Je vois la vie en rose, Chapter 3: Cerebro (X-Men First Class, Erika/Charlotte, R)

[lilacsigil]

They were all bleary-eyed when they arrived at the enormous house in Westchester. Even so, Erika could see Charlotte and Raven smiling in delight, then immediately yawning, almost in unison, as the truck stopped. Erika couldn't simply lie down and sleep in a strange place, not without at least a quick survey. And the astonishing size of the house and grounds meant that feeling at ease here would not come easily.

Frustratingly, much of the house was stone and massive beams of wood, rather than the steel frames of modern constructions. The iron nails of the floorboards and beams were good markers, at least. The more recently renovated areas, especially underground, and the big greenhouses, were immediately clear to her senses. There was another odd shape off in the distance, too, but she couldn't quite resolve it into an identifiable structure.

"A tour, perhaps?" Charlotte asked, taking Erika's arm. "Raven, will you find Harriet a room?"

"I'll head up to the third floor. They will have got that ready, if nothing else." Raven waved hello to the house and took Harriet and her suitcase inside, along with his and Charlotte's travel bags.

At Erika's quizzical look, Charlotte shrugged. "The house has a permanent staff of four, who bring family members in to help out when someone actually shows up here. We sent a telegram ahead from Oxford to say our things would be arriving and to open up the house."

Erika looked around at the massive building in the pale morning light. "What a terrible hardship it must have been, growing up here."

Charlotte shrugged, an odd expression on her face. "I had Raven. And the size of the house was very helpful for a developing telepath - there were so many places I could go to get away from the other minds. My range was much smaller, then." She dropped a complete image of the house's interior into Erika's head. *There, that should help you and Harriet find your way around.*

They walked up the crunchy gravel drive to the front doors and inside. The wood panels and high ceilings rather reminded Erika of a stately British home she'd broken into to recover a list of names of former Nazi sympathisers in Britain. The lead hadn't panned out, but at least she'd stolen a good meal and several small but valuable antiques.

"No Nazis sheltered here, I promise you. When the war started, my father brought us back from London to volunteer his services as a scientist. He was rather disappointed when the USA didn't immediately join the war effort, but he certainly got to contribute in the end."

"What kind of scientist was he?"

"A nuclear physicist."

Erika laughed at the incongruity: one man helped make both soft, kind Charlotte and the bombs that destroyed two cities. "You never felt the urge to follow in his footsteps and make bombs yourself?"

"No, not in the slightest! Quite apart from the fact that they treated their female colleagues abominably, I won't be the cause of someone's death, even indirectly."

"How noble of you." Erika felt the black mood descend on her again. She tried to tell herself that Charlotte was an ally, that it was good that Charlotte had never had to kill, but all she could feel was a violent hatred for everything around her. She wanted to tear it all down, burn the house to the ground and see Charlotte weep over the ashes, and at the same time never wanted to see Charlotte cry at all.

*Erika. The candelabra are groaning. Be calm.*

Erika unclenched her fists as best she could, and let her senses range outwards, trying to relocate herself spatially herself, to know that she was here and nowhere else. Again, she felt that odd, large shape off to the rear of the house.

*That's a satellite dish.*

Suddenly the shape became clear. It was, indeed, an enormous satellite receiver. "You own a satellite dish?"

"Don't sound so incredulous! No, I don't own a satellite dish. It's on land that my father leased to the Weather Bureau in the 1930s. They sneakily installed the dish a few years ago by making sure Raven and I received notification too late to protest." Charlotte took Erika's arm again and started up the stairs. "Come on. You'll be able to see it from the bedrooms on the third floor."

Erika shook her head. "I can't believe you have a satellite dish."

"It's going to be awfully convenient once we get Cerebro set up properly, isn't it? We should probably start with the television antenna - I'd rather not accidentally fry my brains."

She showed Erika to a bedroom and indeed, the satellite dish was visible from the window. Erika had been expecting something akin to the bedrooms in the English home, densely furnished with four poster beds and washstands, decorated with giant tapestries and paintings on the ceilings. Instead, apart from the wood panelling and expensive textured wallpaper, it resembled a hotel room, with a plain double bed, a nightstand and a desk. If it wasn't for the satellite dish outside and the knowledge that this was part of Charlotte's home, it would have been quite comfortable. Erika put her briefcase on the desk.

"Yes, it does feel rather like a hotel at times. Still, it will be the perfect base of operations and - if we can get Cerebro working properly - a great place to house more mutants."

"If you don't fry your brains, as you say."

"I've willed the place to Raven. I'm sure he'll let you stay."

Charlotte was hovering in the doorway, uncertain. Erika found her so hard to read, sometimes - she wasn't as direct as an American, nor as reticent as the few upper-class English women that Erika had met - and it was unnerving, knowing that she, along with everyone else, was an open book to Charlotte.

"Get some rest," Charlotte said, kindly. "I'll see you in a few hours."

"These staff of yours won't be worried by two guests and a truck full of stolen equipment?"

Charlotte laughed. "They've seen stranger things. But no, I'll call them and ask them not to come over today. We need some peace and quiet." She hovered a moment longer, then backed out the door, closing it softly behind her.

Erika slumped down on the bed, suddenly exhausted. She'd had longer days - much longer - but all the revelations of the past 36 hours were be catching up with her. She stripped off and got under the covers, yawning. It had been a very long time since she was in a house filled with her own kind. For the first time ever, that was not a threatening thing. For the first time ever, that kind was mutants.

She awoke later in the morning, abruptly as she always did, quickly showered in the adjoining bathroom and got dressed in her sole change of underwear and the same dress. She left off the stockings and cardigan, though: it was unfair to ask Raven and Harriet to not hide themselves and then hide the marks of her own life. It felt quite liberating to stretch out her limbs and see the bare, scarred skin, exposed for no purpose other than that she wanted to. She'd sometimes left her tattooed arm bare to intimidate those who would be alarmed by the evidence of their handiwork, before she killed them, but she had never been casual about it. Erika slipped her feet into her flat court shoes - she was lucky to be tall enough that wearing them appeared to be a fashion statement rather than a readiness to run - and headed downstairs. The mental map Charlotte had given her led her to the kitchen, past rooms for which her mind supplied names - the library, the parlour, Mother's room - although the doors were closed.

"Good morning!" Raven chirped. He was eating a bowl of cornflake, wearing his pretty blonde form, seated at what Charlotte's map called "the breakfast table" in the kitchen itself. There was a massive dining room beyond that, tables and chairs covered in swathes of white cloth.

"Good morning, Raven. Is there coffee?"

"God, I hope so. Charlotte and Harriet aren't up yet, but Charlotte will make the tea anyway. She takes it just so, and I'm not British enough to get it right or something."

Erika opened the pantry door and realised it was an entire room, about half-stocked with food. "How many people lived here?" She took a moment to orient herself and quickly found an unopened packet of ground coffee, right next to some filter papers.

"Since Mother and our step-father died, and our step-sister Kaye moved out? Only the two of us, and then we went to England. Yeah, I know, the house is too big for two people."

"It's too big for twenty people." Erika located the familiar shape of an electroplated steel coffee percolator in one of the cupboards and retrieved it. It was a little dusty, but nothing that a quick rinse wouldn't fix. A kettle sat on the stove and Erika went about making the coffee.

Raven crunched away at his breakfast. "Maybe we'll find twenty-one mutants, then! Or two hundred! You never know."

"Do you think there's that many?"

"I don't know. Harriet was trying to explain how her machine works, and it went right over my head, but if she can find mutants using a telepath, maybe Charlotte has been attracting us all along? Maybe there's not very many, but we collect in proximity to telepaths?"

Erika frowned. She hoped that wasn't true, because then Shaw's telepath would be collecting mutants. "Even so, there'd be hundreds of people who've never met a telepath. I've had my abilities since I was a child - stronger since I was a teenager - and I've been all over Europe without meeting another mutant."

"As far as you knew."

Erika could give him that. "Yes, as far as I knew. Did Charlotte ever seriously look for other mutants before?"

"When we were little we'd lie in bed and she'd reach out. If it was a still night, and she was really relaxed, she could reach about twelve miles. No mutants."

"That's hardly a diverse population. Did she ever try in Oxford?"

"I don't think so - and not in New York, either. It's so busy there that Charlotte has to really concentrate so that she can think her own thoughts and not wander out into the road. You saw how she was on the plane." Raven brought his bowl over to the sink to wash it. "I guess we'll find out soon enough how many mutants there really are."

"In the meantime, coffee." Erika poured two cups, then another two as she felt the metal of Charlotte and Harriet's watches and shoes approaching.

"Good morning everyone!" Charlotte beamed. "And there's coffee! Thank you, Erika."

"Uh, good morning," Harriet said. She was wearing similar clothes to yesterday - blouse and plaid skirt in marginally different colours, and she had her socks and shoes on. Erika raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Raven was not so quiet.

"Harriet, doesn't it hurt to wear those shoes? You don't have to wear them here."

"She should dress however she feels comfortable," Charlotte waved a hand and slurped down a mouthful of coffee. "This is really quite excellent, Erika. But, speaking of clothes, you should have a look through the wardrobes on the second and third floors and see if you can't find something to fit you. Raven has been all kinds of sizes, as you might expect, and our step-sister Kaye is tall - some of her old things might fit."

"Thank you. I was planning to go into town, perhaps, but a change of clothes would be very welcome in the meantime." Erika had worn other people's old clothes often enough in her life that she didn't do so now unless she had no choice.

"Is Kaye a step-sister or a half-sister?" Harriet asked, nearly spilling her coffee in excitement. "And is she a mutant, too?"

"Not a blood relation and no, not a mutant to our knowledge." Charlotte made her way to the pantry. "Raven, could I prevail upon you to make something more substantial than coffee and cereal? After all that telepathy yesterday, I'm starving."

"Well, it will be much nicer than cooking on that horrible little stove in Oxford," Raven replied amiably, and headed for the fridge. "Take a seat, all of you, and I'll see what I can manage."

Erika obeyed, and sat down at the table with her coffee in hand. She knew that she should be getting on with things right now, assembling Cerebro, finding Shaw's people and thus finding Shaw. Even so, she was weirdly content simply to be around other mutants, watching Raven make his arms longer to reach the frying pan, seeing the intent look that meant Charlotte and Harriet were deep in telepathic conversation. She reached for the anger of early this morning, at Charlotte's riches and Charlotte's absence from her life until now, but it was gone. The constant acid burn of her rage at Shaw and the feel of the coin against her breast had not diminished. She was not weakened by being here, by finding comrades. That thought was enough to let her relax a little, to enjoy the sunlit kitchen, the smell of food and the company of, yes, friends.

After their very late breakfast, they began to assemble Cerebro. Erika, who'd changed into a poorly-fitted pair of cigarette pants, a loose shirt and sandshoes from Kaye's wardrobe, traced the most modern of the electrical wiring from the kitchen around the east side of the house. The heavier wiring also ran to a large room with burned walls and damaged fittings, the windows boarded. Erika was about to ask what had happened, but both Charlotte and Raven were studiously ignoring that room, so she didn't. The other room on that side of the house was a partly renovated ballroom, half the floor polished and half only sanded. The ballroom contained nothing but an out-of-tune upright piano and a gigantic chandelier. Tempted, Erika flicked at the metal fixtures of the crystals to make it jingle and chime, and Charlotte laughed in delight.

Erika grinned at her, but turned her attention to Harriet. "It's here or the kitchen."

"Not the kitchen," Charlotte added. "I'm going to try to cook us all dinner tonight."

"You're sure we shouldn't call in some of the staff?" Raven asked, but Charlotte shook her head.

"The gardeners will be in tomorrow and I'll have to encourage them not to look in here. I don't need people poking around the house today. Besides, I'm feeling like a bad hostess."

"It's not as if Mother ever cooked anything," Raven muttered, and they shared a fond glance.

Harriet had her head out the window. "The television antenna is on the chimney on this side of the house, so here will be perfect!"

They unloaded the truck, Erika carefully levitating the heaviest equipment into the goods elevator. Harriet took off her shoes and displayed strength beyond what her scrawny frame should allow by lugging boxes of magnetic tape and the smallest of the computers; Charlotte and Raven followed with the most delicate pieces and the extra wiring that Harriet had insisted they bring. She was right to do so - some wires and connections had been damaged by the trip to New York.

"Can you find where the breakages are?" Harriet asked Erika. "Normally, this kind of set-up would take days to test, but if you can find the problems with your power…"

Erika hadn't thought of using her power that way, but she had certainly snapped or connected electrical wiring before, as she needed it, and Harriet's suggestion made sense. "This is wonderful - I'm learning more about my abilities so fast."

Charlotte, perched on the piano stool, nodded. "As am I. Your minds really do feel slightly different to me than other minds, now that Harriet has explained her theories to me. I hope Cerebro will expand that."

"So, what are we going to do with all these mutants once we find them?" Raven asked, winding magnetic tape into the computer as Harriet had shown him. "I mean, I think it's great that we're finding them and telling them there's more of us out here, but then what? Some of them are going to have jobs and families, and not be in secret CIA bases where brainwashing works as an excuse."

"We should prioritise." Erika pressed her fingers on the outside of an insulated wire and mended the break in the copper inside.

"What kind of priorities? I want to find Shaw's people, but I don't know where they are or what kind of range this thing will have. Obviously, the first people we pick up are going to be the closest, so there's one criterion." Charlotte frowned. "And about Doctor Shaw's people: they've obviously been trained to fight, and we haven't."

"I have," said Erika.

"Apart from you, of course. Harriet is here to build, and Raven and I have powers that lend themselves to defence. We shouldn't gather people here who are only going to be frightened."

Erika put down the wiring. "I think that most of them are already going to be frightened. By who they are and the way others treat them, if others know."

Both Raven and Harriet nodded at this, even as Charlotte looked argumentative.

Erika pressed on. "Also, I am here because you offered to help me find Shaw. We need people who will be willing to do that, to rescue the mutants Shaw has, and it's entirely possible that we're going to have to fight them. Shaw's methods are very persuasive: she has a way of making you believe that she is your only friend, your protector."

"Yes, I see." Charlotte's voice was soft and sympathetic, and Erika felt that anger burn through her again.

"No, you don't see. If Shaw had really been protecting me, she wouldn't have killed my mother to make me perform tricks. If she was really protecting Emory Frost, she'd force them to let him finish his education, not parade him around Miami and make him be her bodyguard. But she will have told him that whatever she makes him do, whatever she does to him, it's better than what others had planned for him.

"And she's right, in a very basic way - I'd be dead with my parents, Emory would probably be in a mental institution with all the other queers. But we are not regular people. We don't have to follow human rules and prejudices. We don't have to accept the limitations they put on us. All Shaw does is tell you that those limitations are real, and she is the only one who can save you from them."

She turned on her heel and stalked out, unable to tolerate the expression on Charlotte and Harriet's faces any longer. Raven, at least, didn't stare. Erika took the staircase down to the ground floor and walked out the front door, tempted to get in the truck and drive away, to never talk to anyone again. It had all been so much easier by herself, easier, and yet she had failed so badly. Shaw had been right in her grasp and she'd given up. She should have died rather than let her escape. Instead, she'd been distracted: how Shaw must be laughing now!

With that, all the energy seeped out of Erika, and she walked slowly over to the plush green grass and sat under a tree. There was a light breeze and the leaves rustled gently, dappling Erika with sunlight, as if everything was good and the dark places of the earth could not co-exist with such a serene, lovely vista.

"I'm sorry, Erika." Charlotte sat down beside her, her dainty floral skirt spreading out around her.

Erika waved a hand at her, though she couldn't find any words in any language to reply.

Charlotte moved a little closer. "You're right. I did promise to help you, and I will. This idea I have, about all mutants working together, that's in the long term. Imagine if we could bring children here, give them somewhere safe to grow up and learn about their powers. I think it's the best defence against predators like Doctor Shaw. We should help these children first, so that there's nothing Doctor Shaw can offer them."

Erika nodded, slowly, but still didn't reply.

"Even better would be if we can stop her entirely. I was reading the papers we copied from Agent Duncan's office, and Doctor Shaw is definitely playing some larger game. She's got military contacts on both sides, and she's spent a lot of money on them."

"Maybe she'll make an army," Erika said, her voice weary. "Or put her own people in power. Can you imagine placing one of you in the Kremlin? What you could do? It makes sense for her to be cultivating Soviet and American forces alike: if she made a wrong move on one side, with no-one ready to counter it, we could all end up dead in a hail of nuclear weapons."

"Yes, well, when I get to Heaven I'll be sure to tell my father what he wrought. You couldn't stop missiles?"

"It would depend on the size of the missile. I certainly couldn't stop an ICBM. So who are these people you want to find?"

"Friends. Shaw has allies, why shouldn't we? Raven's right, though. We need to select carefully. I thought that mutants who are already in trouble might be a good start. We can immediately and directly assist them, then they can make a choice whether to come with us or not. And if we start with the closest mutants, well, we're not far from one of the biggest cities in the world. Harriet and I combined our calculations and it's back of the envelope stuff, but we made a conservative estimate of one mutant per six million people. That's three in New York State alone. And there could be more, many more."

"How long does Harriet think it will take to assemble Cerebro?"

"With your help, by tomorrow night. Without you, at least a week."

"I'll go inside and help her, then." Erika nodded, and climbed to her feet.

Charlotte took her hands and held her still for a moment. "Erika. You're the most remarkable person I've ever met. I'm sorry that I keep blundering into things I don't know about and making you angry."

Erika shook her head, though she didn't know what she was denying, and, after a moment, pulled her hands free and went to find Harriet.

---

It took Erika and Harriet until noon the next day to get Cerebro ready for Charlotte to test. While Charlotte was deeply fascinated with the machine, she had neither the engineering nor electrical knowledge to be any use at this stage. Instead, she and Raven put their teenage cooking courses to use - they might have completely forgotten the etiquette lessons, and all the marriageability they were supposed to confer, but the cooking basics had stuck with them and kept everybody well-fed. The staff had come in on the morning of the second day, and Charlotte had been busy, then, shoring up the defences against them seeing Raven turn blue, adding in details about Erika and Harriet while masking anything to do with their powers. The two gardeners, handyman, cook and maid might be able to break through it if something obvious occurred, but short of that, they would notice only that Miss Charlotte and Miss Raven had guests.

Harriet had been thrilled. "That's fascinating! Will it work on anyone? What do I look like to them?"

"Well, I'm not making them see a particular thing: it's more that most people would rather see something ordinary than something strange. So some of them might see you as a girl with big feet, some of them might assume you're wearing shoes and so on. It only really works in familiar environments with calm people, and it's much harder with people trained to observe - scientists, the CIA…"

"Gossip columnists," Raven added gloomily.

"You shouldn't have changed your hair at Mother's party!"

"I was bored! And I didn't know it would take hours to do my hair like that! Anyway, you convinced her it was an especially good wig."

Charlotte was glad that Harriet seemed to have largely got over her terror of Erika as they worked together. Erika might be uneducated, but she was highly intelligent, quickly grasping everything Harriet was doing and taking care of the miles of wiring with calm competence. Harriet, unfortunately, was one of those dreadfully didactic teachers whose lectures got longer and duller the more she knew on a topic, but at least she wasn't at all condescending. Charlotte doubted that Erika would have stood for that, not even in the cause of finding more mutants.

And now the moment of truth was here. Surrounded by trailing wires and humming electronic devices, Charlotte sat on one of the chairs from the dining room and tried to stay calm as Erika and Harriet made final checks.

Raven paced around the computers. "Are you sure this is safe?"

"I'm sure it's not going to electrocute Charlotte, thanks to Erika's help," Harriet replied cheerfully.

"You're welcome." Erika checked the readings on one of the panels. The needles trembled but they were all well in the green zones. "Harriet, I think we're ready."

"Okay then! I had the helmet on a swivel arm back in Virginia, but here Erika kindly made me a frame out of metal garden stakes."

"Which you attached to the piano, I see. You can't just put in on my head?"

"Oh, no, it's very heavy, and very delicate. If you faint and drop it, it's going to take a tremendous amount of work to reassemble."

"She's going to faint?" Raven looked ready to leap across the sea of cabling and carry Charlotte away.

"Probably not?" Harriet didn't sound troubled at all. Charlotte reached out to touch her mind, and indeed it was happily bubbling away with predictions and possibilities, but very little concern.

Erika crouched down beside Charlotte, holding her arm. "The machine itself isn't going to hurt you. I made sure of that." *If you're going to make yourself a lab rat, I'm going to protect you.*

"Thank you, Erika. But you think the amplification of my telepathy might cause problems?"

"Raven told me that when you try too hard, you pass out. So do I. I think it's self-protective, so we don't hurt ourselves badly." She lowered the helmet to Charlotte's head, adjusting it carefully so that every electrical ending touched Charlotte's skin. "Are you ready?"

Charlotte sat up straight. "Oh, and Harriet, you can stop thinking about shaving my head. It's not going to happen."

"Right, right of course. Ready?"

"Ready."

The helmet hummed lightly, as if she was resting her head on the speaker of a radio, but for a long moment nothing happened. Then Charlotte felt as if she had opened her eyes to find hundreds of people in the room. She was racing outwards in every direction, surrounded by shadowy figures, her mind expanding far beyond anything she'd been able to reach in her childhood attempts to find more people like them. It wasn't the same, though: it wasn't the full spectrum of telepathy at all, but looking through a filter that blocked out most of the colours in the world. She took a deep breath, and somewhere out there she could hear Raven's voice.

*I'm…fine…* she stammered out, and then she was racing outwards again, and there was a bright light - a mutant - and another. Without warning, she plummeted back into her body and felt her hands locked on the helmet, holding it in place despite it being switched off.

"You're out of focus," she said to no-one in particular, and felt Raven's warm hands on her face and someone holding fingers to her throat. The helmet lifted away from her, smoothly and irrevocably, and she might have made a strange choked sound as it went.

"Strong pulse," Erika's voice floated in and Charlotte had to blink a dozen times before the faces around her resolved themselves.

"Oh. God. That was amazing. I'm fine, totally fine, better than fine."

Harriet rushed to her side, clipboard at the ready. "We received six sets of co-ordinates, all within fifty-seven miles! That's far beyond our predictions! Could you read their minds in there? Was your telepathy normal?"

"No, no, not at all. I can't explain - we need to find those people. We can find out their situations and whether they would be better off with us." Charlotte got up with only a slight wobble, quickly caught by Raven.

"First, tea. Then we'll put the co-ordinates on a map. Then we'll talk about going to find people." Raven's voice reminded Charlotte of Matron at school - probably deliberately - and that wasn't a tone with which she could argue.

"Of course, of course. Thank you, Harriet, Erika, that was truly amazing." Raven helped her towards the stairs, but as they went Charlotte recovered remarkably quickly. She felt no more tired than the times she had given a few men in a pub a small push not to bother her and Raven.

Erika had discovered a large and detailed map of New York City and parts of the surrounding areas somewhere, and spread it out on the breakfast table as Raven made tea in the familiar old china teapot that had come over from England more than twenty years ago with Charlotte and her parents.

"One here in Brooklyn. Another in Brooklyn, not far from the first. One close to here."

Raven peered over Erika's shoulder. "That's Bedford Hills. It's a women's prison, where they send all the really bad ones."

"I suppose that mutant's out of the question then," Harriet said.

"Why would you think that?" Erika snapped, and Harriet cringed again. Charlotte sighed. They'd been getting along so well.

"For all we know, she might have ended up there because of her mutant power," Charlotte noted, in her best academic tone. "Or even be a guard."

Erika scowled mutinously, but said nothing more.

Raven put the mugs of tea on the table. "We should definitely check her out. Even if she's not there because of her power, she might have been thrown out of her family because of it, and got caught committing a crime trying to survive."

"I agree." Erika sipped her tea. "In any case, Charlotte will be able to read her mind as soon as we get close enough. Shall we head to Brooklyn tonight?"

"Erika, I'd love to. I think just the two of us should go, perhaps."

"What?" Raven put her mug down with a loud clunk. "Why?"

"Firstly, I think that showing up in force could scare the mutant away. Secondly, I don't think Harriet is ready for a recruiting mission, but I don't want to leave her by herself."

Charlotte glanced over at Harriet, expecting resistance, but Harriet was nodding fervently.

*Please, Raven, I don't want to take her, but I'm worried that, left alone, she'll electrocute herself or something awful.*

Weirdly, Raven gave Harriet a fond sort of look and stopped arguing. *Okay. I'll make her stop working and watch some TV or something. If Erika hasn't wrecked the reception by running Cerebro's connections up there, anyway.*

*Thanks, Raven.*

*No problem. Go buy Erika some new clothes, show her the sights and maybe you'll get lucky!*

Charlotte shook her head. *All my secret plans, undone by my loving sibling.*

*Yeah, because it was a state secret!*

They both laughed, making Harriet jump and Erika smile her small, close-mouthed smile, the one that said she was relaxed and calm.

Erika was indeed happy to buy some new clothes - though she refused Charlotte's offer to buy them for her - and even happier to be driving the whale-sized, bright red convertible that Charlotte's step-father had given her for her sixteenth birthday.

"Even though I was going to go to school in England and didn't even want a car, and it was my money anyway," Charlotte grouched.

"This is a wonderful piece of engineering, Charlotte. Later I'm going to practise lifting it."

"It is rather heavy. And by the way you're stroking the wheel as you drive, I have to believe you're not going to drop it."

Erika pulled the car out of the department store parking garage into traffic. "Of course not! Will your brainwashed servants be troubled by me making a car hover?"

Charlotte frowned. "Staff, not servants. Maybe you shouldn't lift it right in front of anybody - there's only so much the human mind can overwrite."

"Could you make them not see it at all?"

"Yes, certainly, but it's a lot more effort on my part, and I have to be vastly more specific: it would be perfect to cover up a single incident, but I'm thinking in the long-term here, and about things that I might not be able to predict. Making their brains do the work is tremendously more reliable. A few of them vaguely remember that Raven had red hair as a child, but none of them know he's got blue skin."

"Did Raven go to school, too?"

"Not until he was a teenager - his control wasn't very good and we were too scared of a slip-up. He came with me to the boarding school in England, though - it was a small group of people, so I could easily cover any problems. He didn't stay after I left, though, so he finished high school in Oxford, at a day school."

"Yes, boarding schools are very small but very vicious places. I can see how a single idea, positive or negative, could have a great deal of currency there." Even Erika couldn't get a car of this size moving at any speed in New York, so they idled in traffic. "Let's head out to Brooklyn now and park this thing."

"Okay. Erika, I know you're focused on finding Doctor Shaw, and I agree that needs to be our first priority, but after that, well, I keep thinking about what you said to Harriet. That she deserves to know she's not alone. And about Raven, outcast because of how she looked. We can find those children and adults, at least the ones in the US, for a start, and let them know who they are."

"And what, adopt the ones who've been thrown out?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of a school."

"Teach them to fight, so they're ready when people come for them. I like that."

"Again, I was thinking more along the lines of a school."

Erika thumped Charlotte's leg, affectionately. "Yes, of course you are. And I agree that they should have an education. I used to want to go to university, myself, the same as my mother did. But they need to learn more than that, otherwise we're painting a target on them, gathering them all together." There were very clear images of herself as a small child, being expelled from her school, sent instead to one with only Jewish girls, yellow stars on their coats.

"We're not rounding them up, though. We're providing a safe haven."

"It won't remain secret forever. Mutants won't remain secret forever - look at Agent Duncan, giving Harriet the resources to build that machine."

"We can protect them, you and I."

"Not everywhere, and not always. Besides, you're assuming that we both survive Shaw, and her mutants are salvageable."

"Of course they are! I mean, I'm not opposed to fighting them if we have to, but we haven't seen them do anything terrible."

"Frost hurt me, telepathically. And Shaw, well, she doesn't break you. She bends you the way that she wants you to be. She makes your powers stronger, certainly, but your soul weaker. The only saving grace for me was that Shaw killed my mother: I knew from the start what she was."

Charlotte put an arm around Erika's shoulders, who was staring straight ahead as they moved slowly through the Manhattan traffic. "I wish I could undo what happened."

Erika smiled, suddenly and brightly. "You're the first person who's said that and truly meant it, not because you want something from me. Thank you."

Charlotte smiled, too. "But I do want something from you. I want you."

Erika froze for a moment, her eyes darting to the side before staring straight ahead.

"Erika? I'm sorry to startle you, I thought you knew I was a queer."

"I'm not offended, please don't think that. I'm just…that's not something I've thought about. With women. Or with a friend." She didn't pull away from Charlotte's arm, though.

"Oh, God, I've made such a hash of this. But really, you've never thought about kissing a woman?"

Erika blushed slightly, and Charlotte was entirely charmed.

"You have, haven't you?"

"When I was in the army in Israel. My field commander. But almost everyone had schoolgirl crushes on their commanders, so I didn't think anything of it. Besides, she despised European Jews; we were all weaklings who lined up to be killed, in her eyes."

"Do you ever intend to go back there? To Israel?"

Erika shrugged. "Better there than anywhere else, I suppose. And the Mossad helped me hunt down Shaw, in the early days. When we disagreed about which Nazis had priority, they cut me loose. Any other security force might have tried to kill me for knowing too much about their operations, but they didn't even try."

"You could stay with me. After Shaw, I mean."

She shrugged again. "Why not?"

Charlotte could feel that weird detachment again, where Erika's emotions were not connected to anything she thought or said. They were halted in traffic again, and Charlotte couldn't think of anything else to do, so she leaned over and kissed Erika on the mouth.

Erika must be one of very few women who were entirely unafraid to make out with another woman in an open-topped car in the middle of Manhattan. Charlotte made the most of it, waving the most aggressive people away with gentle brushes of her telepathy. A few still saw them: some were turned on, most were frightened of or for them, and Charlotte used the high she was feeling from Erika's kiss to soothe their fears. On a whim, she linked Erika in to let her see things as she did. Erika laughed, quietly, then leaned down to kiss Charlotte's collarbone, just once, then smoothly rolled the car forward as the traffic started to move again.

*Can you see things through my eyes, too? Manhattan is a beautiful city in metal and magnetism.*

Charlotte could and did, and gasped at the beauty of the energy all around her, swirling through the streets in the form of cars and coins and people's jewellery and watches, the buildings flickering as elevators zoomed up and down. Unlike Charlotte's mental map of the people who buzzed around all over the island, Erika's senses kept everything linked to each other: the flux of the electricity in the buildings calling to the steel of their frames; magnetic fields everywhere rearranging, pushing against each other and swirling together and apart. Most beautiful of all, though, was the elegant web of the Brooklyn Bridge, and Charlotte laughed the whole way across it, holding her hands up as if she could catch the energies and hold them to herself.

"Erika, my lovely Erika! I can feel something magnetic way off that way - what is it?"

Erika smiled at her. "That's the Statue of Liberty. We should get a better view when we get nearer our destination."

"You haven't seen it before?"

"Not since I was seventeen."

They exited the bridge and cruised down into Brooklyn, into one of those areas that bridged the gap between classy restaurants and sleazy peep-shows; a mix of women with children and groceries walking past catcalling men; men in suits and those in overalls; women in very high heels and big coats hurrying along; a few transvestites out on the streets even this early in the evening. Erika parked the car in a semi-deserted restaurant car park, and, once they'd got out, pulled up the sunroof and locked it in place by its metal rims.

"Honestly, I don't know how your step-father expected you to go out in this thing and not get robbed."

"Maybe he was hopeful that I would?" Charlotte shook her head, too high on kissing Erika to be mean about even Kurt Marko. "Probably he wanted this car himself and giving it to me was a neat way around the trust fund."

"Come on, let's go to see the Statue. It's been a while."

They walked the two blocks to the dingy waterfront, and looked out at the mighty statue. Charlotte could still, a little, feel it with Erika's powers: the whole statue was a beacon. Charlotte had seen it innumerable times, though, and watched Erika's smile instead.

"America was generous after the war, maybe to make up for keeping us out while we could still have escaped. I first came here at seventeen."

Charlotte tugged her jacket closer with her free hand, chilled, but Erika was still cheerful.

"I knew Shaw had American connections - her German was accented, and she had spoken of America more than once - so I made it to an American sector and ended up on a ship of refugees bound for New York. My father and aunt visited New York, once, long before I was born."

"You don't sound very American, if you've been here that long."

"It was stupid to have come in the first place. I was completely unprepared. My English was terrible and I couldn't find out the first thing about Shaw - I checked out every Schmidt I could find before I realised she probably used a different name. It was a waste of time, so I decided to go back, maybe try to find a trace of her in Europe, somehow. I stowed away on the first ship I could find and ended up in County Kerry. The Sisters there said I could stay and go to school if they could baptise me, so I agreed."

Erika was wreathed in nostalgia and the glow from her arm being through Charlotte's, her usual anger turned down to a low simmer; Charlotte felt as if that anger had crept into her instead.

"That's horrible, my darling. What a cruel thing for them to do."

Erika turned to Charlotte at last. "It was only words, Charlotte. If you could change who you are by saying so, the camps would have been empty. No, the Sisters treated me very well: I was the living symbol of their charity."

"How could you stand it?"

"What does the statue say? 'Yearning to breathe free?' I can't have that, not until Shaw is gone. Anything that helps me with that goal was worth it. She made me what I am and she still owns my soul."

"Erika, no, your soul is your own."

"Breathe free, Charlotte. There is nothing stopping you. No chains, no training, no murder."

"There's you." Charlotte reached up and pulled Erika's face down for a kiss, unafraid of anyone watching. "I choose to share this with you - maybe you can share my freedom, too?"

Erika's kisses were softer than usual, and the sunset painted her in rich colours. "You make me think foolish thoughts, my dear." A future, she doesn't say, even though Charlotte needs her to take that step, so much that it was suddenly crushing her heart.

---

Harriet refused to be pulled away from her Cerebro printouts for hours after Charlotte and Erika had left, so Raven spent the time saying hello to the staff she remembered from their last visit - ten years ago, now - and introducing himself to the new gardener. They all seemed to have the idea that Harriet was Charlotte's student and Erika was some kind of visitor from Europe, but Raven couldn't tell whether that was because Charlotte had planted the idea, or if it was simply the most logical conclusion on beholding their motley group.

It wasn't as if Harriet was a boring person - every time Raven had got her talking, she was fascinating, with opinions on everything - but she wasn't used to people being interested in her, and tended to keep her mouth shut. Raven wasn't too surprised, having seen how hard Charlotte had fought to be taken seriously in a male-dominated department, and learning electrical engineering sounded even worse. By eight o'clock, the sun was going down, everyone had gone home, Raven was starving, and Harriet was still holed up in the ballroom with Cerebro.

Raven threw together some sandwiches, heated a saucepan of leftover soup, and carried it all upstairs on one of the serving trays. It was heavy, but he had good balance and strength - nowhere as good as Harriet's, though - and he made it safely to the door.

"Harriet! I've got dinner, let me in!"

"I'm sorry! On my way!" Footsteps scampered over, and Harriet opened the door. She was wearing her shoes again. "Can I take that?"

Raven glanced from her shoes to her face and Harriet blushed.

"No, I'm good. Come on, you need a break. The TV room is right next door."

"Near the antenna, of course. Lead on!"

They got themselves settled on the sofa in front of the TV - Raven checked each channel, but after so long in Oxford he didn't know any of the shows - and dragged around side tables for their food.

"Oh, Route 66! That's good." Harriet selected the show and while they ate, they happily watched the adventures of two attractive drifters helping people out.

"I wouldn't have thought you'd have time to watch TV," Raven said, polishing off a sandwich.

"I didn't, really." Harriet smiled, and put her soup spoon down. "But they'd built the first all-women dormitory at MIT, and they had recruited women students from all over the country. They tried to make us to socialise more than most of us wanted to, but watching TV together was a good compromise."

"It must have been amazing, surrounded by other brilliant women," Raven remembered boarding school somewhat less fondly, having to be constantly in fear of discovery, even if Charlotte could probably undo it afterwards. She hadn't slept well in the entire two years she'd been there.

Harriet's expression was rueful and familiar. "Not really. I mean, the education was great, amazing, and it helped having more than one woman in the class, but I had to take showers in the middle of the night and I certainly couldn't join the sports teams, even if I was still faster than most of them with my feet restrained. I suppose I just wanted to be…"

"Normal," Raven finished for her. "Look, I haven't been entirely honest with you."

"That's not how you really look, is it?" Harriet smiled again, and the expression softened the serious lines of her face. Raven reached out and tucked a stray lock of hair behind Harriet's ear; Harriet wriggled as if she was about to duck away, but didn't go. Her haircut looked like a home-made hack job, but Raven found it endearing rather than ugly: Harriet had better things to do than to worry about how her hair looked.

"How did you know?"

"Charlotte said that she'd been practising on people's minds since she was small, in case you slipped up. I thought that there must be something for them to see, a default form, perhaps. And I didn't mean that's not really you - of course it is, you chose it. I mean that it must be an effort. Like the way I have to walk with my shoes on."

"If I showed you, would you freak out?"

Harriet pondered the question for a moment. "Not unless there's something about your appearance that overcomes reasoned thought."

"You're overthinking this!" Raven laughed, and let go of his pretty blonde shape.

Harriet stared in amazement. It wasn't quite Erika's immediate compliments, but nonetheless Raven was pretty pleased with himself. He did a slow turn with his arms over his head and Harriet watched, her mouth open in surprise.

"I…I never thought…" Harriet's voice was tiny, but her face broke out in a genuine smile and Raven grinned right back, and flopped down on the sofa beside Harriet.

"It feels so good to be able to show people who I am. You know exactly what I mean."

Harriet nodded. "But why do you choose to appear as a girl? If I didn't have to, I wouldn't."

"I guess I started out that way - Charlotte assumed I was a girl, because she couldn't see anything to indicate otherwise - so that shape was the one I grew up with. It might be different if I had a big brain like you or Charlotte, I suppose, and was in a field that was mostly male. But I enjoy being around people and talking to them, and it's easier to be close to people as a girl."

"But not really close. Not to the real you."

Raven didn't think he'd been this happy since he finished school and realised he never had to go back. It was such freedom to have someone understand what he meant - not even Charlotte did, not this way.

"Harriet, thank you so much." Raven leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, and Harriet blushed bright red, but took Raven's hand.

"Raven, I don't want you to think I'm being forward, but I like you. I mean, a lot." She smiled, embarrassed. "Now I sound like a teenager."

"It's okay. You're not being forward. Even if you were, the usual rules don't apply here."

"I liked you before I saw you this way, and now that I have, I think you're amazing."

Raven knew he was blushing, too, but at least his dark blue skin hid that. "I think you are, too."

"And I was so worried that I liked a girl, you know, but it turned out that you're really a boy! No wonder it felt okay." Harriet's beaming face blurred in Raven's vision and he suddenly realised he was crying.

"But I'm not a boy. I'm not a girl or a boy."

Harriet pulled her hands away. "Yes, you are. You're a boy, no matter how you pretend to look."

Raven got to his feet. "No."

"But you said you wanted to be normal. You can't be normal and be both a boy and a girl."

Raven blinked away the tears, but he was sure a few had escaped. "I can be anyone."

"And live like this? Hidden away from everyone? This is a great opportunity, but it could easily become a prison. We're lucky that we can blend in when we need to - what kind of life could we have without that?"

"I don't - What if I decided to be a girl?"

"I don't understand why you would want to."

"Because I'm not a boy."

"You can't just decide that!"

Raven couldn't take Harriet's utter certainty for a moment longer, and, shifting into his blonde self, ran down the hall and up the stairs to his old, familiar room. He flipped the mirror around so hard that it knocked a chunk of plaster out of the wall, then threw himself into bed, wishing desperately that Charlotte was here and taking back all the horrible things she'd ever thought about Charlotte not understanding. He was never leaving this room again.


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