I am the most offending soul alive.
who; Charles Xavier, open to any residents or guests of Mutanthaus. (If your character has been invited to chill out there in the past, feel free to assume they're here if you'd like? Alternately if anyone wants to just stop in to say hello, that's also cool.)
what; Charles is chilling out in his study, writin' all the things.
when; Today sometime.
where; Mutanthaus! Which is in RZ3.
warnings; Charles is being British. You've been warned. Also: talk of paralysis and era-appropriate reactions thereof, so there's some use of the word 'cripple', et al.
It's difficult to think of this place as being home, though he's gone out of his way to mimic that which is most familiar to him. Everything is rich brown leather (imitation leather, he supposes, he's hardly seen a tannery about) and all the musty old books he's been able to get his hands on. The number still remains depressingly low. Nearly all the books here are digital which he doesn't mind, but... there's something cathartic about holding a bound novel in your hands. The smell, the texture, the slight aberrations in the printing where the press was just the tiniest bit imperfect. Books.
He's a professor, or will be. Someday, books will be all he has. Less than twenty-four hours after returning home, if he can change nothing in that time. He will be paralyzed and he wonders that it didn't destroy him. It must not have, couldn't have, not with Logan knowing him as he does, or Kurt. He knows he must put on a brave face and weather that storm because there's so much more at stake than one man's dignity-
And it is an indignity. He's seen the veterans, after the war. Cripples, they were generally called. Young men, many of them still in their prime, missing limbs or soundness of mind. Does that make him a veteran of some war as well?
No. That would belittle everything those men fought for. A single day on a beach does not make one a survivor of Normandy. A single day on a beach barely qualifies one for anything at all, save the pity or contempt of his contemporaries.
Unthinking, he rubs a hand across his lower back, fingers (slightly calloused, now, he doesn't remember his fingertips ever catching on wool before--) digging against his spine. A stray piece of metal, Erik had called it.
Yet it seems an open, yawning gulf. Insurmountable.
That's defeatist, he tells himself wryly, settling the paper before him into order. And you know better, Charles Xavier.
Of course he does.
He knows that he's on a space station, millions of miles away from this awful, inescapable future. He knows that he's probably no sounder of mind than those he's tried to help. The silence here is deafening. There are some three billion minds on Earth in his time, and even though he can't reach more than a few hundred thousand at a time there is always that constant weight of them, the pressure, the pleasant humming static of their mundanity. There is always something.
Here, there are a few token minds. Some that shine brighter than others, though none are by any means dim. Here, he is shuttered off, closed out. He cannot reach beyond the zones, and every attempt to do so has left him with a migraine that pressed him into a show of gritted teeth and sweat-damp hair clinging to his forehead and temples.
And as the children leave, one by one, Charles sees in their absence something of his future. He will be a young man, paralyzed, and those children that he seeks to teach and guide will grow up and leave and he will be constant, never-changing, frozen - not quite physically - at that moment in Cuba.
He scrubs a hand over his face, across the back of his neck as he bows his head. Defeatist. Indeed.
Charles pushes aside his thoughts, macabre as they are, aside. Picks up a pen. And writes, in his best passable calligraphy, on the topmost sheet of paper;
Dear Erik,
He stares at that for a while, and then crosses out the name Erik and pencils in Magneto in the chickenscratch shorthand he customarily takes notes in.
Magneto suits him no better. To his understanding, Erik died on that beach and Magneto, the man, was reborn from the alchemy of his own ashes and Shaw's dead body. But he is not that man yet. Not quite.
He crumples that piece of paper, tosses it over his shoulder towards the approximate location of his wastebin, and tries again.
My dearest friend,
That's better.
Pleasant weather we're having, isn't it?
He taps the pen against the paper, against his lips. Leans back in his chair and swivels it in a slow circle that reminds him just how empty this room really is. And then, switching to his left hand (he's always been left-handed; it was one of the many things that the teachers of his boyhood tried to train him out of. 'There's a reason left is called 'sinister' in Latin', after all) he kneads the knuckles of his right against his temple and sets the nub of the pen back to the paper.
I realize words can hardly suffice to apologize for the wrong I've done you, my friend, but it's a peculiar hope of mine that they'll at least be seen in the spirit in which they are meant. There is a difficult path ahead of us, Erik, both of us, and one I believe I fear more deeply and desperately than I could ever accuse you of. It was that fear, I believe, that drove me to the accusation I threw at your feet and though trepidation is by no means an excuse, it is... a reason.
But what I said to you, in the guise of an imprecation... we wound others when we ourselves are wounded, Erik, and I confess that I am not above such pettiness. It's unfair of me, to judge you by acts not yet committed, but it is equally as difficult to hold the events that change the course of our lives as separate in my mind. But more than being simply unfair, it's cruel, and that is the one thing I swore I would never be--
This would be easier in person, you realize. I'm much more articulate when I don't have to stop, shake out a cramp in my hand, adjust the paper I'm writing on, check the time, ensure I've spelled a particular word properly. I could simply show you what I mean. If you'd permit it, at least.
It's difficult for me to respect your desire for secrecy, though I am trying my very best to do so. I am still a student of humanity, and I expect I will always be so. People may accuse me of ignorance all they wish, so long as they don't expect me to retain that ignorance indefinitely.
I've learned a great deal since I've come to this place. I've learned that in our future, we are enemies, and somehow still the best of friends. I've learned that in what I think must be the most complete betrayal of my life, you try to use my mind to eradicate humanity. Even though I haven't lived it yet, I find that the most difficult to forgive, though I am certain I am by no means innocent. I know you are your own man, Erik, but I cannot help but think that if I but do something differently... change some word, or phrase, if I lose a game of chess I might have otherwise won, if I had stood beside you against Shaw, shoulder-to-shoulder-
'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother, be he ne'er so vile,'
Or perhaps it is that things must play out how I know them to. Perhaps we must have a clash, a war of ideology. Perhaps we are meant to play our parts as foils in this grand theatre of existence. Perhaps it's all foreordained and we are but helpless pawns laid out-
But no. We could never be pawns, my friend. We are the kings of one possible future, black and white, opposite and equal.
Erik, Erik. I'm sorry. Forgive me.
Charles reads it over. Again. And again. Very deliberately, he crumples it up. Smoothes it out. And then carefully puts it in the top drawer of his desk. It is a relic of another age.
what; Charles is chilling out in his study, writin' all the things.
when; Today sometime.
where; Mutanthaus! Which is in RZ3.
warnings; Charles is being British. You've been warned. Also: talk of paralysis and era-appropriate reactions thereof, so there's some use of the word 'cripple', et al.
It's difficult to think of this place as being home, though he's gone out of his way to mimic that which is most familiar to him. Everything is rich brown leather (imitation leather, he supposes, he's hardly seen a tannery about) and all the musty old books he's been able to get his hands on. The number still remains depressingly low. Nearly all the books here are digital which he doesn't mind, but... there's something cathartic about holding a bound novel in your hands. The smell, the texture, the slight aberrations in the printing where the press was just the tiniest bit imperfect. Books.
He's a professor, or will be. Someday, books will be all he has. Less than twenty-four hours after returning home, if he can change nothing in that time. He will be paralyzed and he wonders that it didn't destroy him. It must not have, couldn't have, not with Logan knowing him as he does, or Kurt. He knows he must put on a brave face and weather that storm because there's so much more at stake than one man's dignity-
And it is an indignity. He's seen the veterans, after the war. Cripples, they were generally called. Young men, many of them still in their prime, missing limbs or soundness of mind. Does that make him a veteran of some war as well?
No. That would belittle everything those men fought for. A single day on a beach does not make one a survivor of Normandy. A single day on a beach barely qualifies one for anything at all, save the pity or contempt of his contemporaries.
Unthinking, he rubs a hand across his lower back, fingers (slightly calloused, now, he doesn't remember his fingertips ever catching on wool before--) digging against his spine. A stray piece of metal, Erik had called it.
Yet it seems an open, yawning gulf. Insurmountable.
That's defeatist, he tells himself wryly, settling the paper before him into order. And you know better, Charles Xavier.
Of course he does.
He knows that he's on a space station, millions of miles away from this awful, inescapable future. He knows that he's probably no sounder of mind than those he's tried to help. The silence here is deafening. There are some three billion minds on Earth in his time, and even though he can't reach more than a few hundred thousand at a time there is always that constant weight of them, the pressure, the pleasant humming static of their mundanity. There is always something.
Here, there are a few token minds. Some that shine brighter than others, though none are by any means dim. Here, he is shuttered off, closed out. He cannot reach beyond the zones, and every attempt to do so has left him with a migraine that pressed him into a show of gritted teeth and sweat-damp hair clinging to his forehead and temples.
And as the children leave, one by one, Charles sees in their absence something of his future. He will be a young man, paralyzed, and those children that he seeks to teach and guide will grow up and leave and he will be constant, never-changing, frozen - not quite physically - at that moment in Cuba.
He scrubs a hand over his face, across the back of his neck as he bows his head. Defeatist. Indeed.
Charles pushes aside his thoughts, macabre as they are, aside. Picks up a pen. And writes, in his best passable calligraphy, on the topmost sheet of paper;
Dear Erik,
He stares at that for a while, and then crosses out the name Erik and pencils in Magneto in the chickenscratch shorthand he customarily takes notes in.
Magneto suits him no better. To his understanding, Erik died on that beach and Magneto, the man, was reborn from the alchemy of his own ashes and Shaw's dead body. But he is not that man yet. Not quite.
He crumples that piece of paper, tosses it over his shoulder towards the approximate location of his wastebin, and tries again.
My dearest friend,
That's better.
Pleasant weather we're having, isn't it?
He taps the pen against the paper, against his lips. Leans back in his chair and swivels it in a slow circle that reminds him just how empty this room really is. And then, switching to his left hand (he's always been left-handed; it was one of the many things that the teachers of his boyhood tried to train him out of. 'There's a reason left is called 'sinister' in Latin', after all) he kneads the knuckles of his right against his temple and sets the nub of the pen back to the paper.
I realize words can hardly suffice to apologize for the wrong I've done you, my friend, but it's a peculiar hope of mine that they'll at least be seen in the spirit in which they are meant. There is a difficult path ahead of us, Erik, both of us, and one I believe I fear more deeply and desperately than I could ever accuse you of. It was that fear, I believe, that drove me to the accusation I threw at your feet and though trepidation is by no means an excuse, it is... a reason.
But what I said to you, in the guise of an imprecation... we wound others when we ourselves are wounded, Erik, and I confess that I am not above such pettiness. It's unfair of me, to judge you by acts not yet committed, but it is equally as difficult to hold the events that change the course of our lives as separate in my mind. But more than being simply unfair, it's cruel, and that is the one thing I swore I would never be--
This would be easier in person, you realize. I'm much more articulate when I don't have to stop, shake out a cramp in my hand, adjust the paper I'm writing on, check the time, ensure I've spelled a particular word properly. I could simply show you what I mean. If you'd permit it, at least.
It's difficult for me to respect your desire for secrecy, though I am trying my very best to do so. I am still a student of humanity, and I expect I will always be so. People may accuse me of ignorance all they wish, so long as they don't expect me to retain that ignorance indefinitely.
I've learned a great deal since I've come to this place. I've learned that in our future, we are enemies, and somehow still the best of friends. I've learned that in what I think must be the most complete betrayal of my life, you try to use my mind to eradicate humanity. Even though I haven't lived it yet, I find that the most difficult to forgive, though I am certain I am by no means innocent. I know you are your own man, Erik, but I cannot help but think that if I but do something differently... change some word, or phrase, if I lose a game of chess I might have otherwise won, if I had stood beside you against Shaw, shoulder-to-shoulder-
'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother, be he ne'er so vile,'
Or perhaps it is that things must play out how I know them to. Perhaps we must have a clash, a war of ideology. Perhaps we are meant to play our parts as foils in this grand theatre of existence. Perhaps it's all foreordained and we are but helpless pawns laid out-
But no. We could never be pawns, my friend. We are the kings of one possible future, black and white, opposite and equal.
Erik, Erik. I'm sorry. Forgive me.
Charles reads it over. Again. And again. Very deliberately, he crumples it up. Smoothes it out. And then carefully puts it in the top drawer of his desk. It is a relic of another age.