#magnetiik

There were no rules when it came to family. Some tried to limit it to blood or ancestral, but roots on family trees spread wide. Wanda’s relationship with family had always been tumultuous. She had lost her mother and the man she believed to be her father early on. There was Max, Pietro and Lorna, but the Monarchy of M was volatile and often at odds with one another. How funny it was that they hadn’t found true peace until long after Wanda had found out she was not part of the Monarchy at all.

At the end of the day, Max and Wanda had decided to choose one another as family. He was her father and she was his daughter even if blood did not link the two. It was because of this that she became one of the few non-mutants with routine access to Krakoa. Walking in the gardens near the Monarchy was a year round activity due to Krakoa’s perpetually pleasant climate.

“You can’t be surprised to see me.”

Moira X played the long game. It went on for lifetimes; centuries that blurred into one another. Ten, so far. According to Destiny, she was nearing the end of her potential cycles. Was Moira afraid? She had died so many times that death didn’t scare her. The blazing void was intimidating, but Moira would face it as she had for the last ten lifetimes. Death, she knew, came with the absence of control. She had learned to love control over time; even in the background, pulling the strings, Moira found power. 

That power was no longer enough.

Her anger at both Erik and Charles was righteous. She had worked intimately with both over her different spans, but it was Charles she had been close with during this life. Moira loved Charles, in her own way. She loved him as a man who would live, die and start again in an oblivious fog of fresh possibility. Erik, she saw differently. It was Erik’s armchair she was in, one leg crossed over the other. There had been precautions, of course, Moira was forbidden from moving across the Island freely.

“I worry for Charles, you know.” She poured two fingers of whiskey for the both of them. “Wearing that target on his head, as genius as it is. But that’s another topic altogether. Destiny.” Moira paused. “You promised me she’d be gone. You’d get rid of her. But she’s here. She’s breathing. She’s on the Council. Do you not understand the threat she poses?” Both to Krakoa and to Moira. Her vendetta against the mutant remained strong. One didn’t easily forget being burned alive, after all. Moira rose and moved to the window, staring out at the dusk covered Island.

If Erik was mad it was within his rights to be. Jean was mad too. Twice he had watched the Phoenix Force claimed someone too young. This time he seemed more invested. The Erik of the future ( or, to everyone else, the present ) was softer than the one she had known. That softness wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but it was different. He cared, some of the sharp edges curved slightly. Jean wished she had someone like that when she had been spiraling. No, that wasn’t right. She had someone like that once.

There were some days that the loss of Charles stung so prominently that Jean could have sworn that someone stabbing her in her side. Others she could still hear his voice in her head. There were a lot of things that Jean hadn’t thought possible, including her resurrection. A world without  Charles Xavier was another. If there were two people who had loved Charles though it was Jean and Erik. The loss of Charles and the younger Jean were  two holes that hung between them and was hopefully enough for some civil conversation.

He hadn’t bothered to go back home to the mansion with the rest of the X-Men. He couldn’t stand to be around everyone who turned on Jean and especially not Logan. Instead he went to find Erik to find Jean and give him a peace of his mind. Being very familiar with both of their scents it was easy for him to track them down, just took a lot longer than he would have liked. Through the entire journey his emotions festered in him. He didn’t know what to do or what to say but he had to do something. 

When the strength of the scent got stronger and more portent he knew he was close. “Erik!” He howled loudly as he continued in the direction of his scent and the sounds of life. “Where is she?!”