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Title: Big Fish Little Fish
Fandom: X-Men First Class, with some comic canon
Characters: Erik and Anya Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, Raven
Rating: All ages
Wordcount: 6000
Content Notes: Canon violence and child injury.
Prompt from the kink meme. So, I've seen a couple of prompts incorporating Pietro and Wanda into the movieverse, but what I'd really like to see is (still alive) Anya. Think about it: she's the apple of her daddy's eyes - and she's not a mutant. How do Erik's views and actions change if his child is a normal human? Would prefer happy-ish end (i.e., he doesn't abandon her or feel disappointed in her), but otherwise anything goes.
Summary: Erik knows the world is cruel to monsters like him and his daughter, but now they have the power to fight back.
Also on AO3.
The Caspartina was moored carelessly close to other yachts: Schmidt always was confident in his ability to survive. Despite this perfect opportunity, Erik wasn't taking any chances. The two of them would only have one chance to do this cleanly. If they failed tonight, the danger would be far greater because Schmidt would know for certain that Erik was alive. It had been seventeen years since he'd last seen Schmidt; seven since his rebuilt life had gone up in flames and Erik had started hunting Schmidt and his kind.
Earlier this morning, the owner of the Yellow Bird was having breakfast in a Miami diner when he had an unfortunate accident: a spindly wrought iron chair collapsed and pierced his foot. He would be in the hospital for at least a day or two, and his yacht would be untended. The starboard side had a perfect line of sight to the upper deck of the Caspartina and they could take their time setting up there, unlike on the busy marina. It was still daylight and boats were going past, so preparing the sniper position would have to wait. From the deck of Yellow Bird, Erik took one last look at the Caspartina, then went below.
He couldn't see Anya immediately, but he reached out with his power to find the wires he stitched into the seams of all her clothes since they had embarked on this quest.
"Don't pull at my arm, I'm holding a knife!" she called out as he walked up behind her and kissed the top of her head. She was in the galley slicing up sausage, cheese and fresh, crusty bread. She'd even found a box of chocolates, of which she'd eaten several.
"Some vegetables, Anya."
"Papa, tonight could be the end of the mission. Step off." She said the last part in English and smirked, clearly weighing up her chances of getting in trouble for backtalk compared to her chances of praise for picking up colloquial English.
She guessed right, of course. "Tomorrow, vegetables."
Night fell quickly this close to the tropics, but the temperature barely changed. Erik made Anya take a nap, much to her annoyance, but he was far too keyed up to sleep and just paced instead. He kept his promise to wake her as soon as it was dark, and they quietly worked together setting up the rifle and calibrating the scope. It was something they'd done together many times before, comfortable and familiar.
"Be careful," Anya said, and abruptly hugged Erik, making his wetsuit squeak. She was nearly invisible in the darkness, dressed in black with her usual cotton scarf covering the shiny scars on her head and wrapped around most of her face.
Erik kept his voice steady. If he showed no fear, perhaps she would not feel it so acutely. "Remember the plan. All of the plan."
"You're going to come back."
He peeled her arms off him and kissed the small strip of forehead visible past the folds of her scarf. "You know war doesn't work that way. But I'll do everything I can, and you know that's far more than anyone else can do."
"I know." She released him and took her position behind the rifle that they had set up. "Go, then."
Without further delay, he lowered himself off the side of the boat and into the water.
It was barely 300 metres to the Caspartina and Erik took it slowly, staying low and quiet in the water. As he got closer, he could hear Schmidt talking and laughing – he'd recognise that voice anywhere – and a woman's laugh in return. Instantly, all trepidation was burned away by the white-hot fire of his hatred. All the metal around him, from the Nazi knife on his leg to the steel hull of the yacht, was in harmony with his rage. He barely touched the rungs of the ladder as he climbed onto the yacht. It was as if the metal rungs simply flung him upwards in accordance with his will, as Schmidt had taught him. Erik might be a monster, but monsters were powerful. He knew that well.
It was easy to find his way through the metal passages to the upper deck, the walls thrumming around him, his heartbeat hammering. Sometimes he wished that he'd never started on this quest, that he and Anya had hidden somewhere – Israel, maybe – and let the world spin on past. But with Schmidt still alive, Erik knew that any thoughts of a home would be an illusion. They had been made monsters, he and Anya both, and there was no safety but what they made for themselves.
"Herr Doktor," he said, his voice remarkably calm. Schmidt recognised him immediately.
"He's come to kill you." The woman in white stared at Erik, and suddenly he was screaming in agony, every pain he had ever suffered stabbing into him all at once. His mother was dragged away; Schmidt cut open his hands to touch nerves; Magda fled and Anya burned; and, no, she'd seen Anya! Erik threw his knife in desperation, trying to get Schmidt to move into the line of Anya's shot before the woman could say anything, but it was too late.
Catching the knife easily, the woman turned to Schmidt. "He has someone else with him."
"How clever of you! Dragging another person into this silly little revenge of yours!" Schmidt laughed, and Erik scrambled sideways, not taking the time to get to his feet. Schmidt took one step towards him, another, and a rifle shot rang out. Erik stretched out his hand, ready to guide Anya's bullet, but her shot was perfect. It hit Schmidt square in the middle of the back…and fell to the deck with a clunk. Erik's power was active and the bullet rolled straight to his still outstretched hand. Schmidt was completely unhurt.
"Wonderful!" Schmidt laughed, and Erik lunged at him, all his plans lost in a roaring tide of pure terror. He was helpless, again, and Schmidt would find Anya, kill her, and –
Before he knew what had happened, he was struck in the chest and send flying over the side of the boat.
*Get that child out of here!* Erik felt the woman's voice stab through his skull as he hit the water, then all he could think about was catching his breath.
---
"There's someone in the water!" Charles shouted, then the anchor and chain rose into the air, serpentine, striking again and again at the Caspartina. That strange telepathic shield still protected the people on the boat, but not their attacker.
"Someone like us!" Raven danced with delight, but Charles could feel the man's mind and how badly he was overexerting himself in his desperation. Charles quickly connected the images to Shaw and the other telepath – how amazing! – but then a submarine, of all things, came shooting out the bottom of the yacht, dragging the man with it.
Yelling at the man in the water had no effect, so Charles threw off his coat and launched himself into the water. He only remembered midair that his swimming skills were more suited to paddling about in a river than rescuing a powerful mutant from the ocean. Fortunately, the water was buoyant and not at all cold, so Charles had no difficulty diving down and grabbing the other man, latching on to his body and his mind all at once.
"Let go! Erik! You're going to drown!" Charles couldn't let this ferocious, focused mind die, but the man's intent left no space for self-protection. The telepathic intrusion startled Erik long enough to allow the submarine to pull away. He kept his hands out, ignoring Charles and trying desperately to regain his hold as Charles kicked them both up to the surface.
"No! No! You let him escape!" Erik screamed at Charles, trying to feel out the submarine's position again. He wasn't using his eyes or ears but a separate sense entirely: it felt natural to him but entirely strange to Charles.
"You were going to die! The submarine is too much for you!"
Erik abruptly stopped searching for the submarine and turned the glaring spotlight of his focus on Charles instead. "Who are you? I thought I was the only one."
Charles grinned, even as salt water splashed into his mouth. "You're not alone." He was most surprised to suddenly receive an elbow to the face. The pain blocked out everything else for a moment, then he came back to himself as Erik yelled at him.
"I am alone!" Erik shouted. "It's just me!" Unfortunately, the more someone tried not to think about something – Erik had certainly learned the concept of "telepath" very fast – the stronger the image was in their minds. In this case, it was a young girl of about eleven, throwing a knife with considerable skill; reading a magazine; biting a pencil as she did a maths problem; fast asleep in a lavish hotel room. Her image was infused with such love and pride that it took Charles a moment to realise that the girl was not what other people would consider beautiful at all, but horribly disfigured. Most of her scalp was covered in thick burn scars, along with the area around her right eye and cheek. Her right ear was only a bump of flesh, and her right eyelid drooped, anchored in place by more heavy scarring. The only hair left on her head was on the left side, from the front to behind her left ear, and that was cropped short.
"Your little girl – does Shaw, Schmidt, know about her?" Charles asked as he grabbed Erik's arm. Erik was trying to swim away from him and the approaching Coast Guard vessel, but the exertion with the anchor and submarine had been too much.
"The woman read my mind! Schmidt knows now!" Erik's desperation was the only thing letting him keep swimming: he wasn't even startled that Charles knew, too.
Charles easily put the name to a face. "Come with me. Schmidt knows what you can do, but he doesn't know what I can do. Together, we can protect her."
Erik was too tired and desperate to protest anymore. Charles could feel him trying to convince himself that it was a good strategic decision to follow the information. "Okay."
---
Anya was deeply suspicious that her father was willing to leave her behind. He hadn't done that since they had been searching for her mother, years ago when she was little and her scars hadn't properly healed yet. Anya had taken to the Xavier siblings just fine – they hadn't been at all surprised by her looks. Raven helped her with her English, and let Anya touch the amazing blue scales on her face and arms, even if she didn't show them very often. Angel was nice, too, with her beautiful wings. She'd painted Anya's fingernails bright pink to annoy her father and laughed at the expression on his face. Darwin treated her as if she was a little kid, but that was better than Hank, Alex and Sean, who were unnerved by her scars and had to constantly avert their eyes when she caught them staring. Well, Hank never stared, but he never looked her in the face when he spoke to her, either. Anya wasn't going to put her scarf on, though: Papa always said that wearing it was for her convenience, not to relieve other people's squeamishness. Hank and the others had to be around her anyway, and she saw no reason to cover up for their sakes.
Papa was leaving her here so he could hunt Schmidt in Russia with Charles. Anya and her father were supposed to be a team, but as soon as there were other kids around, he'd relegated her to their group, as if she needed basic training or to be kept safe by the stupid CIA guards. She'd survived more than Charles had, even if she wasn't as old as him: she'd travelled all over the world hunting evil. She'd shot Schmidt – it should have killed him. Mostly she worried that now her father had found other mutants, they wouldn't be monsters together anymore.
"Papa might be a mutant, but if Shaw's a mutant too, I'm glad I'm not one," she muttered to Raven, as they sat on the big squashy sofa in the rec room.
Raven looked hurt. "He's not evil because he's a mutant, you know. You may as well say 'If Shaw's a guy, I'm glad I'm not one'."
"That too!" Anya giggled and Raven relaxed again.
"You're worried about your father, aren't you? I'm worried about Charles."
Anya shrugged. "I'm not worried about him. He's really tough. I'm worried that he's not going to take me along anymore. I'm the one who shot Shaw, you know."
"I still can't believe you learned to shoot like that! No, I take that back – with Erik for a father, I shouldn't be surprised at all. He makes you take a gun everywhere." She patted Anya's arm, glancing down nervously at the weapon on Anya's hip. " I think that your father's really worried that now Shaw knows about you, he'll try to hurt you."
"He'd have to catch me first!"
Raven laughed, and got up to queue more songs in the jukebox, and that's when Anya heard the noise. She had no idea what it was – it certainly wasn't an explosion – but she definitely knew what the next noise was. It was a body hitting concrete from some height.
"What's that?" Darwin asked, moving away from Alex and the pinball machine for the first time in hours.
"Someone died," Anya replied. She jumped to her feet and pulled her gun in one smooth movement, keeping it pointed at the ground until she had a target. She couldn't work out whether to think of the others as armed or not: they had powers, but no training.
Darwin had the curtain fully open before Anya could tell him to get away from the window, so they all saw the next man hit the ground, and the next. Raven screamed; Angel took cover behind the sofa and pulled Anya with her.
A CIA agent with a gun shouted at them through the window. "Stay put! Do not leave this room! We're under attack!"
Darwin herded everyone else to cover as the window shattered with weapons fire. Anya tried to get up and take a shot at the red-skinned man who appeared outside, but Angel wrestled her down to the floor.
"You're not bulletproof," Angel hissed, and Anya didn't have the time to explain that she wasn't randomly getting up but finding a good position. Instead, she kicked Angel in the elbow to make her let go, scrambled to her feet and scuttled to the far end of the sofa, peeping over the arm for quick recon. The red man was gone, leaving behind at least ten bodies – crushed, shot, stabbed – and now there was heavy gunfire not too far away.
"We have to get out of here!" Anya shouted at the others.
Darwin agreed. "Yeah! 'Stay here' my ass!" He shoved the others towards the door.
Darwin led them down the corridor making sure to keep himself at the front – at least someone had an idea about tactics, Anya thought – and she stayed right behind him, ready to shoot. She really wished Raven would stop screaming.
More CIA and military men were in the corridor, yelling at them to get back. They ignored Darwin's offer of help, obviously scared but sticking to their training and protecting the civilians. Anya turned and grabbed Angel's sleeve.
"Angel! We can't go back, that red guy is there!"
Angel looked around quickly, but there were no other doors. She pushed Anya behind her and spat out a controlled explosion that ripped through the plasterboard of the wall and cracked the concrete slab behind it.
"Darwin! Get us out of here!" she yelled, and Darwin ran at it to break through. Instead of forming armour, his body squished flat against the wall and rebounded into the hallway.
"Damn!"
A huge explosion sent everyone staggering, and flames and debris went shooting down the other corridor a few steps from where they stood. That was enough to make Anya scream, too. There was no way out.
Hank, of all people, shoved Darwin aside and launched himself – giant feet first – at the cracked outer wall, smashing a hole in it big enough for them to climb through. "Come on!" he yelled and shoved Anya through first.
The other girls went next; they hauled Hank through, then the rest of the boys followed. They had come out in a grassed area near the edge of the compound. Everyone had the sense to keep on running. Anya started to cough in the billowing smoke, and wished desperately that Papa was here to make sense of everything. He'd be taking control and setting up defensible positions but, in all the terror and fire, Anya couldn't work out how to do it. She was going to die the very first time she had to fight alone.
They reached the fence quickly, but as Angel prepared to spit on the metal, that weird sound came again. Three men were standing in front of them: the red man, the man who had been on the yacht, and Shaw. Everyone stopped in their tracks, Sean colliding with Alex in his desperation not to run into the red guy. Shaw had a strange metal helmet under his arm, and Anya could only wish Papa was here, ripping the helmet away and smashing it into Shaw's skull.
Angel was stuck at the front of the group, since she'd been about to take out the fence, and everyone clustered in behind her. Anya put her gun behind her back: looking harmless was her best chance right now.
"Good evening! My name is Sebastian Shaw." He sounded entirely jovial, as if the smoke from the ruined compound wasn't roiling around them. "I'm not here to hurt you."
Anya gasped in terror, trying to choke down shameful tears. She knew very well what he meant. He wanted them alive to do to them what he'd done to her father: hurt them and twist them until their powers were strong but they couldn't take Anya to the doctor without breaking out in a cold sweat; until they screamed in their sleep and scratched at the tattoo on their arm until it bled; until every waking moment was a war between fear and rage. She didn't dare speak, hiding behind the older kids.
"So," he said, after words that Anya had lost entirely, "You can stay here and fight for the people who hate and fear you, or you can join me and live like kings." He surveyed them calmly, and Anya wanted to vomit: that was a man who had no reason to be afraid. That was a man who was unstoppable. His gaze fell on Angel. "And queens."
Angel took his hand and walked with him. Anya's shout was lost in everyone else's shocked attempts to call to her, but Angel's face was calm and determined.
"We have to do something," Raven muttered, and Anya saw Darwin exchange glances with Alex, the two of them shoving at each other briefly before nodding.
"No!" Anya said, but her voice wouldn't come out. She tried to speak again and her throat closed. Darwin was walking away from them, now, towards Shaw who was fearless because he had no need to fear. There was no possible way for Darwin and Alex to succeed, not if her father had failed.
She pulled at Alex's arm. "Don't attack Shaw," she managed to rasp out. "Stop Darwin, please."
Alex must not have been too sure about the plan either, because he stepped forward and grabbed Darwin's arm. Raven suddenly burst into action, running forward and grabbing Darwin's other arm, dragging him away from Shaw. She might not be trained, but she was tall and strong, and Darwin was taken by surprise at the assault.
"What the hell?" Darwin's arms grew bony plates, but the defence didn't stop him being pulled along by Alex and Raven.
Anya finally found her voice and yelled at Darwin. "Don't fight him! He'll kill you!"
Shaw laughed merrily. "Little mutant, you're very right. And what is your power?"
Anya froze, certain that now he would identify her and take her with him, but he didn't seem to recognise her at all. Perhaps the telepath hadn't told him everything.
Raven quickly answered for her with a neat lie. "Aim. She hits her target."
"Delightful! My offer remains open to all of you until the moment you move against me. Remember that."
The last Anya saw of them was Angel's scowl, glaring at the boys who had tried to counter her choice.
---
Hearing about the attack from Emma's smug mouth had sent Erik sprinting down the hall of the dacha, screaming for Moira to get in touch with HQ. He'd left poor Charles to deal with Emma by himself. By the time they managed to establish contact, Raven and Darwin were firmly in control of the situation. Anya was fine – she'd kept her head just as she'd been taught, even facing down Shaw himself. Erik couldn't be prouder of her. The return trip from Russia had been endless, and he'd found himself talking and talking to Charles, trying to make him understand how important Anya was, how precious, and how the world needed to be better for her.
"But you've made her so strong," Charles replied, his expression of fierce protectiveness unwavering. Erik loved that Charles felt so strongly about not only his own sister, but children he barely knew. Anya was something more, marked .
"I can pass, even though my genes make me a mutant. Anya never will, even though her genes make her human."
"Erik, you know I'd still love to have a chance to analyse her cells – she's the first child of a mutant of whom I've become aware."
"No." Erik had stopped pacing and threw himself into the seat opposite Charles. "That's her decision, not mine."
"You place a great deal of importance on her choices – and you taught her so many dangerous things!"
"And I'm glad of that today."
"Yes, as am I. But I protected my sister and I can only imagine that the urge to look after your own child is much stronger, especially when people tend to react so badly to her appearance."
Erik knew that Charles saw far more to Anya than her scars, and he didn't have the urge to punch him, as he did with most who commented on his daughter. "Mutant powers aren't everything."
Charles looked so bemused that Erik leaned forward, picked up Charles's hand, and put it to his own temple. "Let me show you."
They're in the Soviet Union, in the Ukraine, and Erik has a construction job. Even ten years after the war, there's plenty of work to be had in the cities. Erik is the fastest worker there, but the foreman casually stiffs him on his wages because Erik has a heavy accent and no papers, and he's heard that Erik's wife is a Gypsy. Erik won't stand for that kind of bullying, and threatens the man with a crowbar that somehow finds its way to his hand. Later, he and Magda go out to buy food, leaving Anya at the boarding house because there are too many drunks and whores out tonight to take a four-year-old with them. Erik would go alone, but Magda speaks the language much better than he does; Magda would go alone but she would be too much of a target.
There's a crowd when they get back because the boarding house is on fire. They fight their way through the crowd, but as they get to the front, Erik's foreman is there. He's armed with a two-by-four from the building site, and he's got friends with him. He beats Erik to the ground, and they start to kick him, when Erik hears Anya scream and something uncontrolled and ferocious rises within him, something that tastes of blood and the clean steel of a scalpel. Within moments, everyone that had stayed to watch the fight is dead, pulverised by nails, wire, their own cheap jewellery and steel toecaps, coins from their pockets. The only people unhurt are those closer to the burning building than Erik: Magda, who has collapsed to the ground and is crawling backwards in terror, and two women holding out a blanket. Erik's legs are wobbly, but he tries to do what he has been taught to do and use his pain and terror to rip out the side of the building. Nothing happens.
"Jump!" the women shout at Anya, but she stays at the window, shrieking in terror and pain.
"Jump!" Erik bellows in Polish, and Anya plummets from the window, a trail of flame in her wake. The women catch her and roll her in the blanket, but her screams don't stop.
"Go," one of the women shouts, pointing, "The hospital!"
Erik scoops her up, and looks down at Magda, who can't get away fast enough. He has no choice, now, and runs for the hospital. He never sees Magda again, although the nurses at the hospital claim to have seen her visiting Anya, once. The two women – sisters who were firefighters during the war – visit daily as Anya hangs between life and death for weeks.
"They saved her, those women and the doctors," Erik told Charles, "And for all the powers Schmidt developed in me, it was my voice that got her out in time."
"You shouldn't think of yourself as a monster," Charles put his hand on Erik's thigh. "Or her."
"Why not? I'm proud of it. We stick together, one big family."
"And Schmidt? It seems that he's a mutant, too, but you still want to stop him."
"It's not mutant against human, Charles. Those women saved Anya even knowing what I was. It's those who use power to harm against those who use it to protect. Those of us who are different should know better."
---
Anya wasn't at all surprised that her father wanted her to come to Cuba to fight Shaw, but she was less than pleased that Hank hadn't made her a suit. Her father yelled at Hank for that and ended up on the ground with a big clawed hand around his throat.
"You can't possibly take her with us," Charles said to Papa, horrified at the very thought of a little girl in a combat zone.
"I'm not going anywhere without her ever again. Besides, she handled herself well in the last attack. Better than some of the older students."
Raven took Anya a few steps away from their argument and asked exactly what Anya had been hoping that someone would ask. "Do you want a codename?"
"Yes! Chevalier."
"Great name!" Raven grinned in delight, and her smile was beautiful in her blue face, brighter than it had ever been in her false skin. "Why did you choose it? Because you're so good with weapons?"
Anya felt a bit embarrassed now. "Because I used to ask Papa why he had special powers and I didn't. And he would tell me that it was like in fairy tales – a knight would go on a quest, armed with strength and skill and justice. And there would be a wizard to help him, maybe, but it was the knight's adventure. So he was the wizard, and I was the knight."
Raven hugged her, and Anya's scars brushed against Raven's scales, making them both smile.
Her father won the argument, as she knew he would, and Anya took her place with the others, thrilled as her father lifted the submarine out of the water, terrified as their plane went down.
She and Raven stayed at the crashed plane as a last line of defence for Charles as he mentally travelled with Papa into the submarine. Darwin took out Riptide; Raven distracted Azazel long enough for Hank to stop him; Anya didn't hesitate to shoot Angel in the wing and bring her down when she attacked Sean and Alex. Then Charles was screaming and Papa emerged from the submarine carrying Shaw's body. Anya ran across the sand to embrace her father. As soon as she wrapped her arms around him, he dropped Shaw in the sand to put an arm around her. For some reason, he was wearing Shaw's ugly helmet.
"I can feel their guns moving," Erik said, pointing at the ships arrayed before them. "Charles, you know it's true."
Charles staggered out of the plane. "Yes, I feel them," he gasped. Everyone on the beach went very still, except for the CIA agent running for the radio in the plane. The missiles launched, a hundred of them, but Anya clung to her father in complete confidence that he could stop them.
He did, and turned them around to attack the ships that had fired them. Anya hid her face, not wanting to see the explosions, and waited for it to be finished.
Instead, she was bowled over by Charles running into the two of them, shouting, "Stop! Erik! Let them go!"
Anya spat sand out of her mouth and waited for her father to throw Charles off him. He did, with ease, and hurled the rest of the team away when they tried to attack him. The missiles wobbled in the sky but only a few fell into the water.
"They're trying to kill us!" Erik shouted, holding an arm out to Anya. She hurried over to him, and tried not to listen to the shouting. It seemed pretty simple to her: the men on the ships were trying to kill them, and Papa would stop them.
Then, to her horror, her arms moved, not under her control. She tried to call out, but she couldn't speak, like when Shaw had attacked them at the CIA compound. Tears formed in her eyes, but before Papa was aware of what was happening, Anya had knocked the helmet from his head and Charles had them both. They tumbled to the sand as Charles walked towards them. The missiles started to explode in mid-air and others plummeted into the water. The ships were entirely undamaged.
Charles had tears in his eyes, too, but he didn't let Anya or her father move. "I'm sorry, my friend, but I can't let you do that."
Erik stared at Charles, horrified but paralysed, and Anya lay helpless beside him. When the last missile vanished, Anya could move again and she frantically pulled at Papa's heavy arm. "Get up!" She turned to Charles. "Let him go!"
Charles had his fingers pressed to his temple and his face was sad but stern. "If I do that, he'll explode the missiles that are still in the ships. I can't let him do that. We have to work this out in a civilised way."
Before she even formed the thought, Anya had her gun out and fired. Charles crumpled to the ground, blood spreading across the front of his uniform.
"No!" she shrieked. "They were supposed to be bulletproof!" She didn't even know what she meant, caught between the need to protect her father and the horror of hurting a friend.
Her father was free to move, now, and ran to Charles, hauling him into his lap. Anya couldn't hear them talking over the rushing of blood in her ears, but if Charles was still conscious, he could still control them: she didn't understand why her father wasn't trying to defend himself. She ran to where Papa had fallen and retrieved the silvery helmet. Raven had had the same idea, and dashed across the beach, but Anya was much closer and got there first. Unlike everyone else, Raven looked angry rather than stunned. She moved to block Anya, but Anya didn't need to hand the helmet to her father. She threw the helmet in his general direction, trusting him to grab it with his powers even though her best possible throw would fall well short.
He did, and handed Charles over to the CIA agent, then hauled Anya over to him by the wires in her clothes. She relaxed her body at the familiar feeling, but her mind was still racing, terrified that he would be angry. Instead, he scooped her up in his arms, carrying her on his hip as he had done when she was much younger. She let out a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding. She was desperate to know that he didn't blame her for what Charles had made her do; that he wasn't angry at her for hurting Charles. He kissed her cheek, the helmet bumping against her head, and then they were teleporting.
The base in Argentina was quiet, disturbed only by Azazel reappearing after he'd been sent to take Charles to a hospital: to everyone's surprise, he brought Raven back with him, blood staining the front of her uniform, her skin still blue. She and Angel held each other and cried; Riptide held his head, and Anya threw up on the floor, queasy from the teleporting.
"I'm sorry, my darling." Her Papa held her in his strong arms and rubbed her back soothingly. "Not everybody is willing to be like us."
"I know, Papa," she sobbed, thinking of how close he had been to Charles, how betrayed he must feel. "Some people won't protect their own."
"I will always protect you, Anya."
She wiped her nose and sat up straight, crying finished. "I know. We're the same."
Fandom: X-Men First Class, with some comic canon
Characters: Erik and Anya Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, Raven
Rating: All ages
Wordcount: 6000
Content Notes: Canon violence and child injury.
Prompt from the kink meme. So, I've seen a couple of prompts incorporating Pietro and Wanda into the movieverse, but what I'd really like to see is (still alive) Anya. Think about it: she's the apple of her daddy's eyes - and she's not a mutant. How do Erik's views and actions change if his child is a normal human? Would prefer happy-ish end (i.e., he doesn't abandon her or feel disappointed in her), but otherwise anything goes.
Summary: Erik knows the world is cruel to monsters like him and his daughter, but now they have the power to fight back.
Also on AO3.
The Caspartina was moored carelessly close to other yachts: Schmidt always was confident in his ability to survive. Despite this perfect opportunity, Erik wasn't taking any chances. The two of them would only have one chance to do this cleanly. If they failed tonight, the danger would be far greater because Schmidt would know for certain that Erik was alive. It had been seventeen years since he'd last seen Schmidt; seven since his rebuilt life had gone up in flames and Erik had started hunting Schmidt and his kind.
Earlier this morning, the owner of the Yellow Bird was having breakfast in a Miami diner when he had an unfortunate accident: a spindly wrought iron chair collapsed and pierced his foot. He would be in the hospital for at least a day or two, and his yacht would be untended. The starboard side had a perfect line of sight to the upper deck of the Caspartina and they could take their time setting up there, unlike on the busy marina. It was still daylight and boats were going past, so preparing the sniper position would have to wait. From the deck of Yellow Bird, Erik took one last look at the Caspartina, then went below.
He couldn't see Anya immediately, but he reached out with his power to find the wires he stitched into the seams of all her clothes since they had embarked on this quest.
"Don't pull at my arm, I'm holding a knife!" she called out as he walked up behind her and kissed the top of her head. She was in the galley slicing up sausage, cheese and fresh, crusty bread. She'd even found a box of chocolates, of which she'd eaten several.
"Some vegetables, Anya."
"Papa, tonight could be the end of the mission. Step off." She said the last part in English and smirked, clearly weighing up her chances of getting in trouble for backtalk compared to her chances of praise for picking up colloquial English.
She guessed right, of course. "Tomorrow, vegetables."
Night fell quickly this close to the tropics, but the temperature barely changed. Erik made Anya take a nap, much to her annoyance, but he was far too keyed up to sleep and just paced instead. He kept his promise to wake her as soon as it was dark, and they quietly worked together setting up the rifle and calibrating the scope. It was something they'd done together many times before, comfortable and familiar.
"Be careful," Anya said, and abruptly hugged Erik, making his wetsuit squeak. She was nearly invisible in the darkness, dressed in black with her usual cotton scarf covering the shiny scars on her head and wrapped around most of her face.
Erik kept his voice steady. If he showed no fear, perhaps she would not feel it so acutely. "Remember the plan. All of the plan."
"You're going to come back."
He peeled her arms off him and kissed the small strip of forehead visible past the folds of her scarf. "You know war doesn't work that way. But I'll do everything I can, and you know that's far more than anyone else can do."
"I know." She released him and took her position behind the rifle that they had set up. "Go, then."
Without further delay, he lowered himself off the side of the boat and into the water.
It was barely 300 metres to the Caspartina and Erik took it slowly, staying low and quiet in the water. As he got closer, he could hear Schmidt talking and laughing – he'd recognise that voice anywhere – and a woman's laugh in return. Instantly, all trepidation was burned away by the white-hot fire of his hatred. All the metal around him, from the Nazi knife on his leg to the steel hull of the yacht, was in harmony with his rage. He barely touched the rungs of the ladder as he climbed onto the yacht. It was as if the metal rungs simply flung him upwards in accordance with his will, as Schmidt had taught him. Erik might be a monster, but monsters were powerful. He knew that well.
It was easy to find his way through the metal passages to the upper deck, the walls thrumming around him, his heartbeat hammering. Sometimes he wished that he'd never started on this quest, that he and Anya had hidden somewhere – Israel, maybe – and let the world spin on past. But with Schmidt still alive, Erik knew that any thoughts of a home would be an illusion. They had been made monsters, he and Anya both, and there was no safety but what they made for themselves.
"Herr Doktor," he said, his voice remarkably calm. Schmidt recognised him immediately.
"He's come to kill you." The woman in white stared at Erik, and suddenly he was screaming in agony, every pain he had ever suffered stabbing into him all at once. His mother was dragged away; Schmidt cut open his hands to touch nerves; Magda fled and Anya burned; and, no, she'd seen Anya! Erik threw his knife in desperation, trying to get Schmidt to move into the line of Anya's shot before the woman could say anything, but it was too late.
Catching the knife easily, the woman turned to Schmidt. "He has someone else with him."
"How clever of you! Dragging another person into this silly little revenge of yours!" Schmidt laughed, and Erik scrambled sideways, not taking the time to get to his feet. Schmidt took one step towards him, another, and a rifle shot rang out. Erik stretched out his hand, ready to guide Anya's bullet, but her shot was perfect. It hit Schmidt square in the middle of the back…and fell to the deck with a clunk. Erik's power was active and the bullet rolled straight to his still outstretched hand. Schmidt was completely unhurt.
"Wonderful!" Schmidt laughed, and Erik lunged at him, all his plans lost in a roaring tide of pure terror. He was helpless, again, and Schmidt would find Anya, kill her, and –
Before he knew what had happened, he was struck in the chest and send flying over the side of the boat.
*Get that child out of here!* Erik felt the woman's voice stab through his skull as he hit the water, then all he could think about was catching his breath.
---
"There's someone in the water!" Charles shouted, then the anchor and chain rose into the air, serpentine, striking again and again at the Caspartina. That strange telepathic shield still protected the people on the boat, but not their attacker.
"Someone like us!" Raven danced with delight, but Charles could feel the man's mind and how badly he was overexerting himself in his desperation. Charles quickly connected the images to Shaw and the other telepath – how amazing! – but then a submarine, of all things, came shooting out the bottom of the yacht, dragging the man with it.
Yelling at the man in the water had no effect, so Charles threw off his coat and launched himself into the water. He only remembered midair that his swimming skills were more suited to paddling about in a river than rescuing a powerful mutant from the ocean. Fortunately, the water was buoyant and not at all cold, so Charles had no difficulty diving down and grabbing the other man, latching on to his body and his mind all at once.
"Let go! Erik! You're going to drown!" Charles couldn't let this ferocious, focused mind die, but the man's intent left no space for self-protection. The telepathic intrusion startled Erik long enough to allow the submarine to pull away. He kept his hands out, ignoring Charles and trying desperately to regain his hold as Charles kicked them both up to the surface.
"No! No! You let him escape!" Erik screamed at Charles, trying to feel out the submarine's position again. He wasn't using his eyes or ears but a separate sense entirely: it felt natural to him but entirely strange to Charles.
"You were going to die! The submarine is too much for you!"
Erik abruptly stopped searching for the submarine and turned the glaring spotlight of his focus on Charles instead. "Who are you? I thought I was the only one."
Charles grinned, even as salt water splashed into his mouth. "You're not alone." He was most surprised to suddenly receive an elbow to the face. The pain blocked out everything else for a moment, then he came back to himself as Erik yelled at him.
"I am alone!" Erik shouted. "It's just me!" Unfortunately, the more someone tried not to think about something – Erik had certainly learned the concept of "telepath" very fast – the stronger the image was in their minds. In this case, it was a young girl of about eleven, throwing a knife with considerable skill; reading a magazine; biting a pencil as she did a maths problem; fast asleep in a lavish hotel room. Her image was infused with such love and pride that it took Charles a moment to realise that the girl was not what other people would consider beautiful at all, but horribly disfigured. Most of her scalp was covered in thick burn scars, along with the area around her right eye and cheek. Her right ear was only a bump of flesh, and her right eyelid drooped, anchored in place by more heavy scarring. The only hair left on her head was on the left side, from the front to behind her left ear, and that was cropped short.
"Your little girl – does Shaw, Schmidt, know about her?" Charles asked as he grabbed Erik's arm. Erik was trying to swim away from him and the approaching Coast Guard vessel, but the exertion with the anchor and submarine had been too much.
"The woman read my mind! Schmidt knows now!" Erik's desperation was the only thing letting him keep swimming: he wasn't even startled that Charles knew, too.
Charles easily put the name to a face. "Come with me. Schmidt knows what you can do, but he doesn't know what I can do. Together, we can protect her."
Erik was too tired and desperate to protest anymore. Charles could feel him trying to convince himself that it was a good strategic decision to follow the information. "Okay."
---
Anya was deeply suspicious that her father was willing to leave her behind. He hadn't done that since they had been searching for her mother, years ago when she was little and her scars hadn't properly healed yet. Anya had taken to the Xavier siblings just fine – they hadn't been at all surprised by her looks. Raven helped her with her English, and let Anya touch the amazing blue scales on her face and arms, even if she didn't show them very often. Angel was nice, too, with her beautiful wings. She'd painted Anya's fingernails bright pink to annoy her father and laughed at the expression on his face. Darwin treated her as if she was a little kid, but that was better than Hank, Alex and Sean, who were unnerved by her scars and had to constantly avert their eyes when she caught them staring. Well, Hank never stared, but he never looked her in the face when he spoke to her, either. Anya wasn't going to put her scarf on, though: Papa always said that wearing it was for her convenience, not to relieve other people's squeamishness. Hank and the others had to be around her anyway, and she saw no reason to cover up for their sakes.
Papa was leaving her here so he could hunt Schmidt in Russia with Charles. Anya and her father were supposed to be a team, but as soon as there were other kids around, he'd relegated her to their group, as if she needed basic training or to be kept safe by the stupid CIA guards. She'd survived more than Charles had, even if she wasn't as old as him: she'd travelled all over the world hunting evil. She'd shot Schmidt – it should have killed him. Mostly she worried that now her father had found other mutants, they wouldn't be monsters together anymore.
"Papa might be a mutant, but if Shaw's a mutant too, I'm glad I'm not one," she muttered to Raven, as they sat on the big squashy sofa in the rec room.
Raven looked hurt. "He's not evil because he's a mutant, you know. You may as well say 'If Shaw's a guy, I'm glad I'm not one'."
"That too!" Anya giggled and Raven relaxed again.
"You're worried about your father, aren't you? I'm worried about Charles."
Anya shrugged. "I'm not worried about him. He's really tough. I'm worried that he's not going to take me along anymore. I'm the one who shot Shaw, you know."
"I still can't believe you learned to shoot like that! No, I take that back – with Erik for a father, I shouldn't be surprised at all. He makes you take a gun everywhere." She patted Anya's arm, glancing down nervously at the weapon on Anya's hip. " I think that your father's really worried that now Shaw knows about you, he'll try to hurt you."
"He'd have to catch me first!"
Raven laughed, and got up to queue more songs in the jukebox, and that's when Anya heard the noise. She had no idea what it was – it certainly wasn't an explosion – but she definitely knew what the next noise was. It was a body hitting concrete from some height.
"What's that?" Darwin asked, moving away from Alex and the pinball machine for the first time in hours.
"Someone died," Anya replied. She jumped to her feet and pulled her gun in one smooth movement, keeping it pointed at the ground until she had a target. She couldn't work out whether to think of the others as armed or not: they had powers, but no training.
Darwin had the curtain fully open before Anya could tell him to get away from the window, so they all saw the next man hit the ground, and the next. Raven screamed; Angel took cover behind the sofa and pulled Anya with her.
A CIA agent with a gun shouted at them through the window. "Stay put! Do not leave this room! We're under attack!"
Darwin herded everyone else to cover as the window shattered with weapons fire. Anya tried to get up and take a shot at the red-skinned man who appeared outside, but Angel wrestled her down to the floor.
"You're not bulletproof," Angel hissed, and Anya didn't have the time to explain that she wasn't randomly getting up but finding a good position. Instead, she kicked Angel in the elbow to make her let go, scrambled to her feet and scuttled to the far end of the sofa, peeping over the arm for quick recon. The red man was gone, leaving behind at least ten bodies – crushed, shot, stabbed – and now there was heavy gunfire not too far away.
"We have to get out of here!" Anya shouted at the others.
Darwin agreed. "Yeah! 'Stay here' my ass!" He shoved the others towards the door.
Darwin led them down the corridor making sure to keep himself at the front – at least someone had an idea about tactics, Anya thought – and she stayed right behind him, ready to shoot. She really wished Raven would stop screaming.
More CIA and military men were in the corridor, yelling at them to get back. They ignored Darwin's offer of help, obviously scared but sticking to their training and protecting the civilians. Anya turned and grabbed Angel's sleeve.
"Angel! We can't go back, that red guy is there!"
Angel looked around quickly, but there were no other doors. She pushed Anya behind her and spat out a controlled explosion that ripped through the plasterboard of the wall and cracked the concrete slab behind it.
"Darwin! Get us out of here!" she yelled, and Darwin ran at it to break through. Instead of forming armour, his body squished flat against the wall and rebounded into the hallway.
"Damn!"
A huge explosion sent everyone staggering, and flames and debris went shooting down the other corridor a few steps from where they stood. That was enough to make Anya scream, too. There was no way out.
Hank, of all people, shoved Darwin aside and launched himself – giant feet first – at the cracked outer wall, smashing a hole in it big enough for them to climb through. "Come on!" he yelled and shoved Anya through first.
The other girls went next; they hauled Hank through, then the rest of the boys followed. They had come out in a grassed area near the edge of the compound. Everyone had the sense to keep on running. Anya started to cough in the billowing smoke, and wished desperately that Papa was here to make sense of everything. He'd be taking control and setting up defensible positions but, in all the terror and fire, Anya couldn't work out how to do it. She was going to die the very first time she had to fight alone.
They reached the fence quickly, but as Angel prepared to spit on the metal, that weird sound came again. Three men were standing in front of them: the red man, the man who had been on the yacht, and Shaw. Everyone stopped in their tracks, Sean colliding with Alex in his desperation not to run into the red guy. Shaw had a strange metal helmet under his arm, and Anya could only wish Papa was here, ripping the helmet away and smashing it into Shaw's skull.
Angel was stuck at the front of the group, since she'd been about to take out the fence, and everyone clustered in behind her. Anya put her gun behind her back: looking harmless was her best chance right now.
"Good evening! My name is Sebastian Shaw." He sounded entirely jovial, as if the smoke from the ruined compound wasn't roiling around them. "I'm not here to hurt you."
Anya gasped in terror, trying to choke down shameful tears. She knew very well what he meant. He wanted them alive to do to them what he'd done to her father: hurt them and twist them until their powers were strong but they couldn't take Anya to the doctor without breaking out in a cold sweat; until they screamed in their sleep and scratched at the tattoo on their arm until it bled; until every waking moment was a war between fear and rage. She didn't dare speak, hiding behind the older kids.
"So," he said, after words that Anya had lost entirely, "You can stay here and fight for the people who hate and fear you, or you can join me and live like kings." He surveyed them calmly, and Anya wanted to vomit: that was a man who had no reason to be afraid. That was a man who was unstoppable. His gaze fell on Angel. "And queens."
Angel took his hand and walked with him. Anya's shout was lost in everyone else's shocked attempts to call to her, but Angel's face was calm and determined.
"We have to do something," Raven muttered, and Anya saw Darwin exchange glances with Alex, the two of them shoving at each other briefly before nodding.
"No!" Anya said, but her voice wouldn't come out. She tried to speak again and her throat closed. Darwin was walking away from them, now, towards Shaw who was fearless because he had no need to fear. There was no possible way for Darwin and Alex to succeed, not if her father had failed.
She pulled at Alex's arm. "Don't attack Shaw," she managed to rasp out. "Stop Darwin, please."
Alex must not have been too sure about the plan either, because he stepped forward and grabbed Darwin's arm. Raven suddenly burst into action, running forward and grabbing Darwin's other arm, dragging him away from Shaw. She might not be trained, but she was tall and strong, and Darwin was taken by surprise at the assault.
"What the hell?" Darwin's arms grew bony plates, but the defence didn't stop him being pulled along by Alex and Raven.
Anya finally found her voice and yelled at Darwin. "Don't fight him! He'll kill you!"
Shaw laughed merrily. "Little mutant, you're very right. And what is your power?"
Anya froze, certain that now he would identify her and take her with him, but he didn't seem to recognise her at all. Perhaps the telepath hadn't told him everything.
Raven quickly answered for her with a neat lie. "Aim. She hits her target."
"Delightful! My offer remains open to all of you until the moment you move against me. Remember that."
The last Anya saw of them was Angel's scowl, glaring at the boys who had tried to counter her choice.
---
Hearing about the attack from Emma's smug mouth had sent Erik sprinting down the hall of the dacha, screaming for Moira to get in touch with HQ. He'd left poor Charles to deal with Emma by himself. By the time they managed to establish contact, Raven and Darwin were firmly in control of the situation. Anya was fine – she'd kept her head just as she'd been taught, even facing down Shaw himself. Erik couldn't be prouder of her. The return trip from Russia had been endless, and he'd found himself talking and talking to Charles, trying to make him understand how important Anya was, how precious, and how the world needed to be better for her.
"But you've made her so strong," Charles replied, his expression of fierce protectiveness unwavering. Erik loved that Charles felt so strongly about not only his own sister, but children he barely knew. Anya was something more, marked .
"I can pass, even though my genes make me a mutant. Anya never will, even though her genes make her human."
"Erik, you know I'd still love to have a chance to analyse her cells – she's the first child of a mutant of whom I've become aware."
"No." Erik had stopped pacing and threw himself into the seat opposite Charles. "That's her decision, not mine."
"You place a great deal of importance on her choices – and you taught her so many dangerous things!"
"And I'm glad of that today."
"Yes, as am I. But I protected my sister and I can only imagine that the urge to look after your own child is much stronger, especially when people tend to react so badly to her appearance."
Erik knew that Charles saw far more to Anya than her scars, and he didn't have the urge to punch him, as he did with most who commented on his daughter. "Mutant powers aren't everything."
Charles looked so bemused that Erik leaned forward, picked up Charles's hand, and put it to his own temple. "Let me show you."
They're in the Soviet Union, in the Ukraine, and Erik has a construction job. Even ten years after the war, there's plenty of work to be had in the cities. Erik is the fastest worker there, but the foreman casually stiffs him on his wages because Erik has a heavy accent and no papers, and he's heard that Erik's wife is a Gypsy. Erik won't stand for that kind of bullying, and threatens the man with a crowbar that somehow finds its way to his hand. Later, he and Magda go out to buy food, leaving Anya at the boarding house because there are too many drunks and whores out tonight to take a four-year-old with them. Erik would go alone, but Magda speaks the language much better than he does; Magda would go alone but she would be too much of a target.
There's a crowd when they get back because the boarding house is on fire. They fight their way through the crowd, but as they get to the front, Erik's foreman is there. He's armed with a two-by-four from the building site, and he's got friends with him. He beats Erik to the ground, and they start to kick him, when Erik hears Anya scream and something uncontrolled and ferocious rises within him, something that tastes of blood and the clean steel of a scalpel. Within moments, everyone that had stayed to watch the fight is dead, pulverised by nails, wire, their own cheap jewellery and steel toecaps, coins from their pockets. The only people unhurt are those closer to the burning building than Erik: Magda, who has collapsed to the ground and is crawling backwards in terror, and two women holding out a blanket. Erik's legs are wobbly, but he tries to do what he has been taught to do and use his pain and terror to rip out the side of the building. Nothing happens.
"Jump!" the women shout at Anya, but she stays at the window, shrieking in terror and pain.
"Jump!" Erik bellows in Polish, and Anya plummets from the window, a trail of flame in her wake. The women catch her and roll her in the blanket, but her screams don't stop.
"Go," one of the women shouts, pointing, "The hospital!"
Erik scoops her up, and looks down at Magda, who can't get away fast enough. He has no choice, now, and runs for the hospital. He never sees Magda again, although the nurses at the hospital claim to have seen her visiting Anya, once. The two women – sisters who were firefighters during the war – visit daily as Anya hangs between life and death for weeks.
"They saved her, those women and the doctors," Erik told Charles, "And for all the powers Schmidt developed in me, it was my voice that got her out in time."
"You shouldn't think of yourself as a monster," Charles put his hand on Erik's thigh. "Or her."
"Why not? I'm proud of it. We stick together, one big family."
"And Schmidt? It seems that he's a mutant, too, but you still want to stop him."
"It's not mutant against human, Charles. Those women saved Anya even knowing what I was. It's those who use power to harm against those who use it to protect. Those of us who are different should know better."
---
Anya wasn't at all surprised that her father wanted her to come to Cuba to fight Shaw, but she was less than pleased that Hank hadn't made her a suit. Her father yelled at Hank for that and ended up on the ground with a big clawed hand around his throat.
"You can't possibly take her with us," Charles said to Papa, horrified at the very thought of a little girl in a combat zone.
"I'm not going anywhere without her ever again. Besides, she handled herself well in the last attack. Better than some of the older students."
Raven took Anya a few steps away from their argument and asked exactly what Anya had been hoping that someone would ask. "Do you want a codename?"
"Yes! Chevalier."
"Great name!" Raven grinned in delight, and her smile was beautiful in her blue face, brighter than it had ever been in her false skin. "Why did you choose it? Because you're so good with weapons?"
Anya felt a bit embarrassed now. "Because I used to ask Papa why he had special powers and I didn't. And he would tell me that it was like in fairy tales – a knight would go on a quest, armed with strength and skill and justice. And there would be a wizard to help him, maybe, but it was the knight's adventure. So he was the wizard, and I was the knight."
Raven hugged her, and Anya's scars brushed against Raven's scales, making them both smile.
Her father won the argument, as she knew he would, and Anya took her place with the others, thrilled as her father lifted the submarine out of the water, terrified as their plane went down.
She and Raven stayed at the crashed plane as a last line of defence for Charles as he mentally travelled with Papa into the submarine. Darwin took out Riptide; Raven distracted Azazel long enough for Hank to stop him; Anya didn't hesitate to shoot Angel in the wing and bring her down when she attacked Sean and Alex. Then Charles was screaming and Papa emerged from the submarine carrying Shaw's body. Anya ran across the sand to embrace her father. As soon as she wrapped her arms around him, he dropped Shaw in the sand to put an arm around her. For some reason, he was wearing Shaw's ugly helmet.
"I can feel their guns moving," Erik said, pointing at the ships arrayed before them. "Charles, you know it's true."
Charles staggered out of the plane. "Yes, I feel them," he gasped. Everyone on the beach went very still, except for the CIA agent running for the radio in the plane. The missiles launched, a hundred of them, but Anya clung to her father in complete confidence that he could stop them.
He did, and turned them around to attack the ships that had fired them. Anya hid her face, not wanting to see the explosions, and waited for it to be finished.
Instead, she was bowled over by Charles running into the two of them, shouting, "Stop! Erik! Let them go!"
Anya spat sand out of her mouth and waited for her father to throw Charles off him. He did, with ease, and hurled the rest of the team away when they tried to attack him. The missiles wobbled in the sky but only a few fell into the water.
"They're trying to kill us!" Erik shouted, holding an arm out to Anya. She hurried over to him, and tried not to listen to the shouting. It seemed pretty simple to her: the men on the ships were trying to kill them, and Papa would stop them.
Then, to her horror, her arms moved, not under her control. She tried to call out, but she couldn't speak, like when Shaw had attacked them at the CIA compound. Tears formed in her eyes, but before Papa was aware of what was happening, Anya had knocked the helmet from his head and Charles had them both. They tumbled to the sand as Charles walked towards them. The missiles started to explode in mid-air and others plummeted into the water. The ships were entirely undamaged.
Charles had tears in his eyes, too, but he didn't let Anya or her father move. "I'm sorry, my friend, but I can't let you do that."
Erik stared at Charles, horrified but paralysed, and Anya lay helpless beside him. When the last missile vanished, Anya could move again and she frantically pulled at Papa's heavy arm. "Get up!" She turned to Charles. "Let him go!"
Charles had his fingers pressed to his temple and his face was sad but stern. "If I do that, he'll explode the missiles that are still in the ships. I can't let him do that. We have to work this out in a civilised way."
Before she even formed the thought, Anya had her gun out and fired. Charles crumpled to the ground, blood spreading across the front of his uniform.
"No!" she shrieked. "They were supposed to be bulletproof!" She didn't even know what she meant, caught between the need to protect her father and the horror of hurting a friend.
Her father was free to move, now, and ran to Charles, hauling him into his lap. Anya couldn't hear them talking over the rushing of blood in her ears, but if Charles was still conscious, he could still control them: she didn't understand why her father wasn't trying to defend himself. She ran to where Papa had fallen and retrieved the silvery helmet. Raven had had the same idea, and dashed across the beach, but Anya was much closer and got there first. Unlike everyone else, Raven looked angry rather than stunned. She moved to block Anya, but Anya didn't need to hand the helmet to her father. She threw the helmet in his general direction, trusting him to grab it with his powers even though her best possible throw would fall well short.
He did, and handed Charles over to the CIA agent, then hauled Anya over to him by the wires in her clothes. She relaxed her body at the familiar feeling, but her mind was still racing, terrified that he would be angry. Instead, he scooped her up in his arms, carrying her on his hip as he had done when she was much younger. She let out a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding. She was desperate to know that he didn't blame her for what Charles had made her do; that he wasn't angry at her for hurting Charles. He kissed her cheek, the helmet bumping against her head, and then they were teleporting.
The base in Argentina was quiet, disturbed only by Azazel reappearing after he'd been sent to take Charles to a hospital: to everyone's surprise, he brought Raven back with him, blood staining the front of her uniform, her skin still blue. She and Angel held each other and cried; Riptide held his head, and Anya threw up on the floor, queasy from the teleporting.
"I'm sorry, my darling." Her Papa held her in his strong arms and rubbed her back soothingly. "Not everybody is willing to be like us."
"I know, Papa," she sobbed, thinking of how close he had been to Charles, how betrayed he must feel. "Some people won't protect their own."
"I will always protect you, Anya."
She wiped her nose and sat up straight, crying finished. "I know. We're the same."