Author Notes: I've lost my mind. It's good to be here. Sare for the beta and the clarification of the imagery, Suz Voy for the idea and the story "Up in Smoke" and "A Perfect Union", which got all kinds of things turning in my head. Hope you approve, dear.

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It was simple, when she woke up and walked down to the kitchen.

There were nights she crawled into the fridge and grabbed a beer, cigar in her pocket, to sit beneath the porch light and stare into the dark like a living thing was watched her back, a grin turning her mouth up as she listened for things she was no longer able to hear.

Those were the nights she could handle, that she liked, when she felt him close enough to touch and argued with his voice in her head.

A view of Jean in the hall that brought the taste of apricots and a smell that was fresh, the silky lines of skin she'd never touched burning into her fingers.

The muted laughter which she shared, taking a sip.

Those were the nights she liked, the nights she understood, the nightmares she accepted because it might make her a little dirty, but he always cleaned up afterward.

It was different on Wednesdays.

He was always cold, leaving chilly trails in her mind he used to mark his territory. He woke her up for a martini, seated at the bar, tracing the lines of six-sided star on the dull wood from a war she'd hadn't been born in time to see. And her thoughts twisted into different lines that only a foreign language can create and she wanted to shower so badly she could taste it like iron on her tongue.

The weight of her body seemed foreign and the smell was always sterile and she hated the feel of the crawling presence in her mind, the slightly British snap of consonants and rough vowels of his voice coming out of her mouth. English had never been his preferred language.

She was never sure if Xavier was answering or she was. Always Eric in her mind--Magneto existed only in her nightmares.

And he wouldn't laugh at her, but she felt the amusement of him in her mind, the way it pulled her to a mirror to look into her own eyes, stare until Marie emerged from the tiny box Eric inhabited, that was locked until she awoke from sleep remembering starvation and cold nights without blankets and the numbers twisting up her arm.

He stayed around even when she locked him down and out and deep and shot whiskey until her eyes watered and her stomach rebelled. When she deliberately tried to lose herself because Logan and Eric couldn't remain in the same space in her mind and Logan was sometimes stronger than she was.

She never knew who was saying what. Sometimes, she didn't even care.

But every second Wednesday, she drank that martini and went to Xavier's room, set up the chessboard without comment and played the same game. It never varied. Marie didn't know how to play chess.

She wished just once she could win. Then perhaps Eric wouldn't want to come back. He had to win, at everything, even over the will of a little girl who should have killed him if only she'd been given the chance.

It was him that made her catch Xavier's hand and brush gloved fingers across the palm. She was Xavier's living, breathing penance for not being what Eric wanted, for not believing, for not listening.

In her mind, he laughed softly at the catch of Xavier's breath, so brief, and meaning more than any words spoken.

"I'm sorry," she would whisper, and he would nod, not quite taking back his hand, not quite moving away until she did, and when he looked at her she knew he didn't see Marie at all.

When she looked in the mirror over his shoulder, neither did she.

And there were the other nights. Nights waking from personalities that hadn't touched her as long or as hard. Vague, indistinct images she hated because there was nothing behind them.

And always Logan, just around the corner, shading everything with something light and cynical and sometimes even rude, but he never left those slimy trails and she always smiled, even when he looked out of her eyes at Jean and she caught own breathing too fast, fingers clenching in her palm, a heat that spread through her body.

"Your move, Marie."

She moved the rook, watching Xavier's eyes on her, feeling the twist inside her that could have once been love if it hadn't ripped itself apart into more pieces than anyone could put back together again.

"What will you do when they come for us?"

His head tilted softly, gaze lingering on her fingers, tracing the line of a star that Eric saw in every dream they shared.

"They will not."

He had faith. She had Eric. Xavier had her.

"If they do."

"They will not."

She never got anything else. She felt Xavier's presence over her mind, not quite touching, content to feel Eric emerge from within her. He never got weaker. She never let Logan weaken to compensate.

It took a bottle of whiskey to drive the taste of Eric from her mind. So she could be a highly functional alcoholic at eighteen. There were worse things.

"How was your day?"

There was a time, years before her body had ever been created, that the question would have made her smile.

"I think I'll be able to graduate this spring," she answered. Eric pushed at her to move the queen out of range. And maybe she didn't want to win, if she wouldn't even move the damned queen because that was what he wanted.

She moved the queen and felt another tendril of slimy thought curve through her mind, another way to chain her.

"I don't belong to you." She heard the clipped consonants and closed her eyes. But Xavier said nothing and she wanted Jean--Jean woke up Logan, not Eric. Jean made her want to touch and taste and find out every curve of a woman's body, if it matched her own.

Eric made her want to watch with cool eyes and whisper things that made doubt linger on the edges of her mind.

"No, you don't."

Sometimes, she wanted to leave. And if she'd been sure it was Logan driving her, she would have. She watched the next move of the game.

"Tell me this won't be forever," she whispered, picking up her martini. Eric in her head enjoyed the taste of gin--it was chalk to her.

"It will fade, given time." He could say it like it was true. He also said that there would never be a Mutant Registration Act and he'd been right--and only because Kelley was dead, and didn't he owe Eric something for that?

"Your move."

Checkmate in three if she made the right moves. Eric wanted the pawn--she opted for the bishop, watched the bishop die a fiery death in her mind when Xavier took it.

"How can you love him?"

Xavier's eyes snapped up and there was still that cool barrier that separated him from the world, from the common problems of humanity, the petty concerns, always big picture. Scott, the Leader, Xavier, the ruler, and Jean--

"He doesn't understand, Marie."

"I don't want to remember anymore." Her voice was a whisper and she felt Xavier's presence then, pushing back the others, the memories, the taste of iron and martini and death and hate that never faded enough.

"Checkmate."

She nodded, half-rising, before looking at him.

"Fix me." She asked every time.

"I can't."

"Or don't want to?" It was a whisper she could barely manage, it was all herself.

Eric had left another trail.

He didn't answer, letting her put away the board silently, go to the door. She stopped, briefly, staring at the wood.

"Tell me that you don't want to."

She was penance. She was all that was left he could touch. He had Eric as long as she lived beneath the mansion's roof and he'd bind her with the promise of Logan.

She wondered if Scott ever looked at Jean and saw the chains Xavier had created for them.

"I would, Marie."

"I don't believe you."

That wasn't Eric. That was all her.

The End