Title: Lengths of Wire and Pieces of String
Fandom: my X-Men default, ie, a mix of original movie trilogy-verse and 616 canon
Word count: 5462
Characters/Pairings: fem!telepathic!Erik/fem!magnetic!Charles. Double AU!
Rating: R
Warnings: rape as backstory, holocaust as backstory, suicidal thoughts, age difference, bondage, PTSD, mindfuckery... yeah. This one's kind of dark.
Summary: It's 1951 when Magda Lehnsherr and Charlotte Xavier cross paths. Magda is twenty-two. Charlotte is seventeen.
Author's note: I'm a bit nervous about this one. I feel like I've taken more risks than I usually do with a fic. Hopefully it will pay off. Hopefully no one will be offended by me rambling on about things I don't know about... I should probably stop with the excuses now.
Author's note part II: First section shamelessly plagiarized from myself.
Magda- her name was Magda now- liked physics class. She tried to pay attention in all her courses, particularly psychology, but too often it seemed ridiculous, and she couldn't help but let her mind drift. Physics, though- knowing how things worked- that was good, she liked it.
She liked Barnard. Even despite her new strength, she still felt spoiled by the safety of this community of women. She liked the classrooms, the desks and the chalkboards, the painted plaster walls and windows, through which light streamed, and the sounds of the city. She liked the quiet hum of focused minds, and the wandering threads of other bored students. One of them was watching her right now.
She decided to be forthright, and looked around. The other's eyes flicked away, but not before Magda caught the extreme interest with which she'd been regarded. She gave her observer the same appreciative once-over. A girl, really, not much more than seventeen, slender, remarkable only for the lack of hair she hadn't chosen to hide with a wig, and also her terrible taste in sweater vests. Magda skimmed the surface of the girl's mind. Rich, slightly rebellious, looking for something out of the ordinary. Magda smiled politely and turned back to the lecture. She had no desire to be this girl's mystery.
The professor caught Magda's arm as she walked out of the hall at the end of the lecture, and she had to clamp down on her immediate instinct to lash out. "Ms Lehnsherr," the professor said, gentle, apologetic almost, "just a moment of your time."
He came to the point soon enough. "I have reason to suspect you of academic dishonesty," the man said, "based on your last test."
Magda mentally winced. She tried very hard to block out other people's answers during exams, but sometimes things bled through. "Don't worry about it, Professor, I'm sure it's just a coincidence," she said with a practiced smile. She hardly even had to reach for the right English words any more- her powers seemed to have sped up her ability to learn the language.
"Just a coincidence," the man repeated vaguely. "Of course you're right. It must be just a coincidence."
"You should probably just forget about it," Magda said, and walked out into the sunlight.
A moment later she felt another mind near by. The girl from earlier. Her mind had just lit up like the sun. Magda whirled. This was really not her day. "Don't bother," she said, reaching out.
"No," said the other girl- Charlotte, Magda's powers supplied. She let her bag drop and reached out with both hands in a pleading gesture. "Stop- wait- look, I know what you are-"
Magda went cold. "What I am?" That could mean anything. Jew, German, sexual deviant, or- other- she lashed out-
"No!" Charlotte cried, and seemed to actually be resisting her control. "Look- we're making a scene here, can we just go somewhere quiet- I promise you don't have anything to fear from me."
Other people have said that, Magda thought, but her eyes darted around. There were a few students crossing the area to get to their next classes, but there weren't too many, she thought she could handle them, and unlike Columbia Barnard lawns were not very open. Finally she said, "Just say what you have to say. No one will hear."
Charlotte' eyes widened, but she reached into her pocket. Magda tensed, which in retrospect was really quite stupid. Charlotte brought out a handful of ball bearings. She spread out her palm, and the ball bearings rose into the air above it, circling each other like electrons in an atom.
Magda sucked in a breath. She tried not to lose her composure, but she couldn't help staring.
"I'm like you," said Charlotte. She smiled. It was, Magda noticed, a beautiful smile.
Magda was feeling rather drunk, though she'd barely touched her wine (she glanced down to check, just in case, and was distracted by the tiny ringing sound of metal hitting glass as Charlotte refilled her half-emptied cup). Charlotte's innermost self was protected in a way she'd never encountered before, but it was addictively easy to slip among the darting thoughts flitting so quickly across the surface of the other mutant's mind. Half of Magda was still waiting for the headaches to hit; the other half was wrapped so close to Charlotte she was almost seeing double.
"I thought I was alone," Charlotte was saying. Charlotte was surprisingly sensual for someone with such terrible taste in clothes. Her thoughts concentrated on the heat from the furnace and the places their fingers touched when they moved the chess pieces. The room was brighter through her eyes, the moment more vivid. "I sometimes imagined- a few times, I even tried to contact someone I thought was like myself. They always just assumed I was talking about my sexual preferences."
And what are those preferences, Magda shocked herself by wondering. She knew that Charlotte Xavier had slept with at least one man but preferred the female body, that she knew the feel of room service and silk sheets but preferred to wake up in messy, dirty apartments like this one, with the city sun creeping in a tiny window, that she hated the taste of cigarettes but smoked them anyway, that she dreamed of melting all the metal in Manhattan like a Dali painting and reforming it into a vast unnatural garden of organic shapes. Magda didn't know whether Charlotte had any siblings, how old she was (surely not more than eighteen), what her fears and desires and darkest memories were. She wanted to know, wanted with a fierce burning that frightened her.
"I encountered other superhumans, sometimes," Magda said. "What do you call them? Homo superior? I knew they didn't want to know me. They were terrified. Their families, their societies had shunned and hurt them, and they'd learned to survive by hiding the strongest part of themselves." It seemed very important that she find the right words to say to Charlotte, to convince her of- of what, exactly?
"You've lived so much. Through yourself, through other people's experiences," Charlotte noted, moving her bishop unwisely. "Hard to imagine how much knowledge you must have."
"Enough to beat you at chess, little girl. Checkmate."
Charlotte laughed, and drained her third glass. "It's been a year since anyone's been able to beat me at chess, you know? You are incredible." Something occurred to her, and she said teasingly, "Were you cheating? Seeing my moves before I played them?"
"Given that these pieces have metal bases, I'm surprised you didn't take the opportunity to move them around when I was distracted."
"I knew you would notice," Charlotte replied, and it took Magda a moment to realize she hadn't said it out loud. This was dangerous, and also more fun than she'd had in... ever, really.
They poured themselves more wine, and Magda moved to sit next to Charlotte on the stained couch. "You dream of Dali."
Charlotte stared, and then smiled. "Extraordinary." Her smile was too sharp for the softness of her face, though it matched the muscled runner's body under the horrible sweater vest and plaid skirt.
"I mention this because there is a Surrealist exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, and I would be very, very happy if you would accompany me on Sunday."
The sharp smile widened. "Of course."
Magda judged the time was right, and put her hand on Charlotte's knee. And Charlotte flinched. And her mind was suddenly full of spiked edges. And a metal-framed photograph fell off the wall and hit Magda on the head. She yelped.
"Fuck, I'm sorry!" Charlotte shouted. "Oh god, did I hurt you?"
"Um," said Magda. "A bit, but I don't think there's any permanent brain damage."
"That was terrible of me," Charlotte said, and she covered her eyes with her hands.
"Don't be ridiculous," Magda said, angry and a bit fuzzied by the blow. She tried to scan Charlotte's mind but it had folded up into hard metal boxes. "Tell me- are you disgusted by my advances because I am a woman, or has someone hurt you?"
"Oh god," said Charlotte, sinking on to the couch. "Oh god." She was turning quite red. "You're a bit blunt, aren't you?"
Magda was suddenly revolted by herself. "I haven't had to care for others' feelings much, these past years. I know, that is not a good excuse. Should I just leave?"
"No! I was just- startled, that's all. Oh, this is going all wrong."
"I'll leave," said Magda. She got her coat, buttoning it up tight against the bone-chilling cold.
"Thank you," said Charlotte quietly. And then, "I'll see you on Sunday."
As Magda walked home alone through the dark, surrounded by the terrible mental noise of drug addicts and prostitutes and criminals and other poor unfortunates just freezing to death in the snow, she didn't know whether to scream in frustration or happiness. And for the first time since her mind had opened up to Hell, she felt a piercing loneliness, and a longing to experience that double vision again.
These were the things Magda didn't know:
At the first funeral, Charlotte had wept. Not for the distant paternal voice she mostly remembered reading out bits of the New York Stock Exchange over breakfast on Saturday mornings, but for herself. She hated the black velvet dress, even more than she usually hated dresses. It was stiff and hot and made her think of herself as a breakable china doll. She sometimes thought of what she would look like when all her hair had fallen out. She'd be a thrown-out doll, chewed up by the dog, useless.
Her mother had wept too, smearing her too-thick makeup. Charlotte had held her hand, out of solidarity more than comfort.
If Charlotte had been Magda, she would have felt the evil in the man who held her mother's other hand. She would have known better than to be charmed by him. But the watch on his wrist and the coins in his pocket couldn't tell her of his soul, and she couldn't hear them anyway, not yet.
Charlotte didn't cry when her step-brother Marko, eyes and arms bruised blue by his father, came to share his pain with someone weaker. She was smaller and younger and encumbered by thick heavy dollhouse dresses, so instead of fighting back, she learned to hide, lying very still in the lost spaces of the mansion for hours on end. She didn't cry when she walked into her mother's room and found her applying makeup to hide marks of abuse. Even when her mother screamed at her and threw little glass bottles at her until she left.
"So what great English novelists would you suggest I start with?" Magda asked, stepping around a patch of black ice on the sidewalk. It was cloudy as well as cold today, but the combined thrills of conversation and a stunning young woman's attention were keeping her warm. "Fitzgerald, Dickens, Joyce?"
Charlotte hardly paused before answering- their conversations were so quick, it was thrilling, Magda barely saw the thoughts forming in Charlotte's head before she had to come up with her own reply. "T. H. White," she said authoritatively, with a downward glance both mischievous and slightly embarassed.
"T. H. White?"
"The Once And Future King," Charlotte explained. "I'll lend it to you."
They rounded the corner. "Here's the museum." They crossed the road. Charlotte's strides were slightly shorter than hers, yet they walked together, perfectly in sync.
Magda liked museums. The heads of the other patrons were filled with quiet, contemplative thoughts, and in this hive of human beings that was about as close to peace as Magda ever came.
The art exhibit itself was... educational. Magda mostly focused on not looking like a yokel in front of her more cultured friend. She would stand in front of a painting and stare at it, letting her first violent impressions sweep her up, and then Charlotte would come and stand next to her and Charlotte's thoughts on technique and color would filter into her brain, calming her emotional response with her ordered, interested mind. Charlotte wasn't an artist, she was just more experienced. She probably had gone to museums quite often as a child. Magda tried to remember if she had ever seen any kind of art display when she was young. She suspected not, and she knew if she thought about it any harder it would become painful, so she let Charlotte's thoughts enfold her once more.
They went back to Charlotte's place again afterward, the result of some unspoken discussion between them. Charlotte's apartment was a few blocks from Barnard, on a rather grimy street. There was a sex shop next door, the proprietor not even bothering to disguise the nature of his merchandise, and, high on bravado, Magda swept inside with Charlotte in tow, and walked out with several dime novels in brown paper bags, not even particularly rattled by the interaction with the sandpapery mind of the boy behind the counter. She took them out as they climbed up the dark, narrow stairs, and she read out several of the more hilarious passages she could find in her best Shakespearean tones, Charlotte hanging onto her arm and giggling and whispering to her to be quieter. Magda read bits of the first chapter of Satan Was A Lesbian on the stairs, and then switched to I Prefer Girls while Charlotte fumbled with the key, doubled over in muffled laughter. "I find my enthusiasm for T.H. White somewhat diminished," Magda announced sadly, sweeping herself into Charlotte's armchair. She waved I Prefer Girls in Charlotte's general direction. "I somehow doubt he can be as stimulating as this fine classic of American literature."
Charlotte collapsed half onto the sofa and laughed her head off. "Oh no, I'm being a bad host," she said once she had managed to partially control herself. "Do you want something to drink? Wine?"
"That would be wonderful," Magda said, concentrating on the 'w' sound. If she was serious about being an American, she should at least sound like one. Apparently telepathy didn't give much assistance when it came to accents. "I think I remember where, if you want me to get-"
"No, hang on," Charlotte interrupted. "I think I can do this." She closed her eyes in concentration and stretched out her arm behind her, fingers spread out in the direction of the tiny kitchen. "Second... cabinet... on the left..." Something banged, loudly.
"I think you should look at what you are doing," said Magda, a bit nervous. Her head still had a nice bump on it from the picture frame.
Charlotte sighed. "You're probably right." She rolled over and stared intensely at the cabinets. One opened, and the metal pitcher floated out of it, onto the coffee table. She switched her gaze to the shelf that served as her pantry, and gestured at a bottle of wine. It wobbled off the shelf and promptly crashed to the floor in a tide of purple liquid and glass shards.
Magda winced but her host just giggled. "It's terrible cheap stuff anyway."
The second attempt was more successful, and most of the bottle ended up in the pitcher. "What about glasses?" Magda asked. Charlotte shook her head. "I'll get them," she said, getting up.
"Top right," Charlotte called after her, though Magda already knew that, Charlotte's thoughts blurring with her own. She came back with the glasses, and sat down on the couch, and then they were very close together.
"Forget the dime novels," Charlotte said. "Back at the museum, there was something on your mind. I could... hear it." Her dark brown eyes were wide in wonder. "You were still thinking about what we were talking about, the other night. About the possibility of there being more of us."
Magda felt confusion. She didn't like the way Charlotte had picked up on her signal, she didn't like the revelation that the transmission ran both ways, but she liked the way she didn't like it. She almost... enjoyed the feeling.
That metaphor hadn't come from her, had it?
"It's an intriguingly possible hypothesis. Supposing it's analogous to the homosexual situation? There might be hundreds of superhumans in this city alone."
"Thousands, perhaps," Charlotte said. "All living in hiding, as we do."
"There might be an enormous population, worldwide. And if your ideas are correct- if our powers are the result of genetic mutation- the birth rate of superhumans might well rapidly increase, in this age of increased radiation."
"Do you suppose," Charlotte said, and Magda could feel her excitement building, "we might be the first two to ever encounter each other?"
Oh, Magda thought. There's something so terribly poetic about that. Dear God.
She didn't believe in God, not anymore. That didn't mean she'd lost her sentimental love of the dramatic, the divine.
"A large population," Charlotte said. The words were tripping from her brain to her tongue almost too fast for her to manage. "It couldn't stay hidden forever. And when it eventually became known... the world would irrevocably alter."
"In a good way or a bad way?"
"We would have to make sure it was good. Or, I mean, people like us. If there really were large numbers of us, we would have to be accepted."
"Don't be a child, Charlotte. There's a reason you and I have never revealed ourselves before. We both know what the reaction would be."
Charlotte drew back a little. "This is all entirely hypothetical."
Magda smiled. "But fascinating to discuss."
Charlotte leaned in for a kiss, and Magda obliged her. She kissed with a youthful desperation. Magda stroked the back of her bald head, and she seemed to like that. Charlotte's hands settled into position, and Magda slowly moved her own downward.
And the metal pitcher flew into Magda's shoulder. She didn't yelp this time, but she did wince. It hurt.
Charlotte jumped away. "Oh god, now you're covered in third-rate wine."
"Um," said Magda. "Don't worry about it, I'll just- well-"
The girl looked at her. Those eyes were still very beautiful, and now they were also determined, and slightly mischievous. "I think we should get you out of those wet clothes right away."
The funny thing was, although Magda really, really wanted to find out what Charlotte had in mind, she was actually more interested in continuing the conversation.
In the end, they did both.
"If there was eventually a large homo superior population, they couldn't possibly be expected to live within human society. To give one example, the American legal code would have to be altered out of recognition. My dear, you seem to have given this quite a lot of thought."
"I've had a great deal of time to refine my ideas," Charlotte said. The bedframe twisted further as the metal flowed over Magda's wrists. "I'm just very grateful to you for giving me this opportunity to try them out."
"I must say, it's a bit unusual for a first try."
"If you'd rather something more vanilla-"
"I'd rather you tell me more about your ideas for an integrated population. Don't worry, you can use your mouth for other things. I'll be able to hear what you're thinking. It'll be an exercise in multi-tasking."
"Just tell me if you want to stop."
"Right now I want you to start, my dear."
Charlotte still hesitated, so Magda said, If I want you to stop, believe me, I won't have to tell you.
They took to sitting next to each other in class, and walking as far as they could in the same direction on the way home. One day Magda finally invited Charlotte to her own apartment. She watched, warily, as Charlotte examined the intensely clean room, the jumbled mess of German and English books on the shelves, the white walls. It was even colder there than in Charlotte's apartment, and Magda made them tea. They sat on the bed to drink it and Charlotte wrapped them in a cave of blankets and comforters, unbuttoned Magda's shirt and slowly pulled it off, kissing every inch of exposed skin. She paused for only a moment at the numbers on the inside of Magda's arm before she went back to exploring the hollow above her collarbone.
"I must go get something for dinner," Magda said eventually, pulling the shirt back on again.
"I'll come," said Charlotte.
"There's no need."
"I'd be far too lonely, lying here without you," Charlotte said, and she smiled her most charming sharp-edged smile, and Magda gave in without much fuss.
The groceries were heavy to carry home, and Magda could hear Charlotte fantasizing about how easy it would be to carry everything in floating wire baskets. So Magda stupidly led them on a shortcut, down a little-used, poorly lighted side street and across an alley.
There was a man waiting in the alley, planning on jumping out, pinning Charlotte to the wall, and Magda could see in his mind every terrible thing he wanted to do to her. She started shaking all over, skin crawling, and she stepped on his slimy mind like she'd crush a bug. He folded up, collapsed. Not dead, she thought. Too bad. Charlotte stared.
"He wanted to," she tried to explain. "He- he was going to-" She shook. There was a terrible fear in her that hadn't even crossed her mind before. She had a hostage to fate now, someone she had to look after. She could never rest. The world was full of slimy cockroach minds.
"Magda." Charlotte's voice, New York accent, gentle arms. "Magda, you're safe now. It's okay."
Magda slid down the wall slowly, her arms involuntarily rising to hug her chest. She took a deep breath, then another. All right, all right, everything is all right.
Charlotte knelt by her, stared at her earnestly, intensely. "Please. Let me help. I know I could, if you'd let me in."
"No," whispered Magda, "no, no, no..."
"Come on," said Charlotte, and she leaned forward, touching their foreheads together. Her bald head was smooth and sweaty. "I can handle it, I promise."
And Magda was so hurt and hurting and she wanted to force it out, get it out of her head, and she screamed silently, and that would have been a more reasonable time for the accident to happen, in that alley surrounded by pain. She might have been able to deal better, if it had happened like that. Magda preferred her pain all lined up. She didn't get surprised, then. She didn't get false hope.
But somehow she kept it all inside, and Charlotte sighed and gently lifted her up, touching her as lightly as possible until she leaned on her to show her it was all right, and then they made their way home on the bus, leaning into each other's solidness.
The way it actually happened was somehow worse.
It was a cold morning, as always, and Magda was reluctant to leave the warm oblivion of sleep. She felt cocooned in the blankets, the light streaming in through the curtains, the sound of the kettle and the sight of Charlotte's eyes watching her with concern.
"Good morning," she murmured sleepily.
"You had nightmares again," Charlotte said gently. She leaned in to smooth Magda's damp hair. "You were screaming."
Magda stared at her.
"I can't stand it. Come on. For my sake, you have to let me try and help. I won't have any peace of mind or conscience until I do. Come on." She leaned further to kiss Magda, gently, and Magda felt the scream bubbling up again inside her, and she was powerless to stop it. Charlotte was all around her. No. It was Mama, Vater, Max, all around her, the dead, the bodies, she'd been buried alive, she had to get out, had to claw her way from the pit with her bare hands, though they were waiting for her up there, with dogs...
...Mother lying on the floor, the pill bottle empty in her hand, the television flickering blank light against the bed...
...Erik, Erik smiling, touching her hair, saying she was beautiful... Erik silhouetted against a barbed wire fence...
and Charlotte screamed too
she'd known what her stepfather was going to do when he came into her bedroom, but she didn't move, the same way she hadn't cried at the second funeral, she could have killed him with a thought but instead she just lay there and when he was gone she walked into Marko's room and brought a five hundred pound bookshelf down on top of him and everyone assumed it was an accident and he'd survived but she'd never trusted herself again, not after the metal started singing to her and she knew what she was capable of
Erik's mind so soft and gentle, like him, going silent, gone, and everyone screaming, everyone everywhere, the whole world, the pain and the evil and the love shut up shut up shut up
the fire's consuming everything, she deserves the flames, why is her stepfather dragging her out, why is he saving her and Marko, why does he die in the fire, why does it not turn green with evil when it eats him, why why why
and she screams shut up and they do, the minds bothering her with their pain go dark, and the man in the white coat says very good Magda, that's not even her name she wants to say, these hands covered with blood aren't hers.
And now she screamed and now Charlotte's mind was going dark.
Magda blinked. She was sitting up on the bed. Charlotte was lying on it, and Magda's hands were glued to her forehead. Magda jerked them away. Charlotte was staring up at the ceiling, eyes blank, unnatural.
Magda shook her, yelled at her, but she already knew it wouldn't make any difference.
She sat there for almost twenty minutes while the kettle screamed. Then she stood up, moved Charlotte into a more comfortable position that only seemed to emphasize her unnatural tension. She went to the window and drew the blinds on the rainy street. She turned off the gas. She went outside, locking the door, and went downstairs. She went down into the street. She went into a coffeeshop and sat down and didn't order anything, and found she couldn't think because her mind was frozen on the image of the girl lying inert in her apartment.
The scream was bubbling up again, and she asked for some water and drank it down very fast, hoping to force the pain down with it. She could not afford to hurt anyone else.
Everything was worse because when she opened her eyes, she saw everything twice, once as Magda and once as Charlotte. She knew everything about Charlotte now. She knew what her thoughts would be on everything. Magda wished she had Charlotte's voice in her head, telling her what to do, but there was nothing but alien memories and tastes.
She went out of the coffeeshop and got onto the subway and got off the subway and wandered until she was in front of the New York Public Library. The lions stared at her accusingly. Charlotte had always liked them, imagined them protecting library members from the outside world. Magda went inside, where it was heated and warm. She had the vague unformed thought of researching the problem but staring around at the towering stacks she realized that she was not going to find anything of use, and also that she was not exactly thinking clearly.
Focus, Ru- Magda. Magda. Focus.
But how was she supposed to focus? She'd told herself so many times that they couldn't hurt her any more- cold comfort, but the only kind she'd had. And now they had hurt her again. They'd hidden themselves in her mind and struck out like snakes at her only friend. Her brain was toxic, poisoned.
Perhaps she hadn't actually woken up at all that morning. Perhaps this was just another hyper-realistic nightmare. It had the qualities of a nightmare, the confusion, the uncertainty of time and location. In a moment she'd be woken by the sound of the kettle and Charlotte's gentle touch. Perhaps it was actually a Thursday, not a Sunday.
She was in a synagogue. Someone was asking her if she needed help, lady. The light through the windows was making her headache worse. People were thinking about all their terrible problems, their ill son, their husband in Korea. People were thinking about God. She felt sick.
She was in a park. She was lying on the grass. A butterfly landed on her nose. She brushed it away. She stood up, and stumbled out toward the busy road she could hear a few hundred feet away. The light was fading from the sky, what she could see of it between the towering buildings. She could see the street now. It wasn't as congested as most Manhattan streets, there were cars going along it quite fast. She watched their headlights go past for a few minutes. All people were evil really, she thought. If she went back to the synagogue she'd probably hear someone praying to be forgiven for a murder, a rape, a terrible lie. They didn't deserve anyone's forgiveness. Neither did she.
She watched a red car approaching and found her feet carrying her out into the middle of the road. All she wanted was quiet. The car didn't have its headlights on. She watched it approaching, and hated herself. This was stupid. It wasn't going to help Charlotte. It wasn't going to help any lost children out there hiding their true selves. All she was going to accomplish was traumatizing some poor driver.
The car roared up in front of her and then, dreamlike, it swerved in an elegant curving arc around her and crashed into a lamppost, landing on its side. The reality of death passing so close shocked Magda out of her stupor, and she reached out to the driver, who'd been thrown out of his seat and into the bushes of the park. A middle-aged man; he was conscious and didn't seem badly hurt. She made sure he didn't have a concussion, then she gently slipped him into sleep. He'd wake up with blurred memories of the whole incident. That done, Magda came back to herself and looked onto the dark road ahead of her.
Charlotte Xavier stood there, one hand held in front of her. She was shaking and looked horrible, but her thoughts were wonderfully vivid and alive.
"You're all right," Magda said, taking a step forward.
"Can we get out of the street?" Charlotte said, low and quiet so that Magda could hardly hear her at that distance.
They walked into the park and sat down on the swings. There was still a hint of light on the horizon, and the park was fairly well lit. "You're all right," Magda repeated.
"It will take more than you to bring me down," Charlotte said with a small smile. She looked exhausted. Magda could see through her eyes that neither of them looked very good, in fact.
"How did you find me?" Magda inquires, amazed.
"It seems our minds have bonded to a greater extent than either of us realized," Charlotte said, rubbing her eyes with the side of her hand. "I'm not yet sure whether this will turn out to be a blessing in disguise or an awful curse."
"I do hope it's not both," said Magda.
Charlotte's geneticist friend Moira Mactaggert was very excited to hear of the discovery of a new superhuman. She invited herself over for tea, and ran through several tests and questionnaires with Magda, who seemed happy to show off. Later, when Charlotte asked her what her thoughts were, Moira said only, "She's dangerous for you."
"Oh, I know that," Charlotte said, laughing, in love. "I'm a bit dangerous too, aren't I?"
At seventeen, Charlotte knew a lot of things, some of which she later forgot. The things she would have benefited most from knowing, though, she didn't learn until it was much too late.