Talking
A small part of me hoped that he would forgive me.
But that little bit of hope died very quickly.
We went through the portal, and found ourselves back at the mansion, the rafters and stone looking as lost and forgotten as I felt.
It was good to see everyone home safe and sound… but Logan avoided me for two days before the professor asked to talk to me privately. Jubilee and Roberto were trying to convince the others to redesign the mansion with bigger rooms, a place for arcade games, and a bigger swimming pool, the two of them still trying to make their sales pitch to Scott as the professor called me into a room to talk.
…Well, it was kind of a room…
There was a wall and a door, but the other side of the room was opened up to the outside with no roof and one whole wall missing, and a long drop to the ground if you got too close to the edge.
“I tried to ask Logan what happened to you two in the past, but he has been very tight lipped about it” he said in a calm and gentle voice. “I was wondering if you would like to talk about it?” he said…as if it was that easy.
But the way he spoke in that caring voice laced with parental concern…
Well, there was always something about that voice that would put me right at ease and just open up.
So, I sat down in a corner of the room and told him everything – How we had ended up at the Weapon X facility, how we got Logan his metal skeleton back, how I tricked him into thinking I was Jean…how I said that I loved him…
Right about then is when I stopped talking, curled up into a ball and tears started streaming down my cheeks.
All the pain and torture that Sinister put me through was nothing compared to this…
I barely heard the Professor’s wheelchair come up to me, and my body was shaking so bad that I hardly felt his hand resting on my shaking shoulder.
“I’m sending some of the team on a mission to Muir Island, it might be best if you went with them” he said softly.
“You’re sending me away?” I asked looking up at him surprised.
“No my child, never” he said as he pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to me. “I simply think that you are needed there to help. Hank needs a few things for the infirmary and the computers” he said as he paused for a moment. “I also think that it would be a good idea for you to spend some extra time there, to heal and rest” he added.
“It feels like that’s all I ever do” I said as I wiped my face, tears of anger and frustration pouring out a second later.
“Sinister broke your mind and will… One could argue having your heart broken is infinitely worse” he said as gently as possible. “And that’s why I want you to go. It pains me to see you like this and I want to see you whole again.”
“Who all is going?” I asked.
“Magneto to help with the technology, and Rogue, to help stock up supplies there, just in case we need to make a fast escape again” he answered.
“Great, a whole mission where I get to be the unwanted third wheel” I said as I sighed in defeat.
“The others and I are going to be here repairing the mansion; I think you need time to repair yourself” he said as he tried to stroke some tension out of my shoulder.
“Whatever you say Professor” I said as I handed him back his handkerchief and walked out to go to what was left of my room, feeling like a zombie the whole way.
The next two days I listened to the Professor and Hank as they explained what they wanted us to fix on the Island, what supplies they wanted to put in storage, and the components they needed us to return back to the mansion, other than that I wandered the halls feeling lost and alone… Waiting for this pain to stop and to feel alive again…
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The three of us had boarded one of the jets, all the others stopping what they were doing to see us off and to tell us to be safe… All except one…
The Professor was the last to leave, he stayed back in the hanger and watched as we took off.
‘We love you Morph’ he said to me through my mind.
‘Not everyone,’ I said as I tried to hold back the tears that were pricking at my eyes.
‘We are your family, Morph, no matter what, and I look forward to seeing you come home once the week is up,’ he said.
‘I don’t know if I have a home to go back to,’ I said as I watched the mansion disappear before my eyes.
‘I will be here for you Morph, I promise’ he said before his voice was gone, and there was nothing but my own thoughts in my head.
A couple of hours later we landed on Muir Island, Rogue and Magneto got off the jet and brought their things right to a room to share, while I walked off to the room I had here long ago in a daze.
Part of me was still trying to work through the pain of what happened between me and Logan, the other part of me walked down the halls feeling like a ghost. The last time I was here I was trying to recover from what Sinister had done to me… The last time I was here Moira was alive, always giving me a gentle smile and surrounding me with a reassuring presence. She was just like the Professor that way – always making me feel calm and safe, making me feel like I wasn’t alone…
It was terrible to think that such a wonderful person like her was dead…
And Sean Cassidy walking around wearing his Banshee costume, he was gone too…
It sent a cold deep hurt down to the center of my being to walk around this island and have them both be gone.
I eventually left my bag in my room and went out to the cliffside, watching the waves as they crashed into the rocks down at the bottom.
I spent most of the day there when Rogue came along.
“Why don’t y’all come in for some lunch shuga” she said as she flew up and landed next to me.
I shook my head, staring down at the waves feeling numb inside.
“The Professor… he told me and Erik what happened.”
“You’re both playing babysitter” I said more than asked.
“He wanted to explain why you’ve been acting so different lately, wanted to explain why you hurt so bad.”
I didn’t say anything to that. What was there to say?
“We’re here for you shuga, we’ll always be here for you” she said as she knelt in the grass next to me and hugged me.
At first it didn’t mean anything, but after a while her warm embrace broke through my numbness, and I felt a small bit of life go through me.
“We’ll keep some leftovers in the fridge in case you change your mind” she said as she rubbed a few small circles in the middle of my shoulders before flying off and leaving.
Sometime later it turned dark and that’s when Magneto came up behind me.
“Plotting the demise of the one who hurt you?” he asked, his deep voice and sharp words breaking through my thoughts.
“You’re a fine one to talk about hurt when you nearly killed Logan, ripping the metal out of his bones without a care in the world” I said rising up about ready to attack him.
“Yes, I ripped out his bones, he ripped out your heart, and he meant to rip out my organs with his claws. Tell me, will tearing me apart make him love you? Will it help you to heal? What will it solve, hmm?” he asked.
I deflated and fell to the ground.
He was right, me hurting him wouldn’t do anything… And it definitely wouldn’t make Logan love me.
(He might like me again, and he would laugh for days about it, but he wouldn’t love me for it).
“I have tried to solve my pain with violence, and it gave me nothing” Magneto said as he came closer to me. “Charles’ love and friendship, that is what cured me. You have the love of a family in the X-Men, do not push them away as I did to Charles… as I did to Rogue” he said with regret.
“Pushing them away is what protected them when I was under Sinister’s control” I said as I wrapped my arms around myself. “It was the only way I could keep them safe” I said shuddering at the memories.
“A noble effort, but there is no reason to run from them now” he said being surprisingly gentle with his words.
“You don’t understand, that’s all I know. Keeping them away so they wouldn’t see how broken I am, hiding so they wouldn’t treat me like I wasn’t me. I hid the fact that I didn’t feel totally male or female for ages because I didn’t want them thinking less of me… I can’t lose them, they’re all I have… It’s all I’ve ever done, is make sure they were safe from me, that they didn’t get hurt because of me I don’t know how to do anything else” I said curling in on myself.
“You are an X-Man, yes?” he asked kneeling down next to me.
“I don’t know anymore” I said honestly.
“Did you not take an oath to protect others?” he asked.
“Yes”
“Did you not promise to watch over those in need?”
“Yes”
“Did you not say that you would help all those who asked?”
“Yes”
“Did your friends not make the same promises?”
“Yes” I answered, finally seeing where he was going with this.
“Perhaps you underestimate your friends” he finally said. “They helped you when you were controlled by Sinister, they loved you even when you revealed the truth of your gender, and they are here for you in your moment of need again. You do not need to hide from them anymore” he said, a heavy silence falling between us after that.
“I’ve put them through so much already” I said sadly.
“When it is family, it is never too much… Charles proved that to me time and again. And I can guarantee that I did far worse than you, and I was under my own control” he said, his voice strong, but far from proud.
His words sounded so good, but after spending nearly a year half dead and at Sinister’s whims it was unbelievably hard to believe words like that.
Even now there were times I was expecting everything to shift and warp and I would wake up to find out it was one of Sinister’s hallucinations…
“You are loved, let yourself be loved” Magneto said shaking me out of my fears.
“Ha, it’s love that got me into this mess” I said with a scoff.
“If Charles were here, he would say that only love can help you now” he said with a faraway look and a fond smile.
“Yeah” I said nodding my head in agreement. “…Except he would say it better” I added.
“Huh, he was always good at making people believe in things like that… in believing in the impossible…” he said gazing up at the stars.
“He has a way of making you believe you can fight against the odds and win” I said looking up at the stars with him.
“Charles sees something special in you” he said after a while. “They all do.”
“Not all of them” I said under my breath.
“Wolverine…has never been very bright” he said as if he was trying to choose his words carefully. “Of course, if you find foolishness appealing then you have an abundance of options in the world” he said.
I tried stifling a laugh that was trying to escape, but the small smile that curled the corners of his mouth told me that I hadn’t been very good at it.
“If he cannot see what a great partner you would make then he doesn’t deserve you, and you deserve better” he said.
“I suppose” I said unconvincingly.
“I would not worry about it too much if I were you, you could have anyone you wanted.”
“Honestly… that’s what I always liked about Logan, I could be myself around him, really be myself. He knew I was me, he always saw through my disguises, no matter what or who I changed into he still knew it was me. He knew how to see though my looks and really see who I was, not who I was pretending to be or what I could be… It was like he could see clear down into my soul… No one ever saw me like that before… No one ever looked at me the way he did” I said sadly.
“And yet he is blind enough to not notice that you would make a good match for him, he truly is an enigma” he said with a long sigh.
“I’ll never find anyone like him again” I said, my throat going tight from all the emotions trying to well up inside me all at the same time.
“One could argue that he will never find anyone like you ever again either” he countered.
“He doesn’t want anyone like me, he wants Jean” I said as everything inside me felt like it was dropping down to the center of the earth.
“Yes… The married woman who constantly keeps him at arm’s length” he commented flatly. “I can see why that would be appealing for him, constantly chasing after a dream instead of having to hold on to the real thing right in front of him” he said.
“He still wants that dream more than me” I said, my voice nothing more than a whisper now.
“Someday he will wake up to find that illusion he longs for so badly will not satisfy his needs or keep him warm on a cold night, and knowing him, he will not figure that out until…ha…until there is peace between the mutants and humans” he said in a mixture of dark humor that turned bitter at the last words.
“Not all humans are bad, or dangerous” I said looking over to him.
Name me one human that has ever cared for us mutants, tried to help us, dared to look at us as equals” he said, his voice getting louder and louder with each word.
“Moira MacTaggert” I said. “She helped me after Professor Xavier took Sinister’s device out of my head. She helped me find myself again” I said, feeling sad for a different reason now…
“Yes… Yes, she was a good one, wasn’t she?” he said, the anger gone now.
“I used to send her flowers here, once a year, to thank her for all she did for me” I said, tears streaming down my cheeks now. “I’m… I’m going to have to send them to a grave site now, just like my mom” I said as I sank my head down into my arms to let my suit soak up the tears.
“Your mother is no longer with you?” he asked softly.
“Cancer” I said, the single word choking me as I forced it out.
“…My mother… my mother died in the concentration camps” he said next to me, his words so soft and far away I barely heard them.
I tuned to him again, the pain on his face matching mine.
“How old were you?” he asked.
“Thirteen… you?” I asked.
“Young enough that I do not remember her face” he said dejectedly.
A long heavy silence surrounded us for a long time after that, the waves below us and the wind around us the only sounds cutting though everything.
“I am sorry Wolverine added to your pain the way he did” Magneto said, his words startling me.
“He isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last, will he?” I said more rhetorically, not expecting an answer.
“With the world we live in, I would say so” he said knowingly. “However, you have one thing that most people would give anything to have to get through pain like ours.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A family” he said turning to me. “One of them is up there waiting for you right now” he said pointing to the building behind us.
I turned to see that the lights were on inside and I could just make out Rogue’s shadow moving around inside.
“Shall we go to her?” he asked standing up beside me.
I looked up to him and saw that he had his hand out for me.
I took a deep breath and grabbed his hand, his strength helping me up to my feet.
We walked up to the building in silence, following the lights up the hill together.
“Hey Magneto” I said as we got up to the door. “I never thought I’d be saying this, to you of all people, but…thanks” I said a little awkwardly.
“No trouble at all my friend” he said with a nod.
He opened the door and let me step inside. We went to the kitchen and when Rogue saw me, she smiled a huge smile, pulled me into a big hug and floated us all around the room with her flying powers, causing us both to laugh as we spun.
“You hungry now shuga?” she asked.
“That depends – did you cook?” I asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked as she dropped me to put her fisted hands on her hips and glare down at me.
I laughed and laughed as I rolled myself up off the floor.
“Do not worry, I cooked” Magneto said behind me. “I saw no reason to add to your misery” he said under his breath.
I started laughing so hard I collapsed on the counter to hold myself up.
Rogue took his bate and started “attacking” him for the comment, the two of them playing and rough housing… just like Logan and I used to do… but unlike us, they finally broke down and started kissing each other.
I lost my appetite and was about to go to my room when a metal chair scooped me up off the floor and swung me around to the table.
“You’ll not escape that easily” Magneto said as he used his powers to lay out a buffet’s worth of food at the table.
“Yeah, I want to see what Erik’s been working on half the day” Rogue said as she flew to her own seat.
“Don’t worry I did not let her help” he whispered to me, causing me to snicker.
She threw a fork at him, pointed end first, and he caught it with a smile, and I laughed even harder.
That laughter, the good food, and the supportive company were my first steps to feeling whole again.