Chapter 3

Author's Note: Holy crap. I'm sorry I've been away for so long everyone. There are a few reasons, namely because of school. I am officially a college graduate. :) Very stressful. Further, I got way into my SOA story for awhile, but now have writer's block for that...anyway, lastly, I was having some issues with the plot here. There were a few different directions it could have gone, and it took awhile for me to decide on this one. Then I wanted to spread all that happened in this chapter over two or three, but decided, you know what? Suspense is hard to do. I figured you all would have read enough X-Men to guess where this was going. :) I'll explain a little more on the end, alright?

P.S. To LittleBlackSparrow, thank you for the idea of involving Renee, I agree that she needed a bigger part. She'll probably be involved more, she's just so endearing :)

Kurt hadn't told anyone about what happened last night. Julia knew this the moment she appeared in the kitchen and everyone greeted her normally. His arm had been back to normal by the time morning had rolled around, but that didn't mean she felt any better about it. Or that she had been able to sleep the rest of the night. She had lain awake, trying to figure out just what in the hell was going on, why the nightmare had suddenly gotten worse. Who that person had been.

After all, if the most powerful telepath on the planet couldn't get into her head, how was someone else going to invade her dreams?

She sat in an empty chair at the table, drinking a large cup of nearly black coffee, feeling utterly inhuman from lack of sleep. She only noticed Marcy trying to get her attention when she patted Julia's shoulder lightly, the little brunette looking at Julia with wide, two-toned eyes imploringly.

"Sorry Marcy, what is it?"

"I said Scott said you're supposed to help me and Logan out in the yard. Our class has their first obstacle course today."

Obstacle courses. Julia remembered what those were like; they were sort of like a first step before the Danger Room the school used for the students who were truly getting the hang of their powers. But why would Scott want her to help? Especially after yesterday?

"Uhm...did Scott say why?"

Marcy shook her head, but Logan's voice sounded from the dining room doorway. "We thought it would be a good starting place for ya."

Julia swiveled in her chair, looking at Logan over her shoulder. He had seen what she had almost done yesterday as well, but he also seemed to be keeping it quiet. It wasn't like she would have expected Logan to turn her over to Scott, but...well, she just didn't know what to think of the situation she had found herself in. She wondered if she could ask Logan about it, get some advice. And if there would be a good time to ask him about it, she supposed it would be while the kids were out struggling their way through his boot camp.

"Sure. I guess I can help."

Once breakfast was done and they headed outside, Julia found herself promptly assaulted by a brilliant orange glow and found Renee to suddenly be practically bouncing in front of her, the girl's feet three or four inches off the ground.

"Are you going to be part of the class Julia? Can you be my partner?"

"Partner?" Julia questioned, confused, nearly blinded, and feeling her own powers stirring in the presence of Renee, who basically always seemed to be putting out about as much energy as the average dwarf star. She focused on that last part, stamping the well of her own dark energy as far down as she could get it. Which wasn't far, considering how bonded with her it was now.

"It's a pair course," Marcy explained, coming up to Julia's side, "-It's supposed to be a team building exercise too. That said, I don't think it's really fair if you get Julia as a partner Renee. She's only supposed to be helping, and-"

"And she's technically still X-Man level," Logan supplied, also joining the growing group.

Renee pouted, sinking back to the ground, though the glow hardly dimmed. "But we have an uneven number anyway. And you're not technically a teacher right? So it wouldn't really be cheating or anything." Renee turned pleading bright orange eyes to Julia again.

"Uhm..." She turned to Marcy and Logan, not sure whether she should let the official "teachers" handle this. Renee didn't seem to want to take no for an answer, and she hardly wanted to hurt the girl's feelings.

"Mr. Logan, please please please can I pair with Julia? I promise I'll go through again if you want me to."

Logan opened his mouth, clearly about to say no, but Renee fearless, little teenager that she was, stared back with the biggest eyes she could manage. Julia had to give the girl props, at Renee's age, she probably wouldn't have dared argue with Logan. Actually, at fifteen, she probably would have avoided Logan like the plague; she had tended to do that with all adults when she had been that age.

Logan's shoulders drooped slightly, obviously unable to resist Renee's charm. "Ah, to hell with it. Fine. But Jules, ya don't get any teleporting or claws, only transforming, got it? This ain't set up fer all that, it's just some basics."

"Okay, I can do that." She nodded, actually a bit relieved. After what had happened the last time she'd used her claws, she wasn't sure she was willing to use them today. She wasn't even sure she felt like transforming was going to be a good idea.

The first pair to go made it through with relatively little trouble, a pair of girls, one who could throw fire as well as Pyro, and the other who could make shields a-la Invisible Woman. Pair number two was a boy with TK, which he had so far only been able to use on electronics, and a South American girl whose ability, as far as Julia could tell, was something akin to Collosus, most of the course had been broken, and they were unscathed.

Pair number three was going now, and Julia and Renee were pair number four. Some of the kids had been a little weirded out by her presence, but one look from Logan if they got to whispering had most of them ignoring her. Except for Renee, the girl was talking Julia's ear off about everything from school, the letter she had finally gotten from her mother, the homework she had lost, the boy she had a crush on, and a million and five questions about when Julia was getting married and Renee wanting to know if she was invited. The girl was like a whole pep-squad rolled into one, and Julia found it rather relaxing to listen to her ramble about things that seemed so normal.

Pair number three emerged from around the trees, signalling they had made it to the end of the course, and Logan waved Julia and Renee along. Julia shifted forms, and almost instantly began to feel...something.

She couldn't really describe it, but after yesterday being in her dark form had started to feel somehow unhuman. Before she had never really paid much mind to the fact that her dark form technically wasn't her body, but these days she was painfully aware that it was something from an entirely different dimension. That said, only recently had it decided that it wasn't going to listen to her as well as it had used to.

Renee lifted off the ground again slightly, her glow brightening, and headed off toward the course, at about the same pace as Julia jogging behind her. It still wasn't quite flying, more like hovering or levitating, but the control Renee showed now was clearly much better than when she had first showed Julia a few weeks ago.

Barely five minutes into the course Julia -half dodging little rubber balls being shot at them, and half making sure her own powers didn't start siphoning off Renee's energy- felt a strange tingle in what was usually her spine; she wasn't sure what it was in this form. At first, she thought it was just the beginnings of a little headache from trying to divide her attention between the course and Renee, but it was steadily getting worse. She was starting to feel as though she was being split down the middle, or that her top-half was trying to pull apart from her lower-half.

She felt herself stop, but she wasn't sure why, she could hear Renee saying something to her, but she didn't seem to be processing any of the words, even when she tried to focus on Renee, trying to guess what the girl was saying to her.

Mine.

Julia spun on her heel, not sure how she knew where the voice was coming from, but somehow pinpointing the source with ease. The woman from her nightmare. The one who looked just enough like her to be uncanny, but obviously wasn't Julia. The woman gave a little smirk, and turned away from Julia before she could even open her mouth to demand just what the hell was going on.

Without giving it a second thought, Julia gave chase. She could catch her, bring this crazy invasive woman back to the mansion with her, and and they could get some answers. Yeah, she had to be a pretty powerful telepath or something to get into her head, but she would bet Professor Xavier was still better. Or maybe she just wanted to believe that so she didn't have to be afraid.

Doesn't matter. I'm stopping this before it gets worse.

Julia picked up her pace, sprinting after the mystery woman, though she seemed to have lost sight of her. She couldn't be that much faster than Julia, could she?

Something knocked Julia off her feet, something she couldn't see, even after she had hit the ground, rolling instinctively into a crouch, prepared to strike whatever it was. What felt like a hammer blow landed between Julia's shoulders, throwing her forward into the dirt. To her surprise, she tasted blood.

Coughing slightly, Julia shoved herself up on her hands, raising an arm to wipe the dirt from her mouth, stunned when it came up flesh and left her mouth with blood smeared on it. She was in her human form? But when? And how? Could she not even control when she changed forms anymore?

"Looking for me?"

Julia's head snapped up, staring into the identical grey eyes of the very woman who had been in her dreams. She surged to her feet, trying and failing to force herself back into her energy form.

"Who the hell are you? What have you been doing to my dreams?" In response, the mystery woman smirked, as though amused by the question.

"You don't know? I'm Eclipse."

Julia frowned, not the least bit amused. Though why she would say such a thing, Julia couldn't figure.

"I'm Eclipse. Just what are you trying to pull?" Julia demanded. The woman's expression shifted to one of annoyance, almost anger.

"Wrong. You're Julia. I'm Eclipse." She took a step toward Julia, who backed off an equal distance, not sure what to expect from her, and slightly uncomfortable without the ability to shift forms at the moment. She was also utterly confused by this woman. Was she aiming for that, or did this total stranger seriously believe that she somehow actually was Eclipse? Personally, if Julia was going to pretend to be someone she wasn't, she would have picked someone with a better record. 'Eclipse' was infamous for throwing a guy off a building and mysteriously vanishing from an MRD prison.

"Look, you can't be Eclipse. I'm pretty sure that's me."

"Oh? Then what about your powers?" The smirk came back, keenly satisfied now. "Where are they? Why don't you use them?"

"That's none of your business!" That, and truthfully, Julia didn't know the answers to any of those questions.

"Just like I thought," the woman calling herself Eclipse smirked again. "You can't do anything without me." Her body seemed to shimmer, an effect Julia recognized from her own transformations, and a half-second later, Julia found herself staring at a mirror image of her energy form. Too shocked to speak, she could Only stare at her twin, more confused than ever, and now with a deep sense of foreboding lurking in her stomach. She didn't know what was going to happen now, but she was almost positive now would be a good time to head back toward the mansion, where someone else could hopefully make sense of this.

Julia turned on her heel and bolted, suddenly painfully aware of how long it had been since she had run in human form and used her lungs this heavily, pushing passed some low hanging branches, only to find her imitator easily overtaking her, warping through the trees with speed that made her practically invisible. It was only Julia's energy sense, the false Eclipse leaving a vivid trail of darkness behind her, that told Julia where the other woman was.

That did not, however, make her any more prepared for the attack that came, seemingly out of nowhere, her eyes catching only the vaguest outlines of claws, curved, dangerous, and again, so similar to her own, before they slammed into her face.

The sensation was excruciating; it was what Julia imagined being stabbed with icicles felt like, the cold biting through, seemingly to her very soul. Her heart stopped, her lungs seized, and her mind went blank.

Vaguely, she felt her body hit the ground, but hadn't felt her knees buckle or give out, but the world was fading, going dark. It was beginning to look like her nightmare.

The frantic pounding on his window nearly gave Kurt a heart attack, especially considering his room was four floors above the ground. He turned to the window and found a frantic, almost tearful Renee, awkwardly suspended at a strange angle, her legs nearly above her head -she still didn't quite have flight down- desperately attempting to get his attention.

"Mr. Wagner! You have to go help Mr. Logan, Something's wrong with Julia!"

"Jyulia? Vhat's vrong vith Jyulia?"

"I don't know! She was doing the training with me, and then all of a sudden she started talking to someone but no one was there, then she started freaking out, and now I think she's trying to kill Mr. Logan!"

"Show me vhere," Kurt demanded, hoping Renee didn't take his sharp tone of voice as being directed at her. Considering the things that had been happening to Julia, he simply didn't wish to take any chances, the quicker he arrived to help his soon-to-be-wife, the sooner they could resolve whatever was happening. He hoped anyway.

A few quick teleports later, following Renee's shiny beacon of energy, Kurt arrived at a very strange scene. At first it looked like Logan and Julia were merely sparring, but upon a closer look, he observed that Logan was honestly having to defend himself; any of Julia's lightning fast attacks that he failed to block resulted in bleeding gashes, healing as quickly as ever, but with an obvious detrimental effect to his ability to move.

This was strange indeed, Julia had never been able to make her claws solid, not enough to cut flesh, nor had her energy ever been intense enough to numb Logan out, even for a moment.

Kurt had the strangest feeling he was not currently looking at the woman he loved, but someone else entirely.

"Don't stay here, go back to the mansion," Kurt told Renee, gesturing vaguely at the tree he was perched in and Renee was hovering behind. She nodded, and drifted higher into the branches presumably to head back in the other direction, while Kurt debated his next step. While his first instinct was to simply jump in and pull either Logan or Julia away by a distance of about two miles, but he had no idea what had started this, or whether that would end it. The way Julia was attacking, he wasn't sure pulling her away would do anything but give her a new target in the form of himself. That left Logan.

Kurt leaped from the tree, jaunting to Logan's side, grabbing him and taking a full two mile jump away from Julia, hoping that would buy them a moment. She was completely unpredictable right now, and Kurt would rather not take chances.

Logan slumped against a tree when their feet were safely on the ground again, rubbing at a cut on his cheek that was healing, but slowly.

"Vhat's going on here? Vhat's vrong vith Jyulia?"

"She's outta her flamin' mind, that's what!" Logan practically snarled. "One minute everything's peachy keen, and the next she's tryin' to slice the life outta Renee!" Logan spit out what appeared to be tooth, rubbing his jaw. "I don't know what the hell's going on, but she's lost it."

"Renee said she vas talking to somevone-"

"Someone only she could see." Logan spat again, this time blood free, his healing factor kicking in at full capacity now. "I couldn't get through to her at all. She looked at me like she didn't have a flamin' clue who I was."

"I'll try to talk to her-"

"Kurt you don't even know what the hell is going on with her."

"No. But vhat do expect me to do?"

"I...hell, I dunno." Logan scratched the back of his head. "My healing factor's taken care of the nerve damage by now. I'll go back with you. If nothing else I can distract her while ya try to get through to her."

"Ja. Let's go." While Kurt supposed he sounded mostly confident, but he didn't really feel like it. He remembered Jean's first outburst as Dark Phoenix, and he knew Logan would be too. He knew they all probably would when word got around. And that mess had hardly been an easy one to fix, would this be the same? As bad?

Kurt sent a little prayer up that it wouldn't come down to risking Julia's death, because she, unlike Jean, likely did not posses an ability to return to life.

Julia was no longer in the obstacle course when they returned to the spot they had left her, but a crack of thunder and lightning from the direction of the mansion heralded which way she had gone, and also that Logan wasn't the only one she had tried to harm, nor was he the only one ready to fight back. Kurt was having a seriously hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that Julia was apparently the one doing all this. Attacking friends, after so staunchly trying to prove she was ready to rejoin the X-Men? It didn't make sense, nothing Logan could do could possibly have set her off to this extreme. And even if she was having trouble controlling the shape of her claws or her powers, that didn't explain these sudden and unprovoked attacks.

Following the weather anomaly, Kurt and Logan arrived to see Ororo in the air, and an apparent black streak of lightning arcing around her, only barely being repelled by the small tornado Ororo kept tight around herself.

"Don't throw any lightning 'Ro! It's only going to keep her going longer!" Logan shouted, though Ororo was likely aware of the fact.

The black streak halted, forming into a more human shape, but with far more mass than Julia had ever had, seeming suspended in a cloud of Darkforce energy.

"You're confusing me with her. I don't have her limits." Without any more preamble, she launched at Logan again, giving Storm a moment of reprieve before she too joined in, hurling in more gale-force blizzard winds that seemed to do little more than irritate Julia as they pinned her to the ground. She disappeared, warping, but Kurt intercepted, knowing she would be aiming for Ororo again, grabbing Julia out of the air the moment she solidified; though he couldn't muster the will to hit her, even knowing she wouldn't feel much in this form.

Julia twisted in his arms, a wordless growl escaping her, raising claws that curved like raptor-talons, and Kurt had the horrific impression that he was about to understand what being paralyzed felt like.

"Jyulia! It's me!" He let go to raise his hands placatingly, and rather to his surprise, she did stop. Looking surprised for a moment, then frustrated, then angry.

"She's stronger than I thought, she doesn't want you hurt. Hmph. No matter." She turned, as though simply planning to walk away from him, but Kurt reached out to grab her, stunned when a blade of dark energy sprouted from her shoulder, lashing out at his hand. It would have caught him too, if not for the instincts that had him dropping to the ground on all fours. These weren't Julia's powers at all, she had never been able to do anything like that. And if it wasn't Julia, who was it that had usurped her powers this way?

She lashed out with a leg, a new blade sprouting from there as well, Kurt scrambling away before he ended up with nerve damage.

"Jyulia please! You don't know vhat you're doing!"

"She can't hear you." Whoever, or whatever, this woman was taunted. She lashed out at Kurt again, all claws and blades of darkness, forcing him to practically flatten to the ground, and then teleport away before she could land a solid hit on him. Kurt landed in a tree nearby, while Logan charged in again, his adamantium claws meeting spikes of solid Darkforce energy that looked fit to kill anything less-tough than the Wolverine.

They weren't getting anywhere like this, they needed to stop Julia, and hopefully do it without harming her. Ordinarily Kurt would hope they could just wear her out, since Julia's transformations only lasted thirty-minutes at most, but since this wasn't actually Julia -Kurt was positive of that much at least- he had no idea how long that would take. For all they knew, there might not be a limit.

Julia was beginning to think this wasn't a dream, or the dream as the case may be. It had started the same, still looked basically the same, but nothing had happened yet. She had been content to wait it out, sure all those crazy delusions involving that other woman were also part of this nightmare and that it would soon end and she would wake up, but now she wasn't so certain. For one thing, she felt like this dream had been going on an awfully long time, so long in fact, that her legs had gotten tired and she was now sitting on the invisible floor within the endless darkness, that was something she was positive had never happened in one of her dreams before. Any dream.

Not only that, she felt awake. Lucid, and aware -for the most part- of what was going on around her. She could feel all her limbs and digits, knew for certain she was breathing and her heart was still beating. So if it wasn't a dream, what was this place that looked exactly like the nightmare she had been having?

The Darkforce Dimension. The thought occurred to her spontaneously, and, considering the decor, it seemed like a pretty good bet. That would also probably be why this place hadn't eaten her alive like it apparently did to most things that wound up here; she was connected to it, it was a part of her. Now, how had she gotten here? Hank said she probably didn't have the ability to teleport, and if she could teleport, wouldn't she have ended up somewhere else back in her own dimension? At the very least, she had never seen Kurt wind up stuck in the middle of a teleport. But no, she would probably know if she had sent herself here. It was the other woman, the one who was trying to pass herself off as Eclipse. She had attacked Julia, and Julia had woken up here, so it must have been her doing. The other Eclipse must have Darkforce powers too, freakishly similar to Julia's own, albeit they were obviously much stronger.

If only that would help her get back out. Just because this place wasn't trying to absorb her didn't mean she liked it here. It vaguely occurred to her to wonder why she was handling the idea of being trapped in a realm of pure darkness as calmly as she was at the moment.

It seemed as though, for the moment at least, she was the only thing here that was solid. Everything else, the vague shapes she could almost see swirling in the darkness, were incorporeal forms of energy, if they were even actually out there. On a whim, Julia reached down into herself, attempting to pull at the Darkforce Energy within her own body, wondering if she could switch forms and get out somehow, only to find it completely unresponsive. In her own dimension, her powers worked by pulling the energy to her and letting it replace her physical body, here, she would naturally be powerless, because she was in the dimension she pulled energy from. The idea made enough sense at the moment that she left it at that, and turned her mind back towards this Eclipse woman. Just who was she and what did she want with Julia?

A little voice in the back of her head that didn't seem to be Julia's own pointed her to the fact that the other Eclipse had definitely been the one in her dreams. An almost identical twin, one that had her powers. Could get into her head when even the world's most powerful telepath couldn't.

Which basically meant one thing as far as Julia could tell. 'Eclipse' must somehow be a part of her.

This was not going as planned. Of course, there hadn't been much of a plan to start with. Fight as they might, Julia kept progressing closer and closer to the Mansion. Kurt figured he knew why, the supplies of energy there were close to boundless, Jean, Scott, Renee to name a few, all sorts of energy for her powers to feed on.

Kurt's arms and hands were starting go numb from his repeated attempts to grab Julia, to reason with her and, hopefully, bring her back from wherever this stranger had put her. Each time there was a faint glimmer of Julia, a hint of her mind returning, but each time he had been forced to retreat when the not-so-nice Julia took control again. His Julia was still in there somewhere, he just had to get to her somehow.

The other X-Men who had come to assist in the fight looked as if they too were starting to run out of ideas. This version of Julia had yet to even show a sign of losing energy, losing her hold on her energy form, and they had been doing nothing but fight her for nearly an hour.

Kurt, I think I have an answer.

Professor?

I've found Julia.

Kurt's brow furrowed in confusion. He knew that this person wasn't exactly Julia, but she was still mostly Julia, wasn't she? Vhat exactly do you mean?

Julia has been misplaced into the Darkforce dimension. This...person, is her equivalent from that side. Somehow she's managed to take Julia's place on our side.

How can you be sure?

As I said, I found Julia. Her powers are currently separate from her physical body and therefore not blocking me; I was able to trace her mind to the edge of our world. I think I can help her find her way back, but I don't know what that will do, or if that will allow her to regain control. I'm afraid we may not have much choice otherwise, the longer her Darkforce aspect is here, the harder it will be to force her back.

How? How can ve get her back?

This version of Eclipse, she's created a hole in our dimension, according to Hank, she's pulling enough energy through it that she's corrupting our side. In this case, the link goes both ways. I should be able to send a Psionic projection to Julia, and guide her through moving back through to this side.

Und Eclipse vill just go avay if Jyulia comes back?

That I'm afraid we can't know for certain. All I can do is bring Julia back. It took Kurt only a moment to decide what course of action he would take.

Ve'll keep her occupied a little longer. Professor...bring her back. Please.

I'll do the best I can. Logan, Ororo, Peter, did you catch all that?

"Yeah, yeah, we heard ya Chuck! Now get down here and get Pete outta there before Jules absorbs him, wouldja Elf?" Logan shouted, one hand had a hold of the back of Peter's uniform, while the other was waving in Kurt's direction, Peter trying desperately to punch his way out of what looked to be solid fog of some sort, spreading from Julia's form and trying to wrap around him to strangle him.

'Porting in to Peter's rescue, Kurt only hoped Julia was as strong as he believed her to be. Putting this Eclipse back into her own dimension was going to be no easy feat.

Author's Note 2: So, as you'll likely guess, I recently re-read both the Dark Phoenix Saga, and Phoenix Endsong (and there's a little Angel/Archangel from Uncanny X-Force). Heavily inspired. Hopefully though, it's different enough that you'll believe me when I try to say it's not a knock-off. As to where the second 'Eclipse' happened, I'll try to explain it in the next chapter. I also got the idea based on Darkstar's Wiki page, which says her power comes from a split-consciousness. As I said, I'll try to explain more of this in the next chapter. Have faith in me please! :)