Well, I'm Back

Eventually this war, like all wars, ended.

They said that I would come to a bad end, and maybe I have, but it didn't feel so bad, driving down the Hudson in a sleek white corvette. I came over from Canada last night. Discreetly, of course. It's much easier to drive in than fly, war or no war.

The shadows of the trees made wild patterns across the road, flying shapes of gold and green. I remembered escaping down this road in the back of Scott Summers' car with Marie and Logan, a long time ago. That was another person, almost. A younger person by twenty years.

I hadn't been back to Westchester since the Professor died. Not since Summers was killed by humans. Mutant talents are great, don't get me wrong, but they don't do much good against serious semi-automatic fire. I've only known one man who could stop bullets in the air, and he wasn't there. I try to avoid heavy weapons when I can. Which might be the reason I'm still here.

The gates swung open of their own accord. I drove in and parked in front, where the parents used to park when I was a kid.

Nothing looked different. The trees were a little taller. The garage was a different color, off to the left. Otherwise, I might have stepped back twenty-two years. I got out of the car and went around it.

She was standing at the top of the steps, red hair streaked with gray in the front, like Marie, a quiet private school headmistress in her mid-fifties, tweed jacket over a red sweater, leashed fire in her eyes. I've seen that loosed, and I never want to again.

"Hello, Dr. Gray," I said.

"Hello, John," she said. "And you can call me Jean. I'm not your teacher anymore."

"It's been a while," I said.

"Where is Mystique?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Do you think I know? Do you think she'd tell me where she was when she knew I was going to meet with the most powerful telepath in the world? Besides, don't you have Cerebro for that?"

"I don't use Cerebro," she said. "Ever." There was something very final in that, some story I don't know and I don't want to know.

We had coffee in the staffroom. She looked at me over her cup, one eyebrow lifting. "I like the car."

"Car?"

"The white corvette. He used to have one, when I was a child."

"Did he?" I stirred my coffee, added milk from a stainless steel pitcher. "I didn't know."

"You're like him, you know," Jean said. "You're the one who survived. One of the few to make it all the way through, out of all our students. So many students." Her voice was perfectly clear.

"I didn't exactly graduate," I said. "But I think you're less of a chump than I did then."

"I think you're less of a punk," she said.

"I was a punk," I said. "I needed Erik to show me what I could do."

"So did I," she said.

"And the Professor?" I asked. I had not seen him, not once.

"Charles taught me everything he could, but he couldn't teach me everything. Some things you have to figure out on your own."

"Yes," I said.

"And now it's over. At least it looks that way."

"It's never over," I said. "Better. A different time that calls for different methods. I'm willing to do what works. Peace, if it works. Until the next time."

"So what will you do now?" she asked, glancing around the kitchen. "I don't think you exactly want to teach."

"I'm going to write a book," I said. "So that they'll know what happened. I'm going to stay in Quebec with Jean-Paul and write a book. And I hope you'll help me."

Jean nodded slowly. "We were the only ones who knew them both."

"Colossii straddling an age and all that," I said.

She laughed. "Oh yes! And they'd both think that was very funny!"

"I'm sure Erik would tell me I was being ridiculous. He'd find it camp, the idea of straddling the age."

"They'd need big statues. Back to back. Straddling the age."

"Better than front to front. Straddling anything."

Jean laughed. She really did have beautiful eyes, with the shadow of flame in the dark irises. "But we won," Jean said.

"We did." I looked around the kitchen. The old stainless steel refrigerator was gone, replaced by modern cabinet doors that hid separate refrigerated drawers and freezers. The blue checked curtains were gone too, replaced by a green print. The glass cabinet doors were gone and green shelves held white china. "You and me and Kurt and Marie and Logan."

"And Bobby," she said gently. "He's going to be here this fall. He's going to be teaching. And if everything goes well, he'll be the one to keep the school open after I'm gone."

"I forget Bobby," I said.

"Of course," she said. If she could have said more, she didn't.

Instead she poured more coffee. "So where is Mystique?"

I shrugged. "I told you I don't know. She contacts me when she wants me. Otherwise, she could be the old woman in the supermarket or the Attorney General. Your guess is as good as mine. But I'll tell you this -- if you think anyone is ever going to catch her and try her for anything, you're wrong. No one will ever find her. She's the original wanderer. There was only one person who could hold that leash, and it's not me."

Jean half smiled. "I suppose you won't believe me if I say that I wish her well."

"Would she believe you?" I asked.

"Possibly."

And so there was a truce with the X-Men at last, at least what there was left of them. Jean and Kurt, Bobby and Kitty. Marie had vanished with Logan, and the others were dead.

I drove back to Canada under a flawless September sky, feeling the power of the car like a living thing, the spark deep inside that moved it, imprisoned fire, and wondered for the five hundredth time what it felt like to feel the metal itself that way. And I thought of a beginning for my book.

It starts in Warsaw, with a boy who walked on the rails of the railroad tracks, feeling the iron like fire in his skin. And it leads here, to this September sky, to open roads and open borders, to beginning again. The Professor liked the Lord of the Rings. "Well, I'm back," he said was the most profound ending to a book. Erik liked darker endings, the final throw of Camlann and the sword disappearing beneath the water.

But it's not the end. It's the beginning. I am forty. The next forty years are our time.