To Guard a Gate
by Kaylee
They're Marvel's. No money. Don't sue.
This is part of <gasp> a trilogy! I wrote a trilogy! How nifty. I never thought I could maintain focus long enough to write one. Ah, but the Muse... she strikes when you least expect it...
This is part of the same collection as Tombstone and 'Til Christmas. The first focused on Magneto and Scottt Summers as they met beside Charles Xavier's tombstone. The second (which was a prequel to the first... don't try to figure it out ;), touched on the actual end of Charles' life. This story is a sequel (yes, it happens AFTER ;) to "Tombstone," and you have to read it to see what it's about. :)
Comments to Kaylee@subreality.com. Hey! You! Yeah, YOU, the person READING this! Would you buy that my entire self-image is based on how much feedback I get? No, huh? Blast. Well... pretend it is and send me feedback.
Enjoy!
I should have been there, Charles.
He'd thought the same words more times than he could readily count. Bitter words. Painful words. Words full of recrimination and those doubts that he'd allow himself, few though they might be.
I should have been there...
Around him moved a motley collection of average Joes preparing for their day. The coffee shop was busy, even at this early hour. Men clad in the rough clothing that would last through a hard day of construction. Women dressed for school, dressed for work, dressed for the last long hours of a roadtrip. There was little conversation as sleepy brains waited patiently for caffeine to send that surge of false energy into tired bodies; it was barely after dawn, and words wouldn't fully wake up 'til they had to come alive to rail against congested traffic or overly-critical superiors.
He relished the quiet... the presence of these people close enough to remind him of breath and pulse and life, distant enough so that his carefully guarded Self wasn't impinged on. It was an illusion, he knew, and one that couldn't last long.
But for the moment he let himself be nothing but a man seated in a coffeehouse sipping steaming liquid and savoring this moment of peace.
If I had known...
He would have gone. He would have fought, if he had to. Battled the students of his oldest friend, laid their bodies by the wayside, bent their flesh beyond hope of recovery. Anything it took. Everything he had to. Whatever measures the situation demanded, he would have allowed. Because Charles wasn't meant to die like that. Charles wasn't meant to die without that desperately-needed understanding between them.
Charles wasn't mean to die.
That gate wasn't meant to be unguarded.
I can defeat your students, he thought, almost absentmindedly. I have before. Perhaps I will again. Without your passion fueling them...
"There's always another choice."
"It's obvious who taught you. His words. Your voice."
"My words. His memory."
...
Perhaps they would find a passion of their own to keep them fighting.
"S'cuse me..."
And perhaps he'd commit the final betrayal to Charles' memory by destroying his living legacy, one former student at a time...
"Sir?"
He blinked. Looked up. Careless of me. With all the bodies moving around the small shop, he'd let himself damp down his awareness of magnetic fields. This man was far too close, and he hadn't even noticed his approach. There's no excuse for that.
His face didn't flicker in expression as he met the gaze of the short, roundish, balding man. "Yes?"
A friendly enough smile. "Mind if I sit here? Place is getting kinda crowded."
"I'll leave," he answered, beginning to push his chair back to stand. "You may have this table."
"Whoa!" the man said hurriedly, holding out pudgy hands. "You haven't finished your coffee. Never mind, okay? Keep your table; I'll wait."
A silver-gilt eyebrow raised. Manners. You would use this man as an example to further your arguments for the basic decency of humankind. And I would take you up on the challenge by inviting him to sit and sounding out his beliefs until his own narrow-minded bigotry was exposed.
He gestured for the chair across from him. "Then you might as well sit down. There's no cause for you to wait."
"Hey," the man said, smiling again. "Thanks, pal. That's real good of ya."
Quite.
"Lemme just grab my mug, here..."
The man did so, then sat with a comfortable hitching of the chair towards the table. Coffee gave off rich, scented steam; almost enough to wake a body up without so much as a sip of the liquid. The man proceeded to pour an unseemly amount of sugar and cream into the mug, stirring intently until the drink was the color of soft toffee rather than stern, straight coffee beans. "You got a name?"
'Magnus' would hardly be inconspicuous. He paused a moment, then said only, "Erik."
The man shoved one of those soft hands unceremoniously over the table, palm turned a little ways up. "I'm Ron Norton. Pleased to meet ya, Erik."
He sipped his coffee, ignoring the proffered hand.
Ron Norton's smile faded just a bit, but he pulled his hand back without so much as an injured look. "So... you from around here?"
"No."
A pause.
"Oh," Ron said after a minute. "Out-of-towner, huh? So what're you in the Apple for?"
"A funeral."
Ron seemed to expect more. He wasn't prepared to give it.
So, "Oh," the man said again. "I'm real sorry to hear that. Anyone you were close to?"
"If I could have chosen a brother, I would have chosen this man."
And again-- "Oh." Ron was shifting uncomfortably by now, glancing about the coffeehouse as if looking for a likely excuse to go elsewhere. "Was the service nice?"
"I assume so. I arrived after." I should have been there. I should have known.
"Oh." If he says that one more time... "What'd he die of?"
He looked down, not interested enough in this man's conversation to bother with eye contact. "Cancer. Pancreatic cancer."
The man's mouth opened. I'll wrap that spoon around his neck if he says it, I swear it... But instead, "I had an uncle who died of that. Hard stuff."
He sighed deeply. 'I had an uncle...' 'I knew someone...' 'I heard about a guy...' Everyone knew someone, it seemed, who'd died of this disease. Either that, or everyone lied to preserve that false feeling of importance. He was inclined to believe the latter.
His only answer to Ron's statement was a nod. That careful social dance of sharing the information, sharing the semblance of grief, seemed so... mundane. Distant from him and the life he'd chosen. He was impatient with the very thought of it, and here he was, sitting in a coffeehouse with a man who would make it a reality.
He had to take control. He had to bring the conversation onto ground he considered worth walking.
"Hey, man," Ron said awkwardly. "I'm real sorry 'bout your friend. I'll, uh... I'll get this coffee to go, huh? Let you think alone."
"My friend was a mutant," he said suddenly, cutting off the man's movements as he stood to leave. He raised his eyes slowly to meet the other's, waiting.
Ron froze. "... Oh."
The spoon... it's so tempting, Charles...
"Oh." The man sat back down, face still. "That's, uh... well. That's rough. Losing any sorta friend, but knowing he was... y'know. That."
I told you, Charles. It took only the smallest opening for his bigotry to become obvious. This... a 'normal' human. As average as anyone walking the streets. Do you see? Do you understand yet?
"Do you fear mutants?" he asked calmly, quietly. You should. You will. If we will not have respect for our very existence -- if you will not give our lives the same value you would give any other person's -- then you will respect us through fear.
Ron looked away uneasily. "I've never met one. Don't know if that's such a bad thing, either. I mean... well, I don't hold with the FoH or anything, but... it's almost scary, isn't it? Knowing there're people out there who can do those things. I don't even like people to have guns, but those guys are walking around with bombs you can't take away from them, know what I mean?"
Fool. Trying to sum up something so complex with words so simple. Speaking from ignorance and believing he made perfect sense. You would have seen hope in this man. I can hear your words now... 'Ignorance can be defeated, and not a drop of blood need be shed.' You would say that, wouldn't you? Educate them. Show them. Raise the common man up to understand that which the bigot would have him bury beneath fear.
You were ever a fool, Charles.
A fool who'd died. A fool who'd left the gate swung wide, unprotected from the bigots and from him.
And through that open barrier was the future that Charles hadn't lived to see. Every opportunity for the wavering balance between mutants and humans to be tipped irreversibly.
He could stride through those gates, triumphant. He could pay admission in the blood of Xavier's followers, if that was what it took. There was little to stop him now -- not even that old bond of friendship that had hindered his focus during more battles than he wished to count.
Ron looked at him, the skin around his plain brown eyes crinkling in indecision. "But y'know... I've thought about it sometimes. What it'd be like to be able to fly. Just like that. Spread your arms and lift off the ground. I mean..." He sighed, something distantly like envy in his voice. "... can you imagine the... the freedom? Can you just imagine...?"
...
It's not worth the effort. One man at a time, one more voice in the dark? No. Better to change the world by conquest. The cost may be heavier, but the ultimate reward is worth it.
"'Course, I probably wouldn't fly even if I could," Ron continued thoughtfully.
"Oh?" He almost slapped himself. 'Oh' again. He allowed himself to use that useless, infuriating, mindless response...
A sheepish grin. "I'm afraid of heights. It's nice to dream, though..."
He blinked. Afraid of heights. The man dreamed of flying, and he was afraid of heights. He spoke wistfully of a freedom he could never know, admitting readily that he feared it as much as he yearned for it. How easy would it be for that yearning to turn to envy? How long before that fear became a bitter, angry thing that fed off of the jealousy he didn't know well enough yet to acknowledge?
Ron stood at the gate, and there wasn't a guard there anymore to help show him the way.
One, Charles. I'll give you one. In memory of the few ideals we shared.
"For some, the dream is a nightmare," he began, carefully keeping the passion leashed in his voice. "For many, being... 'able to fly'... is a curse because of what it brings from those others who see what they have. Who covet it. Who cannot understand it."
Ron sipped his coffee, brow furrowed. "I guess I can believe that... but what about the others? Those dangerous ones? How're normal guys supposed to feel knowing there're people out there who can just wipe 'em off the face of the earth with a thought?"
A pause at the threshold. Honest questions whose answers might decide just which side of the gate Ron Norton decided to stand on.
Just one, he thought again. A gift to you, my friend.
He fixed the man with a steady gaze, fingers loosely gripping his mug of coffee. The words formed in his head; slow in coming, perhaps, but familiar. He let them sit there, eager and ready, while he straightened slightly in his seat, gestured at Ron's mug--
"Allow me to buy you another cup."
--and mentally stepped forward; not to pass through the gate... but to stand beside it. Only for now. Only to take the time to convince one man.
Only to add one more voice to the shouts in the dark and to help fill the silence where the loudest voice had so recently disappeared.
Deep in his mind, something told him-- It will take many more than one to fill that hole.
He didn't want that hole filled.
And it will take more to guard that gate. You realize this, of course.
Guarding the gate was not his concern.
You'll do it again. You'll tell yourself, 'Just one more,' and you'll do it over and over and over...
He was not Charles.
He did not believe that words would ever be enough to change the world.
"Another coffee? That'd be great. Thanks!"
...
And this was just one man. Nothing but a gift to his departed friend. No more, no less.
And tomorrow...?
Tomorrow... was another day.
Today he would stand at the gate.
"You're welcome." He nodded at a waitress, then at Ron's mug. She went for the coffeepot to refill it. "Let's talk a while, Ron."
Just one, Charles. Only one. I won't make the mistakes you did. I won't dedicate my life to folly.
I won't live a dream, and I won't live a lie.
But I'll visit one. For you. For today.
For now.
~end~