Dem mutants want you!

The diner smells like burnt coffee and bacon grease, the kind of place that never changes no matter how many years pass through it. You sit in your usual booth, back to the wall, eyes on the door out of habit more than fear these days. The bell above the door jingles.

You don't need to look up to know who it is. You can feel it, the way the air shifts when someone with that kind of presence walks into a room.

Storm enters first, tall and regal even in a plain jacket that's clearly an attempt at blending in, especially that white hair of hers. It doesn't work. She has never looked like she belonged anywhere small. Behind her, the door widens further and Charles Xavier wheels himself in, moving with the easy confidence of a man who has done this a thousand times before.

"my goodness," the waitress behind the counter says, startled, nearly dropping a mug. "I mean... can I get you two anything?"

"Coffee, please," Storm says, warm and gracious, the kind of politeness that makes people forget she can call down lightning. "Black."

"Tea, if you have it. Chamomile, sweetheart" Charles adds, guiding his chair toward your booth like he already knows exactly where he's going. He does. He always does.

They sit down on either side of you without asking, the way old friends do, or the way people do when they've decided the conversation is happening whether you want it or not.

"You look well," Charles says, folding his hands on the table. "This town fits your charm."

Storm glances around at the cracked vinyl seats and the flickering neon sign in the window. "It suits someone."

"It's peaceful," Charles says, not quite an argument, more an observation offered to you. "I imagine that matters more to you than most things these days."

The waitress returns with the coffee and tea, throwing you a curious look before retreating back behind the counter, sensing correctly that this is not a conversation meant for her ears.

"We're not here to drag you back," Storm says, wrapping both hands around her mug. "Charles wanted to be clear about that before we said anything else."

"I did." Charles's eyes don't leave your face, patient in that infuriating way of his, like he has all the time in the world and intends to use every second of it. "But I would be lying if I said hope wasn't part of why we came."

Storm huffs something like a laugh. "He always says that like it's a small thing."

"It rarely is," Charles admits.

Outside, a truck rumbles past, and for a moment the diner is quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator behind the counter and the sizzle of the grill.

"The world is not getting any simpler," Charles continues, voice low, meant only for your booth. "There are things happening that concern all of us, mutant and human alike. I won't pretend your absence hasn't been felt."

"By some of us more than others," Storm adds, and there's something softer under the words, not quite an accusation, more of an ache.

Charles glances at her, then back to you. "We've asked before. I know. And you've said no, and I've respected that, as I will continue to respect whatever you decide today."

"But?" Storm prompts, arching a brow at him.

"But I had to ask again," Charles says simply. "Some things are worth asking more than once."

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The bell above the door jingles again, days later, or maybe it's a different afternoon entirely, the kind of town where time blurs at the edges.

You're in your booth when the air changes a second time, colder this time, sharper. Magneto doesn't so much enter a room as claim it. He's dressed like he's stepping out of a boardroom rather than a diner, the cape traded for a long coat but the bearing exactly the same. Beside him, a woman with red hair and sharp eyes scans the room with the practiced ease of someone cataloging every exit.

Mystique. Though right now she wears an ordinary face, freckled, unremarkable, the kind of face built to be forgotten.

They don't sit down right away. Magneto's gaze finds you across the diner like he already knew exactly which booth you'd be in, which seat, which wall you'd have your back against.

"May we?" he asks, though it isn't really a question, and he's already moving toward the booth before you can answer.

Mystique slides in across from you, studying your face with open curiosity.

"So this is them," she says to Magneto, like you're not sitting right there. "The one you keep bringing up."

"This is them," Magneto confirms, settling beside her with the stiff formality of a man unused to diner booths.

"Should I know you?" Mystique asks, tilting her head at you, genuinely puzzled. "He talks about you like you're supposed to be somebody."

"You will," Magneto says simply, cutting off whatever explanation might have followed. "In time."

The waitress approaches warily, still rattled from the last round of strange visitors this booth has attracted.

"Something to drink?"

"Nothing for me, sweetheart." Magneto says, as if he wasn’t some sort of terrorist mastermind.

"I'll take whatever's strongest that isn't alcohol," Mystique says, flashing a grin that doesn't quite reach her eyes.

The waitress retreats, and Mystique's gaze slides back to you, appraising, the way a jeweler might look at a stone before deciding if it's worth cutting.

"He doesn't usually come out of his way for people," she says. "So either you're dangerous, or you're useful. definitely dangerous."

"Perhaps he simply recognizes potential wasted," Magneto says, folding his hands atop the table, rings catching the diner's fluorescent light. "You've buried yourself here. Someone of your ability, hiding behind a coffee cup and a bacon special."

"Subtle," Mystique snorts.

"I've never been fond of subtlety when honesty serves better," Magneto replies, unbothered.

Outside, the afternoon sun glares off the hood of a rusted pickup, and somewhere in the kitchen, a bell dings for an order nobody rushes to collect.

"Charles came first, didn't he," Magneto says, not quite a question. "I can smell his optimism on this place. He asked them to save the world."

Mystique's eyes flick toward you with new interest.

"I ask something far more honest," Magneto continues. "Not to save it. Only to stop being asked to kneel to it."

The waitress sets down Mystique's drink, and for a moment nobody speaks, the diner humming along around the three of you like it has no idea what's sitting inside it.

Rain streaks the single window of the apartment, tracing paths through years of grime nobody has bothered to clean. The building creaks with age, radiator clanking somewhere down the hall, and you sit on a mattress that has seen better decades, the only light coming from a bare bulb overhead.

A knock comes, too polished for this building, too certain. Then the door simply opens, no wait for an answer, because at this point you know it wouldn't have mattered.

Erik enters first, and even here, in a place that smells like mildew and old take-out, he moves like the room owes him something. Charles follows, no wheelchair now, walking with an ease that still looks slightly unfamiliar on him, like a coat worn for the first time. He glances around the apartment, and something crosses his face too quick to be hidden, distaste dressed up as concern.

"This," Erik says, gesturing at the peeling wallpaper, the cracked ceiling, "is what you've chosen. Over an island built for people like us."

Charles says nothing at first, only looks at you the way one might look at a painting hung crookedly, wanting to reach out and fix it.

"We didn't come to judge," Charles says, though the way his eyes sweep the room again suggests otherwise. "We came because it's time you stopped living like this."

"Like an animal in a cage of its own making," Erik adds, no cruelty in his voice, only the flat certainty of a man who has never doubted himself in his life. "Do you understand what we've built? An entire nation. No more hiding, no more apologizing for what we are."

He crosses the small room in three strides, looking out the grimy window at the gray street below, at the ordinary, fragile people moving through the rain.

"They fear us," Erik says, "as they should. We heal what they cannot. We live when they die. And you," he turns back, something almost pitying in his gaze, "you sit here pretending to be one of them."

"What he means," Charles cuts in, a diplomat's smoothness layered over the same certainty, "is that Krakoa was built for exactly this. A place where you don't have to shrink yourself down to fit into a world that was never built to hold you."

Charles moves further into the room, careful not to touch anything, as if the apartment itself might be contagious.

"You've always had extraordinary gifts," he continues. "It seems almost a waste, doesn't it? All that potential, spent here, paying rent to a landlord who wouldn't lift a finger for you if you collapsed on this floor tomorrow."

"On Krakoa, you would want for nothing," Erik says. "Resurrection. Purpose. People who understand exactly what you are, because they are the same."

Outside, thunder rolls low over the rooftops, and the bare bulb overhead flickers once, as if the storm itself is listening.

"We're not leaving until you at least hear the offer in full," Erik says, settling into the room's single chair without asking, as though the apartment already belongs to him simply because he's decided to occupy it. "You've hidden long enough."

Charles lowers himself onto the edge of the mattress beside you, gentler than Erik, though no less immovable.

"Just hear us out," he says. "That's all we ask."