Chapter Text
”Destruction, evil represent-That is my proper element"
The moment it happened, she thought she was going to die. The physical pain from her wounds faded into a searing void; the skin still hot, ravaged and burned, charred by the blast, but the pain that should be there - that must have been there, just a moment ago, just a moment too late, just- It is not.
There is nothing - even when all she wanted was the pain.
“It’s your fault”, her own voice whispers to herself, as she frantically chases the pain of splintered bones, broken skin, a burnt face, large locks of his hair tangled into her fingers, falling out along chunks of his scalp. Every inch of her bare hands and arms returns only the salt of her tears, the smoke and the dirt, and her own despair.
There is nothing, because he is dead.
He is dead.
She thought she was going to die.
But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. Her skin, her impregnable armor, untouchable, indestructible, wouldn’t let her - no matter how much she wanted to. She was cursed to live through this unbearable sense of nothingness.
Maybe it’s better if she didn’t go to his burial, someone said. Maybe it’s better if she didn’t go inside his room. Maybe it’s better if she let go of his duster.
Maybe it’s better if she killed the ones who killed him.
She hunted down the accountables. She beat them, broke them, killed them; not an inch of remorse. She wanted to have the regret of soaking her hands in blood, but not even that she could feel.
Maybe it’s better if she killed the one who killed him, she thought as she threw herself into a fatal blast. Maybe it’s better, she thought as the impact and the heatwave plunged her into the dark. Instead of dying, she lost her senses into a coma, but not the void eating her from inside out. Not the clammy skin under her fingers, not the stench of charred flesh, not the tufts of hair and cloth burned into him.
Maybe it’s better to kill everyone, Magneto said. Every last one of those who stand against us. And so he did, he killed them. He killed so many of them, just like he said he would, in the name of a better world for their race. But his skin still peeled whole at her touch, his face - his handsome, handsome face - still disfigured, melted under the extreme heat. Her skin, still untouched by the pain she caused him.
Maybe it’s better if you become my Queen, Magneto had said before the Ball. And she - stupid, stupid, stupid - said yes.
Maybe it’s better if you forget, Magneto says now. The man she was entrusted to as a student, the man who was supposed to teach her how to control her powers, how to touch, how to connect. Instead, he touched her. Then he taught her how to adore him like a King, the Greatest of the Great, King of Mutants, Ruler of their Promised Land. All he rules now is the ashes of the place that took her love away from her.
Maybe it’s better to fight for a better world, the Professor says. The Professor who abandoned his students, played dead while he lived his outer-space adventure, while his School fell in the hands of Magneto. Then he chased her, coerced her. He belittled and humiliated her love right in front of her - so he would come with her to Genosha, to his demise. And she laughs, a shrill sound that is hollow and bitter, while she asks, a better world for whom? For whom, she screams, yes, screams and shouts while the two old men tell her to calm down. The world, she cries, is never going to be better, for he is no longer in it.
Maybe it’s better if you let go of him and accept he’s gone, Magneto says, enthralled as he always is by the sound of his own voice. As if only his pain is valid and legit, only his pain is grounds for vengeance. Her pain? The student he seduced, the mutant woman he singled out to be his Queen? This pain, they must let go. For the sake of mankind! For the sake of mutantkind! I’m here, he continues, as Charles is here. So maybe it’s better if we-
“Maybe,” She finally breaks her silence, voice hoarse from all the tears, ears numb from so much listening, the sand beneath her feet giving in as she gains momentum before a flight. “It’s better for you to shut the fuck up.”
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