Disclaimer: Don't own. Never will. Property of Marvel Enterprises, Stan Lee, and J.K Rowling. Long may they conquer reality.
A Message to the Reader: For those of you who have inquired: the team featured here is based off of the X-Men: Evolution TV series, with a few tweaks. Most of those will become apparent all on their own, but if there is any confusion, feel free to PM me.
Important: Constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated. Flames are not. This is my first publicly displayed story. My baby. Please don't blowtorch my baby.
Enjoy,
LadySparks
~*~
Full moon like a glaring gaslight, but not a star in the sky. Sleeping gingerbread houses framing a scarred white sidewalk that fairly glows in the dark. A sweaty palm encompassing a tiny one.
A woman's face: wide, crazed eyes like twin blue moons hooded by the crease-barbed skin of her brow. Skin almost glowing in the unforgiving full moonlight. A purple cloak floating around her like a dark thundercloud.
Footsteps, quick and loud, striking cobbled pavement—broken, buzzing street lamps flying past, whizzing by—
On the worn gray coverlet of her thin dormitory bed, the little girl is stirring—thrashing softly, but with gaining momentum, in her sleep. She rolls her head and kicks out with her tiny legs, wrestling invisible foes. Syrupy, nonsensical sounds trickle forth from her barely parted lips. The moon—a stout, smiling blade hovering precariously like a guillotine in the sky—grins through the grimy windowpanes.
Dark-haired gentleman with a handlebar mustache drinks tea as he reads the sports page—
The frightened woman again, this time all smiles, bending over a garden of dahlias (she has curls the color of slick autumn leaves crunching underfoot, snap snap snap)—
"Drought out to be over anytime soon." A big yellow lawn—
Little girl in the high boughs of a tree—
A creaky porch swing—
Sparks on a stick—
"Does she have a name, then?"
"No."
The little girl whines. Her eyes are fluttering open, the lids as rapid as a hummingbird's wings. Her head, with its cap of baby-fine coppery-brown curls, thrashes with near-violence—almost as if attempting to shake something loose. The babyfat face twitches, shaking off the peaceful mien of slumber and knotting itself up into something ugly—afraid.
Swinging a shapely stick over a swath of basil, growing in a rock-lined garden—
A purple house, color of heather growing by the millpond—
A voice, singing a familiar lullaby, with the smell of honey all around—rockabye baby, on the tree top, whenthewindblows...the wind blows...the wind blows...
With sudden ferocity, the girl sits straight up in bed, claps her pudgy hands over her ears, and cries out—to the moon, to the darkness, to the relentless murmurs in her own head. In the cavernous room, the noise is amplified to nearly a good, earnest scream—but the other children, sleeping in their sad little ordered beds, barely stir. The little girl sits in a bubble, a cage—her every word bounces off the arched walls back to where she lies and smacks her with double force than what it left her with.
"He'll be coming soon."
Moonlight slanting in the windows, turning the mirror into a pool of light. Shadows watch from the walls, whispering—
"We'll have to go. Take the child..."
Little girl in the high boughs of a tree—
Heather-colored house swallowed up by the night, disappearing—
Teddy bear, color of melting chocolate, wearing an old lace ruff
Rockabye baby—
For as long as she can remember, she has wakened every night to this: quick bursts of memory, foggy and distant, yet persistently present. Each memory is a small explosion, the loud and unexpected pop of a bursting balloon in her head. There is no physical pain—only the pain of being startled, of surprise—of confusion. With vice, she digs her fingernails into her palms, willing the mental pain away with a physical replacement.
A heather-colored house—
Gold numbers on the door 0304—
Cicadas...cicadas...
A HEATHER-COLORED HOUSE—
The last explosion is by far the largest and loudest yet; her skull fairly vibrates with its thunder. The child writhes in place and opens her mouth to scream—to purge memory, to empty herself in a single sound.
When she screams, no sound leaves her lips.
Around the room, the shadows flutter.
~*~
With a sigh, the wheelchair-ridden man removes the heavy steel helmet from his head and lays it on the desk beside him. His eyes are troubled; they stare searchingly up at the image frozen on the spherical walls, scanning every inch of its two dimensions for something, anything, that may explain why it is there.
"It's true," he says aloud at last, rubbing his temples in defeat. His words echo transparently throughout the room, intangible and weak; he himself cannot believe or understand them.
The red-haired girl beside him shakes her head, though he is not looking in her direction. He continues to study the screen of the mammoth computer, the lines superimposed on his brow deepening.
"That's impossible," the girl says—though her voice is comprised more of anxiety than actual conviction. "There's some kind of malfunction."
The man glances up at her. "There's no malfunction," he says wearily, clicking a button on the panel before him and wheeling backwards away from the desk. The image on the screen blurs, pixilates, and slowly fades from sight. The red-haired girl watches it disappear.
"But...England?" she says, more to the blank screen behind her than to the man making his way slowly out of the cavernous room. By rote, she falls into step behind him; but her attention is still gripped by the now-empty screen. "It can't—it shouldn't—"
The man sounds half-amused. "But it has. And since it has, it is now our responsibility to pursue it. It may very well signify something important."
"Like what?" the girl challenges, a tad harshly; then, becoming aware of herself: "Professor, I don't...it doesn't...if Cerebro could pick up mutants all the way in England...why hasn't it before? And why now? Why this little girl? I just...don't like it. I don't like it."
The Professor sighs. There is weight to his breath—the undefeated yet wearied sound of one who has seen and known much more than his mortal shell should have to uphold. The red-haired girl walks in respectful silence beside him, patiently awaiting his reply.
"I don't know, Jean," he finally says, turning to face her head-on for the first time. Locked on to each other, their eyes—one pair brown, one pair emerald—are strangely alike, buoyant with matching weight and wisdom. On the girl's, it appears unnatural, almost disturbing; in the Professor's, it becomes almost grandfatherly, belying the stiff crispness of his outward appearance. "But whatever the reason—it's our duty to examine it."
The girl nods. This sudden understanding casts a serene aura about her; she cannot be more than fifteen, but, weighed down with this new wisdom, she seems much older. Those startling emerald-green eyes soften, accommodating their inborn heaviness.
"I'll assemble the team," she says.
~*~
Her footfalls make hardly any sound on the cobbled sidewalk; but her breath, hot and fast and shallow as a dragon's, are like thunder growling its way down the streets. Her Wellingtons squeak on the dew-slick sidewalks. Her shadow is a black runway unfurling behind her.
Cicadas...cicadas. A cicada is an insect that can sing songs.
How?
With their bodies. They can make music with their bodies.
She tries not to whimper—not here, where she will be heard by such a greater and more dangerous audience—but it is hard, so hard, when all she wants to do is scream and scream and scream until the earth comes shattering down around her. Instead, she concentrates on elongating her strides, on outrunning the memories that, like beggars' hounds, lick at her heels—desperately giving chase.
Oh three oh four oh three oh four oh three oh four—
A house the color of heather, with a creaky porch swing and a high tree of soft leaves.
Oh three oh four—
Where do you live, honey?
Oh three oh four Cicada Street—
Her feet are moving of their own accord—piloted by a force greater than herself, directed by one who knows far more than she. She does not fight this phantom entity; she does not know if she can.
She cannot remember traveling these streets before. Yet, as she races by, flickers of memory flit through her mind.
Sprinklers slugging over a yellow lawn.
A dog with a smiling mouth and heavy breath.
A woman with a baby stroller that rattled when it coursed over sidewalk.
These memories quell at the same moment her feet do—and she is standing, in her too-long gray nightgown and muddy Wellingtons, before a heather-colored house with a porch swing, on the corner of a dark avenue. Gold numbers are festooned along the door: 0304.
She isn't afraid. She knew, deep down, that this was the destination all along. That everything she cannot remember—everything prior to seven days ago—began here, and so must end up here once more.
~*~
The aircraft is as black as rot, with a wide streamlined hull like a torpedo and thick missle-equipped wings. In spite of its size, it is surprisingly stealthy: a hulking black panther creeping across the paling sky, soundless and unseen. This is what it has been designed for; this is the purpose it serves. In the cabin, its passengers wait in identical silence, watching the lights of New York City recede behind them.
Jean sits between a pint-size portal to nowhere and a monster, the latter of whom is reading from a heavy, musty-smelling volume of Emerson's collected essays. His glasses are perched on the edge of his catlike nose; those wide, unnatural eyes—so painfully observant of everything they take in—roam the wiggling trails of print with a determined navigation. A monster, to be sure—one only has to glance at him, at his blue-skinned, apelike body and wide feline face—but who's to say monsters can't be scholars?
The plane is being piloted by a man wearing thick sunglasses and a woman with a shock of snow-white hair. They are conversing quietly in the cockpit, flicking switches and turning dials with quiet professionalism. The Professor, sits in his wheelchair at the head of the aisle of seats and surveys the little audience before him. It isn't much of one—Jean; the monster; a fair-haired young man with a trenchcoat only half-concealing his hunchback; and a hulking, solitary man with beard stubble and a perpetual snarl. He stares out the window with pure venom, as if the sleeping city below—growing smaller with every passing minute—has done him a personal offense.
"As soon as we're flying over water I want us switched to supersonic," the Professor commands over his shoulder. The pilots bob their heads and continue working.
"When are we due to land, Professor?" the hunchbacked boy asks anxiously. He keeps shifting in his seat, uncomfortable; the seats aren't designed for hunchbacks.
"Midnight, if we're lucky. We don't dare fly over London on supersonic—it causes too much disturbance in the air."
The man with the sunglasses—a strange accessory for the dead of night—calls a question from the cockpit. "What is it exactly we're looking for?"
The Professor sighs. It's clear that the inconsistencies of this case are causing him deep personal pain.
"A girl," he reports. "Two years old. Dropped off at the Open Arms Orphan Asylum just a week ago. She's a manipulator."
"Light?" the pilot asks. "Or dark?"
"Both," the Professor says tensely. "Shadow and light. I've never seen anything quite like it."
A murmur ripples through the cabin, gets stuck on the surly man—who has taken little or no notice of the Professor's scintillating speech—then picks up on Jean again, who exclaims softly. Only the monster beside her, still contemplating his essays, seems unruffled.
"Shadow and light," he murmurs, flicking an onionskin-thin page aside with his thumb. "Like the autumn that hangs between the brightest and the darkest times; the hairline between yin and yang..."
He trails off, nodding his head. He's in a poetic mood. Reading Emerson does that to him.
The Professor doesn't say any more, and once again the cabin lapses into silence. Jean watches the black line of the city become the endless, fathomless blue of the sea and considers the monster's words.
The autumn that hangs between the brightest and the darkest. In a strange way, it fits her—this child whose name Jean did not even know.
~*~
She is bleeding.
Her arms—their smooth white undersides, till this minute untouched by even the sun—are leaking blood through identical (yet so utterly different) cuts, running parallel from her wrist to the crook of her elbow. The blood wells up, creating a little ruby river that stripes her moony skin like a candy cane, then overflows and trickles across the rug. A little pool of the stuff is slowly turning brick-brown at her feet.
She doesn't hurt or fear at the sight of it—not really. More than anything, she feels calm. Her head, once again, belongs to her—all those foreign voices dribbling out of her on a tide of blinding red.
It hadn't been her intention, upon entering the house through the unlocked door, to mutilate herself this way—not originally. But once she had, the memories—the man, the woman, the pond, the garden—had accumulated to such a fiery crescendo that suddenly, fleeing the house for relief was too long a process. Purging—any kind of purging—offered immediate relief; she seized on to it, grabbing the two sharpest objects she could find—a knife and a fiery-tipped contraption she doesn't quite know the name for. Now, kneeling on the rough carpet watching herself bleed out, she wonders if by purging the memory, she has inadvertently purged everything else, too.
She doesn't know. She doesn't care. She can die here, die in a pool of her own sharp-smelling blood for all she cares—the peace that surrounds her is so comfortable, she cannot bear to pick herself out of it and face her demons once more.
Yes...that's right. Don't fight it. Give yourself to it.
Yes, she agrees drowsily with herself. Yes, that's a splendid idea—
Just a little longer...just a little longer...soon now, soon, soon—
Bow to death, little girl.
Something deep within her stirs unpleasantly.
(Wake up!)
No; why should I? It's so lovely, finally at peace...
(Wake up! Wake up! Wake up out of it!)
Relax...succumb to it...
(No! NO!)
It's no use. The silky voice within her swallows the little bubble of reason whole, like a serpent swallowing an egg; then, without so much as a hitch, resumes crooning its lullaby of darkness.
~*~
After a hasty landing in an East Anglia field, a lung-exploding race through the darkened streets of London, and a brief respite outside of the orphanage to give the Professor time to locate telepathically the missing girl, they finally arrive at a purple cottage on the outskirts of the city: 0304 Cicada Street. The street is mostly deserted, by the looks of it—only a handful of sleeping cars are parked in their driveways. The team stops once again to catch their breath, while the Professor squeezes his temples and tries to concentrate.
Jean is breathing hard. Telepathically she picks up snippets of what the Professor is seeing, but they don't make much sense to her—a river of red liquid, an antimacassar draped across a green sofa, a silvered knife. Eventually, the mental strain becomes to much, and she accepts defeat. She sucks in meditative lungfuls of breath.
The Professor suddenly gives a violent start, making the whole team jump. Beads of sweat are gathered on his forehead; terror dances madly in his eyes. "There's something there," the he gasps, shaking his head wildly. "Something. An evil. I don't—I don't—"
Jean glances anxiously up at the nearest face—the sunglasses-wearing pilot. He squares his shoulders forward. "Let's go, team," he says gravely. "Storm, Logan—we'd better take the back door. Rest of you to the front, but be cautious."
They slip stealthily away, through the dew-glazed grass of the summer-green lawn.
Jean turns to the Professor, still quaking badly; then to the hunchbacked boy. He's shed his long overcoat; a pair of resplendent wings stretch from his shoulder blades, glowing in the moonlight. "Stay with him," she orders, and he nods.
She and Hank—the monster—pick their way forward, quiet as rouge shadows. When they reach the front door, she turns questioningly to Hank, who nods—and kicks it in.
What lays before them—like a grisly apparition—is nothing they were prepared for.
A little girl—light-haired and grimy-faced, in a sagging gray nightgown—is crouched on the floor, head bent over her upturned arms—which are leaking blood onto the carpet like small waterfalls. She doesn't appear to be in pain or fear, nor to have heard the intrusion. She sits perfectly still, entranced.
The fight ebbs out of Jean's shoulders, loosening them from their death stance.
At that same moment, however, Hank draws in a sharp breath. Of her own accord, the child has turned to face them—face them with empty eyes that do not see, and blood pouring down her front.
Something stirs deep within Jean, sprouting up through her throat and choking her. Her air supply falters, rendered weak by the sight of that baby face, that blood, that fear.
"Autumn!" she cries—whether as a statement or a summons, she doesn't know. She doesn't even know where it came from.
In any case, the child gives a start. Her eyes suddenly snap into focus, darting at once to her bleeding arms—
She screams, terror pouring out of her like a bloody river, and the lights flicker on and off—not the house lights but the sky, the moon and stars themselves. She screams, and wraiths of shadow and light peel away from the walls as if they were embedded there all along, twirling and spinning and creating a tornado of dark and light, cackling, rising...
Somehow, she fights it, pushes through the spinning vortex and into Jean's arms, sobbing wildly. Her blood smears the front of Jean's uniform, gummy and red.
Jean has no siblings or young cousins to speak of—no experience with small children whatsoever. She doesn't know what to say to this frightened girl; doesn't know what words will bring comfort. Doesn't know anything at all.
In the end, she just repeats the word, the magic word of Hank's that saved her. Autumn. Autumn. Each time she says it, the tube of wraiths funnels smaller, until it ebbs away completely; and the little girl, little Autumn, stops crying at last.
~*~
She doesn't know why it is, but something—a spell, perhaps, or a sort of charm—draws her out of the fog of her mind and into the present: bleeding on the floor of a strange house, with a lady and a monster standing in the living room.
Everything snapped suddenly into perspective; and then her arms were burning like fire, and there were ghosts and shadows swimming in the walls, and ordinary objects—cups, saucers, picture frames—kept appearing spontaneously, and the sun seemed to be flickering on and off.
She heard a word: Autumn. She didn't know why, but the word tugged at her soul, and she took it to mean her name—a summons from one who knew the name of her soul, and could draw her out of the abyss.
She ran to it.