Disclaimer: Moira McTaggert, Charles Xavier, the X-Men and all related characters belong to Marvel Comics, and not me.
Author's Note: I wrote this late one night not long after the Krakoa-era of the X-Men started. I forgot all about it, and I'm not even sure what I was aiming for with this, but since I found it recently, I thought I would post it.
Moira in Retrograde
by Mako-clb
I know the future. More accurately I know a possible future, many possible futures. I know because I have lived them all already, or I have lived the ones I know. If I do this, Charles dies. If I do that, the X-Men will never come to be. If I do something different, well who knows. Maybe someone. One woman in particular, but certainly not me. I know the future only because I know my past. I am cursed with the ability to reincarnate after I die, but to reincarnate as myself in the past. I once again become that fetus that will be born as Moira. No matter how much I know, that's something I can't change. I can't go back in time until I die, and once dead, I have no power to influence anything until I am born again. Even then, what power does a newborn babe have. I must still wait until I can hold my head up and form the sounds that will make words. No amount of foreknowledge or past knowledge can force my body to develop faster. Only my mind is ahead of its time.
It is certainly empowering to know as a child all that I am capable of achieving. All that I can be. And while I might need to go through the motions to earn a degree or prove my knowledge to others, I know what I know and what I don't. Each life, I can take the time to learn a new skill, to store new knowledge that will help me change things for the better the next time. Once, once with the X-Men's help, I became the repository for the most important knowledge. I only had to survive long enough for one mutant to get it to me. And then I only had to die to put it to use.
Strange how, even though I have more time than most, not unlimited, but more lifetimes than any one human could need, I always feel as if I must hurry, as if I don't have enough time to do everything I need to do. I need to save mutants, but sometimes I think that we are beyond saving. They are beyond saving. Because even though I am a mutant, I am not like the others. I can hide in plain sight. It isn't just that I look like an ordinary human. It isn't just that my powers are subtle and unusable until I die. It's that I don't even register as a mutant most of the time. I'm not sure why. Is it because my powers don't kick in during puberty? Is it because they lay dormant until my last moments, my very last moment? Or is it something else, something more? Am I truly a mutant or perhaps I am a proto-mutant or the next stage in mutant evolution. It's strange that very early mutants, like Apocalypse, seem more powerful than those born in more modern times. If mutants are really all about evolution, then you would think we would get stronger, live longer, that our powers would emerge sooner or be more easily controlled and understood, more instinctual the way crawling or walking is for human babies. But now, we often have no control of our powers at first. We must train to do the simplest of things without causing harm. We must wait for our powers to manifest in their own good time. What kind of mutation is that?
No, I think perhaps humans are the ones favored by fate or evolution. How else can you explain that we have gone from being nearly immortal and connected in ways that defy description to being few, vulnerable, and disconnected? Was that fate's way of balancing the scales to give humans a chance? Why them and not the proto-humans before them? What grace has been bestowed on them?
But I can turn the tide. I could not get rid of mutants, but I can take us back to what we were. I can unite Charles, Magnus (I will never call him Max, what an average name for such an above-average mutant), En Sabah Nur. I can take the best of all of them and convince them to create a mutant utopia. Of course, I can never truly enjoy it as the others will. I must keep myself hidden or risk losing it all. It seems so unfair to live so many failed lifetimes for this one goal, only to have to play dead for others to enjoy it. Me, the woman who is not allowed to die, must appear to be so in order for others to live.
Fate truly is cruel or very funny.
Sometimes I see them, although they never see me. I am locked in a little womb on Krakoa, just waiting to be born again, but knowing that if I am it means this effort has failed, too. I have sacrificed too much. I have molded too many into something they are not in order to get this far. I can sacrifice a little more. I will not give up. I will not give in. And I will not allow that bitch to be resurrected. Charles will continue to dangle the carrot in front of Mystique. We need her, and Destiny's resurrection is the only thing keeping her here. Strange that she and her lover are the ones who convinced me that I had to do whatever it took to save mutants, and yet Mystique cares not about the cause, but only Irene. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that Fate is so cruel. After all, fate and destiny are one and the same.
Perhaps I will treat myself today. I do love eating those pastries while strolling down the Champs Elysees. Even a dead woman deserves a few moments of fresh air and delicious food every so often. Besides, I want to see how the humans are doing. Do they know yet, do they understand what it has taken to get to this point? Do they know that they are just small obstacles to be pushed aside with inconsequential things? What need do mutants have for medicines that cure diseases when we cannot die? Even better, we can be brought back without the pain of failure or loss if we want. We store copies of every mutants' brain patterns. We can restore them to whatever age they desire, with whatever information gone from their memories that they wish never to experience again. It is nothing for Charles to manipulate the thoughts before they are fully integrated into the new body. Sometimes, they never even know that they've lost something. Sometimes they do and they see it as a gift, knowing that is lost pain and sorrow even if they will never remember why it hurt or why they cried.
I've wondered sometimes if Charles has done that to me. Is there a lifetime I've forgotten? Perhaps one where the pain was so much worse than any that I do remember that I asked him to remove it. But no, that I would not do. For I must remember all of it, every lifetime in full detail, so that if I do die, if I must start over one last time, that I do not repeat my failures.
The only question is, is there a failure that Charles would want me to repeat. A possibility he knows I would want to, no need to try before giving up, forcing me to take that path again because I didn't know I already had?
I supposed I simply must trust Charles as much as he trusts me, which is to say trust, but with caution.
The End
