Title: Four People Magneto Never Was (And One He Never Will Be)
Fandom: X-Men (movie-verse AUs mostly, #4 is based on a comics-verse canon AU)
Characters/Pairing: Charles Xavier/Magneto
Warnings: Racism and transphobia from major characters in an historical context, major character death, the Holocaust as a backstory. Also I'm a rampant Magneto apologist, although I'd think most M/X shippers are.
Summary: Five AUs. The last one being sort of a dig at Ultimate-verse and, er, other Marvel writers who are Wrong.
Word count: 3469
Disclaimer: I write about a lot of things I don't know very well in this. I might get a lot of things wrong. I've never been to Cambridge, MA and I don't know NYC very well. Sorry.
September 23, 1951
Erik- his name was Erik now- liked physics class. He tried to pay attention in all his courses, particularly psychology, but too often it seemed ridiculous, and he couldn't help but let his mind drift. Physics, though- knowing how things worked- that was good, he liked it.
He liked the classrooms of Columbia University, the desks and the chalkboards, the painted plaster walls and windows, through which light streamed, and the sounds of the city. He liked the quiet hum of focused minds, and the wandering threads of other bored students. One of them was watching him right now.
He decided to be forthright, and looked around. The other's eyes flicked away, but not before Erik caught the extreme interest with which he'd been regarded. He gave his observer the same appreciative once-over. A boy, really, not much more than seventeen, slender, remarkable only for his lack of hair. Erik skimmed the surface of the boy's mind. Rich, slightly rebellious, looking for something out of the ordinary. Erik smiled politely and turned back to the lecture. He had no desire to be this boy's mystery.
The professor caught Erik's arm as he walked out of the hall at the end of the lecture, and he had to clamp down on his immediate instinct to lash out. "Mr. 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."
Erik mentally winced. He 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," he said with a practiced smile. He hardly even had to reach for the right English words any more- his powers seemed to have sped up his 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," Erik said, and walked out into the sunlight.
A moment later he felt another mind near by. The boy from earlier. His mind had just lit up like the sun. Erik whirled. This was really not his day. "Don't bother," he said, reaching out.
"No," said the other boy- Charles, Erik's powers supplied. He let his bag drop and reached out with both hands in a pleading gesture. "Stop- wait- look, I know what you are-"
Erik went cold. "What I am?" That could mean anything. Jew, German, homosexual, or- other- he lashed out-
"No!" Charles cried, and seemed to actually be resisting his 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, Erik thought, but his eyes darted around. There were a few students crossing the area to get to their next classes, but there weren't too many, he thought he could handle them. Finally he said, "Just say what you have to say. No one will hear."
Charles' eyes widened, but he reached into his pocket. Erik tensed, which in retrospect was really quite stupid. Charles brought out a handful of ball bearings. He spread out his palm, and the ball bearings rose into the air above it, circling each other like electrons in an atom.
Erik sucked in a breath. He tried not to lose his composure, but he couldn't help staring.
"I'm like you," said Charles. He smiled. It was, Erik noticed, a beautiful smile.
June 29, 1969
Sunlight was streaming in through the windows, thick and treacly, and there was a copy of the New York Daily spread across the bed. Anna frowned. "I thought I told you not to read that trash," she said.
Charlotte's voice emanated from behind the ghastly large typeface. "It put the riots on the front cover," she said, preoccupied. "It has pictures."
Anna stood undecided in the doorway for a moment. "Tea," she said eventually.
"Yes, thank you." The paper rustled a bit as Charlotte turned a page.
Anna went into the kitchen. It was only two steps from the bedroom. This was a tiny apartment, but it was good for the location. It might have been less crowded, if they hadn't had to get one with two bedrooms. She picked up the kettle with a thought and filled it with water, her hands searching for the tea bags. There were so many things in this apartment, she thought. Not perhaps as many as other people had, but maybe too much. There was a picture of Moira Mactaggert in a glass frame on the windowsill, and next to it there was a plant that had miraculously survived Charlotte's haphazard watering. Nickel utensils in the various drawers, plates in the cabinets, easy for Anna to wash after dinner. Cigarette cases lay next to pyramids of ball bearings, worry beads for Anna when she was in a particularly bad mood. Lists, scraps of paper on every surface, lists of groceries, of meetings and lectures, of possible contacts, and one list held to the fridge by a magnetized scissors, a list of phone numbers. The important lists they didn't write on paper, but whispered to each other at night, in the darkness, in safety.
The kettle went on the stove, but Anna hadn't figured out how to turn on the pilot light yet, so she had to go and do it by hand. Her hands were calloused, her nails greasy from all the repair work she'd been doing lately. They were running low on funds, even so. The grand experiment might have failed. Anna didn't like the idea of touching Charlotte's money any more than Charlotte did, but she was also ultimately a pragmatist. They couldn't work on Cerebro if they couldn't buy parts, or if Charlotte had to start working and didn't have the time.
She brought the tea in to Charlotte, who had put down the New York Daily and picked up the Village Voice. She'd taken out a pen and a new pair of scissors, never a good sign. When Anna offered the tea she took it without looking up. Thank you, she said, eyes still scanning the page.
"Are you getting hopeful?" Anna asked, and almost winced at the harshness of her voice. "Do you think this is going to change anything?"
"Of course it will," Charlotte replied, a note of startlement in her voice and in Anna's head. Anna hated that. They'd had this argument often enough before, Charlotte shouldn't have been surprised. "Look at what happened with King and Negro rights. Enough people fight back, the oppressors start having doubts."
"Fighting," Anna repeated, grabbing the paper and waving it in front of Charlotte's long nose. "You call this fighting? This isn't fighting back, this is a kick line."
Charlotte sighed, which was too much for Anna. And don't you dare turn this into pity, she yelled silently, striding to the window. Poor Anna, her opinions always informed by her tragic past. You infantilize me when you do that. I know exactly where I am.
"Then why don't you see-"
Anna crumpled the newspaper into a ball. "This has nothing to do with us," she said. "Martin Luther King didn't speak for us. Neither do these men. All they're going to do is provoke a backlash against homophiles. That might affect us." The sunlight was far too bright. She pulled the heavy curtains closed.
Charlotte sat up a bit, and Anna turned back to face her without quite meaning to. Charlotte had been losing her hair lately, which was worrying Anna more than she would admit. She wanted to go to Charlotte now, lie down next to her and hold her very tight.
"Why can't you ever look for hope?" Charlotte asked quietly.
"We can't afford to identify with people who aren't like us." And I'm starting to doubt we'll ever find anyone else like us. And if we do, they won't care what we say.
Charlotte sighed again, but it didn't worry Anna this time so much as tug at her heart. Charlotte always sounded so tired.
I feel trapped, Anna thought, and wasn't sure if she was saying it to herself or to Charlotte. We were given our gifts, our brilliance, our stubbornness for a reason. I want to lead, but no one is ever going to follow us. This is not our world. It is never going to be our world.
Charlotte looked at the side of the bed. Anna caught her meaning without words, whether through the blurring of their minds or mere familiarity she didn't care to wonder about. She went to the bed and lay down on it. The room was darker now, but the stifling heat remained, and the edges of things seemed illuminated by sunshine, a halo around Charlotte's body. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around Charlotte, a soft presence in her mind, a feeling of safety. An illusion. They weren't ever safe. Anna stretched her power into every single piece of metal in the apartment and knew if anyone came bursting in through the door she could rip them to shreds, that even asleep Charlotte would already have wrested their minds from them and frozen them where they stood. But they could never be safe, and Anna had other worries, that she tried to keep from Charlotte as best she could. There were limits to her powers. She couldn't stop a nuclear bomb.
Oh, they'd both thought about it vaguely. About how easy it would be for a telepath to walk into the White House or the Kremlin and find the person who knew where all the warheads were buried, how simple it would be for Anna to transfigure deadly weapons into lumps of useless metal and wiring. But it wouldn't work. The two of them couldn't take on the world all by themselves.
And so Anna would never feel safe, not even pressed down by heat, encircled by Charlotte's arms.
December 3, 1983
Charles is late home, and Erik is already running worst-case scenarios through his head as he stares at the cold dinner on the table. Charles hates when he does that, but Erik can't help it. He stays awake for hours at night sometimes, imagining all the terrible things that might happen, testing his emotional response like a child holding a finger to a flame, trying to somehow prepare for the intolerable. But the phone rings, and Erik shuts off the television he wasn't listening to, and the truth is actually far worse than anything he could have imagined. It is terrible in the mundane nature of its horror.
It's a freezing winter night in New York. Erik has to take a bus to the hospital as they only have- had- one car, and he doesn't know the neighbors well enough to ask them for a ride, and even if he did he wouldn't. Being on the bus is hard. People are crowded around him, laughing or arguing with each other, nothing more important on their minds than their Christmas shopping. Erik doesn't have his coat, but that isn't why he's so cold.
Charles has been in the hospital for two hours when Erik gets there. He knows the hospital got the number from the paperwork Charles is so careful to carry around with him everywhere. He doesn't ask why it took them so long to call. He doesn't want to talk to anyone at all. The moment he steps into the white building the old fear starts to build. He tells himself he needs to be calm now and charming, he needs to control himself for Charles' sake. He goes up to the desk and tries to get the information he wants, and tries not to stop every machine in the building while he's at it.
The woman at the desk says he's in critical condition, and only relatives can see him. Erik calmly explains that Charles has not had any family for ten years now, and Erik has power of attorney, and he must see Charles, and he can't quite hide the desperation in his voice. She looks at him hard for a long moment, and for the first time in his life Erik wishes he had Charles' power, some way of swatting this woman aside like a fly without actually hurting her. "I'm sorry, sir," she says, and there's a note in her voice that Erik recognizes intimately. He walks outside. It's still very cold. The sleeves of his shirt are too short, he suddenly notices. He leans against a wall, slides to the frozen ground, wrist pressed self-consciously to his chest.
There's a small tickle of warmth at the edge of his mind, and closing his eyes, he reaches for it, frantic. Charles, he screams, and there's no coherent answer, just the faintest illusion of a hot summer afternoon, the soft sensation of love. He reaches for it, and there's a feeling like two twined hands being brutally ripped apart by an unfathomable abyss, and then it's gone. That's the moment Charles Xavier dies. They don't tell him for another hour.
I should have ripped down those walls, he thinks then. I should have torn apart anything between us.
They make him fill out a lot of paperwork. His mind goes somewhere else then, somewhere blank. He blinks and it's later, and he's standing on the Brooklyn Bridge next to someone's stolen car, and the sun is rising.
He could crush this city full of life like a snail under his shoe, he suddenly realizes.
He thinks of boots, with nails in them, stamping down on a pleading hand, a spine, a head. He shudders. He stands there shivering for a while longer, and it begins to snow.
Then he walks to the nearest bus stop, leaving the car. That's going to cause trouble later, and there isn't a telepath around to smooth things over any more.
Back in the house he tries to think rationally, like a normal man with a normal life. He should be making calls. There's no one to call. There's Moira. He hasn't seen her in ten years. Charles had other friends, didn't he?
Erik didn't. Doesn't. It's not very easy for him to let people in. Because then they might get taken away. Like Charles.
It takes him a terrible, frustrating, numbing hour to find Charles' will. There's a letter lying on top of it, careful penmanship on fine paper. Dear Erik, it begins-
Erik shuts his eyes and slides the drawer closed again.
There are a number of things he could do now, and none of them seem very attractive, because none of his possible futures have Charles in them, and after more than thirty years he can't seem to plan anything without Charles any more.
Yesterday he had a cause, he had righteous fury, he thought he could change the world. He can still change it, but afterward it would be just as empty and meaningless.
He's probably a rich man, if Charles has left everything to him, but that would involve a lot of paperwork and he doesn't have the patience or energy for it. So he goes out again, this time remembering his winter coat, a heavy, expensive wool blend Charles bought for him when his old threadbare version gave up the ghost, and he walks to the nearest ATM machine and tells it to give him five thousand dollars, and it does.
Then he gets another bus, this time to the airport.
He wonders if maybe in Haifa he'll stop feeling this cold.
August 6, 2009
He never leaves Genosha any more. Other people come to him. It is, he supposes, refreshing. Perhaps he is going into a slow and sinking retirement. He hasn't actually given up any power yet. He's... not very good at that. His mind is sharp as ever. He tried to play chess with himself yesterday, and he remembered all of the subtle rules, but it wasn't the same when you didn't have someone to play it with.
So he stands in the garden and remembers.
He can afford to rest a little, now, can't he? Surely he deserves it. Everyone is safe, now- no, that's, that's not quite right. There's always danger. But it's not something they need him so urgently for, any more. He's fixed the world, made it right.
The castle is beautiful. There's very little metal in it. Lorna had asked him if he wanted to design it, and he said, just make it of stone, and put in a lot of gardens. The children will like to have gardens to run about in. That was a good idea, gardens, for the children, and for him also. There's very little metal in the gardens, except the plaque, of course, a constant mild buzzing on the edge of his awareness. That isn't good, but it's necessary. It reminds him, every day.
He spends a lot of time in the gardens now.
There was something Charles said to him, a long time ago, and it's been irritating him for days that he can't quite remember the exact words. Something about there being a certain joy in struggle. That would explain why he's been feeling this strange listlessness. The struggle is over, and now it's all jostling to maintain his precarious position. But his family is all around him; his people are prosperous and safe. He has everything he always wanted, always fought for so hard.
He didn't use to be like this. He suspects the person he was would despise the weak, floundering thing he is now. He suspects Charles would pity him.
He never thought he'd long for Charles's pity.
May 8, 1945
Max didn't quite realize the extent to which he was different until he was sixteen and sitting in a coffee shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, listening to an exultant radio broadcaster and looking into Charles Xavier's eyes.
He had begun to talk very rapidly about nothing, about how happy his parents would be, and then Charles had leaned over the table, knocked his coffee on to the floor, and kissed him. The place was nearly empty and they were hidden by a large fern of some sort, so there was nobody to see, and even if there had been Charles wouldn't have let them, though of course Max didn't know that at the time. He didn't know anything at the time. His head was empty and there was a strange singing in his bones.
"Er," he said, when Charles pulled away, "no, don't do that, I mean, don't stop. I liked that."
Charles grinned in relief, and looked down at the spilled coffee. He started to clean it up. "Maybe later," he said, from down on the floor. "Let's go to the river."
They went to the nearest bridge and stood looking down at the water. "I suppose we're not going back to class then," said Max.
"No one will mind," said Charles, imperturbable. His hand brushed Max's on the railing.
"I'm going home at the end of the semester," Max blurted out. "You should come with me. Mama will love you. My sister Ruthie will think you're terribly handsome. They won't mind you're a Gentile." And you won't have to pretend you've got a home to go back to, he thought, but didn't say.
Charles looked out at the clear morning sky. "Maybe," he said, but he seemed sadder. The mood had been darkened, and Max was terribly sorry. He thought about the radio and about Berlin in rubble and he thought maybe he didn't care. Maybe Mama would stop crying every night now. On Max's part, he barely even remembered Germany any more. He liked being an American, and he looked at Charles and thought he might like it even more in the future.
"Let's go back to the dorm," he said finally. They'd been assigned as roommates, probably because of being the youngest students at Harvard. "I want to try some more of that- you know-"
"Me too," said Charles, and they grinned at each other again, embarrassed and excited all at once.
The bridge was singing to Max, and the cars rushing by, and all his vision seemed slightly different, but at the time he just thought that was what falling in love was like.
It wasn't until later that he realized his father's heavy watch, ancient and timeless, brought all the way from Germany, had stopped its endless measuring of time, hands forever frozen on the moment Max had heard the news of victory in Europe.