Sarah Across the Multiverse

General (POV)

Charles, Erik began, his voice low and sharp as the door to the ward clicked shut behind them. The sterile hallway stretched ahead, its oppressive quiet only amplifying the tension between the two men. "Do you believe her story? And more importantly, do you really think it's wise to bring her into this fight against Shaw?"

Charles exhaled, rubbing the bridge of his nose like a man carrying the weight of the world—and in many ways, he was. His eyes lingered on the closed door behind them, as if he could still sense Sarah's enigmatic presence on the other side. "The story of her being experimented on? Highly plausible. She claims to be human, though. Perhaps it's denial—or something else entirely," he admitted, his brow furrowing. "What's clear is that her past was harrowing. If even half of what she said is true, she's suffered in ways I can scarcely imagine."

He paused, his jaw tightening before he continued. "As for joining us… I don't know. Her mind is—" Charles hesitated, a flicker of frustration crossing his face. "It's impenetrable. Not resistant, just… blocked. It's like trying to listen to a symphony when someone's ripped the strings from the violin. And that unsettles me, Erik."

Erik's expression hardened, his jaw tightening as he processed this revelation. "So, the great Professor Xavier proposes sanctuary," he said, his tone laced with dry skepticism. "A young woman—possibly a mutant—possessing both remarkable abilities and intellect. Left unchecked, she's a walking beacon for trouble. If the wrong people catch wind of her…" His words hung ominously in the air.

Charles met Erik's gaze with unwavering resolve. "That's precisely why I invited her here. To protect her. To guide her. If nothing else, she deserves a chance to live without fear."

Erik raised a brow, his skepticism undiminished. "And Shaw? You're really going to drag her into that storm? Do you think she can handle that?"

Charles blinked, his incredulity breaking through his usual calm. "You can't be serious. She's barely managing her powers as it is!"

"And that's exactly why she needs training," Erik countered, his voice growing more insistent. "Did you see what she did back there? Her control over metal rivals mine, her manipulation of electricity is astonishing, and she's still raw. She could be an asset, Charles. A force like hers doesn't go unnoticed—or untapped—for long."

Charles' patience was wearing thin, his tone cutting through Erik's reasoning like a scalpel. "She's an outsider, Erik. A stranger to our cause, and likely to our entire way of life. She's no soldier. She's a young woman who's been through God-knows-what in some lab. We can't just throw her into battle because her powers might be useful!"

Erik held up a hand, his voice steady but unyielding. "I'm not suggesting we throw her into the deep end. But you're missing the bigger picture. Sarah is more than a collection of powers. She represents something neither of us fully understands yet. And that's exactly why she needs us."

Charles' gaze darkened, a flicker of anger breaking through his measured demeanor. "I won't let you use her as a tool, Erik. She's not a weapon. She's not a bridge. She's a person."

"And I agree," Erik said, surprising Charles with a rare glimmer of sincerity in his tone. "But Charles, look at what we're doing. You and I—our ideologies—are a ticking time bomb. If Sarah's presence, her perspective, can anchor us, can make us see beyond our differences, isn't that worth exploring?"

Charles remained silent, his jaw tight as he weighed Erik's words. Sensing the hesitation, Erik stepped closer, his voice dropping to something almost gentle. "You once told me you believed in the good of people, Charles. You believed that we could build something better. I'm telling you—this Sarah? She's not the one who'll break. She's the one who might hold us together."

Turning away, Erik gazed out a nearby window, his expression unreadable. "We're at war, whether you like it or not. The world won't wait for Sarah to figure out where she belongs. The question isn't whether she's ready—it's whether we are."

Charles stared at his old friend's back, the weight of Erik's words pressing down on him like a tidal wave. The silence between them was thick, electric, charged with a tension that neither man could fully articulate. Somewhere behind that closed door, Sarah Vasilissa waited, a puzzle neither of them knew how to solve—and one they couldn't afford to ignore.

...

Sarah (POV)

"What's on your mind, Sarah?" Raven's voice, smoky and low, cut through the haze of my introspection. It wasn't intrusive, but it had weight, grounding me from the swirl of my thoughts. I sat cross-legged on the bed, staring out the window with a face that revealed nothing.

"Just thinking about what to do next," I muttered, my gaze not shifting from the glass.

The past few days had been a whirlwind of confusion, lies, and revelations. No mansion filled with idealistic mutants here. Instead, the air in this place reeked of government meddling, the walls sterile and lifeless. This wasn't a school for gifted youngsters—this was a CIA facility disguised as a safe haven, where agents whispered behind closed doors and watched with unseen eyes.

Apparently, the duo of Charles Xavier, charming telepath extraordinaire, and Erik Lensherr, the enigmatic metal-bender with a flair for the dramatic, were working with the Feds. Their target? Some big-shot mutant named Sebastian Shaw. From the snippets I had overheard, Shaw and his rogue band of mutants were causing enough chaos to give the Cold War itself a run for its money.

I wasn't a player in their game. I was collateral. Wrong place, wrong time. Xavier, ever the optimist, had misread my situation entirely. Believing me to be a mutant (I wasn't) and convinced I needed "help," he'd dumped me in this makeshift medical ward after a confrontation I didn't even start. And now, as fate would have it, Mystique—yes, that Mystique—was stuck babysitting me.

A flicker of memory surfaced, like a ghost from another lifetime. X-Men: First Class, a late-night movie session hazily recalled. Except now it wasn't a film; it was reality. 1962. The Cold War was in full swing, a precarious dance of nuclear tension between the U.S. and the Soviets. Mutants weren't front-page news yet, but their existence was the undercurrent threatening to shift the world's balance of power.

And at the center of it all was Sebastian Shaw. In my fragmented memory, Shaw was a Nazi scientist turned mutant supremacist with one goal: to push humanity into nuclear war and emerge from the ashes as the dominant species. His ideology was grotesque, but his methods? Diabolical genius. Shaw wanted to manipulate two global superpowers into annihilation, believing mutants would rise as the natural rulers of a scorched Earth.

I exhaled sharply, dragging myself back to the present. This wasn't a comic book or a blockbuster movie. This was a chessboard, and I was a pawn who didn't even belong to the set. Charles and Erik were building their team, scouring the globe for mutants to fight Shaw. Me? I was an inconvenient tagalong who'd stumbled into their recruitment drive.

Raven sat beside me on the bed, her presence surprisingly warm despite the tension. I had expected the infamous Mystique to be icy, and distant, but this young version of Raven? She was disarming. Friendly, even. I found myself lowering my guard, something I rarely did.

After a lull in our conversation, I made a decision. With deliberate movements, I began to unwind the bandages wrapped around my arms. The act was methodical, almost theatrical, as if peeling away a lie to reveal the truth beneath. My skin, once marred by injuries, was now flawless.

"Raven," I said, letting the name hang between us like a loaded question. "Fully healed."

Raven blinked, then leaned in closer, skepticism evident in the sharp furrow of her brow. "How?" she rasped, her voice tinged with disbelief.

"Powers went on a bender," I replied flatly, the corner of my mouth twitching in something that wasn't quite a smirk. "Regeneration kicked in to compensate."

Raven didn't bother hiding her doubt. She reached out, her fingers brushing against my arm as she peeled back more of the bandages, confirming for herself what her eyes already told her. Smooth, unblemished skin met her touch.

After a minute, Raven sighed. "You'd better keep those on for now. The last thing we need is the suits freaking out over your magic healing act."

I chuckled, the sound low and humorless. "Yeah, because that's the last thing they'll freak out about."

Our conversation meandered after that, dipping into lighter territory before Raven excused herself. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I leaned back on the bed, staring at the ceiling as my mind wandered to the young woman who'd just left. Raven was… complicated. A shapeshifter hiding in plain sight, a misfit trying to find her place in a world that feared her very existence.

I felt an unexpected kinship with her. Both of us were outsiders, wearing masks for survival. Raven's disguise was physical, while mine was emotional—a carefully curated facade to hide the truth of what I was.

My mind churned, dissecting the fragmented memories of this world. "Xavier's idealism versus reality," I murmured, running a hand through my hair. "He wants peace, but the world isn't built for it. And Raven? She must've seen enough of humanity's cruelty to know better. Then there's Erik... His methods may be harsh, but maybe they make sense to her."

A sigh escaped my lips as I closed my eyes. The lines were already being drawn between Xavier's dream of coexistence against Erik's vision of supremacy. Raven was caught in the middle, teetering on the edge of darkness. And me? I wasn't sure where I fit in this unfolding drama—but one thing was certain. Sitting on the sidelines wasn't an option.

A sigh escaped my lips as I leaned back, staring up at the sterile ceiling. "Stop Erik from becoming a full-blown villain," I murmured to myself, the weight of the task sinking in. "And maybe save Raven from the same fate."

The enormity of it all made my head spin. Erik Lehnsherr—the man destined to become Magneto. His name alone carried a future of destruction, rebellion, and ideals that would fracture the world. For now, though, Erik was simply a level-three mutant, dangerous but not yet the unstoppable force of nature he was fated to become. That evolution, however, was as inevitable as gravity, born not from ambition but from scars—deep, jagged wounds carved into him by humanity's savagery.

I closed my eyes, recalling what I knew about his past. As a Jewish boy, Erik had endured the unimaginable: imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. The Nazis tore him from his parents during a selection process, and in his desperate attempt to hold on to his family, his mutant abilities surfaced for the first time. His fear and anger had bent a metal gate in a terrifying display of raw power, only to be met with violence—knocked unconscious by a German soldier.

Then came Sebastian Shaw. Shaw, the man who recognized Erik's latent power, was also the man who planted the seed of Magneto's darkest beliefs. Shaw's monstrous method to unlock Erik's potential? The cold-blooded murder of Erik's mother was executed right before his eyes. That single act destroyed what remained of Erik's childhood, replacing it with a festering hatred that Shaw knew all too well how to exploit.

Even when Germany fell, Shaw escaped justice, leaving Erik to stew in his grief and fury. And that fury became his sole compass—a thirst for vengeance that consumed him. It was this unrelenting pursuit of Shaw that brought him to Charles Xavier, the bright-eyed telepath chasing the same ghost. Together, they were like two ends of a magnet—pulled together by shared purpose, yet destined to repel.

All this had played out mere moments before I stumbled into this world, a passenger in their unfolding story. But while Erik's pain was evident, what worried me more was Shaw's lingering influence. It was a cruel irony that Erik, who despised Shaw with every fiber of his being, had inherited the man's warped worldview. Shaw believed in mutant supremacy. Erik, knowingly or not, was beginning to echo those beliefs, his kindness reserved for mutants alone, his ruthlessness saved for humans.

Even in the future, when Erik and Wolverine would cross paths as adversaries, Magneto's restraint in killing Logan underscored a cold truth: Magneto judged mutants by their power, not their age or innocence. The stronger they were, the more respect they earned. Power was currency in his eyes, and I, with my peculiar abilities, seemed to carry some weight in that ledger.

I couldn't forget our first meeting. Erik's piercing gaze, those steel-gray eyes, had assessed me with the precision of a predator sizing up an equal. And then, in that clipped, Germanic accent, he'd delivered the verdict that still echoed in my mind: "Charles, I like this one."

Maybe I could work with that.

I sat up, running a hand through my hair, my thoughts churning. Of all the mutants here, Erik would be the one to champion me. Not because of empathy, not because of camaraderie, but because of potential. In his mind, I was useful, and Magneto respected utility above all.

"Great," I muttered, the corner of my mouth tugging into a sardonic smirk. "I'm Magneto's favorite science experiment."

Still, the thought lingered. Erik wasn't Magneto yet. He was still a man with a soul, albeit a fractured one. If I could find a way to keep him from spiraling into the abyss, if I could stop Shaw's poisonous ideology from taking root entirely, maybe—just maybe—I could change his future.

And Raven… Raven was another story entirely. There was a fire in her, a spark of rebellion against a world that demanded she hide. I saw it every time she walked into a room, every time she shifted into someone else's skin with a bitterness that felt almost palpable. Saving her wouldn't just mean steering her away from Magneto's influence—it would mean helping her find peace with herself, a feat that felt Herculean in its own right.

"No pressure, Sarah," I muttered, flopping back onto the bed with a groan. "Just rewrite mutant history while you're at it. Sure, why not?"

For now, the focus shifted—magnetism.

I let out a deep sigh, contemplating the best way to wrangle control over metal. Lightning? Yeah, sure, using it to generate magnetism sounded good in theory. But in practice? Total pain in the ass. Earth and wind fusion, on the other hand, were like the lazy river of elemental control—easier to work with, but they required magical energy. Why? Arbitrary rules? I could now, now that I was siphoning energy from my pocket dimension, but...

That's when the image of Magneto flickered in my mind. Yeah, the guy who could bend metal like it was taffy. Not exactly bad at this whole magnetism thing. And if there was anyone who could teach me how to unlock my potential with a little more finesse... it was probably him. Let's face it: If you wanted a pro to teach you the fine art of evil overlord status, Erik was the one to talk to.

As I mulled over that, something else nagged at me. Over the past few days, I'd been getting this... bizarre pull. It was like the metal itself was calling to me, whispering its secrets, trying to coax me into bending it in ways that didn't involve my basic magnetic skills. It felt almost like it had a mind of its own—some creepy telepathic vibe that had nothing to do with the magnetism I knew. I'd been filing it under "unexplained phenomena" for now, but let's be honest—my mind couldn't completely dismiss the possibility that I was discovering a whole new subset of powers: Metalkinesis.

Which, of course, only complicated things further.

Being surrounded by mutants was one thing—being surrounded by mutants and realizing they were walking, talking DNA goldmines? That was a whole other mess entirely. I had always been pragmatic, and with my unrelenting focus on survival, it wasn't long before I started thinking about... how to turn things to my advantage.

The X-Men? Their blood? It wasn't just mutant biology; no, it was prime material. If I could get my hands on that, I could create the ultimate supersoldier serum. Not for myself, mind you—my body wasn't exactly built for traditional human biology. I was an energy construct, after all. But... someone else might find it useful. Someone like my girlfriend back home. Not that I'd ever admit I had a soft spot for anyone—but hey, power was power, and I'd make sure it was put to good use.

My mind wandered to all the ways I could use the data I was going to collect. What if I could get some of the blood from the X-Men, say, one of the more... special mutants? The ones with the weird, overpowered abilities. Maybe some spontaneous regeneration or, dare I think it, a few telekinetic specialists in the mix. One of those would make for a hell of a serum. And, sure, it'd be a little dark, maybe even a bit shady, but who was counting at this point? I wasn't exactly here to play by the rules.

I snapped myself out of my thoughts, tapping my fingers absently on the table. "Okay, Sarah," I muttered to myself. "Focus. First, figure out how to master metalkinesis before you get all Dr. Frankenstein on people. One step at a time."

I stretched out, letting my fingers flex in the air, trying to feel for the pull again. My thoughts were clear: No one else was going to look out for me—so why not make sure I could take care of myself?