dira | X-Men: First Class Fic: Not a Miracle

Title from Apollo 13: "From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. And it's not a miracle, we just decided to go."

Thanks to

iulia for insisting that I write it, and everyone who audienced!

Charles, Erik. Gen. G. 1000 words.
July 20, 1969. The unity of this instant was amazing.

Not a Miracle

Charles joined his students in crowding around the television, but when the picture in the box changed from the newscaster to images from the surface of the Moon, he closed his eyes.

He could still see it, of course--but this way he saw it through them, all of them. The mutants and humans gathered around him and those further away, crowded around other sets, watching the same thing at this same incredible moment. All at once Charles saw the image clearly and through tears of delight; he saw the glances that flicked sideways to take in the wondering faces of friends, family, loved ones. He felt the hands that clutched other hands, felt dozens, hundreds, thousands of hearts racing as their breath came short with wonder or anxiety. There were children who had never known this was impossible, elders who remembered when ordinary flight was only a fantasy. All were together, now. All were watching this one camera's view.

The unity of this instant was amazing--people in living rooms watching, people listening over radio, looking up into the sky-- thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands, millions of people. He knew it wasn't quite true, but it was possible to imagine just then that everyone was sharing this moment with him, with each other.

And, there. Surely the unity of all human-and-mutantkind had to be complete in truth if even this mind was opened to him, sharing this moment, this same awe.

Erik, Charles said, acknowledgement and warning. He couldn't presume that Erik had left himself unshielded as an invitation to Charles at this exact moment. He wouldn't delve deeply enough to find out without permission.

Erik didn't shut him out, and didn't take his eyes from the television screen he was watching with an unblinking gaze. The voice of his mind was cool and smooth as steel, giving nothing away. Charles.

They both fell silent then, listening, as the astronaut descended the ladder and spoke. That's one small step for man--one giant leap for mankind.

There were cheers, hugs, wild gesticulations on all sides, every side, thousands and millions of sides--but Erik remained unmoving, if not entirely unmoved. Charles felt his little quirk of bitterness at Armstrong's words, something too well-worn and essential to rise into words. Erik did not hear mankind as a word which included him.

Charles could not force upon Erik the euphoria he felt himself-- the connection of all of these minds, of all nations and kinds and classes of people for this one moment. Nonetheless, he had to say something. He had to try.

We couldn't have done that, could we? Charles asked. Without getting into too many particulars, he inventoried the numbers, skills, and dispositions of mutants of whom he was aware. We couldn't. Humans did that. Only humans could have done that.

Charles hadn't followed the project as closely as Hank had, but he knew enough to know what a vast undertaking it had been. Countless corners of industry and government, thousands of dedicated and painstaking individual efforts, had been required to rally around the project to bring them to this point, this single courageous man standing on the Moon.

We couldn't, Erik allowed. There was a little frustration in the admission--a furious sense of the ultimate pointlessness of the achievement, when there were so many other things those resources, that cooperation, could have accomplished--but Erik couldn't deny the grandeur of it. History would break around this moment, before and after humans stepped off their own world and onto another.

I could have destroyed it, Erik added. It wasn't a threat, just an assessment of his own skills and the nature of the undertaking. Charles suddenly had, from Erik's mind, a sense of the Apollo rocket, and the lander which even now perched on the lunar surface. Hank knew a good deal about them, in design specifications and equations, circuit diagrams and checklists. Charles had gleaned that before, and thought he understood the nature of the attempt.

Erik's understanding of these things was as purely physical, mechanical objects. Charles absorbed, all at once, a sense of the true size and scope of them, the exact nature of every metallic part and the breathtaking complexity with which they worked together. He felt, as if it were present before him--as if he stood within it, as if his senses, his body, encompassed/was encompassed by it. He experienced intimately the enormity of the rocket boosters and the heart-stopping small fragility of the lander.

Erik, being Erik, focused irresistibly on the vulnerabilities, the possible points of failure. There were millions. And not one had--yet--gone wrong. There the man stood, on the Moon.

I could have destroyed all of that, Erik repeated. One rivet, one weld, one electrical signal, was all it would have taken. Erik could have done it from miles away, half the world away. Behind his thoughts Charles thought he detected Erik's resistance to the idea of such vandalism, on a sheerly aesthetic level, and a grim willingness to do it anyway, if it had served a necessary purpose. But I couldn't have done it.

Seven years earlier Charles would have pressed the point, tried to make Erik acknowledge that humans could also accomplish great things. And if humans could fling themselves into the future in this fashion, surely they could also be coaxed into the biological future of their race, into a better understanding of their mutant brothers and sisters and children. But in seven years, Charles had learned a thing or two.

He let his awareness fan out again, searching the minds near to Erik's. To Erik he said only, Do you have a handkerchief?

Erik did, in fact--Erik was always prepared.

Raven is crying, Charles pointed out, and then he drew away from Erik, and from the millions, thousands, hundreds of others, to the minds in the room with him--his students and colleagues and friends. Some of the views here were blurred with tears as well. Charles reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, and opened his eyes.