Elizabeth My Dear
Disclaimer: The characters (notably the Braddock twins and the X-Men) and settings mostly belong to Marvel. The title, chapter headings, and any unlabelled song lyrics, come from songs from the Stone Roses' 'Stone Roses' album, and I'd like to add that the three things to do before you die are make peace with your children, empty your wine cellar, and listen to the Stone Roses. They are the Metatron. The story belongs to me, although most of the key elements are drastically unoriginal. This is my way of resurrecting Psylocke. I've done anger, now witness a denial.
There is a plot, but the first chapter is establishing. You know how it is.
Other Note: Feedback will be greeted with delight – It makes my cold, cold heart hop up and down in my (beautifully well-defined) chest. Requests for archivist's rights will be greeted with gratitude, and virtual homemade baked goods. Marriage proposals will be greeted with scorn, unless you bear a more than passing resemblance to Gina Gershon, Kurt Cobain or Eliza Dushku. Unmarked, non-sequential, used banknotes will be greeted with an open wallet and no questions asked.
I: I am the Resurrection
Don't waste your words
I don't need anything from you
I don't care where you've been or
What you plan to do.
'Brian?'
'Betsy?'
'What, exactly, is going on?'
'I resurrected you. You see, Roma went crazy and I led an assault on the Otherworld, and now I'm ruler of the Omniverse, and Meggan decided that I was neglecting her and she needed some space, and I got so lonely up here alone –'
'You – resurrected me?'
'Well, yes. It was the least I could do, seeing as you'd just been killed. I left Vargas alive, by the way – I thought you'd want to get revenge for yourself. But could you stay here a while? Just until Meggan comes back?'
There was a momentary pause, as Elizabeth Braddock, former Supermodel, Pilot, Secret Agent, Captain Britain, Ninja Assassin, X-Man and corpse, absorbed the monumental pigheadedness of her twin brother Brian, former Engineer, Athlete, Captain Britain, Alcoholic, Phoenix-Removing Plot Device and current Ruler of the Omniverse and Crappy Husband Extraordinaire. Then she took a few moments longer to absorb the facts that Vargas killed her, that she's back in her blonde British body, that she's a telepath and not a telekinetic, that the Shadow King is very definitely no longer contained within her head, and that her brother's wife has walked out on him and he has therefore resurrected her as a replacement.
She decided to address the most important issue first.
'And you're just sitting here, brooding, hoping for her to come back?'
'No! No, I brought you here. As – as a temporary replacement.'
'Alright. First of all, brother dear, I was dead, and, while I'm very happy to be alive, bringing me back definitely counts as contravening the natural order, in other words not living up to the responsibility of your newfound powers –' Brian looked like he was about to interrupt, and she held up a hand to forestall him. 'Second, if you for one moment meant that bit about replacing your wife in any way other than for companionship then, cosmic powers or none, I'll leave you singing soprano. And third, and most importantly, when the woman you love walks out on you, don't try and replace her, go out and win her back. She fell in love with you long before you noticed her – though what she saw in you is anybody's guess – and stayed with you through your drinking, so for her to feel neglected you must have been even more of an arse than your usual.' This harangue was seriously disconcerting Brian. 'So, take us both home, ask around her friends 'till you find where she is now, and then start wooing her.'
Brian really could not think of any argument, and began meekly to comply. As the siblings walked towards the portal to Braddock Manor, the telepath latterly known as Psylocke was struck by an idea.
'Also, if you're going to be busy ruling the Omniverse and romancing Meggan, and seeing as I'm now legally me again and no longer risking my life on a daily basis, you could hand over control of the family investments to me, couldn't you?'
The portal glowed white briefly, and they were gone.
It took Elizabeth Braddock the best part of a week to sort her life out. She had been dead, she discovered, for less than two months. For the first couple of days she had Brian hanging around her almost twenty-four/seven, so she bullied him into looking for Meggan. They promptly ran across the problem that, as far as he knew, his wife didn't have any friends except the former members of Excalibur, who could now be divided into dead, untraceable or with the X-Men (and Betsy didn't want to talk to them just yet). They were actually on the verge of giving up the whole idea for the moment, when Feron wandered through and commented that apparently Magik had been looking for Brian a couple of days before. After that it was fairly simple for Brian to use his recently gained powers to contact Limbo, and Amanda was able to point him towards some possible locations in the English countryside where Meggan might have gone to unwind and let herself feel more like herself. After that Elizabeth pretty much forced him to start touring the beauty spots of Britain with a picnic hamper and two tickets to the ballet of 'Romeo and Juliet'.
Then there was the wardrobe. Brian had resurrected her almost exactly as she had been before her merging with Kwannon, with the additional bonus of hyping up her Fay half so that instead of being merely extremely long-lived and permanently youthful she was permanently ageless. Therefore, not only did all the clothes she had left in Braddock Manor still fit, they would continue to fit for as long as she kept in shape. The problem, though, was that they were the clothes of a fashion model, as of five and a half years previously. In 1996 they would have been perfect; in 2001 they just looked ridiculous.
Then there were her old skills. In her most recent body she had casually neglected much of her training in espionage and intelligence work, as well as the various job skills of a professional clothes horse (which did include a working knowledge of French and Italian, as well as the ability to completely change her hairstyle in less than five minutes), in favour of the various martial arts abilities inherited from the assassin Kwannon. Unfortunately those abilities had come with that body which, though a similar height and weight, had had a rather different build. Betsy found that her current body, though strong and extremely healthy, lacked the coordination and fine muscular control of the previous one. She needed to retrain, badly.
By the fifth day she had worked out a training program for herself to rebuild her old skills – she wasn't sure why, as she was, for the moment, happy to be retired from the superhero lifestyle (not that the action side wasn't fun – except when you got impaled on gigantic swords – or the travel fascinating, but the testosterone count around the mansion had been astounding lately, and she'd found herself in danger of becoming co- dependent), but it seemed the sensible thing to do – and decided that she needed to sort out some clothes. She considered starting simple, nipping in to the nearest town to visit a high street clothes shop or even going round to Oxfam (and dropping off all of her old outfits while she was at it). Instead, she called several of her favourite fashion designers and cordially invited them to drop everything and rush to accommodate the fabulously wealthy model who had just resurfaced after five years in the wilderness (she told them she'd needed space; they nodded and smiled and thought vicious thoughts, and she discreetly encouraged their supposition that she had actually been in rehab), and then drove herself round to visit an old friend from her STRIKE days, who agreed to make her several discreet sets of lightweight body armour – a girl can't be too careful, in this modern world.
Eight days after her return from the dead, half an hour after receiving Brian and Meggan's postcard from Wakanda, Elizabeth Braddock switched on the television to catch the second half of the news, and saw her former lover, Warren Kenneth Worthington III, lecturing the G8 summit on mutancy.
He was wearing, she noticed, a great suit.
Always naturally inquisitive, she watched the broadcast in its entirety, and then went online to see what else she could find out about his recent movements. It wasn't that she wasn't utterly and completely over the blue- skinned stud, but she was interested in what had been up with the team while she had been in Spain, and then dead.
Although she would not have admitted it, Betsy was lonely. Feron was no kind of companion, the manor hadn't retained a household staff since Brian moved out to the Otherworld, and all old friends were fashion models (and would have forgotten her in the last five years), STRIKE agents (and therefore far too paranoid to accept her reappearance) or X-Men. If she had had a Cerebro, she reflected, she could have located Kitty Pryde, her only independent friend, and she realised it was kind of pathetic that she really had no kind of life to come back to.
The X-Men had become her life, but, more than that, the X-Men were her friends.
She had been back more than a week, and they would still think she was dead. Her teammates would still be mourning her[1], Thunderbird would still be bereaved[2], and she still didn't know how Beast and Rogue were.
She was astonished at how selfish she'd been. She might not rejoin them, but she should at least let them know.
Unfortunately she had no idea how to find the Xtreme X-Men. They certainly weren't in Spain anymore, and her rudimentary hacking skills didn't get her close to finding where they'd ended up. Once more she found herself wishing for a Cerebro, and then wishing they hadn't fixed it so Cerebro couldn't find them. She'd thrown her computer chair across the room and demonstrated the fact that she'd already learned some basic Wing Chun on a handy partition wall before it occurred to her to take the indirect solution. It then occurred to her that the reason she'd been putting off thinking about it was that she simply didn't want to admit that that was what she wanted.
It took her less than an hour to find out where Warren – and therefore his X-Men team – was staying, and she promptly ordered a first-class ticket to Paris. Psylocke was packed and ready to go in record time.
Finding Warren's location was not difficult – it was the only corporate office block in Paris with a stealth jet parked on the roof. Getting in proved another matter entirely. The security staff, she realised quickly, had very specific instructions about admitting attractive young women claiming an 'interest' in their employer. After ten extremely frustrating minutes of half a dozen security guards trying to shove her out of the building (and cop a feel while they were at it), she resorted to projecting into their minds the belief that Archangel had ordered them to let her in.
Before taking the lift, she did allow herself the satisfaction of kicking the most lecherous of them in the groin with finely calculated force. Then she went straight up to the penthouse.
At the top she pushed past Chamber – who, she reminded herself, could have no idea who she was – and smiled at Iceman (who'd never really met her like this either, but had seen pictures as well as Revanche), who reacted by sitting down heavily. She moved over to the balcony – Warren always liked to be out in the open air – and stood watching her old paramour, who finished speaking on the 'phone and turned to see what the distraction was.
His mouth fell open and stayed there.
'Hey, Blue Angel.' She greeted him. 'Looks like I'm secretly a Summers after all.'
It was, she reflected, one of her better entrances.
----------------------- [1] Shyeah, right. Take a look at X-Treme X-Men 5+ to see how overcome with grief, guilt and vengeful anger at her killer Storm and company aren't. I mean, seriously, someone kills one of your friends you hunt him down and rip his entrails out through his arse. And if he's too much of a badass (and you're in the MU) you hire Deadpool, Belladonna (if she's alive this week) and Bullseye to do the job for you.
[2] So bereaved he'll hop into bed with the first Australian megamutant to come his way. And to think I was beginning to like the scumball.
Disclaimer: The characters (notably the Braddock twins and the X-Men) and settings mostly belong to Marvel. The title, chapter headings, and any unlabelled song lyrics, come from songs from the Stone Roses' 'Stone Roses' album, and I'd like to add that the three things to do before you die are make peace with your children, empty your wine cellar, and listen to the Stone Roses. They are the Metatron. The story belongs to me, although most of the key elements are drastically unoriginal. This is my way of resurrecting Psylocke. I've done anger, now witness a denial.
There is a plot, but the first chapter is establishing. You know how it is.
Other Note: Feedback will be greeted with delight – It makes my cold, cold heart hop up and down in my (beautifully well-defined) chest. Requests for archivist's rights will be greeted with gratitude, and virtual homemade baked goods. Marriage proposals will be greeted with scorn, unless you bear a more than passing resemblance to Gina Gershon, Kurt Cobain or Eliza Dushku. Unmarked, non-sequential, used banknotes will be greeted with an open wallet and no questions asked.
I: I am the Resurrection
Don't waste your words
I don't need anything from you
I don't care where you've been or
What you plan to do.
'Brian?'
'Betsy?'
'What, exactly, is going on?'
'I resurrected you. You see, Roma went crazy and I led an assault on the Otherworld, and now I'm ruler of the Omniverse, and Meggan decided that I was neglecting her and she needed some space, and I got so lonely up here alone –'
'You – resurrected me?'
'Well, yes. It was the least I could do, seeing as you'd just been killed. I left Vargas alive, by the way – I thought you'd want to get revenge for yourself. But could you stay here a while? Just until Meggan comes back?'
There was a momentary pause, as Elizabeth Braddock, former Supermodel, Pilot, Secret Agent, Captain Britain, Ninja Assassin, X-Man and corpse, absorbed the monumental pigheadedness of her twin brother Brian, former Engineer, Athlete, Captain Britain, Alcoholic, Phoenix-Removing Plot Device and current Ruler of the Omniverse and Crappy Husband Extraordinaire. Then she took a few moments longer to absorb the facts that Vargas killed her, that she's back in her blonde British body, that she's a telepath and not a telekinetic, that the Shadow King is very definitely no longer contained within her head, and that her brother's wife has walked out on him and he has therefore resurrected her as a replacement.
She decided to address the most important issue first.
'And you're just sitting here, brooding, hoping for her to come back?'
'No! No, I brought you here. As – as a temporary replacement.'
'Alright. First of all, brother dear, I was dead, and, while I'm very happy to be alive, bringing me back definitely counts as contravening the natural order, in other words not living up to the responsibility of your newfound powers –' Brian looked like he was about to interrupt, and she held up a hand to forestall him. 'Second, if you for one moment meant that bit about replacing your wife in any way other than for companionship then, cosmic powers or none, I'll leave you singing soprano. And third, and most importantly, when the woman you love walks out on you, don't try and replace her, go out and win her back. She fell in love with you long before you noticed her – though what she saw in you is anybody's guess – and stayed with you through your drinking, so for her to feel neglected you must have been even more of an arse than your usual.' This harangue was seriously disconcerting Brian. 'So, take us both home, ask around her friends 'till you find where she is now, and then start wooing her.'
Brian really could not think of any argument, and began meekly to comply. As the siblings walked towards the portal to Braddock Manor, the telepath latterly known as Psylocke was struck by an idea.
'Also, if you're going to be busy ruling the Omniverse and romancing Meggan, and seeing as I'm now legally me again and no longer risking my life on a daily basis, you could hand over control of the family investments to me, couldn't you?'
The portal glowed white briefly, and they were gone.
It took Elizabeth Braddock the best part of a week to sort her life out. She had been dead, she discovered, for less than two months. For the first couple of days she had Brian hanging around her almost twenty-four/seven, so she bullied him into looking for Meggan. They promptly ran across the problem that, as far as he knew, his wife didn't have any friends except the former members of Excalibur, who could now be divided into dead, untraceable or with the X-Men (and Betsy didn't want to talk to them just yet). They were actually on the verge of giving up the whole idea for the moment, when Feron wandered through and commented that apparently Magik had been looking for Brian a couple of days before. After that it was fairly simple for Brian to use his recently gained powers to contact Limbo, and Amanda was able to point him towards some possible locations in the English countryside where Meggan might have gone to unwind and let herself feel more like herself. After that Elizabeth pretty much forced him to start touring the beauty spots of Britain with a picnic hamper and two tickets to the ballet of 'Romeo and Juliet'.
Then there was the wardrobe. Brian had resurrected her almost exactly as she had been before her merging with Kwannon, with the additional bonus of hyping up her Fay half so that instead of being merely extremely long-lived and permanently youthful she was permanently ageless. Therefore, not only did all the clothes she had left in Braddock Manor still fit, they would continue to fit for as long as she kept in shape. The problem, though, was that they were the clothes of a fashion model, as of five and a half years previously. In 1996 they would have been perfect; in 2001 they just looked ridiculous.
Then there were her old skills. In her most recent body she had casually neglected much of her training in espionage and intelligence work, as well as the various job skills of a professional clothes horse (which did include a working knowledge of French and Italian, as well as the ability to completely change her hairstyle in less than five minutes), in favour of the various martial arts abilities inherited from the assassin Kwannon. Unfortunately those abilities had come with that body which, though a similar height and weight, had had a rather different build. Betsy found that her current body, though strong and extremely healthy, lacked the coordination and fine muscular control of the previous one. She needed to retrain, badly.
By the fifth day she had worked out a training program for herself to rebuild her old skills – she wasn't sure why, as she was, for the moment, happy to be retired from the superhero lifestyle (not that the action side wasn't fun – except when you got impaled on gigantic swords – or the travel fascinating, but the testosterone count around the mansion had been astounding lately, and she'd found herself in danger of becoming co- dependent), but it seemed the sensible thing to do – and decided that she needed to sort out some clothes. She considered starting simple, nipping in to the nearest town to visit a high street clothes shop or even going round to Oxfam (and dropping off all of her old outfits while she was at it). Instead, she called several of her favourite fashion designers and cordially invited them to drop everything and rush to accommodate the fabulously wealthy model who had just resurfaced after five years in the wilderness (she told them she'd needed space; they nodded and smiled and thought vicious thoughts, and she discreetly encouraged their supposition that she had actually been in rehab), and then drove herself round to visit an old friend from her STRIKE days, who agreed to make her several discreet sets of lightweight body armour – a girl can't be too careful, in this modern world.
Eight days after her return from the dead, half an hour after receiving Brian and Meggan's postcard from Wakanda, Elizabeth Braddock switched on the television to catch the second half of the news, and saw her former lover, Warren Kenneth Worthington III, lecturing the G8 summit on mutancy.
He was wearing, she noticed, a great suit.
Always naturally inquisitive, she watched the broadcast in its entirety, and then went online to see what else she could find out about his recent movements. It wasn't that she wasn't utterly and completely over the blue- skinned stud, but she was interested in what had been up with the team while she had been in Spain, and then dead.
Although she would not have admitted it, Betsy was lonely. Feron was no kind of companion, the manor hadn't retained a household staff since Brian moved out to the Otherworld, and all old friends were fashion models (and would have forgotten her in the last five years), STRIKE agents (and therefore far too paranoid to accept her reappearance) or X-Men. If she had had a Cerebro, she reflected, she could have located Kitty Pryde, her only independent friend, and she realised it was kind of pathetic that she really had no kind of life to come back to.
The X-Men had become her life, but, more than that, the X-Men were her friends.
She had been back more than a week, and they would still think she was dead. Her teammates would still be mourning her[1], Thunderbird would still be bereaved[2], and she still didn't know how Beast and Rogue were.
She was astonished at how selfish she'd been. She might not rejoin them, but she should at least let them know.
Unfortunately she had no idea how to find the Xtreme X-Men. They certainly weren't in Spain anymore, and her rudimentary hacking skills didn't get her close to finding where they'd ended up. Once more she found herself wishing for a Cerebro, and then wishing they hadn't fixed it so Cerebro couldn't find them. She'd thrown her computer chair across the room and demonstrated the fact that she'd already learned some basic Wing Chun on a handy partition wall before it occurred to her to take the indirect solution. It then occurred to her that the reason she'd been putting off thinking about it was that she simply didn't want to admit that that was what she wanted.
It took her less than an hour to find out where Warren – and therefore his X-Men team – was staying, and she promptly ordered a first-class ticket to Paris. Psylocke was packed and ready to go in record time.
Finding Warren's location was not difficult – it was the only corporate office block in Paris with a stealth jet parked on the roof. Getting in proved another matter entirely. The security staff, she realised quickly, had very specific instructions about admitting attractive young women claiming an 'interest' in their employer. After ten extremely frustrating minutes of half a dozen security guards trying to shove her out of the building (and cop a feel while they were at it), she resorted to projecting into their minds the belief that Archangel had ordered them to let her in.
Before taking the lift, she did allow herself the satisfaction of kicking the most lecherous of them in the groin with finely calculated force. Then she went straight up to the penthouse.
At the top she pushed past Chamber – who, she reminded herself, could have no idea who she was – and smiled at Iceman (who'd never really met her like this either, but had seen pictures as well as Revanche), who reacted by sitting down heavily. She moved over to the balcony – Warren always liked to be out in the open air – and stood watching her old paramour, who finished speaking on the 'phone and turned to see what the distraction was.
His mouth fell open and stayed there.
'Hey, Blue Angel.' She greeted him. 'Looks like I'm secretly a Summers after all.'
It was, she reflected, one of her better entrances.
----------------------- [1] Shyeah, right. Take a look at X-Treme X-Men 5+ to see how overcome with grief, guilt and vengeful anger at her killer Storm and company aren't. I mean, seriously, someone kills one of your friends you hunt him down and rip his entrails out through his arse. And if he's too much of a badass (and you're in the MU) you hire Deadpool, Belladonna (if she's alive this week) and Bullseye to do the job for you.
[2] So bereaved he'll hop into bed with the first Australian megamutant to come his way. And to think I was beginning to like the scumball.