So, uh, do you need a glass of water, or something? Or a paper bag to hyperventilate into?"
Now I'm really glad that I asked to have this conversation away from any of the others, because if the X-Men were around to see this, I'd have to fight my way out of here. I've never seen such a change in anyone, much less in a man as normally stoic as Charles Xavier. His face looks pale, his eyes hollow, and it's like the man has aged 20 years in the past 30 seconds. I know this Xavier is a much younger man than the one I remember from a lot of the comics and movies, and haven't quite been numbed to the horrors of the world just yet, but still, I wasn't quite expecting his to react this way.
"Sorry to worry you, but seeing ones worst fears coming true despite all efforts does tend to have an impact" Xavier says with a mirthless laugh, shaking his head as he tries to process what he's seen "It's everything I feared... and yet, so much worse..."
"Honestly, you just got the abridged version, I figured dumping all the horrors of the future on you at one go might be overkill."
"Yes, well, even this much was quite enough for me, thank you..." he stares out the windows to the snow falling outside "...my students?"
There's really no cushioning this "...dead. Or wishing they were. I'm sorry."
"I knew there would always be danger when I recruited them for this arduous task, I knew there was a chance that one day, one of them, or more, wouldn't come back from a mission. But this..." He turns back to me "Already a part of me tries to force myself to believe that this is all some cruel trick on your part, that you've somehow been able to fool my telepathy in a way no other man has, that these visions are just the product of a sadistic mind." He sighs "But blinding oneself to a painful truth doesn't make it any less true, does it?"
I shake my head "Never worked before."
"Most of my life, I've known I was a mutant, and I'm not blind, nor an idealistic fool, no matter what Eric might think. I'm all too aware of how humanity treats those who are different, that they cling to even the most minute differences to feel superior. Still, I'd made it my life's work to make sure that the coming of mutantkind would not be one of extermination but of equality. I know it would be a hard task, but I had hoped..." he stares out the window into the darkness "Maybe Eric was right, after all?"
Okay, no
"Okay, professor, I know that you're probably feeling like all kinds of hell right now, but that's a load of crap!" He tries to protest "No, I'm talking now. Magneto's methods DO NOT WORK. Period. All it does is make everything worse for everyone, why do you think that future happened in the first place? And your dream IS achievable, even if it's a very long road there."
"But from what you told me-"
"The future isn't immutable" I shrug "I've already changed it based on things I've seen, this is just a lot bigger in scope than anything I've done so far. I wouldn't have told you this if I didn't think there was a way to stop it, I'm not that much of a jerk! You can join me, or you can go back to Westchester and pretend it's all out of your hands. I might be able to do this on my own, or just ask the other Avengers to help me. Now, you in or not?"
Xavier sits there for a moment, his head turned towards the window. Through the flurry of snow, I can just about make out our two teams on the other side of the airfield, lit up by the light of one of the hangars. The X-Men seem far more relaxed now that their mission is over, mingling and talking happily with my own team. I see Beast having an excited discussion with Bruce and Pym near the plane, while Wanda seems to be chatting with Janet and Jean.
Xavier stares at the two teams for what seems like minutes, before turning back to me. Now, he's smiling. "Yes, well, I suppose feeling sorry for myself isn't going to fix anything. Let's get to work then."
.....
This is really a much longer conversation than we can have here, but we've already covered some of the important parts. And Charles Xavier is a very pragmatic man when he wants to be. Which is terrifying, considering that the world's strongest telepath is sitting in front of me and was on the border of a nervous breakdown about 5 minutes ago. But I've already literally been in a fistfight with Magneto, the Master of Magnetism today, so I might as well go for broke.
"We don't know eachother particularly well, Mr. Sunshine, but I have a feeling that your... otherwise prefered form of approach won't assist us in averting what you have seen of the future."
See? Smart man.
My finger drums against the beer bottle I snatched from behind the bar. Xavier had refused, instead accepting a bottle of water I'd found in the fridge. I nod. "I do prefer a more hands-on approach when possible, but unfortunately, in this case, the cat is not only no longer in the bag, it was never going to stay in it in the first place. Which seems rather obvious, cats have claws so they're very unlikely to stay stuck in a bag no matter how curious-"
"Mr. Sunshine, please"
"Right, sorry, babbling. Anyway, mutants were going to happen one way or the other, and like both you and your former magnetic friend anticipated, there was going to be a backlash against them. I know the perpetrators of the particular horrors I've seen, but the problem is, killing them, or brainwashing them, or really anything at all, simply won't avert a fucking thing, and might actually speed it up. Bolivar Trask is the mind behind the Sentinels, but even if I go to his house tonight and shoot a beam of light through his head, it won't change anything. It might delay it a bit, but the technology is already out there, or he'd never have been able to make it. And there's never going to be a lack of scared little men who are terrified of being treated the way they've treated those weaker than themselves. If not Trask today, then someone else tomorrow. And hiding or trying to downplay what mutants are isn't going to help."
"I fear hiding is out of our hands, regardless, and I see now may have been for quite a while, wether or not I wanted to accept it..." Xavier says solemnly "So, both force and subterfuge are both unfeasible, what is left to us?"
I shrug "The same thing you've been wanting all along. Intergration"
He blinks "But surely... I mean, the world is hardly ready for-"
"The world was never going to be ready, and you know that better than I do, professor. And it doesn't matter either way, because we have to work with what we have."
He stares at the bottle in his hand, not drinking from it, just wanting something to cling to "After today, after what Eric did... people will be afraid, Mr. Sunshine. They'll see what a group of mutants did, to an entire country, and no one was able to stop them! They saw the worst of us, and it will be hard to make them see anything else."
"Good thing then that we have an entire team of photogenic, wholesome, all-american kids, led by a kindly mentor figure to offset that then, isn't it?" I just roll my eyes at his surprised look "Oh don't give me that, Professor, I'm not an idiot, no matter what you might have seen in the media. Most mutants are lucky if they just keep their normal appearance when their abilities kick in, much less end up looking MORE attractive than before! Poor Mortimer out there is a representative of those who don't luck out, and I know for a fact he's not even scratching the surface!"
Xavier frowns "I don't think I like what you're implying"
"I'm not implying anything, I'm outright saying that you picked these kids because they were powerful AND good-looking, which made it a lot easier to make them palatable to the public. It's not on you, humans respond more positively to attractive people, it's a proven fact. Thing is, now you're going to have to put it into practice. If we're going to prevent what I've seen, mutants HAVE to be accepted, there's no middle ground anymore. And wether you like it or not, your students are the best bet for that. We got a difficult year coming up, in more ways than you know..."
It's something I've been thinking about since I woke up here, we're looking at a war, not just for mutants, but for actual equality between races, genders and sexual orientation. In my own time, as much as pop culture might have tried to pretend otherwise, even after decades of bloody and painful fighting, success was only middling at best, and mostly amounted to class in the end.
Really, the things they teach in history classes are so whitewashed it borders on the criminal.
And even now, even with the powers I have, and the alliances I've made, I doubt I can stop it all from happening. I can't force people to change their minds, I can't make them accept that all these ridiculous, arbitrary divisions are complete nonsense. But I have to try, because... anything else simply isn't acceptable.
"Professor, I can't promise much. I can't control the future, I can't give you any perfect solution to the horrors I've shown you. I can't even promise you that what I know is perfectly true. What I can promise is myself. I promise you my own dedication to the cause of mutant and human coexistance, of coexistance between EVERYONE, I promise that I will work to my utmost that what I've seen will never come to pass. It's all I have."
"That's all anyone of us can promise in the end, my boy" Xavier smiles, the first genuine smile I've seen him make since our chat began "You know, you're quite an enigma, you've given me a first-hand view of my worst fears come to pass, but you're also one of the first who have given me any hope that my dream may have a chance at coming true. It makes me wish all the more that I could have recruited you among my X-Men."
I shake my head "If I was a younger man maybe, but my place is with the Avengers, professor. Anyway..." I glance up at the clock hanging over the lounge bar "There's more work to be done than we can hash out between us before either of our teams get worried. We got about four hours of Christmas left, so I suggest we try to make the best of it."502