And Not to Yield

by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring

After an absence of decades, Magneto returns to the X-Mansion, where he makes a shocking discovery. Set shortly before the stinger of "The Wolverine."

Title: And Not to Yield
Author: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
Universe: X-Men movieverse
Genre: General
Featured Character(s): Magneto/Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier/Professor X, Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat
Disclaimer: The characters and situations are not mine, but I promise to treat them as well as I can, and to give them back when I'm done with them.
Summary: After an absence of decades, Magneto returns to the X-Mansion, where he makes a shocking discovery. Set shortly before the stinger of The Wolverine.

For a very long time, we didn't know whether Magneto was alive. Oh, the Professor swore he would know if his old friend was dead, but what with the Professor being out of it for a while – you know what I mean – we mostly didn't consider that unimpeachable evidence. We didn't know if we wanted him to be alive. Well, that's not true. The Professor may have, but none of the rest of us would have had a whole lot of trouble with him being among the casualties at Golden Gate Park. Would have been simple justice, we thought. Him and his fat freaking taste for Armageddon scenarios. End your own world, asshole, not mine.

As time passed, and some of our "ex-mutants," like Rogue, came back to the Mansion with their powers – for better and worse – restored, we did realize that, if Magneto was alive, he probably wasn't any more helpless than he had ever been. Which brought us back to the original question: was he still alive? It was more than a little hard to imagine him keeping his head down, if so. Of course, it was even harder to imagine that if the government (anyone's government) had succeeded in killing him, they would have been able to resist the urge to brag about their triumph.

But the other side of the coin was that he was old. He had a few years on Charles (no spring chicken himself), and unlike Charles's current body, Magneto's had definitely been subject to all the ills that flesh is heir to, know what I mean? The man lived through the freaking Holocaust, in the 1940s. He could have passed away from entirely natural causes, with no one the wiser. He might have been - might have been, hell – a force of nature, but that doesn't guarantee that you get to go out in a blaze of glory. Sometimes even forces of nature just, you know, gutter out. Like a candle.

Candles. After a while, the Professor lit a candle in his window at night, as if he was trying to help someone find their way to the mansion. He probably was. He didn't want to talk about it, and eventually we stopped asking him.

In the meanwhile, more of our former members did find their ways to the mansion. Havok (poor old Cyclops's dad), Gambit, Jubilee, NIghtcrawler. The anti-mutant hostility was getting pretty bad, out there in the world. The cable networks kept rebroadcasting the old footage: the mutant rights riots in D.C., Mags himself hovering over his mutant-making machine in New York City, and, from later, unmooring the Golden Gate. Of course they never mentioned things like the first Mutant Registration Act (except to mourn its nonpassage) or the mutant "cure" (except to mourn its impermanence), or the number of times mutants like us had stopped the dangerous ones (no exceptions to that at all). We made forays out, to rescue at least some of the mutants whose images showed up on Cerebro. It was a big mansion, Hank McCoy and I managed to devise an ultra-efficient power generator, and one of our new recruits had a power that was useful with food crops, so we weren't in too bad of shape. For the sake of our younger residents, we tried to pretend the storm clouds on our horizon weren't anything that couldn't be dispelled by a sufficiently powerful mutant weather witch.

We got the answers to our questions about Magneto one fine fall afternoon, when a black-clad man in fedora and an oddly-familiar cape arrived on our threshold. He'd come in a way none of us would have expected: quietly, his power contained and wrapped around him in a manner so controlled he did not even trigger an intruder alert. The Mutant Master of Magnetism, one of the most powerful beings on the face of the Earth, walked up to the mansion and knocked on the door.

No doubt alerted by his own power, Professor Xavier was in the foyer by the time I could get to the door. A double handful of other X-Men showed up as well; some of the others had gone out through the windows to take "high sentry" positions. Forewarned, forearmed; one who knocked on the door was probably not an attacker, but anyone who could get to the door without setting off our scanners was no one to take lightly, either.

I recognized him even in his civilian clothes, as what X-Man wouldn't? He wasn't as tall as I remembered him, and he had visibly aged since the last time we'd fought him, but other than that his form and his features were unchanged. "Magneto."

"I bear that name, yes," he said evenly, in a voice that I'd never realized was oddly musical. "Though your Professor knew me as Erik Lehnsherr. You have the advantage of me, miss."

The world had gotten strange enough before this; now I was trading gracious introductions with my team's deadly foe. All right, then. I can play any game I'm in. "I'm Katherine Pryde."

"Miss Pryde." He doffed his hat and inclined his gray head. His look, as his face came back up, was alert and purposeful, if somewhat weary. "And do you lead those who operate from this school?"

"That job would be mine." The Professor's wheelchair glided up beside me.

Magneto actually fell one halting step back, his faded blue eyes wide with shock, and his lips parting silently as his total attention fastened on the Professor. The lights around us brightened, as at a power surge, then dimmed as several bulbs exploded; the TV in the sitting room went silent as it shorted out. Finally he spoke, never looking away, his formerly-resonant voice a mere thread of sound. "Charles."

And I realized, He didn't know the Professor was alive.

The Professor's voice was warm, gentle, and almost affectionate. "Erik."

"How – how is this possible? How?" Magneto's breathing had grown harsher. "I saw you killed." One of his hands found the door frame, blindly. Coins rattled around us, and a few metal trays on the coffee tables clattered.

Saw it? It was your fault the Professor was killed, I wanted to say. It was your machine that made Jean into the Dark Phoenix. But with the Professor there before him, it wasn't my recrimination to make. And besides, there was something in Magneto's eyes that said he already knew it.

And with the almost tangible line of focus drawn between them, it was pretty clear that I was superfluous to the conversation anyway. I stepped back, and felt Peter's hand bracing me. Good thing you're not in metal form, I thought inanely, or Magneto would be rattling you too. Still, it was good to know he'd had my back.

The Professor must have thought his explanation at Magneto then, because the puzzlement faded from the blue eyes and lined face, though the shock remained. His gloved hand tightened on the door frame. Professor Xavier saw it, obviously, or perhaps he'd picked something out of Magneto's thoughts. "Kitty, get our guest a chair, please. He's come a long way."

Peter did the honors, carrying one of the foyer chairs to "our guest"(!). After a moment's hesitation, Magneto sat. He bowed his head for a moment, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as he visibly composed himself. The din of trembling metal subsided. "Charles," he began, then tried again. "Charles. After learning such wonderful news, I wish I could say that I bore better news myself." He looked up, his eyes taking in the assembled crowd around us. "Come closer, please. This concerns you all. It concerns every mutant."

"I give you my word," the Professor assured us, "that he means no threat. Quite the contrary."

"Very much to the contrary." The others gathered closer then, to hear, though there was still an edge of cautiousness to all, especially Bobby and Rogue. "I come to offer my services, against a threat deadlier than any I could formulate." He told us, then, what he had learned about the new Sentinels being readied for launch: shapeshifters and, worse, powershifters. It sounded awful (about as awful as it actually turned out to be; he was well-informed as well as persuasive), and I shivered even though the room was warm.

"How do you know all this?" someone challenged him. Bobby, I think.

"I still had a few allies." Magneto pressed his lips together, and a brief clatter of metallics was heard. "Now -" He finished, more firmly, "now I seek allies. We must stop these Sentinels, Charles, X-Men, or we will not have the luxury of debating our difference in perspective. Though as to that, you may find that my own perspective is not quite as it was."

"Understandable," the Professor said evenly. "Here at least, though, we still don't hold all humans guilty for the perfidy of a few."

A rueful smile ghosted across the Master of Magnetism's countenance. "Well here's the wonder, Charles: nor do I. Did you assume that all of my former allies were mutants?" He snorted. "Mutants to infiltrate Trask Industries? Hardly, my friend." A brief look into the distance, the smallest of sighs. "Though they had a mutant sister, whom they had loved."

The room was silent. The world had changed – Magneto had changed – indeed, if he had been willing to accept humans as allies, no matter the status of their kin or the urgency of his need. To my own surprise, I found myself thinking that working with him might not be as preposterous an idea as it would once have seemed.

Magneto's eyes came back to the Professor's. "We have an alliance, then?"

The Professor took all of us in at a glance. I felt a light touch on my mind, and knew he was seeking my consent; from the expressions of the others, I assumed he was doing the same with them. After a moment he told Magneto, "We have an alliance."

I saw Rogue turn and stalk out of the room then, Bobby following after. She hadn't agreed, obviously and understandably. I only hoped it didn't mean she, or they, would leave. All of a sudden, I didn't like any mutants' chances in the wider world.

"Very good then." Magneto stood, gathering his cape around him with what looked like the unconscious gesture of royalty. "And though my power is not quite what it was in my younger days, I daresay that between us we shall still give the mechanicals cause to regret giving us the challenge."

..and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved Earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts;
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"