White Noise (4/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationtawabidsNovember 25 2011, 13:22:35 UTC
Sorry for the long, long, long wait on this! My last fill took longer than expected, and writing this one has been fun but really slow. And I cheated a bit on some of the ‘historical texts’ which are clearly just told in regular prose. Hope you don’t mind first person, OP. ---
>xavier is seated at table / hands free / telepathic blocker crown surgically implanted >lensherr enters with bodyguards >lensherr dismisses bodyguards >l: tell me what i’m thinking, mr xavier. >[silence for 1 second] >l: i can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must be for you without your abilities. >x: not so bad, mr president. you should try it. feel the insubstantial difference between us and humans. >l: i tried that once, as a child. it was a terrible time. >x: so you were born human after all. >l: yes, as we are all born human. as we are born unable to walk and shitting ourselves. >x: and do you kill people for shitting themselves? >l: you think this government kills people for not being mutants? we never have. if humans have died, they were criminals. or traitors. >x: is that what your courts will convict me of? treason? is that what my execution record will read? >l: they are your courts, too. or do you deny even that you are genoshan? >x: i am genoshan. i will die a true genoshan. >l: you will die as a dog. >[silence for 1 second] >x: don’t let’s do this. i know why you’re here. >l: oh? >x: you needed to see me. speak to me. to be sure i’m yours >[lensherr pushes rises quickly / gesticulates / metal table clatters] >l: you are a parasite to me, nothing more >x: you think i find this any easier? >l: how long have you known? >x: a very long time, my president. i saw you in the victory parade when i was only seventeen. you rode in the car beside the late commander. i knew then. i thought… i had such different wants then. i dreamed of standing beside you. >[lensherr breaths heavily] >x: i thought i was in love with you. biology is a tease. >l: i feel nothing for you. >x: you needn’t be afraid. the initial rush will pass, as it did for me. i am not in love with you. it was instincts and the ghost of evolution. now when i see you i see only the tyrant who butchered the dukes park protesters with his new einsatzgruppen- >[lensherr strikes xavier across the mouth] >l: we have only ever punished the guilty! >x: [silence 2 seconds / touching bloody lip] >x: then i deduce that i am guilty, mr president >[lensherr leaves room] >[prison guards enter / forcibly bind xavier / he is removed from room] > >select recording at this frame for action? >command: delete recording? >error: credentials rejected / user FROST cannot edit this recording >admin name: [AZAZEL] password: ********* >command: delete recording? >Y
God made alphas One-Two-Three God made 'megas Aye-Bee-Cee But you don't know what you will be Until you're grown up just like me
God made bonded Bee and Two They were married strong and true God made bonded Three and Aye They had children bright as day
But God forgot poor Cee and One Cee caught the plague so One had none There's 'megas out there he could take But he's alone for God's mistake
White Noise (5/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationtawabidsNovember 25 2011, 13:22:56 UTC
Excerpts from interviews with Deputy Lance "Avalanche" Petrakis, officer of the Civil Peace Unit from 1966 - 1973
"That year was a weird one, wasn’t it? But just before it started getting weird, everything was… glorious, I guess you’d call it. I was a rookie then, I didn’t have anyone left I gave two ticks about. I joined the corps because I loved my country and I wanted a chance to use my powers to break some human legs. I guess the second part’s why they stuck me in the Peace Unit.
"You gotta understand. In those days, it was just so obvious that things were wrong because of the humans. There’d been that bombing by the CIA, back in ’63. And of course it was just under a decade since the human extremists poisoned President Shaw - yeah I know the conspiracy theories about how it was his own cabinet, but that’s all bull, everyone knows it was humans. So the hate was still raw, even though most of us had been just kids or younger during the War of Secession. Humans, they were trouble man, you just knew it. And all the traitors who helped them, they were trouble too. Worse, because they were doing it against their own kind. So the lieutenants would point us in the right direction and we’d hunt, man, we’d get our hands on any human who so much as looked at us funny. And any damn mutant who shopped at human stores or gave way to humans on the sidewalk. And if we couldn’t get a hold of them, we’d get their omega or their kids or their cousins - didn’t matter. People had to learn. And these were criminals, or friends of criminals, or parents of criminals. We were just protecting our cities.
“The first time it started to get weird was when humans and collaborators who were on our lists started disappearing before we picked them up. I’m talking within an hour of the order being given - they’d be there one day, gone the next. Some we’d catch later, in another traitor’s nest, but a lot got away to other cities with new names and some I guess went over the border to the camps. That was our first indication that whatever resistance was brewing, it was getting organised. And it meant mutants were helping the criminals - fucking scum, man, how could they?
“One night we caught this family of humans as they were going out the back, and we chased them. There were two others in dark clothes who were helping them. They went in all directions, and we got turned around in someone’s back garden, and I ended up chasing one of these dark-clothed folks who was haring it out of there with the two teens. Anyway, I find my whole squads gone after the other group and it’s just me chasing these three, and I corner them at this wire school fence. The kids start climbing, but I’m Avalanche and I shake them down as easy as anything. And then - I remember this guy in black turning to look at me, but I could never remember his face - next thing I know, the rest of the squad turns up. And my prey is gone. Whole ten or twenties minutes of my life, just gone.
“I’m hopping mad and pretty embarrassed, but my captain, he gets real interested and wants all the details. When I tell him what little I know, he nods and gets on the radio as we head back. ‘It was target X,’ he says to the command centre, 'he was right here, he's definitely a mind wiper of some sort.' First time any of us had heard that, 'Target X'. Wouldn’t be the last, of course.
“We started having to wear blockers after that. There’s never enough to go round and they’re damn uncomfortable and look stupid as all hell. No one liked wearing them. But they said there were traitor telepaths who could control your mind, and that freaked us out. A few months later we get sent out on what we thought was a routine raid, late in the evening, but once we’ve got our blockers on the orders suddenly get switched out for sealed envelopes and everyone starts to feel this contagious tension. Something big is going on. And there’s two other squads, all with blockers, each with their own orders - they were covering various exit routes, as it turned out.
White Noise (6/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationtawabidsNovember 25 2011, 13:23:22 UTC
“We bust into this attic in a big old town house, in a rich-snob area where all the gardens have spiked fences around them. The house turned out to be owned by some mutant businessman, Worthington or something, boy I don’t even want to know what happened to him. They’d been moving the lessons around every week - school lessons for human kids, see. They weren’t supposed to be getting schooling beyond ten, or be able to do more than basic arithmetic or any history. But these idiots, they were teaching ‘em and training ‘em up to become a new generation of bombers and criminals. Idiots. Don’t they know humans are just trouble by nature?
“So we got him. The telepath, the X whose name even the heads of Peace Unit hadn’t known until a day or two before that raid. There were two other mutants with him, one who was caught inside the house and another trying to get some of the kids out the back. We brought them all in that night, though the other two traitors were separated and taken straight to the cells. I don’t know what happened to the human brats. But I remember that night real clearly, the celebrating and high-fiving as they pulled Xavier out of the van and into the command centre. They’d roughed him up a bit, and he didn’t look like much to start with, all floppy hair and a school-teacher vest. But man, that rush you get when you hear a fist hitting flesh, when you see the blood. When you know you’re blameless because the bastard’s a traitor, a sick-headed rat who’s been rotting everything Shaw tried to build.
“Everyone had to have their blockers on, of course, and I know a couple of guys got thrown out until they went and found a spare set to wear. But apart from that it was a damn party. The traitor’s just being pushed around a bit, since our orders were to deliver him mostly undamaged. Suddenly someone yells that the President’s coming and I can feel the faintest hum through the metal table under my hand. The whole place snaps to attention like someone’s yanked their dicks. And in he comes. Magneto.
“When he walks in, you always forget that he’s just another mutant like us, because when he’s in a room he might as well fill it like the brightest light. Everyone is looking at him, even the telepath traitor. And the President looks back at the traitor, and then - then he just walks out again. Everyone’s not really sure what just happened, but we can all hear the President talking real quiet out in the corridor. Azazel, who was in charge of the prisons then, had come and left with him. That’s who he was talking to, I guess. The next thing, there’s orders to get the prisoner set up somewhere and no more joking around. Get the men back in order. We’re all a bit confused, because we thought we’d done a damn good job, a damn dangerous job, and deserved a bit of a slap on the back. We all got a pay bonus, but not the medals we were hoping for.
"The next day the raid was all over the papers, but it wasn't the confetti and parade we'd hoped for. Turns out this rat was a high school teacher uptown. Real popular with the kids of a lot of powerful mutant families. Somehow word had got round that he'd been taken into custody, and the bullshit was already flying. The parents wouldn't believe he was a criminal, and those that did believe it were actually going out in public and debating whether humans deserved education or not. Apparently he wrote articles for the Genoshan Tribune, and he'd been making crazy anti-patriot claims for a long time. Everyone was talking about it. Like he didn't deserve a bullet in the back of the head. Like he was worth listening to.
"We should have executed him that week. But they say the president kept that traitor alive for almost a year. The execution was eventually on the news, because it'd been so long. Lots of people said he must have used his telepathy to control the president. There were even rumours he'd tricked Magneto into bonding with him, that there might have been children. I don't know what to make of that. It's no doubt human propaganda. Magneto would never lower himself to even touch a criminal like that.
White Noise (7/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationtawabidsNovember 25 2011, 13:24:22 UTC
Typed Confession leading to Conviction, Prisoner #719, dated 10-August-1967, PROPERTY OF CENTRAL PRISON ARCHIVES, DO NOT REMOVE
I confess to collaboration with human enemies of the state, to training enemies of the state, to treason and conspiring towards terrorism. I confess to inciting anarchy against the law and against social order. I confess to aiding and abetting criminal activities including battery, prevention of the arrest of criminals, arson and disorderly conduct. I confess to assault and battery of a Civil Peace Unit officer. I confess to using my mutant abilities unlawfully against other mutants, including mind control over Armando "Darwin" Munoz, Alex "Havoc" Summers, and Warren "Angel" Warrington (III).
I am aware that treason and mind control of other mutants constitutes a capital crime. I confess openly, of my own will. I rescind the right to a trial, the right to consult with a lawyer, and the right appeal against this sentence.
Signed,
Charles Francis Xavier
[Prison records show that Mr Muñoz, Mr Summers and Mr Warrington were released with misdemeanour charges and supervisory requirements shortly after this confession was submitted. However, Mr Muñoz and Mr Summers each have a considerable criminal record dating post this release.]
< Property of the Genoshan Presidential Archives > < CLASSIFIED - DO NOT COPY >
I do not think the administration will allow the following memoirs to be made public. I expect they will be destroyed as soon as I am dead, if indeed I do not destroy them myself before then. But I need to put the record straight in my own mind, at least. The memories I recount were formed more than two decades ago, but Emma has helped me to refresh them for the short periods of time I need to write it all down.
In the beginning I saw it as an attack. A threat on my one constant love, which was for mutantkind, for my nation. It took me a long time to learn that I could accommodate Charles and Genosha.
My cabinet had set a deadline for the presidential pardon. I was to make a decision by the 1st of September. This was 1967, the year we started cracking down on human education and resistance. The anger of a few antisocial mutants was not a surprise, but to me at least, it was still disappointing. Nevertheless, I was fully prepared to take whatever action was necessary to quell the illegal actions of fraternisers. It was vitally important that the public see my resolve in this matter as uncompromising. Stories of the deeds of Target X spread rapidly after his arrest, and I could ill-afford to give his followers any encouragement by leaving him alive, even isolated from the media.
But as the 31st of August approached, I could not give up the possibility of a presidential pardon. I told myself there was too great a risk that his execution would become a rallying point for opposition. He had been on death row for just over three months by this stage, and I had spoken to him only once. It was not enough for me.
That last night, I sent for Azazel, whom I knew was loyal to me, and had prisoner #719 transferred to my private quarters. I let him make up his own mind about that. Perhaps Emma had let slip the true nature of my dilemma to him, perhaps not. He did not question me.
The truth was I just needed to speak to him. I intended nothing more. I intended to dismiss the rumours of a presidential pardon the next morning. I intended for him to be hanged by sunset of the 1st.
So many good intentions.
He was on the embroidered sofa in the suite when I arrived back from a scheduled meeting with my generals. He looked well, considering the months in prison. There had been a need to keep him looking well, of course, given that it might be necessary to record the execution and leak it later if there was any question he was really dead. His hair, shaved for the implantation of the blocker crown into his skull, had grown long over the device so that nothing of it could be seen except a bulge beneath the exposed skin of his temples. The orange prisoner’s jumpsuit jarred against the muted red and grey décor of my rooms. The guards excused themselves as I strode in; Azazel had put him in metal cuffs, so I was in no danger.
White Noise (8/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationtawabidsNovember 25 2011, 13:24:52 UTC
“Have you eaten this evening?” I asked, taking off my gloves. It had been cold in the street, and I had walked from the government buildings. I liked to see the city at night.
“No, Mr President,” he answered. He didn’t move from where he had arranged himself comfortably on the sofa, one leg propped up beside him. His eyes did not leave me once as I went to the phone and ordered fruit, cold meats and tea to the rooms.
“So,” I settled myself on the couch opposite him, one legged crossed over the over. “I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here.”
“Not really,” he said, as if this was some progress report over a project we shared. Perhaps that was what he considered it to be. The project being the entire of Genosha, of course.
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I am a mind reader.”
“Not anymore.”
“Alright, I am a schoolteacher then,” he shrugged.
“No, you are a prisoner with a very short sentence,” I reclined my arms back behind the sofa. “But why are you here?”
My comment had silenced him for a moment, but he kept his composure. “I initially thought this would be nothing but the satiation of your loins before my execution,” he said, a little derisively. “But no - you’re too conservative, blood is too important to you. You would not want the slightest risk that I could go to the gallows pregnant.”
I inclined my head a little. “You think rather highly of my self-control.”
“I have had many years to study you, Mr President. If you were a debauchee, I would know about it by now.”
“If you say so,” I waved my hand. “So why? Why are you here?”
He glanced me up and down. “You have never been bonded before. You’re afraid it will never happen again.”
Not a single muscle in my body moved. My breath was caught in my throat. I managed to swallow at last, and speak clearly. “That is quite an assumption. If you know me so well, you would know I have taken many omegas-“
“You know that’s not what I said.”
I cleared my throat. Before I could form a response, there was the knock of the food I’d ordered arriving. I got up and took it myself so that the server didn’t see into the room. I placed it on the coffee table between us.
“Where would you be, if you could be anywhere tonight?” I asked. I saw his eyes flick to the plates in front of us and gestured at them, “Eat, please.”
He peeled himself away from the sofa and took a little cheese and bread, then gave in and ate ravenously. I suppose prison food is not much to write home about. When he had slowed down, I pressed, “Well?”
“With my sister,” he said, licking persimmon juice off his thumb.
“I didn’t know you had any family in Genosha.”
His gaze shot up to meet mine. After a moment he answered, “Not on record, no.”
“According to record, you abandoned your human family and joined the Mutant Free Army at fifteen, but your gifts were considered too undeveloped to have directly military application. You were placed into training for almost three years, but the War of Secession finished before you saw combat. You entered university a year later, were expelled four years after that, and dishonourably discharged from the reserve army after failing to attend regular training exercises. You were hired as a schoolteacher two years later, despite no formal education in teaching. Did you use that remarkable brain to push a few thoughts around?”
“I would never-“ he bit back the anger quickly. “No.”
I poured myself a cup of tea, stirred in the milk slowly. “So we both know more about each other than most couples entering a marriage,” I smiled and held up my cup to toast to that. When he didn’t answer, I sipped and asked, “And what would you be doing with your sister, if you were with her?”
He’d been staring at his hands, but now he looked at me again. “I was partway through telling her a story when I was arrested. I would finish telling her that story.”
He watched me. After a moment he asked. “Would you like to hear it?”
White Noise (9/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationtawabidsNovember 25 2011, 13:27:41 UTC
…
My name is Wanda Darcholm & red is my favourite color. I live wiht my anty Raven & my uncle Hank & my brohter Pietro. We hav to write waht our parents do at work but I don’nt have parents. My anty told me a good story yestaday about my uncle Charles. When Charles was in the army he woud do pranks on people & his freind Alex woud help. One day wen it was very snowy they were watching the fence between Genosher & Canader. they wanted to get home fast so they told ther boss they were doing a prank on some people at ther camp & ther boss thort it was funny so he let them go. But they were relly going home bcos it was cold. they took a shortkut becos they did not want any one to see them & then they saw ther was some of the Canader army in the forest. Charles hid from the Canader army but ther was nowher for Alex to hide but Charles was a tellypath so he made the army not see Alex. But then the army stopped!!! & Alex coudnt move becos the tellypathey woud not work good if he moved they were both STUCK wiht lots and lots of Canader humans everywhere!!
…
Charles paused. He seemed to be looking at the window behind my head. The clock tower above the town hall was striking midnight. I’d had no idea it was that late.
“Well?” I asked, leaning forward over my knees. “What happened? How did you get away?”
Charles sat in the corner of the sofa with his legs curled under him. “I’m very tired,” he said, in a voice like the slow lap of the turning tide. “If I don’t go back soon the block will be closed for the night, and I’ll be made to sleep on a cold floor in the holding cells.”
I scrubbed my chin with my hand. I almost said, ‘but you can sleep on this couch’, but no - too many people would see us the next day, too many questions would be asked. Besides, I was not quite in such throes of dilemma that I would go to bed with an enemy, however well-cuffed, in the room next door.
“Very well,” I said, standing up. “I’ll have you sent back at once.”
He looked back at me as Azazel led him away, and I felt the biological pull stronger than ever. He was waiting for me to say something - to tell him my decision about the presidential pardon. It was incredibly cruel to make him wait through the night without knowing.
Re: White Noise (9/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationblack_betty_26November 25 2011, 14:07:07 UTC
just--this--what!? This is so good, I'm incoherent. fuck. You've created this entire WORLD and with such ease, it's actually astonishing...I love that Charles and Erik are "bonded" as it adds such a complex layer to everything that's happening...and Charles' confession that he mind controlled Alex and Darwin and Warren so that they would go free... And Charles helping the humans, who, holy shit, are completely persecuted--GAH! so good!!!
Re: White Noise (9/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationtawabidsNovember 25 2011, 20:12:39 UTC
How do you do it? I have read your other fics on the meme, and it is astonishing the ease with which you write these complex characters, back plots, and freaking fictional worlds.
Like, seriously?
Really looking forward to more of this AU. Wondering if Wanda and Pietro are still Magneto's kids...if not, how do they fit into the story?
Re: White Noise (9/?) Warnings: references to the holocaust and terrorism, dehumanisationtawabidsNovember 25 2011, 21:23:24 UTC
Oh God I never thought I could find a dystopia fic so hot and engaging to read. The historical documents are chilling and very, very credible. You excell at worldbuilding. Off to read everything you ever wrote.
---
< recording: azazel/prison_security/cctv/northwing /interview_room_camera_2/1_aug_1967 >
>xavier is seated at table / hands free / telepathic blocker crown surgically implanted
>lensherr enters with bodyguards
>lensherr dismisses bodyguards
>l: tell me what i’m thinking, mr xavier.
>[silence for 1 second]
>l: i can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must be for you without your abilities.
>x: not so bad, mr president. you should try it. feel the insubstantial difference between us and humans.
>l: i tried that once, as a child. it was a terrible time.
>x: so you were born human after all.
>l: yes, as we are all born human. as we are born unable to walk and shitting ourselves.
>x: and do you kill people for shitting themselves?
>l: you think this government kills people for not being mutants? we never have. if humans have died, they were criminals. or traitors.
>x: is that what your courts will convict me of? treason? is that what my execution record will read?
>l: they are your courts, too. or do you deny even that you are genoshan?
>x: i am genoshan. i will die a true genoshan.
>l: you will die as a dog.
>[silence for 1 second]
>x: don’t let’s do this. i know why you’re here.
>l: oh?
>x: you needed to see me. speak to me. to be sure i’m yours
>[lensherr pushes rises quickly / gesticulates / metal table clatters]
>l: you are a parasite to me, nothing more
>x: you think i find this any easier?
>l: how long have you known?
>x: a very long time, my president. i saw you in the victory parade when i was only seventeen. you rode in the car beside the late commander. i knew then. i thought… i had such different wants then. i dreamed of standing beside you.
>[lensherr breaths heavily]
>x: i thought i was in love with you. biology is a tease.
>l: i feel nothing for you.
>x: you needn’t be afraid. the initial rush will pass, as it did for me. i am not in love with you. it was instincts and the ghost of evolution. now when i see you i see only the tyrant who butchered the dukes park protesters with his new einsatzgruppen-
>[lensherr strikes xavier across the mouth]
>l: we have only ever punished the guilty!
>x: [silence 2 seconds / touching bloody lip]
>x: then i deduce that i am guilty, mr president
>[lensherr leaves room]
>[prison guards enter / forcibly bind xavier / he is removed from room]
>
>select recording at this frame for action?
>command: delete recording?
>error: credentials rejected / user FROST cannot edit this recording
>admin name: [AZAZEL] password: *********
>command: delete recording?
>Y
God made alphas One-Two-Three
God made 'megas Aye-Bee-Cee
But you don't know what you will be
Until you're grown up just like me
God made bonded Bee and Two
They were married strong and true
God made bonded Three and Aye
They had children bright as day
But God forgot poor Cee and One
Cee caught the plague so One had none
There's 'megas out there he could take
But he's alone for God's mistake
- Children's clapping rhyme, originated circa. 1810
Reply
"That year was a weird one, wasn’t it? But just before it started getting weird, everything was… glorious, I guess you’d call it. I was a rookie then, I didn’t have anyone left I gave two ticks about. I joined the corps because I loved my country and I wanted a chance to use my powers to break some human legs. I guess the second part’s why they stuck me in the Peace Unit.
"You gotta understand. In those days, it was just so obvious that things were wrong because of the humans. There’d been that bombing by the CIA, back in ’63. And of course it was just under a decade since the human extremists poisoned President Shaw - yeah I know the conspiracy theories about how it was his own cabinet, but that’s all bull, everyone knows it was humans. So the hate was still raw, even though most of us had been just kids or younger during the War of Secession. Humans, they were trouble man, you just knew it. And all the traitors who helped them, they were trouble too. Worse, because they were doing it against their own kind. So the lieutenants would point us in the right direction and we’d hunt, man, we’d get our hands on any human who so much as looked at us funny. And any damn mutant who shopped at human stores or gave way to humans on the sidewalk. And if we couldn’t get a hold of them, we’d get their omega or their kids or their cousins - didn’t matter. People had to learn. And these were criminals, or friends of criminals, or parents of criminals. We were just protecting our cities.
“The first time it started to get weird was when humans and collaborators who were on our lists started disappearing before we picked them up. I’m talking within an hour of the order being given - they’d be there one day, gone the next. Some we’d catch later, in another traitor’s nest, but a lot got away to other cities with new names and some I guess went over the border to the camps. That was our first indication that whatever resistance was brewing, it was getting organised. And it meant mutants were helping the criminals - fucking scum, man, how could they?
“One night we caught this family of humans as they were going out the back, and we chased them. There were two others in dark clothes who were helping them. They went in all directions, and we got turned around in someone’s back garden, and I ended up chasing one of these dark-clothed folks who was haring it out of there with the two teens. Anyway, I find my whole squads gone after the other group and it’s just me chasing these three, and I corner them at this wire school fence. The kids start climbing, but I’m Avalanche and I shake them down as easy as anything. And then - I remember this guy in black turning to look at me, but I could never remember his face - next thing I know, the rest of the squad turns up. And my prey is gone. Whole ten or twenties minutes of my life, just gone.
“I’m hopping mad and pretty embarrassed, but my captain, he gets real interested and wants all the details. When I tell him what little I know, he nods and gets on the radio as we head back. ‘It was target X,’ he says to the command centre, 'he was right here, he's definitely a mind wiper of some sort.' First time any of us had heard that, 'Target X'. Wouldn’t be the last, of course.
“We started having to wear blockers after that. There’s never enough to go round and they’re damn uncomfortable and look stupid as all hell. No one liked wearing them. But they said there were traitor telepaths who could control your mind, and that freaked us out. A few months later we get sent out on what we thought was a routine raid, late in the evening, but once we’ve got our blockers on the orders suddenly get switched out for sealed envelopes and everyone starts to feel this contagious tension. Something big is going on. And there’s two other squads, all with blockers, each with their own orders - they were covering various exit routes, as it turned out.
Reply
“So we got him. The telepath, the X whose name even the heads of Peace Unit hadn’t known until a day or two before that raid. There were two other mutants with him, one who was caught inside the house and another trying to get some of the kids out the back. We brought them all in that night, though the other two traitors were separated and taken straight to the cells. I don’t know what happened to the human brats. But I remember that night real clearly, the celebrating and high-fiving as they pulled Xavier out of the van and into the command centre. They’d roughed him up a bit, and he didn’t look like much to start with, all floppy hair and a school-teacher vest. But man, that rush you get when you hear a fist hitting flesh, when you see the blood. When you know you’re blameless because the bastard’s a traitor, a sick-headed rat who’s been rotting everything Shaw tried to build.
“Everyone had to have their blockers on, of course, and I know a couple of guys got thrown out until they went and found a spare set to wear. But apart from that it was a damn party. The traitor’s just being pushed around a bit, since our orders were to deliver him mostly undamaged. Suddenly someone yells that the President’s coming and I can feel the faintest hum through the metal table under my hand. The whole place snaps to attention like someone’s yanked their dicks. And in he comes. Magneto.
“When he walks in, you always forget that he’s just another mutant like us, because when he’s in a room he might as well fill it like the brightest light. Everyone is looking at him, even the telepath traitor. And the President looks back at the traitor, and then - then he just walks out again. Everyone’s not really sure what just happened, but we can all hear the President talking real quiet out in the corridor. Azazel, who was in charge of the prisons then, had come and left with him. That’s who he was talking to, I guess. The next thing, there’s orders to get the prisoner set up somewhere and no more joking around. Get the men back in order. We’re all a bit confused, because we thought we’d done a damn good job, a damn dangerous job, and deserved a bit of a slap on the back. We all got a pay bonus, but not the medals we were hoping for.
"The next day the raid was all over the papers, but it wasn't the confetti and parade we'd hoped for. Turns out this rat was a high school teacher uptown. Real popular with the kids of a lot of powerful mutant families. Somehow word had got round that he'd been taken into custody, and the bullshit was already flying. The parents wouldn't believe he was a criminal, and those that did believe it were actually going out in public and debating whether humans deserved education or not. Apparently he wrote articles for the Genoshan Tribune, and he'd been making crazy anti-patriot claims for a long time. Everyone was talking about it. Like he didn't deserve a bullet in the back of the head. Like he was worth listening to.
"We should have executed him that week. But they say the president kept that traitor alive for almost a year. The execution was eventually on the news, because it'd been so long. Lots of people said he must have used his telepathy to control the president. There were even rumours he'd tricked Magneto into bonding with him, that there might have been children. I don't know what to make of that. It's no doubt human propaganda. Magneto would never lower himself to even touch a criminal like that.
"I don't know. That's just what I heard."
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I confess to collaboration with human enemies of the state, to training enemies of the state, to treason and conspiring towards terrorism. I confess to inciting anarchy against the law and against social order. I confess to aiding and abetting criminal activities including battery, prevention of the arrest of criminals, arson and disorderly conduct. I confess to assault and battery of a Civil Peace Unit officer. I confess to using my mutant abilities unlawfully against other mutants, including mind control over Armando "Darwin" Munoz, Alex "Havoc" Summers, and Warren "Angel" Warrington (III).
I am aware that treason and mind control of other mutants constitutes a capital crime. I confess openly, of my own will. I rescind the right to a trial, the right to consult with a lawyer, and the right appeal against this sentence.
Signed,
Charles Francis Xavier
[Prison records show that Mr Muñoz, Mr Summers and Mr Warrington were released with misdemeanour charges and supervisory requirements shortly after this confession was submitted. However, Mr Muñoz and Mr Summers each have a considerable criminal record dating post this release.]
< Property of the Genoshan Presidential Archives >
< CLASSIFIED - DO NOT COPY >
I do not think the administration will allow the following memoirs to be made public. I expect they will be destroyed as soon as I am dead, if indeed I do not destroy them myself before then. But I need to put the record straight in my own mind, at least. The memories I recount were formed more than two decades ago, but Emma has helped me to refresh them for the short periods of time I need to write it all down.
In the beginning I saw it as an attack. A threat on my one constant love, which was for mutantkind, for my nation. It took me a long time to learn that I could accommodate Charles and Genosha.
My cabinet had set a deadline for the presidential pardon. I was to make a decision by the 1st of September. This was 1967, the year we started cracking down on human education and resistance. The anger of a few antisocial mutants was not a surprise, but to me at least, it was still disappointing. Nevertheless, I was fully prepared to take whatever action was necessary to quell the illegal actions of fraternisers. It was vitally important that the public see my resolve in this matter as uncompromising. Stories of the deeds of Target X spread rapidly after his arrest, and I could ill-afford to give his followers any encouragement by leaving him alive, even isolated from the media.
But as the 31st of August approached, I could not give up the possibility of a presidential pardon. I told myself there was too great a risk that his execution would become a rallying point for opposition. He had been on death row for just over three months by this stage, and I had spoken to him only once. It was not enough for me.
That last night, I sent for Azazel, whom I knew was loyal to me, and had prisoner #719 transferred to my private quarters. I let him make up his own mind about that. Perhaps Emma had let slip the true nature of my dilemma to him, perhaps not. He did not question me.
The truth was I just needed to speak to him. I intended nothing more. I intended to dismiss the rumours of a presidential pardon the next morning. I intended for him to be hanged by sunset of the 1st.
So many good intentions.
He was on the embroidered sofa in the suite when I arrived back from a scheduled meeting with my generals. He looked well, considering the months in prison. There had been a need to keep him looking well, of course, given that it might be necessary to record the execution and leak it later if there was any question he was really dead. His hair, shaved for the implantation of the blocker crown into his skull, had grown long over the device so that nothing of it could be seen except a bulge beneath the exposed skin of his temples. The orange prisoner’s jumpsuit jarred against the muted red and grey décor of my rooms. The guards excused themselves as I strode in; Azazel had put him in metal cuffs, so I was in no danger.
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“No, Mr President,” he answered. He didn’t move from where he had arranged himself comfortably on the sofa, one leg propped up beside him. His eyes did not leave me once as I went to the phone and ordered fruit, cold meats and tea to the rooms.
“So,” I settled myself on the couch opposite him, one legged crossed over the over. “I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here.”
“Not really,” he said, as if this was some progress report over a project we shared. Perhaps that was what he considered it to be. The project being the entire of Genosha, of course.
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I am a mind reader.”
“Not anymore.”
“Alright, I am a schoolteacher then,” he shrugged.
“No, you are a prisoner with a very short sentence,” I reclined my arms back behind the sofa. “But why are you here?”
My comment had silenced him for a moment, but he kept his composure. “I initially thought this would be nothing but the satiation of your loins before my execution,” he said, a little derisively. “But no - you’re too conservative, blood is too important to you. You would not want the slightest risk that I could go to the gallows pregnant.”
I inclined my head a little. “You think rather highly of my self-control.”
“I have had many years to study you, Mr President. If you were a debauchee, I would know about it by now.”
“If you say so,” I waved my hand. “So why? Why are you here?”
He glanced me up and down. “You have never been bonded before. You’re afraid it will never happen again.”
Not a single muscle in my body moved. My breath was caught in my throat. I managed to swallow at last, and speak clearly. “That is quite an assumption. If you know me so well, you would know I have taken many omegas-“
“You know that’s not what I said.”
I cleared my throat. Before I could form a response, there was the knock of the food I’d ordered arriving. I got up and took it myself so that the server didn’t see into the room. I placed it on the coffee table between us.
“Where would you be, if you could be anywhere tonight?” I asked. I saw his eyes flick to the plates in front of us and gestured at them, “Eat, please.”
He peeled himself away from the sofa and took a little cheese and bread, then gave in and ate ravenously. I suppose prison food is not much to write home about. When he had slowed down, I pressed, “Well?”
“With my sister,” he said, licking persimmon juice off his thumb.
“I didn’t know you had any family in Genosha.”
His gaze shot up to meet mine. After a moment he answered, “Not on record, no.”
“According to record, you abandoned your human family and joined the Mutant Free Army at fifteen, but your gifts were considered too undeveloped to have directly military application. You were placed into training for almost three years, but the War of Secession finished before you saw combat. You entered university a year later, were expelled four years after that, and dishonourably discharged from the reserve army after failing to attend regular training exercises. You were hired as a schoolteacher two years later, despite no formal education in teaching. Did you use that remarkable brain to push a few thoughts around?”
“I would never-“ he bit back the anger quickly. “No.”
I poured myself a cup of tea, stirred in the milk slowly. “So we both know more about each other than most couples entering a marriage,” I smiled and held up my cup to toast to that. When he didn’t answer, I sipped and asked, “And what would you be doing with your sister, if you were with her?”
He’d been staring at his hands, but now he looked at me again. “I was partway through telling her a story when I was arrested. I would finish telling her that story.”
He watched me. After a moment he asked. “Would you like to hear it?”
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My name is Wanda Darcholm & red is my favourite color.
I live wiht my anty Raven & my uncle Hank & my brohter Pietro. We hav to write waht our parents do at work but I don’nt have parents.
My anty told me a good story yestaday about my uncle Charles.
When Charles was in the army he woud do pranks on people & his freind Alex woud help. One day wen it was very snowy they were watching the fence between Genosher & Canader. they wanted to get home fast so they told ther boss they were doing a prank on some people at ther camp & ther boss thort it was funny so he let them go. But they were relly going home bcos it was cold. they took a shortkut becos they did not want any one to see them & then they saw ther was some of the Canader army in the forest. Charles hid from the Canader army but ther was nowher for Alex to hide but Charles was a tellypath so he made the army not see Alex. But then the army stopped!!! & Alex coudnt move becos the tellypathey woud not work good if he moved they were both STUCK wiht lots and lots of Canader humans everywhere!!
…
Charles paused. He seemed to be looking at the window behind my head. The clock tower above the town hall was striking midnight. I’d had no idea it was that late.
“Well?” I asked, leaning forward over my knees. “What happened? How did you get away?”
Charles sat in the corner of the sofa with his legs curled under him. “I’m very tired,” he said, in a voice like the slow lap of the turning tide. “If I don’t go back soon the block will be closed for the night, and I’ll be made to sleep on a cold floor in the holding cells.”
I scrubbed my chin with my hand. I almost said, ‘but you can sleep on this couch’, but no - too many people would see us the next day, too many questions would be asked. Besides, I was not quite in such throes of dilemma that I would go to bed with an enemy, however well-cuffed, in the room next door.
“Very well,” I said, standing up. “I’ll have you sent back at once.”
He looked back at me as Azazel led him away, and I felt the biological pull stronger than ever. He was waiting for me to say something - to tell him my decision about the presidential pardon. It was incredibly cruel to make him wait through the night without knowing.
But the truth was I had no answer yet.
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Like, seriously?
Really looking forward to more of this AU. Wondering if Wanda and Pietro are still Magneto's kids...if not, how do they fit into the story?
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