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Magneto grimaced as he allowed the heavy metal bar to drop to the ground, glad that he was at least sparing himself the embarrassment of having his failure observed by any of the members of the Brotherhood. They were all of them—Pyro excluded—unaware of how slowly his powers were redeveloping, despite his constant practice and self-chastisement. It had been scarcely two months since he had had his first inkling that his powers were not quite as gone as everyone had thought, and since then he had not rested. He had rebuilt his Brotherhood with newer, stronger blood, had rebuilt his powers to nearly three-quarters of their original strength, had had the same old argument with Charles Xavier, who had somewhat surprisingly managed to transfer his mind into the body of a comatose man, and had begun his latest campaign against homo inferior.
Things were going well, better than he had hoped—but it was the times when he failed at a simple task that he had done effortlessly in the past that he was reminded that the fiasco at Alcatraz had taken much more from him than simply two months of his life.
The sound of a ruckus drew his attention to the clock on the wall of his private workroom—his mutants were late in getting back from their mission, not a promising end to their first unsupervised outing. Magneto sighed, then waved his door open as he walked out to greet them.
"Pyro," he said curtly, nodding at one of the only mutants who had remained loyal to him even after he had been given the "cure." He looked past him to scan the faces of his new men, noting with dissatisfaction their bloodied and bruised faces.
"Sir," the young man responded, his signature cocky grin in place although there was uncertainty in his eyes. "The mission was successful."
"The school?"
Pyro smirked. "Up in flames."
"Good. What kept you, then?"
The younger mutant shifted uncomfortably. "There was a...complication. I wasn't sure how you wanted to handle it."
"A complication?"
"That would be me," a familiar voice broke in, the faintest hints of a Southern accent still audible. One of the new members of the Brotherhood was pushed aside, and a young woman defiantly forced her way into his line of vision.
She was as attractive as he remembered: slender and well-formed, with pretty features and flowing brown hair. Then, of course, there were the white locks that framed her face, his gift to her and her badge of honor from the time she almost became the martyr for mutantkind. There was something different about her, however, and it took him a moment to place what it was—he had never seen her expose so much bare skin before. She wore a tank top but no gloves and black slacks that emphasized her figure charmingly.
He blinked. "Rogue."
"Magneto." She nodded at him perfunctorily, and he noticed that her hands were tied behind her back. "Now that we've established that we remember each other, will you please tell your minions to let me go? I didn't realize the Brotherhood took prisoners."
"Pyro?" His tone made it clear that he was not amused. The ex-mutant—for clearly her powers had not returned—was correct; the Brotherhood took no prisoners, and if she was not a mutant then she was a human and thus should have died with everyone else at the school.
Pyro shrugged uncomfortably. "She was there before we got there, talking to the principal—"
"Castigating him is more like it," Rogue muttered.
"—and she saw us coming a mile away. She pulled the fire alarm, so by the time we made our move most of the building had been evacuated. We did burn it to the ground, though, and I think our message definitely got through—"
"Why is she here?" Magneto cut in, his expression forbidding. "And what happened to their faces?" He gestured towards the cowed Brotherhood mutants.
"Well, I mean...I couldn't just burn her up! We used to be friends—and killing her wouldn't have solved anything anyways. The damage was already done. And I knew that you used to respect her at least a little, and I couldn't just let her go, so I gave the order to capture her. She didn't like that.."
Magneto's expression was slightly startled as he returned his attention to Rogue. "You did that?" There was respect in his voice, despite his disgust for the crime she had committed by voluntarily taking the cure.
She shrugged. "Just because I ain't a mutant any more doesn't mean that I let myself get out of practice with fighting and all. And I wasnn't exactly anxious to be seeing you again, as you can imagine. So now will you please kill me or let me go, because I have better things to be doin' than spending time with a man who once tried to kill me and a boy I used to think was a friend until I realized what a self-centered prick he was."
One of the new mutants gasped. Magneto glanced at the small army, his expression blank. "I expect better in the future. Go clean up—we will have an in-depth briefing this evening."
Nodding and kowtowing, the soldiers did as he asked, leaving him alone with Pyro and Rogue. "Did you have something to add, Pyro?" he asked, eyebrow raised.
Pyro shifted from foot to foot. "Look, Magneto, I'd do anything for you, you know that. I left the X-Men for you; I even fought Bobby for you. But I couldn't just kill her when she was standing there all helpless and unarmed, and when she was at that school for the same reason we were."
Magneto rubbed his forehead, a gesture of fatigue that had emerged when he had lost his powers and that he still found himself doing unconsciously. "I am not angry with you, Pyro—except for not acting quickly enough to destroy the school when there were more humans inside. There was no contingency plan for this." He pointed at Rogue. He looked back at Pyro. "Go on and clean up. We will discuss this more later." His voice was almost kind. Pyro nodded uncertainly, then left. Magneto looked at Rogue and realized that they were still standing in the hallway. "This way," he commanded, spinning on his heel and marching down the corridor back towards his workroom. She shuffled awkwardly behind him, and he realized that her feet, like her hands, were cuffed. Had he had his full powers, he would have sensed the metal instinctively. "You won't need those," he said carelessly, easily unlocking the cuffs on her ankles and then—with greater difficulty although he hid it well—pulled apart some of the links holding her wrists together so that the chain fell off but the cuffs remained.
"Show off," she muttered.
He glared at her. "Does it surprise you to see me rejoicing in the use of my powers, after you and your kind tried to deprive me of them forever?"
She glared back, her newly-freed hands coming to press against her hips. "I lost my powers too, you know."
"Gave them away, you mean," he shot back. "And do you regret doing so now?"
"Best decision of my life," she said smugly, her eyes alight at his obvious fury. "It showed me who my true friends were, and enabled me to live a normal life for once."
They were at his door; he jerked it open angrily, then slammed it shut behind her. "You betrayed yourself—mutantkind—in the process! Can you still not see that you succumbed to them? You gave up everything that you should have stood for, little girl, and you dare to stand in front of me and say that you did the right thing?"
Rogue growled, running a hand through her hair as she stared at him. "Listen, Magneto, no one knows you better than I do, and I understand where you're comin' from—really I do. I know all about the concentration camps, about the things you went through, and I admire your zeal in protecting mutants. That doesn't mean that having powers is everything, though; for you it was a gift, a way to be stronger than the people who had hurt you, but for me it was a curse, it made me both vulnerable and a threat—the two things I never wanted to be."
Magneto stared at her, distressed to find his own fury diminishing. He turned away, momentarily refusing to make eye contact. When he turned back his expression was hard. "Appreciating one's mutancy has nothing to do with desire, and everything to do with having pride in oneself. Perhaps you will learn that in your time here."
"In my—what?" she demanded, eyes narrowed.
"You can't think that I would let you go now, could you? You know where my fortress is."
"You'll need a better excuse than that," she spat, arms crossed over her chest, her creamy pale flesh catching his eye.
"Very well, then. I want you here so that you can see the error of your ways—so that you can realize everything that you gave up when you ceased to be a mutant, and everything that you can never have again. You will live to see the day when mutants reign supreme, and you will not be one of us."
He stormed back out of his room, pulling her viciously along by her cuffs, and tossed her into another room only a few steps down the hall. "Try to escape, and I will know," he said menacingly, glowering down at her from his much loftier height. Though her expression was afraid, she was far from cowed. "You won't like what will happen then."
He turned to go.
"Magneto," she said, the strong timber of her voice pulling him back, "we both know you can keep me here if you want, but don't lie to me, and don't lie to yourself. When you figure out why it is you really want me here, let me know."
The older mutant stared at her for a long moment, highly tempted to say something that would be disgustingly childish in a man of his position just for the sake of having the last word. He swallowed his retort and shut the door firmly behind him. He walked slowly back to his room and sequestered himself inside.
"Well," he said, examining his worn, lined face in the mirror, "this is going to be interesting."
Rogue didn't come out of her room for three days, and Magneto wondered whether she was going to sulk until mutant supremacy was achieved. In the meantime, he resumed training his Brotherhood with even greater intensity than before. On the fourth day, she came down for breakfast unconcernedly, as if she did so every day, although she carefully sat as far away from Magneto as she could manage, which was quite a ways considering the length of the barracks-style dining table. Even from that distance, he could see that her skin was red and irritated around the cuffs.
"Rogue," he said sharply, drawing her attention just as she was about to bite into a bagel. She looked up, seemingly unworried by his tone. "I won' t have you corrupting my Brotherhood. You will sit by me." He gestured imperiously to the seat at his right, which was always left empty by the other mutants, out of some fear of being considered impertinent. She watched him silently for a moment, and he wondered whether she would make him force her. At last, she lifted her plate and walked to the seat he had indicated, sitting slowly as if afraid the seat would contaminate her. She bit into her bagel.
Pyro, who sat at Magneto's left, watched the exchange with a kind of amused caution, then opened his copy of the New York Times, ruffling through the sections, apparently in search of something.
"You read the newspaper?" Rogue asked, speaking for the first time that morning as she goggled at the other mutant in shock.
Pyro sneered. "I'm not stupid, you know. You always thought you were better, just because you liked books—"
"That's enough, Pyro," Magneto said quietly.
"You find the comics interesting, don't you John?" Rogue asked, the disdain clear in her voice. "Do you like the pictures?"
"Rogue," Magneto warned.
"What?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "You can make me stay here, but you can't honestly expect me to grovel at your feet like one of your minions. I think for myself, Magneto, and being your prisoner ain't gonna change that."
"You as good as admitted when you were captured that you respected me," Magneto replied firmly. "I would appreciate it if you would show that respect when you speak to me."
She smirked. "Of course, sir."
Magneto arched an eyebrow, but said nothing as she turned to her meal, soon following suit himself. Magneto saw out of the corner of his eye that Pyro had finished the comics and was now turning to the editorials.
"Huh," the younger mutant said as he skimmed the front page.
"What is it?" Magneto inquired.
"Still nothing from Anne, and no explanation. It's like she disappeared."
"Strange," Magneto said. "We expected her latest editorial two days ago, did we not?"
"Yeah. Wonder what happened."
A snort distracted them from their conversation. They both looked over to see Rogue watching them with an amused expression; she shook her head before spearing a sausage and raising it to her mouth. Unamused himself, Magneto forced her hand down before she could take a bite of the sausage. She frowned at the sausage, then glared at the Master of Magnetism.
"Oh, come on," she said, annoyed. "You're nearly a genius, Magneto, and even you're not that stupid, Pyro."
"Huh?" Pyro asked.
Magneto, on the other hand, blinked in surprise as several synapses in his brain fired, making a connection he had refused to even consider until she had pointed it out. "Are you saying that you are Anne, Rogue?" he asked, watching her closely.
She smiled, and he noted, not for the first time, how attractive she was. He quashed that thought. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you didn't figure it out, since you think that humans aren't capable of doin' anything worthwhile," she remarked.
"But—those editorials started coming out almost immediately after Alcatraz. You had already lost your powers by then."
"Doesn't mean I became a different person," Rogue replied. She pursed her lips. "This prejudice of yours is your worst characteristic, Magneto; you're as blatantly prejudiced as they are, and because of it your cause never succeeds as well as it would if you would show even a modicum of restraint. Not having powers didn't make me not care about mutants, but now, as one of them, I could finally do something about it."
"Those articles, they are very provocative," Magneto observed. "With the kind of action they demand, violent action if necessary—I cannot imagine that Charles would condone them."
"The Professor? What does he have to do with anything?" Rogue asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. "Or do you think I'm still working with the X-Men?"
"Aren't you?" Pyro demanded.
"Hardly," she replied sardonically. She looked at Magneto. "I told you that losing my powers helped me learn who my true friends were. Let me tell you—most of the X-Men weren't it. I was already planning to leave before the cure came up, and after their reactions when I came back, I knew that it was finally time. I haven't been back to the mansion in months." She smiled when she saw the expression on Magneto's face. "I know that look. If I were a mutant, you'd be trying to convert me right now, but as it is you still can't help but despise me because my skin no longer sucks the life force out of people." She stood up, walking over to scrape the remains of her breakfast into the garbage. "Sounds like you like my articles. My latest one is ready to send out, if you will permit it, but I'll tell you right now that I won't tolerate any censoring, not by you or anyone."
Magneto eyed her cautiously, leery of being surprised by her any more that morning. "I will come by your room to retrieve it later."
She nodded perfunctorily, then left the room.
"Whew," Pyro said when she was gone. Magneto turned to look at him. "Who'd'a thought, Rogue as a mutants' rights activist? As the person whose editorials we've all been reading the past few months and admiring?" He was grinning, his tone self-mocking. His expression turned pensive as a thought struck him. "You know, she was probably working on her latest editorial at the school when we broke in."
"Undoubtedly," Magneto muttered.
"Just think—if we hadn't interrupted, she probably would have written an article about the incident there that would have fired up a bunch of people, humans and mutants, instead of just making the humans madder at us."
"Yes, thank you, Pyro," Magneto said, glaring at his right-hand man. "I think we're all clear on the situation."
"Oh. Right." The fire mutant finished his meal in silence, then stood and looked at the others. "OK, you lot, time for training. Let's move!" They scrambled to follow his command. Magneto waited till they had all left, then went to his office to work. Half an hour later found him outside Rogue's room.
He knocked, then entered before she could answer. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, scribbling away at a notepad while she twirled a strand of right hair around her left trigger finger. She looked tantalizing sitting there, all long, exposed legs and slender curves. His mouth watered. Her pencil scratched as she finished her sentence, then she looked up, her expression displeased at the interruption. "I suppose you want the editorial?" she asked when he said nothing. He nodded. She reached under her pillow and pulled out a sheaf of papers. She held them out to him, then let her hand drop when he took them from her. He left without a word.
Twenty minutes later, he put down the article and stared at the words on the page. They didn't change a thing—couldn't change a thing—and yet for a moment he wished that they did. He wished that he did not live in a world in which his "kind"—be it Jew or mutant—was oppressed, in which the masses could not be trusted to give them the respect they deserved, and he almost wished that it was not his lot to rectify the problem of that oppression.
Then the moment passed, and he skimmed the article one more time, tapped it on the table to make sure the pages were even, stapled them together, and went to mail them.
By the end of the second week, the mutants had all become used to seeing Rogue as she went about her own daily routine, a routine that only occasionally coincided with theirs. She ate breakfast with them every morning, taking the seat at Magneto's right without complaint, but made her own lunch and dinner at odd times of the day. She spent a great deal of time writing, and every few days she would give an article to Magneto to read and submit, but she could also be found daily in the gym taking advantage with the Brotherhood's state-of-the-art equipment. Sometimes she would even spar with Pyro, who was always quite put out to be defeated by a human.
What the rest of the Brotherhood didn't know about were the evenings that Magneto spent in Rogue's company, when he joined her in the library or sought her out to talk about his latest plan. He was a little miffed that she was always so critical of his schemes, usually finding them excessively violent and unforgiving, but he found that she usually had good insight to offer, and that she could predict the reactions of both humans and mutants in a way he had never been able to; more, she could explain the reasons for those actions. He enjoyed the time he spent in her company, although he never allowed himself to forget what she was, and she—she had even begun to relax and occasionally smile in his presence.
Everything changed during the third week. It was only around noon that someone pulled the alarm, alerting the others that the base had been infiltrated. Soldiers bearing cure-guns and X-Men quickly neutralized many of the Brotherhood members. Magneto and Pyro, who had been planning together at the time, hurried towards the corridor adjoining Magneto's room, which led to an escape tunnel. Next to that room, of course, was Rogue's, and Magneto tore open her door in fury.
"You," he snarled, advancing on her as she stared at him in surprised, backing her into a corner as the cuffs around her wrists tightened so much that they cut her skin and then forced her hands above her head, pinning her to the wall. He could see her hold back a gasp.
"I didn't tell 'em, Magneto," she told him, visibly getting her fear under control as her own anger was sparked. "You read everything that I wrote, and—"
She quit talking when he cuffed her across the face. "You had some code worked out with the X-Men! That's the only explanation!"
"It's not," she insisted, straining against the cuffs. "Magneto—look out!"
Trusting her instinctually, Magneto spun around, just in time to get a face-full of rock, hurled by none other than a furious looking Wolverine. The world went black.
The first thing he noticed when he woke up was that his face hurt. It felt as though his nose had been broken and then rather crudely set. Magneto resisted shifting or opening his eyes, wanting to put off having to face renewed captivity for as long as possible. They must have drugged him; he was very weak, weaker than his injury should have made him.
He couldn't hear anything around him, and he tentatively reached out, feeling for nearby metal. There was some very nearby; the fools, they had underestimated him yet again. Firmly gripping the metal with his mind, he tugged at it, feeling it come undone and testing its strength. It was a crude weapon, but it was serviceable.
He opened his eyes. There was something familiar about the room, about the placement of the cot and of the locked door, but he couldn't place it. Perhaps it was just reminiscent of every other cell he had ever awoken to find himself in. The piece of metal he was gripping with his mind was the pipe connecting the sink to the wall; the cheap plastic bowl of the sink was lying, discarded on the ground.
He looked down at himself. He was still wearing the same clothes he had been at the fortress; at least he hadn't been dressed in one of those miserable jump suits guards were so fond of. These guards were strange, whoever they are; surely anyone who could have captured him would have realized that a metal lock could not hold him?
As if someone had been summoned by his thoughts, the locking mechanism clicked and the door opened.
Whoever he had been expecting, it certainly had not been Rogue. He stared in shock. He had not believed her capable of such treachery.
"Don't look at me like that," she scolded, frowning at him as if he were an errant child. She looked tired, with dark bags under her eyes. "Honestly, don't you even recognize your own hideout?"
He dropped the bar, staring at his surroundings again in confusion. She was right; this was a room that he had designed, not as a cell but as a temporary medbay in a temporary safe house. Its location had been known only to him, yet here they were.
"What happened?" he demanded, pushing himself up on the cot and pleased when the world only spun a little. "How much time has passed? Who else is here?"
Pyro peaked his head around the door. "Rogue, how is—Magneto! You're awake!"
"And grumpy as ever," Rogue said, and there was a hint of genuine humor in her eyes that Magneto found captivating; she appeared more lighthearted than she had since the Brotherhood had first taken her prisoner. She handed Pyro a tray that Magneto hadn't realized she was holding. "Make sure he eats that, will you? I'm going to go check the news."
Pyro carried the tray over to Magneto and sat beside him. It contained something that looked suspiciously like gruel, and entirely unappetizing. The older mutant's expression must have shown his distaste, because Pyro reminded him, "You're supposed to eat all of it, or Rogue's going to be pissed."
"Why should I care whether Rogue is...'pissed'?" Magneto inquired, his voice deceptively soft.
Pyro leaned forward in his chair. "Things have changed a little in the past few days, Magneto," he said earnestly.
"Pyro. Tell me everything."
"Well, you probably remember, the fortress was being invaded, and then you thought Rogue did it and you attacked her—"
"Yes, yes," Magneto interrupted impatiently. "Wolverine attacked me, I was knocked unconscious, and then?"
"And then Rogue grabbed your arm and absorbed your powers," Pyro said hurriedly. At Magneto's wide eyes, he continued, "Turns out she'd been hiding the little fact of her powers having returned about the same time yours did; turns out that cuz of the slow way they came back—and you didn't tell me yours were coming back slowly, you know—she had actually gotten control of then. So she grabbed your arm and absorbed your powers and then used them to knock out the mutants attacking us, then scooped you up using your powers and led the way out of the fortress. She flew the helicopter here and said it would be safe."
"What else?" Magneto asked, seeing the hesitance in Pyro's expression.
"She wrote some angry articles that have a lot of people up in arms. She's been demanding that our people be released a formal apology issued, and a lot of people agree with her. Others say that she's all talk, and that we can't make them do anything." Pyro hesitated, then seeing Magneto's keen expression, went on. "She said that you were on her side, and would uphold her promises to try to mitigate the violence and to target only those truly guilty. She said that you would be up and about and that if things weren't resolved in 'the way most favorable to everyone,' and fast, then you'd be angry, and that they wouldn't like what would happen then."
"And what did 'they' say then?"
"They agreed. They said that if you threw your might behind Rogue, they'd free our people and they would agree to discuss the Brotherhood's goals."
Magneto blinked, settling back against the headboard of the cot. Could it be? Could they be so close to achieving everything he had always hoped for for mutantkind? It seemed unbelievable.
"Get Rogue," he ordered Pyro.
The younger mutant took one look at his stony expression, nodded uncertainly, and hurried from the room.
By the time Rogue arrived, Magneto had pushed himself out of the cot and managed to lean against the wall, making it appear almost as though he were standing under his own power.
The look she directed at him was unimpressed. "You wanted to talk to me?"
"It appears that there has been some interesting activity going on over the past few days, Rogue," he said pleasantly, his blue eyes steely.
"Things are certainly in a better state now than I would have thought three days ago when you hit me," she said, her features stern. There was a shadow of a bruise across her face; Magneto had forgotten about having struck her.
"That...was a mistake," he said. It was the closest he could come to an apology, he thought. Her eyes narrowed. Maybe not. "I'm sorry. It was wrong of me to jump to conclusions."
She nodded. "Turns out it was Spines who betrayed you. The government took his sister."
"Of course." Magneto's fists clenched.
She leveled a long look at him. "We'll get them back, Magneto."
"We?" he repeated archly.
"Didn't Pyro tell you? We're a team now. You're behind me one hundred percent, and I'm convincing the world's leaders to seriously consider your goals. Unless, of course, you have a problem with that?" She raised an eyebrow at him, the edges of her mouth twitching upwards in a smile.
He didn't have a problem with that, but he couldn't bring himself to say so. She must have read his expression, because she nodded once. "Sit down," she ordered. "You're not proving anything to anyone but yourself."
Magneto watched the ten o'clock news, a satisfied expression on his face as the reporter onscreen talked about the successful conclusion of the talks between Rogue, himself, and various heads of state. True, it was only a beginning, only a first step in what would undoubtedly be a long and difficult road to mutant supremacy—for that was still the goal, whatever the humans might have thought—but it was enough. It had been surprisingly easy to turn his nightly talks with Rogue from the time of her captivity into a convenient partnership, at least it had been once she had pointed out to him that she could have escaped from his fortress anytime she wanted by stealing his powers and that she only didn't because she was enjoying their talks as much as he did.
Rogue let out a little sigh, and he tightened his arm around her, looking fondly at her as he reveled in the silky soft feeling of her skin. He brushed a lock of white hair out of her face, smiling slightly as she grabbed his hand and pressed it to her lips.
"It's not a perfect fix, you know," she said, the lilt of her voice sending shivers down his spine. "People will always find ways to disappoint us."
"Not all people," he replied, then grimaced at how sappy he sounded.
She laughed a little; he could feel her shake under his hand. "Come here, you," she said, turning her face up to his. He obliged and leaned down to kiss her. As the kiss continued, his hand ran down her body and he pulled her against him.
And in their new fortress, with the restored members of the Brotherhood sleeping in their scattered rooms throughout the edifice, they made love to the sound of their success.
Fin