Teaser: A bleak little scene played out behind the greater façade of Magneto's crusade. Remember when he used the machine to mutate Senator Kelly? It's about an hour or so after that.

Rating: NC-17. NOT for anyone below this age. Offenders will be shot.

Genre: Some references to m/m sex, non-consensual sex, disturbing imagery.

Notes: IMHO, the movie established no canon for Raven Darkholme/Mystique; Eric/Magneto or even Professor Xavier, so I made up my own. It shows.

Thoughts are encapsulated within asterisks. Some phrases are within asterisks to denote emphasis. I have tried to make the distinction clear in the tale.

Please send all feedback and archive requests to spyke_raven@yahoo.com. Archivists, I will probably say yes, but first I want to give you a do-nut for being nice enough to want the story!

***

When he was especially disheartened, or weary or just feeling his age - as often happened in their tactical meetings nowadays, given Toad's propensity for agitating Sabre-tooth's testosterone - Eric attempted to bolster his flagging spirits by concentrating on his one perfect soldier. Mystique, dear soul, rarely spoke at meetings unless it was to acknowledge his orders, or support his ideas. And that, he was wise enough to remember, was all part of her charm. Her Mystique. The spell he had taught her to cast as a protective screen against the enemy when she infiltrated them... the spell of mediocrity. Of being simple, mindless, and obedient.

Still, she was a calm soothing presence among all the frothing volatility as Sabre-tooth, the grunting bully, bellowed his way through the conversation, while that rascal Toad jumped from topic to topic, inserting his wicked and seldom witty tongue into matters where he had no jurisdiction at all.

*Gruff!* "They'll catch us at it," *snort* "we'll never make it."*Growl *.

*Reptilian sniggers * "Master, I don't think beast boy here can  -" and later, in eloquent silence, *fine, but remember I told you so. *

While Mystique, bless the girl, waited silently and patiently for his orders, following them without question. No morose "They're going to get away" or the insidious hiss that accompanied Toad's most obsequious answers. No, Mystique just went straight ahead and got the job done, with no whining recriminations if she failed. And she never, ever laid the blame at anyone else's door but her own. Not that the child failed often. Seldom, if ever, now he came to think of it, maybe only twice since he'd first started using her.

*Using her...*

*No.*

But now, after the machine had drained him and he was barely able to sit unsupported, she stood in his room, spikes trembling with anger, uncharacteristically challenging the very basis of their mission.

He was tempted to reprimand her, and if he had had the energy to do so, he would have, instead of merely lying there, half dead, listening to her preposterous demand that at this late date, he needed to give up or alter his strategy or else -

"Or else, *what*?"

He'd meant the words to sound compelling, even angry. Meant to scare her into submission, into remembering that despite his age and apparent frailty, he was still Magneto, still the man whose vision had brought them this far.

*Still the dominant alpha male, * he thought wryly, *only that came out weaker than a pipsqueak.*

Amazingly, though, his quaver did the trick. She fell silent and stopped stalking around the room, moving instead to place one foot on the windowsill so that the light framed her silhouette in an enchantingly feminine way.

Eric smiled to himself. He'd taught her that trick.

"Thank you, my dear," he spoke, happy to hear the tones come out fuller and steadier as the minutes passed and the recharging electromagnetic field around his bed did its work.

"I was beginning to get quite dizzy with all your circling around me."

She looked at him, a little startled, then turned back to gaze out of the window, ashamed of her momentary lapse.

"I'm sorry," she said after a while, her voice now small and ashamed. "I never meant to upset you."

He chuckled feebly, letting a tiny glimpse of the weariness show. "Really? Then you failed miserably."

Lowering his voice, as though half to himself, he spoke sadly. "It's hard... especially when your most trusted comrades doubt your ability to lead."

He was rewarded by the flutter of her back spikes that hinted at strong emotion. She confirmed it by turning to him, her face appropriately ashamed, but her voice eager as she asked, "Most trusted? Do you... do you really trust me?"

"Child," he laughed, "You and your brothers are all that stands between me and an uncaring world. I may have found you and reared you -" he noted in satisfaction that at each reminder of his care her face looked more and more penitent, "- but you are my heart. My family. Whom else would I be doing this for if not for you?"

He let that hang in the air, suddenly amazed at the accuracy of his words. Meant to manipulate  - ah Eric, do you not trust even your own? - they were truer bolts than he'd intended, cutting a swift straight path into his slowly shrinking heart. Indeed, they were the symbol of all he sought to set free. They were the mutants whom even Charles would shrink from - the misfits, the ones who isplayed their mutations obviously, embarrassing those who hid their powers in the dark just so that they could pass as - *faugh! * - normal human beings.

*We're the outcasts. The rebels. Unashamed to be not-normal.*

*Unashamed?* That wasn't a safe word. Best concentrate on normal.

*Normal.* Faugh! What was *normal* compared to the siren deadliness of the blue dragon lady, the reptilian grace and sinuousness of the toad man and of course, the delightful ferocity of the wild beast.

Not to forget himself, of course. In a way, he was the strangest of them all, the only true freak show. He was Eric the anomaly, Eric the embarrassment, Eric who survived the concentration camps and the government testing so that he could fight for truth, justice and humanity.

He laughed at that, now. He'd been so young. *Too young. * Naïve and idealistic enough that he'd actually thought that people would listen to him. More than that, he'd believed they would care.

That if he just worked long enough and hard enough and told his story to the right people, there would never be another Auschwitz.

Auschwitz again...

*His parents... Mama crying... Abba who loved his son enough to hurry her away, mouthing frantically behind her back that he loved his son, that he was proud of him, that he should be a good boy... *

Her hand was gentle on his shoulder, her fingertips wiping away his tears. He returned to reality with a sudden aching sense of loss.

*I've lived too long, * he thought wearily. *I should have died that day. *

"NO!" she said vehemently, grasping his shoulders. "Never say that, Magneto. Please. No."

He supposed he must have spoken aloud. He never meant to. But he grew so tired day by day. So many battles, so many friends lost... so many turning against him at the end...

*Charles, * he remembered with the sudden fierce pang that always accompanied that memory. *Oh Charles, Charles, you call me friend as though you wish to remind yourself that we are only that, barely that, when once... *

Once. A long time ago.

He smiled bitterly. *So many turned.* He would always be left alone.

Mystique's head rested on his chest, and she was holding him fiercely, probably willing her strength into him, dear child. He put out a shaking hand to caress her hair, felt her lean into the touch and begin to sob.

"Ah, no, child, don't," he murmured, honestly distressed. She was a good girl after all. He shouldn't, he really shouldn't have played on her emotions that way.

"You're a good woman, Mystique," he said fondly, stroking her hair the way she liked it, feeling her spines quiver and lay still against his skin. "Never forget that, child. You're a good person."

She stiffened, and he remembered the day he'd found her.

It was a brothel, somewhere around Rouen. The Madame had been most voluble, boasting of her latest acquisition.

"Anyone you want, m'sieu, this little one can be anyone you want." Her voice growing slyer, if possible. "Say, apropos, that you would want the little boy as well as the girl - the deception is remarkable."

He resisted the urge to cleanse the foul atmosphere of her stench by blasting her with a few thousand volts. He forced himself to smile.

"Indeed, Madame," counting a thousand American dollars into her greedy palm, "I would be most interested in your little - toy."

He'd nearly spat out that last word and when he finally saw her, the rage had been almost too much to bear.

After all these years, what he most remembered was the stench. And the strange pale child sitting rigid and almost immobile on the bed.

"And who would you like me to be, monsieur?" she'd asked listlessly, moving a little to show her half formed torso. "I have magazines here if you want to choose -"

He'd moved towards her then, hand outstretched, trying to retain his calm even as his nerves sang with outrage at the way she'd been treated and her mutation caused his electrons to twirl in dizzying anticipation. *She's the one, the one, the one, the
one.... *

"I want you to be yourself, ma fille," he'd whispered, kneeling at the foot of the bed, a full metre away from her, palm upwards to show he meant no harm. "I only want you to be yourself."

Two hours and several thousand dollars later, he had obtained permission to take the little one for a 'trip', one from which he had no intention of returning.

They'd boarded several buses and taken two trains to confound pursuers, but there appeared to be none. He'd not known why, but hadn't really bothered, concentrating on getting the waif to eat, to sleep, to trust him.

He'd wept that first night, when she tried to enter his bed and please him, trying in the only way she knew how, to repay his kindness - *what kindness was that? Not to treat a child as a thing? Scarcely a kindness...and yet, and yet...*He'd wept furiously for his own lost innocence and thoroughly scared the poor child, who was convinced she'd worse than killed the man who'd been so kind to her. After all these years, it still made him ashamed, her understanding caress on his wet cheek as she told him it didn't matter, that it was alright for him to be afraid of her, that she knew she was evil, and wicked and ugly. It was then that he'd sworn...
*Forget what you'd sworn.*

But she'd survived, and he'd survived, and there had never been any talk of repayment between the two of them since then.

*It was merely understood that her life was mine.*

As if to prove it, she spoke again, voice muffled into his chest. "Then don't go into the machine with the girl - let me do it for you."

"Ah, Missy, you know that can't happen." Touched, though, he lifted a strand of hair and fingered it gently. "You can't simulate my powers, only my appearance."

"I could, if I tried!" she all but shouted.

He waited for her to calm down, gently stroking her spines to rest. Finally, she gave a shudder, and rolled onto the bed with him, clasping him around the waist, never raising her head from its ostrich like position on his chest. They lay like that for a while, while Eric closed his eyes and enjoyed the field emanations both from her body and the apparatus quietly humming around his bed.

*I'm so tired,* he thought again, wanting to sleep, but afraid to let go, in case he never came back. *I'm so... very tired.*

He felt the bed shift and opened his eyes to find that Mystique had raised herself on one elbow, half bent over him, eyes luminous with the particular blend of worship, awe and love that never failed to embarrass him thoroughly.

"Let me make it better," she whispered softly, face beginning to morph.

"No," he protested feebly, but he didn't have the strength to do more. And if he faced the truth, he didn't want to stop her. He wanted what she could give him.

Blue lightened and smeared into pale pink, whitened out into a particular texture. Hair disappeared and smoothened into shiny baldness and Professor Charles Xavier sat at his side, eyes shining with love, worship and awe, just as it had been for so many years when he was the strong one, the sun in their relationship and Charles a mere planet in his orbit, content to adore him.

"Let me," he/she whispered the words that Eric knew so well. "Please let me make it all better."

Eric closed his eyes, still unwilling to surrender to the inevitable, as Mystique/Charles began their gentle ministrations enveloped him in love and adoration, care and comfort in the only way that she knew he would receive.

*I should have died that day. * He thought in painful self loathing, even as flesh began to respond, unable to do more than succumb to the pleasure of being held, of being caressed but only thus far and no further. *I have lived far too long. *

"Never say that, old friend," whispered Charles/Mystique, their lips soft warm against his aging flesh, "Please, never say that."

Eric never spoke very much during these encounters. Mystique/Charles did all the talking, all the caressing, all the soothing. Eric merely followed where she/he lead.

Though he'd never ask for these - sessions -  a shape shifter had to know more about the bodies she imitated than just their physical appearance. Somewhere after the first battle against Charles, she'd appeared in his bed as he lay there seething, tormented and cold at the realization of whom he was fighting against. She'd come to him fully morphed and ready to play the role to the hilt, even when she must have realised he would take her in anger, in harsh brutality, to purge himself of all he felt, that he might be clean and level headed again on the morrow.

Her head stilled and he knew she felt him shrink. He willed himself to relax.

 That had been the first time. There had been others... when he was stronger and could still take charge. Once, only once had she come to him, naïve and uncertain, as herself... he'd thanked the uncaring God of his childhood that it had been she who had fled first, unwilling and unable to trust her true form to anyone, least of all the man she regarded as saviour and father.

The man who could never love her the way she deserved...

He put that thought away from him, like he put away all others at this time. This was his time to forget. To renew. To heal.

*To take. Again.*

The first time he'd felt his strength wane and knew with terrible cold certainty that he had not much longer to live whole; the first night that he had lain awake knowing that tomorrow and every next day onwards, he'd be staving off death with only his slowly lessening will to live, she'd come to him as the comforter. As Charles-who-had-never-been, the man he could lay his burdens onto and rest, and finally take comfort from. Charles-who-knew-everything and forgave him and loved him and let him forget the pain and the solitude of leadership and just... follow, for a change.

Forget that even though this war was worth the fighting, his heart and life were on the other side... that he was so tired, so lonely, so cold, and so alone...

*So afraid. *

Forget that the woman who worshipped him and bound her youth inextricably to his decrepitude was the little girl he had promised could be entirely and completely herself with him... that he'd never require her to be anyone but herself ever again, especially with him...

It was war, it was fair, it was the song that he'd sung so long he'd forgotten how to believe in it, and was it fair that his perfect soldier would be the one he'd take comfort from after using her body and abusing her soul when he'd sworn, as he rescued her that she'd never know shame again, never know pain again and now he had lied, lied, lied to her and yet

Yet his/her lips moved in circles, softly and sweetly over his tired eyes and withered lips, saying with each movement and soft breath, forget the lies, my Eric. Forget the pain. Forget to speak, to think, to do. Forget to be.

In some ways, he supposed, not resigned, not accepting, but just feeling too old and too tired to do anything about it, in some ways that was part of the charm.

~ End.