The long-legged crane picked its way through the marsh. It cocked it's head, keeping an eye out for intruders. The marsh wavered, never entirely solid except for his immediate surroundings. It was the nature of reality in dreams.
He clacked his beak together and waited.
A steel-grey wolf slunk through the marsh. "Hello old friend," he said.
Crane turned with a smile. "It has been too long since we've met. It would be nice to talk unfettered, like we used to in the old days." He was hopeful that all of this was going to end someday. That the need for the charade and secrets would end.
Snapping at an flea in his coat Wolf grumbled. "We didn't wipe our minds just to gossip about the old days. We have a purpose, or have you forgotten?"
Crane was peevish now. "I haven't forgotten."
"Sometimes I wonder," Wolf snapped. "You certainly seem to have gone off task."
Crane couldn't help laughing. "You are going to hold me responsible for what my artificial personality has done? You knew we would only have limited control of what our constructed personalities would do."
"Sometimes I think it would work better if we could take a little more direct control." Wolf looked for a dry spot and flopped onto his side, panting in the heat. "I know – I know it would defeat the whole purpose if every two-bit psychic could tell that this wasn't anything more than a long con."
"I wish you wouldn't put it like that," Crane looked in askance at him. "What we are doing is far more noble than that."
Wolf shrugged his narrow shoulders as best as he could. "What we are doing is more noble. How we are doing it is still nothing more than a two-man con."
"Do you even remember who's idea this was?" Crane asked. "I remember the plaza in Israel where we used to talk. I remember talking about the nature of humanity."
Baring his teeth in a smile, Wolf added, "I remember your face when you found out I was a mutant as well. But no, I don't remember which of us initially came up with this idea."
"Baron Von Strucker certainly wasn't expecting to face two mutants that day," Crane clacked his beak again.
"The Nazi cache of gold certainly came in handy." Wolf said.
Unable to resist just a little jab crane asked, "It certainly paid off well for you. You spent quite extravegently building your organization." He shook his head. "It seems so strange to think of those days. So few mutants. Mostly it was meta-humans like Captain America and Baron Von Strucker back then."
Wolf agreed. "I did not think there would be this much of an explosion in the mutant population. I figured it would take us a decade, two at the most to guide them the way we thought was best. But now . . . . I don't know."
Crane sighed, his narrow chest heaving. "The only thing I truly regret is the children. Pietro, Wanda, David . . . . would it have been better if we could have told them? Included them? Would things have been better with them if we had allowed ourselves the knowledge of what was occuring? So many questions with no answers."
Despite their limited time in the void of the dream, the two old friends fell silent for a while. It was Wolf who finally broke the silence. "We are doing this for all children. If we have let our own fall by the wayside; all we can do now is press on. Continue what we started. We are shaping the destiny of all mutantkind. Humans won't change unless we steer them the way they want. Mutants aren't much better." Wolf grunted, "Hell, the personalities we crafted for ourselves are barely any better. Perhaps we can alter them to be a little more aggressive."
"White Queen and Jean Grey would never notice the difference," Crane said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.
"We could make them not notice," Wolf said. "Jean Grey is powerful, but she still doen't hold a candle to Charles Xavier." His teeth clicked as he shut his mouth quickly. He had broken one of the rules they had set for themselves. One of the earliest and most important; no real names were to be used during communication. They took on these alternate guises for a reason. Any psychic who stumbled across them when their true selves were in communication would assume it was nothing more than a dream. Using real names and real images could make decades of effort nothing more than a futile exercise.
Crane didn't remark on the slip. He didn't have to. They had worked together assembling their tactics, their long con as Wolf called it. "Progress may be slower than we would like. But it is being made. And if we are willing to sacrifice our children then we should be no less willing to sacrifice ourselves." They were bold and noble words and Crane mostly meant them. But the thought of dying before his true personality and self could be restored was beyond horrible.
Wolf nodded. "You are right." So much had been sacrificed already to create the dual identity of the mutant movement.
It was patently ridiculous looking at it from this point of view and only reinforced Wolf's belief that mutants really weren't that much superior to humans. Two charismatic leaders, Professor Xavier and Magneto. Two sides of the same coin. Good guys versus bad guys. But dammned if it didn't work. Between the two of them they managed the entire public dialougue about mutants and had for decades. They each kept tight rein on very powerful mutants, keeping civilization from splintering into a dozen factions of anarchy.
They had actually flipped a coin to decide who would take which side. If that wasn't worth at least a bitter laugh then nothing was.
Max and Charles would never have been able to achieve all this. But with Magneto to sweep up the mutants who believed in innate superiority and Professor X to gather those who wanted accord with humanity, they had managed to steer the development of human and mutant relations.
"We must discuss what to do about the Morlocks," Crane said. "They could be problematic. We have no way of reaching out to them."
"Yes," Wolf rolled back to a sitting position. "Very problematic."
Callisto woke up. A thought that had been forming at the back of her head finally coalesced as her eyes landed on a picture in the newspaper that had been scrounged. One of her subjects had laid it next to her breakfast. Callisto was instantly struck with desire for this beautiful creature. A beautiful, heavenly creature apropriately named Angel. The Eloi to her Morlock world.
She shoved her breakfast aside and went to gather her comrades.
Xavier woke up. He laid in bed for a few moments as the last snatches of his dream faded away. Then he went down to breakfast. As he left his room he touched the small wolf carving on his dresser. A good luck charm from back in the old days. It's back was getting quite smooth now from the constant contact.
Jean was already in the kitchen, making pancakes for breakfast.
"Good morning," Xavier said. "How did you sleep?"
"Good for the most part," she said. "I had the strangest dream. Something about a wolf and a crane . . . . ." she screwed up her face while she tried to recall the rest.
Without thinking about it, Xavier replaced her memories of the dream. Then he promptly forgot about it too. "I'm sorry, you were saying?" he asked.
"Oh, just that I had the strangest dream. Something about flying sharks and robot sushi . . . ."
Magneto woke up. He was lost in thought for most of the day, trying to remember the dream he'd had. He realized Toad had been speaking for nearly five minutes and he hadn't listened to a word of it. "Not now," Magneto interrupted. He walked away without any more apology than that.
There was something going on in the world far belowe Asteroid M. Doubtless if there was something he would need to be involved with it would come to his attention soon enough. In the meantime there were plenty of actions to be planned. Idly he folded a scrap piece of steel into an origami crane.
Author's Notes:
1) I've never really bought Magneto as a villain. He's awfully sympathetic for a bad guy. Likewise I've never really gotten over a hinkey feeling that Xavier can't be trusted as a good guy.
2) For those who aren't as geeked out on X-men lore: Callisto captured Angel, intending on forcing him to be her husband. The culmination of his rescue came when Storm challenged Callisto to a duel for supremacy of the Morlocks. Storm won, becoming rightful leaders of the Morlocks.
3) Morlocks are not Murlocs.
4) Thanks to my buddy Tim who came up with the idea. Thanks Tim!