November 2, 1973
Moira sat in the room outside of the surgery. They had been in there for an hour already, and she knew that there were at least two hours to go. The surgeon was particularly skilled, and she knew he'd set some records. His niece was a mutant though, and he'd been eager to create a place that would be safe for her one day. It was the only way Muir Island could afford someone like him.
She had known that she was going to be there for a long time, but she couldn't think of anywhere else that she could be. Not knowing what was going on behind those doors. So she brought curriculums to go over, progress reports to read, and paperwork to sign.
It wasn't going well. Everything that she tried to read blurred. Moira found herself reading some progress reports two or three times over, and she set them aside. Something more mechanical might be in order, something that didn't require her to process information. She'd already gone over the amounts for the bills: signing them would be easy.
As she tried to sign some of the forms, her signature came out shaky. She put the pen down and rested her head in her hands, frustrated with herself. Confused emotions warred within her, and they were slowly but surely pulsing to the front of her mind.
She remembered when she had simply wished that Charles would go away, that he wouldn't set foot on Muir Island. It had been an impossible wish, she wouldn't have refused a sick man the chance for treatment, but at least she had known what she was feeling.
Now it was all whirled and confused inside of her. She was used to knowing what she was feeling, knowing herself. It was how she had managed to push through any obstacle, to withstand any storm. Sometimes it took her a while to pick herself up again, but she always did it.
This time though, she wasn't sure what was going on inside of her. She had decided not to trust Charles before he had stepped food on Muir Island. Moira still thought that he was a good man, but he was willing to let things go that should have been held onto. She'd been surprised when he'd let Raven go with only a few words. Perhaps he'd been afraid of pressuring her, his gut telling him to do the right thing but having trouble.
Really, she should have known that she would be next. Raven had been with him since he was a child, and he'd still been willing to let her go. Moira had only spent a few months with him, not a relationship that spanned the years.
So why had it hurt so much? Why had loving him become such a part of her that, after only a few months of knowing each other and a few days of having a relationship, the pain was so sharp?
She had all of her memories now, memories of planning a war, and then a school. The last ones had been good, even if they had been tinged with sadness. It had been one of the best periods of her life, full of planning and exploring a world that could either move forward into light or backwards into darkness. It all hinged on them.
Moira hadn't told Charles, but she had been considering quitting the CIA. And why not? Being considered collateral hadn't surprised her. She had been willing to lay down her life for her country, and she had signed up for that.
But there had been children on that beach. Yes, she had led them into a combat zone. But it had been a protested move, and McCone and Stryker probably hadn't even thought of them when it had happened. If anyone had crossed their minds, it might have been her, and that was a strong might. An agent's life could never be the sole consideration.
Children should have been though. And then their foolish, thoughtless act had been all the justification that Erik had needed to begin his war on humanity. They had created a monster that day on the beach, a monster with followers that would one day crash onto the White House lawn with robots. Idiots.
She'd had a chance to trade them for a place where a difference was being made, where cares about future generations were placed above concerns about how the past generation would react. With Charles and the rest she had felt something changing within her, the strength to change the world flooding into her.
And then, she had completed the final steps towards falling in love with Charles. It was inevitable really. They were both so well tuned to each other. He was more idealistic than she was, and she had been less optimistic, but she had thought that she'd found a kindred soul.
She'd trusted the thought enough to fall into his arms, and that was when he'd told her that he loved her. There had been so much emotion that had been poured into the words that she couldn't speak, could only kiss him back and hope that he understood. He hadn't.
Even now, part of her wondered if she had really been so far off the mark. Their lives had taken them on divergent paths, only to have them meet in the middle. They had both started schools, inspired by a few months where they had dreamed together, wanting to make a safe place for mutants. He'd been thinking of the world, she'd been thinking of her daughter. The causes weren't really so different.
Kindred souls indeed.
"Moira?"
She looked up. Hank was staring at her, a book held under his arm. She sat up, brushing her papers.
"Hey Hank," she said, "I was just...I didn't get much sleep last night."
There was enough truth in it that she didn't feel bad saying it. Hank nodded and sat down next to her.
"Neither did I," he said.
He paused, his hands turning over the book he'd brought.
"He's going to be fine," Hanks said, "I know that. I just need to...to see that everything's going to be okay. I was the one who invented that damn serum."
Moira put a hand on Hank's shoulder. She'd read about the details of Charles's case in the dossier. She couldn't imagine the pain that Hank was going through.
"He certainly seems convinced that that's how it's going to be," Moira said.
Hank shrugged, before sighing and digging into his pocket. He pulled out an envelope and hesitated, placing it over his book.
"Moira...Charles...he told me..." he said.
"Yes?"
He flipped over the letter. Moira could see her own name written on the envelope in Charles's neat handwriting. A burning pressure began behind her eyes.
"He um, he wanted me to give this to you," Hank said lamely.
Hank held the envelope out to her. She took it, her hands shaking slightly, barely knowing what she was doing. The minutes began to pass as she stared at the neat handwriting on the envelope, her mind shutting down.
Stop being so afraid.
She swallowed. She hadn't heard that voice since she had gone out to rescue Rahne years ago. Moira swallowed and opened the letter. Her hands were trembling in earnest, but the words didn't blur in front of her like the progress reports had.
No. They were all too clear now.
Moira,
I know how silly this is, but I need to tell you something, and I'm running out of time. I don't intend to die today, but nor do I intend to leave anything unsaid in case I do. A few days ago you asked me why I had sent you away, and I was unable to give you an answer. I have one now. If anything happens, you deserve to know it.
I've already told you part of the truth. I was worried that you didn't love me back, but that wasn't all. You were right: there was a chain of logic that I was following, however flawed. In the end it all came down to trust.
It wasn't that I didn't trust you. I trusted you with my life, and I knew that you would stand by me through anything. You trusted me enough to do so. I even trusted you with the lives of Alex, Sean, and Hank. I knew that you would never put them in danger if you could help it.
But it was knowing all of this that led me to make the decision to send you away. I was afraid, yes, and this did factor into what I did. But there was another factor, one that probably didn't even register to you. I didn't trust you with your own life.
You would die to protect us all, and if the CIA had tried to hurt you to get the information out of you, you wouldn't have budged an inch. You said so yourself. True, we could have run a rescue mission, but there was no guarantee that we would have been in time.
I knew that you would have happily sacrificed yourself for the rest of us. It's what I would have done. We're so alike, you and I, that as soon as I realized what I would do in that situation, I knew you would do it too.
But I also knew that you wouldn't be willing to leave us to save yourself. When I realized that I knew that I couldn't just ask you to go. You would fight back and fight back hard. You can be amazing like that. So I came to the conclusion, however cruel, that I needed to make sure you didn't know that there were people you had left.
Having you alive in the world somewhere, with no memory of your time with us, no memory of the love we shared or what we accomplished, seemed better than knowing you were dead. It allowed me to struggle through the next few years believing that, if nothing else, I had saved you.
Yes, this was wrong. I should have talked to you, convinced you not to go to the CIA, come up with another plan. But I told you that my fear was very much alive and pulsing inside of me, and all I could think about was the possibility of losing someone else.
I've always tried to do the right thing, but lately I've started to realize that I haven't always thought things through. I never meant for you to be in pain, and I was unaware of the head pains and repercussions at your work that this would cause.
If anything happens to me today, which I don't think it will, I wanted you to know. When I wake up, you're free to come and yell at me if you want. I'm sorry for what I did, but you're right. I still did it and, if this isn't an acceptable answer, I will understand.
With all of my regard,
Charles
Moira got up, clenching the letter in her hand.
"Moira?" asked Hank.
She didn't answer and, instead hurried down the hall, her shoes clicking on the floor until she got to her office. Moira shut the door, locking it behind her. Then she slid down it, feeling what little feeling she had in her limbs slip away.
Moira began crying, her tears drenching the letter. Her shoulders shook with sobs, because she knew what the letter meant. Charles may as well have sighed it 'with love' for all of the emotion that had been poured into it.
Something told her that he wouldn't die that day, that he was going to come back. When he did, he was going to know that she read the letter. And that thought scared her, almost as much as the thought of him dying did.
Because, God help her, she loved him. And she had no idea what to do about that.
A/N: Four more chapters to go.