Disclaimer: I own nothing.
And Then There Were Two
Bobby/Iceman
I lost! I never lose! ... Usually.
Of course, he hasn't admitted that we're playing, but I'm still keeping score. Thus far, I've won rounds two and three. One and four... those were flukes. I was off my game. We're tied right now, but I think it's time for round five, the tiebreaker.
Which is why I'm standing outside the classroom, wasting my valuable lunch hour I might add, so I can ambush John when Ms. Clayton lets him go. I wonder what he's done. I mean, he used to be in and out of teachers' offices so often he'd be on first name terms with them, but not recently. Either way, I'm waiting, and victory will be mine!
Five minutes later (alright, so I'm not exactly the picture of patience), I decide that this is taking too long, and knock on the door, trying to think of a plausible reason that I might have for knocking. No one answers, though I can hear faint voices through the solid oak door. I wait for a minute, and then knock again, more urgently. Something is making me uneasy, and I'd really like to know what's happening behind this door. I might look like an idiot for hammering on the door if she opens it and there's nothing wrong, but then again, I might be right.
No answer, so I push the door open, and find that I was right after all.
Ms. Clayton, with more speed than a teacher would ever need, starts moving towards John, sidestepping the desk gracefully. John, looking just as glued-to-the-floor as I think I must, pulls his hand from where it rests inside his pocket and light flares up inside his hands. Then something appears in her hands and she plunges it into his arm, and my insides seem to freeze. His expression turns shocked for a moment then seems to glaze over, and the room starts to smell of something burning, then he's falling.
Before I can think, I'm moving, and where Ms. Clayton used to stand smiling strangely, there is a prison box of ice a foot thick. I'm across the room and I've caught him, but awkwardly, so I sink to the floor. I see the fire, not cradled in his hands anymore but burning them. The significance of this doesn't register with me. My brain hasn't caught up with events yet, I guess. I cover his burning hands with my own chilled ones, and watch distractedly as the steam hisses upwards from the extinguished flames, then let go.
I can't really remember how we got to the infirmary. John wasn't conscious most of the time, which was a mercy I guess, considering the burns on his hands.
They were second-degree burns, and much less severe than they could have been. There'll be some scars and stuff, but Storm called this guy, Mr. Thorpe or Thorn or something, who can speed up the healing process. There's kind of a story behind this guy, actually. He used to me some kind of naturopathic doctor and he and his patients thought that his medicine was miraculously effective, but then he found out that he just had a mutation, and that freaked some people out. There was this one guy, he would have lost his leg to an infection without Mr. whatever's help, but he also had a thing about mutants. He burned Mr. whatsit's house down and the rest, as they say, is history, although it did give him something of an expertise regarding burns. Maybe that's why she called him.
I don't know why Storm is telling me all this. She must have seen me from her office, as I was half-pulling and half-carrying John down to the infirmary, and I guess my expression worried her, because she's been trying to keep me distracted. It's working so far. It helps that I really don't want to think about any of this.
Maybe if I don't, none of it will have actually happened. John wasn't actually stabbed with a cure dart by some dangerous psycho, nor did he nearly burn his hands off as a result. I certainly didn't entertain murderous thoughts, I'm not sitting with Storm next to an unconscious and feverish John, and everything will be fine if someone would just kindly pinch me.
Just then, there's an extremely welcome distraction; the doors slam open as if they've been kicked, by, perhaps, the heavily booted feet of Logan. He's 'escorting' Ms. Clayton, who looks strangely serene for a woman with a claw or three grazing her neck, none too gently. I feel my fists clench almost involuntarily, and I sit up straighter and slightly forward, eyes narrowed.
She meets my eyes, and then smiles knowingly at me, and I have to look away because I won't be able to control myself if she keeps looking at me like that. My eyes dart around, then light upon my own clasped hands, detachedly surprised to find them not flesh and bone but solid ice. I must be pretty angry, I think almost disinterestedly. I glance over at her again, and feel the cold spread upwards, over my arms. Yeah, I'm really damn angry. I try to push away both the advancing red-hot fury and the unnatural icy calm that accompanies the state change, because neither are making it any easier for me to think clearly.
Logan's acting weird. Well, weirder than usual, that is. Frankly, he looks like he's sniffing Ms. Clayton.
Suddenly, his grip on her arm gets a lot tighter and he growls, almost triumphantly, "Mystique! I knew you felt familiar. Not even bad perfume can cover that!" Her face creases into a vengeful smirk, and now that I'm comparing it to Mystique, the resemblance is almost painfully obvious. She speaks, and even the voice is similar, but it's missing something. "That's a relief. I was afraid that you'd never figure it out."
Storm raises herself from her seat, eyes narrowed dangerously. "What are you doing here? How did you get in?" She looks like she has a lot more questions, but she also wants answers, so she's slowing herself down.
"You know why I'm here. You can see exactly what the purpose of my little visit was," she says, gesturing with her free arm towards John before continuing, "and getting in was hardly difficult. Even as simple Homo sapiens, I have a few talents. Alexia Clayton was never a real person." Even with the knowledge that her background check was foiled with such apparent ease, I can see Storm visibly relaxing with the knowledge that Mystique's dangerous and versatile ability has stayed neutralized.
"Surely there is a bigger cause here than harming one of my students?" is the next question, Storm clearly expecting a larger, more sinister plan than a single act of malice.
While Mystique does reply, "No. Nothing else," it fails to reassure anyone, due to her mysterious, self-satisfied smile. The smile doesn't falter even as the door to her makeshift confinement closes behind her. I finally release my grip on my chair and try to coax the blood to return to my hands.
Logan breaks the repressive silence abruptly, "What do we do with her?" Storm's scowl deepens slightly, "I won't turn her over to the containment facility until we have no other choice. After turning a cure into a weapon and then refusing to face the music when it turned out to be dangerous, I have no trust for them and no idea what kind of fate we'd be turning her over to. Not even to an enemy will I do that."
"That's all very well and good, but we can't keep her locked in a wing of the infirmary forever either."
A deep, tired sigh. "I know." She walks out, presumably to wait for Mr. Thorpe/Thorn, and Logan begins to pace restlessly around the room, glancing over to the door that conceals Mystique from us. I settle into my chair beside John's bed and resign myself to a long wait.
If you're reading this then someone is still checking back here, and I'm glad that I have so many faithful readers. So, thank you! My internet was dead (and still is. This isn't my computer.), so I couldn't post anything. I got a bit crazy and went over the first few chapters with the proverbial red pen. If you'd like, you can read the new (and hopefully improved) versions, but it isn't necessary because I haven't changed any major events. Finally, there was a correct guess, before I'd even asked about Mystique, which was really cool.
Colvine