#masterofmagnetism

Lilia paused, looking over the man as she silently considered her answer. It didn't take a psychic to know who this was, though her Seer gifts certainly helped, but anyone with common sense and access to the news could probably piece it together.

"I do," she eventually answered, squinting slightly as she looked at him. "But I thought you were more concerned with fighting for your future than looking into it."

Magneto!

Focusing helped. Letting something completely overwhelm her mind so it was the only thing she could think about. The rumbling still followed her, but Daisy was starting to get comfortable in the thought that she wouldn't be bringing down any buildings. Daisy wasn't sure what she could really do here — but she had her laptop and a booster that could connect her to satellites that she was not supposed to have access to... and she figured that maybe she could find a way to hard reset the grid. It felt like a solid plan in her mind... until she was around the corner and looking at Erik.

He was helping, it looked like. Trying to get the grid back online and she wasn't sure if he knew what he was doing — but from where she was standing — he was trying to help. But Daisy wasn't thinking about that. (The rumbling got louder again, and her breathing uneven.) She was thinking about the missiles and Rictor and Kara. She was thinking about how she had trusted him and how she believed in him—

She was looking at him, not with anger in her eyes — but grief. Frustration and sadness and betrayal. He owed her nothing, and she knew that. Learned that lesson many times over the years while working at SHIELD. No one owed her a damn thing. (But he was supposed to be different.) "Erik." Even his name sounded foreign on her tongue, "What the hell did you do?" It wasn't an accusation — but a question. He had been someone she had cared about before. A man she had trusted. A man who had helped her. Desperately, Daisy wanted to understand.

She knew it was going to happen. It was a given. She had already told Jean what she thought, felt the anger pulsing in her veins along with the hurt that stung enough just to make itself known that it was merely being covered by the anger. She was going to be scrambling to make this make sense, to paint over the angry shade of red that the portrait that was being painted before the residents of Genosha, before the world really. She knew, felt, he needed to stay dead. 

“It’s awfully rude not to knock.” Maddie drawled in a bored tone when she felt his presence, could feel the familiar essence of his mind nearby. She turned to the man she had helped murder and felt her jaw tick. “Welcome back.” Her eyes swiped over his form carefully and looked at him, nothing on her face giving her away. “I’m sure you have plenty to say from what I’ve already heard. Go on then.”

She had known him before. In her universe — or was it the future of this place? Rachel didn’t know. And the confusion of this reality was enough to tighten her chest. There were stories about her mother, Jean, having large gaps in her life when she was dead before the Phoenix brought her back. And from what she had heard, her mother had found a way to reacclimate herself so seamlessly. But Rachel? She had only been displaced once before. And that had… arguably been a choice.

This part was new. And Rachel didn’t know who to reach out to. Kitty was alive. She had seen Scott. She knew by the name of the school that her mother was still alive — but she wasn’t sure if she was ready to tell her parents exactly what was happening. Not that she’d be able to hide it for long. She was sure if she made direct eye contact with her mother for more than a second that it’d all be over.

Her first instinct was to reach out to Magneto. Erik Lehnsherr. But it was complicated here. Here, he was… he was important to her mother. Important to her father. He was family. (And the idea of a good portion of her family being alive at once was great and terrifying. All at once.)

Ray knocked on his door. It wasn’t his office. It was his home. And as her knuckles rapped against the door, she wondered if she should have gone to his office instead. The door swung open, punctuation that it was too late for her to change her mind. Her mouth dropped open, words barely forming in the forefront of her mind before the smell hit her. Tea. “It better be herbal,” she said quickly. “Caffeine isn’t good for stress or anxiety, and we both know you don’t need to make yours worse.”

@master-of-magnetism

"Liar.” Zatanna didn’t need to look further than the darkened circles beneath his eyes to know it either. The world did as it always had when Zatanna was off chasing her own adventures, it kept moving. And Zatanna came back to a new land mass being pulled to the surface. An island. Genosha. The new home for mutants. And while her heart ached for her friend who had been — well, truthfully, Zee didn’t know what had happened to Kara. Not really. Only what she had read in newspapers and that was vague and reaching if anything at all. But she knew Erik, at least through Jean. Seen him a few times and knew how much he meant to Jean, so by extension, Zatanna offered him the same warmth she’d offer any other member of the family. A small grin and some gentle prods that meant no harm.

“Are you looking for conversation or avoidance?” A fair question, because she knew what it was like to want to keep those sort of things private. Like the demon that had tried to ensnare her own dreams — she would never tell anyone about what she saw, or let anyone know how vulnerable she had been in that moment, even if only briefly. “I’ve got a few tricks on how to hide...” she used her index finger to draw a circle around her own under eyes, “I do shows all the time with an hour or so of sleep, working two jobs will do that too a girl. Or maybe just... updating your wardrobe will make you look less sad, really.” 

Their relationship happened in waves, it seemed. The Brotherhood had, arguably, been them at their best. Rogue had been on his side, saw him in a light that was nothing but flattering in her own mind — and then she left. And with that, the light on him had changed. She saw the Brotherhood as something different, saw him as someone different. And with each new wave, their relationship changed in other ways. Straining much of what had connected them in the first place.

But one thing had never changed. One thing had remained sacred between them — Erik’s quiet confessions about his daughter, Anya. The lives he had lived before he had met her. The people he had lost, the things he had suffered — the people who had abandoned him. (And Rogue never pretended that she wasn’t on that list now. She was his little ghost as he had said.) They were all things that she knew about him, tiny little details that she refused to talk about to anyone because they were Erik’s.

But she had used it against him. In a public way — and by the look of the conversation that had continued, no one had even noticed what it was that Rogue had said. She had wanted to diffuse them tearing each other apart... and she had been successful. But at what cost? Jean said that Erik was doing his Erik Thing and Rogue assumed the worst. Assumed that he had donned the helmet again and was violently pulling away from all of them — a reaction that Rogue understood.

The desire to run. The desire to be alone. They both knew she related to that impulse. She had followed it enough times that she wore it like a badge on her chest — but even more personal than that. She used it as her name. But Erik wasn’t like her. He didn’t do well when he isolated. And, unfortunately for him, Rogue knew him. And there were only a few places that he would have gone to clear his head. (Only a few places in the city that he trusted to do that.) And one of them was a quaint tea shop that made it properly, as Erik often put it. 

He was sitting in the corner, back to the corner of the wall so that he could see everyone coming and going. Something they had learned to do young — especially when they knew they were being hunted. Rogue half expected the doors to the shop to be stuck closed when she pushed them open. Was this him saying that he’d speak with her, or was it him wanting her to make the choice to turn and leave him in peace? Rogue knew Erik in many ways, but she had never had the privilege of knowing his mind quite like that. All she could do was make assumptions. Little leaps.