Wanda called during dinner, and she was nearly hysterical. "Excuse me a moment," Erik said to the other diners at the head table when he saw who the call was from, and stepped over to the sideboard.

"He's hurt. I know it, I felt it. What happened to him? What happened to my brother?"

"Wanda, calm down. Your brother is fine. He sprained his ankle, that's all." He made his voice as soothing as he could.

"Sprained his ankle? He never sprains his ankle." She denied the very idea.

"This time, he did. He started running without paying attention to his surroundings, and he took a fall down the stairs."

"Then why can't I feel him now?"

"Dr. Grey gave him codeine pills for the pain. He's asleep."

"Dr. Grey—Then you're at Xavier's? Both of you?"

"Yes. You caught me in the middle of dinner."

"What time is it—? I can still get a train to Salem Center. I'm coming to see him."

"Tonight?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Very well. Call if you need someone to pick you up at the station, and I'll see you later."

"I will. Goodbye, Father."

Two calls in one day, when she's never called before. It's all because she's upset, but still, that's more communication than she otherwise volunteers in a year.

He folded the phone into his pocket and resumed his seat. "That was my daughter. She's planning to take a train up here tonight."

Down at one of the student tables, that remark set off a conversation.

"Who knew Magneto had kids?" Kitty asked.

"Ah did." Rogue said, quietly.

"Oh, that's right! You would." Jubilee chimed in. "Because of how when he gave you his powers, he gave you some of his memories, too. So—what do you know about them?"

"Ah know he didn't raise them, and he hasn't got what you'd call a good relationship with them now. Their names are Wanda and Pietro, and they're twins."

"So who was their mom?" Jubilee asked.

"Ah don't know a whole lot about her. He doesn't like to think too much about her cause he hurts real bad when he does. Her name was Magda, and she was human."

"Human? Wouldn't that be like that senator, what was his name---Thurmond, who was this big racist, but it turned out he had a child with a black woman?" Kitty frowned.

"He didn't know he was a mutant then. He didn't even know there were such things as mutants." Rogue replied.

"Weren't his powers a clue?" scoffed Jubilee.

"He didn't come into his powers reliably until he was older." The strange girl called Callisto spoke up. "He told us about how he grew up in Auschwitz, and malnutrition retards the development of powers. He just knew metal things sometimes jumped around when he was upset."

"Oh." said Jubilee.

"That fits right in with something else Ah remember from his past." Rogue leaned forward, confidingly. "This one cuts right to the bone. Ordinarily Ah wouldn't feel right about telling something like this—."

"Then maybe you shouldn't" Callisto put in.

"—but it wasn't like he told me in confidence. He was trying to kill me. Ah didn't want to know all this about him. The twins weren't the only kids he and his wife had. They had a little girl before them. The first time his powers worked at full strength was the night she died."

"Did he kill her?" gasped Jubilee.

"No. He wouldn't do that. Not to his child." Callisto stated.

"Wouldn't he?" asked Rogue. "He was willing that Ah should die for what he believes in. Ah don't think there's anybody he wouldn't sacrifice for what he thinks is right—except himself. But you're right. He didn't kill his daughter. There was a fire…

"A lot of this is confused in mah head. This was back when there was a Soviet Union, and that was where they were living. He got in bad with this labor gang, and they were beating him up while the place they were living was burning down. His daughter was trapped, and he could hear her calling him, and then screaming. See, his wife had left her there when she went out grocery shopping, so she was safe.

"That was when he snapped, when his little girl was burning to death. His powers—well, you know what they're like. He just lashed out at everybody around—killed a lot of people. He didn't mean to, he didn't have control over them."

Intent as Rogue was on the story that she was telling—and as intent as her audience was—they didn't realize the room had fallen silent, and she was clearly audible to everyone present. Nor did she realize Magneto was gripping the edge of the head table in both hands…

"There he was, with their daughter dead there in front of him, bodies all around, and his wife just freaked out—."

The spoon in her hand suddenly tied itself into a knot. She jumped, and turned as a scraping sound came from the head table. Magneto had stood, pushing back his chair, which toppled backward and crashed on the floor.

His face had gone grey, and Rogue had never seen him look angrier—or scarier—than at that moment. Deliberately and carefully, he picked up his chair and replaced it at the table. Then he turned and walked out of the dining room without saying a word or looking at her.

"Rogue." Professor Xavier said into the silence. "Come here, please."

All around her, people scrambled to fill the quiet with conversation, any conversation, while she got up and walked the short distance to the head table. It seemed like five miles.

Everyone at the head table looked at her with reproachful eyes, except for Ms. Engstrom, who had gone white under her tan. She was folding her napkin and putting it beside her plate.

"I am very disappointed in you." Professor Xavier said. "You may go back to your seat, Marie."

Somehow having the Professor say that was worse than if he'd hauled off and given her a fat lip with the back of his hand. "Professor—Ah—Ah—."

"I am not the person you should say that to." He didn't soften his look. "I don't recommend that you follow him now, however."

The walk back to her table was just as long. Behind her, Grace Engstrom murmured something, and left the room.


Erik was in his room, in the dark, staring out the window. She hesitated a moment, wondering whether she should knock first, but she decided their relationship didn't require such formality.

She had to touch his shoulder before he turned his head and said, "Did your voices tell you to come after me?"

"No. They didn't have to."

He reached out and drew her in, crushing her against him. She was half-expecting the embrace to turn into love-making, a rough grasping for comfort which men—and sometimes women, too—sought from a partner, but it did not.

"I would have told you." he said into her hair. "I wanted to tell you, later, when you knew me better, when we knew each other better, but in my own time. That wretched girl…"

"I think we're learning about each other at an accelerated rate. We're going through years together in a matter of days. Let's lie down."

"I—." he began.

"I'm not going to rape you—or expect you to rape me." she interrupted. "My feet are sore from all the standing and walking in the kitchen, that's all."

They moved to the bed, and lay on it fully clothed, on top of the covers, and she wrapped her arms around him. The tension in his shoulders was palpable under her fingers—he was almost trembling with it.

"She was terrified." Erik said, after a long silence. "Terrified of me. She looked at me like a—a thing, not her husband. I didn't hurt her, I wouldn't have hurt her. Never."

Grace could think of nothing to say in reply, so in silence she kissed his brow, his eyelids, his ear. After another silence, he said. "I will never hurt you. I swear it. No matter what. Only—only, whatever may happen, don't just disappear, without a word. Get angry at me—shout, yell all you like, throw things—but don't vanish forever."

"I won't."

She held him like that until his weight started to put her arm to sleep; then they shifted positions. "I feel very bad about Pietro." she told him.

"That's sweet of you…" he said, half-asleep. "Wasn't your fault."

"My voices set him up."

"…What?"

"They wanted him to fall down the stairs, so the lion told me not to have Scott replace the bulb right away, and then he told me not to move the brooms."

"Why would they do that?"

"I think they wanted him to have to stay here so the two of you can patch up your relationship. If you could manage that without me, I'd be so grateful, because I feel kind of swamped as it is."

She could feel the ripple of laughter. "I'll see what I can do…"

They drifted off to sleep as they were, only to be woken by a loud knock on the door, and a woman calling, "Father? Are you there?"

"Wanda?" Erik asked, muzzily.