Weekly, Private Eli Goldsman wheels Charles over to me in that temporary plastic-framed chair they issue him for every visit, across that ridiculous inner-tube of a retractable crosswalk; he's a pleasant enough young man, all-American and apologetic, armed with a plastic-blend gun that shoots ceramic-blend bullets--more than adequate to rip one old man's still-aging flesh and break his brittle bones on contact, if necessary. Not, of course, that I've ever made it so.
     Thus far.
     Pausing at a minimum safe distance, Goldsman squints at me over Charles's annoyingly calm head, the way he always does. And calls out, hestiantly--
     "We're comin' in, Mr Lenscherr. Um...you decent?"
     (Silly question.)
     I clear my throat. "Certainly, Private." Then, acidly: "Can't you *tell*?"
     *The walls ARE made of plexiglass, after all.*
     Goldsman bows his head again, with a jerky little nod. Causing me to note, once again, that aside from the fact that his family name was probably once Geltzmann--which means that both of us have Ellis Island to thank for (relatively) recent lifestyle alterations--he really does blush *far* too easily to make a truly effective stormtrooper.
     And here it comes: Charles' mind, touching mine, gently disapproving, utterly uninvited. Trading shamelessly on past intimacy, as ever.
     //Really, Erik. No need to be insulting...//
     ...or bitter? *Danke schon, mein alte freund.*
     //HE thinks you're decent.//
     Ah, yes. But then--we don't know each other very well, do we?
     (He and I.)
     And if I have my way, as you well know--
     --we never will.
     I glance back at Goldsman, his cropped head down, intent on keying my main cell's computerized access code. And DO feel a moment's regretful stab of empathy, which may or may not be trustworthy--since, in the final analysis, it may or may *not* originate from outside my own skull. I have no proof, after all.
     Because: Sometimes, things come into my head, just appear there--and I genuinely don't know if they come to be there naturally, or if they've been inserted while I wasn't looking, by *someone*...
     (mysterious, ghostly, anonymous "someone")
     ...who hoped I was far too distracted to notice.
     I sigh. And send back, with equally insulting care--
     //If you want to TELL me something, Charles, you might at least have the goodness to say it to me directly.//
     (With your *mouth*.)
     Thinking, at the same time, before I can properly monitor or censor myself: You know, I hate that helmet; it's clumsy, heavy, restricts my peripheral vision and makes me look borderline ridiculous. Not to mention how long I had to spend searching for just the right combination of metals to block human thought-waves--a task made all the more difficult by the fact that most of the engineering colleagues I consulted with, over the years, still won't even admit that they think the damn things EXIST.
     No telepaths need apply to the Brotherhood. I won't have them near me. It's far too...intrusive a form of access to allow to anyone you haven't--been similarly *intrusive* with, if only on a purely physical level.
     Dignified Erik. Erik, the inviolable.
     (Now, yes.)
     I'd rather die, literally--than not be.
     After my arrest, I woke to find myself oh-so-democratically drugged incoherent, wrapped in a full-body system of plastic restraints, arraigned on charges ranging from reckless endangerment of over a hundred international diplomats to defacing a public monument--and I really had to laugh at that, later, when I was capable. The simple truth being that I'd almost forgotten all about that vaunted Freedom-icon of theirs, what with the extent of the...excitement.
     Ironic, considering that it was the immigration records housed nearby, cross-referenced with fingerprints taken during the first mutants' rights protests in the late 1960's, that eventually revealed my "true" identity. Charles' idea, once again; let them treat you like a human, if you're going to demonstrate alongside humans. Don't resist. Definitely don't throw that police-car against the nearest telephone pole.
     No, Erik; BAD Erik!
     Your precious scruples, costing me dearly once again.
     (As *ever*)
     //You've said that already.//
     Dry, phantom commentary; neither asked for, nor appreciated. And, since I have no defense against it anymore--not exactly quite as FAIR as you pride yourself so highly on being, these days. Is it?
     This constant pose of sweet reason, utter equanimity: Wears a bit thin, when you're dealing with someone who'd known you as long as I have. But then again, it's never been any great work for you to see things from everybody else's point of view.
     At any rate...then came sentencing, followed by yet more prodding and probing, scientific and not--secret tests, blood drawn every day, more media Neandertals-in-training *presuming* to plumb the depths of my dysfunction through pop psychology, cheap Holocaust homilies. Inevitably, they found a photograph of my parents and splashed it across TV screens everywhere: Oh, SO sad. Yes, indeed. One can only gape, and wonder, and *understand*.
     *I'm Jewish too, y'know,* Goldsman told me yesterday, shyly, as we trailed back from that subordinate all-plastic room they call my exercise yard. Ceramic weights, therabands and a pitiful "track" that must be ten feet wide at its circumference; I have to do three times as many laps as usual, just to make myself sweat.
     Here under the monitoring cameras, everything is plastic, plaster, glass, ceramic. What I ask for, they have to bring; what they don't already have, they have to *make*. It was a mildly amusing game, at first. Now it makes me feel like a rat in someone else's trap, doomed to die--alone--in a place he can't even bring himself to call...
     ...home.
     *Interesting,* I replied, trying to sound anything but.
     *My grandparents--*
     (--have tattoos on *their* arms? How very nice for them.)
     Bring them by, sometime; we can compare systems of ennumeration.
     *I haven't been a practicing Jew since I was twelve years old, Private.*
     I gave him a sidelong stare under a half-raised eyebrow, and got a guilty kind of shrug in return.
     *Um...me neither.*
     Quite pathetic, really. When you--
     (*think*)
     --about it.
     Ah, but never mind, mein kleiner Eli. More effective governments than *yours* have already told me I had no right to exist--have tried, and failed, to kill me just for being born where I was, the way I am.
     I can't *allow* myself to like you, boy; not enough, certainly, to keep myself from killing you to get through that door out there, if I see even the slightest chance. It's nothing personal. How could it be?
     Religion aside, you're not even part of the same species.
     Suddenly exhausted, I close my eyes and give myself over to the instinctive call and response of metal, mapping my surroundings like sonar. Teasing possibility of metal at the bottom and top of the shaft this cell floats in, slicked and shielded in ten feet of rubberized plaster. The walls too, one assumes, which must be why they're careful to keep them so scrupulously inaccessible to me...
     We, mutants, are all of us a thousand species of one, allied only in the fact that none of us have *anything* in common people like you. No one could ever "share" my Gift, not even if I were to have a child. We are eugenic heresies, separate, isolate. Family-less, homeless, and alone--
     --except with our own kind.
     Ask your grandparents how this goes, Private; I saw it coming years ago, long before Senator Kelly ever conceived of a Mutant Registration Bill...or a career in politics, for that matter. First, they tell you to leave their homes. Then they tell you to leave their neighborhood, their city, their state. Their country. Their *continent*.
    Forced out of every inhabited area of the Earth, reduced to citizens of Antarctica--and where to THEN, I wonder? Some floating, mutant-made island? Another planet?
     Somewhere, there probably already exists a mutant able to do just that--and return. And if...
     (*when*)
     ...I leave here--I really must find him, or her. Or it. Before--
     --Charles does.
     As the cell door slides open, finally, I drag myself back into the present and sit down at the table, while Goldsman slides Charles' chair into position at its opposite end, then backs away again. He reseals the door, and leaves us alone together--a prospect which, I suddenly find, already makes me feel as though I've just been punched in the gut.
     Amazing, how these visits have palled. First they were a welcome break from endless routine; now, they simply grate. I often find I waste an inordinate amount of my time, what's left of it, on just deciding from day to day which will take less effort--acknowledging him, or ignoring him.
     Admit it, though, Charles--what *really* keeps you coming back is how much you love the thought that from now on, you'll always know where to find me.
     "Are you well, Erik?"
     "Very, thank you. Fit, fed, rested--"
     "You don't LOOK well."
     "Then you'll just have to take my word for it, won't you?"
     Unless, of course...you'd prefer to simply *read my mind*.
     "Marie--Rogue--has been asking to see you."
     I muffle my surprise. "And whatEVER for, I wonder?"
     He shrugs. "To talk, perhaps. Achieve some sort of...closure."
     I nod. Thinking: *Really*. Knowing, in my core, that he's misread that tremulous little Southern leech, perhaps dangerously--as he'll no doubt discover himself, one of these days. The Rogue Effect goes both ways, you see; her depths (while necessarily shallower, if only due to inexperience) bid fair to match mine, eventually, in terms of sheer murkiness.
     Ah, and did you hear that? Are you still eavesdropping, Charles--right in front of me, your own promises notwithstanding? Hard NOT to, isn't it?
     (As you always said.)
     Your students would refute it, of course--but what do they know about how you used to be? When you'd stroke my body from the inside-out, in public, just to see me jump?
     They have never known you to be passionate, as I have. Never known you to be irascible, or self-doubting, or reflexively defensive--easily *roused*, one way, or another. Poor Charles. I see you now, so damnably self-moderated, and I think: Did you do that because of me? Cut all the least attractive parts of yourself away--all those things which made you most attractive to me, once upon a time?
     (Or *me* attractive to you, as I recall.)
     How did we bond so quickly and completely, you and I? I know you didn't do it deliberately; you didn't understand enough about your own talent, back then, to even know how. But the fact remains that while you still need Cerebro to find a fellow mutant only a few miles away, you can look over MY mental shoulder anytime, anywhere, from any distance. A perfect experiential Polaroid: 1968, 1979, 1984...Erik in Israel, visiting the site of the siege at Masada; Erik tracing the Rockies, searching for new and interesting untapped veins of metal; Erik working his way through America from top to bottom, scouting recruits...
     A glancing brush-by, mind to mind--intermittent, almost inadvertant. A finger down my spine in the dead of night, instinctively hooking deep into all my most secret areas.
     Erik in bed, now and then: Women, men; few repeats, nothing of any significance. No humans, if I can help it. We used to joke about losing control at the height of passion, but the jest always contained a hint of black reality, of actual danger--and I have never hated humans so much, even at my worst, to be willing to risk damaging their bodies or minds in the selfish pursuit of my own brief pleasure.
     It was Cerebro which became both the height of our partnership, and the beginning of its dissolution. We designed it, constructed it and implemented it together, then almost came to blows over its use. Charles simply wanted to find other mutants, to inform and counsel them about the best way to develop and control their "gifts". I wanted to warn them, train them to fight--then *fight* with them.
     And see? After all our debates, you still ended up doing exactly what I wanted you to, didn't you, Charles? Because the phantom threat you've armed these performing seals of yours against, all these years...is ME.
     *They must make their own choices,* you argued. To which I replied:
     *Be serious, Charles. You and I know there's only *one* real choice, given the way things are, rather than the way we'd like them to be.*
     Fight, or die. That's what it all comes down to, always--first and last, fast or slow. And fast, in the long run...is better.
     (If, inevitably, more painful.)
     Which is why that's become the only lesson taught at *my* school--the only one I have to teach, not that I'd ever dignify myself with the title of "Professor".
     The only one I've ever learned WORTH teaching.
     I lower my head, arms crossed, and meet his opaque brown eyes with a long, measured stare. Still feeling that *spark* whenever we lock gazes, the one that goes straight to somewhere in the deep and murky core of me. The one that rockets me back, whether I will or no, to when we'd fight like dogs in a bag all day, then scrabble at each other like puppies all night. That literal charge running back and forth between us: His pupils seeming to catch fire, smoking with psionic overbleed; the hairs on the back of my hands standing straight up as I clenched my fists in angry lust, fingertips crackling with excess energy.
     We must have seemed like two gods quarrelling, from a distance: Transfixed, transfigured. Not of this earth.
     I'd flood him with violent images, things I thought would drive him from my mind, until he became immured to even my most disgusting memories. Then fly away, because I COULD--the further and higher the better, surfing magnetic waves, finding and mapping the ley-lines beneath every Homo Sapient city street.
     Running myself through my paces, 'till I felt my muscles strain: Attract and repell. Fuse. Twist. The gestures serve as foci; another tip from Charles, as early as 1952. Channel my energy, my emotion--dial the force up slowly, then allow it to eddy and ebb away. To dissipate from a full-on surge to a simple electromagnetic current, blending back into the "normal" bodily charge of firing synapses. Scale it as high or as low as I need, and shape it to the task at hand.
     I keep the gestures, as you've seen; I *like* them. But if we were only outside this trap once more, Herr Doktor-Professor--I could wrap your more usual chair around your sleek, bald head without any more warning than the twitch of an eyebrow.
     Quietly: "Do you really still think you can manipulate me through fear, Erik?"
     I smile again, this time a bit sharper.
     "Oh no," I say. "Not--for *yourself*."
     Those students of yours, however...
     But no. Give me all the dirty looks you want--you know I'm no child-killer, more's the pity. Not--
     (--if I can possibly help it.)
     Think back to your little Rogue, with her Blanche DuBois gloves and her Mississippi drawl: Mein lieber Gott, Charles, do you think I *wanted* to go ahead, knowing I'd be killing a fellow mutant? If I'd thought killing mySELF would achieve anything, in the long run, I'd have done it without a second thought. But these days, unfortunately, most people--most *young* people, mutant OR human--simply don't have my...
     //...death-wish//
     Oh, do shut UP.
     You're as old as I am, almost. And you, of all people, should know that sometimes we just don't have time to waste on getting things *right*.
     Besides which: Every war...has casualties. Even amongst those too ill-informed even to know that they're already fighting it.
     Ach, I'm so damn tired, so sick of this slick box they've coffined me inside, this glorified ant-farm. Exercising under Goldsman's half-fearful, half-admiring eagle eye; getting my tissue sampled and my requests met; sleeping, shitting, *breathing*, always performing for some unseen camera's sleepless lens. I want to walk outside, to feel the sun, taste the wind. TALK to people other than soldiers, or doctor, or *you*.
     I want, I want, to go--
     (home)
     Such an odd word, "home"; an odd word, for that oddest--and least familiar--of concepts. Home-y. Home-ly. Heimlich...
     ...und UNheimlich.
     I've been homeless for over fifty years, except for wherever I chose to lay my figurative hat. Lived in places, yes; grown familiar. Taken refuge. I *live* here, for now, but this isn't my home--no more than any other place, any- other -where.
    Your America. Your parents' mansion. Your bedroom
    (...you.)
    And yes, there was a time--but what good does it do to talk about it now, even when I'm not *talking* about it to anyone? In particular?
    No good at all, I suppose.
    But:
    "I though you wanted me to speak to you aloud, Erik," Charles reminds me, gently. To which I reply--
     "Yes, well...and perhaps I simply have nothing to *say* to you today, Charles. Aloud--or otherwise."
     Behind him, through the wall, I can see the tunnel-bridge extending itself once more. Goldsman makes his crossing, heading for the door-lock; Charles turns to greet him, perhaps poised to ask, oh-so-politely, for just a moment more time with this poor old friend of his. And Goldsman, smiling his usual shy half-smile, simply leans through the opening doors before either of us have a chance to react--fast, so FAST, *too* fast for anything entirely human--
     He hits Charles right across the back of his turning skull, knocking him from his chair. Then whips close enough to kiss me, invading my personal space...before letting "his" mild eyes slide, iris-click-quick, to yellow.
     "Magneto."
     I hug her to me, cheek to cheek with Private Goldsman's unruly five o'clock shadow. "*Mystique*."
     (Ahhhhh, my good blue girl.)
     "How long ago did you kill him, exactly?"
     She shrugs. "Just this morning." Innocently: "Guy thought a lot of you, y'know."
     "I'm sure."
     Taunting me with coy hints of prospective bedroom conversation--she wants me to pry, to speculate, if not inquire. To wonder: Was she female, when they lay together? Did she make herself look like me? Did these "thoughts" of his confine itself strictly to the realms above the belt?
     But I've always made it clear, right from the start, that I don't care about her methods. After all, I'm not a telepath: I don't *have* to know everything...
     ...just the parts that apply.
     Charles groans and humps up, feeling--unsuccessfully--for some sort of purchase against the slick plastic floor; he falls again, groans again, concussion taking over. Meanwhile, Mystique pulls me back as a section of the wall blows apart, detaching neatly from top to bottom, peeling away like grey, plastic-slicked skin--it falls to bridge the gap where the bridge used to be, crushing my living-room's back end beneath it. Toad's work, no doubt.
     *I KNEW there was metal under that, somewhere.*
     Mystique gives me a wide, yellow-fanged smile, and passes me what she's been holding in the crook of her arm: My helmet.
     "No more eavesdroppers," she promises.
     I smile back, just as wide. "*Thank* you, my dear."
     And far away--from down near my feet, beneath the table's see-through top--I can hear Charles' thoughts echo, weakly, as unconsciousness pulls him under. That last, dimming mental plea:
     //Don't...DO this, Erik. Not--//
     --to *you*, "my friend"?
     //...to...yourself.//
     I snort.
     "Goodbye, Charles," I say, aloud. Adding, in my head:
     //For now.//
     Then slip my helmet back on, blocking his reply; feel the building charge flood my neurons, lift my hair, flash from my eyes like Zeus's fabled thunderhead. The CHARGE of it, so sweet and odd and familiar as cells subdividing, all ozone-stink and flaring pins-and-needles halo--a crown of thorns, electrified. Ten thousand volts, and counting: Snapping, crackling, inexorable.
     I rise, letting my toes brush the deck--briefly--as I lift off across the shaft's fallen wall, through the rift and out, to freedom. Rise, as I rose that first time I left you: Straight up into the air, leaving you and your long-limbed body still wedged into the chair below--smooth skull tipped back, face craning upwards, eyes black with righteous anger, with utter betrayal. Face outwardly composed, even as your mind screamed after me--
     //Erik, stay. *Stay* with me. STAY, damn you...//
     (please)
     Ah: And what would you have done, Charles, without your vaunted scruples to hold you back--forced me to? Made me *want* to? Cracked my brain like a nut, excised all the parts of it which didn't agree with you--which will NEVER agree with you--
     (But then--then I wouldn't *be* me, anymore. Would I?)
     And would you like that, Charles? Is that what you want? What you've always wanted?
     //Don't talk to me. Don't find me. Don't think about me.//
     //How am I supposed to not even THINK about you, Erik?//
     I shrugged, intransigent. And sent back, as I breached cloud-cover--
     //*Try*.//
     *WORK at it.*
     Oh, Charles, let me make this very clear: I never saw anything we did as unnatural, no matter what the rabbis...or the Westchester clergy, for that matter...had to say on the matter. On the contrary--it was all just true, and good, and *right*, frighteningly so. Necessary as food, natural as breath.
     And all the more dangerous, therefore, for it. To me. To--
     (both of us)
     This is the *other* lesson Auschwitz taught me, Charles: Never to let myself love anything, or anyone, so much that I couldn't leave them behind in an instant, if necessity dictated it.
     But you already KNEW that, damn you--like you know everything else about me, and exactly the same way. So how could you possibly have the priviledged American arrogance to expect me to learn a whole new set of rules, and live by them, when the old ones are all that kept me alive in that whirlwind of shrapnel and blood and shit...
     *Whoever told you love would be SAFE, Erik?* He asked me, once, when I first snarled the thesis above in his quizzical face. To which I could only reply, baffled by the question:
     *...no one.*
     //And whoever--told *you*--that what we've done together counts as LOVE?//
     But this is mere sophistry. He knew it, then; I know it, now.
     Yet it changes nothing.
     I left you, Charles Xavier, as I will always leave you--sooner or later, no matter WHAT arrangements we may reach or accommodations we may make for each other. Cut and ran, just like that bestial new convert of yours, Sabretooth's mysterious object d'obsession: Wolverine/Logan, with his sharp metal claws and his even sharper tongue, emotional escape artist extraordinnaire. And much as I have to admire his ferocity in the face of helplessness--recognize the aptness of his comments, for example, during our last battle--the difference is that he always runs away, while I run *towards*.
     Towards my freedom, my Brotherhood. My chosen family. My...un-home-like...
     (home)
     I rise, and rise, and rise. Once again, I have shown gravity that no man, no place, no *force* will ever be my master. Feeling the angelic hum of metal fill me, and laughing aloud as every part of me begins, at once--like some phantom mechanical choir--
     --to sing along.

THE END