Chapter Text
“CHARLES!”
The shout blasts through the wall behind him with the force of a nuclear bomb. Well, maybe not quite—the wall is, after all, still standing—but the sound is still loud enough to make him cringe and type an inadvertent string of j’s into the middle of the story he’s currently editing. So perhaps it’s more like…a car alarm, or maybe an anachronistic teenager with a boom box held above his head and cranked up all the way. But instead of a creepy eighties movie, that teenager is in the office next door, and instead of Peter Gabriel, he’s playing the soundtrack to pure rage.
Sighing, Charles takes a sip of his tea and glances at his watch. It’s barely nine. He stifles a groan; it is way too early in the morning for yelling. He hates days that start with yelling. Days that start with yelling invariably continue with more yelling, which usually devolves into screaming matches, which occasionally devolve into fistfights. Days that start with yelling almost always end with Charles sitting, catatonic, in front of his television in a reality-TV-and-beer-induced stupor. Days that start with yelling are generally followed by mornings that involve headaches, empty bottles, and serious reconsiderations of his career choices.
Now, actually, would be a great time to seriously reconsider his choice of career, but instead he puts down his tea, saves his first attempt at untangling one of Hank’s unintelligible drafts, and gets up from his dilapidated swivel chair. The very least, he thinks absently as he heads for the door, that they could do is buy him a new bloody chair. This one’s never been quite the same ever since Logan and Scott’s grand wheelie chairs vs. stairs tournament (as far as Charles can tell, the winner was whiskey).
Outside his office, the newsroom is eerily silent; all heads turn in his direction when he emerges and begins the all-too-short journey to the office next door. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Alex (who is definitely supposed to be out covering the high school baseball game) shake his head and whistle under his breath. Promptly, Scott reaches over from his copy cave to smack his younger brother upside the head and mutter something along the lines of “can it, shitshow.” One of these days, Charles thinks, he’s going to have a little discussion with the elder Summers about the appropriateness of corporal punishment in the workplace, but for now, he’s got bigger problems. He’s just arrived at Erik’s door.
He pauses, takes a deep breath, his eyes sliding across the all-too-familiar plaque: Editor In Chief, Amistad Avenger. And he knows full well that that plaque has been there for decades, but sometimes he still feels like Erik put it there just to intimidate him. The worst part is that it works every bloody time.
But not, he thinks firmly, this time. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and tries to collect his thoughts.
-
Amistad is a tiny desert town with a population of two thousand, a name straight out of a John Steinbeck novel, and the highest per capita crime rate in the southwestern United States. It’s not too far from the border, which explains a good bit of the crime; there’s a chronically overrun and understaffed crossing not 20 miles away, so the town is crawling with coyotes and their drugs and their guns. There’s also the fact that the entire place is an arid wasteland, so there’s no agriculture and certainly no tourism. The railroads went bust in the fifties when the highway came through town, and the few remaining factories shut down pretty much the minute that the Chinese figured out how to make stuff. By the seventies, Amistad was a ghost town. Ironically enough, the drug wars in Mexico and ensuing border battles have sort of rejuvenated the town, expanding the previous zero options for Amistad residents to a grand total of two: commit crime, or fight it.
That is Amistad, and this is its newspaper. The Avenger, named decades ago by some failed gold-rush truth-crusader who tried to right the world’s wrongs through poorly spelled newsprint, has a full-time staff of nine, all of whom work in a cramped newsroom jammed into one floor of a rickety old building in the historic downtown. They are two blocks from city hall, around the corner from the courthouse, and across the street from the fire department (the latter has proved invaluable upon several occasions that Charles does his best not to remember).
The Amistad Avenger is, quite frankly, a relic. Charles is fully aware of the fact that a small-town, locally-published newspaper with a miniscule staff and an even smaller budget is a hopeless leftover from an era before iPhones, Blackberries, and asshole “news” bloggers on the internet, but…well, he thinks it’s quaint and adorable, in a pathetic sort of way. Besides, the satellite internet out here is so slow that it’s actually more efficient to wait for the Avenger to hit newsstands than to try and load CNN’s homepage.
And in a weird sort of way, it’s actually a damn good paper. It’s one of the only neutral things in this whole town; as Charles has to remind Erik at least seventeen times a week, their job is to tell the truth, not serve justice. Yeah, sure, it’s hard, especially when you have to write a nice, dispassionate story about the child rapist who just got let off on a legal technicality, but, well…that’s what this business is about, isn’t it? Because despite what its name might suggest, the Amistad Avenger isn’t out to avenge shit. It’s supposed to tell the truth.
-
Charles opens his eyes, feeling his heart recede slightly from where it was previously thundering in the back of his throat. He’s by no means calm, but this is about as ready as he’ll ever be—and besides, he can’t keep Erik waiting for too much longer. Briefly, he considers knocking, but decides that would most likely just aggravate the beast further. Instead, he takes a deep breath, pushes the door open, and pokes his head inside.
“Hi,” he says, erecting what he considers to be a particularly miraculous façade of cheeriness, “You do know that my office is right next to yours, right? And, you know, I don’t think that the drywall is all that thick, so you really don’t have to shout quite so loudly. And there is always the internet and that sort of thing, and since I’ve got a computer and a Blackberry I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that you can reach me that way too. Instead of, you know, yelling. Or maybe we could establish some sort of system of knocking, so that you could just sort of thump on the wall whenever you need me, and there could be, like, one thump for “come here I need to talk to you” and two thumps for “go out and deal with whatever it is, I’m busy” and three for “get in here right this instant, everything is on fire” and four for “phone the authorities, Logan’s been drinking,” though I suppose that those two are awfully similar-”
“Charles.” Erik cuts him off, looking none too amused (though that is, Charles supposes, his default expression, so he’s not planning his escape route just yet). “Stop babbling.”
“I’m doing that again, aren’t I?” Charles says just a bit too loudly. Well, so much for calm. You’d think after two years he’d have gotten over this whole terror thing. “You keep telling me not to do that, but, you see, it becomes a bit difficult when you’re, you know, sort of sitting there trying to reduce me to cinders with your eyes, seriously, what did I do this time, I haven’t even let any stray cats into the office this week, I thought you’d be proud-”
“What,” Erik interrupts again, raising his voice over Charles’ semi-hysterical blather as he points to his computer screen, “Is this? Would you care to explain it to me, since you seem so keen on talking this morning?”
“I, uh,” Charles mumbles, slipping all the way into Erik’s office and closing the door behind him because shit, it’s one of those days. “‘That’s your computer’ would be the wrong answer, wouldn’t it?”
“Well done, Charles,” Erik says coldly. In spite of what all his survival instincts are screaming, Charles takes a step towards Erik’s desk and tries to get a better look at the computer screen.
“Um,” he says, “That looks like Janos’s story about the shoot-out at the 7-11 last night. Isn’t it?”
“His story,” Erik repeats softly, dangerously, making all the hairs on the back of Charles’ neck stand on end, “Which you edited this morning, correct?”
“Correct,” Charles says, leaning in to look still closer. “Why, what’s wrong with it? Did I miss an egregious typo? I reworked the lead a bit, it was wordy as all hell, but other than that I didn’t really-”
“Look, Charles,” Erik orders, reaching around him to point to one particular line of text (and Charles would really just like to pretend that it’s a little chilly in here and that’s why he’s got goose bumps all over, thank you very much). “The police stated that the weapons involved came from an unknown source.”
"Ah,” Charles says very, very quietly. He knows all too well what this is about, but there’s a small, pathetic part of him that doesn’t want to confront the thing just yet. It’s that part of him that opens his mouth and says, “I don’t see what the problem is. That’s what the police said-”
“An unknown source, Charles?” Erik roars, and, okay, he definitely didn’t just leap to his feet and grab Charles by the shoulders and spin him around in order to yell at him more directly. “We know perfectly damn well what the source of those weapons was!”
“Erik, we-” Charles begins, but Erik, not one to break a good streak once he’s got it going, cuts him off yet again.
“You let that by you, Charles? You let that slide, knowing full well that you and Janos and everyone in this goddamn town know where those guns came from?”
“I am not about to get one of our interns killed, Erik,” Charles snaps, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin to glare straight back into those thunderous eyes because they’ve had this argument before and Erik knows all too well what his position is on the matter. “For god’s sake, the boy’s only nineteen, he doesn’t need the full force of the rage of-”
“It’ll be my fucking rage coming down on him if he doesn’t fix this goddamn story,” Erik growls, kicking his wheelie chair away from his desk and striding towards the door.
In a moment of temporary insanity (the kind of ‘temporary’ insanity that he’s suffered from for his whole life), Charles puts himself in the way. Instantly, he’s reminded of just how short he is, how tall Erik is, and how loudly Erik’s knuckles crack when his hands clench into fists.
“Leave him be, Erik,” Charles says firmly, doing his best to hold his ground and ignore the sensation of being a hamster blocking the path of a Rottweiler. “He’s only doing what he’s been told.”
“It’s lying, Charles,” Erik says, and there’s a kind of helpless desperation creeping around the edges of his voice that makes something inside Charles twist uncomfortably. “We can’t lie to our readers.”
“Erik,” Charles sighs, holding out his hands, placating, palms up, “Remember what happened last time.”
-
The problem, see, is their publisher.
More specifically: their publisher, who is also the largest arms dealer in the Southwest.
Needless to say, Tony Stark is not the sort of man you want to cross. The guy sells guns to drug cartels, angry rednecks, and grade-a hit men, builds new and horrific weapons in his spare time, and publishes a newspaper. He’s not just a criminal; he’s a fucking philanthropist.
Though actually, who you really don’t want to cross is Pepper Potts. She’s Stark’s secretary-slash-assistant-slash-accountant-slash-business manager-slash-bodyguard, handles all his publicity, and can put a bullet between a man’s eyes at fifty yards. Charles considers this an unbelievably dangerous combination and tries to avoid her at all costs, despite Tony’s repeated assurances that she’s really a very nice lady.
Because the thing is, Charles thinks Tony is a pretty nice guy. And by pretty nice, Charles means ‘complete and utter asshole, but somehow sort of likeable dear god how does that even work.’ Of course, Charles tends to think that most people are somehow sort of likeable, but that’s a whole other issue.
The issue here is that hardly a week goes by when they don’t have to wriggle their way out of mentioning Tony Stark’s name in a less-than-flattering story. Because, in case it’s not obvious, the man sells a whole lot of guns. And a whole lot of those guns end up being used in various situations that Charles calls ‘unfortunate’ and Logan calls ‘straight-up clusterfucks’—and which, of course, the Avenger is compelled to write about.
And that ‘last time’ that Charles has to remind Erik of every single time this issue comes up (generally at least once a week, which should give you a pretty good idea of just how many guns Tony sells)? Erik completely lost it and, without consulting anyone, changed ‘an unknown arms trafficker’ to ‘notorious arms dealer Tony Stark.’ Charles only caught it by chance three hours past deadline, long after they’d gone to press, and wow, was that not a pretty scene. Actually, it mostly involved Charles being very, very calm (read: passive aggressive), Erik being very, very not (read: just plain aggressive), and everyone else edging nervously towards the nearest exit until Charles gave up and went home in a huff to drink tea and fret.
What no one ever managed to figure out was how the masthead got changed. All anyone knew was that the small box of text on the back page of the paper that had formerly named the editor in chief and managing editor now proclaimed that Erik Lehnsherr was “Asshat Number 1” and Charles Xavier was “Asshat Number 2.” Charles wasn’t sure which was more offensive: the fact that sixty percent of the staff, including Scott fucking Summers, laughed until their stupid bloody faces turned blue, or the fact that Erik got to be number one and he had to be number two.
The laughter, however, quickly subsided when they all discovered that they couldn’t change it back. Because as hilarious as Erik the Asshat was in theory, the man stomping around the office smiling grimly and asking sweetly if anyone had managed to fix the ‘little issue’ was an utterly terrifying reality. Sean and Hank eventually locked themselves in the IT office with three laptops and a liter of Mountain Dew and didn’t come back out for several hours. When they did, they looked unsurprisingly haggard, rubbing their faces sheepishly and admitting that they had no fucking clue. And, okay, it is possible that Charles was not there to shield them from Erik’s unmitigated rage because he had by this point locked himself in a bathroom stall in order to breathe in peace, but he did eventually emerge, fend off the irate Erik, and suggest very, very calmly that perhaps everyone ought to go home now.
The next morning, it was gone. The masthead was completely back to normal; no mentions of asshats in sight. That day’s edition printed just as normal and everyone thanked Sean and Hank although they all knew it wasn’t their doing.
Because that, as Logan said, is just the kind of sadistic bastard that Tony Stark is. Charles often wishes that there were some sort of law against the sort of psychological torture that their publisher subjects them to, but he still manages to be grateful that things have not yet escalated to the physical level. Unfortunately, he worries that mere pranks will not be enough to satisfy Pepper Potts if they ever get on her bad side. Let’s just say that he’d rather not verify the rumor that she can crush a man’s skull between her thighs.
And yes, it definitely kills him a little inside to have to lie like this, and yes, it goes completely against every journalistic ethics lecture he sat through in grad school, and yes, the helpless rage flickering in Erik’s eyes makes him want to do something really dreadful to Tony Stark (though, if he’s being honest with himself, what it really makes him want to do is take Erik home, fix him a cup of cocoa, read him a bedtime story, and watch him sleep in a totally non-creepy way).
But the survival of his staff is more important than all of that (yes, even more than the cocoa and the bedtime story), and so he does what he has to. Unlike many people, Charles is good at that.
-
Erik, unfortunately, is not. If Charles had to write each of their mottos, his own would go something like “keep buggering on and try to smile and be polite to everyone and maybe sleep every once in a while.” And Erik’s…well, Erik doesn’t really have a motto, doesn’t need one in the same way that a pit bull with its jaws locked onto an ankle doesn’t need one. He doesn’t philosophize, doesn’t dogmatize, doesn’t chop his life up into neat little mottos. He just does.
Charles really thinks he should stop comparing Erik to irate canines, but sometimes he just can’t help it; the image is just too perfect. When Erik is angry, as he is now, his fists clench, his shoulders rise, and his mouth twitches in a barely-repressed snarl. Some small, sick corner of Charles’ mind starts imagining that dark, slicked-back hair standing on end like hackles on an angry dog, and then he has to cover his mouth to conceal the ill-timed laugh trying to fight its way out.
“What’s so fun-” Erik demands, but breaks off when Logan bursts into his office.
“Banner’s gone batshit again,” he announces, sounding far more gleeful that he should. “Some new shit he cooked up. Witness says he’s pulling trees up by the roots. Again.”
“Oh, my,” Charles says quietly. “And the trailer park had so few of those in the first place. That place is going to turn into Death Valley if he doesn’t quit it.”
“You know, I really wish Barnes would get that guy locked up for good one of these days,” Erik says grimly. “This shit is getting really old.”
“Ah, but he keeps things so interesting,” Charles chuckles, shrugging his cardigan off his shoulders and rolling up his shirtsleeves. “I’ll take a few interns down there, shall I?”
“Sure, send the kittens in to see the alligator,” Erik scoffs and sits back down at his desk, the Stark business mercifully forgotten for the moment. “Just try not to get any heads ripped off, will you? Our health insurance is expensive enough as it is.”
“I shall do my best,” Charles grins, heading for the open door. “No promises about the decapitation thing, though—occupational hazard and all that.”
“And take Azazel with you,” Erik calls after him in that voice he uses when he’s doing his very best not to be amused. “Everyone always likes the pictures of the trailer park getting fucked up beyond all recognition.”
“Will do,” Charles calls over his shoulder before stepping out into the newsroom. “Interns! I need you!”
With remarkable speed (Logan’s got them well trained at this point, and Charles just tries not to think about what, exactly, Logan’s training methods involve), the four interns assemble and line up in front of him, arms at their sides and backs ramrod straight.
“Ready, sir!” Armando barks with military sharpness, but Charles just sighs and waves the words away.
“Please, Armando, none of that. For god’s sake, this isn’t Fort Hood, I’m not sending you off to war—well, considering this town, you never really…look, never mind. Just…stop with the military stuff for now, please. I’ll have a word with Logan about that, don’t look so frightened.”
Exchanging dubious looks, the interns droop back into their normal slouches, and Charles has to stifle another sigh. At least Logan’s methods improved their abysmal posture…but now is not the time. He makes a mental note to talk to Logan when (or, a dark corner of his mind says, if) he returns from the trailer park.
“Now,” he says, clasping his hands, businesslike, “As you may know, there’s been a bit of an…incident down at the trailer park involving Doctor Banner. And we’re going to go down there to—yes, Alex?” He interrupts himself as the youngest, blondest, and most inordinately violent and insubordinate intern raises his hand.
“By ‘incident,’” Alex says, putting air quotes around the word, “Do you mean, ‘Doctor Banner’s gotten blasted out of his mind again and is fucking the shit out of everything’?”
“Language, Mr. Summers,” Charles says automatically. “But you do, essentially, have the right idea. Angel, please put your phone away, now is not the time for texting. Don’t give me that look, I can tell when you’ve got it in your jacket pocket and I want it off. Now, run and grab your notebooks, and I mean just your notebooks, no cell phones or iPods—oh, and Janos, could you go fetch Azazel, please? We’re going to need some pictures of this.”
He watches them disperse into the newsroom and can’t help but feel a faint pang of doubt about bringing them anywhere near a hopped-up Bruce Banner. Angel nearly walks into a door because she won’t take her eyes off her phone, Alex pauses in his search for his notebook to start a miniature fistfight with his brother, away from which Armando has to drag him, and Janos…well, Janos actually runs off to do what he’s told, which is sort of comforting but not quite enough to make up for the fact that Charles has hired a pack of incompetent children.
-
“Well, at least we’re not paying them,” Logan observed dryly the first day Charles brought the interns into the office.
The interns had been something of a…point of contention, to say the least, for the past few weeks. There had been several arguments, most of which involved such choice phrases as, “We need to educate more young people about our profession, Erik,” and, “Is this going to be like the goddamn cats again, Charles? I’m not having the goddamn cats again.” Eventually, by some miracle of persistence, endless pestering, puppy eyes, sulking, pleading, and cajoling, Charles triumphed. The next day, they printed a tiny advertisement reading: Interns wanted. Must be students, literate, and not too easily scarred.
They got four applicants, and Charles…well, Charles accepted all of them. He couldn’t help it; they all seemed so sweet and earnest and hard-working and not too fucked up in the head, and besides, free labor never hurt anyone, right? After all, they only had four reporters on staff, and that was when no one was hospitalized. Interns, as he promised Erik at least six zillion times, would make a wonderful addition to the paper.
Interns, as it turned out, were far more work than expected. There was, of course, the inevitable difficulty of having both Summers brothers in the same room, let alone the same building (day after day, Charles wonders how on earth their parents managed). After the first few snapped pens, shattered picture frames, and head injuries, Charles moved Alex’s cubicle to the opposite side of the newsroom from Scott’s. Briefly, he considered making each of them a break and bathroom schedule to ensure that they would never cross paths in the office, but instead settled for charging the rest of the staff with ensuring that the siblings stayed far, far away from each other. They don’t always do everything he tells them to, but that order, they followed.
And then there was Angel’s constant texting problem, which didn’t bother Charles too much until she nearly got Sean killed when they were out covering the St. Patrick’s Day parade (it’s a very long story involving some very drunk people and a very large leprechaun float, but suffice to say that it very nearly ended very, very badly). Erik, true to form, flew into a rage and threatened to fire her (can we really fire interns, Charles wondered, to which Erik replied I can fire the hell out of her if I damn well want to I run this goddamn newspaper). Fortunately, Erik was saved from having to fire the hell out of her by Emma Frost, who took the sulky intern under her wing and devoted her entirely to the arts section. Charles was deeply relieved, and so was Angel; after all, she could text all she wanted at concerts and gallery openings.
Mando and Janos, thankfully, proved to be far less problematic; Janos just sort of fell in with Azazel (which, Charles supposes, isn’t all that surprising considering Janos manages to go for days on end without saying a single word and Azazel is Russian and basically hates everyone), and poor sweet Armando started following Alex around trying to keep him from turning the office into a smoking crater. The results of his efforts were mixed at best, but Charles definitely noticed that fewer things got broken whenever Alex and Mando were together.
After the first week, Erik ambushed Charles in the break room and asked him, grinning dryly, how exactly he’d managed to the pick four most dysfunctional kids in town. After nearly choking on his tea, Charles cleared his throat, smiled, and said, “Well, how did you hire your entire staff?”
-
It’s a short, bumpy ride from the Avenger offices to the trailer park, but it feels considerably longer thanks to the four sulky interns crammed into Charles’ dilapidated Subaru. He hates to say it, but for once he’s actually grateful that Angel is glued to her phone; at least it’s keeping her completely silent, which is more than can be said for Alex. The younger Summers appears to have embarked upon some sort of quest to make Janos talk—or, at the rate things are going, punch him in the face.
“C’mon, buddy, c’mon,” Alex says loudly from the back seat, reaching forward to jostle Janos’ remarkably stiff shoulder. “I know you’ve got a voice box in there somewhere, c’mon, you’re not just, like, some kind of fuckin’ mute, are you? Because that’d be real shitty, I mean, a mute working at a newspaper—how the fuck would you interview anybody? Show ‘em fuckin’ flashcards?”
“Language, Alex, please,” Charles says, briefly taking his eyes off the road to shoot a sympathetic glance at Janos, who steadfastly ignores him.
“Sorry, boss,” Alex says, not meaning it, and jostles Janos again. “C’mon, man, what’s the matter, you mad or something? Or are you just, like, I dunno-”
It is right about then that Charles decides he’s had enough; without glancing away from the road, he turns on NPR just about as loud as it can go. Even Alex, it turns out, gives up on talking when he’s being entirely drowned out by All Things Considered, and so the rest of the ride passes in relative peace. Charles isn’t quite sure, but he thinks he sees a flicker of relief pass over Janos’ face.
It’s not long before they arrive at the trailer park—or what’s left of it, anyway. Charles pulls the car to an abrupt stop, and from the back seat he hears Alex whistle under his breath. For once, Charles is inclined to agree with him.
Logan wasn’t kidding; trees have been ripped up by the roots, the dry earth cracked and split open like mortar craters. What Logan failed to mention were the trailers that have been pushed over onto their sides, dismal flowerbeds and tricycles crushed underneath them like Dixie cups. It’s not hard to find the source of the destruction: a path of wrecked trailers and splintered trees leads straight to it.
Bruce Banner is not a particularly frightening man. True, he’s fairly large, but he’s also sort of shambling and ridiculous in an absent-minded, high school English teacher sort of way. There’s nothing inherently threatening about him—that is, aside from the fact that he’s throwing tree trunks in six different directions with his bare hands.
Because Bruce Banner is not an ordinary drug cooker. Ordinary drug cookers cook the stuff and sell it to dealers, plain and simple. Ordinary drug cookers do not mix up newer, crazier kinds of drugs and then test them on themselves.
But it’s exactly his bizarre methodology that makes Bruce Banner so hard to get rid of, because no one can actually convict the guy of dealing. As far as anyone can tell, all he does is get fucked up on his own drugs and break stuff. The breaking stuff, of course, is what’s problematic, but actually getting close enough to the guy to arrest him is even more problematic. Even Sheriff Thor isn’t crazy enough to try that shit, and he’s…well, he’s Sheriff Thor.
In fact, Sheriff Thor is currently ducking and weaving his way through the war zone formerly known as a trailer park, trying to get close enough to Banner to shout at him. Or whatever it is that Thor does; Charles isn’t always entirely clear, but it certainly never fails to make entertaining copy.
“Come along, children,” he calls, pulling the keys out of the ignition and pushing his door open. “Let’s go see some news.”
The interns trail after him as he picks his way across the dusty parking lot to where Deputy Barton is leaning against a squad car and looking remarkably unimpressed.
“Gonna have to advise you to keep a safe distance, Xavier,” the deputy says flatly, folding his arms and leveling an I-have-many-more-things-to-worry-about-right-now-than-your-skinny-ass look at Charles, who just smiles. He’s used to it by now.
“Good to see you too, Clint,” he says brightly, dodging around the squad car to try and get a better look at the imminent confrontation between the blitzed-out chemist and the sheriff.
“Back it up, buddy,” Clint orders, and Charles finds himself being dragged backwards by his shirt collar. “Don’t want you gettin’ hit by a flying tree trunk or something. Be tragic, that would.”
“Indeed,” Charles agrees vaguely, craning his neck and squinting into the brilliant morning sun. “Erm…correct me if I’m wrong, deputy, but it appears that Dr. Banner is attempting to engage the sheriff in a jousting match. With trees.”
“With—oh, for the love of god,” Clint groans, releasing Charles and shading his eyes to get a better look. “They’re not seriously—oh my fuck, Thor’s actually, did he just, oh my god they do not pay me enough for this shit, I’m not fucking Sancho Panza here, this is fucking ridiculous—”
He starts to run off towards the impromptu jousting match, but skids to a stop a few yards away and turns around to yell, “Don’t—don’t fucking go anywhere, okay, Xavier? The last thing I need is you getting your posh ass kicked around by Bruce fucking Banner, okay, just, just stay there, don’t meddle—aw, what the fuck am I saying, asking you not to meddle—alright, just, uh, try not to die, okay?”
“You can count on me, deputy.” Charles smiles, innocent as can be, hands clasped behind his back like an angelic schoolboy. Clint just snorts, rolls his eyes, and sprints off again. Even from this distance, Charles can hear him yelling something along the lines of, “Thor! Put the fucking tree—no, Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle, that is not—this is not how we settle things, do you not fucking—Thor, Jesus, no, what’re you—”
“I will not suffer this affront to my manhood!” Thor bellows, drowning out his enraged deputy. “You have reached the altitude of aerial children’s toys, scum! Be silent, or you shall not live to speak further insults regarding my mother! She is a good and honorable woman and gave birth to many strong and able sons!”
Before Clint can reach him, Thor has swung a tree trunk at Banner and sent him flying into the side of a trailer. The sheriff’s triumphant roar doesn’t quite overwhelm his deputy’s scream of outrage.
-
It’s sort of a funny story about Sheriff Thor. It begins six or seven years ago when, for some bizarre reason, a Norwegian family moved to Amistad. Being the industrious Nordic people that they were, they promptly took over the town; Odin Borrson became the world’s most terrifying one-eyed judge, his wife Frigga began running the Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, and their son Thor became sheriff. No one seems entirely sure of exactly how that happened; there have been plenty of whispers about Odin and the mysterious “accident” that offed the previous sheriff, but everyone’s too terrified of the old judge to say a word.
It’s not that Thor is a bad sheriff. He arrests more people in a year than the old sheriff managed in three, and over half of them turn out to actually be criminals. But Thor is…well, Thor is inordinately large, extremely blond, and has an extraordinarily bad temper and a tenuous grasp of English at best. As entertaining as his astonishingly convoluted medieval phrases are, it turns out that many people (ie, people who only speak Spanish) have difficulty understanding that “Submit to bondage, villain, and speak not for fear of echoes returning to condemn you” means “You’re under arrest, and anything you say may and will be used against you in court.” They’ve had more Miranda rights headaches than anyone cares to remember, but Charles doesn’t mind. It’s never hard to get good quotes out of Sheriff Thor.
And then there’s the fact that Sheriff Thor has been arrested more times than all the coyotes put together. That’s partially thanks to his predilection for boilermakers (beer, whiskey, and Norse really don’t mix well) but mostly thanks to his ever-charming deputy, Clint Barton.
Clint Barton has lived in Amistad for his entire life and is generally regarded as the biggest asshole in town, which is pretty impressive considering that the same town also contains Tony Stark and Erik Lehnsherr. Charles sort of likes Clint, though; anyone with the balls to arrest their own boss is pretty impressive in his book—though, he’s always had a weird thing for dangerous men.
Not that he has a thing for Clint Barton; that would just be weird, and besides, he’s not sure he could handle quite that much douchebaggery in his everyday life. He’s already got Erik, anyway. To, er, fulfill his douchebaggery quotient, that is. Not to…well, that’s probably enough on that particular subject.
-
Besides, at present he’s got more pressing matters to worry about. Namely, how to get close enough to the jousting match to snag some good quotes without actually getting any of the interns killed. Now is the time to make a run for it, since Clint has currently got his hands full attempting to persuade Thor that this is an opportune moment to arrest Dr. Banner, not to “complete his victory in the name of Mother Frigga.”
“Alright, children,” Charles says briskly, “Let’s—oh, there you are, Azazel, good. I was just about to suggest that we go take a closer look at this little altercation.”
Azazel, sliding out of the tiny imported shitbox that he calls a car (Charles has always wondered how the thing ended up in Azazel’s hands and not, say, a museum of Soviet relics), fixes him with the usual flat stare, one dark eyebrow raised slightly in an are-you-shitting-me-this-is-not-a-little-altercation-you-stupid-posh-bastard look, but as usual, he says nothing and nods tersely.
“Right, then,” Charles says, squaring his shoulders and flipping open his notebook. “Shall we?”
They begin to pick their way across the wreckage formerly known as the trailer park with Charles leading the way and doing his best to avoid the occasional smashed, smoking toaster or shredded tire swing. Just ahead, Bruce Banner is staggering to his feet, the splintered remnants of a tree trunk hanging loosely in one hand. Thor opens his mouth, and Charles raises his notebook to capture whatever brilliant bit of Thor-ness is about to ensue—that is, until Banner swings the tree trunk and sends the sheriff skidding backwards into the hole that must have once held its roots. Beside him, Charles hears the snick of a shutter and turns to Azazel, somewhat awestruck.
“Did you get that?” he asks hopefully.
“I got that,” Azazel nods, something that might just be a smile flickering across his face.
“Excellent,” Charles says, unable to contain the triumphant grin making its way across his face.
“Jeee-sus,” Alex says, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“Seriously,” Armando agrees. “Remind me never to get on his bad side.”
“An excellent policy, Armando,” Charles says, daring to take a few steps towards the hole out of which Thor is currently attempting to climb. “Sheriff!” Charles calls at the slowly emerging blond head, “Sheriff, I was wondering if you’d tell me exactly what charges Dr. Banner is being arrested on. Sheriff? Sheriff, are you-”
“Clint, I thought you told me that you would dispense with these irritating people of news,” Thor grumbles as he heaves himself up out of the smoking crater. “I need no charges to arrest the maker of narcotics; I operate under the authority of the Allfather, who shall righteously punish the wrongdoers of-”
“Thor, Jesus,” Clint cuts in, forcibly turning the hulking sheriff away from Charles' furiously scribbling pen. “Remember that whole conversation we had about, y’know, those things that we don’t tell reporters? Like, uh, well, “I need no charges to arrest the maker of narcotics” is a pretty fuckin’ good example of that, buddy. Because that’s basically telling the press that, y’know, you do what you want, which, okay, they basically know already but—Jesus, Xavier, you’re writing all this down, aren’t you, you fucker, I thought I told you to stay back!”
“So you did,” Charles grins, clambering up on top of an overturned trailer to peer down at Bruce Banner, who currently appears to be huddling under the cover of an upside-down pickup truck and twitching. “An admirable effort, Deputy, but rather ineffective, I’m afraid.”
“Should’ve known,” Clint sighs, putting a rather useless steadying hand on Thor’s enormous arm. “You alright there, Sheriff?”
“Bruce Banner will regret the day he saw the light of the sun,” Thor growls, brushing the dust off his shoulders.
“Brilliant!” Charles says, adding the quote to the ever-growing list in his notebook.
“Jesus Christ,” Clint groans.
Then, without warning, Thor leaps up onto Charles’ trailer, making the thin metal vibrate so violently that Charles goes staggering sideways like a drunk on a merry-go-round. As he tries to right himself, his foot slips over the edge, and with a faint yelp, he falls. The four-foot drop to the dusty ground is brief but nasty, and it takes him a moment to collect himself enough to mumble, “Well. That was rather unexpected, Sheriff.”
“There are matters of greater importance to me than you, Charles Xavier,” Thor says bluntly, dropping gracefully off the edge of the trailer and hitting the ground in an explosion of dust.
“I’m crushed, really,” Charles says, coughing as he pushes himself up onto his hands and knees. “For a moment there I really thought you liked me, but now I suppose I’ll just have to go cry for a little while and maybe eat some ice cream straight out of the-”
“Xavier,” Clint says, and there’s something in his voice that makes Charles look up to where he’s standing, squinting, on top of the trailer, “I’d suggest that you get the fuck out of there. Right now.”
When Charles looks away from Clint and towards Bruce Banner, he sees Thor advancing on the enraged doctor, gun in hand. And, okay, Clint Barton is an asshole, but he’s a correct asshole, because it looks like things are about to get really ugly and here is not the place that Charles should be.
“Right, ah,” Charles says, struggling to his feet, “I’m just going to, uh…oh, oh dear.”
Because he looks back over his shoulder and shit, shit, Banner’s unfocused gaze has locked onto the advancing sheriff and there’s a rather large branch in his hand and oh, oh god, oh shit, he’s about to throw it, isn’t he?
Before Charles can clamber over the trailer to safety, Banner throws it. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if Thor didn’t have such excellent reflexes and Charles did, because Thor ducks and Charles doesn’t and the branch sails right over Thor’s head and hits Charles’.
“Fuck,” Charles says, muffled, before he slides to the ground and everything goes black.