Author's Note: More style experimentation from yours truely. I'm hoping that a disjointed sense of time helps convey a breakdown in perception and being insane.
So, I got to read some X-Universe over Finals week. Props to my pals. Anyway, the storyline, which I'm not certain was picked up after Exiles established that good old Age of Apocalypse was here to stay, was basically: Piotr's brother, who is absolutely power mad and crazy in any universe, hooks up Empath to a machine, and uses the empathic powers to tear London apart right before the AoA ceases to exist. It ceases to exist on a high note, though, because the heroes overcome Rasputin in fine AoA style (a lot of people are screwed/dead in the end, but good basically triumphs). One of the high notes is the redemption of the Keeper controlling Empath, when he kills Empath out of pity. I thought I'd do a little one shot about what's going on in Empath's head, and maybe take it for an AU spin at the end, because I love my character interaction. So, we have a What If: The Keeper managed to free Empath instead of killing him? for the AoA.
So, for those of you who have read all of my comments and Author's notes, you might have noticed a pattern in the kind of characters that I place on my fandom pedestal. They're crazy. Absolute psychopaths climb my fandom ladder faster than anything. Now, while this may indicate that I should seek mental treatment, this is also why I chose to write this scene from X-Universe and not something staring Gwen Stacy kicking ass. I did want to focus on Empath because, well, he's been a favorite of mine since my first encounter with the X-Men, New Mutants #38. He's erratic, got bundles of issues, and a total lack of morals, because, let's face it, when he tries to be ethical, he always chooses to sabotague himself. He has a corner in the universe that he fills, and he likes it. Going out of that corner is a dangerous and scary process, so he'll stay right there, thank you, Amara. While I have a lot against the current plot arcs Marvel has taken since the nineties, I still was extremely happy to see Empath back and even more psychopathic than usual. It's nice to see him completely lose it, and open up more of his twisted issues. Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker really made me a happy fan last year (never thought I'd EVER say that), and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Necrosha somewhere down the line. Oh, undead Hellion goodness.
As for the God references, when I suspect that Christianity has been squashed in all the corners of America except for the Dark Beast's distant memories, Empath was just mind raping a whole population of Eurasians who probably had some religious solace to turn to while their world went mad. He's picking it up from there, and the Keeper is picking it up from him. Go with it.
There's a thing called power. Any product of the breeding pens knows to recognize it and fear it. And here he is, in the center of more power than he ever could have imagined. Power hurts.
He was shackled to a monstrosity he can't touch or see any more. He was young, he'd survived being picked to defend the citadel, he should have survived this. He won't survive this. Wires and tubes forced into his head streaming all that experience down there, a full, unslaughtered (relatively speaking) continent. His hands. His legs. They were jam packed with little wires. He can feel it all, as electric jolts and impulses jump into him. This range, this freedom. He had more of it than he possibly knew what to do with, and he could not do anything. Because he is programmed. He is Rasputin's new toy.
He felt them, the men who strapped him in and stapled him up. His body was nothing more interesting than the component that slotted into the new machine. And the Keeper watched. Oh, how the Keeper watched. In another time, in another place, he would have laughed at the impossible task. Watch over the boy, and see to his well being. Watch over him, as he goes mad.
The boy in the machine understands what he can do now. Could have done. He is never going to do it now, because he cannot control any of this. Will not ever control any of this. His body twitched and rocked in the restraints. This range, this freedom, this pain. There was no freedom. It was all an illusion. As he made others love Rasputin, there was no freedom. No freedom for them, no freedom for him.
Keeper. Keeper. His mind grasps everything. Even the minds of his captors. Even the mind of the Keeper, who cannot break with Rasputin because Rasputin turned him into a puppet toy. Rasputin turned him into a puppet toy and took him out of the darkness. I know why you love him. I know why you hate him. You weren't made to watch children suffer.
You don't even know that I am a child. I don't know if I am a child.
Here came the pain again. Thousands of minds, hundreds of minds, millions of minds, all resisting. All painful. All in pain. All in agony. ALL DYING. Anguish. Anguish came to rip him open, hold his insides, play with his stomach in slow, loving prods and licks. Prods and licks.
The empath jerked and heaved in his restraints. All his emotions, all his control were down there, fed in through a cycle of tubes and wires. All funneling down into the hell below, forcing their ways into innocent civilian heads. Innocent civilian heads. Not at all likely. There were pedophiles being burned alive down there. There were murderers being killed down there. There was Rasputin down there. There was nothing down there.
Oh, Keeper, Keeper, are you coming?
Water was forced down his throat. Carefully, through a funnel. His head had been wrapped in a vice. They put a piece of wood in his mouth to keep him from biting his own tongue in his agony. The nice noises and the whimpering, it told the Keeper everything, did it not? The whipped puppy in the middle of all the power in the world.
He heard. He heard. His mind was not totally inwards bound. Indeed, if he could wrest that away from the downwards below, he would have had some sanity. Some time. He was aware enough to beg. To know that he was alone with the Keeper, and to beg.
Now one would touch him. When he was touched by a minion—less than a Madri, just a server of a server, temporarily exalted to do Rasputin's bidding—the minion goes mad. Just as he is mad. (He'd rather not have anyone else touching his man parts, anyway, thank you. The lemon if you please. Yes, he did believe that the otters would be common this season. Was it always so hot in the jungles?)
Blind monk. Capricious priest. Keeper, come and save me. Save this little devil. Little incubus in their dreams, controlling this nightmare.
He was psychotic. He wanted out of the machine. The dues ex machinca wanted out! He raged. He strained. Wires refused to pop, thoughts refused to stop. They could all feel him. Feel him in their unity. UNITY. Unity for Rasputin. The Horseman to survive (Sinister must have survived, right? He made them all. Well not the ones the Beast made). In their unity he would rip them apart, using their own hands. Because they loved Rasuptin, they would strangle each other. They would destroy each other. Because they obsessed over Rasputin. Just as the boy did.
Keeper, closer. Closer, Keeper, closer.
What are red lines? They are the lines on the heart. The monitors. They tell everyone how close the experiment is to annihilating himself, as his brain cooks in the web of wires and tubes. He heard their screams to the Keeper. He heard them. Do not let the specimen perish. But Rasputin needs him tonight. Rasputin needs him now.
There is no love in this world. Rasputin wants love. He wants what the boy does not know, does not understand. But the boy knows obsession. He became intimately acquainted with madness right here. Right as the population that he is tapped into, begins to be massacred. Right here. Right now. The world is mad. Because the boy was mad? Or did the madness start before the world had a chance to be mad.
There had to be something better than this.
For a moment he sees it, sticking into him as sharply as the rest of the emotions. There is a universe where he knew what love looked and smelled like (Love was blond and smelled of fire). Where he could taste it on his tongue (Sweat he licked away from and ear lobe, tasting of heat and spice). Where it reached into his powers, and drowned them (He would give anything to make love happy. To make certain that this never stopped). But there is no universe where he is not mad. No universe could exist where he did not doom himself. For love. For what passes for love. For obsession.
He was insane. Froth at the brain, insane. He did not even know who he was. Which one of a thousand deaths was he? Which one of them?
Has the Keeper forgotten me? Naughty little Keeper can't forget me. His charge. The guard over the cross never forgot Barabbas. Or was it Judas? Do they even—I'm not sure if they exist. Everyone gets forgotten once they ROT.
He let the rot consume him, crawling through his veins from the tubes in his head. Hundreds of them. Weaving through his body. Weaving a net of other people's feelings, other people's pains.
"You know, being sensitive in today's world does not pay."
The voice is actually directed at him. For a moment, he is lifted up from the chaos. He loves the Keeper. The keeper who speak to him, and not about him. Who gives something for his mind to cling to, as all he has is unleashed below. Everything he had. What will happen when he dies? Will he be empty? Yes. So very empty.
If he could, he would pull himself into the Keeper's head. He would show the Keeper everything. Revenge for caring about him. Revenge for bringing him out of his quickly accelerating death. Does the Keeper really care? The Keeper doesn't want to care. But I am here, and he is watching me. And the heart that I feel is not gone. Can he feel me? Yeah, everyone can feel me.
He jerked again, thrashing with all his might. If only he could break loose. If only he could break free. And then he was told by the nice voice in the sky, that he loathed and hated, that sent shivers down his spine, that he should be calm.
Calm like the dead, dead corpses. Like the havoc he wrought. Calm like them. Calm like the aftermath. Calm like a billion fragmented suns. Calm like devouring them all. Oh, he wanted to devour them all. Could he devour them all? Should he devour them all? Oh, he wanted to devour them all.
Calm. Destroyed through apathy.
The electrics sparkled and screamed into his brain. He takes a lot of pleasure in ripping their pathetic bodies apart. He giggles and grins, and screams in horror as he forces women to beat husbands to death. In revenge. Because mothers can turn upon their children with the sound of a bond breaking.
As he writhed against the maelstrom of souls and feelings, calloused fingers met his blood soaked hands.
Oh, Keeper, you were watching over me.
With a vicious push, the empath shoves what little he can into the mind of Keeper. His Keeper. Like Cain to Cain. He forces everything he can, and sees the death coming for him, as the Keeper is not restrained, and the Keeper can act.
"NOOOOOOOO!"
His final plea, cut off by raging machines, which explode while he is strapped into them, rings in the Keeper's ears.
A burn scarred hand managed to claw up the wall, bringing the Keeper with it. He breathed heavily, ripping the visor off. He never wanted to see—and the full betrayal swamped him, because he could still see. See each reflection and echo made by his own breath.
The body was still twitching.
That knowledge lead him back over to the great exploded organs of Rasputin's parodized crucifix. Blistered, cut, and burned, the body coughed enough to make the Keeper see the outlines of mangled limbs, and where his club had smashed into the machinery.
"Hello, Keeper," the voice swooped between delirious and deranged. "Give me a hand?"
A mute, thoughtless movement was grabbed by burned and bleeding fingers. The boy grunted with pain as he pulled himself upright. Blood ran down his face from the wires that had pulled free. Others still linked him into Rasputin's sparking machine. The Keeper jerked in sudden sympathetic pain as he felt the empath pull the rest of the tubes and wires from his own head.
The boy waited for a few seconds. Then: "I'm amazed. Those were right in me, and I should have died doing that."
"You should have died a few minutes ago," the Keeper could not help but point out.
He did not know it, but the boy's face broke into a crooked grin of lip stretching insanity. "I should have. But I didn't. I should thank you. But I won't." His eyes lit the small chamber with an evil blue glow. "We will all die, Keeper. Whether you find atonement or not. How many others have you watched die in their own madness for Rasputin, hmm?"
The Keeper's face stilled. Guilt perhaps. Or simply cold realization that he could never take back the past. It was time to move.
"At least ten," the meta-human told him. "So, Mr. Sensitive, where will you go?"
Shakily, Empath extended his mind, feeling his way throughout the ship. The Keeper winced as flashes of feeling jolted through him. How long was this going to last? "There is a revolt in the cell blocks, some of the human council are going to seize control of the ship, and Rasputin is down there, fighting," the grin was not becoming any more sane, and the boy knew it. "Well, Keeper, I'm going to do what every bad dog does, and bite the hand that feeds it."
"Lead the way to the flight deck, then."
The empath looked at him, blue flaring eyes narrowing. Really? Still, maybe, it wouldn't be so bad. If he was going to get killed by an antsy human, or have another mutant decided he shouldn't be up and among the walking, having the Keeper to throw in front of that line of fire wouldn't be too bad.
"I'm thinking of calling myself Emmanuel, by the way," he commented, as he moved to the door, looking for the key pad.
The Keeper pressed a button, and the door slid open. "I was called Matt Murdock when I was still fully human. Emmanuel, really?"
"Too long?" the empath asked, stepping out into the hall. He sent a wave of that thrice damned calm ahead of them. "It's a nice name. I think I found it down there. I'm not certain."
"Too Biblical," the Keeper replied, striding after him, staff at the ready.
The empath smirked. "Well, I think God is a little crazy."
They stepped through bodies together, one man and one boy, one clothed and one naked, both still suffering from psychic feedback, and both not certain where the new world would take them. "If the man up top asks," the empath commented, stepping into an elevator. "Say you're looking for some pants for me. Actually, do that anyway, I'm freezing."
"I've never really been one to look for anything," the Keeper replied. "Rob a corpse."
Light washed over them, as doors opened, and the empath grabbed the Keeper's hands, getting them high in the air. The innumerable clicks of the guns told Murdock everything he needed to know about their current situation, and he felt the movement of the boy across his line of attack as the young mutant stepped forward.
"So, that bit about corpse robbing," Emmanuel commented, his eyes losing their blue sheen, "probably not an option."
Murdock sighed. If the empath was not using his powers—which as the Keeper had not heard the guns uncocking or lowering, he suspected was not happening—chances were there were some dangerous people in front of them. "We're trying to surrender. And find pants," the blind man said to the air.
"Just who are you?" a female voice asked, giving him the impression of quite a lot of space, and even more people.
"People who don't want to get shot," he replied. "And we weren't on the right side for that to happen. Can't we surrender peacefully?"
The was an ominous chuckle. "Tony, any objections to holding them, and extracting any information we might?"
"Keeper doesn't have much information to give," the empath snarled, shifting lower, and thankfully out of Murdock's throwing lines. He had a good shot to ricochet off most of the gun men, if they were where he thought they were. "He's just a blind servant. And if that wall of water is what I think it is, everything I know is mostly useless. Rasputin is dead. The Age of Apocalypse is over, isn't it?"
"We're getting a radio transmission from the states," another woman said, as if in confirmation. "Doom, it's the Rogue. I can't believe any of them survived the blast. And she seems to think that the Horseman is still in charge of this vessel."
A sigh of annoyance. "Tell the zealot that we're all human here, and relocating before we rebuild Europe. Tony, does that satisfy you?"
A shape to the right moved its head, as far as the Keeper could tell. "It sounds fine, Otto. Now let's get the boy some pants, and put them under armed guard. Given the blue in that one's eyes, he is a mutant. So we should probably find out what he can do first."
"Good, separate them," Doom ordered. "The boy remains up here. The Keeper--,"
"Stays with me," Emmanuel said swiftly. With horror, Murdock heard gun holding hands move until those guns had to be pointing at heads.
"I'm being nice," the boy stressed, before giggling slightly. "I could have them kill all of you, any time. The Keeper stays with me, or you'll learn why Apocalypse thought it was a good idea to liquidate all psychics into his defenses. He's mine."
In the dark, the Keeper put a hand on the empath's shoulder. They were dead, otherwise. "Don't."
"You will stay with me!" the force and fear behind those words caused the assembled humans and meta-humans to flinch. Murdock felt the obsessed need burn into his mind. The pain was minimal, compared to the few seconds of torture below, but a small gust of wind could have pushed him over just then.
With a swift, efficient movement he jammed his club into the back of Emmanuel's skull, wincing as pain blossomed like an ugly tumor just under his own ear. The empath's body crumpled. Murdock surveyed the others, wondering what they thought, wondering if they knew. He could hear guns being placed back in holsters. He was oddly enough not afraid, for either himself, or the boy sprawled at his feet. Whatever happened, happened.
"The empath is a little unbalanced. I can keep him under control," the Keeper told them all, stepping forward, over the body. "I just want you to give him a chance, that's all."
The silence bloomed, and he wondered what the group was making of it all. There were many here that Emmanuel could not affect except for individually. He could see that, and wondered who had taught them, or how their will power could be that much stronger than an ordinary human being's. How he knew this he didn't think about too closely. A flash of feelings transferred by physical contact had been enough to send others mad. What an empath could do when reaching out for help, any form of help, was not something Murdock wanted to investigate until they were well away from the current leader of the Human High Council.
The one at the head of the bridge turned his back on the proceedings. "Fine. There are ways of dealing with his kind. And with you."
"But you're with us, hmm?" The man named Tony asked, as the Keeper moved towards the window. He could not see the beautiful vista of water below, but he could hear the shouts and echoes of the engine, the breathing of the humans. The world had been so closed, once. Then a man named Rasputin had come forward, offering the return of sight, and an escape from the death mines. Had it all been a lie? His unquestioning servitude in return for the expansion of his world. He could have expanded his own world all along. Was what the boy had shown him worth it? Did the shattering illusion of his savior matter? He had done horrible things—allowed horrible things to happen.
"For the foreseeable future," he heard himself say, "I am yours to command."
But never again will I allow myself to walk past a suffering child, he promised himself. When I see my people tortured and dying I will act. The boy was just the first.
"Good to know that loyalty can be bought so quickly," a girl commented snidely.
A throat was cleared, although Murdock knew that was what everyone was thinking. "Now, Gwen," Tony began.
Murdock held up a hand. "You'll be rebuilding the world. What more could I ask?"
Up front, Doom chuckled menacingly.
Yes, good Keeper. Heel.
Thank you very much for reading, and if you've got a suggestion on what might be done to tighten up the conclusion, I'd appreciate it.
~ MF