Way Leads On To Way

by Charleeney

2 weeks after Cuba. The government is mapping out actions against the new threat, Magneto is building up his army and Charles is caught in the crossfire. Moira tries to help and Mystique is forced to remain loyal to Magneto- even if it comes to actually harming Charles. For Raven/Mystique and Eric/Magneto these are going to be the final choices.

1. Chapter 1

Way Leads On To Way

"Xavier? What do we want from him?"

Moira was trying to keep her voice steady, but still apprehension was colouring it.

Her superior raised his eyebrows.

"Interrogate him, naturally."

"We can do it in hospital, it is surely unnecessary to move him over here"

His eyes steeled.

" It is, " he answered succinctly. " Agent MacTaggert, that will be all, you may go"

Moira couldn`t. Impulsively she stepped forward.

"Sir, he is and has always been on our side. We…we can`t treat him as if he were some kind of an enemy." She desperately tries to explain, to make him see. "He deserves better, we – all of us! – owe our lives to him and…"

He cut her short.

"Agent MacTaggert, this will do. I no longer detain you"

Moira turned blindly away towards the door.

XXX

Outside she leaned against the wall, trying to keep her head above the overwhelming tide of emotions. Indignation, anger, helplessness, shame...And finally everything was submerged in pain. The deep ache never lets her go since the beach: she is insensibly getting used to it, but sometimes it soars, blinding her- like now…

Tears sprang to her eyes as she remembered Charles the way he was now- had been for the last 15 days, ever since the day on the beach. She wasn`t allowed to visit him yet- no one was, but twice she managed to see him from afar, as he was being questioned- as yet, tentatively - by the CIA.

Pale, tired, with shadowed eyes and unlit face, his easy grace and openness gone, he looked so vulnerable that it wrung her heart. And caged, too. Tenseness broke now and then through his tired indifference- she sensed it in the short glances he threw at the agents, in unconsciously self- protective gestures. But then again he would go still and remote.

In fact, he looked as if currently he was not caring about anything at all.

And horribly lonely.

His cockiness, arrogance, his foppy ways and the seeming shallowness used to annoy her considerably in the pre- crisis days, but now that his injury and everything he had gone through had stripped him of those, she realised that she had somehow sensed all along the real person that he was behind of those. And now he - he was in pain.

And it hurt her more than any ache of hers could ever do.