In which Young Charles is severely weirded out by his older self, the entity that drove Kitty to rip out Alfred's heart is revealed, and the whole group discovers that they are not the only people (or the only world) to have a beef with the Memories.
The jar with the heart sat in the middle of the table, like some sort of obscene conversation piece.
Marie wasn't quite sure whose idea it was to put it there, but now it seemed like nobody wanted to admit they were squeamish enough to want it gone. She herself had drunk enough vodka that she no longer cared.
As usual, she sat with Logan on one side and nobody else on the other, trusting him to keep her from accidentally bumping into someone and murdering them with her face. She was leaning against him now, head on his shoulder, resolutely refusing to explain...anything. That task fell to Ororo, who laid out the last five days to the Professor and Magneto.
It took over an hour, two bottles of vodka, a pizza, and a great deal of interruptions, but eventually they got through it all. The whole of it, actually put into words, sounded so insane that Marie barely believed it, and she'd been there.
"A week," the Professor - the older Professor, oh God, she was going to have to come up with something else to call the younger one - said. "You've all been back here less than a week, and look how you've changed everything." He sounded more amused than anything else.
"And not even on purpose," Ororo said, with a small smile. "Mostly, anyway."
"That would require an amount of forethought I think none of you are capable of," the younger Magneto - shit, she was going to have to start calling this one Erik, wasn't she? - muttered. He winced a little, as Kitty very obviously kicked him under the table.
"Because you've done so much better," she said, giving him what Marie could only describe as a hairy eyeball.
He raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, but of the two of us, who accidentally ripped a man's heart out of his chest?"
"That was one time!" she protested. "Although if you keep it up, I might just give a repeat performance. Or finish 'Go the Fuck to Sleep'."
"Children," Ororo said, earning a glare from both of them. "Not helping. Anyway, that's our story. How long have you two been back here?"
They exchanged a somewhat unfathomable glance. "Less than a day. The three of you vanished without a warning, and not ten minutes later, we found ourselves on the side of a freeway. We nearly got arrested for hitchhiking."
That was a sight Marie would have paid to see. Especially since she couldn't imagine Magneto not throwing some kind of tantrum over it. (Hey, she might know that he'd been working with the Professor, but she hadn't actually seen it, and she was never going to like the bastard. Attempted murder, and all.)
"So you were pulled back ten minutes after us, but arrived almost a week later?" Clarice said. "I'd say we should ask Alfred more about time travel, but even if he had his heart, I doubt we could force it out of him."
"One of the Professors could check his mind," Logan said. "Sorry, but one of you is Charles. You hash that one out between you. Would it even be possible to read his mind while he's a zombie?"
"Not a zombie," Erik muttered, though Marie suspected that by this point, it was an assertion made on auto-pilot.
The elder Professor was quiet a moment. "I don't see how it could hurt. Kitty, you say he's...restrained?"
"We'll go ahead and call it that, yeah," she said. "He can't get anywhere near you, if I take you in there."
"Why can't you just read it from here?" Magneto asked. Unlike the Professor, he looked very, very tired. Marie refused to feel sorry for him, though, because again, asshole who tried to kill her. She was still trying to reconcile herself to the idea of younger him; dealing with the Magneto she'd known just wasn't an option yet.
"Lead," the Professors chorused. Okay, if that kept up, it was going to get really, really weird in a hurry.
"I can get you in," Kitty said, "but you might want to take Logan, just in case Alfred somehow got his foot out of the floor. I'd say that was impossible, but he's somehow alive without his heart, so...yeah."
That thought was somewhat alarming, despite the fact that Marie knew he was more than capable of taking care of himself. It was the zombie aspect that freaked her out - no matter what Magneto (Erik, goddammit) said, a guy who lurched around with no heart and bit people sounded a hell of a lot like a zombie to her.
"Not a problem," Logan said, "but I'm thinkin' we should wait until mornin'. Far as I'm concerned, three a.m. doesn't count as 'mornin'."
"You've got that right," Clarice muttered.
"It might be a good idea," the Professor - their Professor - said. Marie was going to have to start thinking of the younger one as 'Charles', or this was never going to work. "This would be much better attempted with clear heads."
Meaning, Marie thought, not completely punchy from lack of sleep. She had to agree there.
"You want we should fix up some rooms?" Logan said. "Thanks to the nightmares, rest've us have been stayin' in one room with our 'watchers'. East wing still stinks like garlic, though," he added, giving Kitty a glare. Her answering look was completely unrepentant.
"Worth it," she said, looking at Clarice, who somehow managed to both wince and scowl.
The Professor and Magneto shared a glance that almost made Marie burst out laughing. They were both in for a fair amount of...well, she supposed 'culture shock' was the closest term she could come up with. This might be the past, but it was no longer history as they knew it. Such a sharp deviation from their original timeline was probably not something either would get used to overnight. Then again, it wasn't like the rest of them had, either, and they'd lived it.
"We'd appreciate it," Magneto said. "Today has been...tiring...in a way nothing in the war ever managed."
"You'd better get used to that," Ororo said, a little grimly. "There's rarely a dull moment around here. We go through a lot of coffee."
"And booze," Marie said. "And food. Really, we just go through a lot of everythin'. And we never did get back to the store again, sugar," she said to Logan.
"We're pickin' some other victims tomorrow," he said. "I'm not goin' through that again any time soon."
Again she almost laughed, this time because her entire group collectively tensed. Clarice actually twitched.
"We all need to go get more clothes, too," Marie said, feeling more than a little evil, "before we head to France. We can only wash everythin' we've got so many times before it falls apart."
Now it was Kitty who twitched. Rather like Marie herself, she'd never been particularly interested in shopping, but Clarice had loved clothes, once upon a time, and she couldn't leave the house until they got her some hair dye and makeup - which meant Kitty and Marie would be doing her shopping for her. If I have to suffer, Marie thought, so do you.
"Not with those ribs, you're not," Hank said firmly. "You were supposed to be on bed rest the last three days, not turning people into zombies."
"Not a zombie," Erik said, yet again, eyeing his scraped knuckles.
"You sure we can't shoot him in the head?" Logan muttered. He jumped when a fork clipped him in the ear.
"Children," Ororo sighed. "Professor, Magneto, I'll help you find some rooms. The rest of you, behave yourselves."
"Not sure that's possible, with this group," Hank said, mostly to himself. Marie had to resist an extremely childish urge to stick her tongue out at him, mostly because that would just prove him right.
"You need to sleep?" Logan asked her quietly, and she knew what he meant: did she want to stay in the main room again, or find their own? As much as she'd like the latter, she was dog-tired.
"I do," she said. "And I'm probably not the only one. Think the only reason everybody's still up is 'cause the Professor - gonna have to start callin' one of 'em Charles, too - went in and stuck my system in their heads. Probably still tryin' to get used to it."
"They'd better do it quick, before we head to France," he said, low. When she stood, he followed after her, closer than he perhaps needed to.
Marie shivered. "Part of me's terrified to go, and another part just wants to get it over with. Professor - Charles - is probably gonna want us to go in the next couple days, huh?"
"Probably," Logan agreed. "We'll get through it, darlin'. This group might be a bunch of lunatics, but we're tough lunatics. The rest can get figured out later."
While that was probably a terrible idea, it was nevertheless tempting. Right now, she didn't want to think about a damn thing besides some kittens and a soft pillow. Wait.
"What about the kittens?" she asked. "We can't leave 'em here on their own, but none of us can stay. 'Cause you know the Professor and older Magneto won't be willin' to sit this out, even if they're not directly involved."
Logan groaned. "Let's worry about those damn furballs later. If we have to, we'll stuff 'em in that crate and put it in the cockpit with Hank. He'll just love that."
The mental image made Marie giggle so hard she almost couldn't walk straight. Especially since she knew they'd be meowing up a storm the entire time.
They reached the room before everyone else, and were therefor mobbed by attention-starved kittens. Marie dealt with them while Logan grumbled, trying to wipe the cat hair off his pillow. She bit the inside of her cheek, somehow managing not to laugh. The little ginger tried to climb his leg, meowing all the while, and he glared down at it.
"Marie, do me a favor and grab this thing, will you?" he asked, sounding very pained.
She rolled her eyes. "C'mere, you," she said, disentangling its claws from the fabric of Logan's jeans. Immediately it became a perfect sphere of fluff, nuzzling against her hand and purring like a tiny orange chainsaw.
Logan grumbled again, but didn't protest when she took the little creature with her as she laid down. He wrapped his arm around her waist, careful not to squish the kitten, and she could feel him listening to her breathing until she fell asleep.
Charles had known that he and Erik had future selves, but he only now realized he hadn't properly comprehended what that meant until faced with them.
Strangely, the thing that struck him most was that apparently, at some point, he lost all his hair. The fact that his older self was somehow far more well-adjusted, despite having lived the last few years in a hellish future, took longer to sink in. When it did, he felt hopelessly inadequate - a ridiculous thought, considering the other man was him, and had once been where he was now.
Well, not quite. The last week was his and his alone, which was somehow an even odder thought - though not half so much as the way older him interacted with older Erik. Kitty and Logan were, evidently, telling the truth: somehow, in spite of everything, they really had reconciled. It was not the teeth-clenched teamwork he'd been expecting, either; they truly did appear to be friends once more.
And that...well, coupled with what he'd seen in younger Erik's mind, it troubled him. One of the current foundations of his psyche was shifting, and he didn't like it. At all. It was so much easier to think of Erik as a monster and nothing more.
The man in question had beaten him to the communal bedroom, where he was currently lying down and trying to keep a kitten from crawling on his face. Kitty was actually trying to help him, but the little furry creature would not be deterred.
Eventually, she picked it up, held it in front her own face, and said, very solemnly, "Go the fuck to sleep."
Logan snorted - very quietly, so as not to wake Marie. Ororo smothered a laugh in her hand, and Hank choked a little.
The kitten, apparently unimpressed, leaned forward in her grasp and bit the tip of her nose. Now it was Erik who tried not to laugh - tried, and failed.
Charles wondered if he should talk to the older Erik, if there was any point in discovering what sort of hell the man had unleashed. Whatever he'd done, he had to regret it now, or Charles was certain his older self would never have fully reconciled with him. With any luck, Erik the Elder could talk his own younger self out of any potential...stupidity...he might plan after France. It was true that young Erik had no current plans to, but that could always change.
Charles looked around the room, at all the strange, maddening (and occasionally mad) people who had wormed their way into his life so effectively. He had to get them all out of France alive, or he would never, ever forgive himself. He wasn't certain his older self would, either.
Eventually, Kitty slept. As soon as she'd nodded off, the Stranger stirred, deep within her mind.
The heart was not enough, it knew. There were far more organs to gather, living things that must be used.
She wasn't an easy creature to possess, but she was the only one who was capable of doing what the Stranger wished. It needed the organs, but it also needed their owners alive. Fighting the darkness with death would have no impact: only the living would do.
None of the living yet knew it, but they were not the only ones who would see the Memories destroyed. Such creatures didn't belong in this world, and could not be allowed to escape their basement prison. Powerful as they were, those who now stood against them simply would not be enough.
Yes, it needed more organs, but it couldn't take them until everyone else fell asleep, until no one would be aware of Kitty's movements. Influencing others while still in her mind was not easy, and it took precious time they did not have to spare. The telepath was difficult, but Erik, however convincingly he pretended, was impossible. But then, he would be - he alone had seen what the Stranger did. Kitty herself had no memory of it, and never would, but the Other had no way of making him forget.
Eventually, it had no choice. If it were to wait for him to truly sleep, the others might well be awake - the Stranger could only hold them all for a finite amount of time. He had no way of waking or stopping her, even if he followed, so let him.
It stood, careful not to step on anyone or anything. Having a physical form was...hard. It had not operated a physical being in a very, very long time, and had to consciously think about putting one foot in front of the other. Fortunately, Kitty could phase through walls and doors without thought, and she did so now.
The glow of the waning moon shone through the windows, but the Stranger needed no light to see. It knew where the others slept, too, and guided her silently through the corridors. They had little time: Erik would follow, and if he had any sense, he would wake the others. So much distraction might allow Kitty to break free again, and the only recourse the Stranger would have was rather less merciful. It took no joy in killing the living, but neither did it grieve for them. It did what it must, and nothing more.
Erik swore silently. He'd known this would happen - he'd known it. He also knew that, much though he didn't want to, he had to wake the others for this. Given how spectacularly he'd failed on his own the first time, he didn't want to try snapping Kitty out of...whatever the hell she was in...alone.
"Get up," he said, more harshly even than he'd intended. "We have a problem."
It was probably the level of his voice that roused them at first, but once his words sunk in, half of them tensed. He flicked the lights up to full brightness, dislodging a kitten from his knee.
"Kitty?" Charles asked, rubbing his face.
"She's moving again," Erik confirmed. "Or something's moving her. She might be after another...victim."
Logan cursed, but not so loudly or creatively as Marie, who shoved her tangled hair out of her face. "Who the hell is she after now?"
"Obviously not one of us," Hank said, trying to put his glasses on straight. "Either she's gone to finish off the job with Alfred, or she's headed for his group."
Much as Erik would love to let her rip out one of Janek's organs, the rest of them weren't bad people, and she'd never forgive any of them if they didn't at least try to stop her.
Charles's expression went blank for a moment, his eyes unfocusing. "She's on her way to their wing," he said. "Or, rather, whatever's driving her is on its way. Erik, I've asked our future selves to intercept her, but I don't know if they can."
"Probably not," Marie said, stuffing her feet into slippers. "She's not exactly easy to catch. I don't think there's anythin' she can't just phase through. Except Alfred's chest, apparently."
Erik tried not to shudder. Somehow, her attempt to put the heart back was almost worse than its removal.
They moved in a herd through the corridors, with a great deal of both tripping and cursing and a total absence of stealth. Erik's hand throbbed, and he found himself hoping that she wasn't right about the zombie thing after all. While he didn't know just what the bite might do, the fact that she'd said someone would need to shoot him in the head was...not encouraging.
They'd woken. All of them, past and future. Both telepaths were hunting, trying to find Kitty's mind where it sat safely cocooned within the Stranger's grasp. Trying to fight the pair of them was far from easy, and it could feel Kitty's consciousness stirring.
Who are you?
It was the elder telepath, the one from the future. He was the stronger of the two, and much more adept. You need not know, the Stranger said. You need only let me work. You cannot defeat the Memories without my help.
We can't let you hurt the others, he countered. What you've done is wrong, as is using Kitty to do it. We don't need to kill our own people.
You know nothing, the Stranger said. And they are not your people, nor am I killing them. You cannot do this without me.
We woke the Memories, the other telepath said. We can destroy them. You aren't the first being to visit our dreams.
I do not visit, the Stranger snapped. What you have seen nothing more than shades, peering through the veil to give you advice of little use. I offer you tangible aid, and you refuse.
Kitty twitched, and for a moment the Stranger's feet faltered. It forced her onward, but she twitched again, struggling to wake, making the Stranger almost lose its footing. Not for the first time did it curse being trapped in a physical form.
Sleep, it ordered, but she refused. Her attempts were sluggish, but they were undeniable: she was fighting, and the Stranger had no time for it. It tamped down on her consciousness, ruthless, driving her forward.
The others - the entire lot of them - came skidding into the hallway from around a corner. A human might have found the sight of them comical; to the Stranger, they were just an annoyance, and one easily dealt with.
Logan wasn't going to lie: he'd seen a lot of freaky things in his life, but the Kitty that approached them scared the living shit out of him. Her face was almost vacant, but not entirely: there was purpose in her eyes, more alien even than what he'd seen of the Memories. She even smelled wrong: harsh and metallic, like an oncoming thunderstorm. Marie was right - there wasn't actually any way to restrain her.
"You broke free of this once," young Magneto said, his tone a strange mix of worry, fear, and total exasperation. "You can do it again, preferably without tearing out someone's organs. Otherwise, I'm putting this on your face." He held up his uninjured hand, showing her - where the fuck had he found that spider? Logan hoped like hell the thing hadn't been crawling around the bedroom while they were all asleep. Spiders didn't really bug him, but he didn't like the thought of one trying to get into his ear while he slept.
Kitty blinked, and for a fraction of a second, Logan would swear he saw her in her eyes. It was so brief that he might have imagined it; even if he hadn't, it certainly hadn't slowed her down.
She did pause, however, when she reached them, those ungodly eyes sweeping over the entire group. Logan actually felt his skin crawl. "You'll all die without my help," she said, "but if you stand in my way, I'll kill you myself. I will not let you hinder me."
Logan never would understand how every single one of them managed to stand fast. Their collective terror was so intense that the stench of it was absolutely foul, but they all stayed put.
The Kitty-thing's eyes swept them all again, expressionless. Save for that, she stood unnaturally still, free of any tension - which made what she did next such a shock. Her right hand shot out, landing right over Magneto's heart - and staying there, immobile.
She actually blinked, whatever was in her mind temporarily thrown. It tried again, with the same lack of result, and Logan could see its hold crack.
"She doesn't want to kill him." The Professor - the older Professor - wheeled himself down the hallway, somehow looking serene as ever. "You can't truly force her to do anything, you know. You can't make her kill where she doesn't wish to. I would imagine it only worked with Alfred because she already wanted him dead."
"I do not kill," thing said, sounding almost humanly puzzled. "Those I take from do not die. Why would she stop me?"
"He's a jackass, sure, but she's never actually wanted to hurt him," Logan said. "Just throw shit at him. Including spiders, which, yeah, you might want to make use of that, bub. Might help."
Magneto blinked, rousing himself out of his stupor. He looked at the spider in his hand as though he'd entirely forgotten it. Fortunately, he did as bidden, and dropped the thing on Kitty's outstretched arm.
She jerked backward, trying to fling the thing away, and yeah, there was Kitty. Logan doubted the thing in her head was afraid of spiders.
"Christ!" she yelped, flicking it away with her left hand. Her flailing would have been funny, if the situation hadn't been so tense.
"Is it gone?" he asked, inhaling even as he spoke. She smelled like Kitty again, albeit a Kitty drenched in fear.
"What, the thing in my head, or the spider?" she asked, a little hysterically.
"Both. You smell like you again - are you you?"
Kitty shuddered, rubbing her arms. "Think so. Am I going to have to worry about that every time I go to sleep?"
"Not if I do for you what I did for the others," Charles said, with a firmness Logan wasn't sure he actually felt. "You can keep it out like they do the Memories."
Logan inhaled again, unease creeping through him once more. Kitty might smell like herself again, but the weird, metallic scent wasn't actually gone.
He didn't realize what was happening until it was too late, and apparently nobody else did, either. Marie stepped forward, stripping off one glove, her expression dreamy and vacant. Before anyone could react, she grabbed Kitty by the throat.
Oh, great, Kitty thought, right before searing pain hit her like a truck. Rogue had never touched her before, but holy shit did it hurt like a bitch. It only took a few seconds for her brain to catch up and let her phase through Rogue's hand, but those few seconds were more than enough.
She landed on her knees (ow), choking like a clubbed seal, and thinking, vaguely, that passing out right now sounded like an absolutely fantastic idea. Unfortunately, consciousness didn't seem to want to cooperate. Dammit.
Somebody - Erik, she realized, when her eyes bothered to focus - picked her up, checking her throat. It sure as hell felt like it ought to be bruised, but she was pretty sure that wasn't how Rogue's power worked. He had a pretty amazing ring of bruises around his own neck, thanks to zombie Alfred. The sheer fury in his face was a rather terrifying thing - or would have been, if she hadn't felt so goddamn awful.
"So," she managed, clearing her throat, "that just happened. Please tell me Rogue isn't possessed."
"Rogue's possessed," Clarice said, her voice laced with panic.
"Dammit." She looked back at Erik. "Are we going to have to have the 'put me down' argument again?"
"I wasn't aware there was any argument to be had," he snapped. The way he was glaring at Rogue was...not good.
"Don't," she said quietly, touching his face to make him actually look at her. "Let the Professor handle it. Next to him, Rogue's probably got the strongest mind in the entire damn world. If anybody can lock that thing up, it's her. Just chill." She paused. "Can I get a rough estimate on when you will put me down?"
He gave her a look that wasn't quite a glare. "No."
She could always just phase herself back to the floor, but...she didn't want to. And she was absolutely not going to think about why. Nope.
It had been so long since Charles had seen Marie. So very, very long, and for years he had thought her dead. When he'd finally realized that she was alive, and in the camps, there had been nothing he could do - a thing that had haunted him daily.
But she hadn't just survived. In her brief time in the past, she seemed to have thrived, a thing no doubt helped by Logan. She had a strength now that had only been a whispered potential not so long ago. He could feel her struggling, trying to lock the strange, alien presence into one of her mental cells. The fact that she was having such difficulty was worrying.
"Marie," he said, trying to focus her. "Marie, let me help you."
She nodded, her jaw clenched and a vein throbbing at her temple.
Her mind was, as ever, very neatly ordered. It would seem that her time in the camps had reinforced her will, rather than destroying it: the others were all resolutely caged, including something in one of her iron-clad 'solitary' rooms. It howled and fought, banging on the walls, but it was as effectively trapped as anything could possibly be.
The other thing, though - the Stranger, it called itself, was not so easily bested. It twisted and turned, evading each personality as Marie released it. This must have been how she locked up the other thing, the dark creature in solitary, but it wasn't working now. The Stranger's form was intangible, only vaguely humanoid, and all who tried to grab it could find no purchase.
Marie, he said, trying to augment her power, to give him some measure of his own telepathy without actually touching her. Focus, Marie. You can do this.
No, the Stranger said, she can't. I need her. Its voice was distinctly feminine, though its accent was like nothing he had ever heard before. Drive me from her and I will return to the other. One way or another, I will finish what I came to do.
Marie said nothing, but he felt her push, shoving at the Stranger with all the considerable force of her strength. It only made the Stranger smile, and Charles realized, too late, what was going on.
Stop, Marie, he said, a very faint tinge of desperation in his voice. It's feeding off your effort. I know this sounds strange, but your mind is too strong to evict it.
Not entirely foolish, the Stranger said. You are not a truly stupid race, for all your stubbornness and morals. I will return her when I am through, unharmed. Until then, you will all stay out of my way.
Oh dear. Sorry, Charles and Marie, but you've actually found something that can use your own power against you. Oops. Somebody better get Anathea and Company out of the way, and stop Erik from deliberately throwing Janek under the bus. He's just a teensy-weensy bit murderous as it is. Can the pair of Charles's help? Will the two Magneto's drive Logan to murder someone himself? We will find out.
The title of this chapter, and the last two, both come from Twin Peaks:
From the days of future past
The magician longs to see
One chants out between two worlds
Fire, walk with me