Title: Babel Fish
Author/Artist: Blue Stem Cell
Universe: Marvel (Alternate Universe)
Rating: 16 +
Genre: Drama/Action/Romance Sub Plot
Summary: "No more Mutants." Three little words and more than 90% of the mutant population lost their powers. Nearly a year later, a British schoolboy, suffering from constant migraine destroys a part of his school and the first new mutation is registered. But just what is his power?
Disclaimer: I own nothing by Marvel or Douglas Adam's.
Note: I'm dyslexic. Not an excuse but just a note in case you come across anything spelled wrong or grammatically incorrect. Point them out to me, I do try and catch the ones I see.
Edited on 22/08/2011. Cleaned up a few spelling/grammar mistakes and did a general tidy up.
Chapter 13: Life, loathe it, ignore it, you can't like it
Leeland had missed Halloween. Having been unconscious for two weeks and confined for the next, he had completely let it blow by. Not that he really minded, it was never fun trick or treating as a kid when you knew you couldn't really eat all of the sweets you had swindled out of old lady's. Well, that was Brian's trick at any rate.
No, looking down into the little bag Nicholas had handed him, he realised how ordinary the whole thing was. Here was a little boy, covered head to toe in short brown fuzz with the temper or an irritated puppy, and he had still found time to go trick or treating.
Picking up a rather sticky blue thing, he popped it into his mouth and let the taste of raspberry melt against his tongue. How intriguing that the colour of raspberry was not pink, but a blue so unnatural that he could taste the E Numbers.
"You stare into space a lot." he heard the voice but it took him a second or two to realise that Nicholas was speaking to him. Snapping out of his staring contest with the floor, he turned towards the little boy and rubbed a hand through his fly away hair. "Ah suppose." He muttered, shivering in the cold of early November. Dressed in a t-shirt, jumper, coat and scarf the boy could still feel the chill through the layers.
Nicholas frowned, always too warm whatever the weather but Victor had made him put a jacket on just in case. They were sat on a stone bench in the gardens, watching as Victor tossed a bright yellow Frisbee back and forth between himself and little Ernst. Grumbling, the boy stood up and shuffled over to Ernst, with his arms cross over his chest and a scowl on his face. "Is it my turn yet?" He whined. The wolf child was much too rough when it came to playing with the girl, despite her super strength, and had been made to sit on the bench with Leeland. A small part of him felt like the fat kid when it came to sports day; left on the bench with the kid who couldn't breath properly.
With a role of his eye's, Victor lightly threw the Frisbee in their direction and pointed towards him. "Play nice." He warned and Nicholas's face erupted into an ear reaching grin.
Leaving the giggling children, he headed over the bench, rubbing his gloved hands together. There was a rather odd cold spell going on and the lizard boy never did too well in the cold. Summer, summer was the best time for him.
"You're being awfully quiet." Victor sat down next to the blonde, their knee's touching between the folds of jeans. The tall blonde shrugged slightly, his shoulder's drooped, his back slightly hunched over. Victor wondered for a moment if it was difficult being that tall, it seemed that Leeland was trying to make him self smaller somehow. Pushing six foot three before he was eighteen and it did not look like he was going to stop growing any time soon.
"Just…thinkin', ah guess. Ah mean, it's not everyday yah find out you're a…a, well, whatever I am." Leeland admitted, turning to look at Victor with his head resting on his hand. "Ah jus' wanted to paint."
"There's nothing stopping you." Said Victor kindly but Leeland smiled at him, a rather sad little thing indeed. "Yeah but, what does an experiment need to paint for?"
Leeland fell silent after that, facing forward to watch Ernst and Nicholas run about of the frozen lawn.
"Don't talk like that." It came out quietly and Leeland was not sure, at first, if he had heard him at all. Turning, he began to frown but it melted away when he saw Victor's angry little expression. Chewing on the corner of his lip, he wasn't quite sure what to say. Victor was avoiding his eyes and he shifted slightly so they weren't as close to each other.
"Sorry." Leeland muttered.
"What are you saying sorry for?" Victor suddenly asked, the anger in his face replaced by something softer. The blonde shrugged again, feeling just as miserable as the weather. "Didn't mean to piss you off."
"You're not!"
"Ah jus' thought 'cos you said-" He was cut off by the sound of Victor chuckling, trying to hide the smirk behind his gloved hand. "S-Sorry." He said between giggles. "I really don't mean to laugh but you're not pissing me off, Lee." With a shake of his head, he scooted closer to Leeland and peered up at him, the laughter replaced with a smile. "Don't give up your painting, your art or whatever. Just because you're a mutant, doesn't mean you have to be an X-man." He sighed and faced forward, a smile in the corner of his mouth. "When there where millions of us, there wasn't millions of X-men, a couple of teams here and there sure but…most people came to the school and left to get real jobs. Heck, a tonne of mutant kid's didn't even come to the school. I remember Mister Summer's going missing for weeks when he was interviewing potentials for the scholarship; lived out of a suitcase. But Lee, this whole experiment thing…" he frowned, leaning forward with his gloved hands grasped together in front of him. "You're almost eighteen, right?" He asked and Leeland nodded, counting down the weeks silently inside the solitude of his own mind.
"Well…for seventeen of those years you've been with your dad-"
"He isn't my dad." Leeland interrupted quietly and Victor raised his hand. "Let me finish."
"He raised you, didn't he? Didn't keep you locked in a cupboard under the stairs or, I dunno, beat you within an inch of your life?" He questioned though Leeland was sure he hadn't meant too. With a smile and shake of his head the blonde leaned back on the bench. They sat in relative comfortable silence after that, watching Nicholas run for the Frisbee like an over excited puppy. A weight pressed up against his arm and Leeland looked down at the top of Victor's head, the green mutant was resting against his shoulder. "Don't say you're just an experiment, kay?"
"Ok." Leeland replied quietly, his stomach in happy little knots while his head was a jumble of pain and thoughts. So many questions, so little few people to ask. He wondered how long he could keep it all to himself without erupting. Well, he had already done that with Doctor McCoy but the boy was sure there was still something left.
After all, he needed to save it for Emma Frost.
xxx
The warehouse was silent, apart from the odd barks of order muffled outside by Stark's personal army. There was an uncomfortable feeling in the air of embarrassment and shame and it was not only coming from Emma but from Scott as well. From the start he assumed the boy to be some kind of ploy, a trap planted in their little secure gathering of few number's. It shamed him to find out that he had been wrong, that the child was the most innocent part in the bigger scheme.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Was the only thing that came to his mind, watching as Emma peered up at him through her curtain of pale blonde hair, her cheeks resting behind her fingers. He expected scorn and sarcasm and was mildly surprised to find neither on her face.
"It's not exactly something you admit on a first date, is it Scott? By the way I have a secret child all the way in England being raised by a man I barely know." She turned away from him, sat with her head resting on her hand and closed her eyes. It was better when she couldn't see everyone and when no one put her to shame.
"And I still don't know where I was during those three week's…or why I forgot about the boy."
"Stop calling him that." Jonathon frowned, a look of distain on his face. "He has a name and he's no more a boy than you're a little girl." He shifted in his bindings and turned to look at Scott. "I took him back to England with me…it was better that way."
"Better!" Emma spat. "What was better Johnny? The drugs? The control. He look's like a bag of stick's!" She rose to her feet, the pallet she was perched on clattered behind her and echoed through out the warehouse. It took much of her control not to simply wipe his mind and even more not to march over to him and smack his senseless smirk from his face.
"You made that child sick when I trusted you to take care of him."
"If you cared that much Emma you would have taken him yourself."
"Oh so that's what this is?" Emma let out a coy laugh and spread her fingers across her mouth, as if to stop the laughter pouring out. "A punishment is it? Make him sick, make him timid to punish me because maybe I could have done a better job-"
"Always so melodramatic. I did what I had to do."
Scott scowled beneath his visor. "What you had to do? You didn't have to do anything. He could have come to Xavier's, no one would have known who he was; no one would have said a thing." He glanced at his wife who refused to meet his eyes.
"You don't understand." Jonathon began through gritted teeth.
"Try me, because I have plenty of time to listen-"
"HE'S DANGEROUS!" The ex mercenary shouted, his old hardened heart hammering away inside his rib cage as he locked gaze with Scott. "God knows I love that kid but he's not right…not made right."
"I've got lipstick more dangerous than he is." Emma said quietly. "Now hurry up and explain or-"
"Or what? You threaten me with a mind wipe. Make me think I'm a nine-year-old girl? Open empty threats I've heard all before. Mr. Summers…" He spoke with eyes still on Emma. "You have that machine in your school, do you not? Cerebro?"
Nobody outside the X-men team knew about Xavier's most prized invention. Only a select few like Tony Stark, other hero's, and a few villains, knew of its existence. It was a powerful machine but it was not as if everyone knew how to use it or what it was intended for. So why then, did this nowhere man, this swapped identity know about it?
"What about it?" Scott asked carefully, there was no point in denying it's existence if he already knew about it. Jonathon McCorby had made it quite clear that he was not as stupid as he looked.
"Doesn't work without a person controlling it, does it? You have to be psychic to use it, Xavier's pride and joy. There's a machine out there with his name on, made just for him. Very hard to control a telepath, unfortunately-" His eye's glanced at Emma. "But a kid? His powers are electrical, machinery?"
"He talk's to thing's, to people." But Scott frowned. "Hang on, how do you know about his mutation if you've kept it hidden all these years?"
"Just a guess from what I saw when he was little." But there was a certain amount of falter in his voice, but Scott let it go….for then anyway.
"Hook him up to a machine like that, he act's like the control centre, the motherboard. Over ride the system, whatever it is that makes a person have free will and you have your very own mind control machine. Make him think about a certain language…"
"This sound's very sci-fi." Tony interjected, causing Jonathon to scoff. "So you say from a suit made out of jet packs and booster rockets. Another dimension and you'd be the makings of a comic book superhero."
"He's not just a person he's a part."
"A part?" Questioned Tony and the old man tilted his head back, a tired look in his eyes. "A loose screw, a wire, a chip. There's a machine out there with his name on it and all someone has to do is fit him in it."
They looked at him, not quite wanting to believe what he had said. With a tried sigh the man rolled his eyes. "I did my research. Did you really think I'd take him without finding out what he was, what he was made for?"
"This-None of this makes sense." Scott frowned, but there was just something that just didn't seem right. But he would voice his opinion later with out the influence of McCorby.
"You're not making a very convincing argument here Johnny. You where supposed to look after him and you failed. Using danger as an excuse for treating him that way-"
"Emma." Scott tried gently but the woman scowled and shook her head. "No. No I will not be spoken down to, spoke to like an infuriating child that can't get it's own way."
"But you'll act like one." Came Jonathon's retort. A little more than a second passed before a great crack sounded out around the warehouse. Her hand stung but she didn't let the pain cross her face as she stood over McCorby, her breathing ragged with anger. The sandy haired man clenched his jaw, unable to rub at his stinging cheek but the impact was there in his eyes. "I stupidly trusted you and failed my-Well I failed him, whatever."
Scott pulled her backwards and the three of them stared down at the worn Irish man, wondering what they would do with him.
"We should move him from here, we're not getting anywhere here." Tony suggested, saying that perhaps S.H.I.E.L.D head quarters would be the better place to detain him.
"No." Said Emma. "No we take him to Xavier's."
"And what about Leeland?"
"…If he see's him, he see's him. There's nothing we can do about that."
"I meant you."
Emma's reply was cold. "I'm not his mother. I didn't carry him, I didn't raise him. He doesn't need to know."
McCorby chuckled. "Never did change, did you Emma?"
xxx
Meanwhile, in the underground depths of the institute, Kitty stormed out of the room that housed Cerebro. "That bitch! That evil, evil bitch!" Unable to find the right words to describe her feelings towards Emma, the brunette instead repeated the words over and over. Peter was hot on her tail, making sure she did not do something stupid; like tell the boy.
"Girls?" Doctor McCoy questioned the triplets when they had settled their helmets down onto the resting stands. "Did you know about this?"
The girls looked at one and other before Celeste spoke of their suspicions. "We…We thought perhaps there was a connection." They lied, they had known all along but had not thought to say a word. After all, it was really no one's business but Miss Frost's and Leeland's. As much as their "mother" infuriated them, they had sense of pride and loyalty towards her still.
"May we ask you not to tell him? It would not seem right coming from one of you."
Beast blinked at this but nodded his head, it seemed like a reasonable enough request but he felt awful for keeping it from Leeland.
At first, he assumed Emma to be apart of it all, those files from her room a major break through in his ideas. However, there was certainly more to it now, now that they knew the truth.
Furthermore. If Emma was his mother, then who was his rightful father…?
"You're thinking too hard Doctor McCoy." The girl's spoke as one as they left the room, turning to look over their shoulders. "We don't know who our father is, but we've hardly let it hold us back."
"We need to tell him, he deserves to know!" Kitty exclaimed, trying to argue with Peter that her way of doing things would be better than sitting around and letting him figure it out for himself, or simply not tell him at all. "Katya…It's not our place to tell him or to make her do it. You heard what she said, she didn't raise him."
"That's beside the point. Wouldn't you want to know?"
"Peter's right Kitty, it's not our place. Though I must admit that it doesn't leave me with a great feeling either." Frowning, Hank removed his glasses and proceeded to clean them, a ritual he went through whenever there was simply too much floating about his head.
"See it from Emma's point of view-"
Kitty Scoffed.
"She was younger that you are now, barely a child herself. Besides, I don't think she even knew when we found him."
"So we keep quiet, do nothing?" Kitty shook her head, frowning as she leaned against the cool metal panels.
"We do what we're supposed to. We teach him how to use his powers in hopes that one day he'll put them to good use. Emma'll come clean one day…she always does."
TBC~