Title: New Mutant Reunion Part 7/7
Author: Ethiercn
Rating: T
Characters used: Firestar, Cannonball, Jean Grey, Husk, Boomer (Meltdown), Sunspot, and mention of various others.
Disclaimer: I don't own them; Marvel does. I am not making any profit off of this.
Author's Note: Starts after Part 6. Sorry about the open ending, but I will tie up lose ends in the next story or two (and sorry about the weak ending). I'm not entirely sure if Jean could do what she does, but considering what she did in X3, I thought it would be possible. "The Cloak" is the story read at the end. Publication information for it is : Dinesan, Isak. "The Cloak". Last Tales. NY: Random House, 1957. 27-44. The sentences are taken from page 29.
"There," Jean said as she pointed though the front window of the Blackbird. Cyclops looked up and saw Firestar's unique power signature. She was followed by Cannonball. Two other mutants, both fliers, quickly closed on the fleeing pair. As Storm lowered the Blackbird, she raised fog to cover their descent. Jean reached telepathically, letting the other two X-Men know help had arrived.
"Come on," Wolverine grumbled from his position behind Storm, "Let's have a fight."
Firestar's power sliced though the fog as she fired off a blast at one of the trailing mutants. The flier was coming in too quickly to dodge the blast and tumbled from the air. For a second, the second mutant, the air controller, paused and then with an almost lazy gesture conjured a gust of air to slow the other man's descent. His distraction allowed Cannonball to circle around and come in with a punch. Jean's telekinesis slowed the mutant's wild fall.
"This would have been easier if you had allowed me use of my telepathy," The White Queen sniffed.
"Shut up," both Firestar and Cannonball replied as they flew over to the Blackbird.
"Maybe I should drop her," Cannonball suggested as they hovered outside the door to the plane.
"I wouldn't stop you."
Finally, Wolverine, with a disappointed expression on his face, popped open the door, allowing first Angel and then Sam into the jet.
"What's she doing here?" Wolverine snarled as he caught sight of the White Queen as Sam unceremoniously dumped her into a seat.
Frost looked around the Blackbird with an expression of distaste, "He does wash, doesn't he?" she asked no one in particular.
"Let's throw her out," Wolverine said to Cyclops, who ignored him. Making sure that Sam and Angel were belted in, Storm turned the Blackbird for home.
While Xavier, Cyclops, and Storm dealt with Frost, Angel sat in the infirmary's bathroom. Jean started running the bath and then moved to stand behind Angel. The psionic took a pair of scissors and began to cut the sweatshirt away from Angel's back. "Did he rape you?" she asked Angel.
"He tried, and then I . . . "Angel didn't want to think about the ramifications of that, whether she had killed him and whether it made her what Frost desired her to be. She looked at the door to the bathroom. Sam was on the other side being tended to by Beast, and every so often they could hear Beast's increasing exasperated command of "hold still." Suddenly feeling cold, she shivered.
Jean dropped the pieces of sweatshirt on the floor. She frowned as she studied Angel's back and then glanced at the bandages. No one, she thought, she should have to live with such scars. "This might hurt," she said softly as she reached with her telekinesis.
It felt as if someone was tugging on the tender flesh of her back, and Angel clenched her teeth. If she cried out, Sam would hear and come in. He needed to be checked out by Beast. She knew what the White Queen could do to a person. She struggled to hold herself still.
"It shouldn't scar," Jean finally said. Her telekinesis had performed the function of stitches, of, perhaps, a surgeon. Impressed with her own handy work, Jean looked over the various bruises that Angel sported. "Though it will still hurt. You'll be on bed rest for awhile."
Angel nodded. She would agree to anything if it got it her into the bath. She just wanted to feel clean again. She burnt the pants off and used her power to turn the clothes to ash before she sank gratefully into the water.
Jean watched as Angel grabbed the soap and washcloth, and began to scrub her skin. It wasn't right, Jean thought. Not right at all. "I can take the memories from your mind," she offered before she even realized she was thinking it.
Angel stopped scrubbing and looked at Jean. For half a second, she was tempted. To forgot everything, to not have the events in her mind. But no, that was not the way. Frost had manipulated her mind enough, and if the solution to life was to back out the bad and leave only the good, where that would leave her? "No," she replied. The answer came out firmly.
Shocked at her own offer, and even more shocked by the insight that she could actually do it, Jean nodded and then reached for the shampoo.
"Angel?" Sam called out as he wrenched himself out of his dream and raised himself up slightly. He blinked his eyes, getting use to the darkness. He could see the clock radio and Pumpkin's eyes staring at him from the foot of the bed, it felt like his bed at the mansion, which hopefully meant that his dream of the two of them still imprisoned by the White Queen was a dream.
"Here," Angel replied, her hand squeezing his. "I've been using you as a pillow."
He relaxed. He glanced at the clock. He hadn't been asleep that long, maybe a couple of hours at the most. For a few minutes, he listened to the comforting night time sounds of the mansion. Both Hank and Jean had disapproved when he and Angel had refused to stay in the infirmary, with the White Queen being held in an impromptu cell nearby, neither of them had wanted to be that close to the woman. "Did you get some sleep?" he asked Angel, putting his arms gently, almost tentatively, around her.
"No, not really," she replied, pressing closer to him, simply being near him while he slept, and lying in the shadow of his strength helped. Sleep would come eventually, she knew.
"Do you want to tell me what he did to you?" he asked quietly. He wasn't sure how to bring the topic up, but he wanted to know. He had to know, if only so that he didn't say or do anything that would remind her.
"Not here," she said after a few moments. "Not while we are here in bed. It would be . . . wrong." She closed her eyes to block out the sound of Its voice asking, do you scream his name or moan it. "And it wasn't what he did," she continued after she had taken a shaky breath. "That was bad. It was . . . but it's also what I did. I'm sure he's dead from the way they took him out of the room. And Frost, what Frost trained me to be; it's almost like," she raised her head to look at him, her green eyes studying his blue ones almost fearfully, "things are coming full circle."
"Defending yourself doesn't make you Frost's assassin. You're not a killer. You're not cold. Don't ever doubt that." His lips gently brushed her cheeks, tasting the salt of her tears, before he lightly brushed her lips with his. "I'm going to be over protective again," he whispered.
"I'm going to be a bit clingy," Angel whispered back before laying her head down on his chest. "Could we stay just like this tomorrow?"
"I think Hank and Jean would kill us if we didn't," Sam replied as he held her as close as he could, one hand stroking her hair.
Hours later, the knock on the door woke both of them. "Sam," Paige called from the other side. "Professor Grey says you both have to eat or," there was a consultation of whispers before she finished with the overused, if highly effective, threat of the Guthrie clan, "I'll tell Ma."
As Paige and Jay brought in the food, Sam slid out of the bed, and before Angel could protest, picked her up and carried her over to the table. "I told you I was going to be over protective," he said as he set her down in a chair and then took a seat next to her.
Paige and Jay stayed with them while they ate. Both younger Guthries would glare if it looked like either of the two older people was not eating enough.
"What is she doing here?" Paige hissed as she looked up from playing with Pumpkin and saw Tabitha and Roberto standing in the doorway. Looking haggard, Tabitha recoiled at the hiss, and 'Berto shrugged at Sam.
"Paige could you and Jay takes the trays downstairs?" Sam asked as he glared at Tabitha.
"But . . . "
"Now!" Sam said in his best imitation of his mother's voice.
Paige and Jay gathered up the trays, and with looks of pure venom at Tabitha, left.
Roberto was the first to enter the room, and Tabitha only came in just a foot or so, hovering near the door, not quite sure of her welcome.
"She wanted to talk to you," 'Berto said gesturing towards Tabitha.
"Maybe . . . "Sam began with some heat in his voice.
"Don't you remember what Rictor said?" Angel interrupted as she got off her chair. While Angel doubted that she could ever forgive the woman for handing Sam over to the White Queen, if she had been in Tabitha's shoes, would she have done anything differently? Angel didn't know. She didn't want to be friends with the blonde, but Tabitha should at least know about Rictor.
Tabitha looked like she wanted to bolt, unsure and wary of what Angel was going to do. "Rictor's okay," Angel said softly.
With a great gasp, Tabitha broke down into tears. "I'm sorry," she sobbed, throwing her arms around Angel, whose gasp of pain drew Sam to his feet. "I'm sorry," Tabitha repeated as she let go of Angel.
"'Berto," Sam said as he guided Angel back towards the bed, "We should get some rest."
'Berto met Sam's eyes and nodded, then he and Tabitha left.
Two weeks later, Jean sat on the couch with Scott in the common room as they watched C.S.I. Phone to his ear, Roberto sat in a corner chair and talked to one of his models. "But Marisa, it's not like that," 'Berto pleaded as he looked out the window and watched Tabitha leave for a walk.
"The one who suspected it was the woman, Lucrezia," Sam read softly as he sat on the other couch, Angel leaning against him. One of his hands held the book, the other entwined with one of Angel's hands; her other hand rested lightly on his thigh. "And through it she suspected-at the same time with a kind of dismay and giddiness-the hardness and coldness which may be found in the hearts of men and artists, even with regard to the ones whom these hearts do embrace with deepest tenderness."
The couple was recovering well, Jean thought. In the days since the abduction, the two had been close to inseparable. While they were no longer, clinging as close, there would be little touches and glances, and the desire to sit close to each other. During the forced idleness, Angel had started to research her mother, trying to find more about the woman she couldn't remember. Perhaps, Jean thought, the desire was a reaction to the closeness of the Guthrie clan, or a reaction to seeing the White Queen, a de facto mother figure, again.
Jean frowned. The White Queen was a problem, almost the serpent in Jean's Garden of Eden. She kept demanding. Demanding to see Angel, who refused; demanding to be let out of her rooms, demanding to see the grounds. From the woman's snide comments, Jean knew that she hadn't told them everything like whether Marvel Boy was dead. And yet the Xavier was thinking of letting her go. Jean agreed with Logan. There was no way that the White Queen should be allowed to leave the mansion with all her faculties intact. Any woman who would set up another woman to be raped, Jean thought, was pure evil. And Jean suspected that the White Queen was far more evil than that.
Jean knew that it would be a simple matter for her to pluck the information from Frost's mind and then render that mind unusable.
Each day, it was getting harder not to give in to that knowledge.
