he fumbles for the doorknob after he steps into the room, and the door clicks shut behind him softly. he backs up against the door, leaning his head against it while everything swims in his eyes, warmth curling down to his fingertips. the air around him smells crisp and clean, faintly like soap -- maybe erik had a shower, recently, and the steam had curled out from underneath the door and into the room, clinging. or maybe, he still smells like the bar, like alcohol and feminine perfume.
erik, as he always did, begged off and slunk back to their room. charles couldn’t quite understand his reluctance, whether it was about charles or about other people but charles was a social creature, and he always had been. he shrugged off his coat, fingers finding the outlines of the button on his collar and undoing some of those, too. he called out, voice torn between softness and clarity, “ erik, you awake? ”
he hoped not. there’s a certain guardedness he has to maintain around erik that he can’t do properly when he’s compromised -- after a drink, after lack of sleep. he toes his shoes off and pads across the room, squinting as though it’ll make it more apparent whether or not erik is asleep.
the demand of heimdall that thor be immediately dropped anywhere but midgard or asgard was politely respected; their own smooth landing, however, was not. is that a pool on the earth’s moon? on the moon. yes, there’s a pool, and this time the bifrost has dropped the god of thunder at a rather uncompromising position, from high above --- in shock the god is sent rocketing down onto the unsuspecting structure, hitting the glass skylight with a dull, resounding thud. an unpleasant squeak rings out. thor just lays there. just for a moment.
|| @mutantism / i originally posted this 6 months ago so suffer again.
The problem with crashing at Alice’s place, even when you have a standing invitation, is that then you’re there at night.
The bedroom is quiet except for her strained breathing. She doesn’t writhe; it’s nothing as exaggerated as that. She’s lying on her side, back slightly arched, one arm wrapped stiffly around her waist. Both fists clenched. At night, in armor or not, they still feel like claws.
<< ALICE AGAMAH//: >> scarab hisses in her head. << YOU ARE DREAMING. >>
worldbuilding series. » the triumvirate. ( 1 / ? )
+ character arcs in fc.
@mutantism & @homeopolitics !
( PLEASE DON’T REBLOG : for rp blog reference only. analyses under the cut. )
TRAGEDY: LOSS DUE TO HUBRIS.
mainly achieved through foreshadowing, charles’ arc starts with him fairly privileged and well-off / well-adjusted compared to erik; he’s rich, he’s educated, he’s white, able-bodied, his mutation invisible and passing as heterosexual. by the end of the movie, both raven and erik have left him -- pushed away either very deliberately ( in the case of erik ) or accidentally through callousness over a longer period of time ( in the case of raven ). he constantly, due to his privilege which seems to override any sensitivity he could gain from being a telepath, hurts and upsets the people around him by speaking carelessly, which culminates in cuba, where his plea to erik resembles the nuremburg defense to a holocaust survivor, is the spark for the following actions.
01. “a small slip-up is one thing; a big one does not bear thinking about.” / “they’re just following orders.”
02. “you’re my oldest friend.” raven: i’m your only friend. “thanks for that.” / “go with him. it’s what you want.”
03. “unfortunately, i do know you.” / “until recently, i never had to read your mind to know what you were thinking.”
04. “peaceful cohabitation, if it ever existed, was short-lived.” / erik: we want the same thing. “my friend, i’m sorry. we do not.”
05. raven: would you date me? “of course i would. any man would be lucky to have you; you’re stunning.” / “i thought you’d be in a good mood. hank tells me he’s found the answer to your ... cosmetic problem.”
06. erik: that fear will turn to hatred. “not if we stop a war. not if we can prevent shaw, not if we risk our lives doing so.” / “go ahead, charles. tell me i’m wrong.”
07. “i can’t! i’m sorry, i can’t shoot anybody point blank, let alone my friend.” erik: oh, come on! you know i can deflect it. & “as none of us mutated to endure extreme g-force or being riddled by bullets, i suggest we suit up.” / i am so sorry.
08. erik: honestly, charles, i don’t know how you survived. living in such hardship. raven: well, it was a hardship softened by me. / “go with him. it’s what you want.” & “i can’t feel my legs.”
FOCUS: NEWFOUND DIRECTION.
in the beginning of the movie, erik is focused entirely on one thing -- finding schmidt. there’s a detachment from the concept of ‘self’; the reduction of himself into his mutation, his anger and the drive for vengeance. in the audience’s introduction to him -- the scene with the bank teller -- he isn’t named, only recognized when he uses his powers. when his name is asked for, there’s a lack of self when he responds, a non-commitment to any identifier that isn’t revolving around his vengeance on shaw. erik is very much a lone wolf, operating on his own, with a single agenda. there’s a shift over time, though -- as he finds out there are others like him, as he lives with them and interacts with them, he can’t help but care. the emotion driving his vengeance -- his love for his mother, his ability to love, deeply -- shifts him onto a new path.
01. shaw: we have opened your gift with anger. anger and pain. / charles: there is so much more to you than you know. more than just pain and anger.
02. na//zi: who are you? “let’s just say, i’m frankenstein’s monster. and i’m looking for my creator.” / emma: erik, is it? “i prefer mag//neto.”
03. “i thought i was alone.” / “we’re brothers, you and i.”
04. “what do you know about me?” charles: everything. “then you know to stay out of my head.” / “you’ve known all along why i was here, but things have changed.”
05. charles: i tell you, we can start something incredible, erik. we can help them. “can we?” / “all of us together, protecting each other.”
06. “i don’t need your help.” / “i want you by my side. all of us together, protecting each other.”
07. “i need the situation, the anger.” / charles: i believe that true focus lies between rage and serenity.
08. “if you’re using half your concentration to look normal, then you’re only half paying attention to whatever else you’re doing.” / “the real enemy is out there! i feel their guns moving in the water, targeting us!”
TRANSFORMATION: DRASTIC SHIFT IN VALUES AND PERCEPTION.
she starts off, resentful that she has to hide herself, resentful that she looks so different and only wanting her appearance to be normalised. her self-esteem and self-perception is built off her feelings for charles, and his approval ( and normalisation ) of her person. his fear of discovery only makes her more resentful and ashamed of how she looks, only more keenly aware that she isn’t deemed normal or desirable by societal standards, and that her only option for companionship of any kind is charles. as she meets the first class, especially erik, this starts to change for her. not only does she begin to accept and normalise how she looks for herself but she starts to question both society and its’ values, for rejecting her based on her appearance, and charles, for being intolerant, eventually leading her to leave charles, completely.
01. “but if you’re a freak, you better hide.” / “should we have to hide?”
02. “mutant and proud -- or is that only for pretty mutations or invisible ones, like yours?” / “oh, and beast? mutant and proud.”
03. “you’re not ... scared of me?” / “but i guess pets are always cuter when they’re little.”
04. “would you date me?” & “well, it was a hardship softened by me.” / “you know, charles, i used to think it was gonna be you and me against the whole world.”
05. you want society to accept you but you can’t even accept yourself. / “we shouldn’t be trying to fit into society. society should aspire to be like us.”
06. “this serum doesn’t affect abilities, right? just appearance?” / “hank, don’t! you’re beautiful, hank. everything you are, you’re perfect.”
07. “beautiful on the inside, huh?” hank: and the outside. / “well, this isn’t really me though, is it, hank? i mean, you might as well be complimenting my shoes ... “
08. “you know i can’t control it sometimes, when i’m stressed or tired.” / charles: put some clothes on! “that’s not what you said when you first saw me.” & “this is who you were meant to be. this is you. no more hiding.”
[ stay ] : your muse telling mine to stay in the car (accepting from here)
Cars make her fidgety. Her stomach drops every time another vehicle gets too close, her brain immediately supplementing a future where they never stop and she dies with a head full of glass. She envisions roads that never end, driving ceaselessly through back streets and desolate cityscapes. The radio is broken, the driver is silent, she has nowhere else to run. As close as she to mature adulthood, Spirit always finds ways to remind herself of the helpless confinement of her childhood, all of the ways a human being can trap another.
If she looks closely at Erik, which she won’t, she’ll see scars and a back sore from how severely he carries himself, how tightly his knuckles wrap around the steering wheel. She’ll see a jaw locked like Harris’s or perhaps her own. Perhaps it would comfort her. More likely she would shudder at the memory of what wild and caged creatures do to each other.
When she asks to go home it’s because he’s asking too many questions, not like a therapist or a friend or his own father. He sounds like a soldier, a seasoned interrogator who knows what he’s looking for, unforgiving of her restrained answers. She knows what he is, what he’s done and will do to all the normal people she doesn’t particularly care for, either. She knows what he is and what she is but there is no security in the familiarity with her own identity. Why would there be? The radio is broken but his presence means she’s listening to some eerie, foreboding song. Maybe it’s what she sounds like. Maybe he carries something much, much heavier.
“Could you stop the car.”
And he doesn’t tell her to stay so much as he isolates it as the only option. The car lock clicks down on all doors, thudding in sync. The handle, when she grabs it, won’t budge. His hands don’t move from the wheel, his eyes from the road.
She considers breaking the window, head full of glass. She feels phantom hands on her bony wrists, the pit in her stomach, the memory of being locked in place. All of her panic is subdued, nauseating her instead of affecting her tone.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Can you go back to not caring. Can you just open the door.”
make sure apartment is in order, as much as it ever is — food in his fridge for whatever dinner he wants to make later, trunk locked in the closet, familiar objects where they ought to be so he can touch them out of habit on his way out.
get to the office late as fuck and brace for scolding.
coffee is a last resort, rarely to be trusted if anyone else brews it.
