WAKING THE WITCH, PART ONE (MASTER POST LINK)
In the summer of 1951, Charles Xavier finds himself in that listless, liminal space between graduating one school and attending another, following his step-father’s motley band of biologists around the world to assist at various elite symposiums. He and his sister, Raven, spend much of their free time drifting in and out of the high-brow parties put on by sometimes dubious patrons of their father’s work, both unsure how their childhood appetite for adventure will be satisfied when they resettle in England.
All that changes when Charles decides to chat up a mysterious man on the sly, who seems out of place among the pack of post-war nouveaux riches that populate these gaudy soirées. While he strikes out, he attempts to read the surface of Erik’s mind with his mutant power, and finds he has more than just a noble bearing and refined speech: he’s also got a murderous grudge on their host.
Confronted with the violent imagery, Charles must decide if he wants to stop the murder that night, or let it lie -- and also if his powers are meant for more than just parlor tricks and twisting out of trouble.
A canon-divergent X-Men AU, based primarily on the X-Men: First Class timeline movies but with additions from the comics canon, “Waking the Witch” is a fan novel with a heavy focus on the relationship of trust and romance between Charles and Erik, as well as their interaction with the rest of their found family through the end of the first movie.
Forgive the slightly anachronistic clothing in the edit -- I could only seem to find things from the Depression Era that matched the older styles of the early 1950s. Luckily, men’s fashions and hair don’t change very much, and tight curls and furs aren’t too far away from the women’s fashions of the time.