these lines of life have been drawn and can't be removed our eyes is all it took to know
Realtime made irrelevant, John takes a studious little 15-minute tour of Hell. Magneto shows up halfway through terrifyingly detailed scenarios of the curse, kicks at the ice encasing his shaking body, and drags him off firmly by one elbow. "One cannot make a revolution with silk gloves," he says with that lofty resonance, fingers as unbreakable as the iron he controls.
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
The virtuous pagans part silently to allow them passage, eyes from before salvation inscrutable in their judgment.
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
"Where are we going?"
"Tell me when it looks like we should stop."
The cuffs around Marie's wrists and ankles are too large but she stands perfectly still because they're made of hands and she won't, can't.
They don't stop.
Toad writhes and clenches the ground, insides pulling out pink and ropey, all the greased strings that hold his organs together stretching tight and then unravelling. He is being unwound, undone. They don't stop.
The professor oversees with dead eyes a line of children, making no gestures but rolling them one by one off the steep sides of a cliff. They don't stop.
Logan fights like he's forgotten everything else, but though his opponents fall they don't stay down. Neither does he. An endless plain of fighting, down and close and personal, like every set of knuckles is well-acquainted with each bruise. John stops, and flicks his lighter, but Magneto laughs. No. They go on through gates he slams aside with a gesture, past rivers of boiling blood, dark trees full of snarling and screaming, fire raining from red skies. He doesn't know anymore where he belongs. They don't stop.
"On march the banners of the King of Hell,
Look straight ahead: can you make him out at the core of the frozen shell?"
Like a whirling windmill seen afar at twilight,
or when a mist has risen from the ground,
just such an engine rose upon his sight,
stirring up such a wild and bitter wind
he stumbles backwards into Magneto, earning no reprimand but they have stopped. They've passed ditches of shit John has never even imagined existed, and some that he has, complete with those faces. On this plain of ice he can distantly make out Bobby mechanically filling in holes with his cautious outstretched hand. They've stopped. He thought he'd accepted this somehow, that this would be best if this was how it was going to play out but now he knows he hasn't, that curse or no there is no acceptance, he will not be a hero ever, ever, ever. Everything he does will lead to this cold finality (here at the bottom of all things because his hands have not performed atrocities but he made his choices and some choices are unforgiveable). John looks at his guide, wanting to be able to blame, but the fact is, as they both know, he bit this bitter apple all by himself, and what happens after this is still only up to him.
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
The virtuous pagans part silently to allow them passage, eyes from before salvation inscrutable in their judgment.
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
"Where are we going?"
"Tell me when it looks like we should stop."
The cuffs around Marie's wrists and ankles are too large but she stands perfectly still because they're made of hands and she won't, can't.
They don't stop.
Toad writhes and clenches the ground, insides pulling out pink and ropey, all the greased strings that hold his organs together stretching tight and then unravelling. He is being unwound, undone. They don't stop.
The professor oversees with dead eyes a line of children, making no gestures but rolling them one by one off the steep sides of a cliff. They don't stop.
Logan fights like he's forgotten everything else, but though his opponents fall they don't stay down. Neither does he. An endless plain of fighting, down and close and personal, like every set of knuckles is well-acquainted with each bruise. John stops, and flicks his lighter, but Magneto laughs. No. They go on through gates he slams aside with a gesture, past rivers of boiling blood, dark trees full of snarling and screaming, fire raining from red skies. He doesn't know anymore where he belongs. They don't stop.
"On march the banners of the King of Hell,
Look straight ahead: can you make him out at the core of the frozen shell?"
Like a whirling windmill seen afar at twilight,
or when a mist has risen from the ground,
just such an engine rose upon his sight,
stirring up such a wild and bitter wind
he stumbles backwards into Magneto, earning no reprimand but they have stopped. They've passed ditches of shit John has never even imagined existed, and some that he has, complete with those faces. On this plain of ice he can distantly make out Bobby mechanically filling in holes with his cautious outstretched hand. They've stopped. He thought he'd accepted this somehow, that this would be best if this was how it was going to play out but now he knows he hasn't, that curse or no there is no acceptance, he will not be a hero ever, ever, ever. Everything he does will lead to this cold finality (here at the bottom of all things because his hands have not performed atrocities but he made his choices and some choices are unforgiveable). John looks at his guide, wanting to be able to blame, but the fact is, as they both know, he bit this bitter apple all by himself, and what happens after this is still only up to him.