Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to the X-Men Movies, or characters.

Challenge Prompt:
Pairing: Magneto/Mystique
What you'd like to see: Nightcrawler as their son. Anger over his abandoning her when she was cured. Magneto finding that there is something to life even without powers.
What you don't want to see: Either of them actually being cured.

THE KING & THE PAWN

By
N. J. Borba

There was a slight chill in the air as summer waned into fall. His jacket was pulled taught and a hat hung low over his forehead as he sat alone in the park. He contemplated what had just occurred. For a moment he thought that it had been an illusion, perhaps a play of light and shadow. But when he steadied his hand again, aimed it at the crowned piece and concentrated with every fiber of his being; the statuette wiggled a second time. It was a small movement but enough to spark anticipation in his belly.

He quickly pushed away that optimism though; banished it to a place where he’d long ago buried his childhood fantasies. Once it had been enough to dream of Mutant dominance; of being a God among men. But he’d seen, first hand, what that arrogance had cost. The loss of a dear old friend, of a woman he loved and of a power he had once defined himself by. All he had left was the meager expectation of that power returning, but it wasn’t enough to base a life on any longer. Not when there was no one left to stand beside him.

A shadow fell over the table where he sat. It eclipsed the pewter chess pieces in front of him. At first he thought it was the winged Mutant again, the one they called Angel. The young man had become well-known in San Francisco for his daily flights around the Bay Area. The seconds ticked by and he realized the shadow was not moving. He finally glanced to his left and looked up. His eyes widened a fraction, surprised to find her standing there.

“I suppose you couldn’t resist the chance to see for yourself that I have been cured,” he intoned as his eyes returned to their previous gaze upon the black and white squares of the chess board. He wouldn’t allow himself to be optimistic about her presence.

Though she hadn’t been given invitation to do so, the dark-haired woman slid into the seat across from him. “I guess its true what they sat then, about the king and the pawn returning to the same box when the game is over,” her voice was somewhat tempered but not overly harsh. It was rather more amused than anything.

He chuckled softly at her words. “My dear, they may have taken your mutation away but they’ll never be able to steal your spirit. Still as tenacious as ever, I see,” he observed.

“I learned from the best,” she replied, eyeing him sharply. Her short, black hair fluttered gently in the breeze that swelled up from the bay. Her jacket was pulled tighter across her chest and she crossed her legs beneath the table to stave off further gusts. “Besides, they haven’t taken half as much as they think,” the woman countered.

The man lifted his gaze again and stared into dark eyes that matched the color of her hair and the hue of her birth name. He recognized a familiar glint of knowledge in her raven orbs. A second later, he watched as the iris of her left eye turned a golden shade of yellow. “Well, now. That is a most interesting trick,” he observed.

“It’s no trick,” she shook her head. “Though, I do feel like I am trying to learn my ABC’s all over again,” the woman noted. She paused for a moment as her eye reverted to its former state. “Their cure is a joke,” she finally spat. “And don’t think that I didn’t just witness you jostle that king a few minutes ago. I know your power is returning as well.”

He shrugged off her final comment. “It is of no real consequence,” he replied. His fingers rubbed aimlessly over the king as he contemplated a next move.

“You’re joking, of course,” she scoffed. Her eyebrows furrowed as she regarded the man who she’d shared more than just a goal of Mutant Domination with. “It changes everything. Don’t you see Erik? We have a second chance,” she insisted.

“At what exactly?” he countered.

She looked at him with a mixture of confusion and worry. “The brass ring, everything that we have wanted for so many years,” the woman reminded him. Her voice lowered and betrayed the anger she meant to bestow upon him. “All of the things we used to talk about late at night,” her tone was steeped with longing.

It didn’t take a genius to catch the meaning in her words. They hit him harder than he would have liked. But he was not easily swayed. “And at what price will all of it come this time?” the knowledge of failure edged his voice. “I am sorry, my dear Raven, but I think all the fight has left me,” he whispered.

“You can’t just give up!” she shouted. Some of the anger she felt finally manifested as she glared at him.

“I have not given up, I have given in,” he pragmatically declared. “There is a difference.” An elbow sat upon the table and his head rested against the palm of his hand. The memory of their battle at Alcatraz bombarded his thoughts. “Our last stand came at too high a price. I am old, my dear, and only getting older. I’m tired of fighting,” he revealed.

“They really have defeated you then,” the woman proclaimed.

He shrugged off her comment. “Call it what you will, but I think I shall try to live out the remainder of my days as a simple, Homo Sapien,” he informed her of his plan.

“This is not you, Erik,” she shook her head, not believing a word he spoke.

“Isn’t it though?” he challenged. “I have had a lot of time to think these past few months. And I wonder who I could have been, what I would have become, had certain events not molded me toward revenge all those years ago,” his voice spoke in a wistful tone that had never dared to grace his lips before.

She wasn’t sold on his sudden shift of character though. “So, you think you would have been happy, what, living out your days as a school teacher?” she asked with an unconvinced sneer.

“I think I would have liked to have had that option!” he shouted back.

The woman went silent. She suddenly saw something in his eyes that had never been there before. Regret, sorrow, loss and longing all clouded his features. They made him look like the old man he had claimed to be minutes ago. “I’m sorry,” her voice grew soft again. She knew, all too well, the pain of a past riddled with abuse and loss. It had fueled them both toward a common goal once.

“What are you doing here, Raven?” he finally asked, curiosity winning out. A heavy sigh escaped his lips. “After the way I left you, there should be no discussion of any of this between us. You should want to rip my head off right about now.” He wouldn’t blame her one bit for it either.

She shrugged. “I was angry for a while, and maybe I still am to some degree,” the woman admitted. “But at least the man who left me naked and alone in that truck had goals. He had a vision of something he believed in and he was ready to do anything within his power to make it happen. I respected that man,” she poignantly told him. A look of disappointment washed over her features as she regarded him in his street clothes. He did not resemble the leader she had once admired and respected. Nor did he resemble the man she’d loved. “What I see now is a waste,” she let him know.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied.

Her lips pursed as she tried not to let him get under her skin again. It was a lot harder task than most of the duties she had undertaken as a member of the Brotherhood. She and Erik shared a long, tortured and passionate, past. He had saved her from a family ready to kill their flesh-and-blood because of a mutation. She had saved him from certain death and lifelong imprisonment. And they had shared a dream, not to mention a bed and a child.

“We had quite a life together,” he spoke, as if sensing her very thoughts. “We could still have a life together,” he bravely ventured. “This could be our chance to live for something other than revenge and hate,” he suggested. “Maybe we could even finally tell a certain blue-hued Teleport about his true history,” the man finished.

Shock clouded her black eyes for a moment. “He would never understand,” she shook her head and allowed pessimism to persist. She thought longingly of the baby boy they had turned over to strangers, in the hope that he would have a better life. The life they’d never had. At least growing up in a circus, he’d had half a chance to live incognito.

“But he might,” the man countered. He sighed again, not sure if his line of thinking was hopeful or foolish. “The point is, we could try.”

She swallowed a lump in her throat as her mind actually began to twine itself around the suggestion. But doubt reared its ugly head again. “All I’ve known is hate for so long. I don’t think I know how to forgive or forget,” she let him know.

“I’m not sure I do either,” he confessed. “It would be a learning experience for us both,” the man persisted.

Her eyes danced with confusion. A tingling in her stomach made her feel like an excited teenager again. It all seemed so absurd and yet very comforting. “Maybe that cure was laced with something else entirely, because I must be insane for even contemplating this,” she revealed.

“I believe the feeling is due to something my old friend, Charles Xavier, once believed in. Something called, hope,” he intoned as he stood and abandoned his final game. His hand reached out across the board. “Shall we adjourn then, to our box?” his words were accompanied by an optimistic smile.

The woman rolled her eyes at him as he threw the comment back at her. She didn’t take his offered hand but she stood with him. Several moments passed as she contemplated what to do. Doubt still lingered in her mind about what the future would hold. She didn’t know how to be Raven, she wasn’t quite Mystique again yet, and she didn’t care to play Pawn to his King any longer.

“What if a time comes when we must choose again, whether to fight or die?” she questioned.

His head bowed slightly in thought. “I suppose we’ll make that choice if and when it comes,” he replied. “Together.”

The wind whipped across the Bay again in a sinuous gust. It rustled his jacket and threatened to send his hat flying. Her hair was tussled and swept over her eyes as they slowly began to make their way across the lawn. The sun shown down on them in patchy splotches as it filtered through swaying tree branches.

He regarded the woman at his side. He’d always been somewhat envious of how her shape-shifting abilities allowed her to retain such a youthful look. He supposed that should have been one of his first clues as to the cure’s falseness. Her reverted Human form was still quite young in appearance. No one would ever believe them to be nearly the same age.

As they walked away from the park, he tried to forget the past. His betrayal, her anger, their so-called cure. All of it faded for a moment. “I was wrong about one thing,” he spoke as she tentatively walked beside him.

“What is that?” she asked with a slightly wary tone.

A smile brightened his aged features. “Even in this form, you are quite beautiful,” he finally revealed.

End