Chapter Text
“I hear all my old universe is at war,” Charles said, trailing a reed idly in the water with one hand. “It’s a veritable apocalypse. Can you say apocalypse?” His pupil made an approximate noise, but Charles had proceeded to the next part of the lesson. “The root is Greek, the meaning obscured by religion, for it means revelation.” He sighed. “Well, war or merely war’s alarm, it has little to do with us either way, my dear, so it is the age of apocalypse for me, no matter how old this newsprint is; almost as old as you.”
The child looked up and smiled with her mouth open, revealing missing teeth. She tugged at his sleeve then raised both of her arms.
Folding the newspaper carefully away, Charles bent and picked her up with only slight difficulty. He had twisted his knee just the week ago and there was still a lingering twinge but the child was light enough and she had lost one of her shoe already while running up the stone path to find him. “Come now,” he said, “let us find your father. I hope he’s had better luck with his students, though you were doing very well until we got to the Greek and that was partly my fault for being so sentimental. You won’t tell, will you?” The child shook her head then giggled in his arms.
He carried her to the pavilion where people were clearing away platters. A man was scrutinizing half a dozen paintings laid out drying on a large table, frowning and smiling by turns, the former featuring more heavily.
“Mr. Munroe, I return to you your daughter,” Charles said, “though I fear she has lost a shoe.”
“You are very good with her,” Munroe said, glancing up in surprise, “she always runs to you.” He directed his attention to his hoyden daughter and once she was in his arms said, “Ororo, a half dozen people must be out of their wits for you and you don’t even have a full smile yet.”
After dispatching a boy to deliver the message of Ororo’s recovery, with her more or less sitting curled at his waist, Munroe solicited Charles’ opinion on the pictures, which consists of efforts that attempted to capture the same long green grass, the glittering pools of water, and the purplish mountains ranges beyond to varying success. He had come from a school that demanded more realism, but Storm’s people had a tendency to sketch abstractedly. Though generally dissatisfied, he emphasized to Charles that it was not a lack of ability for he had seen these same artists capture the movements of animals, details of flowers and the expression on each other’s faces to great and vivid detail without needing his tutelage. In general, he thought they had a better sense of light and shadow than those whom he taught in New York.
The suggestion that perhaps their abstract renderings simply reflected dislike to a landscape theme was met gloomily. As a very young man, Munroe had set up his easel and paints under drafty bivouacs while under fire. He perceived the the ability to capture a scene quickly on canvas a necessary branch of military skill, for it trained the mind in making salient observations and the body in precision and economy of movement. Art was an indulgence that a soldier could ill afford and David Munroe had a more thoroughly martial air, even with the child hugged against him, than anyone Charles’ had ever seen despite growing up familiar with the sight of soldiers and sailors.
Munroe even walked as other people marched, each step a precise stride, which he shortened considerably for Charles while they conversed and he tried to get Ororo to take the nap from which she had escaped.
Eventually he had the tea brought out and as Ororo slumbered on his chest, he noticed that Charles had grown quieter and was now gazing at her, wistful.
“Charles,” he said, quietly. “I know that you are eager to return to Westchester, but it is as impossible today as it was when you came, if not even more so, given that now another war separates you from yours.”
“But the war, no matter how great the scale in its inception, might have ended,” Charles said. It was more difficult today to keep silent. “The news is almost two years old, have you really received no word from the coasts, or anywhere? Can men not wish for peace after so long?”
Munroe sighed. He remained silent for a while, then said, “Perhaps when Storm ends court tonight, you might ask her again. She would not lie to you and her affection for you could make a husband jealous. It almost seemed that she knew you would be there.”
It was his usual tease, for Ororo’s eyes were blue, like Charles’ and her mother’s, while Munroe’s eyes were a brown so dark as to be almost black.
“I am fortunate to have her grace.” Charles was not quite able to be distracted, to smile, conscious of his good fortune despite the desire to be home-- more, to be in Genosha -- the same as he had when he finished off his letter to Erik, only a week before all his wishes were opposed.
Disembarked off of a pirate ship, weak from an agony that had passed undetected by others in a hold that smelt of bilgewater, he had been deposited at a Barbary port, separated from his friends, pillaged of all his remaining goods and became one himself.
For his blue eyes and reddish beard, Charles’ captors paraded him to the largest establishment specializing in similar import. He was housed with the other prisoners, each man, alpha or omega, though from diverse regions of the world, sharing the same reduced circumstances and awful future -- if it would even warrant the word -- which their jailer presented with admirable and disturbing clarity in several different languages: slavery.
The common patois the port employed was a pidgin mix of languages, somewhat recognizable in odd words and phrases. After a few weeks of puzzling the guards’ conversations, Charles became conscious that at this particular time in history, due to more frequent raids and battles both at sea and in the inner regions, of all the living spoils of war, young omega males commanded the highest price, for being stronger than females and as fertile; they were also considered better suited than alpha males for enslavement, being hardier in strange climates, and docile if breeded.
However, since there was no outward physical difference between alpha and omega males unless subjected to the most humiliating of exams where bribery of the examiner was common, bringing their appraisal into doubt for the potential customers who might also have taboos regarding the nature of the test, it was customary among the wealthier distributors willing to invest in a more profitable return to have the men isolated and kept until their agonies, which Charles eventually puzzled out as “heat” for English-- a word he had previously only known to apply to livestock-- at which point they would be advertised, and if unsold after the first few days, put to auction in the open market.
It was during that awful length of waiting until his value assessed according to the market that Storm arrived, her litter heavy with scent and gold and much discussed by the guards. But once Charles was dressed and released, it was an American who proclaimed that his queen had seen Charles in a vision and had purchased him to give him freedom and offer position in the household. What that position was, he wasn’t exact, but Charles had nothing except the suit of new clothes on his back and no choice when his worth had a price.
The journey back to home of Storm’s people, for no other names had been given and Munroe had been purposefully obscure, was two difficult months across the desert, and another month traversing a steep and rocky valley. In ordinary times, Charles would have marveled at all the strange sights that he saw. Independent, he could consider it a great adventure, but his weariness and David Munroe’s constant reference to home and the child his queen was bearing only made him heartsick, kept him forever looking backwards even as they marched beyond the sight of the sea; every step carried him further away from slavers, but also from Westchester, Genosha, from Erik and their children, the home he had made unawares but it seemed, would never see.
In the encircled lands that Munroe, expatriate of America, was calling home, Charles had no official duties. Still recovering from his journey, he acted as a royal retainer for Munroe to keep as a companion, listening to his worries about his potential child. It changed six months after Ororo was born, for then Storm summoned him.
She had all the trapping that could proclaim the supernatural: the crown, the sceptre, the imperious gestures- but Charles had came from a different tradition from David Munroe’s democracy. It was no vision that led her to pluck him before the auction block. Charles knew the difference between an abstract belief and polite fiction. Storm was royal; her kingdom rich, her messengers many, and she herself must wear many faces, even one that would deal with slavers and inquire after the source of their wares. She knew, for example, that he came off of HMS Phoenix, and was a scholar.
“David and I are attached,” she had said and Charles was fluent enough by then to know the significance of the word in this land, “and our daughter is proof of an attachment that would’ve been impossible in other times. He had journeyed far to see me and my mind had traveled further to meet his. We are bound tightly in turbulent times. The world is changing, Sir Charles. Wars surround us and if my daughter is to grow up in it as Storm’s daughter and become Storm herself, succor for her land and people, she must know, in safety -- because I am her mother -- what would serve her in times of danger. She must be learned and know how to learn in traditions foreign to us.”
And so Charles understood that he was to be a teacher and prisoner even like the ancients he had studied. He understood also, with a bitterness new to him, that his narrative had been merciful in its way: he had survived piracy; he lived in an oasis; he was fed and clothed royally; Ororo and her father were amiable companions. His shipmates and friends would’ve been fortunate to suffer the same.
But when the initial shock of his change in fortune wore away and his body fully recovered from the arduous journey, every new dish he sampled, every new wine he tasted, and every new marvel he encountered only made him wish to share the wonder only to find that there would be no one who would find it extraordinary and that his ordinary would be strange. And at every private agony, his heart craved more fiercely than his body ever did. In his loneliness, which come frequently, for Ororo was still young and had her nurses and carers and David often had his own duties, Charles imagined Erik, but not his his face and lips and hands and the perfection of his body which he had desperately wanted the first agony after Erik had left him and taken the children to Genosha, but of the time before- Erik sitting across from him, silent and smiling for the perfect understanding between them.
Nostalgia was dolorous in its hurt; it grew worse when he saw the newspaper, though it was French, found at the relay station where Munroe and he played a game of roundball with the new recruits just came up for their furlough. He did not know whether he was meant to see it at the refreshment tent, but the fellow who had it had been apologetic for accidentally tripping him at the game, and offered it to him when he asked.
Munroe saw him poring over it at lunch and then later, while he was making the final arrangement for his art lesson. He had lifted a quizzical eyebrow. Charles had seen the interest and fled, speculating wildly of all the newsprint did not say and growing sick of his own ignorance until Ororo found him.
In the evening, David Munroe made good on his promise and took him to dine with Storm.
He kissed her lightly on the cheek and asked: “Is there news of war or peace?”
She paused from trying to convince Ororo to eat her food and nodded at Charles seeing him enter. “Do you ask for yourself, or for Sir Charles?”
“Both. It is easy to forget that we can be affected as well,” Munroe said, sitting down cross-legged beside her in front of the low table. He shifted Ororo into his lap and took over feeding her.
“Do you still wish to leave?” Storm asked, turning to Charles.
“I wish to know whether my family is safe,” he replied, carefully. He would’ve been embarrassed to be intruding upon one of the rare dinners Storm could have with only her family present were he not so eager for any piece of new of his own. “The news I read is from two years ago, and it speaks of escalation of war, not of its ending when I had not even known it resumed.”
Charles disliked politics. It was the prevailing subject in Westchester ever since he could remember, but he remembered arguing with Erik about the intentions of French Directory, of monarchies, Republics, and revolutions that could create a Brotherhood of men while bringing the world around them into chaos. Erik had defended the revolution and the First Consulate; Charles had found the speaker more affecting than his subject. Erik’s face, lightly tanned from his fondness for the outdoors, had twin spots high on his cheek that turned the colour of coral as he spoke, his passion growing. Distracted, Charles had fantasized the colour in other circumstances. Its first realization occurred during a brisk dawn on an alcoved bed- but was now still only fantasy again.
And perhaps might even remain one even if he did return to Westchester. Erik had excited Westchester before; he likely would have done so again with much of Xavier estate at his disposal. Further, he had two children. Reasonably, Charles could not begrudge them another parent, but reasonably, it went against his very nature to dwell in uncertainties and be contented with ignorance.
“We are very isolated,” Storm said, “I am not without sympathy, but I cannot tell you what I do not know about affairs so distant. The roads have grown unsafe.”
Charles fell silent.
“But war and desperation can drive men where they do not wish to go,” David said, “and while it has led to my happiness, it has led me to find you and this place. A man you might help. A few you can direct elsewhere, but what if there are more?”
Storm looked at him, startled. After a moment, she said, “Cassandra is coming this year. She is already at the borders. Perhaps she will have news where I cannot, if you can suffer gossip and rumors in the same breath,” and sounded resigned.
Then they moved onto other topics and Charles must be content with what he was given.
“Who is Cassandra?” he asked Munroe when he got the chance.
“An agent of a merchant cabal of the Ottomans and a courtesan,” Munroe replied. “Rumor has it she’s so beautiful she can seduce kings and gods. She rides with the Mamluks in the desert and come so far in land every couple of years to collect the flowers of our Celestial plants. I have never met the woman myself, but the Mamluks are fierce warriors and rulers in their own right. Personally, I think she’s a spy for the sultan, though she pays handsomely for the plants and the cultivation of the plants has remained secret. Storm would say Cassandra can tell you more than you need to know of anything and more than half are improbable.”
“Hence the name?” But the reference was lost, so Charles contented himself with counting down the days and laughed at himself for being so eager to see a beautiful courtesan. Erik would not be pleased, but perhaps he would not mind when Charles tells him it was all for the longing to return to him.
There was a story that Charles was writing for him, for the children, a journal that would have a happy ending. It would be a confession and a plea if necessary. He had no faith in his letter’s delivery, though the feelings had remained constant. In the beginning and almost feverish with despair, he had rambled his frustrations and fears to anyone who would hear. The sentiments were simpler now: I had not meant to be away. I love you. Forgive me.
Munroe was with Storm the entire day, so Charles rode with the captain of the Queen’s Guard to greet the captain of the Mamluks. Cassandra was unmistakable beside him. While her companions wore a uniform of different colours her clothes and armor were entirely in black. She wore no turban, but had beneath her hat a veil over her face covered it entirely. As a slight figure sitting straight atop of a horse, it was impossible to see if she was beautiful as rumored. She had, Charles noted, unlike her companions, no sword at her belt though she had the brace of pistols and the easy way she directed her horse made Charles wonder at the use of the word “courtesan.” Was she a mistress or a courtier, or both, and to whom? The Mamluks were all alphas, but she was the only woman among them.
He had expected her to be dark, and she was, but only in her hair. Cassandra, at dinner, her head uncovered and in a loose tunic belted at the waist and white trousers, was as pale as himself with eyes the same shade of blue, without the trace of violet in Storm and Ororo’s eyes. She looked practically a girl, her skin still dewy with youth, the lines of her delicate face soft. There was a splendid charm to her shy smile when Storm introduced them.
All her movements were graceful. In conversation, she had a gaze that was almost mischievous. She reminded Charles strongly of the alpha women he had known in Westchester; the familiarity was almost comfortable, but her intelligence and her wit had a certain strangeness and sharpness that would abruptly remind Charles that she was not a young girl in costume at a masquerade.
Something in his thoughts must have showed, she said, in English with a strong accent that only made it lilting: “You are fantasizing a sad story for me, Sir Charles. I can see it in your face.”
“Am I so easy to read?” Charles asked, smiling, “but I admit to being curious man by nature.”
“And where do you seek your answers? I’ve met men who labour in libraries all hours of the day, trying to find them in books. They blind themselves by candlelight and moonlight and become disappointed by what the sun shows them.”
“Then their loss is a grave one. I know with certainty I won’t find you in any book,” Charles said. “No man would’ve been able to imagine you, for you are a marvel under the sun and a person entirely novel in history.”
The flattery was answered with a laugh, as bright and as light as the sound of silver bells. Cassandra was indeed beautiful, exquisite when she smiled; the blush in her face could’ve been painted by a Renaissance master’s brush. “Not so unique, I’m afraid. My story is the same as my Mamluk companions, though I had my mother with me and she gave me enough protection that I was educated with the sultan’s children. When I was grown, our patron had fallen out of favor, but I no longer required it. I had become as you see me, an agent of other people’s interests.”
And other people’s secrets, went unsaid, but otherwise she would not be here in Storm’s hidden kingdom, traveling with the Mamluks. It was an irresistible dare.
“And what if I express an interest?” Charles asked.
Cassandra lifted a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Surely you cannot be in need of Celestial plants when you reside in its only garden, or,” she lowered her voice, murmured, “or are you expressing a more personal interest? It is only fair to say that will not be here long.”.
She was sat next to him. Beside her was the Mamluk captain, who was talking with Storm.
Charles leaned in further until he could smell her perfume; he lowered his own voice, and said, “My personal interest tend to be in knowledge. As one traveller to another, tell me how to go home- beyond the African coast.”
His request surprised her. It made him play the part of petitioner when she expected a duel. She swirled the wine in her glass. She gazed at him beneath the sweep of her eyelashes. “And what will I have? I can afford very little on my own.”
“Anything I can give,” Charles said, truthfully. “If you can read my face and yet never denied the sad story I imagined for you, then I can at least offer you this: I’m growing acquainted with the mix of peoples that live in these empires, but you cannot tell me that you share the same heritage. Do you not wish to go home and be your own agent instead of other people’s, where you do not have to be constantly wary of your life, traveling with soldiers and weapons?”
Cassandra’s expression remained impassive. “I only said that our story is the same, and it could become your story, too. That narrative may unsettle you, but it is the only heritage that matters. I’ve never known another country or another way of life. Alphas find homes whereever we are, even if I am female, Sir Charles.” Cassandra was right, their stories could be the same, but Charles already knew enough of it to know its wrongs. He caught the longing in the reprimand.
“My name is Charles Francis Xavier,” Charles said, “I am from Westchester, which is near the Kingdom of Great Britain, and I think you must be from the same part of the world for seeing you reminds me of a home I still cherish. Home does not have to be so warlike. Why should you not be able to choose?”
Strangely, a shadow passed her bright eyes but it was chased away so quickly that Charles was uncertain if he only fancied it. Cassandra was silent for a while then said, “And will you take me to Westchester, Sir Charles Xavier? And find me my family?” And she was like the girl she might’ve been again.
Charles inclined his head. “If you desire it. I would offer you the the protection of my status and my wealth in Westchester when you return me to mine.”
She smiled softly at this, but there the topic was an end and Charles could not pursue it further. It was, however, the Mamluk captain who broached the topic of Charles’ leaving with them to Storm.
“He looks like her brother,” he said to Storm the next evening after spending a disconcerting amount of time staring at Charles. “The resemblance is striking to a stranger, especially when they’re both still and the similarities less confused by mannerisms. Perhaps his father travelled.”
Perhaps. Whether he travelled so far as to meet Cassandra’s mother was not impossible, though unlikely. Brian Xavier was not an easy man; in Charles’ memory, he had been a stern alpha, tall and grave, who seldom even smiled at Charles’ mother; he was a difficult master to his servant and an absent father for his son until he was of age to express an interest in the matters that involved Brian’s contributions to the Royal Society. Charles’ distance from his father had never lead him to seek an explanation why it existed at all. However, his father loved Raven, who was his undoubted favorite, being named heir to the Darkholme title if she would be an alpha and a greater settlement if an omega.
“Sir Charles is a teacher in his own country,” Storm said lightly, “a different disposition from Cassandra, I think, but if she want to claim kinship and Sir Charles agrees...” She let the words linger, casting a curious eye at Charles.
There were negotiations beyond what Charles understood, likely involving the price of the goods they had come to trade, but he knew family had precedence in almost all business in the desert and a claim of kinship was effective as a claim on the person.
As the days pass, with Munroe playing advocate on his behalf for Storm whose suspicions for Cassandra remained, Charles grew daring in his hope that he shall indeed see Westchester again.
A few evenings afterward the negotiation had been finalized, there was a knock on his door. Storm was outside.
He admitted her, a bit awkwardly, she had no attendants with her. There was a box in her hand that she set on the table. Although he was mostly packed, there was still tea kept warm on the burner. Charles poured her a cup.
“If you are determined to leave us then you must,” she said and took a sip of the tea, “I keep no slaves. I try to rule justly, and wisely, and be no one’s jailer.” Her eyebrow arched as Charles was about to protest, so Charles kept silent. “You know the way we came from the coast is not an easy road and you cannot take the same road back. I don’t know the countries Cassandra travel or what passport she is allowed. I cannot guarantee your safety, nor can I promise you her good faith. In fact, I’m inclined to advise you to be wary of her. She’s been slave longer than she has been free and there are scars that still leave a woman beautiful and clever.”
“I do not expect others to bear the responsibility for my own decisions,” Charles answered, wondering if Storm thought him seduced by something Cassandra had said, “I would’ve been a poor teacher if I’m so poor in wits or reason.”
Storm smiled. She tapped at the box in front of her then opened it. There were bundles of small packets, wrapped in red or black paper, the seal of the Royal Gardens on them. Charles suspected the contents, but couldn’t help being surprised.
“Consider them payment for the books and papers you’ve written for us,” she said.
Charles could not take anything he wrote of them with him. In exchange, it was a fortune in that box. While still at port awaiting his fate, Charles’ had only heard rumors of Celestial plant and its effects, for the guards were wary of the slaves coming across it and using it upon themselves. Desert travel- rather, all longer forms of travel were substantially more dangerous without it. It also allowed the pirates to remain at sea for twelvesmonths at a time or more without fearing their private agonies synchronizing to render them helpless.
“I know you wish to know the secret of its making,” Storm continued, “but that one thing I must keep concealed from you, Sir Charles. I do not even know it fully myself. Only its gardeners know the full process of growing, harvest, and the extraction of oils. Within the red envelopes are the crystallized refinement from the the life seeds, and within the black, death seeds. If you are not aware, these are ten times as potent as even the oils. The conversions accompany the packet themselves.”
Three drop of the oil of the death seeds could avoid an agony, six drops prevented a child, and half a measure would render an omega or even a woman barren while the life seeds had the opposite effect, so that even the barren may be fertile while lower doses induced agonies and cleavings out of time, leading even to children after one cleaving. At first, upon learning the cultivation of Celestial took place within Storm’s kingdom and apparently only within it, Charles had pursued the topic with Munroe, who would politely distract him from the discussion. Charles had often wondered what Henry would make of the plant, for having within it such power to influence life and reason so directly and with such potency.
It had taken a long time for Charles to realise how deeply the effects of the Celestial plants saturated every part of his life here. The leaves, much less potent, were so plentifully used even in everyday meals that the very nature of his own agonies had changed- that he could remember, clearly, who and what he longed for instead of being rendered almost insensate by the blind burning of his body. The agonies were both worse and better when even caught in the most terrible throes, enough of his mind remained that he could close his eyes and imagine Erik as clearly as if he would be beside him.
“You are very generous,” Charles said. In fact, he could not calculate the worth of the contents in the box even from just what he saw. Celestial plants were traded only in gold, silver, and precious stones and other treasures. For dried flowers, Cassandra’s caravansary had included acres of silk and chests full of pearls.
“I need not to say that you should keep them sewn into your clothes, but is not all for use for trade,” Storm said. “I know that in other lands without the plants’ use, people could forget even if their minds were unwilling. I also know that you are returning to home and your loved ones. For your sake, I wish time had made no intrusions to the constancy of your attachment.”
Storm had given some of the seeds for him, should Erik forget him. There were no cleavings in this kingdom implying a parting, but only attachment, for there was no forgetting and loss of reason even at the height of the agonies.
Charles’ could remember Erik and all the moments they had shared together instead of seeking another to slack the painful lust of his body, but Erik would have had no such relief. Charles had left him with vague words. As undeviating in affection as Charles remembered Erik, Wanda and Pietro rightly deserved contented parents who could give them all the affection they deserve.
It would be a long journey back. Charles was not naive. Despite his convalescence, he was not the same young man who had embraced Erik at Westchester port. That young man had never been denied in anything.
Would he, if he should find upon this return, that Erik and his children had a family with another, employ the life and death seeds for his own benefit? Would not that make him a poisoner or would he argue that for reason and desire both he had the first claim?
“I have shocked you,” Ororo observed. “It is not my intention. You are a good man, Sir Charles, for never being false of what you know or do not know or what you want. Ororo will miss you.”
“I will say goodbye to her,” Charles said. “And if she should ever come to Westchester, I will grant her every kindness within my power.”
Storm nodded, then left.
It was another week’s preparation before they could leave. They departed at twilight so that it would be morning when they reached the desert proper and still have hours to travel when the weather was cool enough.
“I wish you every luck on your journey home, my friend,” David said, his own gifts arming Charles’ person, “that yours have not forgotten you and you would find his affection for you as dear as you have for him. Think of us sometimes, remember the strange places you’ve been and the friends you’ve made. Perhaps Ororo and I will come and visit you when all this war is over."
Charles withdrew a ring from his pocket. He had his seal remade; this one was in silver and in a ring, but decorated with the flowers Ororo favoured. He gave it to David for her but not without regret and sense of relief, for Ororo was yet asleep and Charles could not be sure he could face her tears. He had known her from the cradle, taught her his words and languages and heard her childish babble as he had not his own. A hundred agitations struck him with the thought and unwilling that any of them should turn to bitterness, blinked away the sting in his eyes and said his goodbye to David.
Nevertheless, on the high pass of the mountain, he glanced backwards for his last look at Storm's green kingdom and found it curious that there was an ache in his heart as if he was leaving home. He had not remembered arriving there, only the comfort that eased his body even while his longing increased.
But home, he determined, was with his own family in his own country at the journey’s end. He rode on.
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