A Sacrament of Reconciliation
(Losing My Religion Remix)

Author: Pollyanna

Original Story: A Confession by Alara Rogers

Summary: Father Wagner hears confession.

Rating: PG

Fandom: X-Men

If Father Kurt Wagner had been a swearing man, he would have been cursing a blue streak as he raced up the path, yellow leaves swirling in his wake. He was about ten minutes late for the midweek confessions. He could, of course, have teleported into the church, but he preferred not to needlessly shock his parishioners, particularly those older ladies who were likely to attend the afternoon services. Sliding to a halt just inside the doorway he genuflected respectfully, if hastily, before checking to see how many people were waiting for him. The pews were empty, and he let out a gust of relief, before noticing that at the front of the church was an elderly man in a wheelchair. Not one of his locals that he recognised, but the confession was open to all.

Trying to control his panting, in an effort to appear moderately dignified, he approached the stranger. The wheelchair was modern and showed hardly any wear, and the man himself was well dressed in an expensive suit and polished shoes. He was clean-shaven and completely bald, which may have made him appear older than he actually was. As Father Wagner came closer he could see he had intelligent, piercing, hazel-coloured eyes, which regarded him with curiosity but without any sign of revulsion.

"My apologies for my tardiness, mein Herr. Did you wish to make confession, or are you here on some other business?"

"No need to apologise, Father Wagner. It has been many years since my last confession, a few extra minutes will not make any difference." The man's German was almost accentless, but its very perfection suggested that he was a foreigner.

"I fear you would find it awkward to manoeuvre into the confessional box, but we could withdraw to the Lady Chapel. That would be more private, Herr ... ?"

"Xavier. Charles Xavier."

Xavier, that sounded French, but he did not pronounce the Charles in the French fashion. Perhaps an American. Far from home, indeed.

Herr Xavier continued, with a smile that held some secret amusement, "Oh, we can stay here. I am sure we will not be disturbed."

Which was true enough, since if there was nobody else waiting, there would be no reason for anybody to enter the church at this time of day. Still, the man's confidence was a little unsettling. Excusing himself, Father Wagner knelt at the altar for a few moments, saying a prayer to prepare himself. He was already carrying his stole so he placed that around his shoulders before returning to sit in the front pew and looking towards Herr Xavier who began without hesitation.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been twenty years since my last confession. In that time, I have murdered three thousand, two hundred and seventy-four people, most of whom were innocents."

Gott in Himmel! He had a lunatic in the church. He cast his mind back quickly to the seminary and discussions on how to deal with the mentally disturbed. At the moment all he could recall was 'humour them' and 'keep them talking'.

"That must be a heavy burden, my ... Herr Xavier. However, I wonder if you are not being overly harsh on yourself. It would be very difficult for any individual to kill that many people." He moved swiftly on, realising that the man might be sensitive to anything that hinted at his lack of physical prowess. "Perhaps there was some accident you feel responsible for. Some warning you feel you should have delivered?"

The enigmatic smile was back as the man spoke.

"You are wondering if I'm mad. You are wondering if I noticed that you were flustered enough to nearly call me your son. You are wondering how a man in a wheelchair could kill anybody. And now you are wondering if a madman could deduce your thoughts so quickly. But you see I don't need to deduce them, I know them."

"You know them?" said Father Wagner doubtfully, before remembering he was supposed to be humouring the man.

"Yes. For you see, I'm a mutant like you. But you cannot see my mutation. It's all up here." Xavier twirled his finger against his head in an ironic parody of the gesture for craziness. "I'm a telepath. I can read thoughts, change minds, control wills, as you will find if you try to leave. That's the other lesson you should have remembered earlier, Father, 'identify your nearest exit'."

Even with the autumn sun shining through the windows, the chill of the stones seemed to reach out as Father Wagner realised that had been his exact thought. He instinctively tried to slide away a little along the wood of the seat, but his muscles refused to obey him. Dawning fear made him angry and reckless with his words.

"But this is such a gift. You could help so many people with this, why choose to kill?"

"The first time I killed, it was not by choice, it was in self-defence. I met another telepath, a man who used his gift, as you call it, to enslave others. He forced them to do his will, leaving them some remnant of consciousness so he could revel in their pain as he raped and tortured them. He recognised me as another telepath and challenged me to a duel. We fought psychically and I triumphed but only by becoming as ruthless as him."

Father Wagner was puzzled by the disgust apparent in Xavier's voice, disgust at the other telepath and at himself. It seemed at odds with the previous cold numeration of his victims.

"You took no pleasure in this killing so why did you kill again? Was your next victim evil as well?"

"No, my next victim was a good man, at least I thought so when I met him. He was a man who had survived the death camps as a child. A man who had seen the evil that men can do to men, yet he chose to serve as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital where I was working. He was a mutant too, a powerful one, able to control magnetism in all its forms. Erik and I became friends and we spent many hours putting the world to rights over a bottle of wine. Of course, we discussed the future of mutants. At that time I was hopeful that we could live side by side with humans, that we could even use our mutations to help make the world a better place. He thought that mutantkind's only hope was for them to hide, that they would never be accepted."

Xavier fell silent, distracted by the memories of his old friend. Father Wagner held his breath and reached, delicately, subtly, deep within to the talent that was uniquely his.

Xavier roused and wagged a finger at him, and the link to his final method of escape dissolved like an icicle in the sun. "Uh-uh, Father, you're not going anywhere. You've still to hear the rest of my confession."

"Then tell me why you killed a friend, a man who you judged as good," pleaded the priest.

"He was a good man. As good a man as you, Father. We parted and did not meet again for some years. When we did he had changed. He still believed that man and mutant could never live together, but now he had determined that the only way mutants would be safe was if they ruled over humanity." Xavier paused and repeated again. "He was a good man, perhaps the best I have ever known. But he turned to evil and if he could, then any man could, any mutant could. That was the key thing, Father, the reason why he had to be destroyed, because he was a mutant. If he had been an ordinary man, I could have turned him over to the authorities. But he was too powerful, he would have killed them all and gone on to wreak devastation upon the world. I realised then that mutants could not be allowed to live. I explained it to him as I struck him down with the power of my mind. As you observed yourself, Father, an ordinary human can only kill so many people, but a mutant? We have the potential to destroy thousands, and there is no one who can stop us unless we stop ourselves."

Father Wagner almost found himself agreeing with the principle. He remembered the mob that had nearly lynched him. How easy it would have been for him to kill some to escape. How easy it had been for his rescuer to slaughter them. Shaken, he said, "There must be other ways."

"Don't you think I have thought hard and long about this? Each evening I pray to God to lift this burden from me, each night my sleep is haunted by the eyes of innocents, but each morning I know that I must continue my work. I have found that mutants give off a unique mental signature, so I can use my telepathy to track them and kill them. I consider it is best if I terminate them in the womb and leave only the sadness of what might have been. Sometimes I do not find them until their mutation has manifested. I face them then, look into their eyes as I tell them why they must die, as I am telling you. They never accept their deaths, they beg, they curse, they rage, they weep. But surely, Father, you can see that I am doing what is right."

Xavier's voice was as desperate as any the priest had heard in the confessional. The difference was Xavier did not seek absolution for his sins but approbation. He felt pain at the deaths he had caused, but no true repentance since he was convinced of the justice of his actions.

Perhaps it was the realisation that he was really going to die today, but Father Wagner suddenly felt filled with calm, with an acceptance of whatever God had ordained for him and he was able to find words to answer his murderer. "I can see you are a man of great faith. I can see you believe totally in what you do, but you have based your belief upon hate and I have put my trust in love. I do not think either of us will live to see who was right, yet I pray my legacy will be more lasting."

Xavier's voice was composed again, cold, almost contemptuous. "What have you left behind that will endure?"

"Only small things, mustard seeds." He meant to fall silent then, knowing that no arguments could sway the strongest faiths, but he found himself continuing as he gave thanks for one final gift. "It will not surprise you that when I first arrived here, many of the congregation spoke against me and would not attend my services. They asked the bishop to remove me, but he said I had the church's approval. Slowly they have started coming back to mass, but some still refuse to attend, and some of those I would judge the most worthy of my congregation since they do not choose to follow the dictates of the church when it contradicts their conscience. I was late to the confessions today because I was visiting the sick. My last visit was to the Zimmermanns. Herr Zimmermann has not set foot in the church since my arrival. He makes the journey each Sunday to the next parish which is twenty miles away. But his wife is an invalid and for the past six years has barely left her bed, let alone the house. From the beginning she asked for me to visit her so she could receive the Eucharist and say her confession. Since Herr Zimmermann has a great love for his wife he sent a message that I should come. On each visit he would leave the house, and I would minister to his wife. When the sacrament was finished we would chat for a while and I would depart without exchanging a word with her husband. Today, we were talking about something and I managed to amaze her with some obscure piece of knowledge. She said, 'Father, I do not know why you waste your time in our little backwater. With your brain you should be in Rome.' I waved my tail at her and replied, 'I did wonder about applying for the post of Devil's Advocate, but there is such a thing as typecasting.' And she laughed. She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks, and her husband came in to see what all the noise was about. She told him the story and he snorted. It is difficult to tell with Herr Zimmermann if a snort indicates scorn or amusement, but when I was leaving, he said, 'See you in mass Sunday.' That was all. No apologies. No great explanation of why he had changed his mind. I had become a priest to him, not a freak. No more needed to be said."

"A charming fable, Father Wagner, but not enough to sway me from my course. No one has been able to do that."

"There is one who can."

"God?"

"Death," replied Father Wagner simply. "Your work will end with your death. The mutants you have killed may leave no descendants, but mutants will not stop being born to normal humans. Humanity will have to learn to live with the strangers among them. In fifty years time the human race will be no better than it was two thousand years ago, so we can only hope that love will prevail."

He turned then and looked towards the crucifix. The sun shining in through the west windows, reflected off the gilded reredos behind the altar, dazzling him as he murmured, "Father, forgive him."

~~~~

Father Wagner was found by two elderly sisters when they arrived for the evening mass. Although they were shocked at finding his dead body sitting upright in one of the pews staring fixedly at the high altar, they were also quick with the story of how transcendent his expression appeared.

The devout murmured that he had been called to serve in heaven, while the more secular still expressed regret upon hearing the mundane news that he had suffered one of the strokes which seemed so prevalent among mutants.

The bishop came to officiate at his funeral and the church was packed with almost the entire population of the surrounding district. Many were surprised at seeing Herr Zimmermann, since his opposition to Father Wagner's appointment had been well known, but the entrance of his wife was a matter of neck-craning astonishment. Her husband had constructed a wooden litter for her. A neighbour came forward with a truck large enough to carry the litter. Other neighbours lifted her into the truck, and when they arrived at the service, yet more people came forward to lift her down and carry her into the church.

News reporters salivated over this colourful detail and were quick to pounce on the participants when they left. The word 'miracle' was even mentioned, which caused Herr Zimmermann to snort and say, "Father Wagner was no saint. He was a good priest and a good man, and that is how he should be remembered."

And so he was.

THE END

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