X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #4

Sally Floyd muses that everyone remembers where they were when it happened. She wishes she didn’t. “It” refers to the space force frigate Agnew being sent to attack the Sentinel facility about to destroy humanity.

She was sitting in front of the TV with her partner, Daniel. He asked her to turn it down. What could be more important than the apocalypse? she asked, to be told this was classic avoidance behavior. He was referring to the fact she’d been drinking again. Annoyed, Sally snapped, it was one slip. She just needed to forget for a little while.

That moment, the Agnew self-destructed.

Danny left later that night, because of her secrets. Somehow, amid all the yelling and crying, they missed the moment when the Krakoans saved them all. They steered their own SWORD station into the Sentinel factory and the whole world cheered.

Until Charles Xaiver confessed to the murder of twelve innocent people.

The Sentinels had struck a devil’s bargain with Xavier that mutantkind would be spared. So, he made the Agnew’s X.O blow up his own ship.

Sally’s daughter Minnie was a mutant. When she died, Sally threw herself into journalism. In many ways, her whole career was shaped by Xavier’s dream of peaceful coexistence. The journalist in her can’t help but wonder why a man like that would betray his ideals completely.

Not much later, she is on a train, on her way into the city and looks at her phone, scrolling through the chat between her and her boss Ben Urich about the meeting with Warren Worthington - mutant and onetime boyfriend. The chat ends with Urich urging her not to blow this, or he won’t be able to help her.

While on the train, she looks through several files on Xavier, musing there have always been red flags: for example sending a group of teenagers to battle evil mutants.

Or Danger: an advanced Shi’ar A. I. held captive, its sentience ignored, all because he needed a training simulator for his child army.

Then the Xavier Protocols: detailed protocols on the lethal extermination of his own X-Men.

And finally, the short-lived second X-Men team. Slaughtered on their attempt to save their predecessors. And then he wiped everyone’s memory of the mission.

Sally ignores the woman standing next to her who spits on the photo of Xavier. She gets up, as another woman snaps, that creep ought to be given the chair!

Sally gets off the train and muses, these days every seems to agree Charles Xavier is a monster. But she has done her homework: What about the guy who telepathically flung his thug stepbrother to safety seconds before a brutal car wreck? And the X-Men lay their lives on the line for an ungrateful world. Doesn’t he deserve credit for that?

And his dream has cost him so much. He lost the use of his legs, liberating an entire city from a tyrant. Over the years, he lost so much more. A wife. A son. His whole life in ten thousand and a half words isn’t possible. At least not without help.

She meets Warren Worthington in the Union Club.

Who is Charles Xavier? Warren muses. He isn’t sure even Charles knows. Obsessed with control, yet wholly incapable of governing his own passions. The great egalitarian who left their galaxy to act as consort to an empress.

Sally chides him that this is unhelpful. She explains that Urich threw her a line with this article, because he thinks she is the mutant whisperer. But she can’t get a handle on Xavier. Angel was one of his original students. What does he think?

He thinks that she should start here. He hands her a book – The Once and Future King by T.H White, Xavier’s favorite novel. He’s obsessed with Arthurian tales, Shelves of them in his office. Thomas Malory, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Tennyson, Steinbeck…

Sally asks if Xavier ever told them why White is his favorite. Warren figures it’s because Arthur learns about various systems of governance from Merlyn, and he uses that knowledge to build a doomed utopia. Sound familiar? They used to think Charles saw himself as Merlyn – cursed with foreknowledge, so he could guide them to the promised land. They’d fight over who got to be Arthur in that half-serious adolescent way, but they all knew it was Cyclops. Then Krakoa happened and what they thought they knew went out the window. It was Moira MacTaggert cursed with foreknowledge, not Charles. So, if Charles saw himself as Arthur, then who was Cycl…

Warren breaks off suddenly, overcome with a strong nosebleed. He leaves for the restroom and ends the conversation. He asks her to give Danny his best, and Sally realizes she told nobody about the break-up.

She is back at home on the couch, surrounded by half-finished jigsaws and bottles of alcohol. She figures the pieces don’t fit together, so she goes back to the basics. If she can’t start with the man, she’ll s art wit the event – the Agnew!

As she looks at the list of crew members, she recalls the names of the writers Warren mentioned and sees that they and the crew members share the same last names: White, Malory, Clemens, Monmouth and more. What has Charles done? she wonders.