Uncanny X-Men #389

Publisher
Marvel
Year
2001
Month
1
LastChanged
1/26/2024 9:50:54 PM
The Good Shepherd

Summary

  Note: this occurs after X-Men II:108.

  Xavier works out, swinging on rings, swimming in the pool, and thinking about recent set-backs: Moira and Sen. Kelly murdered; a young mutant in Texas, Serafina Montoya, also murdered; Rogue's power dangerously mutated; Cecelia addicted to Rave.

  Moira had been buried by family and friends in Scotland; Kelly with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

  Xavier remembers meeting Moira Kinross, at Oxford at a lecture by a brilliant geneticist whose mind Xavier couldn't read (Milbury, perhaps?). Xavier was already bald; Moira was dating a Royal Marine, Joe MacTaggert (here misspelled MacTaggart), but she invited Xavier to ride motorcycles with them to Devon for the weekend. Xavier sensed she was attracted to him and Joe wanted to punch him. He went, more interested in standing up to a bully than in getting the girl. Moira told him she's attracted to Joe's recklessness.

  In a local pub, Joe started making out with Moira, getting them kicked out. She tosses Xavier the keys to her bike, and he stays, but hears a telepathic warning. He raced the bike through a storm and found Joe with his crashed bike, wounded but all right. He found Moira telepathically, they instantly fell in love, and she broke up with Joe.

  In the Danger Room, Cecelia hallucinates and rages as she goes through withdrawal. Kurt teleports himself, Neal, and Betsy out of the way when her force field spikes crash through the control room window. Betsy tries to contain her with TK and calls Xavier.

  Xavier remembers first talking to Cecelia. She didn't want to be a mutant, and he said there's no choice, like being a Puerto Rican woman. He asked her why she became a doctor: her father was shot dead in front of her and she couldn't help him. She asked him why he started the X-Men: he remembers the war (now looking more like Vietnam than Korea).

  Xavier enlisted to prove his manliness to Joe and worked in search and rescue, becoming a legend and receiving the nickname "The Good Shepherd." Moira sent him a Dear John (different from the "someone like me" one in iss. 309) a month before their wedding. On his next mission, Xavier tripped a land mine. He lay there, wounded in body and heart, then got up and completed his rescue mission. Ever since, he has lived for the futures of others.

  Rogue takes Logan to snoop in Kitty's room (MIA since X-Men II:100). They see her photo collection of dead friends, and Rogue says Kitty left her a letter telling her about Destiny's diary, volume 7 of 13. They read and find themselves in it, then see Remy trying to kill Mystique in the infirmary of the Federal super-hero prison on Long Island.

  Ororo sneaks in as well and stops him. Mystique, speaking around the tube in her mouth, says their fate is sealed. At age 13, Destiny's power manifested, and she compulsively wrote 13 cryptic diaries that year. When she finished, she was blind. She and Mystique spent years trying to decipher them, but were unable to change anything.

  Mystique gave the diaries she still had to Xavier, to let him play Cassandra for a while. Ororo and Remy ask for proof: she tells them to ask Logan and Rogue, who have read this conversation in the diary.

  The mansion shakes, and Xavier knows it's time for him to help Cecelia help herself. He enters the Danger Room, and she lashes out at him, while Betsy, Kurt, and Hank vainly try to protect him. He talks to Cecelia, saying they're both doctors (since when is Xavier a medical doctor?). He says the drug is an excuse for her to lash out: her real fear is of being a mutant. She calms down and apologizes; he says, "You're not really part of the team until you've trashed the Danger Room."

  The dream lives.

  Mini-Rant: "The Good Shepherd" is an appellation of Jesus Christ (John 10:11). Xavier was Onslaught. 'Nuff said.