TurtleTotem

Roses & Cinnamon — Ch. 12 (Epilogue)

(Holy crap, I didn’t realize I hadn’t published this, sorry if anyone was waiting on it!)

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AO3

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EPILOGUE

ONE YEAR LATER

“The name is a calculated risk,” Charles said, taking the vial of powdered cinnamon from Erik’s hand and applying it to the orange slice before him. “Like so many things involving the school, we must constantly walk a balance between getting the word to the right people and keeping it from the wrong ones.”

“I, for one, still think you are too concerned with secrecy.” Raven scarcely looked up from her novel, one hand absently stroking Irene’s hair where she lay sleeping beside her on the sofa, head in Raven’s lap.

“Yes, Raven, I’m aware of your opinion,” Charles said with fond weariness. “Yet our discreet situation is serving you and Irene well enough at present, is it not?”

“It is, at that,” Raven admitted, and her teeth flashed white-against-blue in a dreamy smile, her hand drifting from Irene’s hair down her shoulder to her rounded belly. Irene had not foreseen any particular problems with the birth of their son, but Charles knew they were both happy nevertheless to be in a more stable and comfortable environment for the event.

Charles was, of course, thrilled at the thought of being an uncle. He had to admit, though, that he was still laboring to adjust himself to the idea of his sister having fathered the child in question.

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Roses & Cinnamon, Chapter 11 (of 12)

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Charles normally loathed mornings. Waking to a new dawn seemed less a gift than a penance when one had drunk oneself into a stupor the night before, as he so often did. Last night, however, he’d spent intoxicated by something far better than scotch or brandy, and waking to find Erik still at his side put him near tears of joy. The sunlight through the curtains signaled full morning, and the hum of minds in the mansion was beginning to pick up speed, but he bundled all that into a quiet, distant corner of his mind, and shifted deeper into Erik’s arms.

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Roses & Cinnamon, Ch. 10 (of 12)

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Most recent part, not yet added to masterpost

[This is it, you guys, THE CHAPTER. You know the one I mean.]

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Within a few days, they had the children in a respectable routine, if not a particularly educational one. They had regular meals and bedtimes, at least, and access to the library and the great outdoors. Between acquainting himself with the needs and characters of each of the children, doing the same with the adults, and organizing the household to accommodate its new inhabitants, Charles’s days were full to bursting. Each of the students — and he privately thought them all students, even those whose aim was to teach — was fascinating and lovely and in need of so much that he could give them.

The constant footsteps and voices and hum of minds was almost enough to drown out the terrible silence where Erik and Raven should have been.

“How is your brother doing?” Charles asked as Alex readied him for bed. Summers, he reminded himself. He really ought to refer to his valet as Summers, first names were for mere footmen.

“He can have the respect due to a valet when he learns to act like one,” said a very dry voice by the window, and Charles swallowed hard, refusing to look toward it. No different than his other hallucinations, he reminded himself. No point in reacting to it.

Alex leapt half across the room. “Mr. Lehnsherr! What — where did—”

“He’s not real, Alex,” Charles said dully. “Ignore him.

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Roses & Cinnamon, Part 2 of Chapter 9

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[In this post, dear readers, it may please you to find Poetry written by better hands than mine, the uniting of one pair of Sweethearts, the continued painful Separation of the other, and another visit from the Ghost Child.]

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Azazel delivered Raven to her bedroom the next morning just in time to send her ladies-maid into hysterics. It took some effort to calm the poor girl before she brought the entire household running, but Raven managed it. She felt as though she could manage anything at all this day.

“Of course it was a very shocking thing to see, Amy, I do apologize,” Raven said when the hysterics were over. “Do go and get yourself some tea, I’m sure it will do you good. I hope I do not need to impress upon you the need for your discretion?”

“None would believe me anyway, miss,” Amy said, her mismatched eyes still wide. “The devil’s own chaos might be nothing new around here, but the devil himself is something else again.”

With her maid gone, Raven let the bedraggled remains of her ball-gown slip to the floor, and stood before the mirror in naught but her own true skin. She and Irene had explored every inch of that skin together, and she seemed still to feel traces of that glow, flickering along her nerves. The thought of trapping herself behind layers of skirts was stifling now. She entertained a brief fantasy of going down to breakfast just as she was, but that would be more scandal than it was worth. She could, at least, wear nothing while seeming to wear… A moment’s thought had her outermost skin transformed into a sprigged muslin morning dress that felt the air around it as no dead fabric could do. She twirled before the mirror, watching her skin-skirt flutter and billow, and laughed like a child. How very good the world was, and everything in it!

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Roses & Cinnamon — Part 1 of Ch. 9

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Charles should not have been surprised when Erik announced he would be staying at the Club that night, but it twisted the knife that much deeper, and his throat tightened so far with unshed tears that he was light-headed from lack of breath by the time the carriage rattled away from the McCoy residence.

Raven sat silent and subdued across from him, still in her blue skin. He had offered, strenuously, to take a stab at fixing the problem, erasing the incident from the mind of every witness, but she had shaken her head.

“It’s too many people, Charles, and too much time has passed. At least one party has left already, and I’m sure the tale has made it downstairs to the servants – there is no stopping it now. I do earnestly thank you for the offer, dear brother, but do not distress yourself. I am prepared to face what’s transpired.”

She was not the only one who would have to face it; Charles could escape suspicion of Abnormality himself, since it was well-known that he was no blood relation to Raven, but his respectability would nevertheless come under fire, particularly when he failed to throw her out into the street or even pack her quietly away to Europe. At the moment, however, he could muster no energy to care about that at all.

Charles reached for Raven’s hand, and squeezed it, trying to impart a reassurance he did not feel. She squeezed back and ventured a watery smile, her teeth startling white against cerulean lips.

Neither of them spoke of Erik.

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Roses & Cinnamon, Part 2 of Chapter 8

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The paths of the maze were lined with shredded tree bark, thank heavens, rather than the equally-popular sand or gravel. Charles was able to move his chair along fairly smoothly, though he suspected Erik more than once of easing the wheels over a rough patch.

They walked in silence, choosing turns at random. Erik at one point tore his gloves off, radiating muted frustration, and Charles followed suit. The inevitable dirt of his wheels cost him gloves by the barrel-full; Raven had been good enough to buy him a fresh pair during her own shopping, and it would be a shame to sully them unnecessarily. Gloveless and hatless, then, how improper; he had somewhat deliberately forgotten his hat on the way out the door, but Erik’s was firmly in place. Everything about Erik was firmly in place just now, his lips compressed and gaze locked straight ahead. The only hint of agitation was the copper penny Erik kept in the air, doing increasingly elaborate acrobatics above and around his hand.

Charles debated a dozen different things to say, ranging from the oblique to the blatant. Surely the time had come to say something. Their friendship was a solid thing now, a foundation of shared purpose that could be built on, and after the way Erik had looked at him in the ballroom, aching and burning and desperately uncertain — surely neither of them could continue to ignore—

“I fail to see the point of a maze,” Erik said irritably. “How does one enjoy being lost? Are your friends in such despair to fill their time that they adopt hardships for amusement?”

Well. Apparently one of them could continue to ignore.

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Roses & Cinnamon, Part 1 of Ch. 8

Masterpost of previous chapters (contains AO3 link)

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It was nearly six o’clock — past time for them to be readying for the ball, never mind dinner — and Raven was beginning to think she ought send someone to fetch her brother home, when he and Erik came through the door on a wave of excited chatter.

“Raven, what do you think?” Charles called on catching sight of her. “I am to start a school! Can you imagine?”

“No, in fact,” Raven said, unsure whether to laugh.

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Roses & Cinnamon, Chapter 7

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Emma Frost was not a fool. She made a point of being familiar with her own strengths and weaknesses, and planned accordingly. She knew, for instance, that facing Charles Xavier in a direct Gift-to-Gift confrontation would probably end badly for her, and so she had no intention of engaging in such a confrontation. She knew also that Erik Lehnsherr had a mind as hard and rigid as steel, and that, having lost the advantage of surprise, it was unlikely she would succeed in adjusting his will to match her own – though she might well find herself just as well-positioned with him as she had been with Sebastian, if she played her cards right.

Emma had a strong instinct for self-preservation. That instinct had given her many advantages: for instance, she was content – preferred, really – to rule from behind the throne, rather than wear the target of open leadership. The same instinct had led her to ally herself with Sebastian of her own free will, rather than wait for him to break her, and it had instructed never to challenge him directly, or show him weakness. Similarly, she knew better than to involve herself in any way with the powder keg that was Erik’s friendship with Xavier.

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Roses & Cinnamon, Ch. 6

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Erik woke with a dream of his father’s voice still echoing in his head, and the fleeting desire, for the first time in decades, to say morning prayers. He didn’t do it, of course; he couldn’t even remember how to begin. Like most memories involving his parents, almost everything about the faith they had taught him was buried. He still thought of himself as a Jew, in some quiet corner of his mind, but he had little idea, anymore, of what that meant.

He could find out. With Shaw dead, all paths were open. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to, didn’t know if he could bow his head before a God that left a small boy in Sebastian Shaw’s care.

Perhaps giving him Charles – or giving him to Charles – was an attempt to make amends.

Dawn light seeped around the curtains, and Charles’s skin glowed wherever it touched. Their bodies were curved snugly together, Charles’s leg tucked between Erik’s two, his head pillowed on Erik’s arm. The other arm, the one thrown around Charles’s torso, was trapped now under Charles’s corresponding arm, their fingers interlaced against Charles’s chest. It was hard to see it as anything but a lovers’ tangle.

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Roses & Cinnamon, Part 2 of Ch. 5

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They found Raven and Hank cheerfully playing whist in one of the gambling rooms. That is, Raven was playing cheerfully; Hank looked on the verge of a nervous collapse, glancing about as if he expected any moment to be attacked and eaten.

It was, in fact, one of the calmer rooms, whist being quite the tame pastime in comparison to the Hellfire Club’s other offerings. Even the lovely brunette singing lustily on the dais at one end of the room had drawn only half a dozen people. That half-dozen included – and this was likely the main source of Hank’s discomfort – a man who floated some six inches off the ground, and another with glowing red eyes. The singer had curling horns like a ram.

“The Hellfire Club, as you may already have realized,” said Miss Frost, leading them to Hank and Raven’s table, “was established as a haven for our kind. Here we may practice perfect freedom, revealing our true selves and displaying our unique abilities without fear of reproach. Well,” she amended with a small smile, “no reproach so long as there is no property damage.”

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Roses & Cinnamon, Masterpost Thus Far

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(CHAPTER ONE)

| He had thought that biting a rag while a battlefield surgeon sawed through his leg was surely the most painful thing he would ever be called upon to endure. It was much too soon to wonder if losing Erik would be a comparable grief. |

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(CHAPTER TWO)

| For the most part, Erik’s mind was a very straight-angled place, tightly organized, terrifyingly focused. Erik had trained himself into this strict focus as the only way to control the violence of his emotions. Beneath a surface that seemed calm, even cold, lay the firestorm. |

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| Erik rather started at the sight of footprints appearing in the corridor, footprints in blood that made a stumbling, laborious path, accompanied by faint sounds of pained gasping, and the occasional smeared handprint on the wall. |

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(CHAPTER THREE)

| Did anything of interest befall you since last we spoke, Miss Darkholme? Oh, no, nothing at all. Only I attended a traveling carnival unescorted and, oh yes, unclothed. |

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| On the edge of the carnival, a bit separated from the noise and light, was a tent of deep purple cloth, and a sign reading Lady Destiny, Blind Seer and Prophetess. |

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(CHAPTER FOUR)

| Water cascaded down what seemed like yards of milk-and-roses skin, leaving Charles’s water-darkened hair clinging to his face and neck. Erik swallowed hard, wondering if he’d contracted a touch of fever, to feel so odd. |

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(CHAPTER FIVE)

| The Hellfire Club earned its name, Charles quickly acknowledged. There were rooms devoted to every major vice, from gambling to gossip to gluttony. There was a boxing ring, in the downstairs, and in the upstairs — Well, it would hardly be a gentlemen’s club if it did not pander to lust. |

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| Erik could not stop himself from melting against that warm body, wrapping his arms tightly around it, pressing his nose into silky-soft hair to smell the traces of rose-and-cinnamon soap under musky-sweet sweat. Charles relaxed into his hold, his shivers already beginning to fade. |

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(CHAPTER SIX)

| Dawn light seeped around the curtains, and Charles’s skin glowed wherever it touched. Their bodies were curved snugly together, Charles’s leg tucked between Erik’s two, his head pillowed on Erik’s arm. The other arm, the one thrown around Charles’s torso, was trapped now under Charles’s corresponding arm, their fingers interlaced against Charles’s chest. It was hard to see it as anything but a lovers’ tangle. |

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(CHAPTER SEVEN)

| “It is impossible that we cannot find some way to agree. After all, we want the same thing.”

Charles smiled, near-dizzy with hope. “Yes, my friend, we surely do.” |

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(CHAPTER EIGHT)

| “Hank, must your life be always proper and normal? Must you and I spend our lives in hiding? No shame between us, you say, but I say there should be no shame for usanywhere. You try — we all try — so hard to abide by the rules of society, to pretend to be like them, when it is they who should aspire to be like us!”

Hank gave a shocked sort of laugh. “Like us? With blue skin or the feet of some malformed beast? No, Miss Darkholme, no one will ever want to be like us. I cannot expect anyone to aspire to freakishness.” |

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(CHAPTER NINE)

| “Will you unbutton me?” Irene asked, low and soft, and Raven did, her hands unsteady and fumbling. Irene turned and did the same to her, running warm fingers down her back. Even exhausted as it was by her night’s efforts, Raven’s skin seemed to chase after the touch. |

| Erik might have said many true things — that Charles’s wealth and Gift were sufficient to protect them both; that the law already had claim on Erik, since the club offered gentlemen as well as ladies; that since he would have drowned without Charles’s intervention, Erik’s life was honorably his for the asking. But all these things paled beside the simple fact that death would be worth risking, to have Charles. |

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(CHAPTER TEN)

| Do you love me? |

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(CHAPTER ELEVEN)

| He glanced up at Charles, who was smiling at him as if he could hardly believe the beauty of what he was seeing. An image traveled from Charles’s mind, possibly without his direction, and Erik saw himself for a moment as Charles saw him – his hair and clothing disheveled, the little girl cradled trustingly in his arms, all of it saturated with the near-painful intensity of Charles’s love for him. How could he ever deserve that? What place had he in a heart as bright and pure as Charles’s? |

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(EPILOGUE)

| “There are no thanks needed, Marie,” Charles said, pressing a kiss to her gloved hand. “Welcome to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.” |

Roses & Cinnamon, Part 1 of Chapter 5

Previous chapters can be found under the Roses & Cinnamon tag, and of course on AO3.

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The terms of Shaw’s will were very clear. Everything went to Erik. All the investments, all the buildings and their tenants, every share he had owned in a dozen or more successful businesses – and, most prominently, full owner-and-proprietorship of a gentleman’s club on Duke Street. All left to Erik, “in the expectation that he will carry the legacy of everything I labored to teach him.”

Charles’s voice slid into Erik’s head, cutting through the buzz of triumph and disbelief and black amusement. Somehow I don’t imagine, when Shaw made this will, that he expected things to fall out quite this way.

I don’t know about that, Erik replied, keeping half an ear tuned to the pointless droning of the solicitor. Even if he had known, who else would he have left it to? I was… his only family. Very quietly, to himself more than Charles, he added, And vice versa, in our twisted way.

Do you feel guilty? Charles asked, in a tone of neutral curiosity.

Not remotely. The man murdered everyone I ever loved. For the rest, though… He was right, you know. Everything he did to me, all the torture and pain – it was all to make me stronger, and it did. He was right. He continued over the beginnings of Charles’s appalled protest, I think he was proud of me, in the end.

That startled Charles into silence – briefly. Erik was beginning to believe nothing could muzzle the man for long. Proud of you for killing him?

Yes. Erik felt a wolfish smile escape onto his face, and the solicitor’s voice stumbled to a halt.

“Er. Yes, well, I’m sure I’ve taken up quite enough of your valuable time, Mr. Lehnsherr,” he said. “There are still a few papers for you to sign, and then I can let you alone to… grieve.”

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Roses & Cinnamon, Chapter 4

(Linking to previous chapters is proving difficult since many of them are queued, but all can be found under the Roses & Cinnamon tag, and of course on AO3)

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As soon as he had a swallow of coffee in his belly, Erik sought out Charles, to tell him that the apparition had visited again. He wasn’t sure the information would be particularly helpful – they knew the cause already, and the cure was still a mystery – but that was surely for Charles to judge.

It did not occur to him until he had already knocked at Charles’s chamber door that he might be violating etiquette by calling on his host before he had shown himself downstairs. Growing up in Shaw’s house had given Erik little education in the ways of polite society, and he had spent much of his Eisenhardt life trying to recover from social missteps. But if he had intruded, Charles did not seem put out by it; Erik felt a brief brush against his mind, a tinge of curiosity that shaded quickly into pleasure, and then heard Charles’s voice calling, “Come in, Erik!”

Erik entered, and followed soft splashing and clinking sounds to the dressing room, where a tin hip-bath called out to his Gift. He stepped into the room to find Charles ensconced in said hip-bath, steam rising around him with the scent of some expensive perfumed soap. Cinnamon? Yes, cinnamon and roses.

Erik found he had frozen in the doorway, breath stopped in his throat.

“Good morning, Erik,” Charles said blithely. A pink flush floated across his cheeks and down his chest, doubtless a result of the hot water, and his eyes were brighter than Erik had ever seen them. “Yet again you catch me at my most self-indulgent. I find that a hot bath braces me for the day, for all that my doctor would rather see me in a cold shower – those are surely only useful for extracting information from captured spies! I don’t pamper myself so every day, but as one of the servants has a heat-based Gift that reduces the inconvenience, I decline to apologize to anyone for my baths. Alex, a rinse please, and then my shaving kit.”

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Roses & Cinnamon, Part 2 of Chapter 3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 Part 1|Part 2

Chapter 3 Part 1

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The carnival was a whirl of torchlight and laughter. Peanut shells crunched beneath Raven’s boot-formed feet, the breeze ruffled her skin-cravat, and a group of grimy children ran squealing past. A one-man band wandered by from the other direction, filling the air with the sound of drums, cymbals, and some manner of horn; she started, then grinned, to realize he played with two sets of arms.

Raven had not been to a carnival since her early childhood, and memory had not prepared her for the overwhelming spectacle of it. For some time she simply wandered, gazing about with fascination and delight. The carnival had a carousel, and a tiny steam-powered train on a circular track. On every side men called out their offerings.

“Which cup holds the nut? Find the nut, win a penny!”

“Fresh roasted peanuts! Fresh hot cinnamon buns!”

“Pick a card, gov’nor, any card you like!”

“The Disappearing Devil! He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere! Come one, come all, you won’t believe your eyes!”

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Roses & Cinnamon, Pt. 1 of Ch. 3

First part of Chapter 3 of the Regency AU!

Previous parts here.

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After dinner, the three of them settled in the drawing room, and Raven made herself quite docile. While Charles and Erik fiddled about with metal and a sporadic game of piquet, she practiced at the pianoforte, read a few chapters of her novel, and embroidered as dismally as ever. She also hid the half-empty wine bottle when Charles wasn’t looking, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. She picked no arguments at all – did not so much as make a joke at her brother’s expense.

If Charles distrusted her sudden agreeableness, he said nothing. In fact, he was so distracted with his guest, his eyes bright and his smiles frequent and easy, that Raven suspected she could have had a hair-pulling, window-breaking tantrum without ever attracting his attention.

She refused to let the idea bother her. After all, it worked in her favor. It meant that when she excused herself early, she received no resistance or suspicion, only an absent-minded ” ‘Night to you, Raven, sleep well” and the doff of an imaginary hat. Mr. Lehnsherr shot him a scolding look, and stood to bow to her properly.

“Goodnight, Mr. Lehnsherr. How nice it is to have a gentleman in the house!”

Charles rolled his eyes, all good humor and loose limbs. She had done well to hide the wine when she did. “Very well, Raven, if it pleases you, I will have Alex fetch my crutches so that I can stand and bow as well. Pray do not be alarmed if I topple over.”

“Ridiculous man,” Raven said, and crossed the room to kiss his forehead. “Be sure to let Mr. Lehnsherr get some sleep tonight.”

He waved her off with fond irritation, and she was free.

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