Genosha

[x-gambit.livejournal.com]

We're about to go into a meeting with Xavier, but I felt that the situation requires a word.

We have all been hit where we live by an enemy that we don't have a handle on yet. For all intents and purposes, we could be at war with a nation state. They seem to know who we are and some of what we do, and that is a very scary thing. Anonymity and misdirection has always been the greatest security that the mansion and the school have had. If that's been ripped away, we're vulnerable like we've never been before. The reaction to being scared is to get angry, and the natural evolution of that is to get reckless and react as opposed to think.

I'm going to underline this. They hit us where we live and took the very people we're most committed to defending as leverage against us. The reaction is to want to visit bloody vengance on anyone who has so much as ever heard the name Genosha.

This is what we can't do. Personal isn't the same as important, and making this personal goes down a path that you don't get to step off of. Genosha wants to stop us, stop Xaviers, make sure what we do here never gets in their way again. If we allow ourselves to let our personal feelings dictate how we respond, it will destroy everything that's been built here as surely as if Genosha put a bullet in each one of us.

You know what I used to be. I wasn't born that way. I didn't become a monster because I was bad from the start. Neither did Erik Lensherr. Both of us let our reactions dictate our responses, until we lost all sight of what was reasonable, and simply were willing to kill because anyone dared slight us. Any method was alright because 'how dare they' never needed to be justified.

We will get our people back. And those responsible will pay for what they've done, whether its tomorrow or a decade from now. We will not forget. But, take a moment to remember what you believed when you came here, as teachers or students or X-Men. Remember the line that you drew in the sand that seperates you from the Brotherhood in the first place before revenge blurs it. All of us made our choice at one time or another. Remember why you made yours, before you decide what Genosha deserves from you for this.