Three Years Later
There had been blood all over her tank top, flannel shirt and down her pants. Xavier could have sworn he saw some on her sandals, but could not tell because of how she hid her feet under his desk. All he saw before him was a teenager – now a woman of some means – that had been a sister to a soldier, student and graduate of his school and part of the X-Men team. Now, she was just as broken as a limp doll, hanging her head in shame as she blurted to him during one of the classes she interrupted that she had something important to tell him, Jean Grey behind her for obvious support. That something had been deadly surely, but it was to Xavier's relief that she was not hurt or killed. Danielle's lame left knee and severe vertigo was controlled through her powers, but the pain cannot always be held sway.
Someone else obviously had been killed in her place.
"What happened, Danielle?" Xavier asked her gently as he excused his other students, caressing her with the same ease he had when she was five years old and frightened of him and Erik Lehnsherr.
Tears sprung from her eyes. Sobs escaped her lips. Jean, behind her without the tears (but they threatened to be her downfall too), put a forthcoming hand on her shoulder for comfort as Danielle sat down in one of the chairs, but it did nothing to alleviate the pain and anguish. Hazel eyes turned to red and back again over and over. Auburn hair that had been the pride and joy of the teenager was now littered with blatant strings of white that managed to dye itself within hours, mingled with the blood of another.
The innocence had come to an end. It was a swift fall, but it was a hard one too.
"He's dead, Professor," Jean said softly as Danielle continued to sob. "Jay is dead."
Xavier's face fell. "I was afraid of this," he began, not knowing what else to say. Thoughts swirled around that the young man had taken the easy way out and tortured himself before his sister before deciding to die, but Xavier doubted that theory.
Something more sinister was afoot.
"Senator Ellis…" Danielle started, but ended, her crying taking up so much energy that words failed her, but could not erase the scene in her mind that she could not share with anyone. It was one she was not likely to forget for the rest of her life, the one that would haunt her forever.
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore"…
"What did we find out?" Xavier asked gently, more directing the question to Jean.
"He's built something destructive and has used it against us already," Jean replied with some hesitation, not willing to divulge information that Danielle should tell Xavier. "He also has the information to destroy the mutant community and start the war that Magneto wanted."
"What do you mean?" Xavier's eyes narrowed.
"There's a serum that Ellis uses against mutants, to get them to do as he wants," Jean explained. "He received it from Major William Stryker, who has escaped under the radar. We cannot find him or anything concerning his motives. The only information we have about Stryker is his obsession with mutants and the Weapons X and XI projects he oversaw in 1981 on Three Mile Island. We don't know what they are yet or if they are mutants or not."
Xavier remembered Stryker's son with dismay, with grief even, and sighed. He waved his hand at Jean to stop, looking to Danielle to tell the rest of the tale.
Danielle had calmed down little, but braved herself for the rest of the story. "He shot him, Professor."
"And he chose to die," Xavier reminded her, always about that family curse that was never-ending.
"He had no choice almost," Danielle explained, wiping her nose with her bloody flannel sleeve. "We've been following Ellis for three years now, when you sent me down to work with Jay. I played the cover well, intergraded myself into the crowds and found out what was conspiring with Phineas Teller and Senator Ellis. I've told you what had happened when there was a breakthrough, when we connected the dots and found out that Ellis was working with Teller and Chameleon. What it was, we didn't find out until today."
"This is much more serious than we realized, Professor," Jean continued, rubbing Danielle's shoulder in an amicable manner. "Ellis had been working many others into an anti mutant frenzy, the like that hasn't been seen in over a decade. With this in mind, he worked with Phineas Teller to locate Chameleon and use his powers to plant a bomb. With a touch of a button, he can decimate an area of ten miles in circumference. With the sound of his voice, the crowds will follow."
Xavier sat in his wheelchair, stunned into silence.
"The bomb is planted underneath this school," Danielle revealed. "I don't know where. I don't know where!"
"Ellis and his men only left us a riddle," Jean added as she took a slightly bloody piece of paper out of her pocket, handing it to Xavier. It had probably been in Danielle or Jayden's hands before Xavier's, fingerprints surrounding it in its telltale red.
I am so simple that I only point, yet I guide men all over the world to the stars, Polaris being my head. Throughout history even, there have been thousands of horses jumping over towers and landing on clergy and small men, forcing their removal from their petty powers. A game, if you must know, it is a game of wits.
"A game of wits indeed," Xavier mused, panicking in his mind about his other students, most of them not having a home to go back to. "When does he think he would detonate this bomb of his?"
"The conditions are simple," Danielle said, shaking harder. "Do what he says and he'll keep the peace. If we don't, he'll whip up a mob and the mutants will fight the humans."
"I am not to be intimidated by a man who thinks he owns the world!" Xavier exclaimed in return. "It is a ridiculous notion that we be controlled by a member of Congress that deems himself the hand of God in matters concerning mutants. Mutants are born everyday. He cannot eradicate the gene pool with his genocide."
"But we also cannot afford to be calling it a bluff either, Professor," Jean pointed out. "I haven't been able to detect anything out of the ordinary, but we have students to consider and neighbors some miles from the school that can be hurt by the blast."
Xavier knew that Jean was right, but the riddle as to where the supposed weapon was confused him. The first sentence seemed like the writer was referring to a compass pointing to directional places, with Polaris being in the northerly route. But Xavier knew nothing of where a compass might be. Nor, from the second sentence, did he spot where something akin to a chess set might be located.
"And it's on the grounds?" he asked furiously, being helpless that he could not have made security on the grounds better.
"Yes," Danielle replied. She put a trembling hand on Xavier's desk to steady herself, now sporting an extravagant diamond ring on her left hand that Xavier had not seen before.
Right then and there, he saw the conditions Ellis had. And they were brutal indeed.
"When?" was all Xavier asked her, a doomsday of some sort for the student that had given him everything he ever needed from this mission and nothing else.
"After I turn eighteen," Danielle said, a birthday that was mere days away.
"And what does he expect of you?"
"I could keep the house that I had been living in and the deed will be mine. It's going to be our home when he's not in his Washington apartment, which will be rare, as I understand it. I have to act his wife in all things politically, be there for the conventions and everything alike. He has no children, so he would want as many as he can, although a fully human child for him might be impossible."
"And your mother?"
"She's going to be staying in a nursing home from now on, Professor. Senator Ellis does not feel that my mother would be safe in what he calls 'inexperienced hands'. That, or he doesn't want the embarrassment of having to deal with her, his new mother-in-law, when he comes back from Washington."
Xavier noticed many things, especially Danielle's great sacrifice. That had brokered practically no arguments or other plans, even from Jean, a friend of hers from the start of her schooling and the one who guided her the most. She was taking Ellis' schemes seriously, just as she did when she and Jayden had been investigating him, using her impulses to counter anything that might harm another. In that, Xavier felt she was being foolish on. There were other ways other than marriage that could have prevented a bomb from exploding at his school, if there ever was one. There were other plans he could have enforced to get Ellis to show his hand better, to negotiate a better deal with him.
Alas, right now, there was none that Xavier can think of. However, what Danielle might also stop will be a saving grace for the time being. With her in the senator's household, he could have a glimpse into his life, what his doings are and even solve the mystery as to where this bomb was. She could be the spy once more and lend her loyalty to him, but the split, especially for the children, might be harsh.
The bluff was not going to be called. Xavier had no choice but to believe the inevitable.
Softly, as not to awake the demons now growing inside of her, Xavier took Danielle's hand. While Jean relaxed her from the back end, Xavier pushed his thoughts into hers as freely as she would allow him to, trying to have her relive the day in which she saw her brother die.
"Show me," he commanded Danielle. "Show me what had happened today."
Danielle only looked at Xavier blankly, willing herself not to open her mind and to use her own powers. "No, Professor, let me take you back there and show you."
~00~
It was long after midnight. Xavier should have retired to bed by then, but something bothered him greatly. After a draining experience taken back into dark memories, learning that one of his older students was murdered and finally died in his hands of his own powers, he could not sleep, so full of grief he was. His restless eyes glanced lightly out the window, watching stars twinkle and blink. The moon shone brightly, the best out of all the nightly lights, but the shadows that it left in Xavier's mind danced and whirled in consternation.
His student, one of his X-Men, was being sent to a slaughterhouse as a sacrifice, a token of good will that Xavier will do nothing to disturb Ellis' other plans, whatever they were. Another was dead, shot several times in the head before laughing in front of his captors, choosing to die when the shooter had enough of the joke and shot him over and over again, his sister screaming as the blood raked her, bathing her in a salty spray. The two had been put towards Xavier's plans and paid the ultimate prices, but when it would end, he did not know. He did not know if he should end the X-Men team and tell Storm, Jean and Scott that it was to be disbanded because no good was coming from it. He especially did not want it to come down to that, but he saw that his X-Men were dying in their own ways around him.
"Oh, old friend, I see that you're reminiscing again."
Xavier turned his wheelchair around from the window, seeing Erik Lehnsherr in the corner of his office, coming out his own dark shadows. The latter smiling, tapping his obnoxious helmet to remind Xavier of his mind's safety, he walked towards Xavier, stopping some inches from him. Lehnsherr was keeping a secret surely, Xavier thought, and played stupid when he thought Xavier was not paying attention to his true intentions.
Lehnsherr had something to do with Senator Ellis. Xavier was sure on that somehow. What it was, he was clueless about, but it had to be against the Congressman.
"Erik, what do I own the pleasure of your late night visit?" Xavier asked in an exasperated tone, not willing to play the game this night.
"Oh, something Mystique had found," Lehnsherr replied casually, pulling out folders from what seemed like nowhere and handing them to Xavier. "I think you would find it interesting to know what Senator Ellis had been scheming this whole time under your nose, other than lusting after Chameleon's young daughter, that is. And let me tell you how much of a spell she somehow put on him, with those mutant powers of hers."
"Is this what it's all about, Erik?" Xavier asked, exasperated at the sarcasm. "You're here to tease us in defeat?"
"No, no, old friend," Lehnsherr said, putting a hand on Xavier's shoulder. "I'm here to help you. Of course, there is no price to this. Just keep in tabs with me about our favorite senator and we'll work for a common cause."
"Which would be what, Erik? Your brotherhood of mutants and no humans on this planet?"
"No, no, no, Charles. That would be too easy to assume, wouldn't it? No, there are better plans to crush Senator Ellis. All we need to do is take our time and plan accordingly."
Before Xavier would give a tarter reply, Lehnsherr had disappeared.
Ok, this is the last of the intro chapters! Present day in the story will start in the next chapters, although the timeline is two years later than the first X-Men movie, so I would ask forgiveness.
