"Absolute moral pacifism is a product of civilization. It is a response by the exploited to their trauma. It is an unnatural state. It is a state that is nurtured by exploiter and victim alike, to perpetuate their exploitative and destructive relationship. If a mother mouse is willing to put her life on the line by attacking someone eight thousand times her size, what the hell is wrong with us? How pathetic it is that we construct religious and spiritual philosophies that tell us that to attack even those who are killing those we most dearly love—or those we pretend we love—is to not love at all. Love does not imply pacifism." - Derrick Jensen

Chapter Twenty

They might have stayed in the Savage Land forever – even for all the long-toothed monsters that stalked in the jungle and plains, things were easy there, uncomplicated – and Mystique had an idea that Azazel might have been content to do just that. But by the fourth night she began t become uneasy about what they might be missing out on back at the Headquarters.

"One more day," Azazel said, when she brooked the question of going back, and he took her to see the polar regions of the Savage Land, where mastodons and wooly rhinoceros roamed among prides of saber-toothed cats and cave bears the size of small cars.

"It's summer here now," he told her, though ice and snow still clung to the ground in the shady places. "It will be much colder later. You will need coat, maybe," he said, and smiled with half his face, as though he thought he'd told a very excellent joke.

They found an abandoned neanderthal camp, and Mystique picked up a broken spear and turned it over in her hands, seeing how the stone head was attached to the shaft, and she thought, There are people at Oxford who would cut their own mother's throat just to touch this, and then she put it down on the ground carefully. She figured that she'd been shown enough here to revolutionize no less than a dozen fields of study, that she'd been witness to things that maybe millions of academics and lay people could only dream of seeing, but she did not like the thought. It seemed to cheapen the experience, and it made her feel strangely selfish, and it was that she began to think again of going back to Chicago. There had been one new wonder after another, and by then an entire week had gone by, or maybe eight or nine days, she was no longer exactly sure, and this time she had not asked to go back but had told Azazel that they simply must.

She had felt uneasy approaching him about this. She believed that she trusted him, and yet there was no question of her dependency in this; there was perhaps no other way in the world in or out of the Savage Land except with Azazel, and that made her vaguely nervous.

"We will go," he said, easily enough. "But first – you want to see the secret to this place, yes?"

And the temptation of that had been too much to resist, even as worried as she was by then that they might have missed something important back home or that Erik might have become angry that they'd been gone so long. So she'd agreed, and took his hand, and when they'd traveled through the smokey plain between worlds she found herself somewhere eerier still.

Looking around the place that Azazel had taken her to, she understood it to be some sort of control room. The walls and floor and ceiling were metallic, and seemed to generate their own low, ambient light. Gigantic, oddly flat television screens lines one wall, and though the pictures were blurred by a thick coating of dust she saw that they showed imagines of different areas of the Savage Land in living color. Other screens showed walls of indecipherable text, and bellow the screens were banks of control panels. There were chairs in front of some of those panels, but they were the strangest chairs Mystique had ever seen. There was something subtly wrong about them, as though they had been built for people who were both taller and more finely built than was normal, and who's legs and arms didn't bend exact the way one would expect a person's legs and arms to bend.

She took a few uneasy steps forward, and Azazel called out sharply, "Don't touch anything," and when she turned back at his voice she saw that she had left a trail of footprints in the dust that layered the floor.

"What is this place?"

"It is great mystery," he told her, "And I am not sure. But I think it is here that the Savage Land is made to work... that these machines run it somehow, control the temperatures and so on. That is why I say not to touch them. It would not be good to change anything."

They're like computers or something, she thought, remembering the transistorized computer that Charles's stepfather had taken them to see demonstrated at the University of Manchester back in '53 – "The first of its kind," he'd said, "and we're building a better one already."

"But who built these?" she said, and though she had been speaking to herself Azazel answered.

"Another mystery... but I think this; It was spacemen, or else men who lived before men were. Either way, it was very long time ago, and they are gone from here now."

Aliens, she thought, and a new wave of unreality gripped her. She looked around again, and now the place seemed even stranger; the way the walls glowed with an almost unnoticeable light, under the layer of dust generations, the bizarre chairs, the level at which the screens were hung, even the angles of the place seemed foreign, part of a thing that was incomprehensibly strange and utterly divorced from anything that had something to do with her. And she found that she was frightened, and that she wanted very badly to be away from this place that had been built by people she didn't know and had no desire to know.

"Can we go home now, please?" she said, and was frightened further by the little girl tremor that had come into her voice, and it came to her very suddenly that this was how so many humans must feel when confronted by the reality of Mutants, as though something intolerably alien had been imposed upon a reality that had hitherto been comprehensible, reducing one to the state of a cowering child, frightened of the monster in the dark, of the stranger with the power to do harm, and briefly she felt badly for them, had almost even understood their fear, even god help her the hate, and –

And then they had gone, and a moment later they had been in the kitchen of the Headquarters, and Angel and Emma and Janos were there, sitting around one of the tables and playing cards, the normalcy of them and the kitchen and everything in the kitchen after the last week – Or was it ten days? Eleven? – was in its own way deeply shocking. It brought her back into herself, refocused her around the concerns of the group.

"Look who's finally back," Angel said, smiling as she set her hand of cards down face-down on the table. She stood up and opened her arms, and Mystique had stepped into the hug, and that felt good, that felt like home. And she realized suddenly that it was not only her sense of duty to Erik that had brought her back here, but that she had missed the others very badly.

And then Angel stepped back and turned around, pulling up the back of her shirt and bringing out her wings. She glanced back at Mystique to say, "Check this out," and Mystique saw that the raggedy burned sections of Angel's wings had been neatly trim away, and that the tear had been neatly patched by some sort of polymer fabric, which had been glued seamlessly to the tissue of her wing.

Angel's wings began to buzz suddenly, and Mystique stepped back, giving her room as she lit into the air and spun around to face her. Angel's hands came out, grabbing Mystique's, and she fluttered upward, pulling her up onto her tiptoes. All this was achieved effortlessly, with a natural ease that was exhilarating to watch.

"Almost good as new," Angel said, landing again, and now there was a sheen in her large eyes that looked very like potential tears. She hasn't looked happy like this since Cuba, Mystique thought, and it came to her that more than Angel's wings must have gotten patched up while she and Azazel were gone.

"I'm so happy for you," she told Angel. "Erik found a way to do it, right? I knew he would."

"Actually, it was Hank that did it," Angel said, almost tentatively. "But it was Erik's idea to ask him."

"Hank," Mystique repeatedly flatly, and it came to her as clearly as if she was herself a telepath that there was something here that Angel didn't want to tell her, something bad. Something that Mystique was not at all sure she wanted to know.

"Yeah. Like I said, Erik got the idea that we should take a road trip down there and see what Hank might be able to do for me. So we –"

"Of course, that wasn't the only reason," Emma said idly, without looking up from her cards. "Erik's been missing his little boyfriend quite a lot lately."

"Stop it," Angel told her, between gritted teeth. And at the same time Janos said, "Why don't you shut your mouth with that noise? It is a very stupid lie."

"Whatever, believe what you want. But are we playing this game or not?" Emma said.

"Are you serious?" Angel demanded. "Fuck the cards, Emma." She ran a hand through her hair and turned back to Mystique. "Look –" she started.

"Charles," Mystique said.

"Yeah. Look... I mean, I don't think I'm the one who should be telling you this, okay? You should go talk to Erik. Or just call Charles, you know? I really think you should call him. He really needs to talk to you right now, I think."

"I... I don't understand what's going on," Mystique said.

"Your brother was hurt really bad in Cuba, okay? More than we realized. Even Erik didn't know, we only found out when we got to... Look, you just really need to go talk to Erik."

Mystique glanced back at Azazel, who had been silent through all this, and caught something on his face. He knew something about this, she thought with absolute certainty. He did.

But this was not the time for that. "Erik's in his room?" she asked, and Angel nodded.

So she headed for his room, but met him instead of the stairs. He was wearing his jacket, clearly on his way somewhere, but he stopped on the landing above her when he saw that she was coming up. So she stopped too. "Tell me," she said, and though she had not spoken loudly the enclosed space of stairwell amplified the words.

His reply was likewise amplified, the words reverberating off the walls, echoing themselves. "Your brother isn't going to walk anymore. He is paralyzed, and it is permanent. I did this to him."

Later, she would wonder if there was something wrong with her, because her first thought when he told her this was not of Charles, but of Erik; of finding some way to comfort him, of absolving him. "No, Erik. No," she said unsteadily. "It's not your fault... it's just something that happened. It just happened, that's all."

"Nothing 'just happens,'" Erik said, and the seething anger in his voice was frightening, almost repellent. "And I think I have already explained that you do nothing for me by lying."

Mystique realized that she was biting her lower lip; she stopped, waited to see what Erik would do. He started down the stairs again, and she fell in beside him; he didn't tell her not to. "Azazel knew about this," she said, and Erik turned his head to glance at her but did not pause.

"Yes, I suppose he must have known something. He went back for them, you know, in Cuba."

"I didn't know that."

"Charles told me. It came out with all the rest. I had not even considered what might happen after we left. I was very angry with him... and I didn't even think of it until later. They might have all been killed if he hadn't gone back.

"I keep fucking things up," he said, and Mystique wanted to argue about that, too, but knew that it would not be welcomed.

"Where are we going?" she asked instead, because by then they were at the front door, and she changed as Erik reached to open it – same old Raven.

"I need to make some phone calls," Erik said.

"Charles?"

"In part. Will you talk with him?"

By then they were on the sidewalk, the shadows of the brick tenement houses looming over them. All those windows, she thought, looking up at them. All those lives behind the windows. "Okay," she said, but there was something in her voice that made Erik turn his head to look at her.

"Would you explain to me exactly why you're so angry with him?"

"I'm not," she said quickly. But that wasn't exactly true, and glancing at Erik she saw that he knew that. So she went on, "I mean, I am, but sometimes I think that I shouldn't be, that I'm not being fair to him or whatever, that none of this is really his fault after all, he's just doing the best he can in an impossible fucking situation. You know? But then I get to feeling like that's all bullshit, that he picked his side and it's the wrong one and he should goddamn well know that, and it all makes me madder than I want to be. How can someone so smart be that bloody stupid, you know? So I go back and forth on it all the time. You get what I mean?"

"Too well," he said dryly.

She could have went on. She could have said, The other thing is that this doesn't really even have that much to do with him, anyway. This is about me trying to figure out who I am without him, and it's about me protecting him from the things that are in my head right now, because there's too much here that would frighten or hurt him, and I can't trust him to stay out on his own. If he saw all this he'd hate me, or he'd want to try to fix me, or he'd want to try to blame himself for it, and I can't take any of that right now. This is all hard enough already without all of that.

But all of that had too much to do with herself, and that wasn't what Erik needed, so instead she asked, "Do you love him?"

Erik let out a bark of astonished laughter. "That's an... awkward question, Raven. I don't know what to say."

"Just do you? Because, I just wanted you to know that I won't hate you if you do. He's easy to love, you know? Even as frustrating as it is to love him, it's hard not to."

"I don't know, honestly. And I don't think it's going to make much a of difference if I do or don't. Either way, things are going to be the way that they're going to be. That's all."

"Yeah, I guess so," she said. "But I love you. I mean, I love all of you. I love Azazel and Janos and Angel and even Emma."

"Even Emma?" he repeated, and under the streetlights she saw a bemused sort of smile flit across his face.

"Yeah, I do. And I know, right, like that and fifteen cents will get me a cup of coffee, but –"

"No, don't make light of it. That's good, Raven. Hold on to that if you can."

"Okay," she said, and she would try. In the end, she wouldn't be allowed to keep a hold of it, but she would try.

On the corner ahead of them she could see a phone booth. Erik picked up his pace, and she did the same to match him. And when Erik picked up the receiver and dialed the number it was not lost on Mystique that he did so from memory and without hesitation. He held the phone out to her, and she was surprised enough by that to take it without thinking, because she had imagined that Erik would speak first, and when she tried to pass it back to him Erik backed out of the reach of the cord, his hands held above his head with the palms facing outward, and then Charles's voice had come on the line, so she'd had no choice but to bring the phone to ear and say, "Hello, Charles," though by then her heart was racing with panic.

"Raven! Is that you?" he said, and though the surprised happiness in his voice cut, felt in fact almost like an accusation, she found she was glad to hear it.

She found also that it was not as difficult or as awkward to speak with him as she had expected, because she said, "Yeah, of course. Look – I only just heard, I'm sorry I didn't call you sooner... How are you?"

And he told her, putting a brave face on it. "I wasn't even in the hospital as long as you would have thought," he said, and "It was a bit trying at first, but things are settling into a rhythm now," and "The psychical therapy is going really well. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been this fit in my entire life – you should see my arms, Raven, I'm actually getting muscles," and sure, it was all an act – she didn't have any doubt of that – but the point was that as long as Charles was carrying on with his act she didn't have to bring out her own, and before she hardly knew it the operator was on the line, telling them that their ten minutes was up and if they wanted to continue their call she'd have to deposit another dime.

"I'm going to put more money in, but Erik wants to talk to you now, okay?" she told Charles. "It's been really good talking to you. I'll call again soon, okay?" And Charles said goodbye and she handed the phone over to Erik, and he and Charles had made small talk about Angel's patched wing and the weather and so on, and when his ten minutes was up Erik made his farewells and hung up the receiver.

Then he picked it up again, dialing a different number, and this time he deposited substantially more coins in the money slot. "Should I go?" Mystique asked, thinking that he might want privacy.

"No, you're fine –" Erik began to say, and then another voice had come over the line, and Erik surprised her by answering it in German – or at least something that sounded almost but somehow not quite like German to her.

The conversation ran much longer than the one with Charles, and in the beginning Erik's tone struck her as lightly cajoling. But after a few minutes he began to look strained, and before long that made it from his face and into his voice. Shortly thereafter he began to become transparently angry, and his voice had gotten much louder, nearly shouting. The reply on the other end of the line was sharp – Mystique could not understand the words, but it seemed to her that the man Erik was speaking to was much older and not at all inclined to take nonsense – and when Erik replied his voice was stiff with curtsey and much softer. Erik seemed to be rallying his patience to try his argument again, but whatever he wanted the voice on the other end would not give it to him.

Near the end he had slipped back into English, apparently out of simple frustration, though it was an English with a much thicker brogue than he usually employed. "I can't be more frank about this," he said. "You need to let me bring you here. I can protect you here." The voice on the other end had demurred, and not long after that Erik had seemed to accept defeat, and had said his goodbyes and hung up the phone with a caution that showed Mystique that he wanted to slam it down.

"Who was that?" Mystique asked, not sure that she should be asking.

"A stubborn old man," Erik said, and ran a hand down his face, which was looking suddenly drawn and somehow strangely young. "It's just family stuff, Raven, don't worry about." And he'd stepped out of the phone booth and started back toward the Headquarters, and Mystique fell in beside him.

"Tomorrow, we are getting serious," he said, without turning his head to look at her.

"Okay," she said.