Fanfic: Ever the Dreamer

[summer_jackel]

The new 'fic is to be found in the comments of this very post.

Fandom: Excalibur (current series); also borrows elements from 'Mystique' and 'X-treme X-men', let's just call it a general XM fic and be done.
Ratings: "R" for some nudity and what I feel is appropriate language. While this is a relationship story (aren't they all?) it is not pr0n. That said, warnings for m/m, f/f and m/f pairings.
Disclaimer: It's just a fanfic, I don't own 'em, that would be Marvel, no money made off it ever. Completely harmless, I swear. (The story, not the writer. ;)
Feedback: Yes, please. I love it.


Ever the Dreamer

“God, it's raining hard. It's going to make our task so much more difficult.”

Well, it does do that this time of year, you know.

Eric didn't need to say the words, only think them in a certain way; his dining companion never liked to listen casually, but it was almost impossible for the telepath to screen thoughts out if someone who knew him sent deliberately. Powerful as he was and possessed of a certain arrogance, it annoyed him to be so manipulated; but then Eric knew that.



The thin lips twisted a bit, sardonic irony lurking in shadows of bone beneath the brooding eyes. Shades of gray and purple darkened the upslanted brows, the sharp panes and smooth dome of his skull, skin stretched over clean angles. It was thinner now than it had been once, an older man's skin though still supple, but the one who had known him for so many years had not missed how smooth muscle still moved beneath it on the strong arms, the lean and wiry chest.

Outside the sky was settling on an angry dark, rain spattering against the glass with insistent desparation. Eric smiled a little and looked down as he finished the last of his tasteless soup, glancing up again with humor and something almost shy in his tired, gray eyes.

The candlelight from the silver menorah only deepened the shadows in that old, familiar face. The holidays hadn't come, not yet, but there was no electricity in Genosha any more and they needed the light. It was the best candle holder he had, the only one he'd had before the cataclysm, and Eric was nothing if not practical. Still, the symbolism seemed apt. The two of them no less than their project needed all the miracles they could find.

Thunder roared, and briefly the room was illuminated in stark white. “Where's Ororo when you really need her,” Eric teased.

“Living her own life, I trust, as are we all.” The comment was casual, meant to be flippant, but Eric knew him, heard the flatness in his tone, the hint of defeat, where others might not. Defeat? There was part of him that focused keenly on that hint of weakness, smelled it as a beast might smell blood, exulted; he forced it down. There was another part, equal or greater, that only sorrowed.

“That's true enough.” Eric stood, taking up the two glasses of red wine he had poured and handing the one to his old friend. He could feel those dark and piercing eyes on his back, thoughtful, a little helpless.

And what now, Charles, he thought, the old fury smoldering in him as Xavier told him how he'd fallen into his plans once more, how Charles had tried to make their recent crisis and young Wicked's fear and vulnerability into an object lesson, another sally in the old philosophical argument. Do not hate, do not fight, bring hope for the young ones, find a better way. Might cannot make right. Do not let your righteous wrath consume you.

Even if Charles was right, it was still humiliating to be so used. Had he not been Magneto, lord of this land? Did he not deserve more respect than to be taught by example like one of Xavier's blighted children? How were they going to make this work?

Could he start anew, after all this time?

“Well, Charles,” Eric sighed with a certain humor, “we have a police officer, we have criminals in custody. All we need is a government.”

“Take my hand,” said Xavier suddenly, his tone intense. He held out his arm in earnest, the muscles corded beneath the skin. In the candlelight, his dark eyes burned.

Almost hesitantly, regretting it already, Eric reached out to him. Xavier's grip was strong as he remembered, full of all that surety and hope. Eric held tighter, feeling something pass between them like electricity. Slowly, their hands dropped. The ancient ritual, the pact, was done.

God, did he have the strength to do this again? To try again when he had failed so many times before?

He remembered Wicked's wide, tearful eyes, so young despite the languid secrets they sometimes held and the fearful power of her rapport with the dead. Her ghosts drifting helplessly around her as she clung to him like the daughters he had lost, seeking his aid in bringing her out of her fear and self-loathing. Trusting him. Oh, God, trusting him. Charles, I do not need this. I should abandon you to it. This is your role.

Staring down at his old friend, old enemy, who watched him with an expression so full of wariness and hope, Eric knew that he would not. The corner of his mouth quirked wryly. “Do you want the job?”

There was always another choice, of course. But none that either of them could live with, and they both knew that. It had begun.

Thunder pealed, quite without the blessing or assistance of Ororo. Just like that, the moment passed. Suddenly, he felt tired, overwhelmed, aware of every ache and pain in his body and his mind. Surely, any more of this empire-building could wait for morning.

Eric sighed, reaching down to his bookshelf, absently caressing the familiar lines of his chess set. It had been awhile since he had had a really enjoyable opponent, and Xavier certainly had always been that. Decicively, he lifted the set and strode back toward the table that he had shared with Xavier.

The chessmen were old, their wood silky and pleasing in his hands, minimalist. Eric moved with a similar grace, spare, simple, easy movements with a wide, leader's stride, though at that moment he was not concious of it. Xavier did not walk, not anymore.

“I only hope that the rains don't entirely wash away our city.” Eric chuckled drily, pausing for a moment before impressive bay windows that just let the heat out now, staring into the darkness beyond. “Although that might be an improvement. And I suppose it couldn't make Hammer Bay any more polluted.” He set the chessmen between them, and sat again. “Would you like to play?”

“Possibly.” Xavier looked up, met the wry gray eyes. “What are you thinking, Eric?”

The tall man laughed aloud, and candlelight caught in the flint-and-silver waves of his hair, the deep lines around his mouth and beneath his gray eyes. “You can't tell?”

Xavier shrugged. “I prefer not to. You know that.”

“Oh yes. Always the moral high ground.” Bitterness hung in his tone as richly as the humor; the hard edge of his gaze sharpened. He couldn't really help it, it had been too long. Xavier looked away.

“Resenting you for manipulating my emotions by leaving me to care for Wicked while the rest of you fought. Resenting you even more for being right. And I'm thinking about the ruins, I suppose, how hopeless a task it seems to mend them. And then the prospect of my empty city. All of the dead. My usual thoughts.”

“For what it's worth, I'm sorry for the first thing.” Xavier sighed a little. “We can't lose hope. You know that. We still have the children, and they need a future, they need us now more than ever.”

“You are not sorry.” He paused. “It must be so comfortable, always to hold the moral high ground.”

“I suppose it must.” Xavier did not meet his gaze, and in the flickering candlelight he looked suddenly weary. Watching him Eric saw, superimposed like a ghost in this spirit-ridden place, the brash confidence of the younger man he had once known, a face smoother but still shadowed.

“I have not felt that way for some time,” Xavier admitted. “I do remember what it felt like, almost.”

Eric sighed, leaned back in his comfortable leather chair. “It isn't easy, is it?”

“No.” Xavier reached out to the board, took the dark queen and turned it between his long fingers. “I think of her, and I hope that she is happy.”

“Storm?” Eric's rusting alto was knowing, more compassion in it than anything else.

The telepath paused too long. “Yes,” he said. “Storm.”

“I don't suppose that it has occurred to you, Charles, that you came here because it was easier.” Eric's voice was mild; Xavier's smooth face, jerking up, held indignation, anger.

Eric shook his head gently, raised his hand. “It isn't an accusation, and we do need you here. My children, possibly even me. But things had gotten…difficult, back at the school, had they not?”

Xavier leaned back, wearily, in his wheelchair. The backrest, which had been new a few short months ago when he had arrived, creaked. “Difficult, yes, I suppose.” He stared broodingly at the chess board. “Better for them…I think necessary…that I moved on.” He looked up, quirked a brow. “Or perhaps I only missed your company.”

A tiny smile touched Eric's fuller lips.

Outside, the night grew wilder and darker. At length, Xavier reached towards a pawn, his long fingers poised above the board as he considered the move. “This was a battlefield game,” the telepath said after a moment, almost to himself. “The game of kings.”

“We are kings, Charles. Or we thought we were.”

They sat together in silence for a long time as the candles of the old menorah guttered lower. At last, Xavier moved his pawn. Eric nodded minutely, acknowledging another beginning.

“I was thinking, Charles,” he sighed after a moment, “That it is raining, and the cold makes my bones hurt, and the headaches are worse than they were. My country, which I loved, has been destroyed, which seems to be a common theme in my life. And I listen to myself, an old man, bitter, whining.” He paused again, the smile dying in the lines of his face. “We haven't forever, you know.”

“We never had forever.”

“We acted like it.” Eric reached for a knight. Xavier's hand was still on the board, hovering lightly over the pawn's fate, and when the man who had once been lord of Genosha moved the polished wooden horse, their fingers brushed lightly. Xavier did not move his hand away; when he lifted his sharp head, his eyes were dark and unreadable.

Eric swallowed, and curled his heavier fingers about the other's. His hands, like Xavier's own, were soft and worn.

“God, Charles, but there are ghosts in your eyes.”

“No more than yours. Eric, I have made some terrible mistakes.”

The other's laugh was soundless. “Have you? I've little sympathy.” But his fingers pressed tighter, and the other hand reached up to encircle it. “I've missed you as well, Charles.”

“Perhaps there is still time.”

“Always a dreamer, aren't you? Always an optimist.”

Charles Xavier did not reply.

* * *

There was not enough wood to heat the entire house, which was large and was now, at any rate, primarily a ruin. Charles had opined that perhaps they should find another place to live, but Eric would not hear of it; and besides, there was enough metal in the structure that he would never be in any danger. Charles had asked him why he had to be so damned arrogant.

Asleep, they did not bicker.

When Callisto came in the next morning, her snake-arms damp and her short, black hair spiking halphazardly from the steady and unwavering gray drizzle outside, she found them curled together on the cooling hearth. The blankets were at least good ones, she noted with satisfaction, mismatched quilts piled over them in untidy warmth. With sudden and completely unexpected protectiveness, she did not want to see either of them get a chill.

Xavier's back was pressed into Eric's belly, sleeping neatly while the other sprawled. The man who had terrified nations had his arm thrown loosely across his companion's shoulders, his face pressed against Xavier's back. He was snoring, just slightly. The face, even in sleep, was regal and severe, but the lines were relaxed, almost peaceful. Laying together, she realized that the two of them were the same height.

Callisto stood in the doorway, tentacles poised on the curve of her hip, a smirk slowly working its way across her face. Her expression was less surprised than gleeful.

Xavier groaned a little and shifted, cracked one dark eye open balefully when it was clear that she had no intention of leaving.

“Mornin', Chucky,” grinned Callisto.

“Would it be unethical,” grumbled the telepath, “If I were to instill in you the compulsion to, say, wake up every morning firmly believing that you were a chicken?”

“You've been spending way too much time with that Emma Frost, sweetheart.” The smaller tendrils around her shoulders were writhing with humor.

Eric Lensherr, once lord of Genosha, once the terrible Magneto, made a tiny sound and shifted, pulling Xavier closer to him. Callisto's grin deepened.

“I was gonna say something about the storms knocking a hole into a building that might have some useful stuff still in it, but I think that can wait. Hell, the kids can do it anyway. I'll be downstairs playing cards with Shola.” She paused, as though she were about to say something else, but decided against it, finally shaking her head and sauntering back the way she'd come with her easy, warrior's grace.

Comments

Favor to a friend

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

They were eating together, sprawled on the battered couches, the mismatched chairs, the soft rugs---the young ones and the old, easy with one another now that there had been months survived, battles won and crises averted, eating food as eclectic and cobbled together as they were, chatting and enjoying one another's company.

Watching them, Wicked's carefully painted face so young, Shola's pained and dream-haunted and not as young as it should have been, Xavier's heart ached a little. It was impossible not to think of his first students so many years ago, earnest Scott and playful Henry, proud Warren and feisty Bobby and beautiful, beautiful Jean. And the other, of course. The secret.

He had done his best for them, he had truly believed that. He still did. And when he travelled as a ghost might to look upon them all, for he could not tear himself away from them entirely, when he saw the grand and hopeful institution that his dream had become, it gave him joy. Gave him hope.

The people they had become were so richly textured, such powerful and worthwhile adults. Yet so scarred, all of them.

Had he done his best for them? Had he done right?

Eyes silver-blue in a Goddess' dark and haughty face haunted him, watching, measuring, something distant in them which had never been there before, even after he had explained. She had heard the explanation, done the favor he had asked---rescued his endangered spy. And then she had left him, she and her team, claiming as theirs the one she had reclaimed. The secret finally uncovered, flown and grown into something he did not understand, had not anticipated. Now, he thought that assuming he had ever understood the one Sebastian had named Tessa was arrogant.

Storm, of all of them, you were never really my student, and you were so much more like me than the others, aloof and apart. I always respected your judgment, valued you so much. Sage never…she never protested it. She even planned it with me. But I think now that you are right.

I remember all your good intentions, Charles, and I've walked the road to hell with which they're paved.

Her words came to him with the perfect clarity of her indigo eyes, so compelling, a shade darker than Ororo's, deep and cold and as unreadable as the mind she had closed to him. She called herself Sage now, and her shadow haunted him as surely as any of Genosha's dead.

From across the room he regarded Eric, the cool gray eyes that he turned over the ruins of his city thoughtful and kind, still a little wary. The feel of that body, so familiar and so strange all at once, filled Xavier's memory, heady and good, a bittersweet and unexpected comfort still shocking in its sudden reality. It had been…so long, since they had touched. Since any touch for him, really, but Eric's had always been so different, so unique.

Eric stared broodingly out the dark window; if he was aware of being watched, he did not deign to show it. They certainly hadn't made it work all those years ago. What made him think that it would now? That he had the strength to try again?

From the other corner of the room, sprawled on the rug with her tendrils twined around Wicked with an intimacy that Xavier didn't quite approve, Callisto's single yellow eye watched him as well, with thoughtful, appraising humor. Why the long face, Chucky, you brooding again?

Xavier raised an eyebrow at her and wondered if Eric had taught her the trick, or if she just thought loudly. More likely, she knew telepaths in general, had learned to do it, synthesized with the elegant mind which was her true mutant gift.

Power Struggle

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

He took her sending as an invitation and allowed himself the pleasure of briefly touching that mind, a bliss of graceful clarity after the multi-layered jumble that marked the thoughts of most people: Callisto was pure water, deep, cool and soothing. Brooding, Callisto? I suppose I am. It's a lifetime pattern. I'm just watching you all.

Like what you see? The insenuation in her mental voice was as obvious as the sudden wiggle of her hips and the sway of her tentacles, the narrowing of that hawkish eye and the full curve of lip. Xavier felt his cheeks flush, just a little, as a tiny zing of heat pooled elsewhere. His inarticulate and flustered sputter carried across the psychic air between them, as did the bell of her laughter, higher and younger in his mind than the deeper growl of her physical voice.

“So why did you come here?” Wicked was asking her, blissfully unaware of the older mutant's repartee with Charles. They were sharing stories, memories of the past and hopes for the future. Was it so wrong to want safety for these people?

The road to hell, whispered that voice, cool and touched so faintly with the trace of her native language. In his wheelchair, Xavier shivered a little.

“I mean,” Wicked was saying, “You were someplace…good. I mean, I love Genosha. I wouldn't leave.” Her voice went defensive, and Callisto's tendril rubbing between her shoulderblades soothed her. “But why?”

Callisto shrugged, a prettier motion than it should have been with all the tentacles, but she was an attractive woman, if harshly so. “You have to have seen where I was before you call It good. Still. It's never really been about comfort for me. Although I do wonder how the Arena's getting on without me sometimes, Charley checkin' up on them now and then or no.”

She graced him with an ironic tilt of her jaw, a little smile. “Honestly? A good friend asked me to keep an eye on her beloved mentor and fearless leader, and since I do have the one…” she blinked pointedly, and Wicked laughed…”I took her up on it.”

Callisto, he thought almost tenderly, but was careful not to send, remembering the dusty, defiant girl she had once been. When I first met you, you would never have made a joke about your eye. You were so angry then, so bitter. How is it that everything you have survived has burned away that anger, lessened it?

There was disbelief in Wicked's voice. “You came here as a favor to a friend?”

“Ah, but she's a very good friend, and…well…you gotta love the audacity. Besides, when the the all-too-perfect Goddess of Storms asks you for a favor, you do it. And I really like the idea of her owing me one.”

“Callisto,” sighed Xavier, “are you and Ororo ever going to work out this…power struggle…you have between you?”

“Oh, but Chucky. I like our power struggle.” The image flashed across his mind then like a trout in water: Storm's long and magnificent body glimmering with sweat and the fragrant oil which had been rubbed carefully into her dark skin. The green snake-tendrils twined around her like a beast-god from some primeval myth, and her supple limbs around them; Callisto poised above her, panting, features slack with passion.

It was a struggle of sorts, but not the sort he had generally associated with the two of them. Nor was this a posture in which he was accustomed to see Ororo; Xavier blanched and swallowed, pushing away the sending as quickly as he could, trying to respect her privacy in that, at least, even as his body responded too easily to the image.

Callisto's mocking laughter pealed across the psychic air.

Xavier tried valiently for a poker face, but he felt the heat rising in his cheeks anyway. Unseen in the shadows, he felt Eric's knowing grin. Wicked raised her eyebrows, puzzled.

The professor sighed and leaned back in his chair.

A little regret is nothing

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

“Do you ever regret coming here? Or rather, was your favor worth it.” The rich tones of Eric's voice startled them all a little, Xavier thought later, maybe even Callisto. It was if they'd forgotten his presence, or, more accurately, as if it had not occurred to them that he might deign to actually join in their conversation. He had not spoken for some time.

Callisto curled back against her divan, expression going serious. She shrugged, a slow writhe of tentacle-arms which gleamed wetly. Xavier knew from experience that they were cool and dry, smooth and scaled as a snake's were, but they reflected nonetheless that damp, silurian glimmer. What had Mystique called her, sea hag? That had certainly been unkind and inaccurate, but somehow, this night, he fancied her something older and more transcendent than she was. A free and feral thing come lately from wave and salt, at home in this haunted, empty city fallen close enough to bay and sea that he could hear the roar of it at night, an entity deep and mysterious, with judgment in her.

“I don't think that there's anything I've ever done that I don't regret at least part of,” she answered slowly, meeting Eric's hooded gray gaze across the room. Charles watched his old friend nod slowly, arms crossed over the black sweater which stretched the breadth of his chest.

“I thought that your mutation made you some kind of a master tactician,” Shola interjected. “That you, what, see actions clearly, anticipate your opponent's moves, that kind of thing. Doesn't that mean you can avoid making stupid choices?”

Callisto had been telling them her Arena stories, though Charles had overheard enough of her thoughts while she did it to know that she'd censored a fair amount of the worst parts of them. They had, of course, been spiced with plenty of physical demonstrations; no one in the room doubted Callisto's ability as a fighter. Shola's was a good question.

Callisto smiled lazily at him. “It is. I anticipate moves, possible futures, possible outcomes. Easiest in a fight, but it works in other ways, too. On a deeper level, I suppose, I understand the three dimensional world, and the objects in it, more clearly than most.” She paused for a minute, seemed to think. “I can pretty much reliably predict the outcomes of most decisions, in a fight or otherwise. Sometimes I'm wrong. Not too often.” She shrugged again, twitched the end of an arm towards Shola, but he was just out of reach and wasn't volunteering to come closer.

She settled it on Freakshow instead. The boy's expressive blue eyes widened a little bit; he hadn't quite gotten used to Callisto's casual way of touching, it seemed. Wicked grinned, well, wickedly, and snuggled closer to him and the tentacles which twined more tightly around them both.

“So, if that's true,” the blond boy asked, apparently deciding to ignore the snaky green extremities for the time being, “how come you regret part of everything you do?”

“Yes,” said Shola, his dark face intense and as always ridden by his own demons. “That's my question.”

“The more you know about the future,” smiled Callisto, her yellow eye rich with secrets, “the less it's possible to avoid regret. I have this on very reliable sources. There was a mutant seer named Destiny once who saw all of the choices that could shape the future. She was driven blind, and then mad, and then killed by the visions. Personally, I'm glad my power isn't any stronger. A little regret is nothing.”

Her gaze shifted to Xavier now, languid, humorous, something serious lurking deeper in it thickening her lemon-shaded eye into gold. He tensed in his chair.

She sees the world differently

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Chucky, darling, she thought, I can see you fidgeting. Honestly. Relax.

“There's another mutant, Callisto continued, addressing the young ones now and seeming to ignore both Xavier and Magneto, casually lifting a goblet of water to her lips with the edge of a smaller tendril. “I don't know her personally, she's a friend of my lovely weather goddess. Seems to have a power a bit like mine, but again more so. She sees the world…differently, very clearly. Synthesizes data like nobody's business, and you better believe that she can do a halfway decent job of predicting the future.”

Callisto's tendrils writhed, stroked Freakshow's smooth cheek. “And if you believe Storm, although personally I think she's a little besotted, this girl has plenty of regrets. The fact still remains that she likes to hide behind the way that people tend to see her as some kind of living computer, avoids interpersonal relationships of all varieties, and drinks too much.”

Callisto finished the water, as if to make her point. “Still, there are other things that factor into that. I'm much more well balanced.”

Her smirk was for Charles alone, and he knew it. Suddenly, her thoughts went opaque and distant. Xavier realized in that moment that she could shield him out far more effectively than he had thought. For the first time since receiving the unexpected gift of her presence and support, he felt unease.

Oh, Chucky, hush. If I was going to do something super-villianish and try to hurt you, don't you think I'd have done it before now? I wasn't lying when I told you that 'Ro sent me here to look after you. But there's a conversation that we should probably have before very much longer.

Yes, he sent, his mental voice deepening with distrust.

Callisto smiled faintly and turned back to the others. There was nothing she said after that which had a double meaning, at least as far as Xavier could discern.

***

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

* * *

The house builder

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

“You were a house builder, Shola says,” murmured Callisto, hopping lightly over a downed piling. They were very near the sea, and its low muttering washed away in the distance. She watched him with interest.

“Long ago,” said Eric, “That is one of the things I was.”

“Domestic of you.” She smiled, and it was genuine.

He raised his long hand, the skin on it convoluted like a map of the things he had seen and the places he had been, stretched his arm outward imperiously. Before him, a pile of wood and metal that had once been a shipping warehouse groaned and shuddered like a living thing, something huge and hulking returning unwillingly from the dead.

Callisto watched him with interest. She had not found the opportunity to be alone much with him, to talk to him, and she wanted to.

She felt rather honored, in a way she had never been with Charles: in the beginning she had felt more jealousy for him than anything else, with his fine house and beautiful, strong children. That had long since burned out of her; she was not sure when, though the ghost-faces of her Morlocks flitted through her mind. It was natural; she had known Charles for years, and Eric really was a stranger still. But he was Magneto, after all. Callisto was unused to being impressed and she was not sure that she liked it.

The expression on his face was rapt, brooding, lost in thought. He jerked his hand like a conductor, and the metals separated, rose above the piles of crushed cement, brickwork and mortar. With a jagged edge of steel, he pushed the debris aside thoughtlessly; an amount of material that Callisto knew from experience would take a work crew days to move, even with heavy machinery.

The steel went pliable, melted into itself like butter, moved like life organic as the impurities worked their way out. It was stunningly, strangely beautiful, and she had not expected that. It occurred to her watching that Eric could have been an artist, what amazing things he could do, what exquisite performances, with an ability like that. It was a strange thought for someone who had been a practical, bitten-edged fighter most of her life, and she scoffed at herself. But still the thought remained.

He raised his hands above his head, and the sleeves of the loose black sweater fell down to his elbows. She saw the row of small, uneven numbers then, for the first time, faded blue by the passing of years, but still inscribed forever in his flesh. Above him, the twisting iron hung in the sky like mating dragons, stretching and deforming, dancing in wide arcs before they lengthened into even, regular lines.

He lowered his hands, and again Callisto thought of a conductor, though she had never seen a symphony, save once on a stolen and cranky television. The steel returned to earth gently as a stack of I-beams. Falling feathers might have created more disturbance.

Magneto stood quietly, unmoving, staring at the pile with an expression she could not read; by which she determined that he had finished. Callisto padded deftly to the pile, which was taller than her head, and examined them. They did not look exactly like manufactured stock, but they were most likely better…Callisto knew building materials… and gleamed as if new.

“Nice work,” she said at last, laying a tendril on one of the beams. The metal was warm and very smooth. She caressed it, enjoying the texture; her tentacles were far more sensitive than her hands had been. “It was actually really…pretty, what you did.” She found herself a little mollified saying the words, almost embarrassed. “Beautiful, actually.”

“Thank you,” he replied, rubbing his forehead. “But what it is, is painful.”

“All work is painful.” She walked over to stand beside him. He was very tall, and carried about him an air of sober nobility. Lovely man, she thought absently, and wished a moment for Xavier's gift so that she could touch his thoughts, know him.

worth the price

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

“What an odd mood I'm in,” she said at last. He raised a brow. “I've been having strange thoughts since I came here, first that what you were doing should be…I don't know…some kinda art. I've never had any use for art in my life. And just now I wished that I could be Chucky for a minute so I'd know how to talk to you.”

He laughed, a good, rich laugh, though there was still sobriety in it. “You are talking with me perfectly well.”

She hoisted herself easily to perch on the pile of debris beside him with a few of her longer tentacles; she was closer now, and at eye level with him. “Well, that's good to know.”

“You evaded my question quite neatly, the other night.”

She tilted her head, appraised him shrewdly. “So ask it again.”

“Was doing your lover's bidding worth the price of being here?”

“How did you know she was my lover? Xavier tell you?”

His smile was minute. “No. But I assumed it, watching you and hearing you talk about her, and I saw the quite priceless expression on Charles' face when you sent him what I assume was a rather…explicit thought.”

She grinned. “You know, for someone who can read the deep whatevers of people's psyches more easily than he can screen 'em out, Chucky can be quite the prude.”

Eric shook his head. “Less so than you would think, when he is alone and at ease, and not concerned with overhearing somewhere he isn't welcome.”

“Is that so. Huh. Guess you'd know.” She shook her head. “It was a gift.”

“Charles is rarely confident of that.”

Callisto nodded, stared at the ground for a moment, and then at him. Magneto looked tired, she thought, tired, thoughtful and a little imperious, just as she had always imagined him. “I don't know why you people assume I don't want to be here. It's a nice place. Good cause.” She paused. “Interesting company.”

“Do you miss your Ororo?”

Callisto crossed her tentacles across her chest and looked away. “Not mine. Just...I guess you'd say borrowed. It was a weird thing, both of us knew it wasn't going to last. Just while she was in the Arena.” She paused, and then said almost unwillingly, “When she left, it just wasn't the same. She called in her favor. And so I came here.”

“You sound like you're trying to convince yourself, my dear.” He watched her a moment. “I thought you were enemies.”

“Oh, we were. Deathly. I was the first person she ever tried to kill. And she was the first person who ever beat me in a fight, because I didn't think she'd do it.”

“I suppose that is as auspicious a beginning for a relationship as any.”

Time changes you

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Callisto chuckled sadly. “I suppose. We really hated each other back then. She took my Morlocks, I detested her for that. Time changes you, though.”

“It does at that.”

The lean mutant looked up, regarded him frankly. “I had her beat in the Arena. Not the fighting, you understand. Other stuff. She loved it. Craved the crowd, the rush. The submission. To me.” Callisto smoothed her short black hair idly, and the brief spike of triumph and anger that had blazed in her eye died as quickly as it had come. “She still won in the end, though. I knew I couldn't keep her, and I miss her. Bitch.”

“You're lonely,” he said. “You love her.” He paused. “I'm sorry.”

“Nah. I don't know why I'm telling you this…because you asked, I guess. But then again, you know all about having stupid, screwed up relationships with your enemies.”

“I suppose I do,” he smiled.

“Think it's gonna work?”

He watched her for a moment, considering her question. “You are the master tactician,” he replied at last. “Why don't you tell me?”

Callisto shook her head. “Love is the only thing that ever beat me, didn't you know that? Lust, I can handle that just fine.” She stretched her long legs, the combat fatigues mud-spattered and beginning to show wear. “Maybe Sage could tell you.” Her voice held a trace of bitterness, just for a moment. “I'll tell you a secret that I don't think she understands it either. Hope Storm has better luck with her.”

Eric nodded, and, with a little more difficulty, brought himself onto the upended piling to sit beside her. “How about the rest of it, then,” he asked. “Our project. Our country. Tactically, give me your opinion.”

Callisto nodded slowly, gazed at the ordered pile of girders incongruous in the blasted chaos, out over the eternal sea. “Lotta variables there,” she said at last. “We're going to have a hell of a time, I'll tell you that. So many things we can't know about yet.” She looked up at him sharply, decisively. “I give us a good chance.”

“You and Charles, then, dreaming of a better day, a hopeful future?”

Her expression darkened. “No. Never like Charles.”

For a long time, she did not speak. Then, quietly, “Charley never lost it all. Everyone. You did…hell, you've seen worse than I hope I ever will. He doesn't get it, doesn't understand. He can't. You…do.”

Slowly, Eric laid his hand on her shoulder. The tiny tendrils there surrounded his fingers almost shyly; there was none of the audacious physicality with which she handled nearly everyone else.

“Charles has suffered as well, you know.”

“Yes. But he never lost…everything, everyone. Somehow that damned school gets rebuilt every time. Jean Grey crawls up out of her grave, Wolvie's been cuisinarted I don't know how many times and he still comes back for more like he wants it. They don't die. And they love him. How does he do it?”

“Something I have oftentimes wondered myself,” he smiled gently.

“I'll put it all into Genosha,” she said at last. “I'll give it all, nobody else wants it. I can't say right now if I think we really have any chance. Wish we had a Destiny or a Sage around, they could tell us.” She barked a short laugh. “Maybe that's for the better. Just watch me, I can fight for something without ever believing it will work.”

Eric rubbed her shoulder, reached up to smooth a few tangled strands of her hair. Callisto sighed, a little raggedly.

“That is true of all of us, my dear.”

She looked up, and her smile was not her customary brash leer, but something more fragile. Quickly, she reached up to kiss his dusty cheek, then dropped lightly from her perch.

“Maybe it is.” She stopped in mid-stride, poised on the verge of movement, of thought. “Hey. I think you make a nice house. It suits you.”

“I shall take that as a high compliment.”

She smiled again. “Thanks, Mags. I'll see you around.”

***

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* * *

warm morning

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The bluffs above Hammer Bay were beautiful, thick-furred with lush and vibrant green, dotted with flowering trees. Empty but for placid cows, colorful, singing birds, and the two mutants who slogged up the hill, the scene would have been an idyll were they not searching for the few isolated survivors that remained of Genosha's once flourishing population. Hammer Bay stretched out below them to the sea beyond in wide blue ribbons. The city's ruins were still clearly visible on the shore.

The good, green earth smelled of grass and life and the heaviness of rain. He had not realized that the city still stank of charred earth and blasted concrete. He had missed the worst of it; Wicked, Freakshow and Eric remembered the reek of smoke, charring bone and, later, decay.

Through Callisto's surface thoughts, he felt how she relished the morning's loveliness, the feel of warm sunshine on her neck and face even as she grumbled about the wet grass soaking through the bottom of her combat fatigues. He did not read her deliberately, but this close, it was impossible to completely shield her out. Held against her lean, strong back by the unbreakable snaking grip of her tendrils, he was surrounded by her, the clean warm scent of her mingling with grass and flowers in the warm Genoshan air.

No more easily could he avoid her intense and formidable psychic taste. This close it felt almost as if it were his own legs making the trek, the steady rhythm of her breathing, the disorienting weight that he knew to be his own. There again, his curse and his blessing, forced to be so close, to know others so intimately, by the inescapable nature of his gift. Forced by his promise to himself, his sense of ethics, never to use that stolen intimacy to claim a closeness that he had not truly earned, always to hold himself apart. He had long since become accustomed to it; his inevitable window into others' souls had not made him uncomfortable in years. Only, at times, a little sad.

So the warm spring morning sang with Callisto as much as it did birdsong, discordant flavors each in their own way as beautiful as the other, and he did not fight it overmuch. When had he begun thinking of Callisto as beautiful? Certainly not when he had first met her. But time had so changed them both.

She had spent almost all of her life in cities or under them, and he tasted her memory of the dank closeness of the Morlock tunnels, the superheated tang of sweat and fear and giddy excitement that was the Arena. It was so rare that she was in a place like this, a simple and untrammeled hillside with fresh air and warm sun. What a terrible thing, he thought, to spend almost half of a life underground or in a fighting pit, shielded from the sun, before he realized that he, too, had not been outside of a city in a very long time.

Well, that was going to change. There would be no real cities on Genosha again for some while, possibly not even in his lifetime. With a start, Professor Xavier, who had been in space with the Shi'ar and had generally become accustomed to the best technology available on planet or off, realized that he might live out the rest of his life here, in this place where their powers alone could sustain them. Here, with Eric, helping him piece together the shreds of his once-proud mutant nation.

Would that truly be such a terrible thing?

apple tree

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Xavier was broken from his reverie by a shift in Callisto's weight and the slither of her tentacle-arms along his chest. It had been alarming at first; now, he was used to it.

With a little grunt, she set him down gently on a large rock.
“Sorry, Chucky, gotta take a little break, here.” She stretched her back as he watched her in profile, ribs showing in a clean line beneath her sallow skin, black hair flashing blue-green highlights. Her emerald tentacles writhed a halo around her, scratching an itch here and there, rubbing sinuously along her spine.

“This is just as well, our mutant is about twenty minutes away, and I still want to think a little more before we approach him.” Xavier paused. “Is this hurting you?”

“Nah! I'm strong enough.” She leaned against the rock and stretched like a cat, dark lips slightly ajar on neat, white teeth in a little scowl of pleasure. “Not like we'd get anywhere with me pushing your broken wheelchair around the woods. This is faster.” Callisto seemed to consider a moment as she pulled the canteen from her knapsack, drank from it, and offered it to Xavier. “Still. Since you're starting 4-H clubs for the mutant kiddies now, I think that we should ask one of them to go catch you a pony, King Arthur.”

Xavier smiled weakly, sensing in a flash of rare precognition that Callisto was going to get as much mileage as she could teasing him about that particular idea. Well, they had to learn to feed themselves somehow. Genosha had a fair number of young people and a lot of feral livestock. It didn't take a rocket scientist.

Callisto's single yellow eye was warm enough to take the sting from her comment, but embarrassment and guilt for using this formidable woman as base transportation still rose. With it came the anger at his own helplessness, even, irrationally, at her for having to be its victim and witness. From the taste of her thoughts he knew she understood, knew what he felt as swiftly and surely as any telepath.

Not that it was a particularly complex motivation to understand. But Callisto, unlike others, felt no pity for his useless legs and never had. She had little enough pity to spare anyone, true, but it was refreshing. He was grateful, affectionate even, towards her for that.

Callisto rummaged around in her knapsack, scowling a little before she withdrew a pair of hard biscuits and some dried meat. “Eh, not the worst I've had,” she muttered as she glared over at the distant herd. “You're probably right. Hell, I can learn to gut a cow. Bet it's easy.” Casually, she drew one of her viciously sharp throwing knives from the belt that hung low on her hips, played it between her tentacles as she often did.

With a deceptively relaxed flicker, the slender spike was airborne, launched with swift elegance into the damp foliage a few feet above them. There was a rustle and a wet crunch. The knife fell toward earth speared in the middle of an almost-ripe apple; with a casual leap, Callisto captured it before it touched ground.

“Not bad,” she nodded, inspecting her work, paring the fruit into even slivers with the same knife. “I could have had the squirrel that was next to it, but I'm not in the mood to cook.”

She passed the fruit to Xavier. Watching her, he bit into it; it was almost painfully tart, but still good.

the pain of her clarity

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“I found a bottle of cognac the other day, down among the docks,” she said casually. “Wish I had it now. It would be perfect with these apples. The good stuff.”

Her smile was secret as she took the small, keen spike of her blade from the sour green flesh. She sent him another image, almost aggressively, as if he didn't understand. Jaded indigo eyes in a pale white face both serene and severe, the cheeks cut with jet-black slashes as dark as her bound up hair. Always, a glass of cognac about her when she was working, deep crimson in the cool white hand. It hurt her, to use her gift: the great depth of her clarity was painful. Drink dulled it somewhat and helped her keep her attention on things outside of herself. Xavier realized that he might well be the only one who knew that.

The image wasn't quite right; Callisto had never seen Sage, and there was an odd softness to it. A third-hand image, he understood, a photograph, or a careful description. Ororo's?

“Shall we have that talk, then?” he asked quietly.

“We should have a long time ago, I guess,” she answered, delicately flinging another knife, taking another apple. Xavier did not flinch as it whistled keenly past his cheek. Her tentacle slipped gently across his neck after she caught it.

“Would you really kill Eric?” she asked casually. “You've known him most of your life. He's your best friend. Your lover.”

“And a very dangerous man.”

“That's true.” She bit into the apple without slicing it this time and for a moment seemed to focus her keen entirety on the task, like a child. “You're dangerous, too,” she told him through a mouthful of fruit. “I like to think I am as well.”

“You are extremely dangerous,” he told her seriously.

“Glad to hear you think so.” She swallowed, took another bite. “So, you'd kill him if he...what...disagreed with you? Sounds like bloody revolution and palace intrigue waiting to happen, Chucky. To say nothing of base hypocrisy. I thought you were supposed to be the noble one.”

“If Eric condones the killing of humans again, if he takes us on a path that will have the world coming down our throats, yes, I will do what I must to stop him, as I have always done.” He paused. “I don't want to. You have to know that.”

She nodded, toyed idly with a few of her knives. “I know. I even understand.”

“I don't feel much like 'the noble one' any more, to be honest.”

She looked up, her expression measuring, commanding. “I don't suppose you do.” She didn't say anything for awhile, eating the fruit. Then, almost playfully, she grinned, “The high-handed and almighty Professor X with his secret school---keeping secrets from your secrets. Tell me, does anyone know everything about your little network of spies? Sage, Mystique and poor little dead Prudence aren't your only ones.”

“No. And please do not mention Prudence again.”

“Why, because she died in the line of duty for you? Believe me, I've had the experience; my spies just weren't as pretty. Get over it. We're political leaders. Occupational hazard. People die for us.”

She tossed another throwing knife into the bark of the tree. “Actually, the spy thing doesn't bother me at all. I respect you more for it. It's a good move. Very impressive that you managed to get a collar on that damned Mystique, though personally I think you'd be better off putting a knife or five in her.”

“I wouldn't do that,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “Not even to her.”

She shrugged. “I've had spy networks. Needed 'em, to keep the Morlocks going. I never used kids, though, and sure never sent 'em into the Hellfire club.” She smirked at him. “And here I thought I was the kinky one.”

“Ororo,” he sighed heavily, “Is never going to forgive me, for Sage.”

“No,” agreed Callisto, peeling an apple, “She probably won't.”

children

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For a time, they sat there in silence, watching a flock of white pigeons wheeling across the sky. “I never really thought of her as a child,” he said at last. “When I met her...I'd never experienced a mind like hers. I never have since. Though you remind me a little of her, when I use telepathy with you.”

“I hope that's a compliment.”

“I enjoy your mind,” he admitted. “It relaxes me.”

“I don't think I've ever been accused of relaxing anyone,” she grinned, showing teeth.

“You do. And it means more to me than you know. But Sage...I cannot bear to touch her thoughts when she is fully engaging her power. I think it would drive me quite mad. She can be...frightening. Her potential is so terrible. She learned to hide it later, but still, there is such a cold rationality to her. A cold-bloodedness.” He sighed. “She knew what she was getting into, she knew what the Club was, when I sent her. She agreed with the mission and its purposes.”

“Chucky, you can't be that naive. There's no way that a kid that young could know what she was getting into with the Hellfire club. 'Ro says that she was younger than Kitty when she came to the X-men. You hid her so that they wouldn't know.”

“Honestly, I was afraid of how she might effect the others, and I knew that her mission might last years. She never...never seemed even to exist in the same world as someone like Kitty. Seeing her as I did, understanding what she could do, seeing her kill, I never thought of her as a child. And the Hellfire club...was not always what it became.”

Callisto rolled her eye. “Oh please. You shouldn't have to be a mutant tactician to see that one coming. Gods. Men.”

“Callisto, I have considered this at length, and I believe now that I was wrong. I was...much younger then, myself.”

He felt the edge of her tentacles on his wrist, his knee. “You should try telling Ororo some time. And Sage.”

“I wish I had the strength,” he half whispered.

“Well,” she smiled. “The great Professor X has feet of clay, what do you know.”

“Don't tell anyone.” He sighed, staring down at the blue-gray rock beneath him, and finished his apple. Finally he looked up, resignation in his dark eyes. “Callisto,” he sighed, “why did Ororo send you here?”

those we protect

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She stood with ophidian grace, stretching her arms and her long, smooth back, the knives still gleaming like silver about her person. “To protect you,” she told him calmly. “She was worried for you out here with no X-men to keep an eye. She does love you, even though she's not particularly happy with you right now. You're family to her, you've earned that right.”

“And,” she continued, her sad yellow eye meeting his with level frankness, “If you became dangerous. If you started to use people, control people, manipulate them for your dream essentially against their will. I was told to stop you, however I needed to.”

Her simple, sharp knives caught and refracted the innocent sunlight, a poise of deadly grace, this woman who had broken Ororo's gentle serenity those years ago and made her, for the first and most poignant time, willing to kill. Another thing he had blamed himself for, another strand in his hair shirt. But here they were, this woman and the one who had sent her, both of them revealing aspects he had not given them credit for.

He probed at her telepathically and her shields were like iron. It came to him that they were quite alone, he and this merciless fighter who only once had been bested, here on this high, deserted bluff. He was not without defenses; certainly he was, though crippled, far from helpless. But Xavier had no illusions as to his chances, should she decide to act on her hidden directive.

He steadied his breathing, calmed himself as he did before facing any serious and potentially ultimate crisis. Callisto watched him, her eye cool and inscrutable, the power in it, the wicked throwing knives glinting in her tentacles and low on the curve of her hip. He wondered, distantly, as from across the roaring of the sea, if this was it, if this was right, if in this moment he would finally settle his debts, atone for his sins.

He thought of Sage, of Prudence, even of Ororo. Eric. A great peace descended upon him.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked her calmly.

The full curve of Callisto's lips twisted on a secret smile, edged and sensual. “Because I don't think I'm going to need to.” With rapid grace, she sheathed her knives, plucked the one she had lodged in the apple tree. It left a fresh, pale wound; a chip of bark fell to the laden grass. She stretched with a feral, easy motion and quickly repacked her knapsack. “Because you asked.”

She glided to his side. Her tendrils surrounded him without asking permission, warm, smooth and undulating, twining his limbs and torso with their tremendous and casual strength. She drew him up to herself, settled him against her shoulders. He realized that he was cold, and that her warmth was welcome.

“Come on, Chucky. Let's go do this, so we can get home.”

***

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* * *

You never kill

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He wondered later, because he had so much time to think on it, that there were so many who were ready to pass judgment upon him. And that Callisto, unlikely as it seemed, had been gentle in her estimation.

The late winter night was still cold, though there was no snow in Genosha's squalling, tropical winters. He was alone. Forge had come to the island and so, perforce, Eric had hidden himself, gone to the rooms he kept near the waterfront he was rebuilding. Just as well, Charles, he'd said, his hand lingering a moment longer than it needed to on Xavier's shoulder. The embargo will be lifted sooner or later. When it does, we will have trade, and when that happens, we will need a functional port.

Charles had ignored the quiet fury which had turned Eric's eyes to edged and deadly flint, a fury that he himself understood too well. Why did the world embargo Genosha, or rather what little was left of the country? Genosha's people were the victims. He knew, of course: the mutant fear.

So Eric was alone with his plans and time to brood over the injustice, which made Charles nervous, but it could not be helped. It was not that Charles did not trust Forge, or even the Maker's ability to keep a secret, but he was not yet ready to explain himself, to defend Eric, to anyone. There was a chance that Forge might see Magneto and, panicking, run, taking the secret with him. They were certainly not yet ready to explain Magneto's continued existence to the world.

Slowly, his hands on the rims of his wheels, Xavier pushed the chair to his cold bedside. He had cut the tie with Mystique, and while he had not killed her, simply let her go having released his protection, it was inevitable that someone would do the job before long. He was surprised how, finally, that disturbed him. Had he not, guiltily, wanted to do it himself?

Shortpack's disappearance and capture weighed heavy on his heart as well, his agent gone to seek a vengeance he would never have condoned. Another of his people emperiled, though, he reminded himself, Shortpack had chosen to go on this course of action by himself. Still, should the death of Prudence have hurt him more?

It was not dead Prudence that haunted his waking mind now, but the living Sage, still and always an enigma. His best, most loyal and perfect spy, who had completed one of the longest and most ambitious missions he had imagined, whose heart and motivations he still did not understand.

Why had he sent her? Did it anger him that, from the beginning, he had been unable to quantify her or predict what she might become? Did her cold practicality and the edged blade of her mind make him want to hobble her, place her somewhere that would force her into wariness, to be always endangered, living a lie? Had he done it to keep her as long as possible from the full promise of her mutant ability, because it frightened him?

She had frightened him from the moment, greviously hurt and far from home, he had reached out to her child's mind. Had he used her this way so that he would not face in her a potential threat, so that he could have his retribution on what she was?

Young as Kitty, Callisto said. Had there been that kind of evil in him? Was it there still?

He thought of Mystique, whose freedom he had stolen. Was that wrong, too? He was questioning everything.

No, he thought, lifting himself from his chair and into the empty bed. Never that. Kill her, Callisto said, and he had wanted to kill her, God he had wanted to, after she had murdered Moira. Having the changeling Mystique in his power had been such a vulgar, sweet, fierce pleasure.

He never killed. He would not; his first edict, decided long ago. No, a small voice whispered in the back of his head, a voice that sounded like Sage's and then Mystique's, even Eric's. You never kill, only cripple.

you brought this on yourself

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Xavier rolled into his cold sheets, troubled, and pulled the coverlet about his shoulders. He missed Eric more than he would have thought.

It seemed so right, later, when the warm hands touched him, startled him out of sleep, and he saw that gentle, smiling, dead face. That she should be living still did not surprise him, given the fantastic things he had seen over the years, only how.

He gasped her name in an exhalation of breath, “Prudence...!” Her lips, bowed and girlish, smiled sweetly, her cornsilk hair pulled back on a face too kind to be a spy's, her eyes too blue and cheeks too rounded. Of course, they both had traded on that...women made wonderful spies since the world loved to underestimate them.

She smiled like an angel, and he thought, shocked and still caught in the maze of sleep, Prudence, you are not dead, I am not guilty after all, even as he whispered questioning disbelief to her.

“Hold still,” she murmurred like a lover, and her hand pushing back his head was bitterly strong.

Her smile widened to show teeth as the dim night light caught on the deep curve of her blade, a skinning knife as exquisitely sharp as anything of Callisto's. And he thought for a moment, a small betrayal, that it was she. Why, he cried plaintively in that split second before the knife flashed down, why now?

The blade was keen as Callisto's, honed with the same warrior's pride and utilitarian necessity, but far more flamboyant in style. Prudence's blue, blue eyes flashed sulphur-gold, almost playfully, and he knew.

Mystique had come home to him.

“Sorry, Charlie, but you brought this on yourself,” she whispered with the predator's sensuality in her low voice, and brought down the blade.

Its kiss was shallow and burned like fire. Her lips turned up, expectant, and she poised to leap a second before the door blew open to Forge's enraged bellow. There was yelling and shots, explosions as they tore yet another hole in poor Eric's once-proud house. Eric, he thought distantly as the world began to spin from the poisoned blade, Eric, and did not even have the strength to mindcall.

Would he die alone now, with Eric so close? God, the irony. The horrid, appropriate irony.

***

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* * *

dust colored jackals

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It had rained the night before and the city's ruins were still damp, but winter was ending. The sun blazed above, a few hours off noon, and water peeled from the blasted roads and girders in skeins of white mist.

Callisto was bathed in scarlet to her shoulders, her tentacle arms writhing nightmares tipped in silver blades, blood smeared across her throat and belly. She was at least wearing her 'plain' eye patch, Eric noticed, rather than the silk one with its glittering point. The studded choker she favored was gone, leaving her long neck unadorned. Tendons stood on it; her face was a calm mask he understood for fury. Practical, he thought, well enough.

The carcass was a grisly spectacle of bare bones and carnage in front of her, held by a hook in its last remaining leg to the metal frame he had made her for the purpose. He watched her face through bleeding ribs that stood out at odd angles.

Several feet away, the offal and a pile of spare bones lay in a pile. Three of Genosha's small, dust colored jackals gorged beside a mottled, stray dog that was slightly larger, and glanced up occasionally to keep a weather eye on their benefactor. Clouds of gulls screamed angrily overhead.

On the opposite side, Shola lurked quietly, apparently seeking to avoid her attention. Callisto's blade pared a long sliver of meat from the bone, then another. Shola moved forward with his light elegance and took the cuts as quickly as possible.

Her chin jerked up and her eye, forbidding and mercuric, met that of the newcomer.

“Cow,” she snapped defiantly.

Eric nodded quietly. “You look about done with that.”

Shola glanced up at him, and then Callisto, and carefully gathered together a last knapsack full of meat. With economical silence, he departed.

She said nothing, glaring at the tall, silvered man.

“Book says that Charles will live,” he told her quietly. “Most likely. She is not certain what poison was used, but his fever has stabilized.”

Callisto's lips drew back from her teeth as she tore a bone from the carcass, throwing it hard at the jackals. They scattered like leaves and then came back almost immediately. The boldest seized the missile, gnawing.

what about next time?

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“Damn her,” Callisto snarled. “She did it on purpose. That was no failed assassination attempt; she came here to hurt him, to prove that she could.”

“Is that not better,” Eric said reasonably, “than the alternative?”

Her eye blazed, and a bloody knife whistled past him to lodge in the wood behind. He did not seize it with his power or flinch; of the last he was rather proud.

“Do you know,” she demanded, “how many times I've contemplated killing Charles-fucking-Xavier myself?” Another knife whirred past his ear to join its sister. “I saved him once, did you know. One of my spies found him when he'd been beaten nearly to death by a pack of the humans he wants us to all make peace with so damn badly. I kept him in my Morlock tunnels. Brought him back to health.” Her tentacles dropped slowly to her sides. “Put him in my best leathers, too. Worth it just to see the look on his face, but he didn't look bad in 'em.”

Callisto's head shot up again, defiant, all fury hot and cold. “You.” She threw another knife as he made his way carefully towards her; this one came close enough that he did close his eyes and wince a little.

“You. Are mine. I see that bitch, and god help her if she ever pretends to be me again, I'll change her shape.”

“Callisto,” Eric said gently, and took her two thickest tentacles in his hands. They were tacky, sticky with drying blood, and swayed restlessly as he held them tighter. “He'll live.”

“Course he will. What about next time? What about you? The world hates you, Magneto. You have no fucking idea how much I do not want to live through this!”

“Callisto.” There was the gentlest hint of a command in his voice. One of the tentacles he had captured looped around his wrist; she swallowed and met his eyes.

He brought the hard bones of his knuckles to the angle of her cheek, barely touching her as he brushed the skin. When he traced along the white scars, old and barely visible anymore, which radiated from beneath her patched eye, he felt her curb her flinch. Her eyelid flickered down.

“Callisto,” he said again, quietly, and smoothed a strand of her bloody hair. “You're filthy. Come to the ocean. Clean off, it's warm enough. And then we will attend to Charles.”

She nodded, a quick, reluctant jerk of her head.

weathered bones

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They made their way down the ruined streets and gaping wreckage in silence until they came to the strand between the sea and Hammer Bay. There were clouds, huge and high above, moving slowly, sometimes crossing the sun's progression to cast brief, cool shadows. The afternoon's warm light blazed green on waves, white sand, and staring at it he could almost forget the wreckage behind. Almost.

Callisto picked up half of a bleached skull, sighed, and threw it down again. The fine, glittering sand was full of weathered bones.

She had regained her composure; there was none of that brittle anger to her now, but still she was unusually quiet. Eric stripped of his shirt, deciding that the worn, brown shorts he wore would have to do, and waded to his ankles into the lapping water.

Her black half-shirt and patched fatigues were stiffening, the blood on her flaking into rust. She shrugged out of the clothes easily and tilted her head to the sun for a moment as if seeking guidance or benediction, and then walked towards him.

Eric swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. The sun caught on her lean, fighter's body, all scars and whipcord muscle, the dark points of her small breasts, the blue-black gloss at the juncture of her thighs.

Close to him, almost somberly, she entered the water, let it sluice around her, froth in her tentacles and hair. Her eyelid fluttered closed, and he could see the blue shadow beneath it, the water beading on her lashes. Eric did not see in her a fantastic beast of the waves, a pre-Cambrian goddess. What she was, was enough.

He approached her slowly to make sure that she knew, that he had her permission. The sea frothed greenly about his waist, cold and urgent, moving. He could feel the sun baking the skin of his back, bleaching the silvered mat of his chest, and it felt so good.

Her tendril-arms bobbed in the water loosely, like kelp, and her expression could not be read.

“Callisto,” he whispered. She looked up, fearless but serious, and did not touch him yet.

Carefully, he bent his mouth to hers. She made a tiny sound, the only truly vulnerable thing he had ever known her to do. She tasted of need and blood and seawater, and he held her tightly.

***

Re: weathered bones

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* * *

sunbeams

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Charles saw Moira again, but that was no longer unusual. It did not upset him much that the impossible came to him like some waking dream, and now that he was close to death, he found the presence of her ghost comforting. No, it was not right to lie to ones' self in these ultimate moments. He had found her comforting all along.

“Ah, ye daft, daft man,” she sighed as she rubbed his forehead with a cool rag. Her hair was smooth and thick, falling past her face in a nut-brown wave as she bent over him, and her eyes were dark with concern. She was less transparent than translucent, and he saw light through her, could see the cracked, gray walls of his bedroom beyond. She was younger than she had been when she had died.

“Well, I can appear however I bloody choose, can't I,” she demanded, glaring.

“Actually,” he groaned, “you appear however my subconscious would like you to, as you aren't real. That feels wonderful. Please don't stop.”

Moira ran her long, pale fingers across his scalp. “I'd slap ye if ye weren't so hurt.” Her words were gentle. Why had it never worked between them? He could not remember now.

He did hurt. Pain radiated from the knife wound in his belly in vicious spears and he could not lift his spinning head. Vaguely he was aware of hands on him, moving him, checking temperature and pulse, dressing the wound. He remembered now. Mystique. Vengeance. Why hadn't she killed him?

Perhaps she only wanted to make it slow.

“Oh, Moira.” He swallowed. “I believe that I may be dying.”

“You aren't, Charles.” She wetted the towel that was as ephemeral and insubstantial as she was and washed his brow again with its blessed cool. “You're not done yet. Ye can't leave Eric, not now. Ah, daft man.”

“Eric is well enough without me,” he sighed, resigned.

Her lips pursed. “The devil you say. Pull yourself together, man. Ye've seen worse than this.” Her brogue deepened, as it did when she was angry. “Yuir people need you. Eric. That Callisto, even if I don't much like her. She makes ye forget those things you will not do.”

“Should have killed Mystique.”

“Nae, Charles, ye canna blame her, ye did her wrong.”

“She killed you, Moria. You're dead.”

The shade of Moira McTaggert shook her head, her expression radiant with a sad and gentle smile. “It doesn't matter any more, Charles. It's done. Call your people to ye.”

Moira faded into the dappled mist until the last thing left of her was the memory of her eyes, melting into the sunbeams.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

The pain became a constant. He could not move his limbs, his neck. Time passed; he did not know how much. Forge came and went, unhappily. He thought he saw Eric, reached for him.

Callisto, he thought, something to do with her. A small betrayal. A task she had been set. He reached out with his mind, felt his psychic image leave his body like some specter, something newly dead. Callisto?

It was not her that he reached.

The world smelled like snow now, that cool, familiar brush of a New England winter, a dream of nostalgia. His home, so strange and yet so familiar, his house rebuilt again risen phoenix-like from its ash, full of sleeping children. Ah, here? Have I come back here to die?

Long, pale hands brushed the side of a face inhumanly elegant, even newly wakened from sleep, black hair a thick riot around her bare, white shoulders. The edge of her mind sprang on him and seized him like a trap, considering, sharper and more hurtful than broken glass.

You are not dying, Charles. Her sending was remote, disinterested, wary. She was fully alert, poised from sleep to battle in a heartbeat.

You have grown up, he sighed to her, Sage.

You are ill, professor. You should not be here. Her telepathy was still weak compared to some and always would be, but the mind that fueled it was vast, encompassing, calculating in a way for which he had no words. It touched him that in that multifaceted immensity he could taste concern.

You tax yourself. You are fevered and need to rest. He could feel the probe of her power slice into him, cataloging, considering. I can do nothing for you from this distance, but you are severely hurt. You are aware of this.

There was movement beside her, a sleek body comfortable beneath one thin coverlet, a pittance beside the mass of down comforters which surrounded Sage. Silver hair spread gleaming on the pillow. The cyberpath's deft fingers reached out to smooth the hair, traced the edge of her temple, and the sleeper quieted.

Sage, he asked her, are you happy?

An odd question from you, Professor, she replied, her tones guarded, as calm as they always were. He wondered suddenly what she was like when her defenses were down, when she was relaxed with someone she loved, safe and alone. If even Ororo had been graced by that knowledge, if anyone ever had.

I wanted to tell you that I am sorry.

Her elegant head tilted slightly, and she watched his shade across the miles, analytically. He would never understand her, he knew that now, never have a true road into that mind. Perhaps he did not need to.

I understand, she responded at last, her voice still emotionless. Sleep now.

swimming's a pleasure

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

For a time, he did, though his dreams were fevered and chaotic, full of pain.

“Wake up wake up,” he heard the words, humor and sorrow in them, through the omnipresent whisper of the waves. It's getting warm again, and we need your help dealing with this little country we're trying to patch together.

I do not wish to wake, he sighed. I am hurt, and I am wrong, and I've done awful things.

The hell you have, Chucky, and Ye daft man.

Mercy, I cannot fight the both of you.

Arms inhuman cupped his skull and the base of his spine, rocked him, held him. The sea of our country is wonderful and warm, she whispered in her mind, knowing he would hear. Swimming's a pleasure I'm just getting to know…teach an old dog new tricks, hey? Come on, you shouldn't be afraid. I'm not gonna let you drown.

He still hurt deeply, and came to himself with the knowledge that he was going to hurt from this wound for a very long time. “You gotta eat, Chucky,” growled a voice, and he startled a bit, for the words were not Sage's. Sage's? Why would he expect her here?

Familiar hands held his shoulders, propping him up. Warm scales slid crosswise across his chest and arms.

“Come on Chucky, up up.” She paused. “You know, I'd say we've done this about twice too often now. Don't make me tell Mags here all about that time I had you done up in my leathers…”

“Please don't,” he croaked.

“See, he's up.” Her voice was far too cheerful. A cool rag touched his forehead, and he thought he saw Moria's ghost smiling at him from across the room, though his eyes were still closed.

“Step one accomplished, Chucky. Now, I'm really gonna be upset if you don't like this, and I went to way too much trouble to see you not eat it.”

There was iron in her voice, no denying her. The presence at his back was silent, but no less commanding. Something warm touched his lips.

It was beef stew, thin broth that he would not choke on, seasoned by a hand he remembered from long ago. And it was delicious.

* * *

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

* * *

what about us

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

It was raining again, a squalling spring tempest. Xavier's chest hurt, and he was so weak he could barely move the wheels of his chair or work up enough desire even to make the attempt to hoist himself into it. Still, he had made the effort today. He had to. They needed him.

There were flowers in a vase at his bedside, a handful of daisies pulled as a child might, from Wicked. From Shola, a volume of Shakespeare, its cover scorched. A potted weed from Freakshow, from Karima a vial of agates in perfect gradation from gray to white. A little distance away, Eric's old chessmen waited patiently.

He could feel his band of Genoshans all gathered in the common room below, taste their worry and concern like a palpable thing. His bedroom was small, and the two that he needed most desperately had come to bring him down to the others. They were close enough to touch, but he did not touch them, could not.

Xavier knew that his clothes were looser on him than they had been. Eric seemed thinner too, his eyes angry and haunted, sullen from his own newest tragedy. Older, since the death of his daughter, with a hint of the familiar madness in him.

Eric, he wanted to plead, don't, don't go this path. Not again. I haven't the strength and we need you. I need you.

He could not find the words to say it. Their eyes met across the room. Callisto's tentacles twined carefully around Eric's wrist, and he knew somehow that his old friend understood.

I do not know if I can, those eyes said. I hate them so, hate the human world for what they did to us, do to us.

“Eric,” he said, his voice hoarse. “There is no 'them'. Your way is no solution. Might cannot make right. And the humans aren't the only problem. Not any more.”

“Do you have a better solution, Charles?” Magneto whispered, his voice harsh as it was careful.

“Even Mystique found a better one,” he swallowed, his throat dry.

“Ah, Chucky.” Callisto shook her head.

The two men stared at one another in silence, eyes sunken in shadow. Outside, springtime raged.

Callisto stood with feral grace. In the morning darkness she was fierce and clean, her hair combed, her tentacles oiled, a gleam of studs in her leather collar and bladed silver at her hip, a dark patch over one eye and a proud glare in the other. She coiled her arms beside the flower vase and leaned forward.

“So, you two, what's it gonna be,” she hissed. “We all ready to try and kill each other now? Seems like it would be easier.”

Charles and Eric both stared at her. At last, Eric sighed and dropped his head. “No,” he sighed at last. “We are not.”

“Good,” she breathed, and let him draw her carefully against his chest, leaned her head for a moment against him and closed her eye. The long snakes of her arms moved fluidly around Eric's waist as they coiled about the wheelchair like some mutant vine, moving up Xavier's arm, a question. He pushed backwards for a moment in an agony of indecision, ready to flee, to send his mind anywhere, even back to Sage, anywhere but here.

Callisto opened her eye, regarded him with level, tired honesty.

He let her pull him closer, let her twine her arm about the back of his neck and shoulders.

“What are we going to do about us,” she asked calmly. “How are we going to make this work?”

“I suppose,” murmured Eric, sliding his weathered fingers over Charles' smaller hand, “we shall have to discover that. I suppose that everyone needs a dream, do they not, Charles?”

“Yes,” he whispered, letting the two of them draw him closer, tentatively reaching for the familiar minds, familiar hands. “I suppose they do.”

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

end.

[doppleganger55.livejournal.com]

Wonderful story. I just loved the atmosphere you painted of Genosha. Destroyed but still beautiful in it's ruin, just like in the comics. Callisto was very interesting to read about. Her coy attitude with both Charles and "Mags" was fun to say the least. :) And you did a very good job of making her an appealing character (even if in my opinion she isn't that visually appealing). She's artful in her frankness and her understanding of human emotion.

Magneto was hit right on with the bitterness. And I kind of like the casual but deep bond he and Charles have. And then Magneto and Callisto. Mrph. Well I hope Charles isn't the jealous type. :)

This Sage was a character I'm not too familiar with. I've HEARD about her but I haven't been following religiously. So I'm sort of out of the loop. But you did provide good background info on her and filled out her story quite nicely. And it DID explain why Ororo was mad at Xavier. Though...could it have been just because Sage was young and Xavier sent her into a dangerous situation or because Sage and Ororo were lovers? And well are Callisto and Ororo lovers canon-wise?

*snaps fingers* I really shouldn't pick up comics (haven't done so in years). But you've seriously tempted me. Should've picked up that issue of Excalibur at Waldenbooks. *sigh* But then I'll have to backorder the darn thing. :P *Shakes fist* Oh you! You are just tempting me to do it. :P

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

oh, I'm evil. Spreading the curse of X-readership. Heh...I read Alexandria's fics and decided to start reading just one X-title again...now look at me. 6 a month. ;D The torch is now passed...

Seriously, I'm very pleased that you enjoyed the fic. Especially my portrayal of Callisto, which I really wanted to come across. Y'know, I didn't find her that visually appealing at first either, and she's not *supposed* to be, that was at least originally a major part of her character. But by the same token I never found her ugly, either, and, well, she grows on you.

As for Charles...well...I don't know how jealous someone can get who has that sort of psychic rapport with the both of them. And maybe I didn't make this clear enough (because I didn't want explicit sex in this one ;), but I figure by the end of this the three of them can, uh, share.

Canon questions: the "Storm: the Arena" storyline in X-treme X-men (which is one of my favorites...love that whole series, even if the art went downhill in a serious way for the last half of it) didn't come out and say that Storm and Callisto were lovers. But it was made pretty darn obvious. The next thing we know, Callisto is in Genosha. Heck of a break-up. :P

As for Sage, well, she's one of my all time favorites. I just love her, and she shows up in something like half of my X-men fics. The feelings between her and Ororo canon-wise are more subtle, but then Sage is a subtle lady, and she's showed a rather fierce devotion to Storm.

Storm's distrust of Charles is also canon, and it coincides with her rescue of Sage. Try the X-treme X-men TBP "Schism" for my all-time favorite story about this dynamic.

Thanks for reading. :)
Summer