"You did not see the hospital in Hiroshima. You saw nothing in Hiroshima." Hiroshima mon amour, Marguerite Duras, trans. Richard Seaver.

“It was the age of fullness, the age of wading into everything up to the neck.” The Once and Future King, T.H. White.









Up for it, Logan had said, but Xavier hadn’t realized that up for it at that moment would mean a preliminary scan and physical examination in the medbay—that place he has yet to visit—which he cannot yet visit, won’t, won’t—and so Xavier explains, a touch too hastily, that his visit had been intended more as a friendly hello, as a general overview of his—“situation,” Xavier finishes.

Logan nods without comment, and Xavier remembers that he has never really liked taciturn people. People suspicious of or inhibited by speech. Xavier has never known the luxury of being one of those who could trust the body and its gestures, more than words. More than thoughts. Everything Xavier has ever been able to hold onto, has never been something he could hold with his hands.

What did you tell me, he can hear Erik musing. “I don’t care what you say, just don’t stop talking, don’t stop talking—”

Logan is still staring at him, so Xavier clears his throat and continues: “Moreover, I think it would be best if I paid Rogue a visit now.”

The man’s entire body freezes so suddenly and sharply that Xavier himself freezes, too, by instinct alone. Or, at least: the part of him that can freeze. The part of him that isn’t already frozen.

Logan’s voice is low and tight when he says, finally: “Why the kid.”

Xavier thinks to himself: So that’s still there.

He says only, evenly: “Storm has asked me if I might offer some help to Rogue. By way of counseling, that is. Of course, all of this is tentative. That’s why I’d like to speak to her in person. I’d like to hear her own wishes on the matter.”

A look passes between them, and Xavier doesn’t have to read Logan’s mind to hear him think those words again, their last fight, you’re talking about a person’s mind here, about Jean—

Xavier smiles faintly. “And I haven’t seen Rogue since I came back.” From the dead, he tries not to think, and thinks.

Logan’s face is still tight, his nostrils slightly widened. He is breathing only through his nose now, and Xavier knows that he is now being run through Logan’s senses; that his body is being smelled, his pulse listened to; that Logan is falling back on his instincts, as always, to figure out what he should do, how safe the situation is, by detecting the slightest change in the room.

In your heart, Xavier can hear Erik correcting.

Logan’s face releases—not relaxes—slightly. He exhales through his nose and looks away from Xavier. “Storm tell you how she’s been?” he asks.

“Not in great detail,” Xavier says. “But from what I can gather, not many people have been privy to the details of Rogue’s daily life. For quite some time.”

He pauses, and then he adds—because although Xavier has always been a consummate diplomat, the model of politesse and compromise, something about Logan has always made him reach for words like a lash—least of all to you—

—the voice of a man like a son to him, a man still in love, trying not to choke: there had to be another way, why did she leave the plane—

—and Xavier’s voice harsh in response, just a tone before anger, but not permitted to become anger—but why should I have to be the voice of reason today, still, when she left her last words in my mouth, I was the one who had to speak them—you lose a daughter you loved like a woman and then what—how many times do you have to learn this lesson, that too early you will lose and be lost to everyone you love—

—because she made a choice—

“—even you, it seems.” Xavier looks at Logan’s slightly overgrown beard. “And you two were always so… close.”

Logan is still not looking at Xavier, but his face has tightened again.

“She’s real close to Kurt,” he barks finally. “You should talk to him.”

Xavier nods. “I’d already planned on it.” He thinks of asking another question about the girl, then thinks better of it. Logan already looks like he doesn’t want to say a thousand things.

His hand hovers over the wheelchair’s accelerator button. “So shall we continue this another time, then?”

“Tomorrow at three,” Logan replies, too quickly, too easily. “In the medbay.” Now he turns to look at Xavier. “For the scan and the exam and everything.”

Xavier stiffens and thinks of their last conversation in the medbay. Their last argument.

He wonders if Logan still thinks of that conversation. If he still remembers the anger and betrayal passed between them. Over Jean’s unconscious body. Their clashing, rival devotions.

And his own words, she has to be controlled, knowing they were monstrous, knowing he believed them, knowing the belief was the monstrous part; meaning the words, not meaning to mean them, meaning to do what he had already done, not wanting to mean it.

No, Professor—I had no idea of what you were capable of.

Xavier thinks of Storm saying that Logan trusted, and trusts, him. But Storm doesn’t know about that particular conversation.

“Yes, of course,” he says, more to break himself out of his own thoughts than to respond to Logan’s words. “Until tomorrow, then.”

Xavier reverses the wheelchair, then begins to move towards the exit. When he reaches the doors, his back still turned to Logan, he stops, and turns his head just lightly, so that Logan can see his profile. He can’t quite see Logan, but he can already feel the man’s glance.

“I forgot to thank you,” he says, his slightly mocking polite smile already on his face. That slightly mocking polite smile Xavier had always worn, talking to Logan.

Physics! I’m Charles Xavier. Would you like some breakfast? Where am I. Westchester. New York. My people brought you here for medical attention. I don’t need medical attention. Yes, of course.

Now Xavier turns his head fully, and this tiny movement nudges him, just barely, but no less truly—out of his head, out of his neck, so that he isn’t even sure if the surge of panic through his blood, warming his face, is really warming that face as all. If the panic he cannot help himself from feeling can be glimpsed on that face—his face—at all.

Apparently it can be, because now Logan is taking a step forward and saying, alarm in his voice: “Professor?”

Where’s the girl. Rogue? She’s here, she’s fine. Really.

Xavier can still remember the look he had given Logan then, at that moment. The look in response to that sharp, already-territorial, “Really.” That “Really” full of danger, full of future vows, future misery. Full of Logan's near-death, not once, but twice.

And what exactly had Xavier been wanting to say with that look, just before Storm and Scott had entered the room? Something like: I know you, I already know you—already vowing to protect a precocious young girl who’s crawled inside your heart, let me tell you how this not-love story ends, however much you think you’re already needed, it isn’t even half of what you’re going to end up needing—

The memory of how that look, during that first meeting with Logan, felt upon his own face, all those not-so-many years ago, snaps Xavier back into his body. That face. His face.

“I forgot to say thank you,” he says again, finally, when he trusts his voice to speak for him. “For the—physical therapy. For taking the time. Thank you, Logan.”

For a moment, Logan looks once again like he doesn’t want to say a thousand things, and Xavier is already imagining most of them.

But then the man makes a great show of shrugging, with that new macho nonchalance he had started wearing after Jean’s first death at Alkali Lake. Different from his old macho nonchalance, this one is brasher, more affected, prone to making stupid sexist jokes Xavier knows he doesn’t really mean. Before the dam broke, Logan had never seemed like he was acting.

But the dam did break, Xavier thinks. Didn’t it.

“Anything for the great Professor Xavier,” Logan responds—and the tone of his voice alone tells Xavier that Logan does, indeed, remember their last conversation in the medbay.


*


Still several yards away from Rogue’s room, and Xavier is already once again feeling that throat-stuffed-with-cotton sensation of teenage misery. But the girl is alone, which is helpful; he wouldn’t have wanted to have this first conversation with Kurt in the room as well.

He knocks on the door; three crisp raps. For too long he doesn’t hear anything, and he wonders if she is asleep, but although he isn’t reading her thoughts, he can sense the presence of an active mind; she is conscious, at least. Dreaming? He doesn’t think so.

Several minutes pass. Is she used to not answering the door to unknown visitors? Finally, he clears his throat and calls: “Rogue? It’s Professor Xavier.”

More silence, and Xavier palpates, just slightly, at the edges of the mind humming within the door. If only just to feel what she is already unconsciously telegraphing out into the room. He notes apprehension, fear, but not too much surprise—someone must have told her that he would visit, Xavier realizes.

Before he can probe any further, the door opens, and Rogue is standing before him, overdressed and undersunned. And that wink of silver hair; he can already hear Erik chuckling in the back of his mind.

“Hello, Rogue,” Xavier says.

He can’t decide if Rogue looks older or younger than the last time he saw her. He knows she is still a teenager; she won’t turn twenty for another month, that much his memory still informs him. If anything, she looks like someone who grew up but was forced not to acknowledge it. An adult playing a child playing an adult.

“So it’s really true,” Rogue says, and while her voice is as tentative and girlish as ever, Xavier can hear already hints of difference; a fading Southern accent, a rasp where two years ago there might have been a lilt. She smokes now, that much Xavier can smell. “You’re really still alive.”

“As it turns out, yes,” Xavier says, smiling. “It’s very good to see you, Rogue.”

She returns his smile not quite with her mouth but with her eyes, so at least he knows she isn’t going to slam the door in his face. She looks down at her shod feet and says, “So they send you in here to fix me up?”

Xavier tilts his head. “I don’t think you need fixing at all, Rogue.” She snorts a little, and he continues: “I’m here to—talk, if you’d like to talk. And to try to—help, if you think you’d like that, too.”

Rogue looks over her shoulder into her room, then back out into the hallway where Xavier is waiting.

“It’s really you, right,” she remarks again. “You’re not, like—a hologram, or a spy, or something.”

Xavier laughs. “Yes, Rogue, it’s me.” Then he gestures towards his body. “The body itself isn’t mine, exactly—it belonged to my twin brother—” This absurd story again. “He had been in a complete vegetative state for years—but it was understood in my family that if the need ever arose—”

“So that’s why,” Rogue says suddenly. “Because you looked different. You really look different.”

Xavier blinks, startled. He had always thought he looked different, from the moment he had seen his own reflection in the mirror after inhabiting this body again, two years ago. But no one had ever made mention of the difference before.

Before he can respond, Rogue goes on: “I even thought maybe you were Mystique. She got hit with the cure needle, too, but you know how that goes. I thought maybe she came back.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re not Mystique, are you?”

He lets himself chuckle then. “No, Rogue, I’m not Mystique.” He gestures towards his body again and says, “I’ll admit, I don’t quite feel like myself just yet, but I am—in whatever capacity being can be defined—Charles Xavier.”

He knows he doesn’t sound entirely convincing, and Rogue doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she only tugs the end of her scarf and says, “Well, Kurt and Storm both think it would be good for me to talk to you.”

“The important part isn’t what they want, but what you want,” Xavier replies firmly. The girl still doesn’t meet his gaze.

“In any case, there’s no need to make any immediate decisions,” Xavier says, folding his hands on his knee—or at least he thinks he does, he can’t feel it. “Today I just wanted to say hello. See how you’re doing.”

He smiles. “Storm says your German is coming along splendidly.”

Rogue’s eyes snap up to meet his, a little panicked, then she looks back down before Xavier can fully read the look. The swiftness with which she looks away reminds Xavier of how twitchy she is, has always been. How when she had arrived Xavier had always considered Rogue the feral one, not Logan. How she has always been able to avert her gaze faster than anyone else in the mansion. No matter how long she has lived here, in this shelter he had created so many years ago, she remains a girl who knows how and when to hide. How and when to run away.

“Kurt helps me,” she says only. “He comes and gives me my lessons—I don’t really like to leave my room if I don’t have to.”

“Yes, I understand completely,” Xavier says, but the expression that passes over Rogue’s face disagrees.

Still, he makes a show of tapping his right temple. “If you ever find yourself wanting to—talk—I don’t even have to be in the room. If you would prefer that.”

“No,” Rogue says, so quickly that Xavier’s hand drops from his head. Hastily, she continues, “I mean—not that I don’t want that—maybe—but—”

Xavier tries to smile. “You can also call me on the telephone. Same extension.”

Rogue hesitates, then nods. “Okay,” she says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Xavier lifts his hand. “No apologies necessary, Rogue. I apologize if my suggestion made you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t—it didn’t,” Rogue says, and that’s clearly a lie, Xavier knows. “It’s just—” She seems to be picking her words carefully. “There’s a lot of stuff in there.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Xavier says quietly. “I’ll just say again: if you think I can be of any help—in any way—with any of it—then I would be more than happy to be at your disposal."

He adds, "Like the time after the Statue of Liberty; you remember.”

Rogue looks down, then nods, carefully. “I remember.” When she looks back up, the same look is on her face that was on Logan’s; the look of not wanting to say a thousand things.

These bloody people who can’t speak, Xavier can’t stop himself from thinking, impatiently. He can hear Erik, but he can’t hear what Erik is doing, saying, feeling. Can just hear him. Hear him there.

Xavier leans back into his wheelchair. “Just think about it, Rogue.” He nods toward the corridor. “I’ll be on my way.”

As he is moving away, Rogue calls out, abruptly: “It’s good to see you, too, Professor.”

He looks up at her again. In this moment, she still looks sixteen-going-on-seventeen, a half-starved runaway, desperate for love, ashamed of her body, smarter than everyone her age, older than everyone her age, exhausted by being both smart and old, trying desperately not to be so smart and old.

That last part, at least, all three of them have in common.


*


At dinner in the cafeteria, Xavier sits at a table with Storm and they talk about the films of Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer, a passion they had both shared. A passion that, indeed, he had been the one to introduce her to, when she had first come to the mansion. Young Storm in a spiked leather jacket, trying to hide her accent and sound like any other New York girl, listening to the latest and most obscure punk bands. Storm, suppressed emigrant pain, punk and Alain Resnais. The film Toute la mémoire du monde. All the memory of the world. Xavier knows something about that.

Xavier also knows that Storm is talking and talking like this, so incessantly and so cheerfully, in an attempt to bring the two of them back into that safe, familiar space of mentorship-friendship. To paper over the fact that she is now the leader of this mansion, and he the tolerated grandfather. As if nothing has changed between them.

He wants to tell her she doesn’t have to do this, that he’s incredibly proud of her, that he’s prepared to defer to her, that he wants to hear things that she knows, that he doesn’t know, that he hasn’t taught her.

Or; he wants to want that.

Logan is sitting at a table with Warren, and three other mutants, two of whom Xavier recognizes from Cerebro, if not in person; two mutants that had once been part of Magneto’s Brotherhood. The third mutant is a woman about Storm’s age, who resembles Storm, only she is wearing a white lab coat.

Xavier doesn’t know why Logan is sitting with these people, or who they are. Once again he feels himself slipping out, but not only of his body, but of the world, and his life in it. Everything has shifted, he doesn’t belong here, even the word here is a foreign one—

Then, suddenly Kurt enters the cafeteria. It is at least half an hour after everyone else has already settled into their meals. For some reason, he is already carrying a tray, but it is empty. Xavier watches the blue-skinned man head back to the food stations and fill up the empty tray with food again.

Xavier soon registers that he is not the only one watching Kurt. He can feel Logan’s stare from across the room.

Thinking, already knowing: Who was the first tray for.

Kurt takes his now-full-again tray and heads back into the cafeteria. He waves at a table of mutants Xavier does not know. As he walks towards them, he passes by Logan’s table. Xavier sees Logan lower his head, lean ever-so-lightly out into Kurt’s path. His nose twitching, his entire body still and taut as a hunter’s. Detecting. Inhaling.

Smelling, Xavier realizes. Smelling.

Then Kurt passes, and the moment does, too. Xavier looks at Logan. It isn’t quite jealousy, or anger on the man’s face. Just this serious, grave determination. This frank instinct, or need. Need to take what he can. Need to feel what he can. Where he can find it.

He must never see her, Xavier thinks. He must never see her at all.

Now Storm is asking Xavier if it would be a good idea to screen a series of classic French films, here at the mansion, perhaps every week, for the students, if that would be something they might enjoy, it could be fun, what does he think?

Xavier says yes to Storm, without knowing what he is saying.

Later, after he has deposited himself into his bed, using the special contraptions that were long ago built for his convenience and only occasionally updated—

—special contraptions I built for you, he can hear Erik saying, and Xavier doesn’t want to think about how all these contraptions are made of metal, doesn’t want to feel how good metal can still feel on his skin—

—he is still thinking about that moment. Thinking about Logan, leaning into the smell of an absent girl. About the thousand unsaid and unsayable things.