Chapter Text
It was high noon in Jerusalem in the middle of August, which meant that if you weren’t in the shade you were a slowly melting human popsicle. Fortunately for Erik, the cafe Azazel had chosen -- and therefore the site of Erik’s stakeout -- had a shaded outdoor section, so while he and his drink were sweating, at least they both weren’t evaporating quite as quickly as the tourists in the crowded street.
Erik hardly noticed the heat anyway. He’d been trained to ignore things like his own body’s reaction to stimulus. Ignoring your own body was a useful skill to have when you were being tortured or in a long-distance pursuit on foot, and it was useful now as well in the sweltering outdoors. The newspaper Erik was using for camouflage was not holding up as well, the paper slowly wilting in his sweaty palms, but luckily it was still stiff enough that he could hold it up to cover his face if Azazel ever glanced his way.
Azazel, however, appeared much too distracted to care about any of the other cafe patrons, shifting often in his seat on the other side of the cafe from Erik. The heat undoubtedly had something to do with Azazel’s discomfort -- the waitress had been over to refill his water four times now by Erik’s count -- but the devil-like mutant had been drawing frequent stares this close to the Temple Mount, and by the way he kept glancing down at his phone, it was apparent that whoever he was meeting was running late. For his own part, Erik hoped that Azazel’s contact would show up soon. He was tired of waiting.
His phone flashed suddenly at him from its resting place on the tabletop, and he looked down automatically. It was an alert from the online chess app he’d installed last year. His long-time opponent, groovy_prof had apparently just put him in check. Damn it. Annoyance flashed quickly through him, but he didn’t have time to counter now, not while he was on the job, and especially not when he was shadowing Sebastian Shaw’s right-hand man.
For ten years now, since before he’d become an agent with the CIA’s Mutant Operatives Division, Erik had been following Shaw’s movements. In fact, Shaw had been the reason Erik joined the CIA in the first place, and it was testament to the quality of work Erik did that even though the director Moira knew about the history between them, she didn’t take him off the case. She also probably knew that if she did, he’d leave them in the dust. Being with the CIA was convenient. You got information and advanced tech for free, and yes, you had to jump through some hoops on occasion, but Erik always managed to come out on top. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have stayed. Moira knew this and respected it, and in turn Erik respected her. Erik liked knowing where he stood with people, and he and Moira had always understood each other, even if they hadn’t always gotten along.
Unfortunately, Moira had given him very little information before sending him off to chase Shaw this time. All their sources knew, she’d told him, was that Azazel was going to be meeting an undisclosed contact at 12pm in the city. No word was given on why they were meeting or what sort of exchange was going to take place -- whether this meeting was for information or an artifact -- and without another way to answer his burning questions, Erik had hopped on a plane to intercept Azazel’s rendezvous. From the openness of the spot, though, Erik thought it was unlikely that Azazel would be getting anything material from his contact. It was much more likely that Azazel was waiting to give or receive information on a new piece to add to his boss’ gallery.
Shaw was a collector and distributor of rare items; a euphemism for a black market dealer, and an eclectic one at that. For years, Erik had followed the trail of priceless paintings, occult items, drugs, and illegal arms Shaw left in his wake. With all the aliases and random projects, the man would have been almost impossible for anyone else to track; but Erik was like a bloodhound, and from the second he’d caught Shaw’s scent, he’d chased him relentlessly, always one maddening step behind.
The many near brushes just made the anger in Erik, which constantly simmered beneath the surface like magma, burn that much hotter and brighter. In the almost fifteen years since his parent’s death, nothing had cooled his temper, and he was beginning to resign himself to the fact that nothing ever would. Some things helped, of course. Whenever he was feeling particularly hopeless, on long nights when he’d toss and turn in his bed for hours without being able to fall asleep, Erik would go for a run, exhausting his body so his mind had no option but to turn itself off. Work was good, too. Around the office he’d developed a reputation for being a joyless workaholic who refused to go out for drinks with anyone, but Erik didn’t mind this. It kept his coworkers off his back -- well most of them -- and it meant he got twice the paperwork done.
Lately, in the past year, Erik had discovered another rather unexpected balm for those bad days when nothing seemed to be working right and he couldn’t focus on anything but his anger.
“You know, you’re giving me a headache,” Emma Frost had said to him one day in the break room as he stomped in to get more coffee. She was leaned up against the counter next to him, steeping a tea bag, and he had been studiously ignoring the way she was staring at him until she spoke.
Erik grunted, refusing to apologize. If he was in a foul mood it was because he had every right to be: two operatives had had a lock on one of Shaw’s safe houses the night before, but right as they were about to swoop in and arrest him, the safe house had blown itself up and Shaw, of course, had been long gone.
“You should do yoga, sugar,” she said as she swirled the tea bag around in the hot water. “I’m sure your blood pressure is through the roof. I know mine is skyrocketing just looking at you.” Erik turned and glared at her. She raised one immaculate eyebrow, unimpressed. “Seriously. I’ve had a stress headache all morning since you got in and its only getting worse. Find some way to unwind or I’ll have to talk to Moira about it. You know you’re not the only one in this building who has important work to do, and I can’t concentrate on my cases when you’re three doors down, smashing my shields in with your emotional battering ram. It’s not cute.”
“I can’t go for a run,” Erik said gruffly, not even sure why he was responding to her other than maybe that would make her leave him alone. “I’ve got to stay in the office, there’s so much shit to clean up after last night.”
“Well, what about something less physical,” Emma replied, dumping her used tea bag in the trash. “Don’t you play chess? Mystique said last time you were out on a mission together you brought a travel set for the plane ride. She thinks it’s cute, but I beg to differ.”
Erik frowned. “Mystique shouldn’t be talking about my personal life all over the office,” he said.
“Honey, if that’s what qualifies as your personal life, you don’t have any reason to be worried about gossip.” She gripped Erik’s forearm as he brought the coffee cup up to his lips, and he startled, looking her full in the face for the first time their whole interaction. The look in her eyes was icy, and highly unamused. “Play some chess. Get an app or something, I don’t care. But if this headache isn’t gone by lunchtime I’m calling Moira and suggesting you take some time off. I wouldn’t get into that head on purpose for a million bucks and a new mink coat, but there are things that have gotten through my shields today and they are not pretty.” She released his arm and he drew it back immediately, swallowing. “You’ve got three hours, Lehnsherr.”
Emma waltzed out the door, and for a full two minutes afterwards Erik fumed silently, unmoved from the spot where she had left him. On the one hand he hated being ordered to do things, and he hated that Emma apparently thought she had enough authority to give him orders in the first place. On the other hand, he couldn’t afford a forced leave from the department, especially not after last night. And there was no doubt in his mind that Emma would be true to her word and talk to Moira if she didn’t get what she wanted.
Gritting his teeth, Erik had strode back to his office with such stormy intent that it had scattered the two agents he came across in the hallway, and stared at his phone for another minute before grudgingly downloading the first chess app he’d found in the store and pulling up a new game.
Not surprisingly, his first three opponents had been easy to beat. They were beginners, and for all Erik was out of practice -- he hadn’t really played since he flirted with hustling in college to make some extra cash -- he was still very, very good. What did surprise Erik was when he looked up at the clock after his last match and saw that an hour had gone by. An hour in which he’d gotten exactly zero done on the Shaw case. Even more surprising was the fact that he wasn’t all that upset about it. In fact his head felt clearer, fresher. Maybe, just maybe -- and Erik thought it quietly in case she was listening -- Emma had been right.
From that day on, the online chess games had been another very effective de-stressor, but it wasn’t until two weeks later that he got paired with groovy_prof for the first time. Groovy_prof was the first actual challenge; in fact, it was the first game Erik had lost in maybe seven years. Erik had laid in his bed, staring disbelievingly at the animated letters and chess pieces dancing across his phone screen declaring “CHECKMATE” in far too smug a manner. The chess app had a chat option and it pinged with a new message. Up until then, Erik had ignored the few messages he’d received, but now he was intrigued despite his better judgement. His finger lingered over the chat box for just a second before he clicked it.
groovy_prof: good match. the best one i’ve had so far, in fact.
groovy_prof: i had fun. rematch?
Erik hesitated only a moment before replying.
Magneto: As long as I get to be white this time.
groovy_prof: i suppose that's only fair.
They’d played through another game before groovy_prof had said he needed to go to bed.
groovy_prof: i have an 8:30 class to teach tomorrow, but if you’d be amenable, i’d like to add you to my friends for a rematch.
groovy_prof: you seem to be the only person worth playing on here.
Erik had smiled wolfishly at that, hardly one to sniff at a compliment. With anyone else, Erik might have refused, seeing the friend request as an invasion of his incredibly large personal bubble. But he’d lost both of their games and groovy_prof hadn’t talked to him other than to request a rematch. It wouldn’t hurt, he supposed.
Magneto: Sure. I’m game whenever you are.
Magneto: No pun intended.
groovy_prof: excellent. i’ll send you a game request when i’m free.
A little red notification bubble appeared above Erik’s otherwise blank friend list, and he clicked it to accept groovy_prof’s request.
Magneto: I look forward to it.
groovy_prof: me too. until then, magneto.
The chess games had continued like that for the past year, and almost so gradually Erik didn’t realize what was happening, he and groovy_prof started to become something like actual friends. He still didn’t know his opponent’s real name, but he knew he was a professor of archaeology, that he had a sister who lived in New York City, and that he and his sister were both mutants. Groovy_prof was apparently a telepath, but he didn’t say what his sister could do, only that she had been very uncomfortable with her mutation until recently -- something groovy_prof was very proud of her for overcoming.
In return, Erik had opened up to groovy_prof almost more than he had to anyone else since his childhood. Groovy_prof knew he was Jewish but not practicing, that he lived very much alone, that he was metallokinetic, and that cooking elaborate meals was his secret passion. This was only because Erik had been unable to hold back his mortification when he learned that groovy_prof ate takeout almost every night, and had let slip about the myriad of containers in his freezer and fridge, filled with homemade goulash and chicken ziti and matzo soup. Groovy_prof had been impressed, which made Erik preen before he realized what he was doing.
Somehow or another, after about a year of matches with neck-and-neck wins, groovy_prof had wormed his way into Erik’s life. Which was why, in the sweltering August heat of Jerusalem Erik gave just a moment’s actual regret as he looked down at the chess notification on his phone. He didn’t have long to dwell over the matter, however, because just a few seconds later he saw Azazel sit up straighter in his chair, his eyes locked on the crowd passing by the cafe.
Erik straightened up too, dropping the drooping newspaper just far enough to see a man with shoulder-length dark hair striding through the tourists and street vendors. He had a determined look on his face, which made his features look almost like they were carved from olive-colored marble, and as he wove his way over to Azazel’s table Erik did a cursory sweep of his person. There were no weapons that he could make out on the newcomer, unlike Azazel who as always was carrying his two curved blades hidden away under his blazer. The only thing Erik could feel was a heavy cell phone in the man’s left pocket. Harmless, then.
The man sat down across from Azazel, much to Erik’s relief. He was too far away to hear them, but not far enough away he couldn’t read their lips. It wasn’t ideal, but any closer and he might blow his cover: he’d met Azazel several times over the years and he knew Shaw was too careful not to give instructions to keep a sharp eye out for Erik and the other CIA agents on his trail. Even if Azazel wasn’t on the lookout for Erik specifically, he’d be on his guard.
The waitress came over and filled up the newcomer’s glass. He smiled thinly at her, then turned to Azazel.
“No one followed you?” Azazel asked. He was speaking English, so most likely his informant was American or British. Erik made a mental note.
The man shook his head. “All clear. I took the route you told me to.”
“Good,” Azazel replied. He stretched, looking casually around the cafe.
Erik hurriedly put the newspaper up again to shield his face. The movement caught Azazel’s eye, and he paused for a moment. For the first time all day, Erik felt himself really beginning to sweat. He couldn’t screw this up now. The informant had only just got here. He held his breath, held the paper steady, and waited. Azazel reached into his suit jacket, and Erik immediately tensed even more in preparation for a fight, his metal-sense reaching out to the small gun hidden in the jacket he had draped on the chair beside him as well as to Azazel’s knives. He breathed in and out slowly through his mouth, watching Azazel for any minute shift in movement. But after a pause, Azazel seemed to abandon whatever suspicion he had. He turned back around to face his informant, and when he drew his hand out of his jacket, Erik saw he held a small USB drive between his fingers.
“This has all the information you need for our next rendezvous, everything you’ll need to get the artifact out safely. The money will be sent to you separately. My employer doesn’t want you traced back to this; your connection could be too valuable.”
The man placed the USB quickly into his pocket. “Thank you. I won’t let you down.”
“No, you won’t,” Azazel said.
A shiver passed visibly through the other man, but Azazel ignored it, looking around the cafe surreptitiously again. Erik quickly went to raise his newspaper, but just then, the waitress walked up to his table, holding out a jug of water for a refill. He opened his mouth to shoo her away, but it was too late. Her bright yellow uniform had drawn Azazel’s eye instantly.
Erik didn’t even have to turn his head to know he’d been spotted and recognized. He saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and he felt the sudden movement of the hidden blades in Azazel’s jacket. He was on his feet in an instant, the small revolver flying into his outstretched left hand while he used his right to push the waitress down out of the line of fire.
Screaming erupted around them. The cafe’s patrons dropped to the ground and hid themselves under tables, but Erik hardly noticed them. Azazel had raised one of his curved blades as he rushed across the distance between them. Erik fired off a round, but it was too late; with an audible pop, Azazel was gone, the bullet curving and passing through the center of the smoke cloud he left.
Erik whirled around, heart hammering even as he schooled his expression into something more neutral. A split second later, Azazel had reappeared right in front of him, the sharp edge of the blade catching the sun as it slashed through the air straight at Erik’s head. He jerked right at the last moment, close enough to feel the rush of air the blade made as it swept past him, and flicked his fingers again. The first blade flew from Azazel’s grasp and imbedded itself in the flagstone patio before melting, spreading out into a puddle like a cracked egg.
Azazel let out a noise of frustration and aimed a kick at Erik’s midriff, which Erik dodged, knocking his water glass off the table to shatter on the ground next to the waitress’ broken pitcher. Glass crunched under his feet as he aimed a punch at Azazel’s midriff, ripping at the remaining blade with his power, trying to tug it free. Azazel’s grasp was strong, but Erik’s powers were stronger: he kept his grip on the sword as Erik dragged it through the air, but in doing so he lost his balance and went crashing into Erik.
The two of them fell to the ground, eliciting a shriek from the waitress who was cowering behind the potted plant next to them. Erik gasped, feeling grit and glass dig into the skin of his shoulder and the side of his cheek as he landed painfully. The fall was the surprise he needed, however. He tugged once more at the blade, landing a strong punch at Azazel’s solar plexus at the same time. Azazel groaned and dropped the sword’s handle. Instantly, it embedded itself in the floor beside its twin before it, too, melted.
Triumph sizzled under Erik’s skin for the first time since the whole ordeal began. He flung his good hand out, calling for the dampening handcuffs that always rested in his jacket beside his gun. Shaw was not going to win this time. He wasn’t. Azazel aimed a punch at Erik’s jaw, which he blocked and countered. The cuffs were in his hand.
And then Azazel was gone. The smell of sulfur hit Erik’s nose, sending him reeling. He turned over on his back and saw Azazel standing next to his contact back at the table. His grin was wide as he took in the look of shock and anger on Erik’s face, and Erik struggled to his feet, determined not to let them get away no matter how futile that might be.
“Do svidaniya,” Azazel shouted, over the screams from the crowd.
Desperately, Erik reached out again with his power for something, anything that would keep Azazel and his contact pinned under his control. But it was too late, and with a quiet pop, the two of them were gone.
Erik breathed hard, his chest feeling like it was caving in on itself. He blinked in disbelief, hand still outstretched and powers still straining as he stared at the spot Azazel and the man had just vacated. A thousand thoughts ran through his head -- how stupid he was to have come so unprepared, how Moira should have sent more than one agent, how he would have to go back to the office right away to have any hope of catching up with Shaw.
Then he felt something smack into his palm. Something small and rectangular. Hope and incredulity surged through him, and he brought the thing up to his face to see more clearly. It was the USB. Erik felt a grin spreading across his face. He stood up and, ignoring the onlookers, started to stride back to his hotel room. Perhaps the day hadn’t been a total disaster after all.
______________________________
Charles was trying very hard not to be disheartened as he finished up the last dregs of his tea and stepped out of the mess hall tent and onto the dig site. He had told himself all along that it was very unlikely they were going to find anything of great import during this excavation. He’d even told his students as much, though it hadn’t dampened their enthusiasm at all. The students, bless their hearts, had been busier than bees for the past two weeks, plotting out their trenches and marking them with caution tape, working scrupulously through each layer of topsoil with little trowels and brushes and all the other bits of their toolkit.
Charles was very proud of them, even though the most they’d found were some pieces of pottery and some nails. Still, he thought as he stood at the mouth of the mess tent, surveying the dig site and the five or six students digging and brushing away within it, it would have been nice not to have flown 4,000 miles with barely anything to show for it.
That was not the students’ fault, though. Charles should have known better than to organize a dig at a site that had already been excavated so often, especially when he was coming up for tenure and Dr. Weisman had been breathing down his neck about expanding their university’s gallery. It had been a silly call, but the lure of the Knights Templar was one Charles had a hard time turning away from. And the Holy Grail was the loudest siren song of all.
Not that Charles took all the stories seriously. He was a well-respected, up and coming historian, and you didn’t get as far in history as Charles had chasing fairy tales and legends. But the Knights Templar did have a history, obscure as it inevitably was, and the mystery surrounding them was almost dizzying to Charles. It electrified him. It kept him awake sometimes, though in a good way; thinking through all the obscure bits of information he’d uncovered from primary documents or other historical texts and trying to piece it all together to make some sort of cohesive thing.
Maybe it was because, as a telepath, there wasn’t a lot of mystery in his life to begin with. Charles made a point to stay out of people’s heads -- telepaths were never trusted to mind their own business and Charles hated giving anyone reason to carry on with that particular stupid suspicion -- but often, people thought quite loudly. Asking him not to hear them would be like asking him not to breathe the oxygen in the air, to sort it out from the other chemicals before inhaling. If any of his coworkers at the university were excited about a new find, for instance, he’d know it immediately the second they thought about it. That’s the way being a telepath went, as far as Charles was concerned. But it did mean that it was hard to surprise him, and that was what Charles liked most that about his line of work; all the people concerned with his interests were dead. He couldn’t pick up their thoughts and they couldn’t get mad at him for being who he was.
But Charles was not thinking about all this as he made his way lazily through the grad students diligently excavating their little grid-marked plots. He was currently worrying about the dark clouds rolling in over the distant hills, bringing with them the clean scent of a thunderstorm. Most of their dig had been spent in the rain, which probably helped account for the low turnout of artifacts. Students couldn’t excavate properly in the mud.
Today marked the start of their last week in Champagne, at the ruins of a castle that once belonged to the Vicomte Frederick de Forest, and a rumored hiding place of the Holy Grail. The site had been excavated six times before, but there was still a lot of ground to cover and a lot of artifacts to find. No one was kidding themselves that they’d find the Grail, of course, but still, it was exciting to think about.
As he idled his way around the site, Charles looked down into the plots to see who was still working. Most of the students he met -- Alex, Marie, Sean -- were all digging happily away and hardly noticed him as he passed. But when he came to the mouth of the next plot, Charles’ eyebrows shot up in surprise when he saw Janos, sitting in a corner of his site, sipping from a water bottle and flicking through his phone. Janos looked up as he caught Charles’ movement, but when Charles gave him a small wave, he simply nodded mutely and returned to his work.
Janos was a transfer student trying for his PhD. Charles was not very familiar with him, but he had come highly recommended from other professors in the department, and on top of that, he was a mutant. Charles had a soft spot for mutant students. It hadn’t been so long ago when people like himself had been persecuted just for walking down the street, and there were still some baseline humans that were militantly uncomfortable that unsuppressed mutants were free to live their lives out and proud. In order to counteract some of the stigma associated with them, Charles tried to give as many mutant students a leg up as he could. As a result everyone on this dig -- Kitty, Clarice, Armando, Marie, Sean, Jubilee, Alex, and Janos -- had the x gene. Many of them were his advisees as well, but Janos was not the only new face; there were only so many digs a year and all students in the PhD program needed to get practicum in order to graduate.
Since they were all mutants, the only thing that really set Janos apart from the others was his attitude. Charles understood that not everyone was a extravert like himself, but Janos was almost reclusive. Whenever Charles and the others had called it a day and headed back to the mess hall tent to eat and socialize before bedtime, Janos sat at the fringes of the group, barely speaking to anyone, sometimes skipping communal bonding time all together and taking his food back to his solitary tent.
On a few occasions, Charles had specifically tried to draw him into conversation, sitting close by and asking him about the details of his dig that day or what he thought about the courses he would be taking in the fall. Every time he was given a monosyllabic answer or a sentence or two at most. Janos hadn’t even made eye contact half the time. Normally, Charles would have made it his sovereign duty to befriend his troubled student in order to broaden their social and academic horizons, but the dig had gone so poorly and he had been so distracted by the questions and speculations of the others who immensely enjoyed trading “what-ifs” about Templar artifacts they might find, that Janos had somehow fallen by the wayside.
Well, Charles said to himself as he meandered along, his hands in his pockets, it’s too late to be his best friend now. Might as well spend your energy on making sure everyone else is having a good experience.
He stopped up short at the far end of their excavation site, his back to the others as he looked consideringly up at the sky. The clouds would be on them within an hour -- two if they were lucky. Maybe it would be best to stop the digging a little early so everyone could focus their efforts on waterproofing their trenches as best as they could. Charles was thinking regretfully of how he should have asked Professor Munroe to co-host the dig with him when he heard a sudden shout behind him.
“Professor! Professor!”
He spun around and saw Jubilee and Kitty waving their arms frantically at him from a trench in the middle of the site.
“Over here!” Kitty shouted. “I think we found something!”
Adrenaline sparked suddenly through him, and Charles had to fight to keep his expression open and unassuming as he strode quickly over to the two women. “What is it?” he asked when he reached the lip of their trench.
“We think its a box,” Kitty said, gesturing to two metal corners sticking up out of the earth, spaced about three feet apart. “I was working on one end and Jubilee was working on the other.”
“We didn’t realize it was the same thing until more of it got uncovered,” Jubilee said. “There’s a symbol here, Professor. I think its a Templar cross.”
Charles jumped down into the trench, which was only about three and a half feet deep. “You think?” he asked, moving to crouch down to the corner Jubilee had indicated, the two ladies following him. He could sense the inquiring minds of the others drawing closer as well.
“Well, I know its a Templar cross,” Jubilee said sheepishly. “I just can’t bring myself to believe it.”
Grabbing an abandoned brush nearby, Charles gently smoothed over the corner of the box. About four inches of metal had been uncovered, and sure enough, emerging just above the earth was the square edge of a Templar cross. The breath went out of Charles in a rush, and he suddenly found himself sitting in the dirt rather than crouching. He looked up at Jubilee and Kitty, his eyes wide and mouth open in wonder.
“Ladies,” he said, beginning to grin, “I believe you’ve uncovered a lost Templar artifact.”
Kitty and Jubilee looked at each other, excitement and disbelief radiating from them in equal measures, but then Jubilee grabbed Kitty’s hands and in an instant they were laughing and hugging and jumping up and down. Charles couldn’t help but laugh along with them, glancing around at the other students who were now standing at the edge of the pit, craning their necks for a glimpse of the box as they chattered feverishly and shouted their congratulations to Kitty and Jubilee.
“Excellent work, you two,” Charles said over the din. “But the job’s not finished. There’s a lot of work to be done and a storm that’s rolling in.” At Charles’ words, several of the students looked up at the sky glumly. “Clarice, Marie, Armando, could you pop into the supply tent and get some more tarps and poles? I’d like to make a tent around this whole area.”
Clarice nodded. “Sure thing,” she said, before throwing an arm out behind her to create a portal and taking Armando and Marie’s arms to guide them through it.
“Sean, isn’t your site the next one over?”
“Yeah,” Sean replied. “You want me to go get my stuff? Alex, could you help?”
“That would be wonderful, thank you,” Charles said, and Sean and Alex set off at once.
“What can I do?”
Charles turned to see Janos standing expectantly on the lip of the trench just to his left. “Oh,” Charles said, immediately fixing on a bright smile to hide his surprise. “How about you help Sean and Alex collect more tools from around the dig site? We’re going to need all hands on deck to get this thing uncovered.”
Nodding, Janos walked in the direction Sean and Alex had disappeared. A second later, Clarice, Marie, and Armando returned laden with tarps, poles, and several coils of rope.
“Come on, you two,” Charles said, clapping Jubilee and Kitty on the shoulder as he passed. “Let’s get the tent going and then the real fun can begin.”