Fire and Ice

Summary: When William Stryker captures a precognitive and demands that she read the future to find a way for him to kill Magneto and/or Charles Xavier, he doesn't expect her to show everything that will happen if they die. Namely, the end of the f-ing world.

Rating: K

Genre: friendship ; romance ; angst

Canon Character(s): Charles Xavier/Professor X ; Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto ; William Stryker

OC Character(s): kind of . . . She's like Destiny/Irene Adler, but not really

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

Notes: I sort of mixed Destiny/Irene Adler with Alice Cullen's power to create a kind of strange OFC. Anyways, I was inspired by a review from one of my earlier X-Men: The Movie fics, Three Chances, where I suggested that Stryker believed that if he had killed Magneto first, Xavier would easily die. Then a reviewer pointed out that most likely if Magneto had died, Xavier would have gone ballistic. That got me thinking: what would Xavier do if Magneto died? (Yes, I am a fan of Erik/Charles stories, where they love each other so much that in every fic where Xavier "dies" Magneto goes wild and burns the entire darn world down.) Also inspired, a little bit, by Robert Frost's poem of the same name, which I'll explain later.

So here's my attempt to answer that, when the girl shows Stryker what the world will come if he uses what she shows him to kill Magneto, Xavier, or the both of them. Stryker's POV, first person, past tense = my second examine-Erik/Charles's relationship-from-an-outside-party.

Prologue

~ William Stryker ~
The girl sat like she was waiting to take a test she had studied very well for. There was no fear, no anxiety, nothing. Her fingers were folded coolly in her lap, and she showed no sign of planning escape routes, and she didn't try to ask for a phone call home. She didn't even ask for the battered backpack we had taken away when the guards had patted her down for weapons.

Then again, the girl was said to be a precognitive.

"So why didn't she run?" I wondered to myself.

If she had known we were coming, if she had known what we wanted of her, if she had known what our scientists were itching to see . . . why stay?

"Sir?"

I shook myself. "Nothing. Open the door, I'm going to ask the questions. Have all the equipment running, I want a full data breakdown when I'm out." I looked back at the girl who might potentially have the ability to end our war with these . . . mutants. "I want to know she's telling us the truth."

"Of course, sir."

The girl said nothing when I entered. I did note, though, that she was already looking my direction, despite being blind.

"Irene Adler," I said, pulling open her file. It was shockingly small. We didn't even know her age. Or if Irene Adler was even her real name. "That's your name, isn't it?"

The girl smiled, chillingly, like she was the one asking the questions, not me. "To someone like me, it doesn't really matter," she remarked. "I am Irene. I am Adler. I am Destiny. And you are Colonel William Stryker."

I blinked. We had never told her any names. . .

"You would have, in a minute," she informed me. "I am merely expediting the process. As to how old I am, as that's your next question, again, it matters little to me. I live in the future, William Stryker, not the past. But if you are really curious, I would say, perhaps the late thirties or early forties – if I am lucky."

"If you are lucky?" I repeated, unable to help myself.

"Before I die," she said. "If I do as you want me to do, and tell you how to kill Magneto and the Professor."

I straightened unconsciously. Ah, yes, here we were. The information we needed. And then, yes, she might die young – she couldn't be more than twenty right now, at most, I was guessing – because then we would have no further need of her mutation anymore. Not if the two leaders were killed, because then it would be all too easy to finish off the rest of the mutants. The teleporter might be a little difficult, and the shapeshifter, but in the end, there were only so many places one could hide, and we knew where Westchester was.

Adler shook her head. "You really think that this will bring you peace?"

"We'll have peace when the vermin like you are dead."

"Will you really?" Adler laughed, very quietly, leaning back in her chair. "Are you truly naive enough to believe that nature would let you destroy her own creation so easily? That homo sapiens will triumph over homo sapiens superior? My goodness, you do believe it. Well, then, I was right, I am needed here."

I blinked, feeling a little lost. What the hell was "homo sapiens superior?"

"Mutants. It's the technical scientific term for us." Adler frowned. "Or it will be, in a few years, once mutants become more wildly known."

"They'll be dead by then."

"Perhaps."

I leaned across the table, forgetting that she was blind and could not see. But in any case, it didn't matter; she was still smiling so strangely at me that I felt off-balance, unable to intimidate her no matter what. It wasn't condescending or fearfully. It wasn't happy or sad. It just was a smile. And it was aimed directly at me from a blind woman who knew who I was and where I was without being able to see.

"What do you mean?" I snapped.

Adler tilted her head. "Evolution, William Stryker, means that in the competition for the survival of the fittest, the fittest survive. Tell me, who would win if it were you against Magneto? Or the Professor? Or even me?"

Ah, and here we were. This was ground I could navigate.

"Plastic or glass, and Magneto's dead," I told her, ticking the counters off one by one. "There are telepathic-proof alloys for Xavier. A gag for Mr. Cassidy. Sedatives for the teleporter. And you – you're blind, Adler, I could just reach and stab you in the throat, and you would never know in time to defend yourself."

Adler laughed. "Ah, spare me your delusions of grandeur," she said dryly. "Plastic and glass – that's your grand plan? Magneto's been killing Nazis and former SS men for many years, and I'm certain that even without metal, you know he's far deadlier than any of the men you have here. And that telepathic-proof alloy – I don't foresee that becoming available for you for a long time yet, and even if it was, you still have many rounds of testing before it'll be ready to hold a telepath half as powerful as the Professor. If you can't even subdue them, how do you plan to subdue me, William Stryker? I can see the future, or have you forgotten?"

I gritted my teeth. She was really starting to get on my nerves. "I haven't. Which is why you're going to show me how to kill them."

"Which one?"

I chose one at random. "Magneto." He was, after all, right now the greater pain in the rear-end than Xavier. "Now. Or I'll find a way to make you talk, Adler."

"Oh, there's no need for that. I'll gladly show you."

I blinked, my gesture for the scientist and shock electrodes dying halfway. We had expected resistance of some kind, any kind. True, she was young and probably more easily intimated than Xavier or Magneto, but still . . .

"You will?" I blurted out in surprise.

"I can show you my visions, if you wish. So. Magneto dead?" She paused. "Ooh, that's a heavy blow indeed to Homo sapiens superior. I think my lifespan just went down to twenty-eight." She blinked and rubbed at her eyes, as if trying to clear her tears, although there was no sheen and she wasn't affected by the bright lights in her clouded eyes. "Give me your hand, and I'll show you, William Stryker, how to kill Magneto, if you wish."

"Just like that?"

Adler smiled again, this time sadly. "Well, no. I can't control how much you'll see, you see. So . . . you might see a bit too much planning or a bit too much of the effects of Magneto dying right now. But you will see how to kill him."

"Then that's all I want."

Adler gave me a pitying glance. "It shouldn't be," she said ominously.

"No one has the power to avenge Magneto."

"That's a foolish belief," she observed, but she took my extended hand anyways and closed her eyes.

The next thing I knew, we were standing in the most deserted place I had ever seen. It was like the nuclear war had happened – bodies were everywhere, eyes still open, the ghosts of their last emotions (fear, terror, pain) frozen forever on their faces, just collapsed on the ground like puppets whose strings have been suddenly cut. The sun shone, but it was so, so, so cold, like the very warmth was drawn away from the whole world, and grief – grief shone instead, grief so strong that tears threatened to spill from my eyes even though I had no idea what or who I was grieving for.

I whirled to Adler. "I thought you said you would show me how to kill Magneto!"

"I will. Just – let me find the right moment. A few days ahead, I think, of this," she murmured, her eyes still closed.

"Well, what the hell is this then?"

"Hmm? Oh, this? This is what will happen if Magneto dies, I think. The Professor was . . . quite put out. Ah, here we go."

The world spun, but not before I caught a glimpse, in the far distance, of a solitary, gleaming silver-colored wheelchair parked in front of a blood-red helmet, and a man, clad in blood-splattered clothes, keening soundlessly and endlessly over a still body clad in magenta and scarlet.

And I knew, without being told, that it was Charles Xavier who had done this.