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"Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful."
- Proverbs 27:6
Once and only once did Erik ask Raven to take Charles' form while they fucked.
Not that he asked directly, of course. Never that. Raven snorts quietly to herself, considering it.
He'd been in a malicious mood that whole day, as evil as the reputation he so nurtured, but pettier than that. Sadistic. He'd made Raven laugh with his malignant humour when he hadn't been aiming it at her, and for most of the day, he hadn't been.
Who knew what had set him off this particular time? Who ever knows? Raven has rarely been able to follow the streams of Erik's ill moods back to their source. If Erik knows himself, he never tells. Maybe Charles Xavier understood these things, saw the cause and effect of it all, but if Erik had wanted to be understood, he'd never have left his 'old friend', would he?
It isn't as if Raven isn't used to Erik, fair weather or foul. If she wants the one, she has to accept the other, and she takes pride in her pragmatism. She's always had a thing for thunder and lightning anyway, and brooding skies make her think of home. But on the night in question, Erik had pulled her by the arm into his bedroom and demanded that she entertain him. His lips curled as he announced disdainfully that he was not in the mood for female parts. He wanted a cock, clean and straight. Oh, and uncircumcised.
Changing for him is a game they play frequently, even now, and while Raven didn't like to be told, she decided to play along for a while. She tried a number of different men for him, offering them like candy to a spoilt child in a tantrum.
She suspects now that right from the start she knew inside whom Erik really wanted.
This man was too young and that one too dark, and the next had altogether too much hair… They stared at each other across the bedroom for at least a minute, and she was able to see Erik savouring the hurt he'd caused her. Not that he had, but it was clear he thought he had. He was rolling in it like a cat smug in sunshine.
So Raven took the shape of their enemy and stalked with a masculine gait to Erik's side. She kissed him hard enough to bruise, hard enough to taste blood -- just faintly. Hard enough to make him hard and gasping, strong need in his hooded eyes and in the slight tremble of his swelling lips.
Then she turned and walked out of the room.
She waited a week before coming back to his bed, and he never asked her again to take Charles Xavier's form. She never offered either. She's not a fool; she knows a fatal attraction when she sees one. Fatal for at least one of them anyway -- she'll see to that if it ever goes too far.
But this, now, is different, and this is why she's thinking about such things in the first place.
This is Erik whimpering like a little boy in his sleep, crying out for a mother long lost to the chamber and then the ovens. This is Erik seeing… Well, Raven can only guess what he's seeing, but she's watched the footage of the camps, the piles of skeletal bodies, dehumanised and genderless with their ragged garb and shaven heads.
And empathy, the ability to project and imagine, is part of her mutation.
She cannot bear to see him like this. It's not that she demands only strength from him. No, she actually enjoys his more vulnerable side, appreciates that he trusts her enough to let her see it.
For a short while. Occasionally.
But this isn't 'vulnerable'; this is broken, and Erik can't break. Because there's a small and entirely uncynical part of Raven, a part she normally denies even to herself, that believes that she is St Paul -- an apostle for a new age, for a new messiah.
Raven had a tomcat once, when she lived in Belgrade. It was a stray -- rangy looking and 'entire', and a vicious little bastard when she'd tried to scratch an ear or stroke its back. She'd fed it anyway, and somehow over time, they'd become friends. Eventually, the cat would roll over and let her tickle its belly. For a short while. Occasionally.
It was hit by a car one day, and though it lived, it wasn't the same animal afterwards. It would look at her as if it did not know her at all when she approached it, its eyes wide with fear, its bowels loosened, strands of salvia hanging from its damaged mouth.
She killed it, quickly and cleanly. It seemed a kindness. Who would want to live like that -- a broken thing living in terror of ghosts?
Erik can't break.
So when he opens his eyes, but reacts to things Raven cannot see, when the tears run unchecked over the crags of his face, and when he talks in stuttered Polish, pleading -- for what? Raven doesn't really know -- she nonetheless gives him what he wants.
And it's the hands of Charles Xavier that soothe Erik into quietude, stroking his hair and rubbing his back in large, slow circles. It is the arms of Charles Xavier that hold Erik securely as his eyes close once more, and the lips of Charles Xavier that kiss Erik softly on the forehead -- the kiss of a mother. It's the voice of Charles Xavier that lies shamelessly and tells Erik he is loved and safe and always will be.
It is the eyes of Professor Charles Xavier that watch Erik's breathing calm and deepen, eyes that only change in a long, slow blink from brown to golden once Raven has heard the first deep snore.