Fic: The Pilgrim's Progress (Magneto & Rogue, G)

[st_aurafina]

Title: The Pilgrim's Progress
Fandom: X-Men Movieverse
Rating: G
Notes: sionnain, the last time that I was offering to write drabbles for folks, I didn't see a comment from you asking for Magneto/Rogue. So, um. Ta-da! I'm so sorry that I missed it - but kind of glad too because it spawned this odd little idea. Thank you to lilacsigil for the super-fast beta.



Waitressing was meant to be a temporary stopping point on a long trip far away from New York. The anonymity of the job was enticing, though, after the claustrophobic closeness at the Xavier school, and Marie had been at this pokey diner long enough to see winter become spring in a rush of snowmelt pouring down from the mountains. Here, Marie could be whoever she wanted, with no expectations placed upon her beyond the name printed on the badge pinned to her uniform. She had no history hanging about her, no legends to be passed on to the new students in whispers. She felt strong and buoyant and free.

She had enacted scenarios in her mind, when she had still expected people to come looking for her, preparing to better fight against their arguments that she should come home, that it didn't matter that she had taken the cure. By the time it actually happened, when a familiar face walked through that glass door, all she felt was a detached kind of sadness.

Erik looked old now, sitting at the corner booth, refolding his newspaper into a neat rectangle, and fastidiously arranging his cutlery on the chipped formica. He hadn't noticed her when he walked in, but when she came to take his order and pour some coffee, his face twisted in recognition. Resting beside the cheap aluminum knife, his hand twitched as though he was going to grab her wrist.

"Marie, is it?" It was that drawling, snide voice that she could still impersonate to a tee, if she cared to do it. She didn't - she didn't care about much anymore, and that was a liberation in itself.

"Marie it is." She wondered idly if he'd just play along. "Can I take your order?"

When she brought his eggs to the table, there was a creased and folded leaflet sitting unfolded beside the salt and pepper. Habit made her take in the first few lines of print, and it was when she had to quell an incredulous laugh that she realised he was watching her face, trying to shock her, to weigh up her reaction. She struck the traditional pose of the roadside waitress – hip out, eyes hard.

"A faith healer? You think you're going to get your power back that way? If you're so desperate to throw your money away, you can leave a decent tip."

At the counter, Erik paid with small bills and change, letting his fingertips slide over each coin. From any other customer, she'd think it was sleazy, but she knew it wasn't a display for her benefit; he was reaching for the lost taste of the metal. His expression was far away as he counted the coins into her palm, and his fingertips were dry and papery. She slammed the coins into the register, and shoved it closed with her hip, turning to look at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Why don't you come along? See my humiliation in all of its glory?" His words dripped scorn, and she suddenly hated that she could remember how to roll those syllables around her mouth so mockingly.

She laughed lightly. "I don't think so. Unless you left a really, really big tip." She let her eyes linger on the patch sewn over the elbow of the threadbare jacket, long enough that that he could follow her gaze and narrow his eyes in defence.

He smiled, a little twist of revenge. "What's the matter, Marie? Afraid of a little fire and brimstone? Or that there might be something to it? We've all heard how happy you were to throw your power away. You wouldn't want to get it back by accident."




Marie hated the way Erik could twist words, making it seem that not attending the congregation was to admit that the faith healer was authentic. She told herself a comfortable lie about intelligence gathering for the X-Men, and rode her motorbike out to the car park at the bottom of the summit trail.

"What kind of healer makes his congregation hike up a mountain?" She kicked the stand down, and pocketed the key. "Makes it hard to rip off the sick, when they can't push their wheelchairs up the mountain to see him."

Erik was waiting for her by the start of the trail. "Perhaps he's not in it for the money?" He walked ahead slowly, hands in his pockets.

"Maybe he doesn't want any real sick people to visit him. It's easy to cure what isn’t there." She stomped past him, her boots crunching on the gravelly path. When she'd left him far behind on the trail, she propped on the fence at a lookout point with her back to the view, and watched him coming up the rise. He moved carefully over the uneven ground, one hand on the rail as if wary of falling. It seemed to Marie that he would always be moving like this; slow but implacable, for hundreds of years to come.

"Don't you ever want to just stop fighting?" she asked, as Erik leaned on the fence to catch his breath.

"I don't think I know how." He looked the valley for a few more minutes, then stepped back onto the trail, putting one foot in front of the other until he disappeared around the next corner.




There was no single religion on display inside the tent pitched on the picnic ground at the mountain's summit. Marie looked at the testimonials taped to the grubby canvas, next to crutches that had been cast aside by the gratefully healed. Someone had hung a plastic dream catcher from a folded walking frame. Pictures of Ganesha and Buddha were pasted next to an autographed photograph of Elvis. The gimcrack nature of the place was painful, and she was embarrassed for Erik, but he waited serenely in the queue, hands folded behind his back as he contemplated the floor ahead of him.

Erik paid for her ticket, and she followed him to the rows of plastic seats, sitting in the second row.

"Why didn't you sit in the front, if you're so desperate?" Marie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The plastic chairs were covered in condensation, and the dampness was soaking into her jeans.

Erik crossed his legs. "Strategy. We must appear needy, yet humble."

"Humble? Do you think these people would be trying to help you if they knew you'd tried to kill them a few years ago?" Marie kept her voice low, but she couldn't keep the venom from turning her whisper into a hiss. "Why should they try to heal your powers when you're going to exterminate them five minutes later?"

Erik kept his face turned towards the stage, but Marie could feel him watching her from under hooded eyelids. "I believe it's Christian doctrine that advises one to turn the other cheek."

Marie swallowed a snort. "There's proof you're not a Christian, then." They both sat there in silence, and she wondered if he too was remembering the echo of the cantor's voice and the smell of candle wax and floor polish.




For a con-artist, the healer was disappointingly respectable. She was an elderly woman in a twinset and pearls, with grey hair in a neat bun. She didn't pray, or read from the bible, but gave a sensible speech about taking care of the world that you live in, and treating your body with the same respect. It felt more like a health class than a healing session. Marie was pondering whether she had been eating too much saturated fat when the woman called her name.

"Marie. Please come to the stage. There's much that causes you pain, I believe." The woman had turned towards their seats, but her gaze was over the heads of the audience, fixed on the back wall of the tent. She held out her hand, but did not beckon.

Marie stood up, and looked down at Erik; for a moment, his face was stricken, then the expression was gone, buried in a sarcastic smile. She looked up at the stage. "Take him instead – I don't mean to be rude, but he's the one who really wanted to come here." Beside her, she felt Erik turn his face away from the stage to stare at her incredulously.

The woman on the podium smiled, but shook her head. "I did not call him. I called you. And I don't care that you're not a believer, child. It's not my place to decide who shall come to the platform, nor who will be healed. I am merely a conduit for a higher power." She opened her mouth as if she were going to speak further, but instead folded her hands against her stomach and bowed her head, as if in prayer. When she looked up again, there was a quizzical expression on her face, and she continued speaking as if she had never left off. "Of course, if you choose to bring someone along, I cannot refuse to aid you."

Marie hadn't wanted to go, but maybe there were things that needed healing after all. She kicked off her boots and knelt on the platform, and Erik, taking a little more time to unlace his shoes, slowly did the same. The woman rested one hand on each of their foreheads, carefully arranging her fingertips, splaying them above Marie's closed eyes and into her hair, where the moisture in the air was making tiny curls form. There was no chanting or prayer. There was nothing, really, except the feeling of cool fingers against her brow. After a few minutes, she began to feel a little uncomfortable, and wondered how Erik's older knees were holding up to kneeling for so long in the cool evening air. She opened her eyes a crack, peeking beside her. Erik's eyes were firmly shut, his lips pressed into a narrow, bloodless line, as though he could bring his powers back by concentration and force of his own will. She drew in breath sharply at his expression, and the healer raised her eyebrows in an expression that made Marie feel that she had been caught passing notes at school. She shut her eyes again. And they kept kneeling, for a long time, until the woman finally spoke.

"We are what we make of ourselves, and both of you have lost something that defines you. Go, do what you must to be whole, and do this without fear." She pulled her hands away with a swift movement, and Marie could feel the cool air against the warm place where the fingers had rested. She opened her eyes, and looked at Erik. His face was ecstatic, and he shook the healer's hand politely. Marie shoved her feet into her boots and waited while Erik laced his shoes. She wondered if he would be disappointed later, and hoped that she wouldn't have to see his face when he realised his powers weren't coming back. Maybe he would have moved on by then. They returned to their seats for the rest of the service.




Afterwards, as the healed and the curious shuffled out onto the trail that led down to the car park, Erik offered her his arm. She took it, happy for the moment to allow him to pretend that it was gallantry and not fear of falling that motivated him. They walked in strangely companionable silence for a while, footsteps crunching in time on the gravel.

"So, that was strange. She had some interesting things to say." Marie was thinking of the energy she spent maintaining a persona that was completely isolated from her past. Maybe there was no need to protect herself from something that could not be changed.

Erik snorted. "Oh, I don't attend for the philosophy. Just the ability."

"You really think that she's going to reverse the cure, don't you? It doesn't work that way." Marie was a little sad that Erik wasn't able to see the sense in what the healer said. No wonder he was traipsing across the country after snake-oil peddlers – without his powers to define him, Erik ceased to exist. She was far more sorry that she'd spent the better part of the year convincing herself that she didn't exist, either.

Erik rattled the coins in his pocket. "I hardly think, with your background, that you'd be sceptical about extraordinary abilities, my dear."

Marie pulled her arm away from his. "You think she's a mutant! Oh, god, were you there to recruit her?" A horrible idea dawned in her mind. "Were you here to recruit me? Are you going to ask me what my real name is?"

Erik leaned over her, his mouth pressed through her hair, lips moving against her ear. "What is your real name?"

His lips were hot, and Marie longed for the cool hands of the healer on her brow. She and Erik were so similar – fixated on the powers that had directed their lives for so long, ignoring any other aspect of their existence. No wonder she felt lost – she had no idea who she was. Did Erik feel the same way? She pulled away from his grip, looked up at his face, pale in the wan moonlight. He seemed to be holding his breath, eyes fixed on her, willing her to his side. He was so lonely and so unwilling to change that he would drag her down into his despair. She took his face in her hands, and kissed his forehead.

"My name is Marie. And if you want to talk to me, you know where I work,."

She left him there on the path in the darkness, walking back to the car park alone. She had an early shift tomorrow, and she didn't want to lose any sleep tonight.