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The way the gravel crunches under my boots I could almost pretend that this is Westchester still. The architecture is similar, the green lawns, the carefully arranged shrubs and trees. This could almost be another time, another place. I could be walking off a long day of training. I could be smoking and grumbling to myself first thing in the morning. I’d have to squint a little and pretend that the sun hasn’t risen so high but it would do. I still hold my cigarettes between forefinger and thumb. Like a man always used to smoking outside, sheltering the glowing tobacco from the elements. You’ve never smoked like that, have you, Charles? Your fingers bent outwards, cigarette between index and middle finger, holding your glass precariously beneath as you say something else in the firelight.
I miss those conversations. Our disagreements. I miss your presence always at my side. Your softness and stunning naivety. You barely know how to cup a flame with a protective hand if you light a cigarette outside. You certainly don’t know how to strike a match off a stone. And that evening when there was no bottle opener to be found, you were lost until I cracked the cap off using the end of the radiator. Of course I was showing off. I could have just as easily used my powers to remove it. But. Always a qualifier in our relationship. You always know which way to pass the port. You know how to gauge a man’s station by the cut of his clothes. You know how to deflect suspicion by playing to all the weaknesses that they expect of you. How many times have I seen you dip your head and look up at a man through your lashes? How many times have you talked of your studies airily as if you were a mere undergraduate still? And they believe it all. From your clumsy attempts at seduction to your air of spoiled privilege. They are fools and you, Charles, are a magnificent liar.
Maybe I go too far. It’s not as if you lie for the sake of it. You hardly seem to enjoy it much. But you do lie. Often. Constantly. You lie because they cannot accept the truth. They don’t want to. And you don’t want to force them to see it. That is where we differ. You know that the truth will kill them. I know it too. The only difference is that you care about that. You don’t want to hurt them as they’ve hurt you. You care about those nameless, faceless statistics. I don’t. I’m really quite simple like that. I care about those that I want to protect: I couldn’t give a damn about the rest. I do not believe in the greatness of humanity. I have seen, with my own eyes, the cruelty that the human race is capable of. You will argue this with me, of course. You will say that they didn’t know, that they were only following orders or some other unfortunate phrase. Sometimes, I like to imagine that you didn’t realise what you were saying that day, but you are too wise a man for me to think otherwise. You knew, Charles. You know. And you said it deliberately, desperately, trying to make me realise the enormity of what we faced.
You’ve always had a strange relationship with my past. You know of it of course, in that dusty, academic sense. You understand it, always understood it, even before you had touched my memories. You know it through my memories just as well as I still recall what belongs on the seder plate and why. You would, were you less polite, tell me that the faiths of the oppressed are all rather similar in their canon, and that the path I would forge now follows in that tradition. That one day we will use our righteous might to smite our oppressors. You would tell me that all holy texts are full of such promises. And I would tell you that the pages of your King James Bible are particularly good for use with rolling tobacco. Perhaps then you would laugh or simply opinion that I’d find Catholic bibles less useful in that respect. I think, if you did, I would tell you that, of course, it is only the pages of your New Testament that I’d use. Your prophet is not in the Torah and I am permitted some small arrogance in that respect.
But you have not said these things to me. You have not sat down to explain herd mentality or social conditioning or blindness out of fear. You do not talk to me of Keynes or Cold War stratagems, of Neo-conservatism or isolationism. No, you do not say any of those things to me. You never would. You know that I have already considered and dismissed them. That I do not care enough to embrace them and yet... You do not say these things because you know that were they to come from your lips, I would question. I would question myself and my ideals. You would shake the very foundation of my existence just because it is you who would ask, who would reason, who would forgive. You let everyone around you believe such falsities, Charles. That you are too innocent to address these matters, that you are perhaps ignorant of them. You have never been innocent. How could you have been? You understand that the truth rarely sets anyone free. You know that the world prefers comforting lies. How can you stand it? To know that everybody around you fails to see? How can you survive in such an environment? I could take you away from all that, Charles. I could give you a world where there is only pure and unadulterated truth before your eyes. For you I will create an Eden where the knowledge of good and evil is laid bare for all humankind. Even if it burns them, even if it blinds them.
But there is no Paradise to be found. Not for me. Certainly not in this place that looks so much like my man-made Eden that it disgusts me for all its flaws. ’Where the tree of knowledge stands is always Paradise’: thus speak the oldest and youngest serpents. So says one Friedrich Nietzsche. Yes, Charles, another Prussian. And, like the other, I think that he is quite right. There is but a single Paradise on Earth and that is only ever when I am at your side. Wherever you choose to go, so my eternal bliss goes with you. And yes, of course, I have managed to expel myself from Eden. I understand this. I have made my choice. And yet... Why do you not hate me? Even sometimes? Why can you forgive, Charles Xavier? What makes you the better man? You have seen, have felt, the horror of humanity. You cannot shut them out. And yet, you forgive each one of them. You have forgiven me. If I came to you now you would embrace me still. And yet, you are not a fool. You are confounding.
I will lay waste to all the nations of the earth if necessary. I will present to you the eternal servitude of the human race. Then what will you say to me? I imagine that you will smile and you will reach out, touching my mind gently, carefully, and you will tell me that this is wrong, that this is not what you had planned. You will tell me that my rebellion is honest and understandable but that still, it will not do. And then you will talk to me of logistics and propaganda and management. All in direct, concrete arguments that hammer down on my belief like divine ordinance. Of course I will not understand. I will argue. I always argue, you know that well enough. And then, when all my arguments are exhausted, you will smile at me with such gentleness, such affection that I will curse myself for having been a fool all along.
You are cruel, Charles. You let me go. You know the mistakes I will make, the bloodshed I will bring. But still you haven’t stopped me. You are letting me make these mistakes, tying myself up in knots trying to find a perfect, elusive, solution. You know that I will not find peace here. You know that I cannot find it in my memories, in my vengeful justice, even, should I try, in the arms of your sister. You know, Charles. You have always known. Sometimes I like to tell myself that I hate you for it but we both know that isn’t true. I am amazed, appalled, terrified by your truth. I am driven to madness, blind to anything but your truth. It makes me wish that I had never known it. That knowledge brings me nothing but despair. This is why. This is why I have fled Eden, fled your embrace, your truth. I have not the strength to be equal to it. I am, not yet, that man. Perhaps I never will be.
The gravel beneath my feet isn’t truly anything like Westchester. The skies are not nearly so bright. Even the hulking masonry is but a poor copy. My cigarette tastes of tobacco and not of your lips. And this helmet? Is but a battering ram for the upcoming battle. This place is nothing like my Paradise. You know this as well as I. You know my truth, my penance: that there is nothing in this world that will bring me peace like the welcoming circle of your arms.