Disclaimer: Characters: Marvel's. $: 0. Suing:
useless.
Rating: G. See the first chapter for summary and
stuff.
Note: Requires knowledge of the facts in Uncanny
X-Men #212 and X-Factor #7. Why, you know, X-Factor... Oh, well,
never mind. A/Ns are at the bottom.
Warning: I have completed Chapter 11. Please check that you have read the extended version!
The Apologist
Chapter
Twelve -
Premonition
She lay frozen, staring at the
ceiling with eyes wide open. Nothing. The room was quiet and dark,
the only noise coming from the boards of the wooden boathouse,
settling in the wind. Scott was sleeping the sleep of the just right
beside her, night goggles on, his face awkwardly buried in the bend
of his elbow for further safety. She scanned the surrounding: no one
else around, only a mouse on a bag of onions in the cellar, its
rudimentary thoughts barely a tickle at the edge of her perception.
And yet someone had broadcasted, with urgency, loud enough to
wake her.
Nothing happened.
She kept a psychic eye peeled as
she lay still, waiting for her heart to stop thumping, but nothing
followed along. The alarm clock blinked 3:16. There was still plenty
of time to catch a good sleep, if she managed to relax...
Again!
The
peak of anguish surged like a splinter of ice from below still water;
cold, deep, razor sharp.
She soared from the bed and tk'ed her
uniform out of the drawer and onto herself as quickly and quietly as
possible. Scott groaned when the mattress settled, but otherwise
showed no sign of awakening. She levitated down the stairs, leaning
no weight on the creaky wooden steps. The thought pattern
originated from somewhere outside; Jean opened the front door and
froze on the threshold.
I'm still dreaming, all right...
The
familiar expanse of the Spuytin Dyvil, the path to the Mansion and
the Graymalkin grounds had vanished, replaced by the sunlit streets
and skyscrapers of New York City. The nearest building was the old
X-Factor base, before the Ship and the kids and little Nathan. A
crowd - really more of a mob - had gathered into the plaza below,
roaring and yelling like the spectators of a gladiator fight; despite
her wariness, her feet dragged her towards the clamor. As she neared,
she was able to make out what the crowd was chanting:
"X-Fac-tor! X-Fac-tor!"
Oh.
She remembered that riot. Those two
poor misfits were trying to take out the mutant hunters, unaware that
X-Factor was only a lure for racists and fundies, that they really
were trying to save...but X-Factor couldn't and didn't make their
life any less miserable. Jean pushed her way to the front of the
human hedge. She had the power now, the power to talk inside their
heads, to explain things... only that she couldn't even open her
mouth. She was reliving a memory; this was the past, and her present
self was only allowed to watch.
She caught a glimpse of herself: concentrated on the fight, her mouth a thin taut line in a harsh face. Scott, trying to pass for an evil mutant, looked even worse, all tense muscles and clenched teeth; everything in his line of sight simply evaporated. Expletives were flying like angry bees. She remembered having yelled some of the worst ones. Muties, misfits, genefilth. Why not? She was mad. Mad at Scott, at all of them, liars, covering up for the Leader of the Pack; putting up a sham for her, the same way X-Factor was putting up a sham for the flatscans crowding the plaza. Oh, the irony.
Okay, it was a bad idea. I
had been away, I didn't know anything, anymore. I
trusted...
Wait. This is not a dream.
Amusement, like a
waft of warm breath, passed beside her. Someone was with her - the
memory's owner. She struggled against the memory, and was aware of
something hard and cold in her hand; she was still holding the door
handle. With an all-out effort, she took a step back and slammed the
door shut.
There.
But her senses told her it wasn't
over. The air was warm and damp, almost stifling, and carried an
unpleasant scent of iron and tar...
As she fought to escape the
plaza, the Morlock tunnels had crept behind her and taken hold of the
entrance. Bodies were piled knee deep, bleeding, twitching, exhaling;
but this time she knew better than to try and change anything. This
was the past; they were not alive; not thoughts, only
static, and there was nothing she could do for them anyway, just like
the first time.
She waded through the miry galleries to the main
tunnel, where pressed earth gave way to concrete and bricks; and
finally, through a manhole, the sky. She peered inside the window of
the closest building and could not place, at first, what she was
seeing. Hundreds of people lying on the floor, some groaning,
pleading, some covered with sheets, lying motionless, beyond help.
Then she spotted more familiar figures walking to and fro among the
rows of bodies, dressing wounds, checking IV lines or simply
comforting the wounded, and recognized the place: the old Blackbird
hangar, jury-rigged into an infirmary.
A kneeling figure stood up
and headed towards her, and she found herself looking suddenly Joseph
in the eyes.
She started, taken aback with the surprise, but her
host's eyes barely flinched. The man she had mistook for Joseph was
really Magneto, and when he came nearer, hard-eyed and stern-faced,
she wondered how she could have made such a mistake.
Magneto
looked infinitely old; tired, spent. He was carrying an armful of
ragged linens, which he dropped onto a heap on the floor and a slim,
young Cannonball picked the bloody bundle up and carried them away;
STDs and Legacy were still years in the coming. One by one she
spotted the other people in the teams; but she had to look twice
before recognizing Storm. Her snowy white hair was soiled with mud
and blood; her Olympic grace was gone, together with her powers. She
was carrying a dead body out of the hangar, to make room for more
wounded; just a woman too young, doing too hard a work, exercised
muscles standing out on her arms.
Then she saw herself.
"Can't be" she whispered, and, as a matter of fact, it wasn't. There was something definitely foreign about this other self, and she knew why as soon as Magneto approached her.
"Madeline" he called. "Any news from Muir?"
"Kurt and Peter are... stable," she replied. "For now."
The way she evaded his gaze made Magneto suspicious. He took a step forward, holding her by an arm.
"Shadowcat?"
Her silence was eloquent. His head hung low, Magnus returned to the rows of injured Morlocks.
Once the shock was over, Jean fought back. She repelled those alien memories, felt them tumble in disarray, and rebuilt her shields, preparing for an attack that did not come.
What do
you want from me? she screamed soundlessly, and shook her
head so hard that her backbone made snapping noises.
For all answer, her
defences were bypassed like an open door, and the scenery changed
once more.
The air was brisk against her flushed cheeks, and scented with foreign flowery smells. She opened her eyes again to the greenish light of nighttime in the desert; the sparse bushes and carved rocks conspired in creating unearthly shapes under the moonlight. In the distance, a lonely rock rose to break the flatness of the horizon. It resembled a lying elephant and suddenly her body started to tremble, frozen with the sudden realization that if she'd only turn her head and look up at the figure towering over her body... if only her sight wouldn't darken so...
Right when Jean
was most eager for the vision to continue, she found herself facing
the closed door, at the ground floor of her house in
Westchester.
There would be no scenes after the least one, she
realized, because that one was the last her host had ever seen.
He
was dead. She had been running half the night, shoved around by the
mind of a dead man.
A dead man who was trying to warn her about...
stuff. But who? Mastermind? No, his illusions had a different
flavor... and one she had got acquainted to. Jason Wyngarde had a
daughter², though... and yet, the mind with which she had been
in contact had a distinctive maleness to it.
The Shadow King?
But why would he ever warn them - assuming that anything was left of
him after the last encounter with the Professor.
Speaking of
whom... the last possibility stepped on, unmentionable, unthinkable,
sending splinters of ice up her spine.
Charles?
There
was no answer. The gaping silence seemed to mock her.
She awoke again in her bed, with a sigh, cursing Sam's pork chops. Scott muttered something unintelligible as she squirmed and stirred, and she sent through a reassuring motion that had him humming and settling for a sounder sleep. Lucky bastard. She made a mental note to herself not to allow any more X-Men from below the Mason-Dixon to the kitchen for at least a month.
What a nightmare.
The
alarm beeped at 7:00, pulling Scott out of a deep, though agitated,
sleep. He sat slowly on the edge of the bed and went through the
change of glasses routine, with careful movements, trying not to wake
Jean. He settled for making breakfast in the tiny kitchen instead of
going to the mansion; he vaguely remembered Jean stirring and
moving... if she'd had a hard night, a bit of lie-in would probably
cheer her up.
By the time he put the tray on her bedside table,
however, his mouth was a thin straight line and his brow was
furrowed.
"Is there something I should know, Jean?" he asked before she could speak, trying to make the question sound casual and failing.
She frowned, eyes still closed. "What do you mean?"
"There's a trail of sand from the entrance door to this room, and you're wearing your costume in bed."
Next: Gambit pays a visit to the MedLab. Yet again. Only this time, he's walking in.
--
¹: X-Factor 7: Jean finds out that Scott is married to Madeline, and has a son from her. She is not amused. In the meanwhile, two radioactively-contaminated mutants, feeling that their death is near, mount a suicide attack against the X-Factor base. To divert them without harm, Beast, Iceman, and Cyclops dress up in 'mutant' uniforms as the X-Terminators and pretend to reinforce the assault; a jury-rigged formation of X-Factor (Jean and others) drives the 'aggressors' away.
²: Well, two actually, but the X-Men just know one by now. Wolverine and Gambit first met her in their 'Victims' miniseries.
