Sometimes he dreams of Marie, appallingly young and innocent, handcuffed in the boat, or lashed to the machine atop the Statue of Liberty. Except now her piteous cries arouse him, and all his patient explanation why he must kill her for the good of all mutant-kind fails him, and he moves to take her, as he himself was taken when he was no older. Or else he dreams of how it felt to actually touch her, to feel his powers, his self slip away, like the little death of orgasm. Sometimes he is Marie, chained to the posts like Andromeda, sobbing for help, for release, for his parents to come and save him. And then a shining stranger is there to consume him – sometimes with his face, or Charles’s, or even that of Wolverine.
And then there are the dreams with Wolverine. Magneto is contemptuous of the animalistic Sabertooth and Toad, brutally twisted by the world’s treatment of mutants. They are evolutionary off-shoots, tools he can use to a better end. Wolverine would be another such; Magneto has seen him slash with those metal blades; what could such a man be other than an animal, a guided weapon at best? He is surprised that Charles willingly associates with such a one; Charles has limited his recruiting to the comely, the civilized ones. Magneto is content that it should be so; he sees himself as the force that will change the world, and the kindler, gentler mutants such as Charles and his brood will inherit it. But still, Wolverine – how that snarling face haunts him. Mystique had stolen the records that Jean Grey made of his physiology, Charles’s speculations about his hidden personal history – and Magneto is intrigued by the thought that this Logan was the victim of hideous experimentation, calculated sadism for science, reminding him of the Nazi scientists who got their hands on young Erik for far too long.
He imagines what such torture might have been, in his dreams – bones replaced by impossibly tough metal, the pain and fire inside, such as he knows when his power flows through him. And he imagines torturing Wolverine, his power manipulating those bones, animating him like a puppet, pulling him to pieces and putting them back, like clay over a metal armature. Or else he dreams of the animal-man crawling over him, devouring him, forcing those claws again and again into his bleeding body….
In the morning after such nights – and they are frequent here – Magneto wakes, shattered, weary from the parade of horrors, soaked with sweat or other fluids, and sits on his cot, getting his breath under control, and forces himself to think of his goals, of the iron control he must assume to reach them, dismissing his doubts and his humanity as mere paltry things.
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