"Ms. Engstrom, considering the day and night you've experienced, I would like Dr. Grey to look you over before anything else. She will also affix several remote sensor discs to your temples and forehead—they're no larger than a dime. They will monitor your brain activity, much like an EEG machine does, but these are calibrated somewhat differently. It won't hurt. Since your voices seem to be unpredictable, it hardly makes sense to sit in the infirmary and wait for them. This way, whenever or wherever they might speak to you, we'll have a record of what happens." said Professor Xavier.
Grace tore her attention away from the milling students to look at him. "All right." There were so many of them, and all mutants…
"In the meantime, Erik and I will be in my office. Jean, you'll show her how to find it, won't you?" Xavier turned to look at his former student.
"No problem." smiled the doctor.
"If that's where I'm going, may I ask you to take the lamb and monkey with you? I'll hang on to my lion, in case the universe has a message for me in the meantime." She opened her knitting bag and showed them the two objects.
"I will take the monkey," Erik offered, and called it to his hand.
"Is it beneath your dignity to walk through the halls of my school with a stuffed toy under your arm? I have no such shame. I will take the lamb, and gladly." said the Professor. "We'll see you later." The two men went off down the hall.
"Smart move," offered the lion.
"Thank you." she told it, but Dr Grey, who was a cherry-soda redhead, thought Grace was speaking to her.
"That's quite all right. Believe it or not, when it comes to your pregnancy, I'm as interested in it as you are." They went in the direction of the infirmary.
The house was much as Erik remembered it; only noisier and somewhat battered around the corners. A stream of students poured from a classroom and rushed straight towards them, the current parting to surge around them like a river flowing around rocks. His presence made them gasp, point their fingers, and whisper excitedly to one another.
"Can your staff not maintain some sort of order around here? So much noise and disorder must be trying." Erik commented.
"Noise and disorder go along with youth, Erik, and they must find an outlet somewhere. What you see as a lack of discipline, I see as high spirits. Here we are—the same old office."
"I remember it well," said Magneto, looking around the room. It was bright, spacious and airy. Apparently it also served as an informal classroom; there were teaching materials and educational toys scattered around the room. "I'll just put the monkey on your desk for now."
"Would you be so kind as to put the lamb with him?" Xavier asked, holding out the toy. Erik did so, and took a seat.
"Well, Erik?" Xavier steepled his fingers and looked over them at Magneto.
"'Well' what?"
"Ms. Engstrom."
"She and I had only a moment alone before the world intruded, and she was too upset to talk immediately. We barely exchanged half a dozen words before we were interrupted." The thought of their reunion, her warm, salty mouth, and the unspoken promise in that kiss made him smile.
"Did she confirm your suspicion that you are the father?"
"Not in so many words, no. Her expression was most eloquent, however. I am fairly certain the answer is yes." Her eyes said it, even if her lips did not—and then she felt Mystique's stare.
"If you have managed to father the first mutant child of two mutant parents, you're going to be insufferable, aren't you?"
" 'Going to be insufferable'? I was under the impression I already was." Magneto smiled.
"I'm sure you can achieve even greater heights of self-satisfaction. Let me be plainer, then. We were asked to provide Ms. Engstrom safe escort here, which we did, and to offer her safe haven here for as long as she might need or want it. However, she is free to stay or go as she pleases. What do you intend by her?"
"I shall likewise open my home to her, and on terms of rather higher status than you offer. I have more than one reason to believe she will accept."
"Despite the fleeting and transitory nature of your relationship heretofore?" Xavier fixed him with a penetrating stare.
"Dear me, Charles. Have you stooped to reading thoughts without permission?" Acid sarcasm etched his words in the air. Of all memories which are private, those are the most private of all.
"Not at all. One need not read minds to read people. You were able to pinpoint Australia as the place of, ah, conception. Neither you nor she live in Australia. That suggests a short-term relationship between two wayfarers whose paths happened to cross. Hardly a foundation on which to build a life together."
Charles is altogether too shrewd. "If I am correct, we have already built, or rather, made a life together. A child thrives best with two parents. Although I admit our prior acquaintance was brief, the depth of our compatibility—and I am talking about much more than the mere physical—was such as one does not meet with more than once or twice in a lifetime."
"What about Mystique? Your relationship with her seemed stable."
"Yes, rocks which sit and go nowhere are very stable indeed. That is over."
"I see. What about Ms. Engstrom's powers? She will have to learn some degree of control over them—and if she is receiving messages from some unknown outside source, she will have to learn how to protect herself from them."
"Protect herself from them, when they have been doing their best to guide and protect her? However bewildering they may be, her voices clearly mean her no harm. They even told her that she might trust you." Erik pointed out.
"Will their intentions always prove so beneficial? Perhaps they are only building up her trust in preparation for some inimical deed—if indeed they do exist, and are not an invention of her mind."
Magneto was impelled to get up and pace about the office. "And what if these messages come from some power that means and does only good by her?"
"I would appreciate some proof, first of their existence, and then of their intentions before I simply let them continue to run loose through her mind."
"Perhaps this is something which must be taken on faith, Charles. It isn't very likely that a tangible proof of something as intangible as her voices would fall right into your lap—Oh!"
The 'Oh!' was because in his pacing, he had wandered into the classroom area of the office. So intent was he on their conversation that he was not paying attention to where he stepped, and he put most of his weight down on a set of wooden rollers which were hidden by a bench.
Falling backward, Erik crashed heavily against the bookshelf behind him, causing it to rock and send objects raining down around him. A marble bust of Plato narrowly missed his foot by mere inches, and a taxidermied owl seemed to take flight again briefly, before it landed on a four-foot high plastic model of the DNA spiral.
In its turn, the DNA spiral knocked over a wooden easel with a large corkboard on it, and those items fell on a table which had a stack of paper slips on it, sending the slips flying around the room like autumn leaves, aided by the cross-breeze from the open window.
None of the items were metal, meaning that Magneto had nothing to do with what happened.
The slips landed every which way, one of them lodging in the folds of Erik's jacket.
"Or then again, you might be wrong." said Professor Xavier, hesitantly.
"Wrong about what?" Magneto asked, regaining his balance.
"That proof of that sort wouldn't be likely to just fall into my lap." He held up two slips of paper, on which were written, in Xavier's own handwriting, 'Trust' and 'Communication'.
"Trust Communication," Erik said, aloud. "How many of those slips of paper were there?"
"Two dozen. It was for a writing exercise. The younger students got single words, the more advanced got entire phrases. Of course, it's entirely a coincidence—a coincidence which strains credulity, but merely a coincidence." The Professor shrugged it off.
"You think so? I received one as well, one that you'll appreciate. This will strain your credulity past the breaking point." He regarded the slip that had tucked itself into his jacket.
"Why? What does it say?"
"Make love, not war." Magneto held it out.
The two men looked at each other uneasily.
"She isn't even in the room." Xavier murmured.
"No—but they are." Erik pointed to the lamb and the monkey.
"Were they both looking in this direction when you put them down over there?" the Professor asked.
"I'm—not sure." his friend replied.
At that moment, Storm burst into the room with a loud "What's going on in here?"—and had to be persuaded that Magneto was not attacking the Professor, derailing what might have been a very interesting discussion about who or what the voices were.
