X-Men: The Last Stand (19 page)

“Charles?” repeated Magneto, sensing that something was percolating in his old friend’s brain but unsure what—which was strange because generally Magneto found Xavier quite predictable. “Shall we go inside?”

“I came to bring her home, Erik. Don’t interfere.”

“Just like old times, eh?”

“You must trust me, just this once, when I tell you that Jean is more dangerous than either of us ever imagined.”

“Well, then,” Magneto responded, in a tone of complete assurance, accompanied by a smile of infinite confidence, “it’s lucky I’m here to protect you.”

As they passed the three members of the Brotherhood, Magneto spoke quietly to Juggernaut: “Nobody gets inside.”

Xavier entered first, with Magneto following.

The house was utterly still, and Xavier recognized the same eerie and unnatural quiet, the deadening of all sound he’d seen while reviewing Ororo’s memories of Alkali Lake.

They passed the archway that opened onto the living room and saw curtains stir as if in a breeze, although Charles didn’t feel the slightest movement of air. Chairs moved across the floor, as though being rearranged by an unseen hand that was impossible to satisfy. Xavier had psi-scanned the house on the drive over and found it substantially blocked to him, gleaning instead from the neighbors’ recollections that Jean’s parents were away for the week, visiting her older sister, Sara, and the grandchildren, in Boston. This knowledge had been a monumental burden lifted from his shoulders.

In the kitchen, water hung reversed in a cooler, floating up at the top, air bubbles going down. More chairs were shifting, along with the lights. Nothing was at rest. Everything quivered just a little, reminding Xavier of the preshocks before a great earthquake, or the faint rumble that tells you the train is coming right before it hits.

She was waiting in her father’s study, surrounded by all the photos and records of accomplishment: diplomas and citations, prom pictures, wedding pictures, baby pictures, all the tangible substance of her life floating in the air along with every piece of furniture in the room. Jean herself was sitting on nothing at all, using telekinesis to create an invisible chair that held her as easily as she did all the rest.

The moment they entered, the furniture crashed to the floor with a tremendous racket. Only her own personal items floated gently to the floor.

Jean sat mainly in a shadow of her own making, very much like a queen upon a throne, surveying them through hooded and wary eyes.

“I knew you’d come,” she said, the tension in her voice establishing that this wasn’t a ferociously good idea.

Magneto was perfectly content to allow his friend to play Daniel, and let him walk first into the lion’s den.

“I’ve come to take you home,” Xavier said, gently as any father.

“I have no home.”

“Yes, you do. You have a home and a family who loves you.”

She clearly didn’t want to listen.

“You know,” Magneto interjected, ignoring the sharp glare and warning thoughts hurled by Xavier; indeed, he reveled in them. “Charles thinks your power is too great for you to control.”

“Erik!”

Magneto stepped fully into the room, relating to Jean as one monarch to another, manner alone dismissing Xavier as some kind of uppity peasant. “I don’t think your mind games are going to work anymore, old friend.”

Jean’s eyes fixed on Xavier.

“So you want to control me?”

“Yes,” Magneto answered for him. “He does.”

“No,” Xavier said forcefully at the same time, “I want to
help
you!”

“Help me?” Jean wondered aloud, as if considering something she found utterly distasteful. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Magneto assured her, daring Xavier to say different—and thereby, given Jean’s evident state of mind, strike match to gunpowder.

“Erik,” Xavier warned again, with a thought that expressed both desire and exasperation,
for God’s sake, stop!
”

“No, Charles, not this time. You’ve always held her back!”

Xavier spoke to Jean, with a measure of desperation, “For your own good!”

A silver-coated softball, her sister’s, shot away from where it had dropped to the floor and shattered a mirror across the room with such force that Xavier had to shield himself from the shards of flying glass.

“Get out,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “
Both
of you.”

“ ’Ro,” Logan said to catch her attention, as the Greys’ mailbox began to shudder.

“I’m going in,” he told Storm, but she grabbed him by the arm.

“The professor said he’d handle this.” Her subtext was plain:
She’s
my
friend, too, for longer than you’ve known her; don’t you
dare
screw this up!

Juggernaut, obviously sensing a challenge, looking for a fight, strode forward to confront them.

Logan extended his claws. One hand only, three blades, ramming into view with their characteristic
SNIKT!

“I heard those claws, they can cut through anything,” Juggernaut announced. “Wanna take a shot?”

“Don’t tempt me, bub,” Logan cautioned, but to Storm’s great relief, even though she knew how close to the edge he was, he retracted the blades. For assholes like this there’d always be another time. What mattered now,
all
that mattered now, was Jean.

Xavier, of course, didn’t take Jean’s hint.

“Look at me, Jean.”

“No,” she snapped. “Stay out of my head!”

Lightbulbs exploded in a cascade that started in the kitchen and made its way through every room. Xavier’s wheelchair began to slide backwards, despite the application of its brakes. The walls began to tremble.

“Perhaps you should listen to her, Charles,” Magneto suggested, not unkindly.

Xavier was beyond hearing him. “Jean,” he said, speaking with his voice while at the same time opening wide the access to his mind so she would see that he was speaking the truth. It was the most calculated of risks, because he was also leaving himself dangerously vulnerable to attack.

“You must trust me when I tell you, you’re a danger to yourself and others….”

He forced himself forward, stubbornly determined to overcome her resistance, even though the walls advanced from trembling to outright shaking.

“But we can help you.”

Magneto had a flash of inspiration, but it was dreadfully, fatally wrong. “You want to give her the
cure
?”

He of all people should have known that was anathema to everything Xavier held dear, but perhaps in the final analysis he didn’t really know his friend as well as he thought he did.

Regardless, Xavier barely heard him. He had eyes only for the fire flickering in Jean’s. He refused to be cowed, and held her gaze while the walls shook like they were being pounded on by trolls.

“Look what happened to Scott,” Xavier told her. “You killed the man you loved because you couldn’t control your power. You damn near did the same to Logan.” His thoughts were racing far beyond his voice, trying just as hard to reach her.
The potential within you is glorious, my child, but it must be embraced by the maturity to know how to properly wield it. The reward that awaits is beyond belief, but you must travel the entire path to reach it. There can be no shortcuts.

She was a grown woman, a kind and generous soul, yet on the levels she was reaching, in the terms Xavier was applying to her, she was still mainly the child he’d met so many years before. And the willful flash of temper displayed then burst forth in his face now as a full-fledged tantrum.

“No!” she cried.

The walls bulged outwards and the stone facing of the house cracked from foundation to roof. The fieldstone hearth behind her shattered, the chimney collapsed. Xavier was bounced back in his wheelchair, smashing into the wall behind him, while Magneto was shot through a set of glass doors to the kitchen.

Magneto tried to rise but the weight of the planet seemed to have settled on him, a weight that no application of muscle or mutant might was able to dislodge.

Logan, with his enhanced senses, heard more than the others.

“That’s it,” he said, pausing as Ororo called his name.

“Logan, wait for me!”

With that, Juggernaut lowered his helmeted head and charged.

Echoing the tactics they’d used in the Danger Room, Logan and Storm split apart at once.

With a quick glance backwards to ensure the coast was clear, Logan met the onrushing man-mountain head on…

…and just as quickly found himself at the bottom of a shallow trench gouged all the way across the street, through the sidewalk, and partially into the neighbor’s front yard.

Figuring the second hit would be even more fun than the first, Juggernaut kept on coming, faster than before.

Storm, by contrast, went airborne, spinning herself out of the reach of the others left guarding the door. She held herself still in the heart of her vortex, while intensifying the surrounding winds to the point where she generated a localized but formidable tornado. Among mutants left outside, Kid Omega and Radian apparently didn’t know which way to turn as the funnel descended on them, striking faster and more accurately than a cobra. Callisto was far quicker off the mark, ducking inside the house the moment Storm went airborne.

The winds slammed the two boys into each other like they were tackle dummies, keeping them so disoriented that they never noticed Ororo dropping down to finish the job with a succession of powerful, accurate blows.

Logan isn’t the only X-Man who knows how to fight,
she thought.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have much time to contemplate this, as Callisto met Storm with a fist to the head as the X-Man followed her inside.

At the rear of the house, Xavier never slackened in his determination to reach his first and most beloved pupil, even as Jean pummeled him mercilessly.

“Jean,” he demanded, putting his heart and soul into the struggle, “let—
me
—
in!
”

She stood over him, refusing to yield, and he knew then that things had gone too far. Neither of them would surrender. There could only be defeat.

Juggernaut hit Logan again, punching him into the neighbor’s house, then through the house, pretty much demolishing it in the process. He hammered Logan up through the ceiling…

…only Logan didn’t come right back down again. Not where Juggernaut expected him to, anyway.

Instead, Logan clawed himself a different hole
behind
his adversary, slashing at some vital joists as he did, to drop as much of the structure as was left on Juggernaut’s head. That wouldn’t hold the big guy long, he knew. In fact, he was counting on it. He was also counting on making Juggernaut
really
mad. Logan figured he had maybe five seconds, tops, before Juggernaut exploded out of there, and he used them to take off back the way he came, towards the Grey house, to be in a position to meet him.

Jean’s eyes glowed with fire. Her hair stirred languidly, as though she were underwater, moved by currents of energy drawn from places Xavier couldn’t imagine, but wished with his whole heart that Jean would share. He knew the alarms had sounded back at the Mansion. A mutant manifestation of this magnitude was one of the things he’d designed Cerebro to detect, but without him there to guide the system, all it would do was monitor the event. He assumed Kitty would take charge of the analysis, although back in the day that would have been Hank McCoy’s job. Jean was clearly shredding the boundaries between states of reality and possibly even dimensions, and Kitty’s phasing power gave her exceptional insight into what happened on a quantum level under such circumstances. Whatever occurred, he knew they would learn from this encounter.