Archiving:To all who have archived my fic before, if you'd like to take this, please go ahead, I'd be honoured. And here. Have a cookie.

Teaser: Mystique's POV on events spanning the movie and a little above and beyond.

Rating: R for language, sexual imagery, hints at slash, and all kinds of stuff.

Genre: Is romantic angst a classification?

Notes: Words or phrases between asterisks are italicised.

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I have always done what my Master requires of me. Even when it is as hard as this.

"You'll take his place." He said to me.

Yes. I didn't have to voice my obedience. He knew I would do what he wanted me to. Because he never forced me. Everything I have ever done, I did out of my own
free will, submitting to his leadership and trusting in the rightness of his vision.

Because I could leave at any time. But I don't.

I won't.

Because he needs me.

"You'll take his place at the Senator's side," he said to me, not smiling. "You will *be* Henry Guyrich."

Knowing what he meant, I obeyed.

True transformation needs a molecular understanding of the subject's identity. The stench of his sweat. The taste of his fear. The soft, helpless look he has in the throes of orgasm, mingled with the musky after-smell of his seed.

I took it all, and studied it.

It was easy. Slipped into the good agent's bedroom one night, disguised as the embodiment of his most erotic dreams.

That was for the lust.

Turned into my true shape, my proud true shape as I rode him to ecstasy, his and mine, becoming mine alone as his dread and understanding robbed him of any joy in his culmination.

That was for the fear.

Told him, as he lay imprisoned and bleeding between my thighs, "That was for the fear, Agent Guyrich. For the fear I felt all my life thanks to people like you, until *he *  - my Master - took me under his wing and freed me to walk tall and unafraid to be myself again."

As I left the man oozing and pliant after death, as I took on his shape and inhaled the fear scent and sweat-stench, I was reborn in the knowing that this was for me. By me. My own free choice to sleep with a man and take a shape not my own.

Because my Master only requires this of me. He will never demand I do it.

Over three years I hid in the unfamiliar shape of a man's body, genuflecting to the whims of bigoted, cowardly Senator Kelly, kissing asses and wiping noses. But it was worthwhile. It was for our crusade.

The moments in the shadows where I whispered secrets or received instructions from secondary messengers were never enough, however. He must have known how I longed for those few stolen weekends when I could return home, home to him, because it was always the same welcome, from the first time I returned to the last, always the same simple ritual that I treasured and cherished as a talisman to protect me from the stinking human waste I lived in, day in, day out.

He'd be in his 'office' as I came in, his eyes already fixed on the door, as though he knew how I'd enter, where my eyes would be, so that he was already looking into them before I even registered his gaze.

"Mystique," he'd say, smiling softly, "welcome home, child. Welcome home."

Sometimes the others were there, and we'd meet immediately to discuss the information I brought him. Other times, though, when he was there alone, those times were the best.

Those times I imagined him waiting at his desk only for me, noting the absence of any paperwork or field journals with a secret thrill, pretending that his being was focussed on the sound of my steps echoing through the hallway, his eyes alert and ready waiting for me to meet his gaze.

Those times I really thought he loved me.

He'd still be sitting, looking straight at me as I entered. He'd still say the same welcome home as he always did.

But then he'd get up and come a little ways in front of his desk, so that I could drop everything I was carrying, the burden and the lies and the half-hidden shame, drop it all behind me and rush into his embrace, flinging my arms around his chest, burrowing deep as though I could touch his heart and hold it as he held mine.

Those times I really knew he loved me.

When his dreams started, I thought I had positive proof.

Oh, he'd let me into his bed once before. This was less than a year after I took the shape of the Senator's aide, and was beginning to comprehend the demands of total transformation for any length of time.

"It won't be easy," he'd assured me softly. "Cytoplasm is a pliant substance, but any form of cellular transfiguration is unforgiving."

Unspoken his words - *you don't have to.*

Unspoken my determination - *but I want to. It's for you. For us. For the future we can never haveotherwise. *

Unspoken too, his words of praise, but I felt it in the warmth of his smile and the kindness of his hugs as he welcomed me home after each absence. But it wasn't enough.

I used to wake shaking, afraid of the dreams that were mine and yet not mine, afraid of a dead man trying to live again through my mind. But it had never been as strong, the night Magneto completed the machine that would be the focus of our plans.

I went to him that night, with the electric field humming in my veins and the energy lines in the air nearly tangible and seeming to glow in the dark. I found him in his chamber, admiring the lines of his invention, and he took me in, just like that, into his arms, and his heart and led me to his bed.

I was the first to break away. I ran from his bed, not unwilling, but afraid to show... to show him...

But he would not have been able to, either. I wasn't sure how I knew it then. All I knew was that though I wanted him, and I think - no, I am *sure* - that though he wanted to love me as well, he was incapable of it.

I cried to myself for the rest of the night, hanging on to grim wakefulness, though no longer in fear of meeting Agent Guyrich in my dreams.  I was far more afraid of losing the few memories that we had been able to create during that all-too-brief encounter.

The feel of his arms around me.

The scent of his person as he held me.

The softness of his cheek - not old, no, never old - as he rubbed against my face, letting me know with touch and sensation what he could not bring himself to say in words.

Maybe it was a trick of the night, I told myself. He *is* Magneto, unusual power fluxes have an unusual effect on him.

It didn't change the fact that I wanted him and still do. It didn't change the fact that he didn't - doesn't want me in the same way.

 Still, with the taste of his longing and the smell of his fear, I could begin to understand when his dreams started.

His crime was being born a Jew. Mine was being born at all. Similar demons, yet not that close.

He'd seen his parents die and suffered horrors of the mind and body that I never want to imagine. And now the ones that should have been his closest allies banded against him instead, taking a garishly comic-strip name to demonstrate their allegiance against his crusade.

And I... I have my own demons.

The net result was that neither of us could sleep very well. Until one day I faced the truth and shrugged off my selfish sadness to reach out and give him what he truly wanted, what he has always wanted.

The respect and affirmation of his equals.

I know now why he could never love me the way I want him to. I'm not his equal. I know that now, and I accept it. He is the Master, after all.

It is enough that he will take his comfort from me, in the only shape he can accept it, in the only shape where it is of any use to him. Even though the illusion is incomplete, its enough that he takes it from me. That he lets me love him, even in that shape.

It has to be enough.

I wonder if the others know?

Probably not. They'd have left by now if they did. They wouldn't understand him. Not the way I do.

Only I understand him. He's said as much before. That I'm his perfect soldier, the one he trusts most.

I still wanted to kill the little bitch Rogue when I realised he intended to *transfer* with her.

*NO!* I wanted to scream, I wanted to roar like Sabre-tooth, to wrap my arms around him and demand that he refuse, that he use me instead.

"I can take you," I insisted, "I can *be*you." All the while dying inside - *please no, don't give that to her...why not me? Why NOT me?!!*

"It can't be you," soft and reassuring, his fingers in my hair, calming and soothing the spikes, gentling the storm in my body even before it began. "You know it can't be you, Missy."

Because - unspoken - while I can mimic the physical, little bitch Rogue can harness your soul.

At least he never slept with her. I'd have killed her if he'd even intended to touch her more than he needed to.

And I let her know it too, draping my arm around him casually as we stood looking at her. Yes, you can look, little missy, but he's *not yours*, you hear?

Not mine either. But definitely not yours.

I don't think he really likes me to touch him in public. But sometimes it's just too hard not to reach out and caress him, even surreptitiously, just to feel that vitality deep below the aging flesh that imprisons it.

Oh, you're not old, Magneto, my love.

I mean, Master.

You're just - tired.

Which is why you're letting your guard down right now, and why you want me to wait and watch instead of instantly freeing you from this pathetic cage that they pretend can restrain you.

I have always done as my Master requires. I will always do what he needs me to do.

But it is hard.

Especially when the clear walls do not hide the slight throbbing of your pulse nor mask the eagerness with which you greet this visitor.

The man I am not. Your friend. Your equal.

Your love.

You play the same games day in, day out. Chess. Checkers. Once you suggested 'Go Fish' just to see him smile and I had to bite down on my lip to prevent crying out at your obvious pleasure at having amused him.

I wait and watch, like a good security guard should. Like your good soldier should.

But it is hard, Magneto. It is very hard.

"How long do you think this plastic prison of yours will hold me?" you challenge him as he leaves. Only I know that it is not a challenge as much as a threat, to see his reaction at the possibility of losing you.

He doesn't react, of course. Why would he? He doesn't know you, or need you, or care for you as I do.

Why him, Magneto? Why not me?

Day in, day out as you play your little games with Xavier, I wait patiently for you to give me the signal that lets me know you are ready to leave, that you have finally given up on these old ghosts and are ready to forge our brave new world. 'Senator Kelly' and his associates have been paving the way for you, my love, laying the groundwork for the nation we want to build.

We wait upon our Master's word.

And wait.

And wait.

You know I will always do what you require of me, Magneto. Because though you don't care for me the way you would have in a world less screwed up than this, I know you need me.

You do need me. You do. If you've forgotten why, I can wait for you to remember.

I can wait forever for you, if need be.

But please, Magneto -

Master...

Please don't make me wait too long.

~ End.

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