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Adeline was dreaming.
In her mind’s eye, she was seven years old and hugging her mother’s legs. Her dear mother, the pillar of their family. She had always been Adeline’s hero, the fearless knight who vanquished the monsters beneath her bed at night. The balladeer who sung her fitfully to sleep, rich and resonant voice a thing of beauty.
Adeline had always wanted to be like her. A childish dream, perhaps, one born as the consequence of growing up in a precious household. But Adeline was a child, then, and all her little heart longed for was to share a family with a man who would love her like his father loved her mother.
Then she met Erik, and Anya came along. From then on, this childish dream of hers only burned brighter, and for a long while, she thought it had come true. Finally, she’d say, heart freer than a bird soaring through the vast sky. Suddenly, all the hardships they’d endured were worth it, if it meant having a life with Anya and Erik.
Finally, the universe was on her side.
Until, of course, it wasn’t.
Adeline sighed, watching Rogue support the infant’s head and neck, hands impossibly careful. Scott’s protective arms held Jean, whose body was spent beyond measure.
Still, Adeline thought, she eventually had Pietro, Wanda, and Leona. Though it took her an even longer time to come back to her senses and be the mother they truly deserved, her life did get better and easier to bear because of them. Her childish dream, once a fleeting nightmare, was no longer a dream.
Without Erik around, she had to learn to pick herself up and be happy for her kids, if not for herself. It was a fortunate thing, truly, that her pretense of happiness for their sake eventually became the real thing.
She couldn’t help but think of such things as she and Rogue delivered Jean’s baby—Jean and Scott, who were like children to her, and in their own way, helped her find her footing again. In all her years of being a healer, this was not her first time playing the role of a midwife. But moments like these always reminded her of the glaring truth that, if anything, she was always meant to be a mother.
Of course, she had other things going for her in life—but for everything and for everyone, her heart simply swelled with maternal love. The instinct to care for someone who needed it. The untamable urge to heal and nurture and love.
Adeline glanced at the monitors, noting that the baby’s heart rate was steady, his oxygen saturation climbing into a healthy range. There were no visible anomalies or birth trauma as far as she could tell, which she happily relayed to the anxious parents.
Jean let out a half-sigh, half-sob, and Scott was gripping her hand so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.
“You did amazing,” Adeline told her, holding her face gently. Jean leaned into her touch, smiling up at the healer despite her tear-stricken cheeks. She felt their collective relief so vividly, like it was her own.
Adeline took the baby from Rogue once the initial assessment was finished and wrapped him in a fresh blanket before handing him to Jean. The exhaustion on her face completely melted away as soon as he was in her arms, looking down at him like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Adeline saw herself in Jean, then: widened eyes of wonder and bewilderment tracing every delicate curve of his tiny hands and following every rise and fall of his little chest, unable to believe that this child, so small and perfect, was the treasure of her making, come to life.
“Nathan,” Jean whispered softly, eyes shining. “My little Nathan.”
Scott smiled up at her, eyes glistening. “Nathan Summers,” he said, voice chiming loud and clear in the deserted room. “Has a nice ring to it.”
“Agreed,” Adeline said before stepping back to give them space. She hated to separate them, but she knew it had to be done. “You need to get some rest, Jean. We’ll keep Nathan safe in the meantime.”
“I’ll watch over the two of you,” Scott said reassuringly. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, my love.”
Jean seemed reluctant to be away from Nathan, but the need to recover soon took over her, and she nodded tiredly, handing Adeline the baby and letting Scott tuck her to bed.
Adjusting her grip on Nathan, Adeline cradled him close as she and Rogue stepped away from the bed to put him in the nursery, which was a small compartment in the med bay enclosed by glass doors. Nathan was tiny in her arms, yet his mere figure hummed with power. Relief and concern were her inseparable companions, yet she was certain that no harm would come to him, not with his parents around.
Rogue then made sure that Nathan was settled and secured, while Adeline finally bade Scott and Jean goodbye.
“Thank you, Adeline, truly,” said Scott, keeping his voice low to avoid startling Jean awake, “for everything.”
“You know it is always a pleasure, Scott,” she said. “You and Jean are family to me.” She squeezed his hand, pausing before adding, “And now Nathan, too, of course.”
Scott shot her another grateful look before she finally left the room, the door sliding shut behind her. Finally able to shed her duties as healer and midwife, she allowed her shoulders to sag, and her body moved as if on its own, her mind adrift in unending thoughts, heedless of the world around her.
And though at some point she finally sat to rest her feet, she instead was left to wander the long corridors of her own mind, pacing memories and blurred thoughts until time thinned and slipped away unnoticed. Minutes of silence soon unfolded into long hours. Then, when the afternoon golden hour receded into dusk, she felt the urge to stand and move.
It was only when she finally stopped in front of a closed door that she realized where her feet had taken her—Charles' old office.
She sighed, staring at her distorted reflection on the bronze handle. It turned out that even in death, Charles' presence was still the comfort she sought. Perhaps it was because they used to talk a lot, and all his wisdom was a warm and well-worn quilt around her shoulders, a thing with which she could have refuge. His departure, too, still felt unreal to her, a hazy dream she has yet to wake up from.
Adeline had seen many deaths in her years of being alive, and every single one of them took a long time for her to process. Charles Xavier's death, she knew, would take lifetimes.
The knob was slightly warm when she finally grabbed it and pushed the door open. Belatedly, she realized that a warm handle meant that it had been previously used, and a used handle meant that someone was likely inside.
There under the yawning threshold she stood, watching the silhouette of a man sitting atop Charles' old swivel chair. A hulking figure, he donned the same bodysuit he’d worn during the trial—a stripped down version of his usual attire. He looked like royalty in this light, purple cape draped around his shoulders and Charles’ chair as his throne.
Dominating his chest was a bold emblem, and in that light, he was, so unmistakeably, Magneto. But when he turned to her direction, she saw that his face carried the same sense of exhaustion she used to see on Erik all those years ago, when she completely shut the world out after Anya’s passing. And even before that: when they struggled to survive each day back at the concentration camp.
Was this man before her Magneto or Erik? In her heart of hearts, she could not tell.
She stopped in her tracks, freezing by the doorway. Her mind flashed back to when she first heard Charles’ will, where it was immortalized that his last wish was for her to take care of his legacy and children—the school and the X-Men. She remembered Scott profusely trying to convince her not to accept.
“Don’t do it,” he had warned her. “If you want to truly move on from him, don’t do it.”
And she remembered herself laughing at that, thinking he was being too overprotective: “Why should it matter? There is nothing between us anymore. In fact, there isn’t even an ‘us’.”
Scott had looked unconvinced and even more unamused. “But there used to be,” he said pointedly, “and that’s the problem.”
Adeline had simply reached up with a smile, ruffling his hair. “Thank you for your concern, but I’ll be fine, Scott. I mean it.”
She did mean it. With her beloved children all grown up and gone, she had nothing to preoccupy her days. Between potentially running into Erik—Magneto—in the institute and living the rest of her life with an empty heart and a listless mind, she would rather have the former. And if anything, Charles was doing her a favor by giving her something to live for.
Still, she understood Scott’s concern. Her own children would no doubt also convince her against it—if they were here, that was, and not off-world for an Avengers mission. Leona, who would have been her biggest hurdle to face, had tagged along too, as they needed someone with magnetism; much to Adeline’s convenience.
And it was this decision of coming here that she began to seriously question upon finally seeing Erik—Magneto, she chided herself—in flesh and blood before her.
Upon seeing her old lover, every fiber in her body told her that she must flee. His nearness… this cruel closeness of shared air and memories… it all gnawed at the careful order of her mind. Seeing him was like seeing the first sign of land after weeks in the open sea, and at the same time, it was perilous to her resolve, and—she dared admit—perilous to her heart.
Her heart, which had never truly learned how to forget him, no matter what her brain insisted.
No, she thought to herself firmly. She had accepted Charles’ final request fully knowing that Magneto would be here, so why would she run away now? The old Adeline would do that, perhaps—but she was not the same person anymore. She was stronger now; her own children had taught her the importance of having conviction.
Besides, this would be the first time they’d ever get to have a proper talk. And perhaps it would not be such a terrible thing to listen… or to be heard. After all, theirs was a bond that did not demand absolution or explanations. Despite all that happened, they had once understood the same unspoken language, one that neither agony nor conflict could make them forget.
Adeline saw the exact moment that he, too, froze. But the moment was gone as quickly as it came; the great Magneto composed himself quickly with a fleeting shake of his head. “Adeline,” he greeted her stiffly. “I… ah, wasn’t aware of your presence.” He pressed his lips together, waiting for her to respond, but when she didn’t, he added, “I could leave. If you desire it.”
This jolted her back to her senses. “No,” she sputtered. Her mouth moved on her own, quick to assure him, like the mere sight of him reawakened her long-slumbering instincts. “You don’t have to leave. This is your office now, anyway.”
“If you insist.” He nodded. “Come inside, then.”
Adeline entered the room, but as soon as she was a step closer to where he was sitting, all her rationality slithered past her wobbly ankles and out the door. It was as silent as it was awkward; Adeline’s nerves were fried beyond reason.
“How is the child, if I may ask?” She nearly jumped out of her skin at his inquiry, and when her eyes went to him, he wore a mask of careful calmness. Clearly, he was uncertain of what facade to use in dealing with her.
The thought brought forth a wave of melancholy, for once upon a time, he and Adeline used to talk to each other without needing words. Oh, where had that time gone?
“Which—?” she began to ask before stopping herself. Which one? she wanted to ask, but she now realized it would have sounded quite foolish. Magneto was referring to Nathan Summers, not the children they shared. “Ah, I see you’ve heard about Jean’s baby,” she said instead to cover up her mistake.
“Yes,” he said. If she noticed it, he didn’t say anything. “I heard it was quite the ordeal.”
“Nathan was delivered successfully, and he turned out to be a perfectly healthy boy,” Adeline said, and despite herself, she could not suppress the smile that graced her lips. “Jean and Scott are looking forward to seeing the man he would soon grow into. Well, as am I—with parents like them, I’m positive Nathan will turn out quite nicely.”
Magneto nodded to himself, lost in thought. The look on his face was unreadable, and Adeline found herself wishing she could read his mind like she used to. Was he thinking about their children and how, an eternity ago, they were also mother and father for the first time? Was he thinking about sweet Anya and how her birth had been the most beautiful thing to witness, a contrasting sight to all the horrors they had faced?
Was he thinking of such heart-wrenching things? Adeline desperately wanted to know, staring intently at Magneto with pleading eyes that he refused to meet. The murmuring ache in her chest began to blossom, and suddenly she did not want to think about Anya or the past they once had anymore.
“What of your trial at the United Nations?” she asked to usher the conversation along, for fear that if she dwelled on the past, she might just break apart. “I caught some of it before Jean went into labor. I heard there was quite the commotion—so much that Rogue and I worried Scott would not return in time.” She sighed. “But I trusted that he would not miss it for the world, and that he did.”
Magneto cracked a weak smile at that. “Indeed. No father would willingly miss the birth of their child for any cause.” Taking his gloves off, he pushed the chair back and stood, leaning against the wall behind him. “That trial… Ah, it was a catastrophe in every sense of the word.” There was a hint of childlike amusement in his tone, and Adeline couldn’t help but wonder if the old Erik was truly still within him. Or was this simply another mask he wore?
“Is it true, then?” she asked, taking a few more steps into the room. She stood near the shelf, hands in her pockets. “Will you really carry out Charles’ lifelong dream of coexistence?” She cleared her throat, forcing herself to pause for a few moments. “You must forgive me for prying. After all, our old friend’s views are far cries from your own principles of mutant superiority.”
Erik folded his arms over his chest and observed her, trying to glean her thoughts and ultimately failing. It broke his heart to find her so guarded and careful around him, and he wasn’t foolish not to recognize this distance for what it was: the linger scar of wounds he himself had carved upon her soft flesh.
Years ago, Adeline had drawn him close with her positive outlook in life. There is already too much pain and darkness in the world, she had claimed. I do not wish to add more to it. His Adeline was lively and vibrant, one born from her defiant refusal to let grief and anger be the legacy she left behind. A wide-eyed wonder that held her heart on her sleeve without worry that he would be the one to break it.
But now, all her walls were up, and she had not invited him in. What was once an open book to Erik was now a closely shielded vault that even he, with all his powerful magnetism, could not begin to pry open.
He swallowed. He had to be careful with his response. Adeline had always hated Magneto and his ideals—no doubt she would be cautious that the spirit of his atrocities still lived on. Erik, born anew, could not risk losing her once more. Not now, when he was given this precious chance to mend the broken bridge over the chasm between them.
“Do not trouble yourself, Adeline,” he said. “Charles’ dream does not die with him. His ideals shall endure within me, and in his name, I will do whatever I must to forge peace between mutant and human alike.”
Adeline did not know what to feel at his response. If she knew him well enough, she would say that he seemed genuine, if only in the ambitious manner with which he always carried himself. But then again… could she even say that she knew him anymore? That had been true once, but in the time they had been apart, how much had he strayed from the Erik she fell in love with all those years ago? And how much of it had he retained?
Adeline hated that she could not answer her own question. Unsure of what to say, she avoided his gaze entirely and instead let her eyes roam over the shelf she stood next to, trying to find comfort and strength in whatever was left of Charles’ essence here. This was the reason she came here in the first place, anyway, before she got distracted by… someone else.
Her gaze drifted along the shelf until it settled on a framed photograph: young Pietro, frozen in time as he stood among the X-Men of his generation. Defiant, and unknowingly bound to a future far beyond any of the people alongside him could ever imagine.
A profound ache began to rise within her. As a mother, she’d never thought of her children’s heroic crusades as anything but the proof of her failure as a parent to steer them toward reason and discernment. If she had never brought him to the institute, would he have been different? Safer, perhaps, or worse? A child untamed and untrained, lost in a world that would have chewed kids like him up and spat them out.
Adeline was only doing what she could, with what little help she got. She wanted to give her children access to guidance that she herself could not provide. Yet there they were, insisting on a path she would never choose, stepping willingly into the part of her world she spent her entire life avoiding.
It was a betrayal of the quiet life she once dreamed for them, of the parent she swore she would be when Magneto left them to pursue his ideals of a mutant-dominant world.
And yet she saw it clearly: their insistence, their stubborn and brave hearts. It was her failure as much as it was their choice. Perhaps the greatest failure she could have inflicted in the end, one that no power or reasoning could ever undo. She could not shield them from what they were drawn to. She could only watch and silently hope that the world would caress them as she could never bend it in her own youth. That the chaos they embraced would not break them as it had broken so many before. Broken her.
As she wrestled with her inner turmoil, Erik watched her in silence. It had been years since he last saw her, and yet she was as captivating as he remembered, as though time had loved her so much it simply passed her by.
Upon closer look, he noticed the look of pained unrest on her face, and so he called her name, cautious and gentle, fearing that he might do something to scare her away.
“Adeline.”
She flinched at the sound, surprised to find that he had been watching her so closely all along. A shiver ran down her spine at the sound of her name on his lips, arms prickling with gooseflesh. Blinking her tears away, she turned the frame around, shielding herself from her son’s smiling face, before finally turning to meet Erik’s eyes, searching his expression.
“Pietro…” Erik said, wanting to somehow comfort her even if he no longer knew how. He tried not to let his nerves spill into his voice; he wasn’t certain whether he’d succeeded. “He is a good boy. Clever. Capable. He bears his mother’s strength, perhaps more than he realizes.”
Much to his chagrin, however, the words landed poorly. Instead of pride, Adeline’s face only contorted bitterly. Whatever reassurance he had hoped to offer fizzled in the tense silence between them. Some sentiments however well meant, it turned out, arrived too late to heal what had already been broken beyond any hope of repair.
“I alone raised our children,” she said in a hardened voice. “I alone. And you have no such right to speak on them.”
“I know I have caused you all great pain,” Erik said. “But… believe me, Adeline. Believe me when I say that I am trying—at last—to make things right.”
“I do not want to hear it, Erik,” she snapped, stepping forward menacingly, as though all her instincts screamed at her to scare him away.
And there it is, Erik thought. She’d finally called him by name.
Meanwhile, Adeline’s old rage resurfaces, and whatever longing she had felt for him earlier burned out with a violent hiss. “I did not come here wishing to speak with you,” she snarled. “I came here seeking solace in the memory of an old friend, not to dwell on a past that is long gone.”
She sniffed, hands balled into fists at her side. “And let me make this perfectly clear, Erik—I am with the X-Men only out of respect for Charles’ final wishes, and not to reconcile with you, if that is what you imagine.”
It was only when Adeline stopped did she realize that she’d been moving forward the entire time she was talking. Now she stood well within his space, close enough to feel the heat of him. Close enough that retreat would have been an admission she refused to make, despite herself.
He’d wrung his hands free of his gloves earlier, and from here, she could clearly see the numbers tattooed on his wrist. This brand on his skin was one that they shared; faded, yet still a seething reminder of the horrors in their past.
Adeline remembered it without softness, because there was none: two years behind wire and concrete, time reduced to hunger and desperate survival. Hope had been something unspoken—and when light finally shone upon the dreary purgatory of the prison, it was not bravery that had moved them, but inevitability. They found each other once more against all odds, and only when the sounds of pursuit had faded did they stop to embrace, ravenous for the other’s touch. They’d wandered for weeks afterwards, beneath the cover of the forest, amongst the rustling of the leaves. Two ghosts learning to be human again.
And despite the storm of fury in her, the sight of this tattoo softened the sharp furrow of her brows—because for all Erik’s faults and for all their differences, hadn’t they, so many lifetimes ago, loved each other once?
The true, wholehearted love that could find each other in every universe, in every reality. One that could change the flow of tides, alter destinies and all of humanity—if they so chose.
This was the man that Adeline had built a life around in her mind when her heart had been younger. She had been so prepared to start a family with him, and when sadness hovered over her like an inerrable shadow, she would envision having a happy future with him to keep the darkness away.
That was, until he decided to take the fate of the world upon himself and bear its burden on his shoulders alone. In his own twisted way of showing love, he’d become Magneto to make the world a better place for his family and fellow mutants. But salvation forged through force left little room for mercy, and the price for every victory he had seized for himself was another fracture into the man he once was.
The world saw instead a tyrant crowned in blood and ruthlessness; only those who had loved him knew how much of himself he had actually sacrificed on the altar of that dream.
The thought left a bitter taste in Adeline’s mouth again. How does one accept that two such warring truths could exist at once? Erik had been her lover, and Magneto had purged the world with tidal waves of blood and iron. In them, mercy and massacre wore the same face, beat within the same heart. And no matter how fiercely she tried to keep them asunder, naming one as a memory and the other as a monster, they remained inescapably, devastatingly one and the same.
Very, very carefully, Erik reached out to take her hand—the first step forward after time seemed to have frozen solid between the two of them. And maybe it was because of that, his meek yet firm olive branch, that she didn’t pull away.
His warm hand was just as comforting to the touch as it had once been, a tether to a past she had thought lost. Adeline didn’t know if the growing discomfort in her heart was dread or yearning.
Could it be both?
She thought she knew anguish. She’d dived headfirst into it, closing all her doors to the possibility of her and Erik ever getting back together again. Once, she’d sworn to herself that she will never let herself be harrowed by his promises of a perfect life again.
But where did all that shutting out get her now? All he had to do was touch her, and she was once more transported to the happy years they had spent together—from their soul-stirring escape from the concentration camp to the house they’d settled in at a Carpathian Mountain village, a place wedged between stone and sky.
There, for the first time, they were not running away from anything. There, they could breathe and exist without needing to measure each moment against fear. Erik built their life with his hands, as Adeline healed and nurtured. And at night, when everything outside was nothing more than wind against the mountain, they would find each other again—not as terrified fugitives, but two pieces of a puzzle that made a whole.
Erik loved her with the fullness of everything they had survived together; Adeline loved him with a depth he had not dared to hope for.
And they were reckless in their happiness, then, daring in their joy. No walls between them, or whispered fears. When their first daughter was born, their horrors of the camp were cast to oblivion, returning only in harmless nightmares.
Oh, how had things gone so wrong? Why had she let him slip away? They had been so good together and for each other; it could all have been perfect.
Taking her silence as tolerance, Erik nervously brought her hand to his lips and pressed a light kiss to her knuckles, and for a moment there, Adeline thought she saw her husband again—the man who, burdened by grief no less profound than hers, nonetheless offered himself to labor and indignity, scraping together sustenance through whatever menial work society would offer, so that they might endure while she surrendered wholly to a mourning so complete it consumed reason and life itself.
The thought stirred on an old, unwelcome hurt within her. This is how he reaches you, Adeline reminded herself through gritted teeth, time and again.
She pulled away, stepping back to put some distance between them. Even with hands trembling and bloodied, she would sooner deepen the chasm than allow her defenses to collapse. After a lifetime of pain, she owed that to herself at least. Her chest heaved with jagged breaths.
If he wanted to get to her, he would have to tear through every wall she had built.
“Do not touch me again,” she hissed, tearing her eyes away from him. If she had to look into those fervid eyes of his for a second more, she feared she might spontaneously combust.
She cleared her dry throat and smoothed her wrinkle-less shirt, anything to avoid looking at him. “I have to go,” she said quickly and left the room without waiting for his response.
As soon as she stepped out of the room, the invisible hands eased their grip on her lungs and she could breathe again. She pressed her back against the door, gripping her chest, holding herself together to keep the emotions away. Her heart was a thudding drum in her ears, calling out like a warning and a prayer all at once.
‘Shaken’ was far too small a word for what that encounter had done to her. She was at once bewildered and fearful, yet stirred with an excitement and hope she had never imagined possible after so many years apart. It was as if her soul, which had been a long dormant creature, was nudged awake by his lips, trembling at the impossible promise of something new yet achingly fragile like morning dew catching the first light of dawn.
This was dangerous, she knew. A folly. Every wound he inflicted upon her heart throbbed in consternation.
And yet for all her defenses, the truth, stubborn and unrelenting, persisted: she wanted him still, and some long-buried, foolish hope—that he might yet truly become as good as he had promised—stirred back to life.
She exhaled and lifted her back from the door, letting the cool wood fall away. Throat tightening, she swallowed shakily, eyes fixed on the closed barrier before her, haunted by the image of the man who remained inside.
Adeline didn’t need the power to see the future to know that letting her heart open to him again was a foolhardy peril. Every pulse of old longing and obstinate scars whispered warnings of torment to her. She knew all this, and yet she still had to muster every ounce of her strength to will her feet forward until she at last moved away from the door and down the hall, specters wearing Erik’s face following her closely behind.