Big hugs, plus - FIC: "The Winter of Banked Fires" (XMFC/XMM, NC17, Charles/Erik, Wolverine/Rogue)
First of all, I am totally overwhelmed by all the responses to my last post. Thank you all SO MUCH for the kind wishes; it helped a lot during those first couple shaky days. Now, though, I feel much steadier, have obtained a new phone, and actually IDed the guy in a photo lineup today. He is known to the constabulary. After a very rainy Tropical Storm Lee, the weather in New Orleans is shockingly beautiful and clement. I am in fine spirits.
And! I come bearing fic! Rather, I come bearing chapters 1-5 of 37; the rest will all unfurl over the next two weeks. Still editing the end, but this is not truly a WIP. Thanks muchly to my betas, rheanna27, counteragent and Marvel expert claudiuslives.
Is this an XMFC or XMM story? you may ask. Well, the "prequel" film contradicts the X-trilogy to a great extent, so I synthesized the canons using the following highly objective criteria, i.e., I took what I liked from each and ignored what I didn't. Which is what the filmmakers do, so it's all okay! But there's a lot of XMFC, a lot of X-trilogy, and my own efforts and fixing what in X3 can be fixed (and ignoring what can't!) It's set after X3, during XMFC, and everytime in between.
1.
Erik hates getting lost.
He never had been before last month, never once in his life. The difference between Earth’s magnetic north and south poles had always been as obvious to him as the difference between up and down. He was an adult before he understood how it was even possible for other people not to be able to find their way. (Before that, he’d thought pretending not to know where you were was some odd social affectation.)
Now he gets lost constantly.
He’s taken up residence in Boston, a city large enough to hide one aging man whose face was well known on the news - but only when he wore a helmet now cast aside as useless. However, Boston has winding side streets, no grid to speak of. Erik finds himself wandering from block to block, confused, back-tracking. He’s learning human tricks - memorizing directions, finding landmarks - but slowly. Today he’s sitting in a park at a chessboard as if inviting a game; really, Erik hopes to be left alone long enough to figure out his way back to the cheap “men’s hotel” where he currently rents a room by the week.
(Erik owns fortunes - in banks around the world he can no longer reach, in strongholds without keys he can no longer melt open.)
Originally he hated the Wolverine and Beast for his condition, but that hatred has dimmed. He first attempted to use the Cure against them, after all; he understands the need to strike back with equal force. Erik has been forced to live as the thing he feared most - as a human - and even in his darkest temper, he can appreciate the irony of it.
Charles would have had much to say on the subject.
“Hey, man.” It’s Juan Pablo, a skinny kid who often comes to hustle the newcomers at chess. He tried to hustle Erik once. Erik made ten dollars that day, an amount of money he can no longer scoff at. To Juan Pablo’s credit, he not only took it well but also has had the good sense to ask Erik for pointers. “You gonna show me the opening gambit you were talking about?”
“The variation on the Budapest,” Erik reminds him. “Not today, I think. But soon.”
Juan Pablo shrugs, takes a slurp from his McDonald’s cup. “That friend of yours coming to play sometime? The one who taught you that Owen’s Defense?”
He should just say it. My friend died. He won’t be playing any more chess matches. But Erik gave in to a terrible temptation the first time he spoke to Juan Pablo about Charles Xavier; he pretended Charles was still alive.
“How about this,” Erik says. “Next time we meet here, I’ll show you the variation on the Budapest and another of Charles’ best tricks. That one’s a surprise.”
“Cool.” With a wave, Juan Pablo lopes off.
It would not be precise to say that Erik likes Juan Pablo - Erik will never be that open, and Juan Pablo’s habit of speaking with his mouth full is off-putting. But he does not hate the boy. Erik recognizes him as an individual, the first human being he’s allowed himself to acknowledge in many years.
What does that mean for him? He doesn’t know. Doesn’t care enough to find out.
Erik is lost now in more ways than one. His pole stars have vanished in an inner sky that’s gone blank white. He can no longer measure himself against humanity. He can no longer weigh his decisions versus those Charles would make. Sometimes he looks back on the past decades and feels true horror; it seems impossible that he would do those things, make those choices. Other times, he thinks he didn’t do enough. He thinks the war is coming and he cannot fight. He imagines himself an old man trudging through mud toward wire gates that cannot be moved. They will close behind him, and lock, and he will be turned to ash.
Sometimes it seems to Erik that his entire life has been one long walk through that gate.
Charles, if only I could speak with you just once more. You wouldn’t mock me. You would listen. You’d give me advice, and it would either be wise and good, or so ridiculous that I’d know to do the exact opposite.
For a moment Erik imagines himself a young man again - fancying himself so jaded and hard, and yet still so new, so vulnerable to the world. He imagines sitting in the study at the great house on Graymalkin Lane, lying on the Persian carpet with his head pillowed on one arm, Charles next to him, with their bodies just inches from touching. Charles had been reading THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING aloud, and Erik had felt himself suspended between the beauty of the story and the unmistakable timber of Charles’ voice.
The sexual frustration had been killing him, the suspense of not knowing whether he should act, and at the time he’d thought he couldn’t bear another second of it - though really that was one of the most exquisite hours Erik would ever know -
Erik leans his head in one hand. He is so very tired.
His mind searches for Charles - a habit, one he’s never lost, not even after decades apart. They never lost the old connection. Even at the height of their enmity, Erik took comfort from being able to brush against the tethers that bound him to Charles. He was a touchstone … a compass point, not unlike his lost north.
Erik reaches his hand out toward the metal chess pieces. Once he could have made them dance. They used to have a set like this at the mansion, and Charles would joke that Erik was moving the pieces whenever he turned to pour them another glass of wine. It was his way of not admitting that Erik played better chess.
Charles, he thought. If you were here, I’d let you win.
It seems to him that he hears/feels/smells/knows the echo of Charles’ presence, for just a moment. The illusion of happiness ghosts around him, almost a kind of serenity.
And that’s the moment the queen rocks on her square, the tiniest wobble.
The moment Erik knows he will find north again.
2.
Marie runs out of the dorms onto the school grounds. It’s Indian summer, hotter than it should be this late in the year, this far north. Tears blur her vision of the still-green trees. Blinded, she stumbles on the ground and falls hard to her knees in the dirt. She leans against a nearby tree trunk and covers her face with one hand.
Don’t cry, she tells herself as she sits there, trying to calm herself. Don’t you dare cry. But how can she help it?
“Hey,” says Logan. “You’re back.”
Marie looks up to see him standing near, leather jacket over T-shirt. As always, she feels a complicated mix of emotions at the sight of him: longing, confusion, vulnerability, trust. She says only, “Yeah. I’m back.”
“What’s wrong?” Logan crouches beside her, head cocked, as if he could track whatever hurt her by its scent and hunt it down. “Did it not work for you or something?”
Logan was the only one who knew she was going to take the Cure. He told her not to do it for some boy, to do it for herself, and thank God he did. “It worked,” she says.
To prove it, she slowly reaches out toward Logan; with him, she knows not to make any sudden moves. Logan stares at her hand, like he can’t even believe it, until she lays her fingers on his forearm. His skin is warm, almost startlingly hairy. At the touch, a lazy grin spreads across his face. Somehow that makes her want to cry more than ever.
“It worked,” Logan repeats. “So what’s with the long face?”
“Bobby - I guess he’s with Kitty now. Or he wants to be. He says he can’t be with me when he doesn’t know how he feels about her.” The fact that Bobby was trying to be considerate - to be polite - somehow only makes it worse.
“Punk.” Logan’s face furrows into a snarl, but his eyes are gentle. “You gonna be okay?”
Marie nods, even though the tears have begun flow down her face. “It’s just - I waited so long, you know? I felt so lonely for years, and I thought as soon as I could touch somebody, the waiting would all be over. But I’m still alone.”
Logan looks profoundly uncomfortable, unsure what to do with a crying girl. He moves - to pull his arm away, she thinks - but instead he takes her hand. The simple comfort of contact, denied to Marie for so long, washes over her. She grips his fingers tighter until she lets go to wrap her arms around his neck.
Then she’s in Logan’s embrace, and it’s not about her crush on him, none of that. Marie is simply holding, and being held. She is crying in someone’s arms. She’d forgotten how much it helps.
Though Logan probably wishes he could escape, he hangs on to her and lets her cry it out. Marie is acutely aware of every place their skin touches: her forehead against his neck, his hand upon her bare arm. Merely breathing in another person’s scent is a gift she’d forgotten … even if Logan mostly smells like motor oil and cigars. She gulps in the smell of him, relishes the warmth of another body next to her own, and knows that at least she can do this. As long as that’s true, the Cure wasn’t for nothing.
When finally she’s calm, she leans back, blinking. Logan uses his thumb to wipe one of the last tears from her cheeks. “Better?” he says.
“I will be.” Although she still feels watery and hurt inside, Marie knows this is true.
“Listen to me. Okay? You’re not alone.”
Marie nods. Logan’s friendship - she had that before she got Cured, but it still matters. It matters a lot.
He studies her for a moment. “You staying here with us?”
She blinks. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Then she feels like an idiot. Xavier’s School is a home for mutants; she is no longer one of them. Will the others even want her here, now? The one thing that bound them all together, made them the same - she undid that.
“Hey, don’t freak out,” Logan says. “If you want to stay, stay.”
“What if they all hate me?” she whispers.
“They’re not gonna hate you. Who could hate you?” It comes out like he thinks that would be totally impossible, which makes her smile a little.
“I’d rather stay here, if it’s okay. Out there - it’s weird, Logan. It used to be like human beings hated us -” Can she still say “us”? Well, she will. “-but now it’s like some huge tragedy happened. Like we’re, I don’t know, polio victims in iron lungs.” Marie did a report on that once for school. “Like there’s something wrong with us, even though we can do stuff like read minds and make lightning and, you know, fly. They act like the Cure being taken away was the worst thing ever.”
“Just glad you got it while the getting was good, since you wanted it.” Logan clearly isn’t too worried about what the rest of the world thinks of him; Marie thinks she really ought to try that sometime. “And yeah, it’s okay for you to stay here. Anybody says different, you send ‘em to me.”
That makes her grin despite herself. “I don’t want to just sit around taking up space. If you think there’s anything useful I could do at the school -”
Logan’s whiskery face twitches, not quite a smile. “We’ll think of something.” Then his expression clouds as he looks past her into the distance beyond her shoulder. “What the hell?”
She follows his gaze to see a dark-haired woman stumbling onto the grounds, loose-limbed, as though she were drunk. But that’s not right, Marie senses: Something is wrong with this woman. Something way worse than alcohol.
They both rise. Logan yells, “Hey! You lookin’ for someone?”
The woman turns to them; her head hangs at an odd angle, as if she were broken inside. She answers in a normal speaking voice, which at this distance Marie can just barely here: “Take me to Charles Xavier.”
3.
Logan doesn’t like the look of this.
They’re in the Professor’s office - just the office, now, but it still feels like the old man’s. But Storm has done a good job of taking charge. She stands there in front of the desk, arms crossed, staring at their new guest.
There’s something peculiar about the lady, damned weird if you ask him. Plus, she smells familiar. He can’t place the scent exactly - it’s changed, somehow, from the last time he breathed it in - but Logan suspects it means trouble.
“Charles Xavier,” the woman repeats. Her eyes aren’t focused on any one person or thing. The way she sits there limply in the chair reminds him of a broken doll. “I need to see Charles.”
Storm glances over at Logan, clearly wondering if he has a better suggestion to try than the truth. He doesn’t; he just shrugs. So Storm says, gently, “Professor Xavier is dead.”
“Dead?” The woman’s voice cracks. Logan could’ve sworn she couldn’t get any worse, but she starts crying, and yeah, it’s worse. This isn’t the kind of weeping Marie was doing outside, letting off steam like anybody else; this is like watching somebody let go of her last hope.
For a moment he thinks of Marie - seeing her cry makes him want to bust somebody’s head, and Bobby is now on Logan’s list - but he breathes in that woman’s scent again and frowns. Damn it, he knows her. Is she from the time before his memories begin? That can’t be right.
“He can’t be dead,” the woman chokes out between sobs. “He was talking to us, on the beach. He told me to go with them. I thought he’d be okay.”
Logan and Storm exchange glances; the situation isn’t getting any clearer. “Maybe we can help you,” Storm says, kneeling by the woman’s chair. “This is still a safe place for mutants and their allies. We’re not without resources.”
“No place is safe. No place is safe.” The woman pulls at her hair. “Magneto said we’d never be safe while they lived.”
Logan sniffs the air again, and it’s the scent plus the mention of Magneto’s name that does it. His eyes widen. “Mystique.”
She glances up at the mention of her name. Now he recognizes her - the bone structure that always lay beneath the blue. Didn’t know her with her clothes on, he thinks.
But just when he’s about to flash his claws, Mystique says, “Where’s Charles?” She sounds like a lost child. “Did I kill him?”
“Not for lack of tryin’,” Logan retorts.
Storm rises and thumps Logan on the shoulder as she walks toward the doorway; he understands the order to follow. Mystique doesn’t even move, save to put one hand on the Professor’s desk, like she’s reminding herself it’s real.
Once they’re in the hallway, Logan mutters, “They must’ve hit her with the Cure.”
“They did worse than that, too.” Storm brushes a lock of silver-white hair from her forehead. “The bruises on her arms, on her neck - Logan, I think they tortured her.”
Logan’s been tortured. Captors love to figure out how much punishment his body can take, which happens to be infinite. Against his will, he feels a few seconds of real pity for Mystique. “Shit. Is that why she’s crazy?”
“Well, she’s unstable,” Storm says. “And human, now.”
“That makes her the humans’ problem.” His eyes narrow as he sees that prim look Storm sometimes gets on her face when he’s fucked up. “Right?”
“This school is a sanctuary.”
“For mutants.” Which is not exactly what he told Marie a few minutes ago, but this is Mystique they’re talking about.
Storm sighs. “The professor would have let her stay.”
“Yeah, well, the professor’s dead.”
“Do you want this place to change without him?”
Logan doesn’t like the sound of that, but he shoots back, “Do you think Mystique can be trusted? Wasn’t that long ago she helped kidnap Marie. Nearly killed her.” That’s not the kind of thing he can forgive.
“I remember, Logan. But Xavier would’ve given her a chance.”
“Xavier would’ve known whether or not that was a good idea. We don’t.”
The communicator at Storm’s belt chimes. She pulls it into her hand and frowns. “Moira MacTaggart?”
“Who’s that?”
“A human doctor who used to work with the professor. An ally,” Storm says as she puts the device to her ear. “Hello. Moira? What’s going on?”
Logan’s ears are sharp enough to pick up the tinny reply. “You’ve got to come to the hospital. It’s unbelievable - Ororo, it’s Charles. He’s alive.”
4.
Charles knows only a few things for certain.
He was dead, and is not. There are no words he can use to describe being dead - it’s outside of any language, any context or experience - and yet he knows what it was. In the same way he knows it is over.
This is his body, and it is not. He had formed pathways to this body long before his death, never thinking to travel the path himself. Charles had no plan; he made no choice. And yet he found his way here just the same.
Above all else he knows he is not alone.
“Moira,” he says again. She smiles down at him, face and spirit blurring in his confused mind. It seems to Charles that her chestnut hair and her pragmatic good humor are equally visible, that her reedy frame and her hope are equally a part of her soul. Then someone else comes close, a great cloud of blue. “Hank.”
“Merciful heavens.” That’s Hank’s voice, his bright mind turning the situation over and over. “The resemblance to Professor X as a younger man is uncanny, but this cannot be the same person.”
“It is.” Moira’s voice is distant, but Charles tries to hold onto it as a tether to consciousness. “Or I should say, it will be.”
“What do you mean?” That cautious spirit, both mourning and celebrating within her still, silvery form, can only be Ororo. Charles wants to say her name too, but he needs to swallow, and even that small movement seems to take all his strength. “It’s him or it isn’t.”
Moira explains. “This body belonged to a man who’d been declared brain dead. He had no remaining family. Charles and I were debating the ethics of transferring the consciousness of someone dying into him. I don’t know if we would’ve done it - we had no candidate in mind yet - but it seemed worth talking about.”
“That’s a slippery slope, Moira.” Hank’s disapproval washes past Charles, as transient as winds blowing past stone.
“Yes, yes, I realize that and so did he, but the point is that the connection was made. I believe that on some instinctual level, at the moment of death, Charles transferred himself into this body. And that body is even now being changed into a replica of Charles’ own. His psychic energies, I suppose.”
Moment of death. The memory swirls around him, present and past commingled. Winds of energy tear apart his flesh, while the darkness in Jean’s eyes rips his heart into ribbons.
He looks through the whirling debris and sees Erik lying there, stricken.
When Erik lifts his eyes to Charles’, the years of distance between them shrink to seconds. Nothing is left but regrets.
And then the void. And then … this.
The silver shine above coalesces into Ororo’s face. “Professor?” she says. “Do you know me?”
He calls her by the name she chose, to prove he remembers. “Storm.”
“My God,” she whispers.
“Now, listen here.” Hank was always like this, even as a boy; Charles remembers that much. “This could be some sort of a ruse. A duplicate created to fool us.”
“By whom, and why?” Moira demands. “For that matter, why create a duplicate of the younger Xavier, instead of the one we’d recognize more readily?”
“We’ll know him the same way he’d know one of us,” Ororo says. “Professor, can you touch our minds? Any of us? Just a touch. That’s all we need.”
This brain isn’t used to handling his powers yet; Charles has little grasp on his gift now. But he knows Ororo needs the truth, Hank too, and though he has no idea how long he was dead, he knows he has missed them all terribly.
So Charles tries to relax into it. He breathes in, breathes out. Shields he hadn’t known he was maintaining fall, and suddenly the clouds are gone. Everything is sharp - too sharp - and yet he remains open. He must.
Ororo. Hank. Moira. He brushes against each of their minds, unsure whether he is being too strong or not strong enough. Gasps of wonder touch Charles’ ears; at least he has done what he meant to do.
He tries then to pull those shields up again, but he can’t. It’s like trying to will spilled water back into a broken glass. There are so many minds around him, thousands, millions, billions …
… and something horrible is happening to them. To so many thousands of them.
The first time Charles makes a sound beyond a whisper, he screams.
5.
After Moira has sedated Professor X back into unconsciousness, Hank takes himself off to the hospital lounge to think.
It’s the professor himself, no doubt about that. Leave it to him to cheat even death itself! Hank wants to celebrate this incredible resurrection, but the memory of the Professor’s fur-raising scream casts shadows over his mood.
The hospital lounge is as sterile and glum as most of its kind. A television set blares unwatched in one corner. People in pairs huddle together, tense, tired and bored. Many eyes rake over his blue form as he takes his seat in a chair slightly too small for him; Hank can tell that some of them are nervous about his presence, but at least one perks up, perhaps recognizing him from television.
Secretary of Mutant Affairs, he’d been. U.N. Secretary, now. They’d made much of his new position, invited all the press to the swearing-in, even set him up with magazine and television interviews. Last week Hank had to rise at three in the morning to tape his appearance on “Good Morning America.”
Increasingly, however, Hank thinks he’s been kicked upstairs.
The real authority the U.S. government vests in the secretary to the United Nations is less than that given to a midlevel employee of the FDA. Hank isn’t going to meetings where anything gets decided; he’s going to receptions where people get their pictures taken with him. He’s being shown off.
Like a pet, he thinks.
Right now, the American government is making a show of tolerance toward mutants. The registration act is tied up in committee; thanks to a rider that adds on $800 million in shipbuilding subsidies, the act seems likely to wither and die from neglect. Merely seeing how many mutants were willing, even eager, to have their mutations “cured” has had a powerful effect on the public. Hatred has ebbed.
But instead of being replaced with respect, that hatred has been replaced with pity.
Xavier always taught them that they were not humanity’s superiors, but neither were they inferiors. The idea of being pitied rankles. And yet. This is progress of a kind, isn’t it? Sometimes pity can lead to sympathy - better yet, to empathy. Perhaps this moment, distasteful though it might be, is one they can use.
Then the television set screen changes into a graphic: BREAKING NEWS.
Hank’s ears swivel slightly toward the TV as he takes it in, and his eyes widen as the headline at the bottom of the screen is revealed - CHINESE ANNOUNCE MUTANT CURE BREAKTHROUGH.
“The Chinese government has announced that its scientists have managed to synthesize the compound known as ‘the Cure,’ which has the ability to indefinitely suppress the mutant gene and restore mutants to normal lives. Earlier this summer, thousands of mutants across the world were able to be healed - but when radical mutant leader Magneto destroyed the Worthington Laboratories compound on Alcatraz, it appeared that the chances for the rest of mutantkind had been destroyed with it. Now this announcement restores hope. But disturbing rumors about the Chinese government’s greater response to the mutant crisis abound. With more on this announcement, here’s - ”
Synthetic Cure. At this very moment, no doubt, thousands of vials are being loaded into crates destined for markets worldwide. The supply is now unlimited.
Across the hospital lounge, one of the waiting family members gives Hank an encouraging smile. She’s happy for him.
Pity turns out to have been the least of their problems.
CONTINUED TOMORROW
And! I come bearing fic! Rather, I come bearing chapters 1-5 of 37; the rest will all unfurl over the next two weeks. Still editing the end, but this is not truly a WIP. Thanks muchly to my betas, rheanna27, counteragent and Marvel expert claudiuslives.
Is this an XMFC or XMM story? you may ask. Well, the "prequel" film contradicts the X-trilogy to a great extent, so I synthesized the canons using the following highly objective criteria, i.e., I took what I liked from each and ignored what I didn't. Which is what the filmmakers do, so it's all okay! But there's a lot of XMFC, a lot of X-trilogy, and my own efforts and fixing what in X3 can be fixed (and ignoring what can't!) It's set after X3, during XMFC, and everytime in between.
1.
Erik hates getting lost.
He never had been before last month, never once in his life. The difference between Earth’s magnetic north and south poles had always been as obvious to him as the difference between up and down. He was an adult before he understood how it was even possible for other people not to be able to find their way. (Before that, he’d thought pretending not to know where you were was some odd social affectation.)
Now he gets lost constantly.
He’s taken up residence in Boston, a city large enough to hide one aging man whose face was well known on the news - but only when he wore a helmet now cast aside as useless. However, Boston has winding side streets, no grid to speak of. Erik finds himself wandering from block to block, confused, back-tracking. He’s learning human tricks - memorizing directions, finding landmarks - but slowly. Today he’s sitting in a park at a chessboard as if inviting a game; really, Erik hopes to be left alone long enough to figure out his way back to the cheap “men’s hotel” where he currently rents a room by the week.
(Erik owns fortunes - in banks around the world he can no longer reach, in strongholds without keys he can no longer melt open.)
Originally he hated the Wolverine and Beast for his condition, but that hatred has dimmed. He first attempted to use the Cure against them, after all; he understands the need to strike back with equal force. Erik has been forced to live as the thing he feared most - as a human - and even in his darkest temper, he can appreciate the irony of it.
Charles would have had much to say on the subject.
“Hey, man.” It’s Juan Pablo, a skinny kid who often comes to hustle the newcomers at chess. He tried to hustle Erik once. Erik made ten dollars that day, an amount of money he can no longer scoff at. To Juan Pablo’s credit, he not only took it well but also has had the good sense to ask Erik for pointers. “You gonna show me the opening gambit you were talking about?”
“The variation on the Budapest,” Erik reminds him. “Not today, I think. But soon.”
Juan Pablo shrugs, takes a slurp from his McDonald’s cup. “That friend of yours coming to play sometime? The one who taught you that Owen’s Defense?”
He should just say it. My friend died. He won’t be playing any more chess matches. But Erik gave in to a terrible temptation the first time he spoke to Juan Pablo about Charles Xavier; he pretended Charles was still alive.
“How about this,” Erik says. “Next time we meet here, I’ll show you the variation on the Budapest and another of Charles’ best tricks. That one’s a surprise.”
“Cool.” With a wave, Juan Pablo lopes off.
It would not be precise to say that Erik likes Juan Pablo - Erik will never be that open, and Juan Pablo’s habit of speaking with his mouth full is off-putting. But he does not hate the boy. Erik recognizes him as an individual, the first human being he’s allowed himself to acknowledge in many years.
What does that mean for him? He doesn’t know. Doesn’t care enough to find out.
Erik is lost now in more ways than one. His pole stars have vanished in an inner sky that’s gone blank white. He can no longer measure himself against humanity. He can no longer weigh his decisions versus those Charles would make. Sometimes he looks back on the past decades and feels true horror; it seems impossible that he would do those things, make those choices. Other times, he thinks he didn’t do enough. He thinks the war is coming and he cannot fight. He imagines himself an old man trudging through mud toward wire gates that cannot be moved. They will close behind him, and lock, and he will be turned to ash.
Sometimes it seems to Erik that his entire life has been one long walk through that gate.
Charles, if only I could speak with you just once more. You wouldn’t mock me. You would listen. You’d give me advice, and it would either be wise and good, or so ridiculous that I’d know to do the exact opposite.
For a moment Erik imagines himself a young man again - fancying himself so jaded and hard, and yet still so new, so vulnerable to the world. He imagines sitting in the study at the great house on Graymalkin Lane, lying on the Persian carpet with his head pillowed on one arm, Charles next to him, with their bodies just inches from touching. Charles had been reading THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING aloud, and Erik had felt himself suspended between the beauty of the story and the unmistakable timber of Charles’ voice.
The sexual frustration had been killing him, the suspense of not knowing whether he should act, and at the time he’d thought he couldn’t bear another second of it - though really that was one of the most exquisite hours Erik would ever know -
Erik leans his head in one hand. He is so very tired.
His mind searches for Charles - a habit, one he’s never lost, not even after decades apart. They never lost the old connection. Even at the height of their enmity, Erik took comfort from being able to brush against the tethers that bound him to Charles. He was a touchstone … a compass point, not unlike his lost north.
Erik reaches his hand out toward the metal chess pieces. Once he could have made them dance. They used to have a set like this at the mansion, and Charles would joke that Erik was moving the pieces whenever he turned to pour them another glass of wine. It was his way of not admitting that Erik played better chess.
Charles, he thought. If you were here, I’d let you win.
It seems to him that he hears/feels/smells/knows the echo of Charles’ presence, for just a moment. The illusion of happiness ghosts around him, almost a kind of serenity.
And that’s the moment the queen rocks on her square, the tiniest wobble.
The moment Erik knows he will find north again.
2.
Marie runs out of the dorms onto the school grounds. It’s Indian summer, hotter than it should be this late in the year, this far north. Tears blur her vision of the still-green trees. Blinded, she stumbles on the ground and falls hard to her knees in the dirt. She leans against a nearby tree trunk and covers her face with one hand.
Don’t cry, she tells herself as she sits there, trying to calm herself. Don’t you dare cry. But how can she help it?
“Hey,” says Logan. “You’re back.”
Marie looks up to see him standing near, leather jacket over T-shirt. As always, she feels a complicated mix of emotions at the sight of him: longing, confusion, vulnerability, trust. She says only, “Yeah. I’m back.”
“What’s wrong?” Logan crouches beside her, head cocked, as if he could track whatever hurt her by its scent and hunt it down. “Did it not work for you or something?”
Logan was the only one who knew she was going to take the Cure. He told her not to do it for some boy, to do it for herself, and thank God he did. “It worked,” she says.
To prove it, she slowly reaches out toward Logan; with him, she knows not to make any sudden moves. Logan stares at her hand, like he can’t even believe it, until she lays her fingers on his forearm. His skin is warm, almost startlingly hairy. At the touch, a lazy grin spreads across his face. Somehow that makes her want to cry more than ever.
“It worked,” Logan repeats. “So what’s with the long face?”
“Bobby - I guess he’s with Kitty now. Or he wants to be. He says he can’t be with me when he doesn’t know how he feels about her.” The fact that Bobby was trying to be considerate - to be polite - somehow only makes it worse.
“Punk.” Logan’s face furrows into a snarl, but his eyes are gentle. “You gonna be okay?”
Marie nods, even though the tears have begun flow down her face. “It’s just - I waited so long, you know? I felt so lonely for years, and I thought as soon as I could touch somebody, the waiting would all be over. But I’m still alone.”
Logan looks profoundly uncomfortable, unsure what to do with a crying girl. He moves - to pull his arm away, she thinks - but instead he takes her hand. The simple comfort of contact, denied to Marie for so long, washes over her. She grips his fingers tighter until she lets go to wrap her arms around his neck.
Then she’s in Logan’s embrace, and it’s not about her crush on him, none of that. Marie is simply holding, and being held. She is crying in someone’s arms. She’d forgotten how much it helps.
Though Logan probably wishes he could escape, he hangs on to her and lets her cry it out. Marie is acutely aware of every place their skin touches: her forehead against his neck, his hand upon her bare arm. Merely breathing in another person’s scent is a gift she’d forgotten … even if Logan mostly smells like motor oil and cigars. She gulps in the smell of him, relishes the warmth of another body next to her own, and knows that at least she can do this. As long as that’s true, the Cure wasn’t for nothing.
When finally she’s calm, she leans back, blinking. Logan uses his thumb to wipe one of the last tears from her cheeks. “Better?” he says.
“I will be.” Although she still feels watery and hurt inside, Marie knows this is true.
“Listen to me. Okay? You’re not alone.”
Marie nods. Logan’s friendship - she had that before she got Cured, but it still matters. It matters a lot.
He studies her for a moment. “You staying here with us?”
She blinks. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Then she feels like an idiot. Xavier’s School is a home for mutants; she is no longer one of them. Will the others even want her here, now? The one thing that bound them all together, made them the same - she undid that.
“Hey, don’t freak out,” Logan says. “If you want to stay, stay.”
“What if they all hate me?” she whispers.
“They’re not gonna hate you. Who could hate you?” It comes out like he thinks that would be totally impossible, which makes her smile a little.
“I’d rather stay here, if it’s okay. Out there - it’s weird, Logan. It used to be like human beings hated us -” Can she still say “us”? Well, she will. “-but now it’s like some huge tragedy happened. Like we’re, I don’t know, polio victims in iron lungs.” Marie did a report on that once for school. “Like there’s something wrong with us, even though we can do stuff like read minds and make lightning and, you know, fly. They act like the Cure being taken away was the worst thing ever.”
“Just glad you got it while the getting was good, since you wanted it.” Logan clearly isn’t too worried about what the rest of the world thinks of him; Marie thinks she really ought to try that sometime. “And yeah, it’s okay for you to stay here. Anybody says different, you send ‘em to me.”
That makes her grin despite herself. “I don’t want to just sit around taking up space. If you think there’s anything useful I could do at the school -”
Logan’s whiskery face twitches, not quite a smile. “We’ll think of something.” Then his expression clouds as he looks past her into the distance beyond her shoulder. “What the hell?”
She follows his gaze to see a dark-haired woman stumbling onto the grounds, loose-limbed, as though she were drunk. But that’s not right, Marie senses: Something is wrong with this woman. Something way worse than alcohol.
They both rise. Logan yells, “Hey! You lookin’ for someone?”
The woman turns to them; her head hangs at an odd angle, as if she were broken inside. She answers in a normal speaking voice, which at this distance Marie can just barely here: “Take me to Charles Xavier.”
3.
Logan doesn’t like the look of this.
They’re in the Professor’s office - just the office, now, but it still feels like the old man’s. But Storm has done a good job of taking charge. She stands there in front of the desk, arms crossed, staring at their new guest.
There’s something peculiar about the lady, damned weird if you ask him. Plus, she smells familiar. He can’t place the scent exactly - it’s changed, somehow, from the last time he breathed it in - but Logan suspects it means trouble.
“Charles Xavier,” the woman repeats. Her eyes aren’t focused on any one person or thing. The way she sits there limply in the chair reminds him of a broken doll. “I need to see Charles.”
Storm glances over at Logan, clearly wondering if he has a better suggestion to try than the truth. He doesn’t; he just shrugs. So Storm says, gently, “Professor Xavier is dead.”
“Dead?” The woman’s voice cracks. Logan could’ve sworn she couldn’t get any worse, but she starts crying, and yeah, it’s worse. This isn’t the kind of weeping Marie was doing outside, letting off steam like anybody else; this is like watching somebody let go of her last hope.
For a moment he thinks of Marie - seeing her cry makes him want to bust somebody’s head, and Bobby is now on Logan’s list - but he breathes in that woman’s scent again and frowns. Damn it, he knows her. Is she from the time before his memories begin? That can’t be right.
“He can’t be dead,” the woman chokes out between sobs. “He was talking to us, on the beach. He told me to go with them. I thought he’d be okay.”
Logan and Storm exchange glances; the situation isn’t getting any clearer. “Maybe we can help you,” Storm says, kneeling by the woman’s chair. “This is still a safe place for mutants and their allies. We’re not without resources.”
“No place is safe. No place is safe.” The woman pulls at her hair. “Magneto said we’d never be safe while they lived.”
Logan sniffs the air again, and it’s the scent plus the mention of Magneto’s name that does it. His eyes widen. “Mystique.”
She glances up at the mention of her name. Now he recognizes her - the bone structure that always lay beneath the blue. Didn’t know her with her clothes on, he thinks.
But just when he’s about to flash his claws, Mystique says, “Where’s Charles?” She sounds like a lost child. “Did I kill him?”
“Not for lack of tryin’,” Logan retorts.
Storm rises and thumps Logan on the shoulder as she walks toward the doorway; he understands the order to follow. Mystique doesn’t even move, save to put one hand on the Professor’s desk, like she’s reminding herself it’s real.
Once they’re in the hallway, Logan mutters, “They must’ve hit her with the Cure.”
“They did worse than that, too.” Storm brushes a lock of silver-white hair from her forehead. “The bruises on her arms, on her neck - Logan, I think they tortured her.”
Logan’s been tortured. Captors love to figure out how much punishment his body can take, which happens to be infinite. Against his will, he feels a few seconds of real pity for Mystique. “Shit. Is that why she’s crazy?”
“Well, she’s unstable,” Storm says. “And human, now.”
“That makes her the humans’ problem.” His eyes narrow as he sees that prim look Storm sometimes gets on her face when he’s fucked up. “Right?”
“This school is a sanctuary.”
“For mutants.” Which is not exactly what he told Marie a few minutes ago, but this is Mystique they’re talking about.
Storm sighs. “The professor would have let her stay.”
“Yeah, well, the professor’s dead.”
“Do you want this place to change without him?”
Logan doesn’t like the sound of that, but he shoots back, “Do you think Mystique can be trusted? Wasn’t that long ago she helped kidnap Marie. Nearly killed her.” That’s not the kind of thing he can forgive.
“I remember, Logan. But Xavier would’ve given her a chance.”
“Xavier would’ve known whether or not that was a good idea. We don’t.”
The communicator at Storm’s belt chimes. She pulls it into her hand and frowns. “Moira MacTaggart?”
“Who’s that?”
“A human doctor who used to work with the professor. An ally,” Storm says as she puts the device to her ear. “Hello. Moira? What’s going on?”
Logan’s ears are sharp enough to pick up the tinny reply. “You’ve got to come to the hospital. It’s unbelievable - Ororo, it’s Charles. He’s alive.”
4.
Charles knows only a few things for certain.
He was dead, and is not. There are no words he can use to describe being dead - it’s outside of any language, any context or experience - and yet he knows what it was. In the same way he knows it is over.
This is his body, and it is not. He had formed pathways to this body long before his death, never thinking to travel the path himself. Charles had no plan; he made no choice. And yet he found his way here just the same.
Above all else he knows he is not alone.
“Moira,” he says again. She smiles down at him, face and spirit blurring in his confused mind. It seems to Charles that her chestnut hair and her pragmatic good humor are equally visible, that her reedy frame and her hope are equally a part of her soul. Then someone else comes close, a great cloud of blue. “Hank.”
“Merciful heavens.” That’s Hank’s voice, his bright mind turning the situation over and over. “The resemblance to Professor X as a younger man is uncanny, but this cannot be the same person.”
“It is.” Moira’s voice is distant, but Charles tries to hold onto it as a tether to consciousness. “Or I should say, it will be.”
“What do you mean?” That cautious spirit, both mourning and celebrating within her still, silvery form, can only be Ororo. Charles wants to say her name too, but he needs to swallow, and even that small movement seems to take all his strength. “It’s him or it isn’t.”
Moira explains. “This body belonged to a man who’d been declared brain dead. He had no remaining family. Charles and I were debating the ethics of transferring the consciousness of someone dying into him. I don’t know if we would’ve done it - we had no candidate in mind yet - but it seemed worth talking about.”
“That’s a slippery slope, Moira.” Hank’s disapproval washes past Charles, as transient as winds blowing past stone.
“Yes, yes, I realize that and so did he, but the point is that the connection was made. I believe that on some instinctual level, at the moment of death, Charles transferred himself into this body. And that body is even now being changed into a replica of Charles’ own. His psychic energies, I suppose.”
Moment of death. The memory swirls around him, present and past commingled. Winds of energy tear apart his flesh, while the darkness in Jean’s eyes rips his heart into ribbons.
He looks through the whirling debris and sees Erik lying there, stricken.
When Erik lifts his eyes to Charles’, the years of distance between them shrink to seconds. Nothing is left but regrets.
And then the void. And then … this.
The silver shine above coalesces into Ororo’s face. “Professor?” she says. “Do you know me?”
He calls her by the name she chose, to prove he remembers. “Storm.”
“My God,” she whispers.
“Now, listen here.” Hank was always like this, even as a boy; Charles remembers that much. “This could be some sort of a ruse. A duplicate created to fool us.”
“By whom, and why?” Moira demands. “For that matter, why create a duplicate of the younger Xavier, instead of the one we’d recognize more readily?”
“We’ll know him the same way he’d know one of us,” Ororo says. “Professor, can you touch our minds? Any of us? Just a touch. That’s all we need.”
This brain isn’t used to handling his powers yet; Charles has little grasp on his gift now. But he knows Ororo needs the truth, Hank too, and though he has no idea how long he was dead, he knows he has missed them all terribly.
So Charles tries to relax into it. He breathes in, breathes out. Shields he hadn’t known he was maintaining fall, and suddenly the clouds are gone. Everything is sharp - too sharp - and yet he remains open. He must.
Ororo. Hank. Moira. He brushes against each of their minds, unsure whether he is being too strong or not strong enough. Gasps of wonder touch Charles’ ears; at least he has done what he meant to do.
He tries then to pull those shields up again, but he can’t. It’s like trying to will spilled water back into a broken glass. There are so many minds around him, thousands, millions, billions …
… and something horrible is happening to them. To so many thousands of them.
The first time Charles makes a sound beyond a whisper, he screams.
5.
After Moira has sedated Professor X back into unconsciousness, Hank takes himself off to the hospital lounge to think.
It’s the professor himself, no doubt about that. Leave it to him to cheat even death itself! Hank wants to celebrate this incredible resurrection, but the memory of the Professor’s fur-raising scream casts shadows over his mood.
The hospital lounge is as sterile and glum as most of its kind. A television set blares unwatched in one corner. People in pairs huddle together, tense, tired and bored. Many eyes rake over his blue form as he takes his seat in a chair slightly too small for him; Hank can tell that some of them are nervous about his presence, but at least one perks up, perhaps recognizing him from television.
Secretary of Mutant Affairs, he’d been. U.N. Secretary, now. They’d made much of his new position, invited all the press to the swearing-in, even set him up with magazine and television interviews. Last week Hank had to rise at three in the morning to tape his appearance on “Good Morning America.”
Increasingly, however, Hank thinks he’s been kicked upstairs.
The real authority the U.S. government vests in the secretary to the United Nations is less than that given to a midlevel employee of the FDA. Hank isn’t going to meetings where anything gets decided; he’s going to receptions where people get their pictures taken with him. He’s being shown off.
Like a pet, he thinks.
Right now, the American government is making a show of tolerance toward mutants. The registration act is tied up in committee; thanks to a rider that adds on $800 million in shipbuilding subsidies, the act seems likely to wither and die from neglect. Merely seeing how many mutants were willing, even eager, to have their mutations “cured” has had a powerful effect on the public. Hatred has ebbed.
But instead of being replaced with respect, that hatred has been replaced with pity.
Xavier always taught them that they were not humanity’s superiors, but neither were they inferiors. The idea of being pitied rankles. And yet. This is progress of a kind, isn’t it? Sometimes pity can lead to sympathy - better yet, to empathy. Perhaps this moment, distasteful though it might be, is one they can use.
Then the television set screen changes into a graphic: BREAKING NEWS.
Hank’s ears swivel slightly toward the TV as he takes it in, and his eyes widen as the headline at the bottom of the screen is revealed - CHINESE ANNOUNCE MUTANT CURE BREAKTHROUGH.
“The Chinese government has announced that its scientists have managed to synthesize the compound known as ‘the Cure,’ which has the ability to indefinitely suppress the mutant gene and restore mutants to normal lives. Earlier this summer, thousands of mutants across the world were able to be healed - but when radical mutant leader Magneto destroyed the Worthington Laboratories compound on Alcatraz, it appeared that the chances for the rest of mutantkind had been destroyed with it. Now this announcement restores hope. But disturbing rumors about the Chinese government’s greater response to the mutant crisis abound. With more on this announcement, here’s - ”
Synthetic Cure. At this very moment, no doubt, thousands of vials are being loaded into crates destined for markets worldwide. The supply is now unlimited.
Across the hospital lounge, one of the waiting family members gives Hank an encouraging smile. She’s happy for him.
Pity turns out to have been the least of their problems.
CONTINUED TOMORROW