The car arrived at the mainland ferry terminal on a Tuesday morning.
Alaric wasn’t surprised.
For reasons he didn’t fully understand, Tuesdays always seemed to be the day when the most important people showed up in his life.
He had been expecting Xavier.
He hadn’t expected him to arrive today.
Still, for several mornings, he had walked the perimeter more carefully, brought a second mug to the porch out of habit, and checked the small anchorage at the western shore each afternoon for arrivals that didn’t announce themselves by radio.
He did these things the way people do when they’re sure something will happen, just not when.
So when he saw, through the binoculars, a small figure crossing the causeway alone in a wheelchair, moving at a steady, unhurried pace, he wasn’t surprised.
He was glad, though.
He realized he was, unexpectedly, a little glad to see Xavier.
He hadn’t expected to be.
He set the binoculars down, put the kettle on, and walked out to meet Xavier at the gate.
The gate was really just a small wooden post he had set into the rocks where the causeway met the island.
A sign, hand-lettered on weathered driftwood in his careful lawyer’s script, read: the Sovereignty of Vantage.
Below that, in smaller print, it said, “Please be welcome.” He had added the second line just last week, after thinking it over.
He believed it mattered, even if he wasn’t always sure it was the right choice.
Still, he kept it.
Xavier rolled up at the gate at the unhurried pace he had been keeping all morning.
He stopped.
Looked at the sign.
“That’s an unexpectedly warm second line,” Xavier said.
“I went back and forth about it.” “Hello, Mr.
Vane.” “Hello, Professor.
Tea or coffee?” “Tea, please.
Whatever you have.
I’m not particular.” “I’ve got a black tea I’m fond of and an oolong I’m trying to like.” “The black, then.
I’m not in the mood to be trying to like anything today.” Alaric smiled.
It was the third smile of his life on the island, by his count, and it was the easiest one yet.
“Come on up to the house,” he said.
“The path is level.” “I noticed.” “I know.” They walked.
The day before, Alaric had paced the path himself, slowly and carefully, and made a simple rule to solve a problem he’d been thinking about for days.
He decided the path had to be level to within a fraction of a millimeter.
It was a small rule, not really needed, since the path was already quite level.
But in eighty-five percent gravity, uneven paths felt even more disorienting than usual.
A wheelchair on rough ground was a case where ‘pretty level’ wasn’t good enough.
So he made sure it was right.
He deliberately didn’t mention the relevant legal regulation about path accessibility.
Xavier didn’t comment on the path.
They both knew.
Alaric registered, with satisfaction, that he had passed a test he had not been told he was being given.
At the porch, Alaric gestured to the second chair.
Xavier transferred himself with the practiced smoothness of long habit and settled in.
Alaric brought the tea.
Sat across from him.
Set his own mug on the rail.
For a moment, they just looked at each other.
Then Xavier said, “I should tell you something.” “I’ve been projecting into the island for some weeks now.
Not constantly.
Several times.
I want you to know.” Alaric drank his tea.
“I know,” he said.
Xavier was quiet for a beat.
“How long have you known?” “Since the second time.” “How did you know?” “I felt it.
Not the projection itself.
I felt something—I don’t know how to describe it.
A draft.
As a window had opened in a room I hadn’t realized was sealed.
The first time, I thought I’d imagined it.
The second time it happened on the same kind of day, in the same kind of weather, and I realized I hadn’t.” “And you didn’t object.” “No.” “Why not?” “Because if you were going to project into me, I figured you’d come and tell me eventually.
You’re a man who comes and tells people.” Xavier set his tea down and looked out at the water for a while.
The line of his mouth shifted, not quite a smile, but something close.
“I had a longer opening prepared,” he said finally.
“I know.” “You are going to be difficult to hold a conversation with.” “I’ll try not to be.” “No,” Xavier said, “I think I’d prefer if you were exactly like this.
Difficult is the wrong word.
Direct.” “Direct is easier on me.
I’m not very good at the long opening.” “I noticed.” They drank tea.
The conversation that followed lasted three hours.
Alaric had not expected three hours when he had set out the second mug.
He had expected, perhaps, an hour.
Possibly less.
Xavier had a school to run, and a life to return to, and Alaric had a perimeter to walk and a pile of correspondence on the desk that needed his attention.
Neither of those things mattered.
The conversation took as long as it did.
It ranged.
It ranged.
They talked about the laws, though not as Alaric had expected.
Xavier wasn’t interested in the mechanism.
He had thought about it on his way over, he said, and had decided, with the patience of a man who had been a professor for forty years, that the mechanism was unknowable from where he sat.
He would let other people argue about it.
Instead, he was interested in the shape of the laws.
What Alaric had chosen to legislate and what he had not.
The harmful-intent law, particularly.
Xavier sat with that one for a long time.
“You wrote in primary intent,” he said.
“Yes.” “You did that to leave room for law enforcement.” “And medical procedures.
And consensual contact.
And anything else where the harm isn’t the goal.” “That’s a lawyer’s clause.” “I’m almost a lawyer.” “How almost?” “Three years almost.
I was a third-year student.
I had three months left.” “Mm.” “What does mm mean?” “It means I’m holding a thought.” “Hold it as long as you like.” “What I’m holding,” Xavier said, “is the observation that the most sophisticated political thinker I’ve spoken to this year is a third-year law student from a place I haven’t heard of.
That’s delightful, and also—please hear this as I mean it—also a problem.” “All right.” Because everything inside this border depends on you.
Your continued existence.
Your continued goodwill.
Your continued sanity, frankly.
If you fall down a flight of stairs and hit your head, every one of these laws stops working.
Your residents—when you have residents, which I notice you haven’t yet admitted you’ll have—will still be there, standing where they stood the day before.
But now, the air around them won’t hold the shape they had come to rely on.
Alaric was quiet.
He hadn’t expected it to land that hard.
The clarity also surprised him.
He hadn’t expected someone to put it so plainly.
It was the death question, said aloud by someone else, for the first time.
He had carried it in the back of his head since Day Two, when he began drafting the personal third law.
Working through the implications, he realized the framework he was building was a single point of failure, walking around in a single body.
“You’re right,” he said.
“Yes,” Xavier said.
“I know.” “I’ve been thinking about it.” “What have you decided?” “I haven’t.” “That’s the honest answer.” “It’s the only one I have.
The structure of what I’m building doesn’t currently have a way to outlast me.
I think it might be possible to build one.
I don’t yet know how.” “You’ll need to.” “I know.” “Soon.” “I know.” Xavier sat for a moment in silence.
Then, as Alaric had seen him do before, he changed the subject.
It was a sign that he felt he’d fulfilled his purpose and was now giving Alaric some emotional space.
“Tell me about who you’re going to invite.” “I haven’t invited anyone.” “That’s not what I asked.” “I know.” Alaric set his tea down.
Looked out at the water without speaking.
The thing about Xavier, he was discovering, was that the man asked questions in the precise middle of where you would rather not be asked questions.
It was probably how he ran his school.
I think I’m going to receive whoever comes.
I’m not going to recruit.
I’m not going to send out a call.
I’m not going to position Vantage as a refuge or a cause.
But the word is going to get around.
People will find out there’s a place in the Atlantic where the laws say what they say.
Some of those people will need a place like that, where the laws are the difference between living in the world and not.
“Mutants.” “Among others.” “You wrote a clause for mutants.” “I haven’t published it yet.
But yes.” “Why?” “Because it was the right declaration.
The laws should say what the place is.” Xavier was quiet for a long time after that.
When he spoke again, his voice was different.
Not softer, but more deliberate.
He was choosing.
“What would convince you,” he said, “that you were wrong about this?” Alaric thought about it.
“The day a resident comes to me and tells me that the sovereignty has stopped serving the people inside it.” “That’s a high bar.” “I know.” “It puts a lot of weight on the residents being able to come to you.” “Yes.
That’s part of why I’m going to have to work on that.” “Yeah.
Yeah.” They sat for a while.
Eventually, Xavier said, “I’d like to come back.” “You’re welcome any time.” “Without warning.” “Without warning.” “I’d like to keep watching.” The phrase settled between them.
It wasn’t a request or a threat.
It was something older and stranger, a kind of posture offered for inspection.
Alaric considered it.
“Keep watching,” he said.
“You agree to that.” “I prefer it to the alternative.
I’d rather you watch than imagine.” “That’s sensible.” “It’s only sensible if you watch honestly.” “Charles.” Alaric raised an eyebrow at Xavier using his given name, puzzled at first.
Then he realized it was a gentle signal to drop formality.
He smiled faintly in response.
“Charles,” he said.
“I’ll watch honestly.” “Good.” Xavier finished his tea.
Transferred himself back to the wheelchair.
Alaric walked him down to the gate.
They didn’t shake hands, but they paused at the threshold for a beat that wasn’t quite a goodbye.
“I’ve got a question I won’t ask today,” Xavier said.
“Sounds right.” “I’ll bring it next time.” “Mr.
Vane.” “Professor.” Xavier rolled across the causeway at his unhurried pace.
The driver was waiting at the mainland terminal.
Alaric watched until the figure was loaded into the car, then watched the car turn around, and then watched it disappear into the trees on the road back toward Westchester.
He stood at the gate for a while after.
The thought he had was complicated, and he didn’t try to resolve it.
It would resolve in its own time, the way things did.
He turned back toward the house.
Behind him, the second mug sat on the porch rail, empty, with a faint line of tea where Xavier’s mouth had been, drying in the late morning light.
It looked almost like a lipstick mark, though Xavier didn’t wear lipstick.
In the car on the road back, Charles Xavier sat with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes on the trees moving past, and thought: cautious hope.
High risk.
He categorized this, in the small filing system in his head, as the most honest diplomatic conversation he had had in years.
He did not say this to anyone.