X-Men: The Last Stand (20 page)

This time, in the moment before impact, Logan leapt straight up in a stunt Nightcrawler had taught him, way more circus than martial arts, trusting to speed and agility—which he had in far more measure than most folks gave him credit for—to compensate for Juggernaut’s unmatchable power. He used the big guy’s helmet as a pivot, twisting in midair so that he landed right behind his adversary. Then, while Juggernaut was still a prisoner of his own forward momentum, Logan delivered a kick in the ass that sent him through the front wall of the Grey house like an accelerating Mack truck.

He came in right behind, claws bared, ready for the empirical test to see if Juggernaut’s armor, and his power, was any defense against six blades of unbreakable adamantium, taking a moment to register Storm and Callisto messing it up pretty good as ’Ro used a succession of thunder microbursts like punches to bust up the face and body of the other woman.

He landed on Juggernaut’s back, poised to strike the killing blow.

Xavier and Jean had long since passed the point of manipulating tangible objects. There were no more walls to see for these two. There was no point in hurling books when the raw energies being unleashed between them slashed across the molecular bonds that gave objects their shape and definition, reducing them in a twinkling to their component elements.

He understood why the advantage was hers. She was fueled by passion, he by intellect. Swept away by the titanic rush of these newly manifested abilities, Jean cared nothing for the consequences, whereas for Xavier those consequences mattered significantly. He didn’t want to die, of course, although by now he’d come to acknowledge the very real possibility—but even more, he wanted to find a way to save her. He was a teacher and a healer, and to take any lesser path was an abomination.

He’d tried reaching her with her memories, applying to her consciousness the many talks they’d had on ethics and responsibility, reminding her as strongly as he was able that this dream was as much hers as his. That he may be the mind behind the X-Men, but she was very much their heart. Suddenly it came to him, out of nowhere really—one of those unlikely connections that land as a complete surprise yet seem perfectly obvious once they’re in place—that the soul of the team, its moral anchor, was none other than Logan.

He might as well have been trying to stop King Kong with spitballs.

Jean in turn savaged the vaults of his mind for all his failures and regrets. She replayed for him the final breakup with Moira that had sent him off to war. He relived those many, many arguments with Erik Lensherr as their dreams diverged and turned them into strangers. He saw once more Jason Stryker as a boy and then faced him as a man, letting rage take him just for that moment—he couldn’t save him either time.

But standing beside each of those images meant to debilitate him, to tear him down and weaken his resolve, were the faces and figures of his successes. A memory of Jean and Hank playing one-on-one basketball, where his awesome dexterity more than made up for her nascent telekinesis. Of Ororo, who’d lived and fought and prospered in the slums of Cairo and Nairobi, and survived the wild lands in between. Two women who couldn’t have been more different in heritage and temperament, yet who quickly became inseparable, closer than sisters. Of Scott, who’d come to Xavier lost and alone, but had found the woman he loved.

Xavier’s skin rippled then, much as Scott’s had. This, he had always known, would be the ultimate danger in confronting Jean. Fighting a telepath was a battle of the mind, simply a matter of overcoming the other psi’s defenses. Battling a pure telekinetic was much like any other head-blind adversary; for all their formidable
physical
prowess, switch off the brain and the fight was over. Jean, though, could come at an opponent from
both
directions, a mental attack
and
a physical.

With telekinesis she drew Xavier from his chair…

…and with him, dragged the entire building from its foundations.

Energy stampeded through the house, and all the combatants in the living room—Logan, Juggernaut, Storm and Callisto—found themselves pinned to the ceiling as inescapably as Magneto was to the kitchen floor.

By this time, however, Logan was as irrational as the woman he loved, fully in the grips of a berserker rage that would not be denied. He didn’t try to pluck himself free, but went sideways instead, twisting so that he lay mostly on his belly and then using his claws like climbing spikes to drag his body along.

Xavier sensed Logan’s presence and smiled. It was no accident that he alone was free to move.

Jean was now composed entirely of light, a star made of flesh, so far beyond human and earthly terms of beauty that Charles had no words to describe her. Not even concepts. She simply…
was
. And through her, he beheld the window to all that was and is, and the best of all that might be. He saw in her a reflection of himself, an embodiment of all hope and dreams.

And yet…

And yet…

The very humanity that made all these things possible held in its other hand the darker demons of human nature. Heights were defined by the depths over which they towered; the greater the summit, the more terrible the fall.

Xavier bared his teeth, thankful for the aspect of his power that allowed him to mute his perceptions of pain. The outer sheath of his skin was being flayed on a molecular level and he didn’t want to discover how much that hurt.

He caught a sense of Magneto in the kitchen, staring with equal parts horror and fascination. His old friend was completely entranced. He would take from this only what was useful, ignoring the rest, and that would likely be his undoing. Xavier spared a prayer that Erik wouldn’t also take the world with him.

He didn’t resist anymore. Charles felt an eerie, almost welcome, calm, and knew that he was shining with light too, by this point—although nowhere near as brilliant as Jean. He also knew that as energy, he could neither be created nor destroyed—although his state might well have changed beyond all recognition.

Death would not be pleased with him, this day. He meant to spit in the Reaper’s eye.

Because Life—Life would find in him a champion worthy of the name. He was beaten, yes, that was looking altogether likely. But he’d never surrender. And out of that determination and defiance would come the chance, the hope, of ultimate victory. He smiled.

Then he heard Logan’s hoarse cry, from very close. He’d done better than Xavier had expected.

Jean ignored Logan. She had eyes only for her teacher.

And he met that glare, continuing to smile, daring her to do her worst.

She took the challenge, as he knew she would.

Xavier had time to voice a single prayer: “Don’t let it…control…you.”

And with those words, he cast forth into the heart of her the very best of himself, only a fraction of an unmeasurable pulse of time before she struck what remained of his body with such force that it instantly shattered into less than its component atoms.

A shock wave erupted from the study with cataclysmic effect. In the kitchen, horrified, Magneto threw up his hands to shield his face, coating himself in such an array of magnetic force that he warped compasses for a thousand miles, aware as he did so that if Jean chose to focus on him as she had on Xavier, there’d be just as little he could do to save himself.

The walls of the study bulged and unraveled, molecules of wood unzipping as smoothly as carpet fiber. A solid battering ram of air struck the other four mutants and cast them each in different directions, dumping them throughout the neighborhood, to the astonishment of some of the neighbors, who—because events had happened so unimaginably fast—were only now coming to realize that the area was being torn apart.

The remainder of the Grey house hung suspended for the better part of a minute, and then crashed down, collapsing in upon itself, until all that remained was a pile of rubble and a single, slim, exhausted young woman with haunted eyes and hair the color of fresh-spilled blood.

Of Charles Xavier, there was nothing left but memories.

Out of the chaos rose Magneto, released at last from where he’d been trapped in the kitchen. He spared a small glance at the twisted ruin of Xavier’s wheelchair, and saw that it was the focus of Jean’s gaze too. She must have known what she’d just done, but was in too much shock for the events to have any true meaning. It was as if it hadn’t really happened to
her,
it was just something she’d watched on the news.

He’d felt much the same, that first day at the Auschwitz crematoria, still more boy than man, but strong enough to be assigned as a
Sonderkommando,
to cart the bodies from the gas chambers to the furnaces, to search them for valuables along the way and chip out their gold teeth, and then search the ashes afterwards, just to make sure. If he’d acknowledged the horror of what he’d done, he’d have plunged himself into the flames rather than face another day. He had watched another boy do precisely that, and another still hurl himself on the guards so he could be beaten to death. He’d found a way to survive.

Now he would try to help Jean do the same. And together, they would banish all the nightmares from their past, the demons of memory who stalked them still, and build a future for their people of peace and prosperity.

That was something Charles had never given him credit for—that
he
had dreams too. Perhaps, by achieving them, they could do honor to his friend, and to
all
those who had died before.

“Jean,” he said, laying a gentle arm around her shoulder. She was trembling, unable to speak, likely not even fully aware of who he was.

“Come with me.”

And he led her out the back…

…just as Logan bulled his way into the rubble standing out front, with Storm right behind, all thoughts of the mutants they’d been fighting cast aside, their sole concern for their mentor and their friend.

Logan was able to make it to what remained of the study on sheer adrenaline. The minute he crossed the threshold, his body called it quits and he collapsed to his knees. Until he recovered, and he knew that would be a while, he wasn’t going any farther. He tagged Jean’s scent mixed with Magneto’s and told Ororo so, but there was no point in following. Not after his eyes found the wheelchair. The scent combined with the flashes of memory of the things he’d seen while dragging himself across the ceiling confirmed what had happened here.

Charles Xavier was dead.

Logan threw back his head and roared, a cry that echoed out across the nearby houses and raised the hackles on the necks of all who heard it—even Magneto, ushering Jean into his vehicle. Jean blinked a couple of times, as though trying to find her way back to herself, her mouth starting to form the shape of his name, so that her next exhaled breath might say it aloud and restore some order to her world.

But she caught her breath instead, and sagged into the remains of the furniture behind her.

Charles Xavier was dead and a terror walked the world.

It was a glorious day, with only a bare scattering of clouds to gentle the sun with occasional moments of shade.

One and all, though, the students thought it should be raining. Something torrential, biblical even, would be far more appropriate to how they felt.

This was the private ceremony for what Charles Xavier considered his true family, the students he had gathered and mentored over the decades, all of whom—regardless of age—were feeling more than a little bereft, like ships that had lost their moorings.

There’d been the equivalent of a town meeting. Xavier had left some instructions in his will, but the faculty felt it would be best to give the students their own voice on how to proceed. Charles had wanted to rest on the grounds, among those he loved the best. The only question that had remained was where.

The decision was made to establish a memorial in the garden, because that was always where he taught the hardest cases who came to him. He would take the offending parties and set them to work doing what was difficult for him—caring for his roses. And because he was never one to let pass such an opportunity, those sessions turned into seminars of extraordinary variety and depth. A course of instruction on how to properly transfer a plant evolved quite naturally into a discussion on the nature of structure and balance, and how natural selection was affected by human engineering, which in turn led to philosophy and a measure of history. And since he’d never let anyone get away with just spouting a position—oh no, they’d had to buttress it with citations going back, invariably, to the dawn of writing—that would often lead to a course in Latin or Greek or who knows what else. The deeper into this seemingly makeshift curriculum one went, the harder one wanted to work. A lesson learned, a life saved, roots put down—and not just for the rose.