when she was dropped. The bullet hole is interesting -- it clearly entered the surface at an angle. He turns around and looks up at the roofs of the buildings, wondering which was the one the faceless killer chose to take his target out from. He'd send the CSIs up first thing, and he'd get them to correlate the angles--
"Hey, Erik! Over here!" Alex calls.
Erik turns and walks quickly over to where Alex is crouching, looking down at something intently. Then he sees what it is, and freezes.
"I think it's a casing, though how it ended up down here is anyone's guess," Alex continues blithely, reaching down to lift it.
"Don't touch it," Erik snaps, physically restraining himself from tugging Alex away. The kid looks at him like he's gone mad, and Erik isn't sure he hasn't -- he's seen casings like that before; the carvings that cover it are distinctive and quite unmistakable, a strange Celtic knot of a tangle, and to see one here, now -- it seems pretty impossible. But there's just no hiding the way it itches under his skin, the way it's like a lodestone to his senses, digging up that part of him that he sometimes doesn’t want to admit to himself is there at all, pulling him in, until he forgets where he is, what he is, who he is.
"Erik?" Alex says at his ear, and Erik starts -- he hadn't even heard Alex stand, let alone get so close. "Erik, what is it?"
"I'm not sure," Erik mutters. It can't be. And even if it is, it just can't be, fuck, not that, why can't he get away from it?
Alex crosses his arms over his chest. With his wide shoulders and strong arms, he cuts an impressive figure even under the sweatshirt that Erik keeps badgering him to throw away. "Erik Lehnsherr, you talk to me right now."
It says something about how rattled he must look that Alex feels the need to take that tone with him -- and that Erik doesn't verbally flay him for it. It has nothing to do with the fact that Alex is the closest thing to a younger brother he's ever likely to get, or the fact that Erik had been the investigating officer in charge of the case that almost got a young detective sent to prison, after said detective’s attempt to arrest a murder suspect had gone disastrously wrong, ending with an explosion that had cost the suspect his life. Erik just hadn't the heart to send the kid packing ever since. Really.
"I'd rather not say until I'm certain, okay? Because if it is what I think it is, this is bad news. Very bad news indeed."
He knows when Alex wants to argue because he gets that mulish scowl on his face, like he's doing right now. But he isn't about to tell his deputy that the first time he'd seen those casings, he'd been running for his life, twenty-four years old and fresh out of KSK training, on his first covert mission that would see his Commander and two-thirds of his team dead and him in a hospital for a month (it had almost driven his mother insane with worry). Nor that the last time he'd seen them had been four years after that, at the head of his own team, and that time it had been worse, much worse.
He doesn't want Alex anywhere near those people. He isn't much older than the kids those monsters usually went after, from what Erik had managed to glean. Erik had burned their last 'research facility' to the ground, half-crazed after the mission had cost him practically his entire team, but it wouldn't erase the memories of broken bodies and dead eyes.
He still woke up some nights screaming.
"What do they want with this girl?" he mutters under his breath. The thought snaps him back to the present with a near-physical wrench. "Summers, I want anything and everything you can find on the victim. Family. Academic history. Known affiliations with any organisations. What she had for breakfast yesterday morning. Pull it together and call me. I'm going to the morgue."
He feels Alex's eyes burning between his shoulder blades all the way back to his car.
---
The building that houses the city morgue is a massive concrete monstrosity, menacing the landscape with its bulky shape. Erik knows his way inside all too well -- five years have been and gone since he was honourably discharged and transferred himself to the police department. The perpetual cool damp of the lower levels seeps into Erik's bones, like it always does. He makes his way to OR3, where he knows Dr Hirsch is to be found pretty much every hour of her shift. He knocks before he enters, because he can stand to hear the 'Don't startle me when I'm fucking working' lecture only so many times.
When he pushes the door open, he finds the doc leaning over the victim's stomach, poking at the cuts curiously. She straightens when she hears him come in.
"Ah, Detective Lehnsherr. I was wondering when you'd slink your way down here. Wanna take a look? Fascinating stuff."
"Hello to you too," Erik says, but he appreciates her getting straight to the point. Small talk is so tiring. He makes his way to the table, snagging a face mask from the box by the door. Hirsch moves back and starts snapping photographs with the large forensic camera, attached to a stand to allow perfect positioning.
Erik watches as the images transfer to the massive computer screen on the wall, magnified over 20 times. He taps the controls to call up an overall shot of the carved symbols, and stares at it with narrowed eyes.
“Was this done pre- or post-mortem?” he demands.
“Oh, pre-mortem, for sure – no more than five minutes before her heart stopped, in fact, judging by the amount of bleeding we’re observing.”
Erik hesitates. “You’re saying she did these herself?”
“Indeed she did.”
Erik leans closer, following the path of the strokes. The edges are curved, like he’d supposed, and they don't match perfectly -- but then again, he would be amazed if they did, considering the woman had done all of this while running from her assailants. Still, they're accurate enough to form a rough double helix with bonds linking the two strands -- a pretty standard rendering of a DNA molecule. It looks to him like the woman had known exactly what she was doing -- the incisions are sharp, precise, no hesitation in the process of making the cut.
"Huh," he says out loud, squinting. There are small x-shaped marks in at least three places, linking the helix and the strands.
"I know," Hirsch says. "Like I said. Fascinating. This woman was almost certainly a scientist, and she knew her way around a blade -- or a makeshift one, at least."
Erik turns to look at her questioningly. She waves him over.
"Look at this. I could deduce by the direction of the cuts that she was left-handed, but there's no need, see?" She lifts the woman's left hand. There are deep, jagged cuts in the middle of her palm, in the same position as what would normally be the handle of a blade. "It's glass," Hirsch adds. "She must have picked it up from a shattered window. It was a long sharp sliver, see the way the cut narrows here and here?" She points out the spots she wants Erik to note.
The cuts are so deep he can see bone peeking out through the mangled flesh. "How did she manage not to cut any ligaments?"
"Sheer damn luck. Although something tells me even that wouldn't have stopped her." Hirsch lifts the woman's pale right arm. On the underside of it is carved another message: the letters XCFBP1, the cuts rough from the ragged edges of the glass, snaking along the skin and taking up half her forearm.
"Any idea what they mean?" Erik asks distractedly as he leans in to get a closer look.
"Not in the slightest," Hirsch says, snatching a scalpel from the prepped tray and pressing it deeply into the skin under the woman's clavicle.
Erik takes two steps back and tilts his head to survey all the damage. It's not unfixable -- everything would have healed, given time. Still, she didn't seem to have cared whether she damaged herself. Every cut speaks of blind desperation, determination to get one last message across.
"She didn't expect to live through this," Erik muses out loud.
Hirsch, too busy with making the Y-incision, doesn't respond except to hum distractedly. Erik doesn't mind; she is utterly single-minded when it comes to her work. It's something Erik can respect. He quickly prints out a photo of the victim's decorated stomach and arm, slips them inside an evidence bag and into the inner pocket of his coat, and turns around again.
"Will you call me when you have the report ready?"
"Yes, yes," Hirsch says, dismissive. Erik takes his cue.
---
It's Thursday, so that means dinner at the average-sized, homey house in a leafy suburb of the city that Erik called home for the better part of eighteen years. No force in this world could make him skip it -- not if he doesn't want to contend with Edie Lehnsherr's formidable temper. And if he's honest with himself, which he tries to be as a rule, this case has unsettled him pretty thoroughly. He doesn't like the heavy feeling in his gut; doesn't like the fact that, regardless of his unwillingness, it looks like the part of him he’d striven to keep buried as deep as humanly possible, ever since he’d got an inkling of it in the middle of nowhere almost a decade ago, would have to be dragged kicking and screaming out into the open if he was to close this case without anyone else getting killed.
It unnerves him, and he doesn't want this thing anywhere near his mother -- but he knows that even if he tries making an excuse not to come over, she'd see right through him and demand he come all the more. So six-thirty finds him turning off the car engine and climbing out in front of the garden gate. The familiar feeling of peace washes over him when he looks over the fence, sees the garden that hasn't changed a whit ever since he left, except to grow a little older, just like him.
Which is, of course, the perfect time for his phone to trill shrilly, shattering the soothing silence.
"Lehnsherr," Erik answers without looking at the display, busy juggling the shopping bags out of the trunk without bashing them into the car frame.
"It's Alex. I have the information you wanted."
"Anything unusual?"
"You can say that again," Alex says grimly. "Victim's name is Hanna Rilke, 34 years old, works as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. No boyfriend, no family to speak of, one cat that her flatmate is taking care of. Flatmate by the name of Anna Scholtz, completely distraught, has no idea who could have done such a thing to Hanna, the usual. I took a couple of officers to the flat, searched her room, found zip. Tried at the labs, too, and guess what -- someone beat us to it. All her research has been stolen, or smashed to pieces, and that includes the lab's computers. It's pretty much a dead end."
"Damn it," Erik growls, wanting to hit something.
"Also, Dr Hirsch called to say the report is done. The two shots that killed her are .50 calibre bullets matching a Barrett M82A1 sniper rifle."
Erik almost drops the bags. "Seriously? A sniper rifle for a scientist? What about the rounds we dug out of the road?"
"Consistent with an M16 semi-automatic."
"Whoa.” That kind of fire power is way over the top for a simple shoot-to-kill. And that's the perps' first mistake -- they've given them a clue without meaning to. “Whatever it was she was working on, it must have been important enough to employ that kind of force. Right, see if you can talk to her colleagues, figure out her research topic, and call me."
There's a short pause. "It's Thursday."
"I know what day of the week it is, Alex, thank you. I said to call me."
"I don't want Edie pissed at me," Alex whines defensively.
"She'll be pissed at me, not you. Besides, you know she can never stay angry at you."
"Fine," Alex sighs. "Say hello to her for me."
"I will."
Erik flips his phone closed and shoves it in his pocket, hefting the shopping bags up again. He'd got a nice bottle of wine for the two of them to share, as well as the crackers that Edie pretends not to love. He shoulders his way through the garden gate and trudges up to the front door. Before he can try to twist his arm and fetch his keys, the door swings open and his mother's smiling face greets him, just like it always does.
"Hello, Liebling," she says, voice a little rough. She must have been in her workshop until it was time to start dinner.
"Mamma," Erik says warmly, dutifully kissing her cheek. She reaches to take some of the bags from him, but he sidesteps her and toes off his shoes, making his way into the kitchen.
"How was your day?" he asks her as he shucks his coat and hat and starts unpacking his purchases.
"Productive," Edie says with a satisfied twist to her lips. "Oh, that's wonderful," she adds when Erik shows her the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc he picked out for them at the supermarket. "Shall I open it?"
"Go ahead." He sets out the other purchases where she can see them before he puts them away.
"Erik, how many times do I have to tell you -- you don't need to buy all this stuff for me. I am perfectly capable of going to the shops myself."
"And I keep telling you that I like shopping for you."
Edie hands him a glass of wine with another smile and a kiss on his cheek. "Thanks, Schatz. Now, how was your day?"
Erik tries not to tense, he really does, but he supposes the ability to read their sons comes part and parcel of being a mother.
"It was tiring," he admits, taking a seat at the table, in one of his mother's exquisite dining room chairs. The house is full of Edie's creations, perfection carved out of wood, like it had taken no more than a thought to bring forth the shape from the rough block.
"New case?"
"Yes, and a nasty one at that." It's all he will say, and his mother knows better than to expect him to discuss open cases with her. "Let's not talk about it. Tell me what you were working on today?"
Dinner is pleasant, but Erik is preoccupied, and it only gets worse once Alex calls to report another dead end -- apparently not one of Hanna Rilke's colleagues knew exactly what she was working on, apart from that it had to do with the human genome, and she had just made a massive breakthrough the day before. Erik grows progressively more and more discouraged, and in the end tells Alex to update the report at the station and hangs up in frustration. Edie watches him, sympathetic.
"You're a good boy, Erik," she says, out of the blue, in that fond maternal tone that never fails to make Erik feel warmed all the way through.
"Yeah, maybe," he concedes. "It's not going to help this time, I'm afraid."
"Nonsense. I think half of your job is caring. The other half takes care of itself, and you're smart enough to get all the details to fit together. Much too smart, I think sometimes."
It's an old argument. Erik had been a rising star in Maths and Physics at school, and he and his parents had discussed Engineering as a possible, desirable career choice. And then his father had been swept off the road one winter night by a lorry that had lost control, and suddenly it was just Edie and her sixteen-year-old son, strapped for cash in a big house Erik refused to hear of selling. As soon as he was out of school he had enrolled into the Army, despite Edie's protests, and that had been that.
It wasn't too late for Erik to get back on track -- he'd been just over twenty-nine by the time he'd been discharged from the hospital a second time, he could have done it -- but this was all he'd known how to do anymore, and the fact remained that university degrees cost more money than Erik was making even now.
So he says nothing, merely takes another bite out of his delicious roast and lets the flavours take him back to a simpler time. They chat about the neighbour's cat's latest attempt at infiltrating the house (Erik swears that beast has an evil agenda of some kind), about Edie's interesting new project, about Mrs Stein's available daughter ('Mamma, please, not that again, I thought we talked about this'), and Mrs Kussberg's handsome son who had just come out to the family ('Mother, god, honestly. No more! Besides, how can I possibly date with my job being what it is?'). Edie pouts and looks disappointed, and Erik is torn between irritation and regret that he can't be a better son to her, someone who brings home nice girls and well-behaved boys for his mother to dote on. He just hasn't found anyone that he thinks is worth the effort yet; in his more dispirited moments, he doubts he ever will.
He lounges on the small chaise tucked into the corner of the kitchen, feet crossed before him and head drooping back onto the sunshine-yellow cushions, while Edie finishes washing the dishes and comes closer, bringing with her a small cup of her fragrant, strong coffee to wake him up before his drive home. Erik is loose, relaxed, his guard down for once, feeling as safe as he ever does -- here in this house, with his mother smiling gently down at him. She bends to hand him the cup and press a kiss to his forehead.
The bullet flies right over her lowered head, sending out a droplet of blood to spray Erik's light blue shirt. He acts entirely on instinct, tugging her down towards him and onto the floor, sending the cup flying and covering her with his body to shield her from bullets and scalding coffee both. There is a tinkle of glass by the window and another bullet embeds itself into the far wall, splintering the cupboard door. Erik paws at his mother's neck frantically, finding a pulse, checking the damage -- it's just nicked her, thank god, it's barely skin-deep, but if she wasn't bending down it would have gone straight through her neck. Erik goes cold all over at the thought -- but there are more bullets coming through the windows, and he does not have time to freeze like this, not when she's in danger. He rolls them, taking cover behind the chaise, hearing a bullet bury itself in the cushion where his head was a second ago.
"What--Erik--what is happening?" Edie asks, disoriented and frightened.
"Someone's trying to kill us," Erik says, stating the obvious while his mind snaps to business. It can't be anything that his mother has done; she's harmless, a model citizen, therefore this has something to do with him, and the only thing that's been seriously wrong in the past month or so is this damned case. "We have to get out of here."
"Why are they shooting at us?" Edie demands, and Erik is relieved to hear her start to sound less freaked out and more angry. Angry is good. Angry keeps you from freezing up and gets you out alive.
"It must be because of what I'm working on," he grunts, checking out the exits. He wonders whether the attackers would have had time to circle around the back as well -- he'd have to assume they have, out of sheer self-preservation. They are too exposed here -- there's nowhere in the house they can hide. They have to get away.
There is no noise apart from breaking glass and furniture. Their guns have silencers -- probably why no one heard Rilke getting shot, either. That's far from an amateur performance -- if anything, it's frighteningly professional, the way they cover the space with fire so their targets can't move.
Which means someone is coming in, and Erik is out of options.
He digs for that part of him he spends his days forcing dormant, yanks it out of his body and sends it hunting. He feels every piece of metal in the vicinity, locks onto six signatures of a size and complication specific to semi-automatics. There are other objects, too, smaller but of a similar composition. Handguns.
He looks at his mother, frightened and small, but with a determined set to her features, waiting on his orders and ready to follow his every direction. The unquestioning trust does something to him, twists his gut at the thought of quite another look stealing over her face when she sees what he's about to do, what he’s capable of.
No choice. Two of the semi-automatics are coming closer -- they're about to take the house while the others cover them, and that’s one thing Erik will not let happen, no matter what it costs him.
"I'm sorry," Erik murmurs desperately, and reaches.
He feels the metal and takes control over it, turns the guns in their hands and squeezes all the triggers at the same time. There's a yell right behind him, and he snaps around to see a man dressed all in black, with a pair of goggles over his eyes and tactical gear concealing his body. The man folds in on himself, sprawls down onto the floorboards. Edie yelps and jumps back while Erik floats the semi-automatic into his arms and runs out to check the back, where this guy had obviously gained access. He finds two more dead bodies lying in the garden, staining the grass dark with their blood; he circles the house and finds the other three within a few feet of each other. None of them are moving, but he checks anyway -- no pulse.
He sprints to the back entrance and inside, and comes to a stop when he sees his mother crouching behind the chaise where he'd left her, holding tightly onto the dead man's handgun. She's facing into the room, training it on the door to the kitchen, trusting Erik to have her back even after he must have scared her half to death with his stunt, and the love he feels for her in that moment is quite frankly overwhelming.
She turns, and he sees that her eyes are red-rimmed but her hands are steady around the gun. "Are they gone?" she asks. Her voice is just as steady.
"They're all dead," Erik tells her. It's the most reassuring thing he can think of right now.
He watches her carefully, but there's no sign of fear on her face now that they're safe for the time being; nor the distrust and hatred Erik has every reason to expect, now that his mother knows what an aberration he is. Instead, she looks calm in a way Erik hasn't seen in all the time he's been alive.
He doesn't know what his mother sees in his face, but she's quick to push herself to standing and walk over to him, holding the gun loosely in her right hand as she covers his cheek with her left.
"Oh, Liebling. It's okay."
"How can it be okay?" Erik asks desperately, fingers clenching on the weapon still in his hands. It crumples inwards like a giant fist had closed around it and squeezed.
Edie smiles at him, no less loving than fifteen minutes ago. "Look," she directs.
Erik turns to see where she's pointing, and almost falls over when he stumbles back in shock. One of the dining room chairs is floating in the air, coming towards them. As he watches, the chair falls apart into its component parts, and then the pieces split in two like an impossibly sharp axe has just cleaved straight through them. The planks form a large shield, welding themselves together in a manner that leaves Erik breathless, and in seconds he's looking at a window shutter, the perfect shape to fit over the window frame where the bullets have shattered the glass.
You're a--a wood manipulator?" he says hesitantly.
"Yes," Edie says, a quiet statement that does more to ground Erik than any elaborate explanations.
"Why didn't you--I never--"
Edie smiles sadly. "You father was human. He knew, and he accepted it, but when you were born, we--at first you were too little to understand, and you never showed any signs of being anything other than human, and then your father--and you left, and I guess I thought you didn't have to know."
Erik reaches for her and draws her closer. "You never have to hide from me again," he says softly, hugging her tightly to him. If he has his way, neither of them ever will. She wraps her arms around him, and they hold each other for a long moment in the disaster zone that is their kitchen.
When they feel strong enough to let go, Erik fashions Edie's pots into hinges with some effort, power still raw and unyielding, and together they affix the shutters his mother makes to the windows, shutting out the world. Erik drags the dead man out of the kitchen, through the back door and throws him with the others in the garden. He has a feeling someone will be around to make sure any evidence of anything untoward happening is long gone, if his suspicions about who's behind those attacks prove right. (How he's going to find out whether or not they are is another matter altogether, one that will need fixing soon.)
Unfortunately, 'any evidence' extends to the living beings in this scenario as well. Whoever it is that’s gunning for him wouldn’t be after Edie at all if Erik hadn’t dragged them to her house in the first place; but what’s done is done. The two of them have to leave the city, even the country. With that in mind, after he has fussed over the bullet graze on Edie's neck and she has told him in no uncertain terms to stop, and refused adamantly to go to a hospital, Erik tends to it himself with the first aid kit Edie keeps under the sink. Thankfully, it really is no more than a scratch – deep enough to break the skin, true, but not so deep that it doesn't stop bleeding after it has been cleaned and bandaged. It doesn't even show once she has restyled her hair to cover it. Then Erik tells his mother to pack a small bag and fetch her passport, while he uses the time to book her on the first flight out of Heathrow to Krakow, where his aunt Anna lives. It should keep her safe until he can wrap this thing up. Meanwhile, he locks all the unbroken windows and prepares the house to be abandoned for as long as it takes to solve this case.
When Edie comes back downstairs, Erik throws her bag into the back seat of his car and takes off for the airport. They travel silently, while Erik avoids as many of the brightly lit roads as he can.
"What about you? Where will you go?" Edie asks, breaking the silence.
"I don't know," Erik admits. "I'll start with the case, it's the key to getting to the bottom of this. And I’ll need to find an expert in genetics."
Beside him, Edie goes still. "Why do you need a geneticist?" she asks, in the voice of one putting a bunch of pieces together.
Erik hesitates, but he can't really get into any more trouble than he already is. He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out the photos he'd swiped from the morgue a few hours ago. He hands them to Edie, turning on the overhead light so she can see.
There's a sharp intake of breath from beside him, and he wants to hit himself for letting his mother see something that is bound to distress her. He opens his mouth, to lie, tell her it's a hoax, anything, when she surprises him yet again.
"I think I know a person who can help."
Charles Xavier, Erik thinks on his way back from the airport, after watching his mother's plane get her away to safety. He supposes England is close enough, and even if Xavier can't help him, he might know someone who can. He'd booked a ticket to London on the six a.m. flight while he was still at the airport, but he can't go home to pack -- they might be waiting for him there. It's a good thing he keeps his passport and a few changes of clothes at the station, for when he has to pull an all-nighter or they get a particularly gruesome case. He heads straight there, keeping his eyes peeled for anything suspicious, but he's in luck, and he gets in and out without a single bit of trouble. His bag is slightly heavier than it should be, but the file on Hanna Rilke is already getting bigger than normal, and he imagines there will be much more of it once they really start digging. That won't be his problem for a while, though; his request for two weeks unpaid leave is even now cooling on his Captain's desk. She's not going to be happy, but Erik hasn't taken a single holiday since he started working for the department six years ago, and she can't begrudge him the time.
He's ready to get out of town. But there's one last stop he has to make first.
---
The block of flats where Alex lives is small and ancient, a miraculous leftover from an earlier age, spared from the WWII bombings by some bizarre quirk of fate. The overall impression is one of damp, all the stronger now that it's started drizzling, a cloak of mist over the city. Erik watches all the hidden corners carefully for any sign that he's been followed, that someone has managed to keep up with him through the twisted path he'd taken to get here. Nothing moves save for a late-night straggler keen to get home. After watching for another few minutes, Erik takes his chances and runs over to the entrance, tumbling the lock with a twist of his fingers.
It comes to him easier now than it ever has before. He's not an idiot -- during those dark, lonely times at the hospital he'd read everything he could get his hands on, including textbooks on psychological trauma that a kindly doctor had supplied, taking pity on the long-term patient bored out of his mind. He knows that a traumatic event could unlock all sorts of things, from hidden memories to physical potential -- to potential of another kind altogether, although he is only now making the leap. He wonders whether his mother was always meant to be the key, the one thing in his life he would tear apart countries to protect, including wielding a power he was still half-afraid of. With his mother not only accepting, but someone like him, that fear dwindles away into nothing and his power stretches freely, unencumbered for the first time since he’d felt metal call out to him.
The one other person he has to give a heads-up to before he disappears lives on the fifth floor of the building he just made his way into. As he steals up the stairwell and along the fifth floor corridor, all he hears are everyday noises from Alex's neighbours -- the sound of a TV turned up too loud, kids laughing, some couple fighting behind the door he's passing right now. Alex's flat is at the end of the long hallway, and Erik curses every second that it takes to gain the door.
He debates whether he should pick the lock again, but in the end decides against it -- no reason to freak Alex out more than he's about to already. Besides, he doesn't relish the look of disgust, distrust, shock that's bound to take over Alex's face as Erik is forced to give an explanation for his sudden self-imposed exile (he's not fool enough to think that Alex would let him go without demanding one, or that Alex would believe even his finest bullshit).
He raps his knuckles on the door and waits, not at all patiently. As soon as Alex opens the door a crack, Erik shoulders his way inside, ignoring Alex's state of undress.
"Whoa, hey, what the hell?" Alex grunts when Erik pushes him back inside the flat and peers out of every window they pass. "You finally snapped, Lehnsherr?"
Erik doesn't answer, instead marches past Alex into the bathroom and looks out of that window, too. The shadows over the roof of the building next door make it difficult to ascertain whether or not there's something–someone--there that shouldn't be, or if it's just Erik's paranoia rearing its head again. The uncertainty makes Erik nervous.
"I think you're in danger,” he says urgently. “We should get out of here."
"I'm not going anywhere until you explain," Alex says stubbornly, crossing his arms over his bare chest. Erik spares it no more than a fleeting glance -- he's just not capable of feeling that way about someone who amounts to his brother, no matter how attractive he is.
Erik runs a frustrated hand through his hair, calling out to every piece of metal he can reach. There's really only one way he can say this that won't make Alex scoff and threaten to have him committed.
"I have to leave Germany for a while," Erik says, and watches Alex's eyes widen as a betrayed look creeps over his face. "And I'm afraid you're very likely in danger, too."
"Does this have something to do with the Rilke case?" Alex asks, watching him shrewdly.
"Yes," Erik says, stalling and hoping Alex won't ask too many questions.
"But there's something else, too, isn't it?"
Damn, when did the kid get so smart? He's always been sharp, but putting things together so quickly? Seeing right through Erik? Erik wishes that didn't put Alex in even more danger.
"Can't you just say 'okay, Erik' for once?" he groans. They need to get out of this flat, stat; prolonging their presence here puts them both in even more danger.
"No can do," Alex says with a smirk that shouldn't make Erik want to smile in return.
"Fucking--fine," he snaps. He knew it was going to come to this anyway, he shouldn't act so surprised. And, really, anything to get Alex to move already. "I'm going to show you something, and it would be really nice if you could--not freak out about it."
Alex shrugs, looking sceptical. Erik wants to grin a little, because cocky as Alex acts, Erik knows damn well he’s still going to knock him out for six.
He locates the keys to Alex's car, which he was going to ask to borrow anyway, and floats them into his hand.
"Holy shit," Alex breathes. He looks--okay, that's strange. He doesn't look panicked, or appalled, or anything else Erik has been imagining and resigning himself to. He looks excited. "Oh my god. Do that again."
Erik draws the steel lighter from Alex's jeans pocket and lights it in front of Alex's face. The dancing flame is reflected in Alex's blue eyes, wide and delighted.
"Fuck me sideways," Alex swears, slipping into English without realising. He's grinning fit to burst.
"Much as I'd love to stand here doing magic tricks all night, I really do have to go," Erik says, eyeing him askance. He hopes he didn’t break the kid; no one should react like this to their superior exhibiting bizarre abilities.
Alex sobers up immediately. "You never answered my question."
"I did, at least part of it." He eyes the set of Alex's jaw. "Jesus. Okay. Those men that killed Hanna Rilke, I've met them before. Or others like them. They went after people like me, people who have weird things happen around them, even if they didn't know what caused it. The first time I crossed paths with them, I didn't know why strange things were happening around me, either, and to be honest, I didn't want to know. It's not until tonight that I--" he stops, unable to say it. He should have known he wouldn't need to.
"What happened tonight, Erik? Are you all right? Oh my god, is Edie all right?" Alex demands, looking frantic.
"She's fine. Got grazed by a bullet when those men came after me in her house. She's safe now, but I have to leave. I just wanted to warn you to be extra careful for a few weeks. I think it's all tied in with the Rilke case; she must have been working on something to do with abilities like mine. Look, Alex, do not investigate the murder. Bury it, or pass it on to someone else; we'll close it when I get to the bottom of this and find out what's really going on. You lie low. And for fuck's sake, please don't be a hero. They're not after you, they'll just look at you as an associate of mine if all goes to plan, an underling that's doing the legwork on the case. But stay watchful, and keep your gun on you, just in case. I'll draw the heat away when they find out I've left the country."
"Where will you go?"
"Mother mentioned this guy in Oxford, England. A professor of Genetics. She's been corresponding with him for years now. And get this -- his name is Charles Xavier."
Alex's eyes widen. "XC--the letters!" he exclaims, and Erik nods. "Do you think what Rilke did was a message for him?"
"Could well be, especially considering his field of research is something to do with classifying genes."
"You're going to show him?" Alex asks, even though it's not really a question.
"Yes. Tomorrow, when you get to work, make sure you report the Rilke file missing, okay?"
There's an unreadable expression on Alex's face; at least, Erik wishes it was unreadable, but he's seen it all too often for it to be any kind of mystery. "No," he snaps. Alex just raises his eyebrows at him and turns away to stalk into his bedroom. "Alex, no. I am your superior officer, and I am ordering you not to follow me."
"Never been much for orders," Alex muses lazily when Erik follows him into the room, even as he piles a few shirts and jeans in a battered backpack. “Besides, you’re on holiday as of this evening. You can’t give me a direct order until you're back on duty.”
"Alex, you can't come with me. It's not safe," Erik yells, half-frantic himself. He can't get Alex killed. He can't.
Alex stops shoving clothes inside the bag and straightens, turns to Erik with this dire look on his face. He opens his mouth--but Erik has no idea what he intends to say, because before Alex can speak Erik is on him, bearing him to the floor. The bullet aimed for Alex's head whizzes over them and burrows into the far wall.
"Fuck!" Alex hisses, already shoving Erik away and rolling over, peering around the edge of the bed to look out of the window. Erik tugs him back as another bullet attempts to take Alex's ear off – damn it, he knew those shadows were suspicious!
"Get back, you idiot!" Erik hisses back, already pushing Alex ahead of him out of the bedroom. They make for the door, still bent in two, using the wall for cover. Alex snags his bag as they pass it, and then stops in his tracks.
"There's a gun in the nightstand by the bed, I might need that," he says, making to turn back.
Erik pushes him towards the front door to the flat as hard as he can, swearing as he locates the gun and summons it into Alex's hand. Alex grins at him, sheepish and excited and a little wild. It does more to calm Erik down than any kind of talk. Alex is his partner, someone Erik trusts with his life. All brotherly or paternal feelings aside, Alex has taken care of himself for a lot longer than Erik has known him.
All the same, though. He can't take Alex with him. Alex would become a target now that Erik has shown he cares for him – just like his mother.
They run out of the building and straight to Alex's car, even as Erik resolves to find a way to send Alex Edie's way before he leaves. Then they're inside and Alex is gunning the engine, speeding away down the empty street and around the corner as fast as the creaky old Volkswagen can go. Erik can't stop looking behind them, casing the space carefully. He swears when he sees another car in the distance, yells at Alex to ‘go go go’.
"It can't go any faster," Alex yells back, frustration clear in his voice, taking corners on two tires in an effort to lose them. It's not working. They're gaining, and Erik spies a flash from the car's passenger window. The zing of a bullet flying past, about an inch from his nose, is loud even with Alex's swearing.
There's no other way about it -- they're going to have to engage the killers. Erik pays attention to his surroundings for the first time since the first turn back at Alex's flat, and sees that Alex has tried to take them through the industrial district. Abandoned warehouses gape their empty windows at them on both sides. Erik couldn't have asked for a better spot to kill a few bastards -- or to be killed, of course. There is that.
"Turn in here, through the warehouse, and stop at the far back," he barks. Alex doesn't even pause -- he obeys immediately, so much so that Erik almost gets whiplash trying to follow the black sedan riding on their tail.
As soon as the car stops, Erik is out of it, dimly hears Alex jump out on the other end. They huddle in the shadows, hoping the car would pass them by.
No such luck -- but then again, Erik wouldn't be who he is if he didn't anticipate that. His first shot goes wide, but his second nails one of their pursuers through the head, even as bullets explode all around them. He and Alex return fire, but it becomes clear depressingly fast that the two of them just aren't a match for five highly trained professionals. Erik is maybe getting a little worried.
He gives up on the shooting and starts warping all the metal he can reach. He's angry -- fuck is he angry, from being shot at, from his mother being shot at, and now Alex -- but it's just not enough. His grasp of the power inside him is still shaky in the aftermath of the effort it took to incapacitate the other goons, and he just doesn't trust himself yet to be able to control every single weapon out there. The most he can do is send their bullets wide enough that they bypass them entirely, but they're bound to get one past him eventually -- and one is one too many.
"Erik," Alex grunts across from him, taking cover behind an enormous wooden crate.
"You all right? Have you been hit?" Erik demands.
"No, I'm fine. It's just."
"Alex, now is not a good time for riddles!'
"Shut up, asshole, I'm trying to tell you something!"
"Can't it wait?"
"No, it fucking can't. Goddamn it, Erik, listen to me!"
Erik gets one last shot off and plasters his back against his own piece-of-junk cover.
"Fine, hurry up and tell me already!"
There's a pause, and then: "I haven't been entirely honest with you," Alex yells.
"If this is about that time with the paperwork, I swear I'm going to thump you across the ear for bringing it up now."
"Jesus, Erik." Then, quieter, "please, god, don't freak out."
And then there's a burst of red light coming from his left, shockingly warm where it passes by Erik, and then the far end of the warehouse is on fire, melting, crumbling in on itself. He stares, mesmerised, as around him the world burns, as sheets of metal fold up and take out the goons' minivan, and he would have stared some more had Alex not grabbed his arm and tugged him over to the car, pushing him inside because Erik can hardly figure out where his feet are and what they're supposed to be doing.
"Fuck, Erik, come on, wake up, man," Alex says, half-furious and half-desperate as he runs around the car and hops into the driver's seat. He slams the stick in reverse and busts through the far wall, away from the fire and the noise and the confusion.
"What. In the hell. Was that?" Erik rasps, throat raw from all the smoke he'd inhaled while he'd crouched there and stared like an idiot.
"That was me," Alex says, and it's loud like a shot in the quiet night. "You know those people you talked about, the ones that had weird things happen around them? Well. I'm one of them."
Erik stares at him, speechless. "Alex, why didn't you tell me?" he asks, stunned into stupidity.
"Why didn't you tell me, Erik?" Alex returns harshly.
Erik shuts up, and lets his brain catch up with his mouth. "What I meant to say," he tries again, "is that you could have. You could tell me anything and it would be okay. We'd get through it."
The silence stretches, and Erik finds it helps him think, connect the dots. "Drive to the airport, there's a flight to London in three hours. We should be on it."
"So I can come, after all," Alex says, only faintly mocking.
"After all that? I'm not letting you out of my sight."
They drive in silence for a little while, thoughts churning through Erik's mind as he tries to make some kind of sense of the confusion of the recent developments. The flash of Alex's laser beams lights his memories again and again, until something he'd long thought would remain a mystery clicks at last.
"I take it the arson four years ago was a different kind of accident," he murmurs to himself quietly; he's not expecting a response as such, and he's focusing too hard on their next move to pay much heed to the way Alex's face blanches at his words. "We have to find a way to help you control this thing. Maybe this guy Xavier might shed some light on what the hell is going on, too."
"We?" Alex asks, so timidly that for a moment Erik is honestly confused.
"What do you mean, 'we?' Of course 'we', what--" he clocks the look on Alex's stupidly expressive, still so young face. "Alex, for fuck's sake. I know what it's like, remember? You can't control this thing; it controls you. But this stops now. You, me -- we both need some help working through our--gifts, powers, what have you. And the first thing we're going to do is find Professor Xavier. My mother said he can help me -- help us. And until this thing with Hanna Rilke blows over and men with guns stop trying to take us out for whatever reason, we'd be safer if we get off the radar."
Alex doesn't say anything for a long time. The whoosh of tires over asphalt comforts Erik, calms his mind. He's almost drowsing, exhausted from the day and the exertion and the emotional turmoil of watching his mother almost get shot before his eyes. So when Alex speaks, Erik can't help but jerk upright, startled.
"Do you think Hanna Rilke was one of us?"
Erik thinks about that for a long moment, watching the flicker of streetlights wash over them and away. "I don't know, Alex," he says on a sigh. "But whether or not she was, she knew something that was worth killing for – and until we know what it is, we can't make assumptions about any of this, or it might well be us who’s next."
[Part Two]
Pairing/characters: Charles/Erik, Erik/Alex BFFS, hints of Logan/Scott, Raven/Emma, Alex/Darwin, Janos/Azazel, ensemble cast.
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~43,600 (posted in five parts, 9,380 this part)
Warnings: modern AU with powers, allusions to torture, mentions of war, graphic depictions of violence, playing fast and loose with canon, no more than vague knowledge of how US immigration and German policing works (all of it gained from the internet), angst, pining, Erik being Erik, men being stupid about their ~feeeelings, fluff.
Summary: For Kriminalhauptkommissar Erik Lehnsherr, this case will change everything.
Author's Notes: Written for
raven_lore, who won me for help_japan all the way back in April. I can't even articulate how grateful I am for her patience and her unfailing support. I hope you enjoy it, darling! ♥ Also enormous thanks to my SuperBeta zolac_no_miko, who put so much of her time and patience into this. Without her help this fic would not exist, and that's the truth. Huge thanks also to luninosity and jewishnotamish7, who volunteered to read this over and outlined some much-needed changes to smooth over remaining plotholes. I would invite you to suspend disbelief as you entered here, although god knows I have done everything in my power for it to read as authentic as possible. Title from Bell X1's song of the same name -- which is more or less the theme song for this fic.I’ll see your heart (and I’ll raise you mine)
"I've a strange one for you, Lehnsherr," Lukas says, yanking a thumb back at the cordoned scene. Red-and-white tape flutters in the wind as Erik looks past it at the small figure covered by heavy-duty tarp.
"Oh? How so?"
"You'll see," Lukas says ominously.
Erik follows him as he leads the way to the victim, sweeping the scene with an eagle eye, cataloguing the position of everything that could have played a role in the murder. The alleyway is wider than most; the red brick buildings on either side cast blurry shadows on the uneven ground. There's hardly any sun that manages to find its way past -- the day is overcast, and even though it's still noon there's a gloomy air about the place, and not just because of the person lying dead on the cracked asphalt. Erik draws the flaps of his heavy black overcoat closer to his body.
There are some dumpsters not far away, but they look undisturbed -- she hadn't used them for cover, then. Strange, when one is running for one’s life, and Erik would know. When they come up to the body and Lukas draws the tarp away, the first thing Erik sees is the bright red hair, flaming around the woman's head like a rising sun. Even in death it's a vibrant thing, clinging to life for as long as it can. The body itself is crumpled, obviously lying where it fell. Two small red holes decorate the front of her white blouse, right over the heart, contained like she hadn't bled to death, alone in the dark. In contrast the fabric over her stomach is sodden with blood, which Erik supposes that when removed will reveal something done shortly pre-mortem, considering the way the shot wounds have not had time to bleed more than a little. At least one of the shots must have been straight through the heart.
Lukas leans down and flips the bottom of the stiff blouse up and over her breasts, and Erik only just manages to stifle his shocked inhale. It shouldn't take him by surprise like that, not after all the missions and cases he's been through, but it does -- her belly is criss-crossed with cuts, some minor, some much deeper that cause the folds of her skin to gape open a little, like a sick kind of mouth.
"What the hell?" Erik says unthinkingly. Lukas doesn't comment, but nods in agreement.
Erik's first thought is ritual murder, but there are no hallmarks of anything of the sort -- no writing on the walls, no body positioning, no effort made to redress her or rearrange her to face a certain way. Nothing even vaguely resembling any kind of altar.
"Not ritualistic," Erik mutters to himself.
"No," Lukas agrees. "Told you it was a strange one."
Erik stares down at the marks. After a moment, out of the mess a picture starts to appear. He crouches over her, holding his breath a little, and uses the ruined fabric to wipe at the congealed blood. Three of the cuts align to make a curved schematic of-- something.
"We need to get all this blood cleaned up. Call up the ambulance, let's get the body to the morgue. Have Dr Hirsch call me when she's done the preliminary autopsy. I'll take a look around here."
"Right you are," Lukas nods and signals the waiting EMTs to come over.
Erik turns his back on the body, facing the way she had when the bullets had caught up with her. She’s lying sprawled out on her back and side, like the shot had come from ahead and stopped her in her tracks, thrown her back a little with the force of impact. He faces off into the distance, hearing the faint whooshes of cars rushing down the boulevard on the far end of the alley.
Running footsteps approach from behind him and he tenses, making to turn before he recognises the distinctive wheezing accompanying them.
"I'm here," Alex pants, coming to a stop behind Erik and planting his hands on his knees, heaving deep breaths into his lungs. "Sorry, Erik."
Erik does turn then, raising an eyebrow. Alex huffs, put-upon. Erik tries not to smirk and mostly fails.
"Sorry, Kriminalhauptkommissar Lehnsherr," Alex says exaggeratedly, straightening and scowling. "Honestly, Erik."
"What was it this time?" Erik asks, half-wondering whether he actually wants to know at all.
Alex mumbles something; Erik's pretty sure it contains 'got pulled over' and 'speeding' and 'idiot didn't believe me when I told him I was Kriminalkommissar'. He sighs. What with Alex's American accent, it was pretty hard to believe that his mother was as German as they come, and he grew up around here, same as Erik -- until his parents died in a car crash and he and his brother were sent to live with their Aunt in the States. Erik wishes there was something he could do about it, but really, at this stage he's out of ideas short of hiring Alex an acting coach.
He elects not to say anything, letting his irritated sigh speak for his mood. Alex bristles a little, but quickly settles when Erik focuses on their surroundings again.
"Now that you've finally decided to join us, take the far end of the alley. Our victim was shot twice through the chest, bullets coming from ahead of her. I want you to see if you can find anything back there, though."
"The CSIs haven't been?"
"They're on their way, but just check for me, won't you? Look for bullet holes in the road, maybe in the walls."
Alex watches him shrewdly. It's one reason why Erik insisted on Alex being assigned as his underling -- boy has a startling instinct for finding trouble, on both sides of the fence.
"What are you thinking?" Alex asks now. Erik allows a small frown to climb over his forehead.
"Something not quite right about this one," he muses. "Doesn't make sense. Shot from ahead of her -- so she would have been running towards her pursuers? No one does that. Makes me wonder whether she wasn't herded into this alley."
Alex spares the body another look as the EMTs load her into the ambulance. "Small thing like her? Who'd wanna kill her so bad they went for her like this?"
"That's what we're going to find out."
They split -- Alex walks to the opposite mouth of the alley and starts sweeping every available surface with his eyes. Patience isn't Erik's strongest suit, but he knows when to stop rushing ahead and focus on the moment. It's not until he's almost back at where the body had lain that his perseverance is rewarded -- not a metre ahead there's a bullet hole in the asphalt, like she's managed to dodge the first shot somehow. Explains why she hadn’t fallen flat on her face when she was dropped. The bullet hole is interesting -- it clearly entered the surface at an angle. He turns around and looks up at the roofs of the buildings, wondering which was the one the faceless killer chose to take his target out from. He'd send the CSIs up first thing, and he'd get them to correlate the angles--
"Hey, Erik! Over here!" Alex calls.
Erik turns and walks quickly over to where Alex is crouching, looking down at something intently. Then he sees what it is, and freezes.
"I think it's a casing, though how it ended up down here is anyone's guess," Alex continues blithely, reaching down to lift it.
"Don't touch it," Erik snaps, physically restraining himself from tugging Alex away. The kid looks at him like he's gone mad, and Erik isn't sure he hasn't -- he's seen casings like that before; the carvings that cover it are distinctive and quite unmistakable, a strange Celtic knot of a tangle, and to see one here, now -- it seems pretty impossible. But there's just no hiding the way it itches under his skin, the way it's like a lodestone to his senses, digging up that part of him that he sometimes doesn’t want to admit to himself is there at all, pulling him in, until he forgets where he is, what he is, who he is.
"Erik?" Alex says at his ear, and Erik starts -- he hadn't even heard Alex stand, let alone get so close. "Erik, what is it?"
"I'm not sure," Erik mutters. It can't be. And even if it is, it just can't be, fuck, not that, why can't he get away from it?
Alex crosses his arms over his chest. With his wide shoulders and strong arms, he cuts an impressive figure even under the sweatshirt that Erik keeps badgering him to throw away. "Erik Lehnsherr, you talk to me right now."
It says something about how rattled he must look that Alex feels the need to take that tone with him -- and that Erik doesn't verbally flay him for it. It has nothing to do with the fact that Alex is the closest thing to a younger brother he's ever likely to get, or the fact that Erik had been the investigating officer in charge of the case that almost got a young detective sent to prison, after said detective’s attempt to arrest a murder suspect had gone disastrously wrong, ending with an explosion that had cost the suspect his life. Erik just hadn't the heart to send the kid packing ever since. Really.
"I'd rather not say until I'm certain, okay? Because if it is what I think it is, this is bad news. Very bad news indeed."
He knows when Alex wants to argue because he gets that mulish scowl on his face, like he's doing right now. But he isn't about to tell his deputy that the first time he'd seen those casings, he'd been running for his life, twenty-four years old and fresh out of KSK training, on his first covert mission that would see his Commander and two-thirds of his team dead and him in a hospital for a month (it had almost driven his mother insane with worry). Nor that the last time he'd seen them had been four years after that, at the head of his own team, and that time it had been worse, much worse.
He doesn't want Alex anywhere near those people. He isn't much older than the kids those monsters usually went after, from what Erik had managed to glean. Erik had burned their last 'research facility' to the ground, half-crazed after the mission had cost him practically his entire team, but it wouldn't erase the memories of broken bodies and dead eyes.
He still woke up some nights screaming.
"What do they want with this girl?" he mutters under his breath. The thought snaps him back to the present with a near-physical wrench. "Summers, I want anything and everything you can find on the victim. Family. Academic history. Known affiliations with any organisations. What she had for breakfast yesterday morning. Pull it together and call me. I'm going to the morgue."
He feels Alex's eyes burning between his shoulder blades all the way back to his car.
---
The building that houses the city morgue is a massive concrete monstrosity, menacing the landscape with its bulky shape. Erik knows his way inside all too well -- five years have been and gone since he was honourably discharged and transferred himself to the police department. The perpetual cool damp of the lower levels seeps into Erik's bones, like it always does. He makes his way to OR3, where he knows Dr Hirsch is to be found pretty much every hour of her shift. He knocks before he enters, because he can stand to hear the 'Don't startle me when I'm fucking working' lecture only so many times.
When he pushes the door open, he finds the doc leaning over the victim's stomach, poking at the cuts curiously. She straightens when she hears him come in.
"Ah, Detective Lehnsherr. I was wondering when you'd slink your way down here. Wanna take a look? Fascinating stuff."
"Hello to you too," Erik says, but he appreciates her getting straight to the point. Small talk is so tiring. He makes his way to the table, snagging a face mask from the box by the door. Hirsch moves back and starts snapping photographs with the large forensic camera, attached to a stand to allow perfect positioning.
Erik watches as the images transfer to the massive computer screen on the wall, magnified over 20 times. He taps the controls to call up an overall shot of the carved symbols, and stares at it with narrowed eyes.
“Was this done pre- or post-mortem?” he demands.
“Oh, pre-mortem, for sure – no more than five minutes before her heart stopped, in fact, judging by the amount of bleeding we’re observing.”
Erik hesitates. “You’re saying she did these herself?”
“Indeed she did.”
Erik leans closer, following the path of the strokes. The edges are curved, like he’d supposed, and they don't match perfectly -- but then again, he would be amazed if they did, considering the woman had done all of this while running from her assailants. Still, they're accurate enough to form a rough double helix with bonds linking the two strands -- a pretty standard rendering of a DNA molecule. It looks to him like the woman had known exactly what she was doing -- the incisions are sharp, precise, no hesitation in the process of making the cut.
"Huh," he says out loud, squinting. There are small x-shaped marks in at least three places, linking the helix and the strands.
"I know," Hirsch says. "Like I said. Fascinating. This woman was almost certainly a scientist, and she knew her way around a blade -- or a makeshift one, at least."
Erik turns to look at her questioningly. She waves him over.
"Look at this. I could deduce by the direction of the cuts that she was left-handed, but there's no need, see?" She lifts the woman's left hand. There are deep, jagged cuts in the middle of her palm, in the same position as what would normally be the handle of a blade. "It's glass," Hirsch adds. "She must have picked it up from a shattered window. It was a long sharp sliver, see the way the cut narrows here and here?" She points out the spots she wants Erik to note.
The cuts are so deep he can see bone peeking out through the mangled flesh. "How did she manage not to cut any ligaments?"
"Sheer damn luck. Although something tells me even that wouldn't have stopped her." Hirsch lifts the woman's pale right arm. On the underside of it is carved another message: the letters XCFBP1, the cuts rough from the ragged edges of the glass, snaking along the skin and taking up half her forearm.
"Any idea what they mean?" Erik asks distractedly as he leans in to get a closer look.
"Not in the slightest," Hirsch says, snatching a scalpel from the prepped tray and pressing it deeply into the skin under the woman's clavicle.
Erik takes two steps back and tilts his head to survey all the damage. It's not unfixable -- everything would have healed, given time. Still, she didn't seem to have cared whether she damaged herself. Every cut speaks of blind desperation, determination to get one last message across.
"She didn't expect to live through this," Erik muses out loud.
Hirsch, too busy with making the Y-incision, doesn't respond except to hum distractedly. Erik doesn't mind; she is utterly single-minded when it comes to her work. It's something Erik can respect. He quickly prints out a photo of the victim's decorated stomach and arm, slips them inside an evidence bag and into the inner pocket of his coat, and turns around again.
"Will you call me when you have the report ready?"
"Yes, yes," Hirsch says, dismissive. Erik takes his cue.
---
It's Thursday, so that means dinner at the average-sized, homey house in a leafy suburb of the city that Erik called home for the better part of eighteen years. No force in this world could make him skip it -- not if he doesn't want to contend with Edie Lehnsherr's formidable temper. And if he's honest with himself, which he tries to be as a rule, this case has unsettled him pretty thoroughly. He doesn't like the heavy feeling in his gut; doesn't like the fact that, regardless of his unwillingness, it looks like the part of him he’d striven to keep buried as deep as humanly possible, ever since he’d got an inkling of it in the middle of nowhere almost a decade ago, would have to be dragged kicking and screaming out into the open if he was to close this case without anyone else getting killed.
It unnerves him, and he doesn't want this thing anywhere near his mother -- but he knows that even if he tries making an excuse not to come over, she'd see right through him and demand he come all the more. So six-thirty finds him turning off the car engine and climbing out in front of the garden gate. The familiar feeling of peace washes over him when he looks over the fence, sees the garden that hasn't changed a whit ever since he left, except to grow a little older, just like him.
Which is, of course, the perfect time for his phone to trill shrilly, shattering the soothing silence.
"Lehnsherr," Erik answers without looking at the display, busy juggling the shopping bags out of the trunk without bashing them into the car frame.
"It's Alex. I have the information you wanted."
"Anything unusual?"
"You can say that again," Alex says grimly. "Victim's name is Hanna Rilke, 34 years old, works as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. No boyfriend, no family to speak of, one cat that her flatmate is taking care of. Flatmate by the name of Anna Scholtz, completely distraught, has no idea who could have done such a thing to Hanna, the usual. I took a couple of officers to the flat, searched her room, found zip. Tried at the labs, too, and guess what -- someone beat us to it. All her research has been stolen, or smashed to pieces, and that includes the lab's computers. It's pretty much a dead end."
"Damn it," Erik growls, wanting to hit something.
"Also, Dr Hirsch called to say the report is done. The two shots that killed her are .50 calibre bullets matching a Barrett M82A1 sniper rifle."
Erik almost drops the bags. "Seriously? A sniper rifle for a scientist? What about the rounds we dug out of the road?"
"Consistent with an M16 semi-automatic."
"Whoa.” That kind of fire power is way over the top for a simple shoot-to-kill. And that's the perps' first mistake -- they've given them a clue without meaning to. “Whatever it was she was working on, it must have been important enough to employ that kind of force. Right, see if you can talk to her colleagues, figure out her research topic, and call me."
There's a short pause. "It's Thursday."
"I know what day of the week it is, Alex, thank you. I said to call me."
"I don't want Edie pissed at me," Alex whines defensively.
"She'll be pissed at me, not you. Besides, you know she can never stay angry at you."
"Fine," Alex sighs. "Say hello to her for me."
"I will."
Erik flips his phone closed and shoves it in his pocket, hefting the shopping bags up again. He'd got a nice bottle of wine for the two of them to share, as well as the crackers that Edie pretends not to love. He shoulders his way through the garden gate and trudges up to the front door. Before he can try to twist his arm and fetch his keys, the door swings open and his mother's smiling face greets him, just like it always does.
"Hello, Liebling," she says, voice a little rough. She must have been in her workshop until it was time to start dinner.
"Mamma," Erik says warmly, dutifully kissing her cheek. She reaches to take some of the bags from him, but he sidesteps her and toes off his shoes, making his way into the kitchen.
"How was your day?" he asks her as he shucks his coat and hat and starts unpacking his purchases.
"Productive," Edie says with a satisfied twist to her lips. "Oh, that's wonderful," she adds when Erik shows her the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc he picked out for them at the supermarket. "Shall I open it?"
"Go ahead." He sets out the other purchases where she can see them before he puts them away.
"Erik, how many times do I have to tell you -- you don't need to buy all this stuff for me. I am perfectly capable of going to the shops myself."
"And I keep telling you that I like shopping for you."
Edie hands him a glass of wine with another smile and a kiss on his cheek. "Thanks, Schatz. Now, how was your day?"
Erik tries not to tense, he really does, but he supposes the ability to read their sons comes part and parcel of being a mother.
"It was tiring," he admits, taking a seat at the table, in one of his mother's exquisite dining room chairs. The house is full of Edie's creations, perfection carved out of wood, like it had taken no more than a thought to bring forth the shape from the rough block.
"New case?"
"Yes, and a nasty one at that." It's all he will say, and his mother knows better than to expect him to discuss open cases with her. "Let's not talk about it. Tell me what you were working on today?"
Dinner is pleasant, but Erik is preoccupied, and it only gets worse once Alex calls to report another dead end -- apparently not one of Hanna Rilke's colleagues knew exactly what she was working on, apart from that it had to do with the human genome, and she had just made a massive breakthrough the day before. Erik grows progressively more and more discouraged, and in the end tells Alex to update the report at the station and hangs up in frustration. Edie watches him, sympathetic.
"You're a good boy, Erik," she says, out of the blue, in that fond maternal tone that never fails to make Erik feel warmed all the way through.
"Yeah, maybe," he concedes. "It's not going to help this time, I'm afraid."
"Nonsense. I think half of your job is caring. The other half takes care of itself, and you're smart enough to get all the details to fit together. Much too smart, I think sometimes."
It's an old argument. Erik had been a rising star in Maths and Physics at school, and he and his parents had discussed Engineering as a possible, desirable career choice. And then his father had been swept off the road one winter night by a lorry that had lost control, and suddenly it was just Edie and her sixteen-year-old son, strapped for cash in a big house Erik refused to hear of selling. As soon as he was out of school he had enrolled into the Army, despite Edie's protests, and that had been that.
It wasn't too late for Erik to get back on track -- he'd been just over twenty-nine by the time he'd been discharged from the hospital a second time, he could have done it -- but this was all he'd known how to do anymore, and the fact remained that university degrees cost more money than Erik was making even now.
So he says nothing, merely takes another bite out of his delicious roast and lets the flavours take him back to a simpler time. They chat about the neighbour's cat's latest attempt at infiltrating the house (Erik swears that beast has an evil agenda of some kind), about Edie's interesting new project, about Mrs Stein's available daughter ('Mamma, please, not that again, I thought we talked about this'), and Mrs Kussberg's handsome son who had just come out to the family ('Mother, god, honestly. No more! Besides, how can I possibly date with my job being what it is?'). Edie pouts and looks disappointed, and Erik is torn between irritation and regret that he can't be a better son to her, someone who brings home nice girls and well-behaved boys for his mother to dote on. He just hasn't found anyone that he thinks is worth the effort yet; in his more dispirited moments, he doubts he ever will.
He lounges on the small chaise tucked into the corner of the kitchen, feet crossed before him and head drooping back onto the sunshine-yellow cushions, while Edie finishes washing the dishes and comes closer, bringing with her a small cup of her fragrant, strong coffee to wake him up before his drive home. Erik is loose, relaxed, his guard down for once, feeling as safe as he ever does -- here in this house, with his mother smiling gently down at him. She bends to hand him the cup and press a kiss to his forehead.
The bullet flies right over her lowered head, sending out a droplet of blood to spray Erik's light blue shirt. He acts entirely on instinct, tugging her down towards him and onto the floor, sending the cup flying and covering her with his body to shield her from bullets and scalding coffee both. There is a tinkle of glass by the window and another bullet embeds itself into the far wall, splintering the cupboard door. Erik paws at his mother's neck frantically, finding a pulse, checking the damage -- it's just nicked her, thank god, it's barely skin-deep, but if she wasn't bending down it would have gone straight through her neck. Erik goes cold all over at the thought -- but there are more bullets coming through the windows, and he does not have time to freeze like this, not when she's in danger. He rolls them, taking cover behind the chaise, hearing a bullet bury itself in the cushion where his head was a second ago.
"What--Erik--what is happening?" Edie asks, disoriented and frightened.
"Someone's trying to kill us," Erik says, stating the obvious while his mind snaps to business. It can't be anything that his mother has done; she's harmless, a model citizen, therefore this has something to do with him, and the only thing that's been seriously wrong in the past month or so is this damned case. "We have to get out of here."
"Why are they shooting at us?" Edie demands, and Erik is relieved to hear her start to sound less freaked out and more angry. Angry is good. Angry keeps you from freezing up and gets you out alive.
"It must be because of what I'm working on," he grunts, checking out the exits. He wonders whether the attackers would have had time to circle around the back as well -- he'd have to assume they have, out of sheer self-preservation. They are too exposed here -- there's nowhere in the house they can hide. They have to get away.
There is no noise apart from breaking glass and furniture. Their guns have silencers -- probably why no one heard Rilke getting shot, either. That's far from an amateur performance -- if anything, it's frighteningly professional, the way they cover the space with fire so their targets can't move.
Which means someone is coming in, and Erik is out of options.
He digs for that part of him he spends his days forcing dormant, yanks it out of his body and sends it hunting. He feels every piece of metal in the vicinity, locks onto six signatures of a size and complication specific to semi-automatics. There are other objects, too, smaller but of a similar composition. Handguns.
He looks at his mother, frightened and small, but with a determined set to her features, waiting on his orders and ready to follow his every direction. The unquestioning trust does something to him, twists his gut at the thought of quite another look stealing over her face when she sees what he's about to do, what he’s capable of.
No choice. Two of the semi-automatics are coming closer -- they're about to take the house while the others cover them, and that’s one thing Erik will not let happen, no matter what it costs him.
"I'm sorry," Erik murmurs desperately, and reaches.
He feels the metal and takes control over it, turns the guns in their hands and squeezes all the triggers at the same time. There's a yell right behind him, and he snaps around to see a man dressed all in black, with a pair of goggles over his eyes and tactical gear concealing his body. The man folds in on himself, sprawls down onto the floorboards. Edie yelps and jumps back while Erik floats the semi-automatic into his arms and runs out to check the back, where this guy had obviously gained access. He finds two more dead bodies lying in the garden, staining the grass dark with their blood; he circles the house and finds the other three within a few feet of each other. None of them are moving, but he checks anyway -- no pulse.
He sprints to the back entrance and inside, and comes to a stop when he sees his mother crouching behind the chaise where he'd left her, holding tightly onto the dead man's handgun. She's facing into the room, training it on the door to the kitchen, trusting Erik to have her back even after he must have scared her half to death with his stunt, and the love he feels for her in that moment is quite frankly overwhelming.
She turns, and he sees that her eyes are red-rimmed but her hands are steady around the gun. "Are they gone?" she asks. Her voice is just as steady.
"They're all dead," Erik tells her. It's the most reassuring thing he can think of right now.
He watches her carefully, but there's no sign of fear on her face now that they're safe for the time being; nor the distrust and hatred Erik has every reason to expect, now that his mother knows what an aberration he is. Instead, she looks calm in a way Erik hasn't seen in all the time he's been alive.
He doesn't know what his mother sees in his face, but she's quick to push herself to standing and walk over to him, holding the gun loosely in her right hand as she covers his cheek with her left.
"Oh, Liebling. It's okay."
"How can it be okay?" Erik asks desperately, fingers clenching on the weapon still in his hands. It crumples inwards like a giant fist had closed around it and squeezed.
Edie smiles at him, no less loving than fifteen minutes ago. "Look," she directs.
Erik turns to see where she's pointing, and almost falls over when he stumbles back in shock. One of the dining room chairs is floating in the air, coming towards them. As he watches, the chair falls apart into its component parts, and then the pieces split in two like an impossibly sharp axe has just cleaved straight through them. The planks form a large shield, welding themselves together in a manner that leaves Erik breathless, and in seconds he's looking at a window shutter, the perfect shape to fit over the window frame where the bullets have shattered the glass.
You're a--a wood manipulator?" he says hesitantly.
"Yes," Edie says, a quiet statement that does more to ground Erik than any elaborate explanations.
"Why didn't you--I never--"
Edie smiles sadly. "You father was human. He knew, and he accepted it, but when you were born, we--at first you were too little to understand, and you never showed any signs of being anything other than human, and then your father--and you left, and I guess I thought you didn't have to know."
Erik reaches for her and draws her closer. "You never have to hide from me again," he says softly, hugging her tightly to him. If he has his way, neither of them ever will. She wraps her arms around him, and they hold each other for a long moment in the disaster zone that is their kitchen.
When they feel strong enough to let go, Erik fashions Edie's pots into hinges with some effort, power still raw and unyielding, and together they affix the shutters his mother makes to the windows, shutting out the world. Erik drags the dead man out of the kitchen, through the back door and throws him with the others in the garden. He has a feeling someone will be around to make sure any evidence of anything untoward happening is long gone, if his suspicions about who's behind those attacks prove right. (How he's going to find out whether or not they are is another matter altogether, one that will need fixing soon.)
Unfortunately, 'any evidence' extends to the living beings in this scenario as well. Whoever it is that’s gunning for him wouldn’t be after Edie at all if Erik hadn’t dragged them to her house in the first place; but what’s done is done. The two of them have to leave the city, even the country. With that in mind, after he has fussed over the bullet graze on Edie's neck and she has told him in no uncertain terms to stop, and refused adamantly to go to a hospital, Erik tends to it himself with the first aid kit Edie keeps under the sink. Thankfully, it really is no more than a scratch – deep enough to break the skin, true, but not so deep that it doesn't stop bleeding after it has been cleaned and bandaged. It doesn't even show once she has restyled her hair to cover it. Then Erik tells his mother to pack a small bag and fetch her passport, while he uses the time to book her on the first flight out of Heathrow to Krakow, where his aunt Anna lives. It should keep her safe until he can wrap this thing up. Meanwhile, he locks all the unbroken windows and prepares the house to be abandoned for as long as it takes to solve this case.
When Edie comes back downstairs, Erik throws her bag into the back seat of his car and takes off for the airport. They travel silently, while Erik avoids as many of the brightly lit roads as he can.
"What about you? Where will you go?" Edie asks, breaking the silence.
"I don't know," Erik admits. "I'll start with the case, it's the key to getting to the bottom of this. And I’ll need to find an expert in genetics."
Beside him, Edie goes still. "Why do you need a geneticist?" she asks, in the voice of one putting a bunch of pieces together.
Erik hesitates, but he can't really get into any more trouble than he already is. He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out the photos he'd swiped from the morgue a few hours ago. He hands them to Edie, turning on the overhead light so she can see.
There's a sharp intake of breath from beside him, and he wants to hit himself for letting his mother see something that is bound to distress her. He opens his mouth, to lie, tell her it's a hoax, anything, when she surprises him yet again.
"I think I know a person who can help."
Charles Xavier, Erik thinks on his way back from the airport, after watching his mother's plane get her away to safety. He supposes England is close enough, and even if Xavier can't help him, he might know someone who can. He'd booked a ticket to London on the six a.m. flight while he was still at the airport, but he can't go home to pack -- they might be waiting for him there. It's a good thing he keeps his passport and a few changes of clothes at the station, for when he has to pull an all-nighter or they get a particularly gruesome case. He heads straight there, keeping his eyes peeled for anything suspicious, but he's in luck, and he gets in and out without a single bit of trouble. His bag is slightly heavier than it should be, but the file on Hanna Rilke is already getting bigger than normal, and he imagines there will be much more of it once they really start digging. That won't be his problem for a while, though; his request for two weeks unpaid leave is even now cooling on his Captain's desk. She's not going to be happy, but Erik hasn't taken a single holiday since he started working for the department six years ago, and she can't begrudge him the time.
He's ready to get out of town. But there's one last stop he has to make first.
---
The block of flats where Alex lives is small and ancient, a miraculous leftover from an earlier age, spared from the WWII bombings by some bizarre quirk of fate. The overall impression is one of damp, all the stronger now that it's started drizzling, a cloak of mist over the city. Erik watches all the hidden corners carefully for any sign that he's been followed, that someone has managed to keep up with him through the twisted path he'd taken to get here. Nothing moves save for a late-night straggler keen to get home. After watching for another few minutes, Erik takes his chances and runs over to the entrance, tumbling the lock with a twist of his fingers.
It comes to him easier now than it ever has before. He's not an idiot -- during those dark, lonely times at the hospital he'd read everything he could get his hands on, including textbooks on psychological trauma that a kindly doctor had supplied, taking pity on the long-term patient bored out of his mind. He knows that a traumatic event could unlock all sorts of things, from hidden memories to physical potential -- to potential of another kind altogether, although he is only now making the leap. He wonders whether his mother was always meant to be the key, the one thing in his life he would tear apart countries to protect, including wielding a power he was still half-afraid of. With his mother not only accepting, but someone like him, that fear dwindles away into nothing and his power stretches freely, unencumbered for the first time since he’d felt metal call out to him.
The one other person he has to give a heads-up to before he disappears lives on the fifth floor of the building he just made his way into. As he steals up the stairwell and along the fifth floor corridor, all he hears are everyday noises from Alex's neighbours -- the sound of a TV turned up too loud, kids laughing, some couple fighting behind the door he's passing right now. Alex's flat is at the end of the long hallway, and Erik curses every second that it takes to gain the door.
He debates whether he should pick the lock again, but in the end decides against it -- no reason to freak Alex out more than he's about to already. Besides, he doesn't relish the look of disgust, distrust, shock that's bound to take over Alex's face as Erik is forced to give an explanation for his sudden self-imposed exile (he's not fool enough to think that Alex would let him go without demanding one, or that Alex would believe even his finest bullshit).
He raps his knuckles on the door and waits, not at all patiently. As soon as Alex opens the door a crack, Erik shoulders his way inside, ignoring Alex's state of undress.
"Whoa, hey, what the hell?" Alex grunts when Erik pushes him back inside the flat and peers out of every window they pass. "You finally snapped, Lehnsherr?"
Erik doesn't answer, instead marches past Alex into the bathroom and looks out of that window, too. The shadows over the roof of the building next door make it difficult to ascertain whether or not there's something–someone--there that shouldn't be, or if it's just Erik's paranoia rearing its head again. The uncertainty makes Erik nervous.
"I think you're in danger,” he says urgently. “We should get out of here."
"I'm not going anywhere until you explain," Alex says stubbornly, crossing his arms over his bare chest. Erik spares it no more than a fleeting glance -- he's just not capable of feeling that way about someone who amounts to his brother, no matter how attractive he is.
Erik runs a frustrated hand through his hair, calling out to every piece of metal he can reach. There's really only one way he can say this that won't make Alex scoff and threaten to have him committed.
"I have to leave Germany for a while," Erik says, and watches Alex's eyes widen as a betrayed look creeps over his face. "And I'm afraid you're very likely in danger, too."
"Does this have something to do with the Rilke case?" Alex asks, watching him shrewdly.
"Yes," Erik says, stalling and hoping Alex won't ask too many questions.
"But there's something else, too, isn't it?"
Damn, when did the kid get so smart? He's always been sharp, but putting things together so quickly? Seeing right through Erik? Erik wishes that didn't put Alex in even more danger.
"Can't you just say 'okay, Erik' for once?" he groans. They need to get out of this flat, stat; prolonging their presence here puts them both in even more danger.
"No can do," Alex says with a smirk that shouldn't make Erik want to smile in return.
"Fucking--fine," he snaps. He knew it was going to come to this anyway, he shouldn't act so surprised. And, really, anything to get Alex to move already. "I'm going to show you something, and it would be really nice if you could--not freak out about it."
Alex shrugs, looking sceptical. Erik wants to grin a little, because cocky as Alex acts, Erik knows damn well he’s still going to knock him out for six.
He locates the keys to Alex's car, which he was going to ask to borrow anyway, and floats them into his hand.
"Holy shit," Alex breathes. He looks--okay, that's strange. He doesn't look panicked, or appalled, or anything else Erik has been imagining and resigning himself to. He looks excited. "Oh my god. Do that again."
Erik draws the steel lighter from Alex's jeans pocket and lights it in front of Alex's face. The dancing flame is reflected in Alex's blue eyes, wide and delighted.
"Fuck me sideways," Alex swears, slipping into English without realising. He's grinning fit to burst.
"Much as I'd love to stand here doing magic tricks all night, I really do have to go," Erik says, eyeing him askance. He hopes he didn’t break the kid; no one should react like this to their superior exhibiting bizarre abilities.
Alex sobers up immediately. "You never answered my question."
"I did, at least part of it." He eyes the set of Alex's jaw. "Jesus. Okay. Those men that killed Hanna Rilke, I've met them before. Or others like them. They went after people like me, people who have weird things happen around them, even if they didn't know what caused it. The first time I crossed paths with them, I didn't know why strange things were happening around me, either, and to be honest, I didn't want to know. It's not until tonight that I--" he stops, unable to say it. He should have known he wouldn't need to.
"What happened tonight, Erik? Are you all right? Oh my god, is Edie all right?" Alex demands, looking frantic.
"She's fine. Got grazed by a bullet when those men came after me in her house. She's safe now, but I have to leave. I just wanted to warn you to be extra careful for a few weeks. I think it's all tied in with the Rilke case; she must have been working on something to do with abilities like mine. Look, Alex, do not investigate the murder. Bury it, or pass it on to someone else; we'll close it when I get to the bottom of this and find out what's really going on. You lie low. And for fuck's sake, please don't be a hero. They're not after you, they'll just look at you as an associate of mine if all goes to plan, an underling that's doing the legwork on the case. But stay watchful, and keep your gun on you, just in case. I'll draw the heat away when they find out I've left the country."
"Where will you go?"
"Mother mentioned this guy in Oxford, England. A professor of Genetics. She's been corresponding with him for years now. And get this -- his name is Charles Xavier."
Alex's eyes widen. "XC--the letters!" he exclaims, and Erik nods. "Do you think what Rilke did was a message for him?"
"Could well be, especially considering his field of research is something to do with classifying genes."
"You're going to show him?" Alex asks, even though it's not really a question.
"Yes. Tomorrow, when you get to work, make sure you report the Rilke file missing, okay?"
There's an unreadable expression on Alex's face; at least, Erik wishes it was unreadable, but he's seen it all too often for it to be any kind of mystery. "No," he snaps. Alex just raises his eyebrows at him and turns away to stalk into his bedroom. "Alex, no. I am your superior officer, and I am ordering you not to follow me."
"Never been much for orders," Alex muses lazily when Erik follows him into the room, even as he piles a few shirts and jeans in a battered backpack. “Besides, you’re on holiday as of this evening. You can’t give me a direct order until you're back on duty.”
"Alex, you can't come with me. It's not safe," Erik yells, half-frantic himself. He can't get Alex killed. He can't.
Alex stops shoving clothes inside the bag and straightens, turns to Erik with this dire look on his face. He opens his mouth--but Erik has no idea what he intends to say, because before Alex can speak Erik is on him, bearing him to the floor. The bullet aimed for Alex's head whizzes over them and burrows into the far wall.
"Fuck!" Alex hisses, already shoving Erik away and rolling over, peering around the edge of the bed to look out of the window. Erik tugs him back as another bullet attempts to take Alex's ear off – damn it, he knew those shadows were suspicious!
"Get back, you idiot!" Erik hisses back, already pushing Alex ahead of him out of the bedroom. They make for the door, still bent in two, using the wall for cover. Alex snags his bag as they pass it, and then stops in his tracks.
"There's a gun in the nightstand by the bed, I might need that," he says, making to turn back.
Erik pushes him towards the front door to the flat as hard as he can, swearing as he locates the gun and summons it into Alex's hand. Alex grins at him, sheepish and excited and a little wild. It does more to calm Erik down than any kind of talk. Alex is his partner, someone Erik trusts with his life. All brotherly or paternal feelings aside, Alex has taken care of himself for a lot longer than Erik has known him.
All the same, though. He can't take Alex with him. Alex would become a target now that Erik has shown he cares for him – just like his mother.
They run out of the building and straight to Alex's car, even as Erik resolves to find a way to send Alex Edie's way before he leaves. Then they're inside and Alex is gunning the engine, speeding away down the empty street and around the corner as fast as the creaky old Volkswagen can go. Erik can't stop looking behind them, casing the space carefully. He swears when he sees another car in the distance, yells at Alex to ‘go go go’.
"It can't go any faster," Alex yells back, frustration clear in his voice, taking corners on two tires in an effort to lose them. It's not working. They're gaining, and Erik spies a flash from the car's passenger window. The zing of a bullet flying past, about an inch from his nose, is loud even with Alex's swearing.
There's no other way about it -- they're going to have to engage the killers. Erik pays attention to his surroundings for the first time since the first turn back at Alex's flat, and sees that Alex has tried to take them through the industrial district. Abandoned warehouses gape their empty windows at them on both sides. Erik couldn't have asked for a better spot to kill a few bastards -- or to be killed, of course. There is that.
"Turn in here, through the warehouse, and stop at the far back," he barks. Alex doesn't even pause -- he obeys immediately, so much so that Erik almost gets whiplash trying to follow the black sedan riding on their tail.
As soon as the car stops, Erik is out of it, dimly hears Alex jump out on the other end. They huddle in the shadows, hoping the car would pass them by.
No such luck -- but then again, Erik wouldn't be who he is if he didn't anticipate that. His first shot goes wide, but his second nails one of their pursuers through the head, even as bullets explode all around them. He and Alex return fire, but it becomes clear depressingly fast that the two of them just aren't a match for five highly trained professionals. Erik is maybe getting a little worried.
He gives up on the shooting and starts warping all the metal he can reach. He's angry -- fuck is he angry, from being shot at, from his mother being shot at, and now Alex -- but it's just not enough. His grasp of the power inside him is still shaky in the aftermath of the effort it took to incapacitate the other goons, and he just doesn't trust himself yet to be able to control every single weapon out there. The most he can do is send their bullets wide enough that they bypass them entirely, but they're bound to get one past him eventually -- and one is one too many.
"Erik," Alex grunts across from him, taking cover behind an enormous wooden crate.
"You all right? Have you been hit?" Erik demands.
"No, I'm fine. It's just."
"Alex, now is not a good time for riddles!'
"Shut up, asshole, I'm trying to tell you something!"
"Can't it wait?"
"No, it fucking can't. Goddamn it, Erik, listen to me!"
Erik gets one last shot off and plasters his back against his own piece-of-junk cover.
"Fine, hurry up and tell me already!"
There's a pause, and then: "I haven't been entirely honest with you," Alex yells.
"If this is about that time with the paperwork, I swear I'm going to thump you across the ear for bringing it up now."
"Jesus, Erik." Then, quieter, "please, god, don't freak out."
And then there's a burst of red light coming from his left, shockingly warm where it passes by Erik, and then the far end of the warehouse is on fire, melting, crumbling in on itself. He stares, mesmerised, as around him the world burns, as sheets of metal fold up and take out the goons' minivan, and he would have stared some more had Alex not grabbed his arm and tugged him over to the car, pushing him inside because Erik can hardly figure out where his feet are and what they're supposed to be doing.
"Fuck, Erik, come on, wake up, man," Alex says, half-furious and half-desperate as he runs around the car and hops into the driver's seat. He slams the stick in reverse and busts through the far wall, away from the fire and the noise and the confusion.
"What. In the hell. Was that?" Erik rasps, throat raw from all the smoke he'd inhaled while he'd crouched there and stared like an idiot.
"That was me," Alex says, and it's loud like a shot in the quiet night. "You know those people you talked about, the ones that had weird things happen around them? Well. I'm one of them."
Erik stares at him, speechless. "Alex, why didn't you tell me?" he asks, stunned into stupidity.
"Why didn't you tell me, Erik?" Alex returns harshly.
Erik shuts up, and lets his brain catch up with his mouth. "What I meant to say," he tries again, "is that you could have. You could tell me anything and it would be okay. We'd get through it."
The silence stretches, and Erik finds it helps him think, connect the dots. "Drive to the airport, there's a flight to London in three hours. We should be on it."
"So I can come, after all," Alex says, only faintly mocking.
"After all that? I'm not letting you out of my sight."
They drive in silence for a little while, thoughts churning through Erik's mind as he tries to make some kind of sense of the confusion of the recent developments. The flash of Alex's laser beams lights his memories again and again, until something he'd long thought would remain a mystery clicks at last.
"I take it the arson four years ago was a different kind of accident," he murmurs to himself quietly; he's not expecting a response as such, and he's focusing too hard on their next move to pay much heed to the way Alex's face blanches at his words. "We have to find a way to help you control this thing. Maybe this guy Xavier might shed some light on what the hell is going on, too."
"We?" Alex asks, so timidly that for a moment Erik is honestly confused.
"What do you mean, 'we?' Of course 'we', what--" he clocks the look on Alex's stupidly expressive, still so young face. "Alex, for fuck's sake. I know what it's like, remember? You can't control this thing; it controls you. But this stops now. You, me -- we both need some help working through our--gifts, powers, what have you. And the first thing we're going to do is find Professor Xavier. My mother said he can help me -- help us. And until this thing with Hanna Rilke blows over and men with guns stop trying to take us out for whatever reason, we'd be safer if we get off the radar."
Alex doesn't say anything for a long time. The whoosh of tires over asphalt comforts Erik, calms his mind. He's almost drowsing, exhausted from the day and the exertion and the emotional turmoil of watching his mother almost get shot before his eyes. So when Alex speaks, Erik can't help but jerk upright, startled.
"Do you think Hanna Rilke was one of us?"
Erik thinks about that for a long moment, watching the flicker of streetlights wash over them and away. "I don't know, Alex," he says on a sigh. "But whether or not she was, she knew something that was worth killing for – and until we know what it is, we can't make assumptions about any of this, or it might well be us who’s next."
[Part Two]
