
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/385257.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      X-Men:_First_Class_(2011)_-_Fandom
  Relationship:
      Alex_Summers/Scott_Summers
  Character:
      Alex_Summers, Scott_Summers, William_Stryker_(Movieverse), Charles
      Xavier, Hank_McCoy, Sean_Cassidy, Other(s), Havok, Cyclops
  Additional Tags:
      Sibling_Incest, Torture, Captivity
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-04-17 Updated: 2012-04-23 Chapters: 2/? Words: 2588
****** Welcome to Wherever You Are ******
by fuzzytale
Summary
     From a kink-meme prompt: here
      
     AU in which Origins takes place at the same time as First Class,
     featuring the Weapon X project, Stryker, and teen!Scott.
Notes
     I'll be improvising/taking epic liberties with anything to do with
     Wolverine Origins, b/c I'm just not going to watch that again.
     Title from the song by Bon Jovi
***** Chapter 1 *****
Alex wakes up to pain which, in and of itself, isn’t that unusual. But this
pain is. An unfamiliar sharp burn in his chest to go with the familiar pulsing
ache in his head that says ‘concussion’.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t even let his eyelids flicker as he tries to assess
both his condition and his surroundings. Hard surface under him, some kind of
low end cot, he thinks, and dim light burning into his brain even through his
closed eyelids. The sound of someone else breathing nearby, steady but shallow.
Footsteps somewhere in the distance, and a low murmur of voices. Subdued
sounding, and too far away for him to make out the words. A sharp metallic
noise that nearly startles him into motion, and echoes hollowly for three slow
breaths before it fades away. Not the mansion infirmary. It sounds more like
the concrete and steel of prison, and the thought makes him tense in a way that
spikes pain through his chest and shoulder. He doesn’t move, though. Doesn’t
gasp or sigh or do anything to give away that he’s awake now.
He doesn’t have a fucking clue where he is and, better still, he doesn’t
remember how the fuck he got here either. Doesn’t remember anything after
shushing Sean as he picked the lock on the warehouse door and then the three of
them crept into the darkness beyond. Darkness that was supposed to hide...what
had it been?
His thoughts are swimming in and out of focus, elusive as the fish one of his
foster mothers used to keep in a small pond in the back yard. They’d drift
there, suspended in the blue-green water, bright and enticing, until he moved
that half step too close and they darted into the dimness beneath the lily
pads. His head feels like the water looked then, murky and churning, with a
fine layer of scum floating on the surface.
He’s almost decided to dare cracking one eye open when something - someone -
shifts nearby, and a hand settles lightly on his side then works its way
carefully up to his chest. The side that doesn’t hurt like burning, thank fuck.
The breathing he’d noticed is closer now, he can feel soft exhalations brushing
his cheek as whoever it is hovers over him.
“You’re awake.” The voice is quiet, slightly hoarse as if with disuse, and it’s
a statement not a question. “I was starting to worry, you’ve been asleep so
long.”
Alex can’t quite assign an age to the voice, other than he’d guarantee it’s a
boy and not a man, and he turns his head almost infinitesimally towards it,
though he doesn’t open his eyes yet.
“It’s okay, the guards won’t be back until the morning,” the voice continues,
growing slightly less rusty. “I saved your share of dinner for you.” It sounds
both forlorn and hopeful, and Alex finally slits his eyes open. He catches
sight of a face hovering over him--young, dingy bandages wrapped over its eyes-
-before he squeezes them shut again with a quiet moan he can’t quite suppress.
“Are you okay?” The voice is sharp now, worried, and he reaches his own hand--
oh good, he can move, he’d been almost afraid to try--up to touch the hand on
his shoulder. It’s meant to be reassuring, because he’s not sure he can find
his voice just yet, and the boy seems to take it that way. He turns his hand
slightly and squeezes Alex’s fingers.
“Okay,” the voice--he says--accepting the gesture as the reassurance it was
meant to be.
Alex knew the light was going to hurt, and he takes a few slow, steady breaths
before he opens his eyes again. He squints against the glare, no matter how dim
the light is, and draws another shaky, pained breath, but this time his eyes
stay open.
The boy is ‘looking’ down at him, for some value of looking. One that doesn’t
require he actually be able to see past the bandages that Alex now confirms are
wrapped thickly over his eyes. Alex can see the concern etched on his face
despite the way his eyes are covered, though, and he licks his lips--oh god, so
fucking dry--and tries to decide if he can find his voice.
“Wh-” He starts, and has to stop and try again, as the boy cocks his head
inquiringly at him and waits. “Where am I?” he finally manages to ask.
There's a long silence and Alex has to struggle to keep his eyes open as he
waits for an answer. He's actually starting to think there won't be one and he
starts to move his hand - and how had he not noticed he was still basically
holding the kid's? - when the answer finally comes, along with a renewed grip
on his fingers.
"This...it's a lab. I'm not sure where, none of us are. But it's on an island,
we think." It's a whisper, almost as if the kid's ashamed to admit it, and Alex
squeezes his hand slightly, reassuring. The admission, at least, brings more
memories to light, drifting, lethargic and disjointed, from the jumble of his
thoughts. It was what they were looking for. Or something like it. Rumor of a
place where mutants were being rounded up and held, maybe experimented on. They
hadn't expected to find the facility, but they'd been told they could find
records, information that would lead them closer to their goal.
"...who?" he manages to rasp, voice coming out sandpaper rough, and he has to
close his eyes finally or he's going to puke, and he doesn't want to think
about how much that would hurt right now.
"Scott," is the immediate answer. It wasn't actually the question Alex had
meant to ask, but it's useful information just the same. "We're not supposed to
use names, but-" Alex can feel the shrug in the way the boy - Scott's - hand
moves.
"Scott," he repeats, then swallows hard against the dryness of his mouth. He
wants to lick his lips but he knows that will just make it worse. Feels like
there's nothing he can do right now that won't make something worse. The
burning ache in his chest, the throb in his head that's gone from dull to
pulsating in the last few minutes, the rasping pain in his throat-
Scott moving, carefully extricating his fingers from Alex's, jerks him - almost
literally and painfully - from his thoughts, and he curls his hand, suddenly
cold, against his own chest, fingers pressing gingerly along the lines of pain,
feeling the unfamiliar folds of what he realizes must be bandaging over broken
ribs and, he thinks, burned flesh. He's startled yet again when Scott's touch
returns, and this time he does jerk, the motion accompanied by a choked off cry
of pain and a ragged moan, which is immediately followed by Scott's almost
frantic apologies.
It takes a couple of minutes, longer than it should, for Alex to convince
himself that he's not actually going to puke or pass out from the pain, but he
finally manages to raise a hand and wave it vaguely in Scott's direction until
he gets the idea and quiets again.
"'S'fine," he manages to choke out, even if it isn't. No reason to freak the
kid out anymore than he already is, which would be sort of hilarious if he were
coherent enough to really process. Because he's locked in a cell, in a lab and
he's worried about not freaking out his cell-mate? He'll be up for plenty of
freaking out of his own once he has the energy for it.
He's focusing on breathing--in and out, slow and steady and not too deep,
because fuck do his ribs hurt--when Scott's hand settles delicately on his
wrist. "I brought water."
That gets his attention again and then some, and Alex opens his eyes without
really meaning to...and closes them immediately with another groan. Water
sounds fucking amazing, though, and when Scott slides his hand behind Alex's
head and urges him, gently and so very carefully, to lift it enough to drink he
ignores the renewed swirl of nausea and levers himself up fractionally. Scott's
fingers find his cheek and then his lips next, and Alex is slightly taken
aback, wonders what the fuck the kid is doing, until he remembers the bandaging
over his eyes and realizes Scott's just trying to find his mouth. The fingers
pull away, then, and a moment later are replaced by...not glass, but the smooth
metal neck of a canteen, he thinks, and he gulps greedily as it's tipped and
tepid, metallic tasting water spills out.
He has so many more questions he needs to ask, now that the dry ache in his
throat has eased somewhat. So much he needs to know. Unfortunately, his throat
may have eased but his head's gotten worse and everything seems to be fading
into a disjointed muddle, the sound of Scott saying something else registering
as nothing more than so much noise as darkness takes him again.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Summary
     Alex finds out at least part of what his captors want from him.
The second time Alex wakes up it’s to a searing, agonizing pain in his left
forearm, and he’s screaming before his eyes are even open, lurching futilely
against bonds strapped across his chest and waist as well as at each wrist and
ankle. He can’t make out anything past the glare of the light in his eyes,
bright and direct unlike the muted light in the cell with...Scott. For some
reason he clings to the boy’s name as the the stench of burning flesh
registers, and he realizes that the pain is something being burned into his
flesh.
He blinks rapidly, trying to focus past the brightness and the tears blurring
his vision, tries to turn his head to see who is doing this to him. Doesn’t
even realize that he’d still been screaming until he stops, heaves in a deep,
stuttering breath despite the renewed pain in his chest, and bites down hard on
his lower lip to keep from giving in to the broken whimpers trying to escape
from his throat.
When he finally manages to get his eyes to do something like focus there are
two men looming over him, backlit by a ceiling mounted light shining directly
down on him and faces concealed by surgical masks. One of them’s turning away,
putting something down with a clattering noise on a surface he can’t see, while
the other is...peeling away the bandaging on his chest that he’d only vaguely
registered before. It pulls at abused flesh, and he’s opening his mouth
to...protest? Demand answers? Maybe it’s only to scream again as the pain
mounts. He’s not actually sure.
“Good afternoon, X-19.” It’s not either of the men standing over him and his
mouth closes with an audible click of teeth as he tries--and fails, his head
and stomach rebelling at the effot--to turn his head enough to see whoever’s
speaking. “So nice of you to join us, I’ve been looking forward to the
opportunity to...chat with you.”
The voice is oily and grating, accompanied by the hollow ring of footsteps on a
concrete floor as it comes closer. Just as Alex catches sight of its owner in
his peripheral vision, though, his attention is very emphatically diverted, and
he jerks against his restraints again with a barked curse, looks down to see
blood welling up from the reddened, blistered skin on the left side of his
chest and the sight of it makes his stomach twist even more intensely than the
pain and he has to look away. And directly into a pair of flat, dark eyes
regarding him like something found hiding under a rock...or maybe on the bottom
of a shoe.
“It’s unfortunate, really, that you appear to be immune to the effects of your
own power-” The man reaches out and taps sharply on Alex’s sternum, just to the
side of the worst of the burns...and directly over where his power breaks free
of his body. “But not to its effects on your surroundings. Being pinned by a
super-heated metal beam burns you just as badly as it does a human being.” The
man’s voice is almost inflectionless, and yet it somehow manages to imply that
Alex is very far from being a human being. Is, in fact, something so far
beneath a human being as to be laughable.
“Fuck...you,” he manages to grind out, only then tasting the coppery tang of
blood from where he bit through his own lip. A sharp pain in his chest turns
his defiance into another choked off howl of pain, though, and as he blinks the
world back into focus he realizes that the sick fuck had dug his finger into
the worst of his burns. He’s looking at the bloody ooze on his fingers with
distaste when Alex manages to focus on his face again, and he reaches down to
wipe it off on Alex’s pant leg before looking back to his face.
“Language, X-19,” he chides sharply. “You’ll speak to your betters with
respect,” and Alex’s stomach does a slow roll. Even in prison he had a name, he
was a person, however reviled, but this man makes it more than obvious that
he’s nothing. Alex doesn’t even realize that the men in masks--doctors?--have
finished whatever they were doing until the other man makes a sharp motion with
one hand.
“Leave it,” he commands, and the way he says it Alex isn’t sure if the ‘it’
refers to the dressings they were just starting to reapply or to...him. “Now, I
have a few questions for you, X-19,” the man begins, and Alex shivers in fear
he doesn’t want to acknowledge as he realizes the man is pulling on a pair of
surgical gloves. “And I very strongly suggest that you answer them to my
satisfaction.”
“Fuck y-” He doesn’t even manage to finish before gloved fingers are being
pressed viciously into burned flesh, but he manages to clench his teeth tight
against the scream that wants to escape.
“Wrong answer,” he voice tells him, cold and utterly disinterested in his pain.
Some part of Alex’s mind thinks that it would be better, easier somehow, if the
man seemed to be taking any pleasure in what he’s doing to him, but if he’s not
completely indifferent to it then he’s doing an amazing job of pretending to
be.
“Where are Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr?” The question actually catches him
by surprise, more for the way the man’s strung the two names together like he
believes he’s asking a question with one answer, and Alex wonders if he--they?
He doesn’t even know how the fucker is, or who he’s working for--actually think
that Erik is still with them.
“Where are Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr?” the man repeats, when Alex has
apparently been silent too long. He blinks a couple of times, clearing his
vision, and looks directly into the man’s eyes.
“Fu-” He doesn’t manage not to scream this time, even though he’s expecting the
pain, and he suddenly can’t find the man’s face past the humiliating blur of
tears.
“Let’s try this again.” The voice is level, toneless. Relentless. “Where are
Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr?”
“Go to he-” This time the pain only lasts for a moment before everything falls
away into merciful darkness.
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