"I'm going to take a trip to Europe." Joseph announced.

"No, you're not." Scott replied without even taking his eyes from the computer screen.

"I wasn't asking you, Scott, I was simply informing you." Joseph said. He rubbed his shoulder as he spoke. This mornings Danger Room session had been the most intense since he came. The only consolation was that this time he won. Funny what the memories of forty years of using his powers did for his skill levels. Still needed a bit of fine tuning though.

"You are a member of the X-Men, Joseph, and that membership implies a number of things. One of them is that you take orders from the person in charge. That is me. End of story. Anything else on your mind or I can continue here uninterupted?" Scott sighed in exasperation. The tapes he was viewing had been sent to the X-Men by an anonymous source. They showed the beginning stages of the construction of a Sentinel plant using extremely advanced technology. Scott was particularly disturbed by the presence of the man known only as Bastion.

"I am not a slave and I didn't join your little army. I came here because I thought you deserved the curtsey of being informed of my whereabouts if I am to be a member of the X-Men. However, I go where I go when I go. I answer to nobody." Scott finally looked up. There was no way he was letting the only member of the tea with magnetic abilities go gallivanting off into the wild blue yonder right before a possible attack on a Sentinel base. There was also no way he was going to tell Joseph about it either -- because if he decided not to attack he didn't want Joseph to get the bright idea of hitting it solo. He still didn't trust that Magneto was completely gone.

"Listen to me, buster. You are either on this team or you aren't. I might remind you that we were the only people who would take you in after some of the crimes you committed. You owe us for that." It was dishonest, but Scott figured it was worth the risk.

"Don't lie to me, Scott. Ever." Just for a second Scott thought he saw Joseph's eyes turn into pools of magnetic fire. He looked away, chilled.

"What do you mean by that?" Scott stammered.

"If I was the monster that you claim I was, then why did Professor Xavier leave me as the headmaster of this school. Tell me, where are the atrocities I supposedly committed? Or do you now consider self defence to be a crime?" Joseph stared into the blazing eyes of the X-Men's leader.

"Who told you this? Who?" Scott said. The last thing he needed was a potential wildcard and Joseph was too useful uninformed.

"I remembered it. Like I have remembered a lot of things. I'm going to Europe, Scott, to make peace with my past. I thought that perhaps I was sufficiently in your confidence that I could tell you this. I was woefully mistaken." Joseph turned to leave.

"Wait. I'm not letting any of my X-Men go off that far without support. I'm warm up the Blackbird and go with you."

"I'll travel faster alone."

"Look, you came here looking for trust, right? Meet me halfway here and accept the ride. Otherwise, Rogue will kill me if I let you go off alone. Slowly." Scott said as he thought quickly. There was no way he was letting a potentially fully aware Magneto out of his sight. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to do about it, but the last thing we wanted to do was let this develop into a problem.

"As you wish."

*I still don't see why I had to come along.* Jean said to Scott via telepathy.

*I don't trust him. He claims he has regained some of his memories and I'm afraid that he might go berserk once we get to Europe and he remembers his past.*

*So you brought along a strike team to take him down if he goes nuts?*

*Exactly!*

*You mean I am along on this annoying mission instead of sleeping because you are too paranoid to let a member of the team take a trip by themselves?*

*Look, you can trust nobody anymore. Look at what happened with Havok! My own brother turned against me, Jean.*

*Yes, I know. He turned against you after he was kidnapped and brainwashed by the Black Beast. Just how likely do you think that is to happen to Joseph?*

*But what if he sees things that make him go nuts? Then we might be dealing with Magneto all over again.*

*So, instead of doing the rational thing and letting him go alone, you have brought us along so that we are at ground zero if Joseph goes insane.*

*Exactly!*

*I think you are in more danger of insanity then he is right now, love. What exactly are you, me and Sam going to do if he goes nuts?

Magneto is a challenge to the whole team and this isn't Magneto. I should know.*

*What do you mean by that?*

*I met Magneto when I was probing Joseph. He was as terrifying as he ever was, and Joseph isn't Magneto.*

*But the original is inside his head? And you didn't think to mention this to anyone?*

*It wasn't relevant. I destroyed the persona and thus the conflict building inside Joseph. That freed his mind to start remembering his past.*

*So what happens when he remembers the truth about his relationship to the X-Men?*

*He was going to do so sooner or later anyway. We can't hide the truth forever, Scott, and if he isn't with us now then he never will be. I've been as deep inside him as I have been in you and I think he'll stay. Not easily, but he'll stay. After all, he doesn't really have anywhere else to go.*

*Unless he decides to rally the Acolytes around him and declare a holy war to pass the time.*

*Doubtful. He isn't insane like last time-- Onslaught took care of that problem.*

*At the cost of the most important man in the world.*

*Charles isn't dead, Scott.*

*Bastion has him. He might as well be because if he ever leaves Bastions torture chambers he won't be the man we remember.*

Joseph knelt before the grave of Magneto's wife -- or perhaps it was more accurate to call her Erik's wife. She had left Erik the first time he had ever become Magneto and had never returned to him. Her children had been strangers to Magneto and he had ended up abusing them without even knowing who they were. So much had gone wrong for the day his first daughter had died and so little had gone right.

He had visited the remains of Auschwitz. It was funny, he no longer felt the fear that used to fill the place. The naked terror inspired by the guards and the gas chambers. Instead, all he had felt was a great sadness as he gazed upon the ground where so many of his fellows had died. He had needed that perspective because it reminded him that he had grown to adulthood as a human and persecuted as a human. That there was a lot less separating him from humans then he thought. More importantly, that the fear was gone meant he was finally free of the memory of the horror that had happened there. The nightmare that had ruled his life had finally ended and it was time to make peace with the ghosts who had filled his heart.

And so he returned to pay homage to Erik's dead. The people who had meant something to the man he had once been and still remembered -- as a distant memory dancing in his mind. He understood why Erik had become Magneto and he respected the decision. Back then, when there were so few mutants, there had been some hope that one strong mutant might unite them all against the dangers that their sudden emergence had wrought. Protect them from being killed and exploited. Plus, he might have been able to bring a few years of peace to this blood soaked globe and that would have been worth a lot. But the dream had died and the time when it could have been done was past. The future belonged to Xavier and his way, not to Magneto.

So he was going to return with the impatient trio who had been getting increasing frustrated as he knelt and stared. He would do his best to create the sort of world that he had always dreamed off. As a child he had dreamed of being far away from humanity -- alone against nature. It had been his escape against the evil that he had seen in his fellow man. Perhaps now he could try to urge that evil and make the world into a place worth living.

"Finally, I thought you were going to stare at that tombstone forever." Scott commented.

"I had a few goodbyes I had to make." Joseph replied.

"Feel better?" Jean asked.

"Yes, I think that I learned a lot today about what I have to do. Perhaps there is a hope to forge a new beginning." Joseph mused.

"Well, if y'all are finished discussing it, I'd like to head back and get some sleep." Sam prompted.

"Of course, we have a long road ahead of us." Joseph replied.