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"Hank, I need your help."
"Certainly. How may I be of assistance?"
"I can't tell you over the phone, you
have to see this for yourself. I need you to come to Westchester. I'll meet you at our coffee shop." That was most inconvenient,
he'd only just been made Secretary of State for Mutant Affairs, he had his office and staff to organise, and how would it
look if he dashed off on private business at a time like this. "Please, Hank."
How could he deny Ororo that? Not when
she was he dearest friend when they were at school together. And certainly not when invited to their coffee shop.
“I'll
see what I can do.” He quickly flipped through his calendar. “Thursday night. See you at seven.”
Things
had changed in their coffee shop. There was a new waitress and a new wifi hub. He couldn't complain of course, Ororo had cut
her hair and he'd, well, he couldn't have looked more different if he'd tried, and it wasn't the mere replacement of t-shirt
and jeans for a smart suit and a tie.
They sat in what had been, for so many years, their booth, hidden in the back
of the shop. Luckily the ownership of the place were either mutant friendly or realised a man with a Secret Service escort
was not to be messed with, so they were left alone. Ororo took out her laptop, a seriously sweet MacBook, with the kind of
features that were new the last time they were here and were now entirely standard.
“After everything that happened,”
and how they missed her so, brave, valiant, sweet, darling, witty, clever, doctor Jean, “was sorted out, I finally got
round to checking my inbox, and I got this doozy.” She turned the laptop round so that Hank could read it.
"Dear
Ororo,
As you have received this e-mail, it means that Cerebro has detected that I have falsely used my powers and
overstepped the bounds of reasonable behaviour. There can be no doubt about it, I set the parameters for what I consider reasonable,
and Cerebro has been trained to follow my psychic trace and mine alone.
In the attachments, you'll find the blueprints
for a suit of armour that will block my telepathy, because goodness knows, it's the same design as Erik's and his works all
too well. There is also the chemical formula for a drug which will stop me and dosage instructions. Get Henry to help you
with it. He'll know how to synthesise it.
I am sorry to have to ask this of you, but you are the only person I can
trust to do it. I expect that Jean will not be available. If I have done something terrible, I fear she will be the worst
affected, and I trust that you can understand why I cannot ask Scott to do this. You, and Henry who I presume is also reading
this, are the only Institute members I found when they were already developed as people. I can't ask any of the children to
do this."
The email finished with many salutations of his gratefulness and sorrow at having to ask this of Ororo.
"So,
what do I do?" It was a rather open-ended question.
"'Once something is seen, it cannot be made to be unseen.'"
"Exactly.
What happened at Alkali Lake wasn't his fault, but his instructions are precise.” She'd been there, seen what Jason,
no, that thing hadn't been poor, harmless Jason, what Jason's father had done to both Jason and, through him, to the Professor.
Not one moment of it had been Charles's fault but ... “The next time he oversteps the line might not be his fault either,
but he'd still have to be stopped.”
What had happened had shown one thing - that if Charles's powers ever did
go haywire again, whatever the reason, there would be no time to make all of this, in fact, there was next to no chance that
she'd be able to use it even if it was already made, but if it was there would be the smallest fraction of a chance that she
might be able to do something to stop him. And she loved Charles enough to at least to try, he'd given her a home and control,
basically everything.
“It leaves me with an awkward,” and how was that for understatement, “choice
– wait until next time and hope for a miracle, or attack him now, when he's not expecting it. It's not if I should make
it, it's whether I should use it now or later. He's already done terrible things. But he wasn't in control, so killing him
would be wrong. But what if next time he doesn't know what he's doing either. He'd still have to be stopped."
He knew
now why Charles had chosen her. He'd always known Ororo was capable of great things, but the way she calmly described the
problem showed how clear and logical her mind was. The instructions had been released because Charles had already crossed
the line, and with hindsight, even with this information they would have been powerless to stop him. And if he broke his own
laws again, they would probably be equally powerless. So if they attacked him now, with his own weapons while his guard was
down, it would be their only chance.
And it would go against everything they believed in. Even as a misquotation, primum
non nocere, it held a powerful hold on the physician’s ideals, and Ororo's principles were actually stronger than his.
They'd spent hours in here, arguing round knotty moral problems, and he was sure of that.
"I don't believe I could
kill him in cold blood. But, I think that would be the only way to stop him." She leant against him, a way she never had before.
They'd been friends, but never this, cogitating on their mentor's death at their hands. This moment would seal them forever
like this, mark them as co-conspirators. What a terrible, fearful position to be in, powers or no.
It brought him back
to the last time he spoke with Charles, shortly after accepting his present post. He had asked why the Professor hadn't taken
the job for himself, for while he liked to think he was not entirely without merits when it came to management and politics,
and possibly more importantly politicking, Charles was better at it and certainly had more experience. Also, Henry liked to
think that after coping with a school full of hormonal maladroit miserable minors, or teenagers, whichever way you preferred
to look at it, would prepare you for far worse things, particularly when, if some of them became upset, the local area tended
to be incinerated.
Charles had said something about not feeling fit for the job, because of his dual citizenship, and
because of his power, he felt that people might not trust him. Then there was the issue of Henry's secondary mutation; his
super-strength now covered in what a hair-product producer would undoubtedly call 'luscious' blue locks. If mutants were going
to break the barrier then they really ought to do it in style, send in someone who couldn't pass as a normal human any more.
Oh,
the joys of being a high-visibility mutant!
The conversation had done one important thing, it brought home to Henry
that Charles Xavier was the most powerful mutant that he knew, and while he trusted the Professor not to misuse said awesome
and awful power, he had also accepted that it was a most easy and terrible power to misuse. He had to trust to the Professor's
own lines and limitations, and if the Professor had overstepped those bounds then he and Ororo were honour bound to stop him.
Since
the accident, Henry had gained a sudden personal interest in the difference between man and animal, and whether the only difference
between the two is control of emotions, and that humanity have the choice to not follow their baser, 'animal' passions. He'd
never been the most expressive of people, but now he kept as many of his feelings as possible buttoned up, because if he had
to be more animal on the outside, then he'd be more human on the inside. But now he felt such anger, and all directed at the
'good' Professor.
He could see the logic of Charles's actions. Of all his network of friends, allies and fellow travellers,
Ororo was probably the one who would be most able to do this. She could fly, which would purchase time to work out how to
stop him, and her other powers would prevent her being caught by all but the strongest force. The only other person who fitted
that description was Erik, and, well, he was sure that the Professor wouldn't have wanted to give him any further power over
him. He wondered though, if not to long ago, this message would have been sent to Erik.
Back in the day, and how dismaying
that he could finally use that phrase without irony, when the Institute had first started and taken them in, he'd thought
how much he would have wanted a friendship like they had, where you could speak your mind freely, without censure, except
in cases of poor reasoning. The Harvard debating society didn't know what hit them, because after arguing your every case
with Erik Lehnsherr for 3 years, you knew how to marshal the facts and figures and every bit of evidence at your disposal,
and, in another time and place, Professor Xavier would have taught oratory Athens.
The connection between Erik and
Ororo, of course, was that they both loved Charles enough to do it.
That last point was the grounds for Henry's absolute
vehement anger. To do that to someone you claimed to hold in some regard yourself, to ask her to kill you, it was beneath
the lowliest animal, only a human would stoop that low.
Oh, he'd make sure Charles got his wish; he'd help give Ororo
the tools to defeat him. Being a Secretary of State wasn't really worth much if you couldn't get the army to make you metal
armour. But he'd protect her from doing it for as long as he could, for forever if he could manage it.
"Have you got
somewhere secure and within easy reach where you can store the armour and the chemical? Then we can all be ready in case anything
like this should happen again."
"That was where I'd got to too. I thought it was the best way of doing it, but I'll
admit to worrying that I might not be the rational and reasonable person on this matter.” He had to worry about how
much sleep Ororo was getting now, as the X-men leader and one of only two full-time teaching staff left. The dark rings around
her eyes were worse now than when they were studying for finals.
They'd decided then. Now they just had to worry about
not letting Charles know where they'd hidden everything away. He had to have known how they'd react to the e-mail, and as
a telepath, it would be easy enough for him to find out if he ever did go to the bad, but there was little sense in making
it easy for him by letting him know now. That placed both of them in unfortunate positions, as Ororo had to spend most of
her time with Charles and, in his role as Secretary of State for Mutant Affairs, he would have to meet with Charles, because
he was one of the most influential voices on mutant rights in the world and it would look decidedly odd if the man who was
supposed to be looking out for mutants at a government level avoided him like the plague.
Yet, at the same time, Charles
was a telepath and if he made even the smallest attempt, he could know everything Henry knew about this. Of course, Charles
didn’t normally scan people’s thoughts without good reason, but now Henry was justifiably worried about giving
the game away. Not thinking about it would only create the largest pink elephant that would undoubtedly intrigue Charles if
he were minded to read Henry's thoughts. If Charles ever did decide to use his powers for evil, then Henry himself would be
the weak link. But there would be time to worry about that later, now they had to set to work.
~~~~
There was
only one positive thing to come from the madness that surrounded the “cure”, it meant that his mind was elsewhere
when he next met Charles and that he didn’t let the cat out of the bag and hopefully that meant that the Professor still
didn’t know where they'd stashed the armour and the drug.
It still played on his mind though, especially when
he first met the child. It would be a more elegant solution, because this "cure", ethics be damned, would at least not involve
killing Charles, and that would be easier on Ororo, and everyone else.
Soon after that, it stopped being a problem.
~~~~
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