Chapter Text
Ourtside Lviv, Ukraine, July 7th, 1964
A woman with a blue, scaled face stood with a bundle in a dull gray cloak while she waited for the caravan barely visible in the distance. She looked anxiously at the horizon, where dark, pendulous clouds were gathering. The bundle in her arms made a mewling noise, and she carefully tucked in a blue pointed tail which had worked its way out (again). She gazed down with great sadness at the tiny mutant, and kissed him on the forehead as the first vehicle of the caravan pulled up to her. She quickly flipped to her blonde persona as the first vehicle of the caravan pulled up.
"Hello," she said in heavily accented Russian, as an older woman walked toward her with a smile. "Olga?" The woman nodded, still smiling. Mystique took a deep breath and began to recite the speech she had memorized in the language that was so foreign to her tongue. "Olga, thank you for taking my son-" unbidden, her throat clenched and she was unable to continue. With a choked cry, she shoved the tiny bundle into Olga's arms.
Olga gently passed the blue child to another woman behind her and turned to give Mystique a warm hug. "This is what our cousin Azazel would have wanted," she breathed in English to Mystique. "Your Kurt will fit in here." Mystique pulled back and looked into Olga's eyes, seeing a swirling kaleidoscope in each eye instead of the usual irises. Mystique nodded curtly and turned her head away, wiping her nose on her sleeve. With one last longing look at her child, she resolutely turned and walks away from the setting sun, towards the east. The caravan packed up again with their new addition, headed the opposite direction from Mystique.
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Outside of Sugarcreek, Ohio, February 2, 1983
A man sat up in a field.
He appeared to be a nondescript, blond man in his late 30's, not bad-looking, but someone who would be easily overlooked and probably dismissed as unthreatening. He was wearing brown slacks and a beige corduroy jacket. The man brushed some leaves off his shoulders as he rose to his feet, frowning ever so slightly and looking around. He spotted a structure in the distance and seemed to perk up a bit as he headed towards it.
The man arrived in the store of a small service station, still several miles on the outskirts of town, a place with high gasoline prices designed to gouge people who just couldn't make it the extra five miles to Sugarcreek. A tired-looking woman, in about her mid-fifties, eyed him warily as he walks in.
"Ah, hello," he said to her briskly, with a tight smile. "Would you be so kind as to direct me to the nearest mutants?" His tone was cordial, with the faintest backbone of sarcasm in it.
The store clerk looked at him for a moment. A small color television behind her was silently broadcasting President Ronald Reagan giving a speech.
"The nearest what?" She said, finally.
The man appeared slightly impatient. "Mutants, freaks, people who look strange to your bucolic eye, people with unexplainable abilities." His mouth was pursed now.
The woman blinked at him. "What did you say about my eye?"
He sighed. "You really had to waste my time, didn't you," he said and suddenly her eyes were wide and she was not breathing, pawing at an unseen hand holding her up by the throat. The man continued, calmly. "I can see in your mind that you know what I am talking about. As soon as I said 'mutant' someone popped into your mind. I'm going to release you and give you a chance to tell me, with your words, where that mutant is. If you don't, I will just take it from your mind, but I may use a machete instead of a scalpel." He clears his throat. "Metaphorically."
The woman's face hit the store counter as the unseen force released her. A trickle of blood was dripping down from her forehead as she looked up. "The Johnson boy," she gasped. "He made electricity - do things. And sometimes he wouldn't - touch the ground when he walked." She shuddered. "But he got sent away last year. Some fancy school in New York."
"See, was that so hard?" He smiled a smile that didn't reach his eyes and tapped her twice on the cheek, not especially gently. He started to leave the store and a faint frown crossed his features and he turned around again. "Which way is New York?"
The woman looked confused and pointed with her arm, uncertainly. The man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Useless," he muttered to himself. "Well, so much for subtlety." He addressed to woman again. "I can see in your mind that my destination is due east of here, but clearly you are too stupid to communicate with me in an effective manner, so...well, might as well start drawing attention to myself now." He takes a deep breath and blows out a stream of fire that devours the woman. As she screams, dying in horrible agony, he calmly goes to select a soda out of the refrigeration case and a candy bar. He cheerfully waves good-bye as he leaves the store.
He walks a little ways away from the store, which explodes into flames behind him as the fire inside reaches the gasoline tanks. He barely takes notice as he is struggling to open both his soda and candy bar. He appears very pleased when he has accomplished both tasks, and looking up in the morning sky to get his bearings, he starts walking for a few feet and then frowns, levitates and starts flying in the direction of the rising sun.
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Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Westchester, New York, the same day.
"Rav-" Charles stopped himself. "Mystique! How wonderful to see you. What's it been, six months? Please, come in!" Charles is wheel-chair bound, wearing a Cosby sweater, hair and goatee neatly trimmed. He has more gray in his hair and beard than he used to, but still looks a bit younger than his late forties.
Mystique, blue and scaly but wearing a dress for once, enters the Xavier mansion with a smile and sets down a large bag so she can lean down to hug Charles in his wheelchair. "Hello Charles! It is good to see you." She straightens and sees Hank standing nearby. "Hi, Hank," she says, deliberately.
In his mid-thirties now, Hank has filled out but is still somewhat shy and doesn't seem to feel comfortable in his own skin "Hi - you," he stammers, caught between wanting to call her Raven (which would make him comfortable) and Mystique (which would make her comfortable), and settling on neither.
Mystique looked at Hank, and then back to Charles. "Fine, you can both call me Raven," she said, exasperated. "But I'm not changing my form."
"Thank you for settling that, my dear sister," Charles said with a warm smile. Hank seemed to relax a bit too. "Please, come join me in my study so we can catch up. I have a few hours yet before we have to get ready for our school field trip. Would you like some tea, or coffee?"
Raven started to pick up her bag but Hank rushed to get it. "I'll get that," he said, coming nose to nose with her and catching his breath. "I - I - hope this means you might be staying for a while?"
Charles shot Hank a look. Please, Hank Charles said in Hank's mind, Let me discuss that with Raven in my own time.
"I'd love some coffee," Raven said, smiling at Hank. "And thanks for getting my bag, Hank. I'd appreciate if you could take it to my old room - I actually do hope to stay for a few days, if that's all right, Charles?"
Charles looked very pleased and said softly, "You are always welcome here, Raven."
"Great!" Hank said, a little too enthusiastically. "I'll be right back with your coffee." He left.
As Raven and Charles walk to his study, children's laughter is heard. "How is the school going?" Raven asked, brightly.
"As well as can be," Charles replied to his sister with a smile. "We have thirteen students now."
"That's, well, that's -" Raven had been planning a positive response but decided on honesty. "That doesn't seem like that many."
"Well, not compared to the number I had at full enrollment in 1964," Charles admitted, "But I had enough faculty at that time to support a larger student body. Right now the only teachers here are myself, Hank, and Alex." He was hinting at something that he had discussed with Raven before, and she picked up on that immediately.
"Charles," Raven sighs. "I know you want me to teach here. But I'm not ready to tie myself down to a committment like that."
"Yes, you do have some trouble with feeling tied down by committments," he murmured.
She abruptly stopped walking and Charles had to wheel himself around to see her. "If you are talking about what I think you are talking about, Charles, that is a low blow," she said dangerously.
Panic flashed across Charles' face as he realized that he could be rocking the fragile familial foundation he had so carefully re-established with Raven. "I'm- I'm very sorry, Raven. I am not questioning your choices. I just - I would like to meet the boy, someday," he swallowed.
They arrived at the study and seated themselves inside. "He's not a boy anymore," Raven said softly, to herself as much as to Charles. "He's older than I was when I joined the Mutant Brotherhood."
Charles stiffened as if in shock. "Oh, Raven, don't tell me--"
Raven made eye contact again with him again then, eyes flashing. "Now, if I had allowed Kurt to be recruited into the mutant brotherhood, wouldn't that defeat the whole point of me sending him away to begin with? Erik still doesn't even know he exists."
Charles reacted to the name "Erik" by sharply turning his head away and rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. "Ah. Well, I have to admit I am relieved to hear that. But considering the boy's --ah, young man's--power, it seems that it wouldn't be too difficult for him to visit here."
"No, it wouldn't," Raven agreed, "If he wanted to. But I'm not going to ask him, as he asked me not to visit anymore nine years ago." She looked away from Charles.
Charles sucked in his breath. "I'm so sorry, Raven; I didn't know."
She laughed ruefully. "I really thought you had read it from me."
"I don't read your mind without permission," Charles said softly, resigned, and with a touch of anger. They were recycling so many of their disapointments today.
"They take good care of him," Raven said. "There are a couple other mutants in the troupe, distant relatives of Azazel; they have done better for him than I could have."
Charles nodded in understanding, not really understanding at all, because part of him wanted to say, why didn't you just come home? -- but, he accepted her decision. He had learned that he can't control her, and he feared she wouldn't keep visiting if he second-guessed everything she did out loud.
"Ah, coffee for the lady and tea for me, Hank, you are a lovely man," Charles said with delight as
Hank entered with a tray. "None for you? Are you not joining us?"
"Ah, no, I actually have a student right now," he said with a smile. "I'm tutoring Gabriel about electricity."
"Well, I can think of nobody better for that job," Charles said jovially, and then a shadow crossed his face as he could, in fact, think of someone who might be better for that job. If either Hank or Raven noticed his brief mental digression, they did not mention it.
Hank left with an awkward little wave at Raven and she chuckled.
Charles turned back to Raven. "So," he said, handing her her coffee, "to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
"I just --" Raven busied herself with her coffee. "I just needed a little break."
Charles noticed, then, the dark circles under her eyes and slumped posture. He was having trouble choosing words to ask her about that when she spoke again.
"I have been working with Erik, a bit," she said, as if it was a confession. "When he agrees not to kill. When mutants are in danger. But it doesn't pay well - at all, really - and although I can get anything I need by changing my shape, I am just too aware that I am stealing most of the time." She closed her eyes, then looked up at Charles with a slight smile. "Stealing never bothered me until I met you, you know."
"You are always welcome here," Charles repeated to her, his heart swelling with love and empathy for his first friend, "I don't expect anything in return - although I hope you feel like teaching someday," he acknowledged. "Or just send me some referrals - I need staff!"
They both laughed.
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It is just after noon the same day when Charles finally got all the students into their little school bus. Alex was driving, and Charles sat near the back, where there was a space for his wheelchair. Alex had the loudspeaker.
"Okay, you guys, this is a special occasion so I expect--Gabriel, get down off the ceiling please--I expect you to be on your best behavior. Remember, don't use your powers when we get to the museum, okay?"
The children mumbled assent.
"What was that? I didn't hear you," Alex teased in a sing-song tone.
"OKAY, ALEX," the children screamed with glee. Charles winced a little at the volume but smiled at the chilren nearby. This trip needed to be fun as well as educational, so he was going to try not to be such an old man today.
They started the drive to Manhattan. For the first thirty minutes of the drive the children were essentially well-behaved, even if a few tiny Ororo-generated storm clouds floated around. Charles debated saying anything to her about this, as he wasn't sure if she was being cheeky or if she wasn't in full control of her power yet. I could peek into her mind to check which it is he mused, and he was just debating doing that when Alex slammed on the brakes.
Himself and most of the children flew forward, with shreiks and cries. "Alex!" Charles yelled.
"Professor, I didn't do that," Alex yelled back, and the children all abruptly got quiet as they realized that something might be very wrong.
Inside voice, Alex Charles requested telepathically.
The bus just stopped on its own. I am stepping on the gas pedal and it's not moving, Alex explained mentally. Charles could hear the engine revving, in fact.
Erik? Charles sent out a message to see if his old friend was in the vicinity and responsible for this, although it wasn't really his style to terrify mutant children. He did not feel Erik's presense, but as he reached mentally out he felt a horrible, inky and terribly powerful evil nearby. Charles' breath caught in his throat.
The front door to the bus opened and a mild-looking blond man stepped inside. "Well hello!" He greeted everyone inside with a pleased smile. "I believe I've been looking for you!" Charles felt his insides roiling. The horrible evil feeling was coming from this unassuming and blandly pleasant man at the front of the bus.
The man had stepped inside, hands clasped casually behind his back taking a few steps along the aisle of the short bus. He looked at each individual in the bus for a moment, as if assessing them. Nobody said anything to him, everyone just stared with wide eyes. After a moment, he seemed to reach a conclusion. "Two!" he proclaimed, seeming very pleased indeed. "The rest of you are not, well, ripe," as he chuckled to himself, his bland smile was taking on a distinctly unpleasant appearance. "Come along, then," he said as he turned to leave to bus.
Charles felt a powerful pull in his mind to follow the man, the most intense compulsion he had ever felt. He screamed and threw up every mental defense he had, just managing to avoid the powerful and simple directive pointed at his mind FOLLOW. To his horror, Alex stood up and followed the man outside the bus. Charles did not move, hands on his ears and still screaming his defiance, both mentally and physically. He knew in some part of his mind that the children were terrified and desperately spared a part of his mind to send out a soothing message to them it will be okay, all is good, it will be over soon.
The man was now outside the bus, standing next to the door impatiently. Out the window, Charles could see Alex standing next to him, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed. Charles spared another tendril of consciousness to peek inside Alex's mind and found an echo chamber. Alex was gone.
"Yoo-hoo," the man said, and with a horrific, metallic shearing sound, all of the bus except the part Charles' wheelchair had been sitting on was suddenly gone. Without the support from the rest of the bus, he crashed to the ground and his chair ended up half on top of him. Charles looked around for the children in a panic; he felt them very nearby, but they had never been more terrified.
The complusion to FOLLOW pressed at him even more intensely and anger overtook his fear. "NOOOO," he roared, sending a vicious DESTROY command to the other mind.
It would have killed a human, but the man in the beige jacket just seemed annoyed. "Fine," he snapped. "Have it your way - you're a cripple anyway. But I'm breaking all your toys." With a sneer, the man gestured up and Charles saw where the rest of the bus and the children had gone-- they were hovering about thirty feet above his head--no, they were rushing down now, too fast, too fast--
The bus slammed down on the ground, hard, and it was only because Charles had somehow gotten himself stuck under the now-mangled heap of his wheelchair that he didn't receive a fatal injury. But something metal did stab him painfully in the side and he received a hefty crack on the back of his head.
The physical pain was horrible, but as Charles reached out desperately to his students to count them --Are you ok? Who is hurt?-- and found only one small terrified mind still alive, his anguish tore through him. A mental scream that dwarfed his previous "destroy" command ripped out of him as he succumbed to unconsciousness.
**************************************
Hank and Raven were just preparing lunch together when they doubled over. Charles. "Something's wrong, really wrong," Raven panted at Hank. He seemed to feel the same thing she did.
***************************************
Erik Lensherr was pretending to be someone he wasn't, wearing a suit and posturing as a business man to gain information that was important to him in a high rise building in Manhattan when he felt Charles' anguished cry. He closed his eyes for a moment and gritted his jaw against the pain of it and snapped his eyes open when it abruptly stopped.
He smiled tightly at the sweaty man across from him. "Please excuse me," he said, and without thinking much more about it, he turned to the window and ripped out the metal windowframe outwards with his mind, smoothly following it out and letting the frame and windows crash below as he flew onward, heading north.
Charles' mental cry was not an effective locator beacon, unfortunately, but Erik had the benefit of an excellent sense of direction due to his power. He could tell that Charles was somewhere between Westchester and New York City, so he flew low enough to be able to see anything that might be Charles, not really caring if the humans saw him. Some did; he heard some cries and maybe some crashes, but his instinct thrummed find Charles and Erik usually followed his instincts.
Finally, he saw something yellow and crumpled below him and his stomach twisted as he realized it was a school bus. He flew down and landed, his shoes crunching in the gravel as he approached the wreckage. He heard sobbing and found a head of white wavy hair was the cause of it. "What happened?" he demanded. He did not see Charles.
The crying girl whipped her head up and Erik saw her eyes go white. Storm clouds surrounded him and he looked warily at her dark face and realized he should try a different approach.
"My name is Erik," he said, and gently knelt down a few feet away from her. "I'm here to help. Can you tell me what happened?" He quelled his impatience and tried to convey warmth to the child, although that wasn't exactly something he was good at conveying.
The storm clouds dissipated a bit. "Everyb-body - every- everyb-body's dead," She choked out, eyes now welling up with tears. She moved her body to reveal that she was leaning over Charles. Erik's face went pale at seeing his limp and bloody form when the tiniest groan escaped Charles' lips.
"He's not dead," Erik immediately stepped up inspected Charles as closely as he could get, which was several feet away. He could see that Charles had a pulse in his temple and that he was still breathing, but due Charles being buried in the wreckage, Erik was not able to get close enough to determine anything else. He realized he was standing over the girl who had cowered away from his abrupt change in demeanor while he was trying to assess Charles. "How many of there were you?" He said to Ororo, more quietly.
"Thirteen students, plus Alex and the Professor," she said, breathing raggedly. "But then that man made Alex leave."
Erik filed the last bit of information away for future processing. He carefuly began peeling away the metal of the bus, not able to get to Charles quite yet if it might risk a child's life. As he uncovered the first tiny body, he felt something cold clamping down inside him. Must not react. Must work. But first--
He knelt down to the white-haired girl. She had stopped crying and was staring wide-eyed at the body he had just uncovered. That's someone she knew he realized. He spoke as gently as he could, putting a hand on her shoulder and turning her from the body. "What's your name?"
"Ororo," she said dully. Then she looked up at him. "I know who you are," she said. "You're Magneto. Did you do this?"
"I would never do this," Erik stated vehemently. He took a deep breath, he mind pulsing hurry hurry hurry Charles may not have time and forced himself to speak slowly and calmly. "Ororo, the Professor is alive but badly injured. Some of your friends may be in the same condition, and I need to move carefully and quickly to save as many lives as possible. Do you understand?"
Ororo nodded, with a tiny ember of hope in her eye.
"I think its best if you don't watch while I do this," he continued. "It's your choice, but please do step back so you don't get hit by flying metal."
She stepped back and lay flat on the ground as Erik continued his excavation. Smart girl, he thought, realizing that she was not as young as he'd first thought - 14 or 15 years old, maybe.
Another small body was uncovered, also quite obviously dead.
Erik found a internal numbness he had used as a survival technique so many years ago at Auschwitz and kept going. When he finally got to where he could free Charles, and had sifted through all the metal in the bus, he realized there weren't any survivors aside from Ororo and Charles.
He knelt down by Charles and saw that although the crumpled wheelchair had served as a small structure that prevented him from being completely crushed by the bus, he had a jagged metal piece of bus stabbed into his side and the back of his head was bloody. Erik did not remove the intruding piece of metal from Charles' body - he had some basic medical knowledge - but he did melt off the end sticking out so it was no longer attaching Charles to the bus. He wished he had a way to bandage Charles' head, but knew it was time to go - he heard sirens in the distance.
Suddenly he realized the problem. He was going to have to carry Charles, and the only way to get him the medical attention he needed fast enough was to fly - but he couldn't abandon Ororo here.
"We should get him home," he heard her say behind him. Erik turned around to Ororo and saw her floating off the ground, eyes milky.
His sense of relief was palpable. "You can fly?" he asked. She nodded, but bit her lip. "How long have you been flying?" he asked.
"About six months," she replied. Well, better than nothing.
Erik gathered Charles in his arms. He winced as Charles' bloody head rolled against the crick of his elbow, but there was no help for it. He levitated straight up and looked down to see if Ororo was with him and she was right beside him, closing her eyes tightly against the scene below. He wished he could hold her hand, but his arms were full of Charles, and he was trying not to jostle the projectile still sticking cruelly out of the unconscious man's side.
"Can you hold onto me?" Erik asked Ororo. She nodded shyly and laced her arm through his on the side where Charles' legs dangled over Erik's arm. There. Now he felt more secure that if she wasn't as strong as flyer, at least he would have a chance at not losing her.
"We're going to go fast," he warned her and she nodded. "Okay, on three - one, two, three!"
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