Kaddish

This story was written for the Fireplace Alliance's Quote Challenge, which asked authors to write a fic inspired by a short quote of their choice. A big giant thanks to Kitty Kat K.O., who beta'd an early version of this fic without having any knowledge of the X-Men, and to jellispar, who knows more about them than is probably healthy, and who beta'd out all my continuity errors and bad sentence structure.

The fic takes place between Uncanny X-Men #275 (where Magneto kills Zaladane, officially ending his redemption arc) and [Adjectiveless] X-Men #1 (where the first Acolytes come to Asteroid M). There's quite a shift in his attitude while he's off-panel between those two issues, which is what I was trying to capture here. Also: Continuity porn ahoy!

"Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?"

--G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The window of my library affords an excellent view of the Earth beneath me, shining beautifully. This base, built to hold more than a dozen people, is empty save for me. I find the silence somewhat uncomfortable; I suppose I have grown too used to the constant clamor of an occupied school. Still, the solitude is good for me, necessary. I have been among people too long, walking a path that is not my own. I had truly hoped that path was the right one, but my optimism proved—as it has innumerous times—entirely misplaced.

I shift my eyes away from staring at the green-blue planet rotating gently in the darkness, gazing instead into the void itself. I know you're out there somewhere, oblivious to the fact that I've betrayed you yet again. Of course, it's possible that you really did die, though I don't want to believe that. Men like you and me don't die easily. Whether or not you still live, though, is irrelevant. I have broken my promise to you, and you were a fool to expect any other outcome.

Come now, Erik. I can almost hear your response, still entirely predictable. You are using my assumed name, the one you call me only when you want to remind me that I am human. You didn't abandon your students because you thought my way was impossible. You did the best you could to uphold the promise you made in Paris, and it went badly. You don't want to admit that you failed. But cutting and running? I would've thought better of you. Your voice in my head—completely imagined, of course, but as lifelike as if you were here beside me—sounds amused and perhaps a little condescending.

You have no right to talk to me like that. Are you trying to goad me into doing something foolish? Flying back down to New York and trying to make amends, perhaps? You should know better than that by now, old friend. You were dying, and I granted what I feared was your last request. In one respect, though, you are correct: I did my best to uphold your damnable "ideals," but I saw with my own eyes that your way doesn't protect anyone from fear and violence.

Without someone fearsome protecting the race, acting as a boogeyman—don't harm a mutant, or he'll find you—humans can't be trusted to coexist peacefully with us. The world needs me as I am; it certainly does not require another you, let alone such a pale imitation. That is why I took control of the Hellfire Club, though I know you'd condemn the action. It turns out you were right. For all their boasting, Shaw and his companions were interested only in themselves, so I relinquished my title. The club simply was no use to me, so I severed ties with them. Please don't imagine you had anything to do with it.

No one expected you to be me. All they wanted was for you to run the school as best you could. How charmingly naïve of you. Do you really believe that your X-Men expected anything from me, save perhaps some diabolical plot? Your first students, your original protégés, left the school rather than coexist with me, though I bore them no animosity. How dare you talk down to me about how they just wanted me to try my best?

And how did I do? If you are here to pass judgment, what do you have to say to me? My students have forsworn me. They saw what you refused to, Charles. I cannot be the man you wish me to be. Poor Cypher died because I was incapable of holding my charges in the same sway that you managed so effortlessly.

And I maintain that your failures are not my dream's failures. You are deeply annoying. I find myself growing angry at the ghost of you I have conjured from my memories. If you were here, I would be screaming at you and you would be as infuriatingly calm as ever. Take responsibility for your actions and inactions, Erik.

If the fault is mine, then it's yours as well. You should have known better than to leave someone like me in charge of your damnable school! Ever since I was a young man, long before you met me, a miasma of death and misery has hovered about me. Did I ever tell you of my daughter Anya, how she burned while I watched, powerless to save her? How her mother fled from me when she saw my powers? Magda chose death in a freezing wasteland over life with a mutant. These memories were dredged out of me only days ago by Brainchild's machines, and they still cling to the forefront of my mind.

I know I never told you about Isabelle. We simply haven't talked enough since parting ways in Israel. Besides, it's not the sort of memory I care to share with anyone, especially not with someone who can make me feel as vulnerable as you can. Isabelle's murder confirmed that death was following me, that my loved ones were doomed to suffer. After her death, I thought I knew better than to get close to anyone. If you hadn't died, old friend, if you hadn't made me swear that abysmally foolish promise, my heart would not be breaking now for the people I have lost along your path.

Because staying emotionally distant worked so well for you in the past? By now I'm glowing with rage, and the furniture in the room shakes dangerously as you speak.

I take a deep breath, bringing my powers back under control by force of will. Really, the way you go straight for my weak points is terribly unfair. Yes, I alienated my children by treating them as minions rather than as friends. I wouldn't have done it if I had known who they were, but I accept their dislike and distrust. It only proves they're still sane. What does that say about you, old friend?

That I'm an incorrigible optimist. Or perhaps that I'm not so blinded by old hurts as Wanda and Pietro are. It may run in their family. You are smiling, trying to make me feel at ease. I appreciate it, of course, but I know you too well. These last years, ever since you began training children to send against me, you only sound lighthearted when you're preparing to say something deadly serious. I don't blame you for what happened to Doug, or any of the New Mutants. You did your best, and that's all I could have ever asked of you.

It does not matter to you that I let one of your students—my students—die!? That I've alienated the others, probably forever? I am a failure, Charles; I cannot explain it any more simply. And I can't accept failure. Before you died, every failure of mine was a temporary setback, something I knew I would be able to overcome given enough time. That isn't true any longer; I cared for the New Mutants more than I have for anyone in a long while, and then I lost their trust, irreparably. I've burned my bridges now, Charles. There is no longer a place for me among the X-Men, for I doubt your successors would be as forgiving as you are.

You underestimate the X-Men. They accepted you once, and they wouldn't have done that if, in their heart of hearts, they didn't believe that you'd truly changed.

I cannot make you see logic here, can I? Very well. If you cannot accept my decision as a rational one, pretend that it is a matter of pride. I will not go back down there and beg your students' forgiveness, because that would render me both a failure and a fool for returning to my folly. Is that the only way I can make you understand this?

Let the world think me a villain. They have done so before, and I have not suffered for it. I would rather draw fire here, away from innocent mutants, than go back to Earth and try futilely to protect them with pacifism. So here I shall remain; let humanity do what it will to me.

I desperately wish you were not dead.