Magic
"Talk to me, Rebecca."
"No."
My daughter has been this way ever since Hank felt confident enough to bring her out of her sedation and move her out of the infirmary. She wears a modified ruby quartz visor that has a locking collar attached to it, in order to prevent her from using her optic blasts against us. In addition, a small dose of neural inhibitor still runs through her veins – enough to allow her still to sense us telepathically, but also enough to prevent her from gaining access to her more aggressive telepathic abilities. She has free rein of the mansion, but she cannot go outside the grounds without me accompanying her. This last directive I asked for myself, since Rebecca is my responsibility, and mine alone. Warren and Scott – my child's "fathers", I suppose you could call them – have both been of tremendous help to me, spending time with Rebecca themselves and helping me to try and help her adjust to being in the outside world, but I know that the buck ultimately stops with me where she is concerned.
Rebecca scowls at me momentarily and then rolls over on the soft bed we have given her here in the East wing of the mansion, looking out the window silently.
Please talk to me, Rebecca,
I say, telepathically. I'm your mother."Not by choice," she replies in an outwardly emotionless tone, but with barely veiled venom evident behind her words. I think Sinister must have given her the ability to mentally dissect an opponent as well as physically destroy them. It certainly stings to hear her say those words – more than it should do, actually – but she is my daughter (not in the conventional boy-meets-girl sense, but my daughter nonetheless. It's… complicated), and I'm going to do my utmost to make sure that Sinister's taint is washed away as much as possible. I won't let him corrupt her. I owe her that much, at least.
I reach out to her and try to touch her shoulder. For me to tolerate, let alone initiate, any kind of physical contact at this point in time is still a huge effort, and one which forces me to override the instincts that I built up during my time in Sinister's base, but I will not let him win that victory over me. To do that would be to finally admit that the Marauders have snuffed out the last spark of what made me human, and I don't want that to happen. In the event, though, it matters little, because Rebecca shifts off her bed and towards the window of her room, avoiding physical contact like a petulant toddler.
"Why are you doing this?" she asks, matter-of-factly. "Why am I even here?"
"Because I'm your mother, Rebecca," I say. Perhaps if I reiterate it enough, she'll eventually start to accept it as something other than biological reality. "I care for you a great deal, and I want you to see that for yourself, all right?" She laughs for a second, humourlessly, and then turns her head so that she is looking at me through the corner of her left eye.
"And if I don't then you'll kill me, I suppose?"
"No," I say, shaking my head vehemently. "No, Rebecca. The X-Men don't kill. It's not our way."
"Is that so?" She turns fully, so that she blocks the light from the window as it seeps in through the gap in the heavy drapes. It surrounds her with a bright corona, as if she is an angel. "I beg to differ. You killed when you were Lady Mandarin, didn't you? Colossus snapped Riptide's neck in the sewers. Cyclops tried to kill Apocalypse and Sinister. Jean Grey smashed Prism into a million pieces. And don't get me started on that sawn-off little psychopath Wolverine." She sneers. "You like to think you're so much better than the Marauders, but deep down, once you take away all your pretty morality and your noble intentions, you've got just as much blood on your hands as we do. You just like to dress it up in nice acceptable labels so that you can sleep more easily at night." She narrows her eyes to slits behind the visor. "You make me sick." That spurs me to react, finally.
"First of all," I begin, my voice still slow and deliberate, "I was brainwashed by Spiral and Mojo into being Lady Mandarin. I used the Mandarin's rings and my own powers to hurt – and yes, to kill – other people, but the Mandarin was only using me so that he could get the Hong Kong crime scene back. I was a slave, Rebecca. I was a slave. And worse than that, I was a slave who didn't care about what she was doing, because I thought it was what I was supposed to be doing. Scott did what he had to do to stop Apocalypse from murdering the whole world. Colossus and Jean were trying to stop other people from dying. And Wolverine often can't help his berserker rages. He is a killer, but he's not a murderer. There is a difference." Rebecca shakes her head.
"How?"
she asks, disbelievingly. "How is there a difference?" I sit forwards in my chair, folding my hands about my uppermost knee and taking a deep breath."I killed as Lady Mandarin; I won't deny that. Do you think I feel good about it? I had no free will. The Hand told me what to do and I did it, because that was what I had been programmed to do." I pause. "Colossus and Jean killed Riptide and Prism because they were slaughtering Morlocks. Hundreds more would have died if they hadn't stopped them right there. They did what they had to do to prevent people from being murdered. Do you really think they enjoy knowing what they did down in the tunnels? Do you think Scott enjoys knowing about what he did to Apocalypse and Sinister? Do you think Wolverine likes losing his mind every time he gets into a fight?" I pause. "None of us liked what we became in those moments, Rebecca. None of us. But the Marauders do. And that's why you're here. I won't let you become like them." Rebecca twists her lip contemptuously.
"You're so eager to save me, aren't you?" she says. "Does that make me your designated charity case for this year? Am I supposed to be like Sabretooth now?"
"No, Rebecca, of course you're not. I just –"
"Don't insult me," she says, before I can finish my sentence. "You're only doing this because I'm related to you and your perfect-priss leader. Would you even give a damn if I were one of the Morlocks, or if I didn't look as human as you do?" She pauses. "Well, would you?"
"That's unfair, Rebecca." She spits at me as I finish speaking, and I feel it hit my cheek and begin to ooze slowly down towards my lips. I brush it off without a word, using my handkerchief to dry my face and dab it clean. Doing my best to ignore it, I continue "I'd do the same for you no matter who you were."
"Don't give me that," Rebecca continues angrily. "You left the Morlocks behind in the sewers when you could have taken them to a better place and given them a real life, but you didn't, because they were ugly. And you really can't stand people that don't at least look human, can you? Anybody who's ugly gets left behind to rot in their own filth." She smiles coldly. "Sinister would've taken them," she says quietly. "He would have made sure they were all accounted for."
"Yes, he would have," I say, taking advantage of the double meaning in her words, whether she meant for it to be implied or not. "He would have cut them all open and poked around in their innards if he'd thought it would be scientifically interesting. He'd have done it to you, too, if he thought you were particularly fascinating. Don't you understand, Rebecca? We took you away from him so that you wouldn't have to worry about that any more!" I can feel my exasperation burning hot and bright at the base of my skull, and it irks me that I am being affected so much by Rebecca's words. My psyche is especially fragile at this point in time, but I had hoped that I had built up at least some resistance to that kind of psychological attack again. Evidently my defences were not as strong as I had thought. I breathe deeply and fold my hands in my lap, looking down at the floor for a moment before saying "We only want the best for you, my darling. Warren and I are still working out how to be parents, but we can do it a lot better than Sinister can, even on our worst day. Can't you at least give us a chance to make you happy?" Rebecca raises an eyebrow.
"You want to make me happy?" she asks sourly. "Send me back to Sinister. That's where I belong. I'm a Marauder, Mother! That's what I was born to be!"
"That's as may be. But you don't have to stay that way, sweetheart," I tell her. "You can change, like I changed, after the Mandarin let me go. I beat him. You can beat Sinister, too. You don't need to be a slave forever." Rebecca clenches her fists frustratedly and walks over to the window again, glaring out across the misty grounds towards the lake.
"I don't want to change," she says softly. "I like being what I am." I smile to myself, bitterly, as a buried memory snakes its way to the surface of my mind.
"So did I, Rebecca," I reply in an equally soft tone. "So did I." She turns her head and looks at me with her piercing red eyes. It occurs to me that they're no less striking behind the visor than when I first saw them in Sinister's base.
"What?" she says, disbelievingly. "What are you talking about? What do you mean?" I get up out of my chair and walk over to the window in order to stand beside her. I keep a little distance between the two of us instinctively, but I try my utmost not to let that govern my actions completely. I know that she is not likely to hurt me, but it is a hard habit to break, and it hurts me greatly to know that I can't be intimate even with my own flesh and blood.
"When I was Lady Mandarin," I begin slowly, as I watch the ducks swimming on the lake out by the gnarled, ancient oak tree, "I loved the sensation of having the power to do what I wanted, when I wanted to do it. My body was changed. I was changed, Rebecca. I thought that that was what I'd wanted all along – to be stronger, faster, sexier, or whatever – but then when Logan rescued me, I realised that I had been warped into something that somebody else had envisaged. I wasn't what I wanted to be at all." I pause, seeing the mist in the early morning air burning off as the sun rises higher in the sky. It looks like being a better day already. "The Mandarin had me remade into his chief assassin. I would have been his slave for the rest of my life – or for as long as I was of use to him, whichever was shorter. Don't you see, Rebecca? Sinister is the same as the Mandarin. He was using you. He wouldn't care about you: you'd just be a tool to him – a means to an end. You wouldn't have mattered if it came right down to it, I promise you. You would have been sacrificed as quickly as the Mandarin would have sacrificed me. " I smile slightly as something comes to my mind. "Listen to your mother, Rebecca. She knows what she's talking about."
"You're lying," Rebecca says, shaking her head insistently. "He told me I was important to him. He told me that I'd be his best Marauder. He told me I had power." She points to her skull. "It's in here. He made it so."
I turn my head to look at my daughter, seeing disbelief begin to blossom behind her eyes. I touch her on the shoulder and watch her flinch visibly, shrugging my hand off. "Didn't he also tell you that he'd kill you himself if he thought you weren't pulling your weight, Rebecca? Doesn't that prove my point? Doesn't that show you that going back to him is a bad idea? He's probably growing a dozen other clones of you right now. He doesn't need you. And you don't need him, Rebecca – I promise you that. I'm anything but perfect, but I'm better than that… filth on the worst of my bad days." I intentionally spit the word filth, making Rebecca blink, looking slightly taken aback. She shouldn't have been surprised, though. After what he put me through, I can't think a more appropriate word to describe Nathaniel Essex than that. "He was right about one thing, though. You do have power – I've still got the bruises to prove it." I rub the left side of my face, which is still marked with a dirty yellow swelling from where she hit me, and smile slightly, feeling my stomach's aching abdominal muscles throb sympathetically. "You're more powerful than Scott and I will ever be, certainly – your telepathic powers rank higher than my own, according to Cerebro, and your optic blasts – well, Scott says that when he was your age, he certainly couldn't have punched through half the things you've been able to. You're like your brother Nathan – you've outdone your parents. We're your inferiors, Rebecca. You have the power Sinister told you about, Rebecca – no one's saying you don't. What you have to do now is decide how you're going to use that power. Do you want to talk about that?" Rebecca narrows her eyes behind her visor.
"What am I supposed to say to that?" she asks. "That I want to use my powers for truth, justice and the American way just like mummy and daddy do?"
"No, sweetheart – I just want to talk, that's all." I point to the bed again. "Come on. Sit down and let's talk this out, all right?" She folds her arms across her body and shifts her feet slightly.
"Why should we?" she says coldly. "It's obvious you want me to be like my brother and fight the good fight because it's the right thing to do. I can sense that from here, Mother. Don't insult me by lying about it."
"I don't mind if you don't join the X-Men, Rebecca," I tell her. "I don't mind what you do with your life, but frankly, I think it would be a breath of fresh air if you didn't join the team. Scott's already got too many family members to worry about as it is." I take a deep breath. "But I do want you to learn how to use those powers he gave you so that you don't hurt anybody else." I smile a sad little smile for a moment, as a thought strikes me. "I could have set Wolverine on you to teach you that in his own special way. But I didn't – I chose to do this my way, because I love you, Rebecca. I love you. I love you with all my heart and then some, and I wish you loved me back." I get up off the bed and move towards the door. I open it and look back at her as she stands silently. "I'll be back later, all right? I'll bring you down to the kitchen and we can eat something together. I think Hank's making some stew for the others – I'll ask him to save some." Slipping noiselessly out of the door, I kiss her mind with my own – the only version of a hug I can give her without her shrugging me off like a dirty throw rug. I shut the door and leave my daughter to think. As I pad down the stairs, I sense Warren playing solitaire in the drawing room, and I pad over to him, waving him a quick hello.
"Hey," he says, absently. "What's up?"
"I just talked with Rebecca," I say, and watch him switch his full attention to me.
"Oh." His face falls. "How'd it go?"
"Better than before, I think." I tie my long blonde hair back into a ponytail and scratch the nape of my neck briefly. "I actually managed to get her to talk to me this time. She's still angry with me, but I think I'm getting through her shell, just a little bit. I told her I loved her today, and she hadn't a clue what to say."
Warren widens his eyes and whistles, running a hand through his hair as he does so. "Wow. Scott and I usually have to shout to make ourselves heard, she screams at us so much. You sure she won't just start ignoring you that way, too?"
"I have to try, Warren. She's the only good thing to come out of what happened to me in the Bronx. I'm not going to lose her to Sinister." I sit down beside him, and feel his hand hesitantly come to rest on my shoulder. He kisses me gently on the temple, and I close my eyes as he does so, feeling my hands wring themselves out like dishcloths involuntarily.
"You won't, Betsy," he says softly. "Do you want me to try talking to her again? Maybe I could actually get a word in right now." I shake my head.
"No, Warren – leave her be for the moment. I want her to think about what I said, and I think she ought to do it by herself. I could do with some company, though." He nods.
"Sure." Picking up the cards on the table in front of him, he stacks them neatly and puts them back in the pack, folding it closed and hiding it under a magazine. "Don't want Remy stealing them," he says, with a silly little grin. His smile fades when he sees me looking up towards the doorway to Rebecca's room again. "She'll be all right, Betsy. We'll find a way. I promise."
"I hope so, Warren. I really hope so."