from the rivers of our palms

Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook

of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,

your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb

but couldn't hang on.

—Bob Hicok, other lives and dimensions and finally a love poem

***

from the rivers of our palms

prologue: old men

langley, virginia, 2002

The doors slid open with a hiss, and the sudden outpouring of air was dry and brittle.

Magneto smiled thinly. “Bit of a shock, isn’t it?” he said. “You get used to it.”

“Good to know.” Charles straightened his collar and Iskierka chuckled softly from her usual place on the back of his chair. She was making fun of him.

Stop that, he told her. You’re undermining my graceful poise.

His daemon shook her magnificent head, laughter rattling through her wings. Right, she said. I’m the one undermining your ‘graceful poise.’

Oh, shut up.

“You have thirty minutes,” the guard snapped.

Erik waved his hand, a clear dismissal, and the man’s daemon snarled.

Unfortunately for the dog daemon, Aliyah’s growl was bigger, deeper, and far more menacing, backed by unsheathed claws and long, terribly sharp fangs.

The dog daemon flinched, her growl breaking, and the guard, Laurio, glared. “Watch it, Lehnsherr,” he warned.

Erik showed him all his teeth. “You first.”

“Erik,” Charles cut in. “The man’s only doing his job. Don’t harass him.”

Magneto shrugged carelessly, eyes wicked and sharp.

The guard muttered something derogatory under his breath—fucking mutie, should just kill him—before stepping back into the plastic hallway.

Anger rolled in Charles’s stomach, and he forced it down.

The door swished shut, the hallway collapsed, and then Charles was alone with Erik in an island of clear plastic and white light.

Aliyah rumbled, padding back to Erik’s side, and he absentmindedly rubbed her ears.

“Must you cause trouble?” Charles said with a sigh, rolling himself over to Erik’s table. A chessboard—also plastic—was set up off to the side, and thick sheets of paper covered in Erik’s untidy scrawl took up most of the space.

Charles picked up a piece and raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t a real language,” he told Erik. “Really. I don’t—what are you even saying?”

Erik shrugged, and his daemon let out a low, pleased hum. “I’m remembering,” he said. “And yes, I know it’s not written in a real language. I did that on purpose.”

“You,” said Charles, leaning back in his chair, “are excessively paranoid.”

“Keeps me alive.” Erik leaned back in his own chair, studying his companion. From his side Aliyah murmured something private and soft, and Charles politely refrained from listening in.

Charles wondered what he was thinking about—he could find out, of course, but that would be rude, and Erik would know—and returned his sometimes-enemy’s gaze evenly.

They were old men.

Lines carved stories into their faces, veins spider-webbed in their hands, the weight of forty years pressed down on their chests. Charles’s hair was completely gone and Erik’s was vividly white, and between them they felt a sort of age-old ache, sharp, ancient pain softened and roughened over time.

It was familiar, and for now Charles was going to take whatever he could get.

Charles smiled. “What are you thinking about, my old friend?”

Erik shrugged. “Things.”

His tigress growled at him softly, nipping his hand. Magneto glared down at her, but there wasn’t any heat to it.

“You’ve heard the rumors, I presume,” he said.

The smile slid from Charles’s face, and he looked away. On his shoulder Iskierka shifted, uncomfortable, and made a soft sound in the back of her throat. He knew what rumors Erik was talking about. “Yes,” he said lowly. “I wasn’t aware that you had, though.”

Erik offered him a lopsided smile. “Mr. Laurio likes to gloat,” he murmured.

“I won’t let them give you the death penalty,” Charles said fiercely. Iskierka flared her wings and lofted from his shoulder, flying in tight, controlled circles around the room. “It’s not just, you’ve never actually outright massacred anyone, you attack only when provoked first—”

“That is not the rumor I’m talking about.”

Iskierka dropped back to Charles’s shoulder like her wings had been cut.

“No,” the telepath said. “No, it would never happen. The government—the people—I—would never allow it.”

Aliyah sighed and padded from her human’s side, circling Charles. She had aged too, since she’d let herself be dragged from the water all those years ago. Her fur, once strikingly orange and black, was now liberally frosted with gray and she moved slowly, less fluidly, like she wasn’t sure of the strength of her bones anymore.

(She was old, Charles noted, but no less dangerous because of it. She had teeth, and claws, and razor-blade intelligence. She was an old tiger, but the most experienced tigers were always the deadliest.)

Erik smiled. “We’re not afraid, you know.”

Charles blinked, startled. “You should be,” he said. “They want to—there’s talk of having you intercised, Erik, don’t you understand how serious that is?”

Something like old fire stirred in Erik’s eyes. “Of course I understand,” he snapped. “I know what it is. I’ve seen it done, or have you forgotten?”

“No,” said Charles, and Iskierka hopped into his lap so he could fist her feathers. “No, I haven’t forgotten.”

Erik calmed, gritting his teeth and forcing the sudden violence out of his shoulders. Aliyah paced, around and around. “I am not afraid,” he said, “of dying.”

“It’s not dying,” Charles said. “It’s worse, they’ll cut your Aliyah away—”

Erik waved a hand, gesturing for Charles to stop. “I’m old,” he said plainly. “Intercision, death, it’s all the same to me. Aliyah and I wouldn’t survive the procedure, I don’t think. The shock would kill us.”

His voice was steady, and only someone like Charles, who knew Erik’s mind intimately, could feel the tremors there. Iskierka clacked her beak together and her eyes were wide and soft. She hopped on the table, scattering Erik’s papers, and inched towards the other man.

Aliyah stopped pacing and prowled to Charles, looking up at him with her fierce, fearless amber eyes.

“We are not afraid,” she said, and her voice was deep and lovely.

Charles tried to smile. “No,” he mused. “I suppose you wouldn’t be. You two have never had the common sense to be afraid of what could kill you. You’re quite happy to make martyrs out of yourselves.”

“One of our many flaws,” Erik murmured. “We’re old, Charles, and anxious, but we’re not afraid. And if we become martyrs for our cause,” he gave a broad, shifting shrug. “So be it. At least we won’t be forgotten.”

“Anxious?”

“For our people.” Erik began to gather up his bits and pieces of memory, written in a language only he knew, and his mind whirled, a hundred thousand fragmented thoughts spinning by.

Charles was quiet. The room—cell, it couldn’t be called anything else—was hot and dry, and he felt like his throat was coated in dust.

Erik sighed and Aliyah stepped closer to Charles, shifting in and out of his space, always in and out of his space.

“I wrote about it,” the Master of Magnetism said, after a heavy pause. He tapped a page with his spider-webbed fingers. “Here, I wrote about the last time.”

“You wrote down the Bolvangar Project?”

“Of course.”

“Why? I thought we agreed to hide it, to never speak of it again—”

“So I don’t forget,” Erik said. “I do not want to forget.”

The Bolvangar Project, Charles thought, and he fought down the urge to rub his face. Iskierka spread a wing to brush him comfortingly.

“You’re going to tell the world about it,” he said. “If they decided to intercise you, you’re going to have the Bolvangar Project exposed.”

Erik smiled, and this time it was a tiger-grin of wicked teeth. “Yes.”

In the control area, Charles could feel the guards and psychologists and legal personnel chatter amongst themselves, confused, surprised.

They’d never heard of the Bolvangar Project.

There was a reason for that.

Charles titled his head back and closed his eyes. Aliyah was so close to his hand he could feel her breath tickle his palm, warm and familiar and entirely too close.

Don’t, he wanted to say, but couldn’t because his own daemon stood on the table in front of Erik at eye level, staring him down and offering him a wing to stroke.

“How much have written down?” Charles murmured.

Erik looked at him with eyes frosted and clever. “All of it,” he said. “Would you like to see?” His mind tapped at Charles’s, gentle, welcoming.

Aliyah leaned closer.

Charles took a deep breath, and Aliyah leaned into his open palm, Iskierka brushed a wing down Erik’s face—

They burst into light at those points of contact, and it was like coming home.