Journey to Hell
Note and Disclaimer: I obviously don't own anything, like characters and plots, from X-Men, but the extra characters are obviously mine. This is now the third story of two of the series, "Unspoken", hoping to end by "Days of Future Past". It'll be boring in some parts, with a mix of first (Danielle) and third person, but when there's always a great future to think about, there has to be tragedy and hope as well. Enjoy!
September 25, 2008
I am home.
It has been a little more than month since I walked through the house I've owned since I was eighteen, a house in which holds no meaning to me anymore, not since the worst days went behind me and the best had yet to become a dream. I mean, with so many people now milling in and out of here, it's a wonder that most of us haven't been caught, as I had…or can be ransomed and recaptured, like Storm or Hank. This house now has laughter and tears, friends and family, but most of all, it has the people I never thought to see again.
It's also a house that holds too much for me. There has been birth and death here, but there also has been a price that most of us could not pay. It is a house I would gladly leave and with the bittersweet tears I hope never to shed. I can still walk away.
I sit here in my bedroom, locked away from the others except for my children. In the month or so I've been gone, all three have gotten into the habit of sleeping in my and Logan's bed, most likely for comfort and smelling my pillow (Riley mostly, his nose stuck in the middle when Logan carried in me). While they had been quiet in their greetings, they hugged me closely nonetheless, Devon included. Now, as I try to lie on my side of the bed, I have three others contesting for space (well, four technically), one of them an eighteen-year-old carving a walking stick on Logan's side of the bed. While I find this amusing (and cannot read the markings), I remember that even the tightest of spaces could not hold me back from what I dreamed of…what I wished…and what I always hoped would happen.
However, even I find that everything can come true…just not in the happy ending one always asks for.
~00~
After seeing Danielle off to bed with the children crowding her (annoyed enough that he had no time with her since he got home an hour before), Logan came down into the kitchen, watching the sun dip into the western skies. He felt mentally exhausted. After over two weeks of scouting, being captured and rescuing and killing, he returned home to the farmhouse with his mate, but he felt it too high of a price. It had been almost a month and a half since Danielle had mysterious disappeared and was saved by him. But it had been those days in captivity, those two weeks away from home, that he had to suffer for her, counting those moments of his plan in which he would overcome those guards, run into the room she was held in and run out, killing anyone blindly in his sight and allowing the other prisoners to escape behind them. After a few days on the road and being home now, seeing that Danielle and their unborn child were out of harm's way, he began to plan once more.
Logan had schemed like an old, seasoned soldier…and he was determined to still win, no matter the odds of survival had been. He had been taught many, many years ago that there was always a zero chance for endurance, even if that chance came to him very few times. But if he had the ability to heal and to age slowly, why couldn't he make the same odds for another who was mortal by choice?
Grabbing the stool from underneath the island, Logan sat down. He put his head into his hands to rub out the memories of his trip, unwilling to imagine the horror he and Danielle had to face together for a short period of time, and shook them all free. He then heard a familiar, gentle noise behind him, but he was not ready to talk, even if the other was. He turned around to face the old man in the wheelchair nonetheless, putting a smile on his face that hopefully would ward his company away. Logan doubted that though.
"Did she say anything about who they were and what they were after?" Charles Xavier asked Logan, folding his old, wizened hands together.
"No, but I think I figured it out," Logan replied stoically. "Shiny government agents with a new assignment. Without knowing, we were targeted again. And it wasn't the Ellis family that was after her – us – this time."
"Trask, you think?"
"Most certainly, Professor. The elder Ferris brother took over what the Ellis family had worked so hard for and has been the puppet master since. Already, without the media reporting and chitchat about, there have been more openings in new agencies to bring down the mutants, all of them created by the president with Trask behind him, whispering in his little ear. Transports have started up again and newer and better camps are running. Thankfully, Kansas still has a hole in the ground."
"And the place where Danielle was taken?"
Logan again rubbed his eyes, this time to get the dirt out of them. "A prison-like hole in which they want the most powerful mutants to be tortured, forgotten and killed. After we came back from Kansas, I think someone put two and two together and began with Danielle and just liked me too much to let me go when found in the woods. Local rumors don't help much either. And hell, they have more in that prison than just her. All of them managed to escape after us though."
Xavier nodded. Ever since arriving here with Magneto just before Danielle was kidnapped, he was trying to come to an understanding about where the world was heading, especially here in the United States. He and his old friend barely made it into the country and were just able to reach the farmhouse during one of the happiest times yet. Summer was still underway in those early August days, a springtime youth had taken over amidst the chaos and a closer familial tie had brought all of them together. Even with the usual arguing between Logan and Hank (and sometimes Roger Mortimer), all had been well.
That is, until that day Danielle decided to go out shopping alone. With her convertible fixed (she and Logan had been working on it for some time before then), she felt freer to go into town and grab things they needed without the kids tagging along. However, when she did not return home after nightfall that day and could not be reached through any links, everyone began to worry. It was not until a picture of her naked and chained, along with a warning not to mettle, had been posted to the porch door that they knew the worst had happened. Worst of all, it seemed, there was a mutant in the community that had betrayed her, one in which knew her so well and had wished her the best beforehand, even if his intentions seemed a little off-handed.
And Xavier knew that Logan would have hunted them all down and killed them at any cost in order to save Danielle, save for the one who betrayed her (the honor would be Logan's, if the mutant had it his way, but Danielle would do since it was a person she knew). It had taken a week of planning (after two and a half weeks of moping and feeling sorry for himself in the bedroom with the kids) and another two weeks to get in and come back, but they both made it back alive. Well, it was all three, if Xavier wanted to count Danielle and their unborn baby.
"We have more to worry about then, don't we?" Xavier asked, feeling that he was stating the obvious.
"I guess so," Logan replied, trying not to let his mind think. He always hated to get ahead of himself. "And I think they'll come back if we don't hurry. It's about time to start to think about splitting up."
"And rightfully so." Magneto had entered the kitchen from the living room, trying hard not to overhear the conversation, but feeling the need to come into it anyway without the others hearing when they came home. "I think Danielle has been trying to push us towards that, Charles."
"I know." Xavier had remembered the first conversation he had with Danielle in years. She urged him to think over separating them more, to keep in contact when they could, but Xavier thought them safe for now. His refusal almost meant her life.
"Do you think we should think of such things now?" Logan asked, his eyes trained to the stairs. "We might need a few days to regroup and rethink our action plan."
Magneto had no mercy. "And give them time to do the same? No, Wolverine, I think we need less than a few days. Bags have been packed. Groups can be determined at a later point. The destinations remain to be seen, although I am sensing a long trip south of Mexico for us."
"South America?" Xavier was confused.
"Trask has built a new co-called detention center there for mutants," Magneto informed them, Logan's eyes still concentrated on the stairs and not on the latest hate. "I think if we strike there, we might have more on our side. Already, from what Rogue has said, there are three mutants from the Kansas camp who are willing to fight with us."
"Blink," Logan recalled, seeing the purple portals in his mind from a mission past. "And there are two more, but I can't remember their names."
"We'll figure it out soon enough," Xavier said with a wave of his hand. "We'll have everyone together for a meeting. If the South American camp is true, we can easily run it around and have those in there be in charge and overturn it. Roger Mortimer can help us with it."
Magneto's face turned into one of disgust, but he kept his opinions to himself this time, willing himself not to have to fight with the master spy, Roger "Firebird" Mortimer. Still bitter from all the events from the past forty years onward, Magneto had been one to voice his extreme words and send others to help in his dirty words, battling with Roger for years too. He had escaped more prisons than he could count, destroyed government agencies bent on killing the mutants and still managed to be the same terrorist everyone thought he was since 1962. Now, with the peaceful deal he made with Xavier after the events at Alcatraz, he was coping with his past…and bending to make the future better, even if it meant more killing and dealing with someone he hated. Xavier was soon seeing it the same way.
"And Mae and her son?" Magneto asked in general, his thoughts too on the wife and son Roger was going to be leaving behind. "What about them?"
"Sacrifices have to be made, Erik, you know that," Xavier pointed out. "Roger Mortimer still holds control over many of Phineas Teller's men, as well as his own. He is only person we know that can devise a plan to help us on a whim. He can rejoin his family at a later time."
"We just need to find him," Logan added, although he was not sure where Roger was. Nobody really did and that was increasingly becoming a problem.
"I'm pretty sure I can try," Xavier said, smiling. Although he did not have Cerebro, he could still attempt to reach out. Even Mae had a better advantage of linking with the Professor, although she could only jump through memories, not read minds.
Magneto then turned to Logan. "Do you think we can get Danielle on her feet by tomorrow?" he asked him, trying to gauge Logan's feelings and see how unbiased he could be.
"I don't know," Logan honestly said. "If I had her sister-in-law, I'd have a better opinion to give, wouldn't I?"
Xavier immediately saw the conflict coming. "Let me try to contact them," he urged the two between him, trying to make sure no fight brought out again. It was bad enough when Logan and Hank had it out. "I'm sure they're nearby and will come as soon as possible."
"I'm sure as well," Magneto added smoothly, watching Logan's reaction.
Logan didn't give Magneto the satisfaction of being talked to like a child by Xavier. Frowning at the two older men, he crossed his arms across his chest, saying nothing.
"Logan" Xavier warned.
"I'll wait," Logan said grudgingly. "I'll be upstairs if you need me."
Magneto and Xavier then watched the mutant take off, arms still crossed. They both had the same thoughts, but did not voice them. Indeed, for their sakes and for Logan and the kids, they hoped that Danielle lived through what she previously experienced. If they had lost her too, then some of their hope would have faded a little more, waning already by the news that fresh threats approached. While Hank, Ororo, Matthew Adams and Rogue had not been around to hear the news (and would only be excited by the return when they came in from their trip), they would understand the implications just as Xavier and Magneto had.
Heavy footsteps upstairs echoed from one end of the house to the other. Xavier knew that Logan was angry, on the surface, at least. It wouldn't be long before those feelings exploded into something more though…and soon.