The Gaze and the Glance

Author's Note: Actually, this is one of the few times I don't have much of anything to say. :) Read away!

Chapter 25

There were one-hundred and twenty tiles in the ceiling. Which amounted to precisely one-hundred and twenty anti-power grids hard-wired above her head. She hadn't yet gotten around to trying to guess how many were in the wall panels.

Julia didn't know whether she would have the concentration to do anything more than the simple math used to calculate the number in the ceiling anyway. The constant hum of the machinery around her was made to interrupt her mental faculties, or at least, the ones that they theorized were connected to mutant powers; and it gave her one hell of a headache being around them all day. As if that wasn't bad enough, they had matched the wavelength of the energy emitted by the damned machines as exactly the opposite of the one she utilized with her powers, in other words, even if the machines didn't mess with her brain, the room would neutralize her energy before she could even manage to switch to her energy form. Who knew the MRD had stuff like this?

Julia rubbed her eyes, feeling like she hadn't closed them in days. Maybe she hadn't. It was really hard to tell how much time had passed in a windowless room which she wasn't allowed to leave. Plus, with all the power-repressing wiring in the room she had a hard time forming complete thoughts. The machines probably didn't have such severe effects on mutants who's powers weren't so integrated with their bodily functions, but, unfortunately, Julia's were. Repressing her powers to such a degree made her feel like she had been given a high dose of anesthesia, everything felt fuzzy and slow-moving, and she had lost most of the feeling in her hands and feet.

Well, it could be worse I guess. It could hurt or something. Not to say this is fun, but at least I'm not in pain.

She knew she had to be on trial somewhere after her capture, no doubt the MRD had commercialized it like the Superbowl to prove to the regular folks out there that they could actually protect them from mutants, and to advertise what a bad idea it was to kill humans to any mutants who thought to imitate her example. Either way, she wondered how the trial was going, considering she hadn't yet been invited. Maybe the fifth amendment didn't apply to mutants? She huffed a scoff of a sarcastic laugh at the ceiling; being in here certainly made her sound more jaded. She hadn't even gotten into a prison fight yet.

Experimentally she rolled over on the mattress, careful not to stretch the stitches in her shoulder. Kurt had been right in his assessment of the dart, it had been full of mean barbs and required a shot of morphine and scalpel to dig back out, though they had seemed please with it's success in keeping her 'normal'.

Kurt...I wonder if he's alright. Don't know why he loves me. All I seem to do is get the poor guy in trouble. Guess I'm just lucky. God. I wish I'd never dragged him into this mess. Hell, I almost wish I'd never bothered trying to help that doctor. I seriously don't think it was worth it, considering he ended up dead anyway...

She cast her eyes to other side of her tiny cell at the sound of the door opening, and discovered two of the guards in the doorway, one bearing a set of electronic looking cuffs, the other a collar and a night stick. This would imply they were taking her somewhere, somewhere which didn't have the power dampening grid the cell did; which was likely either the lab or visiting quarters. Though, that said, she hadn't had a visitor yet so that option didn't seem probable.

"No trouble." The guard with the nightstick warned, pointing it at Julia in a way she supposed was meant to be scary. She merely rolled her eyes, and with no small effort raised herself into a sitting position and raised her hands. They had -so far anyway- mostly been too scared of her to make physical contact unless absolutely needed. They didn't yet understand her powers, so most seemed to think she could still be dangerous.

"Sure. None."

They half-dragged, half-carried Julia out of the hallway, moving along at a steady pace, Julia's eyes having an awful time adjusting to the lights over her head. Before long, about two-hundred paces, she was dumped into a plastic chair, under more bright lights, and heard a very, very familiar voice state:

"Thank you. I will handle it from here." She blinked in confusion as her brain caught up with the world around her.

"Professor?"

Xavier wasn't exactly shocked to see the state Julia was in, he was surprised she had begun to look so...haggard as quickly as she had. The circles under her eyes were dark, as though she hadn't slept properly in several months; though that couldn't be the case since she had only been in captivity for two weeks. Her skin was pale and sallow looking, and she moved as though parts of her body were in severe pain or numb. Unfortunately, Xavier was not here to see to her care. He had barely been allowed visitation rights, and it had only been after a gentle psychic nudge he had even been allowed into the MRD facility. Of course, they also thought he was nothing more than some form of legal representation, he shuddered to think how much more difficult it would have been to convince them if they knew he was a mutant too.

Still, Xavier had felt it necessary to come here. Not only because Julia was still one of his X-Men, but because Kurt deserved some answers. After whatever had separated them, Kurt had evidently gone on a desperate and ultimately futile week-long search of the entirety of LA for Julia, inadvertently terrifying many of the city's inhabitants. However, upon being unable to find her -even after some questionable tactics used to interrogate MRD agents he had ambushed along the way- he had given up the ghost as it were, and had finally called the institute, the only thing he really could have done in his situation, much to Xavier's relief. Whatever Kurt had done in Los Angeles was less of a concern for Professor Xavier; what he was currently going through at home on the other hand was quite worrying. Kurt was, quite simply, in some of the most severe emotional agony Xavier had ever felt, even if only vicariously. Depression and loss were certainly the most dominant feelings -no one had yet managed to coax Kurt out of his room for anything other than the occasional meal- but a feeling of betrayal was constantly cutting though, usually immediately followed by guilt. He felt as though Julia had somehow betrayed him by leaving him behind, which was tangled up with feeling guilty over being unable to help her. And of course, Kurt refused to talk about it with anyone, because he believed that no one loved Julia the way he did. True enough perhaps, but it wasn't as though the others were any happier to see her arrest; Xavier imagined they had all been secretly hoping she would escape.

All that aside, Professor Xavier hoped, perhaps naively, that if he was able to get some words to pass along from Julia, he could at least provide Kurt some solace. He hoped to offer him that much if at all possible.

"Let me guess," Julia broke the silence between them, her eyes seeming somehow unfocused as she met Xavier's gaze, "-you're here to pick my brain now that they took my powers away?"

"Your powers are very much intact, I assure you. They merely removed your access to them. I still can't read your mind, nor would I force my telepathy on you."

"Then why are you here?"

"Aren't you even going to ask about Kurt?" The first flicker of life appeared in Julia's eyes at the mention of his name, but she maintained her neutral posture.

"Is he...alright?"

"Other than being quite heart-broken and upset, yes, I believe he's fine."

"Don't give me that. You and I both know he was only going to get hurt. It was the only choice I could make." The flicker of interest went away as quickly as it had emerged, and she returned to staring at the wall to their left. Xavier sighed slightly, folding his hands.

"I suppose you should know that Eric is championing a campaign for your release," He stated nonchalantly.

Julia gave a snort in return. "And why in the world would he be doing that? I turned my back on the Brotherhood."

"Perhaps, yes. But you are also a mutant who followed his cause. I believe he's attempting to use you as the poster child for what happens to mutants who attempt to stand up for themselves. It seems to be causing quite the stir."

"It's a pity it's not that black and white. I don't think the things I've done were really about standing up for myself." Julia shook her head, her long, tangled hair falling in her face. Professor Xavier took the opportunity to broach the subject of Julia's recent behavior. He had known when he arrived that if he brought it up on his side of the conversation, she would simply shut down and refuse to answer, they would have gotten nowhere. However, since she had brought it up herself, perhaps she was ready to discuss it, to give him some answers.

"Why did you kill those men in New York?" His tone was perfectly composed and neutral, not wanting to give Julia the feeling she was being condemned for a second time.

"Because they deserved it."

"And why did they deserve it?"

She shot him a miniscule glare. "You didn't see what they were doing in that warehouse. You didn't see the way they had experimented and killed those kids. I did."

"Julia you could have taken the information to the police. We could have exposed the Purifiers as a terrorist group rather than the freedom fighters they claim to be. Instead, you destroyed the evidence and proved that mutants are deadly and made those monsters martyrs by killing them."

"Who would have believed me?"

"I would have. The X-Men would have. Why didn't you come to me with that information?"

"You haven't trusted me since you figured out you couldn't read my mind."

"Julia, that's simply not true," Professor Xavier said firmly.

She gave him a face that said, quite plainly, that she didn't believe him for a second. Xavier frowned, realizing that this was going to be more complicated than he had originally thought. Yes, it was more difficult for him to work with Julia, if only because he had grown so accustomed to using telepathy to communicate in place of a phone or email, but he had tried to avoid letting it effect the way he treated her in comparison with the other members of the team. After all, he was unable to read Storm's mind as well, and Ororo had nearly always had his full trust. Is that why Julia had pulled away from the X-Men? Because she had felt ostracized in some way?

"You don't believe we would have tried to help you?"

"It was too late. You can't rescue the dead Professor. It's sad but it's true. So instead, I tried to rescue any future victims they might create. I killed them."

Again, Xavier frowned. In some twisted way, her logic made sense, it was even noble. That said, if he let her believe that it would involve tossing his own morals and beliefs right out the window, it involved undermining everything he had built his school and the X-Men on. The X-Men did not kill.

"But Julia, you must understand that it wasn't your place to judge-"

"I've had this exact same debate before, Professor. With Kurt. I'll tell you what I told him. I'm not judging and I'm not saying what I did was a good thing, I'm just saying that at the very least, those particular assholes won't be hurting anyone else."

"And that makes you feel as though your actions were justified?"

"Yeah. Pretty much." She shrugged.

"I see..." Xavier sighed. He honestly couldn't tell whether Julia truly did believe in what she had said, or she was merely being stubborn. "There is...another reason I came to see you Julia."

"And what would that be?"

"I was hoping that you would have something I could pass along to Kurt. He's...as I said, he's extremely upset. I think it would help him to hear from you."

Unexpectedly, Julia had quite the opposite reaction to what Xavier had hoped. Her eyes glassed over with tears, her lower lip quivering slightly as she stared hard at the wall that had been occupying her attention for most of their interview.

"I don't know what to say to make it better," She said quietly, her voice shaking and small. "All I ever seem to do is hurt him. I never mean to, but...but..."

"I know. Perhaps it can't be helped. Still, is there anything...any message you would likely me to give him?" Xavier reached a hand across the space separating them to lay his hand on her shoulder. "Ordinarily I would simply put your minds together, but I'm afraid we have to do it the old-fashioned way with you."

"Yeah, me and my lovely mutation." Julia's laugh sounded more like a scoff as she shook her head. "Just tell him the usual I guess. You know, I love him more than life itself, he's amazing, I'm so, so glad I met him, and tell him it wasn't his fault. I got myself into the mess, he had nothing to do with it. And I clubbed him over the head and I gave myself up, so me getting caught wasn't his fault. Nothing was his fault. Make sure he knows that. And please just keep him out of trouble, I don't know how this is going to work out yet, I dunno what they're going to do but it's okay. Whatever happens, I'm going to accept it as consequences of my actions, so...don't let him do anything crazy like try to rescue me or something. He needs to just let it go. I screwed up and this is how it's going to end. I know he's going to feel bad, but...I can't make that better. There's a lot I can't make better actually. But I prefer it happens this way than the way it was going, I didn't want to make him a causality of my personal vendetta."

The Professor nodded, placing his hand back on his lap. "I'll make sure he gets the message."

"Okay...thanks. I know this is probably weird for you to. But, well," Julia raised her hands to further display the rather obvious cuffs on her wrists, "-I can't exactly take a stroll to New York and pour my heart out to Kurt right now."

"It's alright." There was a pause of silence, Julia's mind seemed to be wandering off again, and the Professor wasn't entirely convinced it was because she was actually thinking of anything in particular. She couldn't seem to stay focused for long, and he suspected it had something to do with her restraints. They didn't seem to be keeping her physically restrained, but it was fairly obvious that she belonged to the small groups of mutants -home to Magneto, Wolverine and the like- that was considered a guaranteed threat. Meaning she was likely restrained at all times, and he distinctly remembered Hank worrying over that exact situation more than once. Again, however, it pained Xavier to remember that he was not here to attempt to remedy her situation, he didn't think he would be capable of doing so, even if he was. Julia, like Eric, had simply gone so far down her own path that there was no turning back. The difference being that Julia seemed willing accept where that path lead her, Eric stubbornly refused to acknowledge what the end would most likely be: extinction, for mutants or for humans, Xavier could not yet predict.

The door opened once again and the guards reappeared, Xavier's small psychic suggestion having finally worn off.

Julia cast them a glance that was almost bored, and looked back at Xavier. "Thanks for coming to see me Professor. And I hope...I hope you'll take care of Kurt."

"I'll certainly try."

"You managed before I showed up and started getting him into trouble," Julia said, the corner of her mouth quirking up slightly. A parody of a smile, but Xavier took it as a good sign all the same.

She left with the guards without any sort resistance, leaving Xavier to contemplate the situation. If nothing else, he would at least be able to project Julia's smile for Kurt, that would ease a little of the depression. He hoped.

She was counting ceiling tiles again. Which was silly because she knew exactly how many were there. But as usual it was all she really had the mental capacity to do, and if she didn't concentrate on something, she was honestly worried she would just drift off into some void she would never manage to come back from. In her opinion, that was easily as terrifying as the thought of physically fading out, that simply ceasing to exist would somehow be worse than death. So she continued to count the ceiling tiles, one by one by one.

Assuming they fed her three meals a day, Julia would estimate it had been about two weeks since Professor Xavier had stopped in for his little visit, which would mean Christmas should be drawing very, very near, unless it happened already. Julia had nearly forgotten about the holiday completely until she had heard a pair of guards discussing Christmas bonuses and what they planned to spend them on. Not that it really made any difference to her, she didn't think they'd be big on showing her any Christmas spirit, it just made her a little sad to think that this should have been the first Christmas she and Kurt would have shared. Hell, it would have been the first time she bothered to celebrate the yuletide event in several years, because, like her birthday, she hadn't had anyone to celebrate it with while she was in New York. If things had gone a little differently, she would have had a whole gaggle of family/friends to spend it with this year.

"Too late now..." She mumbled aloud, simply to hear the sound of a human voice. Even if it was her own, it was reassuring to hear it. Made the place seem less dead. Her eyes drifted closed, tired from staring so long at the ceiling, and she tried to find another train of thought. What could she do besides count?

Julia cracked an eye open again, thought she wasn't sure how much time had passed, when she head footsteps in the corridor. Different than the MRD, quiet, firm. Military maybe? Or at least, it sounded like someone with definite purpose, and that purpose seemed to be near her cell door, for that's where the steps stopped.

"Shut if off."

"But sir, she's dangerous and-"

"You heard me."

"Er...yes Director."

A male and a female judging by the voices. This just got more and more interesting, Julia had never encountered a female MRD officer, she wondered who the woman was. Her eyes shot upwards when the hum that had been constant since she had arrived suddenly died away, and the feeling was akin to suddenly having a heavy wool bag pulled off her head. Clarity and the access to her powers came flooding back into Julia so abruptly it was nearly staggering; she had to shake her head in an attempt to re-adjust to her brain suddenly being fully functional again. It was like she had been asleep all this time and was only just now waking up. And she was waking up to a total stranger standing in the cell door.

"Do you know who I am?" He asked, his hands in the pockets of a long coat, which he wore over some sort of uniform. An eye-patch covered one eye, and the other was watching her with neutral interest.

"I can hazard a guess," Julia replied, rubbing her eyes against the light from the hall. "What brings SHIELD all the way to my little corner of the complex? And why turn the power grid off?"

"Call it...a gesture of good will."

"And why would I need your good will, Director?" She questioned, mimicking the title she had heard before. Nick Fury, despite the stories, struck her as being totally normal. Minus the eye-patch, there didn't seem to be anything too special about him, and he hadn't come in here guns blazing. But, one didn't become the Director of the most prestigious information organization on the planet without having a little something special. So what did he want with her?

He crossed the floor with an easy demeanor, but she thought she could pick up on disguised tension, he would probably be out the door with a gun lined up with her eye-socket the moment she gave him a reason. For the moment though, he merely kicked the metal chair away from the tiny table in the corner, plopping down in it casually. He dug around within his coat and produced a large envelope, handing it over to Julia.

"How about this guy? What can you tell me about him?"

Hesitant and rather confused, Julia took the envelope cautiously and flipped through it, her confusion increasing when she found it to be a file on Jefferson Telmond. She was pretty sure everyone knew she had everything to do with what had happened to him, so why was Nick Fury sitting in her cell and asking her about it?

"I can't say for certain, but I'm going to assume that he's still in a hospital somewhere, and doctors are trying to figure out why his nerves are all dead when there's no sign of physical damage." She replied, admittedly probably being more of a smart-ass than she needed to be. Much to her surprise, he actually seemed pleased with this answer.

"Good. I'm glad we're going to be straightforward with one another Miss Hayle."

"Rumor has it Nick Fury is never straightforward with anyone."

"Well, you can't believe everything you hear. What was your beef with Telmond?"

"He made a bomb." Julia shrugged. No one had asked her these questions before, no one had really cared. They were only concerned with the fact that it was an act of mutant violence. "A bomb that was then used in an attempt to kill a lot of mutants and nuke part of Boston in the process. I was hoping it would slow down the Purifiers if one of their leaders was suddenly unable to lead. Not the case, obviously."

"And did you happen to hear where he got the bomb, Miss Hayle?"

"It's Eclipse."

"Excuse me?"

"If we're going to talk about things involving super heroes and mutant powers, then it's Eclipse. 'Miss Hayle' is for when you're asking me about the weather or something."

Fury's mouth twitched, as though he was tempted to smile, but it vanished quickly. "Okay. Sorry, Eclipse. Now about that bomb-"

"He said the MRD sold it to them. And the radiation guns they've started using." Though Julia answered, she wasn't entirely sure where any of this was supposed to be going. Shouldn't SHIELD know about all this already? And if they did, why in the heck were they in here questioning her instead of weeding out whichever MRD officers were selling deadly technology?

"I'm sorry to say you were misled. The MRD doesn't know much of anything about those weapons, and even less about the bomb. Their methods are strictly non-lethal. The bomb and the guns came from SHIELD."

Julia's eyes widened, and she felt her lips pull into a frown. "And you're telling me this why?"

"When I say they come from us, I mean they were stolen."

"It's possible to steal from SHIELD?"

"Apparently so. I can promise you that we're tightening security, and it won't be happening again."

"Okay, sure. That's really none of my concern though. What the hell does any of this have to do with me?"

"The one who did the stealing was a SHIELD agent. Ex-Agent now, naturally. We need someone to go after him."

Understanding clicked in Julia's brain, and she didn't think she was going to like where this conversation went next.

"You have an obvious connection to this little...problem of ours, and-"

"And SHIELD doesn't want to be seen hunting down one of its own. You want me to clean up your mess, is that it? Forget it." She shook her head firmly. "I'm not going to play assassin for you, and I'm sure as hell not going to take a fall for you people. Besides, in case you haven't noticed, I'm kinda locked up. Like I seriously need another crime to add to the reasons I'm in this hell-hole."

"That's our half of the deal." Fury gave her what she assumed was supposed to be a winning smile; it came off more as a sneer.

"Beg pardon?"

"There's a little more gray area around homicide when you're killing murderers. We're willing to look into that gray area, and we're willing to convince the MRD that they should too, especially as it applies to your case. And we don't necessarily want him dead, we just want him John Doe. Do that paralysis thing you did on Telmond. We just want to make sure he ends up in a little out-of-the-way place with no ability to ID himself."

"And what about dental records or DNA or-"

"Already being taken care of. He'll be a ghost."

Julia felt her eyes narrow, really not liking the idea of being a part of this much espionage. "And you expect me to just take your word on all this?"

"No. I didn't think you would." Fury smirked and turned to look over his shoulder. "Hill, bring me the papers."

A woman, presumably the one Julia had been hearing earlier, stepped into the cell as well carrying a stack of paper easily hundreds of pages thick. She handed them off to Fury, and then took up a guard stance in the corner of the cell.

"This Document fully exonerates you of everything you've done since Boston, declaring you an unofficial agent of SHIELD, and implying that every action you've taken has been fully sanctioned and under my direct orders. All it needs is my signature. Feel free to flip through it." He handed the heavy stack of papers off to Julia, who did just that. It was pretty dense, and she didn't really have time to read the whole thing, but it seemed pretty legit.

"And why exactly are you offering all this to me? Why not use some super-secret SHIELD thing to take care of him? Why not just let regular police arrest him or something?"

"We're offering this to you because we don't want this to get messy, Miss- Eclipse. SHIELD doesn't like to get its hands dirty, and if word of this gets out -any word- we lose a lot of face with our backers and with Governments who work with us. SHIELD is the most powerful agency on the planet, we can't afford even one loose thread like this. And because you managed to stop the same type of bomb once before. We may need you to do so once again."

"Ah, so I also get to be your human shield then? Lovely. I'm assuming that should things go bad you can probably manage to pin it all on me, and should they go well, you have my silence bought and paid for. Is that about right?"

Fury just shrugged, and gave a very obvious look around the tiny cell. "How much do you really think you have to lose Eclipse?"

Julia crossed her arms, giving Fury a silently appraising look. That was a valid point. The worst that could happen was she could end up back in here. Still, what good was it to get involved in SHIELD's business? It seemed more like that would only somehow screw her over in the long run. That, and the phrase "two wrongs don't make a right" was continually floating through her head. If she went through with this, wouldn't she just be committing another crime? So what if it was going to Okay-ed by mister high-and-mighty Nick Fury first? Not to mention she would only end up being under SHIELD's thumb if she agreed, and that thought appealed to her not a bit.

She did want to get this guy though. One less mutant-hater with bombs couldn't be a bad thing, the circumstances simply made her a little uneasy. And maybe if the Purifiers didn't have the guy who was selling the technology, it would be easier to put a complete stop to it. Would it be an equal trade-off? She glanced at Fury again, and a thought occurred to her. If SHIELD could keep the MRD off of her -someone who had already been captured- then it should be a simple task for them to do so elsewhere.

"If I said I agreed to go along with this under one condition, would you listen to my request?" Julia questioned, meeting Fury's good eye evenly with her own.

Hill piped up from the corner. "You're in no position to be making demands-"

A raised hand from Fury had her silenced again in a second. "I believe she said a request Hill, not a demand." Hill nodded silently, seeming embarrassed by her outburst, and Fury turned back to Julia. "Alright, let's hear it."

"Someone else got involved in Los Angeles. You probably know him as Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner."

"Yes, I am aware of Mister Wagner's interference."

"Make the MRD forget about him. If you can do that I don't care whether I get out of this place or not, I'll go after this guy for you."

Fury's eyebrow raised at her words. "Is that so?"

Julia felt her teeth grit when his tone was more-or-less skeptical. "Yeah. I wasn't exactly wrongfully accused or anything, but Kurt- Nightcrawler, hasn't done anything wrong. He's my...friend, and he was only trying to help me, he didn't realize what he was getting into. I want the MRD to stay away from him. Forever."

"Forever? Well, that would take quite a bit of work..."

"But you can do it, can't you?"

"Of course we can."

"So make it happen. That's the only thing I'll ask of you."

Fury watched her for another second or two, and then he shook his head with a little smile. "I can't say I understand why, but if that's what you want in exchange for helping us out, then I suppose we have to give it to you. Consider it done. Nightcrawler will be off the MRD's wanted list by tomorrow morning, and I can promise you they won't be asking any questions. In the mean time, come along with us. We need to get you suited up." Fury rose from the chair and started to the door, stopping suddenly, apparently waiting for Julia to follow.

"Suited up...?" Julia questioned, getting up from her bed as well, but suddenly unsure of simply walking out of here, even if it was with the Director of SHIELD.

"Unless you want to wear your prison scrubs? We're aware of your special clothing needs, we have some equipment you should be able to wear."

"Er...alright..."