Mutant and Proud

Summary: I hate Moira MacTaggert. Everyone knows that. She's a human, after all, and she was the one to hurt my brother. There is, of course, one other reason too – but this one's not MacTaggert's fault.

Rating: K

Genre: romance ; angst

Canon Character(s): Charles Xavier/Professor X ; Raven Darkhölme/Mystique ; Moira MacTaggert ; Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto

OC Character(s): none

Set During: a few years after "X-Men: First Class"

Notes: This is my first fic for the X-Men, so I'm relying heavily on Wikipedia and what I saw in the movies to guide me. If I get anything wrong, please tell me. The fic is being told, first person, by Mystique about the events on the beach, so if you don't want spoilers for "X-Men: First Class", don't read.

When I woke up in the middle of the night, for the first few blissful moments, I thought I was back at the mansion – back at my home – and I actually rolled out of the bed, turned on the light, and stumbled towards the door, wanting to reach Charles and assure myself that the fateful day at the beach had all just been a bad nightmare and he was fine and we were all fine –

And then I passed by the silly full-length mirror, and I faltered.

This was our sixth safe house – what kind of lock could keep out a metal-manipulating or teleporting or flying or shapeshifting mutant, after all? – and I had had the bad luck of getting stuck in a room where apparently the humans had decided to install a full length mirror for their own vain purposes. And now, in that mirror, I caught the glimpse of the alien creature with blue skin, red hair, and yellow eyes, and I halted.

I wasn't Raven Darkhölme-Xavier anymore.

I was Mystique.

And Charles . . . well.

With barely a flicker of thought, the flash of blue scales rippled through my body, and my brother's face peered back at me from the mirror.

No.

He wasn't my brother anymore. And he couldn't . . . stand . . . or walk . . . anymore.

And with that, a surge of hatred rose inside of me – hatred for the woman who had torn me apart – had torn my family apart. I hated Moira MacTaggert. I had hated ever since that fateful day on the Cuban beach, when we had been forced, for the first time, to see the cruelty of humanity for our own eyes and make our choices as to how we were going to deal with it. That day, I had joined the Brotherhood of Mutants, and left my brother behind to start his school for young mutants. But I hadn't just left behind my regret for leaving my brother.

I had also left behind the target of my now undying hatred for humans.

Well, one human in particular.

True, the whole lot of humans – Russians and Americans – had fired their missiles at us after we had saved their lives, but Erik . . . Magneto . . . had stopped them from hitting us. They had been acting, I knew, as all of the puny humans did when they feared something: they tried to destroy it.

Not quite forgivable, but not that damaging either.

It was Moira MacTaggert who did the damage of that day.

When Magneto was protecting us all, she decided to take out her gun and fire on him and try to kill him.

Reason #1 to hate Moira MacTaggert, I thought, pacing: She acted like all the humans, and when she feared something, she tried to kill it – specifically, Magneto. Charles had always insisted that she was fine, that she understood us, that she would help us. The only help she brought was to open my eyes to the futility of Charles's endeavors for coexistence. Like all humans, she was part of the war, and she had chosen sides: to be against mutants. She was my enemy.

I hate her for that.

Her pitiful bullets didn't do much. Magneto was perfectly capable of deflecting any and all metal, and continuing to keep his attention in pushing the missiles back at the humans.

One shot, two shots, three shots – it was like the woman thought she could wear him out by just continuing to shoot.

That is, until with the last bullet, Magneto deflected it just as Charles started to stand –

And then he screamed and fell.

Reason #2 to hate Moira MacTaggert, I fumed: Not only did she try to kill Magneto, she hit Charles and hurt him. So much for Charles's insistence that she would never hurt us. She was the reason he was paralyzed – is paralyzed – and will be for the rest of his life.

I couldn't forgive her for that.

He was a great man, and a good brother, and even though he tried to stop Magneto, he didn't try to kill him.

Moira MacTaggert tried.

And she hurt my brother. Now he's stuck in a wheelchair, unable to walk or run ever again, reduced to a permanent state where everyone will either hate him for being a mutant or pity him for being paralyzed. To have my brother brought to such a state . . . and brought by a human, nonetheless, a human Charles had done so much for and trusted so much. . .

I hate her for that.

My third and greatest reason for hating Moira MacTaggert was, perhaps, the most confusing. I barely understood it sometimes. But it was there, nevertheless.

Reason #3 to hate Moira MacTaggert: She had the first person who hadn't been a casual fling for Charles. I had seen it in the way she looked at him and he looked back. He didn't dismiss her. He didn't talk down to her. He dodn't even try any more of that mutation sweet-talk he used to snare all the girls with when she'd made it clear she had something serious she needed to speak about. He just . . . talked to her. And when he did, it was like sparks of a fire were being stoked and there was just a connection between them and . . .

He liked her.

And it wasn't a casual one-time thing either.

We received word, later, that he had wiped her memory and sent her back to the CIA – a typical selfless move for Charles.

But I also knew that he's only so selfless towardsthe ones he really cared about. Like how he endured such horrible pain to continue controlling Shaw long enough for Magneto to kill him. Or like how he let me go, even though he didn't approve or like it, and told me to join Magneto if it was what I really wanted to do.

A human. Of all people to choose, he settles on a human.

And a human who hurt him.

I hate her for that.

I once asked Charles if he would date me – heck, if he would even look at me, had we not grown up together, with something more like simple brotherly affection. H had said no without even thinking. Ad when I had revealed my true form, his only response had been shock and a quickly hidden disgust for such an alien form.

Another flicker of blue scales, and my . . . normal . . . form stood before me, with long blonde hair and dark eyes and a figure-hugging dress.

The form wasn't real. It had never been real. It was a combination of traits I had adopted over the years, experimenting and adding to ensure that I remained pretty, and so there was not even a chance that someone would call me "ugly" – or, even worse, a "freak" as I knew they would if they could seen my true form, the form Magneto accepted without flinching, even outright said that he preferred over anything else.

More importantly, though, the traits were not imagined from me.

They came from other girls.

The long, wavy blonde hair came from Charles's first crush as a teenager, the trait he had hit on with his "groovy mutation" speech and grabbed her with. The large dark eyes had been favorite part of the fellow Oxford student that Charles had been raving about before she'd dumped him, his first willing ex-girlfriend. (Well, willing ex for about all of three days, but still.) And even the slender figure with long legs and curvy torso – that came from the girls I'd seen Charles hit on in the bars since he'd returned to the states. My entire "human" form was a collage of traits Charles had liked in other girls, a pitiful attempt to mix-and-match until I was his ideal girl.

And he had ignored me. I was his sister, he said, and he couldn't look at me in any other way but that. And that was that.

I swallowed hard, and returned to my natural form, trying in vain to convince myself that I was better this way. Magneto appreciated my true form – he thought it was one of the most beautiful things he had seen – he acknowledged it.

Charles hadn't.

In spite of everything I had said, everything I had told Hank, everything Magneto had told me, I was still hurt by that. I wanted Charles to acknowledge me as someone – anyone – other than his sister.

I looked at my blue form with cherry red hair and brilliant yellow eyes, and just for a moment, I almost wished that I had taken Hank's cure. Maybe Charles would have dated me if he had never seen my natural form – maybe we could have been dating the whole time, with him flirting with Moira only until it became clear that she was on our side, and remained my boyfriend.

"Mutant and proud."

I scoffed at myself. Hank had needed the encouragement by my flirting with him and appreciating him more than he had needed to hear me tell him to be "mutant and proud".

Maybe so did I.

And if Charles wasn't here . . .

I pushed open my door and headed down the hall to Magneto's room. He had said to wait until I was older – well, I was older. It had been a few years, and he wasn't going to turn me down so easily. I wasn't going to be turned down so easily.

Magneto gave me a very surprised look as I walked in the door.

"It's been a few years, Magneto," I said. "How long do you expect me to wait?"

He crossed his arms, and then a slow smile crossed his lips. He stood, and walked, slow step by slow step, towards me, and I could see the attraction in his eyes – the attraction I had always wanted.

"Not much longer," he said. "Now you've learned to accept yourself."

But even as I kissed him, in the back of mind, I was thinking. No, I haven't, Magneto. I'm sorry to use you like this

I still want Charles.

I don't hate Moira MacTaggert because she's human, or because she hurt Charles, or any of that. I hate her because she is the one that Charles loves, and I am not. And until now, I've never really realized that.

Mutant and proud? If only.