(A/N: The details about suitable wedding dresses and the racy bits of The Count of Monte Cristo are true. The description of Erik's face is my own, and applies only to Mutant! Erik, who is a combination of several sources plus additional materials. There's going to be a Fantastic Four movie out in July, and several members of the FF and Dr. Doom are mentioned here. This author thinks that Erik was part of the original inspiration behind Dr. Doom and so Doom is inferior. Plus Doom has worn full plate armor for twenty years, and that's just not good.)

Dear Professor, and all my dearest friends:

My last letter ended, and this one begins, when I was finally well enough to get out of Erik's tub. The first thing I did, once I was dry and dressed, was write that brief letter to you.

"It hasn't been that long since I posted my last letter," I explained to Erik, "but I correspond with six people on a regular basis, four of whom live on the same estate. They've come to expect at least one letter from me every couple of days. As the purpose of this letter is to keep them from worrying, I'm not going to say, 'I almost died of cholera, but the Opera Ghost is nursing me back to health, and by the way, I've been living in his bathtub.' I've gotten this far in my life without ever winding up in a lunatic asylum, and I'd like to keep it that way."

He laughed. "My desk awaits you." He led me to that corner of his large living room, showed me where the stationery was kept, and retreated to the pipe organ and started to play.

Writing the letter didn't take that long, but there was a lot to look at on his desk. He had a scale model of the Opera House's interior on it, with the stage set for Le Nozze, and it was populated with little wax figurines. I could recognize the principal singersâ€"La Carlotta, Piangi, Fonta, and othersâ€"and directly in center stage was the figure of a brunette dancer, in costume for Le Nozze, with a dark green sash and kerchief. I had been the only dancer who wore a dark green sash and kerchief. The figure was meant to be me.

That placement was significant and symbolic. For him, I occupied center stage.

That made my heart hurt. I didn't want to have to say, "I don't love you. I'm sorry. I love someone else. His name is Peter Rasputin. He should have married me, but he married someone else. He's not as intelligent as you are. He's not as talented as you are. He married someone else. Despite all of this, I still love him. You have my gratitude. You have my undying friendship. I already gave my heart."

I was not looking forward to making that speech, but at least it didn't seem as if I would have to make it right away. I was grateful for any stay of execution, so to speak.

I couldn't find an envelope without black borders, and anyway, the seal he used was a deeply incised death's head that looked as if it would use half a stick of sealing wax every time he wrote a note. In the absence of any less funereal way of readying my letter for the mail, I simply folded it and left it on his desk.

I took the time to survey my surroundings in detail, and there was a lot of detail to take in. I have been in caves before, and I'm certainly familiar with elegant living rooms, but this was the first example I've seen where the two were combined.

It was illuminated by dozens of candlesâ€"another proof that he was pyrokinetic. Only someone who was able to ignite and snuff them with a thought would use all those candles. Any other person would have to spend several hours every day lighting and dowsing them.

The furniture was uniformly dark, heavy and ornate. There were several full-length mirrors, but they were covered with draperyâ€"only a glint of reflected light showed around the edges. It gave the room the air of a house in mourning. There was a thick carpet of obvious quality on the floor. It was beautifulâ€"but it was also something like a stage set. It was arranged to be seen at its best from the underground lake, which lay behind heavy velvet curtains that kept in the warmth and kept out the draft when they were closed. Again, it was like a stage setâ€"with the fourth wall being the curtain.

The focus of the room was not really the décor, however. The focuses were on the various workspacesâ€"the organ, the architect's drafting table, the desk, the easelâ€"all of which had projects in various stages of completion. None had even a whisper of the dust that tells of abandonment. All of them were works that were currently in progress. I went around to each in turn, being careful not to disturb a thing.

It was somehow familiar, and I knew I had been somewhere like it beforeâ€"not so much in how it looked, but in what it wasâ€"the workplace of a brain that never ceased creating. DaVinci's studio must have been like this, I thought, and that thought led me to remember the time I was lucky enough to visit Dr. Reed Richards' laboratory. Dr. Reed Richards, or Mr. Fantastic, as he is called, has the finest scientific mind of this era. So they say, anyway.

It was possible, then, that Erik could have the finest artistic mind. It was quite clear that he creates the way most people breathe.

He must have done this all himself, I realized, as I looked around. Brought the furniture down hereâ€"installed the plumbing, painted the bathroom ceiling. Everything.

I was listening to him play as I went around the room, and I recognized the tune he was playing. It was from Giselle.

Giselle is a ballet, not an opera. The music is by Adolphe Adam. It isn't performed much these days, but it is one of the classic ballets, and the part of Giselle is one of the greatest any ballerina could ever hope to dance.

Its story is fairly simple, as plots in ballet or opera go. Giselle is a country girl with two suitors, Hilarion, a hunter, and Albrecht, a prince in disguise. Of the two, she loves Albrecht, who is not just in disguise; he is deceiving her, because he is already betrothed to a noblewoman.

When Giselle finds out, she goes mad and dies right on the spot. You might think that would be the end of the ballet, but it's not. It's only the end of Act One.

Act Two is where it gets interesting. There is a whole pack of Wilis, or Vilis or Veelas, as they are sometimes called, ruled over by Myrtha, their Queen. The Wilis are the vengeful spirits of dead girls whose purpose it is to gang up on unescorted men after dark and dance them to death. (Exactly why they do this is never explained.) Giselle comes back from the dead and becomes one of them.

Hilarion, who loved Giselle, visits her grave and falls prey to the Vilis. Then Albrecht, overcome by remorse, comes to lay flowers on her grave as well. Giselle still loves him, and she fends off the Queen and the other Wilis until dawn, to save him.

Erik was working on Myrtha's dance. The problem with the second act of Giselle is that the music doesn't live up to the action. It should be spooky, tense, and atmospheric, and instead it is pretty and genteel.

Erik was trying to correct that. I could tell.

He took the basic melody and made variationsâ€" slower and in a minor key, it became a moan; faster and higher, it was a whirling, chattering parody of itself. Legatoâ€"and it became a yearning lament for the life Myrtha had lost.

I went over to where he sat on the organ bench, and paused to look over his shoulder, where the original score lay open, next to a pile of papers with his own notations.

I was then seized by one of the strangest, most powerful, and inexplicable impulses I've ever had.

I suddenly wanted to take his mask off.

Fortunately, a more rational part of me said "Whaaat? You wear a mask when you go on missions. Would you like it if somebody ripped yours off? Besides, there are people out there who would probably kill you if you unmasked them without permission. Victor Von Doom, as an example!"

I was sure Erik wouldn't kill me, but it would be, if nothing else, exceptionally rude of me to do that. I have no idea why I felt such an urge in the first place; it was nothing like me. So I resisted, and in a moment, it passed.

Instead, I said, "I know that music. You're re-arranging Giselle, aren't you?"

He looked pleased. "Yes, I am. I think there's more dramatic potential here than has ever yet been realized."

"Giselle was the second ballet I ever went to," I reminisced. "I was five...From what I've heard so far, your version will be too intense for children so young. Are you doing anything to the first act?"

"I hadn't planned on it, but the more I do to the second, the clearer it becomes that I will have to rework the first as well. It would be excessively disparate if the first act was conventional when the second is as wild and terrifying as I will make it." He sounded very confidentâ€"as well he might. He can do it.

"What will you do to the first act, then?"

"I plan to make it genuinely rusticâ€"the music will be played on traditional instruments as a band of country-folk would play it, if they were consummate professionals, that is."

"When the party of nobles comes in, will they have a style of their own?"

"Of course, but only as an entrée. Then it will become a polished harmony against the rustic theme. The nobles don't do much but advance the plot. I don't often improve other composers' worksâ€"I'm undertaking this as an experiment, you understand."

"Yesâ€"I hope this isn't just going to be an intellectual exercise. I'd love to see itâ€"or better yet, be in it. But people don't seem to want straight ballet these days."

"Madame Giry is of the opinion that the right prima ballerina would change that."

"Maybe so, but La Sorelli isn't the one." I opined.

"Sorelli isn't who she has in mind."

I didn't want to hear about who Madame Giry thought would change the world of ballet, so I asked, "What are your own works like?"

He said, "They have never yet been produced, you understandâ€"My current original work is Don Juan Triumphant, but that's not ready to be heard yet, but since you will undoubtedly be familiar with Shakespeare...Now is the winter of our discontent..."

He began to sing the famous soliloquy that begins Richard III, Shakespeare's tragedy of the brilliant and deformed Richard of Gloucester, who because, as he says, he is not a man to be beloved, lies and murders his way to the throne of England.

His voiceâ€"his voice was indescribable. It was pure, expressive, flexible and powerful. It is the most beautiful voice I have ever heard. It was devastating. I had to sit down, right where I was, on the organ bench next to him. It made me feel weak in the knees. I felt like lying down on the floor and closing my eyes so as to concentrate better. I cannot do justice to it with any possible written description. I can't really comment on the musicâ€"his voice was music.

"....and therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair, well-spoken days. I am determined to prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasures of these days." he finished.

I sat there for a long moment, and finally managed, "I haven't the words. That wasâ€"and you areâ€"I can't say it."

"Thank you." he said.

He seemed to be made uneasy by my nearnessâ€"I had noticed it before, but sitting crammed against his shoulder, as I was, seemed to intensify it. I cast about for a reason to move awayâ€"and spotted a beautiful chess set. The pieces were ivory, half left in their natural color and half of them dyed red. With relief, I suggested that we play.

During the first game, I used the silence to think long and hard about my host, and about the mask he wore.

As I said before, he wasâ€"and isâ€" handsome. Whenever I decided his eyes were blue, not green, they turned grey. In the dark, they glowed yellow. He has a beautiful smile, and nice, even, white teeth.

The mask, which was white and made of molded leather, covered a third of his face. It started at his forehead, bisected his nose, and then curved slightly to cover not quite half of his upper lip, before coming to a point just above his jaw. It extended beyond the hairline at the brow and the side of his face, as well.

As a means of concealing his identityâ€"the usual function of masksâ€" it was utterly useless. Therefore it must, I reasoned, serve some other purpose, and that purpose must be to hide some abnormality.

While I was (naturally) curious about it, I wasn't nearly curious enough to remove it without his permission. Perhaps the impulse I had felt earlier was a subconscious desire of his, which he was projecting telepathically, but that was not enough for me. If he wanted me to take his mask off, he would have to say so, or, better still, tell me he wanted to show me his face.

As it was, he hadn't mentioned his mask at all. I decided that I was not going to be the one to bring it up. What ever he might look like underneath it, he was still a very attractive manâ€"and although he had character flaws, he also had intelligenceâ€"to say the leastâ€" talent, and the capacity for great kindness to help make up for them. That was before I realized that there was something very wrong, deep down inside him.

I won the first game. From the opening play, it took only seventeen moves until I said "Checkmate", but he wasn't taking me seriously. He will not make that mistake again. He was struck dumb with consternation for a moment.

As I passed his pieces back to him, our hands brushed. I thought nothing of it, but it made him jump. It bothered me. If he had used that contact as a preliminary to further promiscuous hand-touching, or even progressed to try holding my hand, it would have been one thing, but this jumpiness on his part wasâ€"odd.

I was so uncomfortable that I started a conversation to fill what would otherwise have been an awkward silence.

We talked about books while we played, and also about Xavier House and (of course) about the people in it. I had the distinct impression that he didn't believe all that I said.

We took a break for lunch, and afterward talked books some more while we finished the game. He won, but I made him sweat for it.

Then he took me on a tour of his house, some of which I was already familiar with, and some of which I hadn't seen yet.

Professor, you've sometimes spoken of how you would like to have a room where you could pit us against threats and challenges in a controlled setting, a danger room, as it were. I can tell you that your dream is entirely possible and can be made a physical reality. I have seen Erik's Chamber of Confusions.

On the night he brought me down to his house, we passed through a room that bent and fractured light. That was the Chamber, and it consists of a room full of mirrors in combination with an array of devices, some of which produce illusions and some of which hide snares. It is Erik's final line of defense against intruders breaking into his house through the back way, and it is always primed and ready.

He tells me that occasionally someone, by accident or by design, does blunder in there. Except for one incident when he had left a rope lying around, after a couple of hours of disorientation, the intruder either passes out on his own, or Erik chloroforms him and removes him to the Rue Scribe, where he wakes up in the gutter with a blinding headache and a telepathic command to forget about where he was.

The unfortunate rope incident resulted in the intruder's suicide. Erik said that he was highly inconvenienced by the corpseâ€"much more so than he was bothered by the death. That bothers me. He also say he has various other traps scattered around his 'private corridors and entrances' to ensure his safetyâ€"and mine.

I saw his libraryâ€"an immense cavern full of shelves, with a ladder to reach the less accessible partsâ€"his pantryâ€"and learned he gets his food from a local restaurant with which he has an arrangement, as he owns two-thirds of the business. I saw his wine cellar, and a storeroom full of gunpowder left behind during one of the revolutions. He says he is not sure what to do with it, and that it does no harm where it is.

But of everything that he showed me, the most striking and important by far was a mannequin that stood in a curtained alcove, and he hesitated for a moment before he threw back the concealing fabric with a flourish.

The mannequin was female. It was my height, and had a brown wig styled like my hair. It was dressed in a beautiful white gown, and enveloped in a wedding veil as delicate as an exhalation of mist.

Oh, no, I thought, and I said the first thing that came into my head. "That's not a wedding dress, you know." Because it wasn'tâ€"it was a ball gown. It was very low cut, had only the tiniest of puff sleeves, and left the arms bare.

He looked at the gown in surprise, and blinked. "It's not?" he asked, stupidly.

My brain frantically began to work several times faster than normal. This man lives in a hole in the ground. He wears a mask all the time and haunts an opera house for a living. How many weddings can he have been to? He's probably only read about them, and he's read that a wedding dress is usually a beautiful white gown, worn with a veil. I don't want to point his ignorance out to him. He deserves better than that from me.

My next statement came out without so much as a pause. "Not for an English weddingâ€"or a Jewish oneâ€"and those are the only sorts I'm familiar with. All English weddings have to take place before noon, by law," (which used to be true, but isn't anymore, so I didn't tell him that) "and this is an evening gown, not a morning gown, so it would be wrong for the time of day. And a Jewish bride is required to dress very modestly. If a Jewish girl even suggested standing under the canopy in a gown that bared so much, her mother would have heart palpitations. Real ones."

"The canopy? Not before an altar?"

"No. Jewish weddings are quite different from Christian ceremonies. I do recall, now, that in Madame Bovary, Emma wanted her wedding to be held at midnight, by torchlight, so I suppose this would be proper for a French bride, if that was the case." (It was no such thing, no wedding dress is ever that naked, but it was a reply that didn't make him seem like a fool.)

And it redirected him from the unsafe topicâ€"if I would be willing to stand under a canopy with him if it were a more modest dressâ€" to the safer subject of literature.

"Madame Bovary?" he asked. "Forgive me, Katherine, but isn't that a rather improper book for a young and unmarried woman? Althoughâ€""he said, as if it had just occurred to him, "so is The Count of Monte Cristo."

"You mean that just because it has hashish, adultery, and two girls in love with each other, it's improper? I don't know what could possibly give you that impression."

"Has no one supervised your reading at all?"

"On the contrary," I replied, "Professor Xavier insisted that we should always be reading something for pleasure, outside of our assigned materials. We had to keep reading journals, and be prepared to discuss everything we read, intelligently, with him once a week. Beyond that, we were only restricted by the limits of our intellects and our capacity for embarrassment. No one would read anything they were too embarrassed to discuss. One boy has a copy of Fanny Hill, (which I understand is extremely filthy), that he daren't even open, because the Professor would make him talk about it."

Erik was looking at me with concern. "I only hope...", he began, but he let it trail off.

We were still standing in front of the beautiful not-a-wedding gown.

"You are too intelligent not to comprehend my meaningâ€""

"Don't!" I cut him off. "I don't want to hear it!"

"Notâ€"from me?" he asked, in a very low and quiet voice.

"Not from anyone! Do you know why I'm here, in the ballet corps of the Opera Populaire?"

"I had not thought about it." he admitted.

"Back in June, I got a letterâ€"Look, can we go in the living room and sit down? I'm going to need a handkerchief. I'm going to need half a dozenâ€"and I'm sick to death of crying!"

My prepared speech, simple and dignified as it was, was no help at all. Once I was provided with tear-mops and seated on the sofa, with Erik on a chair across from me, I began. I will leave out all my sobbing.

"His name is Peter Rasputin. We met when he was nineteen and I was thirteen. I fell in love with him immediately. Don't say I was too young. Don't say it was only a school-girl's puppy-passion. It was love and it was real. He was, he is, tall and handsome and good. Genuinely good. And he loved me, tooâ€"at least, he used to...

"We came to an understanding. We would wait until I was eighteen before we even announced our engagement, and marry six months later. Until then, I would be no more to him than another sisterâ€"although sometimesâ€"It never got further than kissing. He was honorable. He was good.

"He's an artist. A professional art-restorationist, anyway, and he can do murals in the antique styles. So he travels a lot, to work in people's homes, and in museums. He's very good, so he's in demand all over Europe. Six months ago, he went to Turkey. I was just beginning to think about bride-clothes, when I got that letter.

He married someone else. A girl from a hill-tribe in Turkey. Her name is Ezadjiâ€"isn't that a pretty name? Sometimes I wonder what she must look like...He doesn't speak her language. She doesn't speak any of hisâ€"but he fell in love with her, and married her only three days after they met." I was aware that my voice was getting a bit high and I was talking too fast, so I paused for a moment.

"I had no idea." he said, blankly.

I continued, deliberately lowering my voice and speaking more slowly. "I wrote back, and said everything I should have said. I wished him happy. I said it was silly of him to think he was hurting me. I set him freeâ€"and it nearly killed me to write it."

"I had no idea." he repeated himself.

"I love him still. I know I should let go. I know he is married. I know he no longer loves me. I even know part of the reason I fell in love with him so fast and hard is that I had just lost my family. They're not dead. Only lost to me...It was my powers. I couldn't control them at first. They knew. They saw. They couldn't throw me out or lock me in my room, because I could just walk through the doors. When the Professor came, they couldn't get rid of me fast enough. They signed the papers granting him guardianship and they covered the mirrors for me."

"Covered the mirrors?" Erik glanced at the covered mirrors that were scattered around the living room. "I don't understand."

"It's a Jewish custom. When a member of the family dies, you cover the mirrors."

"I see."

"I've never stopped loving my family. They didn't answer my letters. To them, I'm dead. It doesn't matter. I still love them. He married someone else. I still love him. It doesn't matter. My guardians sent me here because they were tired of my moping around. It doesn't matter. And nowâ€"and you..." I paused for breath, and to wipe my eyes yet again.

"Katherine, I am so sorryâ€"truly. But I am not like that boy. If you would consent to be my wife, I would not..."

I cut him off, again. "You say that now. But you've never met Jean Grey. Jean Grey is utterly beautiful. She is this century's Helen of Troy, and everyone falls in love with her. Or Illyanaâ€"she's Peter's sister, and she looks exactly like a snowflake fairy. When we went to dances, she'd make her admirers ask me for a dance before she'd give them one with her, or else I'd sit there all night without one partner." I am aware that I might have been a trifle overwrought.

"Of all the possible objections you could ever make, you have hit on the one which would never have occurred to me: that I might leave you for another. I am not laughing at you." he said, quite seriously.

"It isn't only that." I told him. "Your mode of life does not inspire me with trust. Andâ€""

I had not yet had the insight which was to come later, the ultimate insight into what was wrong with him. I had touched on it when I realized he didn't know why that dress wasn't a wedding gown, but I did not know when I continued, "It's far too soon. It's not even October yet. If I could forget five years of love in less than five months, then you shouldn't waste the price of a ring."

He clearly had not considered that. "Then," he said, tentatively, "you are not rejecting my offerâ€"you simply are not now prepared to accept."

"I am neither accepting nor rejecting at this momentâ€"and I won't try to answer for the future. If I didn't say so before, let me say it now. Thank you for saving my life. You have my gratitude. You have my undying friendship. I cannot answer for my heart, and I would never marry where my heart is not."

"May Iâ€"may I ask if you can foresee a time when you might better know the inclinations of your heart?"

"Iâ€"," and I realized that if I did not say something definite, he was very likely to inquire on a daily basis, so I answered, "I need a year. A year from June. A year to mourn the life I would have had."

"More than seven months? Noâ€"it is too long. You will forget. You will meet someone else."

"No. I won't. I won't forget. I can't help meeting other men, half the human race is male after all, but even if any of them want to offer for me, I won't listen to them either. My heart is too bruised. And when June comes, I'll give you an answer, before anyone else. If there is anyone else."

"Would you swear to that? Would you?"

"Yes, if you like. You swore to me. I won't say yes to any other offerâ€"but I might say no, should the occasion arise. I swear it on my hope of Heaven, and I believe in Heaven."

"On your hope of Heaven?"

"Yes."

"And you will not forget me in that timeâ€"you will let me see you, and speak to you?"

"Erikâ€"believe me. You are unforgettable. The rest goes along with friendship. Why wouldn't I?" His plea to be remembered was worrisome. Erik can and often does go from being as autocratic and commanding as Sir Erich, to being as insecure and in need of reassurance as the littlest, newest student at Xavier House. "Besides, we need to go for best two out of three at chess, so I'll have to come visit."

He smiled. "That is right. And voice lessons. I shall give you voice lessons."

"Wellâ€"if you think I have anything worth training. You'll have to teach me how to read music, though. And, of course, you'll have to negotiate with Madame Giry for control of my time."

"She will agree," he said with confidence.

I suddenly felt very tired, and said so. "I would like to lie down for a while. Crying is so draining, and I can tell I'm not fully recovered."

"You mustn't tax yourself," he agreed, and helped me up. "I'll call you for dinner."

It was after dinner that the trouble began.

I have made an enemy, Professor, but I did it to save a life. I exacerbated the worst fears that Sapients have of the Evolved. I showed a full-grown man, a perfect stranger to me, that he was helpless and impotent against the powers of a slightly built girl who was less than half his age and weightâ€"me. But if I hadn't, Erik would have killed him right in front of me.

Over dinner, Erik told me that he was going to fetch a visitor; a man who he said was a friend. He called him the 'Daroga', and said that he wanted to reassure this man that I was a guest and not a prisoner.

If I am any judge, the 'Daroga' was Persian. He was a dark-skinned, dark-haired man with vivid green eyes who wore an unusual hat with his evening clothes.

I firmly believe the 'Daroga' thought he was acting for the best, but there is often nothing as dangerous as a man who firmly believes he is doing the right thing. He began by putting my nose out of joint, because he said I was only a child, and then asked me a series of increasingly impertinent questions. The first few were reasonable enough, but he made it quite clear that he thought I was either very childlike or somewhat imbecilic.

I hardly remember what I said. I was answering him as tactfully and with as much dignity as I could, but my attention was divided between answering him and watching Erik, who was looking more and more offended as the 'Daroga' continued.

I hadn't forgotten the murderous rage Erik had directed at 'Doctor Peevish', you see, and if I was going to have to distract him again, I wanted to be ready. It is a good thing that I was, because the 'Daroga' worked himself up into a righteous froth that culminated when he suddenly ripped the mask from Erik's face.

Every detail of Erik's face is burned into my memory like an image on a photographic plate. The mask concealed a dreadfully cleft palate and harelip, skewed off-center and running like a fissure up almost to his eye. That part of his face had a certain resemblance to a South American fruit-bat I saw a few years ago in the London Zoo.

The skin was transparent and stretched too tightly and irregularly over the flesh it covered, which was livid and discolored. The mask also hid an abnormality of the skull on that sideâ€"his cranium is deformed, distended as if pushed out by the pressure of his brain. I recalled the sad little skeletons I have seen of hydro-encephalic babies, whose skulls were expanded outward from the fluid within, until they resemble flowers...

Yes, it was grotesque, rendered all the more so by the contrast to the rest of his face, his otherwise handsome face with its regular features, and the beauty of his eyes. But I have seen much worse.

Garokk, for example, or Mr. Benjamin Grimm, who looks like a pile of orange pebbles. For that matter, I think Mr. Fantastic is positively nauseating to look at when he stretches the way he does. That bloat Mojo is far more repulsive, as is Mortimer Toynbee, the Toad, and then of course, there's Logan when he's been drinking for three days straight.

Or, worst of all, my father's face, the last time I ever saw him. There is nothing uglier than a beloved face at the moment you discover he no longer loves you.

All that I got was a moment to look at Erik, because, with a terrible snarl, Erik struck the 'Daroga' and sent him flying across the room.

I was already in motion. The 'Daroga' was in danger of becoming another 'inconvenient' corpse to be disposed of. It took me three steps to get across the room and take possession of Erik's sword, and one great leap to stand over the Persian where he sprawled prostrate on the carpet. I did not pause. I shoved the sword into his chest.

I was phased, of course. I then proceeded to tell him that, in terms of dangerousness and fearsome power, I was Erik's equal. I left him weak and trembling on the floor, but I left him alive. I doubt he appreciated that. Sir Erich would say that it would have been more merciful had I killed him, but I am not Sir Erich.

The sword was meant for a man who was a foot taller and had a hundred pounds more muscle than I did, and I should not have been phasing so soon after my illness. I could feel a headache coming on, so I dropped the sword on the carpet and turned to Erik, who cringed like a whipped dog and tried to cover his face.

I stopped him. I told him the truth. I told him that if he were at Xavier House, everyone would look him right in the face and smile, bid him welcome and lay a place at the table for him among us. And we would. Even if he can't believe me now, he will someday.

I retreated, then. I had done enough to that poor man on the floor, and the moment of crisis was past. As Erik took him back up to the surface world, I reflected that I understood, now, why Jean married Scott rather than Logan. It wasn't that she couldn't love Loganâ€"it was that she could never be sure she wouldn't come home to find that he'd put the coalman's head through the wall, or find a lot of unexplained blood on the dining-room carpet, or something like that. I only wish I were joking.

I didn't go to bed immediately, although I was tired enough and my head ached. I had theatrically made my exit by walking through the wall, which had been a mistake. I didn't want Erik to think that I had run off to hide after seeing his face. So I waited, and when he returned, I saw that he had his mask on again. He looked lost, until he saw me.

I said good night to him, and then I kissed him on the cheek. I kissed him as I might kiss you, Professor, or Kurt or Auroré, or anyone at Xavier House. I didn't think it out or plan it, I just felt like it, so I did it.

He grabbed me. He grabbed me and held me tight. He had my arms trapped between our bodies, and he crushed me against him. Then he kissed me. On the forehead, and as chastely and reverently as you might. He was shaking, Professor, he was trembling. I could both hear and feel him draw in a breath and have it catch in his throat. His Adam's-apple brushed my eyelid as he swallowed.

Then his tears fell hot and wet on my hair and trickled down my forehead, and still he held me. He did no more than that, and I let him, rather than protest or fight. He wasn't hurting me, and I could have gotten free. I could have phased out of his embrace, or done that trick with the knee and gotten him there.

I only brought it to an end when I realized it was making him quite uncomfortable, physically, and then I said, "Erik, you're squashing me."

He released me immediately. "I'm sorry!" he said, hoarsely.

"It's all right." I gave him a small smile. It was not the moment to even seem enticing.

"Good night, Katherine."

"Good night," I gave him in return, and I went to bed, but not to sleep, not for many hours. My brain was working at high speeds again. My thoughts went something like this:

I didn't know it would mean that much to him. I didn't know. Most of the time, he seems like a cultured, well-educated man of the worldâ€"and then he reveals this bottomless well of need at his core.

How many times do you suppose someone has kissed him? Or let him kiss her? Or let him hold her? And who? And when? Could I possibly have been the first, ever? Certainly I was the first in many years.

He is brilliant beyond genius. He knows everything about how to behave that can be learned from a book. His house is like a stage set, because that's all he knows. He thinks any fancy white dress can be a wedding dress because he's never been to a wedding.

That was itâ€"that was my insight. He knows nothing about how to be a person.

That can only be learned from other people, people who care about you, people who smile when they see you and care if your belly is full and want to know what you want for your birthday. They also need to tell you who you are, and that you should respect other people, and their lives and their property. They need to admonish you when you're bad, and tell you they love you anyway. They need to control your angers and your destructive impulses, so that when you're grown, you can control yourself. They need to kiss you good night.

If I were to marry him as he is now, it would be a disaster for me and if it was a disaster for me, it would eventually be a disaster for him, as well, because that is how marriage works. To him, the only safe place in the world is that cave under the Opera House, and how long would it be until he tried to confine me to it, too, for my own good? I couldn't live that way. I need the sun and fresh air and other people in my lifeâ€"I need my friends. I need themâ€"and so does he, if he could only be brought to see it.

The only time in one's life that one person can be the entire world is when you're a tiny baby. No matter how much I loved him, as he is now, his need would swallow me up and leave nothing. He needs more than me.

He needs you.

All of you, to teach him, to help him grow.

If I were to return to Xavier House now, he would follow me, but I can only foresee a tragedy if that were to happen. He would fight you to get me back, and against your combined strength, he would lose. And he would set his mind and will against you. I think Xavier House will have to come to him.

Will you help him? For my sake?

There is a deadline approaching. It is June, when I have promised him an answer.

Sincerely yours,

Katherine Pryde.

This chapter ends what I have been thinking of as Part One of this storyâ€"and the next begins Part Two, when the X-Men start showing up. The first visitor, though, will be Sir Erich, in Magneto Goes to the Opera.

You just know he's going to cause trouble...